all right everyone um pres Downs superintendence report yes I um I have a much longer report for downstairs but up here I'd like to uh turn it over to we're ready to uh Dr Morgan and Miss viia for their presentation this evening on our multilingual Learners and all of the different initiatives come on that side of the table so you can sort of see the screen that you're presenting and and the people at home can see you on camera that's the end of the presentation um yeah you just to the top superintendent Wellen the um presentation is at the uh start page do you see that as well you see it now yes thank you and if you could the microphone is attached to the camera so just you know project your voice please good evening everyone good evening and happy New Year I know I didn't see many of you miss W gave us an opportunity to go home get the rainstorm so we are here to talk about the wonderful things that happening in the p12 ESL bilingual space here in Ocean Township next slide please next slide Marian it's there on the computer this is that's a little delay like it's up on the one it's at home I've Advanced it okay that great okay okay that would Tri okay thank you so the goal here in Ocean for all of our students is to utilize the tools and resources provided to us that includes tier one interventions teacher coaches um mental health staff student data and intervention acceleration resources to help every student demonstrate me meaningful academic growth to us that means that we're going to use all of our resources whether it's our supervisors our instructional supervisors our wonderful superintendent our business administrator our board members anything that we have we're going to make sure that our students are successful next slide please thank you so here in Ocean and I can't see so I'm gonna move over here here in Ocean we have five schools with ESL and or bilingual students in each school so in otes we have 62 multilingual learns they are supported by a pullout coach and ESL and Ela they co- te and an ESL bilingual push in for social studies math and science so each school has different programs to support our students at Tois we have 57 multilingual Learners and they are supported by an ESL level course level courses and they pull out we have ESL and social studies where they co- te and in grade five they push in with the E Ela teacher the social studies teacher the math teacher and the science teacher next please at otes our elementary school we have 48 multilingual Learners and the ESL classes are supported by grade level class by grade level and they are pull out and then for our ESL they push in so again let me let me back up I went back ESL class by level they are push out pull out and our ESL they also push in for El for rasa we have 22 multilingual Learners and the ESL classes by level they pull out and there's also ESL push in for ELA and math and finally at weide we have 58 multilingual Learners and the ESL classes by grade level pull out and they push in in ela and at Wayside is also a bilingual parttime Ela for math for and that's good question push in means that the ESL teacher goes in teachers with the regular teacher General teacher so the general ed teacher um I'm sorry the ESL teacher goes into the classroom and they co- te together next slide please so now i' like to introduce Miss El chave where she would talk about our Spartans as a whole what we are doing in our school and outside of the school to support to support our multilingual Learners and our newcomers I'm Cecilia um so when we started working on the presentation I kept trying to keep up with updating updating the slides with the correct numbers and so about last week we we had about 248 multilingual Learners by the end of this week we'll have 253 so I I can't try to give you the most accurate numbers but it was changing quite um so that makes a 253 year today meaning the year starting the academic school year starting July 1st through to today out of our 248 multilingual Learners um we have five of them who are use either in part or in totality our language support services so very briefly because I can go down a rabbit hole and I'll talk to you about this um we offer services we are required by law to offer the services but it's within their parent or Guardian rights to refuse those services in part into T and there's a of reasons why they happen um are twice exceptional multiv Learners who are participation in a special education program and multilingual um and language support programs it's about 30 of them so 12% of that 248 our total new commer multilingual Learners 66 about 27% and when I say newc I'm referring to how it is defined by the state students who have arrived within the United States in a US school system within the last two years um a total exits of this year is 22 and so there's different reasons why a student may need criteria to exit the programs we generally measure their English proficiency once a year as it is prescribed by the seate but in certain situations we are have the allowance to measure the growth of a student and through the feedback of the ESL teachers to content are teachers prior to that assessment we can exit a student if they need the criteria and they know servic and then we had students who be through from District um next slide please if you want us to ask questions after what do you want might be better let's do after that's okay with you yeah I'm with that yeah and so it is important to also understand that when we talk about multilingual Learners or Ells or Els or MLS um it's really an umbrella term right and so part of understanding all the wonderful things that we're doing and all the things they're achieving is understanding that they are all very different and so I broke it down into two categories the one is the home languages are spoken at home in the district currently there's 32 different homeone languages I noted the four top ones because those four top ones inform also the type of programming we have to provide to our students so as you can see Spanish again it's about 50% of our multilingual Learners those who have been identified to be in our program then we have Portuguese hian Creole in Arabic um and then when you look at the other side of the slide and and we're looking at this other um identifier we're talking about where um they're coming from right I think a lot of the times there's this notion that if you're a multilingual learner then you must be foreign and so that is also not correct right and that is matters too because Bing their culture and their experience within us school systems the different supports that we need to provide right and they come with different outlets and so as you can see the majority of our MLS currently are United States citizens who were born and raised in the United States and then we have Brazil Haiti Honduras Colombia and then other countries as well uh next please I wanted to point out two pieces of data that I think that's what um I think we have seen I am new to this District but I can tell you that in the year and a half they've been here I've seen a lot of changes and I think it's hard to understand why we're feeling these changes with a really understanding the two main things so when you look at this slide there's a comparison over the last three school years so two full years and then year today at the top and it's telling you in the full year of last year we had a total of 72 multilingual Learners joining our district become EMP the year before was 80 so it's a close second but I want to highlight that is at the time that we made this presentation it hadn't