##VIDEO ID:WTs2aCoqLqs## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e here miss Ma Mr mmud here miss brogen here please join me in a flag Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alleg flag the United States of America to the rep here miss broen here please join me in a flag pledge leg flag pursuant to the requirements of the open public meetings act advanced notice has been given to the Star Ledger the record and the clerk of the village of Ridgewood in addition notices were posted in the office of the board secretary and in all school buildings so welcome to our August uh meeting um we um are going to have our presentations after comments from the public if there are any comments from the public uh we'll take that now there's no one here U making comments it doesn't appear that anyone is waiting we have a second comment period at uh towards the end of the meeting so if that uh suits anyone you can do your comments then otherwise I'll close com uh public comment and we'll go to presentations Dr schores good evening everyone thank you so much for joining us for those who are here in person but also those who are attending remotely or are viewing a recording of the meeting very pleased to introduce our first presenter tonight we have Mrs Ashley anmo who is our 612 math supervisor she has been doing a lot of great work with us over the last year especially um and today she is going to be presenting on our computer science curriculum and program review uh very interesting topic so thanks so much for joining us Mrs zembo and uh before we give the floor Mr Freedman did you have anything that you wanted to uh I don't want to take to steal the Thunder here I know that you've been working with membo on a lot of these only that I'm looking forward to the presentation all right Mrs enimo the floor is yours okay so tonight I'll be presenting our fiveyear computer science program review so I'll start with what those five years look like so year one of the program review actually was last year and that is where the computer science department did a lot of research from comparable districts and resources professional development and other opportunities to of how we can grow our computer science program here in Ridgewood year two actually started this summer with curriculum writing for our new cyber security course which will begin this fall and then throughout the year we'll be doing continued research and professional development on courses that we can potentially offer for our middle school which I will be start discussing later in the presentation year three and four is monitoring the effectiveness and making suggestions for curriculum revisions or new courses or even the course um progression for our computer science program for grades 6 through 12 then year five the final year of our program review we'll be analyzing um data and how our courses went collecting additional feedback and deciding what will our program goals be for the next program review sorry uh asle you said it's the curriculum the U the course is only a cyber security course is what we updated as of right now it's just the cyber security course that will be starting this fall that's you're saying that's all we have or that's what we're adding that's what we're adding will everything else be examined as well yes everything was examined so the one thing that we have implemented coming this fall is the cyber security so we did our curriculum writing this summer and then we'll be continuing to kind of develop our curriculum for the following year for our Middle School I'm sorry so do we have a course in middle school now we do have two courses in the middle school now but we're I'm making recommendations for how we can improve our course um progression for middle school and even add in additional courses and those the courses that we have in Middle School are offered to all students or are they the electives so right they're electives so one of them is a required elective for seventh grade and the other one is an optional one thank you I think you'll see and I printed the presentation this time too so you have it in front of you um so year one research study process is we research the current c um computer science programs in surrounding comparable districts we explored instructional resources and materials to support student learning so that included code.org which we already used and we were exploring some of their new courses that they have codehs and then we actually piloted a program called skill struck this year in the Middle School um we held articulation meetings between middle school and high school computer science teachers and we collected feedback from teachers students and parents also this year we actually sent two High School teachers to attend the 3day cyber.org conference so this conference was three days and it had tons of workshops that the teachers had an option to choose which ones they wanted to go to which was very nice because a lot of the ones that they chose to go to were an intro to cyber security in preparation for our new courses but when we have workshops that have so many options and you can really choose what aligns with what you're going to be teaching the following year or something as a computer science teacher you want to expand on you have the option of going to all different workshops so in the future we would like to get some of our Middle School teachers to be able to attend this Workshop as well how many we sent two this year yes and I did find pictures on their website of the teachers but other dist I like scrolled through 200 photos and I found them but then there was other teachers in there so I did not add it to the presentation but this photo is from that presentation I mean that uh Workshop so the standards guiding the study are the 2020 New Jersey uh student learning standards for computer science and design thinking so these standards are intended to promote the development of curricula and learning experiences that reflect vision and mission of computer science and design thinking Foster greater coherence and appropriate progressions across grade bands prioritize the important ideas and core processes that are Central to Computing and having lasting value beyond the classroom and then reflect the habits of mind Central to technology that lead to post-secondary success so our current middle school program consists of a seventh grade required quarter course called technology literacy and then we also have an optional quarter course elective called multimedia a our current course offer offerings in the high school we have six computer science courses including web development cyber security which will be beginning this school year computer programming honors AP principles of computer science AP Computer Science a and advanced topics of computer science so we have two AP offerings which is the most that um College Board actually offers right now and then we also have two high school computer science clubs it's girls who code and the computer Club haved in all three it's that same course but it's any St yes so what I try to do is create the pathways so it's a visually a little bit easier to understand for people because a lot of times they were just in one pathway and it looks like there's only one Pathway to take with computer science some of the courses have prerequisites some of them don't so a lot of times their everyone's path might look very different in computer science so right now for ninth graders they had the option of web development or cyber security and then for 10th graders they would have the option of either web development cyber security if they didn't take that as a nth grader they can take computer programming honors or AP principles of computer science which also doesn't have any prerequisites um and then as a senior they also have the addition of AP Computer Science a and advanced topics of computer science just a a quick question so the AP Computer Science a that's a followup to AP principles of computer science is that like part two so you as long as you have Computer Science Background you can take computer science a um so out of the two the AP principles of computer science there's no prerequisites you can take it without having any prior exposure but AP um computer science a you do so but a lot of times students won't have taken the principles they might go right from computer programming honors right to the AP Computer Science a understood um I know at some point there was some a small group of kids that were looking for the second part is this it is this the or you know what I'm talking about there were a bunch of kids that were looking for another class I thought it was an AP Computer Science what we they were looking for was the advanced topics of computer science and what I'll talk about that with the enrollment because I have on diagram in here you'll see the enrollment for that course okay and how some of the suggestions that we're making will actually hopefully make that possible in the future with more kids having access to that course by the time they get I I just didn't know if this was the same one as that okay thank that's the course is Advanced topics so can I ask you something on the um AP Computer Science a you said that there are prerequisites they have to have computer science exposure so they will have had to take either computer programming honors or web development they just have had they just need prior computer science experience can can students um demonstrate um uh that by not in the briwood high school but if they took a summer program yes we have had students do that as well so here are some course data that I pulled for the last five years for course enrollment so what you'll see is the enrollment in the high school computer science elective courses has actually increased by 55% in The Last 5 Years so in 2019 2020 we had a total of 152 students enrolled in a a computer science elective and the anticipated enrollment for this upcoming school year is 235 students in one of our computer science electives um also enrollment in the AP Computer in one of the AP Computer computer science courses has also increased by 80% from 2020 to this upcoming school year so in 2019 2020 we had 99 students enrolled in one of the AP courses and then this upcoming school year we have 178 students enrolled so can you um I saw this chart earlier when I saw it what struck out to me was the fact that the computer programming Honors that dipped while everything else has increased particularly in the AP which does not have a prerequisite which is the AP Computer Science principles everything else follows what one would expect based on what you're saying the what is going on with that computer programming honor specifically I think a little bit of that would be because more students are going into AP Computer Science principles as sophomore so typically students would take the web development like in the past before cyber security web development would have been that freshman year course and students now can take the AP principles as a sophomore so a lot of them try to get those AP courses in earlier so they can actually go right to the AP principles so as that's increasing some of our other courses are naturally going to start to decrease and then on this slide I have the AP exam result for the last I was only able to pull for the last three years because the two years before that were covid years we do not have data for that um so the you'll see the AP Computer Science principles um for most years we were 90% or above with a grade with a score of a three or higher and then in AP Computer Science a again we were 90% or above with a three or higher so collecting feedback we collected feedback from our current computer science program from 6 through 12 students parents and Guardians as well as the computer science department so feedback from students and parents for grades 6 through eight students and parents would like to see more comp computer science offerings at the middle school level and they feel there's a need for more coding courses Beyond block-based programming such as python JavaScript and other programming languages and then parents would also like to see an incorporation of security awareness and practical technology use feedback from students and parents in grades 9 through 12 feel that there is a strong desire for an increase in computer science elective options beyond what we're currently offering there also were suggestions for evaluating and updating our current course offerings to address topics and skills relevant to today's world this one was a big one we had a lot of them and it is true I feel like with computer science our department needs to be open to constantly looking at our curriculum because things are changing very quickly and even if we're still covering similar topics it might NE it might be the resources or the activities that we're doing to explore those topics so Ash go um I I understand that point about there's a lot of interest but the and and what you said um Dove tales with that in that there is interest but the enrollments are not there for the non-aps so I don't know if one of the considerations is for example the computer programming honors it that was available in ninth grade maybe that will open open up the population who is interested because certainly other than the aps which has had the dramatic growth web development and cyber security they've actually decreased over time the growth has all been fueled by the AP and I don't know if it's part of the whole um desire to demonstrate AP in a transcript for college you know I don't know if that's feeding into it but it's not for lack of offerings it's a lack that it's being concentrated yes I AG great and I do have suggestions for how we can increase computer science um the computer programming honors for freshmen which I'll describe in my Pathways for when I introduce what we what I'm suggesting for middle school I'll be able to share how that will impact the courses in the high school and their access to courses and that I think kind of goes with even the second both points one and two kind of go together we have to re-evaluate our courses is web develop web development as it's decreasing is that still the course we want to offer is that a curriculum we want to re-evaluate and maybe offer something that might be more relevant to today in what students are interested in and then also gaining more access as for freshman for the computer programming honors yeah then there's no AI for example I know that that's a very hot topical very very you know current desire that may not you know as it gets developed but I'm saying you know you're right um and parents have suggestions about increasing Afterschool computer science clubs and creating opportunities for students to participate in computer science science internships so summary of the feedback from staff is they feel that there is a need for improving the middle school computer science program to include mandatory elective courses um middle they feel middle school students should have opportunities for more physical Computing to Pro provide more meaningful learning experiences by creating connections between abstract ideas of coding and tangible outcomes and teachers expressed appreciation and desire for continued collaboration between both middle schools and high schools and high school um High School teachers also would like to see additional computer science electives offered including the advanced topics which we haven't been able to run in a few years as well as new courses in the future so recommendations for middle school for 2024 to 2028 I'm recommending the continued collaboration between Middle School teachers to create the alignment and the equity between the Middle Schools I'm to propose a new computer science course pathway for grades 6 through 8 which I will discuss on the next slide and then consider the purchase of microbit kits which actually will align with one of the courses I'm recommending um for the middle school so the microbits are little pocket sized computers that students will be able to do programming on the computer and then it the microbits will respond to whatever they're designing so I actually had the opportunity to observe one of those lessons and the students enjoyed it and it was very you could differentiate very easily so the students were working in pairs and some of them um so a microbit is like this little computer that has little lights on it and you can tell it what to do from your computer so some students were creating like a little story they had a dog walking and then a person a home and a heart and then another pair actually did Rock Paper Scissors with it and they had said it that they were able to shake the microbit and when it stopped it would land on one of those and they can actually play from microbit to microbit or they can play from microbit to another student so the students absolutely loved the lesson so you can see there's a lot they can do with it especially in a quarter course another recommendation is to comp U plan a computer science night for elementary and middle school students so this would be to promote engagement and excitement about computer science for students before they get to middle school or before they get to high school um and as well as continue to research and evaluate potential course options for curriculum in the middle school so here is my current recommendation for the middle SCH School course Pathways and so these are just the current recommendations the final courses would be presented at the November curriculum board curriculum meeting but what we're recommending is a required quarter course for computer science Explorations in sixth grade so what this course would cover is the JavaScript is introducing students to what careers are in computer science as well as the basics of programming then another required course for seventh grade students which would be more of that physical computing with microbits and then an optional quarter course elective on coding and game design with python so we based the required and the optional based on what we know is possible with the middle school schedule so where we because they can only fit so much into their schedule so we do know we can fit in a required course for sixth grade and seventh grade but we weren't able to do it for e8th grade so that's where it becomes two Pathways which I'll show you on the next slide okay why don't okay so how would the pathways impact computer science access in high school so there would be two Pathways there would be the pathway of the students taking just the required courses for sixth and seventh grade and if they don't take that optional course in eth grade their options for ninth grade would be web development and cyber security the second pathway are students take those two required courses and then they choose to take that optional elective and eighth grade for Pro um with python for the game design with python and then that would gain access for computer programming honors which would increase it so in the past few years computer programming honors only had about four freshmen in it so once we create this pathway that's going to increase I think again with the computer programming honors if there are students who take uh courses outside of school or in the summer they can demonstrate do they they test into computer programming honors they demonstrate so we that's how in the past we've had those like four students who have gotten into that program it's students who had actually gone out of District to take a course or do a summer program and that's how they were able to gain access into computer programming honors and we wanted to design in a way that you shouldn't have to go out of District you should have access to these courses based on the curriculum that we're offering here but yes if they do not take it it doesn't fit in their schedule they want to take an another elective they can always do the same thing we done in the past if they took a course somewhere else recommendations for high schools Contin continue to research and evaluate potential course options for high school students we have our cyber security course starting for 2024 2025 school year consider a proposal for data science for 2526 which is a nice course for aligning the math and the computer science together and then the potential for an advanced cyber security 2 course in the future and all of this will depend on again like we mentioned earlier the numbers and the courses that we're offering making sure that we can run courses research dual enrollment opportunities for eligible computer science courses evaluate and adapt course offerings from 6 through 12 vertical alignment of ESS essential computer science skills increase the opportunity for computer science related field trips and guest speakers develop a high school computer science academy so this is something we've started laying out now we do not have it finalized but we would hope to have it started by next year but if not next year the following year continue to support teachers participating in the cyber.org conference and other beneficial professional development opportunities so something I wanted to share as well is we do want to increase our Outreach so we had talked about doing a computer science night of getting students excited about computer science before they get to the high school um we had the girls who code visit Google for a field trip last year I would like to expand that Beyond just the girls who code program and have even just people who are students who are in the classes be able to to take um these field trips but the students were able to meet with software Engineers who worked on speech recognition and YouTube and learned about careers and Technology the girls who code last year and we are planning it again for this year actually visited the middle schools for the seventh and eth grade and they were able to meet with those classes and they they were the ones doing the microbit activities with them and they're doing that to get them excited about computer science they also did a whole presentation about the computer science offerings in the high school too so it was really great for eth graders before we did it in November last year we'd like to do it in November again but those eth graders to see what is what what's available to them before they go for their course selections I believe in January or February so a summary of our major recommendations would be to propose a new computer science course Pathways for Middle School increased collaboration for with teacher with teachers between middle school and high schools to support the vertical articulation of the computer science program focus on computer science exposure outside of the classroom including field trips guest speakers and dual enrollment opportunities as well as develop a high school computer science academy than thank you Ashley for the um few few comments first of all thank you great job I think this was definitely on on the right path I would say you know this is a very interesting uh and important department or U Focus area because this is one of the largest growing uh Fields coming up in our in our future um so I do have some just thoughts and suggestions to share um and I think you alluded to this I mean the world is changing so much where I think if if we can get our teachers in the mindset that actually every year we should be looking because right now we have the fiveyear right model here and that might be fine for math or Ela or whatever but with computer science it's really not me the world is so different five years and you alluded to it here I would just say like we can re-evaluate course offerings every year that will be very very important yes uh you know some thoughts that come to me is just looking at the course enrollments and even the nature of the courses maybe make sense to act some and add more exciting ones you know like web development is a little bit of an older topic it's not as popular you can actually see the enrollment has gone down in that one if people don't see value in the programming honors and maybe they're just going right into AP because they're saying hey if I'm going to take a computer programming class anyway why not get AP credit for it maybe we ask that one as well uh and then there are a lot of other topics that we're not covering right AI which is you know could be an intro to Ai and AI is really a different computer programming