okay guys good we're already running late sorry excuse me all right good evening and welcome to the West Orange Board of Education public board meeting on Monday November 13th 2023 I would like to thank all of you here in person and those watching from home for joining us tonight I would also like to welcome my fellow board members as well as Mr Moore and Miss Flowers Miss Flowers would you please take the roll call good evening roll call please Mr ifer here Mr Stevenson here miss tuny Cliffe here miss wera Mr Rock here notice of meeting the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest are discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of the ACT a written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board on September 6 2023 that said notice was sent by regular mail to the West Orange Township Clerk and the editors of the West Orange Chronicle and by email to The Star Ledger that set notice was posted in the lobby of the administration building of the Board of Education and posted on the district website please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and may be broadcasted on local TV and the District's website at a future date please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all thank you Miss Flowers in consideration of the closed and public meeting of October 16th 2023 do I have a motion to accept the minutes so moved thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Mr higer there any comments hearing none Miss flowers please take the roll call Mr ifar yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss ton Cliff yes president Rock yes thank you all right and next good evening to our student liaison Leila abona and Kai James uh with the two of you please share your student liaison Report with us all right hello on October 28th West Orange High School marching band was crowned state champions for class quadruple a for the first time in six years thanks to staff thanks to staff and boosters for their support throughout the season and to all West orang students for their hard work and dedication on November 4th the Mountaineer auto shop placed fourth in the milted industries competition and won a prize package worth over $2,800 in tools go Mountaineers is all thanks to the amazing Community for their votes to make this happen and on November 6 special shout out to our PE teachers Nicole Fleck and Gina for Conquering the New York City marathon this weekend promoting health and wellness representing West Orange and his community on October 29th did Festival filled the school with culture and Viber colors it was made through the efforts of the United Asian voices of West Orange the West Orange school district and the help of our amazing Community Hazel Elementary School created a fun fall environment for all to enjoy with pumpkin painting cookie decorating arts and crafts bouncy castles and snacks West Orange High School put a wonderful play on called all in the timing that was shown here on the high school on November 3rd and 4th this play featured seven diverse but equally hysterical one act comedies for all to enjoy coming up West Orange High School's musical this year is Pippen which will be shown on March 22nd 23rd 24th um this musical is about a young prince who longs to find passion and adventure in his life come check it out uh fall Sports have officially wrapped up and winter sports will be beginning soon for what we know will be a great season um looking forward to see everyone at many District's events thank you you good thank you both for that report all right and next up it is Mr Moore it's time for your report uh would you please share your superintendent Report with us yes thank you very much good evening tonight it is my pleasure to acknowledge the achievement made by our Edison Middle School teacher Miss Jen for Bloom who is here this evening along with Edison principal Mr Steve Melendez and Dr Carrie orange I would like I would ask that principal Melendez join us at the uh front and Dr orange to present Miss Bloom with a certificate of appreciation yes you can go to m sorry good even everyone my name is Steve Melinda a proud principal of Edison central 6 Middle School I'm here with Dr Carrie orange our proud vice principal and Miss Jennifer bom in West Orange we are extremely fortunate to have so many outstanding Educators serving our community Edison central 6 Middle School is lucky to have an outstanding staff with one of these outstanding teachers Miss Jennifer Bloom Miss Bloom has been teaching at Edison for 25 years during this time she has been an English language arts teacher a student council advisor the advisor to numerous other clubs and one of our teacher leaders this summer Miss bloom was awarded the 2023 educator of Excellence award for the right on Sports literacy program the WR on sports program was created to inspire students to improve their writing skills critical thinking and self-confidence through the topic of sports the program is celebrating its 18th anniversary has sered has served more than 2,300 students Edison Middle School is fortunate to have the right on sports program offered at our school as one of as one of our after school clubs as as part of her acceptance speech Miss Bloom noted she strives to create a community of Learners that nurtures growth in a positive fun environment working with the WR on sports program has allowed Miss Bloom to teach students real life skills and help develop positive feelings about themselves in their future today we' like to honor Miss Bloom for earning this award as well as for her many years of educating the children of West Orange thank you Miss Bloom and congratulation on your award we are so happy that you are part of our West Orange family thank you am getting the picture at this time I'd like to present the HIV report since our last Board of excuse me since our last board meeting there have been four Hib investigations throughout the district I've reviewed and summarized that four were confirmed I agree with the anti-bullying specialist now I direct your attention to a presentation regarding State assessment for the school year of 2223 will our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Miss Evony dandes please address the board and the community at this time good evening my name is Evony dandz I'm the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and this evening as required by the New Jersey Department of Education uh we will be presenting our 2023 spring State assessment results for the New Jersey uh student learning assessment that was administered uh last year thank you to our board members and to our Administration uh specifically uh Michelle Martino who's our director of assessment accountability and instruction she's with us here this evening um she is the one who has collected all of our data and really gathered um all of our assessment results for us in order for this present uh to be made possible um and also just to our content area supervisors uh for each of the areas um as they are the ones who are um contributing to this presentation in terms of our interventions our strategies and our instructional plan uh this evening we're presenting first our New Jersey state assessment uh presentation we call at the njsla those results will be for ELA and math in grades 3-9 algebra one Algebra 2 and geometry science 5 8 and 11 which was administered May last year um we were supposed to report out on the access for um our multilingual Learners however the state hasn't sent our data in um as of yet so as soon as we receive that data then we'll make our presentation on access for multilingual Learners uh we formerly called our multilingual Learners Ells English language Learners that ter is no longer used so uh this year last month specifically they changed it to multilingual Learners so you'll see from here on out in the presentation that we're changing our terminology and um that would have been for k12 and then we will see our Dynamic learning Maps uh this is the assessment that is administered to our special education students who are unable to take um the njsla due to uh severe cognitive disability and so then therefore they are administered the dynamic learning map in ela and math 3-8 and grade 11 and science 58 and 11 when we begin uh for the njsla spring 2023 these are the performance levels um a level five is a student who exceeded expectations a level four is met expectations throughout the presentation on the data charts you will see us combine these two the percentages for students who met or exceeded level three is approaching expectations those are the students who sit right at the cusp of proficiency um so uh that could be one point away from proficiency or that could be at the um lower end of that band at 725 and then levels two partially met and one did not yet meet those are the students who are not meeting our standards and who require um more intensive interventions we will begin with English language arts for grades 3 through five um and for the njsla uh on the left side you'll see the things that this assessment measures grade level skills knowledge Concepts that are critical to College and Career Readiness um on each assessment students read and analyze passages and they emphasize the importance of closed reading synthesizing ideas determining the meaning of words and writing effectively various tasks are presented to the students in which they have to demonstrate their Mastery of the standards um these are the different tasks that the students must complete and these are the grades in which they are administered this presentation will be posted online and so for those of you who desire to go back and kind of see the detail um I'm going to move a little um through the slides if it has a lot of um language uh we are required to report out to the board and to the community after 60 days of receipt of our state assessment results we are on day 60 um and so then uh we are also required to report out on specific comparisons and specific data sets one of them is the district State comparison so when we think about Ela and grades 3 through five we see in yellow how our district is performing grades three um 51.9% proficiency grade four 63.5 and grade um five 70% proficiency you will then see what the state's performance is um in the bottom White and the comparison and how we are performing um across the bottom you will see uh those performance levels that I mentioned earlier uh met are exceeded um again at 51.9% and then we see our approaching levels those students who are at the cost and those students who are um not meeting in all cases we are exceeding um the state um by 10 10 12.2% and 16.7% respectively um grade four we are at 63.5% proficiency grade five we're at 70% proficiency um and that is a celebration for our district as you'll see in two um in the two-year comparison how we've increased um we do have students who are approaching so in addition for example at grade three with 51.9% proficiency we have an additional 23. percent of our students who are right at the cusp of proficiency and when we talk about tiered interventions then we're thinking about how we're assisting our students to uh move into proficiency uh I also want to make note here that of the 32 students in ela who scored a perfect score um of 850 uh five of them are in this grade scan when we're thinking about our Ela content area strength and areas of focus we're unpacking our data we're looking at evidence statements we're looking at how students are performing across each of the tasks and the strands and here is a list of our strengths and areas of focus the supervisors the teachers um our reading Specialists we use these data to assist in informing our instruction throughout the year and making sure that when we're thinking about a strength based approach to um um Improvement that we're using our strengths in order to address our areas of focus I'm losing myself here okay um when we're looking at the students who are approaching and those who are partially meeting and not meeting we are applying multi-tiered systems of support these are Frameworks um for which teamed intervention services are provided to students we focus on the use of our data to inform the practice we do this in the form of academic support and so our academic support teachers push into the classrooms they offer interventions they offered tiered interventions so here tier one would be differentiated instruction provided by that general education teacher tier two and tier three our academic support team is pushing in to the classrooms to pull small groups to work with students and Scaffolding and um really just giving them some um interventions in tier three we may pull our students out into small group for more intensive intervention and the addition of different programming such as leveled literacy and multi-sensory instruction we are partnering with ruer Center for literacy and development um for coaching to help our uh general education teachers think about tier one classroom instruction what does differentiation mean what does that look like in the classroom also they are modeling um datadriven small group instruction with our teachers so they're going into the classrooms they're teaching a lesson they're modeling for the teachers they're debriefing with the teachers to show them um what really good practice looks like um and they're also modeling lessons for hegr which is in our K and one it is in our Ela classroom when we're thinking about bmic awareness and then foundations K through two the state also reports out MET or exceeded expectations by cluster uh and so then these are the cluster areas and how we are performing across them you will see that um fifth grade we are um is our stronger grade you will see that written expression and writing conventions is where we sit in terms of strength and then our areas for growth are literary text and vocabulary in addition to State assessments we administer benchmark assessments or formative assessments this is called the font sen panel reading benchmark assessment um this assessment uh really sits with the student individual teacher and student and we're able to take a look at fluency we're able to uh think about how students pause as they're reading how they lean into their reading strategies and get information and data for the students for their instructional or independent reading levels here is our performance across the grade levels what this data also gives us is data at the earlier levels kindergarten first and second grade which are not assessed by the um njsla and then you will see here that the percentage of total meeting or exceeding is 63.4% in terms of reading at grade level um another comparison we're required to report out on is a two-year comparison uh here we will look at our spring 2022 data in comparison to this year uh spring 2023 in grade three uh we had a modest gain of .7% um in grade four uh you'll see uh a 5.7% gain and in grade five uh a 22.2% increase in the grade level uh so what this data is looking at is how students performed in grade three in 2022 versus how different students performed in grade three in 2023 so it's looking at the grade level performance in comparison this table here shows a cohort data it means we're following the same students so how did a third grader perform in 2022 and how did that same third grader perform in fourth grade in 2023 over one year and so then we see great gains here from third to fourth grade 23.3% increase and a growth from fourth to fifth grade in 16.5% just as a matter of reference point um when we're thinking about 7 to 10% that's called a significant gain so when we say 23.3% that's a doubly right doubly significant so what are we doing in order to address um our students needs those who are meeting or exceeding we're thinking about our stretch goals and how we're um enhancing their learning uh through enrichment we're also thinking about how we're providing intervention for our students who are approaching or not meeting uh when we look at our curriculum and instruction in grades K through 5 we've added heg pheic awareness instruction to to to grades K through one we've um worked with word study instruction in grades three through five we have foundational skills Fridays we've added decodable text for book rooms at every school and we are now implementing the I ready Ela diagnostic for specific tiered intervention by standard you will notice an asterisk next to hegr and decodable text that is a product of our Ela committee we have assembled an Ela commit committee that began last year and working into this year we'll talk about that a little bit more um later on but um in there analyzing our curriculum and analyzing our data these were suggestions that they made last year and were implemented this year for um toward our goals for improvement we also have reading Specialists and instructional coaching we have our Wilson Reading system foundations leveled facilitators just words and imse morphology and so then our reading spec specialist and our coaching um staff they come in and they're really working with our teachers in these areas providing professional development again with the aim of improving our instruction um big announcement if you haven't read it in the news uh our New Jersey student learning standards for ELA have been revised uh they were just adopted on October 4th and we must Implement in September so that means that we will need to begin to rewrite all of our Ela curriculum and really think about our program before September um this comes as um uh I think a big deal it happened in ela and math was revised but in ela we have significant revisions so we will talk about that um we are going to begin with our administrators this month all um administrators across um New Jersey will receive professional development from the New Jersey Department of education so for our Administration in the district we're all registered we're prepared to go we will learn from the NJ dooe what those revisions mean what the standard implications um having changed uh will mean for our district what we need to do to bring our curriculum in alignment to those new standards uh by December the following month we plan to have an implementation plan we will attend the PD first learn what we need to do then we will draft an implementation plan we will come back to the board and share that um and then in partnership with inspired instruction which is um Consultants that are going to run alongside us to make sure that we can get this work done well um within the short time that we have and then we will have to uh provide districtwide professional development to unpack all of those new standards unpack the revisions see the new coding that was um set up the ELA pra practices that were added and the revisions that were made to foundational skills for reading and writing that will take place between January through June uh we will come back um uh to the board uh through uh Mr Moore or superintendent who possibly say we're going to need to think about some half days in order to train the entire District the intent would been then be to begin curriculum revisions we anticipate being able to get units one through two done before everybody leaves for the summer um and then in the fall and winter we will um continue to revise curriculum in addition to the new standards then um perhaps it's good timing because our Ela K to5 committee is looking at our Ela program we have committee members across the district we have teachers in General Ed special ed ESL we have our reading Specialists our school and District administrators um and we are conducting a formal evaluation of our Ela program to include our curriculum our instructional components our instructional materials and our assessment we need them to align to those newly revised standards we are going to address all of the pillars of instruction and literacy and we need to make sure that whatever we choose is grounded in scientific research literature and effective strategies for instruction in reading and writing the committee has been meeting since last year I pointed out those two things that we've already implemented but now we're going to do a very intensive evaluation of our program as we're receiving professional development on the new standards and so then uh in the fall we've already started our action planning and we've already selected an evaluation tool I am going to point it out I won't go through it but we're going to measure our Ela program according to these gateways we're going to think about uh foundational skills in the earlier grade spans K2 and this is an example of a rubric that we've adopted for our um our revision of our Ela program we will complete that rubric we will analyze each of our elements and then we will come back and uh establish priorities for ELA we will review our instructional programs we will then begin a districtwide feedback loop like we did with math so while we're starting out in committee we will go Committee of the whole District right so we will invol involve all of our staff through the professional developments that are districtwide and make sure that everyone is viewing materials and making a decision together as a group in the winter uh again we will attend that professional development for ELA we will then involve our community in our feedback loop we will think about our findings and recommendations and material selections at that time um in the spring we will begin our curriculum revisions and draft an implementation plan in a p D plan for those revisions and then for the summer we will continue our curriculum development and next year we will be ready for implementation in addition we have established a literacy Academy our supervisors of ela um beatric Hanratty for the elementary K5 and Elizabeth venzano for ELA um 612 has have established a literacy Academy in conjunction with our teachers and so then here you'll see all of the sessions that are now being offered uh after school teachers teaching teachers right uh and they