good evening we call to order the January 23rd meeting of the sa Board of Education ask you to please rise to PL the play aliance 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 ask you standing for a moment of silence we recently lost a well-loved and longtime employee of the district Eileen Seager who was a secretary at the high school for many years and a close friend uh lost her battle so remember I need any prayers please thank you help Mr Callahan yes Mr Esposito yep Mr Fernandez yes Mrs napalitano here Mrs Pabon here miss pyck here Mr Smith here Mr Walsh here and Mrs Bloom here okay will you summarize executive session please um on the agenda was Personnel including but not limited to agenda items matters falling under attorney client privilege and a student matter but the student matter was not discussed any correspondence no we need to address okay um we will now uh need a motion to approve the minutes from December 19th and January 2nd so moved second I have to abstain uh Mr Callahan uh yes Mr Esposito I'll abstain Mr Fernandez I believe I have to abstain for the December 19th and yes of January 2nd uh Mrs impano I'm same I have to abstain from December 19th and yes to January 2nd Mrs pone yes Miss pillock yes Mr Smith yes Mr Walsh yes Mrs Bloom yes okay and now the little bright shining lights of our meeting our student council Representatives gentlemen yes ma'am good evening board here are the events that have been happening at s wmhs in the past weeks starting with just before a break Mr fiser dressed as Santa walked around school complete with holiday music some of which he sang himself and candy can gifts to give to all the students on the last day of school before break to get students in the holiday spirit and students who received straight A in the first quarter retreated to a breakfast to celebrate their accomplishments between January 19th and the 21st the Barry Campell Gallery in New York City situated at 524th West 26th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District showcased the art of three skilled students from swmhs the exhib ition titled Postcards From The Edge featured senior Isabella colazo senior Alexander olmo and sophomore Giana Sienna fenzo these young artists had the unique opportunity to display their work alongside renowned established and emerging artists from around the go the latest version of echol Lights has been published online at echol lights.com and recently students in M Apollo's human anatomy and physiology class received the opportunity to dissect Pig kidneys moving on the sports boys boys bowling is 0 and2 and girls bowling is 2 and8 girls basketball is 1 and 14 in boys winter track during the middle sex County relays both the pole vault relay and Shop relay placed the girls winter track team won their eighth straight white division championship last weekend boy swimming is 2 and four and girl swimming is 4-2 the wrestling team is 10 and seven coming off a 57 to 18 win over mouen boys basketball is 11 and5 overall and 7 and3 in the GMC white division in terms of ongoing activities students are currently taking their quarter leavs so that has been where the majority of our time and effort has been placed this week further into the future HOSA will attend their Regional competition on February 3rd and freshman tip off an event where current eighth graders can come to the high school to learn about the club's offer and watch a watch a varsity basketball game will be on February 1st thank you thank you okay Ashton good evening Board of Education members and administrators my name is Ashton Pondel SMS student council Board of Education representative student council executive board traveled to TCNJ last week to participate in the njc winter convention we were able to network with other schools on February 1 30 student council members will be attending the pathway to leadership conference in Long Branch they will be with other Middle School student leaders from nearby school districts beginning February 5th student council will be selling cations during lunch to raise money for njc charity hugs for Brady cations will be delivered on Valentine's Day community service food drive with student council were able to donate 1,250 pounds of food to replenish which is a distribution center for middlex County food banks replenish provides food and Necessities to our network of over 150 partner organizations including food pantries soup kitchens and Social Service organizations throughout the 25 towns in middlex County to ensure that all residents have access to nutritionally adequate foods and Necessities at all times Kasa gift drive with the help of Ms staff were able to donate 181 gifts for children involved in the middle sex County Court System the class Council started the positive impact bracelets together and choose kindness each week a student and teacher are recognized why they received the bracelet over the morning announcements the PTO designer handbag Bingo SLT Tricky Tray will take place on Friday March 15th tickets on sale Family Pizza Bingo night will be rescheduled and the date will be announced soon save the date for the Harlem Wizards game on April 4th now on to the seral Middle School athletics the SMS Boys Blue Team team extended their we win streak to six games with their best win of the season last week the 54 the 55 over 54 win over Carl Sandberg was sparked by the play of the season with only two seconds left as eighth grader Jason beresi simultaneously rebounded the ball and passed it to co- captain and fellow eighth grader Trevor Trevor Yan for a buzzer beating three-point shot the SMS blue boys blue team is now five and o at home this season the gray Middle School boys basketball team is enjoying a three and three record the team and the coach alike have learned and gained so much from our wins and losses the greaty team's most recent victory was an Avenged lost at Perth Amor the first meeting against the Panthers ended in a tough defeat with a 15-point spread the second time around the bombers got the better of the Panthers with a convincing 12-point win the victory embodies the team's hard work and dedication to the sport as well as the Strategic interventions and the team's application when it mattered lastly some players are appreciating improved grades and positive teacher reports through academic accountability building scholar athletes is a pride of our Middle School coaches go bombers the Sero Middle School's girls basketball team had a great first half of their season The Blue Team currently holds a record of six- two and has shown tremendous improvement from last year they have picked up wins against South Playfield Thomas Jefferson Herbert Hoover Suk and North Brunswick leading the way for the bombers has been Natalia and Veronica as well as Lila Stevenson and sabrini N the great team has picked up two wins so far and continue to work hard and improve each and every day the bombers defeated Highland Park and Timothy Christian so so far this season the girls basketball team will C celebrate their eighth graders players and their contribution to our program next Tuesday and Wednesday at 4:30 come check out this talented group of girls wrestling is currently 6 in one on the season with one more home match against Monroe on January 25th wrestling had its GMC's tournament where it saw three wrestlers Grady Walsh Matt Brown and Lucas Tang win their bracket and move on to the next round the coaching staff is exe extremely proud of their team and looking to finish the season strong the cheerleading team kicked off their season at the winter pep rally they are currently preparing for an upcoming upcoming competition at Howell cheer championships on February 17th the game day team looks forward to attending and performing at the upcoming SMS basketball games reminder all students who are interested in participating in Spring Sports all paperwork is due to the school nurse by February 1st thank you wow great presentation both you good job thank you gentlemen very very much excellent job and Sean feel better I like the hair too Sean you looks like K Reeves you got like Reeves Vibes going on uh what un crunches me I'm I'm trying to restore my what happened I I know poor guy announc okay bye Sean great job buddy good night bye Ash okay while they make their exit [Music] um president's comment I'm just going to say Happy New Year to everybody we look forward to a new year school year here hopefully successful and hopefully on event Madame vice president your highlights well the boys already basically said a lot of these things but congratulations to the Cal Bo Memorial High School art students Isabella cazo Alexander omo and Gian San forenzo who were recently given the opportunity to exhibit their artwork alongside famous established and emerging artists from around the world in Postcards From The Edge at the Barry Campell Gallery in New York City from January 19th 21st congratulations to seral W Memorial High School girls indoor track and field team which won its eth consecutive grade of midis conference white division championship and then congratulations to the seral middle school wrestling team members Matthew Brown Lucas tang and Brady Walsh who won their respective weight divisions to become GMC Champions okay thank you you're welcome and now Dr lbby you want to lead us into our presentation absolutely Mrs Bloom uh as you can see from the agenda we have a plethora of great presentations that will take place in a few moments I just want to recap as you know we're resuming the review of our budget and uh we'll be having our budget presentations we had food services in December today we'll have schools all of our schools that would be our high school middle school elementary schools preschools as well as curriculum and instruction they will give their presentations today during our next meeting on February 6 special education and Athletics will present their proposed budgets on February 20th buildings and grounds capital projects and transportation will present and then we'll finish our presentations with technology and Personnel Services on March 5th before we ask you to approve the preliminary Budget on March 19th as you can see Mr Glock Malloy will also be giving you a presentation a very brief one on the cycle 1 2023 202 before school safety data and then miss Hill will also be providing you with a brief synopsis of our audit report so let's begin with the High School Mr kusky we ask that you come up to the front with your team if you'd like so you can present your proposed 2024 2025 budget and of course we're joined by the entire a team tonight and uh can't thank them enough for taking the time to be out here they're called The A Team for a very good reason so we thank them minut good evening [Applause] everyone uh so yeah after uh 18 years at the high school and five at the middle school I'm back with an amazing team um at the seril wmor high school and and we're going to get right into it I do believe there's an over under for how long I I speak tonight I'm not going to name names Mr Walsh um but uh we'll get through it and uh many people know that I generally ask for everything and try to get whatever we can for our kids so uh thank you Board of Education Dr lbby central office our amazing supervisors in the back over there our staff and especially my team is zarowski Mr Salem uh intern vice principal Mr maruchi and vice principal Jack carry so in review of the 2223 school year uh before my time um we went through a number of uh goals uh first one was provide additional support to uh bilingual students and their families uh the high school achieved three or more action steps that uh that school year so they achieved their goal there to improve the facilitation and identification of students who are at risk of failure or to ensure procedural process processes are effective through our RTI systems and services more than 30 students were um identified from the 2122 school year uh for appropriate interventions and uh teacher feedback and then by June of 2023 seral High School will increase student attendance and decrease the number of student students chronically absent and they achieved their goal from the previous year of 2122 of 13.6% and 2223 of 8.47 which is actually an amazing goal uh getting underneath 10 10% and then moving on the goals resources and school Improvement for 23 24 uh they had goals to promote the positive climate and culture throughout the high school um through social emotional learning committee thanks to Mr Salem and uh the entire committee a great group of uh teachers helping out there as well as the wellness and health uh fair for students and staff and the winter Wellness Fair which uh I was able to uh take a look at this year and it was just absolutely fantastic kudos to Mr Shem and that that committee um staff and student facilities uh as always continue to update teacher Furniture cafeteria Furniture etc etc that's always ongoing and then finally conduct and Implement a whole school self-study which is considered the Middle State's accreditation process which we are um going through at this moment uh with a committee U of of teachers helping us out with that moving on to 2324 uh the our goals this year one academic one uh School Culture by the end of the academic school year of 2324 the objective is to significantly increase our math graduation rate among 11th grade students to align with the New Jersey Department of education's requirements and njsa this goal will will be considered achieve when at least 70% last year's test scores were I believe 55 56% of our students were looking for 70 this year students representing various demographics including uh English language Learners economically disadvantaged students students with disabilities uh meeting the graduation proficiency of a score of 725 or higher just a few things to add to that you see our action steps at the bottom data analysis uh we do a lot of work in our mathema mathematics Department uh where we uh have discussions in regards to data um we also have a few things going on right now in terms of allocation to support math proficiency um thank you to Kim Gman and Bridget B in regards to helping us out putting in a t tutoring program or basically a uh tutorial we call a boot camp for specifically mathematics and and uh language arts for 11th grade students we currently have 80 students in math uh registered and 35 uh for language arts just as an indication of where we're going to help our kids um progress monitoring with uh data review benchmarks uh we we're always constantly looking at those and then ultimately when we get that 70% or greater we will be celebrating our achievements um I do want to add that uh Donna SLE and her staff along with the administration uh addressed the 11 students uh on January 8th as a group about our High School requirements for uh passing that test as well as thank you the early out option for our seniors next year I haven't talked this much in a while move on so our second goal which I'm gonna get a Little Help from uh my administrators here um is strictly about school spirit if you don't mind hand those out for me guys girls um and it's to leverage classroom and building based strategies and activities as well as current integrated activities to increase school pride by introducing additional activities that Foster a sense of belonging and unity among our students so our vice principles and most of our central office have already gotten them but is okay um our pens that we purchased for our school uh all of our students as well as our uh teachers and now to uh the adults in our school community and that's that was really one of the starts of um school spirit and really analyzing what we're what's going on in