type uh approach anyway uh or you allude it to as well data science or data transfer e ETL um and there's a whole other world of just cloud computing as well right that's the world of Amazon Google and so there's a lot of topics that I think there's a lot you can do and especially as we grow the middle school program and students are coming in with so much more exposure to computer science and I feel like our our courses in the high school are going to become more advanced and more dynamic because we can because we will know that all of these students have had two years of electives for computer science and some of them will be on the three-year electives of computer science so as we start every year I I agree we have to look at our curriculum whether the course stays the name of the course and we shift some of our units but we have to keep evaluating it because it's it's going so quickly you can hardly keep up with it but I I will say we have a lot of very enthusiastic computer science teachers and we are getting another new one this year for the middle school so we're very excited with um her background with computer science as well thank you um I would just say um um in addition to you know as you reevaluate the courses it I'm just thinking broadly in terms of what the um college application process is like there is um a desire to have as many APS as possible for the most competitive schools so I don't know like I said I don't know if that's feeding into the enrollment numbers that you're seeing it could be the pathway wasn't so um uh transparent and now you're creating a more much more concrete pathway so just the thought that maybe as you look at it it could be that um if you just simply name renamed computer programming to AP I bet you your moment will be there I mean it's something like that so I just really want to be um cons mindful of the AP load and and providing that opportunity for all the students um and the second thing is um on um as you as you mentioned uh I just want that policy to be um very publicly uh stated in terms of if you don't see it on the paper in terms of access that you may be able to demonstrate um aptitude for that for that um entry into a class even if you have not taken the prerequisite it sounds like there were certainly some households that were aware of that policy but I do think that for especially people who are entering the newer students they may not realize that actually that you know maybe it's an aster as long as you can demonstrate you can opt into X Y and Z because that's that's a really important point because it's you know if we have incoming students or even students in middle school that maybe didn't even know or care and now want to take this in high school that's the the downside or the danger of the pathways I agree with you Pathways important but the downside is that it also creates a lot of uh prerequisites that students were will assume are hardcoded I can't get so too bad I can't take this class now and so you might start to limit some students somehow we just have to message it yeah you know that can be provide or recommended prerequisites or whatever okay and they op you to demonstrate testing or whatever you know that there's a way to get into it even if it's not explicitly stated and even just speaking with the guidance counsel very too because they meet with the students as they're building their schedule so I will I will put on my on my calendar to meet with them annually too because certain households I mean certain parents maybe it's their second or third child so they know oh you know what I know this may say that in the handbook but I think I can talk to XY not everyone's going to be that comfortable to do that yes no I I see it in the math world too A lot of times when you had a child that went through the program you're aware of a lot more than a new parent and so I've been trying to do that on the m M side so I do agree with you it has to be done on this side as well one more just thought as well you also yeah you captured it in the feedback from the Middle School parents but so a lot of this is career Readiness and future but then there's another I think element that's important for the world of computer science which is like just basic life skills awareness uh my wife and I chat sometimes that in a way our generation is actually is actually more Tech aware than our children because we grew up in world of understanding what is a CPU what is RAM right what is an IP address what is a MAC address basic security what is the intern how does the internet really work actually these kids actually don't have that they just go on their phone they click and everything is there but some of those skills are important because when you need to understand privacy or your privacy settings on on Insta or what is Tik Tok and everything you put out there is permanent when it goes to the anyone can dig it up right what is caching or web history when someone uh research you when you're applying for a job I mean there's so many like basics of tech and it that they're not aware of uh that's just going to be good for their their mental health their their future yes and I feel like that would probably need to be embedded into every single course and they do do digital citizenship in sixth grade but they again it's always changing and growing too and there's new things you need to learn about it so it does need to be embedded yearly as well I don't know why you would wait until sixth grade as soon as the kids have their hands on a chrome chome book they should be aware of digital citizenship you give you're AR you're giving them you're arming them with something that could yeah so I I would do it in tandem with the distribution of these tools what grade do we know what grade they so we give Chromebooks in elementary but email is not available until 6th grade yeah the web web browser is you can't wait for just the email to be assigned to a student I think once you once you give a Chromebook I think as a district we have a responsibility to teach uh responsible usage and um digital I love that word digital citizenship just awareness of of the downfalls as well as the of using so um for me uh from my side first of all thank you for a great presentation um I don't have any um critiques I just have few pointers to add to your thought process from um uh and you may have already like for example when I you were making the presentation I was thinking that students who are going to go for rap or amstad they may not be able to take this course and there's a there's a competitive Spirit to go into an academy and you already mentioned that you are thinking of an academy so you you probably are already thinking about most of the things that I'm going to say um first is I think we should have hired you 25 years ago in this District so so uh with the math and computer science all the uh changes that you're bringing in the district so these are some of these are way overdue so thank you for uh all of your hard work on that um the so Academy would be important because otherwise the students may be inclined to opt for compete for one of the academies and once you get into those then you don't have a room for elective so when I talk about room for elective um a lot of high schools in New Jersey offer eight periods or eight classes and I think we have seven classes am I correct there yeah so we we have to have a free so we have only seven classes and most of the colleges uh when you talk to College counselors they want to see five classes all four years which is your English your foreign language your math uh social studies and a science class so those five are um they they they want to see those five throughout all four years as consistency so and I think in ninth grade we you are showing some of the courses on nth grade but I don't remember if the students have an option to take electives in nth grade I think nth grade is pretty much isn't it pretty much said n9th grade no they if I you would know better than me but don't they at least have one elective I I know that they do because we do have n remember my I remember my daughter taking electives just you know but they are limited by the other program they're limited so then then what then what happens is when they they like to take band or any other activities and they also start getting limited on the electives and So within we have two electives and with with those two electives we have a lot of good course offerings so students are always they want to take more but we have too many good offerings in Arts and Sciences and and now you're adding computer science also so uh this we'll need strong guidance for the students to what to take and I think we'll have to come up with some sort of goals that there can be three different goals for as a district one is students who want to make a career in computer science and go to colleges in computer science so we have if we are giving them half biged uh computer science courses they may not be able to compete with other students because that's one of the most competitive college majors so those students who really want to Target for computer science major they may need all the opportunities then we Prov probably need a basic that every student that is graduating from our schools need to know minimum math minimum English minimum um a third language and some sort of computer science they should not go blind about computer science that everybody needs some computer science and then I think some students are also these days thinking about going into a career after 12th grade they may not want to go to college that's a new newer Trend so can there be some courses that are specific to Salesforce service now those type of things that people can get some enough knowledge on computer science that they can go and work in industry or something so I don't know what would be the goals but we have as a district we need what is our goal why are we teaching these are are we doing for Literacy for everybody or towards computer science major like awareness computer science major or we are making them ready for the workforce after 12th grade um I and I think somehow we'll have to figure that out that how does that fit with other courses if somebody like the the whole um guidance and seven periods and any as hju said anywhere where it's there's AP students will probably take those so those two courses everybody is going to want to take it if they are going for college major for computer science because those APS look good on their resume and um so I wouldn't focus on expanding to too many things if we are just doing the basics of computer science like mmud said that the basics everybody should know those Basics so you you read one of the feedbacks about Python and Java being block programming languages and oldfashioned but people still need to know those so I think people need to know the so if we if you do a good job in the basics and make them good computer science person for the what we are teaching instead of trying to teach them too many things and um they go solid on those and generate interest in those I think uh we'll do good job but again these are all just my Rand as you speaking I was like I should put him on the conversation for the Academy but um yeah these are just my random thoughts you already doing amazing job and again you should have been here 25 years ago thank you no I appreciate that and then um even for the certification we would like to have some courses that align with students being able to have the knowledge that they can take a certific certification test to be certified because some students are going one it might look good for colleges as well and to some students might go right into that career path as well given everything we've just discussed it's a good thing that you've got the four years right to really build it out and I really appreciate everything that you've said and done today um so I wanted to thank you for that and you know just kind of to Echo I agree that and on the one hand you need to be looking at it it almost feels like every three months right because something's always changing and on the other hand the overarching goals of the program will probably I would think might take more than a year or something just to really get to where we want to be but you've done an amazing amount of work um in a short period of time um between this and everything you've done on math wow so uh thank you I just want to thank you very much for so if I'm understanding this correctly uh this really doesn't go into effect the some of your courses in the middle school until next year since you're yes it will take time BR them right yeah we want to finalize what the curriculum is going to be like but we also want to make sure our teachers are prepared to teach them so to to have a teacher take on three new courses that are in computer science next year would be a lot on them so what we need to do is once we finalize our curriculum start deciding which professional development we can start preparing them for this year to hopefully be able to implement maybe two of those courses next year to not overload them and and allow them the opportunity to be able to really implement the course 100% and really feeling confident to do so so it's it it will take time and like they were saying it's going to take a few years to kind of get everything into alignment with how we need it to be and then we'll have to reevaluate it again anyway but um it's going to take a few years for the proposals yeah it seems like a fiveyear cycle is long for for this particular subject um on your uh have you had the opportunity to to look at other schools and uh what they're offering um other h performing districts and and particularly your um Tech schools so a lot yeah I did look at some tech schools and that's where I got the certification idea because some of them have a computer science academy so I'm like okay then we can look into something like that so I looked into some tech schools that offer Computer Science Academy I also was looking at Ramsay they have a great computer science program for six through eight they have similar they have a game design they have coding so I tried to look into those comparable schools that I feel like have a strong computer science program program as well as the tech schools to see what we can offer that would make our students stand out on a transcript too and and um the point that was made about how the courses are named is important too because that's what that's all they're seeing we can't expect them to go read the course description so we have to really be strategic with how we're naming our courses as well right and um are you aware of what colleges uh or universities would accept a a du um enrollment and so you would get college credit so I looked into a few to try to get it for the cyber security because they do have cyber security in college however it's much more advanced cyber security because a lot of the schools you're going their program they're accredited schools for cyber for computer science so you have to meet certain expectations for their courses so if we were able to eventually have a computer science cyber security to that course might align with something that would be taken by the college but as we develop our courses like a data the data science course potentially I have to research to see which schools are offering that but that could potentially be a college course but so it's really looking into the colleges which ones are accredited programs because they're going to be a little bit more challenging to get into with computer science courses and as you build um an extracurricular um opportunities I know the high schools uh just begun to do the um internships at the end of the year for seniors in to programming um might that be an Avenue too that we could look at in terms of um any kind of computer work yes no I would really like to get some internships in there and I was gonna I was planning on reaching out to the Alumni Association to see if there was some connections I could make with maybe people that are working in the computer science field to either come in for our guest speakers to invite our students to come see their company or how computer science fits in and either potentially some internships similar to how the other Academy works just as a helpful hint so the president of the Alumni Association um is the inventor of cohort which is group spot which all the hsas use and last year he did have a student intern okay for him and that's his whole world okay Mark kic so I would most definitely contact him because I'm sure he'd be happy to extend the opportunity more than once that was really successful it was incredibly successful for the student and for him yes yeah as matter of fact he hired the student for the summer after it was that successful so and for computer science you would not have trouble in in this community if you send one email to our parents okay there are there are tons of parents who are in the computer science Industry in rewood and they would definitely uh step up for uh anything that you need from support perfect thank you that's great thank you so much is this presentation available anywhere online yes um Christine's gonna post it on the website okay she's on thank you thank you so much Mrs zembo and uh and credit to you credit to your team also I know a lot of teachers worked on that as well so credit to all those folks uh we're really excited for the way you're taking us very uh in a well some ways catching up but in many other ways also like really really leading our kids in the future well preparing our kids well for for this new world that we're in uh our next presentation is from Miss Christine corus Mrs corus is our public information officer and special projects manager and she is here to give the board a little walkthrough and the public little walkthrough of the new website she also accompanied me at my superintendent coffee which was held last Thursday where we more or less did the same presentation but we figured since we were giving it out to the public we would also give it out to the board and we welcome your your feedback and insights welcome thank you just I I just want to say that um you know we we talked about the new website um probably last November December and um and so it was important I thought to uh bring It Forward again for the board to see but also for the public to see and to have that presentation on online so thank you thank you not going we go um first I actually do want want to thank everybody so I've only been with the district about a year and a half it's hard to believe it's only been a year and a half I don't mean that negative it just seems like I've been here a lot longer um and right out of the gate it was one of the things I looked at was the website and I want to thank you because not knowing me the administration the board actually the whole school Community put their trust in the fact that here comes this person to change a website that had been in place for over a decade um it's now been in was in place for 12 years um so way overdue for a website cleanup it was a huge job um but without the support of everybody it would have been nearly impossible so thank you first I also do want to send a shout out I was um lucky enough to have a student at the high school Mark DWI I want to give him a shout out who volunteered because he wanted to learn how to do this um and he said can I come work for you I said I can't pay you he said I don't care so um he was great with all of the especially the tedious tasks of checking hyperlinks and um uploading photos and I would create a template and he would go through and make sure the template carried through so I do want to thank him as well because he really did make it possible for us to launch before the start of school so always great to have those talented students and he already asked if he could come back next year so I told him yes so I guess the you know some of them for first big questions are why did we need to do this other than the fact that it was old old isn't always a bad thing but in website design it kind of is so on top of just wanting to Rebrand and refresh and and make things look cleaner crisper more modern um we were very out of ADA compliance which I had mentioned in the past and with Governor Murphy's ordinance of January of 2021 we really needed to get our website as much compliant as we could the ordinance states that we have to 80% or more compliant per wcag 2.2 um right now we're at 95 we'll see how that goes um but I'm still putting in code to track it and and to monitor on a daily basis but we've got a really good start um and I will say that 5% is because we did have to carry over some documents and that's what we kind of need to work on next is the actual PDF kind of attachments and such that we're working with the other thing is user friendliness um and that's both both on the end user our community side as well as our staff side so when I did some research into the initial site um and I did it as a person who was actually coming to join the district I know when I was interviewed they said okay what do you think of our website and I said well at the risk of you not hiring me it's terrible um so it's it was hard to find things there were very long menus there were things hidden you know um rule of thumb for clicks on a website is you never go more than three deep sometimes it's hard to avoid that but you really try not to go more than three deep we were going in some cases like 10 Deep I'm not even exaggerating um and then again the menus were just so cumbersome and also on the staff side things weren't being updated regularly because it was difficult for them to update it it was a very outdated system it wasn't userfriendly so one of the reasons we did pick the platform we picked is it's easy for them to update um and I'm going to show you a little bit of that as we go through the other thing is we know apps are crucial the app for the old site it was old it was outdated it really wasn't helpful um the new app which I'm going to show you a little bit more on later is um much more user friendly um I was able to customize it to include things like Skyward which is one of the key things we know parents go and look for I'm working with pomptonian to uh every month or week depending I'm kind of letting them look at that right now they're going to be actually entering the lunch data so it'll be actually right on the app so you know what you're getting to eat that day um so much much easier to use compatible app that has the calendar the events Etc and then finally you know just content management and that's things like um PDFs and attachments and so my rule of thumb with a website is to truly try to avoid attachments where you can the r of them should be should be on the screen and that's both to minimize clicks as as well as just to make maintaining it easier if it's a huge document like a program of studies that's not going to work as easy but when it's something like here's your busing transportation guidelines or here's how to access Skyward there's no reason for that to be a PDF we just put it right on the screen so with this new website we moved a lot more right onto the website to get rid of some of those extra clicks and documents that people had to look at so there were two sides that I had to weigh when designing the website on the one side we wanted to use our colors we wanted to use our logos we wanted it to reflect our style and our branding and to look good right because if it doesn't look good kind of makes you not feel so good at the end of the day right um and the other side was the adaa compliance so that included things like our newly adopted District font there are a couple but the primary one is Poppins um the whole District in terms of the website and in terms of our letter heads in terms of everything we're sending out is for the most part we're still transitioning a few things but we're moving towards Poppins uh the reason for Poppins is similar to monra and Verdon um it's very Ada compatible but it also has proper letter recognition so things like your little a are written correctly so that's why we chose Poppins so that the letter like if you look at the small a in readability it's written like an a without the curly q thing on the top um Point size can't go what are we now what were we uh we were actually I changed us last year to monserat and Verdon which are also still compatible yeah in the past they were using