e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e yes no good okay perfect everybody ready okay good good evening everybody thanks for coming um where am I I'm calling to order in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act chapter 231 pl1 1975 announcement I wish to announce that the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the school district of the cadams board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time and place thereof posted in the board administrative offices sent to the clerks of chadam burough and chadam Township the library of the cadams The chadam Courier The Daily Record The Star Ledger and tap Mr Dila R yes M Allen here Mr delandro M Kenny yes Mr Ryan here Mr Smith yes M Weber here Dr Z here and M Chi here all and accounted for perfect uh please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance if you're able flag United States America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indiv there we go okay perfect okay once again thanks for coming um I don't have anything specific at this moment maybe in board business but I'm going to pass it along to uh Dr Lusa thank you Miss Chelli uh we'll roll right into the two reports that are underneath my section of the agenda the first is our annual discipline report which is a regulatory requirement New Jersey and we do every June and then the second will be a uh quick update from our attorneys handling our social media lawsuit so we'll start with the discipline report I'll invite the members of the board down into the seats you want me get it so the discipline report we do on an annual basis and the purpose of the report is to really review all of the available data that we have compiled throughout the school year to plan for the upcoming school year both in the education that we are providing to students the procedures that we're following within the districts for investigating hibs as well as administering discipline and also to see if we need additional training for staff members so we'll begin with chadam high school's discipline report all right good evening thank you I'm Connor Henderson assistant principal and anti-bullying specialist at chadam high school I'll take you through some of the key trends uh in conduct discipline HIV and ssds incidents for our building some of our key trends for this year the number of students with excessive tardiness decreased for the second year in a row and this is the second year that we've had an 820 start time so a later start time we're happy to see that that's continuing to make a positive impact the number of cheating incidents declined significantly and I'll go into greater detail as to why I think that happened our Hib investigations and confirmed incidents decreased however our physical altercations increased and I'll again I'll go into more detail in each item some of the key changes that we made going into this school year Dr Walker our principal instituted a cell phone policy for the building so students are now required to place their cell phones in a holder that we installed in each classroom um the the phones remain there for the entire period even when the students leave for the bathroom uh the phones remain in the classroom and we really feel like that's made a positive impact in the building we worked with our site Council which is a group of teachers a representative from each department last year on making on how to make students more aware of our academic Integrity policy and one of the things that came out of our site Council was that this should be reviewed in every class by every teacher and that it may be helpful for students to read and sign off on our academic Integrity policy so all students did that in their English class during the first week of school during our first week class meetings we did a very thorough rev review of our hi policy we felt like our our high school students were you know less impulsive than maybe some of the younger students in the building and if they better understood the consequences and the impact of their actions you know we hoped that we would see an in a decrease in hi investigations and incidents and then finally an additional class three officer uh was hired so that gave us two class three officers at the high school and a school security guard these are some sample infractions and what a typical School discipline would look like so on this slide uh some of the most common infractions a cheating incident is handle is filed but is handled with an academic penalty since it's an academic infraction cutting class so that's an unverified absence to a class results in a Saturday school which is a 4-Hour detention and disruptive behavior is another common infraction that's met with an Afterschool detention but could increase to a Saturday detention or an out of school suspension inappropriate cell phone use for a first infraction is typically met with an after school detention as well as late to class is another common infraction that we see students receive uh counseling support and some remedial measures in addition to the after school detention for arriving late to class and then finally I want to highlight the U use of tobacco vaping infraction that is met with a one-day suspension however if there's substance use in the building so u a THC vape may be you know the most common infraction here uh that would result in a 4-day out of school suspension we have two different incident types and I'll I'll go through each one the discipline type incidents are most common in fractions would be cutting class so again an unverified absence to a class inappropriate cell phone use or disruptive or inappropriate behavior and then we have file type incidents which are really procedural infractions most commonly lateness to class or failure to follow procedure like signing in during study hall or signing out of the building um when they leave our discipline type in fractions we had almost the same number as last year we had 192 total incidents uh which comes out to about one infraction for every six or seven students in the building or just over one for each day of school the total number of students with a disciplinary incident we had 120u 28 eight students commit an infraction this year that's roughly 10% of our student body but you can see that 99 of them committed one infraction and did not repeat so this shows that students are you know possibly making a mistake but learning from that mistake and not repeating and then we have a very small number of students with multiple incidents this year we had two students with 16 students with two incidents we had seven students with three to four incidents and then six students with five or more incidents and this tracks with the data from last year with roughly you know 14 to 15 students committing multiple infractions again this represents about 1% of our student population suspensions are for significant infractions our suspensions this year were for either in appropriate behavior um vaping whether that's tobacco or THC or fighting there were also suspensions for HIV and you can see the number of suspensions that we had was on par with last year our ssds incidents are incidents that are reported to the state we had four confirmed hibs which was half of last year's total we had three confirmed substance use incidents which was down from 10 last year this year we did see an increase in fight in a fight or assault a fight being Mutual conflict and assault just meaning that it was one-sided without retaliation we did see three of those occur um each time that happens the police are notified it is handled with um you know heavy consequences and counseling as well for those students we saw Zero incidents of damage to property to threat incidents and zero weapons incidents this next slide breaks down the offenders by grade and gender as you can see our male students continue to commit the the large majority of our infractions with 89% of our infractions being committed by male students and then once again our grade nine represented about a third of the total number of infractions and we believe that that's just due to maturity and we see the number of infractions decrease each year by grade as students mature in 10th and 11th grade and then we typically see a small spike in 12th grade those are usually procedural infractions 12th graders have open campus so there's more opportunity for them to um either not return on time or not sign out properly and that's typically why we see um a small increase in grade 12 each year our file type incident which again are procedural procedural infractions 271 of our 301 file type infractions were for lateness to school students once they enter the building they are typically not late to class it's really an issue of arriving late to school in the morning we saw 60 fewer incidents than last school year