okay can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all misso here miss chrisal here miss honat here Mr PR here Mr Sable here miss Calderone here Mr Sher here Mr Sone here miss wwin here okay notice of the March 4th 2024 meeting of the Board of Education was emailed to the clerks of the Burrows of essexfells North cwell rosand and to the township of Fairfield and the editor of the progress on January 5th 202 4 and the Star Ledger on the same day notice of the location change from the March 4th 2024 meeting was emailed to the clerks of the buroughs of essexfells North Cole and rosand and to the township of Fairfield and the editor of the progress on February 26 2024 okay so as you can see um Daman is not here this evening he is unavailable to attend tonight's meeting sorry about that um I just the only thing I would like to mention tonight is that we have two retirees on our agenda uh Miss um bar baros baros who has been here for 15 years and then miss uh McDon who's been here for 16 years um on behalf of the board we just want to wish them well in their retirement thank them um you know for their many years of service here at West essics and um wish them the best in the future and then I don't have anything else tonight um we will move on to we don't have a superintendence report so we will move on to um our board rep our student board rep J good evening so since the last board meeting um there has been several School initiatives on improving school's climate as you know this year we're taking the no place for hate campaign all over the district and as we continue our third activity the Key Club has also implemented the we compliment you initiative and this took place in the month of February where students were able to use a form that was Anonymous and send compliments to other individuals last Thursday over 2500 compliments were sent out to the entire School in the high school and it was really great to see just like during third block like they stopped class just for like five minutes and all the teachers just had like a a big stack of envelopes and we're just calling kids' names out so I thought it was just a really special moment for everybody to see and the promise was like every a student would get an envelope and get an compliment and for my class which I was in study hall so there's like probably 50 kids everyone got an envelope and some of them had multiple compliments and like you didn't know who it was so I thought it was really special to see and I know that some teachers also part tooken partake in it so just seeing everybody participate it's just really wel welcoming to see in the community and has strengthened like just the climate in general past month as we entered the five week long period of no breaks and the students just trying to get through to spring break and then this week uh the climate and culture uh team has planned a night for knowledge on March 6 and just as a reminder this is a set of workshops for the community just to put out information on different activities and different initiatives that students and faculty thought were important for families of the community to partake in if they wanted to learn more about the wests community and the different initiatives we provide and there's been student volunteers to help with this orchestrate the night for knowledge this week and it's going to be really exciting so hopefully some of you guys could attend and see what it's all about and then I want to touch base on the different fields that just like in the past year there's been so many field trips that I thought have been very great opportunities for different classes from Sports Marketing to AP students art history and even just science uh lovers in general uh this month AP languages are going to Ellis Island uh last month the AP art AP art history in French went to the Museum of Modern artart and just today a Google form went out for a trip to see the solar eclipse this month which I thought was really cool and just seeing the different opportunities W essics presents to students to take action and really get involved and what they want to do is really cool to see and finally just to put it out there the musical is coming up and so I encourage everyone to go see the princess in the PE thank you thank you J I know I'll be at I'll be at the play can't wait I know Deb's going a few board members are going yes we love it Deb's yeah great um okay so right now we'll have um Stacy casayas our hi our uh English supervisor give us a presentation on her Department please good evening everyone I'm Stacy Casas I know most of you know me few new faces so hello um I always like to start these by you know setting the mood a little bit and talking a little bit about English and getting everybody ready uh so I'm going to talk today a little bit about some reading I've been doing and these are three professional books that I read recently and uh the middle one there was actually part of a book club in preparation for our professional development speaker Debbie silver that a lot of Middle School teachers participated in over the summer and then the other two books there are Atomic habits and stolen Focus were recommended to me by other English supervisors and the reason I bring this up is because all three of these texts as I was reading them I started noticing a common theme right things we look for all the time common themes and the common theme that I noticed was all three of them talked about the importance of getting into the flow or in the zone some people call it um Debbie silver talks about how the flow is where real Learning Happens Atomic habits discusses how that's really where you are building those sustainable habits and stolen focus with which is about why I and no one else seems to be able to pay attention to any one thing talks about how uh the flow is really where