times R all different things times and Roman aiel my my worst fear comic Sands which I've told everybody is a bad word and to cross it out but um that was it's a common one among Elementary they love that comic sand so we're still fighting the fight but we'll get there um Point size can't be less than 12 pixels this size automatically no matter who posts it the website will not allow you to go less than 12 pixels um so that you know some people get a little frustrated by that but it keeps it ADA Compliant the contrast has to be a 4.5 to one at minimum it depends a little bit on your point size um so there's also a limitation of colors you're not going to see pinks and purples unless it's super dark we've limited that they can only use the Branded District color on the website again I'm not big fan with the kindergarten teachers right now but they'll get used to it um and then readability order which is probably the hardest thing with compliance um is that a way a screen reader reads on a screen is not always the way you might think it would read so you have to make sure that one is one two is two three is three in terms of order so just because something looks aesthetically better in a certain configuration doesn't mean it's read able so this website will also help us prevent readability errors for screen readers so one of the main things when I started to organize the information is I wanted it to be easy for staff to find what they needed students to find what they needed and families to find what they needed and I wanted it to be consistent across schools and across levels meaning Elementary to Middle to high so um and I'll show you this when we go to a live but the Staff Pages staff resources student resources and Family Resources the top halves of those pages are exactly the same every school every level of school but that I mean those have access to your Atlas Rubicon to your um Master's library to your CSI for staff in terms where they can see paychecks so all of the information districtwide is in the same place on that main page for those three groups the other place they'll all find the information again it's the same districtwide is when you click on menu which is the I call it the hamburger icon it's the kind of the industry word for it the three lines um you'll get to this bottom section of the page now this happens to be the main page so it has a little bit more in it but all of the schools under our district have about us they all have academics they all have the resources repeated down at the bottom they have community and what you can't see here is there's actually um it's hidden by in my drop down I apologize is virtual backpack so that's something we moved to um because all of the schools were getting flyers from the community and you had 12 people sending out the exact same flyer and posting the exact same flyer with the design of the new website I can go in and I update those three resource pages and push it out to all 12 places so we don't have a duplication of effort I do the same with the virtual backpack I load the Flyers onto that page and it goes to all 12 schools at the same time but I can pick and choose so Alpha best wouldn't be at the high school but I can post it to all the schools where it would be appropriate same for other age appropriate things so I can pick out of the 12 different Landing sites because we made steps of school with the new website it's an official school um I pick which where the Flyers go and every school's en know how a link that goes to the virtual backpack from the enus so everybody's getting the same information at the same time related to that though it's different from the website every school is now sending out every school that sends an enw which is um is now sending it out on the same day at the same time Tuesdays 1M um and that's for Equity reasons we had a couple situations since I've been here where there were registrations and maybe it was limited while the school school that got their registration emails out first filled up the registrations and the other schools didn't get a chance by everybody getting it at the same time at least we level the playing field a little bit so it's a combined HSA and school en that goes out on Tuesdays at 1 and then reminders and such go out on the news and live feeds and group spot if it's HSA and I'm going to show you a little bit of that as we move forward so for um our staff these are the two primary things that I'm asking every school to update themselves that being said I can also push out the updates so what you see here the September 3rd being the first day of school the introduction of Richard Matthews the superintendent coffees and the distinguished alumni those were all things that I posted um and then I pushed them out to all the schools and I did that for them for the start of school there's even more summer reading school supplies Etc I did that so that when the secretaries who are primarily responsible for this came in they wouldn't be looking at this blank screen and panicking a little that it was new so I got them all started I've met with most of them one-on-one as well as they've had two virtual trainings super simple for them to update um I did send out a little reminder today to say don't forget we got to do news and live feed so the news is things that might be happening a week two weeks maybe even longer out in the future and you leave it there for a while your live feed would be a reminder so an example would be say it's Spirit Week at the elementary schools on the left-and side it might say spirit week is and the week it is and maybe have the whole week's activities loaded on the right hand of the live feed the secretaries could say and they can schedule this ahead of time any of this they can say don't forget today's Cowboy day don't forget tomorrow's photo day so it's little reminders in the live feed that um get bring that maybe that older information that got hidden or stale on the left and bring it more current on the right they can also from these two feeds either one they can also post to their districts I'm sorry their schools social media accounts their social media accounts are linked so with one press of the button they can go to either one of these plus social media and they actually can do one or both of these social media and a communication out via email Andor text so it's really simplifying the number of steps they do it's simplifying the amount of work and rep repetition to make their lives as easy as possible so some of the main changes that I did do on the website that are kind of outside of the template is I wanted to make it more warm more inviting more personal and that's of course through pictures so on sites especially um our this might actually be from our HR site um our human resources Pages our Athletics Pages all have kind of these Banners at the top our department Pages have a a different kind of design but they have a picture with the Department information so we really looked at icons images videos to warm it up and make it more personal um the creation of an information Hub and that's what I tend to call a website to me a website is your information Hub so if a communication goes out out and a parent can't find it in their email that information should reside on the website so that you don't have to worry about oh no I lost this everything should be here it acts as your backup it acts as your storage to remind people of what's coming up um we talked about the backpack and then um we did talk about the the page designs I Incorporated a lot of buttons and menus and I'll show you the Boe page Andor the Athletics page on the previous site as an example the Boe had 13 separate hyperlinks different icons different pages different menu options you are now one icon and when you press on that one there are about 10 buttons that then bring you to the webcast the meeting minutes uh anything else that's board related so we've kind of made it very simple for people they know it's something related to the Boe they find it all in one place we did the same thing with Athletics making a landing page that then has links to the schedule the spirit store Etc now hopefully this is going to work during the superintendent coffee some people had trouble hearing it um but we'll try it and see if it goes it just gives you a nice overview of the app and we'll cross our fingers introducing a brand new app for Ridgewood Public Schools it's everything Ridgewood public schools in your pocket this is the home screen tap the three horizontal lines in the bottom left to see all the menu items to turn on push notifications tap settings select notification preferences and allow notifications tap subscriptions to subscribe to your [Music] school the event section shows a list of events throughout the school you can use this button to add an event to your calendar or tap here to share the event with friends and family the feed is where you'll find updates from Administration about what's going on throughout the school search Ridgewood public schools New Jersey in the app store or Play Store to explore the app for yourself it's everything Ridgewood public schools in your pocket so you can see it's got a lot of things that are very customizable so if you're a parent with a student in three different schools you can pick just those three schools and see the information and you can do this on the website as well just for those three schools but it's nice when it's on your phone and you can't remember what time something is or where it is um the one thing when I did this video with them we didn't have Skyward on the app yet it is now the last button on there as well and we know that's a very common parent and I can continue to customize it if we find that parents are saying I wish this was on it it's something I can continue to um refine and improve quick question so I have the old Ridgewood Village School District app on my phone do I have to delete that and get a new one or will Del that and get a new one yes totally that was okay yeah so because we also as I think everybody knows we changed our domain name at the same time yeah okay um the technology department because we were going to a new website said it's the perfect time for us to change our very long people complain about um domain names so they put out I want to say we started with about 20 available domain names which it was really hard because there are so many ours there's Ramapo there's Ramsey there's Riverdale there's Riverdale there's so we did have a hard time identifying available domain names but we put it out to vote um and that's how we got the RPS nj. [Music] us to the next screen all right so I did want to give a little bit of a live tour just to show you guys some of what I talked about I do have a note at the top asking people just to be patient with me as I continue to refine things um the old website is still up through December 1st did that for two reasons one we knew people would still be going there and since we did have the two domains it made it easy for us to do it um we knew they would still be going there we wanted to be able to redirect them here so there is an alert on the old one and two if there was something that because this site was just massive to migrate it's definitely the biggest site I've ever done um I wanted to make sure that if somebody said I don't see this that I had a resource to easily pull it um and move it if we hadn't so for the next few months we'll just be making sure that nothing's been missed um I do want to point out one of the little customizations I did you can see over here these little finger tabs there's actually five of them but it's cutting off I guess because of the transference um we put five things there that we thought and this was committee everything was committee decided which was great we had a great Committee of people um things that anybody would need whether you were a current Ridgewood family or not so about us was you know generic information student registration there's an alumni tab there um and I am working with alumni to build that up we have a whole big alumni page now which is really nice and I just got called by two more um years that they're planning events and could they get on our page so I know people are looking which is great um the pictures are right now they're all mine um and primary reason is um a I like a kind of certain look but b um phone images don't always transfer well so I go around with the bigger camera and we'll continue to do that to update images throughout the year um here's the Board of Ed icon that I mentioned is it's on the same it's on every page it looks the same on every page and everything board ofed related is on this one page so no matter what people are looking for that's related to the board of ed it's a series of buttons and then all of your contact information so real simple to use um real simple to find without having to wonder which Board of Ed button to press on the homepage or on some submenus the resources pages that I mentioned are all I've went to a very icon uh graphical type of look so these are the prim primary icons that were either on the old page or that they asked me to add um this whole point that part that you see here is on every single school's student page if you were to go to another school and we can do that from the school button up here I'll just show you I know for a fact we've done some stuff at George Washington if we go to the same tab on theirs you'll see exactly the same so that helps people exact ly the same but then we have information that's specific to GW so they can continue to add additional buttons to the bottom um and or we can move those to the top we're kind of waiting to see how that plays out but we can put the school specific information at the bottom or at the top and then the other part of the information will be controlled from one main central location one of the other things that we didn't have on the old site that is actually required by law is that the Hib information should be on every school's landing page we've now added that by school so um when you click this you will get to that specific school's anti-bullying specialist and information and then the homepage is our district coordinator which currently is Mr fredman but we be changing soon the two I'm sorry oh you know what this one should say facts that's my fault I it should say facts but so so the IR I actually have a fact machine so I appreciate that but um I actually I think this is one of the only schools that has one I was like facts who's faing but they said they do so so but can the phone be the active link instead of the fact because right now it looks like I can make it that their template actually has it so it's not an active link so you can kind of tell when I've customized something so I made the fact an active link but yeah they can both be active links yeah like I think between the facts and the phone the ph and it should say facts so yeah absolutely the other section I just wanted to show is the other one I um had shared which was the our school because this is the other primary area um and we made sure so that both middle schools look ex exactly the same all elementaries look exactly the same and of course the high school's its own so it could have a little bit of difference but we still kep the same information in the same area so when people click on our school about us these icons at the top are fairly similar if not identical across schools so you know where to find your school supply lists you know where to find your mission and vision you know where to find the student handbooks so this way there's no confusion when you're going from school to school level to level and then they all have a little bit about the school with a picture and then some of the specific information so what's next um I'd like to say I'm close to done but I know I'm not and as we all know websites are never ending as well if you really maintain them so I have to continue the cleanup and the updates every day I find something small um maybe a hyperlink didn't carryover it's still linked to an old the old site so we're going through Page by Page and I have a lot of people now to help me because everybody's starting to come back so um that's been great we're continuing to improve the Aesthetics I'll be adding more video more icon based more image based um links and such and uh I just had a meeting this morning to finalize that we'll be incorporating a chat bot onto the website working with a a local small group um they're indexing our system as we speak so this will help especially because it's a new website when you come to our new website in the bottom right not sure if it's going to be an animated r or just the r we're playing with both right now you can ask it almost any question of where do I find this I can't find it and it will direct you to that exact page Andor just answer your question depending on what you ask so we think that because it's a new website and because it's so different um that'll be very helpful for people to help them get used to the site and then we can re-evaluate next year if it's something we really want to keep or um you know once people get familiar we don't need it but um I did look at some other districts that are using it and the results have been really positive the other thing that comes with this chatbot is a survey tool um so we can even use it to survey about certain pages or to survey about the website in general however we already do have planned uh a thought exchange somewhere between three and six months out we're going to kind of see where we are but we're definitely going to do want to get some feedback from the community on the new website so can I ask you two questions the first is on the chat bot what I've seen in certain um websites is it's not um it's automatic after like five 10 five seconds it automatically pops up a little box and says do you need hi my name is do you need help it could be you know do you want to buy it or it could be simply I see that you're on the page how can I help you so is there an oport to make it more pushed out rather than looking to find where the chat bot would be yeah know it's the bottom I mean we can pick where it is my right now I'm playing with it in the bottom right corner and there is a little uh I call it a balloon window that comes up to say how can I help you okay I don't know the exact words yet but it's there yeah so it pops up and then it goes away if you don't need it okay and then um the other thing is this certain districts have it it dep I'm not sure where we will land on it but um other districts the Board of Ed they just have one email not individual and it would that way and because sometimes my name is difficult to that's a lot easier but you know there's certain see I made it easy on here yeah so but it's something to think about certain districts you cannot individually email it goes to one it's I think like a info at or whatever a board at yeah but like you know there I mean that's really a board decision and that's something for us to can you know work with the board if that's something they decide they want yeah and there's certain um districts that have no individual emails like I said so it's something to think about it depends on on um on on yeah that's really your guys preference it's aable thing it's a doable thing just to or even it could be additive it doesn't have to be either or it could be just a general one as well as so that we each get whatever gets sent out or we could eliminate our individual it's up to you but that's something to think about and and I know like I think there's a few districts that literally have no email so you have to call the secretary and say I I want to reach the board X Y and Z and they'll be like well what's your number I think I mean I know it could be set up similar to how I'm set up so I have my name but I also have info at which is an alias for me um and then I was just talking to Our IT department about creating a a Web Master app that would be what we call a collaborative email which might might be what works for if you guys decide you want to do that and there's a whole bunch of us well I say a whole bunch there's like three of us who would be could monitor that email account so if somebody was out and there was a problem somebody else would be able to pick it up and run with it um whereas right now info just comes to me that's something to think about you could just have a board so that people don't have to individually type each names because I've gotten some emails where they you know referen board members are no no longer even on the board or they're trying so that's something to think about that's it so I would say um thank you and I'm open to any questions suggestions feedback that you guys have so um I'm really impressed with the new website the ease of use the number of clicks and uh overall just the way uh The Branding is happen and um I've done some of those work in the past so I know it's a lot of work and uh a lot of people have opinions on phones and spacing and horners and to please all of them and still work with all that setup it it's it's a lot of work so thank you so much for doing all of that thank you and uh I don't even think you had enough resources to get this done so getting volunteers and getting it was a full summer yeah I mean I really started as you know last December but um it was fullon hard press this summer yes so so it's a lot of work so thank you thank you for that I just have a couple of questions on um broader um website so one is um and it maybe Sheila or Mary may know some of the historical background on that did we have different color brandings for different schools in the past and if we are now branding everything maroon was there any resistance because earlier I always thought maroon was only high school and Elementary School had their own um mascots or different color great question and um I did pull all of the superintendents and the committee together to discuss just that on the old website every school had its own logo and its own color right um and it was hard to tell you were even in the same district and that was I like that I I I always talk about uniformity across the district but my question is was like was it historically as part of the Traditions they all had different color schemes and well I would say as long as this website was in place so that was over a right um the schools can still use their colors for their own t-shirts in the school or whatever that may be they're keeping their logos that we are going to talk about rebranding the logos and by that I mean the ridge will still have a raccoon it might just be a nicer looking Raccoon as opposed to the clip art they're currently using um Willard has a beautiful professionally designed you know W with the panther or cougar I'm not sure what it is they're going to be mad that I forgot what it is going through it um other schools have a a student drawn picture so we're kind of all over the place with the logos so the agreement um and I will say the colors no one gave me and I was so surprised if anybody was on the call with me I kept saying are you sure no one gave me any issue with the colors at all so but you mentioned that can still keep their colors for their t-shirt so are we branding maroon everything or are we still keeping different colors for schools no so anything that's public facing we're keeping the the maroon we are the maroon but the teach the t-shirts and those will still be they kind of varied on their t-shirts already in the schools and used various colors they kind of didn't always stick to the one okay um but I didn't feel like that was as crucial because the the activities at like the elementary school are within the elementary school they're not really going out into the public with me if you do see kids wearing Ridgewood gear in public it tends to be maroon okay but because we are Maroon I I don't remember that a historically across all these schools so but if we are doing that may we should do that consistently that's my point yeah and we're definitely in that direction I will say they had no problem with the website being all Maroon which was great for me because it's really where I was I thought I was going to be in for a little bit of a battle but I really wasn't as long as I kept their raccoons and their Panthers and there they were fine okay and I would just add to that just by saying that um that I think that to our priority has been first and foremost this conversation