and 100 20 fewer than the 2122 school year when we had a 740 start time so again this has decreased each year when students arrive late to school they sign into the office the teacher marks them tardy and then once they accumulate a certain number of tardies we send letters home we issue detentions we schedule conferences with the parent and the counselor to really talk about the the reason for the tardiness whether that is trouble with Transportation trouble with sleep maybe uh an overworked student who's staying up too late at night and we really try to get to the root cause academic Integrity as I said earlier was a big Focus for us this year we had 17 incidents that's 44 fewer incidents than last year last year we had 61 and this time last year I I was very concerned about the academic Integrity violations I think having students sign off on our policy and asking each teacher to talk about what academic Integrity looks like in their content area and provide uh Department specific examples was really helpful for students the Temptation is always there and we know that with AI the opportunities to cheat are growing but really we really want students to Value their learning and understand that as they get older and with 98 % of our students going off to college each year the consequences for cheating you know only get more severe as you continue in your education so I was very happy to see uh that number significantly decrease our hi data this year we had 10 Hib investigations four of them were confirmed that's down from eight confirmed incidents last year and we had one student who had previously uh committed a Hib infraction throughout their time in the district this next slide just highlights that a hip report can be filed by anyone can be filed by a parent student staff member as you can see we had a confirmed Hib from each kind of demographic there and we also receive Anonymous Hib reports through our website so of the four parents who filed hi reports one was confirmed of the five students who filed reports two were confirmed and for the one staff member who filed a report one was confirmed our identifying characteristics we have seen cases where race sexual orientation or religion were the distinguishing characteristic in previous years uh this year we did not have any in those three categories uh all four of our confirmed hi incidents fell under the category of other Dr Walker does have the opportunity to complete the principal determination checklist along with myself as the anti-bullying specialist many of these uh we used the principal's determination to decide whether or not an investigation was warranted and if we assumed that all of the information in the report was true and still knew that uh it would not meet the four prongs of the Hib law um then we chose to use the checklist rather than investigate many of those came from our Anonymous Hib uh reporting system and in most cases there either was not a victim identified it didn't actually pertain to Hib um or there was not a substantial disruption to the student or the school so we used the checklist a total of seven times this year and finally our strategies some of these are are new some are programs that we utilize year year after year to adress address Hib but also just to build a safe and welcoming environment for every student uh we continued with our Lear links peer mentor program which is 11th and 12th graders who apply to be peer mentors to our freshmen and provide lessons to them in their health and PE classes once again our connections Club lunch table was a huge success we ran multiple week of respect events this year in October um and along with the help of our kids helping kids club which is a new club formed to address uh bullying peer-to-peer so it was really nice to get students support on that we continued with our start with hello program and our ninth grade health curriculum this year we really focused on community and what creates a healthy Community we had students talk about what they love about the community that they live in what they would like to see changed and also you know about their their school community and what they hope to get out of their High School experience we had an emphasis on our school spirit events this year and we tracked participation throughout the year and awarded points to each grade just recently our ninth graders uh they won the competition amongst all all four grade levels and had a celebratory barbecue during the last block of school last week it was the first event of that nature that we've had but it was a lot of fun and and we'd like to continue to do school spirit events we really help think it builds that strong Community our learn unified and play unified activities continue to be a huge success and and probably the best thing that we do at our school uh and then uh continued inclusion of topics across the curriculum as well as consequences and remedial measures for conduct incidents as well as HIV incidents okay thank you very much I'm going to pass it off to Sean dine from chatt middle school all right thank you Connor good evening uh members of the Board of Education Dr Lusa District staff members and members of the community I'm Shan dine and assistant principal of chadam middle school tonight I'd like to take you through the discipline report for CMS for the 2023 2024 school year to begin with you'll you will note as we make our way through the data tonight that there there was a similar number of HIV incidents this year however a decrease in the percentage of confirmed HIV infractions as we have seen an increase in mutual social conflicts furthermore you will observe that race presented as a motivating factor in half of our confirmed HIV violations the next two slides contain some of the typical infractions of school rules at CMS this year along with their accompanying consequences disruptive inappropriate behavior was our most common infraction this next slide shows that usual uh usually the discipline will range from warnings and conferences with ad an administrator or counselors to detentions and suspensions here you will notice that there were 844 students enrolled at CMS this year and 110 discipline incidents were committed or about .13 per student this represents a decrease in incidence which is in line with the decrease in student enrollment of the students who violated the school rules 71 of them or about 88.4% of the population did so once and did not reoffend 14 students or 1.6% of the student body committed two incidents nine students or 1% of the student body committed three to four incidents and two additional students committed five or more in total these 11 individuals accounted for 43 offenses or 39% of all the incidents ssds or student safety data system represents a series of infractions that deal with violence vandalism substance and weapon offenses and HIV this year we had a total of six confirmed HIV violations and 14 alleged HIV incidents which resulted in a significant decrease in the number of confirmed hibs we also had two violations relating to possession of a weapon and zero incidents of fighting or assault which is down from the four previous years as for suspensions seven students or 8% of the student body were suspended once this year and no students were suspended more than once this is a 50% decrease in overall suspensions these suspensions amounted to 13 total days of suspension for a variety of offenses including insubordination confirmed HIV violations and disruptive or inappro apprpriate behavior when we look at the breakdown of the 96 students who violated the school rules this year you will notice that far more boys committed offenses than girls with the former contributing to 86.2% of the offenses and the latter contributing to 13.8% in terms of the grade levels 22.9% of the offenses came from sixth grade while the seventh and eighth graders accounted for 41 7% and 35.2% respectively as opposed to discipline type incidents file type infractions including information on students who are excessively late to school this year 16 students contributed to 21 file type incidents in an attempt to remedy the situation a progressive set of consequences has been implemented including sending letters and notification home to the parents holding student conferences and if necessary assigning detentions additionally we instituted a new group counseling initiative designed to provide a supportive environment for students to identify the barriers or challenges impeding their time of arrival at school and focus on developing strategies for improvement in terms of HIV 20 investigations were conducted with six of them being confirmed this is in comparison to the 2022 2023 School year when 21 Hib investigations were conducted and 13 of these were cons confirmed the total number of Investigations dropped by 30% from 2021 