hi I'd like to call this meeting to order roll call please my mic was on the whole time M Ro commondo M BR to Mr Mr arello present miss inello here Mr laurentino present M rolloff present Miss toric present M Traverso here miss zelli here hear you you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I was concerned about adequate notice of this meeting has been sent to all members of the Board of Education and to the Bergen Record in accordance with provisions of the open meetings act chapter 23119 1975 and can I have the superintendent report yes thank you first there was a message that was just sent out regarding a 2-hour delayed opening for tomorrow Tuesday January 16th so you should have received a text a phone call and an email and an app notification if you have the app so if you are missing one of those contacts please update your information in the parent portal I also we have a presentation tonight but before we start the presentation I just wanted to comment on the calendar so the 2024 2025 school calendar was on the agenda for tonight and it wasn't completed in time so we are going to put it on the February agenda so what I wanted to do is the all the county superintendence there's a Bergen County group and we have these monthly surveys so I added some questions to the monthly survey to see what other districts do because I did hear I don't typically respond to Facebook posts but I did hear that on Facebook there was a couple posts or I should say a lot of post about today and our students having a half day and our staff had had PD in the afternoon um the reason being was we wanted to keep it consistent across Veterans Day Columbus Day Martin Luther King Day don't didn't want to tried to keep it as Equitable as possible and also um it's a struggle to have 184 required student days between September and June and all the days that that we do have off currently so I did speak to two parents today one reached out to me one I reached out to and we had great conversations about how um about the process and what's required so I'm going to do this County Superintendent survey see you know what other districts are doing for next school year and then revisit the 2425 school calendar so I just wanted to put that out there and then for a presentation tonight we have one of our speech pathologists Laura Ironman she is um this year she's based slowly at the middle school high school and she has is um is proposing a a new elective for our high school students and it's on the topic of neuro diversity and I thought because this is sort of her her um her baby I suppose and that it would be great to have her come and just share her this course and the thought behind the course with our Board of Ed members because it is on the agenda to be approved at Wednesday night's meeting so at this time I'm going to invite the board members to go have a seat and Laura Ironman to come on up here I will give you no I have oh yeah take that one [Music] sorry just give it a minute [Music] test there we go thank you that's fine I'll hold it yeah perfect thank you y while it's loading I can give a little bit of the context behind why this is my baby for this year um uh you guys were grateful enough I was grateful that you approved that I could go to a conference back in November the American speech and hearing Association at that conference I actually went to a panel in which um a teacher and a speech pathologists are co-treating a class similar to this one in the public schools of Portland um and so based on that I was inspired I saw a need in our school to do very similar things so I thought thought starting it as a half semester or sorry a semester a half year elective would be the perfect start to get this information out there for the need so as Miss Vietti said my name is Laura Ironman I am one of the speech pathologists in the districts I work solely right now at the middle school high school working closely with sale but also working with a lot of individuals who may fall under this uh realm of neurodiverse whether it's ADHD autism um sometimes not any of those and there they have you know other labels but would definitely benefit from this sort of um class so to start off I'm going to introduce what neurodiversity is a lot of you have heard this term before it's very um it's not new but there's a lot more coming out now of what neurodiversity is and what neurodiversity is not so this just gives the definition of what neurodiversity is and it really specifies that it's not necessarily talking about a pathological um diagnosis it's talking more about a difference going on mentally um so it falls under there's a lot that falls under this umbrella and that's what's coming out is that there's more and more that fall under this umbrella it's not necessarily just autism so when we're looking at neurodiversity we're not just looking at autism obviously autism is the one that I think a lot of us think about especially in April we talk we talk about Nur diversity acceptance Autism Awareness but it also has to do with individuals with ADHD executive dysfunction skills dyslexia discala and what we're finding is that this is growing that we're putting more under this term neurodiverse this umbrella because it's fitting more of what we initially thought so so the purpose of this course would be not only to Define neurodiversity but understand the difference between neurodiversity and neurotypical people and and then also learn and practice skills and strategies that support um things like burnout executive functioning um regulation skills social emotional regulation physical regulation all of the above and then looking into this class we would start off by just understanding the ideology of neurodiversity where it comes from a lot of people know the word but they don't necessarily what it means and they don't know that you know a lot of people still have those rumors going around a uh autism caused by vaccines so on and so forth so looking actually at the research and looking at the ideology of