good evening everyone um welcome to the January 2022 nope January 22nd 2024 uh regular board meeting appropriate notice has been advertised roll call please Mr Chu here Mr Craig here Mrs Maya here Mrs molski here Mrs saino here Mrs Seltzer here Cil is absent Mr Sherman here Mr tab here Mr dilus here and Mrs Kaden here please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance uh okay okay so we are going to we we just came out of executive session and we are moving on to section three presentations we have a presentation from our secondary administrators to show us some highlights from their programming feel free to play the Jeopardy theme song in your head while the screen is lighting up and while that's queuing up good evening ladies and gentlemen and good evening and Welcome to our new board members as well my name is Jack McMullen I have the honor and privilege of serving as the principal of colleag with middle school and I've been in that capacity since 2006 six and over the course of that time we've seen our Middle School go through various Transformations from a seventh and eighth grade building to a six through eight building from a Collingswood only Middle School to a middle school that welcomed our students from Oakland as well as our teachers from Oakland um and over the course of these past 17 years we have really uh seen a lot we've seen pillars of our uh of our school longtime pillars of our school Community retire move on and collectively as a group we wondered how we would ever replace that kind of talent but staying true to our long-established core beliefs our Middle School core beliefs we've been able to successfully navigate these various Transformations and each time we welcome new staff into our family we make a conscious effort to ensure that these individuals share support and mesh with our philosophy of middle level education so I'm sure you're saying well what is that philosophy and our philosophy is very simple if you have a middle school student or ever had a middle school student or ever were a middle school student you know it all happens in the middle that is our philosophy that is our core belief and consistent with Decades of research on middle level education we believe that it's very important to strike a balance a balance between academic progress and social emotional growth and development we try to provide our students with opportunities to develop a growth mindset resiliency empathy and we seek to empower our students and we strive to build community and establish and maintain connections and relationships with our students so striking that balance we try to strike that balance between our students academic progress or their IQ or content knowledge and their social emotional growth and development their EQ their emotional intelligence and in order to accomplish this we strive to operate in that sweet spot that top upper right quadrant that's where our teachers establish credibility with their students they build trust they build immediacy while concurrently demonstrating their content and pedagogical knowledge and underpinning all we do is desire to be developmentally responsive to the social emotional needs of our students while equitably challenging them to make progress academically and through through this process we hope to ensure that we are supporting both the hearts and the minds of our students to further Empower our students we seek to provide them with experiences that will allow them to practice and develop Knowledge and Skills they need to take responsibility for their lives to address life's challenges to function successfully at all levels of society and to be creators of knowledge in this area of student empowerment we've been focusing on self-reflection and self-empowerment and consideration of the individual's personal level of Engagement and their subsequent learning outcomes so accomplish to accomplish this we introduce our students to something called a Continuum of engagement we ask them to reflect on their input as it relates to their engagement where are you on this Continuum and then compare that to the outcomes in academic progress in addition to looking at disengagement versus engagement we also help students understand the full breadth of this Continuum and encourage them to employ strategies that can move them from lower levels of Engagement participating for example to higher levels investing in their learning driving their learning through the degree of their involvement so as we continue down the path in this presentation I want to highlight the efforts that CMS makes in the area of connection building community building and over the course of the next few minutes I'd like to tell you about some of the amazing things being done by our outstanding CMS staff to provide our awesome students with opportunities to make connections and build community thus far our this year our students have learned about a variety of communities through monthly Heritage and Community celebrations our students have had multiple opportunities to participate in service learning and community building activities and we are experiencing high levels of student involvement in our co-curricular activities and our CMS clubs a picture is worth a thousand words you can quote me on that so in the area of Service Learning Community Building here's just a quick sampling of what CMS students have been doing thus far this year that first picture is evidence of our 911 Day of Service a schoolwide event to honor victims of the 911 attack and at the same time render service to our community in the third and fourth pictures our members of our CMS Capelli crew are CMS service organization making back to school supply kits for our kindergarten students and the last picture is a flyer of our Veterans Day program which was held on Saturday November 11th at Tatum Shields VFW right here in Collingswood in addition to CMS teachers and administrators the following student groups also attended and participated in this event our National Junior Honor Society our CMS choir CMS and CH Orchestra and the cast of the CMS musical Newsies it was a wonderful program in which as usual our students absolutely shined and might I add the number of students participating was very impressive given the