2022 to 2022 2023 and stayed steady this year additionally we saw a drop in our confirmed HIV rate from 61.9% last year to 30% this year when we look at a breakdown of the hip reports from 20232 24 parents filed six of the 20 reports with zero of the these being confirmed students filed four with 25 of them being confirmed and staff members filed 10 reports with 50% of these being confirmed of the confirmed Hib reports 85% were verbal in nature while the remaining violations featured a mix of written or visual or sometimes physical gestures as for the motivating factors behind the behaviors race sexual orientation enunciation and Rel and religion of the targeted students all played a role however of particular note three of the six confirmed Hib infractions this year were motivated by race this accounted for half of all of our HIV in violations District regulation 5131 .1 allows the principal in consultation with the anti-bullying specialist to determine if a reported complaint of harassment intimidation or bullying Falls within the scope of HIV assuming all facts are presented are true if it does not the principal May exercise his or her discretion to handle a matter as a potential code of conduct violation instead this year this measure was used five times at CMS due to the lack of a distinguishing characteristic the presence of a conflict between students or the absence of corroborating evidence to support a finding of HIV there is a collaborative schoolwide effort at CMS to address and reduce instances of HIV this initiative includes the following Hib education pieces for students staff and parents at the beginning of each school year that took place during back to school night in class meetings mandatory remedial measures implemented by the grade level counselors Student Assistance counselor and members of the child study team for students involved in HIV offenses curricular tie-ins that promote character education diversity and respect for others in the subject areas of ela social studies our cycle classes art and music classes in the health curriculum student clubs such as the acceptance Alliance that brings together students who are interested in making CMS a more accepting place in terms of diversity week of respect activities that featured anti-bullying lessons motivational assemblies such as remembering TJ and community building activities such as the chain of kindness and the CM uh the CMS pledge project we also instituted some new initiatives this year such as a focus on staff Wellness professional learning experiences for all cycle and HP teachers this was this was a focus as staff Wellness directly influences student wellness additionally we also instituted professional learning communities with our staff two of these plc's focused on student connections and and Service Learning we had a Vari we had a wide array of mindfulness Wellness school spirit events which included Spirits weeks which were coordinated by Mrs dangler and Mrs ero in the CMS student council a a ceiling tile project in which students and staff members decorated ceiling tiles with inspirational messages and then plac them around the school a school safety team whose Focus this year was to discuss Trends in HIV in programs or strategies that could be implemented to improve School culture which was comprised of staff and a parent representative we also had a second School safety team that was comprised of various groups of students who met with administrators and counselors to discuss school climate these groups met at least once per marking period and lastly we also had assemblies that were intended to help promote a sense of Tolerance acceptance and respect for others presentations by members of the FBI on the themes of cyber safety and cyber broing and bias as well as as an assembly focused on the experiences at Ground Zero and how we can work together to make the world a better place all right well thank you for your time um and I invite you to contact me or Mrs Dunes the other assistant principal at CMS if you have any questions all right I'll now present lafayette's data the general themes and the key trends at Lafayette is that suspension incidents decreased which was a positive for the school year uh however Hib investigations increased but you will see that the confirmed Hib incidents decreased the overall themes were consistent with much of the Middle School data which that which was that the confirmed hibs and the investigations consisted primarily of name calling insensitive jokes and race Lafayette has many of the same infractions and actions as the other buildings however they usually have much less uh detentions for excessive lateness Etc just based on the age of the student in the 23 24 school year approximately 10% of lafayette's student body had an incident of some sort that involved discipline which which uh amounted to 51 total incidents 19 students had one incident and then there were six that committed more than one so consistent with the High School data students didn't often recommit issues after they had been in trouble the first time there were four students that had between three and four incidents and two students that had more than five the counselors worked extensively with the students to make sure that educationally they understood the extent of what had happened and how not to repeat in the future there were four students that were suspended one time and there were no students that were suspended more than one time um that's a decrease from the prior school year much like the other buildings the male students committed the bulk of offenses with 89.5% of the incidents being male students so 51 of the incidents and six incidents were committed by female students the bulk of incidents also occurred by fifth graders there were 18 Hib investigations at Lafayette so far this school year with four confirmed hibs while there were more investigations there were less confirmed Hib incidents which is a positive sign two reports were filed by parents 14 by students and two were filed by staff members in the four confirmed hi incidents at Lafayette two were based on race one was weight and one was sexual identity there were three principles determinations and again Mr Henderson explained that's where if everything that's reported is assumed to be true and it still does not meet the threshold of a Hib then the principal has the right to determine that it's not Hib rather it could be a code of conduct incident it's not like the school doesn't investigate it in some capacity it's just not opened as a hip investigation it's addressed through code of conduct Andor counseling lafette had extensive strategies this school year to ensure that students were learning the impact of their actions for example there were many lessons on zones of regulation in the beginning of the year the councilors and Mrs Russo the principal LED Hib assemblies for all of the students uh they had counselor Le lessons small counseling groups all School assem assies um they also took grade level trips to Jeff Lake to focus on team building and making connections they worked incredibly hard during the school year to really educate students on the impact of their words and their actions and because of that we've seen a decrease in 2024 2025 uh they plan to continue and increase the role playing that they've done so far in theal lessons for students so that the students clearly understand that certain jokes are inappropriate but also in a developmentally appropriate way so the role playing has been very successful for the counselors to do with the students and they're thinking about introducing student contracts to use as a reminder similar to the academic Integrity policy at the high school where students sign contracts they're thinking about also introducing those and then finally a major takeaway that Mrs Russo and the counselors had was that they'd like to repeat and reinforce Hib lessons Midway through the school year just as a reminder Because by the end of the year the students would have benefited from additional work uh you know about the concept of Hib and appropriate actions so they plan to do that next year and now we're moving on to SPS Washington and Milton's discipline reports so in the elementary suspension incidents increased Hib investigations increased as well as the confirmed Hib incidents increased the themes were name calling and race there were three confirmed I'm sorry there were eight hip investigations in the 2324 school year at Southern at Washington there were seven and at Milton there were three oh if you want to go back thank you and confirmed Hib incidents there were six at Southern three at Washington one at Milton there were three principles determinations at Milton two at Washington two at Southern Southern had one student with more than two suspensions Washington had two