been a full year yet we had already come G cl to the totality of the last year um the other column I wanted to highlight is that term newcomer because I think the shift we have also seen is that historically I believe majority of the MS we saw come through here were transfers from another District so it was a lot of students coming from as uh Long Branch Etc however there has been an increase of those students who we previously defined as newcomers right those who come from another country those who may have never being in a school or certainly not a US school and they bring a lot of assets but also different needs that informs what we need in the district and so I wanted to point out that com that for the last three years it grew exponentially from 16 to 35 to 6 um additionally we were asked to provide some more data to put this even more into context so if you take away these three last years and you look back at an additional 5 years before that the total number it oscillated between 173 and6 so you never quite hit 200 of the totality of multilingual vers we had again currently will be at 250 next slide please so I'm focusing a lot on celebrating our New Commerce part because like I said they come with a myriad of assets but it's also important to understand that what is our job and what things we need to prioritize and we need to Target because as you can see nearly 30% of our multile leers are also New Commerce and that also has uh implications for those families that are not just new to our district they're new to our culture in our country and so as they find their foreign born they're recently arrived um they are immigrants right and so coming into a culture that is also built by immigrants I think there's a lot of commonality that we can find um they do play an important role in our culture here um and so those are some of the assets I was referring to before um next please and so with that then there's certain considerations that whereas we have had steadily multilingual Learners here and we have very qualified Educators and we've created great environments for them there's certain shifts we need to consider for this new Commerce right and so we're talking about taking going to look at our environments right what are things that they and their families need um is our instructional practices is our instructional materials or their instructional priorities aligned with what they can do and what they need from us um social emotional support right one of the big things seal it is also Paramount for us to really take a look at what are those cultural and social emotional competencies that they need or that they Thrive under so then they can close the achievement Gap in Meet success and um just continue with encouragements that they can achieve um next pleas and so to that end I introduce you to our team uh obviously they're not full pictured um and so we currently have 11 ESL certified District Educators districtwide in grade State group 12 uh we have one bilingual bicultural SE CI District y K5 um those two are completely different certifications um and we have one bying instructional assistant grades 9 12 she's pictured here she's amazing Miss Ortiz um next please um this year another thing to celebrate I think that being that R District that we pride ourselves and being very proactive rather than reactive we were able to fund uh through ground two positions to site positions so keeping inh housee Talent right and supporing them support our Learners were able to select our Bingle parent advisory commer teacher reps and so we have two a five ESL teachers Andre sod and Andrew Donner were're amazing have been doing amazing work we just opened up the space for them to carry on that work supporting the school supporting the students and supporting those families and Intermediate School we have enria Duncan who's one of our rural language teachers and Mela Jani who's also an teacher and then at the high school we have Les white and then Alis K and in addition to that we were able to also fund a community outage coordinator Miss Heidi Casta who is an amazing instructional assistant of the high school I believe she speaks four different languages and she has a tremendous grasp not only what the students need what the students need emotionally but she's has a network of contacts that we're trying to leverage to build that support in that Community for our families next please uh great things to also celebrate beyond the classrooms it this amazing group of teachers um they hosted a our fall 20203 parent resource Fair uh we are having a virtual webinar Series in the Spartan part Partners in learning as well we're building a parent Family Video library um in the spring of 2024 they are organizing a gate night for welcoming this newcomer families welcoming our current families kind of building that network of support and then we'll also we will hold a one of our bpack so bilingual parent advisory committee meetings are uh M Innovation Innovation and so some of the goals that we mean to achieve by the end of this year is continue and increase the Partnerships we have with local agencies and organizations we are currently working in designing welcome packets with relevant information resources um to have a registration to P out to new families as well and then OTS is in the works of tra winter classet to have some clothing for students who may not have experience or next please so another big celebration um last year we were able to Pilot two of this instant language assistant devices or iOS essentially they're two tablets put together who who have the interface that allow not only for text to text and onetoone interpretation and translation but also speech to text in over 200 languages um in dialects within those languages and so once we were able to Pilot in and get the fum name then we were excited because now all the schools and the central office have two devices and so they've been used at the main office to as face to the community but they are also used in the CSD teams guidance to support with parent student interactions a me of different things next please and because who does not love a testament um she should be getting commission from this company she has learned it she is really someone who has really run with it as soon as I saw her Thrive with it she kind of took the lead and she helps all main office all their sub boards um she is wonderful with that but I think that the Highlight was we do have Educators wanting to do the work it was a matter of giving them the tools so they can do that next please y so thank you Cecilia for that wonderful sharing our numbers and our students so now we're going to talk about how we are supporting our students in the classroom with our teachers our teachers are the most important people in this right they are the ones that connect with the students every day they see them every day although I may be in the but I'm not the one that's talking to the students I'm not the ones that teaching the students so we want to be sure that we do all that we can to support our teachers we are doing that by implementing updated multi tiers of support what does that mean is that we are making sure that we are using student information to support them we are making sure that we are looking at their academic needs as well as their social emotional needs before we can jump into any intervention we want to be sure that students are receiving the English language instruction in the classroom before we say they need intervention so we want to be sure that our ESL teachers are pushing in or pulling out but we want to be