for e e e e e e e e e e right good evening and welcome to the pasac Valley Regional High School District Board of Education meeting for this evening April 29th 2024 during this meeting two opportunities are provided for citizens to make comments in order for the citizens to make a comment they must be physically present at this meeting during the first opportunity early on the agenda comments regarding agenda items are invited the second opportunity will occur just prior to adjournment when residents May address General comments to the board roll call please Mr Yami Mrs bargis here M Calderon here Mrs Wang here Mr Lisi here Mrs Martin here Mr Stanis here Miss stefin present Mr Weaver uh would you all please join me for the flag salute congratulations to the flag of the United States of America to the for it stands Nation indivisible andice for all adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by mailing copies of said notice to the record filing copies of said notice with the municipal Clerks of Hillsdale Montville Rivervale and woodcliffe lake and Publishing said notice in the record on July 21st 2023 right now we would like to take a moment to observe a moment of silence and remembrance of Lamont Alston he would have been uh a senior uh at the pasak Valley High School class of 2024 for thank you uh I would like to announce that Mr Joseph blundo who was our vice president as of yesterday he resigned from the board due to work constraints so uh we will be looking at who will be able to replace him from the town of Rivervale um so Mr Yami is going to give us a few more details about that so unfortunately Mr blundo has resigned his position on the board and we have to there's a vacancy so we are going to need to appoint someone um there is a process to this uh it'll be on our website for sure um all the details um there's fairly simple qualifications for board members um but you have to be a resident of river Veil that's for sure okay um and then basically it's um people who are interested would be sending me a letter of interest and resume uh you can either drop that off mail it or send it via email so all that information is going to be in here on our website um and then what we are planning on doing is the um the applications will close by end of business day on Tuesday May 14th and then the interviews will be conducted on Monday May 20th prior to the regularly scheduled board meeting um so if you have any questions you can always uh contact me as far as uh what's entailed but that is um that is the process we are planning at this point to follow next we have up routine matters we have monthly reports and first we're going to have the finance committee report by Mr usami okay finance committee meeting um Mr Lisi is the chair however he was not present so I'm going to be delivering the finance committee meet um report so it occurred on April 16th um it was myself uh Miss Botti uh Joe Blondo Jenny varis and Kristen Martin in attendance um so there are two agenda items one was dealing with the Athletics and booster clubs and then the other was uh the budget presentation for 2024 2025 budget so this is what was uh provided by Mr Joe spafford pasak Valley Athletics has eight total independent Sports boosters football boys soccer boys basketball uh Dance ice hockey wrestling baseball and boys lacrosse uh dues are collected for football $300 and boys soccer $2 $110 and boys lacrosse $150 now boys basketball wrestling and baseball monies are fundraised the Mone is that typically goes for end of year dinners senior gifts Awards senior shirts sweats Etc uh ice hockey was anywhere from $700 to $1,200 that's depending on the roster size and Ice rental fees and swimming is $350 depending on roster size and pool rental fees now these programs are going to be supplemented or actually going to be fully funded as far as ice time and as well as pool time you'll see that in the presentation um dance uh was $1,850 this year the money according to coach noon goes towards DTU dance camp Dance intensives Tech technique classes once a week from September to January air hotel and meals at Nationals in Florida it also goes towards choreography and end of year dinner and costuming again we are going to be funding some of this uh especially the uniform or Slash costumes for Dance pasak Hills um Mr Steve Papa provided this information for pasak Hills the boys and girls soccer football gymnastics girls volleyball boys and girls basketball wrestling baseball softball boys and girls lacrosse Golf and track that's cross country winter and spring booster clubs all running through Student Government accounts football is the only one that requires dues and $300 fee goes towards meals throughout the 4-day camp and pregame meals throughout the season the others fundraised through various means and it goes towards clothing end ofe dinners senior gifts equipment and trips now for I reviewed the 2024 2025 draft uh budget presentation with the committee um there were a couple of clarifications on verbiage uh otherwise the presentation uh was provided to all board members in the briefing prior to spring break uh I mentioned that the only difference between the tenative budget and the proposed adopted budget is the addition of a projected Charter School student there would be an increase in Appropriations which will be offset with an increase in Vues there would be no effect to the 2.47% tax levy increase that concludes my report thank you Mr Yami next up we have our student report and we are going to go first with Olivia from Olivia G from pasak Hills High School good evening everyone my name is Olivia G and I'll be presenting the pasak hills student report for the months of March and April for the first classroom item pasca kill student students in the science fiction literature English course and photography class along with the history Club went to the sky the spyscape museum on March 22nd 2024 their purpose was to gain insight into encryption and coding post World War II upon arrival the students received a briefing outlining their mission they proceeded to explore various educational stations focusing on encryption lie detection and surveillance all aimed at assessing their aptitude in the world of Espionage the museum showcased a range of artifacts from World War II including examples of secret messaging during World during Warfare a James Bond car a collapsible motorcycle light detection booths and documentation detailing spying activities by various presidential administrations throughout the decades for classroom item number two in a heartwarming display of community spirit students under the guidance of Miss maon undertook a project that showcased their compassion and concern together they devoted their time and energy to creating comfortable beds for dogs at the Bergen County animal shelter and Adoption Center in tior each Stitch and seam in their work reflected their genuine desire to make a positive difference their eagerness and and dedication to improving the wellbeing of these Furry Friends serve as a source of inspiration this experience not only cultivated empathy and a sense of responsibility within the students but also strengthen their connection to the community and its cherished pets co-curricular item number one on March 15th the literary art Magazine's members proudly accepted the silver crown award from the Columbia Scholastic press Association cspa at Columbia University this prestigious award is bestowed upon only a select few schools and represents the highest form of recognition from the the cspi honoring overall excellence in Collegiate and Scholastic magazines newspapers and yearbooks Across the Nation the silver crown award has made history for eeko marking its first win in over 20 years the spring 2023 edition of eeko titled sural earned this in esteemed recognition the Edition featured art and writing submissions exploring themes centered around Breaking Free from the ordinary and highlighting the transformative power of imagination the hills Community extended heartfelt congratulations to the winners as well as to the entire 2022 to 2023 echo's editorial team and staff for their remarkable ACH accomplishments co-curricular item number two the pasak hills history Club created a podcast called the time warp in the fall of 2022 and the first episode was published in the spring of 2023 the club releases podcasts on spot mod ify about intriguing historical phenomena each member contributes their knowledge and research on the chosen topic to the script the pr the podcast's primary goal is to engage students with captivating historical ideas and events with episodes typically lasting around 10 minutes it offers an easily digestible format for listeners co-curricular item number three from March 21st to 24th the pasak players delivered in exhilarating humorous and heartfelt performance in their spring musical whether one was a devotee of Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella Hills theater or both the show was a musty event in the spirit of the Beloved Disney Cinderella movie Rogers and Hamil's Cinderella captivated the audience with its blend of Music humor and fresh interpretation of a Timeless Tale the crew masterfully crafted an enchanting set utilizing vibrant colors lighting effects and overall designed to Captivate Spectators backed by Live musical accompaniment the production featured mesmerizing transformation transformation sequences captivating the audience and for athletic item number one congratulations to the boys tennis team who's 5-2 and undefeated in the big North Patriot division athletic item number two girls lacrosse finished off a successful trip to Universal in Florida and they played some great games um looking forward to the regular season and for academic Awards on April 18th 2024 65 students were inducted into the pascy Hills High School chapter of the National Honor Society congratulations and for my joke of the day why did the picture go to jail yes because it's framed nice thank you thank you Olivia next we have the pasak Valley High School report by Matt mateline Gibbs good evening my name is Maddie Gibbs and I will be giving the PV student monthly report for April for classroom items item number one the students of French three honors and four honors at Valley creative videos on flip grid to share with the students at our exchange School in France lysy amiral deoss previously the students in France had created video to share with our students each school's videos created in both French and English included topics such as Regional Cuisine import local sites cultural stereotypes and life in high school such as the American tradition of prom we look forward to continuing this connection with our partner School in France which began in 2014 item number two the PV symphonic band performed at the regional concert band Festival on March 20th and received a coveted gold rating sophomore Alto saxophonist Ming Yang Quinn received an outstanding soloist award PV jazz band performed at jazz at Lincoln Center essentially Ellington jazz festival at Newark Academy on April 13th students also had the opportunity to hear bands from around the state and world including a band from Australia and participate in clinics given by some of the biggest names in jazz senior guitarist and vocalist Thomas Santos senior trombonist Ming lanquin and Junior pianist J Martinez received outstanding soloist Awards this was an excellent tuneup for the PV Jazz band's upcoming performance at the New Jersey state division 3 finals at matusan high school for co-curricular items item number one the PVB keeping Club had their spring Hive inspection reporting good observation for four active hives they also sold jars of Savannah B company honey to raise funds for supporting the hives financially the club had a table set up on April 13th at the annual hike to Hillsdale event and they also hosted Hills Jr Lila kovalov while she used the bees to conduct an AP research project investigating her question that human generated noise pollution could affect bee behavior for athletic items item number one congratulations to Coach Jeff Jasper on receiving the first ever New Jersey basketball coaches association Lifetime Achievement Award the award honors coach Jasper as an exemplary New Jersey high school basketball coach coach who as an educator leader and Mentor has made significant and sustained contributions to the development of young people who play Scholastic high school basketball in New Jersey con congratulations to coach Jasper on receiving this well-deserved recognition item number two spring pv's spring athletic teams are off to an incredible start of the season with several of our teams being ranked in the top 10 for all of North Jersey good luck to all of our teams as they get ready for upcoming County and state tournaments and be sure to head out to support our Valley Spring teams for my fun fact pasic Valley class councils hosted its annual class cause week the cause week was a tremendous success beginning with a PSA video highlighting the format of the week and each council's cause the week focused on each Council raising awareness and funds for their causes as well as participating in a schoolwide volleyball tournament with all the proceeds going to each grades cause thank you to the PV Community for their continued support of the C Class Council cause week uh and now for my joke where do fruits go on vacation peris thank you thank you Maddie uh one thing I would like to add to the routine matters is I would like to congratulate the pasak Pioneers they had gone to Houston for a uh robotics competition I don't know how they did but I do know that they went which is a big accomplishment that was in Houston so I'd like to congratulate them on that too that's pretty awesome do you know how they I'm not sure but also Deca is currently in California at a fin competition and deca is in you said uh California Anaheim okay great uh so congratulations to them also and good luck to them while they're there next we have uh the minutes for April 8th 2024 the regular meeting and executive meeting can I get a motion so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr Yami Miss Calderon I'm GNA abstain from that both those Mrs Swang yes Mr louisi obain Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stefins yes Mrs bares yes next up we have some presentations so the first presentation that we have is by Mr Yami it is the 2024 to 2025 budget presentation to advance the just use the arrows okay uh so this is the proposed budget for 2024 2025 um so this is the the budget process um it's a very long and arduous process that we go through uh just wanted to let you know that it was very very difficult this year uh it's been getting more and more difficult