e good evening everyone can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the for stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all Melissa you can call the RO please misso miss crisal miss holl here Mr Sable m c here Mr sh here Mr s here miss here okay welcome everyone um I just want to mention um last Thursday West Essex hosted the Essex County uh school board's unsung hero Awards I know a lot of board members were there um this is a recognition given to one um student in every essis County High School uh it's based on um you know the positive give out positivity their service to their school and their Community um it's a really big deal for the students of our County I was unable to attend so I really can't speak to the actual evening U Mrs Calderon was there and she's GNA give us a little preview riew of what her so we didn't have it during Co um the last one we actually had was with West Orange and so this year um Damien decided that and with the board's you know uh approval we decided that we would host the um presentation here at West ESS so um I honestly don't know if there's any other county that does this type of event um but Essex County recognizes student per building um in the county for as Mary said outstanding you know achievement going above and beyond and not so much academics but you know their functioning within their Community within the school how they represent the school how they represent themselves um so it really is it's a nice event it's a long event but it's a very nice event um I especially liked it well it was a surprise to me prior to my retirement I retired from norc public schools as a speech and language pathologist with the medically involved population um non you know non communicators um significantly impaired students and I was sitting there and all the norc schools sends a representative and I was sitting there and all of a sudden I saw this young lady come up on the screen I'm like oh my God she was one of my students from um JFK School which is a totally special ed population um she's now currently 21 so she's aging out of the program I had her when she was three and four years old um I went over to meet her parents and to my surprise they still remembered who I was and um it's it's just I don't know really good home that we give credit to these students out there who don't always get the you know the academic you know acknowledgement but we recognize what they are as human beings and people and how they function in society and in school setting so it's a it's a wonderful program Essex County is very very lucky that we have that um we're very appreciative of the teachers here who you know nominate the students and um it was just a lovely event all the way around and there were um Mr stampone was there um Lila was there Bethany was there and many administrators it was everyone support it was a great night thank you for reporting on that we can move on to joeline us sorry on here okay just to expand good evening everyone um welcome our parents and students that are here teachers thanks for being here um so just expand a little bit on the unsung hero program um over 40 students from 19 different school districts were there um in attendance our recipient was senior yima yiman durma DNA and um what really separated uh her and what really um what really uh brought the decision to nominate her as the unsung hero is just her commitment to helping others and um she's a peer leader and she continuously goes out of her way to help others especially newcomers to the district um transfer students comes that come in she really helps them feel welcomed and supported in in their transition to high school and she always wants to help and as per her guidance counselor she always has a smile on her face so she was the unanimous choice to represent West essic the event was a great success as Miss Calderone mentioned but a lot of people helped to make that night a success and I really feel like I need to mention their names um tant Fetti our buildings and ground supervisor um Melissa our business administrator Lisa swanic our supervisor of Arts Lisa Hol our director of guidance Scott burrow is from our technology department and a shout out to pomptonian uh they provided a really nice uh um really nice Refreshments for the evening um definitely we need to thank our students um specifically our peer leaders uh they came and they helped kind of direct traffic and help people find their way around our building um our music department didn't awesome job M Miss uh Mary and Drew and Miss Styer and our students they um we had a quartet performing in the lobby and we had students sing The Star Spangled Banner um and last but not least um our board members who came and our administrators we had a really strong uh support there um for our school and for the event so thank you to everyone um just a couple other things as you know um our district has formalized a partnership with the school culture and climate initiative um at St Elizabeth University um an import an important part of that process is conducting our survey and um the survey started last week so uh the week of April 8th um we sent out surveys to students parents and staff um the results from the survey com combined with the resources from our from St Elizabeth will help us to um improve our school environment so on um Monday the 8th of April the surveys went out to all faculty and staff um students began the week of the eth uh in the high school the surveys were administered in English classes and in the Middle School in science classes and all parents and families received the survey on April 9th and it runs through through this evening the survey takes about 10 minutes to complete and um at a later board meeting St Elizabeth University will come back to present um the results um so I'm happy to say that West Essex middle school and West Essex High School have been invited to New York City on May 22nd to receive an award and a banner for becoming a no place for hate school um pretty exciting um this was part of our one of our district goals this year and I want to thank everybody that helped make this happen um especially our two culture and climate coordinators Lisa Hol and Dr Westervelt Dr dun Ley for um also taking a big interest in the culture and climate initiative so on May 22nd I'm happy to say that myself two board members Dr Dunley Dr Westervelt um Lisa Hol perhaps another administrator from the high school 10 students uh from each building we all going to New York City um to the Center for Performing Arts and we're going to participate in this um Banner recognition ceremony and we'll take some pictures and we'll come back and we'll be able to display the banner in our school so just want to thank everybody for um for supporting uh the culture and climate initiative and then back by