the web weite you know so the different colors of all the different schools frankly on the old website they came across its different districts they there really wasn't that time together so we had some conversations about redesigning all of their uh all of their logos and Christine suggested some what was it there was a district nearby that had Montville rid theirs and they had a similar situation to ours so they basically did like a custom logo where there was like the M but then the mascot was redesigned with the m so they had a unique thing but there was like a consistent tie in the brand um here I am aware that particularly in the elementary schools the colors are really important to them so I wouldn't I wouldn't push too I'm not taking a position in this conversation right now that we should we should tell them they shouldn't use their colors I mean I know Green at Willard is a big deal and Somerville red is like that's another big deal that's why I'm saying when we say we are Maroon are we are we saying all all school so so I think I think what we're say I mean the theme we are Maroon is the is is intended to tie together the fact that we are all Maroon right like like Maroon is what ties us together but it is important to folks and I think it's important for individual schools to retain some sort of regional identity especially when there are many elementary schools and people take such pride in their elementary schools I think they take pride in they they love being all part of the Ridgewood community and the survey data that we pulled did seem to indicate that they do feel like they're part of the Ridgewood Community but they also love their their their their local identity and the middle schools as well I mean they definitely have like their own local identity and and that's a hell as long as as long as that doesn't supersede their connectedness as maroon then then I I then I think it's great to to give them the freedom in the space within their own building to to to retain their local identity too okay and I will so they with that just to let you we go a little bit further than website like all the letter heads are now consistent um and all Maroon um and things like that so we did bring it Beyond just the website to where it was comfortable yeah in so far I think and I think the standard is in so far things are very public facing yes that we have to lead with with Bridgewood and Maru but in so far as it's intended to be you know internal identity um that's that's a want want to make sure they feel they still feel that special local uh pride in their school okay and the the second one was um in the uh content management system software for this website do they have an option for um automated backups like can we backup export the entire website all of it its content on our servers once a week once a month that's a good question I'm not sure to be honest I my gut is telling me that sir Moran probably did ask that when we were um going through this I'd have to check I can check on that and and if we have that option then are we have we schedule those backups so because if this company goes under or if they just disappear then do we have all the content once in a while backed up on our servers that's one of the questions with hosted software always that okay if that hosted software company goes away then no I'll definitely check with s I'm pretty sure that was something we we asked because of the you know servers and such I will say this is the fastest growing website platform for school districts right now so we're safe for a while but it's still always good to know that we have that backup yeah after Enron went under anybody can go so so we we should just always have some like I so I would I would say they may have backups in place but we need to be ready for a disaster recovery yeah no I'll check with Che with our technology department for sure that's a good question thank you so I I use probably wrong word of backup because they are doing the backups but we need Disaster Recovery Dr do we have access to it absolutely good question thank you um and this one the third one maybe more on for Mark and the policy committee uh that when on the website I noticed so we have um News section so what really goes in District news is uh I think uh right now our policy uh leaves that to the superintendent and it's a superintendent's discretion um but do things from um our partner organizations belong to district news or is that a separate section of um non-district news because we don't know if when we are promoting their events of any part like CPAC or um Bri Education Foundation or specific HSA if you are promoting those on our website as District news do we have any control on who's attending there what messaging They are promoting there especially during election times so what is that District news or is that an extension to the district so that I think uh is a broader question for all the district newsletters and our website because right now we are promoting some of those events on our website and um the question is are they part of the district or are they extension of the district so should they be promoted under District news section or should we be even promot in them during lect times so would I be understanding your question correctly if I if I re rephrased it as um because the groups that you mentioned are like quasi School entities right so like the Ed Foundation is affiliated with the school so it's not completely independent and hsas are affiliated with school but not completely independent as our um um like the cpad group which is an HSA so the question is but you're you're raising the question because even though they're and they're def I can tell you for certain they're there because they are formally affiliated with the schools those groups but your question is to what extent can we do we have any um ability to regulate the extent to which they become involved politically right right I I can't answer that right now are there any agenda right so so if if we can't answer that then should we be promoting them without knowing what's exactly going on in that event uh who's attending the event what's going on in the event should we be promoting as a district should we be promoting that and how's Ed um Foundation like for example R Foundation it's a great organization they raise money and they donate it to us how are they affiliated with the district so I think the core question here outside of the web to C district is the first thing we need to answer is and I just can't give you a certain answer on this is can hsas at foundations cags and these other quasi School entities so hxa and cpag is probably School entity but how is Ed Foundation CI School entity because their Charter is built around and I I'm I'm inir I'm assuming their Charters built around specifically our schools and supporting our schools I just just to add to it yeah I because I was on the board of the brid Education Foundation years ago and they were always very specific that they are wholly independent however as you're saying their Charter their mission is to donate solely and exclusively any of their money to to the Ridgewood Public Schools so they don't exist but for the Ridgewood Public Schools but what you just said is wholly independent they' always been very clear about right so that that becomes a little fair fair enough becomes so it might be a discussion so there are it's a policy dive question because Mr Don's right about this because um we have there are I I believe we have policy off the poll any feel free to fact check me now but I believe we have some policy impacting how hsas function and their structure and I don't know if I don't know top my head if we have anything specifically for the Ed foundation so if we don't have policy for the Ed Foundation the Ed Foundation exists as a fly independent entity then that might be then they might be an exception historically there's always been cooperation clearly like for example um in terms of what they have on their uh flyers and things like that um they were always uh we were always very clear to be sure that whatever we put out was approved by the district right so um but I think you're asking a broader question and I think we probably do need to take it up in policy right and also for example there are a lot of other uh independent people have created trust just solely for donating to our high school scholarship funds the Alumni Association right so they are if we can't uh regulate so Alumni Association would probably fall into the same category right if if uh we don't have any policy or if we don't interact with them so it's a broader question of which groups are we promoting as District news so is this is that do they come because we have different sections we have a section for Community News we have a section for district news so do these and we don't put I'm hoping we we don't put Community School on our website um we they go in the mailers and flyers but there should be like that's a decision I think it's left to the superintendent and I'm hoping that Dr Schwarz you are scrutinizing what goes there because there are repercussions of what goes in um who promotes different types of politics or different types of agendas I would just like to add also consider which is would be a huge impact here so like organizations like jeree for which we do a ton of advertising are not school affiliated right but the thing is if we don't do the advertising they don't make as much no no I hear you I'm agreeing I just want to make sure when we look at this big picture you have to take into account groups like that and cpeg we are mandated to have that organization by law by the state so it's not a regular HSA right but CPAC is similar to hsas which is extension to the district that's what yeah jamere came right to my head when we're talking about this because yeah we have to make sure that whatever we do we have to think about organizations such as that that bring in a lot of money a lot of money and and the education not us but to our students well the Education Foundation is donated over a million dollars over the past several years right there's a lot to think about I guess no no but with J for example if if I'm a big um Advertiser or donor to the jambur and I have a business and part of the do donation or support of of jambur is to get my business advertised and so if then jambur through their relationship ship with the district and it is to benefit the school if I kind of get carried over I benefit and I tendentially backdoor get my name as uh through the district news say they're paying for that debt but they're paying I mean that's that's the point I mean that's the essence of sponsorship right that's the thing is that should we as a non as a as an educational entity be accepting not accepting through the sponsorship Avenue should that allow how much is our brand worth how much is our membership worth how much is our reach worth is it a $110,000 sponsorship I'm not sure but by a it's a fairly that's what's happening right so think no I I think I think this is a policy decision not to not to derail this conversation too much I think you make excellent points that's what I'm saying but you get to the heart of because if you take a look um and you aggregate all the money that all of these different individual groups have given to Ridgewood in any given year or certainly over the years where a good percentage of those dollars come from generous sponsors who consistently donate to the group which then you know comes it comes back to us I think we want to be very very considered and careful about respecting those relationships because ultimately we benefit a great deal and when I say we I mean the student students benefit a great deal from those donations I mean it's it's a sponsorship but but there's a huge benefit there I think I know it's a larger that we need to respect those relationships all I'm saying is um we need to be who we are promoting needs to be driven by a policy and that policy needs to be consistently followed that's it I I I I we we agree 100% And that's a conversation for policy where we you know take this all apart again so that's good one uh just one last thing I'll add to think about as well is if we take any decisions to not promote certain unaffiliated organizations uh then we also should be prepared that they now will do their own communication that could be outside of our branding our communication channels right for possible right so if we say oh we're not going to send out the education foundations updates or Jan then they're GNA have to go and reach out to their constituents somehow so I'm not singling out any organization I'm just saying right because when we talk about an organization benefiting the schools or there are there are organizations that are benefiting the community and if they go under Community News we have had situations when the school district sent out emails during September October time frame and especially in the next three months so District sent out email our uh community clicked on that email to for the link of that organization and it popped up with endorsements right so in that case now you are putting the superintendent and the administrative team in trouble where their email when and somebody's clicking on a link in that email is endorsing candidates so so we have to be so that's yeah and that's that's a very specific example but you're right you're absolutely right that's something that we absolutely cannot allow to happen because no one can be taking a political position with regard have if we don't have uh control over those organizations and their website and their Facebook group then can we promote them just questions yeah I think great questions and I also think there's probably a possible solution in here with respect to some sort of regulatory control like maybe some sort of uh like if we're going to engage in some sort of mutually beneficial activity like most of the world most circumstances we would engage in some sort of an agreement we' have some sort of a contract that doesn't mean we need make everybody sign a contract contract per se but even just a simple memorandum of agreement if an agency is going to donate funds to us that they would make a commitment that they are not going to be um or at least there's some sort of deliberative process regarding what their intentions are to engage politically um but there are mechanisms that we could develop that could give us a greater degree of certainty as to what these groups will or will not do and what the recourse would be if they did do those things I'm sure I wonder if it's a question to stuss I mean we're not obiously the first school district to think about this so I'm wondering if St may have some suggestion they might they might but just in October Fest is October 5th which is the rigid Education Foundation the sole purpose of that money is going to come back to us but we're if we're going to make decisions or have questions about that we need to do that very very quickly yeah and they're currently on the website and in the yeah well and I would expect them to be because you know but Mary I think the uh attorney already appointed on it and suggested a policy and we already voted on the policy so I think at right now just yeah we you you had a policy in last two like two meetings ago we voted on it for um what can go on the website and that was that came from so why are we asking this question then now Matt suggestion so I just want so I'm saying I just want to confirm that what we are promoting matches with that policy uh Christin just the only first all thank you for the great presentation here and all the good work um and not just the website I mean you've done a lot of great work on the social media platforms unifying our communication channels and emails and and all of that so so thank you it's a lot of work uh just the only comment I had is the the app video was was really impressive I mean the app is is super impressive do we want to consider sending out just a dedicated email to get people to download the app I just got the um video done on Thursday morning before the superintendent coffee so um yes it's definitely we're going to send something out because we definitely want to encourage that perfect yeah thank you thank you see what happens um after December one so December 2nd maybe somebody you know decides oh wait um what if will the old email address simply go dead or will it redirect you to this new website address what happens December 2nd well we don't uh we own www. rdwood k12.us but the website won't be there anymore so I have to honestly have to check with Siri I'm not exactly sure but the website won't be up there's no way to redirect it automatically to this new website um I don't I'm not 100% sure but right now the actual if they were to go to the old website nothing will be there so I'm not sure if he can take that domain like we do with the emails he might be able to redirect you automatically um but that contract expires on December 1st and I know they're going to take us down on December 1st okay if there's a way to re automatically redirect short term it mean December one coming right up I think as long as we own the domain just redirect I think they can redirect it just like our emails just I don't want to speak out of turn I'd rather check yeah that would be the ideal situation just wanted to say thank you you've done a great deal of work and I appreciate it appreciate that thank you you it was a labor of love for sure thank you so much thank you m superintendent of Court thank you so much so uh welcome everyone and I want to wish everyone best wishes for a new school year I hope that everyone had a really productive and positive and restorative summer um we uh are ready to go the buildings we had a meeting today the high school just a little bit of stuff left at the high school um as many of you know when we uh we do a lot of work over the summer uh all the floors get stripped and waxed and uh there's a great deal of cleaning that goes on through the schools and it is quite a production so our team our aark team uh led by our new uh manager Mark Lian I CH charged them with being ready having the schools ready two weeks in advance uh as opposed to trying to bring it up to the last down to the wire and they really worked the team worked very very hard and did a really great job of largely wrapping things up last week Ridge and Glenn school have many summer program prams and so they're always kind of the they're down to the wire at those two schools and uh moving uh they were able to shuffle resources around and uh tackle those schools last week and I got the word today that Ridge and Glenn are pretty much done like I said it caught a little bit more work at the high school but we appear to be in good shape opening the school year um the uh we didn't have any major construction projects but the the small items that we did everything seems to be in good shape and ready to go uh We've also been uh pretty adamant with our groundskeeping team uh I did notice some deficien icies and how our grounds were prepared last year so we're going to be on top of that to make sure that things look nice and nice and neat and tidy as his kids come back to school I also want to just give a thank you to our local municipality particularly our police department and all of our crossing guards I did check in with them uh we are fully staffed with crossing guards uh last I checked and they've been they've engaged in their initial training so we're really looking forward to them being available to help out our kids uh get to school uh for we have a lot of interesting things happening this year I'm not going to talk for a crazy long amount of time but of course as always I want to draw attention to the fact we had our superintendent coffee at last Thursday so if you want to get go caught up on all things in the district please feel free to check that out um but a couple of big things that are going on that I wanted to draw attention to uh we have uh strategic planning that is underway at this time and so we have some public sessions that miss corus is going to be sending out a push notification about regarding shortly but I will bring to your attention a couple of dates and times so there are two Community or public forums that are will be available for for community members they're going to be on September 9th at 700 p.m. and SE September 23rd actually I don't have the time on this one right now I believe that's during the daytime it's the 23rd and then we have a session for parents on September 10th at 10: a.m. and again on September 18th at 7 pm so we tried to stagger one for community members one for parents um it wouldn't be the end of the world if a parent went to a community member conversation but we wanted to separate those out so that way we're very clear that even community members who may not have students in our schools their perspective is still valuable to us they still contribute to our funding through their tax dollars and so we want to honor their commitment and have them be a part of our processes there are many other sessions for uh for for um for represent representatives in many other groups uh but I wanted to put those out there as soon as possible we'll get a formal invitation out please do join us it is very important to us to hear from our community members there will also be a brief survey uh that is that was designed based on initial interviews with our board members and our administrative team so we are going to be sending that out shortly but just please keep this on your attention we'll be reporting about it sign uh all year our goal is to complete this process uh which will include an initial focus group sessions like I just mentioned here um then there will be some uh analysis of that information we'll then develop some strategic planning and some action teams and we'd like to have really all the Strategic plan and the action teams wrapped up by budget season so that way we can align our 2526 budget to the outcomes of the Strategic plan so thank you all for your support on the board for uh for for bringing in uh our partners at Hazard young and AA who are leading this this project and I really looking forward to continuously reporting out on its outcomes also wanted to remind folks that um our board meeting schedule and coffee schedule is a little unique this month uh we decided to add a few meetings for the fall when we had our reorg meeting and so we have a Thursday meeting how about that so September 12th we will have a Thursday meeting I think we had some difficulty getting everybody together on a Monday so it'll be interesting to see how that goes um but that will be on September 12th so that's not an error that's not a tyo uh please make sure it's on your calendar if You' care to join us um we also but then our superintendent coffee again follows uh usually precedes the second meeting of the month so that was scheduled for September 26 and then our uh second board meeting in September will be on September 30th also on our district website are all the back to school nights I will be uh going to all of them I just learned that um that my I have my own children and so I have their back to school nights that I have to prioritize as well um and my my student uh my child who was going into High School this year uh his back to school night which I really do not want to miss happens to conflict with our two middle schools so I will make a recorded Uh custom recorded message for each middle school and send them out um I'm sorry that I won't be there that night but I just really want to remind everyone and encourage everyone to go even if you've gone other times before every time you go to back to school night remember you're meeting your child's teachers or new teachers and as much as there's you know maybe maybe uh maybe you might perceive that the message at the beginning might not you know you might be a veteran but I would encourage you to go to all of them I think being involved in your school in the same way that I'm doing it with my own kids is really important because um you never you know the more you know about your child's School experience the more you can engage with them about it the more meaningful it becomes and it sends a powerful message to your child when you when you take the time to get there and if you can get both parents there if you have both parents um try to get them there if you can um because uh it's really just a great