let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please a pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all this meeting is being called to order at 7:33 p.m. can I get a roll call please Mr GC present Mrs Mara here Mrs ricardi here Mr Smith Mr pazdar here M Rivers here Mr Smith had a uh a personal uh item that he had to attend to so he won't be uh able to attend tonight um so with that we will now have a presentation by Mrs opman on curriculum instruction and Technology hello Mrs op hello good evening everyone good evening good evening um will you be able to see over here yeah and we have a hand out Mr you can grab the one next to you that might help help you be able to see some of the things that are a little bit harder to see and this will be up on the website tomorrow for anyone wants to reference it so good evening we're going to go through some updates around curriculum instruction and technology in Emerson this year um I could probably talk for 15 hours straight so I'm going to try to try to keep it brief um but feel free to ask me afterwards if there's something you'd like me to go into more depth so first of all our curriculum all of our curriculum documents are up on the website so here's where you get get to go to departments curriculum and that'll take you to our current curriculum documents that's also where we'll we will post draft curriculum documents once we have the drafts ready for posting so this year we are working on our social studies curriculum we have teams of teachers at each building working on it and we start in September and run through May they do some release time we do and professional development we look at this standards and we revise our current documents I'm not anticipating huge swinging changes in social studies there were not new standards from the state so it was more conversations with the teachers about what's working what isn't working where do you think we could do a better job um and changing the documents more slightly June and July we will finish the documents we will bring them to the board academic committee we will put drafts up on the website for the public and then in August we ask the board to approve the updated curriculum so a few changes we are asking the board to approve a new world history textbook I believe that's on tonight's agenda we had a team of teachers and administrators who use a pretty thorough rubric for um reference our old textbook I believe was in 1995 textbook so for some of us that sounds like oh that's a completely reasonable time to be in high school um but for someone who's in high school in 2024 may not agree with me there uh we reviewed a variety of titles this one is used by several other several other high performing districts um and it did extremely well on our rubric especially in the areas of supporting teachers and students are a lot of primary documents um ideas for projects and activities and most importantly it goes up through the 2020s rather than stopping in the 90s we're also working on a chart that'll be linked to in the curriculum about how we meet all of these New Jersey Department of Education mandates we did pass this part of qac I'm told we don't official word on that but we we did meet all these mandates but there's the anistan Mandate for African-American history holocost and genocide mandate an lgbtq plus and disabilities mandate which is more about celebrating the accomplishments of people who are in those groups um an Asian-American Pacific Islanders mandate and a diversity inclusion more General mandate so um these are all from the Department of Education and so at each grade level we've sat and talked about okay what are we doing in first grade what are we doing in high school and that looks for something like Holocaust and genocide is we're not talking about the Holocaust explicitly in kindergarten but we are talking about tolerance for other groups of people um and things that kind of lead into that conversation in later years so here's a picture of our curriculum cycle and I've circled the green where this is social studies this year but you'll see the whole rest of the column says update to compliance because the state has put out some other standards that we need to update to compliance by the summer so so one of them is that there are new math standards and they came out in October and we are expected to have them ready by August which is a really tight turnaround if you want to make a meaningful change in the program the good news is there are very few content changes um there are very small things maybe a lesson or two here or there um the emphasis is on students analyzing data from a young age we already do this in our math classrooms and our science lessons um so our plan is this spring and summer I will just go in and change make the tiny changes that need to be changed and then we're going to do a math curriculum cycle next year so any more substantive changes would come next year but we will stay in compliance the ELA standards also came out in October so it's a lot to ask a district to change all of language arts and math are probably are two key subjects in less than a year um these have some more changes they clarify they give a lot more detail on K5 phonics um they integrate the reading and writing for science and social studies there used to be like a set of appendix standards and now it's just expected that science and social studies classes use the same standards um so our plan this year is to really work on that phonics piece so we've approved some curriculum writing K3 just looking at the phonics piece of our Ela curriculum and we plan to have that completed for an August adoption all of the other areas will just be a compliance update much like the math um and that means that if you look at this cycle those compliance updates are not just in the English curriculum but any curriculum that lists English standards so it means that the science will be updated the social studies that we're writing will have the new standards World Language will be updated because all of these have like speaking and listening standards