each year um to balance the budget uh but we we did it and we like our budget this year or the upcoming year so the board and superintendent and school business administrator begin Dialogue on budget sometime in August and September and then the budget managers submit submitted the budget requests on November 22nd superintendent and the SBA reviewed budget requests and created tenative budget that was in December then the finance committee and board kept the breast of significant increases in health insurance salary and benefits and transportation that will challenge the budget that was from January through March and then the board approved the tenative Budget on March 18th and then the SBA submitted the tenative budget to the county office on March 19th and the county office approved the tenative Budget on March 26th now the board sets the final budget for the Board of Education vote tonight April 29th so these are the budget priorities uh the support the district Vision it's to create a culture of innovation inquiry and individuality that promotes achievement and Choice by cultivating the skills needed to compete and collaborate as ethical and responsible Global Citizens two to support the district mission statement the mission of the pasak Valley Regional High School District is to prepare our students for successful College Andor career experiences with the needed mindset skills structures and knowledge to accomplish that goal so student and staff recognition look at how our district vision and budget initiatives continue to promote positive results for our school community so at pasak Valley there are 10 National Merit commended students 27 AP Scholars 20 AP Scholars with honors 31 AP Scholars with distinction 10 students National Hispanic recognition three National African-American program One National first generation program One National indigenous recognition program at pasak Hills eight National Merit commended students 19 AP Scholars five AP Scholars with honors two AP Scholars with distinction two national African-American program two national Hispanic recognition program and one National first generation program technology and communication accomplishments we replace the core switches that's the backbone of the network which was 40% funded through ER we also leverag a state Grant to purchase a new video surveillance backend saving nearly $100,000 we also replaced or Consolidated several systems to increase productivity and to reduce costs and we work with student interns as you can see the two interns there and the park and the pasak hills marketing Club to enhance how we highlight great work of our students and staff so kudos to the interns and I don't know if the marketing Club had to do with the photos so the photos that you see in this presentation were done by the interns were taken by the interns and uh they're the ones also who helped in the selection of the photos of the many many photos that we had in athletics so one of the things that we' realize is we always miss the Spring season and to recognize those spring accomplishments because we do the budget presentation around this time of year so we're going to backtrack to 2023 spring and recognize them it's it's an error that uh that I kept saying you know what we never recognize the spring kids let's and the teams let's do that so for pasak Valley One softball player named First Team all County one baseball player named First Team all County two baseball players surpass 100 career hits and girls lacrosse won the nji gll American North Division Championship Athletics of pasak Valley in the fall of 2023 the girls soccer big North National division Champions the boy soccer North one group two State sectional finalists boys cross country one one Runner won the Bergen County Championship First Team all Bergen County three males and four females pasak Valley winter in 2024 hockey the big North Gold Cup finalists in Bowling North one group two State sectional finalists the dance team second place in small pal and third place in large varsity team performance at Nationals winter big North coaches of the Year girls swimming and wrestling girls basketball one player scored her 1,000th Career Point PCAT Valley winter continues indoor track two athletes won both north one group two State sectional championships and Bergen County championships girl swimming big North Liberty division champions wrestling big North National division Champions wrestling njsa District 3 two wrestlers won District three championships nine wrestlers advance to the region one tournament First Team all Bergen County two males two females also in athletics this year a new truss for the turf field scoreboard was purchased a wall pad for the wrestling room was replaced and a 20 21t five row bleacher with guard rail was purchased Athletics at pasat kills I just want to mention one thing is like we didn't capture everything so if I we missed something here apologies uh pasak Hills spring 2023 baseball group two state champions boys lacrosse division Champions first time in school history pasak Hills fall of 2023 and winter of 2024 football second straight Division champion girls tennis division Champions gymnastics division champions girls swimming division Champions boys basketball Bergen Invitational Tournament Champions and MVP of the tournament was Nick Luckman in athletics uh the softball field at pasak Hills was regraded and realigned now we go to curricular proposals so there's an enhanced schedule allowing students to enroll in an additional cour course have desired now it's in its fourth year expansion of the business program continued online and hybrid offerings like financial literacy updated technology and materials that keep the district on The Cutting Edge also new courses and business implementation of new required State curriculum standards supplemental programs for elll Learners professional development for AP and other programs and expanded use of AI training also continued implementation of CPR certification and bleeding control training for all staff and students embedded Real World Learning College and Career Training in various curricular areas and continue focus on social emotional health wellness and mental health practices for students and faculty also continued work with required State plans continued Partnerships with universities and dual enrollment programs also replacing laser engravers kils digital cameras and student use resources so student use use resources are basically consumables in all departments uh other extracurricular proposals here ice H ice time for ice hockey pool time for swimming as we had mentioned previously in the finance committee meeting report uh gymnastics facility from half to full dance team uniforms or outfits swim team supplies also a Heritage Club and intramural club and also Unified sports expansion so right now we have bowling and we're going to have a full-time coach for the unified uh bowling program we're also looking at some donation through Special Olympics to help fund some of these 2024 the Staffing in 20124 2025 Student First scheduling remains in place this budget plans to absorb positions from the anticipated 11 vacancies through reorganization and resectioning of courses final determination of positions will occur after schedules are finalized and may include reduction in spending due to a reduction of six periods or absorption through breakage positions include a consideration of six periods and full-time equivalents enrollment decrease of approximately 400 students since 2011 allows for this adjustment we absorbed a drop of 191 students from from 2020 through 2023 and there's an anti and we anticipate an additional 50 this year actually next year for 2425 what are we doing for crack capital projects we have six projects uh most of these projects are on a smaller scale uh in previous years you may have seen some uh bigger dollar amounts bigger projects uh nonetheless these are very important projects we had a lot of projects capital projects push back due to covid and right now we're starting them we'll be starting them in the summertime so these projects they're slated for 2425 however they probably will not begin until June of 2025 at pesak Valley we're going to repave the parking lot also at Valley we're going to resurface the tennis courts and upgrade the pneumatics to DDC system that's an old system that for heating so it's compressed gas and air as opposed to a digital system that we're going to go to to at pasak Hills air conditioning in the tech room also field lighting replacement and again upgrading pneumatics to DDC system so it's a total of 1, 15932 52 coming out of capital reserve in the budget so total total sources of revenue so you can see that 85% is made up of local tax levy that's also including Debt Service so that's 50 57.6 $7 million capital and maintenance emergency reserves we're also um going to take that we're increasing you can see it's 2.2 million but only 3% of the budget one thing to remember is this year we're going to be using emergency reserve of $250,000 and that is to help offset some of the health insurance increases we also have a fund balance of $2.5 million that takes up 4% that is excess Surplus to help the budget for 2425 we also have tuition 754 th000 uh that makes up about 1% that's uh tuition that we receive from other districts for added District rep uh placements in our in District programs we also have miscellaneous items which comes to about 1% uh that's things like interest on investment and various other things facility use um that we get revenue for and then federal and state aid is almost $4 million and is about 6% % but you can see in the big pie chart that 85% comes from taxes a comparison of general fund revenues from 2425 to uh the current year 2023 2024 you can see that we increased the fund balance by almost um about $450,000 uh tuition and miscellaneous you can see that has increased by about $100,000 the local tax levy the increase like I had mentioned is 2.47% % uh it's a little over $1.3 million um also the capital maintenance and emergency Reserve that's at 2.2 um and I like I mentioned we did some increases $250,000 in emergency reserve and we also boosted the maintenance Reserve by $100,000 for maintenance projects uh the prior year incumbrances that's just from the current year from 2223 that came across in the audit and that's how much we had um that we had allocated for 2223 yet it's being spent in 2324 uh state aid extraordinary Aid and semi you can see there's an increase there of almost $300,000 we got increase in state aid we're also increasing our extraordinary Aid and semi that's a very small number it actually dropped a little bit about 177,000 and changed to about 16,000 in change that is the um special education Medicare initiative uh so you can see what the general fund total is uh $ 65.1 million as opposed to the 2324 which was 63.6 Million so the budget expenditures uh we look at instruction regular programs at 19.27% Support Services support services at 7.5 million Support Services is is the child study team guidance Health Media Center those are the kind of support services operations and maintenance that's our facilities to keep our facilities safe and clean uh at 6.3 million tuition we like I mentioned we also send out students not only do we take students in for in District programs we send students out at a district placements for special education as well as for the bermies and the technical schools so just so you're aware this this will be on the in the minutes um so you'll be able to get this um so there's also instruction and special special education at 4.3 million again we talked about our IND District um programs that we have so that's uh that's at 4.3 million administrative support is almost 3.9 million that deals with the superintendent's office my office the principal's office as well as uh technology information technology uh Transportation at almost $3.8 million that's student transportation that we provide uh Athletics at 1.9 million co-curricular at 671000 and capital outlay that's what we just talked about before about the capital projects that numbers a little more but because there's also um Debt Service that uh the state actually what I refer to as a tax so we had the referendum many many years ago so you're supposed to get 40% but we don't usually it's 34% we also have to budget a number in there over $100,000 over the last I can't remember how long I think ever since uh I started in 20 10 uh it's been been taken out so basically you get that in state aid and then they take it away uh and then there's interest on deposit to reserves so our general fund budget is 65 mil1 $2,128 so to look at it in a pie chart you get a better look at it instruction is 29.6% you can see employee benefits of 14.8% and then the next one support services at 11.7 operation and maintenance at 9.8 tuition at 9.1 and so on Down the Line so another way to look at our budget expenditures so we look at salaries so that's taking the others that you had seen and we pulled all the salaries out and salaries come up to $35.5 million of the budget employee benefits is still 9.6 and services is 5.5 uh tuition again Remains the Same since there's no salaries in there it's 5.9 million um transportation at 3.7 supplies and textbooks it's about 1.4 million utilities just under a million and there are other things other things are things such as legal auditing things such as that um there's other things involved with it but that's about 659 th000 and then Capital outlay we had talked about is just under 1.7 so there you come get back to the 65,8 125,126 and then if you look at it in a pie chart you can see salaries and employee benefits basically make up over almost 70% of the budget and the rest next would be tuition at 9.1 services at 8.5 and transportation at 5.7 so the budget the general fund tax levy is 55 m67431 7% % this includes the use of a healthare adjustment to offset healthare increase uh by law we're allowed to do that without having to go to a vote you always hear about 2% cap with the health care adjustment you can go above and we did at 2.47% contributing factors increases from the 2320 2023 2024 budget uh benefits including health insurance is a little over a million dollar increase student Transportation 221,000 special Aid programs and services 213,000 one thing you have to remember about special education programs we also receive revenue for that and if we didn't have the IND District programs they would be going out you'd be paying uh put tuition on that and um probably higher Transportation costs uh Athletics and co-curricular 181,000 instructional training and Improvement at just under 151,000 so people always ask why is there a difference among the sending districts