are coming in we've had some really good turnout this is a very nice outcome um Cynthia Cummings published an article for us really to just um honor of the work that the teachers are doing um in and toward the aim of improving Ela and improving our teaching and learning so thank you to our supervisors to our teachers um and to our staff for really just thinking about improving our practices I'm going to move on to English language arts for grades 6 through n some of these data repeat so I won't take as long as we move through them but again here you see our district State comparison again we are exceeding the state on all grade levels grade 6 50.4% grade 7 56.5 grade 8 63.2 and Grade 9 53.1 and then we have the students who are at the cusp um ranging between the 18.6 to 26.5% of um of the proficiency scale we also have our Ela content areas strengths and areas of focus you can read these at your leisure um uh but we did break these out into reading and writing for strength and then we have our reading and writing areas of focus we also have multi-tiered system of support in grades 6 through nine we added an additional academic support teacher at Lincoln uh Liberty Middle School and at Roosevelt we have tiered intervention with a focus on tier two interventions for academic support students and we have multi- um sensory instruction taking place in grades six through eight here our partnership is with the American Institute for research center on multi-tiered systems of support and they're providing us intensive training for intervention Frameworks to Middle school students specifically working with middle school students with a focus on progress monitoring there was a question about multi-tiered systems of support and who chose that model that's a state requirement it's not a district choice so the state requires us to implement multi-tier systems of support and what that just means is that it can't be one strategy one way right it has to be multiple different types of strategies and so then that's where you see tiered intervention you see Partnerships with um different literacy projects you see um uh the different multi sensory um supports in addition to the academic teachers who are pushing in or pulling their students out here are our our U performance data by cluster again uh strength in writing uh a need in vocabulary uh and our strongest performance here is in grade eight here strongest performance in grade 11 uh again following that pattern of writing as the stronger area here we do improve in literary text um and still a need in vocabulary but you'll see a a jump from grade N9 to grade 11 twoyear comparison for grade six we had a 6.1% gain grade seven a 7.6% gain grade eight negative - 2.2% and grade nine 16.9% so grade nine here is the strength of the band however uh grade eight is the grade in which we need to um really lean in and provide the strongest amount of support I do want to also add here that as we're looking at Middle School data we see our transition years and that always impacts our data so what does that mean when students leave a building from fifth grade into sixth grade we might see a dip when they leave again from sixth grade into seventh grade we see a dip and when they leave again from e8th grade to ninth grade so each time there's a transition into a school that's where uh some of the accounting is for some of those dips and then they pick it back up so you'll see the dip right and then you'll see it strengthen back out in in grade nine we see this um proves out when we're looking at the actual cohort of students the actual student who's moving from sixth to seventh grade in 18.9% increase in student growth one year to the next so that's strong and then seventh to eighth grade 20.4% increase student right this is the same student as they move from one grade to the next but that e8th to nth grade that transition year that's where we're taking that tip so what are we doing here we've revised our curriculum in the middle school we have fewer units more time to process and practice this is important I had a discussion um this um earlier today with someone about this idea of really coverage and how much content we're trying to cover in a year and it's very difficult when um we're required to cover an enormous amount of content so here we're backing off and we're saying what content is essential what is the standard requiring us to do and how do we get deeper into the learning um so that the students can really um understand the content and transfer it into new and authentic situations we're also adding test prep into our units and into our curriculum to prepare students for how to sit for the njsla we're using datadriven instruction I ready Diagnostic and progress monitoring we've added academic support in grades six through eight and we are using common lit as our Benchmark assessment again this is our partnership Rutger's Center for literacy and development School transitions they're working with us specifically on those transitions so if we know that we dip when we move from one building to the next then we are partnering with Ruckers to say how do we examine that how do we address those dips because we understand we can't just create new buildings and have them all together right that that would be something that's without not within our um Power to do right now so how do we do that they're talking with us about vertical articulation we're understanding our shifts in those Ela standards and we're thinking about transitions from 5 to six and six to 7 and then lastly when we're thinking about reading and writing informational informational text for ELA 9 to12 and our social studies teachers 6 to2 we are embedding our writing strategies into both content areas Ela and social studies in order to address them in an interdisciplinary way uh again the literacy Academy on the first slide I highlighted the St uh workshops that are for elementary 3 through five and these are the workshops that are available for our upper grades um 6 through 12 we are also required to report out on performance by subgroup and so then here you will see our um students with disabilities that's what s swd represents Ed is economically disadvantaged and mLs are our multilingual Learners um so we see these now side by side this is um grades three through five on the left and grades six through nine on the right and so here are the interventions that we're putting in place alongside our subgroup data for our ethnicity and races which were also required to report out on uh for students with disabilities we're looking at the individualized education plans where we provide specialized instructional setting for students with individualized goals based on their need we are providing sheltered instruction for our multilingual Learners and what that means is professional development for our general education teachers who have multilingual Learners in their classrooms uh we have additional support in grades five um K through five with AM and PM tutorials we have homework club in our Title One schools and in the summer we have an integrated academic acceleration program for our Rising students in grades 1 through five in grades 6 through 12 we have paper online tutoring that's 24-hour tutoring available to all of our six through eight students we have our high school writing centers and we have um during lunch and after school Pro um support that is being provided to our high school students twice a week from September to May so these are the strategies when we're thinking about our groups additionally these are the supports that are in place for our multilingual Learners they're broken out by grade span we have K12 um support and then we have by these spans here these include after school programming um literacy and language development our instructional resources in native language um and then our Rosetta online program it's important to know know that when we're thinking about multilingual Learners uh end ofe enrollment uh we talked about this earlier this year it has increased uh of 80.1% over the past two years in multilingual Learners so our enrollment um for our multilingual Learners has increased significantly with the greatest impact in kindergarten and 9 to 12 grade clusters and then when we're thinking about how many students are transferring in after the first day of school um we have a significant percentage increase of multilingual Learners that come to West Orange after day one that's important for us to know because we're thinking about our programming our materials and our scheduling in order to accommodate all the needs of all of our students so that's also something we're thinking about when dealing with our subgroups deep breath we finished Ela we will now move into math so now uh math grades three through five uh these these are the areas that are assessed in map these are uh the cluster areas and the data is reported out um by these areas this is our district State comparison again on all counts we are exceeding the state um in grades three four and five for grade three 57.7% grade four 57.4% grade 5 55.1 and then we have the additional uh 22 to 26 .7% of our students who are at the cus like each of the other areas um we have unpacked all of the data we're able to see our strengths by grade we're able to see our areas of focus and we're able to use that data to inform our instruction we have our tiered systems of support we also have instructional coaching um for each of our our um School visits and then this is our twoyear your comparison so in grade three we've made um a gain of 7.9% thirdd grade from 2022 to 2023 grade four 15.5% and grade five 21.1% so while we understand that our performance right our percentage of students who are proficient um is not where we want it to be we have work to do and we're working on that our student growth from one year to the next is very promising because it's consistent you'll see it consistently the students are growing from one year to the next and we can use that um to continue to see and run alongside that trajectory right we expect for them to continue to grow and then the performance to continue to increase so when we look at that cohort we see third to fourth grade and fourth to fifth grade at 10.9% we are doing a lot in math this year we adopted I ready math it is our first full year of implementation and it is going really well um year one implementation for grades three through five we have increased our intentionality on our areas of focus math proficiency reasoning justifying and critiquing skills these were the things that our data was saying that there was a need in um and we're working toward that end our mathematic vocabulary development is being um placed as an area focus and practice including fluency skills and problem solving we have actionable student Focus data that's given us the the ability to drive our instruction through I students have my path individualized learning that they can work on at home and with um their families at home um and we have a student dashboard that now allows us to support that homeschool connection so that parents can view the videos of what was taught in class they're able to lean into the instructional resources that are available they're able to see their students progress directly in the dashboard and they're able to follow along what the teacher is doing in the classroom this is our uh performance by subgroup again those individualized education plan um a a new uh approach here is that for our special education teachers usually they receive their professional development with our general education teachers but we're also so providing it specifically to our special education teachers separate from so that they can really think about well how does their classroom need the support and the training and then of course we have the sheltered instruction for our multilingual Learners we also have additional supports in the form of AM and PM tutorials our homework club and our integrated academic acceleration math standards have also been revised so here we go and so then I'm going to say the standards have been revised what has not been revised assessments right and so then it's a factor it's a factor that the standards change but the assessments don't and so then we need to just keep that in mind when we're looking at our um results uh we are also working toward that unpacking so when we do come to the board with an implementation plan and the need for the professional development it will be for ELA and math uh for unpacking the standards uh some really strong work happening I just want to honor Darlene Berg our supervisor of math at the elementary level here as she's intently working with our super uh our teachers our principles they're getting one-on-one PD with the IR Consultants um when we're thinking about the connection between what's happening in content and what's happening in the school we're thinking about that professional development also in our schools with all of our leadership so that we can together together um look for those improvements and close any gaps that might exist between content curriculum and school implementation uh we're looking at building based data analysis not only District level data analysis targeted focus on instructional components based on teacher feedback grade level specific PD for academic support and for special education and in our Title One schools our academic support teams are using conquer mathematics to support so now we're going to go to mathematics grades 6 to 8 Algebra 1 2 and geometry and this is probably the most sobering of our data here is our greatest area of need all right so in mathematics uh we understand that our middle school math in our Algebra 1 is the area that we have the lowest performance and the area that we are focusing in the greatest um this year and so then when we think about our district State comparison uh though in um uh sixth grade we're just above the state we are significantly low right we have 35.7 in grade 6 27.2 in grade seven 13.1% in grade eight um and so here are our data for math at the middle school and we're going to talk about this a little bit because it is uh the area of greatest need in our district and across our nation uh first here are our approaching students but more importantly this data doesn't truly represent our seventh and eighth grade performance so it's probably a little lower than would be the norm if we were thinking about all seventh and eighth grade students why because we pull our students out for Algebra 1 um and their advanced classes for honors here so we don't have all of our seventh and eighth grade students there's 63 students in seventh grade who participated in the algebra 1 assessment in place of grade seven math so they're not in these data and in grade eight we had 197 students participate in Algebra 1 two and in place of grade 8 math so again these numbers while they're present they're not representative of all of our seventh and eighth grade students when we look at our two-year comparison however we do see some growth so in grade six this is the same cohort 99.2% if we look at grade seven this is the same student so a seventh grade student um what did they perform how did they perform in 2022 in grade 6 and then moving up into 23 36.7% growth that's to self right so again thinking about that individual student and how they're growing as they're moving up the grade span and in grade eight 19.1% here are our algebra one two and geometry data 31.2 in Algebra 1 26.3% in Algebra 2 and then geometry 67.1% here's our our 2-year uh met exceeded we took a a minor dip in Algebra 1 uh an increase in Algebra 2 um and a decline in Geometry again Math middle school is our area of focus I'm going to zoom into Algebra 1 because we are working here and so then we're looking at our seventh grade and this number should be on the screen but it's not because it's has dot dot dot I guess in bringing it up here so there are 63 students in seventh grade um there were 88 students in 8th grade and there were 349 students in ninth grade so what you see here is when we say in algebra one that we have 31% proficiency our honors students in seventh grade um I don't have those numbers in front of me it's 94% our seventh grade honors students are 94% proficient our e8th grade students are 60% proficient and then our ninth grade is 13% so we're thinking about the majority of our students in n9th grade with 133% proficiency so then we have to back up well what happened in the prior years in sixth seventh and eth grade right to cause our ninth grade students to have a 133% proficiency um we see that those are the students that did not test in grade six or seven right that's when we were out and so then this is that cohort that was not present um for their instruction in person I am going to take a moment to think about our nation's report card because uh when we see that type of data I think we need to put it in context so uh the 2023 npe long-term Trend release was just um um the the data was just released uh last month our national proficiency levels in math are on a decline Across the Nation so when we look at reading we'll start at the bottom graph Across the Nation reading is at fourth grade with a 33 Point percent proficiency West Orange has a 63.5% when our nation is declining in ela that's more than double right if I do my math reading in eighth grade nation is at 31% and we are at 63.2% when we zoom into math um the nation's report card is saying that this is the largest decline ever in 2023 in math so when we see our scores in math it's not unique to West Orange right it's happening across the entire nation um they looked also back at 2019 data as we were asked to do and they were saying that the data de declined even lower than it was in 2019 when we think about math 4 the impact across the Nations at 36 % we're at 57.4% so that's a very nice performance for our math 4 again it's our math in the eth grade and in the ninth grade that we're um having the greatest need so when we think about math we had our general education students at 13.1% proficiency and our Algebra 1 students at 60% proficiency and the Nations at 26 so again math 8 is where it is what is this long-term Trend saying it's saying there is a significant decrease in math Across the Nation its lower performance than 2019 the largest declines were observed among lower performance performing students but evenly across student subgroups right and it also increased the white black scope it widened from 35 points to 42 points in 2023 across our nation so what is the call for there is a nationwide call for Effective math instruction and intensive intervention and that's where you're seeing in our approaches here is our performance by subgroup here is our math academic support for 6 to8 this was h a huge intervention that the board approved last year we have academic support in our elementary schools in K through five but when we moved into Middle School we didn't have any so now we have pushed in all of our math interventionists with multi-tier systems of support we've added three academic support teachers intervention teachers uh We've increased our tiered intervention services we've doubled our implementation of tier 2 and tier three intervention we are implementing I ready Diagnostic and my paath and we've refined our pushin model we've also hired lead teachers to do the math data Dives to unpack the evidence statements and to identify those prerequisite gaps we're adding that 24-hour online tutoring uh and we have intensive professional development in part partnership with the American Institute of research uh to really help us Implement those multi-tier systems of support in addition to the interventions we're looking at our curriculum and our assessment we have uh implemented I ready important to think about I ready so when we say didn't you have I ready for the past three years we bought I ready and we started to implement and we closed right so we closed just as we moved into I ready for those two years so now we're going to be able to have our Baseline data that is going to be one of the problems of practice that we identify that we need to do a reset on all of our professional development for um I ready uh curriculum revisions for pre-algebra Algebra 2 and pre-calculus uh articulation vertical and a focus on those transition years we have our I ready diagnostic assessment and all of the other assessment pieces here and our professional development very intense ensive around I ready implementation in addition to that right and so we're going through all the interventions because this is our area we have started instructional rounds so instructional rounds is a focus on math what that means is that um myself our supervisors of math Darlene Berg and Imad Abu haket we're walking through with our Consultants um for curriculum Associates and all of our principles and so today we concluded our first round we've been through every math class in the district together as a team at all of our middle schools to look at instruction what's happening in the classrooms what are we seeing how are we going to identify our need so that we can apply our interventions appropriately So based on all of these data that we talked about today plus our I ready data plus our rounds as a pattern we identified the following strength strengths right teachers are spending time with students making sense of the problem before jumping right into solving they're honoring our student strategies they're prompting students to use models to problem solve students are asking clarifying questions they're working with the peers and asking them for support um teachers are recognizing student need and offering those support um services in extended time reinforcement small group instruction improving um we see a positive learning culture in our classrooms as evidenced by respect report student to student interaction student to teer interaction opportunities for small and flexible grouping we have active academic support personnel and