terms of school spirit so first after leveraging uh our student council engagements our current activities uh we're trying to build upon what we've had before but now uh We've introduced a school spirit committee which actually we're piggybacking uh Mr veers is Capstone in the stem uh science area where the Capstone students started working on school spirit and then we uh added about 25 students to that group and we've had meetings and we've talked about a few things um but I do want to mention M Mr veers and in the great work that he's done with those kids so they did a survey I'm just going to briefly say what the outcomes were um real quick but they um if I remember correctly the survey were uh mainly seniors and what came out of that is two things Asian students had the most school spirit in our school and the way we measured school spirit in that survey was specifically about clubs and activities that they took part in so ultimately Asian students in our school were the main uh students that took a lot of pride in what they did in the clubs or the activi ities or the sports or everything that they were doing within the school versus what we probably think school spirit is and that's really the rahr you know uh Happy gol lucky you know go bombers kind of thing that's one part of it but everything else that they've measured was really about what they do when they're within the activity which was very cool to to see because it it caught me by surprise Okay so we've kind of built on that um and the second thing that we did was we talked about what we could do within our school and at our most recent meeting I asked them to give me the top five things that they want to do to support school spirit in our school and the first thing was a mascot um so we're currently surveying those the uh the entire School population um in regards to what they would like to see in a school mascot and some of them are Aviator Pilots uh a plane itself um actually an aviator Shaggy Dog uh and a few other things so that's ongoing at the moment uh I'll let you know when we get to the bottom of it um a Unity wall a school Color Run uh schoolwide contests were very uh interesting to see So within the school to run contests we actually had a very nice meeting with student council today and there's I don't know four or five things that they're they're going to pull together for the remainder of the year that have uh two or three contests involved in it so it's good stuff um so then we um asked you know the students and staff uh for what they think in regards to that survey and students and staff about they think about school pride um obviously a lot of a lot of good things uh then we ultimately uh came across physical space meaning the walls in the school the school store branding of the school within the school um and when I came back to Sera High School the walls were a little bare uh and no offense to Jimmy and the guys that yellowish paint is kind of um I'll call it normal so I want to see like really great bomber logos and go bombers and so on and so forth everywhere so we're in the process of working on that with the art Department as well as uh vendors etc etc so those are the steps that were we're ultimately taking to to uh engulf into the school perod of SEL high school so as far as 2425 is concerned we're going to focus continue to focus focus on data to drive instruction through our RTI data as well as departmental discussions meaning benchmarks quarterly that's that's always ongoing continuing Foster positive school spirit Pride through branding of our school um creating a sense of unity uh through teachers and students um voice organizing and regular activi ities and events which surround our community with positive environments continue to involve our students in student-led initiatives um and uh between uh the vice principls and myself we we do speak to the kids often and I do want to make a shout out to Nick citadino um kids wanted Domino's Pizza back uh and that's going to happen this Friday so uh we're gonna we've been listening uh and we're we're seeing what we can do for our kids um and then obviously social media Mr Salem has kind of leads all that uh on different platforms and then continuing to cultivate a vibrant Enthusiast enthusiastic school spirit that Fosters a sense of belonging and pride um and I got to tell you walking into the building after five years at the middle school it felt different and um I didn't personally like the atmosphere I didn't see the enthusiasm for one another I didn't see the enthusiasm to go out to sports I didn't see the enthusiasm to go out and cheer on the bombers and that is slowly coming uh every day it's coming back a little bit more and more and and uh that's than thanks to these guys as well as trying to put a big effort on school spirit and then um moving on to student achievement uh again creating educational spaces uh we did put some some uh whiteboard tables uh poster maker Banner maker things that are going to spruce up the school a little bit and helping our teachers engage in good academic environments uh we're going to absolutely support our kids with the learnings boot camps uh opportunity rooms National Honor Society extra help uh any way we can help our kids uh PVE forward sorry uh continue to implement instructional methods which focus on differentiation and that's uh School wide and constantly ongoing um we uh offer and Implement new electives of interest to our students we did a course catalog audit and came up with a number of courses that we had name changes or credit changes uh as well as American Sign Language 2 uh something else for our Music Department the history of music history of New Jersey sociology um again thanks to Kim Gman and our content supervisors emphasiz emphasis on Dual enrollment with missis County College uh that's a constant conversation and where we can go with that looking to expand the dual enrollment and offer early college experience we had numerous meetings to fine-tune our Academy offerings and sequences and ultimately we want to continue to work on chronic chronic absenteeism climate and culture continue to promote social emotional learning and seal committee again Mr Salem and the great work that he's done continue to promote the theme of bombers through route that Sera High School school spirit committee like I said 30 about 30 students bomber theme hallway decals positive message and accessories School branding interior wall graphics uh school store location and the Advent of electronic payment systems and sraa High School uh if you don't know we've moved the uh moved the school store up to the the lunchroom area um and we're ultimately going to have that open during lunch periods before and after school uh and we're working on uh pulling that all together facilities uh odds and ends classroom needs furniture whiteboard tables technology Etc gymnasium upgrades uh wall padding is is pretty beaten up in the main gym uh the sound system is is a little bit old uh only one side of the system works uh School branding interior wall graphics as I mentioned um Media Center for um Mr Swanson um the poster and the banner maker which we can actually do a lot of In-House things versus uh going outside to to uh vendors um and two other odds and ends was uh schoolwide we've done a great job at um putting in emergency V Evac chairs with Mr naster and Miss Dr defina we're looking for two more um and then the one thing I left off my presentation was the school sign out in front of the school um where it's currently broken and we're looking to uh change that up and finally Personnel we're requesting a social studies teacher uh if you noticed um there was a course named freshman Foundation success at Sarah W more high school and Beyond we're looking to implement that through our social studies um Department to um help with transition into the high school it's going to give us a component to uh work through our guidance Department in there uh have speakers guest speakers our Student Assistance counselor through the 2.5 credit semester um we can do a lot out of that preparing our kids uh to make it through high school and having an ultimate path how they're going to get to their senior year uh with support of our staff and then finally we're requesting a physical education teacher we currently have I believe it's six teachers teaching six periods um some of our gym classes are up to above 40 I think it's 45 um and some of our health classes are in a range of 32 to 36 so ultimately we're looking for those items how did I do start off thanks buddy all righty uh any questions yeah quick question moment yep when can you freshman year sophomore junior I believe it's sophomore year second half of your sophomore year age 15 okay then my question is do you know the number or percentage and it's probably a Donna question but of the kids that participate in this program I don't I don't recall we haven't discussed it recently any yeah okay yeah and I'd like to know how many getting Associates either too because that's what it's all about right currently we do not offer the program where they can earn their Associates we have about 21 courses that are available um they need 60 credits to earn their Associates with middle sex so that's what we're looking to bring in for next year where most of the courses that Mr gluh husky mentions are going to be aligned you'll see a little bit of that later on in my presentation as well great thanks have a question on goal number one yep um so we're looking for 70% of the 11th graders to um meet the proficiency test is that high enough and what happens to the other 30% well uh good question um I'll be honest with you the the original number that I put out uh I think was a little bit out like 72% um we talked about Dr Mahan and I work on those together um I think 70% is an outstanding goal an outstanding to get to um knowing what we have in terms of our our our future in terms of our kids and what we're doing to support them uh I think uh and being and many people remember the HSPA back in the day which was the state test I was opponent with Mr saell um working through that and uh I felt a good number is 70 to 72 but hey well I mean 55 to that's 15 points um trying to get to 70% I believe it's a it's a really great roal to to achieve um but we have to do work to make sure that happens and that ultimately is supporting our kids through um the boot camps and and through uh you know everyday uh work towards the test so the goal that that they're setting Dr Maharana and Mr gusky and I have discussed it at length with our population at the high school I apologize with our population at the high school we have multilingual Learners we have students that have special education plans and it is a standardized test so when the state does allow for alternate Pathways it's not that we're not looking to prepare the students for the proficiency level it's just that that test might not be something that is easily accessible for all of our students but we do provide interventions for 100% of our students to support them to meet that goal it's just that the path that they might take um might be the acup Placer or it could be uh sat or act there's other Pathways that they portfolio well portfolio and then we have the portfolio approach that is used for students that I standard test might not be achievable these are can these are GE classes we're talking about right G 100% of the students are held accountable for the New Jersey GPA I understand but in for this conversation this is General this is General at students no we're working with special education stud students so I'm kind of okay so we're looking for 70% of all students where what is it a big number of General ed students that are in this category that I'll phrase my question to be specific so the goal the goal is 70% of all of our students I know that I want to know the number of G students that are in danger of not graduating that's all I want to know I think we're down to we're down to less than 12 um students that need to meet the requirement with our this year okay that's great for graduation purposes now my second question is I if I should I'm not going to ask this I'm gon to ask this question privately okay but not it's 12 it's it's a good number anything that you need absolutely appreciate I'm learning anyone else I have more of a comment than a question I just want to say to Mr B husky Miss Gman and Dr lvy again I want to congratulate you on moving us forward towards an associate degrees this was something you know I'm very passionate about I think is incredible and can't be understated at what kind of impact and how much of a game changer that is for our school kids automatically will will cut their cost of Education in half and jump start their their career um cutting their their time of Education half this is this is probably the biggest game changer i' I've seen in sville or in any school in decades so and we're looking the grow it's a conversation we almost have every week of how we're getting there you know yeah no I I I know you know I've been M on the committee so this is fantastic I just I I just think that was something that that that needs to be said and explain the the impact and Game Changer that that is for for our school that's we kind of brushed over that and that to me is just such a big such such a big impact that can't be understated so thank you to all to all of you and everyone who's been involved in that thank you I have a question for you um with the recent reduction from the 130 credit requirements to 120 as the principal and a well experienced educator do you think that is negatively going to impact our students no um what will they like what will they will they have more opportunity for electives because that they don't have to take St you know classes that are required or no it has nothing to do with that it has everything to do with acquiring 120 of all the requirements within within the this state and what we use as our requirements so that 130 to 120 it there was a lot of and Kim you can jump in whenever you want um there's a lot of electives that were um crowded I'll call it and uh what it'll help us with that specifically where you're not putting the burden on the kids to say I'm going to have this because I have to be here for eight periods it's actually a really great goal for the kids too to to pass their requirements and pass the state test in 11th grade to be able to um leave a little bit earlier than everybody else you know so I don't believe it's going to hurt the kids at all I came from the system of we had 120 we went to 130 now we're going back to 120 and after seeing all all that all those years I think it's going to be outstanding for the kids and ultimately help us uh with our graduation rate and and a number of things too within the school um possibly sections for teachers you know it might go down there there's there's going to be a lot of nice movement I'll call it well all of our students are still going to have the opportunity to earn 140 credits because we're still going to offer a full load to all students that want to be there during the day but one of the programs that we're looking to expand the Early College they have something called residency credits that have to be be taken at middle sex so those are students that might opt for early out and earn credits at middle sex college so by creating that flexibility for multiple populations at the high school you know we're not taking away the opportunity we I just ran the list of um top 10% students with Miss Bert about a Grant application and every single student on that list exceeded 140 credits you know so we're still going to have that opportunity this is just for special populations