in the amount of taxes needed to support the regional budget the formula for tax sharing among sending districts is strictly governed by New Jersey education law the board of education has no taxing Authority so the tax formula is based on taxable property wealth and student enrollment the calculations performed each year by the state to arrive at the municipality tax levy it's known as a percent share so you could see the tax levy the 57 m738 1873 that also includes Debt Service because I believe you saw the other number of about 55 million um and you can see the four municipalities there and that's the percent share this was all produced calculated by the state um you can see it varies from the high of montale 27 45% to a low to Hillsdale of 22.35 2% and then to the far right you can see what the tax sorry uh and then when you include Debt Service the overall goes from 2.47% tax levy increased to a 2.39% the tax levy is 2.47 but when you add in Debt Service it actually drops the increase to 2.39% the increase in debt service is very minimal from year to year so general fund and Debt Service tax levy so you can see in Hillsdale an average assess home of $476,000 7 the tax is $3,585 the estimated annual increase is $744 or $620 monthly in month fail the average assess home of $541,500 73 and the monthly is $56 in Rivervale the average assessed home of 592 th000 the tax is 3,985 the estimated annual this in this case it's a decrease of$ 30 $30.72 and the decrease uh monthly decrease of $256 in Woodcliff Lake the average assess home $98,500 127 uh on a monthly excuse me on a monthly it's $544 decrease so this is a tax impact history so I got eight years here worth of history of of taxes um hopefully you can see that in the red that's a decrease so it varies from year to year the percent share varies from year to year so sometimes uh municipalities will see a decrease based on the average assessed home and then sometimes they'll see an increase so it's it just varies from year to year board have questions I do I have a quick question Mr Yami so you had started off saying this was a very difficult budget is that because of the what you just to clarify like what you had put um the based on the increases like I showed you that the employee benefits increase by a little over a million dollars so those are the type of things that you that we had to we had to come in this budget so there are various things we did we did cut some things within or reduced our our figures um but mainly uh we did buy some things this year as AO was in the budget so we took that out of the budget and were able to purchase things this year because we had some funds available um and then based on the other things um you know we had to increase our fund balance so we put a little more excess Surplus in we also increased our maintenance Reserve we also increased our extraordinary Aid and we also increased um the emergency Reserve that was to help offset the health insurance increase so emergency Reserve was 250,000 as you saw in the slide um the the health care adjustment was 256,000 so basically that's $500,000 however that didn't even cover the total increase so it does help but there are things that we had to do to balance the budget and fortunately we did get increased state aid that also helped um however the increase was not as large as we had anticipated we had mentioned this previously out the meetings um a lot of that has to do with the the declining enrollment um we were in a seven-year phase where we are one of the underfunded bu uh districts uh according according to the funding formula so over a seven-year period districts like us we and and our sending districts saw an increase in state a um when I look at some of the our ascending districts and some of the other districts we're looking at particularly k8s they received larger increases than we did and that has a lot to do with our declining enrollment as opposed to some of the sending districts are fortunate their enrollments increasing depends on how you want to look at it that's that's good or bad um but that helps that then they get an enrollment adjustment as well so that again they they can get extra funding as well with an enrollment adjustment again it allows you to go above 2% but there's a reason for it it's because your enrollment is increasing uh and one other question in your tenure as ba is this the first time we've had you to use emergency Reserve yes this is the first time I've used it um usually emergency Reserve can be used for increase in health health care and then the other thing that can be used they kind of loosened um their uses as far as emergency was concerned um so you could also use it for security so there there's some things as long as it's eligible and as long as the state approves it but Health Care increase isn't automatic you can do that thank you anyone else have questions thank you Mr I wanted to just uh go back to one of the slides uh mram if you don't mind I'm sorry is that okay sure um can you go to the Staffing slide real quick I just want to clarify that a little bit it was number 20 and the reason is we have a lot of people here that are coming out to show support for our music program and I was just envisioning as you were going through that uh the entire crowd of people over here going ah this we don't want to cut those programs we're not trying to cut those positions so I want to just clarify something about what this actually means means so this is not uh this is not talking about cutting a music position and what we're actually talking about here is looking at how can we resection courses and absorb some of the six periods that we're we're running as well as absorbing through breakage and I'll give a a specific example we have a couple of teachers that don't have full we anticipate I should say because we're doing Student First schedules which means our our schedules are not yet finalized but we have a couple of um teachers that we anticipate not having a full Five Section load we had a teacher that teaches a very specific um difficult science level course um offer retirement at our last meeting and so part of the thought was how are we going to replace that person it would basically not be possible for us to hire someone off the street to teach the classes that he teaches they're they're he does the molecular research classes they're extremely um involved they're very high level they're amazing if anybody has ever uh had a chance to see some of the experiments the students are doing it's incredible um you walk into the room and they'll tell you you know what they're working on and it's fascinating and interesting so the thought was we're likely not going to be able to just straight replace this person um that's not a realistic uh solution um but we have another teacher on staff Dr Malia who is um very qualified to be able to teach a course like that so what we're looking at is shuffling some things around for her to take some of those higher level courses for some other people to take some of the other higher level courses that she had been teaching and basically absorbing that through both uh some additional six periods but also through some of the empty sectioning that we had had so no courses in that scenario are being eliminated um the impact from the student side is going to be very minimal but it is a a budgetary absorption so I wanted to just kind of explain a little bit about what that was the other thing I wanted to point out is the reason that this came up with regard to music um is we currently have four full-time music teachers between the schools all four of them are amazing um Miss Safari who's our full-time music teacher is actually doing an acting role right now as our music and World Language supervisor she's incredible we have a leave replacement in for her Miss Magnus who's incredible Miss alkins who's over here unbelievable Mr Jor and uh Mr uh us uh zco uh Craig your MCO thank you um unbelievable right and so part of what we're we're grappling with is uh small numbers of students selecting those courses so one of the the things that we're looking at is at um and actually the numbers are almost identical between the two schools at uh Hills we have about 35 total students signed up for banded courses there's about 100 courses selections but about 35 total students and then we have about 45 students signed up for choir courses typically a teacher load would be like 125 students so that's that's low but here's the thing and this is you know the example um that I was uh trying to give is that when you look at the straight numbers with our music courses and the numbers are almost the same at Valley when you look at the straight numbers with our music courses it doesn't look like it's supports full for full-time people um however Miss Safari uh you know met with our your admin team and basically laid out a schedule that showed all of the other things that the teachers are doing throughout the day including flexibility with lessons a ton of extracurricular programs that they're running including um you know things that are happening during lunch during the day that they need to be flexible with in order to meet the needs of those students on like a onetoone basis doing lessons um helping with uh you know student interests helping students with some of the courses that they're running and so you know her argument was basically that you know we need all four teachers and the reason that this came up as a conversation is that we currently have Miss Safari who is not in the classroom and is outside of the classroom and there's a concern that um you know we may not be able to retain the leave replacement teacher that we currently have at Valley we would love to retain her I hope she stays uh with us for as long as as we can have her but there's a couple of things here that are sort of being merged together where there was a concern that we may have a vacancy that would be difficult to to fill um but also looking at how are we justifying you know the the course selections versus the total number of people and it's far did a great job of justifying it I think it's very Justified um we're not looking at reducing any of um the the teaching positions for music um in order to keep that up but the reason I bring it up and I'm getting into a little bit of detail is because we're really seeing this pattern and Dr buckenheimer and I were talking about it earlier who by the way Dr buckenheimer actually plays uh with the band over at Valley I've seen him up in the featers a couple of times um and uh you know talking about like why are these student enrollments so low and so one of the things that we think is happening is we think that postco we're still seeing a dip in students who had taken who had not taken rather um uh instrumental lessons uh during those years we're still seeing this as as a big dip the other thing that we're looking at is trying to proactively have our teachers here do things to try to just engender interest in music um Miss alkins I stopped by the other day she had an open house she set it up like a like a coffee shop during lunch it was so cool there were a ton of kids in there she had kids performing she had snacks um kids who are not in the music program were coming in to watch their friends there was lots of clapping um it was a really really cool event and so our teachers are definitely working hard to try to get interest in the program programs the other thing that we're working uh at and I see um I see Mr door um doing this up here and I see um uh Mur Mr urco doing this down at Valley but they're trying to reach down to our elementary and middle schools to show the students how much fun they can have playing an instrument at the high school um so they do a lot of Outreach I believe that both schools now have an initiative where eighth graders are going to be playing with the band uh in the fall at certain select football games which is an awesome idea um which I think will really sort of get some of that excitement going um and hopefully try to create some interest now the other piece that we're tackling as well and um we'll be hearing more about this at subsequent board meetings when Dr buckenheimer and his team give curriculum updates but one of the other things that they're looking at is a revamp of the music curriculum so right now um the curriculum is on a 5year cycle music is up this year um which means that they're going to be doing a deep dive to really look at these courses this is something that has been brought up by our student reps it's something that has been brought up by our teachers that we don't have a lot of honors level courses um College Board only offers one AP course we run it and we typically get it looks like next year we had two total students um request to take it so that's not a very high enrollment of that higher level course so one of the questions that we have is is there a way for us to create other higher level courses perhaps in the honors track that may be more enticing for students to want to take that may also give a little bit of credit to the students who spend so much time um on on uh both choir and band because we know that students who participate in those activities are spending a lot of time most of them are also involved in extracurriculars that go along with them um there's trium music Society who puts on shows and uh um Talent nights and all kinds of other events that these students are are very involved in that is very time consuming so the question I think is is there a way to revamp that in the curriculum all of that is to say that um we're trying to see if there's ways that we can increase the course selections for these um particular programs we're not making any uh reductions in our staffing um for next year that's not what Mr uh Yami is talking about in the budget we're not looking at reducing um any of our music positions and we're also trying to be creative about is there a way for us to get more kids involved and to make this more um enticing um for students so I just wanted to kind of clarify that because as you were going through that I was imagining a collective uh cringe from our audience when we're talking about eliminating positions because that's not that's not what this slide was meant to to um uh explain so thank you okay thank you Mr Sami next we have a presentation from Matthew smel smer from did I get it right okay from the Sai group and it's a regarding cell coverage um and the PV and at pasak Valley High School uh and the analysis all right how's it going I'm uh Matt smelzer I'm the RF engineering manager from SII group uh we're the independent thirdparty company that was hired to come do a cellular assessment at Valley and uh propose a solution um just a real brief on the the