students with one suspension and one student with more than two Milton had three students with one suspension and four students that had two or more suspensions there were extensive educational components introduced in the elementaries there were schoolwide efforts centered around hip education assemblies the week of respect activities which featured anti-bullying lessons Second Step lessons are utilized throughout the school year on an ongoing basis with all of the grade levels and all of the classrooms the counselors push into the classes to do those lessons and then there were extensive class lessons that address behavioral themes counselors also pushed into certain classrooms if they noticed that there was a behavior or a certain term or an activity that didn't perhaps go as well as planned the counselors would push in and do more specific uh class-based activities and finally there were curricular tie-ins focused on the themes of character education diversity and respect in all of the elementaries the Hib um the district grade report is administered by the Department of Education it's a self assessment that's completed by each School the district's score was a 78 out of a 78 um and essentially were scored on the programs that we utilize training on the hi policy for staff members the curriculum and instruction on Hib and related information and skills that are evident with you know within the district and then finally the Hib reporting and investigation procedure so similar to former years we've scored a 78 out of a 78 the overall Trends uh throughout the district um there were five investigations that were based with physical contact 16 that address the themes of race culture and religion 41 that had an identified characteristic present that might be based on weight height um age it could be any identified characteristic outside of race culture and religion and three were based in social media in 2022 23 school year there were less regarding physical contact less regarding race culture religion less identified characteristics more from social media so this year we had 66 investigations last year 57 our data appears to be very consistent with the commissioner's annual report that's compiled from the ssds system throughout the state of New Jersey the most recent report that was released was regarding the 2122 school year and throughout the state there was a 45% increase in race-based hibs um and it appears that that's consistent with some of the data that we've compiled within the district as well moving forward we will continue to examine and provide training and education for students and family staff are trained annually we hold school safety team meetings in all of the buildings and I personally work with the anti-bullying specialists in the entire District regarding what training needs to occur in each of the buildings as well as educational components for students so we will continue to look at the data we've compiled to plan and Implement additional supports and services for the upcoming school year thank you stage thank how are you I'm doing all right how are you you coming tomorrow oh yeah it's a special one any way we can kill that Spotlight there he's coming okay okay so thanks for everyone for their presentations um I suppose you're taking questions yeah are there any questions for Emily or Shawn or I have a question for uh Mr Henderson um you had stated that the um academic Integrity numbers had gone down which is great um do you attribute that to so you said that they had signed the um academic Integrity policy had students done that in the past they had not they had not so that was newly implemented this year yes okay so do you feel that that was definitely played a role in that I think it was one of the contributing factors right um you know last year year we saw a significant increase in confirmed HP incidents and cheating incidents and we spent a lot of time in our class meetings in the first during the first week of school really highlighting those two key uh areas we also emphasized this with our teachers and and spent months with our site Council really talking about academic Integrity encouraging teachers to all follow the same reporting procedure so in a way way I I thought that we may see a similar number of incidents because uh we encourage teachers to all file incident reports for cheating and not just handle it in the classroom but I think there just the holistic approach of having teachers talk to their students having administrators address it with the students and then have them read and sign off on the policy I think that all led to the decrease okay good awesome thank you anybody else go ahead um the usage of the principal discretion um if this is somewhat new and wondering in terms of the recourse parents have if they don't agree that the determination comes out that it's not hip because so could you kind of expand on that yes and we've been using the principles determination for several years and if a parent uh really Express concern over us not investigating an incident and felt that an investigation was truly warranted I would say in almost all cases we would move forward with an investigation um we did not have any concerns shared in using the principes determination each time okay and as Dr sortino highlighted that doesn't mean that the incident is not addressed it may be a code of conduct violation it may come with formal School consequences or or coun in um but it is clear that it is not going to meet the threshold for HIV given the information that we were given compared against the four prongs great thank you it's it's also afforded to us the principal determination is written within the law is an acceptable uh way to address something that is reported this year was the first year that we were required to report the number of times we utilize that so that's afforded To Us by law and policy as well great okay thank you thank you uh Dr stina this is probably addressed to you since you're the leader of the pack there the numbers are great I mean our numbers are small we can't you know complain about that I know this is mandatory that you have to report on it I was just curious the the race one concerns me because it seems like we've made no inroads at least in the last 10 years that I've been here or 13 however long it's been so that especially at the middle school those kids are old enough they know better I get the developmentally ones I get the silly jokes but I mean I count it like three dozen strategies and educational components but something's not working so I'm just curious if we can and I don't necessarily need an answer but of all those strategies and components you just can't keep throwing bullets at it something has to be tweaked a little bit because these kids are too old to be having race issues in middle school I mean if they when if they grow up in high school it then could become criminal so how do we you know how do we tweak some of these strategies and these educational components and curriculum to really really zero in on Race we've made great inst strides in you know comments about sexual orientation lgbtq we've made no inroads there I think the children are exposed to a variety of content that they don't understand perhaps when they're engaging in social media or otherwise they are then repeating certain terms in school not understanding the impact so in our elementary schools we're seeing the use of words that are completely inappropriate and offensive I'm not quite sure that the students always understand exactly what those words mean to your point about the Middle School this year we started that if anything occurs that is uh racially based in any capacity each child has three mandated meetings with the Student Assistance counselor for an educational component in an individual setting so that they truly understand the impact of their words however we continue to examine the best way to introduce um educational pieces that will also make an impact so that kids are not repeating this very serious mistake and do you see that they're not repeating after this okay correct so that's good and and we have to remember there were only three three confirmed incidents dealing with race at the middle school and zero at the high school I think it's three to many at that age I I agree it's certainly three too many but in terms of and we've only gone back here at a three-year look back but if you go back five six 8 10 years we often had many more investigations and and confirmed acts than we did this past year so I do think there's some progress being made not enough until we get to to the to the zero but as Dr sortino said that we have so many issues that in some way arise because of what kids are exposed to outside of school and what they're looking at on their cell phones or in other places that it's uh always an uphill