e are turn all right do I need to slam my uh good evening everyone good evening before good evening everyone before everyone gets comfortable can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please flag of United States of stands under God indivisible andice okay Melissa you can call the RO please here here here okay notice of the March 2024 meeting of the Board of Education was emailed to the clerks of the bus of essexfells North coell and rosand into the township of Fairfield and to the editor of the progress on January 5th 2024 and the Star Ledger on the same day notice of the cancellation of the March 2024 March 24 2024 meeting with the rescheduled date of March 18th 2024 was emailed to the clerks of the bus of FS North cwell and rosand and to the township of Fairfield and the editor of the progress on February 26 20124 I'll keep my uh I know we have a busy evening I'll keep it brief as I can uh first I just want to um thank our buildings and grounds um department for our newly renovated room we still have some other little things to do but this is our um meeting room and they've painted we set up a new um Booth back there to do camera equipment and our microphone so we just want to thank them for the wonderful job they did here um last Thursday myself and some other board members I know De Ray Bethany lla I don't know if anybody else was in um attendance but we went to see the um production of Once Upon an actess it was phenomenal um it was an outstanding performance I just want to congratulate who involved in the acting and behind the scenes it always amazes me and the talent we have at our school good Asad I've ever seen I just want to congratulate students on that perance I also want to let you know that tonight we'll be accepting the retirement of our Middle School um assistant principal thisy uh she's been with district for 18 years a middle school principal is not job and she has done it with dedication and commitment to the students of West essic so um just want to wish her well in her retirement she will be missed and uh she has big shoes to um I also want to um mention that we're excited Damon's G to get into more detail but we're excited that we will be approving our new athletic director tonight Mr Tim Walsh uh he also has been with the district for many years and many different capacities so we wanted to say welcome I'll let Daman continue with that just because to say as well and last but lot not least tonight is Damian's or today is Damian's birthday our leader here just want to put him on the spot our Leader's birthday today so we just want to wish him a happy birthday it's all yours another performance that was uh just outstanding um couple just brief announcements spring sports are underway the high school started uh last week uh Middle School um some of our Middle School sports start later this week and and um after spring break um our culture and climate initiative um we're administering our surveys um the week of April 8th uh that information went out to parents last week um quick reminder Wednesday students if you didn't remember you have a two-hour delete opening um for professional development for staff um Mrs tamberi uh is retiring effective August 1 I know Mrs wtz talked about her um we're we're going to Miss Lisa tremendously she's probably one of the most dedicated people I've ever worked with um hardworking just super dedicated you know ve very committed to West essic and we we will we will definitely miss her and um you know we will be giving her a proper send off you know later later on in the school year inviting her back to a board meeting with our other retirees um but we we we certainly will miss um uh Lisa tambury and last but not least uh I'm recommending I'm pleased to be recommending Mr Tim Walsh for the position of athletic director and supervisor of health and PE um starting July 1 Mr Walsh has been in education about 11 years um he's been with our district for nine years um he's currently a math and special education teacher at West Essex High School uh Mr W Walsh is probably one of the most dedicated um employees I know um he's completely immersed himself into the West essics culture during his time here I'm going to list just some of the activities that Mr Walsh is a part of um he's been an assistant volleyball coach assistant boys basketball coach a Middle School boys basketball coach a Middle School baseball coach he served as a class advisor for all grades he's been involved in the athletic director in a number of roles over the year he's been a clock operator TI Aker a site manager whatever whatever you ask of uh Mr Walsh he's always there um he's also served on a variety of school committees the culture and climate committee the Hib committee the skip committee which is our school Improvement panel and the social justice committee um Mr Walsh was integral in um starting the senior service project uh called Give Kids the World he helps with graduation the sophomore tricky train tricky train Al list go goes on and on um he's very excited about this opportunity and we all are looking very forward to him joining our team so um later on in the agenda we'll be approving Mr Walsh but we're very happy to have you join our administrative team so congratulations to Mr Walsh and with that being said I'll turn it over to Mr learner oh I'm sorry sorry right uh good evening I just want to touch briefly on last week the Juniors took the NJ GPA which is their final high school standardized testing so congratulations um this would happen Wednesday and Thursday and in English section and this is required for graduation U last week also our third activity in health classes for the no place for hate um took place and this included traditional bullying presentations and discussions however one major key difference was a lot of these conversations that were being having were student uh created and so I thought it was more relatable for us to talk about situations that are more likely to happen because the the students created the situations um the a night for knowledge also took place earlier this month