popular demand is our take your child to workday um April 25th um this is one of the most anticipated events in the district for both our faculty and our staff um and it started back in 2014 I found some pictures here where uh we built this really great program where our our the kids come in for the day and our teachers do really awesome activities um music art science Library pomptonian provides the kids with with free lunches and the kids move about the building and they do different activities I found these pictures here we have Mr gupta's kids that are in in the picture on the top right Miss rfor down on the bottom there is c one of Mr deiberto's daughters um my two my two uh daughters are in the bottom left there um and then in the top left uh Donna shakat Tano Mrs shakat Tano Miss ricka for Miss Simmons who was our former director of special services and one of our former students dressed up as a Disney princess anybody remember her name yep Karen T so um looking forward to another great day um thank you to the principals and to the teachers for putting together such an awesome um event okay so that's all I have for tonight and I'm going to turn it over to Brandon oh wait hold on hold on my mistake we're totally out of order has to go first okay thank you you would think this is our first time doing it Damen messed it up she was supposed to good evening so since the return from spring break a lot has happened a lot coming up I'm excited to share from the student perspective as soon as we came back from as disced byting thear students participated and although the bus did arrive a little late than expected from the student testimonies I've heard nothing but wonderful things so hopefully we can do this next solar eclipse in 20 years um last week also the fashion Club closed out their formal drive this is drive and it's just great to see different clubs interacting with different parts of the community and these formare will go to schools that have like um formals coming up but with less fortunate children uh that won't be able to uh dresses and suits uh coming up tomorrow is the National Honor Society ceremony where um Society will be inting 107 new members I think it's really important to acknowledge all the hard work that these students have brought in most of them are Juniors and they needed 40 points of extra cers and this range from Boy Scouts Sports other honor societies clubs and more throughout the community they also needed 30 hours of community service and this all had to be approved by the National Honor Society board so I just want to congratulate them and wish them luck in Main next uh following this National Honor ceremony on Wednesday is academic achievement and induction day throughout the high school during the school day uh over 10 different societies are inducting new members a little bit different than previous years um in each period the cafeteria will be open to parents to take a look at the different epidemics at West essic for example I know in my AP language class we're going to the cafeteria and on how to do cultural comparisons and really just using our language skills that we built over the years uh and cultural comparisons are part ofam nice to practice exams coming up so soon and other fun events that are upcoming and I know a lot of students are excited about of course prom is next Thursday for the juniors and then on May 4th is decision day for or May 1 is decision day for thei um I know it's always the exciting time of the year where the W will continue their tradition of making aage of farewells and hello H they as they announc their new beginnings so and I also want to mention that the W wire did fantastic job once again with their media day for their spring Sports so it's just awesome to see like fellow peers like doing all this amaz work around me and that's really all I have I'm excited mon with all these events and of course testing thank you thank you joine um I just want to ask can you clarify so the dresses and stuff like that that you're donating is it just from the students that you're collecting or can anybody have have dresses been dropped off yet or you still colleting okay that's say can other people donate I have tons of dresses okay yeah be great I think we all have daughters who have gone TOS goodidea next we have Mr oh okay no problem all right uh hello I'm not Brandon cunning I'm Chris armill uh I'm teacher English and journalism here at the high school um I was not asking for nice shoutouts for the westex chire and the work that the students have done but uh we've had a really great opportunity and even the past like five years really do a lot of great expansion in the journalism classes and with the work we do in the newspaper um and one of the reasons I'm here is the I very excited to sort of introduced the first time we've had an independent study in journalism this year it was a really great opportunity so um Brandon D is or horn but I'll talk it l a little bit about how he was a rising star in my journalism classes I had C him as a sophomore and this year as a senior you know our normally our highest level um journalism class um very much focused on reporting and practice in terms of working on print and online for the westex wire I was speaking with Brennan and he had a really strong interest not only in journalism and media but also in sociology and kind of learning more about like theory and practice he did a lot of work with in our news Department um and also writing opinion pieces and he wanted to kind of merge all that together so we kind of worked together on a on an independent study in journalism that had a lot to do with objectivity in the media and examining not just practice but also Theory and looking a lot into how a lot of this kind of comes together um in a really taught sort of media literacy component that I thought was really kind of excited about so um I'll let Brandon take the show here and talk a little bit about some of the work he's done uh what we're trying to do in the next couple weeks hi everyone I'm BR cunning and I'll be presenting on my inent study uh political messaging objectivity and story selection in media so the purpose of this study was explor an interest in political journalism at a critical time so with the 2024 presidential election coming up I thought it'd be really interesting to look at news reporing uh I've always found an interest in that and I had the opportunity to have the study so I I took it to exp that LE objective reporting um you know a lot of news articles these days could have certain Slants or something um there's also like veiled bias so I wanted to take a look at uh like real truth in reporting news articles and uncovering that so avoiding bias in media so in the media we consume it's important uh to avoid any opinions or anything that could possibly SED us in a