for example so that's just a a lot of paperwork on our end that's not going that's going to keep us in business because the department of end asks us to do it but it's not going to really change things for the students that'll take more time so going a little deeper into that Orton curriculum work our teachers and some of them are here tonight working on this are working on a really strong scope and sequence from kindergarten through third grade about when we're teaching each letter sound rule what are the high frequency words and what are the red words that are harder to sound out because they don't necessarily follow the rules so this is the very beginning of kindergarten we start with the letter c we learn the word can this is very very beginning when we get to third grade we're learning things more or like CH can say CH for chair or sh for machine or for school um these are much much harder Concepts um singular and plural possessives like where you put the apostrophe with the S I know a lot of adults who struggle with that so I think um it's pretty great that we're doing this with our third graders so we'll have this scope and sequence and it'll be added into our current Ela curriculum but all the other units about you know we're reading and writing um all throughout the year that's going to remain what we approved last year we also as we're working on Orton um we're have a second cohort of teachers so on the left we have five of our teachers and on the right Dr Linda Edwards who's working with them so this gives our teachers expertise we recently graduated a cohort of five teachers in addition to teachers who've gotten this certification on their own it really gives them a great lens for the instruction even teachers of at volano school and it also through the program there's a practicum so they're providing tutoring to some students at Memorial School right now on Wednesday nights as kind of a side benefit of this program that the teachers the students get toing all right so we'll continue on teacher learning and professional development so this is a photo from our summer Institute we had three days in August this was funded by our Esser grants where we had Consultants from the Great Schools partnership and almost 30 of our teachers so a pretty full house in the memorial uh multi-purpose room or it's now just the library media center um talking about about proficiency based learning and assessment and starting to look at our units and map them out um so here's the the road map that I presented last year at this presentation and you can see if we were a little car we'd be a little bit further down this road where we're talking about designing assessments planning for instruction talking about our grading and Reporting but the goal at the end of the road is strong and Equitable student outcome so that's kind of the why of what we're doing on this right before that is the acting on data to improve instruction in interventions and we can't act on data if we don't have data so that's why all the talk about assessments is about collecting good data so that we can act on it both within the classroom level but also the tiered supports level within the school so here's a photo of one of our professional learning groups working towards the Year this is the high school tiered systems of supports group they're working with our litery consultant Patty vitel Riley um they were working on identifying tier one and tier two supports in the classroom that once we have this data how are we acting on it within the class class room and then we have this plg is working on how do we act on it outside of the classroom like how can we offer basic skills at the high school level and we also have a tiered supports group at volano having the same conversation and we're talking about having a group like this possibly at Memorial next year to round it out we also have proficiency based learning groups at all three schools that are kind of continuing the work from the summer Institute we also have teachers working on these individually oring even smaller groups so these are some of the slideshows from our our self-directed growth plans last year um this is the Highly Effective Teacher option for Tanger teachers they're able to do action research so rather than have me observe their lesson for 20 minutes during the year they will actually do an entire research project where they work with colleagues they collect classroom data they reflect on it and at the end they present it back out to colleagues so the these are a few of the presentations from last year that were around proficiency an assessment um and it's been nice to see it all coming together the PD we're offering the teachers working together the teachers working individually so one of the outcomes of this work is the new report card so if anyone's a grade four or five parent this report card is now live in the classroom and on the left side of the report card you can see the proficiencies and it's fewer we used to have pretty much every single standard listed and so some of the work with the Great Schools partnership helped us with was to condense that a little bit to just really the key pieces that we wanted to report out on to parents um so if we take one of them under mathematics for example would be algebraic thinking at at fourth fifth and sixth grade So within that within that bigger proficiency those smaller standards are still there so teachers during the year are teaching into an assessing on generalizing and analyzing patterns using number models um determining the difference between factors and multiples so all that teaching is still happening in the classroom it's just feeding into a more general report card grade that we're hoping will be a little bit more helpful to parents and also help us collect some data in terms of who needs interventions um within the classroom and outside of the classroom so for each of these proficiencies we have this massive spreadsheet that we're making called an assessment map so for algebraic thinking and functions you know generalizing analyzing patterns creating number models