and I was there and I saw a couple of the board members there too so I hope you guys really enjoyed it but I thought it was a really great success I saw many of the younger students including elementary and middle schoolers and current high schools schoolers too so I just thought it was great to see a level of community that I haven't seen since maybe Co before Co even and this event included uh six workshops ranging from experts to even some of our high school teachers and topics ranging from mental health consumerism and just overall tips for surviving middle school and high school um in upcoming days the AP languages and French 4 will also be going on the Lis Island trip mentioned in previous meetings every month I'm hearing of new field trips and I just think it's a great opportunity for students to have this handson initiative and from this I've seen just more passion in the classes because of them having more opportunities and it's really driving students to take interest in more classes and maybe put on their schedule next year from hearing it from other students on these gr initiatives and finally this upcoming month we are inducting 107 new members that are Juniors into the National Honors Society so congratulations to the indu all right good evening everyone all right thank you to the board of education for inviting me to speak tonight thank you as well to Damien Ryan and the entire administrative team for their continued support over the past five years since I became sign supervisor at West Essex incidentally it was 5 years ago to the day that I was board approved my brother just sent me the picture so I was like w look at that it's the same day kind of funny um I'm grateful for all that my Lead Teacher Lauren summer does to help move our department forward I'm also appreciative of the great teachers and staff wonderful students and involved parents at West Essex speaking of our teachers there we go there they are on this slide is our science department um in the middle school we welcome Josh danziger who is fully immersed in Middle School science as he teaches both seventh and eighth graders and as a result works with our middle school science teachers they've done a terrific job sharing their knowledge and resources with Josh and he has in turn offered wisdom glean from his many years of teaching in our in other districts in high school we are finishing up a transition to our science sequence um so all 10th and 11th graders are currently taking chemistry as a result our chemistry teachers have taken extra classes this year thank you so much to all of them for their hard work doing that once the transition is complete all nth graders and 10th graders will sorry all nth graders will be taking biology all 10th graders will be taking chemistry and all 11th graders will be taking either physics or environmental science this will allow students to choose between the various electives during their senior year so as we turn towards our district goals there are many ways we are incorporating them into what we do in science we're continuously working to use data to improve student outcomes one way we do this is by strengthening classroom instruction our teachers go to countless hours of PD offered by the district seek out PD on their own and also use PLC time to collaborate with each other and me all right so on this next slide what you'll see it's a little bit small but hopefully it's just big enough you'll see um science 8 um scores for njsla you'll see at the top 2022 and at the bottom is 2023 you'll also see the state average there if you look kind of in the middle it says average scaled score and the state had a 161 average in 2022 for science a in 2023 the state average 162 so they went from 161 to 162 basically no change we went from 170 osics to 178 it's certainly a bigger change to look at in terms of performance levels you can see that level one is considered below proficient level two you're getting close and near proficient and level three is proficient where level four is Advanced proficient so one metric that we like to use is getting level three or higher right getting proficient or Advanced proficient in 2022 the state was at 15.6% of students at level three or level four they improved in in 2023 to 18.5% that represented a 19% increase just a small increase for them however for us in 2022 we had 17.8% of our students at level three or level four we improved to 29.2% that represented a 65.3% increase of students and you can even see the raw numbers that we went from having 49 students at level three 4 to 81 students all right so we had that 65% increase and hopefully we'll continue to see increases like that as we go forward um in order to hopefully get that future Improvement whoops I I think I went to um no we're staying the same side sorry um as we looked to that future Improvement our middle school science teachers are using Edge elastic uh more extensively this year than in the past Edge elastic is a computer-based program that offers questions formatted similar to the njs science a test combining the testing format familiarity that edulastic provides for our students with the data that it provides for our teachers we hope to see future gains similar to what we had this year on State Testing here we go now we're moving on to school climate and culture that's our second goal this year Miss westbelt organized West sesk High School's First schoolwide elective Fair which is really a spin-off of sorts to what we had done in science the past few years with older students talking to younger students about science courses and what to expect as they Advance through the high school as you can see in the picture to the left in the current rendition during lunch students went around to various stations where other students informed them about elective courses they are currently taken students were able to ask questions which was very helpful as they decided on their courses for next year this event involved collaboration between students and staff as well as a lot of student to- student interaction all of which surely had a