company history so we've been uh we've been in business for over 25 years I've been with the company for over 13 um I'm going to use the term dis Das a bunch which stands for distributed antenna system that's what provides the cellular coverage inside the building um I've designed over a hundred of these D systems myself and we've built and touched maintain um way more than that as a company so there's just a small just a small portfolio small look at the company you guys will have a copy of this conver of of this presentation and you can look through in detail but we've we hit venues large and small um we we cover New England and and New Jersey Philadelphia area so you'll see some of these venues like Fenway Park Gillette Stadium uh Logan Airport uh we've worked at new New York Liberty Liberty Airport um bunch of venues in New York City as well um so just quick highlight um so this is the Distributing tennis system this is a little block diagram I made uh very simplistic look at the system but essentially there's a signal source that that what your phone is talking to um going into this distributed antenna system and that distributes the signal all these antennas throughout the building um which is providing cellular coverage so there's two different types of that signal Source you'll see at the bottom here one says BDA which is a repeater um and a dedicated source so I'm going to go into a little more detail as to what each of those is because they're relevant for what we propose as a solution so a BDA or repeater it basically takes that external so if you're driving around your car the towers that are covering um and you have coverage or coverage in your home so that is taking that signal and it's rebroadcasting it throughout the building um so there's a couple drawbacks to doing that um one of which is weather season foliage so if there's a lot of tree coverage around the building and the trees you know the trees grow and and it's going to degrate that signal coming in so that is dependent on the site dependent on which um what where your building sits and what the coverage looks like so we we went out on the roof and we assessed that for Valley um and the total user capacity for the repeater is all dependent on that Tower so if that Tower were to go down then the system inside the building would go down so dedicated Source that's an inde dependent radio it's not reliant on that out outside Network um the user capacity will depend on the actual the type of source that is deployed um and that's going to require it's not connected to that external network so it's going to require uh back hall from from The District in order to uh connect to the cellular network so the proposed solution that we put together is kind of a hybrid of these two um depending on the carrier so three different car is AT&T T-Mobile and Verizon um AT&T and T-Mobile are on the BD BDA repeater system um as a proposed solution in Verizon is on a dedicated source so and in this case we're using two different radios um 64 active users on each radio meaning somebody that can connect to the system and send a text message um connect so it's somebody actively trying to use the system so it's not just somebody in the building with their phone because I know those numbers seem low but if you're actually talk trying to to call out or trying to make a call send a text message that's when that active users come comes into play um so there all there are alternative solutions to AT&T and TMobile um but they definitely come at a cost which I'm going to go into at the end here um so this balance for the proposed solution is I say the most cost effective solution that that can be presented um so I'll uh just go into the coverage that this is the current coverage so this is basically what we w we walked around the school we have uh scanning equipment that tests the coverage throughout the building and the the scale on the right you'll see goes from a a pink down to a blue this is a standard uh carrier scale that we use for thresholding so blue meaning the worst so as you can see it's pretty much blue throughout the entire building um so I'm sure you guys know that um so uh there's very slight coverage on that second floor you see it kind of Coes into a light blue but it's still very low um so and and some I think in the cafeteria down here on the first floor very slight though um so this is the proposed coverage so this is we take everything from our survey we build it into a tool we similar to like AutoCAD we we uh model the whole building and we uh propose we we basically run predictions that show what the proposed coverage would look like um so as you can see everything is not no longer blue so it's the same scale as the uh the previous slide here but um so everything under the antenna so you could see kind of the hotpots that's where all the antennas are that are spread across the building um so that is the proposed coverage with the solution that that I was just discussing so and jumping right into into the pricing so I put some not to exceed costing on here because um if this project gets approved goes to goes through the budget then um we would like to be a company that bids on the on the overall solution so um the not to exceed cost here so the total cost with the proposed solution $225,000 that's just covering the inside I know there were some talks about covering the field um which was not in our original scope of work so this just covers the inside the system is capable of expanding to the field if um obviously at an additional cost not included in that um but it is capable of doing that whether that be uh through fiber optics to the Press Box or um covering it from the roof of the school itself so some additional options option so this dedicated source that I was talking about earlier it is available for AT&T and TMobile but it does come at a pretty significant cost and it does come with Associated annual fees the proposed solution we had does not have any annual fees with the exception of if you want system monitoring if you want us to um constantly be looking at it seeing if there's any issues with the system and then we're we're able to deploy and and fix any issues um so that's the only annual cost related to the proposed one but if you were to go with a dedicated source and this is going to provide you with that dedicated connection you're not on the external network you don't have to worry about weather or anything like that um so that's a $90,000 initial cost for the to the radios themselves and then a $20,000 cost annual fee um so that's uh yeah you go back yep which one which slide this one okay here it says T this one yeah Verizon bottom proposed solution yep is that that talking about that proposed solution yeah so it would be switching AT&T T-Mobile from BDA repeater to Dedicated Source just like Verizon okay that's the addition correct yes that's what I want to because Verizon has a solution that's very low cost in comparison to AT&T TMobile which they do not have they do not offer um that's why broke it out as a separate cost and that's why it was proposed this way because that solution is much more expensive than Verizon solution which again they're the only PE only carrier that has that specific solution that is low cost um does having our own internal network does that reduce cyber security threats or it doesn't really matter uh so cyber like so it's the same way your phone would interact with a tower outside um cell phone connections are actually very like compared to Wi-Fi they're very secure um so as far as a Sell Your solution it's the same as if you're just W you know walking around outside and so it has nothing to do with it's not going to increase any potential threats other you know other than what already exists yeah so how so I know you showed that that chart of how it works kind of based on yeah so obviously you can't guarantee that it's so what our design tool though I mean the design tool is only as good as the engineer that's designing it um which goes for any any design tool um so uh I can assure you we do our due diligence um and we did an extensive assessment of the coverage on the roof inside the building outside the building we also did a drive test around the surrounding area as well to assess where the signal is coming from from a tower perspective um so this we find that when we deploy these systems that are that are proposed as very very similar to what is actually deployed because we will once the install happens we'll go and do an assessment basically this same assessment again and we'll rewalk the entire thing and basically show you the the new coverage plots that you know what you have now after the system was installed I have a question um you listed um areas um ballparks and everything else um how about schools how many uh do you have a list of schools that have shown interest or do you know how many schools in New Jersey have a cellular uh I don't know that number for New Jersey schools I can tell you that a lot of the new schools that are being built this is these systems are being now included as a part of the RFP um we've seen that a lot more uh recently um we've we've been on a large number of them because they're recognizing that this is a problem upfront before they even build a building um I know well depending on when the building was built uh you know this might not have been a concern way back then but it is now and and now they're addressing it up front so you're not seeing that many schools that are only ones that are upgrading their facilities and building onto the structure uh no not necessarily there we we are dealing with existing schools as well um but i' I'd say the majority of them are new schools but um I depending on the school where it sits um what it was built out of it all it all factors in and and the outside Tower environment there's a lot of different factors that uh can come into play when you know some of them have partial coverage and we can deploy partial systems you can see here that there's virtually no coverage throughout so um yeah um I have two questions sorry um the $20,000 I guess annual fee sorry sorry that was like the last slide second to last stand corrected um I broke it okay okay um and that you said you're doing constant monitoring but if that was if we decline that does that still mean that it's warrantied the work and I guess the the other question to that is there's a lot of talk in the area of towers being built in the in the near future um would this be necessary if those Towers actually are built uh potentially no but depends on the tower location and I can tell you that building a tower takes a very very long time to build um has to go through a lot of zoning and with the with the town and it takes years to build a tower um and that's obvious so this this proposed solution this is something we could deploy and turn on um immediately once once it's built um so this dedicated Source however so that annual fee is just for the radios for T-Mobile and AT&T so that is their ability to connect to the um back to the network um so that is separate from the actual system so the system monitoring this $10,000 annual that's for monitoring the system itself so that's um so this can be independent of of the dedicated Source um and that system monitoring is just to make sure that we you don't lose coverage something doesn't happen I mean we also provide a service where we're we'll just dispatch a technician you know if you have a problem if you don't opt to do this monitoring um but we have a knock which basically at our office that it's constantly looking at a bunch bunch of different sites we manage and anytime an alarm comes up it'll send send us an email send us an alert that says hey you have a problem we can try to fix it remotely we can log in remotely and if we can't then we can go Deploy on site and and fix the issue where is the system going to be located um so the the only thing um with with any cell phone system in general um electromagnetic radi em which basically it's it's similar to a Wi-Fi um AP broadcasting signal um so this tool will do a report um which will basically spit out basically the FCC um regulations and it'll provide you a tool and and say all right if you're if they're mounted up in the ceiling and somebody can only come within three you know four feet of it it'll tell us that you know everything passes regulations that we're that you're not um that nothing's harmful so the way these are these are built is that it's spreading coverage evenly throughout so there's the way this is all one well not not in this case not all one uh one line basic it it's one coaxial line which is the cable running through the ceiling and it's tapping power off of it so it's only giving a little bit of power to each antenna so the only time we'd see kind of health risk is if we're taking a radio and putting it into like a single antenna and that is single antenna is like mounted in a spot where you can touch it thank you yeah and I just have a question um why is it so red shows you strong coverage why is it at the center of the red Parts is blue uh so that's just a little pictogram of the uh antenna itself oh so it's not not sorry yeah I didn't explain that before yeah how long would this take for you your company to do um to install the system so so the equipment is usually the longest lead time part um so the active equipment the radios that we have to order um that is usually a 4 to 6 week lead time to order that equipment um the rest of the system the antennas the cabling that is like one or two weeks it's a lot shorter of a time frame um there's a chance we can bring that 4 six we lead time down but I just say that to be safe um and then the actual install itself I mean it could be done over a summer break so the installation would be like disruptive enough where you wouldn't want to do it during a school year ideally no um but so that not to exceed cost was assuming standard hours so I know uh well like nights and weekends if you wanted to do it while schooling was in session that that cost would go up got it um so that's assuming we had free and clear access during first year shf got it okay thank you anyone else any other questions thank you thank you thank you next we have a presentation by Dr Barry bachenheimer Dr Mark Russo and Megan Graziano and they it is the department headlight highlight headlight for Math and Science all right so good evening I know we've had a lot of presentations this evening uh this comes from uh our curriculum committee met several weeks ago and uh as part of our curriculum committee We Had Each of our supervisors and myself present kind of highlights of things that have been going on the past several months in each of our academic departments points of Pride