thing for for for uh it's really it's really a great way for parents to support their kids and uh there's plenty of other positive things to say and report on there's there's plenty of other minor just concerns that we're working on but one thing that I just want to take a minute to just uh state is my appreciation for um our assistant super interim assistant superintendent Richard fredman this is actually Mr fredman's last meeting with us and I can hardly believe it uh Mr fredman joined the district in September of 2022 I guess that was right and uh you know he was he was uh he had retired and um and I believe I this the way he tells it he wasn't really planning on doing a lot of inm work um but we managed but he was he was H kind of brought in here on invitation into Ridgewood Public School in an assist interim assistant principal role um first at GW then at the high school and as I came on the team here uh we ended up I learned uh shortly after I was appointed that Stacy polstra our assistant superintendent at the time had taken a uh a superintendency of her own and would be leaving the district um so we already were hiring for a couple other positions so uh it was recommended to me I believe was Miss Murphy actually who recommended that I have a conversation Mr fredman to see if maybe that might be a possible good fit um we had a very funny initial interaction trying to connect with each other over Zoom we both had sound difficulty which is funny because we're both pretty technically Savvy I think you worked for a tech company for a bit period of time and I pride myself in my tech skills and we just could not figure that out so we were miming at each other and eventually we communicated each other's phone numbers to each other and uh we had and we had initial conversation but um it was very clear my conversation Mr fan that Not only was he qualified but that uh he I had a very uh very um very compatible uh views of leadership and uh and that that this might be a good a good arrangement so some followup conversations ensued and we invited him to join us as a director of C of of I'm sorry interim assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction uh since he's joined the team um he has been just a balancing Force he has uh he he he he keeps people very calm while at the same time pushing them to do good things uh specifically I've been really impressed with his ability to um really keep everyone focused on ensuring positive outcomes for students and growth and progress while at the same time always seeming to lead with the importance of a humanistic approach uh and particularly uh an empathetic and empowering mindset When approaching uh staff members and school leaders uh this this the work of a school leader can be can be a bit uh can be a bit um be a bit challenging at times and uh and he always he's always had a light heart about him and and always encourage people to uh to rec recognize the the joy of what we do and that you know at the end of the day everything is always going to be okay especially when we when we work together and we do good thing we focus on making good outcomes for kids um he's led the supervisory team um he was integral in our performance against our 23 24 school year goals um and lastly I would just say what's really been cool is I've worked with a lot of inms over the course of my career and Mr Freedman does not behave like your traditional interim in any stretch of the imagination he's here all the time uh he is Rock solad and available he is you know when if there's ever like a like a around the-clock sort of an issue he's always quick to a text um he comes in on Mondays it's and he acts like he's been thinking about the the the things we have to do that week all weekend so uh that's not necessarily what the job calls for for an in but Mr Freeman you brought that and I appreciate it greatly so thank you so very much for being here with us uh we have um we have a resolution here that we've prepared uh I want to thank Mrs Murphy for getting that together for us so we're going to have a little resolution for you um but in the meantime I just thought I would give any board members they want to say anything an opportunity real quick yeah sure so uh thanks Dr Schwarz um um you covered a lot and um I had when Mr fredman was at high school I did not interact uh much but I can just talk about some of my interactions and some of the accomplishments since he became the interim superintendent um or interim curriculum uh that assistant superintendent for for the curriculum and instructions um there were so many P changes that our residents were demanding for for a long time in the district and um once Mr fredman came into that role they were just it they just happen um and um like math curriculum there were residents showing up uh since I think 2018 2019 talking about math curriculum and now if you talk today that that's no longer an issue and now we are talking celebrating the developments in math so um there were a lot of changes that happened during his time and so uh there are these individual supervisors have the credit for doing the actual work but I think that comes with Mr freedman's leadership to navigate that and to Mentor that and them and to get that done because there is always some resistance to change so to help those supervisors and getting those changes done so I think that there's a lot of credit there for our changes in the math curriculum our changes in the uh Ela Elementary School Ela the uh complete reversal of our how we were approaching um Ela so that is a big accomplishment um you initiated the The Freshman Focus type new course for middle school so Middle School orientation so that was your imag like you came up with that idea and you followed through to make sure that it happens um I never saw that many grants on our agendas before you came on board for curriculum work and uh so you you did the U um like you focused I would say I should say focused back on academics and academic improvements uh there were new um tutoring opportunities that some grants and programs that you introduced for tutoring in uh in our school district for all students or students who need to catch up um there are mult multiple new online subscriptions now there are multiple new tools available to our teachers uh for evaluations for worksheets for math for English um all of those um and we have some two of them today on the agenda so I've seen a lot of new improvements in that area um basically if I if I summarize that part you bring brought instructions to 21st century um I can say that and uh lastly on the I introduced our Green Team to Mr fredman because they wanted to collaborate with these schools for Earth Day and U do some programs the elementary schools and Dr Schwarz and Mr Freedman both were very open to that idea they met Mr fredman met with him and they came up with the poster um poster competition idea for elementary school students uh and they really enjoyed it so overall a lot of great work happened and I'm really not happy about this vote that I'm going to V vot for your resignation for retirement or moving on to the other District uh that's that's one vote I I I do not want to C that right thank you um so I agree with sarab 100% um I've really really enjoyed working with you um it's been too short for me um I feel like I've learned a great deal from you I want to thank you for your you came in here to this district and you listened and observed and really gave many of us the tools and the language to um encapsulate uh and put into um put into movement our values so you've said things like Equity of experience um you talked about the magic of Ridgewood and how there's a magic at each individual school and yet there's the overarching magic how we kind of balance all of that and I want you to know that those phrases and your approach have affected me directly and I think will have a much longer impact um than maybe you think uh for a long time you you really have changed um the way some things are done um for the better and I want to thank you for that um you know you bring great perspective there's been a couple times when I thought I'm just going to call Rich I'm going to ask ask you because I get very emotional I'm sure nobody's noticed that but you have a great calming perspective uh which I think is really important for a new board member I think it's important for the community for the staff um it has been an absolute privilege to work with you um and your values and concerns for our community our students the people um really it's you it's been a gift so uh thank you very very much for everything you've done and you have left a lasting impact here for you and I agree I'm not happy to for the vote either but I'm very happy to congratulate you um uh and you know as you move forward no I I Echo all of that um I will say a great leader someone who uh drives for results and uh change but does that by bringing everybody along and you truly have done that uh so thank you for everything you've done uh it's not easy to push for Change and bring everyone along with you and make sure people are in the boat with you and and lead from the front uh lead by Suggestions by ideas but by bringing everybody there by being open-minded to lots of ideas and suggestions from everybody whether it's board whether it's community and then kind of bringing that all together and finding the right path forward so I Echo all the sentiments it's been absolutely great working with you rich and getting to know you and thank you for everything you've done and we're going to see you back here before you know it I'm pretty sure so that's how I I like to leave these things um you know I think I think um I think everything's been said but I'll say your fingerprints are in so much of the recent progress that the school district has made it has been under your watch and I am so um honored to have learned from you because you have this wealth of experience and your love of Education of what education means to the staff and to the students who come through our doors it's it's really profound and I'm really um I'm sad to see you go uh and really there is a tremendous debt of gratitude that we have and thank you for going way above and beyond of any interim that you know I I've worked with so you've done so much in the short amount of time thank you um your impact is great and um you know what I appreciate was that you were a champion for our schools but mostly for our students and in your ability to uh listen be responsive always in a very calm way um sometimes times I was like wow are you gonna lose it you never did um and it was always that can do you know we we can think about it we can do it we can reframe it and you know you had a a um wonderful opportunity at GW for the six months and then to come into the high school which was in a little bit of turmoil and a lot of grief and and sadness and and you you work there and then to come here where we've had some turn we had some turnover as you know um but always with that positive outlook so um I learned greatly from you and it was a pleasure serving on curriculum when we were there and all the other committees that um we were able to interact with your voice was so meaningful so I wish you great luck um in your intern uh your interim position in Saddle River and those that district is very lucky to have you um so thank you for all you've done for Richwood in the short two years right and maybe the laws only restrict the continuation of more than two years and after so once that that limit hits there you may come back here for something else we tried very hard to break those rules no but he he may be able to come back after one or two years at the other one we'll find out yeah if I can just quickly respond and thank everyone for uh you know just tremendous kindness and um I'm glad I was able to offer something to Ridgewood and Ridgewood offered something to me so it was really it's been just an honor and pleasure not only to work with this board but to work with the administrative team in these different capacities and um you know to arrive in a town whose uh whose values Echo mine and um and to be able to contribute so I'll always remember my place here and uh yeah you never know what happens down the road I now know how to get here so you never know but thanks so much the words really um they uh they sink in they they have great meaning to me so I appreciate you sharing them so I'll leave it to the board if you want to read the resolution now or you want to wait till the HR section so it's memorialized there it's up to all of you do it now yes are you speaking I think uh board president so this is a resolution honoring Richard fredman uh whereas Richard fredman was has served the entire community staff and administration with integrity and administrative Acumen as an interim administrator and the interim assistant superintendent from September 2022 to August 2024 whereas as we owe Mr fredman a tremendous respect and gratitude for the educational leadership he has provided to the district's administrative team during a time time of significant transitions whereas Mr fredman has shared his expertise in the district's curriculum and instruction and has guided District supervisors especially during a period of important shifts in our math and language arts programs where as Mr fredman has been a valuable voice in curriculum decisions actively engaging in productive transparent informative and collaborative conversations with the community and the board trustees while respecting their input Mr fredman's steady leadership through these multifaceted discussions was essential in advancing student progress whereas Mr fredman has provided mentorship and coaching to administrators and teachers and has been an invaluable resource to all staff members and to the board if I could add that resolved that we the members of the ridgwood Board of Education wish Mr Friedman all the best in his next Endeavor as interim superintendent of Saddle River Public Schools and be it further resolved that this resolution be entered into the official official minutes of the Ridgewood Board of Education meeting held on the 26th day of August 2024 so thank you absolutely make a motion to approve that resolution I second I think there might be a a unanimous but I Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss mcav yes Mr mmud you vote all vote no do you stay vote yesan Yes okay is there any other that concludes all the items that I had for the superintendent report for now so we'll move on to consent items regular and routine uh attendance and conferences I move attendance and conferences second Mr Donnie yes Miss quack yes Miss MC yes Mr mud yes Miss Brogan yes Administration we um are in first reading for um these policies that were on our um July uh for just discussion so I move Administration second Mr Donnie yes Miss clock yes Miss MC Mr Mahmud yes Miss Brogan yes uh curriculum instruction I move curriculum instruction and um as I had mentioned before we have two new um software our online uh tools for uh on the agenda this time one is no red Inc and one is common lit and both of these will um are in continuation of adding more and more tools for our teachers to uh create online assignments online worksheets and um they'll help a lot they sound uh like great programs I understand they were reviewed uh through in the curriculum committee yeah so for a long time uh our teachers were already using them as free tools or uh freeware and um now it's time to actually move to the paid version and uh get all the unlock all the features second Mr Donnie yes Miss clock yes Miss maau yes Mr mmud yes Miss Brogan yes Human Resources um there's just a ton in here um thank you very much again for all your work I know is a a long summer um and positions are all filled except we have I know some Aid position care profession yes we're we're in very um good shape with our teaching positions we have some La we had a some last minute resignations that you might see on the agenda so we are actively um working on unfilling those and at last conversation I believe that we have some recommendations coming that will be on the member 12th agenda um for those recent resignations um if everything works out um we are still in critical need of lunching it's for our elementary schools so again I make a publicly that if there's anyone interested um to please reach out either to myself to apply on our website or you can contact the elementary school that you're interested in working directly um and speak with the principal about more information about working in that school um we do pay $19 an hour for lunch AIDS um um and we are um you know and please share the information there may be someone that you know that is retired or um currently working from home and would like to get out of the house for an hour or two a day um and this is a great opportunity um for you to come and see how our schools are and and be a part of our our school Community great um so I'll move Human Resources second and I asked um Mark uh uh d TS to um just go over the interims um just because there's there's a number of them and just for the community to sort of understand U what's happening so when you see it you might go oh hi thank you so much yes and I and I I could have included that in my superintendent report so I'm sorry that I did not but uh we we're very blessed uh well for a couple things first of all for us to be in the current job market in public schools for us to be starting the school year with no major uh instructional vacancies is pretty remarkable even for the last several years um it's been hard especially with some hard to fill positions so kudos to the principles and to Mrs Murphy and everyone who's been involved in recruiting we've been doing job fairs and I've been very very proactive in making sure that we have qualified excellent um and actual people in front of our students U many districts are resorting to uh remote teachers um or they're having to start with substitutes because they can't fill hard to fill positions and in some school districts that are that traditionally struggle to attract teachers they have some cases dozens if not hundreds of vacancies so um so first of all Kudos regarding having everyone here another real U really nice thing about having um a school district like Ridgewood where we have uh such great uh the district's in in is in very good standing and people are very interested in coming and joining us here is we do have the ability to attract really high quality inms um and that's also a function of the great Professional Network that our teams have um as we know of course Mr fredman has been such a great addition to the team um and we have a few other additional inms here uh that that and I certainly want to credit Mrs Mrs Murphy for doing a lot of the work and connecting with these folks but there are other folks involved as well um for starters I want to introduce uh Dr Matthew Murphy Dr Murphy is uh has been was approved by the board to be a long-term substitute for um for uh a supervisor position that was going to be vacant for a portion of the year um Mr Dr Murphy is actually a resident of Ridgewood but he's most well known in the area for being the superintendent of Ramsey public schools for 10 years very qualified as an educator but also very very likeminded to Mr fredman um I spoke with Mr Dr Murphy to see if he had interest in joining us um in the role of director of curriculum and instruction um where we are talking about we'll talk a little bit more about um the roles in central office because um we're going I'm going to be making some recommended changes um so for now we're hiring this as an inim uh director of curriculum instruction position but in terms of the curricular leadership it's going to be very similar to what uh Mr fredman has been doing and um I've had some great conversation with Dr Murphy we've already had him working with the team a little bit he joined our super our administrative Retreat a couple weeks ago um and he seems to be a really excellent fit so I look forward to uh the board having a chance to work with him as well uh we recommending him to be approved through January because we have run we have a open a search for a permanent director and we have some really excellent applicants so we look forward to go to initiating that proc process in September and uh and sharing more with you about how that process will take place I do intend to use the same selection process that we've used for our other administrative hires it's a very rigorous process there's multiple phases we involved quite a few folks um and of course we uh kind of round the whole thing out with a very large stakeholder panel in a performance task so I look forward to that process and letting you know how that goes but in the meantime I'm very grateful to have Dr Murphy uh with so much curriculum and instruction experience and already a very clear sense uh as to where we're going and how and where he can take us um and then we have two additional in uh two additional uh inms uh for the high school we have Miss Christine solo miss solo is one of our guidance counselors she's very experienced um and and and we're going to be sending out some information about these individuals introducing them as as well shortly but uh Mrs CNO um has I believe almost 20 years experience in counseling she's worked in private schools and public schools and so we're recommending her to serve in the role of interim supervisor of counseling while we uh while we evaluate our uh our administrative model at the high school um and consider how we're going to move forward with permanent hires um but she is uh so but she's going to do this role for full-time and we have an additional uh retired uh guidance counselor Mr Thomas kren who's going to be filling in uh in her role as an actual counselor at the school so we really look forward to having her she has I've had a chance to meet with her and some other counselers last year we were talking about college admissions I found her to be highly knowledgeable and I'm very grateful for her willingness to step in and be a lead for us um and I'm realizing I'm I'm kind of speaking for Mrs Murphy right now with some of these candidates maybe uh maybe you could introduce uh uh uh it Dr cardello yeah maybe you can introduce Dr cardello to the group and round out anything I should have said with the other candidates absolutely um and also Mr kren who is joining us is actually a retired director of School counseling so um from another Bergen County district and we'll lend some support to uh Christine while she is transitioning into this administrative role um so he will be a great asset at the high school Dr Joan cordillo will be joining us for the fall um at GW middle school as an interm assistant principal uh Dr cardillo is very excited to be joining our district she actually is retired superintendent from pic Valley Regional District um prior to that she was a principal supervisor um for Patterson public schools and a long-term Middle School principal um so she is going to be a great asset as we start well we have already started the process I believe um with searching for the next permanent assistant principal um and hopefully we will be appointing that individual um once Mr Bailey rounds out the process later this fall um with the hopefully participated start date of January as well um so she's excited to be joining us um and they've already started meeting and um I think she's going to be a great asset to the middle school with her experience um as during this transition I did um want to point out that we do have one retirement on our agenda tonight and just scrolling down um and that's uh Judith uh Russo from accounts payable Administrative Assistant she's been with us for five years and she is retiring um she's resigning to retire um as of uh oh the 1 of September so next week and I'll also just say thank you D to to miss Russo she's been a she's been uh someone who's been supported our business office for quite some time she's background as an accountant she's done really great work for us um and tomorrow will actually be her last day so if you know Miss Russo make sure you say thank you to her tomorrow so I think we're ready um are there any are there any questions on um HR okay we're ready to vote Mr Don Mr Donnie um so I uh I already mentioned one uh thing that that I'm not very happy to vote about today on this uh on this agenda item and the other one one there anytime somebody