factors and multiples of three things that we just saw in the rubric on the last slide here we have mapped out for trimester 1 trimester 2 trimester 3 which tests and quizzes are we going to be assessing these ideas on so that we're making sure we're not missing any of these standards that we're actually assessing them multiple times throughout the year giving students chances to learn more and more about them during the year um and we're working on these for every grade level and subject area the math is not yet complete for every grade level subject area our fourth and fifth grade teachers are um if we think about that car driving down the road they are definitely the furthest down the road right now um and in doing all this work they came to us and said okay we're keeping a lot of information on a lot of students can we please look at some software to make this a little bit more livable um so we are piloting something at bana right now called Otis so this is from a teachers grade book I took the the names off the edge um but each each line would be one student and then each column is one of the standards so operations and number sense Al algebraic thinking geometry measurement these are the four things under math on the report card and you can see um in the color code if a student's green they're proficient if they're blue they're excelling if they're yellow they're developing so this is helping the teachers be able to keep track of how each student's doing it's also um you can see the story of it a single students if you click into them this is one student and one standard over the course of the trimester um so this comes out to being proficient at the end if you and we're looking at different ways to do this the students actually proficient if you look at the mean the median or the mode um we're also looking at a calculation called decaying average where the very last piece of evidence is weighted the most heavily because if you think about at the beginning of the trimester the student probably couldn't do this because no one in the class can do this because hasn't been taught yet whereas by the end we really want our students to be able to do it by the end of the trimester so one of the reasons we don't give a typical number grade at K through five is because we're really interested in what can the students actually do by the end of the trimester and once you average in what they're doing at the beginning of the trimester it kind of makes a model of your grade book so more about dcing averages as we look into Otis but right now they the Pilot's going well um we also can pull some data this is a search I did saying like Okay I'm picking this one standard tell me who in the school is proficient so it gives me um some pie charts in terms of here's how many students in grade four and grade five here are the different race and ethnicity breakdowns of who's proficient here's the gender breakdown I can also see how many students with IEPs students who are gifted and talented students with 504s students with free and reduced lunch um so it's an interesting thing for teams of teachers to be able to look at at the school level and especially for things like our disproportionality that we've been cited for it's good for us to be kind of keeping this data along the way so that we're still learning this program certainly um but we're excited about it and we will make a recommendation whether or not to adopt it by the end of the school year so if you look at the right side of the report card this is work that's going more pre through 12 um it's the habits of work where we have our four categories so responsibility and preparedness citizenship and ethical awareness engagement and mindfulness perseverance initiative and self motivation these we were taking all the way up from prek through grade 12 so they're right on the front of grades four and five report card they're actually right on the back of the cards for grades K through three um so that's one place where the memorial school is really well aligned with that work and each of these have a rubric that supports it as well so this is from K3 um so under responsibility and preparedness want students to follow classroom routines and transitions independently we want students to bring organize and use learning materials to complete a task independently and we talk about what does it look like if students preparing what does it look like if they're developing what does it look like if they're proficient and what does it look like if they're excelling um and there was a lot of conversation and thought at the K12 level about only using words for these categories rather than a one two three and four um because from a growth mindset point of view we'd rather say that a child is developing they're working on this rather than you got a two which usually translates like you got a B you got a C and kind of puts a stamp on a grade on a student whereas we're really trying to help every student move to the right on this progression um wherever they happen to be right now so I have a shot of our prek4 report card which is new this year um we're excit we're excited to be able to give that progress information to parents um so this is a the first time that prek parents can go into Genesis and see a report card so that's it's a nice update you can see the habits of work on on this report card as well so then just some general professional learning this is a photo from our staff and service on in January this is John kedo an attorney who came to speak to our teachers about um IPS 504s tiered systems of support it we don't often put our entire staff into the auditorium for a speaker um but we felt that the speaker would be worth it and the feedback we got was that it was fairly well received um we we learned a lot we actually had some staff members whose spouses work in other school districts who then called me the next day to say like oh I want to do this at our at our school you know my husband or my wife said said that this was really worthwhile so that's really good feedback for us um we also on that day had Dr Edwards from