what neurodiversity is and what it isn't we would also look into monotropic interest which are those special interests that some people have um we would look at sensory and individualized energy scales I have more on the next slide so just going into this a little bit these are all different highlights of the the class that we would cover topics they would happen over multi a multitude of days but we kind of want to do a crash course on neurodiversity getting as much in in that H in that semester as possible so again continuing looking at that class we would work on regulation tools what burnout looks like I have seen students these days especially in my class that they don't even realize they're burnt out they're just they don't know how to even start catching up on the homework that they haven't done they don't know what's going on they're not motivated what it looks like and how to help that burnout and what burnout looks like for physical mental and emotional energy levels and understanding that there's a difference I have all all the time my kids tell me they're tired and I'm like is it a physical tired a mental tired an emotional tired what's going on there and then executive functioning I'll be very honest with you I didn't really understand what execu functioning was until I went to college for it so it's something that I could have definitely used myself in high school looking looking at organizational skills planning time management so I have a lot of students that are what we call time blind and they think that they can wait till the last minute to do this big project and then they panic because they realize they were up all night and they only finished half of it so working on time management and self-regulation as well and then that academic skills so understanding note taking not just highlighting the whole paragraph but understanding the key parts and making sure you're getting the gist of what's going on as well as studying and test taking a lot of neurodiverse individuals will find that especially they're really smart but maybe their test grades don't reflect that because they don't know how to study or take a test in certain ways um the other part of this class would look into the advocacy part so it's going to look at idea um um and IEPs unfortunately I have a lot of students I'm a speech therapist so my students need an IEP they come in I talk about IEPs they go what's an IEP they've never heard of it before so it's talking about something that is their legal document that shows why I'm here kind of thing but it's something that I would really love to teach them the legality of it and show that advocacy piece they have rights as people with disabilities um another one would be a unit on goal setting an appropriate goal setting things that are actually achievable how would they get there things like that and then if we have time I'd love to do a book writing or book discussion on um an author who is neurodiverse so I've read a bunch of these there's a bunch more out there but kind of giving that perspective of neurodiverse authors and giving putting words into what they may be feeling and that would help as well so a little introduction to this class this is one of my favorite slides is we're talking about individualism with this class so I have Michael Scott up there I have some silly dogs I have a how you're feeling every class would start with this individual take on a a a check-in scale when we talk about check-in and we talk about our feelings the idea of the individualistic and how everyone does not think the same we would be creating our own checklists based on how they kind of understand how they're feeling I equated it to not everyone's going to understand like a Liker scale of on a scale of 1 to 10 how are you feeling today or even how are you feeling today knowing what happy Means or knowing what exhausted means but maybe they understand a character how a character felt in that certain scene of that certain movie of that certain TV show so we would be creating these ourselves this would be one of the lessons we do at with the students of finding a way that they can check in with their bodies on a regular another one I love is if anyone is familiar with lelu and Stitch the one to the far right is how bad he is but it's also a great of how much energy do you have today sometimes that red you feel it you're right down to your toes so understanding and being able to check in with yourself and really understanding what that truly means as opposed to just saying I feel fine because that's what I get from a lot of my students um so I'm showing how I would break down these lessons into reasonable chunks so this would be roughly a week into the sensory look of things so the first one would be like a pre preliminary sensory profile that we would do with students they would take a survey to start identify maybe what Sensations they like what they don't like day two would be to identify and understand those different sensory experiences so that would be vestibular um hearing sound sense all of those different fun fun things and then day three would be demonstrating those so if you don't know what vestibular feels like we'll show you putting you in a rolling chair spinning you around kind of thing to really understand what you like and what you don't like and then four day four would be that review maybe another quiz of how do you actually feel about those when I'll be honest I'll do a little personal story here when I first did a sensory profile I wrote what I thought the first time and then I experienced those Sensations and then my my test CH changed drastically the second time cuz I realized what I was actually saying so that would be kind of looking at to a week of this course and then this would be like a day in the life of the class so I like to break it down in different ways so you can kind of visualize what's going on so the lesson again this would be with the sensory so that five minutes would be that daily check-in then 30 minutes would be