fact that this event was on a Saturday of a 4-day weekend so if you had the opportunity to be a Tatum shields for that um You' got to experience something very very interesting as we were wrapping up December our CMS kindness Club made a visit to our United Methodist home here in Collingswood to entertain residents with holiday songs so our kids are out about in the community connecting in lots of different ways our CMS staff and students are also actively involved in our Panther Pantry program a food bank that's been established to assist families throughout our school district and our sending districts I would like to acknowledge our CMS teacher Ard nner who spearheads this initiative yes thank you and I have to say it has done a lot to build community within our school and pictured on this slide is work being being done by the students in our prevocational special education prevocational class as they help to organize the donations and for and in further support of our community building as mentioned earlier our students have learned about a variety communities through our monthly Heritage Community celebrations thus far we've highlighted recognized and acknowledged contributions from the Latino the lgbtq plus Native American disa and disabled communities with additional monthly celebrations to come as part of our December disabilities pride month we also celebrated inclusive schools week at CMS during which we took part in daily activities and discussions culminating in students signing our inclusive Banner pictured here to demonstrate their support for all students and each other one of the more traditional ways that connections are often formed in school is through co-curricular activities and maybe many of us formed them when we are students particularly the participation in our Sports programs and at CMS we're fortunate to be able to offer a wide range of fall winter and spring Sports we see high levels of participation in these programs and I'd like to give a shout out to all of our CMS scholar athletes and coaches for their time efforts and the grand style and high degree of sportsmanship with which they represent our school these students put in countless hours and work very hard and are the embodiment of growth mindset and resilience and speaking of hardworking students growth mindset and resilience and representing CMS and Grand style we have a large number of students forming connections and building relationships through their participation in our fine and performing arts program CMS students were quite busy in the month of December we opened the month with our students performing in the CMS musical Newsies you had a sneak peek at the November board meeting and between the casting crew we had 93 students participating in this production 95 account myself and Mr Jefferson to put that into perspective 20% of our CMS students participated in just this CMS musical alone and if yeah Round of Applause [Applause] absolutely after the meeting I'll be reprising my role of Teddy Roosevelt out in the parking lot um and as I do say so myself I mean the if they gave Tony Award WS for uh middle school productions every single student should have received one um we closed out the month of December with our winter instrumental and coral concerts and if you're able to attend you witnessed a high level participation and an enthusiastic performance from our students these programs are great extensions of our elementary program and a great feeder for our high school program I'd like to take a moment to highlight the instrumental concert during this program held on the birthday of our dearly departed band teacher Mr Joe Lurch students also had the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings about Mr Lurch as a tribute to his memory our students spoke in eloquent and heartfelt terms and specifically referenced the relationships that have been built and the community that's been established the evening's concert concluded with Band program alumni some well into their their 40s coming up on stage to join the current band members and play a holiday Med medley that Mr Lurch had arranged and to me as I say just further underlying and reinforcing the importance of relationship and community building it was if you were there I think you'll agree it was truly a beautiful tribute yeah [Applause] one of the unique things about CMS is the creativity that our staff brings to involve students and another way that we try to do that is help our students develop the sense of belonging and make connections through a wide variety of unique and I would say once we flip through some of these you will be very impressed this is not your your grandmother's after school clubs um the overwhelming majority of these clubs are occurring because we have a wonderful group of Educators who are willing to donate and volunteer their time to provide these opportunities to our students our staff and when I say this but they're middle school kids but our staff truly enjoys spending time with our kids to support their interest and definitely understand the added bonus resulting from providing students with that sense of belonging and community and developing relationships with and among our students as I said many of these clubs are outgross of student suggestions and the list of clubs is constantly evolving some of our newest clubs involve our Zen Club Dungeons and Dragons Club origami club yoga club and our Multicultural Club at CMS all we need to get things started is a good idea and a teacher willing to supervise the activity and we'll give it a shot you see at CMS our teachers also like to exercise their growth mindset so I'd like to wrap things up this evening by showing you a quick sampling of some of our additional Club offerings we're just going to click through all the wide variety of opportunities that our students have to get involved and let you just marvel at the opportunities that's right Esports quick shout out for the second consecutive year CMS has won the Eastern Conference Championship and congratulations to coach Tad Meers and our CMS Esports team [Applause] so doesn't that look like fun yes that's right you're reading that right Trek Wars yes Trek Wars very popular debate those are actually avatars of three of our teachers