battle oh great thank you um just last question on the weapons Mr Henderson you mentioned it I believe oh no no sea Sean I'm sorry this was Sean's not getting to the specifics what are the consequences of that and I assume it's like a knife left in a backpack maybe it was a scout that had an event that weekend and they use the same backpack what are the consequences the consequences in this case um I believe were suspension for the students okay out of school thank you yeah I I have a question related to that too Sean uh it seems like we had in the middle school we had more weapons violations than fights how do we square that that doesn't seem to make sense um I'd prefer more fights obviously well what's what's happening that there's well to start fight and more weap the fighting and assaults number was zero so um the the incidents with the um the weapons were both um as his weer suggested students who um brought it in to the school within their backpack um you know and it was something that you know somebody had seen um and alerted the administration and once they learned of the administration we were able to address it with the families um help the the amilies and the students that were involved understand uh that these were not appropriate uh things to bring to school uh once it was addressed it uh hasn't occurred it hasn't reoccurred since do do we know anything about the intentions of bringing those items to schools like are they bringing them because they feel they need protection of some in some kind or are they just showing off I don't think they you know they weren't bringing it for attention I think they was more something they were showing off um but yeah I I we've had a number of these incidents over the years um in my time typically at the middle school usually it is that they have gotten some type of knife from often times a relative like an uncle or even a parent sometimes it's because they are involved in scouts or hunting or fishing or something along those lines they show off the knife or they tell a classmate oh I got this in my backpack we investigate and then we suspend them as a result um we have had I don't think this year but in other years um instances where students might bring a knife for self harm uh but we have not had any instance that I can recall really because of protection or because there was an intent to use it against someone else okay out of curiosity was it other students that reported seeing it or staff like how was it taken out of lockers it was uh another student reported it okay thank you yeah one of these incidents I know was um reported To Us by uh the bus driver because the student had done a little bit of damage on the bus and as a result that we were tipped off we looked into it we identified the student and comp at the item anybody else have any question all right well thank thank you to the three of you we appreciate the thorough report um and this is a good segue so uh several months ago members of the Board of Education had asked uh our attorneys uh from carella Burn who are representing us Dave gilfillan and Michael inis if they could at least appear at a a meeting to introduce themselves maybe give a highlevel overview of um the litigation that we became involved with uh over a year ago now uh I know that they're conservative in what they want to share publicly because obviously this is an ongoing matter and not something that uh they're going to speak frivolously about uh but nonetheless um I invite them to the microphone just to introduce themselves and if there are any uh general questions that our board might have for them uh you can ask now and if they're comfortable answering them they will and if they're not I'm sure they'll let you know in a lot of words in writing right hello everyone uh I've met most of you at some point over the last year plus my name is uh David gilfillan and um I'm now going to introduce you to Michael inis who not all of you have met but you will be seeing more of in the future Dave's a little taller than me so uh hi yeah my name is Michael lnis um I'm with carella burn um I met uh a lot of you over Zoom a little over a year ago I was recovering from knee surgery now I'm back up and about so you will see more of me um I can give you a you know a very high level um update on where we are in the litigation um since filing hundreds of more um school districts just like the cadams um have filed lawsuits um that are part of the uh mdl multi-district litigation that's pending in federal court in Oakland California um judge Gonzalez Rogers um in her um it's her purview to select um a set of those hundreds of cases to be worked up for trial um and she decided that she would allow the plaintiffs to select six and the defendants to select six um and chadam is one of those uh one of the total 12 cases it's being worked up for trial um we commonly refer to them as bellweather uh bellweather plaintiffs uh right now we're proceeding through the initial phases of written Discovery um which essentially means um we're allowed to ask questions of the defendants they're allowed to ask questions of us um they're allowed to ask us for documents we ask them for documents um and we exchang that information um we'll probably move uh pretty quickly into to depositions over the summer and into the fall and uh if her honor uh schedule holds uh trials will be starting in the new year um so it's it's a fairly aggressive schedule um but I I I do think um it's one that will be um adhered to so and uh that's pretty much um as far as I'm gonna take it in a public setting I have a quick question um the 12 bellweather districts that have been chosen is that public information it is yeah okay are any of the other districts in our area they are actually uh one another of our clients Irvington uh was selected um yeah that was a def that was a Dave's Dave's right that was a defendant's pick okay um chadam was a plaintiff's pick got it um and the you know the rest of the mix is um larger schools um or you know more urban schools and sort of scattered around the country I think the idea and it's a good one it's is to get a good cross-section of all the school districts that are out there um So within those 12 we're actually we're considered a a small school district got it okay thank you go ahead yeah thanks hi Michael good to see you back up on your feet thank you you look like you're in a lot of pain the last time I saw you uh just two quick questions um one can you just cover at a high level what are the benefits to chadam as to to be involved in this litigation and the second question is based on your experience having done a lot of these types of cases if it starts in 2025 are we looking at 6 months 12 months 18 months I know you don't have a crystal ball but generally speaking if you could yeah I I think you the to answer your first question the benefits that chams are um basically spelled out in the complaint that we worked on and and that you all filed uh it's to make to hold these social media companies accountable for um their bad acts um it's to assist with if we're successful to assist with uh the cost of a batement um to fix the problem and also to be um to to change the business practices so this doesn't continue to happen um I forgot your second question already uh length length yes all right so gosh I mean the the last case that Dave and I were on um together was litigating opioids um that took about seven years and then there's still pieces that are ongoing um I had a case where I represented um some New Jersey districts um against a manufacturer of uh artificial turf fields that lasted about 8 years but I've had other case that have gone 2 years so it's it's really difficult to tell um I I do think that though that this is certainly um a case that will be tried um and there's 12 of those that that can be selected for trial great thank you a batement does that is that in any way synonymous to reimbursement of monies that we've put out um we could talk about that in in a closed session okay very good yeah question I had a question was is there a point through your litigation is there is there a point where they say give us a number or do you guys say make a change yeah we could we should probably discuss that in in close session but I can tell you that it just in the abstract there is a point in every litigation where settlement where you get to a point where settlement talks happen demands are made um terms are negotiated right okay any else that's all I got now all right thank you both for taking the time to join us tonight welcome thanks for having us thank you thanks guys all right the only other stated item under my report is the calendar for the 2526 school year um and as I wrote to you in your in in the board memo uh after the last meeting the day after the last meeting I sent out a survey to all parents