##VIDEO ID:m3JT_24WE98## e e e e e e e e e e e right good evening and welcome to the West Nore Board of Education public board meeting on Monday January 27th 2025 I would like to thank all of you here in person and those watching from home for joining us tonight miss flowers please take the roll call good evening everyone roll call please Dr Bryant here Mr Stevenson here miss Vera here vice president ifer here president Rock here thank you notice of meeting the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest are discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of the ACT a written notice was sent from the office of the SEC Secretary of the board on January 7th 2025 that set notice was sent by regular mail to the West Orange Township CL and the editors of the West Orange Chronicle and by email to The Star Ledger that said notice was posted in the lobby of the administration building of the Board of Education and posted on the district website please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and may be broadcasted on local TV and the district's website at a future date please stand for the pledge of egps flag United States of America indice thank you Miss Flowers in consideration of the closed and public meetings of December 16th 2024 January 6th 2025 and January 15th 2025 do I have a motion to accept the minutes so moved thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Mr ifer any comments hearing none just congratulations to those who were elected by the people of West Orange in November and sworn in in on January 6 so congratulations to my board colleagues oh I'm sorry congratulations to the board colleagues who were elected in the recent November election that's my only comment president rock with respect to the minut from January 6 of 2025 thank you Mr Stevenson uh Miss Flowers would you please take the WC call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss Vera yes vice president ifer yes president Rock yes thank you all right next up we have uh our student aan report from Nina Davis take away good evening last Friday the West Orange Chinese Club hosted their annual Lunar New Year celebration in the taroff cafeteria festivities included student cultural performances games A Student Art Show and crafts a Chinese dinner was provided for guests along with a raffle at the end of the night last Saturday West Orange hosted the 19th annual West Orange High School Color Guard Invitational where over 25 color guards from all over the East Coast were able to participate and showcase their amazing talent on January 19th the ABC salute boys step team were the winners of the 18th Annual youth Step USA Brooklyn burough Championship so congratulations to them to celebrate Black History Month West Orange High School will be hosting a Black History Month dinner and celebration on February 13th there will be local catering and festivities including performances from the boys and girls step team the Jubilee choir and the national dance Honor Society tickets will soon be available for $15 each and we hope to see you there thank thank you thank you for that Nina uh next up we have Mr Moore it is time for your report would you please share your superintendent's Report with us at this time thank you president Rock one of our initiatives my first initiative uh last year was to bring air conditioning to our Elementary classrooms so we've completed our first phase of updating electric electric the electrical um in the buildings and it has been completed in for Washington Kelly and St Cloud we will now begin to work on the electrical for Mount Pleasant Gregory Hazel and Redwood I will eventually uh call on our ptas uh to Rally behind a possible donation campaign so that we can we may effect we may help with the cost of effectively installing window units next tonight we welcome Robert hag of lurch Vincy and Bliss they're in audit in firm and they will be presenting the comprehensive fiscal report thank you Robert thank you board um yeah just a brief presentation tonight on your recently filed audit for the 2324 fiscal year uh each year every District in the state has to have an audit uh external audit and filed with the state of New Jersey Department of Education uh what gets filed and what you have uh what you receive from us is two books one is a bigger book which is the comprehensive annual financial report which has all of your financial statements our audit opinions related note disclosures uh then you get a smaller report from us which is the order's management report which discusses the results of the audit uh so just to give you some highlights uh in the big report you receive three opinions from us audit opinions uh you receive what we call an unmodified opinion for all three of those opinions uh basically the highest level of assurance and auditor give uh so you have one opinion on your financial statements on whether they're prepared in accordance with uh generally accepted accounting principles uh second opinion on your internal controls which is more of uh looking at your processes and procedures make sure there's no uh uh deficiencies in those internal controls and then the third one is on your single audit which relates to compliance with state and federal Grant programs so all three opinions what we call are clean opinion on a modified opinion so very positive uh positive result of the audit on that front uh just just to touch on some of the financials uh The District closed the year uh from a surplus standpoint uh about $3.8 million over the state minimum uh State Maximum so the state only allows you to keep around 2% of your budget as unassigned fund balance which is really uh undesignated unassigned uh Surplus uh anything over and above that uh goes back into your budget in the next cycle so in your 25 26 budget uh you'll have $3.8 million from savings from this budget to assist in that budget uh and