##VIDEO ID:eITgp367G-c## Good evening. Welcome to our meeting. I'm going to read the public notice. Public notice of this meeting pursuant to the open public meetings act Just got covered up on my Zoom. It has been given by the board secretary on November 5th. 2024 in the following manner. Posted notice on the school bulletin board at the administration building transmitted to the courier post Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Clerk of Cherry Hill Township. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Finally. Mrs. Sugars, can you call the roll, please? This is your thing. Here. Mrs. Gallagher. Here. Mr. Greenbaum. Here. Mr. Mayor. Here. Dr. Rood? Here. This is Nia's. Mrs. Tom. Mrs. Winters? Here. Ms. Sterner. So I'm very excited to turn over to Dr. Morton. For a board recognition. And I'll just leave it to you. Thank you very much, Ms. Stern. I'm also excited this evening as well that tonight we have none other than Rocky Balboa. Joining us in the audience. Seriously, I'm very happy to welcome Ms. Carolyn Messias and members of the cast from Rocky the Musical, which will be opening next week from High School West. And members of the cast from Rocky Musical will be opening next week from High School West. Come up and just introduce the numbers that we've shared. Rebecca is playing Adrian in our production of rocky so I figured as board rep, she had to sing tonight. But we're going to do two songs. One is Rocky's, one is Adrian's. It's, you know, it's not I'm the tiger gonna fly now. You got to come out we've got to 15 round fight in the boxing ring at the end. And we are the only high school doing it In the 2024, 2025 year, not the school year the year so We are first down here so With that, I'm going to introduce Tyler McGrath. I'm just going to sing Fight from the Heart. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my God. Bye. Oh! Thank you. All right. Thanks so much. Yes. Awesome. Thank you for God. Thank you. Hello. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Okay. Wow. Both of Tyler and and And Rebecca, thank you so very much and mom for coming out, for supporting. This is fantastic. I think many of us can't wait to see the full production. So Mrs. Messias, thank you so much. an amazing show at West. with very talented students and brave, very courageous students so I don't definitely don't think I could do what you both just did. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for starting our meeting outright. Now we go back to business. We are going to now have some presentations, so I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Morton. Excellent. Thank you once again. I'm going to ask Ms. Holmgren to come up. We are going to receive an NJSLA presentation from Ms. Holmgren and members of the CNI team. Hard act to follow. This is definitely not as exciting. I'll spare you from my singing this evening. Hello, my name is Faith Holmgren and I'm the district testing coordinator. This evening, myself, along with the curriculum supervisors. We'll be presenting the 2024 spring New Jersey Student Learning Assessment Results for English. mathematics, and science. As you may be aware, participation in the NJSLA, ELA, math, and science is required by state. and federal law for all students in grades three through eight in high school. These assessments measure student proficiency with grade level skills, knowledge, and concepts that are critical to college and career readiness. The NJSLA also helps us to identify areas of curricular strength As well as areas in which there are opportunities for growth. and improvement. The data you are going to receive today is an overall summary comparing NJSLA 2022 NJSL by 2023, as well as NJSLA 2024 results. Before we dive into the data, I wanted to provide you with the performance levels for English language arts, or ELA, mathematics, and science. This first slide shows that for ELA and mathematics. Levels four and five indicate that a student is proficient and on track to be college and career ready. Below the performance levels, you will find the scale scores that correlate to each of the levels. And here you will find the performance levels for NJSLA Science. Note that there are only four performance levels in science and students who perform within levels three and four. are considered proficient. Sorry, slight technical difficulties here. No, no. I gotta go back. Okay, here we are. Thank you. No, I don't know who it is. You can slide five I'm looking at. Here we go. We will begin the data portion of tonight's presentation by highlighting the three-year trends For our overall district performance for NJSLA, ELA, and math. I want to direct your attention to the far right column of this data, which indicates the overall percentage of students who are proficient and the percentage of proficiency over the three-year trend. As you can see, as a district, we are trending in the right direction. for both ELA and mathematics. Now we will dive into the data specific to ELA. Over the next two slides, I will provide you with the district participation data for ELA. This first participation slide provides you with a three-year participation trends in percentages. The participation data you will find on this next chart includes the actual number of students who were tested Over the three years and how those students performed In each of the proficiency levels. Please note that the green highlighting indicates an improvement from our starting point in 2023. This exhibit shows the overall district performance for ELA broken down by grade. and performance level. When looking at this data, we want to see our percentage changes from 22 to 24 in levels one and two. to decrease while we want to see our percentage changes from 22 to 24 in levels four and five. to increase. For comparison, we have also provided you with the data for the state. as a whole. Diving further into this comparison data, this exhibit provides you with the data over the three years showing the percentage changes for levels one and two. Again, we want to see a decrease in percentages within each of these levels. Which, as you can see by looking at the green highlighted cells. We are seeing a trend in the right direction. And here you can find this data, but for level three, as well as level four. And as a reminder, we want to see an increase in percentages and levels for as well as level five, which is on the next slide. Again, please note we are trending in the right direction here for level four across all three years. We saw an increase in percentage changes in the right direction. And finally, here is that same data for level five. Again, trending in a positive or right direction indicated by the green highlighted cells. Over the next three slides, I will provide you with the subgroup data for ELA. This first slide shows the ELA data for all of our subgroups. by performance level for 2022, 2023, as well as 2024. And here you can see that data for race and ethnicity. The bar graphs indicate the percentage of students within these groups that are proficient for each of the three years. I would like to highlight our Hispanic students On this specific slide who are making continuous gains As you can see. This slide concludes our subgroup data for ELA, but Before moving on, I would like to draw your attention to the progress of our students with disabilities who are continuing to make gains Year after year. Now we will move on to the NJSLA mathematics data. Over the next two slides, I will highlight the district participation data for mathematics. This first participation slide provides you with a three-year participation trends in percentages. The data you will find on this chart includes the actual number of students who were tested over the three years And how those students performed in each of the proficiency levels. Please remember that the green highlighting indicates an improvement from our starting point in 2022. This exhibit shows the overall district performance for mathematics broken down by grade. or specific course. and performance level. I want to remind you that when looking at this data, again, we want to see our percentage changes from 22 to 24 in levels one and two to decrease. While we want to see our percentage changes increase from 2022 to 2024 in levels four and five. As we did for ELA, we have also provided you with the math data for the state as a whole So you can see the comparison of performance. Diving further into the mathematics comparison data, this exhibit provides you with the data over the three years showing the percentage changes for level one and two. Again, we want to see a decrease in levels one and two, which as you can see by looking at the green highlighted cells again, we are seeing a trend in the right direction here. And here you can find this data, but for level three and level four. Again, we are seeing a trend in the right direction for level four across all three years. We saw an increase in percentage changes For level four, with the exception of grade eight math. and geometry. And finally, here's the data for level five percentage changes, which again shows a shift in a positive direction. We will now move into the subgroup data for mathematics. Here you can find the math comparison data for all of our subgroups here in Cherry Hill by performance level for 2023 excuse me, 2022, 2023, as well as 2024. I want to highlight the improvements we have seen in proficiency percentages for all of our subgroups, as you can see. And here is the math data for race and ethnicity. The bar graphs indicate the percentage of students within each of these groups that are proficient for each of the three years. I would like to again highlight our Hispanic students who are making steady improvement. This slide concludes our subgroup data for mathematics, but before moving on, I want to draw your attention to the progress of our students with disabilities who, similarly to ELA, are continuing to make gains. Moving into the final section of our data presentation this evening. We will now move into science. A few things that I first want to bring to your attention. Science is only assessed in grades five, eight, and 11. And the science assessment only has four performance levels and students who perform, as I had said at the beginning of this presentation, within levels three and four. are considered proficient. As we did for ELA and mathematics, we will begin with the participation data. The data you will find on this chart includes the actual number of students who were tested over the three years and how those students performed in each of the proficiency levels. Here I want to note that in grade eight. in level one and an increase in level four performance. This exhibit shows the overall district performance for science broken down by grade and proficiency level. We have also provided you with the science data for the state as a whole. As again, we did for ELA and mathematics so that you can see the comparison of performance. Diving further into the science comparison data, this exhibit provides you with the data over the three years showing the percentage changes for levels one and two. We are looking for a decrease in percentages within level one, which as you can see by looking at the green highlighted cells here. We are seeing a trend in the right direction. And here you can find this data, but for levels three and level four. Again, trending in the right direction across all three years. We saw an increase in percentage changes with the exception of grade five in years 23 and 24. We will now conclude the data portion of the presentation with the science subgroup data. Here you can find the science comparison data for all subgroups. by performance level for 22, 23, as well as 24. And here is the exhibit that includes the science data for race and ethnicity. I would like to highlight our Black or African American students who are making steady improvement, as you can see here in the data. And finally, the last slide of the data portion of this presentation before I turn it over to our Curriculum supervisors, I would like to draw your attention to our economically disadvantaged students who had made steady progress since 2022. Our district curriculum supervisors will now provide you with notable achievements as well as interventions based upon the data I have shared with you this evening. Good evening. So speaking about our students performance in language arts, some of their notable achievements All of our students are performing at or above the grade level, I'm sorry, the state average in all measured ELA standards. In addition, our students continue to perform above the state in writing and make gains in informational text, an area that we focused on quite a lot in the last several years. Good evening. For those who do not know, my name is Fatiya Dharakman. For mathematics, our students in all grades are I thought I could do it, but I can't. I was trying to be, yeah. Students in all grades and content areas have shown increased and higher performance levels. And then more students have met or exceeded expectation for all subgroups for the second year. And all Algebra one students have made gains all geometry students are over 90% proficient in middle school and improved at high school. Hello, thank you for having us. I'm Christy Blondetto. Nice to see everyone again. For our science data, we are very excited to share that we saw students achieving a higher levels above or above the state average for each of the tested grade bands five, eight, and 11. And additionally, it's worth noting that we saw gains in eighth grade This was our first year where students learned exclusively during their middle school years using OpenSciEd as their curricular platform. And this was our first group coming up through there. So they were each grade level's first year. being exposed to that. Teachers were learning alongside of them with that new curricular resource so that's certainly worth celebrating. So our intervention strategies for ela the new Amplify CKLA curriculum has targeted interventions built in Including our boost reading platform that we are using this year. We are also enhancing their classroom instruction with literacy support, including our Title I teachers and literacy coaches across all levels. And of course, we continue to work with our teachers on instructional strategies. Using ongoing professional development. And for math, we are analyzing the NJSLA and local data to identify skill gaps and we're using a targeted problem approach intervention with Eureka Math Square and our math coaches and our INRS teams. We are also focusing on differentiating instruction while infusing release items into our curriculum. Science, much like ELA and mathematics, we have many intervention strategies. We're choosing just to highlight a handful. For science in the elementary level, we shifted the timing of when science and social studies units occur in the classroom so that we better align all of our science instruction happening prior to the NJSLA in the spring. We've also started chunking our skills, which Science background, you can go deep down that rabbit hole. We started chunking our skill sets. So instead of looking at individual skills and needing students to be at mastery each year, we're banding those similar to how our standards are banded for science. We also updated our science benchmarks at the secondary level. And then we have expanded the open side ed curriculum, we are beginning to look at adopting that for our high schools. in a slower rollout this year, each of our core content areas in high school science are also using. one unit of open site. Thank you. Thank you very much. This concludes the unjustly Spring 2024 data presentation. So we'll now open it up to questions. Sorry, I didn't mean to preempt you. Any board members have any questions? or comments. None. Mr. Mayor. Start with thank you. all of you. So this is, I think, the third similar third presentation of the NJSLA data that I've sat through. And it's the best. It's the best in terms of globally where where the results are. are trending. And I think I was also looking at the comparison where there are data comparisons between where our district performed and where the state average or the state district performed Not only are they outperformed, our students are really significantly outperformed in many areas, which is great. It's all great to see. And the worry that I have when I see is that there will be some relaxation. that, okay, we've got it and it's going well, and it will continue to go well and that won't happen, right, unless there's directed continue direct interventions, continued effort in that regard. I have a couple of questions because I know that you've gone through this data I'm sure in fine tooth combs that I shouldn't talk that way because I clearly don't need them anymore. I've always worried about certain Particularly socioeconomically challenged groups. And while it's great to see that At least with regards to this data. They're moving in the right direction. I wonder what specific types of interventions are out there for those groups and are they available to every student at every building. Regardless of where they are. that while those numbers are going in the right direction they're everything that I've seen and read tells me that those are the ones that really need our help the most. So can you or any of you speak to, you know, how are we addressing those students And then second question, which is really kind of unrelated. A lot of new curricula has been introduced this year. Is it too early? I believe it is to to conclude that that is shown in this data. what do you and what do your teachers and what do the educators see with regards to the new curricula and where they expect this data to turn out in the coming years. I'm going to turn the mic over to Dr. Morton. Fair enough. Thanks, man. Yes, it's all. Yeah, like the lights there. Yes. So in reference to the question around subgroups and subgroup performance and opportunity gaps that may exist. I think, you know, first and foremost. It's important for us to ascertain if the interventions and efforts that we have put into place are trending in a positive direction. And the answer to that is absolutely yes you know we definitely have seen growth. And all of our subgroups. With that being said, we are absolutely not satisfied at all. And we'll continue to press and to push forward. Our directors of elementary and secondary education this year are working very, very closely with staff And administration at all of the schools to implement a multi-tiered system of supports platform and framework for us. We've we've adopt the monochrome NJTS. But that multi-tiered system supports, we believe, is that key ingredient and secret sauce in the recipe that really helps us to personalize and individualize our approach And working with students. So if you think about You know, we talk about students in these broad aggregate terms, but these percentages translate to numbers and these numbers translate into individual children. And it's important for us to understand who the children are and what the story is behind each individual child. And in understanding that story, we understand what the needs are of that child. So, Dr. Birdie and Mr. Guy are working with the principals and working with staff around training them on understanding MTSS, implementing the system with fidelity. identifying additional resources, supports at each intervention level within the tiers and really just developing these student success plans, as we call them, that are personalized, that are targeted and that are that are individualized. We believe the future It's much brighter than the present. With this approach that we're taking. The next question had to do with