positive impact on the culture and climate at West Essex field trips as you'll see in the middle picture are another great way to improve culture and climate I know Jocelyn mentioned field um it's great it gives students a chance to bond with other students outside the classroom and in our case SE science in action earlier this month two parents and I helped chapero a trip that Andrea bero organized that's the one in the middle we took anatomy and physiology students to the Liberty Science Center here they saw a live cardiac surgery it was a great experience for students and for the chaperon to see a live surgery and be able to hear from the doctors and nurses involved and those doctors and nurses while they were doing the surgery were even talking to us and answering our questions it was pretty amazing to see it all happen right at the same time um in the in the picture on the right you're going to see students on the beach last May at Gateway National Park in Sandy Hook to the clean ocean action student Summit they were looking for fossils of marine organisms Lauren and our seventh grade science team are organizing this year's trip for 30 students which will be on May 16th they will experience Hands-On interdisiplinary Marine and Environmental Education at the Jersey Shore all right as you know on April 8th really excited to mention it here we will be taking a group of 150 middle school and high school students to Upstate New York to witness the total eclipse in the summer of 201 my family and I were fortunate enough to be out west when that Eclipse occurred when I first learned about the upcoming eclipse last year I reflected on my experience from 2017 it made me determined to bring such an experience to as many students as I could with the full support of the administration in both buildings as well as from Daman and you the Board of Education we will make this amazing experience a reality not only for 150 students but also for 15 really excited parent and staff chaperon special thanks to Lauren um who's been instrumental in helping me organize this as well as the clean ocean action field trip it truly is a team effort to make a field trip happen and trying to organize this one for so many students I'm really realizing there's so many moving parts to take care of but I know in the end it's going to be well worth it um actually what I want to do now is show you guys a brief video to sort of explain the basics of eclipse so I think Dave's gonna play that for us a solar eclipse happens Moes between and Suns away the two objects appear theze in our astronomers are able to predict eclipses because the earth and moon have very predictable orbits why then isn't there an eclipse every month the moon's orbit is usually tilted a few degrees or South in relation to the Earth when the moon does eclipse the sun it casts Shadows on earth a smaller darker Shadow known as the Umbra and a larger Shadow known as the penumbra there are four types of solar eclipses the first and most spectacular is this is what we're going to be seeing Shadow that's why the imaginated by shadow this is the 2017 path they're showing this is what will be happening in New Jersey when unlike a total the moon appears too to fully cover the the moon's Orit is elliptical so sometimes it's closer to Earth and sometimes it's away last a hybrid ecse when the moon between Earth and is banc that the of the earth plays a ro the moon will be away from parts of Earth the eth in anular ecse in other parts the moon will be just close enough to fully cover the Sun while a total solar eclipse happens somewhere on Earth every year or two any given point on Earth experiences the event only about every years once every 400 years and so then there's going to be one that's just you know a few hour drive north of us feels like we have to take advantage and see it um the next one will be in the year 2045 and you'd have to be down in Georgia area to see it so we're definitely taking advantage of this and hopefully it's going to be a nice nice weather that day all right um so just make sure we on the right yeah we're on the right slide okay um so in addition to all the help that Lauren has provided me in the science department as Le teachers she also helps improve the culture and climate of our school Community by organizing and being involved with many events just to mention a few pictured on the slides are pep rally to the left Autism Awareness Pi the principal event which is in the middle and a toy drive which is on the right to support the community lastly Lauren is sping the plastic detox social media challenge at the middle school on earthday this year this event created by earthday.org challenges students to recognize the impact of plastic on the environment and take steps to reduce their usage through a personalized plastic detox challenge after our students complete this challenge they will reflect on and share their experiences with their peers in science classes all right now we have a little bit of student work here are pictures of seventh grade work on on the left is a differentiated instruction activity from Nicole Cris crisps classes students demonstrated their understanding of the DNA replication by creating a project from several options on the right is an example of student work moving on to e8th grade on the left students competed in the science Olympics lab that involve determining the speed of different movements the middle picture shows students creating their roller coaster out of insulation tubing in which a marble was used to represent the car each roller coaster had to have three special features students determin the kinetic and potential energy of their marel as it traveled the track the last picture shows the roller coaster students built in in classes as we head to the high school I want to highlight um tasiana baros who mentioned before in her classes as she will be retiring at the end of the school year after 25 years in education with the last 14 here at West Essex she has been an invaluable member of our science department and the school Community as a whole the impact