that's pretty consistent to where you were last year at this time so so from the June of 23 audit you had about $3.7 million uh available for your 2425 budget so you're kind of on equal footing from where you were last year as far as a uh fund balance standpoint so hopefully when you start preparing this budget at least you you know you're not in a short fall to begin the budget process um you also have around total about $5.2 million in a capital reserve fund that's set aside for Capital Improvement purposes uh 5 million of that is being used in the current budget uh so of the 5 .2 most of that is being used in the current or actually was budgeted in the current year budget uh anything that's not used in this budget will revert back into capital reserve so uh you had 5.2 million of which like I said five million is budgeted so once this year closes whatever is not spent that'll increase that that 200,000 and that's available for future budgets or if the board that board discretion during the year you could do a resolution to withdraw that money for uh any Capital Improvement purposes that's in your longrange facilities plan uh you also have around $2 million in a maintenance Reserve fund that's very similar to capital reserve except it's for maintenance of your existing facilities so it's not for you know major improvements or additions or alterations it's really uh just for maintenance of your existing facilities uh so something breaks you could use that to fix it uh you know you need to replace some equipment you can do that uh so it's more of a an ongoing maintenance rather than a long-term capital um so all in all from from a financial standpoint you're you're pretty even from where you were last year so for a district year size to kind of keep that fund balance even is uh you know pretty stable financially um you know the only thing I would caution is and this is not specific to West Orange but uh you know you're using the money that you're saving from one year you know to assist with the budget in the next year so that's a rolling process that that you've been doing as as most districts do uh so you just want to keep your eye on that so if that tends to increase you know substantially you know that could cause problems down the road but you're not at that point yet but uh just the caution is you're using that fund balance every year you want to kind of maintain that same level each year um and from a a man report standpoint we did have six recommendations which I believe there's corrective action plan put in place uh that that'll be implemented to address those findings we reviewed those with the with the business office um of the six none of them were what we call material or significant they were all what we uh describe as general comments uh so we start out at the general comment level and if we deem it to be a significant deficiency in your internal controls which caused that finding a recommendation we would cause report that has a significant deficiency or if it's a material weakness that you know the finding caused a material weakness in your financial statements we report that as such but all six of these were what we call General comments so uh pretty easily correctable I think if that corrective action plan is implemented you know that hopefully they would be corrected going forward U so all in all very positive audit on on the financial front and on on the recommendations front um so I'm happy to take any questions if anybody has any questions on either of those reports does the board have any questions one quick question yeah sure were any of the findings in the uh notes different from the findings of last year uh yes I think we had um there were six findings three of them did recur from last year uh so three of them were new three of them uh occurred again from last year um so I think we we we talked about that there were kind of problems that are uh corrective action is being implemented it hasn't been fully implemented yet so that's why you see those correct uh you know the same findings again so uh from what we saw it didn't look like you know nothing was done on those findings just looks like needs to be continued Improvement in those areas but three of them were new ones three of them were were repeats from the previous year mentioning the three that are repeats for everybody yeah sure um the one was um there's a level of uh shity bond that uh the treasurer has to maintain uh it's basically based on the size of your budget the state gives us a calculation to say based on the size of your budget here's the minimum Bond shity bond that a Treasurer has to maintain uh that was below the max the state minimum uh that could be the result I don't have the detail in front of me but that this the as your budget increases the level of that shity bond has to increase so potentially what could happen is we had that finding in last year's order report you were required to be at a certain level you weren't last year so we reported now this year your budget went up again so that minimum goes up again so could have been just really a calculation standpoint where I believe your bond may have been increased from last year but now because your budget increased again it it's required to go up again so although it's a repeat like I said it's kind of a continued corrective action um another one was just on uh you have some rolling uh pension and payroll U related issues that uh for employees that are enrolled in the pension and require uh like a retro pay for salaries there's pension associated with those retro salaries that have to be remitted to the state uh so on a normal payroll basis you withhold uh pension from your employees that gets remitted to the state as the payrolls occur but when you have a retro that's owed for back pay uh there's also pension associated with that so what happens is there's a supplemental report that has