curricular implementation. Staff, and I'll throw it to you in a sec but We have had standards updates to our standards that have necessitated the need for the adoption of the curriculum. wasn't the thing where we just adopted a curriculum because It was the best thing, what we wanted to do today or the flavor of the moment. It was out of necessity. that we did that the staffing, you can expand as well. Good evening. So this particular data will not reflect any any impact of the new curriculum. It's based on the testing that took place last spring and all the new curriculum has been rolled out for this school year. As Dr. Morton stated, we have brand new standards in ELA. So even when we compare next year's testing data to this year's. it's going to look different because the standards have shifted. With the adoption of Eureka Math Squared and Amplify CKLA, both are very heavily research based and took into consideration learning loss and the impact of COVID when we took on the adoption. we zeroed in on how are we going to help make gains in our students and help to have them, no matter what grade they're in at this point in time. capture some of that learning loss that we know that everybody faced. So with that said, both of these programs have tiered interventions directly embedded in the curriculum the way the standards are spiraled and reintroduced over and over again. major content and concepts. happen throughout the school year. So it's not a one and done, which historically we've been doing this a really long time, right? Historically, it was we met that we we met introduce that standard. We taught that standard. We moved on to the next set of standard. Now they're all intertwined and it's fully integrated. So even when we're doing implementation strategies and intervention strategies. the teachers are able to look forward in the curriculum and identify when that standard would be hit again and then they can determine the amount of time they need to spend on a major concept. or when it will come up again so that they'll have time to revisit that, strengthen it as well as add more information in. with the introduction of boost reading into the elementary program, that's self-paced. It's for students teachers get that data. They're able to look at it and see how the students are progressing. So there's always that constant continual flow of information coming in for that to determine how they're progressing with the with the standards in the scope and sequence. as it's been introduced and with Eureka Mass Squared, we also introduced ST Math. We know that a lot of times kids feel math is really hard with ST Math, it kind of gamifies those major concepts that students need to learn and kind of get through with that kind of grit and resilience that we need them to have and it makes it more fun and engaging for them so that they're willing to take on that struggle. So we're hoping with the implementation of these new critical components into our curriculum that we'll see those continued gains that we have been seeing And that next year it may look different for us. Thank you. Other board members have comments or questions. This is your fiend. So given everything that you just explained and all of the factors that go into a lot of this data post-COVID, we're making huge changes to curriculum and all that when In your expert opinion, when would you say is a fair time? Obviously, we want to continue to look at this data year to year and see and hopefully see a positive incline in the results, but when would you say realistically is a fair time to do a really in-depth assessment of how our interventions are affecting our student performance. So typically we and evaluating any data set, you look at like a three-year trend to be able to truly substantiate and to ascertain what the trends the trends are. You know, with that said. You know, our kids don't have lots of time. So, you know, we want to make growth and progress each and every year. So we're looking very closely at how things appear to be working and what tweaks, you know, we're able to make to try to produce more games. The board members have any questions? Ms. Gallagher. Just based off of… the results and then what teachers see in classrooms with intervention strategies for students. Where do you feel like the greatest need is to meet the needs of the students? to continue the growth that you see, like that are showing because obviously like there's improvements but some subgroups and even kind of overall, there's still a lot of room to make up. So I'm just curious where you would see like what you've seen that needs maybe the most triage. Right. Is like the best way to say it. So I'm going to jump in on that one as well. So again, just to go back to the MTSS process, the way that it actually lays out is that there's three tiers and the level of intensity in terms of the support that's needed ramps up the higher one goes in a tier, but it also reduces the number of students that may need that intensive support. So what we're seeing And in particular, at some of our elementary schools and middle schools as well and schools that where we may not have had as many students that are in need of a higher tiered support. There absolutely is a need at this point. So what that looks like is there's typically at the tier one and tier two, the classroom teacher has interventions that's built into the into the curriculum that they're able to apply But when students need foundational growth and they need to catch up, you know, where there may be some foundational gaps. That's an expert. typically interventionists or someone along those lines was able to provide that targeted instruction and targeted support. That's where we're seeing the greatest need. We need people to be able to provide that. you know comprehensively throughout the district. Some of our schools, we don't have that level of support. I guess just to clarify, you're talking about like the INRS process? When you talk about the intervention strategies specifically or kind of Yes. Yes. So INR Reshi would fold into NTSS. But yes, as you elevate and level. And kids, you know, emerged with various needs, whatever they may be mathematically or in English language arts. to have skilled instructor person who's able to provide that time. and intensive support. This is actually, I looked at this one is a second ago and smile This is actually a recommendation that came forward to seeing i'm sure she'll speak about it this evening. So it's a great question, Kim. So the question that I asked, so CNI received a different version of this presentation with more detailed data for the committee that you all received as well. In the Friday memo, and then this is the version for the larger meeting. But when we had our deep dive meeting. One of the key questions I asked was. what are the recommendations coming out of CNI for what we can do in the future to continue growth? Because going back to my first year on the board, that was when we added the math coaches. And we also add the additional math and science supervisor. So last year, we were hoping to add some basic skills and structure to the schools that do not have access to them. we didn't get to because there was the surprising swing in state aid, which led to us sort of holding the line on what we felt was really necessary for students not being able to add additional positions going forward. So this year that recommendation is back again because there are schools Several of our elementary schools as well as High School East do not have interventionists. So if you're a kid at one of those schools who needs tier three support. you don't have that person to provide that. In that way that you do in some of the other schools. So, I mean, it's one of those things where to Mr. Mayer's point. It's not true that every kid who needs a tier three intervention is only at this school or at this school. We need to look district wide and make sure the kids are being served because when they do have those gaps and those gaps persist, it's harder to catch them up the longer that persists. So what you want to do is be able to catch them with that focus intervention. Now, last year we had high impact tutoring. So as you'll recall, the district pursued the grant for high impact tutoring that came in, a lot of our kids took advantage of that. From my understanding, and Ms. Staff and you can correct me if I'm wrong. it's a bumpy road when you're contracting with an outside contractor, Tutorfly, who provided it. the CNI office believes, and I don't want to put words in your mouth again, feel free to me. that in-district inventionist would be preferable. But again, that's adding positions and that's a fixed cost year over year, which is challenging for the budget. So I mean. I gave that information to Mr. Greenbaum because I know BNF is currently looking for input on board priorities coming out from my perspective. this is a priority that I think we should pursue. If finance is allowed. We really don't know. I have no idea what the budget's going to look like this year. We were all really surprised last year. But if we're able to do it, I think it would make a real impact. and catching um catching our kids who really need that higher level support up to where they need to be. Other board members have questions or comments. This is Tom. I'm not sure how to ask this question, but maybe you can all help me out. is how do I identify the students i guess after they did tests, right? Some teacher might like it to report that the student need help And all the parent can reach out. How do we identify the student that need help? or how do we reach out to those students? It's actually a good question. Yeah. This is one strand of data. that is available on the student, but it's not the only strand of data that's considered. a teacher may conduct a pre-assessment when a child is in the class, the teacher ongoing on a daily basis, conducts assessments to see how kids are interacting and progressing with the standard curriculum. But we also look at standardized test data if it's available. and other indicators as well. And then a picture a picture emerges about where a child is relative to what the expectations for that grade level are. Our teachers are very skilled. And highly equipped and understanding where students should be. And from there, if a child you know, presents where they might need additional support. you have process in place, a framework in place. We said NJTSS a lot You've heard INRS mentioned as well. But you have these processes in place where teachers can refer a child for additional support. additional help. Just a follow-up, would the teacher get the test square test score of their students and so they can identify the student Yes, yes, they have that information available. Yeah, thank you. Dr. Morton, just to clarify, it's not just the test score, but they're also seeing the specific area, the strand i mean Mrs. Tong, you haven't been in some of the CNI presentations that we've gotten about each area, each standard and curriculum. I mean, they're highly detailed and broken down. Highly, highly detailed. And so my, correct me if I'm wrong the the teachers are getting that and the coaches that information as well, that level of detail for their students. It's not just an overall Oh, this kid didn't, you know, scored whatever it's in this area, these learning contents. for the learning standards. Did I get that right? This is actually the work that I do when I go into the schools. So we look at, they're called evidence statement analysis reports, and it actually breaks down all the standards that are assessed for each grade and each content area. And for each of those reports, we identify, I like to start by identifying areas of strength, and then we begin to dive into the areas of need. And areas that we can begin to focus on. So the teachers and I sit down either by grade level or by content area. We look specifically into those standards. Find out where they fall within our curriculum map, so where they're taught in the scope of the school year. what their instruction looked like previously within those standards, and what instructional strategies I can provide to them that are different than what they have used in the past in order to better meet the needs of their students. as well as to become more equipped as instructors or as teachers in providing instruction within the standards that the students are struggling with. So it is a very in-depth process. I'm just finishing up at the secondary level now, and because of the implementation. of both new programs at the elementary schools. I haven't been into as many of the elementary schools, but that process is starting now in November. So all the teachers have their students data, but it's also equally as important to go in to identify the areas that we need to specifically focus on. And it's actually honed down that far. Thank you so much for clearing that. I think a lot of parents can use that. Thank you. And then just to add on to that, they drill down to the student, look at all those standards, and then they go back and they look at prior data And then they look at ongoing data. So we then start looking at the curriculum where these standards fit again. And then we know how to intervene. We create strategies. where each student almost gets their own individualized plan. And that's how we start to to help them grow and improve. The answer is so comprehensive. The board members have questions or comments or I just have, I don't know, Mrs. Winters, because this is part of the report. I don't know if you want to wait for the report out or just I mean, I just two things, I guess, because we're on this now i mean you know, part of what we talked about in CNI is the budgetary demands When our state aid is getting cut. And we have budgetary demands. And the community says things like. You need to do a better job communicating, which we do. So where do we invest our funds? Do we invest our funds in hiring another extra person to help with communications. and web design? Or do we invest our funds in more coaches, math coaches? So we focus on academic achievement. You know, I think it's it's comprehensive. The approach to budgeting has to be comprehensive and i just I think when people think when Understandably, you know. when people see one particular area that they think, oh, the district isn't doing well or is falling down, like, you know, I can't believe that Our buildings look the way they are, even with the bond money, right? You know, there's so much improvements in our buildings, but they're not brand new, beautiful, gorgeous buildings. state of the art buildings, like, you know, we might want to see But what do we do with the money? How do we budget for this? And how do we you know, we have competing priorities and I just think it's really important for us to, you know, we have to grapple with that constantly You know, and I I think when it comes time to making difficult budget decisions, do we keep a sports team or a specific program that maybe is you know not serving a lot of kids and or you know financially you know challenging for us, expensive. Do we keep that or do we hire another math coach? You know, these are the kinds of decisions that I know I was really thinking a lot about as part of the presentation. I know there are recommendations made. And I mean, in my ideal aspirational world, I would want you know to hire many more coaches. And ensure that we're really shoring up MTSS or NJTSS for all of our students. I just want to be realistic about it. And I think we have to really think. So that's one thing. And the other thing that I really want to understand Dr. Morton or any of your team Can you please talk about, because it's not on here because it's not tested When we talk about our children having successful achievement, where does preschool education fall into that? Absolutely. Gladly. discussing Dr. Mahan can pick up as well. So there was a comment that was a question that was asked by mr mayor It had to do with some of the subgroups and performance around subgroups and as you look at what the research says about why gaps may exist. much of that resource points to the start, where kids start, the level of exposure to experiences vocabulary, books, rich. rich resources and things along those lines. the gap actually is there. The gap exists as early as, you know, from the time a child is born. The idea and the implementation of preschool allows us to begin to take some control. around those gaps, you know, so we can provide and enriching fun social experience that also allows children to get off to a great start and learn. you know at the preschool level that better prepares them to then segue and articulate into kindergarten. We did the same in kindergarten. child up to first grade, so on and so forth. gives us an opportunity to form that relationship. earlier, and as the staff and talked about individualizing our approach, you know, it starts as early as Three years old, children in pre-K. Dr. Mahat, I don't know if you want to add anything else. I would say i think um And again, Mrs. Stern, with your permission, I think that this is a great segue into the preschool presentation. And I'm going to share my screen because you mentioned something that lends itself to the presentation I had planned to share tonight. So thank you for That's not what I meant to hit. Thank you for that softball. It's definitely not intentional, but it really is a question. How do we know? Where does it fit in and does it make sense? So one of the things that I think Dr. Morton highlighted is that we're not just talking about preschool education, we're actually talking about PK3 education and the articulation not only from the preschool, but into our elementary schools. And how we have implemented a comprehensive preschool program that has articulation into our current elementary program. So now that we are able to potentially service 90% of our universe through preschool expansion aid that will really give us an equal playing field for all students of Cherry Hill to have access to a high quality program. And I'm going to jump to I'll go back to this slide. I actually wanted to start my presentation this evening with a quote. redacted a little bit. from a parent. The quote says. They are the most loving and kind teachers you will ever find. They have made my son's transition into the classroom so smooth. And have given so much grace and love to him. I have the utmost confidence in them as a mother because I know that every day I am sending him to teachers who love him and believe in him. And most importantly, he valued his uniqueness what I love most is that they see him. So when we talk about highlighting the uniqueness of our children and valuing who they are and making sure that every child is seen within Cherry Hill, starting at the preschool level. I think it only amplifies the question that you just asked in terms of how does that support achievement and articulation through our school district. So I am confident not only by evidence of what I see on a daily basis working with the preschool program, but also anecdotal data based on this quote that we are serving the population of students that are our youngest and most vulnerable learners and welcome them welcoming them into Cherry Hill Public Schools with open arms. So with that, I jump right into the preschool expansion aid. Again, several of these slides are reminders of where we are in a quick snapshot of the requirements for preschool expansion aid. Here again, which again, another slide, which you have seen in the past. We are now 10 months into a five-year implementation. I want to highlight one sentence on this slide. It's the last one. The implementation of preschool expansion has been intentional to accelerate