certain direction and try to reach the absolute truth identifying sub show your motives certain news outlets might um align themselves with certain political motives um so it's important to acknowledge that when you're reading or consuming their media and then also just providing a resource um of these topics to the school and other students because some students might not find it interested in it until they see someone their age engaging in that content um and it's a very important topic to be uh media liter so hopefully that could help the first thing I looked into was reading this book called governing in the news by Timothy e cook which came out in the late 90s um it establishes journalism as the fourth branch of government in the United States so it's another check to balance to other branches it kind of connects um The Divide between our representatives and the people um and their main objective is to represent the public so he also defines uh different forms of objectivity uh or the lack of it so so story selection could be any way that an outlet decides to put out certain stories over a long period of time so I looked into the Bob Mendes um Senator case where he was taking bribes from Egypt um and that case only really lasted about a week in the news cycle and then it was phased out and then it kind of returned back to like the whole Biden Trump thing that we usually see uh another thing was veiled bias um this is the veil of objectivity so something that might seem completely true but there might be omitted things um that actually give it a slam very and then public journalism is just reporting done by citizens and so this is very prevalent these days um Timothy could kind of reported on back in the 90s but it's become very prevent through social media um and so it's very important to know that it could be a useful um not very reliable at times so acknowledging what that is be very next thing I researched was the fairness Doctrine which is a historical point and kind of shift in our uh history of America so it was a Doctrine inated in 1949 and with the rise of broadcast television and availability of network television it was inated to make sure there was a balance of rep so that the wealthy couldn't just control what was shown to the people of America um so if one opinion or political view or something was displayed on the television there would have to be an opposite or opposing opinion um this ended during the Reagan Administration in the early 80s to promote a free market television uh network television but this um kind of led to certain networks aligning themselves with certain political beliefs um and giving people only myopic VI larger scale of what's actually going on because most people watch the whole Channel distribution and Outlets so my uh reporting has been in the west wire over the year because I'm also a news editor um there are analysis articles available on confirmation biys and political apathy as well as others that I'll discuss later that are coming up and the news reporting on the 2024 presidential primaries and West teachers approach to discussing is which is a current ear on this is just a picture of the website in my landing page you can see it's divided into media analysis basics of media literacy and then political reporting um and it has a special little box when you go Weis so it's very easy to find feature goals these are the planned articles I um waiting to write so how to engage with the other side what factors make a good article the fallacy reality of objectivity and news an inside look at story selection and gatekeeping and practice which hopefully you can get interview someone in the journalism room and also dangers of bling complex issues down to talking BLS and Tik Tok sound BS I'd also like to conduct a survey which I've been U creating over the past week and this would just discuss students questions and Curiosities Med usefulness of the content I'm creating um and also where students get their news like not exactly what their political beliefs are but just where like their parents or social media or Tik Tok or uh the physical newspaper um because I feel like that'd be something cool to write about and discuss you know the school make it more personal as most of my stuff has been more National sorry um and then I'll yeah I'm I'm next year I'm going to be studying um in college and so this is a really good opportunity for me to work up to that with the level of research that I've been doing um and I just like to thank you for this [Applause] OPP hello everybody I'm uh Caroline Blanchard um teach AP US History and AP research um actually before I introduce Marley I just want to say last year because of my daughter's age and because of Co it was the first time she ever got to come to take your do a child to workday and when we were in the car going home she said Mommy when I grow up I want to be a teacher at West Essex High School um I said I'll stay and work and we could have lunch together every day and you can you know push me in my wheelchair because I'll be like 70 years old but um unfortunately she's a Traer because she wants to be a math teacher and not social studies and this year she's going with her father um because he works for the Army and they get to throw grenades and show a cannon so um so maybe we can get grenades and guns next year um no uh so Marley um did an independent study with me this year um I had Marley last year actually for AP US History and she has gone through um the Capstone program here so um uh the students take AP seminar and then AP research um and they have to conduct a yearlong of original research and and and Marley really just like loved the whole process and loved research and thinking about media and like how to get kids thinking so she approached me last year that she kind of wanted to do um research of AP research like very meta research um and I have to say she did independent um research and she was in my independent study but most days when she would come to my class um would say Marley do you think you could conference with this student because the weird thing about AP research is I can't give students feedback everything has to be peer feedback so I'd say Marley could you read this person's paper or could they present that part of their presentation to you and so Marley did all of her research and was basically like my TA in uh in this class which she'll actually talk about that concept um so Marley has just one more AP exam to get a passing grade on and she'll have the AP um Capstone diploma um and uh in the fall she has headed off to emry University so okay so hello my name is Marley primer and I'm a current senior so as miss blanter prev me previously mentioned I completed the AP caps program last year the program completely changed the trajectory of my high school education I became more