you could start focusing again and start remembering what it is that you're learning and the reason I bring this up is because stolen Focus uh the author is not an English person he's not an educator yet he had an entire chapter dedicated on how to achieve that state of mind and it was about reading specifically reading physical books and he says one of the best ways to get into that flow and hopefully you all have experienced that before that sort of In the Zone moment where everything else seems to disappear is to read and he says this is what books tell us firstly life is complex and if you want to understand it you have to set aside a fair bit of time to think think deeply about it you need to slow down secondly there is a value in leaving behind your concerns and narrowing down your attention to one thing sentence after sentence page after page thirdly it is worth thinking deeply about how other people live and how their minds work they have complex inner lives just like you so with that let's meet the teachers who work to instill that in our students we have a tremendous staff in the Middle School and High School 14 teachers in each building in the English and reading departments we have seven special education teachers which if you go into the classrooms that are co-taught it is really having two content experts in the class it's really something uh marvelous to see and then two Librarians which we'll take a look at their work later on the presentation our district goals are to improve School climate and culture and to use data to improve student outcomes this year the department has been focusing on differentiated instruction and planning ahead for the new standards which were just recently ad adapted to go into effect next school year I'm going to start with differentiation since I just talk spoke about those three texts um Debbie silver talked a lot about the zone of proximal development and she discussed how students are really learning when they're in that zone in that flow in that sweet spot where the material is just challenging enough that it's fulfilling and meaningful but not so hard that they're frustrated and not so easy that they're bored with it right James CLE in atomic habits calls it that goldilock zone that sweet spot where it's not you're not bored but you're not feeling like a failure and Johan Hari discusses about you know you don't want to be an autopilot right you want to be challenged so the key to differentiation is getting students in that zone and my teachers have really been working hard out of their own comfort zone to develop a lot of lessons a lot of different U materials where students can live in that zone where they're feeling like the work they're doing is Meaningful and they're challenged enough that they're in the flow so I've seen lessons from seventh grade English students engaging in a debate that they chose the topics and they initiated and we're so eager to learn and read above their level because it was something they're engaged in all the way up to AP lick which is our 12th grade high level achieving students doing lessons that were individually tailored for their own topics that they chose to research for the novel Frankenstein so the teachers really have been you know taking Debbie Silver's message and really pushing kids into that Learning Zone of course we differentiate not just by student interests but also by ability so we are constantly looking at data one of our our district initiatives to determine where students are levelwise we have information from link it from njsla those are our Baseline scores where we're able to see individual standards and how as a whole our students are performing and also how individual students are performing on each standard and from there we use tools such ASL and common lit to really Target and tail our instruction so both of those programs on the right allow you to set specific lessons based on standards and adjust the skill levels so we also use those programs too to individualize instruction for our students our second initiative climate and culture I like to think we're working on this every day in English class through the texts we read and the conversations we have but we're also doing a lot of cool stuff outside the classroom as well um the no place for hate in initiative that Jon spoke about um Dr Westervelt and Lisa Hol were really uh really kicked that off in the beginning of the school year to a tremendous amount of success and The English Department actually did the first activity in their classes where students read and signed the no place for hate pledge now I had the opportunity to visit lot of the classes when those conversations were happening and I was really impressed at the level of vulnerability a lot of our students and teachers showed during those conversations and Trust they weren't easy conversations but our teachers really grounded them in the text that they were reading so that students were more comfortable sharing some of those uncomfortable feelings they may have had so I saw a lot of really meaningful conversations and and it's not always easy and I was in the room they don't always know me and they really were opening up so that was a testament to the types of safe spaces that the English Department provides where students feel comfortable having these conversations we also brought back Comic-Con ComicCon has not happened since the 1920 school year so both libraries are involved along with the Fairfield Public Library there were middle school high school students a couple faculty members brought their kids there were games there was face painting there were crafts so I'm looking forward to seeing that grow again because it was enormously successful event you know four or five years ago and then finally Noah Eagle Mr ashof is a little jealous that I included him in my slide