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 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 e e speci Miss Peterson will you please introduce yourself hello my name is sa Peterson and I'm here to interpret any um Spanish public comments that are made into English thank you Miss Peterson welcome to everyone here and those of you joining us virtually to this July 23rd Dober Board of Education meeting for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6:30 p.m. and those remote comments will be addressed in the second public comment section this meeting which is hereby call to order at 6:34 p.m. is in compliance with the notice requirements of the law public notice was posted in the office of the Board of Education and communicated to the municipal clerk and daily record on January 9th 2024 can we please rise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the repblic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all Mr sabahu may we have a roll call Miss ESO present Miss DS present Mr Miller here miss nothing yes Miss Phillips here miss finales here Dr cner pres miss sones here miss mandz here sorry Miss nutting for I didn't um ask you in advance but will you please read our mission statement of course working together as a community our mission is to Welcome All and provide opportunities for our students in a safe accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and choose to make an impact thank you Miss nutting and I will toss it over to Mr he to introduce this evening's presentation good evening everyone uh we have tonight presenting for us Mr Pand and Mr Carl ring for data information regarding our district good evening good evening my name is Patrick pandao I am the director of student intervention and district testing I'm joined here tonight by Mr Carl who is the director of curriculum instruction uh and professional development so we're here to give the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment results for the NJ GPA that our 11th grade students took this fall next slide so what is the NJ GPA the NJ GPA is a is a assessment by the state it's a graduation requirement that all 11th grade students must take the only exception to those 11th grade students or are there some students uh that have embedded in their IEP taking the alternative assessment but there there very very few uh the NJ GPA tests students to see if they and this is the states words that their graduation ready so they take two different exams that they both have to pass one in English language arts and one in mathematics the English language arts is aligned to the 10th grade standards and the mathematics is aligned to the algebra 1 and the geometry standards next slide so originally the cut score that the state set was at 750 last year they changed that to 725 so all of our students have to meet that 725 cut score in order to pass so if they didn't pass it this past spring they're going to take it again this fall if they still don't pass and meet that 725 requirement then there's two other Pathways that they can take there's a list of tests with cut scores that test they may have already taken or a uh if they do not meet that requirement then they can take what is called a portfolio assessment next slide so up on the board is the venue of items test items that students could take and along with their cut score that's a second path way so if they still don't meet they still don't meet the cut scores on any of those tests then the Third Way is a portfolio assessment which is an assessment done with the classroom teacher in conjunction with guidance but in order to access these particular these second and third Pathways they must sit for the NJ GPA so in order to they might have already taken some of those tests already up there and passed them but if they don't take the NJ GPA it's a mood point they have to take the NJ GPA next slide so let's look at some data from this past spring so we can see for the district graduation ready in language arts we are at 73% to the state's 82% so even though we're below the state averages the Gap in language arts from this year to last year is is actually lessened last year was 12 and a half points this year it's only nine points uh unfortunately Ely in math that's not the case in math we actually have 66% of the students that are not graduation ready meaning 34% of the students are graduation ready compared to the state's 55% that Gap has actually gotten wider I think it's at 21 points now last year was 12 but uh two things I want to point out with the particular math exam we had 50 students that were one or two questions away from being proficient and if those students uh got those one or two questions then they would have been at 50% so hopefully those students retaking it in the fall will hopefully pass the exam and also know we' pointed this out before in many of the state assessments especially in math that many many times the actual State uh passing rate or the expectations of the state are very low so 55% of the students in the entire state are graduation ready which means 45% in theu of the students in the state are not graduation ready with that I like that I would definitely question the validity of the test instrument itself next slide and then this is the visual repres representation of the previous data or the previous slide and you can see the bottom the bottom middle is the uh State the the the state gradu uh the State graduation ready vers uh not uh uh graduation ready and really the the the green bar there should be much taller uh if the test really had a significant validity next slide so this slide deals with students who have been in the district and as it as it relates to their average test scores so as you can see and it would makes sense as students the more of the students in our District the better on average the better off they do that 768 in language Arch is actually well above uh the cut score but the one thing I really want to point out here is that 40% of the students have less than five years in the in the district that took this exam which means they were not they were never at do Middle School we're always teaching critical thinking skills they start at the elementary level but the really complex skills are really to that that basic for the high school critical thinkings taught at the middle school and again you're you're joining components of learning from one link to another so we have many students who are who are coming into Dober and they may not have those particular skills next slide so also we're required to report uh different subgroups and you can see that with some of our subgroups actually a very high graduation ready rate and that's that's awesome congratulations to those students however it doesn't it's really a very small uh number of students the the subgroups only a little bit over 10 so as a result you do see some outlier higher uh higher passing or higher graduation ready rates next slide and then again the visual of representation you see those you know large green bars for some of those subgroups and again there's not a lot of students uh in those particular areas next slide so here are more subgroups and the one subgroup in this area that we really focused on is our English language Learners and this sort of relates to what we uh pointed out before about 41% of the students not being with us at middle school but these English language Learners many of them were