##VIDEO ID:YAjwZa4CA_c## please stand for the flag slute States the New Jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the Cedar Grove board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be advertised by having the date time and place thereof posted on bulletin boards in the district published and or transmitted to the Verona CED Grove times and the Star Ledger newspapers tap into online news filed with the Township Clerk and posted on the district website can I have a roll call please here here here here here good evening everybody all right so we're g to move to um public common on agenda items only see that I there's nobody here for that that I move to close that portion and move on to our committee reports um wait a minute we're going to go out of order a little bit let's go right into our um presentations but before that we're going to start with our student Representatives good evening ladies why don't you introduce yourself first so that the community that are watching at home so hi everyone my name is Gabriella detia and my my name is AA otano and we're the co-presidents for the cedar gr High School all school council for the upcoming school year we have so many plans and ideas for the upcoming months and we can't wait to see what we can accomplish this year so so far we've had multiple events at our school promoting school spirit we had our fall pep rally on September 13th where we recognized our SP our fall sports teams and all of their accomplishments so far for their Seasons leading up to this pep rally we had our very first spirit week of the year so from Monday to Friday leading up to the pep rally ghs students participated in dressing up to show off all their school spirit we were also successful in planning and holding a tailgate before the Friday Night Football game where kids were able to attend and were welcome with Rita's Ice Cream balloon animals airbrush tattoos and many games and for the month of October we plan on helping with the elementary school's trick-or trunk we are so happy with the events we've held so far and hope that this year we can keep up the school spirit and increase involvement with our within our school thank you thank you ladies and welcome yes we appreciate um so going forward it'll always be the same thing you are more than welcome to stay but please don't feel obligated I'm sure you have a lot of homework thank you so much okay so we're going to move on to um our presentations tonight and then we'll Circle back for um committee reports so our first presentation tonight we have the girl softball team our coach thank you yep perfect all right um I'm here to Pro propose a uh spring training trip for softball 2025 this will be my fifth time attending as um head coach my 10th season here um so this is a trip that we usually do we're we're used to it um it's very beneficial for our our program as you know in March it's cold um you don't get a lot of games in and even more importantly uh the team bonding and the chemistry that builds um just within the girls I I think it's really a a fun trip um but in this packet if you go through it um we plan to leave on the 20th of March we'll stay five nights um return March 25th I think March 20th is a half day so we missing about a total of four days of school um I'm very strict with um you know students with their homework we have study hall hours um coach Eddie who is on my staff he's a Bloomfield uh teacher so he kind of handles all that for me so once we we're done with games we we meet in the um like a common area in the hotel we do a sludy whole hour get our homework done um and I kind of stress that to the girls that if that's not done um you know that reflects my program the school um I haven't had any issues with that so um the team that I have now they're they're really you know focused we we are striving to uh break a uh state record of three state championships in a row it's never been done so we're hoping to do that um we're really focused um and that that's really it we we uh I have 25 girls attending um and only one two three four yeah four new girls on the team so the rest have we've done this trip so they they know what what I'm about I'm I'm I'm pretty strict so they kind of don't do anything while we're there we um we try to go out to dinner while if we can playing 10 games um last year was pretty tough we had to wake up every day at 5:00 a.m. and go play so they're kind of exhausted there's not much you know they go by the pool but it's really to go down there play ball you know do your homework come back team bonding and and all that good stuff but if you really go through these packets it's kind of um what we would do we don't have a schedule yet we we kind of get that in January but um it's an example of what our days would look like any questions thank you thank you so much good all right thanks guys appreciate that thank you you may good evening Community um this evening I'm going to be presenting on our njsla results as as well as our district goals for not only this upcoming year but two you'll see two of the gos proposing are actually multi-year goals as well however before we get to the goals I thought it was first important to take a look at our overall student over the last couple of years excuse me Peter we're gonna move so we can so for those that are who are here in the audience or maybe watching at home this first slide is different than slides you would have seen in the past however I want to reassure reassure everyone in the community that the analysis you're used to seeing at a grade level um breakdown is included in a link at the end of this presentation so everything I'm going to share with you with you this evening will be on our website as of the end of the day tomorrow so you'll have full access to so let me first Orient you all to this slide you're looking at of student achievement um over a two-year period the first two columns if you're looking at the slide on your left you'll first see the 23 year and then 24 is the most recent Academic Year and CG obviously is standing for Cedar growth now at this time in the school year the