enrollment and scope of the program over a five-year period. I mention this because I think the five-year expansion period has been lost in many conversations. The Cherry Hill Public Schools program is expanding and the sheer size of the preschool universe lends itself to needing five years to serve all students. So tonight's presentation is dedicated specifically to enrollment. So we are on a path to providing preschool to 90% of our universe over the next five years. In addition to our in-district programs. excuse me, in addition to our in-district program at the Malberg Early Childhood Center, we also partner with private providers. They are Cadence Academy. Discovery Corner Learning, KinderCare, and Mosaic Early Learning. the expansion would not be possible without the support and partnership of of the private providers. So in our initial application to the New Jersey Department of Education, we were asked to include projected growth over a five-year period. to get to our full universe of eligible three and four year olds. Again, I emphasize a five-year projection to get to our 90% universe. This is what was submitted. In our initial application to the Department of Education. Again, I share this because there is a notion that we are not growing when in fact we are growing and as a district, we were intentional in regarding a slow start and accelerated enrollment over the five-year period, a phase-in approach for preschool. over the next few slides, I will show our actual numbers for the past two years and then projected numbers moving forward. as we serve more students in our preschool universe. So for the 2023-2024 school year. In our initial application. We projected that we would have 14 classrooms Last year, we actually had 17 expansion classrooms. This allowed us to have 189 preschool expansion students We initially projected we would serve 144, so we exceeded our projections for general education students. If you included the students we serve through PSD and inclusion seats. That brings our total number to 323 students served. I share this total number because for our purposes, this is moving us towards the entire preschool universe. I do want to highlight that as we talk about our general education students and our PSD students, we recognize that they are coming from different funding sources. However. all of the students are Cherry Hill Township residents. So as we look towards our number, our universal number, 90% of 1700 students. We are also factoring them into our projection. I move on to the 2024-2025 school year. In our initial application, we projected that we would have 24 classrooms. This year, we have 25. This allowed us to have 309 preschool expansion students, which is an increase of 120 student seats from last year. We initially projected we would serve 294 students. So again, we exceeded our projections in the initial application which asked us to project out for five years based on a program we had never implemented. Again. If you include the students we serve through PSD seats, that brings our total number to 433 students served. So let's look at our projections for 25-26 school year. In our initial application. we projected that we would add 41 classrooms for the upcoming school year. This projection includes 16 in-district classrooms. and 25 private provider classrooms. We are making progress towards bringing these total projections to fruition. fencing is up. to begin the in-district classrooms, eight at the Estelle v. Malberg Early Childhood Center. eight at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School. We are also in communication with three additional private providers for approximately 12 additional classrooms. At this moment, we are approximately 12 classrooms short of our target, but we continue to outreach to private provider locations and explore other options. if we are able to bring this to fruition, this would increase our preschool universe to approximately 924 students. in our preschool expansion. But our overall number, including PSD students would bring us to approximately 1,000 48 students. This is an increase, again, of 41 classrooms and 615 students. for the 2026-2027 school year. We are projected or we projected in our initial application that we would add an additional 25 classrooms This projection is for 25 private provider classrooms that would take our preschool universe or preschool expansion number to 1,299. including our PSD seats that takes our overall projection to approximately Well, 1,423. And lastly, which will be year five of the expansion 2027-2028 school year. We projected in our initial application that we would add 27 additional classrooms. Again, this is for 27 private provider classrooms. that would take our preschool expansion students to 1,704. And a total of 1,828 students which is beyond our projected 90% universe. again, our 90% universe is approximately 1700. We continue to work diligently to provide a high quality preschool education program aligned with the New Jersey Department of Education guidelines and expectations. And a program that also supports articulation into the K program and to further enhance our pre-K3 program to provide a solid foundation for our youngest learners. So preschool is popular. Everyone wants a seat If you remember from a previous presentation, I shared that we had 538 families apply. And we have only been able to move approximately 40 students off of the wait list. So for the upcoming school year. We will be hosting a preschool parent information night On January 8th at 6 p.m. the parent information night will be held at the High School West Auditorium. We want to begin engaging our preschool parents as soon as possible. preschool registration will open in February. for the 2025-2026 school year. As I started the presentation, I will end the presentation. I would like to take a moment for a public service announcement. and calling all private providers in Cherry Hill. we need to make preschool expansion successful. We need private providers to make this successful. when you think about the number of students that we will be serving, approximately 1700, that equates to approximately 110 classrooms. So for scale, that is approximately the size of High School West when you think about the number of classrooms that we will be utilizing. we need private providers in order to continue our growth. And we look forward to partnering with providers. It will be difficult to meet our goal without these partnerships. I continue to work closely with Ms. Sugars, Ms. Roscoff. in meeting with possible organizations to partner to further our expansion. Any questions? Thank you, Dr. Mahan. Board members, questions, comments? Mr. Fine. This is probably a better question, Ms. Lieber. She's not here tonight. Do you, I'm sure you do know, but at the moment, do we have any plans on onboarding additional administrative staff? for the program in any capacity? So there are very specific guidelines in the preschool code in regards to staff aligned with the program. So for example, for every 20 classrooms, we need to have one preschool instructional coach for every, I believe it's 750 students. You need to have a supervisor. However, there is some language in the code that speaks to if you have an in-district program versus out-of-district programs. And at the rate that our programs are growing, there would definitely be a need for additional supervisory staff because right now we're floating between five locations as we continue to grow, I'm assuming that will expand and we will have greater need to communicate with the district excuse me, with the private provider directors owners articulate curriculum and things of that nature. So we will be following the Department of Education guidelines. You're welcome. Other board members have questions or comments? Mrs. Winters. Thank you so much for the presentation. I just wanted to recognize the efforts that are being made this year from the preschool staff. around creating really a cohesive community among the Cherry Hill preschool programs. Tonight, I know they had a literacy night at the library, which we were not in this awesome and entertaining meeting. I would have loved to have stopped by at Because I think it's really a testament to the program that the PTA and the staff have been expansive this year in thinking about how to create a unified culture of preschool and a community of support for preschool families. I think that's really neat to see. And to see all the different no matter where you're located in Cherry Hills Preschool program to see all the different families come together And be able to provide that support to each other and grow together as a community is really cool. So I just wanted to commend that change that I've seen this year going forward. And I think it's really going to reap tons of benefits for our families in the program. So thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Winters. We were actually very intentional about that. Last year, we did hear from several families across the different provider sites that They felt disconnected from the overall school community. This year we have private provider liaisons as well as room parents at each of the locations who work alongside of myself. Amanda Gerald, who is the Community Parent Involvement Specialist, and Catherine Briggs, who is the social worker to help organize several events alongside of the PTA. An example of this, in addition to the literacy night, we have other events that are coming up that are actually planned at Cherry Hill High School West to accommodate the large number of students and families who will be participating so that we can bring everyone together in a centralized location as opposed to having all of our events at the Malberg Early Childhood Center. And that includes all of our fundraisers, our pretzel sales. We did an activity for Veterans Day. We coordinated all of our activities for fall festivals. So we are really trying to be intentional. So thank you for acknowledging and recognizing that. Other board members, Mrs. Tom. I'm just curious about on the Melbourne building or the Melbourne one Well, I think it's 11 classrooms with 99 students. Why are the numbers less than 15 per classroom just wondering what Why was that? Thank you for that question. So for preschool expansion, every classroom is supposed to have 15 students. Because we recognize, highlight, and value students who would fall in our inclusion program. we save six seats in each of our preschool classrooms, our 11 preschool expansion classrooms at their Malberg Early Childhood Center each hold six seats for inclusion students. So that's why their number is 99. So nine, our ratio at the Malberg Early Childhood Center is nine to six, meaning nine general education students, six inclusion students. You're welcome. Mrs. Gallagher. I guess my first question is is um Is there a reason why the projected PSD students doesn't change through the years? So in the presentation, I put an asterisk next to the PSD students and then there's a footnote at the bottom that says. This number remains the same because I anticipate that that number will fluctuate, but I did not want to assume that we would have students who would fall into that category. So I nested the three and four year olds into the general education population, recognizing that that number will change. There is an asterisk there along every slide for Pass the what year we're in now, 23, 24 is actual, 24, 25 is actual. So 25, 26 and forward, there's an asterisk there. Okay. And then, um. You mentioned that you're in communication currently with some providers potentially for next year. Are they all within Cherry Hill? Yes, the only provider that is Actually, wait, I stand corrected. The two providers that I mentioned in this presentation are both in Cherry Hill there is a provider right on the borderline in Mount Laurel. The only other provider that we use that is outside of Cherry Hill is Mosaic Early Learning. That is because we are bound by the New Jersey Department of Education to partner with Head Start programs. That is the closest Head Start program to Cherry Hill, we certainly have been in contact with them and moving that program into Cherry Hill boundary lines. The third organization, which I did not include, is actually right off of Church Road. very close to Thomas Paine, where you merge into Cherry Hill, Maple Street. Mount Laurel area, but we have not finalized anything with the three. So our intention is to utilize providers in Cherry Hill. We recognize that that is the most convenient for parents. However. As outlined by the Department of Education, if you do not have providers in your town, you may partner with private providers outside of your district. And then… You know, obviously like um the next year is like a pretty significant increase. And I know you said you're in, but I guess… like what's the likelihood of finding the 41 classes, the 41 classrooms And then also just what's our besides the obviously the educational costs that come through the funding stream, how much costs are paid through like the general education budget that's non preschool. So Ms. Sugars, I'm going to pass the second part of that off to you, but I'll give you a second. The first part of that is the likelihood of 41. We're hoping that we get to 41. I can tell you we have 16 because I see fencing up and construction about to start. And we have, I'm pretty confident, and Ms. Roscoff hopefully is nodding behind me, that we have an additional 12. or eight to 12 that we have in place. So we are certainly moving towards that number. I do want to highlight that If we do not get to the 41, one, our funding is adjusted, but two. The Department of Ed is really looking at you are making progress towards your 90% over the five years. If we came up to next year and I said, oh, we're not implementing any classrooms, that would be problematic. But the fact that we are even talking about implementing 25 classrooms speaks to our commitment to providing preschool education to 90% of our universe. And I think it's necessary to speak to the size and scope of Cherry Hill, us implementing 25 classrooms in one year is larger than most school districts. just keep that in the purview as you are having the conversation because our growth over one year is larger than, again, most school districts in Camden County. One follow-up before I move. So are you finding, because obviously a lot of districts surrounding Cherry Hill also have implemented preschool. Do you find that there's like a competition for the for the private providers. Are you finding that? no uh most we have a handle on all of the private providers here in Cherry Hill. We are not letting any of them get away to other school districts, most of the conversations that we're having with other school districts around private providers are hey, we work with Cadence Academy in Washington Township. You work with Cadence Academy in Cherry Hill. Let's talk about some of the successes and areas of growth that you know we can help to expand the program. So that's really more of the conversation. It's not hey, you're taking our seats. We haven't had that. I mean, Dr. Mahan, you know, one thing when we first talked about do we go for PEA funding, right? Do we provide this resources? What's going to happen with all the private providers who are used to families in Cherry Hill send their kids to? So it's… I mean, I've seen nothing but an increase in preschool providers in the area In the past couple of years, you know. several preschool providers building And, you know, expanding their offerings and you know you think about there's then inevitably, if people don't partner with public schools and public schools and preschool shifting into public school districts then the existing preschools aren't going to have as many students. So there has to be, you know, to me that that shrinkage gets addressed through, you know, it's a shifting I think, you know, as you were talking, Dr. Mahan, about, you know, what happens if we don't get to the You know, I will say that the phrase that I learned in education when my kids were in school is progress, not perfection. That is the expectation in education, progress, not perfection. So, you know, in the most simplest of terms, that's kind of my mindset about applying. I think we press, as Dr. Morton talks about we press to get to our goals or exceed our goals. But, you know. there are always, you know, external factors so Just wanted to add that piece in. And then Mrs. Sugars, I know there was a question about financing, so ask if you wouldn't. Mind taking that one. You don't want to answer that one. I am definitely not the person. It would have to be Mr. Greenbound. But even so, you are far and away. leagues ahead of us on that one, so. So, um. This year, as we went into the 24-25 school year, we received our allotment of preschool funding based on our student count. And the way that it works with this funding is that comes out of our special revenue fund. And so we were able to cover most of our costs We did make about a $1.5 million contribution from the general fund into the special revenue fund. In order to cover the additional costs now again what that number will look like once we finalize, again, budgeting is forecasting, not actual spend. And this is our first year in a full year program. But that was what was forecasted at the time. our um One moment, our preschool, I just want to look up that number real quick our actual preschool aide last year. 7,600. And $76,235. So the 1.5 was the contribution from the general fund into the special revenue fund to cover any kind of cost overages that we have. And then there was some transportation We could not account for all of the transportation costs out of the preschool aid. So there was some transportation costs that are accounted for in the general fund budget as well. So where we land with that, where we land with our providers, we're getting used to our providers, our providers are getting used to us. They have a certain allotment per child, and we're still working with them in terms of the number of children they have, what their actual costs are, they have to substantiate all of their costs when they ask for reimbursement. You know, we'll have a better handle on this, I think, after we get through our first full year of it and we can kind of see, you know, did our forecast match what our actual expenses were. This year, our program, last year our program started mid-year But we were funded for a full year. So we will have some carryover. that we can use moving forward as well that can offset some of these costs. Try to use those carryover numbers on startup costs. furniture costs, equipment costs, not recurring costs. Also, as we expand, you know, we'll know what additional administrative staff we need to hire? Will we need additional nurses? Will we need additional social workers, those kinds of things. So I think after we get through maybe our first two years of full year programs, we'll definitely have a better feel of what that looks like. As you were talking about startup costs so private providers, if they create a room for cherry hill do we cover the costs of the furniture and everything, or is that on the private providers? So as we started up the program, we covered some of that cost and then we took some of it out of their allotment that they received. We thought it was important, particularly with curricular materials and things of that nature, that everything was consistent. We wanted to make sure that all of the classrooms were outfitted the same. So that meant, you know, an RFP, you know, and those kinds of things. So we did assist with some of that in terms of the startup costs. Thank you. Other board members have questions or comments, Mrs. Sorry, I thought of