we did get about a th responses to the three calendars that we sent um there was a clear favorite and that was the first calendar uh to your to to jog the the memory a bit uh the first calendar had a 4-day weekend around Labor Day and then it had an extra long or at least longer than the other calendars break in December uh SL January um with two days off around President's Day weekend the Monday and and the Tuesday and the final day of school was the 16th of June Fray and um of the parents surveyed uh of the parents surveyed 80% of them uh chose that calendar as their first or second choice and both other calendars had about 60% uh for first or second choice so it was the clear selection in terms of parent feedback can I just ask a quick question on calendar number one did we change February to like I'm seeing it as that we're off Friday and Tuesday Monday is the actual holiday correct correct we're off Monday and Tuesday so we changed that from this this last what about the Friday yes we changed that from the original got it okay so it's my and and in the original we didn't have Labor Day I don't think as the the Friday before Labor Day correct okay perfect okay yeah I mean very clear as far as the survey went is that generally the number of responses that we get when we have sent out calendars before I feel like we had fewer than that last time but I can't remember okay it sounds like a pretty decent number a thousand it was a good yeah good showing okay um the one of the other calendars had the entire week of February off and then another one had fewer days basic basically didn't have the 4-day weekend at Labor Day didn't have the longer December break but schools got out earlier the week before so okay well that was good I'm glad we did that so if if you're comfortable with it I'd like to suggest that we adopt that calendar tonight uh under board business or under Section D of the agenda wherever it's convenient uh just so that then we can send that out to All Families before the school year closes and everyone will know what the 25 26 Calendar is okay I mean I'm cool with that everybody good with that we can do it under board business you want to do it under board business sure okay okay um and other than that for me just of course this is the final week of school um we've had a lot of celebrations we've had uh a state championship uh women's lacrosse team again uh lot of good stuff happening tomorrow night of course is our tedx event and I've gotten to preview the talks they were rehearsing all day today in this Auditorium we'll do the same tomorrow morning they're terrific uh it's one of the most special nights of the year I'd say in the district so we're all looking forward to that uh and then through the balance of this week obviously we have different events and celebrations and that will culminate with graduation at 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon awesome okay great thank you for for that um moving on to the business administrator's report Mr Taquila sure um on the construction update um very happy to announce that uh John o' Hara will Begin work on the security vestibules on Monday at both uh the high school and Milton Avenue School on the 24th he'll begin at CMS uh the the 26 the work will commence at Southern Boulevard school on Lafayette June 28th and Milton Avenue School July 8th uh the SE the work on the high school roof will start on Monday the 17th uh the contractor has already put the dumpsters up on the uh the hill between CHS and Lafayette I'm sure as everybody came to the meeting they were recognizable uh the C the CMS interior improvements that work will start on the afternoon of the 14th when school is done and will continue throughout the summer and and the contract will start on the CHS Varsity Field uh Monday July 29th on the other note uh school boards has presented the app or published or listed on their website the applications for the Board of Ed positions uh the applications are available for a single petition or a uh a dual petition for the township the two current incumbents are M Kenny and M Allen and for the bar tomor it's m chiarelli and as a reminder the applications are due to the county office no later than 4 pm on Monday July 29th and I will be putting the app both application uh forms up on the website great thank you that's all I have um okay student Le report Hana okay um Dr Lusa kind of stole the show yeah but um yeah there's not much to report with um everything wrapping up um the high school schedules for the next school year have been released and then like M drusa said we had had lots of Celebration stuff going on so we had senior prom May 31st and the senior pick I think was last week which were both successful and then um like Dr Luc said the girls lacrosse team won the state tournament um and then as you can tell from this set fun little setup we have over here the tedex Youth Event is tomorrow evening here at 7 p.m. with theme um reframe so the talks are going to be about changing and New Perspectives on various topics and then we have have um Balor service at St Pat's on Thursday for the seniors and then graduation at men and Arena on last day and that's all that we have going on thank you okay perfect moving on to committee reports Personnel Miss Weber yes great thank you uh thanks an we met on June 5th and we covered uh four topics uh the first was an update on the par professionals we're kind of in phase two now of having uh full-time Paras versus part-time Paras if everybody recalls um there was a second question passed to provide benefits to some of our Paras so that we can offer benefits and make them full-time um that question was not to increase salary it was just for the benefits portion and this is phase two we won't convert every single person from parttime to full-time we'll still need some part times so that they're they're scheduled optimally um and the administration the principls correct me if I'm wrong Mike but all of the administrations from the top of the house down to the principles are working on finding out what the true needs are for Paris versus just putting Paris where they were historically placed um so they'll work on that throughout the summer the we worked we just talked a little bit about um procedures and process and some contractual issues um just to go over over you know how the process works um Beth and her whole team and the principls and supervisors are working to fill some open positions and also some late notice for retirements or resignations so that's going to I'm sure Tak a focus of the hr's time and then finally um we talked about switching the software platform for how substitutes are scheduled so it's going to a new software called I believe Red Robin and it'll give the each building a little bit more control and flexibility in scheduling Subs and hopefully it will help with the either bottleneck or shortage of Subs um so those are the four topics we covered perfect and meeting again uh don't know not do we have anything else scheduled this some nothing right not as of right now no we we I put the draft schedule of committee meetings in the folder but we don't have anything in the immediate docket right now okay cool all right awesome uh curriculum yes uh the curriculum committee uh also met on June 5th last Wednesday the entirety of our meeting was spent um reviewing presentations given by our Ela supervisor Heather Roco and the math supervisor Aaron Yamamoto regarding the revisions to the K to5 report cards for both of those subject areas as you may recall there were updated um New Jersey learning standards issued in the fall of 2023 um more for ELA than math but uh work has been done on restructuring the report cards and the language to reflect these new standards um work on that will continue through the summer and we'll be ready for parent review and explanation in the fall and probably meeting again in September unless otherwise stated so thanks perfect uh finance and Facilities Mr Smith fining facilities notet September August a August 21st August 21st um okay perfect and policy and planning Mr Ryan policy has not met and uh not met since the last meeting and we're not meeting again until August perfect okay great um any liaison reports from anybody yep I have a quick one for CF reminder Ted talk tomorrow night you can still get your tickets as everyone has mentioned and then um as outlined in the agenda CF approved a $4,000 $14,000 Grant to complete the conversion of three high school math classrooms um the first two phases were done in 2018 and 2021 uh these are mainly design changes the whiteboards on the tables and just changing it over from a traditional classroom into one that you know supports re research that shows that this kind of environment um increases productivity and critical thinking so this is the third round of funding that