November 13, 2018 Board Meeting

The Agenda for the November 13, 2018 Meeting can be viewed below.

Agenda

The video of the November 13, 2018 Meeting can be viewed by clicking on the link below. Videos of the Board meetings are routinely posted on CRONM’s you tube channel.

Video of the November 13, 2018 Meeting

Before the 8 pm public meeting, the Board held a policy work session meeting at 7:30 p.m. CRONM was there and we video taped the policy/work session. To view the work session please click on link below.

Video of the November 13, 2018 Policy /Work Session meeting

The Minutes for the Policy/Work Session can be viewed on District Website by clicking below:

Minutes of the November 13, 2018 work session meeting.

  • During the work session, the District addressed the Eid holiday. Supt. DeTommaso provided the component districts with a ten year spreadsheet of this holiday. Within that ten-year time frame, the holiday falls twice within our school calendar in May and June. The Board spoke about other religious holidays and questioned what percentage of students it will affect. Mr. Corona spoke about what other districts do and he suggested giving students off and teachers participating in professional development and opening on election day and therefore no one loses a day. The Board will continue to discuss logistics involving the Eid Holiday.

  • We want to thank the Board for clarifying and addressing the concern on whether children's programs were cut in the past or going to be cut as part of the ongoing teacher contract negotiations. Per Mr. McDaid and Dr. Seniak, no programs were cut in the past and the cutting of programs will not be considered or be part of the current ongoing teacher contract negotiations.

  • The use of public comment cards were a hot topic of debate during the last meeting. During the work session it appeared that the Board was considering using “public comment” cards to address and answer resident’s concerns.  What this means is that residents would have to write their questions in advance on a comment card and be called to the microphone by the BOE in the order they choose. The BOE could also choose to say “Resident X we have read your question and respond via email” instead of have the question publicly heard. Again, resident's concern would not be addressed during the public meeting and the resident would have to wait to receive an answer to the email later in the week.  At the  November 13, 2018 meeting, CRONM expressed concern to the Board about the use of "comment cards" or emailing responses to residents later in the week.  CRONM believes that if a resident takes time away from their family to attend a board meeting in order to share a concern they have about a policy impacting their child, that concern should be addressed in real time instead of being relegated to a comment card or an email later in the week. CRONM believes that forcing residents to use comment cards or waiting to get a response, could impact our freedom of speech and prevent the public from being made aware of resident concerns. While the use of comment cards may work in other districts, in our small district, our residents should not have to wait to have their concerns addressed or answered by the Board.  We hope that the Board will see how detrimental comment cards or not addressing resident concerns at the meeting will be for their constituents and scrap the comment card idea. 

  • CRONM met with Superintendent Friedman and Superintendent McDaid to ask questions about the budget and district financials. Mrs. Friedman and Mr. McDaid took 2 hours of their time to meet with CRONM this week to explain each line item in the budget. They answered our questions on the Budget and Financials. They also listened to CRONM's suggestions on ways the budget could be presented in a more "resident friendly" way in the future. We are so grateful that they took time out of their busy schedules to explain how the budget works. They could not have been more helpful and we feel much more prepared for the Budget meetings in February and March. Thank you Beth Freidman and Tom McDaid!

Please continue to visit our website and facebook page for a more updates on meetings, budgets, ect.. 

Remember there will be a policy/work session meeting at 6:30 on December 11, 2018 with public meeting to follow at 8 pm. 

See everyone at the next Board meeting on Tuesday December 11th!