two as we were talking. I know traditionally the way that three-year-olds were placed and they were guaranteed the seat. For the next year for four. And I know that is still the expectation The students that are placed where they are now, is there any possibility that they would move to Ensure… I don't know how to even ask this. Consistency of which neighborhoods are feeding into which schools or will it just be Unfortunately, that's just the way it was last year. And each year we'll try to get a little bit more streamlined with that. That's a great question. I think I saw Linda King on virtually, who is our supervisor of transportation So she and I have this conversation daily because Even this year, we tried to cluster neighborhoods. So students are going to preschool with students that they will see in their homeschool, elementary school. As we continue to expand. the goal is certainly that we will have students stay in the seat that they were in, in the location that they were in the previous year. However. As you know, we are adding eight classrooms onto Malberg, eight classrooms on to kilmer. So students who may be traveling further away from their home could potentially come back So we haven't gotten that far in the conversation to determine exactly what we plan to do moving forward, but it is something that is definitely on our radar. Our hope is that we will have more private providers on the east side of town so that we do not have to transport students across town to receive preschool education. And then that will help to better equalize the clustering of students and schools at each location. So great question, and it is on our radar. Thank you for that. And I definitely want to give a shout out to the decision to do the busing from the elementary schools. I know that there was a lot of questioning behind that decision in the very beginning. from, I would say from my own personal perspective, I think a lot of it was, it's already a nightmare in the commuter line. How is this going to work? But I will say that it seems to be working really well. And I think that that was very logical and kudos to all of the people in that decision. decision. My other question, I don't know if you'll be able to answer this and it was just a thought that I had. And this might be open to anybody in the room that has expertise in any of these categories. But do you know if there's any current research on the impact of special ed need later in elementary school for students that started out in preschool and how that can impact what we will look at as a district for the need later on years from now. So I'm certainly not the expert in this. I'm going to look down the table at Caitlin Mallory, who's our director of special education. The one thing that I will say is that We have through preschool expansion, a preschool intervention and referral specialist. who provides specific interventions to students and supports prior to referral to child study team. through the preschool program, we also work very closely with early intervention and child fine to ensure that when students are coming into our program, if they need supports, we are engaging the families early and often and making sure that students receive the services that they need. I do not know if there is research that speaks directly to need later. We do have a social worker who doesn't work in the child study team social worker capacity on our team. She's more of a family community outreach person. But we also have, through Ms. Mallory's office, a case manager who handles any students who are coming through the process at the preschool level so that we can begin again to engage those families earlier and make sure that students are receiving the services that they need. So Caitlin. That shows the level of collaboration. I appreciate that because I would imagine considering New Jersey is one of the only schools that is really looking into statewide universal preschool, that there's probably not a whole lot of data, maybe research on this. I see a hand next to me that has clearly something to say about this, but I thought that that, I mean, just in the essence of thinking of how to save costs and, you know, potential needs later down the line and trying to find silver linings to things that give a lot of anxiety to a lot of people. that hopefully there would be more impact on that entire population considering we have such a huge population of special special needs in the district. So just a quick anecdote, which is an anecdote. It's not, you know, it's not, you know, 25 years of data, which I'm sure Mrs. Winters will provide. But I specifically know a Cherry Hill family. whose child was not on track developmentally? the family had the child assessed in the preschool years. was not deemed to need services. And then in the middle of kindergarten had to be moved to another school Because the child needed every service available in a public school? And it was pretty disruptive. So that's a very small anecdotal story. And that child I saw that child last year at eighth grade. This is a child I knew As an infant, I saw her and her parents at the eighth grade high school orientation last year and it was pretty profound to see to see that. So that was a tiny little window i got So I think we should let Mrs. Mallory do her thing and then we'll come back to Mrs. Yeah, I just wanted to add and make the connection. So we talked earlier about the MTSS model as it relates to the elementary level and the secondary level. So when we talk about preschool expansion. I always say this, I joke that we're going to get t-shirts made that preschool is the intervention. So it's casting a wider net in our community to definitely identify students as needed. We have a really strong early intervention process in New Jersey. We're really fortunate in that way. So we do capture a lot of students with disabilities through early intervention. But there are going to be students through child find that we will identify through this process, but we're also implementing those interventions. So essentially students are getting that two-year intervention piece Through preschool expansion and it'll absolutely decrease the numbers that we see needing special education services at the elementary level. So longer timeline to show that, but absolutely It's an intervention piece very directly similar to the MTSS process that Dr. Morton shared earlier. So hopefully that makes sense. But I can't believe we got child bond too, Dr. Mahan. So proud. We've come so far. broad, broad, inclusive, special, and gen ed education, right? Everyone's becoming that. being able to carry that torch. Mrs. Winters, did you have something else to add to that? I do. This is my favorite thing to talk about. You know that. long time ago when there were dinosaurs roaming the earth 25 years ago. And I was in grad school There was the first cohort of Abbott preschool students. So when Mr. Greenbaum and I were talking about preschool, we were deciding about preschool expansion. He said, I wish there was like a 25 year study that would show what the outcomes are. from high quality preschool. I said, well, actually, there is. We've been following Abbott preschool students for 25 years. So I just pulled up the slide I have. It's from the National Institute of Early Education Research, which is based at Rutgers University, who followed our preschoolers and they were only able to follow the cohort up until 10th grade because then COVID disrupted the study. But we do have the data from pre-K three, four up to 10th. And the important thing to note here is that The preschool expansion program is essentially the Abbott preschool program. So all of the the things that were designated as what's needed to form a high quality preschool program, which is different than just a child care program. the things that are very specific to preschool, like the small class sizes, the certified teacher, the curriculum that's required to be high quality to the size of the classrooms, all these things, the echo scale that we use to rate and make sure the classes are consistent That was all present in the Abbott program. So for special ed specifically, they found that by 10th grade, you had decreased the need for special education by seven percentage points. So that's the outcome for special education. They also found lasting effects on achievement in language arts, literacy, math, and science. they found that the achievement effects were about twice as large when you had two years of preschool. One thing that people often ask is why can't we just do four-year-olds? It would be half the price. Because two things, the state says it has to be threes and fours. And the reason the state says it has to be threes and fours is because you get the impact of that, the results are much more robust. And the other thing I wanted to point out is that grade retention, so holding kids back was reduced by 15 percentage points. So the thing about preschool is that it's an investment, right? So, and it's hard, I think, when we're talking about budgetary impact, when we think about you know what are we going to do this year to make the budget numbers work? Because you're not necessarily seeing the robust impact 10 minutes from now or a month from now or a year from now, it takes a long time for those things. to grow. We will be able to follow this cohort of our threes and see how they do in kindergarten. How do they do in fourth grade? How do they do in eighth grade? But obviously we'll be long past the board by the time that happens. But if you look at these longitudinal studies that have been done. on the preschool programs in New Jersey specifically, which are essentially identical to what we're implementing, you do see that decrease in special education going forward. So I think ultimately all these things will absolutely be beneficial for our kids and for the fiscal piece of it. When you think about, you know. the interventions you need later, it's much harder to change the trajectory once kids are older. the younger that you have them and the more that you can help them get started in the right direction. the better your outcomes and hopefully the less support that you need going forward. I mean, I saw it with my kids were in the old Cherry Hill preschool program, the half day program i can absolutely tell you that for two of my kids, well, all three of my kids went through it, one of whom had an IEP and one of whom had a referral to the PERT team, which is the preschool version of the INRS team, that the interventions they received at the preschool level absolutely changed their trajectory going forward. and decrease the need for interventions later so i mean i see it. I see it's true from the longitudinal data that we find. And I also see it's true just looking at my kiddos, which I mean, when you see it, it's kind of amazing to see how it changes. So if anybody's interested in this super boring data that I have about preschool and Impact in New Jersey, I'm happy to share these presentations. They come from Rutgers, which we're fortunate to have. pretty much the major national center of studying preschool right here at Rutgers. I just want to jump back. Thank you. Just to one topic about the clustering and the kind of keeping kids in cohorts. I mean, I think Obviously, there's a lot of effort being made to do that. I think most of us who had preschool kids who did not go through public preschool, our kids did move. And they did leave their friends and they started over because very few of our kids probably went to preschool with their friends who are in their public school. And the one thing that I see in high school is that my kids have friends from so many different parts of their lives. They have kids. friends that they went to a few friends they went to preschool with who they didn't go to elementary middle with, but now, you know, actually my son's working on a project tonight with a friend that he went to preschool with. But he didn't go to elementary or middle too. you know, I think there is sometimes we see it as a downside when kids don't get to stay together. And obviously we're working very hard to do that as much as possible, but I also see an upside to that in terms of broadening their connections throughout the community. with kids who they are going to kind of overlap with over their their you know pre-k through 12 years. So it's just a just a different perspective to share. Anyway, other. Questions, comments? This is Winters. Dr. Mahan, can I just ask you to expand a little bit about the connection between the preschool curriculum and kindergarten? Because that's something that when we work together on full day K many, many years ago. That was something that I was really interested in having kids who went through preschool in Cherry Hill and trying to make those connections more explicit between preschool and kindergarten. So I would not say that the curriculum is necessarily connected. The piece that's connected is the articulation around the curriculum. So the skills and strategies that creative curriculum has as indicators for performance. are communicated to the K teachers. And we have been intentional around having articulation meetings between the preschool teachers and the K teachers so that there's seamless transition for students based on the teaching strategies platform. We did use a program for a few years. We are no longer using that as we are moving towards the science of reading, which was foundations because we wanted our students to have early access to phonemic awareness and phonics. skills so We are rethinking that now based on the science of reading and making sure that the practices that we have at the preschool align to the practices that are being implemented K-3 so language around Eureka Mass Squared and math and number sense and things like that are We are intentional around having our preschool instructional coaches communicate with other coaches to ensure a seamless transition so it is not the same curriculum. Like you're not going to hear me say Oh, our preschool students were doing mystery science today. It's not that they are definitely using creative curriculum and we are trying to make natural connections between what students will see at the preschool level And then what they will see at the elementary level when they enter our K program. And again, Mrs. Winters. based on your familiarity with the implementation of full day K, our preschool program is heavily heavily emphasizes play and play-based learning. And our K program emphasizes play-based learning. So that's something that we want to continue. Because it supports social interactions. developmental growth, emotional growth. And then lends itself to academic growth for our students. That is amazing. I'm so excited for the increased communication between preschool and kindergarten. And I have to say that we reviewed, as you guys will remember, the outcomes from full day K through CNI earlier this year and the impact and outcomes of full day K are phenomenal. So that was a huge win for the district. I have never seen numbers like that 90 plus percent, which is exceeded all my expectations for what full day kindergarten would do, although it was hopeful that it would. And I have no doubt that we're going to see the same kind of results in impact from preschool and I look forward to continuing to follow your progress as you move forward with this giant implementation. Which is going to affect so many of our kids. So thank you so much. Other board members have questions, comments? Okay, thank you. And we have yet. Another presentation. Dr. Morton, we have an administrative report, so I'm going to turn it over to you. Yes, we have an administrative report. It will not be long, I promise. I just wanted to take an opportunity to report on the results. from the district's QSAC audit that took place last year. Typically on a three-year basis, districts across the state are required to go through an audit process. It's actually called the new jersey Quality, I'm sorry, I just lost my page. New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum Review, more commonly known as QSAC. Districts are assessed in five key areas, instruction and program, fiscal management, governance. operations personnel the district is required to submit a district performance review self-assessment initially, county executive superintendent and our team didn't come out. On behalf of NJDOE and verify the district's performance and operations in each one of those areas. Districts are required to obtain at least a score of 80% in each area or they um would need to put it in input and improvement plan. Our district has exceeded the mark on each one of the five areas and for this year we're designated as high performing. And that will carry over for the next three years until the next QSAC audit. Board members have questions or comments about that very brief presentation. Report. Okay, excellent. Thank you. So we will move on. