and posted in the board office three schools municipal building and filed with the clerk of the Bor of Emerson if could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please I 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 this meeting is called to order at 7:35 p.m. can we get a roll call please Mr gik here Mrs Mar here Mrs ricardi here Mr Smith here Mr Pasdar here good evening everyone so uh before we get into the agenda portion um we would like to take some time to recognize and honor and celebrate one of our beloved members uh giovana solico uh giovana I it it was very hard to capture um you know the emotions and and the feelings so I made an attempt at it I wanted to be brief so uh you've been with the Emerson school system for 20 years first as the board secretary and then as the uh administrative assistant to the superintendent I first met you 7 years ago when I first joined the Board of Education uh I've never known the Board of Education without giovana so um you were always that friendly smiling face you always made me feel comfortable and I can't ever recall asking you a question and you not having the answer or being able to guide me uh your knowledge attention to detail friendliness professionalism dedication and genuine kindness have made you the backbone of this school district and these are words by the way that I've heard others use when when describing how they interact with you and and their relationship with you and their experience I personally am very sad that you're not going to be sitting there when we enter those board offices going forward and you've left huge shoes to fill uh but I'm genuinely happy for you and your family and uh I hope that you know that you've left a lasting Legacy and and you built a strong Foundation here and it will always remain part of Emerson's history and its success so I feel comfort and confidence that Virginia is going to be taken on that role uh so on behalf of the Board of Education both past and present I'd like to convey our deepest gratitude for your service to Emerson we wish you the best in this next chapter that you will write with your home family but know that you will always be part of the Emerson family so from our family to yours thank you for your service and congratulations I think uh bill would like to say a few words as well sure we you know uh most of the people here in this room were were at a wonderful retirement uh dinner that we had for you which I had a lot of prepared words I'm not going to repeat all of that but um Mr pazar you did a a great job of capturing um the the the value of G giovana to our district to myself need giovana go back 20 years now and uh you know if if our district is successful if I've been successful it's because I've had giovana uh all this time um just been just a wonderful wonderful person and most importantly just a great great friend um I'm really going to miss you um now you know one of jiv Han's jobs of course is to when somebody leaves the district when someone retires from the district her job is to order the clock the clock so we thought about making her order own we thought we thought better of it and Bobby Bobby handled it handled that this one What did the what did the guy at the store say he's like I don't know what I'm going to do do without or she we the one plac so uh on behalf of the Amerson Board of Education uh please accept this little token of [Applause] appreciation oh picture on the uh thank you so uh if everyone here has been in the board office you know it's not exactly the most spatial uh accommodations it got really really tight during the pandemic um and we started thinking of ways that we could kind of make it a little bit more um safer start meetings outside you may have noticed that there's a couple of benches now outside in the board office well it's been four years we've been trying to get a bench outside of the Board of Education Office the plan was to have two benches out there but we got three benches the third bench is going to be dedicated for your service giovana soloco August 2004 to August 2024 Board of Education so this will be mounted on the third bench and we're hoping we're really hoping that we're going to get you to come back we'll let you come into the office we promise but hopefully uh you you'll come by from time to time and see that we've permanently dedicated that space to you come on up for some pictures John take one'll take three pictures and one last one with the board office staff one last one with the thank you so much thank you very much thank you thank you so [Music] [Music] much I think wants to get I'm sure yes that was really more than you thank you so much thank you well Chris okay thank you very [Music] thank you okay so do we want to release them and back in a while Soo don't torture don't torture your family by keeping keeping thank you very much congratulations to presentation on test scores and um thank you GI thank you bye Nico bye bye Bo exactly bye all right how are you feeling you all right you up for it okay this will be a short one all right so uh moving on to the uh item on the agenda uh Mrs oerman is going to provide a report on the NJ GPA uh test scores did they open the doors did they open the front fli front door is locked you think there's a stampede that's one way of keeping keeping the public down I'm knocking on the window all right good evening welcome to part one of the testing presentation for the school year the previous school year so tonight we will be talking about the NJ GPA and the weeda access test um Parts two and possibly