retires or leaves it's a great loss to the district um but um I just want to mention one more name here because I personally have interacted and uh I think it would be a big loss to our district uh Mr manahan Tim Manan moving out of rwood he's been a life for here and uh um has contributed a lot at high school and middle school and rwood the alumini association so um I think that would another be another so when you're looking for these Replacements um it will be a difficult one to backfill because those the those expectations are always there comparisons and expectations so when you're trying to uh fil Mr manan's position it will be that that that will be a challenge for you so I'm not happy about that one also when I'm voting but yes Miss quack yes and um Echo that um Mr moah is a well you know such highly regarded and um such a Lynch pin of the community at large as an alumni as a parent and as a as a supervisor and so uh uh best wishes um congratulations to him for his um next stage of his career but uh he will be greatly missed but yes Miss miss m and yes that's Mr M stepped away for a minute Miss bran yes and welcome to all the new hirs Mr mmud we're voting on uh Human Resources thank you yeah they were a great group at n teach orientation they were fun and they're I'm looking forward to working with them they're a great addition uh and we'll go to finance um someone like to move Finance I'll move Finance second if just for the record I'll let me read the donations um from Willard home and School Association $20,000 a gift in kind um and that was renovation of the Willard Auditorium including repairs to the stage painting and building uh two new closets um Mrs Carrie Casper $3,000 a gift in kind of a tricycle to be used for physical therapy at Hall's elementary school again Willard home and School Association $ 22,810 which is a gift in kind for renovations to the faculty room at will Willard Elementary School and again again Willard HSA $4,795 to be used to purchase the reflex math and fra online math instruction program The Morris family for $4,000 which is a gift and kind of two red metal park benches to support the little Free Library at Somerville Elementary School and the Ridgewood High School HSA oh no excuse me rhs uh home and school class of 2023 $ 7,155 73 to be used for pictures around the high school building and to enhance Kevin fely's student leadership program um so we thank uh our generous donors um hsas are pretty amazing in what they raise um other than that um are there any questions on finance um before we vote I do want to um uh emphasize that Clauses uh items five six and seven these are new finance committee we did uh Muhammad and I we did review them the Clauses um basically uh if approved will give the um qualified purchasing agent um the business administrator the ability to go to the co-ops for different services this in no way bypasses the bidding process and it's stipulated so in the language it actually does say that so um it does not bypass it we still have the ultimate board approval but um it just gives him some uh him the latitude to go to the co-ops for the different Services I just uh on one note on um on number 12 um Academy 360 that's a there's only one student it's listed twice but um that was just a tiple um and um I think um you we've been talking about on um just just again to note on 14 is the shared service agreement with the village of Ridgewood uh and the school for school resource officer program and additional security uh security services so I don't know if would you like to speak about that a little bit of course uh so we spoke about this uh a little bit in the budget process and we've spoken about it in committee several times since um I don't remember the last time we we talked about I know it came up at my superintendent coffee a little while ago and I had indicated that um I was aiming to get to a place where I could make a recommendation uh to the board of education for to hire uh to work with the police department to employ three retired police officers uh to one to be stationed at the high school and one to be stationed at each Middle School um at the coffee uh it came up because a Community member had voiced some concerns about uh what the nature and the role of the officer would be and I really explained that as a school district we have to work very closely with the police um You probably noticed that we have police in our schools on a periodic basis um and that is because we operate under something uh called the uniform memorandum of agreement which is a New Jersey document that all school districts and police departments must sign together and that document sets forth all the areas in which the law intersects where schools and uh hits really applies to the Nexus between schools and police it's a very important document and uh as much as we like to as much as uh it's the majority of students and staff go to school every day without any kind of incidents with that as many students as we have uh there are there are matters that do come up that do involve law enforcement so if we do not have a school resource officer program or if we have a very limited program when we do have to engage with the police we end up um just kind of working with whatever officer happens to be available now our RPD is a great group of uh professionals we're very grateful for all of them and we're happy to have any of them come and help our students but often when we have to involve uh police particularly when it involves students um it can be very sensitive matter so to have our own resource officers who are part of our school Community who who are assigned to one school who are there for the arrival and the dismissal every day who can assist with door security but also who can build relationships with staff and students um is really a great asset for a school district I've worked with school resource officers in multiple districts um as with any other position sometimes people aren't the right fit and that's not a problem we just work with the police department and we change the officer um but the officers that I've worked with uh the majority of them with the exception of really one uh they have been wonderful in terms of their ability to build relationships with kids um provide a level of additional um security vigilance in the school um but also really they become uh trust really trusted people that kids go to they're actually prohibited from engaging in discipline uh they can't do police investigations in school all the laws that that restrict police officers outside of school restrict them in school so the administration still does all the discipline they still do the formal investigations but it is amazing that when you put police officers in an environment where their only charge is to be a support for students and to build relationships with them and to be kind of eyes and ears and really a a form of security regarding our um regarding uh um our security against external threats um they end up becoming really great conduits of information and one of the things that I always found interesting is how students even students who sometimes find themselves as the kind as kids who don't always make the right choices have such a tendency to go to the school resource officer with concerns about other students with concerns about possible threats and and that becomes a fantastic Avenue by which we can stay ahead of potential issues um and uh and really before something becomes a police matter disciplinary matter intercede and provide support and help steer whoever might be involved back in the right track um in a very positive way so I think this is a great move for all of us I think it's going to be a great investment uh in District resources and uh I want to express appreciation for our for the prior year school resource officer um who's done a great job with us and some other officers who've worked with us but by switching to the class three designation which means that they're they're retired officers um we're going to we can get a considerably more service for not much more money thank you my pleasure think we're ready to vote I apologize but I did not record the first and the who motion I I moved it and mam thank you I apologize can you make a note that so it's um based on a comment that item number 12 it's Academy 360 one student it's one student it's on twice but you'll amend it in the minutes correct okay we we will correct to say that when we vote that it's as amended it's I think yeah you can say as a meod so Mr Donnie yes Miss qua yes Miss MC yes Mr Mahmud yes Miss Brogan yes approval of bills mamed I present forth the bills uh that I have reviewed this week for approval my second Mr Donnie yes Miss P yes Miss maau yes Mr M yes Miss bran yes board member announcement I just W to um on on Wednesday we have convocation and we welcome back our staff um I know that there have been staff busy in the buildings but this is the official welcoming at BF so we look forward to that eight8 o'clock I think it starts or 8:30 8 o'clock everybody gathers 8:30 I think the program starts so um and then next Tuesday September 3D we welcome back our students and it's it's the beginning of a whole another year so all good any other does any I anybody else have any uh uh board committee reports everybody's been busy and so I thought that since um some of us are on a couple of committees maybe I would would just see if um on finance um Muhammad do do you have anything to add on finance you don't want to put you on the spot no no I think um you know your the agenda supports um the work that we did to make sure that we can bring it to the board world right um facilities uh s you can go well you saw the uh notes in in facilities um there's a lot happening there so um we we did um just briefly touch on our Fields uh Orchard um is still going to be closed but they'll be receding and I believe that after and I don't know if I have that date right is it September 21st um you can water more frequently could be could be earlier than is it the 13th September 13th okay so don't pay attention to me on the 21st September 13th uh you able to water more frequently and so um the seating will happen at Orchard and uh Christine was able to um work with the the village and allow for more watering at BF for the saw that's down and it really looks beautiful um BF so thank you for that um oh actually I want to ask you that um I I thought that the municipalities were exempt from local ordinances or loc you know so does that in cover bard of Ed did we have to go to get a special exemption for that so I spoke with uh M Mr kasmar um we're and we're you ongoing conversations regarding specifically watering and how that applies I mean we we are is as I understand it we are subject to local ordinances unless there's a carve out and there is a carve out specifically for not just for the schools but in general for specific reconstruction of of landscaping so that's where we're fitting under that um but uh we're going to have some following followup conversations because you know in retrospect I would have liked to have requested an exemption for Orchard as well I just didn't it just um but but uh this seems to be a fitting plan for us to get this up and ready so that way by the end the fall it's good the field is good to go but it is something that I'd like to coordinate a little more closely with the village on because you know especially when it comes to a field which is a public which which is a public asset um and and and is often used by groups even outside of our schools um it seems to make sense that we should get some level of exemption yeah I I didn't I mean like the village of Ridgewood themselves don't have to abide by their own ordinances on some certain restrictions I thought I didn't know if that that carve out or exemption applied to the other side of the municipal service like the board of V so it sounds like no but um to the extent that it can be um uh you know approved um and in an expedited way the fields committee would be really grateful well as I said September 13th uh the watering restrictions no but we've been wanting to do this for you know it's been ongoing discussions yeah um and then um some ASB bestus abatement at BF they are converting one of their down their lower level uh rooms into instructional space um and you you see that on um job boiler cleaning um we are it's there has been a a the g g GN pararo architect Engineers have uh started their um review of our buildings and beginning to go through our buildings we'll be looking at that and and that uh report will come to the board and to the facilities committee and we'll begin to really look at the prioritizing of of um projects and then um they also uh Gian pararo is also doing um some work on our field study and um I think that was really most of what we talked about we um are still in conversation about the HVAC options for Glenn and ridge so I just had a couple followup questions um with regard to you know the field um the field study do we have surveys yet I I know one of one of the do we have what surveys I my understanding was we couldn't really get field feasibility until we had surveys and I wasn't sure where we were at in that process we need some bids or something yeah we got a quote on surveys so we just have to make a final decision but but that's a we're that's the definitely the next First Step okay excellent um and then do we know when we're gonna make a decision on the HVAC with Ridge and Glenn so that we can move forward with that yeah in our meeting we had a we had a nice conversation about just uh wanted to make sure we checked all of our boxes there was a plan that was uh discussed by the board last year with a former architect about a a a vrf system which is a variant refriger variable refrigerant help me out here Mr Donnie variable refrigerant refrigerant yeah it was the F on biking yeah but but it's basically it's a system that reclaims energy from from a a hotter part of the building and redistributes it in a colder part of the building so it's very it's very energy efficient uh so in the so um we our new Architects recommended going to the more traditional system for reason for basically just for for ease of Maintenance and for uh and and there we'll still see a significant uh efficiency Improvement by going to a new system you figured out what the f is I can flow yes variable refrigerant flow and the idea is that it can move the refrigerant around in the system with the system of uh um I'm forgetting all the terminology here but there's basically a there there there mechanisms that can actually control the flow of the refrigerant and it can be used to to to heating capacities and cooling capacities to redistribute that so um so it's it's a it's a really it's it's it's becoming this types of system becoming very widely used um but they don't introduce a fresh air component whereas traditional hbac does we've learned that there are a variety of other options so Spirit of uh of uh ensuring that we are staying true to some our commitments around sustainability and being role models of good energy use we are making sure that we spec out um a variety of different different systems that could be more energy efficient than a nut traditional system um and we are uh then going to do a cost analysis and then it's just a simple question of do we want to are we willing to spend if there's additional Associated costs are we willing to spend those additional costs if the if the maintenance is manageable and it's going to get us that much more Energy Efficiency um so uh this is a project that I I'm saying has to be resolved we have to have a path forward in the coming months because we have to be prepared to do this project next summer yeah also looking at the windows over there too so there's a possibility we could do with the windows and the HVAC at both buildings next summer so thank you for that not not to get too much in the weeds but as the parent of two kids with severe allergies you talked about not having fresh air in the building I I'm will will there be an impact like on the health of the kids yes don't yeah we're not we're not we're not exploring any solutions that don't include fresh air what I'm saying is that is the vrf technology requires a separate system that's a fresh air system made me a little nervous there and and and and they can be linked together but but there's a bunch of different models for how to set it up and so we're exploring all the different models no no I appreciate that clarification so Mary one of Legally there's a reason you can do I mean there's a well it just seems like nobody wants to go to school in an airplane right so which is what it sounded like I so but one of the requirements we have put for in front of the Architects is nobody should be able to turn off fresh air component in the classro okay so fresh fresh air component of the system should be o driven by occupancy sensor if somebody's in the classroom then depending on the amount of occupancy it should run at that frequency okay because it's the the requirements are per person 15 cubic feet per hour or something like that so if there are 20 people then the system should be running it full capacity okay if there that's so nobody should just because it's creating noise or if it's uh not if it's bringing out cool air and uncomfortable people should not be able to turn it offood so it should always run understood okay thanks policy uh hu is there anything you want to report we're still we have a long list of upcoming policies that we're still working through um the agenda shows the ones that we have already advanced a lot of it had to do with language updates uh not really substantive in nature the ones that are substantive in nature which it includes for example the um Turf uh policy whatever have you those require much more of a of a deeper discussion so um we're working on it okay that's great that's great yeah I see there was a a lot of work um started and a lot of discussion so that's where this all begins right uh Merry curriculum I know we did a lot um we covered most of curriculum um I would encourage anyone who's looking at the electronic version of the agenda to look at some of the new and revised course offerings that we had we had a great presentation from you know supervisors about some of the newer courses and the revised courses um always really interesting curriculum might be one of my favorite committees I have to say as a new person even though policy is very much fun um but uh we have good we have good discussion of policy but but in all seriousness we um it was a very robust conversation at curriculum and um I just wanted to say on the no red ink in particular that is a very spec it's it's it's a fun way this is g to sound like it's impossible it's a fun way to teach kids grammar in like five minutes a day and it seems like it's a very efficient easy to um implement uh way to really improve the grammar as our kids are learning their writing skills and I think it's something that um is probably a little bit long overdue but we're paying for it now so that's good um and there was just so we did quite a bit at curriculum so we're all good you know it's of interest to me uh I and I don't know for the other board members but I would love to carve out a little time to have just short demonstrations of some of these new curriculum uh that is coming on um because I I really think that just progresses us that much further and we have had this discussion year to year to year about grammar and whether we are teaching it um and you saw the we' tried a lot of different things to teach grammar I I think that would be really worthwhile and it would literally be a f minute presentation um and it it was it was pretty intuitive I think yeah and I would just add a couple of more things from the curriculum meeting one is um almost every uh subject supervisor is now um incorporating climate change related topics in their curriculum and they are finding creative ways on on incorporating them and u high school there's a whole uh subject on that now um on like nature inspired engineering that how when we are introducing like so when we are talking about Academies so rap is an academy amster is an academy computer science maybe an academy so this year we started or high school started a new Academy for um engineering and one of their books is for nature inspired engineering so it it revolves around all the um big events that happened due to climate impact the big floods and all of that so there is a deliberate attempt to add climate related topics at every um by every supervisor at every level is that because of New Jersey isn't that part of now the standard those are very lose the New Jersey standards I think there are some people who are just taking a lot of credit and the politicians that okay they did something but what our supervisors are doing is is much beyond that and it's more driven with Mr miles and uh the sustainability groups because um we want points so the sustainability points and it's it and I think it's not even that it's the I attended one of the seminars and there were teachers from math from our um physical education all like different departments that you would not even think okay how is that impacting climate change and these teachers were attending that because they are curious that how they are curious to find out ways to incorporate climate change into their curriculums so it's I don't think it's just we are like checking the box for standards it's it's driven by the teachers by the supervisors it's it's happening like it's uh because they want to do it I think is that correct yeah absolutely we and we got word today actually that we did get two bronze two bronzes and one silver so we're going to be uh be so if anybody's coming to I know some of you are coming to school boards uh we could use some people to receive those Awards down in the school boards Workshop yeah so so the awards is is one um like benefit or driver but the teachers are driven they they want to learn about it that how to incorporate that into their curriculum so that a lot of work is happening there and uh I think I said two things and I forgot the second one that was it I just want to say just as a compliment our teachers are driven that's a perfect sentence because I see across the board a great deal of intellectual curiosity when Ashley an nembo was talking to us about the cyber security at the curriculum committee meeting she was talking about how all the these teachers came back so enthused so I just you know when you're in curriculum or your parent or in the community you see it constantly that the intellectual curiosity of our Educators then benefits our kids so it just seems like an appropriate time to note that and and I I now remember my second point the second point from curriculum was so one of the course um that um Mr Ferrari introduced two years ago uh was was um ASL in high school and that was an experimental introduction and um that is another course that we have a problem of too much participation like so like we were talking about computer science that we have these only one or two elective options and everybody wants to take those courses so we have that same problem with uh ASL it's it's a very popular course it's going into its third year now and uh we have for 10th grade and 11th grade I think we have now two sections uh for for it so like there are students who took it in 9th grade it's more in 10th and they all want to continue in 11th grade so it's the third year for that course and it's it's becoming a very popular course at high school I do feel that we're um there's a lot of progress being made so I think um as we look at our agendas I I would like um some focus on some of the newer curriculum things uh not only what we're doing but if in fact we're weaving in uh climate change how we doing that I think that's um important for the board to know uh also think it's it's good for the public so um um maybe we can um look at that and plan that out a little bit um on Communications um you saw it we really spent most of the um Communications on the website strategic plan which uh Dr schores um talked about and um um some edits to the student survey some wording just to make the questions clear I think more for elementary for our elementary students so talked a little bit about that um but lots of good great work you saw with the website so uh you know we're really in a very good position to start the year oh I had a question on the