who are involved with that so yes kindness Club more traditional yearbook Club games Club chess club design club anime club crochet Club our National Junior Honor Society our CMS student council the aformentioned Capell crew our service club and we have a couple additional opportunities to connect as well so in addition to all these activities that have already been presented I'd like to conclude my portion of tonight's presentation by highlighting two very cool and exciting events future city competition the Philadelphia Regional future city competition is an educational outreach program it is one of over 50 Regional programs conducted conducted throughout the United States and the world with the goal to introduce middle school students to to the engineering profession this Regional competition draws schools from Philadelphia and the surrounding counties including the Lehigh Valley as well as South Jersey and Delaware teams are comprised of students in our CMS tech ed classes under the direction of Mr Meyers the winner of our school schol based future city competition then proceeds to the Philadelphia Regional competition this year the students challenge was to design a 100% electrically powered City with energy generated from sources that keep the citizens and the environment healthy and safe from September until January CMS teams have been working with Mr Meyers and professional engineer mentors and for CMS this also provides us with another link to our community as we have the Good Fortune to have members of our own community and parents of our students Mr Doug Robbins and Mr Adam Brown donating their time and serving as our future C City mentors and we truly appreciate them and how about a round of applause for Mr Robins and Mr Brown and as I say speaking of appreciation Mr Meyers this past Saturday accompanied the CMS team to Philadelphia the regional competition was held in Radner Pennsylvania and although we did not make the finals our students had an amazing and awesome experience they did a phenomenal job presenting their future city to the various panels of judges and hot off the press we were just informed today that our CMS team won two special awards at the competition our CMS team won the first winners award which is an award given to teams who impressed the judge who presided over the first competition in the region and the project management Excellence award so we'd like to congratulate and thank the following members of our CMS team and tonis haju suaros Jonah Caden Nora Maxwell Amelia M Audrey McGinley and Isabelle opina so how about a nice round of applause and once again extend my heartfelt thanks to Mr Myers Mr Robins and Mr Adams for their time and efforts this is the event you've all been waiting for another fantastic and creative way that CMS is attempting to build and strengthen our connections and relationship is through our 2024 CMS family fund night it will be held on Thursday February 88th from 6:30 to 8:00 pm right here in our high school cafeteria the event's planned and run by members of our CMS staff it's being sponsored by our CA and funded through an njaa fast Grant and as described on the slide the purpose of this event is community building and connection our theme is very simply this is us celebrate diversity and inclusion I know you'd pay a million dollars to attend but admission is free and we are inviting families to bring a donation for our Panther pantry and or the wolf love rescue as their ticket into the event keep in mind though a donation is not required in order to attend and there'll be activities which include arts and crafts projects student work displays Pizza Refreshments drum roll please the ever popular candy Bingo and more I would need another slide and we be here for another couple hours so I'll stop with that so I would like to personally invite all the members of the board to join us that evening as well as members of the community um to see our family fun night in action so as I said at the outset it truly all happens in the middle if you didn't believe me hopefully now you are you are a Believer and although some of our days at CMS may be a bit stressful the dedicated actively involved CMS staff loves what we do we love our students and collectively we feel very fortunate to join our students on this part of their academic journey and work with them to realize and achieve their best versions of themselves academically and socially and emotionally and I sincerely want to thank the members of our board for supporting us in this very important work and now I'd like to introduce our Collingswood Middle and High School secondary curriculum leadership team Mr Dave olivary and Mr Shawn Kendall thank you Dr McMullen good evening it's great to see everybody tonight I'm the supervisor of grade 6 to 12 Ela social studies World Language and fine and Performing Arts on the academic Side Of The Ledger we are working to ensure consistency and Fidelity when observing and evaluating staff seeking adherence to the visible learning objectives the hadti research demonstrates that students learn best when they know what content and skills they are learning why they are learning it and when they know they have achieved Mastery we are looking for these practices specifically on a regular basis additionally our plc's connect to larger District learning acceleration objectives on the teaching and learning side our Ela and social studies teams are working on deliberate practices such as close reading annotation and inquiry to advance student learning and comprehension other areas such as World languages are working on selecting materials which will provide consistency and seamless content transition as students move from levels one through four in their respective subject areas and finally all areas are working on designing and developing formative assessments that can provide real-time feedback on student progress and serve as an indicator of when a lesson must be adjusted this too has become part of our observation process these measures coincide with our benchmarking and jsla data analysis which guides our unit and lesson planning looking toward the future an important facet of upcoming plans which include a targeted support class for grade n students who are close to passing