a part three we'll go over the the rest of the test scores some of them we have just gotten over the summer some of them we do not have the scores in yet so I wasn't able to wrap it all into one and that's probably anyway because when it is all wrapped into one um I end up speaking for well over an hour so just looking at where these tests fit in terms of the K12 experience the NJ GPA is an 11th grade test access for ESL students is any any grade level that the student is currently in how we use these test scores this is a slide I've used previously but for those of you maybe watching at home who haven't been to a testing presentation before uh we use the student data and variety of ways test scores are one piece of student data we also look at rubrics report cards teacher input child study team evaluations but the test scores will be part of our data meetings with teachers we look at them when we're revising the curriculum when we're reviewing instructional materials when we're planning professional development deciding how to Pace units throughout the year and plan lessons uh the state will look just at the test scores not those other pieces of data and they will use them for part of teacher evaluations for teachers that certain grade levels they will use them for federal accountability and when it is a qac year which thankfully last year was a qac year so this year will not be they do use it as part of our QC monitoring when we're looking at an individual students test score so if you're a parent watching this wondering what this means for your child again it's one piece of information out of many we also look at rubrics report cards reading levels teacher input child study team testing and this might in might inform a small group lesson that teacher plans especially the beginning of the year when the teacher doesn't have much other information about the children they might form their initial groups using this information the teachers will use it to inform their own student growth objectives that they set this year only our non- Tanger teachers will be setting them and we use this information to inform individual IEPs for students it is also part of the entrance and exit criteria for students being placed in a basic skills program in a title one program such as Aspire and our explorers gifted and talented program um at the high school it can factor into course placement and it also the access test we're talking about is a key factor for a student exiting their ESL status so the first test we'll speak about is the NJ GPA New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment this is a relatively new test um this is part of a graduation requirement for our students so this is considered the first pathway so everyone takes this test and if you pass pass this test you're good to keep going along with with your coursework and everything else you need to do to graduate if you do not pass on the first pathway you take the second pathway which is we look at other test scores such as sat PSAT acup Placer we actually give the PSAT to all of our students in 10th Grade and 11th grade so that U for students who haven't passed the first pathway we can know right right away whether that second pathway is applicable and for students who haven't been able to pass any of these tests there is a portfolio process so the test will not be keeping anyone from graduate so for this past spring we had 67 students who were eligible 67 of them took the test 100% um the content of the test it's really grade 10 standard so in English it's the grade 10 English standards and in math is algebra 1 and geometry standards because they test it partway through grade 11 so they don't want to test them at the end of grade 11 standards and um our scores for this year were excellent so if you can't see the tiny number that is 97 % of the Emerson students passing the ELA portion of the exam and 85% of Emerson students passing passing the math portion of the exam um the State numbers being 82 and 55 respectively so this these are really really excellent excellent numbers um here it is just in numbers I have the breakdown by various demographics so since almost every child passed the ELA it's not surprising that the male female daughter both all the way up by the 100% um in math the dogs are fairly close I wouldn't be concerned about this as a gap it might be a difference of one student um for male versus female passing kids did really well on both of these tests same for um our demographic breakdowns I can only show groups that had 10 or more students so for this grade level that is the Hispanic Latino students and the white students um the purple Dot and the yellow Dot and again these these dots are overlapping showing that there wasn't really a racial divide in how the students were doing on this test um and then this is the orange dot is an IEP no and the gray dot is an IEP yes so you can see a bit a bit of a gap here where 100% of students who don't have IEPs passed language arts Almost 100% of math um the IP yes group was about 80% for ELA which is very strong um and then math about 30% so when we look at for areas for improvement that would be a group that we would want to work with looking at this data over time we actually had a 97% pass rate last year and I was a little worried like can we can we maintain that and we maintain it exactly which is awesome um and in math we actually went up from a 76% pass rate up to an 85% pass rate which is just wonderful especially looking at how the state um just kind of stayed flat I also like to look at these same