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Greenham. I didn't mean to neglect you. I'm sorry. I didn't see you. So I just wanted to highlight Just a couple real quick things here. While we were rated as high performing Some of these we were at or near 100%. Fiscal management, governance, operations. I just thought that was worth calling out and kudos to the administration for achieving such. high rating on this assessment. Thank you. Anybody else that I've had their hand up that I missed or have? Okay, we move on to correspondence. Do any board members have correspondence This is Winters. So I'm going to start with the parade that I went to at the Malberg Early Childhood Center on October 31st, it was probably the most fun I've had in a long time. There is nothing more joyful than seeing our youngest learners have a great day and so many families out to support them and the teachers and the staff at the Mahlberg Center were wonderful with the kids. It's just a beautiful morning and it was so fun to be back at that school and it was fun to jump in. I want to give a shout out to Colleen, the secretary at Mahlberg, who has been there. forever and does such a phenomenal job in that building. She is really the heart of that building and just with such care and patience for all of the kids, for all the parents and the families who were coming there to see their little ones. She just did an amazing job and it was fun. She asked me to kind of step in and manage a little bit of the chaos and I was really happy I was able to help with that. I also saw my youngest one's preschool teacher, Ms. Sherry Turner, who is still there at the Malberg building. And that was kind of a delight for me. to see her going forward. So that was neat. I also attended what feels like my 10 millionth parade at Russell Knight Elementary School. I may have, I feel like I've just been attending parades there forever and will continue to, but it was like a great day. to see all the kids out in their costumes and enjoying themselves. The following week, I went to the Zone PTA breakfast at High School Westp. Which, as you all know, if the West's culinary kids are catering it, I'm 100% showing up. There is no chance I'm not going to be there because it's always an amazing time. It was great to network. And chat with PTA members and administrators from across the district and catch up. And hear about all the cool things going on and all the different building. So that was really neat. So thank you to the kids at West for feeding me as always. I always appreciate it. And thank you to everybody who stopped by. I just wanted to highlight two other things that I went to as a parent. I went to the fall preview concert at High School East. Which is just really neat because each musical group gets to perform one piece. You really get to see the breadth and scope of the music program there. So that was a really fun night, not just to see my kid, but to see everybody else's kids too and see the wide variety of musical talent. at High School East, and I also went to final playoff game that Cherry Hill East was in this year. It was such an amazing night. to be out with the team and the band and the cheerleaders. It was very sad to me that they lost. But I could not believe how High School East showed up to support their team. The away stands, you couldn't breathe. They were so packed. There were kids all the way around the stadium shouting for their team. It was just really wonderful. to see the school spirit that was there. I saw Mr. Finkel there as well, as well as other staff members. And even though it was heartbreaking that they lost, they just had a phenomenal season. I think the best since the 1990s is what I heard. So just say I went as a parent, but just to really commend the East community for rallying together around their team this year. It was just a really fun night. Despite the loss. Other board members have correspondence? I just would say I also attended, it's been a few years, but I went back and attended the Halloween parade at Stockton Elementary. And saw, um. A bunch of adorable kids. And got to reconnect with some of the staff and teachers. Not that many left since my kids were there. But some still there and it was it was it was you know very joyful it's a quick you know, a quick couple rounds of a parade, but really sweet. And, um. And then I also joined Mrs. Winters at the Zone PTA breakfast, which is always a great opportunity to connect and um Along the same lines, I also went to the final um Cherry Hill East Soccer, varsity boys soccer game Which is the same day as the football game. It was just earlier in the day. And after a shocking win that East actually had over the number two team a few days earlier, unfortunately, their time ended in the playoffs, but it was nice to see Mr. Finkel and Mr. Burrough there as well. earlier in the day, you know, that was during um Friday of convention week, you know, last week so You know, I think when we continue to see all of our you know. Staff, administrators, you know, coming out to events at night During the day, on the weekends, during days off from school, it's just always heartening. And I very much appreciated how dedicated they are so That's probably more of why I wanted to mention it. That's it. All right, other correspondence? Anybody? Okay. All right. We move on to our first public comment. There are two public comment periods this evening. The first one is for any board for, I'm sorry, for board action items only Item 17 through 20 on our agenda. There will be another public comment period for any school related topic at the end of our meeting. Of course, if you are a student and you'd like me to make a comment. you may comment on any district related topic or any topic at all. And, uh. You just need to please put an S after your name if you're online or if I don't necessarily see any students in the audience, but if any students at the table want to speak, you always have priority. If you'd like to speak now, please identify the agenda item you're speaking on and clearly state your name and your municipality. will alternate between speakers who are here in the room and those who are online. Each speaker will be given a maximum of three minutes to speak in the timer on the screen will indicate their time remaining. Public comment is an opportunity for members of the community to comment on matters relevant to the operations of Cherry Hill Public School District or within the authority of the Child Board of Education. The board welcomes diverse opinions on relevant matters. Under established federal law governing reasonable restrictions on speech and public forums. Statements which domain individual community members or groups or which are irrelevant to the operations of the school district or are repetitious will not be permitted. Community members who would like to present information not relevant to the school district are always welcome to communicate directly to the district superintendent, board president and all board members via email or other alternative means. And we will start in the room if there's anyone who would like to speak. Please approach the podium. And there's nobody at this time, so I'm going to go to the align and Laura and iPad, if you could please state your full name and municipality in the action. the action item you're speaking on. Anne Einhorn, Cherry Hill. 17.2, the memorandum of agreement with Digital promise. a little confused. I did attend the curriculum instruction committee meetings, and I don't remember hearing this item discussed Secondly, what will be the outside costs over and beyond the $5,000 grants that the district will have to absorb? I see that there's going to be a community group put together. How will that be established? and I don't know, it kind of rankles with me that there are going to be gift cards given out to the very people who will be um part of this process. Thank you. Okay, we go back to the room and there are no people at the podium. So we go back to the line. And the number is 788. Please state your full name, your municipality, and the action item you are speaking on. My name is Jeff Potowitz on the Venturi Hill, New Jersey, and I'm talking about 17.2. Let's imagine this get in. And I think really anyone who's listening should really go to 7.2 and read that PDF. Please. No, I don't think five. Okay. It's the acceptance of a memorandum of understanding, and please see the PDF. It's a grant. I don't know. Yeah, it's a grant of $5,000, which will only cover a small portion of this. I think you need to read what it says, how much we are responsible for. It's from the same organization, really basically the same parent organization that that Dr. Morton went to California for with that meeting. Remember that, and it was publicized how great it was. I think this is the same organization, a parent organization. I think the parent organization is like. is a business or a public corporation or something. I think they have $146 billion. You could see that online. It says by mutual agreement, says a lot of other things. Really, it says, I think we're committed enough in what's not down here is what's the cost going to be in personnel? What's the, you know. these committees, how much a program is going to cost us. None of the costs are involved in this. Do you get around that by saying this is a grant? I don't know, but I think that's really, really a question. And because costs are not in there at all. No one discusses costs. It's just that we're getting this $5,000 grant Which doesn't cover that much. There's some question of, is there a confidentiality issue? I mean, they're going to be collecting data. What's going on with that? Again, what's the cost? There's no estimate of cost. It's a grant to help offset the costs. There's nothing about that. Maybe that's why it wasn't discussed at a meeting that Ms. Einhorn talked about because we're getting a grant. What's there to discuss? Yeah, it's a grant or is it a discount, really? Because we don't know what this is going to cost us. really going to cost us in personnel. Plus the fact it's already signed by… it turns out that that memorandum is already signed by our dated November 5th by Ms. Sugars. It's already signed, 11-5-24. So, hey, you know, but I think everyone needs to read it and question what the cost of this will be and if there's any issue with confidentiality with this group because what they're going to do with the information that they collect Thank you very much. Vote no. Vote no because we don't. There are too many unanswered questions. much too many unanswered questions. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Potowitz. Okay, we go back to the room. I don't see any people at the podium. We go back online and there's a hand raise and it's the name Rosen. If you could please state your full name, your municipality, and the action item you are speaking on. Mindy Rosen, Cherry Hill. I'm actually also calling on 17.2. And the only thing I'll say, because I agree with what Anne and Jeff said, so I don't want to repeat. I did think it was interesting that Lynn Sugar signed it on November 5th. But then also in the PDF, There's the signature that she signed it today. So I find that questionable. Why would she have signed it on November 5th and then an In the PDF also sign it today. So I also agree that you should vote no And I would like to know when this was even discussed. Okay, thanks. Okay, we go back to the room. I don't see anybody at the podium. We go back online. And I don't see any hands online, so I'm going to close first public comment. I mean, we'll move on to our board work session. Mrs. Winters, can you please give the committee report? for CNI. Yes, and I will try to keep it brief because I feel like the whole night has been about CNI, which I don't object to, but it's from a lot of CNI. So we met. The first couple items we went through fairly quickly. The first item was the theater and musical productions that I know most of Cherry Hill is out there holding their breath waiting that the committee did approve all the productions. So those of you at Beck and Rosa Middle Schools who are waiting for auditions, your time may be coming soon. It's going to be SpongeBob at Beck, Wizard of Oz, Youth Edition at Rosa. And then the spring musicals for the high schools. Everybody mark your calendars for Mary Poppins at High School East and Charlie the Chocolate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at High School West. So I will be attending all of them. Very excited. We also receive information on notification about the family life curriculum. We also heard about two research projects which are on the agenda tonight as well. And then Ms. Mallory gave the major portion of the meeting was two things. Ms. Mallory gave an update on our progress on the special education goal around transitions. This is part of a quarterly update that's being given to CNI. And then we received the CNI version of the NJSLA presentation. which had the information the whole board received tonight, but also more of a deep dive look at the NJSLA data. So do any board members, do any committee members want to elaborate further? Do any board members have any Questions. I don't mean to give it short shrift, but I feel like we just talked about NJSLA. I'm happy to wax poetic about it for another hour if you guys want, but I'm seeing everybody feels good about NJSLA right now. We feel like we've interrogated it. Any questions about the special ed goal? It really was just looking at, I did answer some board member questions that were sent to me about what we discussed. It was just really looking at the special education goal, the indicators of success and noting where we are as we progress towards achieving those goals and marking off those indicators. All right, seeing no complaints, I'm gonna cut it short for CNI tonight. Thanks. Okay, thank you. We move on to business and facilities. Mr. Greenbaum, can you please give the BNF report Tonight. Thank you. I haven't spoken too much tonight. I've been saving my breath for what is going to be a rather lengthy report out, but I think a lot of really great information So we'll start with our committee meeting. We had a discussion about facilities and field rental rates. A committee is continuing to review these rates. Field rates will likely be adjusted while facilities rates will likely remain the same, but need to be more consistently applied. The committee wants to ensure that the district is maintaining their investment in the facilities and covering costs of opening the buildings after school hours and on the weekends. We also had an update on preschool facilities projects. We've talked quite a bit about that today. I'll talk about that more when I do the construction update in a few minutes. But a timeline was shared for the construction of the eight classrooms at both Kilmer and Melberg and the installation of bathrooms and classrooms at Melberg The substantial completion date for all locations is December of 2025. The district has reached out to the state as to whether a mid-year startup a mid-school year startup of the preschool program in these classrooms would be permissible. As we talked about, we actually started mid-year when we launched our preschool expansion program. The hope is that once these classrooms are ready, we can use them. It really comes down to how the state funds them and how we how we work with that. Mr. Sugars, have we heard anything back? Are we still that's still up in the air? No, we have heard back and it appears that they will allow us to start the program. We're trying to confirm. that the 20th as a good date. We know it'll be tight. But… it appears that they are going to allow us to do that. Thank you so much. That's fantastic news. I apologize for putting you on the spot, but I'm glad you had a had the answer we wanted to hear. All right. And then lastly, we talked about board budget priorities for 25-26. This was essentially a speed run by Mrs. Sugars on pages and pages of Budget information where we were last year, what we're looking at this year, and what we're looking at for a starting point. We talked about things like tax levy, bank cap, state aid, debt service, the use of stabilized school aid and capital reserves. And this information is going to be discussed further with the full board next month at our Committee of the Whole. Where we'll start establishing board priorities for the upcoming budget year. Which hopefully we actually get to go with when we get fully funded, but we'll We'll see. Just… a few additional details. that came out of that for planning purposes, Mrs. Sugars assumes flat funding and there's some discussion whether or not to include the $3.1 million stabilized aid in that number. We talked about a 2% tax levy would bring in approximately 3.9 million. We have another 2.43% of banked cap available. Which could bring it up to 4.7 million additional. And 1.3 million of that bank cap expires if we don't use it next year. It's just kind of a baseline to understand if we need to go to a tax levy to make up any budget shortfalls, depending on state funding. That's our starting point for that discussion. The tax levy associated with debt service for the bond. That's expected to increase slightly this year, and then we'll start to significantly decrease in subsequent years. So I'm sure we're all looking forward to that going down a little bit. That has nothing to do with our 2% tax levy or whatever amount we we ought to go with, but it is something that taxpayers will incur. So it's something we certainly want to share. And then one discussion that came up is what happens if our state funding gets cut again and the tax levy isn't enough to close the gap? And this answer is kind of the same as we saw last year and I'm sure years before that, where it would likely mean not implementing the new supports recommended by CNI after analyzing NJSLA data. And asking the superintendent to identify non-essential programs to cut similar to last year, hopefully prioritizing those that have the least impact on our students and staff. I hope to not have to have that discussion and we will wait and see what that looks like. All right, I'm going to pause here for a moment. Are there any questions about the BNF? Committee, Minnie. Yes, Mrs. Trefane. So since Adam already put you on the spot, I'm just going to continue with that So now that we know that they'll allow us to start the program once the rooms are completed, does that mean that we'll include those prospective enrollment numbers in our budget so that we hopefully get the funding ahead of time for securing teachers, et cetera. Yes, we're hoping that's the path that it takes. Yep, good question. And I believe they are currently included in the updated three-year plan that is on the CNI action agenda, correct? Correct? Thank you. Go teamwork. Any other questions before I move on to the construction update. Okay. Seeing none, I'm going to try to go through this as quickly as possible. This month I had eight pages of notes, which I got down to about two thirds of a page. So I'll try to hit some of the highlights. As always, if any board members have any questions about specific projects mentioned here or not mentioned here. I have lots and lots of notes. I'm trying to not be too repetitive or take too much time. All right, so starting with site work at Lewis and Stockton, getting ready to close out that project. There are a few outstanding punch list items. Specifically, landscaping. Which has been delayed due to lack of rain. Nothing grows if it doesn't get water. Woodcrest and Lewis projects are now in the punch list phase. Remaining work includes striping at Lewis, handrails. And currently addressing issues with some of the slides at Woodcrest, the rest of the playground is open. Possibly as soon as this weekend, but I'm not going to make any promises. But I know we had the parts were ordered and they were looking for first available Weekend, weather permitting to install it. With APRs. Lynn, looks like Mrs. Sugars looks like you're ready to share. We'll start with some pictures and then I'll hit some highlights. Sure, I can… Nope, that's okay. If you want to just kind of go through it quickly and then Hand it back to me when we're done, if you don't mind. Sure. So this is from Barton. Barton is coming along here. As you can see, they're doing the brick and the vapor barriers there. So that project is moving along well. Johnson, our one yellow building is moving along as well. These are some of the internal pictures, some of the ductwork, HVAC work that is happening there, and then you can see the wall panels and the yellow brick work there. that's happening there at Johnson. And then at Kingston, as you know, Kingston is ours that is the furthest along. They are working internally at this point. We have some of the electrical panels here and the playground equipment has been installed. And we are waiting on the port-in-place service to be implemented as well. And then at night, which is, I guess, the next furthest along, we have some of the playground equipment there. And the call walks have been installed and we are now moving into the internal interior work that's going to be done there. At Mann, we have the call walls up, the windows are getting put in. Masonry work is being completed. And so they can start, you can see a pattern here where they're trying to get to the point where they can be doing internal work as the weather starts to starts to turn. Sharp is the last in the progress of the building. So we have started the masonry work there. We're putting up some of the Steel is up and that's been painted. The masonry is underway. So that project is moving along as well. Okay, thank you very much. One thing I'll point out, you kept seeing the word call wall windows. We learned about them in our last construction update. The windows are actually translucent. They're insulated. They give lots of really great natural light. But no glare. So any time of day, as long as there's daylight out, you get lots of natural light. But very energy efficient and you don't get glare on within the APR. Really nice feature and they're going in at all of our APRs. The expected completion dates are between April and August of 25. They're being done kind of one after another. So Kingston will be first and then One after another through August. The expected turnover date is in time for the new school year in September, where all of them will be brought online. So starting next school year, we will have six brand new APRs available to the kids. for activities and everything else. For the schools