the other photo um do some dyslexia PD for our Memorial teachers and it was really nice since we can only send five teachers to the cohort and grad school is a huge time commitment it was nice for all the teachers to be able to have at least a little bit of learning from Dr Edwards um and I would say definitely better than making them watch a two-hour video which is what I've had them do many times in the past um this is an example of Emerson kind of taking the lead across multiple districts Mrs love hosted an art share event where she had 24 teachers you can see every seat in the house is filled um we had a long waiting list because there isn't a lot of PD for our specialist teachers um so she hosted this and it was a lesson share so everyone brought different lessons and projects and then they talk about things that um other people in the building can't really relate to like I have 100 wet paintings like where am I going to put these wet paintings you know what kind of rack are you putting the paintings in which seems silly but if if it's your first year teaching as an art teacher it's she has a wealth of knowledge in that and she was able to share it with some other art teachers um a photo from our CPR training which was a Saturday event um we had about 28 staff members we had AIDS teachers administrators um where we all got our I was there we all got our CPR certification um so we're good for two years and now there are many people in each of our buildings who are certified in vent an emergency we've also had and apologies to them it's not the most flattering photos but the ones I had of our parent evening events where um in February we had Nancy Schultz who does our coner mathematics PD for our teachers we had her come present to our parents um this month we had Patty vital Riley who does our literacy PD for the teacher she came to present to parents um both of them were excellent and really focused on what a parent can do at home to help their child in language arts and math and we have two more evening events coming up so I thought i' be a good time to give a plug to anyone watching at home April 2nd we have someone coming for Internet safety and May 7th technology and mental health because these are really um in terms of things that I'm worried about as a parent these are really high on the list and the feedback we've gotten from our teachers and from our PTA and parent Community is that the these are really important topics for our children and then briefly look we had for 2425 we're planning for a summer enrichment AC Academy where we we got a competitive grant for many thousands of dollars to fund teachers to tutor our grades three and four students that was the Statewide it's a grades three and four Grant um some districts who got the grant are running after school tutoring but since we already have most of our teachers will who are willing to work Aspire are already working Aspire we found it easier to staff a Summer Academy um we're using a model we've used several years using Esser funding that's worked really well where students will attend the summer camp um in this building and then be pulled for half an hour during the day for their for their tutoring piece so they get some enrichment camp and some tutoring so we're still working on the criteria for who's going to be invited but those letters should be going out to parents soon we're also planning for an astronomy elective at the high school that we're excited about um we're hoping that maybe the eclipse does a little advertising for us um I'll be in touch soon with families more about how we're going to be handling that in the schools um but we're those of us who are nerds um about science are really excited that this eclipse is coming um we're also work looking at the grade six schedule where we're going to put in a cross-curricular course that'll be study skills for all students um we're also putting in some smaller cycle courses for stem we're hoping to have a dedicated Spanish time a movement course a math puzzles enrichment course and a current events course and these will account for some of the instructional time that's lost from the core courses will be moved into the cross-curricular course and these cycle courses but the Cycles will also allow us to do some more pullout BSI at the sixth grade level which we found is a need in our schedule um and it's easier to pull out from a cycle course than a core course but we would not be pulling out from the current specials courses um because we don't really believe in pulling students out of art out of Music um out of gym for BSI as I said before next year's math curriculum in our curriculum year so we'll be talking more about math um and we'll be continuing the proficiency work so volano is has their new report card we're piloting this Otis system there are more and more conversations at Memorial about their next steps in the high school about their next steps of proficiency so back to curriculum instruction and Technology all these pieces are working together with instruction at the center and really it should be student learning at the center because that's sent her all we do and thank you that's probably I think that's a new speed record for my 30 slides good job anyone has questions this oerman can you just um highlight again the new courses at volano grade 6 and what that's going to do to this schedule for grade six as well I think we talked about it last month when we gave our report from academic committee but just so that that's clarify ified So currently the sixth grade schedule they have specials just like the other grades and then they have English math social studies and Science and each of those is about a quarter of whatever's left in the day it's a little over an hour what we're proposing to do is take about 15 minutes from each of those so it'll be more of a 50 minute period and that'll allow for a 50-minute period that'll be cross-curricular and then a a 25 30 minute period for these cycle courses thank you any other questions from Mrs operan okay great job Al thank you very much Mr grck may ask you to open the meeting