driven by learning and expanding my knowledge rather than just trying to do well on a test I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from Miss and istered over the past three years my goal of the study was to explore independent research at a metacognitive level and find ways to make independent research more accessible to students not in the AP Capstone program the AP Capstone program is a two-year course comprised of AP seminar and AP research which focuses on teaching students the academic research process and prepares students for research methods they will encounter in college and Beyond one way I achieve this goal was as being a teacher's assistant in the AP research class under Miss Blanchard this role furthered my understanding of AP research because I worked with students to learn about their processes and methods through their research when looking to frame my independent study and my rool to TA at the beginning of the year I read Laura fingerson and a Aaron B's work on undergraduate teaching assistance roles in classrooms their model is situated within a college environment but I found it still applicable to a high school environment as the undergraduate teaching assistant model is synonymous with a teaching assistant at the same academic level as the students themselves I use their model as a guideline for my role this year according to their research the presence of an undergraduate teaching assistant can encourage more dialogue and enable students to take a more active role in classrooms personally this role gave me the opportunity to take on responsibilities not often offered not often provided to high school students for instance in the Capstone program as Miss Blanchet previously mentioned teachers cannot give direct feedback so this year I spoke with many students guiding them in the research process with brainstorming sessions help with designing and setting up their method and editing help in addition to serving as an undergraduate teaching assistant in AP research I also conducted my own research on the importance of independent research itself most students are not exposed to Independent research until later in their academic careers considering the opportunities it provides it is certain that it is important to integrate it more into High School curriculum I conducted individual interviews with each AP research student to learn about their experiences these interviews coupled with an extensive review of current literature informed my study from my interviews I yielded four prominent themes first college was the most prevalent of students motivation for taking the course second Stu many students felt that these course empowered them to take ownership over their education one student says if you want to learn more you have to do it yourself third students felt significantly more comfortable with independent research after taking the course in addition every student listed numerous ways that the AP cstone course helped them in other classes and extra curricular activities which includes but not is not limited to time and Stress Management finding and reading scholarly sources and writing and presentation skills lastly peer review is an important feature of the AP capson program one student conveyed that one reason why peerreview is so helpful is that everyone is going through the same process so peers know what is expected and what needs to be included peer peer review is an important facet of a pedagogical culture which in brief is the exchange of ideas within a climate of systematic debate investigation and evaluation the AP Capstone program is considered a pedagogical environment because it is and is it important that other high school students get the opportunity to learn inide environment because it promotes Active Learning techniques and Divergent thinking in the beginning of my research I hypothesized that independent rearch is an effective way to mitigate student apathy many pieces of research suggest that American High School students struggle with apathy while there are many contributing factors one component of apathy is a narrow view of academic success one individual impact of independent research is that it can broaden students view of academic success because it gives students the opportunities to Showcase their interest and apply themselves differently in school settings Beyond tests therefore integrating more independent research opportunities in nonap classes can help personalize classroom environments for students and expand measures of achievement in second independent research Stu forces students to fail in the course we often compare to like filling in a puzzle which encourages students to go down many different paths try different methods before finding the right one for their project in turn this process promotes a sense of intellectual Cur curiosity and a growth mindset in one of my interviews one student conveyed that they they Now understand that learning is not a linear process therefore another reason that independent research should be implemented into more non-ap classes is that students are will be exposed to Divergent thinking later and earlier in their academic careers this leads to my final point researcher Barbara e lit concludes that the later students are exposed to Independent research the more difficult is the more difficult the process if is for them introducing skills like using Search terms reading academic papers creating research questions and deducing themes in high schools will give students more experience with independent research earlier in their academic careers overall independent research yields so many benefits and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity at AP Capstone and this year to learn about independent research thank you [Applause] Marley and Bron thank you so much for coming and sharing to the board I know it's a big ask and it's which on the spot but we really appreciate all the you know your presentations and all your hard work and your studying it impresses us thank you for having me Board of Education my name is Bora drgo I'm the instructional supervisor of social studies and languages is one particular person who does not like to stand on or at a Podium but I'll do my best so what I love to do every year is highlight for you some notable elements of the social studies and moral language Department um usually I start with about 36 slides and for the sake of timeliness I try to cut it down to 26 and down to 10 or 12 so I want to again share just a few notable aspects of our social studies and mor language Department which is Alive and Well we are excited to have after a long process a new teacher of French at the Middle School Miss uh Tina we call her Miss Adis nazer is a Heritage speaker and she is teaching French s and8 the middle school and just a bit of brief feedback