because he came here after his presentation and technically it was a business department presentation but they were generous enough to invite our journalism students so all levels of Journalism went to go see Noah Eagle present and it was really nice for them to hear someone who's working in the industry speak and one student asked him a question like how do you how do you know all this information how do you retain all this information and he said when when he was in college he really developed a passion for reading and he started looking at you know different ways to gain information and he realized he retained more when he read about things I wish he had discovered that a little sooner than college but he encouraged our kids to to pick up a book so that was really nice to hear we also have a ton of extracurriculars in the English Department so we have a couple student Publications we have the Wessex wire and we have um the round table which is the literary magazine and the newspaper in the high school level and they also have a newspaper and magazine at the middle school level as well the editors of the wesex wire this year they're phenomenal they they always are but they really took the initiative to go down to the to the Middle School talk to the eighth graders encourage most more students to get involved and um I've been talking to Lisa Hol and we are also having journalism count for the 21st century graduation requirement so we're hoping that encourages more students to take it and we we have some more diverse voices writing for our newspaper we have book clubs in both buildings National English Honor Society has a showcase coming up on the 21st it's a great opportunity to see students perform original pieces they read poetry they sing and it's a lot of students supporting one another which is nice to see I know some of you have attended in the past so I thank you for that our film club recently went to the Montclair Film Festival where they saw backtack movies and then spoke with a professor at Montclair State and a director from one of the films that they actually just viewed and both of those professionals had wonderful things to say about the quality of questions and the maturity of our students so that's a real Testament to our community there as I mentioned before we have new standards coming up for next year I've been meeting with other Ela supervisors and the supervisor group has paired up with the Drew writing project to provide some professional development some of the bigger changes are uh environmental awareness standards we are already ahead of ahead of things with all of the uh in the middle school we have units already on sustainability and change makers which touches upon the environmental standards and also our High School Mr dberto was um really spearheaded this was a sustainable Jersey school a few years ago as well so we've been doing a lot in terms of environmental awareness media literacy are also standards are also coming down and our Librarians work not with just with the English Department but with all subjects to ensure students understand what credible sources are we subscribe to something called newsguard which allows students to click on an extension and it tells you is this a credible source is it left leaning is it right leaning is there any sort of bias and we teach students to use these tools to help look at the sources that they're using in their work the other big buzzword coming down for the new standards is multimodal meaning students are not just producing writing but they're producing products that have images and videos and audio and we've always partners with the for the last several years with the Ruckers writing program and Ruckers writing recently changed their freshman writing curriculum after like over 30 years to include a multi multimodal piece so it's always nice to see when high schools and colleges are on the same page this year I mentioned the Spring Showcase coming up NS induction is happening during academic achievement and induction day April is National poetry month and then next year we are looking at exciting changes to our Middle School reading program so I'm not going to talk too much about them now because I'll save that for next year's presentation we are still writing the curriculum we'll be doing that over the summer but basically our full year English class is is going to be turning into four individual courses that students will take each marking period and our true crime course which was our most which was our most popular senior elective will now be offered to both Juniors and seniors as a standalone honors elected so those are some big changes coming up everyone's favorite part the spotlight uh I'm highlighting both a student a current student and an alumni this year Marley pearlmutter she's a senior she recently had and I have copies of her research her research published in the Journal of student research high school edition this was the work she did through her AP research class and I called eared my office and spoke to her congratulated her we chatted a bit about her work and one of the things she said that stood out to me was that the AP seminar and research classes really propelled her into becoming a learner and she was so enthusiastic about the type of learning that she that she experienced that her current research is focusing specifically on how this type of learning environment Fosters student engagement by providing students with agency and ownership over their learning so in the future she wants to pursue a career in political science she's particularly interested in the role of church and state and government so we look forward to seeing some good things from her and then our alumni Spotlight Megan Brisco she graduated in 2021 as a freshman she took our film review course and loved it so much that she did an independent