that lecture or talking about all of the different Sensations perceptive atiar attack tactile old factory so on and so forth 12 minutes maybe we start to demonstrate with the class we do a whole class participatory thing and that last two minutes is that wrap-up to review how we're doing at the end that wrapup is very important because it's going to show okay how did you feel at the beginning of the class how did you feel at the end not everyone's going to feel tired maybe they feel something better now that they've regulated or they've learned a little bit about regulation so it's trying to build that awareness into their day and start naturally getting them to check in with themselves so they avoid that burnout it's that natural um Step that they would need to take so why this class um this is from 2020 but 1 in 36 children are identified as autistic according to the CDC that is rising so it's likely much higher now already and then about one in six children Age 3 to 17 are diagnosed with some sort of Developmental disability that doesn't necessarily include it it encompasses neurodiversity but it also includes things like blindness cerebral policy among others but it's still a incredibly High number and it continues to rise and as we learn more about what neurodiversity really is that number also continues to rise and what it looks like in different um ages and genders why this class again the idea is I would like it to build a sense of community including those with different abilities it increases empathy toship and leaders uh leadership skills in our students so a side note is when I'm thinking about this class I'm not necessarily only thinking about neurodiverse individuals I'm also thinking of those who students who are like I want to help someone after after high school I want to go to school to help someone maybe I become a teacher but I don't really know what's out there we would have a course or um we would have a lesson on all of the different tools and careers out that you could do with them I was lucky enough that my sister was a speech therapist so then I became a speech therapist but not everyone is that lucky I always say too if I knew what an occupational therapist was back then I may have changed and shifted gears a little bit more but that being said occupational therapy Physical Therapy music therapy behavior therapy all of the therapies but also School psychologists case managers social workers regular psychologists there's all these careers out there that we would introduce as well so if you have those students that are saying uh you know you want to help someone but you don't know what you want to do with that you just want to work with kids or you want to help this would be a great course to introduce a lot of those careers out there it also allows a place for PE students who are no diverse to feel accepted and normalize differences in themselves the idea is what we want to empower everybody doesn't even necessarily have to be people who identify as neurodiverse could just be a person who now feels empowered because they know how to advocate for themselves or they know how to take better notes so it's really just bettering students in general and then it offers oh I I spoke a little bit ahead of myself but it introduces the professions of Health Care um and offers opportunities of open conversations with peers and staff of people not necessarily knowing what kind of questions to ask maybe they don't even know what they if they are diagnosed neod diverse they don't necessarily know what that means me or what it doesn't mean so they're going to learn something about themselves too and then again it offers opportunities for generalization so me teaching the class it would be great if I had some of my students take the class because that I could see them generalize those skills in the classroom because I always say I have my lovely little office back here and then I push them out of the door and then I don't know how they're doing I check in with their teachers but I'd love to be able to be in that classroom with them as well so this is something that I showed the 11th and 10th graders this week what this class is and what this class isn't I just want to make it clear that this class isn't again just for those neurodiverse students we have a lot of them and they're more than welcome but the idea is that this course is for everyone and everyone would benefit from this course and then I like the office so I have a thing for questions if anyone has any questions yes so is this both so the idea it's both so the idea is everyone's going to feel different everyone has their bad days regardless if you have emotional regulation is difficulties or not you're going to learn how to regulate yourself or others so the idea is if you don't feel it yourself you're likely have already experienced someone who does was in your wheelhouse just based on how frequent these diagnoses are or you're feeling it yourself so it's going to do it twofold the idea is again we're teaching those advocacy advocacy skills we're teaching how to do it but we're also teaching how you could teach others how to do it sorry to of identifi as no no this is open to anyone um when we introduced it this week it's open to anyone 9 through 12th and I made it clear that you don't need to be identified with anything it's not a special ed course it's an elective course so there does not need to be an i AP in place for you to take this class correct [Music] absolutely so I geared it a little different towards um the students yester or two days ago whenever that assembly was to talk a lot specifically about the career paths you can take with it I also have been talking to the counselors at the high school regarding this class and teaching them what it we would be doing within this course so I didn't highlight it a lot in this uh presentation which I should have but that um the career paths is going to be a huge part as well as I already have some interested parties into like a guest teaching a