new curriculum area areas uh new programs uh awards won programs going on lots of good things I certainly hear a lot of it there was even more so uh to share and we heard that the board wanted to hear more Beyond just the curriculum committee so we're here this evening to give you a comprehensive but the synct um overview of our uh math and computer science department and our science and teag AD Department as well as a brief overview of our ongoing review of our assessments uh both midyear and final and some of the changes and adjustments we are making along the way as a results so to start things off Dr Russo thank you so much to the to the board for having me um and I also just want to uh quickly before I start I just want to thank all the math teachers in the district some of the finest hardest working uh individuals I know and to the students so many of whom work so hard in in difficult courses uh really put in time and and energy to uh um to excel um so just briefly the the vision of the pasak valley uh Regional High School District math department is to facilitate the construction of meaningful mathematical Knowledge and Skills with the ultimate goal of promoting the personal and professional growth of each student this Vision empowers students by helping them expand professional opportunities understanding and critiquing the world and also experiencing Wonder joy and Beauty um so I will try and be brief just to share a little bit about what's going on in curriculum instruction and assessment um so in our core courses in mathematics we are in um the process of resequencing to Geometry uh then Algebra 1 then Algebra 2 for students that are not already accelerated in middle school this is the first year of geometry first and we are continuing to look at how we can make that the best experience for some of our incoming freshmen as we also prepare um to to have them take Algebra 1 followed by Algebra 2 in subsequent years um we're looking at articulation and inment to standards and there are also new standards from New Jersey um for this coming fall that we're looking to uh make sure we are in line and exceeding in terms of our elective courses we're committed to probability and statistics for all students uh because while all mathematics is beautiful and amazing it is probably true that statistical knowledge is important for more students as they become uh consumers and produc producers of information as adults um so we're looking at making sure that all students have those experiences uh We've increased our dual enrollment program so that we're now in our third year for the first two years we just had the option of calculus and we had an average of 36 students each of those two years this year after expanding to college algebra statistics and discret math we have 119 students so that's a great opportunity for them um to earn college credit in addition uh we have always had a a rigorous uh and engaging honors pre-calculus course and this year is the first year of a new AP pre-calculus um so without much of uh well there certainly have been adjustments but the rigor has always been there so we have 70 students now for the first time who have that opportunity um briefly on computer science we're consistently looking at an everchanging field uh We've implemented uh cyber security op um opportunities and experiences for students in our Advanced topics class uh and we have a PLC that's currently looking at um how we can support and enhance some of the work we're doing with Java by also giving students experience in Python um briefly I don't want to to short uh short shift um instruction um we are consistently looking at what um the nctm's eight mathematics teaching practices and how we can best support students engaging deeply with mathematics two of these practices I will highlight briefly uh one is just connecting between various math matical representations so we're not just focused on equations we're focused on modeling and graphs and tables uh and contexts and trying to have conversations amongst those things and not just conversations with a math but also with one another um as we the the ability to talk about and reason through and explain mathematics uh can help uh our peers certainly our students but also helps help ourselves um better understand uh the content in computer science we're consistently uh and continually looking at how we can develop students computational thinking skills um which is uh incredibly important for their their ability to engage with computer science but also can can expand to other aspects uh of Life uh and then briefly uh just a word on assessment um our Assessments in mathematics and computer science they're designed to give students and teachers feedback uh on students knowledge of Concepts skills but also their ability to synthesize data uh and apply it to new contexts uh we believe very strong strongly in targeted meaningful feedback that is what assessment is for uh and we do this through sort of this the typical array of quizzes and exams we also have benchmark assessments so we can see how well we're doing against State Standards uh and we also want to make sure that students are well prepared for any sorts of exams that they're going to need for other aspects of their life whether it's just State standardized tests or the SAT or act we're always looking to find that right balance between supporting students and then helping them achieve and understand rigorous material um and in in doing that we ask teachers and students regularly how they're experiencing um not just Assessments in mathematics and computer science but mathematics and computer science more generally as we try and continue to to to take a great program uh and make it better um at this point I'll turn it over to miss ciano to talk about science and teched all right good evening everybody uh first I'd like to say thank you for inviting us here tonight because one of the great joys of this position is getting to brag about all the amazing things we're seeing happening in the classro every single day by our All-Star faculty of teachers and our incredible students who really find their passions in the classroom and run with it which is what makes this job just so amazing so um unlike Mt we don't have any new courses or sequences so I just wanted to take some time to highlight some of the great things that are happening within some of our courses with within um our professional development for our teachers one thing that I'd like to point out at the very beginning is that um we did have several students who were very successful in the Tara North Jersey stem fair um two first place category awards were actually awarded to students from our district one of whom is here tonight miss Olivia um yes Round of Applause so so we had students who um won first place Awards and we had 10 students in total that won awards the science I actually had a chance to go for the first time ever and I was blown away by the level and quality of projects that were there from all schools so to see our students achieve so highly there was just outstanding and really a testament to the program that has been developed here we also have um recently had a visit from a company called leer Adell um which Dr bachenheimer was kind enough to connect me with a representative from there and he brought in a patient simulator which our honors anatomy and physiology students got an opportunity to work with handson these are patient simulators that you would see in medical schools in nursing schools and they had an opportunity to work with it Hands-On um do some diagnostic work and it was a really incredible day and we're hoping to continue bringing experiences like that to our students who are interested specifically in the medical field a SL they scream and vomit on command it yeah that was probably students's favorite part uh we also uh partnered with violia and the woodcliffe lake um Town Council to do a cleanup recently about a month ago and it really went fantastically that was another event I got to go to we had several students I'm going to say between 20 to 30 students from the district that volunteered their time on a weekend to come and clean up um at the Woodcliff Lake Reservoir and I was just so pleased with the turnout considering this was the first year we've organized something like this this is something we're planning on continuing in the future um and so special thanks to um Miss schwarzman who really led the initiative on that and the environmental clubs who who a lot of our students there participated with that and I also want to just give a thanks to miss Calderone who made that connection for us to begin with so thank you thank you very much for opening that door it was a great opportunity we also partnered this year with kidwind um through a professional development experience that one of our teachers had they are um a program that really supports the education of climate change and clean energy and so we had about 11 of our science and stem teachers participate in professional development along with teachers from all four of our sending districts together in one room over multiple days um where they were able to learn a lot about clean energy and activities that they could bring into the classroom we then parlayed that into um the challenge that pasak Valley used during their stem League competition this was the first first time ever that pasak has actually hosted a stem League competition this is something that they've been participating for in in for many many years um but it was incredibly successful we got a ton of fantastic feedback we hosted eight different districts and had teams in um our teachers who I would like to give a very special shout out to Jim Kennedy Danielle dintle Bill kanig and Adam owski for really going above and beyond in planning this incredible event um I'm going to actually switch over there so you can see that the images over or to the right there were're from that event where they not only brought in these teams and hosted this challenge where students were asked to design a floating wind turbine um to produce as much energy as possible and given this challenge in only a short period of time they were then also giving oral presentations to a team of Engineers and people that work in the clean energy um in the clean energy industry right now who were able to give our students real-time feedback you know from the professionals which was incredible so they actually brought in 10 people from outside the district to ask as the judges and have a keynote speaker uh again it was absolutely wonderful and I'd also like to shout out Mr Sherman's uh students who worked hard to capture that and they made a beautiful segment for pvtv if you haven't had a chance to check it out yet I suggest you do and my last note here about our uh stem Department uh we both buildings pasak Hills and pasak Valley were awarded the ITA which stands for the international Technology and Engineering Educators Association um Award of the stem School of Excellence only about 35 not about only 35 awards were given out throughout the nation this year and two of them went to our schools and that is a Real Testament to the incredible work done by our stem and Engineering departments as well as our robotics teams our science teachers our Math teachers um that's a very big deal and something I'm very very proud of so those are just a few of our highlights um real quickly I too I can certainly mention we are in our first year of utilizing the linkit um benchmark assessments this is great because they're directly aligned to state standards and they do mirror what the students will see on the njsla assessment and so this is a really great opportunity for them to practice with questions that are going to be very similar a lot of them are questions that had previously been on um earlier tests they're aligned to the three dimensions of science instruction and assessment here you can see the practices the content and the cross cutting Concepts and we're able then to use that data not only on the content and the practices but also the types of questions that the students are doing well with the ones that they struggle with and then Infuse that into our instruction to help prepare our students moving forward thank you very much I'll hand it back over to Dr bachenheimer and just to reiterate the points here I had a chance to obviously observe a whole lot of these events that they were talking about firsthand it's really impressive what our students are doing and how our staff and supervisors are supporting our students so thank you both and thank you to your staff for all that they're doing now I just want to transition over to talk about Department assessments as Mrs Graziano mentioned every department for the last several years if you recall we started the department metric program where every Department came up with a way to answer the question how do we know how we're doing these were internal assessments that each department developed in order to check out and see you know for when we had that Gap during the pandemic and no State assessments we weren't exactly sure we wanted to make sure that we were accomplishing our goals obvious with State assessments swinging back in we now had those as well and then we also have assessments that we look at in terms of our midyear assessments and endof year assessments that some departments administer so I wanted to talk about that just a little bit the two departments represented here are two out of the three testable departments that our students are tested on we just went through NJ GPA which is a required test for our Juniors for graduation a few weeks ago and in a very short time we're going to start our njsla assessments for our freshmen in math science and Ela um we had strong showings the last two years in our scores especially last year we were commended by the state during our cat inspection for our growth in a lot of those areas so to talk about assessments every year we review the process we look at what we're doing in terms of both our department metrics like the link at examples we look at what we're doing in terms of our classroom practices and we look at our assessments that we're giving um all of you remember but when you were back in high school midterms and finals perhaps were things that caused you a great deal of stress um we certainly our goal is not to cause students stress but our goal is as we take a look to be able to give a clear snapshot of feedback of our students progress for both them and their teachers so instruction can be adjusted in the process uh the way that we're looking at that specifically in math and science when students who are going to be majoring in these areas in college or they take general education