to be filed for each quarter that that retro is associated so what has to happen is that those quarterly reports have to be filed to make up for all of those individual quarters and then that pension will be remitted to the state so again I think that might have been a case of it was different Retros in different years so uh it's just a matter of keeping on top of when those Retros are paid to make sure those uh supplemental pension reports and payments get remitted to the state uh the third one had to do with a capital asset appraisal each year uh we have to report in your audit your uh value of all of your Capital assets your buildings your equipment any Machinery uh and the related depreciation on that so generally what happens is districts hire a thirdparty company to come in and do an appraisal uh they'll update that appraisal and depreciation each year uh so last year and this year we didn't get the report last year I believe we got the report after the audit was issued this year I think they were still in the process of preparing the report uh so that's just the recommendation to say let's you know we need that report a little bit earlier because we need to report those numbers in the audit so I think what happened the last few years is the audit has been extended because of various reasons at the state level so I think some of the uh third party companies have got used to those extensions but now the state is kind of reverting back to the original audit deadlines which are a little bit earlier than it has been so I think it's just a matter of keeping on top of them to get you that report as early as possible thank you sure any other questions Mr thank you thank you uh just one more thing at this time I can present the harassment intimidation and bullying reports since our last board meeting there have been eight investigations I reviewed all the summaries of each of the investigations and none of the incidents uh met the criteria of the Hib and all were unfounded I concur with the findings presented by our anti-bullying specialist thank you all right thank you Mr Moore for that report next up do we have any committee reports or comments from the board sure I'll give a curriculum report um just a quick update on the status of um the math interventions that are happening specifically in grades 6 through eight um there were districtwide classroom visits in October of 2024 um and we have the results of those visits that make it clear about what we actually need to be working on in areas of focus for grades 6 through 8 also areas of support for our classroom teachers um what is encouraging is that we are focused on giving the students more of the cognitive load during the instructional time we are focused on more opportunities for students to explain their learning and what they're understanding and more opportunities for students to discuss their learning with other students so that feels very encouraging our next steps in this process um this week our kids if you have kids in the system are taking Diagnostics in their subjects and so we will have the results of those Diagnostics soon though those will be reported back to us um we will also have the results of classroom visits that will happen in February focused on the discuss it portion of the classroom time and we will have a report out to the curriculum committee that gives us progress on both math sort of where we are how things are going as well as the ELA implementation um that started this past fall so excited to get those updates and as soon as we have them we will definitely share them here um that's it thank you for that Dr Bryant of course anything from you Mr Stevenson no sir thank you okay Miss ver anything all right uh thank you for that committee report uh next up I would like to share my board president's Report with you all recently one of our administrators was recognized by the West Orange human relations commission and was bestowed the 2025 educator Dr Martin Luther King Jr award Roosevelt Middle School principal ly hush was selected for this recognition for his commitment to upholding the values of Dr King through his exceptional service and dedication to making our schools more inclusive and more Equitable We Salute principal hush and congratulate him on receiving this award I also hear that our student L on nah Davis received an award there as well so congratulations to you uh that's all I have well also just like to say thank you for that report on the air conditioning that is exciting to hear that we're moving forward with that um that's all I have uh so next we will have questions from the public on agenda items only any Community member who would like to make comments or ask questions please come to the podium at this time please state your name and home address for the record and then begin your comments please limit your comments to 3 minutes do we have any members of the public here in the audience tonight who wish to make a public comments Adam Kramer Tony Moran Road West Orange um I'm going to be commenting on some things I noticed from the audit report that are really policy questions that come from the audit report uh not that there're any problem with the audit itself um the first thing I noticed is if you look at exhibit j4 in the fiscal year ending June 30 you had total revenues of just over a quarter billion dollars uh 250 m332 3 and 33324 your enrollment was 7,880 so if you do the math you had a revenue stream of 30, 35,3 57 in change per student that figure is way more than double the national average it is way more than the state average and it's way more than the county average my question is um with that much revenue can we do things to help the taxpayer in terms of trimming the budget or making efficiencies so that the tax payers get a break without adversely in impacting um education numbers like that I think there is some room for that