course let's say so I know there's occupational therapists who would love to be incorporated right yeah so the the draw would really be I and this is how I felt and I know a lot of people when I went to high school felt the same way is I want to help people but I don't know how I only know I could be a nurse or a teacher or you know the ones that we see in the front lines but we don't necessarily see all of these other career paths it's trying to Branch out to that so that's the idea behind it is that it there there's more behind it than necessarily what we're just presenting here 9 through 12 to start yeah oh yep I think also thank you Laura I think the draw also is when you're in the class like Laura shared starting off with identifying that self-regulation how you're feeling so kind of learning those skills yourself which every single person can really benefit from and learning learning about the differences between people the inclusivity that we're really trying to promote across the district um the careers is a huge thing you know a lot of our students are interested in OT PT speech therapy and you know other careers that they really may not know as much about um you know just they may have peers with an IEP and they don't know what an IEP is and just sort of learning what's the purpose of an IEP what if you know when they have children they need like what what services are available out there what just kind of an intro as to what world is like a little oh go ahead yeah of course absolutely it's something I wish I had too because I was in college again and I went what is this and it was burnout so I think off offand I think they couldn't get over my last name cuz there was a lot of murmuring when I started and my last name is Iron Man so I was hoping that that also pulled them in but I think that there I think that there was interest there was a lot of like I saw nodding I saw people interested I think the big one is that I I did talk to the counselors and they said that they were recommending a few students if this does pass um to take the class because they knew that they wanted to be prospective teachers I know we have the tomorrow's teachers program too and I was going to be working on chatting with the people who run that as well to say hey if they're interested in it this is a great course to take as par as elective to say even if they don't necessarily go into special education it's going to look great on a resume to take something like this so that they have that um that oneup let's say for colleges [Laughter] thank you well it's funny that Laura up she said if you if you think you want to help people when I was in high school that was really that was that was me I was I want to help people out don't know how I went into social work and I actually I went into criminology I was I did social work at a jenile Detention Center it took me a while to find my way whereas I think if I had more choices more electives um more knowledge that that probably would have benefited [Music] me any other questions all right thank you very much thank [Music] you no like how can that have a problem e all right well thank you very much for that presentation was very lovely done okay okay so um Mr Kate do you have anything I don't have a I don't have a report this evening but I have a few items under the um Budget Finance section to go over so I'll wait till then okay very good all right so um we're going to review the agenda okay so under board action items do we have any questions or comments do you want me to read do you want me to comment it's up to you so under board action we're taking the3 out right do you want me to 31 is is is crossed out yes um oh it's not crossed out on yours it's crossed out District calendar okay so I'll work my way backwards approve the revised board meeting calendar so our board meeting calendar had a couple errors on it so they were corrected um so our board meeting calendar is being reapproved we had our MOA meeting the memorandum of agreement with um sbook police department and that that the Moa just kind of details when we reach out to the police why we'd reach out to the police when we mandated to reach out to the police it kind of um goes through our working relationship which we really fortunate to have a very positive one here in town so I thank them for working with us that is mandated the mo MOA is mandated as well it's um and we are being cacked on Friday so that's important to have the student safety data system that is also mandated that's it's mandated that we report any incidents of violence vandalism things like that twice a year to the state so that's what that is and that's it for me okay all right under um education and curriculum we have e232 4.29 through e23 24.31 does anyone have any questions or comments if I may the 3 is the neur diversity course that Miss Iron Man just shared with everybody um home instruction for two students and field trips let me just take a quick look the field trips a lot of our um special education classes they go on community outing so a lot of those are included on this month's field trips our outdoor club at the middle school high school they have a couple of trips um there's going to be a William Patterson tour for interest Juniors oh and also construction industry career day at the New Jersey Expo Center for interested Juniors as well so those are some important ones and our service learning CL Club they uh they're going to be visiting our kindergarten classes to present kindness activity okay thank you anyone else anything all right under budget and finance bf2 32459 through bf23 3 24.68 so just a few updates before you if you have any questions so we're going to have a second bill that's probably like another dozen or so um vouchers to be paid we just lost time with the the the the um school closing last week so I always want to get them on we'll get that out to you tomorrow hopefully we're here uh 60 and 61 are Financial reports the meeting is a week later in January I may I'm trying to get these