most available data we have to compare our performance to is just state level data after the New Year we do have another layer of access to get more specific dat to do comparisons of our achievements to other districts but that this time in the school year all the data we have access to is state level data now the reason I want I think it's important to look at state level data it's from the perspective of we should to be very candid be outperforming the state at all levels uh based on our demographics uh based on our overall structure and Community um we should always be significant State data what I'm going to be presenting to you tonight though demonstrates that there are some areas where we are outperforming state level achievement but there are also other areas where we haven't where we've been on bar with the state so that tells us very helpful information as Educators about where do we focus our priorities and our planning and our new Investments going into the next two or three school years um so it's helpful to use this data to do analysis at a high level and then I will speak to the community about we're going to be doing at the school and classroom level that gets even more specific to help our teachers support our students to achieve at the highest levels this first slide I'll come back to it now is Ela achievement over the last two years let me explain the Yellow Boxes and why you see a vertical approach by having them displayed that way we're essentially providing the communion with a cohort analysis at a very high level so for example grade 3 79 and 23 well that grade three grade four and so if you look down in a diagonal manner you see 78 that's the achievement of those same cohort of students over a Year's period so you see some consistency there 79 78 what I get excited about though is if I allow my eyes to keep going across to the right and you then see the comparison between CG versus D so that's plus 34 that's the type of numbers we want to see more and more in those columns we should be in state level achievement especially the farther we get from those pandemic years so as you then go down in the grade 34 all the way through nine you can see that cohort analysis however before I go to the next slide I'd like to bring your attention to the far right and the lower part of this slide at a very high level you'll notice the gap between State an your Grove starts to shrink and it's just a very general level the numbers are not quite as high the Point even where you have an area where the state outperformed Us in eth grade last year in ela by four points or six points I'm sorry we need to know that we need to take a look at that and study that and before this presentation's over this evening I'm going to give you an example of how we're going to analyze that and study those numbers so that we can make the necessary improvements going forward so this was Ela achievement over the last two years I'm now going to Pivot to Ma same general approach to how the data is being displayed there are some differences as we get into e8th grade algebra and geometry that I'll speak to but again just want to orient you to you see the cohort analysis starting at grade three again 6774 that's what we want to see some good things right um you see another cohort analysis there from fifth grade to 6 59 53 we prefer that be reversed obviously and grade 4 72 to 62 again I'm going to ask you to take your eyes to the far right of the chart you'll see the numbers are generally higher in the lower grades and they're generally lower in the higher grades that's just a very high level takeaway of analysis let me talk about 8th grade and where we see algebra and geometry so let me start with algebra because we do have students in 8th grade taking algebra as well as students in ninth grade taking alge alra it's two different groups of students and then we also have students in eighth grade not taking algebra so that's why you see the breakdown the way it is now the 68 and 91 let's start with the success the good news the 68 and the 91 number that those are our eighth graders who are taking algebra achieving at a very high level over two years 68 and 91 now the eighth grade math numbers are basically on par with State numbers across the state and to my earlier comments this evening we should be outperforming the state significantly so that's something we need to take a look at and then geometry is only given to n9th grade students and you can see where we are compared to the state slightly above the state but not to the degree that we would all aspire to be so this analysis and some deeper analysis very much inform the creation of our district goals before I get to the goals though let me just show you one other thing related to science achievement this also speaks to a need for new Investments and new resources the overall science achievement while it's only tested in three grade levels um isn't strong I'm just going to always try to be as direct and Canon with our community as I can um there's some underperformance here uh as you compare those State numbers to the other two slides that I showed you so there's really some need to address that and I do speak to that in our district goals this evening as well before I get to the goals one last slide I thought it was important for the community to see something that all of our teachers are familiar with and will become even more familiar with during our first professional development day uh in early October these are called evidence statements and what they do is they give us a breakdown of each item on the assessment that our students took and it tells us where we outperformed based on each question so we can then get down in the weeds and say okay this question represent present this standard and we outperform the state by 20 points we know we're teaching this really well however where it falls either at or below that blue line that's where we need to take a deeper analysis at what those questions are testing and what standards are testing and then think about our curriculum development and what we're prioritizing in terms of