is complete and uh that brings uh cf's grants to $60,000 to uh complete this project wow that's amazing thank you awesome nobody else okay perfect um minutes from the last meeting Mr Dilla um on the May 13th uh minutes M Kenny Mr Ryan Mr Smith and Dr Zang need to abstain Okay do um I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes from the we say May 13th second thank you minutes from May 13th Miss Russ yes Miss Allan yes Mr delandro yes M Kenny abstain Mr Ryan abstain Mr Smith M Weber yes Dr Zang abstain and M Chelli yes minutes P 504 okay perfect thank you um okay we're going to have our first opportunity for public commentary hearing of the citizens during the public commentary section of the agenda is an opportunity for any member of the public to be heard about issues which are or are not topic scheduled for the current meeting to help facilitate an orderly meeting and to permit all to be heard speakers will be asked to limit their comments to a reasonable length of time and if you would when you go up just sign in and state your name that would be great can you hear me yes okay good evening my name is Sharon padlo and this is Maria Alden and we are on the executive team of the high school PTO when Dr Lusa originally presented the idea of changing the start time for the high school a few years years ago we were alarmed by the statistics that lack of sleep increased depression anxiety and negatively affected the mental health amongst children we were also relieved and impressed that our district had been researching and gathering information about what other districts in varia states were doing and had already collected data of our students in chadam to see what was happening amongst our own children fast forward to now we have implemented the change to the start time and we see the research is correct and our high schoolers are benefiting from this change as you heard tonight we have data of our own children to show that there has been an improvement in their mental health and a decrease in their tardiness and absenteeism as moms of high school and middle school students we see firsthand the additional sleep and later start time is so crucial to them and helpful we are here tonight on behalf of the PTO to ask you to consider changing the start time for the middle school students when the transition happens our middle schoolers are at a point in their lives where their bodies are changing they have intense schedules and they too are faced with mental health issues they would really benefit from additional sleep and a later start time this change will inevitably be challenging for the district for various reasons but you have already implemented a big change and made it work when collaborative minds work come together great outcomes will prevail other districts are following what we are doing in chadam and this makes us very proud of our town we have full faith in Dr Lusa our Board of Education and our district leaders that you can make this change happen for the betterment of our children and we hope that you can take a deeper look into this and give this some serious consideration and we thank everyone that is sitting at that table you have a thanless job and we thank you for all that you are doing for our children have a great summer thank you both uh Libby Hills and W chador um I just wanted a clarification I think um Miss Weber mentioned that there was money paid out for the social media litigation um I thought this was sort of a contingent situation where we don't pay anything unless we win the case so my question is have we paid out any money so far um and then my second question just from doing some research so over the past five years just what I've researched from 20 19 to 2024 there have been 35 cases settled listed on the agendas um that say approval settlement agreement upon the recommendation of the superintendent the Board of Education improves the settlement agreement between the district and the parents of special education student number and that number will change so that's 35 cases in five years um Can can anyone tell me the cost of those um and then also have have we paid out any money to this firm over the social media lawsuit thanks thank you good evening Bill Heap um first I will put on my JC hat and thank everybody who participated in the fishack run on Saturday it was a beautiful day uh we didn't have to scrape anybody off the pavement School District had a team we had over 500 Runners uh and it turned out to be just perfect so thank you very much all the money goes back into town uh second thing Switching gears um I have to say I was disappointed in the uh lawyer's presentation I didn't learn anything uh more than I already knew uh it would be nice to know some of the ground rules on this uh I just think we should know whether they are litigating this themselves whether they are part of a bigger uh Consortium whether they have any Financial skin in the game themselves is it being financed by an outside entity um and is it uh is this more of a crusade or is it a financial Venture and finally uh what do we get uh for our good name besides it appears a a lottery ticket uh and the last thing I will say is uh that I will be at the Ted talk tomorrow night it's one of the best things and I've been to the Past previous two I don't know if there have been any more but it is one of the best events that I uh have attended in the school district and I urge everybody to go thanks thank you Mr he okay we're going to close this section of the public commentary um I don't know if anybody wants to respond to any Dr lusu do you have any responses to anything or Miss Weber yeah I just want to correct um I just want to correct Mrs hilsenrath once again misquoting me don't know if it's intentional or accidental but what I said is would we get reimbursed for any expenses for example we spend spend we see we spend a lot of money on mental health and and behavioral issues would we if we can document that we put out x amount of money is there an opportunity to be reimbursed we are not paying any money we have not paid any money they absorb the costs um so that's an answer to your misquote again um Mr Heap you and I have had a few conversations about that and I I sent you an email earlier but I guess you didn't get it um Michael will be doing the the litigation it's this firm and of course they get a percentage that's normal um I know you were disappointed in the presentation but as you can imagine they don't want to jeopardize their case they don't want to show too much of their cards you know they they're they're only going to say as much as they can safely in public so as far as ground rules that'll be dictated by the courts but I know you're disappointed I'm sorry you're disappointed but I'm not that surprised that they could only limit their conversation and I hope they do because I don't want them to jeopardize our case drusa sure um well I'll start by saying in terms of settlement agreements um we all know special education is a is a point of um dispute at times between the hundreds of families who we Service uh and and and the students we provide those services to and on occasion there is a disagreement about program uh for students and that can range from a very small uh relatively small type of program in the summertime to an ad of District placement that might span years and years and years and years and Dr sortino and her team uh works with uh our Law Firm parents Advocates attorneys from for parents and just like our attorneys in the social media case mentioned at almost any point litigation at some moment there is talk of settlement or reaching an agreement so that the parties can amicably try to resolve uh whatever the dispute is so I can't speak specifically to any of those uh individual student cases um but that is why they appear from time to time on our agendas and they range in cost depending on what the exact specifics of the case are uh in terms of school start time uh I really want to thank Sharon and Maria for their leader leadership and all their commitment over the years uh they've been involved in probably like I don't know six PTO like every every school in the district practically has been represented by them um and this year I'd say you know last year we implemented the start time and the feedback was really very very positive from high school folks uh from time to time I'd get questions from elementary parents maybe wishing that the start times of their school would be earlier because they many of them say their children are up early and it would be nice to get them out the door on their way to school as early as possible um I'd say though over the course of the past year or so what's become more a more common refrain that I hear from parents is why can't we do this for our middle school students I see how it has benefited my