she came to me the other day I was at lunch study in in the Middle School and she was like can I talk to you and she she said I'm so happy here she said everybody's been so wonderful to me and I'm so happy here and it was just all I needed to hear it can be very challenging as you could imagine to be a new teacher coming in uh mid year prior to Miss Tina coming in we had our high school French teacher Miss Heidi monkowski who was doing a little bit of running back and forth between the high school and the middle school and posting some assignments for the Middle School classes but um I can that the Middle School French program is alive and well with misstina who's tucked in there she looks like a student herself but she's tucked in there specifically in the middle okay so the topic for this evening will be how the sociales and Rural language departments highlight and uh work towards our district goals specifically um sorry specifically how we use data to improve uh instruction Gathering feed feedback on student performance and certainly continuing to grow the whole student overall so you may have heard by now about link it and West essic uses this program the all the teachers are Adept in linkit we use it to I'm not sure what that little middle thing oh that's just the the graphic sorry what we use Link it for throughout the social studies department is for preassessment of students at the beginning of the year the exciting uh aspect two exciting aspects of think it is that it is differentiated so these programs that we're working with now are intuitive and they move the students to either a higher level or work with them at a certain level if they're challenged and not demonstrating proficiency it will keep at a certain skill with them the teachers are using this for the um preassessments for their sgos in addition as you can see it gives the teachers very Dynamic feedback in addition to being um giving teachers the opportunity to differentiate and it is njla uh standard based so these questions aren't questions that teachers have to sit down and go hey what do you think how should we assess this skill the program itself um provides teachers with questions that are skill and NJ SLA or SLS uh learning standard um um refined okay exciting for the Middle School this year is all the Middle School social studies teachers also now are using ISL you've probably also heard ofl we've been using it in math and English and thanks to your financial support we were able to implement it in social studies this year again the focus is for teachers to be able to have programs that differentiate to a students reading level and or the questions that are generated are differentiated to the students reading level so all the seventh and eighth grade teachers are using ISL in addition to that because it is a New Jersey uh geared program it it does cover questions related to the New Jersey Mandate of personal financial literacy in the middle school and also the Civics mandate for the Middle School uh we were excited I'm I'm sure Dr Don Ley will talk about we were excited to be to have a guest speaker at the middle school this year who spoke to all the seventh and eighth grade students a very dynamic character who roleplayed Frederick Douglas um Mr Darius Wallace captivated the middle school students it's interesting I don't know if you've spent time with middle school students but it's interesting to see middle school students when they're watching something like this they're like is that really him or is he an actor so they were they were intrigued by trying to figure out was he an actor or what was he actually working through and it was um really a key component of oral history which is an important part of a social studies education one another topic that we've been working through for many many years particularly since covid is implementing Project based assessments more performance-based assessments and the seal the social emotional learning aspects in social studies what teachers have the students doing in these examples is creating something applying their learning to create something in the uh us two classes they do a 192s dinner party where the students get a rubric so they know what they're going to be graded on and the students have to create a dinner party where they take the characters of The Roaring 20s and they create a seating chart based on who would sit with who uh and a menu so it gives them a opportunity to really highlight what they've learned and what they understand and these are just some examples every year I you know communicate with the teachers and and they love my email or text message saying I'm presenting to the board of ed please make sure you highlight me or or share with me some uh topics and I always get a lot of messages come see this come see that which Mrs blanch smiling about right okay I didn't get a chance to highlight this last year because it actually happened in the spring so in the AP government classes again the application of students learning is very important so miss Blanchard in the AP government class she does a moot court and this one specifically is interesting to see that these students recreated a Supreme Court case and they actually came out with a different vote than our Supreme Court in that case the key thing is that students need to demonstrate again an understanding of the issues the case and not just the ruling but the interest groups uh and present it and then they actually vote based on the student presentation so it's kind of interesting to see like was it really the the court case or was it the evidence or was it the student presentations that influenced their vote okay um last year again I didn't get to present this to you because I present in April and there's so many things that also go on in May last year in May and also this year in May we have a very d DC celebration for aapi which is the Asian-American Pacific Islander month of activities uh led by our teacher of Chinese Miss muu she engaged the high school and I think last year she also came Dr Don Ley to the middle school as well and these students in the Chinese club and Chinese Honor Society uh engaged in a Dragon Dance the nice thing too was she also did an interdisciplinary activity arts department um and student and social studies Fine Arts and social studies where students created cherry blossom art displays and they did notable Asian-American Pacific Islander research that they presented and displayed throughout the high school as well I feel like I'm going so fast am I going too fast or we're good okay so I don't have a watch on me so just keep on track um a a very high a very um exciting highlight of our upper level Spanish program for Spanish 3 four and AP is what's called March Madness in uh Spanish Lura de Maro so this is actually a national program and there's like