stud students over time so looking back to the I had the data I had for these students took they took Park in third grade fourth grade fifth grade it switched to Ed jsla in sixth grade Co hit them in seventh grade so we don't have test scores for seventh and eighth grade we do have test scores for nth grade there is no 10th grade test and then we have their 11th grade test scores so the Emerson line is the orange the New Jersey line is the purple you can see this group of students has been above the state average their entire Emerson experience um but it's nice to see some growth between sixth grade and nth grade all the way up to 11th grade that what we're doing at the high school is preparing the students that they are meeting what the state says as a benchmark to graduate our school and again in math um while we didn't have the close to 100% passing 85 is strong and looking at how these students were doing in elementary school I'd like to commend the teachers who had these students in 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th grade especially with covid where um students had um sort of a different educ ational experience that we were able to bring so many students up to being able to pass this test to graduate high school um so notable achievements well above State averages we do anticipate every single student will qualify to graduate almost every student who didn't pass his test did have a passing PSAT score and then there's just a handful of students two or three students where we will be looking at a portfolio process um possibly for next spring if they don't pass a fall test we we have been proud of of our Algebra 1 Lab course we're talking about math curriculum this year we might talk about maybe a geometry support course we're also talking about um a pathway for those IEP students who may not pass this test can we do their portfolio work within a course so that it doesn't become something that they have to do on top of their coursework let's make sure that their coursework sets them up with a portfolio so that they're able to graduate just based on cour work that they've done so that they don't have to do something extra if they fail this test uh so that's ngpa and then this is just the data charts for that the other test that we have the data for right now is assessing comprehension and communication in English state to state for English language Learners which we call access for sure um don't puss me on what that stands for I have to read that off the slide um there are six levels of proficiency in English language proficiency and to exit um ESL status a student needs at least a 4.5 on this test and then they also need feedback from their classroom teacher and the ESL teacher agreeing with the test to say that this student is ready to graduate so the 4.5 is in between a bridging level and an expanding level where a student is very fluent in English and ready to not just have a conversation in English but to take an academic class in English um so we have 100% participation rate the number of students is so small that I can't tell you how any individual grade level did or how individual language did um I can share the array of languages Hungarian Japanese Korean malam polish and Spanish and then you see a lot of stars here the star meaning the group is less than 10 so I can't say how they did but you can see the spread of um students in level two most of our students are in level three and level four we had one student in level five so that student um if their ESL teacher and classroom teacher agree will be able to exit the ESL program a 7% pass rate is not a bad thing it just means only one student was at that level it usually takes three to five years of VL services so if a student's only been with us for one or two years getting a two or three on that test is where we would expect that student to be um so in terms of achievements our students are on track we anticipate that they'll be able to exit after three to five years of support and the exciting development is when we had the SR Gra money we were able to send two of our teachers back to graduate school to get ESL certifications because one of our limitations was having one ESL staff member for the whole District um so that that person had to go to all three schools every single day during their day um and now we have a staff member at each building who has an ESL certificate and at the high school where our numbers are very low for ESL and volano where the numbers are very low we'll be able to have that as part of a staff members teaching load where they might teach one period to BSL and then teach their regular subject area and then we will be able to have a full-time ESL staff member at Memorial which is wonderful because we'll be bringing um prek on for ESL this year which we haven't been able to service in the past and now not only um can we service it we must service prek according to the new regulations so that is it for this testing presentation just two tests but if there are any questions I'm happy to speak to them I got one question what is the PSAT score you need to get in order to pass um off the top of my head I'm not sure but I'll look I'll look that up here I was just curious more than anything anyone else all right thank you Mrs opman appreciate it and no good deed will go unpunished so we're looking to take that 97 next year and make it a 98 Ohio we'll go easy we'll do 98 okay um Mr Smith uh can I ask you to open the meeting to the public for input in comments on agenda items only I move to open the meeting to the public for