sure that our students are integrated in the classroom with our general education students so we want to be sure I'm sorry I want to be sure let's go back leveraging data protocols this is something that we're starting with our assistant principles this year we introduce a data protocol to them and we're going to roll it out to our um Elementary and our high school um our elementary principles and our High School principles so what is a data protocol let's just say I'm new to the district and you don't know anything about me the first thing you should do is talk to my parents where do I come from what are my shs what are my weaknesses and then you're going to do assessments at the school level and then you're going to find out they need help in math or maybe they may be proficient in math and they just need English language instruction having data makes will help us to make great decisions for students and this is not just for El this is for all of our students we want want to be sure that we are meeting students where where they are and to be sure and and to make sure that we are providing an equitable education for all of using I'm sorry we're still here of cohorting MLS according to their participation so many of our our MLS come as Cecilia stated from many different languages many different skill sets so we are cohorting students according to their programs so if they are an ESL student third grade we would probably put four three to four third graders in that one classroom where they can receive support from each other as well as support from the general education students in the classroom increasing collaborative Partnerships this is where I'm most excited because we will we are now starting to work with our general education teachers and our ESL bilingual teachers to work together to provide Provide support to our students pushing I believe personally is one of the best things we could do for students I understand that we are not there yet where every teacher cannot push in but I believe that if teachers push in and co- te with the general education teacher and the ESL teacher then our students would be successful not just the ESL the student but all students next slide please I'm sorry this is where I am most excited there's an old book that I read and many of you who are Educators probably WR if you don't keep the teachers they so what I mean by that is that we have to provide support and professional development to our staff this is new to all of us I did come from a district where I have a high population of ESL students but it took us maybe 10 years to get to the point where we had co- teers and everything classroom so it's not something that's going to happen overnight and we understand that however we want to be supportive to the people who are the boots on the ground and those are our teachers so s i maybe back in September and we like you know what can we do you know how can we provide PD and gave me someone that she knew and she gave me a quote for $30,000 so that just went out right so then I said to cilia okay who we have here that can do this work that can uh do PD support our sta train all of us and so she said we can do that so we started to talk about it so here we are with the nural Spartan multilingual Academy Tak Place Fe so during that Academy we would be a full service in in full day uh inservice for all of us including myself I hope Miss W gets to join us into some sessions we are looking forward to providing our classroom teachers our special Area Teachers our child study team guidance C instructional assistance our intervention our interventionist everyone who can come everyone who's asside will receive professional development on how to support our multilingual Learners 238 238 people right taught by our 12 Tau by taught by T by most our staff and yes our staff EXC excited about so yes so the topics as you can see supporting ml newcomers through culture responsive practices twice exceptional MLS you students who are possibly ESL and special education multilingual differentiation accommodations and assessment collaborative practices how to work together um ESL and gen features and ml supports within wonders and envisions and we have a special guest we have the executive director from the New Jersey teachers of English to speakers of other languages New Jersey bilingual Educators that is the association you belongs to and the executive director will be coming in to speak to us that day so we are very very I'm sorry I'm waiting for M Gilman I'm sorry so once we um as we as as I just stated February 16th is a big day however we understand that there are other there we still need to move right we're not going to be done with this um are many other trainings that need to take place many more supports that we need to provide so we are looking into sheltered English instruction um training and coaching um for our teachers increasing the participation in the seab our literacy program extending our collaborative Partnerships to all content areas that means the PE teacher should be working closely with the ESL ESL teacher on how Implement strategies in a PE class it's just not English and math we wanted to ex expand it across all subject areas enhanced scheduling to make sure we are maximizing our scheduling so that our students is are getting what they need and again it's all about Equity it's not about getting everyone doesn't need don't need the same thing we need to be sure that our El's our multilingual Learners and all of our students are getting what they need and our schedule need to that build community awareness and family engagement the um resource Fair we had in October although I thought it was wild attended they told me that it could be better and we're going to make it better we reached out to community uh Community people out there who came in to set up tables and our uh families had a chance to communicate with them Social Services uh you know whatever they may need were there family engagement we definitely want to bring our multilingual families into the building make sure that they are participating in all of our school programming so we want to make sure that we extend that invitation out to them and and try to encourage them to come um I'm looking forward we had a meeting yesterday we talked about Innovation night so that's gonna be good this year I'm excited about that so this concludes our presentation so this is again a celebration of everything that we've done however we need to understand that we still have work to do and we're looking forward to that work and thank you for listen thank you so much really are there any questions from the board so the total number of newcomer MLS that we identified population goes from it went you pointed this out went from 635 to 66 right almost 100% increase year-over-year do we know is that a unique Ocean Township thing is that a m County thing is that a state thing state so you're near District as well yes wow I the district I was previously at Forest County I want to say Bown m o r okay okay and so I want to say it was about four years ago we had an increased enrollment of 300 students over the summer and so what I think has happened is it's rolled out and so it's moving towards from Big urban city centers CIS is and places like that and then it's moving towards places with aable meeting great schools and so they incre it's new to us but it's not new as a whole I think the projection was that in four years or five years we not 2020 2030 one and four students will be mul Years thank you appreciate Mr Weinstein yeah so based on that um and I guess we're