that are in special circumstances that want to look into Co-op and want to look into early college or that might need to revisit some academic courses that they weren't successful at in fact we think that our kids are going to be more competitive yeah for major schools Ivy League schools because of the fact that they can get that early residency not only at middle sex but at Ruckers that early college experience is going to increase the rigor and if you look at colleges what are they looking for looking for your GPA your class rank but they also number one on that list is rigor they want to see that these kids are in rigorous programs rigorous classrooms so when a child has an opportunity to have a residency course or an early college experience at Ruckers of middle sex County College that only increases the rigor of their transcripts very good now can I ask you one thing you might not know this but Dr lab you might know it how many other local districts to us like you know B Bridge polebridge um have the 103 like are we against are we with the norm or against the norm by going down to the 120 we're more with the norm going to the 120 the only uh the only one that I know for sure that is 130 credits is East Brunswick right so one of the things that we also took into consideration when we made the decision is not all high schools have the same bell schedule and they you know there are high schools that have um drop schedule or AB days and things like that where their students uh might have more periods within the day too so it's kind of hard to make a side by-side comparison but with our existing academic program we felt that this was very uh approachable for all of our students but yet it didn't deter any students from being able to earn that 140 great so it's not negatively impacting our students no not in any way it's it's only creating more opportunities for our students thank you very much and just to be perfectly clear I believe the state requirement is 120 credits correct correct thank you forgive my ignorance because I'm again not educated less less credits less classes less Personnel it's not less classes why not because they still have the opportunity to take four years of eight Peri or seven periods per academics but you're not going to stop the teachers in case those classes do I mean it's going to be a year to year well we we we're scheduling now Anthony so we're we're almost there to to schedule for next year so we're going to know what what that's going to look like when we hit the schedule and another another positive consequent might be class size might come down for some of our larger classes very very good absolutely and again I think it's a great thing I don't think it's going to hurt our kids in fact when I spoke with those Juniors uh last Monday they they had to take a double take of I if I have enough credits and I have I can I can go to work or I can go to work early or I can I can go to school for you know middle yeah these are all options that you're going to ultimately have we'll couple that with the um with the great electives that you guys have putting in that's pretty awesome yeah I I'm very happy with that audit U block scheduling never thought about again I know we couldn't do it is it I don't even know if it's good or bad I know I just wanted to since I have I never seen well I I could probably talk to you for hours about that um but the end result last time when we went down that road is we would need a lot of Staffing for that inrease you don't think it would with the 120 you don't think this it doesn't matter it's really about time and place in this in the schedule if you look at eight periods we have seven academic one one period That's a lunch you can't you could you can't put seven academic periods in a 4x4 meaning four blocks of time it it's it can only be four and three if we go to that fourth then you're adding staff yeah so uh it's a it's a pretty large oh I'm sure you know Endeavor okay thank you very much oh I just want to add one thing when I went to legisl to day I had my discussion with the students and you know they did feel hey we want to have more of a voice so it looks like you listened and with all your school spirit things that they feel they I'm ass sure they will feel more empowered under that I think that's the big difference um the between the vice principles and myself we're always walking around talking to kids I actually sit down with kids at the lunch table and say what's going going on now they get a little embarrassed but they know me so it's a little bit easier to talk with them and that's where the pizza thing came up you know when can we have dominoes I loved it in Middle School Mr G I'm like all right let me talk to the guy and we'll get it done you know but there's a bigger piece to the whole thing about school spirit and and they want to do things again we had a great conversation the team and I with uh student counsil today about things that we're going to look into doing between this year and next that are different you know that uh other schools might be doing that you know within reason obviously um but there's a lot of things coming down the pipe that uh I'm very very proud of which we just have to make sure that are happening uh in the right manner um and I I'll I'll go out on saying the next four years are going to be outrageously awesome I really I really believe that um and again I I I keep saying my team my team but um they're really phenomenal and uh two-thirds of the team are graduates so um it's really great to bounce things off of them um specifically school spirit related uh and and everything else but um it's just really nice to see that you know bomber Spirit starting to come back uh more than ever so I'm going to go out on Lim and say next four years are going to be awesome I really do thank you thank you anybody else anybody else thank you all thank you all you thank you m great job and now Mrs Burns is going to go ahead and present to you the project before preschool budget which includes naturally the cover preschool and the Cheesequake preschool and she is joined by her amazing [Music] principles good evening everyone so uh thank you to the high school for doing such amazing things because now in 10 years uh you're leading the pathway we have some pretty amazing preschoolers uh headed your way little bombers little mini bombers so uh curriculum and assessment so our achievements uh tools of the Mind curriculum we are imple we implemented our Dynamic assessment which included letter sound names uh math language arts we have social emotional learning in we are in year two with our tools of the Mind training which was through grow NJ kids um we've Incorporated age of learning with my math academy which was fundamental math concept we did my reading Academy which was also fundamental skills which the preschol schoolers really enjoyed we did it um for about 10 to about 10 minutes a day no actually about 10 minutes a week I'm sorry uh for the preschoolers the teacher really enjoyed uh working with the students in the classroom it is not done individually by it is not done by the students alone it is done during a small group so it's monitored by the teachers so we've had a lot of uh success with that we've also been using uh linkit We've expanded our assessments with uh pre we've inputed our pre kindergarten skills checklist the tools of the mind uh checklist is also in link it we've also been using fontas and panel we're implementing our interactive read aloud and shared reading we're continuing our collaboration with the classroom visits common language with our Elementary kindergarten teachers and this year we have started with teaching strategies goals which is new to the preschool this is an observational assessment and it's for all areas of development it is very new to the preschool so our preschool instructional coaches have just finished their training and they are Turing um the training to our staff during many PD sessions at both preschool locations um our goals for next year of We are continuing with tools of the Mind curriculum uh the tools of them we were provided with an additional $120,000 from grow NJ kids for training for this year for year two this has been such an incredible um addition to the preschool because not only did it provide us with Coach um professional development it was almost individual coaching for all of our teachers they um the teachers would send videos to the coaches they would uh coach them they would you know it was really individual they would give them feed feedback they would um it was it was such an incredible I can't even um praise this enough and of course the fee was absolutely incredible 120,000 so um age of learning is going to continue next year we're going to increase the time that the students will be imp that we will implement this within the classrooms the same with my reading Academy we're going to work closely with our parents and um before we give the access to the homeschool connection we would like to do some um little um PD session for our parents and have them come in and walk them through it we have a lot of firsttime parents so we' like to do a lot of you know in-house PD with our parents before we start sending things home in linkit we're going to expand the assessments to incorporate teaching strategies gold so that all of the data is available to Elementary staff with the fontas and p panel we are going to continue collaborating with our elementary schools especially with our kindergarten teachers continue the partnership which will include classroom visits and of course the common language which we did last year we will continue doing that during our June PD day teaching strategies gold um next year all of our teachers will be trained so we will continue with the observational assessment and we will um be able to input all of this data again into Linkin our social emotional learning is a huge part of our tools curriculum so for our family engagement we did hire two full-time social workers into the preschool program this year they did conduct our community needs assessment which is part of our preschool expansion Aid we did the survey twice a year year for our families next year we will do it three times a year we did do some home visits to assess with the families it is not just you know when they we have concerns it is just to stop by and say hi we assist is assisted uh with attendance issues and this is just not in our IND district schools it is also with our we work closely of course with our private locations um our social workers do social emot lessons in the classrooms our private locations also have their own family worker that we work very closely with we do in-person family events we do a combination of virtual and inperson parent workshops and um next year we will be expanding that and um carish lean has been doing a fantastic job with that and we're going to be doing monthly in-person workshops we right now we do virtual family nights and uh our preschool staff they volunteer and they do directed reading activities monthly so the parents just log on and they just do that it's all volunteer our pers and our per I know um that's our preschool inter inter intervention and referral Specialists and then our preschool instructional coaches so we have three full-time this year last year um I'm not sure if you remember what we had they were shared roles but based on the increased number of classrooms in the district it was required that they become individual roles so um we have a team at Slover there's a team at Cheesequake and then we have the privates have a shared team they visit their house at each location we also have a behavioral incident report system we have we are piloting the linkit intervention manager with pette and next year hopefully we will have a full implementation of linkid intervention manager they are providing the pyramid model staff training we're going to increase the training sessions we have a pyramid model parent backpack connection that is sent home to the parents we have a serious newsletter and we have the teapot tip newsletter and that is all dealing with behaviors and social emotional learning throughout the whole preschool department so looking ahead um Embrace and enact we have a prek through second grade vision for next year um we did participate in the early childhood Leadership Institute this year and the team consisted of um it was something that I volunteered and applied to do it was we had a preschool teacher um a kindergarten teacher a first grade teacher a supervisor a principal and myself and we were part of a team through the early New Jersey Department of Education we we went to five sessions throughout the year and focused on different topics that we could bring back to the district we just finished our last session so it is a work in progress we are going we are in the beginning stages of collaborating to work on our next steps so the areas that we're going to work on um to focus on and improve we're going to improve communication collaboration and interaction among the preschool through second grade staff um virtual articulation between the preschool through second grade staff parents and administrations continue networking and sharing ideas with Educators across the state which I'm currently doing educating community on the value of preschool through second grade education and the preschool through second grade initiatives we're going to create and clearly articulate the shared Vision alignment of the preschool through second grade curriculum uh area of focus with the leadership of Mr burn I've been working really closely with Mr burn and you ask why Mr burn and as you're aware we do have a preschool classroom this year uh we have two classrooms that are currently at the W location so that is the perfect location to start collecting data and to try to align our curriculum with the preschool kindergarten and first grade classrooms at Wilson so we have been um working very closely with Mr burn this year we have been talking about revising um prek K through two schedules that reflect the learning research that we have been all talking about and really develop the Early Childhood mindset set that we're all trying to align to what our vision is for the district so I know we can't finish our preschool presentation without showing you all the cute things that have been happening in the preschool because we know this is the cutest presentation so we did um this is all the fun stuff we did do um playground installations at Cheesequake and Slover to brand new playgrounds with there was a kindness assembly with Mr Ray we did uh there was a turkey with the bombers Beyond there's been a lot of collaboration with the bombers Beyond and the preschool which has been amazing Fire Prevention Week visits with uh Chuck-E-Cheese and Mickey Mouse we also have done uh the unified soccer both at Cheesequake and Slover this year and um Nina and April have done a fantastic job with the school newsletter implementation at both Cheesequake and slow school and the parents I know have um they look forward to this every week um they also do staff and student recognition they do monthly buddy days and um there was the mascot election at um the shark at Slover so we also have uh the steam class that we you know you see the pictures age of learning all the students we have literacy lab there's a lot going on with the um seral Public Library we have a really nice partnership with the library I know um Karen our um social worker have visited the library numerous times um just recently this week they went there to um there was an event going on they went there to distribute flyers and greet parents that came in um to try to get parents to give them