input and comments on agenda items only I second seconded by Mrs ricardi all in favor I I looks like no comments or input um Mrs Mara could you close the I'm moved to close the meeting to the public for input and comments second seconded by Mr grck all in favor I I having had an opportunity for the board members to review the uh consent agenda and after discussion um Mr grolik could you adopt uh motion B please yes I move to adopt all items on the above consent agenda with the exception of items number 27 and request separate consideration for those items indicated second seconded by Mrs Mara roll call please Mr gik I Mrs Mara I Mrs ricardi I Mr Smith I Mr pdar I and uh Mr Smith could you adopt uh motion C I move to adopt the following item numbers 27 requested for separate consideration second seconded by Mrs Mara roll call please Mr GC I Mrs Mara I Mrs ricardi nay Mr Smith I Mr pdar I moving on to committee reports facilities buildings and grounds chair Mr grck Sure uh just a brief update on some of our summer projects um the tennis court project uh we had our bid opening on July 9 we received two bids uh the lowest bidder was substantially higher uh than our original project estimat so we will be rebidding this project uh vanana School Renovations are moving along as scheduled uh inclusive of two classrooms which have been fully demolished and an abatement of the classroom and hallway floors which will be completed uh hopefully by the end of this week looks like we're on track for that um as for our plan High School projects the electrical upgrade uh project it continues to move along starting with the trench work for conduit piping completion of this project is pending delivery of the electrical equipment which we're awaiting a word from the vendor uh painting of all classrooms has been completed in the 120s Wing uh repurposing of some underutilized spaces is being handled by our maintenance team in addition to these projects there's the typical summer cleaning that's been ongoing classrooms hallways floors are all getting a deep cleaning um preparation for the start of the school year um and a significant cleanout has been done to volo's basement as well as the high school wood shop um and given all that I just really like to spend us uh send a special thank you to all of our buildings and grounds team its leadership and Mr marur for his oversight um this is critical and vast work that goes on every summer and it's just important for the community not to take this off for granted so thank you all that concludes my report great thank you Mr grck for budget and negotiations nothing to report uh by me we'll move on to curriculum instruction and student achievement chair Mrs May I'm going to defer a report our August meeting we will be meeting with the um curriculum instructions studing achievement with Mrs oerman and Mrs ricardi so I'll report them thank you great thank you uh individual board member reports Mr grck all right uh just super brief um hope everyone's enjoying the summer congratulations again to Gana um well before I joined the Board of Education it was incredibly out obvious how ingal she was uh to its success and uh just being that fa and so I just wanted to thank her um thank you to miss Auber for your presentation this evening on ngj GPA and access scores um I'm pretty pumped to see our consistent uh positive trending in ela and uh uh even more pump to see the um jump up in MA sport so good stuff there thank you to you and your team um and uh really just uh it feels like forever ago our last meeting but um I just want to say that uh uh it was an honor of me to participate in my first uh Emerson High School graduation and I just want to extend um thanks and kudos to everyone all stakeholders involved and organizing that was amazing congratulations to the class of 2024 again uh and to anyone who participated in a promotion ceremony award ceremony uh congratulations again and I hope everybody's enjoying your summer and read read those books yes that's it for me great thank you Mr gck Mrs Mara thank you very brief as well um congratulations again to giovana I love having her even in the room with us she's just such a positive person and always smiling and it's really going to be um such a void to fill uh going forward I want to say a special thank you to Dr nissanoff Mr marora and the entire staff of the Board of Ed central office because while everybody else hopefully is enjoying summer vacation I know that they're very very very hard at work and it's been a very busy summer for them so I um certainly want to just knowledge that publicly and also say cheers to Dr nof on year two and Mr marora cheers as well um looking forward to 2024 2025 with you both and uh thank you to Mrs oerman for your presentation what I love about the way that Mrs oerman presents this information is she could throw the graphs up and the pie charts although Dr Mr tyan would not appreciate that um she could throw those numbers up there and um what she does though is she expands upon them and really tries to explain just what she as well as the rest of the admin team and our teachers are going to do with this information and so specifically looking at math while math curriculum is up this year for development for for our curriculum they're going to take these numbers and they're going to make them improve because they're going to take that data and actually apply it so that knowledge is great but her applied knowledge is what is going to make the difference for our students so I appreciate all of your efforts and I also wanted to just say