power Professionals in most of our math classrooms and there is strong evidence of Planning by and we see that in our tasks the student centered learning implementation of a variety of resources and the integration of manipulatives so these are the strengths that we're seeing in rounds again we're pushing into every single classroom as a team uh right now we are the Learners the administrators are the Learners we're trying to find out what is the need so we're going into rounds as Learners we will then um for the next round we will bring teachers in where they will then push into the classrooms to see the instruction here is the area of growth we've identified two first understand and Implement I ready we need to do a reset and Implement because we were closed when we went to implement right so we're going to redo all of our training in grades 6 through eight uh and this is probably the biggest area that we're going to identify as our opportunity for practice and that's allowing the students to engage in tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving specifically um a letting letting them explore tasks without taking over student thinking and prod U promoting productive struggles so what does that look like uh we're in class I'm having difficulty with a problem the teacher doesn't rescue me right I'm allowed to think and struggle through the thinking and productively work my way through how to solve the problem this is our um biggest area for growth here are additional opportunities for practice that are very specific based on rounds and our teachers also identified areas of need during our November 8th PD and they want us to think about how to fit instructional materials and CR critical lesson elements into the 55 minute period why because we move from 80 minutes of instruction at the elementary and then in grade six we drop down to 55 minutes and grade seven and eight the same so what does that look like what's the need there identify the priorities and our standard expectations right because now we have to revise all of the standards we're okay I'm all right I need water no I'm kidding all right science we're almost done Science grades 58 and 11 uh we don't get a lot of data for science from the state um here are data for grades 58 and 11 we see our student proficiency we see it in comparison to the state and we see the percentage of students who are near proficiency we see the performance for grades 5 8 and 11 on a two-year comparison again some gains but grade 11 is the area that's tested and that's the area of need in addition to performance across the other areas there is a lot of State discussion about revising the Science assessment there are some significant concerns around it so um hence the light um digging into these data this is the subgroup performance here are our strengths and areas of focus these are the interventions and strategies again these are posted will be posted on our district website for those of us who would like to dig into science and then we end with Dynamic learning Maps um these are our uh students with the most significant cognitive disabilities for whom General State assessments are not appropriate even with accommodations this is their performance and these are the strategies that we're putting in place for our students so this is um our our autism program Etc our next step is growth right that's our next step we're going to leverage our strengths we're going to leverage the areas that we're growing in and we're going to implement and carefully monitor our progress um we're going to refine our district goals all of our administrator goals all of our sgos are aligned to these data um and so then we're holding accountability from top down um and we're going to think about our data system frequent and consistent progress monitoring and Reporting on growth as measured by our formative assessments thank you for your patience as we present our 2023 State assessment presentation yeah your question on side thank you for that thorough and lengthy report Mr Mendes uh I'll just preface this by saying that we have each had an opportunity to meet with Mr amendes and preview this data we have all asked her plenty of questions already uh but if if we do have additional questions from the board um we'll open up to them now for brief questions we'll start down at the end and work this way Mr ifer anything from you no Mr Stevenson uh a few comments more so than questions Mr MZ again thank you for your team's work you and Miss Martino I want to also commend superintendent Moore for making uh student achievement the highest priority that the the district has uh it's good to hear that the interventions and the multi-tiered uh interventions are being put in place instructional rounds are being put in place uh because although the numbers are trending in a positive direction uh I will submit to you as a as a parent as a community resident obviously the numbers are still not where they uh need to be should be or what what any member of the community should expect them to be right that uh surpassing the state is insufficient and and of itself and that we as a community a proud community of West Orange should continue to set a high bar for for student achievement and expectations so I'm glad that uh your team is working hard I'm glad again the superintendent has made this a priority uh in year one of his tenure and administration uh couple of quick comments black and Latino black and African-American and Latino and Hispanic numbers although those students make up the majority of students in the district they're also the lowest performing students in the district based on the sub data that you uh presented so I just want to again um highlight that because obviously if if the majority of our students are underperforming and we see that subgroup data as it is that they're underperforming um other students by nearly 30 or 40% I think we also have to look at uh is there some underlying cause for that that the district can respond to in terms of um parent engagement potentially or other means by which we can continue to partner with parents uh superintendent Mor I'm just thinking about this as a parent myself with elementary school children that somehow or another we have to continue to have some levels of parity in those performances some level of uh of teacher um accountability in terms of responding to those uh great variances in subgroup data and so again I say this to say as a parent we can't discount parents in the process of the education of their of their children and maybe finding a way to continue to extend those Partnerships and incorporate parents more in an evinced way uh to help support the learning of their children uh I think I had one more comment but in the interest of time I I'll defer that comment again thank you to your team and again thank superintendent Moore for making student achievement a priority of his thank you Mr Stevenson anything from you miss t uh yes I have a few questions um thank you for the presentation it's very thorough I do appreciate also seeing the cohort data that's really helpful um on page 14 you talked about um the rollout of the new Ela program and I just was a little concerned that wanted to know one how many units it looks like you're going to be able to train the teachers up through unit one and two by June how many units total are there for the we will have to decide that as we begin to write the curricul um um sometimes there are between six to eight um however this is what we're doing with math and this is probably what we do with any new massive change we wouldn't write all of the curriculum when we're shifting like that we would start so that teachers have a beginning place and then we will monitor that unit one and two to see if it's really mirroring um the practice that we need and then we'll develop them as we go and so then that's very common place for a year one implementation okay so teachers have enough time to do their job as well as then learn culum teams to WR right that way they're not overwhelmed that way we're not writing everything and then learning something that needs to now change right and so then it's appropriate to do a soft roll out from a curriculum perspective when it's a total change okay thank you so much um and then you talked about the inspired instruction um Consultants so that will they be with us through this whole process yes so they'll be starting next year they're with us oh excellent wonderful that's good to know um and then let's see on hang on I had some notes but actually all right um on page 28 you talked about um some test prep I just wondered I know there was a lot of debate with Park on test prep and teaching to the test how much time is spent um with the for the teachers to teach um what's on the test and how is what does that look like can you kind of give us some more color on that yeah I could probably send you something more detailed but there in that example it's a unit a multi- genre unit in which test prep is embedded and so then it's not where we stop to teach test okay it's where where we're maybe I'm giving problems that mirror how they would look on the assessment um the same types of choices released items that the state released in a prior assessment admin Administration um maybe timing it so then it would just simulate for the students as we're teaching but it's an integration it's not where we would have a period or stop everything to do testing now okay great uh thank you for that um and then let me just look um on page 42 you talked about um under the math 3 to five um that there would be on this is Tiny that there's going to be um how are the parents going to access the dashboard you talked about there was this G going to be a dashboard that students can do extra work how are we rolling that out to the families so that they can access it um and you know if they're using it now do we have any numbers on how much it's being utilized we can get numbers but parents already have access and we rolled it out last year before we adopted the program we had um math parent nights um and we walked through the dashboard with the parents uh we had them at every single Elementary School um so that the parents could come we also put a video up on our website for parents who couldn't attend so they're able to see that we also have on our website um different um instructional videos for how to engage with children um at the beginning of the year uh students are given a clever badge at the elementary so then they just put the badge up in front of their Chromebook and parents are able to enter in they're able to see their students work their progress on my path they're able to get their family letters which says these are things that you can do at home and this is what we're learning this unit um this week and this is how you can help um they're also able to see the videos of how to teach that lesson so for example we hear parents say often well I wasn't taught that way I don't know how to do ma right I don't know what a latth is me neither right right and so then I learned it a different way right um and so then here they have videos for how it's being taught now in 2023 because it may differ so then they can kind of watch the little video and then maybe have um more confidence and strength in helping their child at home and then we have that in second language in Spanish as well so that we can help our multilingual Learners and our parents who don't speak English wonderful thank you so in multiple language I'm sorry it's not just in Spanish there's multiple languages available that's wonderful um and then we talked about the 20 you mentioned on page 56 about the math academic support um how do the parents and students access that t 24-hour tutoring uh so paper is available to the students it's rolled out through the school I can get you more information um and they have their login and I don't know any more than that except I can find out how they log in okay have that access yeah I just wanted to make sure people knew where to access it from our website or if it's something like the clever badge that the students have so just this is for our middle school so they wouldn't have the clever badge so I'm thinking it's going to be a login a login okay great and um okay sorry uh page 58 the team rounds that you did in the classrooms um that's wonderful I'm wondering what's the followup for that are you going back in to see if those are yes so we went uh today we had a great day at Roosevelt saw a lot of strength um saw the need to reset on I ready training um but what we started with was as a team we debriefed um Mr hush the principal then sent an email to his staff to say these are the strengths that we saw in your classrooms these are the areas that we're focusing on which is the reset and um um productive struggle um and then we identified next steps uh one of those next steps will be one those days that we have to review the new standards uh but then we're going to have coaching cycles and what that means is that we are now identifying those classrooms that we went into had that model really strong uh grasp of I and the instructional practices that are um proving to you know give us outcomes and we will have a coach come into that class from curriculum Associates they'll co- te with that teacher they'll train them and then all of those Math teachers will be able to walk into that classroom sit down observe the math and they'll go back out and they'll practice it and then we'll push into classes we'll rotate so rounds will begin with us as Learners because we need to learn what it is that we're looking for in those classrooms right um and then um the teachers will push in to rounds as Learners and we expect to get a lot out of rounds we're seeing up close what what we need to do so that's a continual process you're going to continue to go through classrooms and great okay that's excellent um I think that was it for me um that's all thank you so much thank you Miss T Cliff you want to tag back in yes what one more question which begins with a how when why what or who okay we want the folks at home to hear you thank you thank you all right thank you uh Lauren Mr Min to the extent that the district exceeded the state in uh proficiency rates has the district met its own uh Target goals for proficiency we've set goals for this year for proficiency this is going to be our Baseline year and in the areas that we've met goals in the past we've presented out to the board so we didn't have data for two consecutive years if you recall so now we're back at having our data available to us our last presentation we had to report out on formative assessment data because we didn't have state assessment data but now that we have state assessment data we will we have set our goals for this year the board will receive that in in um the form of District goals with very clear smart goals that are broken out for each of the content areas um in our past when we set these goals then we've reported them to the board in terms of here were our year one goals this was our progress to date and I believe the last time we did it we gave three different presentations one in the fall one in the um winter and one in the spring to talk about our progress we will be able ble to do a similar um approach to our progress monitoring of our goals in addition to setting those goals we adopt those goals into our admin goals right so that we're all working together toward that end you you referenced in the report the students who are approaching the standards but have not yet met the standards uh and the multi-tiered systems of support that go to support those students uh the cohort growth year-over-year I assume reflects those students who were in the category of did not meet partially met or approached now moving into the meeting category correct so for example one of the questions you asked earlier and I'm trying to recall it off the top of my head since I don't have the slide open but for that algebra one where we had um in ninth grade the 133% there were 60 students 6 Zer that moved from did not meet into approaching so while we're at 13.1 it's meaningful to know that 60 students moved from did not meet into approaching um we do know that it was that they were sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade right there was a there was a difficulty there with schools being closed but that movement means that now they're in person and from one year to the next of being in person from one for one year 60 moved to grade bands up and another I think it was um 38 moved from um approaching into meeting right so we are able to track it by how the students are moving and that's where we get those percentages from and last question I already math has been the math curriculum for grades six through eight for the last three years notwithstanding the pandemic correct I read math we adopted it and then we closed so yes we've for all intents and purposes had it right but when we adopted it then we closed so now we're doing our reset in order to I guess my question there is uh you mentioned something about professional development and the learning acmy with Ela however schools have been open since the fall of 20 correct I me we came back in person in the fall of 20 uh on a hybrid on hybrid yeah on a hybrid we weren't back full we weren't back full no oh that's right I'm sorry 21 we came back full so here we are 22 23 these are the data that you're seeing that's the first data set that we had and now we're able to set our Baseline we're able to now push in and get of all of our professional development look for Fidelity of implementation and then uh we would be able to use these data next year to say this is a true reflection of an I ready implementation gotcha okay thank you so much sure thank you president R thank you Mr Stevenson and thank you Mr Mendes I don't have any further questions um thank you for answering mine before when we met uh for the community we don't open up these presentations to uh questions directly however we do have public comment coming up if you have a specific question about the presentation you can ask a direct public comment uh this will also as Mr Mendes mentioned be posted on our websites anybody at home can take a look at that uh I'm sure you missed some things that she flew through it um but if you look and you have a question feel free to reach out to her afterwards and she can try to get you a answer to that thank you thank you is there anything else from you Mr Mo right thank you very much all right moving on to committee reports and comments from the board um we'll start now Mr ier had a brief comment just just two brief comments uh really they're the same comments that were at the last meeting which is um total support 100% respect for what Mr Moore and Mr Guerrera are doing they're not getting sidetracked it's a diffic they they have difficult tasks but under Mr Moore's leadership I I think we're moving in the right direction I anything I can do to help it would be my honor um 100% report excuse me 100% support the second thing is that last month I had the pleasure of uh visiting the Washington school and next month I will have an even greater pleasure of visiting Edison with Mr Stevenson so we're going on a little field trip together and uh looking forward to that and it even though it's a brief visit it's always nice to meet with some teachers and administration and I'm looking forward to it thank you thank you anything for Mr Stevenson no report thank you uh yes I'd like to report out on the negotiations that Mr Stevenson and I have been um engaged in for the last uh year or so um and this is a statement I would like to read we've come to an agreement uh the West Orange Board of educations negotiation team is pleased to announce that it and the West Orange administrative Association negotiation team signed a memorandum of agreement for a successor Collective negotiations agreement covering the period of July 1st 2022 through June 30th 2027 both parties will be presenting the memorandum of agreement and accompanying salary guides to their respective memberships for review and ratification very soon the West Orange Board of Education wants to take this opportunity to thank its administrators for working collaboratively with our teachers and staff to serve the students of West Orange the West Orange Board of Education wishes everyone a happy healthy Thanksgiving thank you thank you for that Miss tun Cliffe and thank you to miss tun cliff and Mr Stevenson for serving on the negotiations committee on getting that across the Finish Line next I would like to present or share my board president's report um first I'll mention briefly so I thought Mr Moore was going to uh but we did approve a construction project at St Cloud as part of our budget process at a prev previous meeting uh to renovate some classrooms and create additional classroom space on Thursday the governor announced that different various districts throughout the state were receiving funding for construction projects we were one of them so you may have seen that in the news uh the project itself will cost somewhere between .5 $1.75 million and at a minimum 40% of that will be reimbursed to us from the state we're still waiting on the final figures of how much the state will pick up but a substantial portion of that project will be paid for through State funds which are then paid for through Federal grant funds so that's great news anytime we can use someone else's money uh I like that second thing on my board president's report uh is a brief update about Edison Middle School which uh Mr ier was talking about so just hear a few things that they're up to our Edison students have ACC ated perfectly to their new school there are many smiling faces as the students have learned their new middle school routines and are making new friendships academically the students continue to be challenged and are well on their way to being prepared for seventh grade our PTA sponsored wathon was or PTA