the question next question I had related to Total indebtness um of the T of the Town County and um School Board most people don't realize it between our PR share of the of the county debt the Schoolboard debt and the town debt um there's over a quarter billion dollars in local debt out there 256 thou million and change works out to about $21,000 a household um what are we going to do to control the debt make sure we're using it wisely paying it off and uh getting the best possible interest rates because that's not sustainable for the town um In fairness most of the debts with the municipality um not you um the next question um relates to things and I think this is where you need a better interplay between the school and the town the exhibit clearly shows that the top 10 property tax pay payers in the town dropped from 7.11% in 2015 to 5.4 last year meaning our commercial property base is shrinking that means School Tax Falls more and more on homeowners um I'd like to know what you guys are doing with the town to make sure that they have um land use policies tax abatement policies that are not not robbing your school revenues and then dumping it on the homeowner uh question four was about postretirement wrap it up in a sentence or so my last question relates to the um 400,000 plus debt uh bad debt that you have and I want to know what's being done to collect it um it's mostly from school lunches thank you thank you Mr kman is there anybody else from the audience speaking on agenda items good evening good evening everybody uh Margarita sanoto I live in for bman Road very close to Redwood um I have a daughter who is in kindergarten in Redwood school and I'm glad to hear that the AC units are moving forward but I wanted to ask a little bit more about what's the timeline that we're looking at um we're new in town new homeowners neish um and we had the back to school night it was the first time for us and we were in my daughter's classroom and we were adults it was in the evening it was September and it was very hot so I can't imagine for 5year old six year olds to be learning in that environment and I know the things are being done but I just want to get an idea of also from the parents side like what we do to support that because I'm just thinking know when spring is coming and with climate change as you want to call it um the temperatures are going to be all over the place so that is my question thank you wait see if anybody else is there anybody else for public comments at this time or Mr Mo would you like to touch on the air conditioning question I'll talk budget for a second no worries um in terms of the timeline in for Redwood uh we had to we have to upgrade the electrical in Redwood which puts us back a little bit longer so you're looking at Redwood for 26 uh 2026 in order to get that all online um some of the all the schools were were not sufficient as far as electrical um it was concerned so we had to upgrade every which is very expensive by the way because we're bringing electricity into the schools um and uh it took us a little time to budget because again we didn't do a referendum or anything of that nature we budgeted through our budget and uh so we had to do it in phases so um the first three schools as I mentioned I believe was um right now that everything has been updated was Kelly um Washington and St Cloud um next is Mount Pleasant Redwood um hazel and Gregory uh so we're this year we're looking to uh put air conditionings air conditioning in on Washington Kelly and uh St Cloud um with uh and then the following we're looking to put uh air conditioning in and Redwood itself so it does take a little time because we still have to have electrical and I believe Tanya you can help me with this because I'm getting my information from vendors and buildings and grounds but I believe there are some in order to upgrade the electrical there's things that Transformers and I might be saying this wrong but okay thanks that not need to be ordered and there and those take um we've already ordered them but they take a year to get in um so it will be coming because there's already been ordered for them but it it it will take us a little bit of time to get everything online thank Mr Moore can't hear that thank you for the update um just wondering if if there is a way to have a temporary solution for this year for the schools are not going to be not going to have that I mean I I know that there's a whole replacement but well we do have some air conditioning in the schools uh to get every classroom uh is is very difficult um I can tell you that like last year we explored different things putting people in rooms trying to combine things of that nature but I can't answer if we don't have anything planned to come in temporarily to do that um but I will say that you know we we tend to see if things are getting let's say escalating with heat and so forth we would come up with a plan to try to help where we can we've brought in Portables we brought in fans but I don't I cannot commit to you at this point in time again I would have to talk to buildings and grounds but I I cannot commit that there is a temporary plan that we have ready to go right now sorry work at the school because I think the the temperature was like 101 at one point in a classroom so that's really I mean there might be specific classrooms in the school so I guess we can relate that to the principal because no when we've had those issues we move people to share classroom spaces in which we have something but I I I meant if there was one temporary that I have planned for right this moment I don't um um and and uh you know I will though assess that and we'll talk with your principal a little bit more and we'll keep an eye I can tell you that all right no worries thank you uh and with regards to Mr Kramer's questions about the budget just offer two thoughts um one we are about to go