welcome to miss aella welcome to Emerson it's going to be great to meet you and so um she's the latest addition to our admin team so looking forward to getting to know you a bit more great that's it thank you Mrs Mar didn't mean to cut no no no um Mrs ricardi I just want to Echo everything that has already been said through and through congratulations to giovana she is such a light in this world and she's definitely going to be missed and Emerson but I'm so happy for this chapter ahead for her to come with her family thank you Mrs oerman for this presentation that you did it's always so insightful to see the information presented and you used to spell it out so seamlessly and it definitely takes an incredible amount of time for you to do that thank you and to Mrs Maris point the the way that um you move forward with that information is that's what makes us keep moving forward in a positive why welcome how do you say your last name again appella appella appella okay hello Miss Abella welcome to Emerson we're happy to have you here I hope everybody is enjoying their summer thank you to the central Board office I know that you guys don't get to rest you keep going and without you the district just wouldn't be what it is uh with that that concludes my report great thank you Mrs ricardi and Mr Smith again again thank you Mrs opman what I really liked about it um I liked how you went backwards and looked to follow through I I'm a little bit not a data guy to Bruce's point but I do like to follow data and and I think that was uh that's a great thing to point out hopefully at some point we'll get rid of that Co word and not have to say it even though I know no pun intended right now but uh that you know you don't have to worry about what those classes are they catching up but uh I do appreciate the work and thank you thank nice to meet you Mrs Appel I think I said it correctly but if I didn't I apologize and with Giovani one of the things that some people don't know you always look at the school what she has to deal with she used to deal with the public a lot um because if you ever wanted to use a school field or facility you had to go through her and that sounds easy enough but when you have soccer baseball softball fighting for the same fields at certain times and then a men's league comes in it's a town league and then you know who volleyball wants to use the the gyms and basketball um that's how I knew her for all these years you know who's this giovana lady oh God that poor lady's got every nut calling her looking for a field or so whoever's stepping into that you know hopefully they have the same patience she had but she was always great to work with so uh I just felt that should have been pointed out because everyone thinks about the school admin stuff not what that what that comes into so that's it great thank you Mr Smith uh so for board president's report um luckily for the community and my fellow board members I have nothing really to report from a county or a state level so I'll I'll Echo everything that Mr Smith Mrs ricardi Mr grock and Mrs Maris said uh buildings and grouts team and the admin team um as you said we're all out enjoying our summers but they're hard at work getting the schools ready for September so thank you to them for their hard work we appreciate that Mrs oerman thank you um I think it's um it's really nice to see those the the number of AP test takers the the scores for the tests and all the other work that you're doing it's um I don't think we could stress it enough I I don't know how else we can convey to to the community that the work that you and the teachers do and the staff so it's uh keep up the good work and we'll look forward to to next year's scores so thank you uh to giovana uh you know I think I've said at at her retirement dinner and and tonight uh I think I've conveyed how I feel and I think how I think the board feels so thank you to her again for her service uh so I wish her the best and a lot of enjoyment of the time with her family and uh you've uh we've heard references to uh Jan appella and so I won't steal Mr uh Dr nof Thunder but we look forward to uh meeting you formally so with that I'll move on to the superintendent's report sure thank you well I I I will be very very brief it's just really nobody here to talk to anyway um but yeah at at our last board meeting um we came to uh the board approved my recommendation to approve Janna apella is here today uh that happened very very quickly um the the uh final interview negotiations decision making happened the day of the board meeting I believe uh so it all happened very very quickly um but she's here this evening uh to uh to meet the board and um while not officially on board she starts August something like that a couple in a couple of weeks and and um but even though uh she's still committed to her other District she has been allocating her some much of her own personal time here to the district meeting with staff meeting with parents uh being in IEP meetings um really helping us in our planning and getting organized for the for uh for the next schol year so she's definitely hitting the ground running uh literally and uh so I'll I'll give you the floor if you want to say anything or you don't have to say anything I wasn't prepared but I will um I I'm good on the spot so I am thank you it has been great is a great opportunity to have this transition where I'm kind of thrown in um learning a lot about the district and each school and all the great things we have to offer I'm more excited to join this team because every day I learn