instruction so I'm excited to share with you our school leaders are already starting to look at these reports we have time set aside in our count and schedule to support our teachers as they do this analysis and this really is what drives student achievement the deeper we understand our standards and the getting our teachers in the position to have the best resources which I'm going to talk more about in just a moment so three District goals I'm going to present to you tonight the first district goal is one of two multi-year District goals the theme of this District goal is student growth and academic achievement there are several commitment in this goal the first relates to full implementation of an mtss system mtss stands for multi-tiered systems of support we need to be as aggressive as possible especially in our early grades with providing interventions for students who are potentially not achieving their full potential and there are ways to do that through ongoing data analysis benchmark assessments um throughout the school year that we have on our calendar and we are implementing we need to invest in new curricular resources so math clearly based on the data needs to be a priority and I'm proud to tell you this board our leadership team did a lot of work last spring into this summer to make sure when your students came back to school in September they were met with brand new math curricular resources grades K through algebra in our entire District that was months in the making preparing for September and I just want to acknowledge and appreciate the board for their support in that and acknowledge all of our teachers all of our leaders who really Embrace that challenge and I just want to also say the community please understand it's a multi-year kind of learning curve for Learning and using new resources um but our teachers that I've come across have just been super appreciative and super strength based in thinking about that this past couple of weeks the community should know our job been beded professional development provid has been in our classrooms meeting with our teachers and teaching our students about new ways to learn math so that math has been a clear priority um we also feel it's important that we focus on science more than we have in the past based on some of that achievement data one way that we plan to do that is to begin the process of launching a health care pathway at the high school by doing that that sets a higher bar at the top and allows us to plan backwards for that and think about what our science instruction needs to look like in grades four or five all the way through the middle school so that we have students excited to enroll in that pathway and then lastly some some other items I'll be following up on next month with you um we're going to continue to implement link it and Ed elastic in the district I mentioned the job eded professional development and then yes I know especially at the elementary school our teachers and I'm still getting to know so many of them but in the ones I've spoken to I know there's a appetite for potential new Ela resources so we are committing in this District goal to begin to investigate that this school year so that next September we hope to be able to make some of those investments in our classrooms as well and then we also need to start thinking um uh in a way thinking in matter of fact about policy that's the most appropriate for our community specific to artificial intelligence uh and that's a committee that we'll want to launch in the coming months and by the end of this school year my goal is to make sure we have new policies specific to artificial intelligence to give our teachers and our Educators appropriate guidance I'm going to go to District go two now the theme of District goal two is communication and public relations there's a lot of great things happening in our schools and it's in everyone's best interest for our families to know what those are and that's upon us as Educators to be communicating that out into the community and in today's world of social media um there are better resources that we can invest in to help us do that one of those would be a new website a mobile app so our parents are getting notifications on their phone about activities happening in the school um and being more informed about going on in our schools on a daily if not weekly basis and I think we can start to be more strategic about how we communicate happenings in the district through public relations that's very intentional um whether it's having hashtag movements for getting people excited about coming back to school um or it's upcoming events performances I know we're going to have some exciting performances in our schools this year and we should be building enthusiasm for those performances in our athletic events by having public relations stres in place so we feel like excellent communication is uh is a a simply the standard for high performing school districts and so we want to be very transparent with the community about this will be a priority for us going forward I do want to also call out it's mentioned there more details to come but it isn't the attention my intention that our Administration is hosting Community fors uh we haven't yet defined what that looks like and I plan to do that when I come back in a month and present an action plan to the community goal number three this is another multi-year goal which focuses on finance facilities and security um these are investments that we need to be making in our schools every day and every school year we need to be strategic in how we design our budget going forward uh in terms of making sure our resources are allocated to where the needs are the most and we do have an overcrowding situation at our end schools and we need to begin to do the rigorous planning it's going to take to address that over crowd explore all options and then begin to engage the community with great transparency about a plan and if that plan should include a referendum then really go out and educate our community about what's in that referendum and why we think it's super it's so