sponsored wathon was a hit with our school Community students walked together to raise funds for the many PTA sponsored activities they will enjoy this year Harvest day is back at Edison on November 6th the students enjoyed the outdoors of a beautiful fall day students worked with our science teachers to beautify the community garden Edison has been very busy and continues to celebrate our diversity from September 15th to October 15th uh recognized Hispanic Heritage Month by choosing people of Hispanic heritage to Spotlight during the morning announcements additionally students learned the origin of Hispanic Heritage Month and the importance of it October is Italian heritage month during this time students learned about Italian Heritage and its importance during the morning announcements fun facts about Italy and Italian culture were shared with the students at the beginning of November we announced 5 days of thankfulness for our parents our Guardians grandparents siblings friends and gratitude for our caring Community today on November 13th we took the opportunity to honor our veterans from mid November to the conclusion of the month Edison students will Spotlight Native American Heritage and its importance and finally during the month of December our students will engage in learning the importance of Peace Unity kindness and respect for All Humans during the holiday season all right and lastly I just wanted to say two things about some current events that have been taking place in our district over the past few weeks uh first I want to Echo some of the words from a previous statement that Mr Moore made to the community uh briefly summarizing what he said and quoting from his letter we understand that students and staff of all backgrounds especially Israeli and Palestinian Muslim and Jewish have loved ones in or around Gaza it is our mission to provide a safe and nurturing space for all of our students to learn grow and flourish the district has counseling services and staff on hand if students need support this is the time to be compassionate with ourselves and with others so that we can work together to help our school Community find strength and resilience in these trying times next I want to commend the administration for their Swift and effective handling of the situation related to the student walk out there's a lot of disinformation on social media so let me State a few facts on that Thursday morning the administration was made aware of a social media post calling for a student walk out this post contained language that was offensive and harmful to some students to be clear this was not part of a school club it was not organized or sponsored by the district or its staff it was the result of students acting on their own as individuals that Thursday afternoon the high school administration investigated and met with the students involved they discussed the offensive nature of the language in question the students understood and the students removed the language from their post the administration also made clear that disruptions to the school day or the further use of harmful language could lead to disciplinary consequences on that Friday the administration again met with the students the students decided not to go through with the walk out and they decided to issue a statement clarifying their goals we've received many emails about this and some of those asks how could you let this happen to that I invite you to think about your own children and whether they've ever done something that you didn't think was wise students are individuals with Free Will and with uh constitutional rights they're not robots waiting for programming nor are Educators imbued with powers of Mind Control closest thing they do have to magical powers is the strength of the relationships that they have built on trust and mutual respect ultimately this was a teachable moment the administration was able to use their relationships with these students to help them reflect on the impact of their actions and to make wise decisions this is a perfect example of showing compassion and working together to provide a safe and nurturing space for all of our students to learn grow and flourish all right next oh sorry next up we will have questions from the public on agenda items only any Community member who would like to make comments or ask questions please come to the podium at this time uh please state your name and home address for the record and then begin your comments please limit your comments to three minutes um due to threats that sor could you please um sh your name and where you're from for the record I'm going to get to that uh so due to threats that have been made uh against me and people that support a certain movement uh I fear for my safety therefore I do not want to share my address that that if you could to share your first name and the town you're from that would be fine so my name is Rula and I'm from West Orange thank you very much my standing here today is not to talk about the atrocities being committed against the people of Palestine as though those are undeniable and being well documented very simply put I will not use my time trying to humanize Palestinians to people who have made it very clear that they could care less about Palestinian lives or rather anyone that goes against their views as some of you don't even make eye contact instead I stand here to defend the students in this District that are seemingly being put on the back burner by Administration threatened by residents of this town some of which have made comments on public platforms that they have connection to board members their words not mine and I stand here for students who for a very long time but especially now feel scared misrepresented and feel as though they come second to other groups at West Orange High School students and administrators were bullied out of holding the walk out for Palestine that was made clear through the threatening posts online and the administrators messages that condemned ha hate speech though it seemed like the administrators have only been listening to one side of the aisle in determining what hate speech is or isn't this brings us to something called differential treatment which with the help of legal Personnel I have found that there have been many circumstances these students have been put in that are a violation of 2B of the L which are laws of public education in New Jersey which state it is unlawful for schools to subject students to differential treatment based on race Creed color national origin expression and political views among other things additionally it details differential treatment as passive tolerance of biased base slurs threats hostility and harassment of students that the district were made aware of among student staff and community members it continues to outline something known as disperate impact which occurs when language used in policies or statements made on behalf of the district are geared toward only one group rather than both groups equally and it creates a larger negative impact on one group of students which judging by your turnout you could see who's affected lastly the ACLU clearly outlines that schools cannot prohibit students from expressing opinions no matter how controversial they are so to make things easier I've outlined how West Orange has violated these uh these laws it was brought to administrators attention that they were there were threatening and vulgar comments made against your miners including words trigger warning like raping and beheading them nothing was done no police reports the district put out a statement only mourning the lives of Israelis neglecting to mention any of the Palestinian civilians which have now amassed past 12,000 parents the same ones making the threats were able to come into the school to ask for discipline for our kids among many other things so I ask you what are you going to do to prot protect our students no words actions our job as a district is to protect our kids whether they agree with you or not your time has expired thank you an hour later let him go I'm a alumni of West Orange High School my name is Manel I'm going to get right into it first thing I want to do is address a board member not sure what their name is I think he knows who he is that made some comments at the last board meeting if I recall he was talking about how distraught he was when he found out an Israeli neighbor there you are uh has gone back to fight with Israel he could have empathy for someone who's willing to fight in a genocide but couldn't find his Humanity to have sympathy for thousands being murdered and slaughtered in that genocide to even acknowledge the days that followed October 7th which in case you don't know the the calendar years 8th 9th 10 31st November 1st 2nd 3rd and on it goes to show how one man's hero is another man's genocide supporter everyone was quick to Roar over fake news of beheaded babies but said nothing of the real 39 niku babies in Palestine taken off of incubators and life support D due to the bombing of the hospitals and cutting off Supply Israel is has used misleading uh propaganda and fabricating stories but they forget the biggest defense of Palestine and their people's social media we have our evidence of mass murder and destruction live stream daily people have opened their eyes and ears now another comment I wanted to make was about his use of the word anti-Semitism for such an educated group of people this word has been so overused so ignorant to use the words as semites only to depict the Jewish people you could even Google it my friends semites is anyone that speaks Arabic Hebrew and Aramaic so when you talk about anti-Semitism and only make it about anti-jew terminology is very ignorant where all semites Arabs and Jews Alik alike last thing I wanted to comment on was when you said the students have a right to know good versus evil and I agree with that that's one thing I agree with um the good people are all of you and the students breaking the silence and fighting for your voice to be heard speaking out against Injustice standing together as Muslims Jews Christians humanitarians be proud and do not be silenced you should know about evil as well evil is Israel occupying bombing civilian homes evil is Israel bombing hospitals mths churches evil is bombing schools refugee camps pediatric maternity Wards evil is cutting off medical water Feud and electricity yes know who evil is so you know which side you're standing on Palestinians in Gaza they don't grow up alans and Gaza they don't go to school and get higher educations or hold careers for a long time so we need to grow for them we need to educate ourselves and be their voice be their movement from a distance tell their stories about their stripes get your degrees get your licenses Mark your Comm make your community know who you are attend board meetings be the mayor be the governor go in office so that when they try to mislead you or fabricate that you are there to stop it they try to shut you up because they're afraid of you remember that they try to shut you up because they're afraid of you who do not be silence a thief can never be coming owner an oppressor can never be the victim a pal city nation can never be defeated because they do not fear death evening my name is May I I'm Rec AE I'm also Al lumni for w St high school and uh every single School I've been to one thing that we need to acknowledge tonight that we live in the United States of America not the United States of Israel we should not be afraid to fight and to go out and to speak the truth all I hear on the news is the truth from the Israeli side what about the Palestinian Sky we're ganized and we are all hamash no we are not we are not we are people we have names we have parents grandparents children we live in America and that means we have for right now the right for our first amendment we have the right to speak our mind without fear retaliation but that's not what is happening that's not what is happening what is happening is our youth are being silen and not just skyen they're being threaten and what are you guys doing about it Mr Mory we known you forever and I was a high school student who used to lead the Palestinian flag and our culture and our music our D our food I was I never feared for my life but we're in 2023 and now you want to silence us you want to silence the youth and 2023 social media is out there and they know the truth and that's what you're afraid of you're afraid of that and that's fine they're going to keep smiling it's a beautiful thing because social media is never going to go away we have people reporting live from the grounds of of what's going on listen we have empathy for both sides but we are humans you cannot treat us as simple numbers one isra life is not ping to a thousand Palestinian lives enough is enough I'm here to talk about the students right we're in the United States of America we have the right to speak our mind without fear of of rep repercussion from anybody and what orange like I said before I have never feared for my safety but tonight and with everything going on I do fear for that I were hijab I'm Muslim I'm proud Palestinian I'm proud Muslim and for for the first time in my life I fear walking in in West orang and that's not fair that's not fair for me that's not fair for our community that's not fair for our students do not silence them do not silence them free Palestine hi my name is Rachel jerson I'm a resident of West Orange I probably am not going to be anywhere near as eloquent or as powerful as the three young women who went before me who spoke amazingly um but I wanted to say I was born and raised in West Orange I went to Gregory school and when my husband and I were deciding where to live and raise our children we chose to move back to West Orange and this Choice was guided primarily by the fact that we always thought the people in West Orange were community-minded accepting and reasonable and a recent event is making me wonder if I was wrong about the people of our community I hope that my community my neighbors those that I've chosen to live among would have no trouble finding common ground on the following all human lives are valuable the loss of civilian life is intolerable international law must be applied to All Nations all the time regardless of circumstance and when we see Injustice and when we see Injustice and human rights violations perpetrated we stand against it and we encourage our children to do the same as I stand here more than 12,000 people have been killed inza since October 7th two-thirds of them are women and children as we stand here doctors at alapa hospital and Gaz are wrapping premature babies in tin foil in dark operating rooms because they have no power and amputating the limbs of children hit by shelling without painkillers because medical supplies ran out long ago a group of Brave proactive and socially engaged children at West Orange High School organized a walk out in support of a ceasefire to put an end to the tragedies I've just described and rather than being applauded for their activism they were shut down and far worse they were bullied threatened and harassed by adults in our community on the Facebook group West Orange 07052 several adults called for these Brave students to be doxed an anonymous user wrote that one of the organizers and I apologize for the language this is a direct quote would be decapitated raped and paraded around Gaza these are adults in our community talking about children in our community I know that the Board of Ed is not the Forum to discuss International conflicts or foreign policy but it is absolutely The Forum to discuss our own community and the that we impart to our children as a citizen of West Orange I for one will not stand for adults using hate speech against children calling members of our community terrorists for trying to stop the endless carpet bombing of a civilian population or our leadership deciding that free speech is only the right of those who want to speak to a certain narrative I hope that the town will take action against the hateful individuals who have been harassing and threatening the brave students of West Haren high school for Palestine and that the district will do everything in its power to protect all of our students and allow every voice to be heard thank you my name is Lisa Davis I'm a resident of West Orange I also here representing the black is back Coalition for social justice peace and reparations yes and I'm also involved with many other organizations um first of all I found the report that you gave about this situation so inefficient and insufficient because it didn't tell anything but people came here and wanted to know like you talk about the language that the students use and first of all let me also say this much I have to sincerely apologize to the students and to the younger generation for the horrible system the horrible world that my generation is leaving for them to inherit a world of war NeverEnding War even if pal the issue with Palestine is resolved tonight the issue of all these wars is not and a generation an adult generation that just prepares them for war and as youth as students coming up they're they're the ones who's GNA be this is GNA be left to and another year or so most of them will be voting and they have the right to be concerned about what is going on and to raise their voices and to speak about it so I want to just say to everybody right here because I know better than anybody how this country can be I know how much of a real threat it is what they will actually do to people like the way what my history represents the lynching of children yeah I'm here to say that we are organizing and we ain't we ain't having none of that I'm also here to say if somebody doesn't like what somebody says do what I have to do like when I look at that flag right right there that talks about the land of the free and all this country is founded on freedom and all this kind of stuff that is a lie but I just have to deal with it in a certain way and just be like well I'm just a went when I hear that stuff well that's what I suggest other people do they might not like what people's positions on Palestine or whatever suck it up and wi and let people have the right to raise their voices and they are going to do it I also just want to address something that I saw because I'm to say to the students and to everybody else in here do not allow them to hijack your narrative or your language Palace Victory to Palestine um from the from the river to the Sea Palestine will be free and I'm going to talk about what that means because see we have a situation right here where they are projecting the ruthless viciousness of this country and what it did on people have a different perspective what see the shiny sea meant in the United States was that they killed everyone who was non-white from one sea to the other from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean that's what sea to shiny sea meant to them genocide you cannot you will not project your ruthless history onto other people who have a completely different relationship to the world' from River to the Sea Palestine will be free go ahead yeah yeah I say I'm angry could you start with your name and what town you're from please I'm from this town and he knows me very well for the record could you share your first name please Kathy thank you very angry all these and my brother who's a doctor our product of West Orange [Music] school and for you to sit there and say some measly kids got together and decided to do a walk out that they had no brain they didn't know what to do they just got together and hey let's do it dismissing that they're intelligent and they know what they want and know what they want to do how dare you how dare you you just called well tell me this before you praise them how smart they are and how wonderful they are then now you call them dumb and idiots so which one is it are they smart or are they idiots huh what are they how could you sit there and say this and you believe it and you want us to believe that these kids are idiots and didn't know what to do and you had to save them from themselves who's going to save them from you I'm not safe with you taking care of kids in the school or any other school or any of you and you when she was talking you had that smirk on your face what was so funny what did you find funny exactly what was so funny people are trying to live and you don't want them to live you don't give a crap okay this school has changed I've been here for decades and you know that Mr Moore I advocated for kids for teachers for principls for vice principls for everybody for superintendent whoever they know me and I know them and I don't like what I see now or who I see right now you understand you are changeable these kids will stay and they will become somebody with or without your help you understand for you to sit there and try to demonize them and call them fools and idiot and you're trying to save them from the truth you need help you need help and you shouldn't be sitting there you don't belong there you understand we put you there and I make sure you're not there anymore cuz I telling you to your face my I don't feel safe with these kids in the school with you sitting there because you lied and you believed your lies you believed your and you Tred to make us all believe your your lies telling us there some little kids who decided to do it and you know we had to stop them from this hysteria they were about to there's nothing here to see right now just Palestinians being killed and who gives a crap right is that what it is how many decades we've been Val ma'am your time has expired oh what a shame but you know what so is yours hi my name is Gabby I'm a resident of West Orange um and I also have a one-year-old who will in a few years attend the school district um I recently learned of a campaign in West Orange led by adults aimed at harassing doxing and intimidating a group of students for planning a protest