into budget season so we have preliminary meetings set up with the administration to to meet with each of the board members separately uh as we we did last year we will look for areas where we can save money we implemented several cost savings last year which helped balance our budget uh we do have additional requests for Staffing and professional development and things you know coming forward this year and so we always have to balance what we need and what we want with what we can afford and I'm sure that some of those things will have to get cut and some of those things will be um in the budget um but we will be mindful of the total budget uh and the impact on the taxpayers as we go through that process um and with regards to debt as you mentioned the majority of that debt is the town debt uh in my time on the board I don't believe we've issued any new major debt I will say that when I was elected there was conversations about debt people were talking about a referendum heard Mr Moore just mentioned that we avoided that uh for two major reasons one is facilities and the other is pre so far we've been able to expand prek without going out to a referendum and we have some additional things planned for the short term that are going to increase the amount of prek space that we have without incurring new debt and we've also been able to thanks to the capital reserve and thanks to State uh state funding sources that pay for part of our Capital Improvements managed to do that very expensive upgrade to electrical that'll enable us to do air conditioning which is something the community has long been asking for without adding to our debt so we are as a board mindful of that uh doing the best that we can to provide the best education with the best facilities and the best staff at at a level that is you know as as affordable as it can be for a place like Essex County um so with that did all right we'll we'll take one more public comment then before we close I I appreciate that thank you uh my name is Katherine de Walker I'm from 59 Stanford and I had a follow-up question just regarding you're mentioning some of the temperatures in the classrooms and wanted to know um you may not have the information on hand now but in terms of what safety Protocols are in place as you're considering is there a certain temperature which you know would um trigger something let's say if School needs to be Rel released early or anything like that I mean especially when you're talking about like 101 or so um so I wanted to know if you had any information to share on that yeah um just that's always in place uh we always have u a certain level of temperature and we look at that and it's in place if we can move the students to other rooms we try to do that share spaces and things like that we've done um but there those plans are always in place too cold too warm things of that nature we try to make moves and make sure everyone's safe safeties first for anything we do so yeah all right uh moving on to our resolutions may I have a motion to approve the Personnel items A1 through A4 so move thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Mr ier uh want to congratulate the following retirees Jennifer maresi a special education teacher at St Cloud Elementary for her 30 years of service and brono M Mitch a custodian on the night shift at West Orange High School for his 23 years of service thank you all for your service to the Western orang students and our school Community best wishes to you and welcome to the club where every day is Saturday is there any other discussion on Personnel seeing none Miss Flowers would you please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Ste Stevenson yes Miss Vera yes vice president ifer yes president Rock yes thank you all right next may I have a motion to approve the curriculum and instruction items B1 through B6 so move thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Mr ifer is there any discussion seeing none uh Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss Vera yes vice president ifer yes president Rock yes thank you right next may I have a motion to approve the finance items c special services items a 1- six and business office items B 1- 12 so move thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Mr ier uh any discussion seeing none Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss Vera yes vice president ifer yes president Rock yes thank you should we rewind the clock for a second didn't we have a donation on the agenda there yes we did and who was that from again donation we have for Miss Vera I'm sorry second my point was it was from Miss ver yeah yes I just wanted to say thank you for your generous donation to our schools yes and there was one more my one and uh Mr David meny made donation to Washington Elementary wonderful thank you very much for that um and finally may have a motion to approve reports item D1 through three so moved thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second thank you Miss ver uh any disc seeing none Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss Vera yes vice president ifer yes president Rock yes thank you I forgot there's one more uh item can I have a motion to approve miscellaneous item E1 motion thank you Dr Bryant Sarah second thank you miss any discussion hearing none Miss flowers please take the role what Mr Stevenson the miscellaneous item is the approval of the academic calendar for 2526 yes it is okay I'm sorry I overlooked that my apology no comments on it no comment thank you any other comments on the calendar all right uh Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson I abstain Miss Vera yes vice president ifar yes president Rock yes all right thank you very much to my board colleagues for that uh next up we will have petitions and hearings of citizens for any agenda or non-agenda items that you wish to discuss you will have