anticipating of 66 to some number could be 100 is the program that you have now is it be tax or scale okay you need something else like is there's something different you do when you go from 66 to 100 or 200 no no I don't first it's not it's not a pop coin um so I was what I was actually wondering is um when we're going budget exercises are those those discussions going to happen to maybe solve the problems not only for next year not not the problems but the challenges next year and the year after or is it like we take it one year at a time is that how do we how do we view this right now um when we had our budget meetings with our supervisors did come with her with the recommendations um Miss W and Mr Hastings took her recommendation and we're waiting to know how much money we would actually have but we did request a number of teachers um and support so that our MS can be successful and it is necessary because right now unfortunately we're probably we're not doing what we should do we can't at this moment so I'm hoping that with the budget um we will be able to at least provide an additional staff member possibly the next year as we continue to grow new staff will can I ask a follow question yes so guess one is I guess we'll see this when we go to the budget thinking and I guess the other part is just on the um on the social emotional learning side I guess part of the challenge is that as this group gets bigger is culturally the school district changes somewhat right so are there things that we should be doing more proactive now to kind of soften that so so there's more or that let me know not talk again we from areas where we serve this population so we did talk about culture responsive uh training for our fut um we we can't say you know those kids or these are not our kids these are our kids they're in Ocean these are our kids and to be honest we all don't know how to educate them so it's a learning curve for for for teachers and administrators so we're talking I'm in the planning stages of our administrative Retreat and I'm looking at you know whether I'm going to focus on data C respons teaching both because bothne um and if I may some of the things that we're currently already doing so Al and Conelly have harder up we're leveraging our in-house Talent right so we all know that you have to leverage your positive Oban and so what we've done is I found them all and I put them in a room and I said well I'll hand them down and so it's really been a process about seeing them update their practices so it's not about getting new different things is about upgrading the things that we do so someone like Alison someone like Tina Ed themselves have taken it to support that so Al does come to department needs right like we're already working we're tring those spaces but yes at a larger scale we need to work currently ending towards the tail end of our ability to be proactive and we're going to start having to become reactive and so as much as we can get ready is there a district that we model that we can model ourselves that that might be like a like a little bit of a wave in front of us that done it right I think that there there are a multitude of colleagues I'm in touch with in in our area who have seen similar things but they have they're further ahead but they're still having to update because one one of the challenges here and again I can talk for hours be quick is that we're not fostering bilingual children because we don't have bilingual Educators to do that that's why we don't offer it's not because we don't know not because we haven't tried it's because there's no bilingual Educators for us to hide you're not just saying ocean as a whole right as a whole and what that means is we don't have play adults coming our school so that we and so it's a cycle so we're all even the most successful bilingual programs are currently being dismantled because we don't have the staff to support it and so we're all coming to plan B right and so a lot of the models we have already set the Baseline here are the models that a lot of other places are building I just think that because they've had a larger population over time they've been able to afford to do certain things so just getting ready to do that I'm going to have to cut the questions only because we have to go to Workshop but if you do have questions that you like answered just email them to miss Welden know I think you're hand clarification will get I will but I do just for anyone listening in the public too the two staff members that Miss V was just speaking about our Equity coach and oural Coach so these are our our um teacher coaches that they provide job embedded PD to our staff they work with our instructional coaches who also do the same thing that's on the on on site job embedded PD for our teachers on a daily basis but I just wanted to clarify who they were speaking about thank you both great job thank you so much all right that that concludes my report for Mr Hastings thank you madam president um just one area to touch on that came out of this presentation as well the state released uh guidance updates to its election and budget calendar for the coming year uh we're working on as you know the 2025 school budget uh the governor presenting his budget to the legislature on or before the 4th Tuesday of February which it's the 27th of February 48 hours after he gives his address the state will release Aid to school districts across the state um districts across the state again required to present to the county offices their tenative budgets uh by March 20th which is Wednesday uh we have a meeting on March 12 so we'll be presenting that to the board uh on that day for approval that's the tenative budget that goes before you for initial approval once you approve the tenative budget we send to the county county works with us with any questions with any suggestions or changes they might ask us to make uh and then uh between Wednesday April 24th and Tuesday May 7th which is about two weeks we have to do the Public Presentation of the final budget uh to you and to the public uh for approval and and then uh we move forward with that for the 2025 budg so uh a little for warning I guess over next uh month and a half two months we'll be having lots conversations with you about budget and where we're headed and and what Aid will look like and uh you know what adjustments we may have to make as you heard there's there's lots of great things going on and lots of needs to support our community and support our students uh but unfortunately there's also limited resources to apply to those things so be a challenge for all of us and I know we all want to do the best we can for our students and for our community uh but there will be some hard conversations based on the funding we'll get from from the state and again with the S2 Bill entering its final year we probably do expect another cut in our state a thank you thank you okay action items sorry you heard us too on top my but yep I just present items 6.1 6.2 for discussion questions all right let's move on to financial management Mr Weinstein so I guess uh 8.1 to 8.8 discussion Jeff would you like to anything yes I would just note that uh we've had discussions in the past uh about our substitute rate uh and and doing what we can and looking at our neighboring districts and looking at districts across the county in terms of what rate are offered for substitute teachers uh we are part of a group that that shares information shares that information across various districts and and we've sat and looked at those numbers and we'll be recommending to the board under item 8.7 