courses in these areas when they get to College predominantly midterms and finals are the way these students are assessed in higher education with an excess of 94% of our students or more going on to higher ed uh for your colleges we certainly want to make sure that our students are well prepared for that experience along the way so every year we look at our process we look at what we're doing we talk to students we talk to staff we see what's working and what's not and I really have to give credit to Dr Russo and Mrs graziana who really did a really a massive dive the last two years in adjusting our system to be what's best for students and it's always really taking a look at what can we do better so one adjustment we made was taking a look at making sure that the final grade for students who are taking these larger scale assessments doesn't exceed 7.45% of their grade it means that they're being assessed but if you don't do well it's not going to really hurt you so badly and if you do well it's not going to give you an unfair gain across the board and we' have some data to support that as well that as looking at our midterm assessments that there really was not a major change for students if they didn't do well or if they did do well it really was mostly in line with their grade in that class along the way again as I mentioned our our major goal is really preparing students for their future College and Career plans along the way but as Mrs Graziano Dr Russa mentioned we want to also make sure that we're meeting our standards the New Jersey uh standards for mathematics and science education we want to make sure our assessments are aligned with that how did we know if we're meeting the standards by assessing our students and cross-checking and seeing what we're doing we're also making sure oops went the other way there um that we're using an assessment checklist this year when teachers are giving assessments this Mak sure that it's posted up on canvas students are aware of what they're being tested that there are revieww sheets going on and that there's feedback going on as part of the process they understand if they got something wrong why they got something wrong and not just the answer for the sake of the grade but that really the process behind it we really made sure that as part of our midyear assessment process the teachers were reviewing with students what was going on and as you'll uh soon see when the schedule gets uh dropped in a few days at our end of year process we're going to make sure that students have an opportunity to find out how they did on their end of year year assessments as well which was something that was lacking in previous years they would take their test find out they're great on their transcript and never find out what was going on with the assessments our goal here of course is to strike a balance between instructional time and assessment time without having you know short drifting really either one but again making sure we have time for that feedback and review for students that they understand the why behind the assessments that are there uh We've really tried to work with a continual feedback loop um this year after our midterm assessments both Dr Russo and Mrs Iana went into multiple classrooms and both schools to talk to students um at length about what worked what didn't feedback on ways that we could make things better and took that into account to help adjust for our final exam schedule and into next year um and again one of the the major improvements that we're making sure we've heard students and and adjusting along the way is is uh teachers availability for extra help um as a result of some grant money and some availability that we have we're going to have in addition to our teachers regular availability we're going to have both Math Science and Ela um help centers available for students before school and after school in addition to regular times for students who need some extra help getting ready for those larger scale assessments so we're going to be very pleased to offer that opportunity for students um before and during exams when that's going on anything addition to add for your departments any questions from the board I actually do more of a comment um I really want to thank you for taking a look at this because because this is something that's come up probably for 20 years if not longer um and the fact that it's being used more as an instructional tool now and we did have a lot of community input throughout the years as well and I know one of the people who came to me made a great point because you know obviously we're preparing like you said a lot of these kids to continue with college um but even in college they're a semester and then they're switching a class so they're not really expected to retain something for an entire year it's much shorter blocks of time so these diagnostic assessments um are very helpful for these kids as they're progressing through the years so I appreciate all the time and effort you put into looking and doing that deep dive again into what's going on and what's working and what could be changed so we appreciate those changes thank you I have a few things to ask so there used to be a math and Writing Center is there still a math Center her how well is that utilized by students so we have U Math Center in both buildings during lunch three days a week uh and depending on the sort of the EB and flow of the year uh it can be maybe over utilized uh but it is there are consistently students in the math Center uh in both buildings uh so it's a great opportunity that that we like to be able to provide for students in addition to teacher extra help and then in addition to what Dr bachenheimer mentioned about the added math centers so we were able to provide double math centers leading up to the midterm period um so we're going to have that for the final exam period in addition to the AM and PM so they are being utilized uh they were last year and they are again this year is there any thought I know uh for students lunchtime is a time where they do clubs and they do this that and the other thing also um is there any uh plan or thought to maybe doing centers like after school or before school or anything like that because I know I've heard from students uh you know that's during lunch and I had I don't know my ASPCA club or I don't know if they'll know if that's a real Club but but like you know so yeah yeah so lab exactly so so um you know I I would love to know that like is there a time that that it's going to be expanded no yeah we would love to be able to expand the math Center um so it's it's not even across the board uh there are some past periods available at pasak Valley where we have been able to offer additional help that's not during lunch we want we have wanted to we recognize the lab challenge which is why we want to spread it over multiple days so that all students have that opportunity we had more we love Labs we love Labs uh we had more um availability of funding last year where we were able to uh offer the math Center more often but if there's any way to expand the availability of the math Center we would certainly want to do that uh and to your point about offering it throughout the day or after school um but I do think that um our availability of funds leading up to final exam period will also give us that information as to how many students come before school how many come after school as we try and use our funds appropriately to help students okay um I know with science they have um I heard that like similar type of thing I don't know if it's called science centers or or something or anything like that um but from what I understand we're on the street um I don't know if it's utilized or maybe I don't know if it's that students know don't know what is your experience with science with that so we don't have a science help center now the way that we have a math lab and the The Writing Center um so this is actually going to be new and this is actually a direct result of feedback that we got when talking to students when we were in the classroom and we asked the way it was presented to them was do you see value in this and how can we help you be as successful as possible and one student said to me very directly and I said to Dr rockenheimer as well if we could have something similar to the math Center for Science that would be really helpful so I do want to point out too I know science is a little different where we need to have different CS um to teach teach physics chemistry and biology and luckily we actually have the grant money to support having all three so we're going to have three different teachers one with each CT both in the morning and in the afternoon during this time leading up to exams and afterwards if the funding could ever become available and we see that this is utilized properly I would be very excited about starting something like that and expanding that for the Sciences to our students as well okay um and then how so the the whole question of how do we know what we're how we're doing um how are how do we get student feedback uh is it like just talking is it um written out like hey you know I wish we spent more time on I don't know you know I'd be making things up but how like how do we know what the students need and what their what their academic needs are sure so just the first part is so as you might imagine it's challenging if you are doing well in a class your feedback is going to be yeah things are going great and if you're struggling in a class whether that's partial student partial teacher partial material whatever it may be your opinion might be a little bit different so it's good very hard to tease that out and I've got to give both Mrs Graziano and Dr Uso credit whether it's talking to students individually having focus groups with students getting to different levels of classes different types of classes really trying to tease that out afterwards um in addition I've had meetings with our student government in both schools as well as a chance to talk to them they're the representative of our students kind of getting their feedback on where things are and what kind of things they might be looking for in terms of things that we can a school to do to really help have them be a little bit more successful and then obviously we also have our climate survey which gives us an overall view of the school and the support that students are getting um I would love to maybe consider like every in biology or AP biology hey you know the end of the semester or even middle of the semester right for our teachers to be able to say oh uh I got a lot of student feedback that perhaps uh you know the they didn't understand what they got wrong on these particular tests they need more feedback that way I I I think um those are all great ways that it's done but I would love to see maybe like across the board just students sitting in classing okay not a suggestion box but like okay this this is what I feel uh helped or didn't help and of course there's a spectrum of who what kind of feedback you're going to get from different students but I I'd love to get more feedback from students on what works and what doesn't and and to address that as part of the schedule that we're putting together so in the past when we've had end of the year assessments student has taken their exams and the year is over we've built in now that the exams when the schedule schu comes out and you'll see shortly there's a feedback day and so the day is designed that students will get a chance to go over the exam understand pieces and additionally kind of set an action plan for themselves for the next year that they'll give to their teachers that they can then see that feedback almost as a note to themselves for next year but the teachers also see that data too and see what needs to be adjusted as well so we've been really trying to take that and think about how can we really take that information at the end of the year and really turn that into something that's going to help our students and our teachers adjust got it um I really appreciate everything you all do and I appreciate you hearing what we have to say um I think the only person as of tonight who has been on this board for five years or longer uh is Jim uh everybody else is pretty uh relatively under five years or newer and uh you know I feel like uh if we are at an eight out of 10 we have a great District um but there's always room for improvement if you're not a 10 and most places are not going to be a 10 so I think with this relatively newer sort of board I think that we should aim for the stars and I really do think that we should aim to go that next level up and so I appreciate all of your efforts in doing that and I really look forward to a lot more uh feedback from I think this is great because as far as in everything else being there uh academics is is the Croc of everything for our district and any District so I really really appreciate it question on that on the um feedback the feedback day that you're talking about have you considered doing just course evaluations like and at the end of the semester um before checking out for the semester sending in sending a type of form and just getting Anonymous real feedback back from a student not just on the course content um the instructor um the the just whatever kind of wonderful questions you have for these students but not having it in front of that instructor having it having it you know you know how it is you teach in college level um as I do and I really I think that taking that out that that you know having that anity um really can help have that student come out and explain you know not risking you know you know I'm this person might be writing me a recommendation I gotta I got to be nice you know so um just taking that out maybe um might be um a good thing to try appreciate that suggestion I think obviously we'd have to be careful how we tease that out right because we don't want it to be personal we instead want it to be constructive on ways that we can all improve which is our ultimate goal any other questions or comments from the board all right thank you very much for your time thank you okay next we have comments from the public uh we're going to do things a little bit different today uh usually the first comments from the public public are on agenda items only um but we are going to put you all out of your misery so you don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting and what we're going to do citizens are invited to make comments regarding agenda or non-agenda items and you are limited to 3 minutes according to the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education policy number 0167 persons wishing to speak uh must upon being recognized rise