study with Mr meerson on more advanced film techniques she has she's currently at the Rochester Institute of Technology majoring in Film Production and she's minoring in advertising photography so she really pressed upon the fact that the skills she learned in these film classes at West Essex are still skills she Lear she uses today in her high level classes in school she recently had a short film accepted into a film festival in Austria you can view her films online on her website her future goals are to work in advertising and freelance a little bit in the film industry to try to break in with ultimately her goal is to be a director so we look forward to seeing some good things from her as well and I was going to introduce you to our future alumni member of rning Cunningham but unfortunately he can't make it today he will um be presenting at another board meeting so you'll hear some good things from him now he's doing an independent study in journalism so thank you very much hi everyone good evening some fun stuff tonight okay daras Wallace visited the middle school this week daras has been um actually in several Hollywood movies and is a founding company member of the Tennessee Shakespeare in Memphis Tennessee um he has performed all over the country in thousands of schools universities theaters and libraries as Frederick Douglas he also has been the tedex Memphis coach for seven years it is darius's dream to use the power of communication through storytelling as an actor and daras reminded our students that we all have a story and we need to be empathetic because we do not know what someone else is going through so he was basically a oneman show um and he did kind of a reenactment of Frederick Douglas so I think that was really powerful we had you can see on the right because he's wearing more of the wig and then at the end of of his performance he took off the wig put on his glasses the kids were laughing um they didn't expect him to look you know so different and then he just took questions um from the students so it was a great assembly we had two different assemblies one for the seventh grade and one for the eighth grade so that was wonderful and that certainly is align with our climate and culture initiative re Across America is this week nationally I don't know if everyone is aware so we started something new using our wead peer leaders and what we did was we planned for this week over the course of four days to have our peer leaders go back to their respective elementary schools it was kind of a way for us to give back to the community so you can see today was the first day we went to essexfells um you can see Dr gal gadaleta up in the top photo and then you can see each of the kids reading it was so cute to see them this afternoon and be reunited with some of their teachers and just they were so proud of the school that they came from you know they kind of were showing me where to go and the ins and outs and stuff so that was really neat um and you know the benefits you know were promoting you know West essic we're promoting our we lead peer leadership program and I couldn't help but feel like maybe were also promoting like teaching and education you know maybe maybe some of these students will you know get into the field um who knows so it was a great day and then we'll be at each of the remaining three uh schools throughout this week so I can give you those pictures next month and then finally Hoops for hearts you may recall we do this every year our PE Department Donna shako kind of spearheads it but it's all for PE teachers um last year we were recognized nationally so our goal is she has the goal of 13,000 I I'm not sure if it's 13 or 16 it's something very very large but we're already up over $10,000 raised that goes to the American Heart Association so everyone has until I believe it's March 15th to donate and to try and help us reach our goal for this wonderful cause so just a lot of giving back this month yeah absolutely there's a link in the newsletter I can also just share out a link separately to the board okay thank you that's all I have high school's next thank you good evening so uh our big news for for next week is of course that all Juniors will be taking the NJ gpas which is the uh assessment requirement for graduation this is run primarily by Administration just to make sure that it ensures a real smooth operation of course the standards are integrated throughout all the curriculum whether it's English or math but in recent weeks we have been doing doing some more typical test prep type of things uh junior Mass students have uh taken Mastery tests on course standards um that's for an assignment and they keep retaking that until they actually get a minimum passing score for credit the math lab's also been open all week with double this teachers Staffing it and English teachers have been using linkit and common lit which Stacy uh just mentioned and both of those simulate uh njpa uh type of uh testing uh congratulations to to more seniors who have committed to competing in college Emil Molano play volleyball at Penn State Brandy Wine in Media Pennsylvania John Moss will play football at Western New England University in Massachusetts Chris Nigro will play football at Endicott College at Massachusetts Mario Pontius will swim at William Patterson University in Wayne and Eric scalesi will also play football at Endicott College in Massachusetts and congratulations to boy swim because they have won the Liberty div division for the first time since 1981 that's 43 years so just to put that in perspective for a second in when the last time that that they won the division Soft Cell was on the music charts with Tainted Love good song Good song you'll all be singing it on the way home now also wrapping up a great season wrestling wrestling had eight District Champions that's the