a lot more about what we offer our students and um I have been meeting with families and having discussion with family members and it has been really great this transition and I'm looking forward to officially starting but thanks for having me great we we had another and I I I feel bad that I'm uh bringing this up now but we did have another member of our family uh here this evening rashne Fernandez who will be uh essentially giovan's replacement she'll be the new board office secretary so she was here with us as well this evening um so just a uh a couple of things um you you brought up AP scores Mr pazdar and and although um Alice did not really talk about the AP scores I'm I'm probably going to start gaining a reputation for really milking uh data when we really do well so let's start now even before Alice presents it we do have our a AP scores we have it a chance to to uh take a look at them Alice is going to do a very very thorough job in doing um as she always does in presenting it to the board um but just a few um you know a few quick facts uh one we had 40 AP Scholars out of this year's uh group that's Juniors and seniors 40 AP Scholars eight uh AP Scholars with distinction 11 AP Scholars with honors and 21 uh AP Scholars so we're extremely proud of that I don't remember what we had last year but I'm pretty sure it's more um one little tidbit we had one staff member uh the board may recall that our June I think it was our June meeting we had Elena Moran here with her AP Government students uh Miss Moran teaches 34 AP Government students 34 of those students scored three or above 100% passing rate in AP government of the 34 1777 of the 34 scored a perfect five on the APA exam and that's just one example of some of the outstanding performances from uh our kids and and our teachers um we talked about some of the work that's going on in this summer yes we we we we are very busy our principles are very busy in their buildings um really working hard trying to get classless situ fit finalized and class placement finalized uh we have a few positions remaining to hire um we're down to about three or 4 so we're getting we're getting really really close uh uh the board has my word we will be ready to open in September we will have teachers books and everything ready for uh for for our kids in September the maintenance crew a little short-handed but they are really uh working literally overtime um working to get the buildings in in shape our teachers the I can't tell you how many teachers I run into on a daily basis uh the board may recall we approved the grant U from the state for summer tutoring and how many how many teachers are tutoring in there nine nine nine teachers are here they're actually doing their work here in this space um and they've been tutoring uh the entire enire month of July um really doing a really doing a fantastic job uh again Alice thank you for the uh for their presentation the admin team is doing a considerable amount of planning thinking deeply about what we want to accomplish this year some of the areas in need professional development um some of the district initiatives and what is really taking uh the admin's time consider amount of the admin's time is the hiring process which is is very very time consuming and Janna uh also has made uh dedicated a lot of time to that process sitting in on teacher interviews sitting in on child study team uh uh interviews selecting child study team members for those openings um so with that uh that's all I have for my report wish everyone a happy summer if you need me I'll be in the office great thank you Dr niss off um Mr Memorial a business administrator's report so I feel like Mr Smith tonight everyone is um kind of spoken so eloquently tonight and and touched on everything I was going to bring up I really didn't have a formal report but um just like to formally welcome Mrs aella and um Mrs Fernandez who is here today um new to our staff um also like to thank the board of education for your um just for your um recognition and gratitude for the staff that work over the summer uh I'll be sure to relay the message to them and they'll definitely be appreciative of it um it's nice to be recognized like that and of course I have to recognize and wish uh Mrs filo well in her retirement um I couldn't begin to even touch on everything that she's done I've worked with her for a year and it's been um a pleasure to say the least so you know good luck to her and congratulations and that concludes my report great thank you Mr mamora uh Mr Smith could you open a meeting to the public for input and comments I move to open the meeting to the public for input and comments second seconded by Mrs ricardi all in favor I I okay and uh Mr brck could you uh close us out please I move to close the meeting uh to the public for input and comments second seconded by Mrs Mara all in favor I I and uh Mrs ricardi could you uh close the meeting to public and adjourn please yes hold on are we meeting after this yes okay I move to close the meeting to the public and adjourn at hold on 8:16 p.m. to discuss an executive session personnel and legal issues in the conference room of the Board of Education offices no action will be taken at this time the board will return to open session upon completion of discussion and may or may not take action at that time the next meeting of the board of education is scheduled for August 26th 2024 at 7:30 p.m. in the high school media center all in favor second oh I'm sorry seconded by Mrs Mara all in favor I I all right thank you very much everyone you thank you for