Miss bars has had will be felt for many years in addition to all the teachers and staff Miss bars has affected thousands of students have had the privilege of learning from and with her and are now impacting the world in very meaningful ways because of their time with her and that's not a overstatement she's an amazing teacher congratulations to tasiana on a job very well done we wish her many happy years of retirement and as she always says keep swimming She's always telling her students so we're wishing that for her um on the so sorry on this slide you'll see Miss bars working on a kinematics lab with her students in the hallway kinematics describes the motion of points and bodies without considering the forces that cause them to move on the following slide let's get to that students were studying momentum the objective of the lab was to design and perform an experiment to determine the relationship between the momentum of the cars before and after an elastic collisions as depicted on the previous slide we'll come back to that in a second sorry as depicted in the previous slides science lessons and labs are connected to phenomena to help students understand science Concepts and engage in science and engineering practices for the Next Generation science standards now we're up to our snapshots of success in science and first up is Frank parate who graduated we know Frank right Frank parate graduated from West Essex in 2007 at New Jersey Institute of Technology Frank majored in mechanical engineering technology he has been working in manufacturing for 14 years in various design and quality engineering roles supporting Industries such as Aerospace and defense medical implantable devices and the automotive industry this fall Frank and his family moved to California so he could start a role with Tesla as a senior supplier industrialization engineer his main focus is launching and industrializing products in Tesla supply chain using modern methods to optimize operational performance and reduce cost Frank currently supports a global team with a focus on castings extrusions forgings and metal injection molding products many of which are safety critical and structural components used in all of Tesla's vehicle lines some of the products that Frank has helped launch are on platforms such as the new model 3 refresh which recently launched in North America and the Cyber truck and next up we go to Tessa pain Tessa is a senior graduating from West Essex this spring she plans to attend Eastwick College starting this July and major in applied science and diagnostic cardiovascular sonography this field has impacted Tessa as she has had several ultrasounds due to chronic medical condition she is being treated for this has sparked Tessa's interest in studying stenography so she can help other people who also struggle with a medical condition after researching programs at several colleges Eastwick checked all the boxes Tessa was looking for in a program best of luck to you Tessa as you embark on this journey we hope your time here at West essic has served you well Frank and Tessa demonstrate the importance and power of Science Education I excited and honored to continue the West tradition of excellence in the science department and the Greater Community thank you so much and we're going to be [Applause] transitioning now it's time for to hear from independent study students all right so I'm going to turn it over to miss Del see could introduce all right good evening everybody um Mr Mochi Board of AD members and our community members especially uh to my independent study students Ella k Maddie Kirsten and Katie um I had the absolute pleasure of working with these five amazing young ladies um on their independent uh studies this year ranging in topic from vaccine development to Neuroscience to Dentistry um so this gives students a chance to kind of dive deeply into a particular Topic in science that interests them um and as their adviser I am there exactly in an advisory capacity um you know guiding them helping them with their research but really the The Lion Share of the work was all theirs um I'm so proud of them and I'm so happy that they are here and that you are here to uh hear all of the work that they've been putting in since September in a three to five minute presentation um and that was the hardest part of this I think for them was getting all of it down to uh three to five minutes um but I'm so proud of each and every one of them um I've taught all of them in multiple classes and um they are my little shining stars so um without further Ado Katie hle is going to be our first uh independent study presenter and she is going to be talking about vaccine development hey everyone my name is Katy hle and I'm going to be talking about vaccine development um more specifically mRNA vaccines so I will be diving into what they are the timeline of their development the covid vaccine and the body's immune response so mRNA is a molecule containing instructions for signaling in the cell and it was first discovered in the 1960s immediately scientists wanted to utilize that for different medicines and vaccines and in vaccines It Is encompassed by a lipid nanop particle which allows it to safely enter the cell's cytoplasm without initiating the cell's defense system so when it is injected into the cell the MRNA code gets transcribed um into proteins um by romes which makes the cell an antigen presenting cell and this causes the body to have an immune response as seen here um it's signals for helper te- cells to um signal the humoral and cell mediated immune response in the C mediated immune response you have cytotoxic te- cells along with memory te- cells which um destroy and remember the antigen for next exposure and you have B cells coming to make antibodies and memory B cells coming to remember it so upon next exposure they already have all the credentials that they need in order to successfully and efficiently treat the virus so in the covid vaccine the MRNA code is the spike protein found on the co virus so it is not any um it is not the actual virus it is just