the cause for concern arose from the students use of the phrase from The River To The Sea and their announcement a term that critics linked to hamas's call for Israel's elimination some argu that the students were either deliberately echoing a Hamas line or at the very least annoyingly uh repeating a highly offensive and triggering uh phrase in an article by patch.com on October 27 2023 covering the West Orange students plan walk out the author discussed the interpretation of the phrase by the American Jewish uh committee and the Anti-Defamation League but failed to include perspectives from Palestinian groups it is crucial right to acknowledge the historical context and the meaning of this phrase to Palestinians of all political convictions as a history teacher I find it disconcerting that there is little interest in understanding how the slogan is perceived by those who invoke it to delve into the historical context the slogan was coined by diaspora Palestinians in 1964 as a part of a broader call for secular Democratic state in all of historic Palestine the aim was to establish a state that would free Palestinians from oppression by Israel and other Arab regimes such as Jordan and Egypt which controlled Gaza and the West Bank at that time importantly there has never been an official Palestinian position calling for the forced removal of Jews from historic Palestine while Zion were views as Colonial settlers uh while zionists were viewed as Colonial settlers Jews willing to coexist as equals with Palestinians were welcome to stay in 1974 UN speech of FAL leader and PLO chairman yasar arath expressed inclusively stating we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination disregarding the broader liberationist context in which many Palestinians understand the phrase and citing only hamas's leader use of it reflects a troubling and uh level of ignorance about Palestinians views or at worse a deliberate attempt to smear their legitimate aspirations equally troubling is the assumption that a free Palestine would inevitably lead to a mass annihilation of Jewish isra rooted in racist islamophobic stereotypes about Palestinians instead of ma'am your time has expired ma'am thank you my name is TOA and I also reside in West Orange um I really wanted to speak exactly to that same topic from The River To The Sea Palestine will be free and I want to speak to it because I I can't believe that the education that these uh youth these high school youth were given is that somehow this statement was harmful and hurtful to Jewish people not in my name not in my name my grandparents and half my aunts and uncles were killed in the Holocaust uh during World War II they were not killed by Palestinians I think we all know who killed them right and then my parents uh wanted to leave Hungary to come to the US but guess who wouldn't let them in there is quotas against Eastern European Jews um and we my parents even though they each had a sister who was already here were not allowed to come from the um uh horrors of the Holocaust to to the United States instead they found themselves penniless in what had become the state of Israel and some Israeli [Music] soldiers took a Palestinian family home and gave it to my parents and that's where I was born so I say not in my name so Benjamin netan yaho just on September 22nd spoke before the United Nations here in New York and what did he do he showed a a a graphic a picture of what he called Israel which included from The River To The Sea all all Jewish State that's what he that's what he invoked and where did he think the Palestinian people were supposed to go in his world of from The River To The Sea so the my sister who spoke before me she said she made it very clear that the language that invoked on the Palestinian side from The River To The Sea never was um evoked to annihilate Jews and there are so many Jews in this country and all over the world that say what I say not in my name so I'll end with from The River To The Sea Palestine will be free good evening my name is nater I'm actually in alumni from this high school unfortunately and I saying fortunately because I look at who is sitting in front of me I don't think of you guys as proper adults as proper teachers I'm a physan who had to Tele a medicine with Gaza right in the middle of air striking as far as what it is that can be done and then you had the audacity of saying that you had to correct the language that the children were trying to use because it was offensive to one side have any of you actually seen someone die in front of you no have any of you lost an entire family no so if someone wants to use their American given right because we're in America to go out and say that there are atrocities that are happening to their people they have the right to do so for you to shut them up you're not doing your job you're not doing your job and you all should be replaced and believe me I'm going to do my best to make sure you guys are all replaced I have the entire AMA the AOA and believe me we're gonna take care of it and I apologize I was not laughing at the person before me a critter went by um I'm Deb Cohen I'm a teacher at West Orange High School I'm not here to explain my personal views on the subject I have very strong ones I'm happy to talk individually with anybody that would like to after last month's board meeting I sent an email to the board the superintendent uh my union president that I was very disheartened by the statement that was made um by one of the board members Mr ier and that I felt it was wholly inappropriate to bring it up at a Board of Education meeting in the way that it was the following day I talked to Lea I found her I hunted her down accosted her in the hallway a little bit and went I just want you to know we got you and there's a b there's a couple of other teachers here with me to support her having said that having said that now that I've made you all applaud um I'm here to defend Mr Moore who I he's Hayden he will always be Hayden to me principle Guerrera and the overall makeup of the Board of Ed I have served on the board of ed in my town which is Madison I get it we are in a horrible position where you were asking these people to comment on a situation that changes minute by minute by minute I've seen the footage I I get it I understand but it is our job to ensure the safety of all students regardless of that and I hear that some of you are saying that that's not happening I H from what I have seen I have to disagree I can't speak to the vital on social media the school board is not responsible for what is going on in the West Orange groups they are not if a student comes to any of them that's different and says hey this is what it's talking about lots of teachers are in that group we are all aware of it we are watching out for our students we don't want any of them no matter who they are to be hurt Mr Moore Hayden principal Guerrero all of the principles all of the supervisors District administration all they want is for one educate and two keep our kids safe and keep our faculty safe because as diverse as the students are so is the faculty I've taught in this district for 25 years I stood in Roosevelt and watched The Towers fall in 2001 I was at Roosevelt for 13 years through God knows how many different events there's been quite a bit in the past 10 years at the high school Hayden principal Guerrera Frank curado Lionel hush etc those are the ones I've worked for everybody in the district their goal is to keep us safe no matter what is going on they can't do anything about what adults grown adults are doing on social media unless students go to them and say I'm worried about this because of this and give concrete examples they're not going to put out a statement taking a side or specifically ask asking for this or that they can't do that that's not our role our Ro thank you Miss Cohen your time has expired good evening my name is Ali algera and I sit on the board of directors for the Council on American Islamic relations the New Jersey chapter we are the nation's largest and oldest Muslim civil rights organization and our office was notified of the recent events with with regard to students organizing a potential walk out and being pressured out of it students have the right to students have the right to look at what is happening in Gaza and call for what it is a genocide thousands of children are being slaughtered it is no surprise that these Brave students would be affected by just this alone as our politicians support it you should be encouraging students to stay acquainted with global Affairs and Empower them to be our next leaders walkouts and other peaceful methods have ushered a great amount of positive impact in this country look at Greta thunberg for example it is imperative that you support these students during this time exactly because of the Zionist pressure that you have been facing this is not just about global Affairs statements and sentiments pushed by school districts employers politicians and media that all totally selin Palestinians and their immense suffering work to dehumanize them aside from licensing harm and destruction of Palestinians this dehumanization is the reason why Ken New Jersey our office is unated with unprecedent unprecedented influx of discrimination and hate crimes this is happening here in New Jersey Muslim girls are having their hijabs pulled off Muslim property is being vandalized teachers are calling students terrorists for having Palestinian national flag school bullying is surging and doctors are being fired from their hospitals for saying free Palestine online all of this in the state of New Jersey just last month we dealt with 50 cases most we've ever had in one month let's not make West Orange one of those cases parents are now calling to suspend docks and harass these students online you rightfully did not suspend these students but now we ask you to move in the opposite direction from where you have begun on this issue by reversing the pressure on the students and also take action in protecting these students from people who are seeking to harm them online look I know you want to focus on the day-to-day uh problems that the public generally doesn't care about but you have to see but you have to see how this pressure or a biased narrative harms these students and Muslims in the community we urge you to support students right to expression of political opinion in speech and not succumb to Zionist pressure of a harmful narrative thank you very much thank you hi uh my name is Yousef I live in town um I am an alumni from West Orange High School and I've been in this District my entire life um I would just like to call to attention as many have before me the comments made by Mr iar at the last Board of Ed meeting which I believe were awful there was no reason and mrra I would please appreciate it if you would look at me while I'm saying this okay because you called us baby killers you went on the on record and you said we were evil you might not have said it explicitly but it was implicit in your comments you said that you are fighting we are fighting a good versus evil and you implied that the Israelis are the good and the Palestinians are the evil so I ask you to look at me right now and tell me am I good or evil okay so besides just that I would like to ask the Board of Ed what you are doing about the threat aimed at our students I have a sibling in this high school and I worry about her every single day I should not have to worry about her going to school and coming home there's no reason for that and I've never had to worry about that before I when when I was in this school I loved it here there it's super diverse place this should not be the case and Mr ifer I would please I would appreciate it if for once instead of uh immediately spewing hate you take a second to look at yourself and ask yourself is this what people need to hear at this moment when people are being killed look out at the audience please look out at the audience because if you look out there I don't think a single person in this room would say that they would like to kill babies thank you zelli Patterson U my name is zeli and I'm here representing black lives matter Patterson and I'm here as a representative of black lives matter because we stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and I want to bring that up because being a part of the black lives matter movement has never been easy for many of you who may or may not remember when the Black lives matter movement started in 2014 even saying the word or phrase black lives matter we was called racist we was called anti-white we was called unamerican and it was because through this education because of the protest because of having these tough conversations because of not being allowed to be silenced we had gone to a space where people are now more acceptant of saying black lives matter do black lives matter but now we're in the same moment of history when it comes to a free Palestine we have forces that's trying to tell us that being anti- Zionist is being anti-semite and I'm here to say is that anti- Zionism is not anti-Semitism one of the things that the oppressor or oppressors love to do is to keep you silent whenever you try to protest they say don't protest be peaceful try something else to do because the oppressor wants peace for themselves they say they want peace but they want peace for themselves not peace for you Israel wants peace for itself it doesn't want peace for the Palestinians it never did and we have to be very honest and clear about that and be supportive of our students the goal of Education because I'm an educator myself and Patterson is for our students to be critical thinkers and what we just saw last week or a few weeks ago was our students being critical thinkers being global leaders Global Citizens the exact same thing that we want them to be do we want them to be critical thinkers or do we want them just to be numbers on datas and spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations on the screen our students are more than numbers they are human beings with feelings and thoughts that need to be validated and need to be supported and when there are forces outside that are saying putting them in danger we need to keep them safe and one of the things that you did not say in your message earlier you did not allude to the fact that you allow these Zionist to enter the building these Zionist enter the building and threaten the safety of our school and our children and that's shame on you for not even pulling that out there last thing I would say black lives matter free Palestine from The River To The Sea good evening I've lived in West Orange for almost 30 years my two kids graduated give us your name ibraim thank you sorry go ahead my two kids I've lived in West Orange for for almost 30 years my two kids graduated from West Orange High School and my my youngest is now a senior I love the diversity of this town and in the high school which allows my children to learn different cultures and beliefs that's why I was surprised by Mr iar's uh comment at the last board meeting Mr erer spoke about teaching our children who's good and who's evil and he referred to what happened in October 7th in Israel he said babies were beheaded women raped planting the seed of hate and division into people's heads even though there was no evidence of this ever happening these types of personal political comments are dangerous and should not be allowed at board a Ved meeting it's inappropriate and inflammatory creating ISL islamophobia and anti-Semitism a perfect example of this is where adults are now threatening and intimidating your high school students online on Facebook West Orange 07052 your comments Mr ifar is Israeli propaganda you repeated it again teach our children who's good referring to the Israeli occupation Force I don't call him the Israeli Defense Force I call him the Israeli occupation force and who's evil you said teach our children who's good referring to the Israeli occupation courts and who is evil referring to the Palestinian people Mr ifar I teach my children the truth and the fact about the about the 75 years of brutal occupation of Palestinians by the apari Zionist state of Israel I teach my children that any loss of life especially innocent civilians on both the Israeli and Palestinian side is abhorent especially the killing of children I teach my children that if you take a life it's like you've killed all of humanity and if you've saved a life it's like you've saved all of humanity you said you had to speak the truth about the massacres you said you had to speak the truth about who's good and who's evil so I ask you do you teach your children the truth Mr ifar the truth about the massacres that Israel has done to the people in order to occupy their land let's list some of these massacres the massacre of darasin the massacre of tantura by the way there's a 2022 for the board please watch the 2022 movie uh documentary on what happened of the so-called moral Israeli occupation Force they raped killed disbaled pregnant woman how they threw a child in a bakery oven in front of his father the the so-called moral soldiers of Israel bragged about what they did it's sickening why watch and teach your children the truth the Kia Massacre 1953 the kafar massacre the Khan unun Massacre the saan chatila massacre the alaka Massac IIM I could go on and on and on now the Gaza Massacre now the Gaza Massacre is over 11,1 180 civilians killed who knows what's under the rubble and half of them are children Mr ifar you're a doctor where's your outrage for these innocent lives babies where's your Humanity you're a doctor thank you sir your time has expired thank you hi uh is this m oh yeah hi I'm a Donis I actually attend this high school I'm not afraid to say my full name it's Adonis Pi I'm a senior I really don't care uh I'm not afraid of reprimand so I'll even say that I actually planned on attending the walk out before it got cancelled and what verbal harassment I may receive and what punishment i f May face means completely nothing to me I don't care I went to go support my fellow Middle Eastern friends because a lot of them have been facing a harassment and verbal harassment all kinds of things at this school when I went to go gain like we're trying to start a middle eastern Culture Club so I went to go gain signatures in the hallway even when I went to go like when I asked people about it they then well they called me the nword they called me a terrorist sympathizer all that kind of stuff when I asked teachers for their kind of signature they just kind of scorned me looked at me and they're like hell no and I was like okay whatever you know aage teacher but um once again that all means nothing to me there are nothing compared to the Bombshells hurled at people my age and much younger why can't they go to school but I I mean why can't I go to school but they can't why can the teachers over here go over lesson plans teach me calculus all that kind of stuff whatever but the teachers in Palestina have to mourn their dead students and they can't continue the school year because guess what too many of them are dead all the temporary words thrown at me mean nothing to me compared to the permanent deaths you can't get them back they're dead they all deserve to laugh with their friends they deserve to go to school they deserve to hug their parents they deserve to get married they deserve to live a nice beautiful long life instead of getting instead of being afraid trapped bleeding out and dying by Israeli bullets and missiles my friend actually lived in palistine during the bombings of 2021 because guess what this didn't start on October 7th this has been going on for decades and decades and decades and decades in decades they live in Canada now under the care of the country because their mother and aunt died in the bombings and guess what they actually have a brother in Gaza well he was 10 years old but um unfortunately recently they messaged me his bloody dead corpse which they only learned about from a social media post now I want to ask you a question does imaginary dead decapitated white baby's the only kind of child that matters to you I mean America's policy has always been white is right they don't really care if you get you know a little darker than that but um well yeah no matter how many pal I mean once again don't care but no matter how many Palestinian lives I speak about will never be enough I don't need to sway you my police are going to fall in your deaf ears I really don't care about that even if you don't pay attention to my cries even if I'm punished for them I don't care I will not allow myself to stop them what little punishment I receive through the scholarships I get revoked or whatever kind of reprimand I get or detentions or suspensions I really don't care listen the spit you're going to spit at me is going to wash off like water but the blood of the Dead thousands are never going to go away nor will your complacent Silence about this situation free Palestine from The River To The Sea Palestine will be free peace good evening my name is NOA and I'm also West Orange resident um when my husband and I chose West Orange as a place to raise our children we chose it because of the diversity we wanted our Arab Muslim children to have friends from all cultures and backgrounds we wanted them to have Muslim Jewish black brown Asian white to name a few friends to to go to school with and grow up with when Mr Moore sent out a public letter to the district after October 7th he did a phenomenal job balancing his message because he knew a lot were hurt thank you Mr Moore when several teenagers at the West Orange High School decided to wear blue and white in solidarity with Israel nobody stopped them granted however when students at the West Orange High School scheduled a walk out for Palestine they were harassed silenced by adults in our town their names have been shared all over social media and they are threatened this stems