information for registration Etc and there was also an art night okay so I think that's it and I just want say this was a team collaboration and I want to thank you know my incredible team um you know Judy Cara April and Nina and this program would definitely not be as successful as it is without the incredible team that I have so that's it excellent excellent you are the rumors true that there was a live Elf on the Shelf um the I believe in the parking lot also on the police car police car I do I do I believe there was they had a shark at the other one right you had a shark sure you had a shark come question need the Elmo C what is the mascot at Cheesequake Shar Cheesequake maybe the elf the elf that it's a work in progress talking it's hard to settle on one thing we like so many cheese true all idea hold on oh I'm sorry go okay say something no I said we're open is all idea oh okay are we still looking at uh I'm pres I don't know if we have a realtor or not for spaces for our prol oh you can't hear no okay um are we still actively looking for space for our preschool um students we we did tour the Our Lady of Victory School most recently and got into some brief negotiations with them that were supposed to go up the chain to the um Archbishop we have not heard anything back from them yet okay that would be to lease the space or potentially purchase no to lease they they weren't interested in selling do we have a realtor I mean is there someone maybe Richard Labby is our realtor really you want a partner um we you know there there are not too many schools for lease so what I do is I just check check around with my county superintendent and then we do check around with the arch dasis to see if there's you know anything close by that's either owned by a non-public parochial school or by a school district which is how we found Cheesequake qu you know me asking my colleagues that were somewhat close to us we can't be too far away right right so the The Logical places that we've looked at there are the two parochial vacant parochial schools in South Amboy we looked at those but those were C prohibitive we were able to find the Cheesequake school at that time and we were recently made aware that the arch dasis would be interested in leasing Our Lady of Victories which is perfect because it's right in the heart of s however the building is very old probably as old as Wilson I believe so it's going to take a lot of renovation in order for us to be able to be there so we factored that into our negotiations with them with regard to the lease okay and we and there's no way we could do a retail space like uh like the people we sub this this out to you know we convert it we looked at that idea there are some strip malls and things like that that we could potentially look at but the requirements for a school are pretty stringent M so we'd much rather have a building that is built for a school then a building that is not and then have to go ahead and refurbish to make it up to a school standard and to give it a school feel Miss Burns was talking at length about culture the culture at both of our schools is amazing I ask board members anytime you want to go in to one of our preschools no matter how difficult of a day you're having I'm guaranteeing you when you leave there you're going to have a great day similar to when you go to 132 Main Street for the bombers Beyond Cafe they're the happiest places in saille as far as I'm concerned but part of that charm is the school building in itself cheesequakes an old school but they've done a remarkable job of making it into a very welcoming Pleasant Early Childhood experience and cover too a school that we thought we were going to tear down at one point that school is magnificent now again if you haven't been to cover since it was a central Administration office go there see what Mrs o has done with Miss Burns to that building it's just it's simply amazing so both have their charm both build into the incredible culture that the leadership and the faculty and staff there have created and uh I you're correct I I read there last year to the kids and while you will never know what they're going to say it's pretty amazing and it's funny as hell but uh it was a great time so put me on your short list if you need readers okay we always need readers definitely we're still doing it this year yes they love Mrs babone too yes I'll be back with my ring pops if you guys ever need like a Elmo costume I have like a I paid 600 bucks for this costume it's a real like as if you were on TV costume so I could always I'm not going to be in the costume great Elmo seriously that you can borrow if you want to borrow just let me know anytime there's your M we brought the snow right the snow they any yeah well you guys were the cause of that if you if anybody read Talk Soup there was only one thing in there for the schools and it was the Cheesequake school doing their snow thing that caused us to close school twice nice going Cheesequake dance backwards because we need to get these young ladies back home so that they can get up early to open the preschool any more questions for our preschool all right thank you ladies thank you Miss Burns great job and if Mr nurger and the Middle School administration can join us up front he's got a nice short presentation oh yeah to present their budgets thank you I would like to apologize up front there is nothing cute about my um presentation thank you it's only two pages though so I think that's the cuteness is the speed is kind of hard see he said you're cute uh first of all I'd like to thank uh my incredible uh Vice principls Mrs Rego and Mrs Romero and uh incredible um supervisors who have supported us uh the entire year this year they do a tremendous job so thank you to all of you uh central office and the board of ed for all your support as well uh so we'll dive into it I want to identify our 2022 23 achievements uh goals um kudos to our staff last year led by Mr gluh husky they did a phenomenal job and as you can see uh they met and exceeded the goals they set forth uh for last last year and pursued uh the first goal that they looked at was uh they focused on math and our algebra scores uh and if you take a look at at their stated goal of 20 to 25% of students exceeding standards in grade seven algebra they blew that away uh at 32% um and 40 to 45% of the students will meet standards in Algebra 1 CP and they blew that away at 50% so great job to to the staff last year and kudos to Mr glowski um the second goal goal uh was to uh utilize our RTI our response to intervention system to um address our chronic absenteeism we keep hearing this you know every year chronic absenteeism if they're not in school they can't learn um not only did they meet their goal but they exceeded it and they uh brought down chronic absenteeism by 11% by utilizing the response to intervention uh RTI um methods so they did a great job there fantastic uh student achievement they want to create educational spaces which we're going to talk about in in a moment um Implement instructional methods to focus on centers uh and differentiation of instruction we'll get back to that and circle back to that as well throughout the rest of my presentation um as far as opening up educational spaces B8 is a prime example of that uh and the amazing work um that buildings grounds did over the summer uh to get B8 ready for us in the beginning of the year uh B8 is now a multi-purpose room uh we utilize it for OT PT uh counseling groups uh our PE classes go in there and inclement at weather um some of our science classes have signed up for the the space as well and uh we even created a supervisor's office um in B8 as well so uh a lot of great things happening there with the space that was created so thank you so much for uh allowing that to happen Okay moving moving on to this year uh we are again going to focus on our math scores and take a look at the entire um you know student body and their math scores this year and we're going to utilize um linkit as well uh to utilize the data coming in from link it to drive our instruction and also utilize our RTI system okay uh we have Dr Milo here who's coaching our Math teachers uh we have tier 2 and tier three interventions acmis uh and tier three support which is onetoone tutoring uh we also have ASI or academic support instruction for those students that are identified as struggling Learners uh our ASI teachers push in uh into the classrooms for language arts and Mathematics and they also pull out for small group instruction uh so they're doing a fantastic job there we have the opportunity room where students can take advantage of um going into a quiet classroom during recess getting a little extra help um for any of the topics that they might be going through uh during the course of the year uh we have after school peer tutoring as well um and we are piloting the linkit intervention manager for RTI which we're very excited about uh we just went through uh some training with that and we are looking to Pilot that this year as well so we're very excited over uh that program uh we also are going to continue to leverage uh classroom and building based strategies and activities um for art I to decrease similarly to last year of the number of chronically absent students okay the response to intervention program is really critical uh to to effective change um implementing interventions tracking them and finding out if they're successful or not and how to alter them and to provide the best uh interventions for our at risk students climate and culture a big one for us as well to promote respectful student dialogue and interaction um um with one another and the staff um this might become a shock to everyone but sometimes middle school students struggle with that um so we're we're looking at a few different things one of the things that we're doing right now is a little words project has been fantastic um the students identify uh and staff acts of kindness and they're announced over um the loudspeaker in the morning during morning announcement so not only are students identifying other students but they're ID identifying staff members and vice versa uh and they're exchanging bracelets as well it's really creating a lot of camarad uh and it's modeling what it looks like you know we're discussing it we're acknowledging them and we're celebrating them every single day so that's been a fantastic program so far this year uh we also had our pep rallies and our anything goes days what's nice about the pep rallies we're not just cheering for um our fantastic sports teams but we're also in the NF thing goes part our staff and our students are interacting and engaging in fun activities in front of all the students and and it's really a great time for us to make connections with our kids and that's the key if if you're going to be successful educating a child it's about the connections and these are some of the things that we've been doing to make those connections uh project positivity is a school-based group that sends out positive me messages and um sends out new messages each month um ABC group is our Venture based Counseling Group uh led by one of our fantastic counselors as well um and that is for um problem solving social skills uh and conflict resolution really fantastic program too and this year I'm proud to present that we are starting an eighth grade trip uh we're going to a camp uh in North Brunswick at the end of the year um and it looks like it's a go and we're very excited about that and we're going to be sending out stuff to our grade uh parents very shortly so really excited about uh that new program as well I'm sorry no trip this year parents next year um and we're good okay so our goals for next year what we're going to look at um is facilities we want to continue to create more permanent educational spaces for academic Support Services the district has done such a great job at bringing in more and more support services more ASI teachers ESS you know we have all of this support but we struggle sometimes to find the space the appropriate space to deliver these interventions so uh we're looking at the middle school to create more permanent educational spaces um we're looking to renovate our science labs okay in particular d29 uh which has a fixed tables right now not very conducive to um centers and Hands-On projects we're looking to renovate that room as well as replace some of the older tables and older chairs in the other science labs to bring in science tables uh that are conducive uh like I said to science experiments Hands-On activities uh and and the movement of center-based instruction within the classroom um uh we need horseshoe tables for pushing instruction for uh our academic support instruction um and the other piece that I'd like to to bring up too is that right now for Asi when they pull out a lot of our academic support instructors are using um spaces in the media center with temporary walls they do a great job um but it's not ideal and what I'd like to do is put in uh permanent walls and permanent spaces that are more conducive to small group instruction within the media center we have the room um but putting those and I think will just make our instruction and our interventions more effective um for instruction uh we're going to continue with RTI and Lincoln intervention manager continue with our tier 2 and tier three intervention services asies and onetoone tutoring and our our teacher coaching uh Dr Milo for mathematics and New Jersey teacher to teacher um for writing instruction uh and the big one that we're looking at right now is to revise our master schedule um it's not a small Endeavor but our admin team is looking to revise the schedule to create more opportunity and time for all the remediation and enrichment opportunities that we can afford our children uh not to mention ASI OT PT speech ESS okay and then enrichment opportunities what we're looking at is possibly affording more time to our honors science classes to get them La extended lab periods which would tie into our renovated uh science labs um so we are looking at to uh to revise the master schedule to create more instructional time any question go too quick any questions for Mr nurger just one yes I don't know I missed if it's in your budget I missed it how much for the to which I think is extremely important science how much to upgrade your labs I think the tables were something close to $70,000 for the six classrooms for all of them for all of them but the the d29 is going to be different because there's tables in there that are fixed to the ground with Gas and Electric in them and we have to take a look at how to remove those so that classroom will be more money and we're going to have to take a closer look to get a get a dollar figure on that thank you thanks I see Jimmy cringing in the background don't pay attention to these anything else in regards to the reduction and absenteeism 11% is great what do you attribute that to um yeah Mr gluski can speak on this as well but when you go through the RTI process and you identify um the children in need it starts a conversation with the parents and the student and and once you start those conversations and ow for the parent to come in in a supportive environment dialogue happens and you start to find out that a lot of times the parent or the family needs support in certain areas they just don't know where to ask um you know they the child needs help because they have school anxiety or you know they're both both parents are working and there's a lot of different reasons why there's chronic absenteeism and and it opens up the dialogue and we can start to provide interventions for them to get them into school whether they're incentive bases for the student