come from very challenging backgrounds and not yet new to do they're new to the country um many of those students we don't really know the exact educational background that they've had uh some of them have had very little schooling or interrupted schooling and again when you're really talking about not basic skills tests back in the day the the state assessments were basic skills tests these are not basic skills tests they really need to have the the competency and and the skills and the practice of joining critical thinking skills and having a jointed education when they have a disjointed education that is going to have an effect and that's why on the students in this particular subgroup do struggle and it does affect our overall total score next slide and then this is just the visual representation you can see the the bar graph in the middle that our English language Learners really do struggle with this particular exam next slide okay at this time I'm going to turn the the mic over to Mr Carl who's going to do a deeper dive into Data related to NJ GPA thank you Mr Pand Alo good evening everybody uh Rory Carl director of curriculum instruction and professional development um and we want to use this last section to really talk about okay we have this data now what are we doing with it how are we using it as a district currently as an admin team uh so we're going to dive into kind of how we've already been planning and how we continue to utilize the data uh as we move into the 20 4 25 school year next slide please uh so the first thing I want to do was to celebrate growth uh so what you're looking at on the screen is part of the NJ school performance report uh that is a release by the depart Department of Education um we received this uh in April um and it was sent out through school messenger and this is just one snapshot of it but as we've talked a lot about our district testing you know we've really tried to put the focus on growth um yes we have students that are currently not at grade level standing standards but the growth they are making from year to year uh this was something I was able to share with the curriculum committee um and I look forward to sharing when we present the njsla results um at the one of the next board meetings but the growth that we are seeing is meeting the state average so on the screen you're looking at the ELA District median um and then the uh Statewide median Diego can you give it a a click I have some uh boxes that hopefully should come up on there it's like a little box that highlights it I don't I don't know if it will do it in this but I'll just kind of yeah so those first two sections we're looking at the district so to meet the standard for the state and language arts uh you should be a 40 to a 59.5 uh for the SGP uh the student growth percentile and you'll see that in all areas and in all subgroups we have met that standard and I just want to highlight that in many of those areas we have a very high score on that range uh so we're well within meeting that standard and same thing for mathematics this is looking at our entire district for all students we have met the standard in all but one of our subgroups um and that is something that we are diving into as we continue to use this data to drive us forward and on the bottom uh the reason that there is no data in the 2020 21 or the 20222 uh is that was during covid so due to not having State Testing there was no growth percentile because that is looking at the third grade students when they moved to Fourth um and the growth they made on the assessment so we had our first piece of data again from last year and then we will get those results um toward the end of the summer beginning of September next slide please oh yeah that's the Box um before we jump into this I just want to uh highlight the work that Mr Heime has already done as Acting Superintendent um starting July 1st and on July 3rd we had our first summer admin meeting uh which is a new thing that we are doing and those meetings every week um have set agendas and last week we were diving into Data uh So currently hanging up over at Belmont on the second floor is wall to--all data um and the entire admin team everybody walked through uh we had note Pages up to put notes down of things we could celebrate areas we need to work on and this was a big part of that data these are the new link it benchmark assessments that we're using at the High school um to really track student growth to look at standards and to be able to make more realtime decisions instead of waiting for the NJ GPA with an assessment in at least in math that we're not really sure of uh when the state two years in a row has had more than half of its 11th graders not passing this is something that we can rely on um so we're going to have a couple more come up some more arrows here Diego but what we did as an admin team and then this will continue with supervisors into the school year is we looked for areas that we're seeing tremendous growth so from the green to the orange were're two different benchmarks so there is a gap in between and that's where we can really highlight the growth this information directly available to teachers supervisors working with teachers and analyzing this data but we looked for a lot of growth and we said okay what are we doing and how are we instructing those standards and why is it connecting with our students and then we also do the hard part of looking at the ones where we're not seeing as much growth but we have those conversations of okay why didn't this connect this time and now we can look this year and say okay two years in a row not connecting how can we come together as a group and we pick those small goals we can see that growth so on the top you're looking at our Algebra 1 data from this year and on the bottom that is English 2 um we have those assessments Algebra 1 geometry Algebra 2 and in English one two and three and we are expanding our own benchmarks into some of the other content areas next slide yeah those are the good ones and the ones we're looking at so then diving into Data from the start So currently right now uh the language arts supervisor Miss Sarno and math supervisor Miss Shaw are analyzing the NJ GPA data and adding it to our uh Trend sheet so we've been keeping this since the NJ GPA started in 2122 and we analyze each standard we say okay where Did We Grow which area are we seeing not as much growth and how can we focus on those but this allows us to see those District Trends we then compare this to our Link at benchmarks are we seeing consistency and it help us helps us prepare for the expectations of that test you'll see everything's connected to released items this is shared directly with our teachers who can use those released items to kind of you know make sure we're using similar questioning types you know all of that comes into play um in utilizing that and we'll hit that from the GetGo next slide and finally I just want to talk about the new math program so last year's NJ GPA uh was a confirmation that we really needed to look hard at the math program that we were using in District for Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 Miss Shaw has done a tremendous job with a collaborative effort the uh high school math team came together they reviewed different programs uh they had Representatives come in and speak to them there was a committee that first further analyzed and determined the