to the public sure I moved to open the meeting to the public for input and comments on agenda items only second second by Mrs Mara all in favor I no comments um Mrs bardi would you close the meeting I motion to close the meeting to the public for input and comments second seconded by Mrs Mara all in favor I I the board has had an opportunity to review the agenda items at this time Mrs Mara would you move to uh adopt Item B in secret I I move to adopt all items on the above consent agenda with the exception of items numbered number 10 and request separate consideration for those items indicated seconded seconded by Mr grck roll call please Mrs Mara I Mr gik I Mrs ricardi I Mr Pasdar I and I'll move to adopt the following um items number number 10 requested for separate consideration seconded seconded by Mr grck roll call please Mrs Mara abstain Mr Grow I Mrs ricardi I Mr Pasdar I move on to committee reports Mr grck uh facilities buildings and grounds report please sure uh after the last meeting's pretty extensive report uh the committee currently has no new updates uh on current and plan projects uh we'll be scheduling our next meeting soon and thereafter we'll be reporting out at the following meeting great thank you budget and negotiations I know that uh Dr Nissen off and Mr Marmora have been working hard on the uh the budget and uh right now we have just some preliminary numbers that uh we're that was on the agenda item uh on the agenda tonight uh that will be finalized for our April uh board meeting so at this time nothing to report but um uh we're looking good in terms of getting the budget uh straighten and uh Mrs Mara curriculum instruction and student achievement please uh no further report I I don't think I could follow what Alice just did either but um no further report at this time then next um committee meeting I will present a report great okay thank you and board member reports Mr grck Sure uh I'll be brief um first of all goes out saying uh it's so cool driving around town and seeing uh some of the athletic teams getting out there on the field so good luck to all the spring sports teams as they're starting their season uh my family and I went to opening night of 1776 to production C by the Junior Senior High School it was absolutely amazing I was truly Blown Away by the talent on stage uh behind the scenes in the pit so um absolutely fantastic uh and uh um should all really be proud um I am pretty pumped up uh to attend uh our upcoming third grade heritage uh night although my uh I don't have any third graders left uh it's absolutely an amazing uh night and um wishing all the participants uh a great evening uh it's going to be wonderful and lastly uh thank you Miss opman for your presentation uh really extensive uh it's uh evident uh your passion and knowledge is really there and it's appreciated um and I really really appreciate uh all the uh levels you and your faculty go for for date informed uh decision making and identifying those programs to generate even more meaningful data um really appreciate it and finally um I've heard such wonderful feedback from uh people I've been speaking to in the community about those uh parent education nights uh the ELA and math nights um and so really thrilled to hear that there's more on the way so thank you very much that'll be it for me great thank you Mr grck Mrs Mar um so first thank you to Mrs opman for her presentation I love speaking to you about all of those things so um captive audience whenever you have to give us a presentation on what you um what's going on in our schools um I to attended the high school play it was fantastic it was absolutely fantastic um the students are just so incredibly talented the Almond's are so passionate I mean Mr om man had to be a part of the show this year um and so see it was fun seeing some of the familiar faces too from the district and from the PTA participating I would just really encourage our community to come out in the droves that these students deserve to have sitting in those seats because it really is such a tremendous effort they put on a thousand different performances that at varying times and dates so I just really encourage next year to please make sure that you calendar those dates speaking of that the Middle School play is coming up so please calendar those dates April 10th and 11th yes middle of the week um so hopefully one of those nights works as well um and I'll see you at Heritage night as well um at earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend one of my favorite events for the Bergen County School boards Association I know Bruce you probably talk about this as well the unsung heroes uh event we had one of our own from Emerson being recognized Mr Hutchinson did a fantastic job presenting the award to Brian Garcia Romero um just an absolute standout student and what I love about this program this event every single year is that these are students that are not going to be recognized necessarily for their academic achievements their um athletic achievements uh or being the big names that are constantly you know running around the schools but they are the names of those students that are the best friends they have the best character they're overcoming the um some of the worst of the worst cancer diagnoses the loss of two parents um it's just tremendous how these students can just keep their heads High I think it's a credit to the community I think it's a credit to um the the team of of uh teachers and and employees in the district to help keep these kids pushing forward it's just a beautiful evening so I really enjoy it um and lastly just seeing these numbers from our sick days from January and February with his past two agendas I really hope that we're all on the men because there have been a lot of absences and um I really do hope that everybody is looking forward to happy and healthy Springtime that's it great thank you Mrs Mar Mrs ricardi I too want to thank Mrs oerman thank you so much for this presentation it truly does just skim the surface of everything that you do and it's speaks volume I really hope that Opus