or support for the family I also think that effective School Solutions at the middle school is a big contributor to that as well agreed thank you you're welcome so it it dropped by 11% this year what what is The Chronic absentee rate at the middle school is it similar to the high school right now or is it I don't have the exact numbers in front of me um but I would imagine that's probably pretty similar attendance right now much better this year than it was last year we're venturing closer and closer to pre pandemic rates good am I am I wrong in thinking this though but the percentage doesn't tell everything because what if like you have less students one year to the next so what are you basing it on like your your improvement so you might not have improved well you might have but the students might have decreased so your numbers look better so it's not Apples Apples because the the kids move up right so uh we have to look at it and totality it's 11% of students that were 20 or more absences that's how you gauge it okay that's how that's how I calculated the number probably Fair year-over-year it's probably right there all right thanks I mean we could you could look at you know the progression of the grade level also H how are things um with the students behavior like I know right after it's always sunny in the Middle School improve what's up as the students behavior improved cuz I know after covid when everybody came back there was a lot of disruption the kids were not really you know um trouble and Stu so you know I'm coming from elementary over to to the middle school it's been a fun jump um what I see happen you know their behavior they're kids they're middle school kids it's acceptable um they do struggle with peer-to-peer interaction uh you know my my welcoming uh moment at the middle school was you know I walk up uh in in the summer and I had a bunch of students and you know waiting to come inside and they're all on their phones hey good morning you know I'm used to the kids coming up and giving me high five in the morning they're in first grade second grade not one of them looked up you know they were here like that so I I think it's more of of you know engaging how to communicate with their peers effectively and managing their feelings and not so much the traditional what we think of as Behavior it's there um but really working on how to communicate effectively with their peers I lean to answer your question we're approaching pre-pandemic levels as well with behavior good because you know what I was talking about number of different indicators in fact one one of the most glaring indicators is at this time last year we were up to I think 20 board hearings for discipline I think we've only had five thus far this year not now they struggled coming back from the pandemic they certainly did and we are seeing that settled down yeah thank God yes anything thank you Mr nbg you're welcome thank very much so before this next presentation I'm going to have to ask everyone to put their seat bels on and keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle because Mr burn is going to be presenting for the elementary schools he got the wireless mic I got the mic so good evening everyone I um you can sit you don't have to stand you whatever you want to do it's fine with me uh the first thing I want you to notice is that the um well first of all I just want to share with you I'm not sick um because I've been told this is very brief and so I will keep it brief um but I just want you to know that I'm full of energy ready to go but I've been told all right so um first thing I want you to notice is that the just the the schematic of what we're presenting to you in regard to the what jumps out at you it's the color it's the vibrancy um and I think that would represent to you um if if I may a thematic development in terms of what we want to do here tonight because of the fact that um your support through the budget over the years has been able has enabled us to do many many different things what I think you're going to notice here on this first slide here I have I have we have five slides dealing with 23 24 I want to what I want to point out to your for your attention is that you'll notice the use of remember I'm going to school to be an educational linguist so I'm really interested in words because what words convey so I want you to notice implemented implemented implemented implemented what does that say to us that says to us that we're taking the money that you're giving to us and we're putting it into programs that we feel are going to greatly support what uh we want to do to be able to support the middle school and the high school certainly and certainly with our as Mrs Burns mentioned about what we're doing with our preschool this is all part of the composite that we're using here so this is very critical for us you'll also notice that we've very specifically linguistically we're really focusing in on Phonics because we know that phonics is a very essential element here in terms of reading and also writing so that's very very important for us and you'll see that mention a number of times in terms of what we're doing this year and for next year also notice that we're very very interested in writing we know that different groups have a lot of different challenges in regard to writing and we know that this is something that as we look at this again the total composite here of what we're doing that we're reinforcing that I told you how to be brief um so that was literacy in regard to math uh you see again the key key two key verbs here implemented uh in regard to extra math and in regard to what we're doing with math academy um you'll notice also that we're looking at how we're developing our math programs and I might say we didn't add this on the slide but I would want to give a shout out uh to miss bird and to miss Gman because of the fact that we now have that high impact Grant um and so that's going to further support what we're doing in math this year I did I mentioned briette first yes um okay now now we're going to get into sort of the Nitty Gritty so those of you that are more linear that like that that that that sense of what you can just grab into um next couple of slides will deal with that because the fact that we're dealing with how we're supporting the whole process with instructional supplies um what we're doing with as has been mentioned here just with Mr nurger and Mr gluski in regard to RTI how we're supporting that uh and that which is very critical and I think very especially we want to point out the the shout out here in regard I feel like a weatherman you know in terms of like moving this thing across here so it's like I believe there's a cold front coming we can do anything good we um so we have no go back sorry gave we gave him the wrong Quee um so here we are in regard to the curriculum writing in regard to what we're doing now pay careful attention here though because you got to understand this drives what we're doing in terms of that implementation that's critical and that costs money but we know that there's great success in coming in with this because we're looking at science and social studies looking at math we're looking at a media center now of course this is a very important one here again writing uh we got these new curriculum guides in terms of grades two and three um that's uh a very important component all right so now we have something that we're many different things here but one thing I really want to point to your attention here is with our social emotional learning we are really excited on the elementary level in terms of what we're doing with silus silus has been a great great addition for us in terms of what we're going to be able to do with that so we think that's you'll be hearing a lot more about that next year in terms of what we're going to be doing um but I and I also just want to point out to because it's a new program we thank you for that because that really is going to move us forward in terms of a lot of different things that we're doing with the so whole social emotional piece okay believe it or not I went through this year pretty quickly because I was told to be brief so here we are in regard to what we want to want to do for next year you'll notice the key word again implement this is I talked to Mr naster about this uh uh just a few uh moments before the board meeting we're really excited about this one because this is a very important opportunity for us um to be able to move forward as you know with the Strategic plan we are very very interested in terms of our special education students and we're very very focused on our multilanguage learner students so we have to look at very closely as to what we can do with that so this new program here for special education is critical for us you also notice that we're still working on the things that we talked about before regard to fun us and panel the whole program and of course coming back to heger here uh in regard to math you can see that we're still working on the things that we talked about before but if I could share with you don't get hung up on the fact that we're talking about the same things over and over again because this is an athletic Endeavor we're running we're swimming we're pedling we're in that part of the race where we just got to continue we're persevering we're gutting it out and that's what we do right all the time because that's what we love to do because we're dealing with children and there's nothing greater as Mr nurger mentioned before you know and good luck with him at the middle school um but it's it's just different because our children just become alive they're they're excited we become excited with them you may have noticed that um because that's what we do every single day because that's how we get the children to learn and to be engaged in all these different things uh so now we're going back to the whole supplies again so the whole point of this is in regard to whether it's supplies it's regard to the professional developments regard to response intervention this these are important considerations we're moving forward but we're we're getting stronger in the race we're picking up the pace we had a pace before but now we're starting to pick it up if I could share with you this is like inter if you've ever if you're an athlete and you do interval training this is we're in intervals here we're picking a pace fast let's go see what we can we can accomplish and that's what we're doing here and again that's for 2425 and we need your help to be able to do that okay um this is also a very important component of it because the fact that seals we've talked about is very critical in terms of what we're doing we spent a lot of time in the elementary on that and we will continue to do that in for the Future Okay so that was that might be a world's record for Tim burn in terms of budget presentation I didn't get into any philosophy thank you very much thank you um so I I try to do it quickly again I'm not sick so don't worry um but um questions from the board in Vision math right I I don't know who to go to what what we're starting it now in the elementary school oh no we've had it okay because it says continuing to implement so I thought it was relatively new there well no it's it's it's it's evolving certainly and and with the high impact Grant we know that we are struggling in many respects in regard to math um so it's just gone through a revision so the whole program so that we're continuing with that but it it's something that um we know that we have to keep keep working on um I would share with you that that's an interesting question though philosophically because of the fact that on the elementary level there are different skills to teach math as opposed to language arts so we have to I I I make a point of this in terms of interviewing where is that where's that natural progression in terms of how this teacher is going to is going to be able to think instructionally is there preponderance to go to the to the math side at the expense possibly the language arts um because it's a whole different realm of thinking when we're looking at the language arts uh curriculum and in terms of How It's brought about in terms of the teaching process there got to be some connection isn't that a reading Pro reading math program Envision or am I incorrect well all everything obviously is involving all the the modalities right um but um I think that we were we're very pleased with Envision um because the fact that it's causing our children remember the ultimate goal here is to get them to think to get the teacher to think to get all of us to think to think that's why we're here you're paying us to think um and that's what we love to do because that's that's the the component especially on the elementary level because we have so many different elements of that human person that we need to develop anybody else thank you so much thank you Mr bur thank really is that's a great segue into our next presentation which is curriculum and instruction thank you Dr lbby so um I said I have to follow Mr burn I I mean come on now most of what we are going to be speaking about was hinted at the different school presentations because their goals have to align with what we are doing with our curriculum materials our instructional resources and our instructional strategies so the budget that we are going to be talking about and the goals that we have was a collaborative effort Miss Audrey Burns um worked with our supervisor team which if you guys could all just give a wave so that we can put faces with names back there so our supervisors uh work with Audrey and I to build this budget annually and to make sure that we our spending our money exactly where we need it so last year the curriculum and instruction Department had had two goals one was to better meet student needs by advancing instructional practices and increasing opportunities for students in and out of the classroom our second goal was to enhance curricular assessment and instructional tools used throughout the district throughout cville so in 2324 um we were able to better meet student needs using grant funding and local funding options by providing summer learning opportuni for students in grades PK through 12 in July and August we had our AP boot camp at the high school credit completion and credit recovery for grades 6 through 12 learning acceleration for grades prek through 5 we had stem class partnership with Leading Edge we also implemented after school science learnings for the first time at the middle school we increased our intervention Staffing by adding additional ASI teachers for mathematics in grades K through 8 we broadened our extended day opportunities for students to academically grow by um increasing our programming in mathematics at the high school and Ela we had an NJ GPA boot camp which Mr gusy mentioned earlier that was planned by Mrs capro and Dr Maharana and we had small group tutoring through imagine learning that was part of our um Federal grant money programming where we have Imagine Learning partnering with our pre-algebra and Al algebra courses at the algebra classes at the high school so that students have during station small group access to instructors from Imagine Learning in addition to our mathematic teachers we uh expanded our dual enrollment with middle sex College we added a business organization and management course that uh students in our Academy are going to be able to earn college credit by taking and we also expanded online offerings for our high school students through imagine learning and that's in addition to edes seere and to Apex courses that they were already um uh subject to uh our second goal for 2324 was to enhance