getting new playgrounds, which are four of them, they're expected to be open in the fall as well, many of them sooner. For example, Kingston could be ready as soon as Got to be careful what I promise here, but whether Weather permitting. After Thanksgiving, if not then, then in the spring. But we're still on schedule and within the $400,000 allowance, we have 231K remaining. Financially, we're in very good shape and schedule wise, we're right where we need to be. Most of the unknowns had to do with site work and soil conditions. those were addressed, that's what ate up most of our most of the allowance that we used and hopefully it's smooth sailing moving forward. But we'll see as we go. Next, we'll go to Karusi. And Mrs. Sugar, is you able to share some of those pictures as well? We have a few things that are done, many more in progress, and I'll go into some details after we look at some pictures. So just quickly a reminder, phase one is what we worked on this past, starting in the summertime. We're wrapping that up now. Phase two will begin in June of 2025 and run through the next school year. Phase three will be in June of 2026 and run through 2027 and phase four will be 2027 through 2028. So it's a very long project. Same contractor for all four phases. And let's just show some pictures. This is the gym, that area The gym lobby has been turned over. The gym is open, but we're still working on punch list items. You can see the bleachers. We had talked a couple weeks ago about some issues that we had had with the bleachers. Those issues have been resolved. And you can see there the bleachers are there. We will be installing a curtain that will divide the gymnasium into two. And then the gym lobby you can see as well with the bathrooms there was updated. So we're happy to have those spaces come back online soon. And then as we uh these are the lobby toilet rooms and then underneath of that you can see the lockers. Anyone who had been in those lockers knows that anything is an improvement from what was there. So we're very excited about updating that space as well. Then we also have the main office area. We anticipate that that will be completed soon and that they will be able to move back into the main office over winter break. So coming back in January, that office will be open in the wall that is separating the office from the hallway will be down. And then if you look at the pictures on the bottom, you can see some of the external work, the roof edge And the metal inciting that has been done over the gymnasium there. And then Adam had mentioned allowances. We have a $400,000 allowance on this. We've spent about $100,000 of it, which is about right in terms of a four-year project. So we have about 291,000 left in that project. Okay, thank you very much. I always appreciate that we have some pictures to actually show the progress. Sometimes it's more dramatic than others. But a picture is worth a thousand words and Probably more interesting than listening to me describe it. So other than some punch list items, the gym, the lobby, and the lobby restrooms are completed. The Boys and girls locker rooms are expected to be available to students after winter break. The main office should also be available to staff after the winter break. We have brand new bleachers. Last month we talked about how there's an issue where the installers had measured incorrectly. It was up to the vendor to figure out a solution and they did through an onsite modification at their expense. both Carusi and Rosa now have brand new bleachers. Rosa also has a curtain separating the sides of the gym. It's just a dividing curtain. There is another issue with that being the wrong size. It needs to be reordered or shortened. basically has to do with not being able to have the bleachers open and the curtain extended at the same time. They are working on a solution for that. As Mrs. Sugars mentioned, as far as the allowances go, deductions to date are about $100,000. $291,000 remaining. We used about a quarter of the allowance in phase one out of four phases. So we're right on target there. And I wanted to give kudos to our architect and construction management companies As you can see, things go wrong. There's always something that goes wrong with construction. They've been really great about being proactive and transparent with letting us know what went wrong, but also what they're doing about it and when it's going to be fixed. I've never asked them, what are you doing about it, where they didn't have an answer and it wasn't already in progress. And we see that with the bleachers. We see that with the curtain. We've had countless other things that didn't go perfectly. They addressed it. They addressed it well. And in most cases, it's at no cost to us and minimal scheduled disruption. So really appreciate the hard work that they put in with that. All right. We're at about the halfway point, so I may start abbreviating soon. TCUs, temporary classroom units, these are basically the trailers that will be the classrooms throughout the next few phases of abatement at Carusi. There were two proposals submitted. The bids were within $6,000 of each other. So they were very close and negotiations are taking place now. This will include 26 modules that come together to make 13 classrooms. They're all fully accessible. The bathrooms that come connected to them are also fully accessible. They have covered walkways, so while students will have to walk outdoors briefly, they'll be out of the elements. There's also going to be a new traffic pattern. It's the same as the one that was introduced this year that provides for better safety for drop-off safety and pedestrian safety. But now there's a new paved road going around the TCUs, and it'll be all fenced in for safety and security. The TCUs are expected to be brought on site in the spring and installed over the summer of 2025 in time for the school year to start next year. High School East, the dance studio that's the The second gym reached substantial completion on October 31st. The flooring had some quality control issues that's going to get redone over winter break. But that doesn't mean it can't be used now. The space was used on election day as a break room for poll workers. It's going to be used again for a blood drive next year. This contract also includes stairwells at West. In my notes, they were going to be completed Saturday, November 9th, so I'm hoping they were. I haven't heard otherwise. Okay, I'm going to assume they were and we'll follow up on that at the next instruction meeting. It's the catch to having a week and a half lag between when I meet with them and when I report out. Preschool editions at Melberg and Kilmer, started site clearing at Melberg in October. Construction fences up at Kilmer. The drop-off traffic pattern at Kilmer should be slightly modified starting this week to accommodate that. And the preschool additions are expected to be completed December of 2025. As we just talked about. And the district reached out to the department for guidance and we already talked about that. It looks like we will be able to use those classrooms in January. So we'll stay tuned for further details. But that is 240 more seats across 16 classrooms. That's amazing. And lastly, we'll talk about Rosa. The next phase of construction there went out to bid on November 4th and bids are opening December 10th. This includes renovation of the current cafeteria into music suites. there's going to be a new cafeteria in the back using the same kitchen. a security vestibule and moving the front office closer to the main entrance. The cafeteria slash APR, the new cafeteria slash APR will be able to be used as event space with its own new accessible bathrooms. And the music suite that's going to be built in the old cafeteria will have its own storage. I'm told climate controlled storage for instruments and practice rooms and estimated completion of this work will be in summer of 2026. And I'm going to end it there. There's lots more projects going on, critical HVAC, lots of other future projects at High School West and other locations. If there are any specific questions, I'm happy to dig deeper in my notes, but I think I'll leave it at that. Are there any questions or comments from board members? Mrs. Winters. Do I remember correctly that the Rosa project has a stage? Yes, thank you for bringing that up. So the new APR being built We'll also have stage, which gives it more options for event space or simply for this will be excellent as somebody who has had to build and take down a stage in the Rosa Gym. And that means the gym can't be used when Rosa does its spring musical. So it's going to be really nice over there. Thanks for the update. Absolutely. You're still on your own for the chairs then. Any other questions, comments, Mrs. Stern? This might be for Mrs. Sugars, but just you know kind of the usual question we ask is um guessing this is going to go on our website this update. I haven't forwarded it to Mr. Plovinsky or Mr. Holman because we're in the process of changing the website over. So I think once we get the new website up and running. We'll take a look at what's up there and what we can update. Thank you. The timeliness of this, just today, someone asked me specifically about one of the playgrounds, or I'm sorry, one of the APRs And the timeline and could they, you know, where could they find information? So I sent them, you know, the link for the presentation from quite a few months ago. So it'll be exciting to get the update. Thank you. Thank you. And we're getting ahead of ourselves. I'm sure that this will come up in strategic planning report out, but new website is expected over winter break. So that is when I'm assuming New content will be added as well. For what it's worth, it looks great. Leave it at that. Any other comments? All right. Well, I think I've done enough talking tonight, so I will… And it back over. Thank you. Sure. So luckily for everybody, the human resources committee meets is a closed meeting and it's generally confidential. So what I can say is that we talked about recruitment, hiring and retention. And those related topics. contracts and I'm going to leave it at that. A board members, committee members have anything to add or board members have any questions or comments? Okay, that was fast. Okay, we will move on to policy and legislation, Mr. Mayor, can you please give the report? I can, and I was going to try and compete with you for the speediest report out, but hearing that i um I rescind the competition that I was going to do. I'll do the best though I can do pretty quickly. We started with a continued discussion on the proposal to have self-directed Mental health days at all of the levels that would have been kept at two days. And that was informed, this discussion was different in many ways because it was informed by a meeting which took place the week before of the Mental Health Task Force. task force that meets regularly but was convened specifically to discuss this proposal because we felt We were at a point where we really there were a number of issues that continued to be brought up. that we felt we needed the expert guidance and perspective of those who are in the field so that they could give us is the benefit of their thoughts and It was a 90-minute meeting And Dr. Mayn, I'll just kind of give you a heads up that I may be turning the microphone over to you at some point during this presentation. Just in case. That was a really good presentation. It was a very good meeting. They were initially really quite um supportive of the overall concept. But the meeting turned really to focus more on some concerns that At the end, that group on the whole would present challenges that maybe when we're not prepared yet as a district to meet in a way that would truly protect all the students in the ways that they needed to be protected. we sort of turned back to why was this why was the proposal brought to us in the first place and really was brought to us In order to give a little more of a positive light on students and make them that much more comfortable when They feel like they just need some time. They need a break. They're stressed and they want to take some additional time. And not have to deal with That was unfortunate continued stigma that sometimes is still attached to just reaching out and raising your hand and saying, I need a little break. And what does that really mean and so We took those comments and we took their guidance and we brought it back to the committee. Last week when we met. The decision was made that what we really feel is in the best interest of the students and what we want to take this is to add some different levels of education. find some different ways to provide information to students to families in the district about, first of all, the fact that we do have a particularly liberal policy right now on excused absences. And those absences can be used for so many different reasons, including Days where a student just feels like they just had a little bit too much on their plate for a while and need a little extra time. maybe a day off or a half a day off. totally acceptable on the end. We're going to look at different avenues to provide that information, whether it's During times when the students and the parents are together advancement during the school year. finding better opportunities in real estate on our newly We design website when that's up in order to make some of this educational information available and accessible. So really, that's where we're going to go with this for now. That doesn't necessarily mean that forever the concept of specifically adding these days or using not adding days because that was never the idea, right? The idea was Just to add this as another excused reason for excused absences. It's not completely off the table, but right now the focus It's going to be on widening education with regard to mental health and stress. at the schools and how students can take advantage of the days that are already available to them. We continued our discussions on Also, really in education. on HIVs and finding more opportunities to better educate the community. what is an HIV, what is not an HIV? What is the process? How can we improve the process? what can you do in order to In order to participate in a way, and how can we participate in a way that's more productive? Specifically, we heard from Some of the results now from parent university One of the most probably the best attended parent universities in a long time. the district has done over a hundred participants over four separate Administrations of parent university. In order to get some more information on HIVs and the HIV process. those parents also together with a larger group of families that have been involved in HIVs. are also participating in surveys. Which we will digest and turn into additional ways to improve the communication process and education around the HIV process here. in the district. We also addressed though briefly the 2026-2027 school calendar. Just to do a little bit of cleanup. Again, thank you to Dr. Mann for taking another look at that just to ensure that all the days um in the in the the draft were correct. There were a couple of A couple of changes that needed to be made. Those were made. It's my understanding the 2627 calendar is up. If it's not, there's I believe that it can be. posted and continued commitment that we're going to get additional input from labor management just to make sure that they are that they're good with the minor changes that we made. The last thing that we discussed, these weren't policies or regulations attended to policies. address the need for the district to implement a forms for instance when a a student is… is involved in some sort of whether it be controlled substance or medical issue that requires that there be intervention on behalf of EMS. EMS arrives, student is seen and and the student determines that they do not want to continue to follow the MS. They don't want to perhaps go to the hospital. they're essentially turning down additional treatment. there's now a new form that is presented to that student. Simply saying that they are voluntarily Turning down that the guidance and opportunity to see additional treatment. So that's the form that's going to be attached to the file. Just again, this is really a protective measure for the last, those were all the regularly scheduled agenda items. There was one item brought up in new business. that item addressed the question of whether or not there is appetite to discuss the potential potentially drafting a bylaw for board members. Along the lines of what we have done in policy for the students. And cell phone policy. policy, which I'm going to plug again is going over incredibly well. It's been positively received by students and staff at both at all of our schools. So proposal was made that In order to continue to model the type of behavior that we're requiring that the students follow. that board members while at the board table do the same, whether or not a bylaw would be appropriate. governing the use of cell phones for board members during public meetings. Of course, when we first started to discuss the idea of a policy for students, we piloted those sleeves. I don't believe that was what was contemplated. And it's an idea that certainly was, I think received, you know, generally positive feedback, but not completely. That was discussed. And if there are questions about that or others, we can certainly address those. I believe that covers everything that that we talked about at P&L. Any other P&L members have any comments? If I leave anything out? Just characterize anything. Any board members have any questions? Dr. Root. I just wanted to clarify, you said that right now, because we do have some kind of flexibility in the days off. And the reasons for days off. like, sorry, not days off but excused absences that we're not currently thinking about adding mental health days per se could you Not adding mental health days as a dropdown as what we talked about, adding that as another reason. to take off. So for instance, a student is off doctor's appointment. for a college visit. They fill that fill that that window in on the form. The idea had been we would add that as another specifically excused absence would be a mental health day or stress day, whatever those terms were. So just to briefly discuss what some of the concerns were. The worry is now, and this was amplified a bit in the meeting with the mental health task force. was that those flags, those words could be triggers and they triggered, certainly triggers would trigger a response on the part of the district to do something. follow up really to ensure that the students are okay. We don't want to leave, especially students that are potentially going to be going home to a home unsupervised and they'll be going by themselves. If they've raised their hand and they said. You know, I need time off for mental health or for stress. going home by themselves, but we need to know that that's they are not going to potentially be in a position where They're unsupervised and may need some intervention. Well, how does the district handle that, especially a district of this size with so many students? It's unwielding. It's unwieldy. It's difficult that staffing staffing administrative issues or significant. And that was a concern that was repeated for, you know, I wouldn't say too many times, but very, very often by a number of people, specifically the mental health task force that So these were real concerns and including some Currently within district. All of them, however, pivoted immediately to this is totally, this is an important issue and we think the better way to do it is to increase education with respect to stress, mental health. And there