works out for you so it really cuts down on your um statistics you know timelines because I know how long that that takes and the softwares are there so hopefully it's a a slam dunk uh I attended my first Dei parent committee meeting um this past month and it was amazing honestly uh there was a presentation by a parent here Shelley sad or I believe that's how you say her last name I'm sorry if I'm butchering it uh but it was highlighting U utilizing inclusive language in our diverse and linguistically evolving world and there was a massive emphasis on working with uh the people with disabilities and how certain there was a a part of it where was certain words or phrases you know may be condescending to somebody with a disability and it was something that I never truly considered and I just love that outside perspective and continuing continuing to learn myself um so thank you to her for putting that on I'm very happy I participated and I look forward to the next one I also attended the parent literacy night with Patty fatali uh Riley it was a great great night I'm so happy that I was able to attend I did not think that that was going to happen I showed up in my sweatshirt with like no makeup on and my hair in a bun but I'm so happy that that I was able to be there um one of my favorite lessons from that was to be a book club buddy with your child read the book alongside your child separately but together at the same time so that then you can compare notes and that's something that's been really fantastic in my family uh she also gave repeated kudos to our teachers in District for the Orton Gillingham certifications that we have I mean she just spoke so very highly about how you don't see that in any other district and that's it's something that Emerson really should be proud of and to hang your hat up on so fantastic work to all of our teachers and administration for making that happen and finally foremost I um I look forward to Heritage night it will be my first so I will be there I'm very excited great thank you Mrs ricardi um board uh board president's report um again thank you to Mrs oerman um what can you say the the the depth the breadth the the thought that goes into it um you you covered it all and not just covering it as a report but just addressing the needs tutoring professional development which includes CPR training um textbooks report cards you name it it it's just um it really it's an impressive um display I guess uh so I want to thank you not just for the report but for the work that you do and and also for the work that the teachers do that that that they're all part of this system so um thank you to all of you who for for what you put into it and what what we get out of it um you're you're really the only one I know who can make the term decaying average sound somewhat interesting so so I want to thank you for that alone um uh it's been mentioned I won't HP too much on it but Heritage night coming up really is one of the favorite nights or favorite uh events of the school so I encourage everyone to try to get out there um it's been a while since my kids were part of that so uh it's it's interesting to see it every year and how it evolves for me um I did attend the high school play truly amazing I I lost myself in it uh I think the the the topic was interesting in general and from the cast The Crew the staff the lighting uh love seeing Mr Olen in in in costum and uh so thank you to Mr om man Mrs om man uh Mrs Katon Mr shiaa um and all of the the students for what they put on it was really really amazing I've I've had the opportunity to to see other plays in other districts and and this was among the the the best that I've seen so um great job to them um I also had uh the opportunity to attend an opioid INF fentanyl awareness um event seminar uh and it was it it was depressing heartbreaking informative um I'm glad I went I wish there were more people there really needed to be more well attended but this topic is so amazingly important and uh so many tragic things happen to to our kids uh because of of opioid and Fentanyl addiction and so um I just want to get the word out thank you to Mayor D paa for sponsoring the event but I just want to get the word out if you're not aware of it get out there get informed uh understand what it is and what's happening and and talk to your kids about it and uh I'll move on to ber County School Board notes Mrs Mar did a great job explaining the the unsung hero event that um we attended uh as part of the the board I had the opportunity to actually help set up uh and organize the event and um hearing the stories that that were told uh again these are these are students who don't get recognized with your typical National Honor Society or you know Straight A's and so hearing those stories uh uh you know of Hope and perseverance and it was really uh very inspirational so uh I wanted to congratulate all of the 55 Bergen County uner Heroes and uh especially our own Brian Garcia Romero um for his accomplishments and uh congratulations to him and his family and uh one final item regarding the New Jersey School Board Association the only thing i' I'd want to mention is that um the there was a the state conducted an independent review of of the state's response to covid-19 pandemic so uh there's more that's going to be coming of that when the report comes out and the uh legislature makes some recommendations on what we did well and where there are some gaps that we should uh address so uh we'll pass on any information as it relates to Emerson or anything that impacts the school and uh that's it for my report we'll uh move on to uh student represent report M Rivers so I just have a few things very short report but first I want to say that the Key Club is starting to accept accept spring clothing for their upcoming midnight run I also wanted to congratulate the cast of 1776 for their play that they put on as well as congratulating our validator and salutatorian Alisa capadia and Mandy Deng and then finally I wanted to thank volano and Memorial School for allowing the high school Key Club and student council to come and