curricular assessment and instructional tools that were used by our amazing teachers and support staff we adopted hegerty uh phonic awareness for grades K through 2 and bridge the gap reading programs for our academic support grades 2 and three teachers this really allowed us to build some of the fundamental and foundational skills in phonics and pheic awareness that are now required by the New Jersey student learning standards we implemented age of learning for prek through1 students to Advan their reading and math skills with my reading Academy and my math academy and the elementary program and Miss Burns spoke to that a little bit earlier this evening we adopted a new instructional series for our social studies and history Department in grades 6 through 12 with an actively learned supplemental licensing it's a mcra hill program so all of our history and social studies teachers at the middle school and the high school are using a brand new series this year and uh Mr Howard has been instrumental in providing professional development and support to those teachers in using those materials which not only Advance content knowledge for social studies but also have a literacy comp uh component which is really important we piloted a new series for um our English grades 9 through 12 we had piloted a series a year earlier and our staff really wasn't pleased with um how our students interacted with it so we brought in a new one this is a mcra hill product and Mrs caero has been leading the teachers in implementation and I'm happy to report that they are really excited about the resource and what it will make available to our students next year we launch uh launched the use of assistive technology devices through or orcam to support students with disabilities as well as multilingual Learners we developed and piloted a district writing assessment through a partner with Ruckers and Miss Francis Mrs Francis and Mrs capro I'm looking back there to see they're all sitting there uh worked with a Ruckers Professor to develop a district writing assessment where we're going to be able to Benchmark how our students are expressing themselves through writing and support them because so much of our high stakes testing is dependent on their ability to communicate effectively so that was something that we started this year we brought in American Sign Language one through our uh partnership with proximity at the high school we have 25 students that are taking that course currently we brought in a stem Capstone course Mr ver was mentioned earlier this evening and he's working with those students Capstone is a term that we use when students are engaged in independent research related to different subjects so he is facilitating that brand new course at the high school and we brought in an AP advanced placement pre-calculus course also this year Beluga is a web-based program that we are using in our science and Elementary programs related to literacy and Global awareness and climate change and all of these new requirements from the New Jersey Department of Education and that is something that Mrs Bert is working on with the uh schools that are implementing that tool and that was was a grant purchase and silus was just mentioned by Mr burn and that is a web-based tool to advance our um seal skills and support literacy where the students are able to create multimedia presentations and they are able to use technology to advance their communication skills looking ahead to 2425 um we have several goals that Mrs Burns and I are going to be working on we would like to improve student achievement in the areas of mathematics science and English language arts as measured by State Testing njsla and benchmark assessments we would also like to implement a new districtwide writing Benchmark we're going to take that pilot and go districtwide that will be um used with students in grades 4 through 10 to improve performance on written expression portions of State Testing njsla NJ GPA and the waeda access which is the annual test that our multilingual Learners take we would like to increase the a number of students meeting graduation requirements in math and literacy through the NJ GPA that's the first Pathway to graduation so we'd like to see more of our students and Mr gluski spoke to that a little bit earlier we are also looking to increase performance of our multilingual Learners on the weda access testing so that we have more of our students which is a growing population able to effectively communicate read write listen and engage in conversation in English which is their second and sometimes third language we would also like to increase kindergarten Readiness and success as measured by the Kaa which Miss Burns alluded to earlier through vertical articulation with our project before program and our kindergarten um programs in all of our elementary schools for 2425 um curricular and instructional goals include opportunities for students we would like to increase dual enrollment offerings for students at the high school we spoke earlier about that that early college experience um local partnership with middle sex but we're also looking at other higher education institutions as well we do have uh Partnerships with Ryder right now for our tomorrow's teachers program and we're not limiting ourselves to Middle SE we really want to open up the doors for our students to be able to have these out of building experiences we are looking to update our elective offerings at the high school um the supervisors and Mr glue husky really had a vision for what they wanted to add to their course catalog and a lot of these courses you're going to see students enrolled in next year American Sign Language 2 a film studies course history of New Jersey Evol Evolution of Music and a freshman foundations course some of those are going to be dual um enrollment courses that will allow our students that access to college credit we are looking to expand Academy course offerings for compai fine and Performing Arts including anart art Capstone course where students will be working in their chosen medium and they will be developing a portfolio that hopefully will launch into their college career or their postgraduate career choice in art we are looking to provide more academic support through after or before school learning acmy to all grade levels we have it in our K through 8 program right now but we are looking to expand it to our high school so that our 9 through 12 students have access to that academic support as well and our stem Capstone again Mr vus gets a shout out for his course is looking to have some externship and some field trip experiences so those are all things that you're going to see highlighted in our budget when we present it to you in March for curriculum and instruction tools we are going to need to review uh revise several curriculum guides Mr Burns spoke well about there is a cost associated with that uh time and resources but it is definitely something that is needed we need to meet requirements for the New Jersey student learning standards that were um adopted in September of 2023 for ELA and Mathematics we have to address foundational skills as well as data literacy media literacy we have to um address how people would deal with grief in the health classes that's a brand new um adoption and also climate change awareness and we are looking to adopt a new English series you're going to see that listed as one of our budget items for our uh 340 610 and 640 accounts study sync by mcra Hill and that is something that will be utilized by um our 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade students at the high school remembering that all of our students take English each year so that is a program that will have an impact on 100% of our students we are going to expand our hegerty materials to include decodables and Mr burn mentioned that as well and we are going to look to bring in some instru instructional materials for some new courses sociology film studies history of New Jersey history and Evolution of Music are all going to need some resources to make those courses successful now it sounds like we have a very large budget but we are proud to present a budget that sees a reduction of over $300,000 from last year's budget um Frugal cheap uh smart purchasing I'm not sure you know the budget it really fluctuates for instr materials and curriculum because it depends on what you're purchasing are you purchasing licensing are you purchasing textbooks you know are you looking to improve professional development and partnering with some of our uh Federal grant money Mrs Bert and I work very closely together with that so you know we we feel that we've asked for some big ticket items that it's time to purchase but we also feel that it's it represents what we truly mean as a school district with curriculum and instruction so the budget will include purchases that are listed on the slideshow all of those instructional supplies that they use to implement lessons we had a lot of great PD this year and a lot of those presenters from teacher to teacher from For the Love of literacy Dr Milo they had wonderful suggestions on materials to use in the classrooms so we want to make sure that we have those items in the our teachers hands so that they can Implement those strategies if you want to do over put some ASI teachers in there I'll vote Yes to have uh more academic support we've actually since I've been here um I I joined the team the family in uh 2016 and we really have increased our academic support but we've also um we we've learned to kind of pivot with our staff as well you know we don't have ASI teachers per se at the high school but we've identified amazing mathematic teachers and literacy teachers that work as interventionists so um the supervisors really look at the data and they meet the needs of the student by you know using the staff that we have you know but obviously I'll take anything you want to give me Mr my husband will tell you it's dangerous to offer does anybody have any questions I I a lot of the goals we're setting for ourselves now seem to be getting back to pre-pandemic kind of levels for passage rates of graduation and expectations of elementary students do we think we're finally maybe past that Gap that we saw I am aggressively ready to move on and move up I don't know Mrs burn and I really we have high expectations for our students and what they what their education should look like we only have um limited years with these students so uh we we're putting the past behind us we learned some great tricks for instruction you know during that pivot but we're going to take those tools and we're going to forge ahead I I would if I could just jump in I'd say we're very close to being there in English language arts whereas I would say I even saw it in in math classes this year midd school where my daughter is that the Math teachers seem to maybe divert a little bit from what was being taught to teach what was missed before you get to the new subject matter yeah and I thought that was great in the math classes she had this year yeah Dr Maharana uh really has focused and I think we've spoken about it at some earlier meetings but she's really been working with um Dr Milo who is supporting our staff members um with mathematical instruction but we are revamping many of our curriculum guides and we're really looking at the art of teaching mathematics and there is a large connection between literacy and Mathematics so um she really you know kudos to Dr Maharana for really taking on that project and working hard and partnering with Mr gluh Husky and Mr uh nurger to make those things come true that's great in regards to the student achievement goals I see you have a lot of different of the standardized test list do we also have goals in uh regards to sat act for those students who wish to uh take those tests I mean we we address literacy when you look at the New Jersey student learning standards and you look at literacy mathematics and science they all do prepare students for the SAT the ACT um we are increasing our look at literacy in our history courses and in our English courses and most of those tests rely on Fresh text cold read assessments and study sync is one of the tools that we're bringing in so that our students when they're handed a fresh piece of material that they didn't read with the teacher or talk about in class that they're able to interact with that so I think that our curriculum will support students in meeting those tests as well would we consider having um an elective that is geared towards that sort of test prep for Mak we we've had an elective at the high school um in previous years for SAT prep but believe it or not we did not run it over the past couple of years due to lack of enrollment um students really want to focus on uh courses at the high school that we actually surveyed some of the students but we do have a curriculum that will help prepare and if that is something that we see during scheduling where there's an increased interest in it we can run that course we do have other programs at the high school that are run by private vendors that support that as well but we really want to make sure we're covering those core skills in our classes yeah do we I know that the sat's transitioned um to a digital version effective this spring do we expect that that's going to have an impact on our overall scores for our students Mrs sakola actually ran a pilot for it um last year so it's one of the things that our students are very comfortable with technology uh we're looking at the same thing with our AP exams as well so they've been moving towards the digital platform in multiple assessments but I think the kids are are easier to transition than we are sometimes they're used to it the great thing about study sync is most of it is an online program so the kids are going to be interacting with the literacy online rather than a book in their hand type of thing I know I'm getting old when I say that uh but we're supporting them and being ready for those changes our colleges I know they were waving the requirement for the SAT is that still continuing do you see that Trend there's there's a national movement different colleges have different philosophies but they always have there's always been a handful of colleges that really didn't feel that the SAT or the SAT was a great measurement of what they were looking for in students um you know we were trying to provide students with the opportunities to demonstrate their their fabulousness to our higher institutions in multiple ways but there are a lot of schools that are eliminating that with my son probably wishes they did it three years ago but he survived it with the dual enrollment do we is there or have we thought about offering some of those courses in the summer as well or is that just during during the school year so um at the moment we do not have uh anything plans for this summer but it is not something that I would rule out um The Residency portion for the early college experience requires students to take five classes at middle sex whether it's an online course or on their campus and they can certainly do that starting the summer prior to their junior year so that is something that's available to them for The Residency that would be an excellent opportunity to yeah there there's a great um there's an amazing study skills course that's part of the middle sex program that we're really going to start to encourage kids coming out of 10th grade to take because it gets them ready for that college experience okay excellent and just one other comment I wanted to make when I was giv Kudos started when I I was remiss I I also wanted to thank Miss pilac and Mr Callahan because they were very very supportive