that D mRNA strand so it tells you basically what the what to look out for um what's look out for and really just helps it initiate this immune response so um basically antibodies are created after that signaling pathw that I just discussed so upon next exposure it will be able to recognize the proteins and know how to fight it off quickly and efficiently so there are some misconceptions surrounding the covid vaccine and one of them is that it changes your genome and this does not happen when the MRNA is released it is released into the cytoplasm and dissolves after a few days never touches the nucleus and just acts as a carrier of information to yield the production of antigens that the body leads um and the vaccine was also a lot of people think it was developed too quickly but for since the 1960s there has been research going into this and that's what I'm going to be talking about next so upon its Discovery um scientists wanted to use it for further usage in medicine and in the 1980 1990s um there was a lot of HIV and AIDS research using it and the first mRNA vaccine was created and tested on animals in the 1990s now this used liposomes or multiple lipid Bayers to Encompass the MRNA and it didn't end up being too efficient because it was signaling the cell's immune response a little too soon so it wasn't really getting that um protective response that it needed but in the early 2000s scientists laid the foundation for a structure-based vaccine design aftering the structure of a protein on the surface of human amuno deficiency cells that allows it to enter cells without initiating that response um this led to the Breakthrough of lipid nanop particles which I talked about before that allow it to safely get into the cell cytoplasm and initiate the new response after it is in which was very very important for vaccine development so from 2005 to 2016 um scientists discovered the structure of virus proteins allowing them to in cells using stabilized proteins and vaccines to initiate this immune response and from 2015 to 2018 there was the Ebola virus Nipa virus Ms virus and zika virus that all needed a general vaccine designed to use viral mRNA um so they could just kind of have something that they could copy and paste in that mRNA code and get an efficient and working vaccine so Pharma companies work to establish these Pathways and with the zika vaccine it was DNA based but it set the precedent and the path for mRNA vaccines to be created um with the MS virus they um um they research the spike protein which is similar to how they did the covid vaccine so they use the spike protein with MRA technology and then transformed it into the covid vaccine upon the outbreak of the pandemic so once the pandemic started we got the first genetic sequences of the co virus and they were able to just put that right into the technology that we had and get the vaccine that we needed so in the 20 2020 2021 the vaccine was developed and approved and now we have um the vaccine that we have today so thanks [Applause] guys uh evening bard of Ed um Mr Machi my name is Madison Schwarz and thank you all for being here to to my research um my topic is a basic introdu introduction to Neuroscience so I will focus mostly on the basic of how the system works the brain is composed of the cerebrum C cerebellum and brain stem most people often associate the brain with just the cerebrum as this is the most prominent part of the brain however there are multiple different parts of the brain that function together the cerebral cortex is the wrinkly part of the brain and has many folds to increase its surface area its bumps are separated by three key fissures the longitudinal fissure separates the brain into two hemispheres the left and the right the central fissure starts at the back of the brain and the last fissure is the lateral fissure which runs anterior to posterior in Direction and curves gent gently dorsally the cortex is separated into four different major loes the frontal Lo are the frontal loes are located at the front of the brain and are responsible for higher thinking such as attention critical thinking and impulse control this part of the brain is key to making each individual's personality the peral lobe is located in the middle of the brain and controls the perception of pain and touch like this lobe the temporal lobe contributes to the sensory processing and includes an important structure called the hippocampus the oxital loes located in the back of the brain are the smallest of the four loes as they are closest to the eyes they could they process visual information and stimuli neurons are cells that transmit electrical signals throughout the body and are necessary for the nervous systems inner workings there are over a 100 billion neurons in the human body that are constantly being replaced with new ones the structure of a neuron is a cell body dendrites and axons the branching part of a neuron is the dendrites which receive incoming signals from other neurons from dendrites information is processed to the cell body and that it directs it to the ner to the axons the axons extend out from the cell body to transmit information to other neurons neurons communicate information with each other through the synapse when electrical signal reaches the end of a PR synaptic neuron the neuron releases a neurotransmitter that travels across the synapse and binds to The receptors on the postoptic neuron the neurotransmitter communicates through Action potentials which I will discuss more in the next slide membrane potential refers to the difference in electrical charge between the inside and outside of the neuron cell membrane this potential is measured by the distribution of positive and negative ions across the membrane when neurons communicate neurotransmitters are released from the practic neuron causing a change in this distribution as seen in the graph if the change is within a certain threshold ion channels in the membrane will open allowing ions to flow through across the membrane this sudden influx of ions generates action potential uh this action potential is a brief