from the lack of support from our board our elected board should represent our diverse student body and acknowledge its difference and show empathy when board member ifer on October 16th publicly States and I'm quoting we need to distinguish between good and evil and there are the good guys and the evil guys and that he unifies the board by claiming we stand with the good guys referring to what's happening in the Middle East I find that language extremely problematic and insensitive to our diverse Community the pro problematic language has allowed students and grown-ups in our town to vilify Miners and residents who are utilizing their first amendment of free speech it has also allowed miners at West Orange High School and parents who grew up post 911 to be exposed to the Hostile post 911 rhetorics in lobia and Arab hatred this is not okay I refuse to let my children or anyone else's children in this town to go through what i and many other parents had to go through post 911 due to due to a language used by board member ifer I am asking me board members to represent if's divisive language which has raised the heat in our town I am also asking the board to refute ifer suggestion on the board going through Mr Moore's message meing on such sensitive matters Mr Moore is already doing a great job at his neutral stand and I'm asking the board to use a more Nuance language that acknowledge our diverse Community instead of dogmatized and to protect our students no matter what without favoring anyone it should be a safe place in West Orange to be an Arab Muslim and it should also be a safe place for Jewish students to live here in West Orange thank you um hi my name is Zoe uh I'm a senior here at West Orange High School I'm 17 years old um obviously I live in the town otherwise I wouldn't go here um I didn't write anything because I didn't think that I would be able to speak to you guys like this in front of everybody but the courage and the sheer emotion and the raw vulnerability of everybody who has spoken has moved me to words and I want you to hear them I am a Jewish student I have been told by other Jewish students that I am a traitor to my people I have been told I am not really Jewish because I support Palestine I have been told that I am not really Jewish because my mother is not Jewish and my father you know rest in peace dad was a Jewish man I am Jewish it is in my blood and I say free Palestine from The River To The Sea Palestine will be free and you think that calls for the genocide of Jewish people you think that calls for the genocide of me and I don't want to die and I don't want any other students to feel like they are unsafe and I don't want to continue to see death after death after thousands after thousands of children in Palestine who will never get to where I am because they were bombed and killed sorry my great-grandmother is a holocaust Survivor she had seven siblings that she was the oldest of and she is the only one who survived you say that from the river to the sea is a call for Jewish genocide well I have a ancestor who has lived that and I am a product of her strength and her resilience and I say no genocide for anybody not in our name we need a ceasefire we need to be able to speak out about this even if the whole town is telling us that we are insane or they want us our addresses leaked or they want us to be incarcerated or they want us to be expelled it doesn't matter because children overseas will never ever get to high school they will never ever get to where I am if I may I would like to go and hand out a flag to each one of you go ahead sir good evening uh my name is TJ Whitaker I'm a school teacher at Columbia High School in South Orange Maple Wood School District I'm also um I'm also the co-founder of mapso Freedom School um which is a teacher a teacher organization that is committed to providing racial Justice education to South Orange Maplewood we actually started in 2016 on the heels of a police brutality incident teachers came together to support students and from that point on we become an organization supporting our students right to speak out um to speak critically um to speak truth to power and so when our students needed to rally and protest against cops in schools Maps or Freedom School was there when our students had to Rally against the schools trying to close the libraries Maps or Freedom School was there when three years ago when Israel was bombing Palestine we put up a meme and our superintendent on our Board of Education sideline math or Freedom School what we're here to tell our students today this is about Community empowerment this is about Community organizing this a group here can everyone who is here from South nor Maplewood in solidarity with these students please stand up thank you we are here in support of the students our brother zeli said it earlier we talk about wanting them to think critically but when they act act on it that's when we come down on them for the students who are here you need to speak your truth right know that you have people behind you all right know that you are on the right side of History right they might suspend you now but you know that you are on the right side of History all power to the people speak about my name is d i Orange since 97 I'll speak about three points first point I'll blame everybody Le W orange based on the following black and West Orange present or Hispanic series 3.6 white 17.2 and others Asian two races native haani the port here doesn't present the population in this three whites one black so you didn't do your job to elect people present you you three whites controlling the board and the same thing happened in the West Orange Township work this the first one second one if you prevented students to express their opinion you should releve Mr ier from his duty because he had his speech against I'm not in this side or that side the fair let him go and elect someone else who after him to be fairly treated but what you did is as against fear or free or against I should uh I hope you agree with me I was happy that we have a black African-American superintendent the first time because he will feel the feeling of the most of or majority of population here and he can deal with it but now was do what he did for our students what he exerted in pressure on the district to prevent Free Speech as pressure Bo is boiling now in the community it's someone who board member elected board member took the right side the wrong side and you prevent our future our students our young people future gives a bad examp I'm sorry for saying that Sor we just wait one sec we technical difficulties seeing a lot of faces that I haven't seen in almost 20 years and it warms my heart to see these people um have something like this was able to bring this together again is it all right if we use Miss flower's phone thank you all right go ahead your name and uh my name is sonan uh I actually a resident of Mont Clair New Jersey the reason why it came out today is because I could not let the students feel for one second that they were not being supported by us I had to let them know that there are people behind them unfortunately the school did not stand behind them these people are experiencing an incredible amount of trauma and their Outlet was to go out and and just practice very minor Civil Disobedience and you shut them down you shut them down what happened to some moral compass and on top of that we had people who stormed the school I was speaking to one of my best friends who's on the board of education in North hen he told me that they had a person who was pulling on the doors within five minutes he was surrounded by four cop cars we had people who were threatening these children how did we how did we drop the ball so badly what happened how can we trust you with the safety of our of our students of our children what happened you said that this was a teachable moment I hope that you guys learned from this but I also hope that our students the ones who who who are trying to stand up this is a teachable moment for you guys you guys are not free no matter how much they let you think that you are alone and isolated you are not we stand with you we're with you I hope I really hope that this was was a teachable moment for you as well I hope that you can find your moral compass forget about the politics for some people I know no matter what they won't be convinced of anything but stand with your students stand with your students that's all we ask thank you so much thank you my name is cinaa I am um alumni of West Orange High School class of 2019 and I was one of the two inaugural student Le laun to the board in the 2018 to 2019 school year um I wanted to first start by saying the reason why we started that position my friend and I we had petitioned for that for the year leading up to it was because um our experience here at the at the school district from I've been here since elementary school I've gone through Gregory Mount Pleasant Edison Liberty West Orange High School I've gone through all of it was that the district is a nebulous looming figure the students are here there's no connection between the two um and I had hoped that that position was a way to bridge the gap um but I have not seen that that's what's the case today um and from my experience on the board what I have also learned is that the the the well-being of the students is not the priority of the board that has not been the case when I was there and I don't know that that is the case now but I can also say from my experience on the board there's never been a meeting once where I've have seen these many past members of the school uh past students show out I've never seen as many young students show out current students show out so my first my first audience that I'm here to address are the students and the young members of West Orange because I know that your district has not shown you that you are supported and just like many people have said before me you are supported and that this is your District your taxes pay for these people they answer to you first and foremost secondly I would like to point out that there is some sort of obsession with neutrality I understand that I understand that that's the position of the board is to be as neutral and you know meet as many people's demand as possible but there's nothing neutral about the position that you have taken make that very clear first and foremost and that there is nothing neutral about the interpretation of the phrase that you have chosen to be nitpicky about and I want to also make that very clear and that comes across and it's the last thing I want to point out before I don't know how much time I have left is that um the students that you're the people that you're seeing In This Crowd here this is a new generation and we're not up on this board this the members of the board are not on our generation I know that at least when I was here leison did not have voting rights I know students don't have voting rights on what happens on the board of education and what happens in the district but I want you to understand that you are there's there's still that very fundamental disconnect between the board and the students I don't see that remedy today and I and I I don't know how long it's going take for that to be remedied but I just want you to know whatever position you have taken is not representative of the young people of aor in the future of aor thank you good evening my name is dril kafani Mr moris good to see you uh thank you for your your continued leadership um I'm here first and foremost as a parent my daughter goes to this school my son went to the school and my daughter is concerned about the issues going on around the world and she sees the problems and the trauma and I think we have to have a different way of of looking at the issues to humanize right because that's what black matter mean right it is talk about to Value somebody's humanity and that that statement is no different than the statement from the 1960s which says I am a man that statement was about Humanity it wasn't about a man or a woman it was about somebody's Humanity being recognized and appreciated and I think sometimes we look at the idea of humanizing people's statements and we get to a place where we uh only see our own side and by seeing your own side that sometimes we uh uh uh trample upon uh a balanced way of looking at things and so when we do so I think that uh as a sociologist that we try to get folks to step back from their own Comfort zones to step back from the space that you're in so that you can see the wider picture and sometimes we don't see the wider picture because we only look at the thing that is burning in front of us and so sometimes when that happens that we don't get an appreciation for the magnitude of what's going on in Palestine uh but I'll say not just Palestine because there's also issues going on uh in Sudan there's another Holocaust going on in Sudan see there there's all these different issues and we use these words uh to talk about things and we take them out of context and I think we have to have a more historical perspective to understand it so when you look at the the map of of Israel and Palestine today and go back and look at the map Israel and Palestine in 1940s you see it's a very different map but that map let's not wait hold on now because that map is not too different than the map you come back to the United States and you look at that map with Native Americans were here and you look at the map today we have to be holistic in our analysis we have to be nuanced in our analysis so that we have a way that we're educating folks and we are having these young folks come here I'm defending my daughter because she wasn't even in anything but she was in sensed by the the thing that happened and if there's something that's going on in social media I think that we have the the responsibility to address that issue it's not enough to I someone a teacher said to stand back and we can't be no that's not true because if people on their jobs and other folks are held accountable for things that are that happen and go on outside of that context so I'm here to support these students here they want to come make a statement and they wanted somebody to to feel comfortable and so apparently they didn't feel as comfortable as they needed to feel so I'm letting you know that they are supported and whatever they have to say that they're going to say and use their time wisely uh to make their selves to make their voices heard uh so that they can be uh their representatives of you know in in marketing they say when when one person does that something or sends something that that represents maybe hundreds of people so they represent quite a few students following around them so please come on oh good evening um my name is Olivia I'm a senior at West orang High School and I'm the vice president of black student union and I'm a student council board member hello I'm Chloe Mii I'm also a senior at West Orange High School and I'm the president of the Unity Club hi um I'm Michaela um I'm also a senior at West orang High School and I'm the president of the black student union and we're not we don't have much to say but we just want to talk a little bit about our experiences at this school with voices being silenced and as advocates for diversity and inclusion we think it's very important to stress that you cannot silence protest so a couple years ago my friends and I including them we held a protest in school against the enforcement of the ban on do-rags that we felt were targeting black bodies and it was very important for us to feel like our voices were heard and I felt like that we worked with the administration and were able to cultivate an experience that allowed diversity to be exemplified in our community and accepted but I do not see that same energy being um presented in this situation with the walk out and as a town that Prides itself on diversity of thought and diversity in general it's imperative that that energy is applied equally to every single group that deserves to have their voice heard um I also wanted to add that I think it was last week but a um one of the members of the Israeli Culture Club was allowed to go on the loudspeaker and shed like light on a lot of the Israeli deaths um but failed to acknowledge the other side and I don't understand how you can allow someone to speak on such a loud platform to the entire school at the end of the day and not let us protest or walk out peacefully I don't understand how he's allowed and we're not thank you thank you I'm going to ask you all to stand and give these students a random of Applause for their courage and I'll just I'll sit down after this this is the the thing one of the things that I see that's going on in the challenges I know I shouldn't be speaking but I'm take it two second is that that we got to get more people uh Young Folks motivated to be engaged and if we only do that by we show support for them thank you thank you how y'all doing hi uh good evening my name is jacine I'm a resident of West Orange and I'm a proud teacher and member of the Edison Middle School family um as a teacher of social studies and a trained historian I understand that language is complex and nuanced I often tell my students that as humans we will always be working to improve ourselves as communicators um if I was a perfect Communicator then we would all have perfect marriages and lives and it would be a wonderful world that doesn't exist um I'm still very happly with my partner um he's watching uh that being being true I am also aware of how easily language is weaponized to hurt and harm and allow hatred to exist as I also tell my students where hatred is allowed to exist violence will soon follow this conflict is many years old but it does not stop us from having the empathy necessary to create a different narrative today while the school board is not responsible for what happens on social media groups it does have the ability to make clear that hate failed speech an interest to harm or call for any type of assault let alone sexual assault against our SEC our student body will not be tolerated we see many posts from the school board speaking to the fact that the buildings in our community are physically safe that they are locked that we have wonderful security teams and guards that are so wonderfully trained and that they are but we have not seen any posts from the board or from the Greater Community of the school Community saying this type of behavior or language will not be tolerated that the video recording of students against their consent in a public space and posting calling for their unability inability to be employed as young adults we haven't seen anything against that yet and you know you cannot control the actions of adults but you can speak up against it the board is clearly aware of power that language has yes in our physical buildings but also in a larger social and emotional space that our students and our families and community members live within additionally many times students interest in political activities such as walking out or participating in political events um seem to have most recently been dismissed and dismantled with gratitude student Grace in a celebration of peaceful conversations but still a dismantling at the end of the day we don't provide alternatives to students to express themselves politically or personally we acknowledge that they have an interest to learn how to fight back against racism anti-Semitism sexism homophobia and outright discrimination but we need to do more to provide a space for this to occur it concerns me as a teacher and as a member of the West Orange Community we are obligated as members of those charged to protect our students to also protect their right to have a space to speak and the right to feel heard safely finally with lots of discussion about teacher preparation as it relates to academic achievement very much necessary no doubt related to the data uh there has not been sufficient conversation in empowering teachers to create spaces within school buildings and learning spaces where students can participate in conversations and developmentally appropriate movements and actions that meet the objective of preparing students to be fully functioning participants in a Democratic Society that allows students to connect with families the community and wonderful organizations that seek to achieve the same goals that we hold ourselves each year oftentimes these communications and conversations fall upon one particular department and reduces the greater party of District members whether it be teachers or administrators from their your time has expired thank you great history department is um hi so I'm Gonna Keep it very short and brief as short as I can because I didn't honestly come with anything prepared I wasn't planning on speaking today you start with just your name and what town do you live in U my name is Ria I live in West Orange I'm West Orange High School alum I graduated class of 2021 and let me just say you know I've been part of protests that took place at the school I've been part of walkouts I've been part of protests in support of gun control and jenzi for and jenzi for climate Justice um I've I've seen the wonderful things and I've been friends with people that have put together some of the most amazing protests um some of which have gone on to achieve even more I think it's I think it's quite a shame that all of a sudden and I think it's actually quite convenient for you all of a sudden to make this a matter of hate speech when you have had no when and I and listen I get it I understand you're not responsible for what the parents are doing but as but as um as an as a board of ed you guys have a responsibility to protect your students you guys don't you you guys can't be worrying about any about anyone regardless of what their affiliation with what their beliefs are regardless of if they parents your priority should be your students and there is absolutely no