of this program from the beginning absolutely inspiring and suppor absolutely I just wanted to give them thanks any more questions anything else no thank you so much as always I am so thank you m bur thank you m thank you bar okay moving along Mr Glock Malloy is going to briefly go over our cycle 1 2023 2024 school safety data as briefly as possible um as in past years you will see this data multiple times this is the first time you're seeing any version of the 2324 data this covers basically from the opening of school through the end of December um you will see this again at the end of the school year we have the full school year set of data and you will see it again when we get our final report back from the state of New Jersey confirming data that we submit to them um categories have not changed from prior years you can see our Global categories of violence substance abuse weapons vandalism hivs both confirmed and alleged and kind of the catchall of other and under violence and vandalism we also have some subcategories that fit under those if we look at our first set of data you can see our breakdown of September to December our subsets of data for each school um noting that the preschools have no um student safety data information that they needed to report they've had no such incidents and you can see the spectrum of incidents across our other schools there for period one Chris if we take a look at the next slide here is our reporting of um our comparison of period one data over the last several years you can see that we've had some es and flows a lot of our data has um stayed fairly static over the year it's it's come and gone we've lost a couple in some categories we've gained in others where we saw a major uptick this um period in Period one was our other our catchalls and I did take a deeper dive into what was being caught up in that why did we see such a a h huge increase um predominantly what we saw there again keeping in mind that these are not just out of school suspensions these are all also in school suspensions it was dominated at the middle school and the high school and what we saw a lot of was in the the vein of um missing Satur detentions missing administrative detentions and having escalated um offenses where the original offense may not have been a suspendable offense but because the student did not participate in the OR consequence it eventually escalated up to a suspendable offensive in or out of school suspension there were some other areas that um Peak the other incidents um the middle school as Mr Norberg had mentioned they're working proactively on programs now to work on appropriate speech in schools we've had a number of um recent incidents at the middle school where students been using inappropriate and often biased language in nature and many times not even truly understanding the meaning behind the words it's things that they've seen or heard um so we that was another category that fell into the catch all all of our major um items our violence items our vandalism items um weapons substance abuse they've all stayed within those General um confines that we've seen over the the last few years coming down part of our reports we do have to report out on our training some programs um for our our hivs and our our other related programmingsoftware series of programs that they launched into this year um they've had a number of trainings that they've operated throughout their programs and if we come down to the next slide you can see our comparison over the last few years and again noticing an uptick um this year driven predominantly by the preschools and on our last slide uh we have our restraints and seclusions this was first reported last year this was not previously a reporting require IR M for student safety data systems this is specific to our students with disabilities under New Jersey statute um we do not currently have any policies or procedures in place for seclusion within our schools although there are situations in which we may have student restraint within these particular populations you can see the breakdown of numbers there but you can also note um thanks to to Mr naster and his teams across the schools as well as the building administrators we've had a significant Drive um across buildings but overall um in the district as well going through that rather quickly if anyone has any questions be happy to answer them is it CI training when you hold a child CPI CPI CB CPI CPI excuse me thank you um do we have someone in house that's trained to do that or do we send everyone out they're in but they're technically a contractor I believe we do we have a longtime vendor with us New Jersey we consider consider them part of the family they've been here for 10 plus years but they do all of our CPI training okay repetitive continuous throughout the year any more questions for Mr gloy Fantastic job all right job Eric thank you moving along to our last presentation as you know from items number 17 and 18 in finance infrastructure our Auditors recently completed our ual comprehensive financial report and auditor manager report so miss Hill is going to give you a brief synopsis of that thank you um so yes we as we do every year we are required to review exhibits B1 and B2 as well as any recommendations from the audit so we'll start out here with exhibit B1 which is our balance sheet so this has our uh general fund special Revenue fund capital projects fund Debt Service fund and then it totals all to our total government funds so with this the first section on here is our assets so you can see our total assets for the general fund are 21, 6914 26,7 and then our total governmental funds which includes again our capital projects which is the big one from this past year uh for 1222 m866 79741 cents uh so on our balance sheet our assets have to equal our liabilities and fund balances so our liabilities total our next section so this is anything we owe in terms of payables on June 30th any payroll Holdings anything like that and then if we go to the next slide we have our fund balance which is any reserves that we might have for these different funds so you can see our total liabilities for the general fund total to 21, 6914 1267 and our governmental funds again total 122 milon 866 79741 uh going forward there is the sheet two for the B1 which is just another explanation of our uh governmental funds so it gives you our total fund balance as well as any balances from other funds including our internal service fund which is where we have our self-insured programs and then going to the next slide we have our total net position of governmental activities which is 41 m1711 19968 uh so that is it for exhibit B1 for our balance sheet and then we have exhibit B2 uh this is where you can see an analysis of our or a statement rather of our revenues expenditures and any changes in fund balance so you can see our revenues for our general fund for the 2223 school year were 131 m295 54580 and our total governmental funds were1 154 M9 $ 26,28 45 and then it does give you a breakdown of our expenditure so here you can see what we spend on regular instruction special education instruction and other instruction uh and then on the next slide you can see the breakdown of our support services so this gives you a good idea of how the district spends its funds uh so then you can see our total expenditures total up to the 129 M 54,7 and then down below you'll see actually our changes in fund balance so you'll see what we started our fund balance with on July 1 2022 as well as we ended our fund balances on June 30th 2023 so we started in the general fund with 16, 62,63 a73 and we ended with 8,235 7 $235,700 and that's it for exhibit B2 and this is never something I like to report but unfortunately this year we did have a recommendation from our Auditors and that recommendation and this is actually something we discussed in our uh Food Services presentation in December was that appropriate action should be taken to ensure that net cash resources for the Food Services account does not exceed three months average expenditures um so that is in Rel relation to the finding that we have which you can see on the next page the finding was that our net cash net cash resources exceeded 3 months average expenditures which is all we're allowed to have in our food services account um so this is our corrective action plan in order to resolve this audit recommendation which is we're going to review our operational costs and we will apply the costs that are appropriate to the Food Services fund and in addition we'll begin replacing our fully depreciated equipment that is in need of replacement and we'll continue to monitor the fund balance and use those methods to decrease that fund balance and I plan to have that completed by June first of this school year and that is all I have does anyone have any questions it's not a deficiency just a it's I mean we're not allowed to but it's not a bad position to be in no did we I'm just asking they they have to know we're going to buy new equipment for our kitchens it takes months eight months nine months yeah can we say this is earmarked for or do we have to have it voted for here and everything so if we had been a little bit closer I probably would have tried to have that discussion with the Auditors but we didn't have all of that in swing by June 30th we did have that one large project at the middle school which was the walk-ins so really the amount that they're showing that we're over to me is over stated by several $1,000 because we already had that project in the works but it wasn't completed by June 30th so it's an incumbrance not a payable so it's not really recorded you don't see it on June 30th understood okay it's always good to have too much money it doesn't hurt thank you very much M any more questions Mr no Hill and we actually got the the audit was filed on time legally by the 15th correct correct correct okay if there are no questions you have a question M well I don't really have a question but I want to make a statement I was a party to the um with the Auditors since we're on the finance committee and they were very um complimentary of the fact that our finances are in very good shape and not just this year but years in past they um did say it we do a really good job so that's on eron so thank you very much we do seem to have a really good ba in this District we have an amazing ba so great job Aon with all of this yes every all the finances any more comments or questions anybody if not no Mrs Bloom okay I Surrender we will now move on to board discussion um Mr Smith finance and infrastructure committee please so we met back on December 12th um for our finance committee meeting talked about the referendum um the first bid is moving along all U the units for hbac at the high school and Truman are here but they're just waiting on the install we're going to be doing four rooms at a time at the high school and two rooms at truman uh the second bid for Windows it's SL orl the Middle School um is well underway all that's scheduled to be done within the next 8 weeks uh third bid Roofing uh some of it's been done some of it we're waiting for more appropriate weather to do the roofing um some of the other bids are waiting on equipment and then other bids have yet to be started uh we completed projects with roofs and boilers our solar PPA is an ongoing thing but the middle school is close to being done finally with solar um we did a few um we're still waiting on a fire alarm system part for the HVAC upgrade at Eisenhower uh until then the air conditioning HVAC runs during the day and it's turned off at night until we can get the fire alarm system um taken care of Stadium lighting we're waiting on parts for that but that should be done in March um the theater audio is scheduled to be installed February 2nd and that will be good and then the grandstand audio also should be done this month for the stadium uh and we discussed the audit and like I said before great job Aaron and everything was looking great with the audit that's it thank you Mr Smith uh Personnel committee Miss P sure uh the Personnel committee met earlier this evening uh we discussed open positions uh we also discussed the very successful job fair where we had about 40 or so attendees and some promising um candidates on that front uh and we also discussed the increase to the minimum wage um through the state which will impact some of our lunchroom and playground a that's it okay thank you Mrs pilac uh middle sex County School Board Association update uh there is no meeting this month the next meeting will be in March and it will be a virtual meeting so that's where we stand there okay anything else from anybody on the board right now uh at this time I will open up to public participation on agenda items only just a question we have a couple people here would like to talk about the football position which I know is in specifically on the agenda but I know the weight job which one is on the agenda just which is the more appropriate time for us to second one second one yeah one thank you okay and now we will move to the superint due to the time I'm going to go ahead and forego my report and just leave it as any board members do you have any questions on any of the items on finance and infrastructure student achievement governance and Personnel anybody want to take a minute to see if they have any questions are we all okay I'm okay everybody good I didn't see anything okay everybody already reviewed this okay in uh in that event we will move to the end of the line and we will uh take a motion to approve the superintendent report so moved is this where we would vote no against things I was yes okay yes huh yes no or okay okay Mr Callahan yes but I have to abstain on Personnel item number 10 Lorie C okay Mr Esposito uh yes but there are two exeptions um until we have further discussion on this I'm just I'm holding off I want to know on three and four on page 15 hopefully by next meeting we'll have more information and was that a no or an obstain a no uh no that's a no it's a no okay uh Mr Fernandez yes Mrs napalitano yes Mrs Pavone um I too am going to vote no uh for page 15 number three and four I don't feel that we have enough inform to um make a decision so I vote no for the time being that was yes on all other items yes okay uh Miss pillock um yes Mr Smith yes Mr Walsh I'm going to copy off the other people and do the same thing and vote no on page 15 three and four okay was that yes on all other items yes on all the other items and Mrs Bloom understand yes okay at this time we will open for public on any topics I ask that you come to the microphone state your name and address uh we will hold you to the 3 minute time period those are our rules and we ask that you address the board with respect thank you John Walsh 12 28 Luke Street the Morgan section of uh cille I'm sorry sir what was your name again I I didn't quite catch that John Walsh um it's good to see everybody um first I want to thank the board and Dr Labby for the amazing work you you all do the staff was was great again today um and and I like I've said uh many times you know I think this is a great board I think we have the best superintendent in the state um I don't say that lightly I don't say that just in flate ego I say it CU I believe and I say it because I believe the students of sbel deserve the best so when I say Dr Lobby's the best not only do I believe it but I I I say it often because our students do deserve that and uh without a doubt in my mind without a debatable we had one of the best football coaches in the state of New Jersey this year um to me it's not a debatable thing we had a coach who came off three you know was a three-state championship he's going