best program that met our specific needs the reason reveal math uh was the Top Choice I'll say first and foremost is the multilingual support currently our Algebra 1 program is the only program that is available in Spanish the resources once students get to geometry and Algebra 2 are only provided in English that will now change with reveal math Algebra 1 geometry Algebra 2 both in English and in Spanish including the online Alex program so we talk a lot about I ready at the elementary level providing support for our K to8 students our Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 students will now have that with a program that meets their specific needs you'll see tier one tier two and tier three tier one is happening in the classroom but tier two we can support those students through their indivi individualized programs uh that can be tracked by the teacher and it was one of the Ed reports uh top uh rated math programs out currently uh so we will be launching that in September and we're really excited and that's it thank you everybody Mr Carl Mr PFO thank you so much for that um presentation and all the work that went into that um I will not open it up to the board Mr Miller uh hi thank you for the presentation um I just had a couple questions and I couldn't remember we may have heard this before uh for the graduation process when uh they don't pass the test the portfolio appeal is that like subjective like how is that determined yeah so so the the the entire pathway so students NJ GPA first they must sit for it as long as they sit for it um if they do not pass it opens that second menu uh that's sat you know all the different assessments with the cut scores for students who don't meet those two requirements as long as they sat for the njpa they can go through the portfolio process so we have really designed our portfolio process to support our students best some districts will do this outside of the classroom students have to come back and it's on their own time we have built in classes at the high school a math enrichment and then one also for language arts uh where they do the portfolio so we send um um our um we have five different areas for Math and the same for language arts we send those items to the state for approval once they are approved we then use those in house students must complete four of the evidence pieces to show Mastery of the skill we submit that to the state and then they approve the students for graduation so the students we're administering tests and we have to prove this to the state that they pass the test yes yes so we send uh you know the questions that we use uh for the students to meet those to the state they approve we give those here at do um our High School Math teachers grade them we send the scores to the state um and then they determine if the students have met uh that requirement to fulfill the port the portfolio portion um the chart that you had on there that was showing the um results of students that were here a certain number of years if we had a cut off say three years and less and we looked at those scores above three years did we meet the state average that's what I would be interested in understanding how much of you know the fact that students haven't been haven't been in our district causes those scores to go down yeah and you know we could analyze just that specific group because the SGP that we were looking for was District overall um but we could break down that information but you know I think it's been an important piece is really looking at scores and how long students are here um you know and and when we pulled that data it it kind of stands out dramatically you know those students who have been with us for 10 years or more in language arts I mean the score incredible and with math only a few points off the cut score compared to those you know we looked at those five years or less that Middle School experience you know at least for math with an assessment that is on Algebra 1 and geometry those skills are the foundation is put out for students in middle school so students coming to us who either didn't have a middle school experience or it was a you know a different District it does become a challenge but it's made us really look at that and find ways to help those students you know they are our students whether they have been with us for 10 years or they just got here it it's our mission to support them and I'm proud of the work that we've done you know in the past couple years seeing that um and really putting some things into play for those students I I like the chart with the med uh scores but I'd be interested to understand the data behind that how many of those students are in that upper part that like what students are in the median that you're capturing to know whether is it true growth um or not I I don't know yeah and that's you know it's exciting with with I ready because we've had it we can see that um you know link it next year will be our piece to kind of say okay here's where we were this year and now here's where we're going and I think those pieces help us tell the story a little bit better instead of again waiting just for that end of the year state test uh you know to make those determinations because I know that the growth Trends have to be difficult because of the change at the student population that makes it hard to really follow a student all the way through if they're coming in and out I know that's difficult but yes thank you for everything you're both doing with this thank you Dr s thank you for your presentation um I wanted tag team um off of something that Mr Miller said I really loved seeing the data separating out the time the students are spending in District um I think that we've been talking about our transient our s students our students who are new to the country um could you go into a little bit about some of the interventions that we have in place for these students um who are coming without foundational skills without language skills with um you know Trauma from their migration to this country um and how we will know as a board and how our community will know that they are also improving um even though they may not be meeting the state objectives and then kind of a an add-on to that how are we preparing them for life whether it's after graduation from do high school or just after they leave us how are how do we know that we're doing the very best that we can for all of our students especially this vulnerable population yeah and that's you know it's interesting because today we uh we met as an admin team and talking about our goals as a group for next year and and one of the goals at the Forefront is continuing that support for our multilingual learners for those students uh who have that you know limited or interrupted formal education and the work started last year in creating Pathways um in math and science and you know really trying to make all content areas where there are these foundational courses that provide students with the skills they need but also with the support um you know the foundation piece understanding that they're coming to us and you know learning Algebra 1 might not be the the highest priority that they have but how can we connect it to their lives and how can we develop our own program because I think sometimes you know these big math programs they're not focused on on that student and what they need specifically um you know so it's really the teachers