increases as you can see in the table the basically daily increases from1 to $150 a day uh and then there are increases associated with standard or certificated uh provisional teachers that we would hire at Subs as well as updating our substitute nurse Chan is another difficult position to fill whether it's a full-time position or a subsidy so we're increasing those to to make them more competitive and hopefully attract more folks Mr so is that is that comparable it is it is uh I think we've seen rates as low as $90 and rates as high as upwards of 200 so we're in the B there um so it makes us competitive I'm glad to see this m um my question is that does not have to be bargained it's not in the bargaining because it's outside of the bargain correct these are not Association members we lose who do we lose the substitutes to anecdotally we hear Neptune Long Branch anecdotally so one or two people reporting that to us that they go there for a higher daily name and those compare well to those yes okay anyone else any questions just a comment if you will about the the Bas that isti yes stand up base all right yes items 9.1 to 9.4 for discussion any comments Miss wel then the new course first of all that AP preap course I think is phenomenal it would be helpful for the SATs the acts so yes we have our our our normal professional development School field trips early field placement memo and then also annually every year if the high school or the Intermediate School is anticipating developing new courses or needing to write curriculum around new courses they would then board approve those so that's what you're seeing there 9.4 um for about a year or so maybe a little bit longer our math and English supervisors together with the building leadership and central office have been um reviewing and determining whether or not to move forward a course which uh we have de to move forward with we do believe this will help build um the skills that students need we believe we're giving students access now to higher level coursework but we find at times they're not prepared for it when they enter when they walk through door of access so they need to be better prepar and we think that this is um one way that we can do that among many other ways that we working do that but this is one way so that that's what you see there anyone else can I ask a question yes um so I'm sorry did you so the VIP algebra since it's algebra one since we have a hefty group of kids that take algebra one in eighth grade A lot of times um would they then take this they would take they could take this again and kind of repeat algebra one or they still and no eighth graders would come over to do the pre pre this is a preap class so it would like where does it fall between like Advanced Hors preap or like it above honors for algebra the idea is to provide access to more students not just honor students so to get more students into the class into these classes so um it would not impact students who are taking eighth grade out the one all right anyone else have any questions all right negotiations we did an executive session policy Miss Gilman yes certainly this will be a second reading 11.1 of the policies that we read at our last meeting any questions or comments questions or comments okay and we will move on to public relations Mr Weinstein um yes we're going to have a discussion around a resolution for the school board appreciation mod which um we'll take it'll Mr Hing and I would like to thank you for all of your hard work that you do here and all the time that you give to our school district so just um I'm not reading this right you don't have to I don't think we have in the past it's a little yeah you just have to read the yes else all right we will move on to Old business is there any old business was T have one question I know if there old business or new business but there's been a lot of talk at the high school regarding vling that we kind of talked about and I was just wondering um if we can get just a little bit more information about that like about feedback the process time frame because I know it's like 82 minutes now and then we're looking at 50 minutes or is that more or less or so Mrs kazuba and her scheduling committee began this work last year maybe even a little bit before that and they are still in the uh Discovery phase when they are ready to make a proposal the board will get a full presentation of all of those details but I do not believe she is ready at this moment to make a full proposal moving forward she's still working with her faculty to um way the positives and negatives to the different schedules that they're looking so might be for next year next year it's not okay anyone else any old business business new business any more old business all right new business Mr Weinstein sure hey so um M um so before every every year we've been having uh I seem to meet with the techology to kind of get a little preparation context of the budget items so I can we didn't do it last year for some reason I'm not sure why you think we can kind of pick that up I think we did do it last year I think we did it with Mr McCarthy though oh I I might not have been on the uh you were president oh I might have been um in my uh more get it together Mr get it together was was that president so that's Mr Hastings and Dr Morgan now lead those that committee um so Mr Hing will reach out to you all right right any other new um along those along those same lines um planning construction um I just wanted to see if the committee if I could email everybody and have a committee meeting just to go over um just everything that's kind of been out there a little bit and just kind of catch up with um our new Administration and us just on some of the things that we might want to discuss in coming weeks and and bring back to full board and stuff so I will be emailing um everybody on planning conr C just so you know um looking for a date that is available for you guys we could do a half hour meeting before we used to always meet before meetings if we could so instead of being here at 6:30 you'd be here at 6 then you knew it was a half hour meeting and get it done so that if we can figure out a date maybe I will sounds good any other new business all right um is there any public comments um Miss Conway is there any public comment comment anyone in the cube um yes we have Mr Rick Goldberg okay please go ahead hi thanks yeah I'm Rick Goldberg I'm at 21 per Simon road I was reading the HIV report and I was looking at the 2023 numbers trying to compare them to 2022 but the overall initiated instance are 25 and confirmed were 11 but then the tables Brooklyn down by Nature they were 18 and by mode they were 32 so I couldn't understand how they lined up could you help me understand that sure sometimes it's multiple there are multiple um attributes to an incident so the they add that the 2022 numbers did add up so I was just wondering if was this coincidence I know that for this year and I will say I did not closely examine last year's but this year there were incidents that had multiple events this I'm going to report out on at the regular meeting um just as a point of order answer we're gonna allow Miss Welden is going to um if you could reach out to her via email she will be able to answer your question better via email very good well we are having yeah there will be the the report will be given downstairs okay is there anyone else in the queue Miss Conway or in the room downstairs uh there's nobody in the virtual queue but there may be somebody downstairs yeah we have we have one hi please say your name hi it's