sign in at the podium uh and state their name town of residents and obviously whatever if you're speaking about an agenda item let us know if not whatever you're speaking about go ahead go ahead sorry my name is anthonette McKay I'm from woodcliffe Lake I have two sons that attend Pac Hills currently that are sophomores um I think there's a little bit of confusion why I mean I'm here it it's not about the teachers potentially you know leaving it's more about the curriculum it's about the classes that are not going to be offered um you know I just want you I just want to ask the board do you understand about the music department about music theory AP music theory and music tech um you know it was wonderful hearing from you know the other departments and stuff and you know the great things but not all kids go into math and science and social studies there's a lot of kids that go into to music the Arts and pcak Hills is really falling short on that and you know it's really upsetting over that um and I don't think you realize that those three classes you guys are looking to cut and maybe put off for a year or two are mandatory if you want to go to music school for you know uh teaching for music for composition to be a performer anything in music you need these basic classes that you are now taking away from your current students um during last week's spring break my family visited five universities in Florida out of those five four of them we toured their music department to meet with college professors you know and you know as uh a music Major those are separate departments completely separate did you know to apply to colleges as a music Major whether it's music performance music education or music composition to name a few you not only need to apply to the main college and have good grades good GPA good test scores recommendations and be a well-rounded student in order to meet the emission standards on top of that you also need to apply separately to the music department and have a portfolio including performances accolades received over your high school years you have to audition via video first then if invited you perform in person at each school for a panel of professors I ask you how many other students have to do this for other Majors that they would be going for while visiting each school we asked both the student ambassadors and the professors of the head of the Department of percussion you know what should my son who wants to be um music performance what should he be doing to prepare himself to go to these schools and the each and every one of them said expose yourself to all instruments you need to play for percussion practice your site reading so you can audition with a minimum of three separate instruments and take music theory not only one year but many years to get the basic needs for college now you know I I reached out to the superintendent after the last Board of Ed meeting that I watched online and I asked her you know this you know what do we do and part of the you know uh coming back at me which was that an online AP music theory class would be offered is offered well my son who has never taken music theory will not be able to do this online I don't know if you guys have looked at the syllabus if you have tried this yourselves it's impossible um you know can would you I'm I'm sorry that's okay I understand the argument about cutting the class is due to low enrollment but I ask you why do we have low enrollment have you each personally spoke to the music teachers have you asked them are these classes important for future education have you looked at why you have middle schoolers not attending pascot Hills and going to other high schools is it because we don't offer students enough opportunities for music and the Arts and why are we not being competitive why are we not looking at the bigger picture do you realize you have at least five current seniors that that I know of going to colleges for music education and composition in schools like NYU uh University of Maryland Stevens Institute of Technology and JMU I think those are pretty pretty good schools to be going to for music Miss McKay yes thank you thank you [Applause] thank you great Buzz budget presentation it's Michael Fox Hillsdale did I need any more information we're good okay good thank you all right I'm actually here in regard to the testing report that was just uh given so I just want to kind of share some notes with the board on some of my feelings in regard to some of the assessments that are transpiring here at pasak Valley and how I feel they're unfair for the student and PAs Regional in comparison to other schools so as you may or may not know be aware I've been in touch with the administration since February 2023 in the conversation of midterms and finals here at both schools I asked for data on midterms and finals for the last two years that's midterms of last year finals midterms of this year how many students overall averages went up stayed the same or went down as a result of the exam to date I've not received any data that has shown me any of the following uh in discussions with the administration and we've had great discussions I've had with Miss balotti I've also had more challenging conversations with some of the other administrators in regard to we kind of agree that 50 to 60% and I think that's light of students grce student averages go down after these exams which is an arbitrary number we tended to agree upon this negatively affects uh students who are competing against students from other school districts for college acceptances I asked why we give these exams and the reply consistently was college students come back and say they were helpful which is completely subjective information not data driven as I expected I asked if they felt this was a best practice for high schools and they said yes I completely disagree with them on these high stake weighted tests as you just heard they're 7.5 and 7.5 last year they were 10 and 10 so that's 15 % of a on two tests go towards the final grade A solution is to give benchmarks assessments which they were talking about I would say on 8 week intervals if possible that can be given to enhance learning and Mastery for all students which occur more often in the end we're all here for to help students and not hurt them over the past 4 to five years the district has hurt many students with these exams in comparison to other high schools who do not administer these exams such as bermies Northern Valley alapan Northern Valley Demis tenly rampo Indian Hills Ridgewood Westwood West moris and mor Morris Regional these are just some of the tops high schools I contacted to find out that information there are many more the majority of colleges do not require SAT scores anymore making GPA that much more important PV students are at a disadvantage competing against high schools from other schools in the area who do not have their grades suffer due to these exams for a year and a half now I've asked Administration to analyze the value of these exams Based on data I have stressed the point that no college student takes exams on 5 months or 10 months of material let alone 14 to 18 year olds my perspective is that these exams should be eliminated and alternative assessments should be considered Not only would this benefit students for college admissions but also improve their social and emotional well-being and reduce the loss of instructional time greater value should be placed on teacher student Rea uh contact time I appreciate your time I know it's short here and I hope uh the administration takes this matter seriously I heard the term Cutting Edge in the budget presentation and I see that that this is I see this as an outdated practice finally no one here should believe negatively impacting students is a positive and this practice is just not necessary at PV thank you very much thank you Mr Mr Mr Fox before you leave um we've had very good conversations about this and I and he did not share he's also an administrator um who has students in the district and we've had very deep conversations which you've alluded to about the wellness of the students and some of the negative impact and I think that's a big push for our district so that is something we also need to consider and I I thank you for bringing that point up as well thank you Miss Martin everyone have a great night thank you thank you anyone else hi I'm Rhonda swerski I'm from Woodcliff Lake that's all I I've never done this so yeah okay great thanks all right so I'm Rhonda sersi from wood Cliff Lake and I'm the president of the music parents Association for the um me and um Megan guy for the last two years have kind of interchanged um President and Vice President here at pasac Hills um when I heard that the Board of Education was considering cutting two music programs I was extremely disappointed because I thought we were making strides in the last couple of years I'm not sure if you're aware of this but music theory is an essential class for students who plan a major in music in college my son Brendan who is a senior and will be attending college in the fall at JMU is I'm going for music education he went through a grueling audition process at several different colleges in fact every college that he applied to he applied to the regular college and had to do a second College um application um for the music school and then had to audition um as well um luckily he was admitted to the music program at JMU but site reading was an area that he definitely struggled with he is in um the music theory program this year um he's the one and only student in the intro class because the intro class and the AP class are given during the same section and so um of course the AP moves very quickly my son has an IP um and it was just too rigorous for him um had they offered something like this in a separate section I think that he would have gotten a little bit more out of it than having to learn by himself like with a book um which is basically what he doing he's teaching himself Mrs elen of course is giving him support but um you know she has to teach the AP students because they have to take an AP exam it's closed sorry apologize so um Mr dor Missin provided my son with a great Foundation but there's so much more that's needed to help our kids to prepare to be music majors in college I had my son work with a music tutor but in actuality I don't think I should should have had to um many high schools including the one that I work at um offer programs whether it be during the school year or over the summer like a portfolio prep or a music audition prep program um and I don't think Hills offers anything like that which puts our kids at a disadvantage um I I already mentioned the thing about the um music theory um I think it would be really a dis surface to our music majors to take away music theory um and not offer it every year um even if you just offered the intro a little bit earlier and then an AP um I think it would really help children um who are going out there I I you know what Miss McKay said my son had to do site reading he had to um do scales um he plays percussion as well he had to do um three separate instruments in his audition in front of a panel of people and then had to interview with them and he's a 17-year-old student you know he's that's I couldn't even imagine doing that and he did that at every school that he had to that he applied to so I just want you to keep them in your mind and in your thoughts because our music program my son's not a scholar he's very smart but he's not into the math and the science and the band marching band it saved him you know he really struggled in middle school and if we you really support the Arts like we say we want to which is important to every student um I I just really hope that we have your support thank you thank you Miss zarski hello okay it's on hello my name is Derek guy I am a senior at pasek Hills currently and I am here to discuss the proposed policy changes regarding making music AP music theory a bi-yearly course instead of a course that's offered every year which I know has been on the table two years ago my sophomore year I decided that in order to try and further facilitate my growing passion for music at the time that I would take the AP music theory course at pasat kills previous year during covid I didn't know it existed there are only three students in that class a very small size and that small size allowed for Mrs elen who teaches the class to be able to personally teach each of us oneon-one and provide help when we needed it and I was able to understand the content far greater than I had in any of my other classes for that year then the following year I took music technology where Mr door taught me about the way that modern music is made and all the technical skills of using technology for music and more importantly it gave me insight into what um into what anyone in the modern music industry needs in order to be successful this is something that I am now grateful for as I'm going off to myu to dive head first into the world of music with screen scoring it is with this experience that I stand here today and with which I am voicing my concerns the sparingly few courses that are offered by the music department are already an obscurity to most of the student body here if you ask any randomly SE selected student at the school about a a an AP music theory class they likely will have no idea what you're even talking about especially those in the Freshman Class if these classes are only offered by yearly I doubt that this will somehow to raise awareness of the courses to the average incoming students and may even discourage enrollment for many as only being available once every two years may cause people to perceive it as not an important class these two classes are valuable resources for students who are interested in pursuing a career in the music industry whether performance producing composing or just people who want to understand music on a deeper level than just the band and choir classes can provide a loan in every Department you will see a gradation to the courses that are offered for science math and English you'll see classes dedicated towards the more basic more elementary ideas of the concepts and then you'll see classes that are more specialized that are more advanced honors AP uh if you go to English Department you literature of the Holocaust language with and culture philosophy and literature all these specializations AP music theory and music Tech are the specializations of our music departments and what the courses they can offer it feels unfair that the board might find it acceptable to potentially discourage any musically talented students who may want to pursue those specialized and unique electives in the