here you know working with supervisor developing courses um and making sure those courses you know really support them the tracking piece you know I I think as a district we're really honing in on the data um that we need to focus on and we're utilizing that data to make sure that we're meeting those needs and when we're not the thing that I love right now is this group coming together weekly the collaboration and the discussion and you know just leaning on each other and expertise and past experience expence you know it's that's really become our Focus um just a comment moving forward I would like to hear more as we move throughout this uh upcoming school year of all of these you know I know we've approved foundational courses and how we're tracking these students and I I it's incredibly hard to be a teacher in general and I think our do teachers just have that extra challenge of meeting students with such a wide variety of needs um but how I would like more concrete examples of how we're meeting um this subpopulation needs and evidence that we have of their Improvement or not you know because sometimes we try strategies and they don't work um and so when we go back to the drawing board this didn't work but we're now we're going to try this um I I would like to see that information and I think our community would as well thank you both any other Mr Miller I just I had one more thing I I know that it's difficult to go through it's a lot of data that you have to go through and I know there's more and more artificial intelligence tools out there that can give you more insight I don't know if working with the state if there's has there been any plans of uh different models that are out there that you could utilize that would help you get more insight about each student um by adding a lot of other data that would other otherwise take a long time for individuals to you know analyze yeah and that's where you know I I want to thank you know the board's um support of linkit and bringing that into the district because that data warehouse has made all of this possible um you're right we we want data but data sometimes comes on thousands of spreadsheets that are coming from everywhere and that's kind of where we were two years ago and now it's on one place um and they have a student Hub I need information on one student I can find everything I need on that one student or we can look for Trends districtwide we can look for Trends by school so the state unfortunately uh not as helpful with data um but link it has really been an incredible tool and it really allowed us last week as an admin team to dive into something so early you know to be doing that type of work in early July some districts aren't doing that until you know the end of August when they're meeting for an admin Retreat we've done it now we're having the next conversation already um so it's it's been great any other comments or questions from the board I will share that um over the weekend some of us uh were at the Belmont building and we were able to see all the hard work um that has been going on so I thank you think both of you Mr Heyman everyone who has really been working behind the scenes uh truly appreciated I do have um I am accustomed to receiving these pres this is a lot of information to digest and I am accustomed to receiving these ahead of time so that I can review in my own time and formulate any questions that I might have um is there a possibility that moving forward um we can receive this type of a presentation beforeand yes absolutely absolutely thank you thank you for your time thank you thank you okay we are moving along to public comment on agenda items only the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments limited to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer please understand that public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation with that public comment on agenda items only is now open is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak good evening Susan Jer 346 West Clinton Street in do um first thing I want to say and recognize is congratulations Mr haime and welcome and uh it's nice to see you here um Good Luck your success is our success so thank you for stepping up to this plate um the second thing I'd like to say is thank you very much to Mr Carl and Mr pandal for your wonderful presentation I'm very happy to see the breakdowns the digging into the data um and if I understood it right there will be real time checkups per se of um how we're doing how the students are doing doing and I hope that that will be brought to the public so that the public can more understand the impact of the diversity of student population that we have here in Dover of the migration in and out of students and the impact on our testing um the the other thing that I wanted to mention in um in traveling throughout New York State over the past several years there are definitely school districts who are breaking into the academy system for those students who are new to the country who move a lot the mobility students who are in and out of District who don't have a stable history to go back on for learning you can't go and say what did you learn in e8th grade because there's no history um and I'm hoping that sometime in the future if this instability of time spent in District of students continues that do will consider moving intoy because as uh both our directors told us this evening it's a tremendous amount of work to break down the data so that you understand it enough to offer an intervention to help the situation so if you're spending that much time on a significant population you need basically a whole entire staff to do that and you're taking that staff that you only have one group of the staff you're taking them away from your general population to work on one specific group and you can't equally spend your time as you said the tremendous amount of data that has to be dissected so that we can understand and and cause interventions and then my last question last year um you explained how the interventions were going to be started a little earlier when the students started having red flags of issues and I'm just wondering did that work this year um how many of our graduation graduating students were aided by the intervention uh and how many were not thank you thank you is there any other member of the public in person wishing to speak on agenda items only seeing none public comment is now close um Miss shower I will uh we will try to get that information um over to you if uh maybe Mr Carl at some point can share with Mr Heyman then we'll have Mr Heyman reach out to you thank you um we are moving along to the approval of minutes uh is there a motion to approve the minutes from June 25th and July 13th with an amendment to the minutes from the June 25th executive session to reflect the correct attendance so moved second we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss Phillips is there any discussion seeing none we have a motion and a second second Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote Please Mr I will have to abstain from June 25th regular session um June 25th executive abstain and July 13th 20124 special meeting abstain as a conflicted member m STS yes Mr Miller yes Miss Phillips yes Miss pineles yes Dr senner abstain on the both um both minutes from June 25th yes on July 13th Miss SES yes Miss mandes yes Mr subbulu I just have to add one