Alex Hayes um I know Mr Goldberg said his address but I'm not going to do that I know you don't have to um I also understand um in hearing uh from Miss uh Welden that um you know you did answer a little bit of his question so perhaps the board chair can say if we are actually answering questions from the public or maybe that was a slip or maybe it's just certain members of the public you answer please forgive me that was my downstairs I'm sorry it's not a question it's more our rep who's uh down there an was the point of order heard on the auditory system downstairs no yeah we asked can you hear me there was a point of order that was presented when the question was being answered stating that this is not the procedure that the the district is following anymore just for the record we asked Mr Goldberg to reach out to miss Welden and she will get back to him okay so even though she started to answer him he's she's actually not allowed anymore she's not goingon to be answering exactly okay just making sure um so thank you thank you okay I have a couple of questions um Long Branch which is a school that has a lot of multilingual Learners they have a program where they tied up with a local University to get teachers ESL certified and they actually paid for that so I'm wondering if that's something we might uh be listening or thinking about I have another question since I know you're not going to answer them um um when will this uh PDF be online and of course since it's about multilingual Learners I'd love to know if it's going to be in different languages um second question is 48 mlls at otes 58 at Wayside some folks might think oo Wayside has the most amount of multilingual learners but as you know I'm very fond of context and actually that means that otes has the largest percentage of students in their student body that have multilingual Learners so they have 12% compared to wayside's 10% and then in the presentation I did mention that OTS has an ESL pushin for ELA but not a push in for math um but the other two schools did have for math so that's a great concern of mine if the largest school with the greatest um percentage of ESL students um you know are they getting a fair share of their um bilingual education and bilingual uh teachers rather another question is um gra and T mentioned about the moving from the Block schedules um I'd like to position U maybe that this is something that the Board of Ed can actually Implement I was on the board for three years and not once did I hear that um the high school was looking at changing that 90 minutes back to 45 or whatever you will so if you are looking at it for the high school I hope you consider it for the middle school because I think going to the block schedule was the beginning of a lot of problems for our district where our scores and our competencies went down I hope we really consider going back to the 45 minutes um so I guess I can put all of this in questions I'm just checking to see because I'm sure you're timing me um I'm wondering if any of the bilingual teacher reps I know you had a list of like eight of them I'm curious if they're all um bilingual um and I think this is final question for now um why does the presentation not include prek but since nobody's gon to answer me I will put all that in a question format in an email for superintendent Welden thank you very much thank you for your comments and questions is there any is there anyone else downstairs okay um yes why did we make that change where we can't answer the Public's questions because it seems like a lot more work now on our Administration to take those questions here and then havinga to go answer them for two reasons I think it's the most fair to do it like this because it allows the person that's answering the question an opportunity whether it's Miss weld or someone else an opportunity to do the right research and cor also allows for um the people downstairs to not feel you know we we can't we can't be down there and and listening to a multitude of questions and it almost it almost puts the administration at in a very bad position they don't have answers to everything I'd rather have them get the correct answers and to have to give the wrong answers to people and then go back correct them it's just better to do it like this it's fair for both sides and it is a part of our policy it has we we did it years ago and it worked very very well public comment it's public comment but response to well not not I mean it's it's public comment there is no questions a lot of districts don't take questions at meetings but they have to but yeah just as a point of order this is not an opportunity for this to be a discussion public comment with the we W bring up a new business during the meeting our old business we can do that at any point any board member is able to recommend a change policy it's just I just felt that it was fair for both S Fair for both sides just to make sure that the person asking the questions gets the correct answers and the person that is answering the questions has the opportunity to to find the right person to answer the questions that's the bottom line that would be a board discussion pres no as a president you know I have I can I can make that decision it's one of the few things that I can do on my own because it's it's the way that the meeting is run so that so that is why I did that okay can I please have a motion to adjourn to have a second all right we'll see you all down --------- just who have tuned in to join us I am not online um if you wouldn't mind please please Rising for the flag i al to the flag of the United States of America and to the repic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with Mr Hastings can you please call the role pres Mr Dan pres skilman here McCarthy here M here Mr Schneider here T Rico here Mr Weinstein here par here thank you very much um board president report the only thing I have this evening is that our ethics training unfortunately got moved to March 12 so if if our board could just make that notation um Mr Taylor had some conflict so we had to reschedule and that concludes my report and I will now move on to these um student Representatives report good evening so just to start off with our BAS with our basic events for the month of January so far girls indoor track scored third overall in the mom of County relay and they also have another track track me coming up tomorrow as well so they're getting ready for set for that girls basketball's also off to a great start with a record of 13-2 with another game tonight against sh Regional which is one of their biggest Rivals as well and Eli Clark The Clark Sisters have been doing great all together but Eli Clark has also had the most assists going on in Mammoth County so far Deca competed in the Regionals Events a keen University in the beginning of the month we had 19 qualifiers enter in for our state competition in Atlantic City which is in the beginning of the in March and we we also have several students as well who are coming in who are as writing an assignment to qualify for the state event as well the seal ly tests were also distributed last week we had languages ranging from Spanish Italian toolic Hindi as well and students were able to admit to work through the program along with Miss Jack Mr Jackson to help and find finals are going on this week we have our finals week and then next week we start our new semester with our new classes new teates and overall it's been going it's been going there also in the high school the drama club is currently working on getting ready for Mean Girls their production this year