music department I raise these concerns because I know how much our music department has to constantly push whether it's the marching band for crucial field practice time whether it's the mpa raising fun raiser after fundraiser after fundraiser just to make up for the sparse funding the department receives or whether it is to even find new students who are interested in Rolling for music programs because they had no idea that our music department had anything to offer besides basic courses I know students who go to the school who have an interest in music who have talent who can play instruments but they aren't involved in the music department to such a high extent as like you guys probably would have want um there students here who didn't even know about half of these music classes until their junior or senior year simply because there wasn't enough Outreach to them when they first arrived here to convince them that hey the music department has more to offer than just playing a trumpet once a week um I think that you should take these concerns and take them seriously thank you thank you Mr V [Applause] anyone else goad hello hi my name is Michael McKay and I am a sophomore here at pasc Hills I'm here to about the talk I'm here to talk about the decision to cut some music classes here at pascy Hills I am a proud member of this pasy Hills music department I strive to be as much in as much programs as I can be and I just am not happy with the decision to cut music theory I believe as a music major hopefully wanting to go for music performance I'm going to need it as many future music majors are going to need it to get into college I've heard from my friends that they're going to need music theory they're going to need a whole lot of music stuff that you possibly could be taking away from them because I've heard from them that you're going to need music theory to audition you need it for when you're in the classes you need it for when you want to succeed in this field when you audition for this when you audition for the music department it's a whole other process besides just going into the school you have to audition to get into the music department where you have to where you have to play three different instruments and know the scales and know what you're doing what and this is all that music theory is going to teach you over this past spring break I have talked to four College music departments including the University of Florida and Florida State University where they have all all unanimously said that I should take music theory now so I am better prepared for when I am in the classes so I can get the major I want also it benefits me as a music student where I can do better in some of my required music classes in college and not fall behind I try to work very hard with my parents Mr Caso Mrs Punam and Mr door and Mrs elen to set me up for success for my future career by taking music theory it helps me expand my musical knowledge and help me understand what the song is asking me to do I am looking to grow my per my percussive abilities by getting better at instruments like the maima where I hope to apply these scales and techniques when I am in performances and this is stuff that music theory teaches me if these classes are cancelled I will and I if these classes if these classes were cancelled I was offered an AP music theory class online but personally I need the extra help that an inperson class is going to give me because I have an IEP and sometimes the online classes aren't going to be enough for me to understand what is going on I need that extra one-on-one time to actually break down what is going on and actually learn how to do the proper techniques and stuff I am a percussionist and it is harder for me me to learn some of this stuff because I haven't learned any of it really at all I've only known how to bang things and people clap for me but now that I need music theory for mimba and all this other stuff I need music theory so in conclusion if this is taken away from me is it's going to only hurt me in college and my future career thank you thank you Mr McKay [Applause] I'll sign in my name is Phil Langer I'm Owen's Dad we're from woodcliffe Lake and uh I just wanted to thank you guys for hearing us uh I'll just kind of summarize what I've kind of taken away from today um and and in a in a broad sense it's it's you're dealing with a lot of passionate people musicians artists and uh no surprised that they're going to kind of get uh get get passionate about this this uh situation uh what I saw tonight what was very interesting to me and I didn't write anything down I didn't plan to speak but um was especially hearing the the budget presentation uh from before was that uh this this uh School uh obviously puts a lot of um value in a in a athletic uh turning out great athletes and I think that's great and there's a lot of value and probably a lot of support in the community for that um what my question would really be to the group is how do those priorities Get Set uh with regard to other uh potential uh in this case Arts uh uh activities and budgets expenditures uh because it does seem like from an outsider's kind of point of view that we're we're putting all the eggs in a in an athletic basket from a financial standpoint um and and you know that's great I I applaud great athletes but I would also say there's a lot of value also myself as a a someone who's received a great Arts based uh education uh in Creative problem solving uh you know all sorts of you know benefits that come through an artistic education um so what I would actually just just question how do we do we want to send the message that we are putting all our eggs in the athletic basket or do we want to be more Diversified with our offerings and if we are interested in creating better Arts programs um I would say doing it by asking the students to Rally or asking the teachers to come up with some great idea to revolutionize this program it's not going to happen uh if it doesn't take if if you don't get development proactive financial support uh we're not going to have a program that's going to rival a lot of our neighboring towns uh music programs Arts programs so um I would just say you know don't look for the students to start it don't look for a handful of teachers to start that Revolution but it's got to come from a lot of proactive uh Financial uh sources uh or it's just not going to happen um I I I love going to the football games but there's got to be more than that so uh that's that's where I'm leaving it thank you thank you Mr Langer hi James guy Montville New Jersey let me sign in thank you for letting us go first so hopefully we'll we'll stop speaking after this point so you can get on before midnight um my son already spoke uh with the NYU shirt so you heard most of the you know pretty eloquent explained why how music is important to him and the passion that you've seen here just hearing the presentations tonight there was a lot of them and but there was a lot of good information it's quite surprised to see enrollment going down so much over the last five years for pasc Hills and pasc Valley and uh even the expected next year being even reduced further by another 50 students and uh you know it hearkens back to what antonet said earlier too is it you know are kids going to the private schools why are they going toiv private schools is it because they're offering more art uh and other types of curriculum there that we don't have here at in the Pas Valley or PAs Hills schools um so I know that the math is not there from what I heard earlier right even beyond the 2025 calendar year or school year having four teachers going forward I have some concerns unless enrollment increases in those curriculum for uh music what's going to happen to those two and teachers at each of the schools but I think in order to before you get to that point you just need to focus on how can we increase engagement and get more students involved in music and I heard some of the outreaches I know the teachers El and Andor here at Hills or trying to reach out to the younger students at Fieldstone trying to get them interested as well but I think there is some education and and I and I get it right our our kids that are graduating right now in class of 2024 they're the covid kids they their freshman year was a disaster there was nothing there sophomore year they barely figured out where they were going in the school and then it was Junior and Senior year by the time they really figured out their place here and I think it is you know increasing awareness as they're coming in that there are classes for them and you know as was mentioned previously and I've done the same thing now with with my son traveling all over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic going to all these colleges I'm an engineer by training all this music stuff is totally foreign to me of having to apply to a school and then applying again to a second part of the school so you could accept get accepted one place but not get accepted in the other area and then performing and having to create portfolios and interviewing and we were driving back and forth all over in the Northeast to these different schools it's it's very hard it's challenging but all of them as you heard before all say the same thing you know we expect them to have music theory we expect them to have this they have to expect them to have that in all these preferences otherwise these kids are at a disadvantage going to any of these colleges whether it's a top school or you know an entry-level school for any type of music performance singing performing uh instruments composing Etc so thank you you know as you consider and I know blot we talked about that there would be a proposed curriculum and every five years you're looking at redoing certain curriculums music is coming up on the on the plate and as you consider what you want to do with with music please take that in consideration for those students who want to go on into that field and then to how can you increase engagement with I understand there's other reasons why enrollment is down but really could it be also related a little bit to the art side as well if we promote it we do a great job with robotics and and languages and and all these other areas but what about music and art and and some of those other fields because as you heard earlier it's not always for everybody having once my older son who did Sports he played football here he played uh track and field and did all of that and then I have my my other son who's on the complete opposite side of the spectrum and and very on the arch side so there's there's got to be something for everybody and my son mentioned there's a lot of friends that are in music but they don't actively participate in the music classes here why is that too I think you really need to take a a look into that thank you thank you Mr guy would anyone else like to speak hello my name is Lily plechner I'm a resident of Woodcliff Lake and I am a senior at Hills I wanted to talk about the importance of the music department here at Hills as a non-music major I applied to colleges this fall and my involvement in the music department is was a was a great asset to my application it was part of the reason I got so many acceptances and even Scholarships in fact the admissions officer at one select of college told me in my acceptance letter that my involvement in the music department is what shown in my application I also know that social emotional well-being is a key value at Hills and the music department provides that for many personally band has been a way for me to de-stress from academics and has given me a family and I know that many other students Within the Music Department feel the same way I know this doesn't necessarily pertain to the possibility of cutting music classes but if we do cut music tech and music theory what will come next for the music department and even other Arts related classes I wanted to emphasize the importance of the music department being given the proper resources as many other departments are thank you thank you [Applause] clner would anyone else like to speak okay I think that's everyone thank you for the comments from the public uh next we have policy we have five consent a agenda items uh can I get a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr usami M Calderone yes Mrs Swang yes Mr Lisi Mrs Martin yes Mr stankis yes yes Miss stefins yes Mrs Vargis yes next we have five consent agenda items on education can I get a motion please so move second second roll call uh any discussion will call please Mr Yami Miss Calderon yes Mrs Swang yes Mrs Maron yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stepin yes Mrs barese yes next we have human resources we have 26 consent agenda items can I get a motion please so move second any discussion will call please Mr Yami Miss Calderone yes Mrs sang yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stephin yes Mrs vgis yes so I just want to make a comment we actually have Dr hesy here in the audience so I just wanted to uh say congratulations um if you want to just come up here real quick I'll uh I'll introduce you very quickly absolutely thank you for coming absolutely so Dr hne was obviously just approved as our director of special education here in the district if you want toang sure yeah yeah of course of course thank you so much thank you for com appreciate the opportunity next for finance we have 23 consent agenda items uh can I get a motion please so second any discussion roll call please Mr Yami Miss Calderone yes Mrs Wang yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss stefin yes Mrs VES yes next we have old business anyone have any go ahead I do want to thank you for bringing the representative for the cell tower cell information and I think that that's great that we have some options coming our way so I really do appreciate that next we have new business okay we are going to skip the second andless there's anyone here who's speaking on non-agenda items no okay uh can I get a motion to enter into executive session please so moved second second you did it okay so now I think it'll be about 5 minutes and action may be taken afterwards I'm going to ask um Dr hne do you mind just hang out until after executive session um and then everybody else if you guys would or actually everybody uh if you guys would uh just uh wait in the hallway until we're done like I said I think this will only be about five minutes and then uh you can come back in e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e to go back into public session please second I don't need okay we are back in public session okay and then just okay uh can I get a motion for adjournment please so move second we are adjourned