critical to the success of our of our schools for generations to come um and so you'll hear much more about that in my action plan a month from now and then whether it's those Community forums whether it's other forums where we're engaging Community about with potential referendum we're going to be looking to have that conversation um and share as much information as we possibly can as quickly as we can with the full community I believe I have touched um on the main parts of District goal number three tomorrow when this we when this presentation is posted on our website this is a link you can go to if you want to do a deeper dive on the njsa data based on grade level and then in closing I always like to just reflect when talking about njsla data at the end of the day the most important data is sitting at your dining room table with you every night and the the needs of your child you know best as a parent and the best thing any parent in our community can do is to maintain an open honest dialogue with your classroom teacher um the data you give us is the data that matters the most and helps us inform their overall growth and it's only really through a partnership with all of you in the community that we can make sure all of our students are performing at the highest levels possible so with that I conclude my presentation and mad the president I'll throw it back to you thank you sure thank you Dr T appreciate that and I encourage uh the community to go on the website tomorrow and go to that link and uh do a deeper dive into our scores all right before we move on does anybody have any comments or anything regarding thank Dr T for an excellent presentation very informative no it's okay okay all right um all right I'm going to piggyback I'm going to do my report and then we'll go into um committees just because it it makes sense so as um Dr te spoke tonight about the district goals the board's been working working on their goals and our goals obviously will align with the district's goals um so I'm just going to read them out and then tonight and then they'll be posted on the website um tomorrow at some point tomorrow or in the coming days so we have three goals as well our first goal is student growth and academic performance um the goal specifically says to support and promote student growth and increase student performance levels on standardized assessments by ensuring ing the implementation of high quality educational experiences and programs our second goal refers to fiscally responsible budget decisions and referendum planning ensure fiscal responsibility and transparency and budget planning working towards establishing Financial stability while executing a referendum to address facility needs and then our third one will be communication uh to strengthen Community relationships through clear consistent and accessible communication so you can see that our board goals align directly with the district goals so I and look forward to uh continuing to work on them together um and the only other thing I wanted to say is just wanted to thank everybody um the board of course for their ongoing work um we put in a lot of uh hours outside of um sitting at these meetings and uh we I appreciate everybody's time and efforts I want to thank all the faculty the staff our families and our students for a wonderful School opening uh the feedback that I'm hearing in the community from the parents as well as from the faculty and staff and Administration has been very positive I think we had a really um smooth transition and opening and we really do appreciate the effort to put in Dr T and such a short notice so thank you and if I could just Echo that sen as well uh to all of our staff for such a smooth opening and and all the joy there's a lot of joy in our classrooms those first few weeks and we aim to maintain that thank you yes okay so now we're going to move into uh we do have some committee reports tonight um I attended several of them but I'm going to let my my friends report tonight so we're going to start with um we'll go right in order curriculum and instruction Mr pic thank you Mr Dora on September 10th Dr myself Miss Dora and also Jessica Patell the supervis director of special services um met with us and uh what a very very profound meeting one that enlightened us a great deal about the direction of the district in regard to some very important topics um several of the topics covered involve some of the settlements and uh court cases that that we involved in as well as um the status of our out of District placements and where we will be in in regards to those situations and um it was really a a very um informative meeting that helped put a lot of things in our perspective so as we move forward and um Mr patella does an outstanding job and we want to continue to provide our support in regards to that um also she had indicated that they are changing their software platform into real time um the realtime platform is is one that's going to help them um become more efficient with their data store data and also retrieve data um and it's a you know a system whereby people will be trained on it but um it was very interesting to see and and note where they will be going with that and the uh asset it will provide to um our teams um we also talked a little bit about um and had an advanced preview of Dr presentation this evening and um we talked about the the the SLA data we also talked about the district goals and as he really well well articulated this evening to the to the public so in regards to to the education curriculum committee that was it for that that day thank you very much thank you um we also had a facilities meeting um but I attended with u Mrs Keegan and myself um we can tag team um we started to explore um options for the referendum and building needs things that are going on um where the we discussed where the um referendum options had been presented before and where we want to go from there so there's a lot of hard work being done by Dr T um he's consulted with the administration in all of the buildings to find out where specific needs are for programming to help our