thing I was not here for July 13th so I have to abstain from that okay July 13th yes all right thank I apologize we had a board member who had to step away because of a family emergency and I'm trying to make sure that we have the items she was going to take care of set um Communications there are there are no whole board Communications that I am aware of did I miss anything no okay uh we do not have a student rep report uh Mr H are you aware when do we get our student rep September or that is correct okay great um so we will move along to the board president's report um the application window for the Dover superintendent of schools position closed on June 24th and yielded 35 candidates many candidates are sitting superintendents assistant superintendent School principles a director of curriculum and instruction a director of special services and other educational Prof professions um professionals I'm sorry 19 candidates have earned doctorates the vast majority 32 candidates live in New Jersey one candidate resides and works in New York and one in Indiana the DOA Board of Education non-conflicted members only met an executive session on July 13th to review all of the candidates credal ials and application materials in order to determine a slate of candidates for first round interviews the board conducted first round candidate interviews on Saturday July 20th and our second round of interviews is scheduled to take place on July 27 this coming Saturday um I just want to thank everyone for their continued support of the DOA Board of Education during this important endeav uh we look forward to selecting our next permanent superintendent over the coming weeks and then lastly as a final reminder if you intend to seek a position on the DOA Board of Education the deadline to submit your nominating petition to the county clerk is July 29th and that concludes my report we are moving along to administrative reports Mr haime I am looking forward to your first report good evening everyone when no uh first report the first thing I want to start with is is we are the change in the administrative organization that would allow for a streamlined process and procedures and job responsibilities that will ultimately benefit our staff students and Community uh so tonight's agenda you will see a recommendation for the abolishment of two administrative positions uh that will significantly also help our budget for the 2024 2025 school year the two positions are that of the assistant superintendent and director of special projects I want to take this time to thank everyone uh teachers custodians board members P professionals all for speaking uh with me and supporting me in the last four weeks uh in my new role as the Acting Superintendent I also want to thank all the teachers that took time to listen and speak with me during the listening tour that provided me qualitative data for the team for me to share with the team as we do strategic planning for the year um parents thank you for your invaluable support as well as um as I serve the D Community it's the best of my ability and administrators and the Belmont staff your buyin and energy have made it easy for me to leave support and grow in the last four weeks uh the building walks with all the building administrators as well as mulu um Mr M um with the buildings and grounds uh director as well as the building principles during the walkth through we we had interesting we had great conversations about all of our building needs and strategic planning that we want to do moving forward we also I also did a tour of all of our private providers from pres school as well as our Delk one and Delk 2 uh was very informative and I have to say preschool students are very very affectionate and welcoming um of the sorry the building and construction I just want to give an update uh we've had a lot of construction done over the summer that has been great for our community and our buildings and it's something that I'm very excited very proud to share with everyone this evening so I'll start with Academy the railings are installed at the parking lot preventing students and families from cutting across the parking lot uh the media center and classrooms in the lower area have been completed um and we've been able to remediate the situation with the water in that section with sub pumps and French drains that will address the water issue at North Dober there was an issue with the floring that has been addressed and filled and tiles are being placed today uh DMS vest of uh will be uh worked on very soon um and they're also working they also completed the work in the cafeteria where all the LED lights have been replaced in the cafeteria uh the gymnasium floor have been complete and they look beautiful uh Ed best and main office construction is on their way and now we're just waiting for inspection to continue on to finish up with the project and the modular canopy has been installed for our students to be able to attend classes in the modulars and be uh taken care of away from the inim weather uh DHS the replacing of 200 wi classroom ceiling tiles and painting in 100 Wing has been complete uh we are reorganizing offices in the in the areas to enhance over organization of our guidance office and the child study team members will be returning back to the high school uh thanks to the balancing of our school schedule that meet the needs of our students family and Community uh in Advent technology and resource we are planning this school year for the first time a 4day event two days and two nights to create a One-Stop shop for our parents where they can pick up their technology P out lunch applications and open their gen Genesis parent portal to provide our community the resources to start the school year uh we also have our par back to school night dates already scheduled we'll be sending out that information very promptly to our community uh I have my coffee with the principal uh in Club Columbia once again thank you to Club Columbia for hosting uh Public School District there and that evening provided an opportunity to have a sit down with our families and our community to discuss some of our goals and ideas and expectations of the Acting Superintendent and we are now planning a second panel Forum on August 12th uh this one is going to be gearing up for the school year this will be an opportunity for our parents to participate again in discussion and this will be a virtual and in-person uh discussion that will be held at dolber Middle School uh new website launch will August first a lookout for that that'll be something exciting and new that will be give us an opportunity to be more user friendly when it comes to our website and synchronize all accounts to improve navigation uh we have a very special announcement as well regarding our grant that we have been uh receiving from the Jets uh New York Jets where it's going to provide us with playground equipment for our northb and Academy expansion of their playground area and then for Fourth of July I want to thank uh the town do for and remember Fourth of July uh even though was held on July 3rd it was great seeing all the families of community coming together through of July 4th on Hamilton field uh our sum summer planning meetings with all the administration are going well as Mr Coral had mentioned earlier we have been diving into our data working as a team and really making sure that we're all working in as as a group and