to walk in the New Jersey coaches Hall of Fame when his career is done he came here took a four- win team doubled it in victories to eight uh eight wins was the big Central conference Coach of the Year this uh for our division this year um and more importantly you know taught our kids uh you know when I could tell you this group back here a lot of them are going to talk is a group that a lot of people gave up on a lot of people didn't think this wasn't supposed to be the team that was playing in the semis and have eight wins you know coaches don't usually leave when they have a big team coming up but these guys had a big season and uh that a coach who believed in them very very much um I'm just a little you know I I understand that this board can't talk about Personnel so let me say that first I understand you can't discuss it I understand you can't answer and I'm not asking any I'm not demanding action I'm not demanding answers today I'm just hoping everyone hears what uh I have to say and what the kids have to say and just take it into consideration moving forward whatever that um means I heard a lot of things this year about our coach I was at every single football game this year as you can imagine I was every spaghetti dinner I saw a disciplined football team I saw a disciplined coach I never saw one un Sportsman like flag I've been at games in the past where coaches have been ejected where flags have been thrown not one this year so it just doesn't add up to me now again I know there's information that you have that I don't have and that I can't have so I understand that but I do worry about the message we're sending we have a commitment to Excellence sville commitment to Excellence we want great we want the best teachers we want the best principles we want the best coaches for our kids too and when you bring in a coach of that caliber who's been tenured in the school for 20s something years who and we get them to come here and it just in three months you can be gone I just wonder what it says to the next great person who wants to come here a first year football coach is a very difficult job very very difficult because not only are you winning over the kids you're winning over your staff you're winning over the staff members in the school and matter of fact the last Mr Walsh your time is up sir are you going to take the mic from me I don't think so um uh what time are we at finish your thought John um anyway we have a uh we have a coach that came here gave us uh his heart and soul and uh maybe he made mistakes but I know my nine years on this board we were always a compassionate board we were never a punitive board we always a board to look to to help people to be Progressive in our discipline and to take a guy who's got three beautiful daughters at home you know that's the Flesh and Blood part of this and I know we always want to you know take the advice of our uh administrators because they do a great job but I think to look in the whole thing in a district where we're going to get our best people from so thank you for listening to me I appreciate uh everything and I think you're going to hear some heartfelt things thank you John anyone else from public yes good evening Mrs Bloom and board members Jim Robinson Harlin when the new mayor said he had no interest in helping with the bus depot Dr Lobby was quoted in the media as saying I'm extraordinarily disappointed with this remark and the fact that he nor the Barrow Council are taking responsibility for failing to honor their legally binding written promisory agreement with us in their word how ever this just affirms our decision to litigate and strengthen our resolve for justice I was surprised to see Dr Labby comment on litigation at all but especially since he refused to answer if the suit was even discussed at the November Clos session when I asked I am curious though as to who the hour is when he said this just affirms our decision to litigate who is the hour the board did not vote on this suit no member has even commented on it publicly did Dr Labby use our in the manner similar to the Royal Wii since the board did not vote to Institute this suit would you please clarify who the hour was or did the board illegally vote in closed session to Institute this suit you need board approval to auction off a 20-year-old box truck or transfer a cafeteria worker but not to sue the burrow can Dr Labby do that unilaterally and is every member of the board behind this suit has no one had the courage to speak up and challenge this ludicrous lawsuit or is Dr Labby beyond that challenge I served on the board of education with Hank Kinsman and Dr Parnell and they welcomed challenge because they understood no one not even the superintendent has a monopoly on wisdom the Slover School debacle proved that when I asked at the meeting if the depot doesn't go on Cheesequake Road what other sites were being considered Dr Lobby said Slover Truman Eisenhower and the high school we've gone through this before the first time Slover school was selected members of the public mobilized and I was one of them as was Jeff Smith and the board was forced to abandon that ridiculous plan it makes no more sense now than it did then and it must not happen the members of the board can put this to an end who here will say no the bus depot will not go on the PFC Wayne a grant field and it will not go in any residential neighborhood what board members will stand up to preserve a memorial to a war hero and for the people who live in these School neighborhoods you can get this right you can withdraw the lawsuit especially if you lose on summary judgment on Friday and you can explore sites that won't negatively impact the people of cille there is no shame in admitting a mistake and working hard to do better next time asked a number of questions there do you want to answer them now or at the end of the at the end of the session Mr the end of the session thank you very much let me ask one other question well I timed Mr Walsh he got 38 additional seconds your last okay so I'm going to take that in retrospect do you think it was a mistake for the superintendent not to return or take the call of the new mayor when you're going through the situation do you think that was a mistake or should he have done that thank you thank you Mr Robinson anybody else from public go ahead be your bodyguards don't worry about it um my name is Christine Kirkman I live at 175 Lincoln Street in uh Morgan um here to speak from my heart I was really tired today and I really didn't want to come here it was cold I worked really hard and then I thought about um PFC Wayne a grant and how he never had a chance to miss something or go home when he's tired or you know we we need to preserve Our Heroes from our town and I'm begging you to please consider not to put it at Slover school it's over a memorial and the family lives in Morgan and it means a lot to them and it means a lot to the community that's all I have to say nobody has to answer any questions I'm just asking from my heart to please consider that he's a he's a war hero hero oh my God her hero I'm so tired okay it's okay okay thank you thank you thank you so anyone else from public hello my name is Conor Walsh um I live in uh 128 L Street New Jersey I'm a two-year football captain to the m uh I'm a two-year football captain uh for Sarah W high school I'm joined here with some of my brothers and um I'm just here to talk about um coach lanic I just want to speak quickly about the impact he was able to make on my life and uh all these players here um I think the I think he was able to change um the culture at sville football from like a four and five team to eight8 and3 in the semis when nobody thought we would be able to do that I think he was able to push us every day and um make sure um we were great we were disciplined and we had great character I think you could ask any of these guys right here um about him and nobody would say one bad word you could ask anyone on the team the one word they say is impact he made an impact on every one of us pushing us every day and out even outside of football make his number one concern was us going to college PL After High School and making sure we were great people um I think I think it's a big mistake um if he was not to R return next year um I think it'd ruin the culture I think he's a great coach and he belongs in cille um and he's made a great impact on all of us and all the team and that's all I wanted to say thank you Conor thank you anyone else real quick before you start yeah uh students you guys don't have to say your address just address yourself and let us know that your in for safety purposes we prefer that you don't just say which school you go to Conor was only joking my name is Bryce buard I am a two-year Varsity athlete for the sville football program and for the wrestling team now and I'm an eagle scout Contender for troop 97 and today i' would like to speak about Dono volcanic impact not just on the team but at us as people he installed many moral values that we hold true till today on being accountable and being on time and being the young men that we were intended to be and he really built a tenacious culture on the team and empowered us to play at our best level leading us as Connor said to an 8 and3 deep playoff run which to many of us was shocking because coming off of a very mediate medre season last season to coming off of a very strong and healthy season along with having good culture going into this year I think the removal of s or better known as Don Sanic sorry we just call him Coach s over there but it seems almost unjust that a coach of one year I of course I know there is more than I know that you guys don't know as Mr Walsh covered but from a a player's point of view it seems unfair and unjust that a firste coach with as I heard Hib allegations but it seems that it was a one strike strikeout that there was no second chance or third chance to amend his ways and become accustom to the traditions we have at sville but to I have behind me returning seniors and they as Conor said that they can vouch for s in the way that they impacted us as not just students and athletes but as young men growing up here in sville and building good culture in this blue col town so thank you that's all I have to say thank you thank you anybody else from public okay coming up yeah good evening I'm Abigail mayor I've been a two-year Varsity uh manager for the football team really enjoyed my time they're very sad to leave I've known s my whole life pretty much growing up with his daughter's playing soccer he was always there always a support system towards them and brought his support to the boys I thoroughly enjoyed watching him Coach watching the boys watching the boys play and I feel as if he was a great head coach towards every single player as every coach does he was very impactful towards every single player there the Freshman the JV to Varsity and I'm a TV3 student so this past football season I got to interview some of the players and one of our players said that he was a father figure to him and a father figure to many of the boys that don't necessarily have one in their life he was always there to support and I just remember as a little girl he was there at every single soccer game talking to my parents about a game from 1984 he was he knew the game the quarter the time when the person scored who scored he always knew he always remembered a mistake he remembered something great that happened and he didn't necessarily Bleed Blue from the start but he definitely does now and I just really wanted to speak on him and on the behalf of the manager part of the girls have a good night thank you thank you thank you anyone else from public okay seeing none I will close public anyone on the board want to make a closing comment or before we do that anything for the good of the order hang do you want me to answer the questions that were asked um oh you want to answer the question I'm sorry because I have a comment so Mr Robinson answer question as far as I'm concerned asked three questions the first one is in my quote from the paper who is the r in my state hour in my my statement I am the chief School administrator of the seille public schools when I speak I don't speak with pronouns I or me I speak with the pronouns we and us because I am the leader of this school district so the hour is the school district who is going to stand up to Dr Labby I will defer that to all of you if you need to if you want to should I have t this is this is the best question should I have taken the call from the mayor so I'm presuming Mr Robinson you're referring to the statement that the mayor made at the last council meeting in which he said he called me on January 1st well I'm telling you Mr Robinson he did not call me on January 1st in fact the last correspondence that I have had from the mayor was in late October before he was even mayor he texted me to advocate for a patron that did not want to have to pay for security during a weekend function at the school since then I have had absolutely zero correspondence with the mayor he has not attempted to call me text me smoke signal me you name it the mayor has not tried to contact me I think those was were all the questions there was another question and that was did the board vote in exective session to file and matters that happen in executive session are protected under attorney client privilege you can take it any way you want Mr robinsson I to the attorney okay uh anybody else and I will remind us cannot speak to ongoing litigation go ahead um I just want to say that I had the um my daughter went to Sacred Heart School for five years so I do know the coach and his family his daughters as they grew up and I will tell you that I was highly active just like I was when my daughter came to cville in the PTO at Sacred Heart all our activities our talent shows everything and the coach was at every one of them I I have never seen him uh act out to any bad way to any child or an adult okay he's always been very nice um his family um Community oriented family they have always been active in all kinds of fundraisers I'm sure the girls got to be big by now but when they were little um so I'm really a little surprised at that we're even talking about him and um I just want to say that for from a a personal standpoint I have witnessed him and spoken with him and for five years while my daughter went to school with his family his daughters and he's he's a good guy and so is his um family and kids do look up to him and he did Coach things at Sacred Heart School as well and I never heard any complaints about him so you know I do feel that like the kids are saying that he's a good person that's all I got to say any anybody else with any comments first of all I want to thank everyone who came up and spoke today but especially the young men and and young ladies who came up and spoke today you've showed incredible courage to come up here and speak where many adults don't do what you have done and especially to the seniors Connor and uh Mr bashard you you you truly embody leadership not only you're standing up here to advocate for your teammates your your seniors this decision that's going to going to occur doesn't impact you you're you're going to be off to college or other endeavors and you're still took your time to come up here and and advocate for your teammates and your brothers on the team so I want to thank you all and say that you're an incredible example of what our school district uh embodies regardless of the situation I just want to say you're you guys are perfect examples of what our what our student body is so thank you anybody else have any comments okay motion to adjourn motion all in favor meeting ised