Strategic plan so sure what's the time frame in terms of um engaging the community like I'm not um if you could talk about the schedule and when something like a more finished product would be unveiled um we talked about that yeah we did talk about that and I have the uh we have um a road map that we can share with you all from hya but um they proposed a couple different timelines and we preferred a timeline that was a little more accelerated like I said so that we could have not not just the strategy but the actual action plan fi finished for the for the the budget season so that way we could be very clear about fun about using using those intentions to finalize our decisions around the budget um but basically it's a as I said a monthly process so September is really is really engaging all of our community members in these focus groups and October is very much about processing all that information um and then uh we'd be getting into formally developing the actual and much of our plan is going to be built around the concept of a port portrait of a graduate so uh the portrait of a graduate the the focus would be on building the portrait of The Graduate and then what's our strategy to actually be able to accomplish this portrait of a graduate for all of our students and then um and then of course what are the action plans so it's basically monthly so but in September when you're meeting um other than the focus groups there'll be people who might have input but will not be able to participate in the focus group so are we doing like a thought exchange or how will you capture that well there's a survey there is a there's a limited survey that's specifically limited so that way it's not overwhelming for folks it's a 12 question survey and basically what it's done is it's taken all of the input that you have all given hya as well as our our administrative team and basically narrowed down from all the feedback to a handful of different topics that are of importance and so the survey is going to be going out and asking people please tell us of these list of six items which two are of most important important do you think are the most important so then we can kind of quantify where in the community's mind what's what is most important um and then it's about really analyzing that data so the board's going to be brought up to speed all along the way and this is your strategic plan as much as it is mine so uh you'll have lots of opportunities to see how it's unfolding as we go but in terms of the timeline I can give you the we can share that document with you yeah um I think the time will be very helpful the second thing is in terms of the survey that's going to go out is it just going to go out to the current um student um current parents or is is it going to be you know they could be a l you know the alumni may have some um you know more re you know valid input how will you capture how broadly disseminated will be that will that survey be so that's question you don't have to answer it now but it's just the food especially the more recent graduates they may have some very you know um they might be very interested in providing feedback now having being a graduate going out to uh colleges how rhs R RPS is um situated them that's a great question I don't I can't tell you how broad but it is Our intention to be broad so thank you so the survey will be going out to as broad as possible or not some uh in in September um the data will be crunched by hya in October yep I actually have it right here I can give you a rundown okay so um we're looking at um the survey is is is going out uh in the survey is going out in in September as well so that's going to be going out uh let's see where survey launch is on is is anticipated um between is anticipated somewhere around the week of the of September 9th so we'll clarify about how far out that's going focus groups are taking place through the month of September uh there's going to be some crunching of all that data over the course of September and October they're going to be advisory committees that are broken out in the O in the in October as well so there's going to be there's a proposed and again this is all proposed as we collect our data we'll determine if we need to tweak this schedule but this is what's proposed by our Consultants so meeting one would be focusing on uh reestablishing the state of the district like like Pro the state of the schools address but in light of the recent feedback second meeting will be focusing on the portrait of The Graduate and the SEC second and third meetings will be focused on portra of a graduate admission fourth meeting uh somewhere in the ballpark of November uh second week of November would be uh articulating vision and Mission and then the fifth meeting November 18th would be uh would be to identify goals and this is this specifically this would be work will be done by an advisory committee which we'll be sharing with all of you these meetings will be virtual uh then throughout the December January February time frame we'll be working to develop action plans based on the outcom of those other meetings there's an intention to present the final plan to the board in the March time frame okay because if the if the uh time frame if if the desire is to have this um at a point where this can influence or help guide some of the budgetary decision that you know we we vote on a preliminary budget in March April exactly so it's it just I'm not sure at what point the board will be brought in at what point the public will be brought in but need to be at least one exactly I'm with you 100% when it says final plan presented to bee to be clear that's like the final unfurling of the whole plan but we we're going to be well into this process throughout the Des throughout the whole budget time frame okay so maybe I I would just um ask that one um if there could be some clarification on on how broadly disseminated the survey will be um and second would be um a public um just even a a touch point from it maybe hya or from you just saying here's where we are and here's kind of the broad outlines of what the Strategic Vision looks like in a very preliminary aspect you know this is this strategic plan is is designed to help provide a path for the entire district for at least five years y so I want to give it the weight and the time for the whole Community to understand where we're going rather than you know so there's actually a dashboard timeline that Hy if you remember was pitching to us that they really recommended that we use um so we're actually working with our Tech Team right now because our intention was to do our own okay um but if that's not something that's going to be readily able to do then we're going to go ahead with Hy's dashboard but the idea is just what you described being very articulate and clear and Visually clear about what our time frames are and the deliverables and and where we are in that process so people can see what it looks like right now right now I I know that we've been interviewed I don't know what the collective well and that's and the other thing I think that but and I appreciate you're focusing on the the the the public but but I think what we really want to make sure that we're really clear about is what your all your updates are right yeah I have no updates so so so at each board meeting I think it would be appropriate to allocate a portion of time in the board meeting to be really clear about what we've accomplished so far with his Strat oh that would be great I think because it's such a critical I and I can I mean it is it's critical and it's a major point of focus for us and I could make this a part of my superintendent updates oh that would be great that would be great because the idea is that eventually it'll plant maybe that the mission statement that we have right there correct potentially yeah yes so it's that important stay the same yeah it could change stay the same but however we get there we need to be as transparent and open as possible because it's going to be right there guiding whatever we do as a district and the board so I think it's really important that and for it to have meaning to folks they have to be a part of the process right than and feel a part of the process which brings us into a discussion item um which is the 2425 District gos turn myself up so I have a couple discussion items if that's okay yeah okay so the so the first one we don't need to necessarily have a big discussion right here and now it's really a kickoff of a discussion because we do need 24 25 school year goals and I've been working with the administrative team very similarly to I did last year and I've been working down to uh figuring out different ways to bucket some of our goal priorities last year we decided on the the goal that the buckets of we focused on strategic planning that was looking at the prior strategic plan and deciding whether to move forward with another Str strategic plan we talked about math and language arts particularly at the K5 level we talked about inclusivity and we talked about finance and Facilities those buckets really honestly still work in a lot of ways I would expand and the math and language arts to be more inclusive of all curricular subjects because I think we need to move towards a focus of um uh Equity of experience and quality control across all of our subjects um we I think the inclusion could stand on its own as well except that I'd like to expand that more to just general supports for students including um uh empowerment supports which could be as diverse as um diversity Equity inclusion initiatives where we're celebrating student differences across the schools I could also be U making sure that we have appropriate immediate uh mental health supports for students if they're experiencing crisis um so effectively where we left it with the administrative team when we when we kind of particularly the principles when we talked this through was that we're really looking to keep keep a strategic goal well a framework that we think would work well would be keeping a Strate strategic planning goal where we could memorialize what we're doing in strategic planning to expand the uh math and Ela to just a general academic goal that focused on really achievement for all students and high levels of achievement and then uh expanding the inclusion goal to be more about student empowerment and student well student support and then keeping a again a finance and Facilities goal so I'm so I'm sorry I'm just gonna let me just finish painting the whole picture here so I'm particularly I've charged the principles with working with their staff um and working with each other to identify some targets if you remember last year we talked about really it was kind of a benchmark here we didn't really know to do as far as Target so we've made our goals kind of process oriented so I don't think we can get away from having some process oriented goals this year as well but I would like to even though we have a strategic plan that's coming I do think it would be helpful and healthy for us to start really looking to move some measures that mattered us that means first of all choosing metrics that matter that we're already collecting data on and we now have a really good amount of data from last year um and then moving from moving moving towards picking those data picking those picking those measures and then setting reasonable targets for what which ones to improve and how much to improve them by and the goal isn't to create some unrealistically high Target that we you know we have to change we have to we have to go 180 and like we have to take this number that's a 50% it's got to be 95% it's more about engaging with our professionals and helping them to take some ownership over the deciding which measures we care about right now and then deciding what's a reasonable Target so I'd like to come back to you uh on September 12th with some suggestions for those targets so what my my big ask in how you can help me in preparing for a proposal for all of you is to share with me just first of all your thoughts on those buckets four buckets is also a lot I mean theoretically we could take the academics and the individual bucket and put them into strategic planning because that's all really going together um but uh but also if you think that there are any specific areas and you don't have again you don't have to we don't have to sit here and brainstorm and do this all right now but if you could brainstorm after the meeting and think is are there any areas that you feel like on your mind are still things that we should call out in a district goal so for example we had a cpag meeting not long ago and we talked about um presenting sort like kind of putting together sort of a state of the schools address through like the lens of special education like the state of special education um that would that's something that we that I think we should still make sure we enumerate in in in a in a district goal right so it's a process oriented goal but it's still something I think we should call out so I would just like to make sure that that as I'm drafting these and figuring out how to bucket them and tie targets to them that I'm being inclusive of all the things that are top of mind for everyone so Dr schz um remind me on on 23 24 goals did we do a Public Presentation I I remember seeing a board presentation but was it a public meeting and is the presentation available to the public yeah so I gave a presentation I gave a presentation to all of you and then I wanted to be responsive to the public so I carved out time in one of my coffee where I went through it but I have not given it at a board meeting so it would be appropriate to actually give a version of that at the 12th meeting because board those were like superintendent goals from the board so I think that the wrap up of 23 24 goals should be at a board meeting yeah so and there were a couple of slides there where I had requested more detail information there was a a staff survey that was at the district level and I requested that at the building level and at the position level like we we just clubbed everything at District staff and I requested the separation between uh teachers and uh assistant assisting staff especially at the elementary school level so for each building what those numbers look like um and also I think there were some numbers that it was not enumerated but I found a recording and I had forwarded to everybody on the board that we had talked about looking at numbers for H that how many students are buzzed there versus how many students are so we had talked about collecting that data and that was agreed to at that meeting so it was in two recordings that I forwarded um I did not see that in the uh in the minutes but um so so what the first point is that we have to W close the loop on last year's goals and then last year's goals were about analysis right it a lot of action was already taken uh which is uh which is beyond the goal so that good to you on on that that we accomplished a lot but essentially as a board we set your goals as an analyze or collect the data and then so from those goals that were last year's goals anything that was analyzed and we identified room for improvement those should definitely become action item for this year and the we we may put a bigger bucket but those should be spelled out that anything that we identified in last year's go analysis that hey these are the areas for Improvement where we need to act on those should be part of and so for example some of the things are accomplished already math we already have change everything but for ELA it's still work in progress so that we still have to have a goal for ELA for what will be accomplished this year because that's still very lose that what are we doing this year versus what are we doing next year so we need to carry on as a goal um and then if we identify anything from the diversities uh survey that if there are if there is anything glaring on the screen when we are looking at that then you come and tell us what can be changed so so that just to just to be clear that that sentiment that you just described that's the process I'm going to be doing okay and so when I but I don't want to speak for all of you I mean I have my notes so what I'm asking is if there if you have any items that are I mean you can bring it to me on the 12th and I'll get this to you in advance so you can see it beforehand if you want but um but if if you just know on the top of your head that there's something that's a significant you want to make sure that I'm I'm processing as I'm doing this yeah mine are those two one is the ELA that we need a solid plan for actually three one is the ELA uh the second one is we had the analysis for high school the whole admission process the focus on academics um and high schools like defining our our focus our concentration that how much emphasis we put on academics and high school so that needs we need to come up with some action on this that this year and the third one is the uh diversity of our staff so I have a a question um my first question was and I appreciate I I everything that you just said um I agree with you kind of like a summary but I also thought that the state of the schools address was in part designed to tell us where we were at in terms of the goals so um I feel like a lot of that information is out there but certainly you know a a smaller bullet point um presentation to wrap it up and I agree like I would call them leftover items right what we didn't get to what needs to be done is fine um the thing that um and I don't know how you're going to articulate this but the thing that really jumps out at me is when and I wasn't on the board at the time but when you identified all the district goals we had not had three devastating floods where we lost um you know use of our athletic facilities for a great deal of time and I feel that every time it rains I say another prayer okay and I am concerned about that and I I know it's a big issue but I think that we need to be specific and and I know that we have a a large old District in terms of buildings and facilities and there is so much work to be done um but I do feel like like with climate change and circumstances that that has become particularly pressing and that we need and and there's a lot of discussion about facilities use and what kind of material we're going to have so I think that we need to be mindful of that and come up with a very specific goal related to that it might Simply Be analysis I think it probably is just analysis this year but we we need to at on a a parallel track also talk about what our our contingency plans are particularly in light of the fact that we heard from our insurance carrier and I know that that may not be settled that our deductible was raised you know 10 times so there's a significant financial cost to us that you know wasn't present even a month ago right so we really need to know what we're doing with that because we have um we have great needs in this district for all of our facilities and our fields and we're going to have to start to prioritize them and I think it's appropriate to do that in terms of the district goals well those are the assessments right the assessments yeah but the assessment should give us give us the right so if you would look at that right and so we need to we need to move that a little bit more quickly but I I I just feel that I feel that that issue has blossomed and taken on a life of its own because of circumstances conversations maybe not very helpful I'm not being very artic and I apologize for that but I find we need to find a way to put that all together in a nice piy statement which you're really good at and then help us figure out how to you know get where we need to go yeah because mean historically we have been very event driven we flood we respond remediate we can't afford to we literally can't afford to do that anymore I I agree with you 100% so there is no contingency the the ability to take a breather to do the analysis to have a very comprehensive we kind of lost that yeah the strategy because you're simply putting out the fire putting the field back together so kids can play so like so to have that being elevated uh and have it more concrete we're serious about this we need to figure it out and yeah yeah and it it it could be um it certainly has been an open discussion point but to maybe articulate it so that we can have like maybe yes the discussion is very Freer ranging it's like an Italian Sunday family dinner which I'm very comfortable serious I'm very comfortable with that model however sometimes you don't get much accomplished at the end of the day so I'm just trying to you know we do frankly have to then you know deal with that episode very that event so then then on the same page yeah but to to the extent that we can certainly you know bubble it up I think it's definitely worthwhile because that's y that's what we should be doing um in addition to that um and I think I just thought about this because you were saying you know nobody wants to go to school uh well fresh air and the need for fresh air and access is um the um steps location um you know this is we every during especially renewal periods when the rent increas is hit um uh that building is for sale and so there is um perhaps an opport not opportunity but we just need to think about holistically where we are what's the best way um to serve the population um and the lens by which we think about um General Ed facilities and the need for fresh air we should certainly apply that to the steps program so I just you know it's it's it's maybe not a district goal or or or anything like that but it's be part of the analysis of the special ed programs generally do you think it's appropriate to put it in there or I it's kind of because it falls under the umbrella it's slightly different I understand that and I know that there's different considerations but I'm just making a suggestion if that might help toly find a place to put it by Equity that topic fits the umbrella yeah it's the equity component too um okay so um with all this and if anybody thinks of anything else during the course of the week um you know please get it to Dr Schwarz and then we'll um we'll revisit this um and but let's let's be mindful that there's x amount of days uh and hours for your goal work so the Strategic plan might incorporate some of this work and certainly the facility review um and field review I is part of that so um so the buckets might work very nicely um when you talk about empowering students you're also talking about um seal and and um mental health right yeah so might work um okay and then the next uh discussion item is um election day calendar changes and uh I don't know was this in the FYI at all um if not remember no no so just some context again initial conversation we're not making decision just yet but I just wanted to put out there um be transparent that we were been asked by uh the by the um uh Village clerk uh and the village manager to consider closing schools on Election Day um this came up last year uh I was C presidential election I top for discussion calendar committee that we have in the district which is a broad representation of stakeholders including a few students and uh the committee they they didn't feel like it was necessary to not hold school um the the the point the point of intention is just the uh anticipated high volume of participation and the fact that um there's as a general topic of concern among some folks is election Integrity um and the idea that you know a lot can go wrong on a school day alarms can go off like they could theoretically shut down the polling station um and there's just there there's just a lot of variability so uh in good faith working with my Village Partners I'm you know I'm giving the top consideration of course this is really isn't just an administrative decision calendar is calendar is uh something that I recommend to the board using a process that's pretty spec pretty well spelled out um so I will be putting together the calendar committee um to just to have this conversation with them formally um and I wanted to just give all of you an opportunity to weigh in if you wanted to uh we don't have to do this again right now um because it's a process it's it's not something I would change without consulting you that said um it on our calendar right now there's a professional development day in March that could theoretically just be changed to this date so we we could that