are so many days off that students can take Currently that are excused absences. these certainly fall within them, but does not require a student to to necessarily specifically say that that's the reason why they want I think ultimately, I mean, that conversation sounds good i understand you know kind of wanting to be able to make sure that you can flag you know when a student is in crisis But I do think it's important for students to know that if they're just feeling completely stressed out and overwhelmed with It's okay to take a day off like it's okay to like that's that alone is important for mental health, I think. having language to that effect. would be beneficial. I just want to. Put that out there. No, and that's exactly where that's exactly where the where the conversation has resulted so We're speaking the same language. Dr. Rood, I think like so many other things that we deal with that come up. what I, you know, what sometimes seems very straightforward. Turns out like there's so many more layers And I, just to emphasize, because I was on the meeting as well. And this is my line of work. hearing the really strong quickly raised concern from multiple people about the logistics and the safety issues of monitoring and supporting students who may not just be feeling stressed out. There may be something much more concerning going on for them that would trigger their desire to go leave school and take a mental health day. there just was like so much to that so Yeah, definitely, you know, a lot to can to still look at. But I think to your point even having the discussion, you know, making it known publicly that this is really important that mental health is mental health just as significant a reason for students you know to sometimes take a day. you know, and is absolutely under the same category as other you know, absences or need for absences is I think, a good start. So at least we're there. Any other board members have any questions? Is that a question or just a question? Seeing none, that is it for You know? And we move on to the strategic planning report out. Or Dr. Rood, you could please give the report. I'll try to be brief. We talked about a few of the major projects that are going on through strategic planning and through the district. One of them is as part of the larger communications audit. major arm of that effort. I'm not the only one, but a major one is revamping the website. Mr. Blavinski provided some some context to where the website is. Basically, it looks like the shell of the website so that kind of the the code and like the look and the feel of the website is coming along and nearly nearly done and they're at the stage of starting to look into populating information into that website. One of the big features that he talked a little bit about was how they'll be implementing some new more modern website design features like guided searches. So when you type in your Google search. A lot of times the Google searches are kind of driven by what people have already been searching or You know, different activity and sometimes that can lead to some weird results. So one of the things that they can try to do is to try to kind of auto amplify certain certain search results like For example, like one of the things that might always pop up with certain terms is the calendar of the school year or, you know, like a you know something specific to athletics or You know, but some kind of guided search so that like the most sought after, most relevant documents are kind of forwarded to the top of the search. So different features like that. So the website is coming along. And is slated to be ready at the end of December. ish, so around that time. Along with the website is so kind of a it's separate from the website, but a parallel process. They're working on a we have a contractor working on a data dashboard The data dashboard is kind of an overview of our district. It will have data like demographic data, who are students. It'll have who in a very general sense so you know, kind of percentages and and generality is not like specific data, specific individual data That, of course, is protected. overall kind of numbers on attendance NJSLA data like we saw tonight. So different types of reporting measures. So in general, what the data dashboard is supposed to give the community the ability to kind of quickly jump you know, jump on, look and get a snapshot for where the school district is at, you know, how we're you know, what are our demographics what are our test results, that kind of stuff. So those features are both slated to kind of come online around the end of December. The data dashboard should kind of be ready around the same time as the website. Jumping to the next big topic. Mr. Guy talked about elementary school redistricting So. Given the recent demographic report from Dr. Gripp. we realize that uh you know not We kind of know that this happens, but the report suggested that we really need to think about accommodating growth in our student population. And looking at demographic shifts, sometimes populations may stay flat if you look at the overall number, but things may area to area so using the data from that demographic study and using current enrollments and projected enrollments. There is… multiple groups working on coming up with a plan for elementary redistricting to bring forward to the board. One of the things that came out of kind of some of the community panels and administrative panels is that We really need really… kind of some additional technical support in filtering through the many, many data points. So the district is the district is once again reaching out to Dr. Grip for some assistance with looking at how to draw, how to possibly draw boundary lines, what to look at in terms of where this what would happen if we used this building or that building And he's going to be looking at a lot of different scenarios but Ultimately, he will provide a report back to back to the district and back to the committee. So that they can reconvene with that updated kind of information to kind of try to finalize a plan to present to us. there is nothing set in stone with elementary redistricting So the next things that I say are only theoretical and are currently being studied both through committee and through Dr. Gripp's work. Some of the things under consideration, though, are redrawing boundary lines the possibility of using the Lewis administration building to hold additional elementary classrooms that of course would become with a rehousing of administrative staff Those are kind of the biggest aspects that Dr. Rupp and the committee are kind of mulling over to figure out how those things might might play into possible plans, but there's an awful lot of work to be done. And they're expecting, because of the additional work that Dr. Gripp's going to do, they're expecting this to maybe to for the recommendation to maybe be delayed a little bit. And I think right now they're looking at possibly February or March for a presentation to the board. just kind of a guiding principle of all of this is that they're looking for a full implementation of the elementary redistricting plan Like I said, there is no plan as of yet. It's being studied. But whatever plan is eventually decided upon, the idea is kind of a complete implementation by the 2728. school year. So this is something that we're doing planning for the future Not necessarily, you know, trying to cause chaos now. prevent chaos later. So that's it for elementary redistricting. And then finally, Mrs. Roscoff gave some information about the strategic planning process. So the strategic plan is so the district has a strategic plan, like what are our vision and What's our vision and goal? Where do we want to go? Where should the district be in five years? And that plan is about to expire. And so the district is doing doing the work and working with a contractor, Hanover Research, to look at all constituent groups and get feedback and come together with a recommendation for a strategic plan for the district. And this is kind of an all-encompassing type of thing. We didn't really talk about too many specific parts of what the plan will be one we did talk about a little bit is that part of this planning process is the idea of portrait of a graduate. And we've talked at the board about portrait of a graduate multiple times over the years. But it's kind of the idea that One, we want to kind of have an idea as a district what what are we aiming for? What do we want our children to be able to do what do we want a graduate from cherry hill to to be like. That's not a singular thing. Of course, we have kids who are destined for Harvard and kids who are destined for trades and everything in between. And all around. So that portrait of a graduate is a little bit more of an expansive idea. But in my mind, putting all the things together to kind of figure out like, how can we do the best for each of our kids and and create a plan that's going to provide good pathways for as many of our children to succeed as possible. So that, again, that portrait of a graduate part of the strategic plan Let me see the One of the things that they did work have been working on in their most recent strategic planning meetings is working on mission and vision statements, trying to define those guiding principles that that the district wants to hold to. And kind of thinking, you know, do we want to, I think things that we want to change and update from the past plan and And coming up with new ideas. in uh let me see in The strategic plan is, let me see, the next meeting's in January. One of the big things that's coming up, I believe, I know somebody in the At the table will correct me if I'm misspoken, but there's a lot of community feedback opportunities that are still to come in this process. exactly what types of feedback opportunities, I don't think they're all fleshed out quite yet, so I won't comment on that, but if somebody else with more no wants wants to, that's great. And I think… We had a little confusion about dates, but I think at the end the kind of theoretical presentation day is scheduled in June. And this whole strategic planning process is meant to be completed and implemented for the for the 2020 Here's it for the 25-26 school year. um and I think those are the biggest parts of the notes that I have there. So at this point, I will turn it over to questions or additional details from committee members. If there's anything. Mr. Payne. Can you just go back to what you said, what would be available by February or March? I believe you said there was something So by February, March, so So between now and that time, Dr. Grip is going to be looking at the demographic data in some slightly different ways. So he's not just looking at the data he's done, he's running some different projections. And looking at He's going to provide information back to the elementary redistricting committees. to looking at what would happen if we drew the boundaries in different configurations like What do we get out of that? How do things change if we incorporate the Lewis administration building as a As an elementary school. So those are the things he's considering that is supposed to be delivered i believe Probably in January. And when we were originally expecting some feedback to the board in January. But because that Dr. Gripper is going to be doing this additional work that'll be presented in January. the presentation to the board will be pushed till February or March. And so I'm just looking at our goals. So I don't know if you know, if you discuss this or know the answer to this but That'll be the initial recommendations by that time. And then so will our final plan be pushed back as well then? I believe it's that that February, March is the initial recommendation, and I'll have to pass it off to somebody else to talk about when final implementation might start. Sure. So I have lots of this stuff in my notes. I write down lots of dates just So when people want to know when things are happening, I can share that with them. So when we did our initial demographic study with Dr. Grip, one of the services we did not do at the time were specific redistricting redistricting scenarios. that's something that the redistricting steering committee Am I getting the name right? Yes. Is going to be engaging with Dr. Grip for looking at scenarios of redrawing districting lines, looking at scenarios where we bring the Lewis building online. looking at different ways of utilizing the Lewis building. Is it going to be used for overflow from schools that have exceeded their capacity? Are we going to actually redraw lines to start moving people between schools. That's some of the things that are going to be looked at and that that's expected January, I'm just going to say end of January is originally something the committee was going to look at beginning of January. Getting it at the end of January and they need some time to digest it, discuss and come up with recommendations. That's likely going to be end of February or early March when the steering committee is able to present some of those recommendations to the board. My understanding is there are not going to be any definitive recommendations or a definitive path forward. Now we're looking at roll out probably in the 27-28 school year Again, this is all tentative. I keep looking over at Dr. Morton, make sure I'm not misspeaking. The only thing that needs to be decided sooner than later is whether or not Lewis is going to be brought online as another elementary school. That's something where next year there'd need to be plans to relocate the administrative staff that's here to another location and the following year would be construction. to convert the building. Again, this is all tentative. This is not a definitive plan. And any redistricting plan would not be implemented until the year after that. I think that's a great thing. It buys us some time to monitor the projections that Dr. Gripp has to see how closely they align with what we actually see with shifting enrollment and shifting demographics and can kind of roll with it and see what the best plan is. hopefully that Answers your question? Yes, you answered my question and my second question. So thank you. I thought that might be helpful. I wrote down a lot of these things, just kind of putting together the timeline of when things would happen and when decisions actually need to be made. We have some really great projections and it's kind of exciting to be able to monitor it in real time how accurate they are and adjust their plans accordingly. Mr. So it's exciting to hear the update. So this is you know I appreciate not being on the committee now knowing what's going on. It's fantastic and it's um you know having gone through previous redistricting in my time on the board i really appreciate. the thoughtfulness, the intentionality, the thoroughness. and the um you know, very specific step-by-step effort to ensure that we are making data-driven decisions. you know It's definitely like a longer runway I think that benefits us. Sometimes we want to be extremely agile, sometimes in something this big, we want to be very thorough and thoughtful about how we're doing this. Doing it the right way as much as possible so Thank you. Any other questions? It's like, no. So I'll pass back to you, mister. Okay, thank you. We're going to move on to our special action agenda. And I'm going to ask Mrs. Winters to please move the CNI agenda. Of course, the superintendent recommends and I move the following 17.1, approval of attendance at conference and workshops for the 24-25 school year. 17.2 resolution approving the acceptance of the memorandum of understanding 17.3, approval of master's research project, 17.4, approval of doctoral research projects. 17.5, resolution approving the 2025-26 three-year preschool program plan and annual update submission. Do I have a second? Mr. Mayor, are there any questions on the CNI agenda items? I would like to ask a question on the CNI agenda items. Dr. Morton, can you just provide a little bit of background on agenda item 17.2, which is the memorandum of Understanding? Yes, absolutely. Gladly. So there are a few comments and questions about digital promise and the connection with the League of Innovative Schools, Digital Promise is actually the parent organization by which the League of Innovative Schools comes through. Digital Promise is a nonprofit global organization. And what they do is they Partner. through the League of Innovative Schools partnered with progressive districts that are interested in innovation and research through technology. their work is truly amazing. And part of the excitement and being affiliated with them is that we have opportunities to take part in these rare gifts, so to speak. They have many philanthropic partners that allow for grants to be awarded and for cost to be defrayed, so to speak. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation. The Zuckerberg Foundation, Facebook, Gerard. W.K. Kellogg Foundation, HP, Verizon, Walmart. So on and so forth. The list goes on. The grant that we're going to receive allows us to offset costs associated with curriculum committees that will come in to help write courses on cybersecurity. So as we look to expand in our pathways, college and career pathways, cybersecurity is one of the things that we're exploring Cats out of the bag, folks. Amongst other things as well. So as we look to bolster our experiential learning opportunities, there's coursework that will come along with it. we're going to have community mentors Carol Roscoff is working on that. the curricular pieces, Ms. Staffin. And her team are working on that. And then ultimately what this does is students will take coursework. on cybersecurity, we have a partnership through The League of Innovative Schools with IBM, There's mentors that will help to facilitate the relationship for kids who are interested in this pathway. And then we see them taking part in an internship their senior year as well. So it really is so truly a win-win for the district And something that's phenomenal for us. So, you know, we're excited about our affiliation. in partnership with Digital Promise and the League of Innovative Schools. Thank you. That sounds fantastic. you know that I've been a huge champion since I joined the board of bringing additional funds into the district to continue to grow the pie and expand our offerings. That's something that we should always look to do. As we continue to try to continue to innovate and improve, but also be mindful of our state and local budgets. So I commend you for looking for those opportunities. And also for beginning, continuing to look at opportunities for our high school students. So that as they look to the future towards their career goals that we can help them to get there. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. Ms. Stern. Mr. Morton, I'm not sure. if this is accurate, but I recall from a couple years ago at NJSBA, there are mandates coming for requirements that we do have to provide cybersecurity education. Is that still a mandate that's coming down the pike. I'm not as familiar with that. I don't know if anyone on the team is. I'd have to look into that. To find that out. Yeah, I just recall hearing that and um so it just hearing about this is making me think, well, you know, the frustration of unfunded mandates like that come out sometimes. So if in fact it is a mandate, it's nice to have this resource. So just to kind of keep that conversation going, do you foresee an uh a lot of additional costs related to these initiatives that the 5,000 won't Cover. I'm not aware of any additional costs at the present time. Okay, thank you. Any other questions from board members on C and I agenda items tonight? All right, see no further questions. Ms. Sugars, please call the vote. Board members, you may cast your votes. Mrs. Sugars, I bolted out without my computer tonight, so I'm going to voice vote tonight. I'll vote yes. Minoan 17.5. Okay, we have a no vote on 17.5 from Mrs. Gallagher. Otherwise, we have a unanimous yes vote. Okay, Mr. Greenbaum, can you please move the business and facilities agenda? Thank you. The superintendent recommends and I move the following. 