read their favorite book during read Across America that's it great thank you Dr n superintendent okay I'm carefully marking off the things that I have on my list so I wouldn't be too repetitive there might be a few things uh I'm going to start off again by I will thank thank Alice um you know she really does do a lot of things here for us there are other districts that will have supervisors of instruction uh directors of professional develop directors of Technology we have Alice um and so she wears a lot of hats and she covers a lot of ground for us and she really uh most importantly she is a a tremendous support to our teaching staff and helps them do the jobs that they need to do every day so thank you again Alice um yeah the play was fantastic um yeah we wish there were more people there you know um but uh the job that the that the casting crew did it was remarkable and yes I was at another I won't mention the school I was at another large local area high school and watch their play and ours was right there with them um our kids are just so talented and it really was a a joy um want to say our uh uh good luck to our band who's going to be going this week to uh Disney and Universal speaking of support our Arts um uh they're they're off to a uh a great trip this week this coming weekend uh yeah our spring sports are up and running and kids are out practicing and uh they're away um big shout out to Natalie Habana who competed in the uh North Jersey spelling be at uh Bergen Community College she did a great job um I I I didn't tell her this but you know I I think she was I think she was tripped up by a mispronounced word otherwise she did really really she did really really well um uh I got to check I I don't want to be repetitive um to thank you to the board uh tonight we approved our uh uh partnership with creskill for our football program uh just a note to the board that we have over 20 uh Emerson athletes signed up to participate this year so our first initial year uh was was a great success and so we're looking forward to uh another year partnership with them as well as renewing for two years our Partnerships with wrestling and bowling with uh with Park rdge uh Mr cardi spoke about the uh the parent literacy night that was a a wonderful evening um the lesson we learned there is we need to record these sessions and get some of these messages out to our parents as as as uh as much as we can uh Alice talked about an upcoming the next upcoming parent event uh the the the full title if I have it correctly is analog values in the digital age um and so we're really looking forward to to to that message uh some events uh I won't be repetitive of the events that were there but some events that are coming up that weren't mentioned um on the March 21st the Italian Spanish club is hosting a cultural event here at the high school uh on April 3rd the National Art Honor Society is going to have their induction here at the high school and the dates for the volana play coming up April 10 and 11 and uh coming up after our our our board meeting um but let's keep that on the calendar on April 26 at Memorial Ator moral school is the uh parents stem uh the uh PTA stem night so we're really looking forward to to that event um the another event which I don't know the date but I'm pretty sure the advisor is in the room is the Relay for Life is coming up May May 4th thank you um and lastly I'm going to leave my last message with something a little hot off the press I'm going to leave the teacher's name off of this but this is I thought a great letter that came to my desk this morning I'm going to read it it's the one particular teacher but the fact is it it probably goes to uh the majority if not all of our teaching staff blank not going to say the child's name for confidentiality this is a letter from a parent to a teacher um Dear Miss blank blank smiled from ear to ear the entire conference and continued long after we left we're not sure you know how special you are you have given her the confidence to learn and Trust herself we have seen such a big growth we had seen such a big growth in her this year we attribute it to you and the atmosphere you create in your classroom to Foster learning and let the kids just be themselves thank you for being exactly what she needed in Memorial School we look forward to everything wonderful the rest of the school year has to offer U just a wonderful note uh we get many of these but I wanted to share that uh share that with the board and share that with the uh with the public and that's my report great thank you Dr Nissen off uh Mr mamura business administrators report thank you yep so tonight we're approving the tenative budget um which is on the agenda so this is um tenative meeting it can change uh it is going to be sent off to the county by Wednesday that's the due date and then the next step is the county will review it and make sure everything is in compliance and give us their blessings that we could go ahead and do the final budget presentation uh which is going to take place at April's board meeting so April 29th will be the final budget hearing um just thank you to the finance committee uh to the board for the direction and also for all the staff in District that's helped out with compiling the information on getting the budget ready I really appreciate it and thank you to Dr Nissa for his guidance as well um and that concludes my report great thank you Mr mamora with that Mr grolik would you mind open the meeting to the public sure I move to open the meeting to the public for input and comments second seconded by Mrs Mara all in favor I I okay if no comments Mrs ricardi would you mind closing the meeting I motion to close a meeting to public for input and comments second seconded by Mrs Mara all in favor I I okay and um Mr May would you mind closing us uh yes I move to close the meeting to the public and adjourn at 8:19 p.m. second uh do we have to read oh sorry no we're not going back right um okay uh all in favor I and good all right thank you everyone thanks for coming I just didn't know if we had to oh no oh okay yeah so