electrical impulse which allows neurons to communicate with each other after the action potential passes the membr potential returns to its resting state and the ion channels are reset the nervous system can be divided into two major parts the central nervous system also called the CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord its primary function is to process and information taken in from receptors across the body this information is communicated through the neurons processes I described previously through the brain's various regions the sensory information is processed and stored to generate a response to the stimulus the second part is the peripheral nervous system known as the pns the pns includes a wide range of nerves across the body that are not included with the brain and spinal cord its main three divisions work together to perform different functions the somatic nervous system control voluntary movements and sensory perception which allows conscious movements such as walking and speaking the aut automic nervous system regulates automatic functions such as breathing and heart rate this helps maintain an internal balance the anic nervous system controls the gastrointestinal tract functions alone controlling diges secretion and morality thank you hello everyone for of education and super Mr Mai today I'll be presenting about dental medicine um as weird as it sounds the oral cavity also known as the mouth actually holds important information about um the overall health of a patient because our holds many tissues such as muscles bones nerves and more dentists can actually find underlying medical needs medical needs that may be sorry um dentist can actually find underlying medical needs of a patient that just might be going for a regular D checkup permanent teeth consists of canines and scissors M prear and potentialy and understanding two including crowns roots and perations can help us grasp issues like impactions and gum infections and the pantium also known as the the foundation of our tee is composed of the cementum also which is the root coding of our teeth the p which are tiny tiny strings that connect our ligaments the lever bone which holds Our Roots together and our gingera which is the GS denal carries more commonly known as cavities affect a significant portion of the global population particularly children making it more prevalent than asthma in the US are influenced by plaque salival composition fluide exposure and diet the treatment typically involves removing Decay material and restoring tee by usings or CRS AIS ulcerations also more commonly known as canker SES or C sores can change our gums and induce bone loss and destroy our pontal and pontal disease is influenced by factors such as inct toothbrushing um food impaction gum damage and other factors such as smoking diabetes stress and nutrition um there are many types of oral diseases some of them beinga and aropa and this can infections in the lining of your mouth teeth of your mouth thums and your tongue and this can lead to cancer oil cancer can be better treated if found early on um surgical procedures uh need Den oral health assessing before make sure that there are no Dental infections because there could be a possibility of oral bacteria entering the blood Street and dentist play a crucial role in evaluating patients before surgery because they can identify underlying bacterial infections and transplantations are similar but they need pre and post transplant or health assessments to minimize the infection risks and assess oil hydration salivary flow and closely monitor for infection and lesions to prevent dental decay and improve the quality of life post transplant and then lastly for chemotherapy careful Dental evaluation and treatment are essential for students for patients undergoing chemotherapy can minimize complications and ensure better outcomes including giving antibiotics blood count implementing preventive measures and addressing oral health issues thank [Applause] you well Board of Education I know it's been a long night but I'll try to keep it brief um I have another presentation on Neuroscience I know you heard from bu before but I'm going through the biological anatomy and more of the soci impa and how we see it in our day-to-day lives so let's start with the smallest aspect of Neuroscience are the neurons I know mie talked about this in her presentation but it is mainly composed of dendrites the axon and the synapse um we don't need to go through all the complicated stuff but think of it like Holiday Lights how electrical impulses through wires um light up each bulb in sequential order and eventually it makes its way up to the brain um so it uses neurotransmitters which are basically a chemical you've heard of them before serotonin melatonin dopamine like you've heard of all these chemicals before and they're essentially help um with communicating through the nervous system so the brain itself has multiple regions we have the frontal lobe and parietal lobe which is a lot about planning and impulse control and then in the back we have the oipal lobe which is uh a lot to do with your vision the temporal L um lot to do with language emotion and memory and lastly the spinal cord connects it all to the rest of your body oh sorry and the sellum does more behaviors that you don't have to think about think about breathing or blinking that all happens within the cellum um so this spinal cord connects your brain to the rest of the body this is known as the central nervous system um so some cognitive processes that I'll be going over one big one is memory uh memory occurs in the migdala and hippocampus those are just regions inside you can see them very small in the middle of your brain um so it uses this idea known as brain plasticity or neuroplasticity which is essentially the ability for your brain to change its physical shape when you are learning information um therefore it creates stronger or weaker neural Pathways so this is why you can remember your favorite food but not something you ate for lunch like two weeks ago because um those