a Facebook page where a lot of Spanish teachers interact with each other but it's a national program that's put out where throughout the month of March there's this whole bracket of Hispanic songs from all different countries Hispanic countries and either like during an anticipatory set or a closure activity the uh students will listen to the music it becomes embedded throughout their curriculum as well because it gives them the opportunity to explore the culture of a particular Hispanic song whether the person's from the Dominican Republic or they're from Brazil or they're from Ecuador Mexico or wherever uh it gives our American students learning Spanish or just our students learning Spanish an opportunity to really dig in and engage and I will say this is an absolute fan favorite of students taking Spanish at West essic they're always excited about it and U Mr dberto and the high school staff is always wonderful because there's like a reveal day of which song actually wins the event and Mr dberto is always wonderful and letting like 150 kids or maybe 300 kids go to the library the media center to actually see the reveal and it's always amazing when you have students excited to come to school to engage in an activity particularly in high school right yes uh this field trip I'd like to just highlight because it's an interdisciplinary field trip so we have some amazing AP programs in the social studies we have our AP European History um this year is our new teacher Mr Jason Freda because Mr alen Woodworth retired we have U Mr Bill Morgan who's teaching AP art history and our AP French taught by m manowski they also brought in um AP art and the AP art students all went to uh the Metropolitan Museum of Art did I say that right the Met yes they all went to the met and to the MoMA they did a joint field trip Twice The key thing for these AP students again is to be able to see and apply so that when they take the AP exams it's not just memorization from a book but it's the ability to actually apply uh outside learning or something that's relevant um to the AP question as well so this is particularly a dynamic and exciting interdisciplinary field Tri so thank you for allowing that okay and this year this was new we haven't done this in probably U seven or eight years I think we did it in 20 maybe 2016 we had a group of our AP World language students and our upper level World language students go to the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Museum again relevant to their AP curriculum there's a few themes each AP World language program has specific AP themes as you can see for Spanish and French it uh related to the theme of personal public identity and the teachers give these students before the field trip you know an assignment and some research to do and for uh AP Italian and AP Chinese uh they were able to incorporate uh the theme of migration okay I'm excited for you guys this week we have a couple of activities on Wednesday I want to just highlight real cap it for a second on your left of your screen uh on Wednesday we have roaa which is the national social studies Honor Society we will induct 19 students something that's interesting for you to note is that this is a two-year process the students are recognized in their junior year and and then not inducted until their senior year after they've had the time and opportunity to not just like check off boxes but actually engage in hours of service and or civic duty which is part of the requirements of this particular Honor Society and we have over 79 students being inducted into our four World Language honor societies Chinese French Spanish and Italian and if you haven't been to the ceremony please come it's always an interesting amazing ceremony where I sit there every year and I go oh my God we have such great talented students right has anyone been to the ceremony where they're like oh my God I didn't know that girl could play the piano like that or I didn't know that girl could sing like that or whatever so we're excited to have you in um on Wednesday this is probably what three four years we've had this seal of by literacy this is a very exciting program and very notable for West essic we started three years ago with 10 students so explain to you what this is this is a state of New Jersey Department of Education Program that not every school does we started it three years ago where now we have 40 students so only Juniors and seniors 40 students they can be assessed in their junior or senior year we recognize them in their senior year their actual transcript has a specific designation now so 40 West essic students will have on their transcript this specific seal of biliteracy designation the exciting thing is look at the languages so these students have to take a nationally um a nationally acknowledged nationally what's the word I'm looking for uh accepted test we use Avant and they take the test and it measures they speaking listening reading and writing and if they don't pass like one portion they have a little window of time to be retested but as you can see we have 40 students being tested in two four six eight 10 11 different languages which is very exciting and as you can see three of them were they're actually triple by triple literate as opposed to biliterate they're literate in English because the reason why we recognize them in their senior years because they have to pass the njsla which they take in their junior year but anyway so that means they're literate in two languages in addition to English so this has been um oh and then we had yes that one girl my gosh can we her Bella Lima okay she's a student who actually passed in Portuguese uh French and Spanish I think she also tried Italian but didn't Master Okay so next year she's like I'm gonna pass it in Italian as well so it's exciting it's just an amazing aspect so again thank you for supporting these programs okay and we have two alumni and then I'll just say one last little note to you someone doing that for me yeah thank you hi everyone my name is Josh cuffer BG I'm from north colell New Jersey I graduated from West tics in 2019 and from the University of Texas at Austin this past year in 2023 I'm currently working in New York as a health care Investment Banking analyst and I would say that the West Asic social studies program definitely helped uh build skills that were super helpful in both college and postgrad life so one of the first classes I took in the program was was AP US History uh with Miss Blanchard and I really enjoyed taking that class um I think it definitely built up my writing skills through both dbqs leqs and critical thinking kind of relating all the documents and all the events that we've learned uh together um I also took AP government with Miss bman really enjoyed that class I took it during an election year and kind of just taught