convocation planning is on its way and we have our speaker coming for that day which is uh Jonathan Alzheimer uh who is someone who speaks on empowering schools and on transforming School culture that is well for for my report thank you thank you Mr he uh are there any comments or questions based off of his report this evening Dr Ser um very excited about the new website especially the C calendar feature is it was very difficult to find differing events so that is going to be helpful to everyone thank you for shepher that in absolutely Miss Mendes I I of course Academy Street is on the south side of Dover I live on the South Side the mural looks so cute he does and the railings also look very nice thank you for that absolutely any other comments or questions seeing none we are moving along to Mr Sabu good evening everyone our high school priser is completely functional uh P our food service Management program started using already for the summer school I think it's a great accomplishment because this is our first walkum freezer for the whole District uh on the agenda we have an Ida Grant application which is $925,000 for basic and $2 20,37 for preschool we will utilize most of the grant to pay for out of District students tuition we also have the CF Grant uh application which is 35,3 52,000 352 ,000 that will be used for rodus H contract at the high school that concl my report thank you Mr sabahu any comments or questions based off of his report seeing none we are moving along to Boe reports Mr Miller any updates from the Morris County Education Services Commission they do not have a meeting in July so we will resume in August thank you uh Dr serer legislative report yes there are two bills that are on their way um they've passed both houses and are on their way to the governor's desk um a 2288 um establishes the office of learning equity and academic recovery in the State Department of Education and the uh kind of the general idea of that bill is that it will identify educational products strategies and services that have demonstrated Effectiveness in identify and reversing student learning loss it will maintain a Resource Bank of examples identifying public and private entities that can partner with school districts to provide resources to implement uh learning loss recovery strategies um as well as technical assistance grant application assistance and cooperating with institutes um institutions of higher education um s2644 requires the State Department of Education to establish a working group on student literacy mandates Universal literacy screening for kindergarten through grade three students and requires professional development for certain School District employees that concludes my report thank you Dr s uh Miss DS morrris County njsba report good evening there are no mcba meetings scheduled until October since I do not have an official report this evening I would like to take this opportunity to read the statement from the mcba website which gives a description of the meetings the county school boards Association meetings are opportunities for board members to receive professional development and upto-date information on current education initiatives legislation and regulations affecting Public Schools the meetings enable board members to stay connected and work together to advance the achievement of all public school students in New Jersey program run times vary see a program you would like to attend in a nearby County as a board member you are welcome to attend training in any County not just your local County Association find information on All County Association events at the m CBA website the next mcba meeting is a hybrid meeting that will take place at Panic Township High School on Wednesday October 2nd 2024 the topic will be Mental Health Resources for your District any board members wishing to attend would need to log in and register this concludes my my report thank you thank you Miss STS uh we are moving along to administrative approval is there a motion to approve items one through five so moved second we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss Phillips is there any discussion Dr Ser um we are approving um the anti-bullying specialist um just out of curiosity is this the same staff member fulfilling that role or is that a new person same person thank you any other discussion seeing none we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss Phillips Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please misso uh I will have to AB yes to all abstention on number three abolishment of positions thank you Miss STS yes Mr Miller yes Miss Phillips yes Miss peles yes Dr sener yes Miss soles yes Miss mandz yes we are moving along to personnel which is typically Miss nutting um and I will take that over uh is there a motion to approve items 1-9 with amendments to items 1 and 10 and the removal of employee 817 31432 from item two so moved second there's a motion by Miss Phillips a second by Mr Miller is there any discussion Dr s i see that various General eneral education and gifted and talented teachers specifically those in fifth and sixth grade are being reassigned as more specialized teachers could you explain why this is being done and will our g&t program still be running in grades five and six absolutely so our fifth sixth grade uh students are going to be departmentalized so they can specialize in in their own content this will allow our fifth to sixth grade students to tr such an easier into the middle school schedule and there therefore given them now the ability to build a little more autonomy as they're going from class to class and now being responsible more for their content and in regards to g&t we are still continue with our GNT program thank you any other comments or questions seeing none we have a motion by Miss Phillips a second by Mr Miller Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote Please Mr yes to all abstention on number 18 Mr SS yes Mr Miller yes Miss Phillips yes Miss pelis yes Dr cner yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes uh we're moving along to negotiations uh Mr crew our board attorney can you provide us an update on negotiations sure the uh the negotiations committee has reached a tentative memorandum of agreement with the dssa uh the dssa is in the process of preparing salar guides and hopefully both parties will be in a position to ratify in the near future thank you Mr C uh we are moving along to governance Mr Miller the governance committee will be meeting next week July 30th from 6:30 to 7:30 at Belmont Street Mr Miller um was the governance committee also the governance committee has a m on to L yet no so the during that meeting um we're going to to work on setting up the board a date for the board retreat um and also um now the other thing just went right out of my head there are a couple things it's okay cuz I the most important thing to me is the board retreat because we need to get a date on the books so um and also the the self evaluation for board members that will all be occurring next month so um I have actually a couple of dates that I'm uh thinking that we could use that I'm going to send to you um and Miss Phillips to see if it works because I know that we have a lot of things going on in August and if they're good with you then the committee will discuss it on Tuesday okay so um you're meeting on Tuesday of next week yep Tuesday of next week so can we commit to by