done uh if that doesn't work out I'll take them off the agenda 63 64 and 65 are all part of the one purchase 63 is the purchase of these interactive display monitors 64 is the financing of them and 65 amends our budget 67 is uh a bid we had if you remember last month I had to remove we reject rejected the bids for the elevator we opened up uh rebid January 9th um Mr Wedel's you know reviewing them and we should have the final answer tomorrow I think he's done with with that bid and we're okay with that one um 68 we held offen this because there was some um issues with the with the bids we're we're I think we're reviewing the second or third one but we should that should be all good for tomorrow too so I'll have uh I should have have the vendors that bid with their bids and the and the total award uh tomorrow for Wednesday's agenda and I think that second Bill list and the bids yeah okay that concludes the those items any questions on them good okay under facilities and operations we just have 1 f23 24.7 any questions comments okay nope no we're good okay so we have nothing for policy or negotiations right in Personnel we have P2 32442 through p232 4.49 any questions that are yes 4.42 for the first item those um we have six individuals that are either resigning or retiring and we want to wish them the very best I want to inform the board that I am hoping to interview a replacement for number one um tomorrow or Wednesday morning and it might be a last minute addition to the agenda Wednesday night if we're able to make it work is that the first interview with the person or um the one my one by the time it gets to me so they went through several rounds with the committee very good and if I may add one uh we hope to have a replacement for item under 42 the maintenance position so the under 43 we're hoping to add an appointment for the maintenance position by Wednesday a replacement yes okay okay questions or comments for open discussion that we can have no okay do we have any committee reports not tonight I share one thing I forgot absolutely um Wednesday night's board meeting we are going to have um law Memorial School present they're going to highlight some happenings at law Memorial School and the VFW is also going to be here to present the um awards for their voice of democracy ESS contest winners can you pass it down okay so I think you received the committee list from Bello I'm passing one around hard copy um the only thing we don't have on there was the voucher the three uh new uh board members will be signning vouchers rotating each month and then we'll be setting up some committee meetings so be on a look at for some emails for policy negotiations are going to start with the custodial maintenance group and budget will be starting towards the end of January early February so it gets pretty active now with the Committees it do okay um any Le liaison reports not tonight nothing tonight tonight okay I will say that um the uh middle school high school PTO meeting is at 7:30 I'm sure they've waited until our meeting's over and then you could log on that Mr Mish has sent out the link as well it's on the website so um okay uh correspondence no nope okay all business through the chair I'm not sure if this is old business but I have a question about the board calendar is that okay for now um we have a meeting on in July oh no there's none no it's just June right just the one in June you have the regular meeting in June and then we added a special meeting toward the end of June sorry to clean up I my fault that's okay are you correct there was my meeting in July you added already in because usually it just happens that we have to add it right okay yes I rather put one on there we could always cancel if we don't need it June confusing me anything else are we good and just for the board to remind them that Wednesday we're taking the the board photos for the yearbook so look your best I had my hair done on Saturday for it okay new business anybody new business nope okay all right wait wait wait can we go back under Personnel through the chair yes on p232 4.48 are all of these people they have background [Applause] checks um the new ones well so let me when I go back to my office I will check this week all right all right uh we're going to open the meeting to the public can I have a motion motion second second all in favor I any opposed okay would anybody from the public like to make a comment going once okay thank you I'd like to close the meeting to the public then motion second all favor I any opposed okay so now don't I have to read something okay wait closing me I already did that I have to close it now again motion to go into CL session okay than I'm going to make a motion to go into close session motion second yes okay whereas the Board of Education must discuss matters which are not appropriate for the discussion in a public meeting and whereas these subjects are within the expectations to the open public meetings act and are permitted to be discussed in Clos session pursuant of to the new njsa do I have to say all these numbers 104 -2b and no sorry and whereas the Board of Education intends to discuss the matters to the following we have two cases HIV cases to discuss whereas the length of the closed session is an estimate to be 15 15 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall Recon reconvene and the action will not be taken do I have to do all of this too oh now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Education will recess into Clos section session for only the afford subjects and be further re resolved that the Board of Education hereby declares that it discusses of the afforded subjects will be made public at the time when the Public's interest is disclosed is greater than any privacy or governmental Interest being protected by the disclosure in accordance with the open meet public meetings act I will practice that for Wednesday okay all in favor any oppose hit the gra good night everyone thank you go in peace we will see you Wednesday safe