students um in terms of you know developing our science programs and um there's been a lot of hard work and our architect has been incredibly inspired he's been drafting a lot of new options so um we're excited to see where this work is going to take us yes it's moving um I just want to add that it is moving I know it's kind of seem seems like it's been a little bit um on the slower side but it is moving and in the very near future we will be uh prepared to share much more detail with the community and move on to the next stage I I also want to stress that the referendum planning committee that happened a couple years ago a lot of this information has built upon that things have been addressed that were previously presented as needs um such as the boilers and the HVAC systems parking lots so those things have come out and we've it leaves room for just building further and and making sure that we're really getting to what the students need now and long term y all right thank you Mrs Kean um we did have an FSA meeting yeah it's a North End FSA met last Wednesday evening on the 18th um outstanding group of um parents from the north and uh School setting and they they are really well attended there um the meetings are usually in the area of 20 25 people they have it on Zoom as well um they're very very involved in the school district this was their opening meeting of the year which was was was excellent for them a new slate of officers have taken over over and um we often discuss and they have questions for us a lot of it does as you might imagine the questions do revolve around where we going with facilities and referendums but yes an excellent meeting with an excellent team yeah and we will use that platform moving forward to disseminate a lot of this information not only at our board meetings here but uh I know Dr T talked about public forums and things like that but we would also be using the FSA meetings and the AP and all the other acronyms and all the buildings uh as a opportunity to disseminate uh the information as it becomes available so um I encourage the community to attend those meetings they're very valuable um all right we also had a Personnel meeting that Mr pic and I attended in the area of personnel um most of the items in Personnel will be addressed as normal business items through the agenda this evening um there there is one point of clarification if you go to the tuition reimbursement component which our staff will be receiving the reimbursement for um the college courses they had taken uh there will be different amounts of money there is a pull of money and when the pull of money becomes towards the end and is exhausted the second course that an individual would take is then prated against the balance of funds that that is left so therefore if you see different amounts of money please don't be confused with that when you see that on the agenda um another another piece is that uh there will be a resolution presented this evening for the approval of our health insurance broker um and and uh with the the help of Dr T and and our interim Bas they were able to negotiate a $5,000 reduction in their premium and any little bit helps in that regard but uh having a broker is relatively important to moving forward with keeping the costs of insurance down and so forth um and then there was just one other item uh that is more of a a a Personnel issue item but will not be on on the agenda as a resolution Dr T has indicated to miss dor and I that Miss pignatello as if she doesn't have enough she's really truly a fine administrator will be doing a global global supervision of our guidance department and um she will get it moving in the right direction helping with the in coordination with the high school principal obviously but they will be uh moving our guidance program forward with their goals their objectives and and having specific outcomes that they will be looking for as well and we thank Miss patella for taking on those responsibilities as well thank you Miss Dora thank you Mr pic my week is complete yes we had a busy week we spent a lot of time together all right so let's move some business here um under the business administrator report can I have a motion for G1 through G18 please so move second any discussion roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes we on page 10 under the superintendent report General Administration can I have a motion for H1 through H5 with uh an addition on 3D that will be contingent upon the approval of the coaches at a um a future board meeting second any discussion I think typically just want to add specific to the hivs um we these two have been included and there are currently as no open investigations I just realized I skipped a superintendent report in the beginning I didn't know if you wanted to add anything um no I try okay okay all right any further discussion roll call please David yes yes yes yes yes under Human Resources can I have a motion for i1 through i12 some second discussion roll call please David yes yes abstain from AP AP sorry I apain yes yes abstain from i8p and yes abstained from i8 just for clarification for the community IAP is uh school board's conference that um Mr marzulo um Miss Gan and myself will be attend and Dr te will'll also be attending which is why we abstained um moving on we're on page 22 we're all together here under special services motion for J1 and J2 please so moved second second discussion roll call yes yes yes yes yes this point uh we open the meeting to public comment I didn't grab the sign up but seems that nobody is requesting to speak tonight I move to close that for another meeting um announcement of future meetings our next meeting will be on October 29th uh it will be at Memorial Middle School 7:30 is regular meeting closed session will be at 6:30 the meeting after that will be November 26th and that will be at the high school auditorium um this point I move to adjourn the meeting all in favor I'm sorry I did that J one and J2 page 22 no no problem we're good yes all right all in favor to adjourn all right meeting adjourned have a good evening everybody thank you