the end of that week um having a timeline fleshed out for the uh self- evaluation and then a couple dates we can offer via a doodle Poll for our board retreat absolutely yep thank you um we are moving along to student achievement and curriculum Dr Ser um we will be scheduling a meeting for early August um I have nothing new to report so I move that we uh the board um approves items one through um8 we have a motion by Dr is there a second I'll second we have a motion by Dr s a second by Miss DS is there any discussion Dr s um Mr haime would you like to uh one of the things up for approval are new student handbooks and parent handbooks for all levels which is wonderful um are there since we do have parents um maybe watching at home or may watch this at a later date is there anything that anything of consequence that they should be aware of that will be changing moving into this school year as as parent students I would definitely for the middle school and high school level uh just take a look at the changes that are we've created to be more refective of our P PBIS training that we've applied uh other than that it's really just new titles and roles and new positions that are being updated on the majority of our handbooks thank you Mr Miller uh yes I had um submitted a question about handbooks um just wondering you know at the beginning of the school year is there a process for review with the students and uh and also the parents and if there's any way that um that there's an agreement between either the students or parents that have read and understand the handbook uh because we know there's there's it's very comprehensive they're very good but there's a lot there and typically people tend not to read them so I'm just hoping that there's a way to so that people understand enough that it may be useful uh in their thought process of how they handle themselves throughout the year so this year uh which is new we are going to be uploading the handbooks into our Genesis parent portal to allow parents to have access to them early on before the school year starts uh but of course with that said just to kind of reinforce thean book itself uh the building admin all and together with the teachers uh either whether they do it in grave level assemblies or during the introduction of school year to kind of set the tone and get everything going uh they do go over specific areas that will pertain to students and go over those material so the student have an understanding what the expectations are moving throughout the year oh great thank you any other discussion seeing none we have a motion by Dr serer a second by Miss DS Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please misso yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss Phillips yes Miss peles yes Dr sener yes Miss sones yes Miss mandz yes we are moving along to community relations Miss ASO thank you Miss Mendes the community relations committee has not met but we want to remind the public that a Google form has been posted on the Dober Public School District's website for community members wishing to apply for the citizens advisory committee for the 2024 2025 school year the citizens advisory committee will serve as a conduit for feedback advice and information on matters affecting the school district this allows the DOA School District Board of Education to listen directly to the community while fostering a collaborative environment and relationship between the school district and the community please refer to policy number 9140 for more information the application deadline is August 9th this concludes my report thank you thank you Miss asav and I just want to Echo and emphasize um please uh participate take part apply to be a part of the committee um you know we we as a board decided to um create this committee because we wanted to um collaborate with the community but uh if the community doesn't take advantage of the opportunities then we created it for nothing so please um take advantage of the opportunity we want to collaborate we want to bring everyone's voice to to the table um we are moving along to policy Miss pinales thank you we met the policy committee met on June 27th um we had a fruitful presentation by our principal Freddy Nas our presentation was on policy 5460 re revisiting the graduation requirements from 140 to 120 credits I'm going to tell you some advantages of that they allow it this allows to explore a wide range of academic interest electives while meeting all core New Jersey requirements to delve into advanced courses free Subs senior schedule for work-based learning internships trade apprenticeships unnecessary coursework may affect the student dpas and um it relates to the data that was shown to to us today um there will be no needs for waivers for graduation and just to give you an idea on 2022 we had to fill out 10 waivers on 20 23 we have to fill out 26 waivers and on 2024 we did 44 waivers in order for our students to graduate um this change would allow us um to not have to apply waivers for the students to graduate um on first reading we have policy 24530 educational stability for children in foster care policy 241 15.4 Title One districtwide parent and family engagement policy 2417 is student intervention and referral services and policy 5416 on high school graduation also on regulations we have a student intervention and referral services to include support for multilingual Learners and on second reading we have the Equal Opportunity policies and also for second reading as well including the curriculum content this concludes my report um with that I would like to entertain a motion to providing one through four on their policy you want to make a motion make a motion sorry thank you is there a second second we have a motion by Miss pinales a second by Miss Phillips is there any discussion seeing none we have a motion in a second Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please Miss ESO yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss Phillips yes Miss penales yes Dr sener yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes uh we are moving along to finance and Facilities Mr Miller uh the finance and Facilities uh committee will be meeting next Tuesday July 30th from 5:30 to 6:30 um and with that I'd make a motion that we approve items 1 through 13 is there a second okay a second there was a bunch of them yeah I didn't hear that uh I said second but okay so so we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss ASO is there any discussion I just wanted to mention that um on the donations I know that um Mr haimy mentioned New York Jets but the donation was $75,000 which was a a tremendous amount but we also had a a donation from Miss Loretta kig and she donated some very important musical items uh drum heads and a cleaning kit for trombone so that that was a very generous uh gift of up $600 so I just wanted to mention that amazing um any other discussion Dr s um Mr sabulu I see the transfers in the central services and administrative Information Technology line item has exceeded 15% in a financial training a few years ago we were told that transfers should generally not exceed 10% on any line can you explain how this occurred how this has occurred and how we will avoid transfers like this in the future yeah we we keep everything under 10% but this uh one we had to do for the salaries and the budget was done before me but going forward everything set for the