most ever they sent 13 wrestlers to Regions and sent five to States and Alex Esposito placed sixth so they had a fantastic season uh Jocelyn mentioned some of our our field trips I'm going to uh mention some others Deca and fbl and fbl trips are taking place this month uh Deca is tomorrow and the next day and then FBLA is next week both organizations have students compete in case studies role plays and research presentations in a variety of focus topics in their chosen area of Interest this year we're sending actually our largest groups of students 16 students to Deca and those are all students who advance from Regional competition and 56 to FBLA and they'll compete with students across the entire state of New Jersey in their events and have the chance to qualify for a national competition in the summer and juson also mentioned our our field trip that hopefully is getting approved tonight but let me elaborate on it a little bit more so it's it's April 8th Jason learner is really the one that our science supervisor who's really trying to coordinate this it was his brainchild so for in terms of the the eclipse path here in North cville we're only really in about like 90% which is is pretty impressive too but there's nothing really like being in that path of total eclipse so so the field trip is is going up to Upstate New York so that on April 8th all those students can be in the actual uh the path of totality and and that that would be really cool something to really really remember we already have over 150 students that are interested in going it's out of state which means we need one chaperon for every 10 kids so we'll be looking for sha so if you're interested please let us know we'll do what we can to get your board approved does it sh room and the next time by the way that there there will be a total eclipse is not until 2045 and the next time and the closest place we'll be able to see it is from Georgia so very exciting fure uh and I'm also going to elaborate a little bit on a night of knowledge because J mentioned that as well that's this Wednesday we have 81 individuals signed up to go to that so far okay now that means it's just an individual but we know that of those 81 individuals that registered they're planning on bringing either spouse or children or both so we're expecting over 100 people for this event um that is probably the most significant or or the most successful parent type of event that that we've run since I've been here except for the mandatory driving meeting but that's mandatory so that's a little bit of a different thing so uh here some of the topics here are some of the topics how to be a responsible consumer and producer of information in the digital age surviving and thriving in High School prep tips for incoming ninth uh ninth graders the diet effect how nutrition impacts attention raising resilient adolescen surviving and thriving in Middle School preparation tips for incoming seventh graders an author talk with Michael Bornstein co-author of Sur of survivors Club the true story of a very young prisoner of ashz and I understand that he has assistant that will be helping him with that talk Grand oh okay all right well that's exciting as well okay for ter terrific I look forward to it and and also jz's generational anxiety is it true or a trend this whole idea came out of the climate and culture committee the actual parental inclusive climate and culture committee and I cannot give Kimberly Westervelt enough credit for this for really helping to shape the vision and to to get some uh engaging workshops and seminars and really coordinate the whole thing and then of course uh once once upon a mattress our musical next week Wednesday Thursday Friday right after NJ GPA so please come we have I I yes we have I don't know the percentage but there we do have a significant number of sixth grade parents that have that have signed up and to to go to several of them but I'm assuming that that is a is a popular okay thank you [Music] uh the following Finance motions are made as a recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through 12 will be voted upon in one motion and I so move second any questions or comments Miss P yes Miss chrisal yes Miss homat yes Mr pry um yes items one through six abstain items seven and eight yes items 92 Mr sa yes Miss Cal yes Mr Sher uh yes to all except seven and eight of State pleas okay Mr Sone yes Miss yes Bethany would you like to take buildings and grounds please the following buildings and grounds motions are made of the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda item one will be voted upon in one motion and I so move second any questions or comments Mr yes Miss chrisal yes Miss H yes Mr PR yes Mr SE yes Miss yes Mr Sher yes M Mr ston yes Miss V yes uh Frank do you want to take curriculum sure the following curriculum special education motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items one through five we voted upon in one motion and I shall move questions comments misso yes Miss chrisal H yes Mr PR yes Mr sa yes M Cal yes Mr Sher yes Mr s yes yes um Jonathan would you take Personnel please following Personnel motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through eight we voted upon a one motion is sub move questions or comments Miss Pino yes Miss Christ Miss H yes Mr PR yes Mr sa yes Miss C yes Mr Sher yes Mr s yes Miss yes um Debbie holl do you please sure uh the following miscellaneous motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items one through two will be voted upon in one motion and ISO move second misso yes M chrisal yes Miss holl yes Mr PR yes Mr St yes Miss C yes Mr Sher yes Mr Stone yes Miss yes okay at this time I'll open up the floor for public comments on non-agenda items okay there being none Deb do you want to read us out all in favor excellent thank you everyone are you okay