Pathways and the emotional connection you feel to things that you like create stronger neurop Pathways and stuff that you don't have any memory with or neural uh emotional Pathways with so another big thing is stress stress happens in the amigdala and hippocampus essentially you've been hearing about the amigdala a lot it's a portion of your brain that deals with emotional control so emotional memories emotional responses stuff like that so when you're under stress in a normal person amida releases cortisol cortisol is a chemical that basically tells your body to become focused to do um one of your three responses flight fight or freeze um heightened periods of this however is very detrimental to the body so for example in a normal person the migdala will be sensing for cortisol to be released you'll be stressed and then you'll relax but in a heightened periods of time it causes the migdala to become very swollen you can see in the middle of that section on the left we have a normal brain and then on the right we have a swollen um aital area where the mdala and H hypothalamus region is more like bigger than it should be um this causes overreaction or underreaction to certain stimuli for example you can see in PTSD um patients uh when there's a small beep or something like that they overreact because there much cortisol in their bodies and they don't know how to properly comprehend what's going on around them this is mostly due to external stimuli and uh long periods of stress as I said um lastly we have mental health mental health can be both genetic and due to external factors such as the stress I mentioned before um and essentially has an issue to do with the amount of neurotransmitters or that connecting chemical that allows the brain to work uh how much is being released so if it's over released such as when there's too much cortisol it CS an overreaction and when it's under released such as if there's not enough serotonin being released it could cause depressive States essentially that's how most mental illnesses work um and there's different symptoms and severities for each one which are classified based on the mental illness so there's a lot of research going on into stem cells which I'm working on right now and neuroprosthetics which basically are devices that are implant imp sorry into your brain and it makes it like um monitors your performance and it aids you in certain aspects and also they have been using some AI to try to use that in Neuroscience where they are trying to see how decision- making processes are working through Al algorithms overall Neuroscience is crucial for understanding Behavior cognition and mental disorders uh studying this topic shapes our understanding of our minds and which is why it's so important to meet today thank [Applause] you sorry okay so today I'm going to be talking about the correlation between pre proteins and Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurogenerative disease that primarily affects the parts of the brain that control thought memory and language beginning with mild meory imp possibly leading to the loss of the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to events around oneself one in nine people age 65 and over have Alzheimer's disease risk factors risk factors include but not but are not limited to age family history and changes in the brain Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the accumulation of protein deposits in the brain which leads to Beta amalo plaques and Tall Tangles ending up with disase causing ways to diagnose the disease include but are not limited to spinal fluid fluid analysis MRI or spe prion proteins short for proteinous infectious particles are a class of proteins that can adopt abnormal confirmations leading to the development of various neurodegenerative diseases known as PR diseases there are sever several different kinds of prons including the normal cellular P protein or PPC and the abnormal PR prot prpsc starting with prpc this normal healthy form of prons can be found in the cells of many organisms in a in its normal confirmation it is a membrane bound glycoprotein that's primarily expressed in the nervous system prps PR PSC proteins are what are associated associated with pry diseases it has a different confirmation than the normal pry protein and is characterized by the misfolded beta sheet structure I'm sorry that is resistant to normal cellular protasis PR diseases are a group of rare neurodegenerative diseases that affect both animals and humans unlike infectious agent infectious agents PR prons do not contain DNA or RNA the abnormal prion prpsc acts as a blueprint which induces the misfolding of normal prpc into the pathological confirmation eventually leading to the accumulation of misfolded PR proteins in the brain this can lead to the formation of protein aggregate neuronal damage and the characteristic sponge like holes in the brain tissue which you can see up there PR diseases typically have symptoms including motor dysfunction cognitive decline and behavioral changes these all rapidly progress although prion and pry diseases are found difficult to research new research continues to present insights into the mechanisms of PR proteins while PR proteins and Alzheimer's disease are while PR proteins are most closely associated with pre diseases research has also explored the potential connections between the folded PR proteins known as ppscs and other neurod degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease these Studies have closely looked at the role of protein misfolding and aggregation in the pathogenesis of such conditions suggesting that pran could be a cause of the diseases however the precise links and mechanisms still remain like unknown and researchers are trying to figure it out Alzheimer's disease exhibits prik characteristics with the presence of both beta aloid and T proteins in patients brains both Alzheimer's disease PR diseases involve the aggregation of specific proteins and the accumulation of these proteins Aggregates is associated with neuronal dysfunction and degeneration P like