three minutes to speak please approach the podium at this time and state your name and address for the record Adam Kramer 20 Moran Road West Orange New Jersey I've lived in West Orange over 20 years and I've been coming to board meetings for well over a decade and a half I've lost five School Board elections and I've made some observations and I think the biggest problem is that we don't have a culture of accountability in this school system the mass scores in ninth grade were horrendous nobody owns it nobody is the person responsible and nobody's going to have really a letter of reprimand a job loss and conversely which I think is the better way to solve it nobody's going to get a bonus or a promotion if they come up with great ideas and great work to fix it consistently we are spending way more and taxing way more than pretty much every comparable jurisdiction in the state of of New Jersey and the county of Essex and the nation and when I ask why are our cost structures so radically different for example why is it 20% more expensive to educate a child here than Coldwell West Coldwell six miles away I really don't get an answer it seems that nobody really owns the cost structure and fiscal accountability of this cour nobody's going to get a bonus if they figure out how to save a lot of money nobody's going to lose a job if they signed bad contracts and I think that there in lies the problem so from my perspective and I will say this and people will give me lots of heat but a lot of people agree with me that they're just not courageous to say it we're in a school district that pays top dollar for Education by any measure by the measures of test scores we're paying for mediocrity I see this as untenable and I see this all relates to we have a system and a culture in this District that lacks accountability nobody owns problems nobody gets consequences for when they don't fix problems and nobody gets rewards when they do and I think that's the core problem as to why we have very expensive schools but not necessarily very effective schools for everyone thank you there anybody else wishing to speak a public comment yes good evening my name is Rochelle Alves I'm at 20 May Fair Drive um and I am a resident I'm also a parent to two children here in the district um and I'm also an active member of the West Orange Hispanic Foundation um and as a community member I have uh witnessed the fear the last few days of many of students Families my neighbors my residents of residents here in West Orange who are um fearing uh with the decision of the current Administration on the roll back of a decade old policy of prohibiting arrests pertaining to their immigration status at hospitals churches and schools so with that being said um I present some questions that you may or may not have answers to um the first question I have is does the front office of every school district sorry of every school in the district know what a Judicial Search or arrest warrant looks like are all staff aware of the school pre uh premises building access and visitor policy are all staff aware of the fura regulations and state regulations in regard to sharing student information those are just some of the questions that I have um I know many of my residents many of the neighbors uh fear to speak so I speak on their behalf thank you thank you I think generally we could say yes and we have a plan in place but perhaps Mr more yeah uh direct question sure but if you want to make a general comment you can do that too oh no it's up to you I'm just if she has a list of questions it's probably easier to talk to her one-on-one and answer them all I I know very well um first um let's start with um this district is a you know may have a lot of issues in which uh I I can uh let me acknowledge Mr Kramer as we hear you and um you know it's my first year and a half and uh I don't want a bonus but I want to fix things and make sure that it gets better and I don't need any more money for that I think that we're going to do that because we all share we like you the love for the town and uh we need your expression as as as we need all our um Town constituents to express themselves so we get a great understanding and a better understanding of how we should go about our business and of course relle uh you are a terrific parent and a member of our school system and you've worked very hard and I and I know you personally and I'm I'm happy that you came up and spoke for people and that that's respected and appreciated um one of the things I love about this town is people partnered up with us as a school district these are unprecedented times um and we have no um you know we're going into this new into what is a challenge to a place like West Orange in which a beautiful multi- universe exist with a diversity of people um and that's a good thing however in terms of answering your question directly on do people know the difference between an immigration warrant to a Judicial warrant is the reason why we've partnered with West arpd um to make sure that that is understood by anyone um being approached or um by any immigration agent we would not and I uh sent it out in a letter today we would not let anyone take action and we would protect the confidentiality of our students and families and but we do have to be lawful and we understand that we are not uh you know law enforcement and judicial warrants and so forth um do require us to be lawful but before we um take any actions we would have the assistance of um West Orange PD to help us understand that we also will have our attorney um who we've partnered up with and planned for our attorney to be um present and aware during any if that was to happen here at West Orange and will'll also assist in that um myself would have to be and that's along with the New Jersey guidelines I would be um present to understand what that looks like and so forth and of course um