me a little bit more about how to discuss current events something that I still uh try to keep up with today and finally I also took macro and microeconomics with Mr wwor and being a finance major in college that was a super helpful Foundation uh that really put me on a great path to succeed not just in college but uh Beyond in my job okay and then we have hi there you go Miss Joseph hi my name is Josephine soluchi and I'm a junior accounting major at the College of New Jersey I I graduated from West Essex in 2020 and I had the honor of having Miss Peta as my Italian teacher and I took AP Italian with her my senior year last semester which was my spring semester for sophomore year I decided to take an Italian elective for the first time in college so this had been two years since I had taken Italian course or spoken Italian so I tested into the third beginners level and I really enjoyed the class that I had my professor was very impressed by the level of knowledge that I had in Italian so she asked me to be an oral proficiency leader every student at tcj who is taking a language is required to also attend one hour of oral proficiency each week and this is where you really get one on-one experience speaking the language so each week I prepare lesson plans because I lead a classroom of about 15 students for one hour and I get observed served twice during the semester to make sure that I am doing a good job I am only allowed to speak Italian within the classroom each class I take attendance and I provide each student with a grade based on their level of participation and I send this feedback and this information over to their respective Italian professors funny enough I've been the oral proficiency leader for some past wests students that currently take Italian at T&J overall I could say confidently that my years of Italian at West Essex prepared me really well for college level Italian I would even say that in some ways it's easier at College being in front of a classroom each week has pushed me out of my comfort zone and I am not F in Italian but I hope to be someday and this is pushing me to get there and I couldn't have done it without my West Essex Italian that's think about all the students I mean we just highlight one or two each year hi all the students um from West essic who are around the nation and doing notable things it's like oh where did you come where do you come from where are you from and West Essex is always out there in a very favorable way so I want to just do a little plug for Thursday you'll probably be getting an email if you haven't already gotten it yet for uh from Mr Machi that Miss Blanchard is our AP research teacher and we will also be inviting you to if you have the endurance to come to high school twice in one week in addition to coming on Wednesday we'd love to have you in on Thursday and if you can't make Thursday we can do Friday morning Miss Blanchard the AP research students have to actually give their presentation and and um uh highlight their research topics and we're going to be doing that this week as well so please look out for that and we love to have you twice at the high school this week and again I want to just say from the bottom of my heart thank you for your continued support of the social studies and World Language Department we are excited to have a few new topics for you this year I mean next year um that we've been planning this year we're going to be bringing in a Heritage Spanish course for the first time ever we have 25 Heritage students so look forward to that and sharing feedback on that we've done a lot a lot of research we have 25 Heritage students in uh eth they'll be 9th and 10th grade so we're going to phase out the upper level and we're also bringing in AP Psychology and we have a great amount of interest in AP Psychology so we'll be adding yet another AP course to West tessing so thank you for your continued support of our programs [Applause] good evening everyone I'm pretty quick tonight um hasn't been a lot going on because of spring break I do want to wish all of our families celebrating Easter or Ramadan or Passover I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday um mostly we have a lot of upcoming events we've talked about um bring her child to workday we had to uh change the date of our student council P the principal event so now we're going to be doing both of those events on April 25th and my six-year-old daughter wakes up every morning and asks me how many more days till she can throw pie in my face so that's going to be really interesting um she's vicious so we'll see how that goes uh other events we have njsla testing come up coming up that starts Monday April 29th that's four days of testing two math two language arts um we have our Special Olympics event Thursday May 1st at Brookdale Park thank you to Mrs MAOI and Mr Lambo who are working um with our students there and then don't forget staff appreciation week begins Monday uh May 6th so that's all from us I'll have a lot more next mon thank you okay I know that Marley and BR left already probably goes Sol world problems already but I just want to say congratulations to them great job I I'm always so impressed by students were their independent studies and I also have to say that I know bringing the AP Capstone program here was a big initiative of Mr gupter so I hope that he's sharing I hope that he's sharing in the success and the other thing that of course makes that a Capstone so uh successful is the PowerHouse teachers that that we have teaching it I mean we could not have selected better teachers Mrs Blancher who was just here and Mrs dubie is her counterpart over at the high school and the program has been very very successful and we um that way also I know she's gone but Mr Mai perhaps we can get Mrs Blanchard's daughter on some kind of FASTT track alternate rout program if she's that interested in teaching I mean especially math and business so we have lots of accolades so uh let's get right to it congratulations to our shot right stars for the third marketing period Alexander bani 11th grader uh for academics or Athletics Alex ES of course he's our senior who took sixth place in the state wrestling tournament in Atlantic City for the Arts we have Lexi Cardella one of the leads in Once Upon a mattress if if I hope some of you got an opportunity to see once upon a mattress Great Performances there I'm uh so my colleagues and staff members know that I'm uh deathly afraid of heights I really don't know how Lexi climbed up onto that like Tower of mattresses without severe trepidation um for leadership Brook cerber second time we're seeing cber today I miss those by the wayos Joseph and for service to the community Sophia Ros and for the 10th year West Essex Regional School District has again been recognized with the prestigious Award of best