could become a full day of school and um the professional development day could be scheduled for November 7 so we'd still have people in the building they would just be the Professionals in the building um I don't love the idea uh I don't I don't love the I don't love the idea of having kids in school during an election and I also don't love the idea of not being able to hold school because there's an election I guess the idea that I love the most is not having elections in schools at all uh but that's definitely me being uh that's definitely my bias um because I just feel like it's an interference in the schools but I understand that you know schools are a community resource so uh so I just thought I I I again we I'm not trying to invite us to be here till 12 o'clock tonight but uh but I thought that I would um just put that out there and hear what thoughts you have and I can certainly represent those thoughts uh through the committee and and and I I kind I really would like to hear what you all have to say this yeah this has come up quite a bit actually now I think about it and I thought one of this and this was one of those it was a Freer range discussion nothing really you know we we didn't get resolved but one of the points that somebody brought up if I remember correctly was that we have that week is also the right the teacher conference so then you it just becomes that's right it's not day of school right and so what happens is people tend to not show up or there could be a chance that it just it becomes a child care management issue for working families and it's simply um really difficult if you know I I can imagine lots of famili just simply taking the day off absente having students not be in school for that whole week basically potentially I I think um I think that's I don't know the right answer to that um I think that I I hadn't ever thought of it in terms of the election Integrity side of the argument what I've often heard is just the concern about security and safety for the kids in the schools because you have so many individuals who are you know getting access to the schools and I mean based on anything that I've ever seen is you don't have you know robust security necessarily um I think those are all factors that you and the calendar committee will need to consider um you know not very helpful interestingly oh I'm sorry no I just goingon to say so so I mean my thoughts on on this are I uh I agree like I think closing the schools is a big inconvenience for a lot of people and you know there another day off and especially that week uh so Dr Schwarz I would just ask that you know to actually ask for facts like what is the what is the real um what are the real facts on the ground why we should be closing this have there has there been more danger across the country on Election Day we actually have numbers around that uh is there actual heightened risk of some sort uh we're just making a lot of assumptions without any facts to back it up so that's what I would ask to see com before we make those decisions uh and then maybe if it's a security concern you know do we just pay for some extra security that day and keep the schools open that might cost us less from a district perspective potentially yep I think that's the right way of going about it and I specifically asked that if if the uh since it since what I'm hearing is that the push is coming from the county I specifically asked that if we could if there was any documentation that we could have from the county to support this um so I don't have it yet um but I agree I think some some sort of an analysis would be really helpful here and if it's coming from the county perhaps there's some County resources uh that they could provide for us if it's you know maybe a SRO for the day from a different School District or you know to the extent that the county if they if this is a a desire if they could help fund that you know because I I from not from a closure perspective but of course from a security perspective and electional integrity they have more they're concerned about the school the the the Daily Business of the school interfering with the election process is that what I heard you say as opposed to I'm not I'm not going to speak for them I'm just say trying understand what was presented to you so so it was presented to me well there was a couple things presented to me one of them was that there's going to be a very high volume they're concerned about potential conflicts occurring like again not violence per se but potential disruption if individuals if there's long lines or if there's a delay because of a school function or something that there could be a long people could have to wait in line they don't want people to become uh agitated if there's any kind of delay at the polls um they also threw in that it would be very helpful to have high school students high school students could be paid to work as pole workers if we weren't open that's interesting that's an interesting that's an interesting additional additional component um I but I mean I don't think anyone thinks that there would be violence like that would threaten children I don't hear that from anybody um but I I do think it's a m it's a matter of logistical headache for me when I think about as the superintendent of schools what is what would my reservations be I don't love the idea of many many many people coming in and out of our schools while their kids are there I don't I don't I don't love that idea um I also don't love the idea that this isn't a political statement I think it's I think this is factual there are there are some people who are going into this election if who who I understand are going to be concerned about the Integrity of the electoral process the election process and if again this is I'm I'm getting pretty worst case scenario here but like let's say an alarm goes off or like we have to hold a lockdown or extended lockdown or like that and that's local to our building that isn't being widely felt like it's not like an earthquake where everybody feels it but like uh somebody a ball hits a hits a hits hits a hits a fire alarm and we can't figure out what happened and somebody feels like they smelled gas and now we've got to call in uh a lot of First Responders to evaluate the building I mean something like that could be a disruption that could last an hour theoretically I mean I've seen that before um if that just happens to coincide on Election Day you could have an entire poll station that gets people get locked out for an hour um and I mean I and I again I am programmed to think in terms of worst case scenarios but theoretically you know someone could allege that they alarm was pulled and and someone could allege that like that that someone's rights were violated because they couldn't get into the pole station that they were assigned to so I I'm not I'm not going to put that level of of uh of of concern on the village because they didn't articulate that but as I just run through like what could happen I mean that's probably a worst case scenario of what would I mean a worst case scen be someone would get hurt but I don't I think that's so unlikely that it's not really worth considering but I think that the um but I do think that like something that disrupts polling could happen and that could be ugly that could happen any polling correct and I I thought when we thought about this last time Sheila I feel like someone told us that this where people are coming in to vote are closed off from the most of the schools some of the schools aren't the high school is not closed off um though I suspect you could uh gather everybody to go in through you know just gym one may just have security officer blocking the hallway I don't know there's something about having police offices or Security office within the P close by or something is there yeah I have to follow up on exactly what that what that rule is there's there's been a general guidance about uh police officers not being at polling stations there might be some sort of an exemption about that but that's the reason why the district has paid for private security in the past and the police have not actually manned the polling stations there's been there concerns by some around voter intimidation oh now so my thing is that uh with the presidential election we're we're looking at about 75% of Voters voting um there're the voters have an option and and how many voters are really using the other options which are early voting or um absentee so we can and the last time was 2020 but we didn't everybody was um not absentee mailin ballots right so um it didn't materialize so we I mean those facts because if if this is going to be the request for every presidential election coming from the county and I don't know if will but now this is the second time um do we build that into making our calendar every four years and and just build in every presidential election year close but we have other elections that happen in the buildings we have the primaries that don't bring out as many um and then the the local um elections on the offe you know not a presidential year it's probably about 30% or so um so for me got we have to differentiate between what you know what elections we're going to close for and then have have significant reasons I agree I'd like to move the elections out of the schools completely and I know I had that conversation years ago and there there was it was no no and no again um and I I made no but I don't see why we don't can't continue that conversation and understand why um at least for some of our schools that are not a single entrance into the voting Can't Be Moved Willard's one of them the high school's another BF you're going in those front doors uh and it's in the hallway um in that front um right in front of the auditorium is where they're voting but the schools like um Paws and Orchard um yeah I mean uh Trel what what school do we not have voting in Ridge I think Ridge I don't think there's any voting I don't think there's voting in Ridge so but the other schools you have direct entrance into the room that like travel you go right in and you you can't get into the school so there are some protections on that so if we even concentrated on for the future on those buildings that don't have a single entrance in for the voters would that make a difference um and and could could that those schools be moved there there's parameters there's you have to move you can move polling place but it has to be within a certain distance from the yeah I I don't I mean the very Arguments for why we why the school district is designated as a polling station I think are sound is it is a taxpayer and Resident um asset and it's a public space um and I don't I I'm a Little discomforted by the idea that we would it it it's you want to provide as many voting opportunities as possible absolutely and by um closing off um those opportunities I don't know disenfranchise I think just I'm not saying close them all the ones that don't have direct access so I guess the question is is there a way to create um uh separate access right right rather than shutting the school down completely either through um private security if police officers cannot be or you know or Cy resources I'm not sure um but is there a way to just kind of direct people a roundabout entrance with enough signage I think we need to understand if there's any like facts or other statistics around the danger level that they could provide us so we can weigh that in because let's not forget the people that are or a lot of the people that are coming to vote are are most likely r with residents resid that are registered yeah a lot of those people could be coming to back to school nights without going to their body scans so you still have the same type of threat potential right where parents are just walking into the school I mean obviously these are parents these are not always parents so there's a little bit of a when diagram there uh but parents are walking in without going to security procedure as well back to school might other function that school as well going to section those off are we going to provide additional security every time to think about Dr Schwarz is um can we maybe can we B superintendence and other school districts through the your Association that how many other schools close and what is the protocol in New Jersey um because we are probably not the only District that if the Count's asking then there's 73 school districts is it is the county asking or The Village manager well the the I'm hearing this through the village right but the village is telling me they're that they're receiving pressure to the county and count yeah but pressure it's not County soup it's not it's not the educational it's it's to be clear it's not the county department and those are political positions right so that's a different so those are political positions elected position yeah so so I think that um I think getting more information I think would be appropriate and helpful I think some good questions here you know our discomfort with holding school a lot of this a lot of the stuff that I'm sure the village hears about and I do hear about are there are some specific schools where they're not it's it's not as easily partitioned off um so we can get a little more information on that as well um but I'm hearing from as a board it sounds like it's a board there's a reluctance to close school on that day yes for the sake of of Education continuity for the students absolutely and my my vote is basically based on um like I don't have specific opinion I've uh listened to Dr fishbine as a resident and U when he used to talk about this and I think his view his view used to be that um it's an educational opportunity for students when they see the election in process um so he always advocated not to close it but a lot has changed in the society since before 2000 versus now so it's your decision from my perspective so whatever you recommend um I'll agree with that I appreciate that okay well we'll get we'll get some more data um this will come back on the agenda September 12 there's probably some kind of a deadline that we would need um so for par for our if we are going to as a courtesy I would want to drag this on yeah yeah I wouldn't want to be if there is a closure I wouldn't want to be last minute so I prefer to give people certainty as to what our position is going to be sooner than later and I think September 30th is probably quite late so if we can we can get it together for the 12th that would be very helpful um I had another thing on discussion that is not on the uh thing and I won't belabor it but um um there just have been some concerns and I'm addressing it to Mrs Murphy here particularly but um as the school year begins um you know particularly at the high school um we often have you know either frequent absences on a regular basis or um absences of instruction or teachers um that are totally permissible and fine um but that will go you know like for 10 school days in a row and so there's been some concern about um Google Classroom doesn't necessarily cut it in terms of sufficiency of instruction and and I know that um you've taken some uh there's been some new initiatives that are happening this year so I was hoping you could speak to that to maybe aay some of the concerns that have been expressed to me and that I know I have sure so I think all of us heard some of the concerns last year um that were brought to us especially around um teacher attendance at the high school not necessarily that there was poor attendance or attendance that was as you said not permissible just that it was because of how coverages are done at the high school um it was creating a lack of continuity sometimes in instruction um so you know having those conversations we began to look a little bit more deeply at what attendance patterns were uh what some of the reasons for that are so from an administrative level uh you know Mr nias and his administrative team are taking a closer look at specific cases this school year and we'll address them as need um arises in addition to that part of the work we did during the um Rea contract was to include um some new language around allowing staff to cover classes um especially when you have what I would call a shortterm leave of absence so and I think I had shared sometime at an earlier meeting perhaps about this as well um however you know I find we refer to this like the sandwich generation many of our teachers are in they're caring for both children and for aging parents um and I think you know post covid uh there's been a lot of changes in family structures and we find ourselves having more and more staff members having to be out for four or five days to really you know Assist a parent or another relative or or to deal with a change with with a child um or some difficulty um with their own family um and in doing that you know we find that you can't get a leave replacement and you know the other way because it's it's very short term and um part of the other challenge is you know we sometimes use what we call a point two we have um other teachers from the Department that that teacher from cover which is still a strategy that we'll use depending on the amount of time someone is out but we now have language around this 10 days and and it's good they use it because anything beyond attendees is considered a long-term leave of absence is getting board approved we are looking for a more permanent solution for that absence um so that we have someone certificated and appropriate to take that instruction along while that person's out however under 10 days it gets complicated so the new language allows us to have class coverage so a staff member can be paid to cover a period um at a rate at an hourly rate um it may not be someone who is certificated in that content but it is one of our certificated High School teachers that is familiar with instruction familiar with the curriculum at the high school familiar with the program and can step in for that day or two or three and help to lead curriculum along even if they're not the curriculum expert they're more of a Hands-On person in that classroom than just Google classroom or even one of our daily subs um so that's one strategy we're using this year and we'll see how that goes um in addition we did some analysis around substitutes in general um and we we have found that one of the things we've been doing since covid but we're sort of increasing um these roles in certain schools this year is the use of what we would call a permanent sub so this is someone who may have a regular teaching SE or substitute s but they're going to be our higher caliber substitutes they have more school experience and they're signed to to regular schools so we did increase the number of permanent substitutes at both the high school and and both middle schools um for September um in order to make sure that these people become part of the faculty they become part of the fabric of the school um and they provide more continuity um they're there the teachers know them there's conversation they're helping in classes if they're not covering or covering a class um and so they're more familiar and able to again provide more of that Hands-On instruction and help that we're looking for someone is out again yes I understand it it's not the same as having a regular teacher there and we are working on strategies to address that as well um but overall um when we look at the data our teachers actually have very good attendance and um there's just pockets of areas that we have to address it it's not was never meant as a criticism so much as it was just because there's 180 days of school right so if you don't get to it you can't extend the school year year to finish the instruction and uh some you know so the idea is just to make sure that to the extent possible we maintain the level of instruction that the kids need so that they get the foundation to move forward and get the education so that's that's the concern um and I appreciate all the work you've been doing on it I know you spent a lot of time on it and kind of uh brainstorming other things so uh thank you for that explanation as well appreciate it can I ask you a follow up on that is the permanent Subs are they when you permanent Subs they are there at the school whether sub is required or not so so they're they're always needed there's never a day when they're not utilized um in some capacity at the school to cover classes or to cover for a par that's out I mean even on the first day of school there will be people that are out because things happen and we are a large district with close to close to um 700 certificated stff numbers that's a lot of people I'm not even counting you know the Paras um and other individuals that need substitute coverage sometimes so there there is always a use for those individuals and we're not talking about like 20 people that we're deploying all day we're talking about you know three permanent Subs at the high school and both middle schools we've been utilizing one in the past so we we're expanding slowly we'll see how this goes we want to make sure that we're also not deploying a resource that's not going to be utilized so we can always is um increased and we're using our substitute funds to fund that additional so they're still being paid um out of the same po the same budget um pocket that we would be using for our regular substitutes but then but at what point do they not become substitutes and become just full-time FTE but they're not they're not full-time they work 5.75 hours a day we keep them yeah but they can't be lunching well they can okay they can but that's those are the elementaries okay got it secondary we have so we have three permanents at the high school and you said one for each of the middle schools no three at each middle school for this sorry three at each middle school for this year so three at the high school three at each of the middle schools and then we have anybody for elementary yep the elementaries each have one with the exception of Ridge and haw um which when we looked at some of our data about substitute coverage those schools receive the least amount of daily subs responding so each of those schools will have two to start the school year you're welcome okay um we'll move to acceptance of minutes um we've got the June 10th June 20th July 22nd I just want to make a note that I updated the time on the uh June 10th 2024 executive session the second one the OB of time it was it was had the wrong wrong time it had started six the second one did not start six executive three was um are we ready to there so we're not so with that um edit um I move the executive the executive and regular um meeting minutes listed second um I just note that what's not included in here is executive session three from June 10th when we actually concluded an adjourned meeting it is no it's not on the agenda it it we reviewed it but it's right am I yes no it's not on the agenda it's in the packet but it's not listed on the agenda it's not list like literally not listed so I don't know do if it was reviewed and you want to amend the I didn't get to review that one okay so then yeah I just wanted to make it clear because it's you want to finish it right so June 10th yeah the third executive session will be on the September 12th right agenda got it even though we it's in our packet right just not listed I got it I second what's listed here as well Mr Donnie I think it's just an all in favor I'm going to abstain from July 22nd minutes I was not here and I'm going to abstain from I think it's June 20th I think I was away too so I'm just voting yes on June 10th and June 20th okay and you are abstaining from the 20th I don't think I was here I think I was still in Africa so I think one of the I think it was June 20th yes remember yeah which I yeah you want me to call individual I guess we better so so Mr Donnie voting on everything except for July 22nd correct so three minutes from July 22nd I'm standing Miss qua everything but June June 20th I was absent miss m everything yes Mr mmud M brogen yes uh no what is there any other business otherwise we'll go to comments from the public go to comments from the public um is there they're open for public comment now if there's anybody listening there are no hands um so we'll close uh public comment and um I make a motion to adjourn the meeting you second it and all in favor would you like just to stay a little longer I okay everyone have a good night see you at com