there's always a lot of hours behind the scenes that are included to get that done and ready to be great hopefully hopefully this year very funny also on Friday December 22nd the student council held a successful pep rally which uh had MC's Mr Young and Mrs Clark who got got our students pretty excited and ready for winter sports and they also added games to the segment to keep the students interested active and dizzy at one point girls bowling is currently 36 andl holding an undefeated record at the high school they've had undefeated seasons in the past so it's great to see that team continue their Excellence throughout at least my high school career wrestling or boys wrestling is 13- one also with a meet tomorrow against rbr so great to see them holding a good record and over at the elementary and the middle schools they held their geography and spelling bees earlier this month wow thank you both for that report sounds like you guys are really busy over there both schools right thank you so much all right with that we will move on to our superintendent report Miss wel then thank you very much um I have a few things to report this evening uh first I'd like to start out by just reminding everybody to make sure that they all parents please to make sure that you have the most up-to-date contact information in Genesis we do use your contact information from Genesis for our communication particularly when we have to have delayed openings or emergency school closings um last week that did did occur a few times and um we used code red we used web backpack our website we used our remind app which I'm happy to say sent the message in 32 languages to our community and also um we use Instagram and Twitter to get the word out about any sort of change to the day based on weather so it's important for you to keep that information up to date in Genesis so that we can communicate with you the best way possible okay I'd like to recognize some outstanding Spartans this evening the township of ocean Intermediate School held its annual geography be on January 11th 2024 the Paul mcgrade Memorial geography B is named after a longtime Tois social studies teacher Mr Paul mcgrade Mr mcgrade was a beloved colleague and favorite teacher of so many in addition Mr mcgrade was the moderator for our goob for countless years he always had a way of putting our students at ease during a stressful competition this year in our second year running the be in his name we had 17 finalists rank in from grades 5 through eight this year's competition was intense going into four rounds of sudden death questions our first and second place winners have much to be proud of their performance was outstanding before I announce our winners I'd like to thank our supervisors Miss via and Mr ston and all of the Tois social studies teachers and building leadership for their hard work behind the scenes to expose our students to this Spartan tradition I am pleased to introduce our winner and runner up of the Paul mgra go our runner up this year was sixth grader Jackson Lor please come forward and our winner cash barza please come up yeah we're gonna take your picture if you would stand in front of the awesome work guys that's amazing really impressive these are some of the most difficult questions you'll ever hear I can only imagine competition I can promise you that parents feel free to come on up and take a picture if You' like you can come right up that's that's great congratulations okay I do have more to my report but students if you have a lot of homework and need to get home to get going on your homework that would be perfectly fine otherwise you're welcome to join us for the rest of the evening okay um I'm also going to present the student safety data report in accordance with public school safety law and the Board of Education policy 5512 all acts of violence vandalism harassment intimidation and bullying must be reported to the Board of Education the information that I'm providing this evening covers the reporting period from September through December 31st 202 23 so this fall this information includes the number nature and mode of the Hib incidents and a listing of other student safety data so the first part of my report is all about harassment intimidation and bullying you have the nature of the incident and the mode of the incident and then the columns are this fall September to December 2023 compared to last fall we had 11 incidents confirmed incidents of HIV this fall compared to 14 last fall and then below you see the mode and the nature of those incidents and then on the next page you see a total of all Hib investigations meaning it was a report was made it may have been determined to be Hib or to not be an affirmed case of hip so at the high school this year you'll see the first three rows are this fall compared with last fall and the columns are the number of initiated investigations the number completed in 10 days those two columns are the same and then the number of incidents found as confirmed hips so we opened 13 investigations at the high school this fall and found four confirmed hip cases at inter ocean towned school we opened eight investigations and found four confirmed cases Ocean Township Elementary School two investigations led to two confirmed hibs one ofasa school did not have any Hib investigations Wayside School had two which resulted in one confirmed Hib totaling 11 for the fall in addition we're reporting incidents of violence vandalism weapons and substance abuse in the chart below you'll see that we had nine incidents of violence one of vandalism no weapons three substance abuse and again the 25 Hib invest investigations okay and that is the student safety data report and the final portion of my report this evening is just to add on to what the students did already share there are some other events I want to bring the Public's attention to and the board we have our Ocean Township High School winter chorus this Thursday night at 7 pm next week we have from January 30th which is Tuesday Tuesday to Friday next week we have an early dismissal for our first fifth graders excuse me fifth graders due to conferences we have our preschool parent information session both in person at Wayside Elementary School and virtual for those that would like to zoom in on January 30th at 7M and we have in February OTS is having their share the keys event on February 7th Tois is having their student council winter social February 8th for grades seven and 8 and their honoral celebration is also that day and otes is having their special someone dance on February 9th so some exciting events coming up in the next month or so here in the district so that does conclude my report thank you Miss Welden thank you for the report as well as uh those dates that you shared with all of us um right now I'd like to move on to the school business administrator report Mr Hastings thank you madam president I have nothing further from what we discussed upstairs okay thank you I will move on to the public comments section regarding agenda items following are a series of motions to be read by the committee chairpersons all motions have been discussed at a recent public work session some motions have been approved at a public work session and the minutes for the approved items are posted on the district website at this point in the meeting we will now conduct the first of two public comments sessions the first session will be open for public comments on agenda items only and the second session will be at the end of the meeting can be on any topic would anyone from the public like to comment on any agenda