I can't even I'm I'm I'm struggling to find a reason why you guys are more worried about a bunch of kids putting together this this what you would consider to be a clumsy attempt than uneducated attempt at staging a protest because of their because of their use of the phrase from the river to the see Palestine will be free but you know and it just it just doesn't make any sense because do you guys genuinely believe that these students would go out of their way to call for a mass genocide of Jews do you guys genuinely believe that that they would knowingly call for that that doesn't make any sense I feel like put aside all of it it really does not it doesn't make any it it doesn't make any sense to me how you guys are more worried about about possible hate speech that might have made some parents have said but you're not worried about your kids that are that are Poss that are at risk for being docked on social media by those same adults again regard and I again I I get it you guys have responsibility to be neutral about the situation even though you guys have made it very clear that you're not technically neutral about the situation because if you were you would give that energy to both you would give that energy to both you would give that energy to both the Middle Eastern families that are at risk for their children attending these schools you would give that energy to the families in Gaza that are being separated and that are being terrorized in addition to giving your also also heartfelt support for the Israeli families that both live in your town and live in Israel but you guys are not neutral if you guys are truly neutral you would give that energy to both sides and you guys have not done that but put all of that aside put all of that aside you guys with all du respect you need to get it together and protect your students there's no reason that this has to happen in 2023 I'm again I know that must have sounded sloppy again I didn't come with anything prepared but this is getting a little ridiculous honestly seriously and being very blunt blunt right now there's no reason that this conversation even has to be had thank this shouldn't even have to be problem your time has expired thank you um my name is Alex I am am a junior here at West Orange High School um so as those of you who know me personally um will already know I just transferred here in September um coming out of a nearby private school and I have watched this happen before I have watched student protests be shut down because of disagreement with Administration I am coming out of a school where I could not protest for my rights as a queer person because it threatened my ability to attend the school I was going to I have just transferred into West Orange Public Schools um my family has been very involved in the school I have a sibling in this District I went to elementary school here um to come here and Fa the same issues that I was facing at a school that refused my return for reasons that we're not going to get into is disgusting and shocking to me and I refuse to sit here and be silent while it happens a second time because unlike last time I am now in a situation where I can advocate for myself and I have a community that I can call on to support me because unlike in a private private Academy there is a Board of Ed and if that board of ed is not properly supporting its students and if it is refusing its students rights to protest and refusing its students a proper education on how to be a productive citizen in our democracy there is a community that is going to stand behind me and so I am here to say that while you probably already know it the community support coming out here tonight has been absolutely vital and to say to the board that we are not going to be silent about this thank you good evening everyone my name is Ahmad Sewell I am a Muslim Palestinian American I'm also a teacher here at West Orange High School I'm here to bring light um to the board of ed on the consequences of what was said um during the last meeting after the attack on October 7th I as a Palestinian already felt sense of fear a sense of worry on the backlash that would happen um and after hearing what happened during the meeting I cannot express how isolated I felt after that was said especially being that the board are the people that I look to for support um when things like that happen um and there have been people that have supported me and I'm very thankful that the teachers here and the superintendent superintendent Moore thank you so much and all the other teachers that have supported me through this um it's probably the only thing that made this doable and I feel I can't even imagine what the students feel that go through this as a student who um went to school post 911 and endured and had to live through that fear of what would happen and seeing that I still feel this sense of fear as a teacher I just want you guys to acknowledge that things you say cause a lot more damage than you might believe it to be especially when you identify one side as good and the other side is evil they they do matter so the only thing I wanted to come up here and say is that as a teacher at West Orange High School I I do have Hope and Faith in our town this is a beautiful diverse and strong town that has all when I was hired here the first thing they told me is that West Orange is a family and I have seen that sense of family I just hope that we can revive that sense and watch the things that we say especially thinking about the people that it can harm because it has already harmed and for that I I I I I really hope that we can do better not for just for the teachers like people like the teachers can endure it I pray for the students and I worry about them thank you for your hi my name is Jessica Herold I have a second grader and a third grader and I'm the chair of the diversity council at St Cloud alementary so the words that I speak here tonight are my as I have pointed out at previous board ofed meeting asking for black lives matter at school week and other issues of diversity to be considered we are the only such organization of parents in the district we've been listening to our community to our elementary school and they are hurting we are so aware of the need to name study understand and learn more about our diversity and directly face the trauma that our kids are facing and processing daily so my question is to you simple what are we going to do what is next you have heard so much passion tonight from varieties of perspectives what are we and you going to take what more do you need to learn I've spent a whole lot of time in the past month listening and listening to podcast and watching and hearing because I didn't know enough so I asked what are we going to do to support our teachers our families and our kids to actively engage in respectful educational dialogue there's so much tension there's so much hurt and there's so much passion I'm looking to to you neutral does not mean inactive neutral does not mean ignoring it does not mean that we cannot State reality and face history I implore you to create an actual plan to address this and other issues of diversity at all grade levels our kindergartner need it too there's a connection between those scores and issues like this students who don't feel safe Oren cannot learn so I ask what are you the leaders of our students and our teachers and our community going to do to be a board of education we're looking for Action thank you hi my name is Nadia TWA I'm a graduate of 2018 and I would like to start this off by saying I saw this on social media and it was very interesting because in my last two years at this school we had organized three walkouts protests stins and we had no issues whatsoever and the fact that you did bar these students from having this walk out under the guise of its hate speech when when I was in school we had a walk out because of hate speech because a student made a joke said a couple things that were very racist and yet he was suspended not for what he said but because they feared his safety from us so to see this Behavior continue from the school board from Administration is disgusting and I would like to ask you if this walk out was organized in support of Israel would we be here now no no and like the pre a previous speaker mentioned look at your turnout all I see are Palestinian Flags that's all I see why is that because and I will make it a point to not say the Jewish Community but the zionis community in this town knows that they will be advocated for no matter what and I don't know which one of the board members had said that this walk out was misguided oh Mr Brian rock you had said that this walkout was misguided and why would you say that would you call any walk out sittings throughout history that students LED misguided would you call the greensbor walk out misguide the sit in misguided no Mr Moore you were the you were the principal of this school when I was here would you call any of our walkouts sit in protests misguided no I will answer for you no so and also I would like to add these students have I I graduated from this school I went to I went to Westar District my whole life I the and I can I can strongly say that these students have learned have learned more about this conflict outside of this school than they have inside this school so for you to sit in my face and say that it is misguided is a lie because they don't learn here ma'am your time has expired thank you well I would just like one more thing I would like to say you can mute my mic if you want I would like to good evening I'm Stephan Leone Jones I'm a resid a resident of West Orange parent of three children sociologist I'm going to start just by requesting that Mr ier you say off your phone during my comments all the board members the superintendent the students have had the respect that people here not to be scrolling on social media or whatever it is that you're doing everybody's tired but they're focused on their Community I'm asking you to do the same for my comments and for the remaining I'm here tonight to express my concern over the reductionist tropes employed by board member Robert Ur in describing the tragedies that have occurred and are occurring in Palestine and Israel as a battle between good guys and bad guys with the good guys having our support these generalizations are not only grossly inaccurate they're dehumanizing instead a dangerous precedent for how board members are to carry and express themselves these conversations require more honesty more care more concern and much less islamophobia than you gave it in that moment Mr ier I'm asking the board to formally reprimand Mr ier for this carless dangerous categorization I'm here tonight to stand in solidarity with the students of West Orange their right to protest and their right to freedom of speech the censoring of our students and intimidation tactics used to silence them is anti-democratic and abuse of the district's Authority and a disregard of our moral obligation to stand up for our students to hold space for our students who are in mour and enduring a collective trauma and in this time they are abandoned by their faculty the district's attention to speaking about the trauma from the from the Hamas attack but not speaking up about the death of Palestinian civilians says a lot and has an impact on students and their mental health they're feeling a purpose and feeling protected if the Western World and in turn West Orange is turning their back on Palestinians or those that pray like them look like them how are these students supposed to feel supported finally I'm here to call on our board superintendent Moore and principal Guerrero to protect our students from this community Community our students are being bullied in the township social media pages I know you've seen it the harassment includes threats of doxing minors adults in this Township so threatened by The Bravery of our students going online to intimidate bully and harass and yet the messaging that comes from the district focuses on correcting the misinformation I call on the board and superintendent to acknowledge these illegal violations condemn them and share the measures that you will take to protect our students thank you hi my name is nlet bad I am a former resident of West Orange I graduated West Orange High School in 2007 I'm an educator and I'm the founder of teacher teaching W Muslim when we learned that students were being shut down because of the protest that they were trying to carry out we were outraged and not only were we outraged at y'all shutting them down but you we were also outraged at the wild comments that were made that everybody else already referenced online about these students and what would happen to them and the threats that would happen to them if they actually carried out this protest and instead of focusing on that Mr Moore and and Mr Guerrero the the principal of West Orange High School y'all focused on a word choice of ours that the parents stormed the school when that is figurative language for what happen when parents are calling for the discipline of students who are exercising their free speech as they should be able to I want to read to you a comment another comment that has not been made public and posted yet from the Facebook group so word is that one of you and I quote so word is that one one of you little pricks is screenshotting comments here and feeding them to a pro Hames group at West Orange High School do you think that is supposed to scare us LOL we have eyes there too and we'll find out who it is then we'll have some fun who are their eyes here and why do they feel so confident that they're going to be able to carry out any attack against these students with no repercussions I don't know about you but to me that's parents and and adults storming this school online thank you my name is Natan I live in West Orange I'm speaking even though much of what I have to say is going to Echo what's been said because I want to be another white Jewish West Orange resident that is in solidarity with a student students and the people who are here tonight I'm speaking because I am deeply concerned about the health well-being physical and emotional safety of all students particularly at this time the student organizers of the recent peaceful protest that they were pressured to postpone in addition to concerns about the violation of students First Amendment rights I am concerned that student organizers are at risk due to the harassment threats and doxing from adults in West Orange Community I question what the Board of Education and school leadership are doing to IGN knowledge that this is happening and protect the students from illegal behaviors students are protected by New Jersey statutes and I'm calling for you to acknowledge that what adults in our community are doing is illegal and harmful and to take measures to prevent adults from targeting young people at West Orange High School furthermore if the board is concerned about students making statements to the public that can be hurtful and divisive the board should also be very concerned about a board member statements that further divide the community if you are a board member with with the responsibility of maintaining the public trust yet used divisive and incendiary language your statements compromise the entire board that should be grounds for reprimand or censure especially if not a board approved statement I ask that you not lose sight of your main constituency which includes all students organizing in solidarity with Palestine as one of my neighbors as one of my neighbors who couldn't be here tonight shared the school censorship lack of acknowledgement islamophobia and doxing harassment of students and violent racism and bullying from the same adults who claimed that the walk out was too inflammatory has left the students and other West Orange families feeling completely isolated and abandoned by the administration a Palestinian child is killed every 10 minutes according to the World Health Organization we need to have empathy for and make space for all of the mourning and pain that the young people of West Orange are feeling how long do I have uh three minutes thank you so much uh my name is Rabbi Yoni Glatt I am a local resident of BL orange I'm a board member of congregation or Torah and I teach at many different synagogues in the area I just found out this was happening there's other events tonight to address why there's not such a strong Jewish presence here there's a lot going on tomorrow there's a major rally in DC early in the morning I I've been very excuse me okay I'm just saying there's no reason to Heckle I was very polite didn't huckle anybody else okay very few compared to the population that we have please let me have my time I'm being heckled right first off for any of the hate speech and the attacks on any of the students that is reprehensible and that should be condemned and you should do something about that either way that should not be happening at the same time I personally lost two separate family members in two separate terrorist attempts P yes just two right yes will the audience please remain calm while he finishes his statement I'm going to try to be polite and be respectful I've been polite and respectful listen to everybody else I heard seven people before me I'm trying to be kind and this is why sir if you'll address the board yes please thank you we do want peace Israel does want peace I'm speaking for fine the Jewish people we want to live in peace we don't want to have to walk down streets too many people are doing this now afraid to show that they're Jewish when you he when we hear the words from the river to the Sea Palestine will be free that is terrifying to many Jews to many of them they feel that is a call for violence that is a call supporting Hamas to hear that from students is incredibly scary my daughter who's a teenage girl is terrified home now crying afraid to go out because of the surge of anti-Semitism which you know is happening and if you're going to support it by helping people support Hamas you're then complicit in spreading anti-Semitism do you condemn Hamas right now I will I will con I'm I'm trying to be calm and I'm willing to have I am willing to have a calm rational conversation a peaceful conversation all you want is violent if you want violence if you want death got it got it sorry Mr Rabbi but your time is expired we we please see him out name is Marie and I am a resident of hold on one second as the right the [Music] uh as the presiding officer I'm going to ask that everyone that's talking over there is to do we know we all have differing opinions we have to learn how to be able to have a conversation no matter how charged it is in the Democracy that we live in and still be able to make things happen as an educator this breaks my heart to see my community hurt in this way I feel impacted by it in a way that I I don't even know or have the words to explain but I know as a community and as a district is our responsibility to teach our students and exemplify what it looks like to be able to talk about difficult things speak to our trauma heal in the process and still find a way to move forward that is what our board is here to do that is what Educators do every day when they wake up and decide to come in and continue to create a Democratic Society for all of us to be able to live together and discuss the things that hurt all of us I feel as a community this is tearing us apart but in a way it can bring us together if we are able to find a way to be able to incorporate in our curriculum in the plans that we have uh to be able to discuss these things have a forum for our students to be able to talk about these things peacefully as adults we have to be able to demonstrate to our children how we have these conversations even when it's painful we won't get anywhere if we continue to fight one another I implore us as West Orange to stand together and be that be a community we can overcome this I mean I know this is something that's been going on since the beginning of time we can't figure it out in a day everyone we can't we're all in pain but we can talk about it and trying to find a way to do better for our children thank you thank you evening Larry Ryan Mr orange uh I'm here actually I wanted to say a few things sitting back and been sitting back here for a little while and I know that the board has I've seen over the last month or so has really been there for the community the words that I think are so clear I and I think that the board has been there and I will spe specifically talk about uh Mr Moore he has been there I think for everybody the words are are are solid and clear and honest and sincere to say we want a great Community we don't want a community that's fighting male I moved to this community 30 years ago I love this community I love everything about the community I love the diversity of the community I love being part of the community I've been involved in everything in this community that I could possibly think of I hate saying what's going on that people are not loving each other and caring for each other and that's really what we're all about and that's what we need to be doing so I know that one of the things that Mr Moore had sent me I ashy had talked to him personally about was trying to get some more education because I think we need to sit with each other and educate each other and spend time with we have all come from different cultures and we come from different places and it's important that we actually talk to each other and see each other and spend time with each other and and cherish I use the word cherish each other's culture and cherish each other's responsibilities of life and how we can all work together so I know that there's a lot of discussion about you know good things and bad things and and how to do things differently I think we need to work as a team I think we just need to work as a team because we love West Orange we love the people about West