salaries and also we're going to send it to County for the approval anything over 10% we need to County approval so we can do it thank you any other discussion seeing none we have a motion by Mr Miller second by Miss ASO Mr SAU may we have a roll call vote please miss ASO yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss Phillips yes with an exstension to payments to vendor 1950 1950 Miss peles yes Dr sener yes Miss sones yes Miss mandz yes we are moving along to some informational items um upcoming Board of Education meetings August 20th September 17th and October 15th um so then that brings us to Old business is there any old business seeing none we're moving along to new business misso yes um I would like to take an opportunity to um just to read you a little bit of um Mr nazaro um a former teacher super supervisor has just passed away and I I would like to share some information about Miss nazaro um he was truly an inspirational guy he was I was fortunate to have him as my English ninth grade teacher and I can attest to um how great he was if I make may I read what I have absolutely thank you um I want to send condolences to the family of Mr edra nazaro Mr nazaro was not only a remarkable teacher but also a wonderful human being I was fortunate to have Miss nazaro as my ninth grade English teacher at do high school and later on in life as a dear friend Ed's distinguished teaching career began in New Jersey at Randolph High School in 1977 he returned to Dover High School as supervisor of roal languages ESL and bilingual education a role that he held for 23 years he went on to serve as vice principal at both northover and Academy Street Elementary schools and brought his teaching career full circle when he retired for the Lang from the language faculty at Randolph High School concurrently Ed became an Adjunct professor of Spanish and ESL at the County College of Morris in 2022 Mr nazaro was inducted to the do high schools Hall of Fame Ed contributions to education were recognized through numerous Awards including Morris County's best teacher award two best practice awards from the state of New Jersey an outstanding educator of the Year presented by chb Hispanic political action meting additionally he was awarded prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Grant to study history culture and literature of Puerto Rico and two full bright scholarships to study education in Japan and to teach in Porto Portugal Ed's passion and talent for teaching inspired many of his students to pursue education as a career including myself on September 8th 2024 at 2 p.m. a celebration of Ed's life will be held at the total Funeral Home in Randol new New Jersey a priv private family burial will follow rest in peace Mr nazaro and I'm hopeful that we can include a tribute in the feral Wells and tribute section of our website for Mr nazaro thank you thank you Miss ASO um I will invite us all at this time to um share in a moment of silence in his honor thank you thank you um and Mr will make that happen uh absolutely thank you uh any other new business seeing none we are moving along to public comment the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on School matters to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments not restricted to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6:30 p.m. remote comments will be read by a member of the Board of Education the Board of Education will alternate between inperson and online comments please understand that public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation with that public comment is now open is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak good evening again Susan Cher 346 West Clinton Street in Dover um thank you for mentioning Mr Ed nazaro Miss ASO I had the pleasure of working with Mr nazaro as um when I was a brand new PTA president at North do when he was the vice principal and he was a a wonderful man and the students absolutely adored him and the parents as well so thank you for mentioning it's a tremendous loss um my I have two quick questions I think I heard you say that the child study team was coming back into the building into I'm assuming Dober High School it makes me really happy I didn't think it ever should have left um have we found additional space so that they have workpace that won't impact taking away anything from student classroom space and then my second question is um quickly about the departmentalizing of the fifth and sixth graders uh I went through that before in the district both as a parent and as a PTA uh as a board member and um are the students moving or are the teachers moving classroom to classroom um I think the last time we tried it both ways on two different occasions and I think it worked out better when the teachers were moving instead of the students because there was a tremendous loss of time when the students had to move um so just those two questions thank you thank you Miss shower uh Miss Phillips do we have any virtual comments no no any other member of the public in person wishing to speak seeing none and no additional no no virtual comments um public comment is now closed uh Mr hman can you speak to the um the child study team coming back into some of the buildings and how we are working out um the space for that absolutely so what we found is uh with balancing our schedule better at the high school level we found a uh an office space that was omitted from the schedule last year that didn't we weren't aware um and to be more balanced and making sure that we have the proper amount of students at our class we were able to find a space uh in hopes of bringing the child cud team members back into the the building thank you Mr Hae um and are you can you speak to um the um departmentalizing of the fifth and sixth grade um and kind of elaborate on that a little bit more perhaps absolutely uh so with the reasoning as I mentioned before when it came to the departmentalization of our fifth and sixth grade is to give an opportunity for our students to number one to get a a flavor for what's expect at a high school at a middle school level my apologies and what that's going to be like now from 7th to 12th grade right and and right now what we are putting in place is not only are we providing the support for our teachers to be specialized that content we are also going to be collaborating with the middle school and providing opportunities during uh PD time for there to be articulation between the six and Fifth and seventh grade teachers so there's an understanding of what's going on Elementary and what to expect at a middle school teach at Middle School level as well as opportunities for teachers to see how the content is being taught and therefore there could be a more smooth transition between Elementary and uh middle school students uh in regards to the transition I believe that's something that we're still having discussion on and as soon as we have a confirmation how the transition would occur whether it's teachers mov from class to class or students more from class to class I'll be able to report that at the next board meeting thank you Mr haime um I will entertain a motion I'm sorry is is there a board member that would like to say anything no no I will entertain a motion to adjourn at 7:44 p.m so moved I have a motion by Mr Miller is there a second second a second by Miss Phillips all in favor say I any oppose good night say help clean up if you can