item at this time anyone in the room please make your way to the hi again Alex from Ocean Township Alex Hayes um I was thinking when Mr Hastings went over his budget presentation of dates um I don't know how the public is going to be able to ask you guys questions and make it an interactive discussion about our upcoming budget if we're not allowed to physically ask questions and get answers from you guys kind of defeats the purpose of what you are tasked to do which is to engage your stakeholders so it's a little disappointing that we have these new rules and it's un unfortunate that you won't let our superintendent Miss Welden speak um uh I was checking to see you know actually if there isn't even Authority and if if if we have you all have the ability to Even Silence a superintendent so I'm going to look a little bit further into that um but I do want to bring to your attention policy 0127 that is your public participation at Schoolboard meetings and it does state that public participation may be uh statements questions inquiries it does not say anything about whether or not I can ask the superintendent any questions it doesn't say whether you are able to silence the superintendent and it doesn't also say anything about her being able to not answer the Public's question um we pay her a lot of money and she's a qualified exceptional individual so if the public has some questions for her or Mr Hastings or even sometimes people in the audience um it it's fascinating to me that in 2024 this is when you decide to enact this uh my second uh question and comment since I know you're not going to comment on this is um I did see in the previous one um the revised list of committees um this is a committee of the whole and I see see absolutely none of the three new esteemed members as committee chairs but at least two of the existing cboard members are chairs of three committees um I I think it kind of paints a picture of the elite few versus the newbies um Mr Dalton is a former School Board member himself and um it's it's like the adults get the main table and then the kids get the um you know at Thanksgiving dinner the Kids Table that's the question it reads and it's rather unfortunate that you couldn't divide it up and some of the new um folks who have exemplary resumés um their own chair of a committee it sounds to me like since I've been here for the last six years that this is the first that we've never given new folks um committee chairs and it would have been nice to see them as chairs um and I guess that's it for now okay thank you Miss Hayes for your comments and questions um Mrs Conway is there anyone in the queue no there are no commenters in the queue Madame President thank you very much with that we will move on to the action items move to approve items 5.1 and 5.2 do I have a second second items 51 and 52 Mr Dalton yes Mrs Dam yes Mrs Gilman yes McCarthy yes M McGovern yes Mr Schneider yes M too yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs Paras yes thank you Mr mcarthy Personnel Mrs McGovern um yes I would like to move to approve items 6.1 through 6.10 May I have a second second Mr Hastings for items 61 through 610 yes Mr Dalton yes Mrs Dan yes Mrs Gilman yes Mr McCarthy yes Mrs McGovern yes Mr Schneider yes Mr sto yes Mr Weinstein yes Mr par yes thank you Mrs McGovern financial management and Resource Services Mr Weinstein um thank you madam president um i' like to move for approval um 7.1 to 7.15 Second 16 16 7.6 sorry about that didn't scroll far enough 16 second item 7.1 to 716 Mr Dalton yes Mrs Dan yes Mrs Gillan yes Mr McCarthy yes Mr mcgoverin yes Mr Schneider yes Mr T Rico yes Mr Weinstein yes m p yes instruction education and Student Activities that would be Mrs Gilman thank you president move to approve 8.1 to 8.6 is there a second second fin of inquiry I think that's what I'm saying here on 8.1 Miss Gilman I believe that we actually say that we want to affirm the hip report but we um are moving to approve the rest actually it says move to approve the receipt of the following Hib thank you any other questions comments this is 8.1 to 8.6 Mr Dalton yes Mrs Dam yes Mrs Gilman yes to all and recused from the school field trip for the wrestling tournament thank you m McCarthy yes Mrs mg govern yes Mr Schneider yes Mrs T Rico yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs par yes negotiations Mrs McGovern um yes I just wanted to report that um our meeting our meeting our our committee has met for the first time um with our attorney and our leadership we will be um meeting with the teachers in the coming months um so negotiations is off and running and um I just wanted you all to be aware and the public to be aware that it's started okay thank you for that update policy Mrs Gilman yes uh 10.1 move to approve the third and final reading of the following policies Andor regulations as listed second for item 10.1 Mr Dalton yes Mrs Dam yes Mrs Gilman yes Mr McCarthy yes Mrs MN yes Mr Schneider yes Mr Tarico yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs par yes thank you very much uh policy actually we just did that I'm sorry public relations Mr Weinstein thank you madam president I have two items um one is to move to approve a resolution for the mammoth County School boards um declaring January School Board appreciation month and the other is to 11.2 is to move to approve the a uniform State man uh memorandum of agreement um and just for note um there's a lot of a lot of interesting points to be said about the um Board of Education resolution but I don't think I'm gonna read all that stuff today okay need needless to say um probably the number the last one that I like to read is that the township of Board of Education urges all New Jersey citizens to work with the local Boards of education and Public Schools staff towards the achievement of a children's education second for items 111 and 112 Mr Dalton yes Mrs Dam yes Mrs Gilman yes Mr McCarthy yes Mrs mcover yes Mr Schneider yes Mrs Tarico yes Mr Weinstein yes Mrs Paramus yes thank you Mr Weinstein and with that we will now move on to Old business is there any old business from the board being none is there any new business from the board no okay at this time we will take public comment on any item is there anyone in the room that has any public comment Miss hay um Alex hey ocean uh I see on the bills the Aunt Flow for $840 so I assume uh Mr Hastings when I brought to your attention the period product dispensers at the middle school being empty I'm hoping that was to fill up both dispensers in the middle school and the high school it's crazy you can't even answer me on that but I'm hoping that means that we will have period products in our schools um it's also funny how you guys just said we are hoping that citizens work with the Board of Ed in school board month recognition but we can't even ask you questions it's wild um my second question is or my my third comment rather which I neglected to state in the beginning was uh to congratulate Dr Morgan Miss Welden and Miss V on an excellent elll and MLL report um dare I say that I I don't think we would have seen that report under our previous administration and it was refreshing to see a thorough and comprehensive analysis of all the things we're doing for our multilanguage Learners thank you thank you for your comments anyone else here miss Conway is there anyone in the CU no Madame President there are no commenters okay with that I'd like to ask the board for a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn may I please have a second second meeting is adjourned you all next month thank you for coming