Orange we love being here I I I hate I really I hate I'm sorry I repeated myself I hate seeing what's happening that we're not loving each other that's the reason we came here so we need to spend the time to figure out how to love each other how to care for each other how to cherish each other and I really think that um you know principal Guerrera and and and really and and superintendent Moore have are really on the right path to give us good education to give us good processes to give us good Pro good ways of educating each other and bring us together not standing and and really um having protests but really sitting at the table with each other I would love to be sitting at the table with everybody having a conversation about what we're all about that's what life's about we we should bring what we bring to the table we should bring what we care about each other to the table so my recommendation is is as we go forward we find the opportunity that that Mr Moore and principal G have started and have found a way to sit at the table together and educate each other and maybe we also bring in some other Educators that can help us learn about cultures because that's what it's all about so I I just want to say I'm glad to participate in any kind of discussion to help us make this go further because it's really critical that we feel good to be together as one Community with all the diversities that we cherish and we spend the time doing it together thank you Lear right is there anyone else for public comment seeing none uh thank you all for those heartfelt comments and concerns um we we hear what you're saying I will look to Mr Mo to see if he has any specific responses at this time before we move on to resolutions I'd like to uh just uh clear a few things first we are traditionally a school that allows protests and we didn't stifle the students from protesting or stopping them if you look at the wording it said postpone I would like to address that keeping the students safe number one is the first priority I will tell you when and by the way every post we spoke with West Orange PD they followed through they look things up and they've helped I also employ parents I am not around on a weekends and at nights when you see po you can call West Orange PD I spoke to him specifically about those post we spoke about it with adults we do cannot and do not stop kids from their constitutional writing as a tradition we haven't what we did do though is we talked about what happened was when um I wasn't here during the time as I was driving home I heard about the post which had the words that were inflammatory but our students were being threatened by outside groups if they were to walk out and protest so we called the students to get outside groups and adults where and also we had to prepare ourselves to protect the students so if they walked out onto the football field or other areas in which they would go we needed to have enough just not just security guards but maybe police officers just in case they may need it secondly when people heard about it and I know people are saying they stormed people stormed the door and so forth that did not happen we walked outside and met anyone that came on our property and told them they have to leave because you're not allowed to come on the property and we protected our students by keeping them outside the building if the way that anyone would get into the building and by the way it was the Breezeway is because some they followed someone that was walking in behind so I don't want misrepresentation nor do I want to villainize anyone that didn't do something in that [Music] matter last I started in the beginning from the start with a speech that told the community and talked about that the issue in when we first started and Hamas and all of that when we first first started with with the uh attack and so forth I said we at the school are prepared to take care of our um students of Palestinian descent Israeli descent Muslim descent back any on all backgrounds as we all are going to hurt as we all have friends and family that have lost lives in the region and we care for all I spoke about the scope as a superintendent and I'm not a president or thing I care about all my students that rep that are represented here from all different backgrounds and I want to make sure that they have a safe secure place and know that they are loved and welcomed here I always preach an inclusive and nurturing environment West Orange's strength is entrenched in its diversity there are many truths there are many hurtful feelings and emotions and I do not take those lightly I do hear you and understand but understand I have love for my Palestinian students 110% and they have rights and I did not uh nor did principal Guerrero deny it we spoke to the students because of safety and we used the word postpone and delayed that they would have an opportunity to look at that safety and see what kind of which way they would want to go with that campaign we've always done protests it's not that we stopped or silenced anyone but you speak about safety and adults outside in the community that is not easy to control that goes to the police because adults outside community that don't have anything to do with our kids I have faculty of diversity my my uh my um Arabic faculty fa my Jewish faculty my students I care for all their safety and I do not wish for people outside of West Orange to impede on that as I see those posts and those threats I myself have been given the same threats and post because of my um statement where I said that I would as things unfold and as things go on I will have counseling and and um and designated areas where students can go or counseling actually where students can leave class and deal with what's going on and I asked our students to be empathetic kind accepting and understand that lives are lost and it's humanity and war is the thought of War and the thought of losing lives and what my families my Palestinian Families my my Jewish families have to go through my my families of all different backgrounds not just them the friends they made in West Orange the people they've encountered it all matters I push I understand there needs to be change but I push that change to be productive and peaceful because I think the only way to achieve any change or people to listen is to be productive and peaceful and that's what I've asked of our entire School Community I haven't silenced anyone or shut them down but I asked them to think about how you want to go about that campaign how you want to do but also allow us to prepare safely for you I can and have make sure that we are making sure that all students are safe throughout any protest or any event strong in my position as I represent a diverse Community I will not and I represent and as I I feel my responsibility is to protect the kids yes we do call the police yes we do with post but I ask you too as parents and community members not only do we just condemn it but help us call the police too if they're home on the weekends if they're home at night it is easy to say yeah it's your responsibility you're right but I have a family and kids and I'm not always looking online that's a little unfair sometimes we have to do it as a collective and as a collective we can productive change and unity as well so I'm sorry to be emotional but I love this community and uh I saw some of my former students and I know they thought hey you sounds some hey you did and uh no just like you're used to students are allowed to protest it's a constitutional right I can't stop that I just want want to make things safe because I cannot control what the adults outside of the school is doing reality wise other than reporting it to the police and making sure ma'am the time for public comment is over thank you no ma'am this is not a back and forth at this point the the board has business to conduct so when Mr Moore is done with his statement we're going to move on to business thank you all right so I sincerely speak to you all of course yeah as I thank you very much I appreciate you anything else Mr Mo no thank you all right thank you Mr Moore uh like I mentioned we have business to attend to as a board so we're going to move on to our resolutions uh you all welcome to remain for the really exciting part of tonight's board meeting all right uh the first item on the list is the Personnel section may I have a motion to approve the Personnel items A1 through A7 I think I heard a motion from Miss tuny Cliff is there a second second thank you Mr Stevenson I want to take a moment to congratulate the following retirees Albert alustin a mathematics teacher at Roosevelt Middle School for his 34 years of service Stella gemus from academic support a Gregory Elementary for her 21 years of service Ramone Perez a maintenance worker at central office for his 17.5 years of service and Patricia stefanelli a lunch aid from Redwood Elementary for her 22.5 years of service thank you all for your service to the Western orange students and our school community and welcome to the club where every day is Saturday uh is there any other discussion on Personnel items tli do you want to say something about the contract in this item oh yes thank you no I thought you were just going to encourage us to vote Yes on the contract oh sorry yes uh so we do we do just want to uh say we worked very hard on this uh contract with the waa and I encourage all of my fellow board members to uh vote Yes on this as uh we feel it's a fair uh an equitable contract for both of us thank you thank you Miss ton Cliff is there any other comment on Personnel items nope hearing none Miss Flowers would you please take the roll call Mr eer yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss T Cliff yes president Rock yes thank you thank you and congratulations to the waa on their contract and thank you again to Miss T cliff and Mr Stevenson for your hard work on the negotiations committee uh next may I have a motion to approve the curriculum and instruction items B1 through B7 so moved thank you Mr Stevenson I'll second thank you Miss tun Cliffe uh is there any discussion hearing none Miss Flowers please take the roll call Mr ifer yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss ton Cliffe yes president Rock yes thank you all right next may I have a motion to approve the finance items c special services items a 1-4 and business office items B one through 12 so move thank you Mr Stevenson I'll second thank you Miss tun Cliffe uh Miss wart is not here to talk about the um donations to the district actually I'd like to at least uh say because one of them is my donation um but I'd also like to First acknowledge Miss Whit Wiig uh from East Orange nonprofit uh this is a she's donating 16 student desks at an estimated value of $1,200 to Liberty Middle School so thank you so much for your generosity to the school board we really appreciate it and I also wanted to talk about um I'm donating seven of these books one for each of our elementary schools this is a wonderful book called on the line it just came out by Jennifer Jones who is a resident here um there's a little picture of her on the back she was the first African-American Rockette and she's a friend of mine we went to um middle school and high school together so um I'm really excited and I'm she was sweet enough to meet with me and to provide signed copies for all of our elementary schools um and this is a great little book and I encourage you all to uh take it out when it gets to the library um it's also available on Amazon but um at a time when so many Board of educations are pulling books um about people of color off of their shelves um it really makes me happy to know that our collections here in West Orange continue in the strong tradition of having diverse collections in all of our libraries a number of years ago we were awarded that we had one of the most diverse collections here in West Orange so I'm happy to contribute to our elementary schools and um enjoy the the wonderful book on the line by Jennifer Jones thanks so much thank you for that Miss T clip uh is there any other discussion on the business items uh president Ro I just want to again uh acknowledge Miss ton Cliff's donation to the district seven books of the West Orange resident again it is important as we uh celebrate Publications by uh authors of color and that we have not encountered some of the challenges that other communities have with respect to resp Restraint of uh Publications in our libraries so thank you Miss ton for that acknowledgement thank you thank you all right hearing no other discussion Miss Flowers would you please take the role Mr ifar here Mr Stevenson yes Miss Tony Cliff yes president Rock yes thank you all right next may I have a motion to approve reports items D1 through three so move thank you Mr Stevenson I'll second thank you Miss tun Cliffe is there any discussion no hearing none Miss flowers please take the role Mr ifer yes Mr Stevenson yes Miss tun Cliff yes president Rock yes thank you all right thank you very much to all of my board colleagues for the work on resolutions uh next up we have itions and hearings of citizens for any agenda or non-agenda item that you may wish to discuss you will have 3 minutes to speak please approach the podium at this time and state your name and address for the record Dr calani that's test there we go Dr calani uh yeah I'm where am I 39 no that's why I used to live seven Glen in place uh there's three things I wanted to bring up um one is um uh on the earlier report relating to math and science uh I wanted to um uh suggest that there's something that's called ethn maath I don't know if you know of that but um it's something I'm been trying to push at the college and I think that that though that ethn maath was something that would benefit greatly uh the students uh because what it does it takes in consideration uh culture and it in in integrates culture in math Ma matics and so then that gives another kind of way of of thinking about it and and help students to connect to it more because math one of the reasons that we have math aversions is that students don't connect to it um the other one is I want to should have did this earlier but invite everybody to the health and wellness Expos is going on at Essence County College um uh the school district sent out a a email to everybody that's going to be W this Wednesday um so we hope that we can get some folks here to come to the health and wellness Expo it's free and open to the public it's all day so we have we have about 4 or 500 high school students coming from around the Essex County um I don't know it's probably too late for you guys to have a bus to come at this point but uh you know it' be great if you guys have brought students to many functions before uh so this if not this one we have others that'll be coming up and uh the other thing was that um uh just in terms of education and even the books that you're talking about so many libraries now are getting rid of books right so that they're we're in fact as count because we're in the process they have about 300,000 books they're getting ready to get rid of uh because they're revamping the library and they're making all these book libraries digital and so my question to you all here is uh where what place uh I've held a couple of workshops on artificial intelligence and education and what place are you using to bring uh to the students artificial intelligence because they themselves are are already addressing these issues and I think that uh we've got to think about uh artificial intelligence not in some way that we're running from it but how do we integrate it into it so that it's not just about uh that we as educators are saying you know you can't use it they're going to use it uh and so how do we help to educate them to use it in ways that are best and to be at The Cutting Edge of it so that they are because there there the saying what we had the workshop and my time is almost up was that there's going to be 955 million jobs in AI is going to l lose people 85 million jobs but where is West Orange going to be in getting some of the getting access to some of those jobs and I think we need to think about that and be proactive about it thank you I'll just say that M Moore was just talking to us about Ai and the desire to get some PD in for our staff so if you have any suggestions you might want to talk to him or talk to Mr Mendes offline and I'm sure they would be appreciate any guidance suggestions you can give sure sure I mean I'd be glad to do a workshop for that hello uh my name is Julie fry I live in West Orange my have two kids at St Cloud um I actually came to talk about the state assessment and I'm sorry that Mr Mendes has already left but um I will hope that my comments carry over to her um so I wanted to say you know Mr Mr St I think you you had a point you started when you talked about the disparity the disparity the the differences between the results for Black and Latino students the disaggregated data and also for E economically disadvantaged students for multilingual Learners all that is very true and important what I want to push back up back a little bit on and I and I know you had good intentions here but when it I don't think the issue is the parents I think that the disparity comes from the fact that uh the economically advantaged students um get more opportunities outside of the district um than our other students do and that the district has to find way find ways through its curriculum and instruction to make up for that difference that economically disadvantaged students are also being failed in many ways by our District's particularly balanced literacy curriculum but they get tutoring they go to Kuman they go to expensive camps they get enrichment um that you know a lot of students in this District don't have the chance to get and this has come out a lot um and I've written to you guys about this issue with balanced literacy versus structured l literacy which is what I hope that we move to but a lot of the research has come out and shown that all students suffer from every uh demographic group under uh balanced literacy but the difference is that economically managed students are able to make up for that Difference by getting the help outside right so that's where the problem lies but we can fix this with quality instruction for all students including not just focusing on foundational skills which which I'm happy to hear that the district is now doing but also focusing on the other end of that which is building background knowledge for our students giving them that content knowledge that they don't get um when they don't have again those same opportunities um that academically dispan students don't have um there's this famous study called the baseball study where it took these groups of students um some of them were good readers who knew a lot about baseball some of them were good readers who didn't know a lot about BAS and the other group was poor readers who knew a lot about baseball and in this study it's the famous study from the ' 80s been replicated many times um the students who were good readers and did and knew about a lot about baseball did the best of course but the second best group was students who were poor readers but knew a lot about baseball because that's how important background knowledge is to reading um and this and the question is can schools make up for that Gap with their curriculum they can but the way that our ccum is set up is with a very low focus on social studies on history on science at the elementary school level it has to start there and build its way up you're seeing okay say what you're seeing at the sixth to nth grade level in terms of our drop in literacy scores has to do with that lack of build of background starting from at the beginning if you have any other questions and suggestions I encourage you to send them to Mr Mendes thank you okay thanks all right uh thank you very much Mr for Mr Stevenson let's continue it offline if you don't mind well I just wanted to respond very quickly to miss Fry's comment I I didn't blame fence Miss fry what I said was uh that parents should be incorporated Partners In The Learning of their children I wasn't attempting to say that parents were the cause of their uh students not being proficient in a district our district it's 38% students who uh are below the poverty line but the number of uh African-American and black students and Hispanic and Latino students exceed that number so the majority of our students do not live in poverty and so to the the the inference that um somehow another that the vast majority more than more than the students who don't live in poverty are also not proficient right so you have a just not simply those students who uh may be living in poverty so I think with respect to those numbers uh they don't line up as you as you articulated them there and then lastly as Mr Rock said I think to talked to Mr Mendes offline about uh the curriculum I I will I will agree with you uh on on the face prap fascia that the elementary school curriculum particularly the ELA curriculum uh has some gaps that I think that as Mr Mendes alluded to in her report that they're working through through their Ela committee and as I also referenced I commend the superintendent for making uh academic achievement first and for first and foremost in his objectives as the leader of the district so thank you Mr Stevenson all right and thank you very much everyone for attending our next regular board meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on December 18th 2023 this meeting will be held in the West Orange High School library media center we will not be going into executive session after the close of this meeting there will be no further business discussed and no additional action will be taken may I have a motion to adjourn so moved thank you uh moved by Miss tun Cliffe seconded by Mr Stevenson all in favor I thank you all for joining us tonight the meeting is adjourned we wish you a good night