as far as like uh people walking through our buildings going to through things of that nature we wouldn't allow that we would make sure and have that contained as we would with any law enforcement agency we would have that contained where we can work these things out lawfully uh and to get a clear understanding of what um rights our students have in the moment and so forth and then of of course um you know we will be supportive in in this way um not everyone is trained in understanding immigration and so forth but our teachers are trained in being empathetic and compassion to people's fears and uh the fears of our families and uh you know that we can definitely do and support our families while we are in some unprecedented times and not sure how things are working or going to work going forward but we're prepared to support our students and families because they're what's important to us we are not law enforcement agents agents so we won't act as such we are citizens like everyone else but we do prioritize protecting our community and protecting our kids and so forth but we are not also we also aren't going to obstruct we cannot obstruct or be unlawful so we would work with people on our side such as board attorneys and West Orange PD to really understand the situation before anyone or if anyone can take action so you know I hope that answered a little bit of your is that all right all right I hope that answered some of your questions um so the approach that we're taking right thank you Mr Moore uh our next board meeting for the purposes of rle I think there's a typo there our next regular board meeting oh sorry yeah there's someone else for public my name is Pamela beerley and I resided Bonia Terrace hey so I I made a post today in the mom's group was because I felt it was important for our community to have full transparency and with a lot that's been going on right now I just wanted to share a little bit of my story and let people know that what's going on right now is is real so as a mother who has experienced family separation firsthand due to immigration law I want to sincerely say thank you to our community who was showing support and solidarity regarding most recent events that have been happening with Immigration and Customs Enforcement my husband and I went through due process and waited 10 years for the chance at legal residency for him we were called one day and notified by our immigration lawyer that we had three weeks to figure out our lives because my husband needed to leave the country we had two children at the time we had a life here we owned a house we paid taxes informed our children's teachers that we may only have a little longer with them and said goodbyes to family at Thanksgiving because we weren't sure when we'd see them again I just wanted to share because not everyone thinks that this could happen to their neighbor their child's best friend their coworker there are many people who have been in line and are trying to do the right thing that unfortunately will get swept up in the masses many community members of West Orange are concerned for our children right now some questions that I have for you which you may respond to now or via email our students emergency contact and school pickup information up to date have protocols related to school discipline and treny been reviewed to minimize student encounters with law enforcement and the judicial system thank you okay um I can answer actually some of that um first thank you for sharing and um I know that's not easy so I acknowledge that that's not easy to do and I appreciate you sharing and um thank you for sharing as that might help some of our families as well um yes one of the first so we met on Thursday with um our attorneys West Orange PD all the principles and Leadership and we talked about the very things you're talking about emergency contacts making sure that that was all in line and people were starting were working on that to make sure that that's still um in line so we we definitely were doing doing that that's already been done um your second question was um I'm sorry can you just say that second part for us for me yes so that's not much different than what we do for absences because there are many reasons for us to be um engaged in student absences um I know immigration's a topic today um but we also remember agencies that protect kids from abusive situations and um you know sometimes um mental situations or emotional situations so um I know that those automated calls are annoying um but they also trigger our offices to follow up and to tally if they don't see a student for x amount of time and sometimes parents are a little offended by us calling and saying well we haven't seen them where are they and what room or we do send send out and I I know people are going to some parents have experienced this we send out what we call um safety checks to figure out where uh if Why students absent and a lot of times students are sick at home but we do do that um so yeah those things are still done but we did do the first thing you mentioned we started looking at all the contacts to make sure we have that in line so you're welcome I was able to answer that so thank you all right last call for public comment all right so I didn't mean to cut you off for and thank you for sharing your story U thank you very much for everyone uh our next board meeting regular board meeting will be on February 24th 2025 at 6:30 pm. here at West Orange High School in the library media center we will not be going into executive session after the close of this meeting there will be no further business discussed and no additional action will be taken may I have a motion to adjourn so move thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Dr Brian all in favor hi hi hi any opposed all right uh thank you all for joining us tonight our meeting is now adjourned we wish you a good night