mechanisms may be involved in the spread of beta aloid and top pathology in alimer disease abnormal forms of these proteins could act as seeds that induce misfolding and aggregation in neighboring proteins similar to Prime propagation similar to it is possible that Prime proteins and beta aloid or TP proteins can interact directly or directly leading to cross-seeding events that accelerate the aggregation of both types of proteins common molecular Pathways involved in protein homostasis autophagy and cellular stress responses may play a role in the convergence of Alzheimer's and Prime disease pathology in beta aloid and Toons causing disease which is a study I researched researchers employed cellular bio essays on postmortem samples to investigate the misfolding of both beta aloid and T proteins into prons AC is implicated in Alzheimer's disease the findings revealed significant correlations between Alzheimer's patients longevity sex and genetic background despite similar neuropathological features in all postmortem brain tissues older Alzheimer's patients had lower beta aloid pry levels than the younger ones furthermore longlived individuals displayed low levels of T prons which related to the extent of phosphorated to these findings IND inverse correlation between Alzheimer's patients longevity and the presence of neurotoxic to prons the study suggest that these discoveries may have profound implications for selecting distinct patient populations and developing diagnosises and effective treatments for Alzheimer's I'm sorry I literally didn't get this into work all in all they found that prike processes involving both beta aloid and T proteins may be significant in Alzheimer's disease these findings may have implications for understanding and addressing Alzheimer's disease in distinct populations and for developing diagnosises and treatments this issue needs to be addressed as a priority because it can understand our Advance our understanding of the role that Prime proteins play in Alzheimer's disease thank [Applause] you thank you everyone for your amazing um presentations I want to thank you for coming Pres the board I know sometimes could be intimidating but we're just fascinating with all the knowledge that you have um so thank you again for presenting to us um are there any comments from board members or anyone who very well anyone else on any anyone want to comment on I St TOS St conratulations inand privileg to be part of the ad committee for them anyone else a inform anyone else are there any um board committee reports okayed only thank you very much for your presentations they were spacular I learned a little bit but not much so they were tremendous so thank you and commenting on the play The Master play I mean I'm a parent of a son went masterr and going back and watching was just tremendous I mean we still have to get M on stage's I'm determined that was yeah so um and then I'm going to report out on the finance committee uh so we did have a meeting on uh March 13th um we basically uh good portion of the the meeting was spent around going over the preliminary budgets uh that Melissa put together uh subsequent to our meeting she sent it out to the full board and it is on tenative budget is on the agenda for tonight that we'll be uh be voting upon uh we are also going to be uh moving forward going out for bids for the culinary parts and the stem room Renovations so we're going out on uh March 19th for viid and then uh we'll do the BD opening on April 23rd and the plan is that to have the rooms upgraded by the start of the school year in September and then uh so since we're renovating some of the the rooms in that 100 Wing we're going to continue it and do some uh Renovations there with ceiling tiles Furnitures Des cabinets um speci batement Etc to uh to upgrade that wing and that's going to be done by our facilities Department under maintenance reserve and then we have um a few upgrades so we're going to be upgrading the high school gym padding that's the padding that's on the wall of the main gym that needs to be replaced so looking to do that for approximately $22,000 uh going to upgrade the uh gym divider in the middle school that um it's wearing out place so looking to do that again for approximately $31,000 and track restriping so um that's the track that go around the football field so last time it went stri was in 2015 so that needs to be done again so it's going to be about 14,000 excellent anyone else any comments questions okay this time we'll open up the floor for public comment on agenda items does anyone have any public comment okay we move on to finance um Ray you want to take Finance uh the following Finance motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent and schools anything placed on this agenda one through six will be voted upon in one motion and I so Mo any questions yes yes yes um Jonathan Do you want to build sure following building ground motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda item one we voted upon one motion and I any questions or comments Mr yes yes yes Debbie holl do you want to take personel please motions areation of superintend of schools placed on agenda items and this is now instead of through 15 will be voted upon in one motion I'm going to read out theendum here this is item now is to approve the appointment of John as a leave replacement science assigned to the West Regional High School beginning honor about March 19th 2024 through honor about April 15 2024 an annual salary of 6,781 which is Step One The 20232 Bachelor 15 degree teacher salary guide Mr T will replace employe second questions Mr yes yes [Applause] yes a new job and a new baby on the way new baby tomorrow two new two new jobs if you will yeah two new jobs um Frank do you want to take curriculum please sure the following curriculum special education motions made the recation of the superintend of schools anything placed on this agenda it on one motion any questions yes yes do you want yes this time we Flor for public comments on non-agenda items does anyone have any public comments well anyone else read