18.1 approval of bill lists 18.2, resolution to close dormant special revenue fund 20, other local projects accounts. 18.3, resolution for the award of bids. 18.4, copy of submission of comprehensive maintenance plan and M1. 18.5, resolution authorizing acceptance of the fiscal year 2025 teach STEM classes in nonpublic schools grant. 18.6, approval of donations, which I always like to read aloud. There's a donation from the Cooper PTA. to be used for grades two, three, and four field trips at Cooper Elementary School. So thank you very much for that. Do I have a second? Mrs. Stern, any questions? Seeing none, Mrs. Sugars, please open the voting. Board members, you may cast your vote. Mrs. Sugar's on item 18.1, Bill List 3. I have to recuse myself from the ESS. Invoice. Otherwise, yes, and everything else. This is Sugar's, I'll vote yes. Other than Mr. Mayor's abstention, we have a unanimous yes vote. Okay, superintendent recommends and i move following 19.1, termination of employment certificated, 19.2, termination of employment non-certificated. 19.3 appointments, certificated 19.4, appointments non-certificated. 19.5, other compensation certificated 19.6, assignment salary change certificated. 19.7. Salary chain, assignment salary change, non-certificated 19.8 contract renewals certificated. Do I have a second? Mrs. Winters. Are there any questions? or comments. This is Winters. She's not here tonight, but I'm sure she's listening. I want to commend Ms. Lieber. Looking down the appointments, I see a Malberg special education preschool teacher and drum roll everybody, a world language teacher for the elementary schools. So I just want to commend the HR office for their tireless efforts in recruiting great teachers for our districts. Okay, any other questions? Okay. And Mrs. Sugars, can you please call the vote? Board members, you may cast your votes. Yes, you're going to vote yes. And we have a unanimous yes vote. Okay, Mr. Mayer, can you please move the pause and legislation agenda? Yes, of course. Superintendent recommends And remove the following item, 20.1, approval of harassment, intimidation, bullying investigation. decisions. Do I have a second? Mr. Greenbaum, are there any questions? non-misty Sugars, would you please open the voting? It sounds like there was only the one item and I'll abstain from that as I was not at the meeting. to discuss those. Yeah, other than Dr. Rood's abstention, we have a unanimous yes vote. Okay, thank you. move on to new business. Do any board members have any new business? Okay, seeing none, do any board members have any old business? I actually have an item, Dr. Morton. Last meeting, there was a public comment made regarding an Oprah request and student names. And I'd like to ask if you could please provide any further information or update about that topic. Yes, absolutely. So last meeting there was… comment relative to information that had Apparently appeared on Oprah Machine website. So following that, we had an opportunity to do some research on that and just sort of figure out what happened. So essentially, an OPA request was submitted to the district in August of 2023. the open request came through the open machine openmachine.com. website on behalf of an organization. They asked for a number of information. When the information was provided to them a few weeks later. the information was redacted, but it was redacted in PDF format. We later learned that that redaction in PDF format was able to be undone or to be viewed in HTML format request was made by the district to have that information taken down and replaced. And then again, as we just said, you know, last meeting, we learned that that hadn't That was not the case. Thank you to Mr. Green for his efforts and working directly with that organization In the days following. the disclosure of that information we were able to have the information officially removed and a confirmation that the information was removed on October 30th. Well, actually, I'm sorry, October 30th, I believe the correspondence from mr green went to the organization November 4th, we learned that the information had been removed. He continues to work with the organization to make sure that that information is destroyed and not shared with any Anyone else? On November 5th, when we learned the information had been taken have been removed. I sent letter from my office to all those who we knew whose names had appeared. There were about 92 names that had appeared on the list that we were certain of, and there were also an additional 82 names that we were uncertain if they their names appeared, but we thought it wise to send the information out to those families as well so a letter from my office went to them. I've spoken with Several families, you know, who have had follow-up questions and concerns about things. Again, thank you, Mr. Green, for for following up and ensuring that the information was removed. Thank you for explaining that. I'm not even sure what that means from PDF to HTML. I'm sorry, I don't have that level of technical expertise Mr. Pavinski, you can laugh at me all you want. I do not. It is not my area of expertise But, um. you know so I appreciate, however, all of that information and the swift action that has occurred. since that topic has been brought to your attention, Dr. Morton. Appreciate that. I appreciate the update. Okay. Other old business. For any board members, this is your fame. I was just hoping to maybe ask one question relevant to the same topic. Also, thank you for the really quick action that you and everybody took in the matters. I'm just curious because this is a new, the whole Oprah thing in general is a very new process for me. I don't know if you've all looked into steps forward on how to potentially prevent things like this from happening in the future, but are you able to give any comment related to that at all? Yeah, that's actually a very good question. So I think, you know, overall throughout the system-wide, you know, we're We'll explore opportunities for training all of our administrative staff and the full team you know team here, team in the buildings as well. on just you know the redaction of information and how to best go about making that happen. If you looked at the information that was sent to him. You'd never known that it was possible for it to be converted in another format. So I think, you know, message learned for us absolutely and moving forward, we would definitely want to make sure that the confidentiality of our students and you know personal information is protected. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, any other old business? For board members, from board members. And with that, we will move to our superintendent Our second public comment, I'm sorry. The second public comment is an opportunity for members of our community to comment on any matter relevant to our school district and board of education. If you'd like to speak now, please clearly state your name and your municipality. We will alternate between speakers who are here in the room Not many of you, but there are a few of you. And those who are online. and um we will alternate the timer on the screen will indicate the remaining time you have left and you will have a maximum of three minutes to make your public comment. If we have students who would like to speak, specifically if we have a student who is online. please do put an S after your name so that I know that you are a student. Last time I think a student put like an asterisk or something and I didn't realize it was a student. So I definitely want to make sure. They're calling you first. Public comment is an opportunity for members of the community to comment on matters relevant to the operations of the Cherry Hill Public School District We're within the authority of the Cherry Hill Board of Education. The board welcomes diverse opinions on relevant matters. Under established federal law governing reasonable restrictions on speech public forums. Statements which demean individual community members or groups or which are relevant to the operations of the school district or our repetitus will not be permitted. Community members who would like to present information not relevant to the school district are always welcome to communicate directly. to the district superintendent, board president And all board members via email or other alternative means. So with that, we start in the room if anyone would like to speak, please approach the podium. Please state your full name and your municipality. Sarah Jocelyn, Cherry Hill. First, I'd like to congratulate the district for the QSAC. It's always good to have all of the the items in order here, and I encourage you to continue to strive for excellence. I also want to thank the excellent report on the pre-K. Always learn something new every time the reports come out. Thank you, Dr. Morton, for explaining the Cybersecurity. I would just like to mention that I believe that that kind of education is also available at Camden County College. And I know that there's opportunities to be in a college, high school situation. So I'm just reminding you of that. And of course, we know that there's other ways of earning credits that can be applied for college. A very important thing as we think about our students having to deal with the expenses For those that choose to either go to college or career situations. And so I think it's important for the district to be looking at that kind of impact because that is something that Benefits the community. It benefits the families and it benefits the individual student. So I'm not sure where the highlighting is done on that. I know we certainly recognize students who've done well on For example, AP exams or whatever That kind of thing does happen in normal course. But please consider that as part of the part of the moving forward aspect. I also wanted to mention The extreme importance that as we move forward. we consider those boundary issues And I appreciate that there is a plan moving forward to do so. I ask… It's a question I didn't research that I came up in this meeting. And that was how many states or municipalities beyond New Jersey are involving with universal pre-k because I do not, I believe that New Jersey is not unique in that aspect. And I think that that's something that we should be informed about as this group. So again, I haven't studied that issue, but I recall there were several other states that were making that path forward. And I thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment. Okay, and we go to the line and the name on the line is Rosen. If you could please state your full name and your municipality when the timer restarts. Hi, Mindy Rosen, Cherry Hill. If 17.2 was such a fabulous, fabulous thing, I'm wondering why you didn't do a presentation on it before. And or talk about it in the cni CNI committee meetings, just curious. Also, Dr. Morton, you said that it was requested in all the Oprah was requested August 2023 and it was Settled October 30th and November 4th. of 2023 or 2024 just wanted to know that answer. And also, there's a 30-page document for OPR requests and I also didn't know about electronic things, Miriam. So I'm with you there But it says clearly If an electronic document is subject to redaction. like word processing or Adobe Acrobat files Custodians should be sure to delete the material being redacted and insert in place of the redacted material, either an asterisk or something some other obvious indication of the redaction. techniques such as hiding text or changing its color so it is seemingly invisible should not be used because sophisticated computer users can detect the changes and potentially undo the redactions. I just wanted to put that out there and I would like to know the date. Thank you. Okay, we go back to the room. If anyone else would like to speak, please approach the podium. You say your full name and municipality when the timer restarts. Rick Short, Cherry Hill. You got to give credit when credit is due. Dr. Morton, it sounds like we're moving in the right way with the cybersecurity. So thank you. I do have three questions tonight. One is what makes a school academically successful? Number two, I need to question the cognitive reasoning of our board. President, Madam Stern. Also need to question the cognitive reasoning of Public statements made by miss roshkoff Number three. Mr. Meyer, I'll start with this. Mr. Meyer, you just mentioned tonight that Under protective measurements, a student can Decline in EMT. So does that mean that if a uh that if the school calls the ambulance to West that my son or daughter can declined the ambulance and the parents would not be notified Is that part of the 5756? I'd like clarification on that. So going to question number two, at the last school board meeting, Madam President, you stated that there are hate groups and you're very concerned about the hate groups across New Jersey. with other members, you also mentioned that some of the board members are part of or some of the board members aren't part of the hate group that's joining but Please, Madam President, tell me who these hate groups are. I want to study them. I want to know what boards have these hate groups because, you know, just like the no hate in cherry hill Wouldn't it be better to put… 28 or 3000 some smiley faces on every door than to warn each of our students that there's no hate in that classroom when you put these Door stickers and you subliminally Advertise to our children every time they walk into a classroom that there's so much hate in the classroom that they're protected You know, and also uh And mental health, I mean, it just Your statements recently about all this mental crisis i mean you're actually causing the crisis itself talking about hate all the time. I mean, how many more times do I have to say that? And then, you know. Let's talk about schools, successful schools I've been doing some research in the Camden High School. It's Camden Mastery High School. And they don't seem to have hate problems and they don't seem to have discipline problems And they don't seem to have all the same problems we have. So are you creating your own problems from your policies that you're using, that you're doing. Are you creating the mental crisis itself? It's quite bizarre. And again, Dr. Morton cannot answer his own website. AskDrmorton.com and he can't answer any of the questions. Thank you. Go back to the line, the name and the line is Alana Yarris. And if you could please state your full name and municipality. Alana Yaris, Cherry Hill, Chair of the Fair Funding Committee, a division of Zone PTA. This holiday season, the Fair Funding Committee will be doing thankful Thursdays. to thank Trenton and our representatives for what they provided us for this school year in stabilized school aid and what we were able to bring back with that stabilized school aid. Also, this Thursday is our last fair funding meeting of 2024. based on meetings I've attended and listened to board members for, we'll be discussing district priorities and how the committee can move forward in helping the district. to not only get flat funding but are full share of funding. That meeting is on Zoom so that everyone can still go about their lives and also attend this virtual meeting. The meeting ID is online on social media and there's a passcode as well. And if people could if they want more information, they can email fairfunding chps at gmail.com. Thank you. Okay, we go back to the room. I don't know that there is anybody left in the room to make a public comment who's not spoken, so I'll go back to the line. And the phone number is 788. If you could please state your full name and municipality. My name is Jeff Potterwitzer. I live in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, funding. 7073. The parents target class size. Dr. Morton said in the district to reduce class size with all the fourth and fifth graders from a cap of 26 students to 22 would cost $1.9 million. $1.9 million. In 2018, we received $14.1 million in SFRA in 2018, we received in 2014, 21, we received 21.9 million. In 2023, we received 29.5 million in 2024. We received 36.4 million. With all these increases. All of them, all right We actually had plenty of money. to decrease that fourth and fifth grade classes because we're thinking about the learning loss that these kids had And they were one of the main people who had it. But you made the choice not to use those funds for that. But 1.9 million We had enough funds. Okay, so you didn't do it. August 29th, 2025, LMC equal results. August 29, 2024, in a publication of NJEA. They explained how the labor management collaborative worked to obtain 1.5 million in salary. Guys, our salaries, starting salaries were low for bachelors. We were 478 out of 498. And for masses, 478 out of 498. Again, with all the increases in state aid. All right. All those increases. And since you didn't do it for learning loss with fourth and fifth graders. You had plenty of money to increase those salaries. A lot. What the heck happened? Why'd you drop the how'd you drop the buck? The ball, it didn't make any sense. 1.5 million? Come on. And a year when our aid is cut, all these years it would increase. You didn't know that our school that you did not know that our school district was that low in starting salaries? It would have been easy. Just do it. 1.5 million. Look at those increases. You didn't do it. You didn't do it. And now you're praised for it. Does it make sense? What can you do with lobbying for increased state aid? Well, one thing to do is to say that the state aid needs to be increased when it comes to children with disabilities. Take it out of equalization aid. Give us the full state aid. Don't let it be wealth equalized because our wealth equalization rate will decrease. And also. Last year, we received six points. For this year, we received $6.1 million. Thank you. That's your three minutes. Thank you. Okay, we go. There's no hands online. There's nobody at the podium going to close public comment. And we'll turn it over to Dr. Morton for any superintendent's comments. Yes, Mr. Just a few. So the dates for the OPA request, the information, the initial request came and the information was sent in 2023. The letter from Mr. Green. And the information being taken down was 2024. I think there was a bit of confusion about refusals for EMS, the form that was referenced that was added to the policy is for parents to complete, not for students to complete. So in the event EMS arrives and the parent EMS arrives and the parent refuses, they complete a medical waiver. I want to say thank you to Ms. Messias and the students from High School West. We did not mention Rocky Musical Opens on November 22nd. I think Showtime's at 7 p.m. Over here looking at this Raskov, I think there's additional shows on November 20th. third at 2 and 7 p.m. And on the 24th at 2 p.m. as well. Okay. All right. Go out and see the show. It looks like it's going to be lots of fun. One final note, tomorrow's World Kindness Day. World Kindness Day. Be kind to someone. Do something to make someone else happy. I'm going to do something to make everybody happy and say, have a good night. Very kind. Thank you. And with that, I asked, do I make a motion to adjourn? Do I have a second? Mrs. Scherfein is clamoring for the second. All in favor? Motion carries meeting is adjourned.