high schooler I see how it would benefit my middle schooler why can't you make this change for middle school kids and I've referenced frequently the fact that we're undertaking a lot of change in the district over the course of the next couple of years it's something that remains under active consideration and um the the discussion that has evolved at the PTO level anyway has been you know if we're going to alter the bus routes one year from now if we're going to move one grade out of uh Lafayette Avenue School and over to the middle school if we're going to shift things around uh why not do it all at one time and not PR the change that might be in the works but instead try to tackle it at once and um get our middle schoolers a little bit more sleep because we do know from our data that it's after sixth grade when the sleep starts to really fall off and that of course reflects the the research and the evidence about um the physiological needs of students changing when they hit Adolescence in puberty so it's that seventh and then into eighth grade period where our students are starting to be come sleep deprived because their bodies are changing and they're not going to sleep as earlier as they once did so I think I'd like to thank Sharon and and Maria for speaking tonight and say that this is something that um I will very much consider and engage others in the district on as we move through into and then through next year uh in preparation for September 2025 when we actually do the reconfiguration in an Ideal World our middle school would start as late as the high school if not later and our elementary students would probably start earlier okay sounds like we have some room for conversations which is good yep go ahead I wanted to uh Echo something that Mr Heap brought up about the Ted event uh tomorrow night we we have a lot of events here in the school district there's theater Sports um lots of other things that that happen and it really showcases some of the talents that our students have uh this event is you know I I think you should come out and see I encourage the public to come out and see the product of the environment that's created in the school district um one of the products these students go through a commitment to take a very long difficult class and there's a selection process that you have to go through to be selected to speak um and that means there's a lot of prep work and and other things writing and refining uh but also it's you know it takes a tremendous amount of Courage for these students to come up and speak uh often about very personal deep personal uh experiences in their life to hundreds of people hundreds of people I know many of the people here uh for a long time and I've haven't had a deep conversation with them uh over the you know nine years or so that I've been here six and a half um so it's it's a really a good Showcase of um like I said the environment that the the school district creates for these kids to get the courage to come up and and speak in front of hundreds of people I really hope that the whole Community comes out awesome I Echo that as well yeah it's an amazing event so hopefully many or all of you can be here most adults won't get on that red do no question absolutely okay um perfect moving on to our regular agenda Personnel Miss Weber yes thank you um I'd like to move action items A1 through a19 on the regular agenda and then on the addendum there are updates to number two and number three and then an total new additions are 20 and 21 I'll second I'd like to wish Suzanne Bass the best she's been part of the fabric of our Middle School uh just a terrific person and you've seen her here on occasion at holiday time doing uh you know playing having her quartets or groups of students play the strings for us uh but she's terrific and we wish her all the best all right agenda items A1 to 19 agenda items 2320 and 21 M Ross Yes M Allen yes Mr delandro yes M Kenny yes Mr Ryan yes Mr Smith yes M Weber yes Dr Zang yes and M Chelli yes agenda item was pass 90 okay B 16 on the regular agenda V 17 to 19 on the addendum and highlight uh we've got a few donations here in addition to the uh CF donation that Miss Ross uh talked about be thinking classrooms we also have a uh greater Lafayette classic for cougar Academy donation um and we have a donation from the Washington Avenue PTO of $50,000 to purchase a new playground so thank you that's very nice excellent all right agenda items B1 through 16 with theendum 17 18 and 19 M Ross yes Miss Allen yes Mr delandro yes M Kenny yes Mr Ryan yes Mr Smith yes M Weber yes Dr Zang yes and M Chelli yes agenda is pass 90 I said yes also sorry I perfect thank you okay curriculum Miss Ross C1 to C3 on the regular agenda second for a matter of public record and proper accounting I'd like or proper tracking I'd like to add item C4 the approval of the 2520 calendar option one as Dr luser said so that the agenda will fall under curriculum not board business perfect okay thank you Peter look at him [Laughter] audible all right agenda items C1 and C1 to C3 and the agenda item C4 added to approve the 2526 calendar option one as suggested by Dr Lusa M Russ yes M Allan yes Mr delandro yes M Kenny yes Mr Ryan yes Mr Smith yes M Weber yes Dr Zang yes and M Chelli yes agenda item C1 to C4 pass 90 perfect nothing for policy and apparently nothing for board business from me you have Bo business yes um I would like to announce that I will not be running um for another term so I'd like to encourage anyone who lives in the township to uh submit their application to um through Peter I count through the county to um take a a volunteer position that's very rewarding and um hopefully we get um I I I think it would be worthwhile so I encourage uh people to uh submit their name I just wanted to I just thanks I just want to thank L for her time she's been here 13 14 15 years done yet she's the longest not done yet but she is the longest running board member um so I just want to thank her for I mean referendums redistricting a global pandemic I I'm sure I'm forgetting most of it construction all over the place um and she was there for every step of the way whether it was a midnight call a 7: a.m. call or just dragging herself out to board meetings when you just didn't feel like it so so thank you l no thank you so I hope somebody the next person does 15 years as well big shoes to fill for sure but we're not we're not done with her yet yes I'm here through December 31st so to say thank I'll seat warm for whoever exactly exactly I want to let people know what they're in for that's right perfect um anybody else anything for board business I'll ju I'll just uh mention quickly on the in the spirit of all of L's contributions over the 15 years um we had a little reception on Friday for our students exiting our 18 to 21 program um and these are students who uh once they kind of Hit the the the timeline of 18 they remain with us in a transitional program until they're 21 and um we had this reception in the in the classroom that they frequent and it was wonderful to to see and I'm bringing it up here because this is the kind of thing that you guys create um or help enable us to create and put resources into uh that you might not think about all the time you probably made those decisions to put us in a position to implement that program three years ago or four years ago or five years ago or six years ago and um the turnout of High School staff in this classroom you couldn't believe it like both the police officers wanted to hug these kids goodbye staff from all over the school the main office secretaries principal from another building uh across town uh supervisor like people just some of these students have become like family members um within the within the the environment of the high school and it was really touching and I know uh Emily is is is the you know the person spearheading this and making it all happen um but several of us kind of went down just to say hello we got to talk with some parents a little bit talk with students a little bit say goodbye but it was just a it was a wonderful expression of um true caring and like love on the part of a lot of our staff at the high school and these students who've been with us more than most others usually are so I want to thank this board of education for getting behind uh expansion of programs to help as many kids as we possibly can and Mike Ryan is 100% right if you want to see the manifestation of that because you missed it on Friday's reception come tomorrow and you'll see it in Spades awesome okay um I'd like to open up for a second public commentary anyone anyone okay uh we will be having an executive session action will not be taken correct correct okay perfect all right I'd like to close the regular meeting thank you everyone for coming and get home safely and we will see you soon e e