communities for music education by the National Association of Music Merchants that's frequently referred to as n the N Foundation recognizes and celebrates school districts and schools for their support and Comm to music education and their efforts to ensure that all students have access to music as an integral component of comprehensive education so West ESS is one of just 65 school districts in New Jersey to receive that title and one of 975 districts Nationwide of course thanks to the students the teachers parents some of you are band parents in here for their roles in achieving this esteemed designation uh at the last board meeting I mentioned two of the field trips for fbl and deca were going out at the time we West essics performed very very well in both of those competitions two FBLA teams placed third at the State Convention in Atlantic City juniors Katie Cho aan sha and Katherine riro placed third for digital animation and seniors Jonas himan Alan Hugh and Chris Keenan finished third for computer game and simulation program so both of those teams qualify for the national competition in orando Florida a Deca team also placed fourth in Atlantic City juniors Brianna peas and Gabriella Maza won fourth in the travel and tourism event and they also qualifi for the National Convention in Anaheim and I know that Jin mentioned our field trip from April 8th Eclipse day and I do want to give a big shout out to science supervisor Jason larner for really organizing what I think is one of the coolest field trips in in in recent history and I was bragging about it all spring break because people my friends that know that I'm in education anybody that knows I'm in education hey see your school's canceling school for the eclipse what are you doing I said hey no we're not canceling School we're sending three bus loads into the pan totality so I just think that that's super cool and we do it and I really think that for those students and chaperon who went that those are like lifelong memories that that they're that they're getting through their school and what a cool way to learn and what a great way to make lasting memories with with friends and CH so thank you Jason learning um I actually have a few photos of that so this is outside Syracuse this is like the four to actually occur but that's our students in that Serene environment just chilling in the moments leading up to totality and then here's another one of course this is but this is Mrs G Class outside at Wessex of course with their eye protection on um just watching the beginning of it because of course block six very block you can actually see begin now that on the right is me getting a p so Give Kids the World is a very popular senior service field trip this uh GI the GI kits the World Village is an amusement park that provides CL vacations ill sometimes terminally ill children and their fam so our students go and work there as a senior as a senior service trip so this is one of the fundraisers that they do this is this one is from PI day now Pi Day March 14th and is really a mathematics acknowledgement for pi 3.14 get it March 14th 3.14 so there was a list of about a dozen staff members and students who and you buy raffle tickets for the opportunity to buy a teacher or to buy a teacher or in this Cas an administrator so that is me gettinger and then come back toer the lock and I come back to okay couple upcoming events National Honor induction ceremony is tomorrow at 7 and of course we've mentioned it a few times academic achievement and induction day is now is this Wednesday uh April 17th that's our third annual academic achievement and induction day seven honor societies will be inducting new members throughout the day in the library and the auditorium in addition we're doing things a little differently this time you in the past we've opened up classrooms but I think think parents have been a little reluctant to go into classrooms that their kids were in because I even sa run go this class and and go go visit this class that your child's no my child would be mortified if I went in there so we're we're trying things a little differently this year and we have academic demonstrations for all visitors so that the parents have an opportunity to participate in the west Des learning process or as I like to tell our teachers they can watch the magic happen so in our our cafeteria we have a couple things going through the day this is simultaneous to our actual induction ceremony so we have a crime scene investigation with forensics and Anatomy classes we have balloon battle bots with our Robotics and Engineering class and Bots will battle each other to see which one can survive without having all of its balloons popped we have a family Fe Championship uh we have the Family Feud Championship rounds during lunch this is another Give Kids the World fundraiser we have a culture Exploration with AP language coures and we also have a battle of the generations quiz Bowl so you can test your your logical medal against uh against our students and that is all occurring on Wednesday any registrant we'll all get we'll get anyone who registered is going to get an email tomorrow morning with very specific instructions even on on where to park where to enter and just basic information with a complete schedule so that will be going out tomorrow morning um and that's uh concludes academic achievement and induction uh Tuesday April 30th High School dance Spring Concert Thursday May 2nd the orchestra spring concert May 5th we feed fashion for education at the clubhouse in Fairfield May 22nd District Coral concert and Wednesday May 29th District jazz concert after that there's not too much before graduation that's all I have thank you I hope to see all if not most of you on Wednesday thank you moving on are there any um comments from board members coms any committee reports no it's been in quiet time okay then we'll move on to public comments um we will open up the floor now for public comments on agenda items do have any public comments and agenda items we'll move on to our agenda let's see um Finance Jonathan do you want to take Finance following Finance motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools any on this agenda items 1 through we voted upon in one motion and I ass any questions or comments miss Mr yes Mr M Mr sh Mr St yes yes be you want to take builds build Mr Mr s yes M yes Frank do you want to take personel please sure following personel motions are made the recommendation of the superintend anything placed on this agenda it through V in one motion questions or comments Joe would you like to take curul speci coms M Mr Mr Debbie holl do you want to take miscellaneous please sure the following miscellaneous motions are made at the recation of the superintend Mr yes yes okay do we have any um public comments on non-agenda items out