into the proficient range this would permit us to focus on students specific areas of need with the goal of turning njsla 3s into fours and finally I would like to touch on our electives our students remain dedicated to these subject areas is and there always seems to be a great event on deck in addition to some outstanding student work we have seen great work in graphic design and in all levels and areas of art Mr oler's October Fest happened recently just a couple months ago it was a great success as usual and as Dr McMullen mentioned we were treated to a pair of outstanding holiday concerts both instrumental and coral last month and with that I want to thank you for your time I'd like to turn the program over to our math science technology and engine engering supervisor Sean [Applause] Ken all right here we go uh good evening my name is Sean Kendall and I supervise the stem departments at the secondary level uh I'd like to take a moment to highlight some of the news from our middle and high school math science and career and Technology education courses uh this year we've continued the implement a of our into math curriculum resources at the secondary level this has allowed for continuity of math program resources between the elementary and secondary levels students entering grade six were familiar with this program from the elementary school and this helped to ease the transition to math instruction at Collingswood Middle School Additionally the continuity of Benchmark data provides valuable information to our teachers and administrators to help us better meet the needs of all our students uh additionally we've added an accelerated math option at the six sixth grade level for students who demonstrate Readiness coming out of fifth grade uh this has been quite the Success Through the first semester of the school year and will ultimately provide more students with the opportunity to access AP level math courses earlier without the need to double up or take a summer course uh the CMS math department was instrumental in helping to implement this especially I like to recognize our sixth grade math teacher Mrs Erica Han I Sol her back there she's doing doing an excellent job uh implementing the first year of this program and uh also similar to what Mr aliver just spoke of our stem PLC teams are working hard to support and accelerate student learning the main focus of uh our stem plc's this year is to implement high impact instructional strategies to analyze math benchmark assessment data and to collaboratively plan uh to improve math instruction uh I'm also very proud to highlight the success of our engineering program at Collingswood High School now entering its second year um with the addition of our new principles of engineering course this course focuses on robotics 3D modeling programming and prototyping and I'm happy I'm happy to say that next year we plan to add aerospace engineering as a third course to the engineering sequence this will allow students to explore the physics of flight and space through software simulations and Hands-On experiences finally uh we've been happy to expand our Lego engineering workshops at the elementary level uh for our fourth and fifth grade students this will continue in the spring semester providing our younger Learners a fun introduction to to the engineering experience so thank you very much for your attention and I will now turn this over to our high school [Applause] administration good evening uh my name is Colleen Hart I am the assistant principal at the high school um I am Mr Newman is actually not available this evening he really wanted to be here but he had a family emergency so he's not um Mr whan is going to introduce himself in a few minutes um Mr Newman um brought to the school he is part of a fraternity and he would say that as his fraternity they had a saying and they would say have a chant so he brought it to the school and said this is our chant so he would say he says see wood and they say you know so there are some high School teachers in here so who could help me out and some students so sew so the students bring that to us so we do it in pep rallies we do it and we want them to know that there are certain things we know that seawood is kind caring supportive fun and it's where we go it's our high school bringing back the culture and climate is one of the major things that we are addressing at the high school level is is bringing back that we are a family we need to work together so there are many things that we are focusing on um the a lot of the things that are in the middle school we we bring up we have the panther panther Pantry um we celebrate grades we have achievements we have the Renaissance program that you know honors the students um we tell them that this they their presence in the classroom matters their presence in school matters um that they we want them to be here and be part of the community so they are definitely big achievements that we want them to understand um one of the big things that we always talk about is the positivity is that we need to be positive so Mr Newman every single Morning Has Music on the uh loudspeaker that the kids come into a positive place that they have set goals that a lot of students are checking in with their teachers um looking at their Behavior as well as their grades and things to that so we are really looking up at setting goals and presenting themselves in a manner that they can be proud of one of the aspects that we are doing as well is that for TV production we are online and we are having our students do good morning Collingswood every single day so we come in we do the pledge and then it's go right online and good morning Collingswood so we have anchors they bring in um guest anchors so many people many teachers many of our staff members are guest anchors and they get to bring in different aspects of what is happening um there are um student voice we have a lot of student voices so daily announcements are up kids come at the end of the day and say what's happening so if there's a wrestling meet um a wrestling match at the end of the day the wrestlers are coming down telling everybody to come out to their match um if there is a chorus concert or if there's a club the students are coming down encourage ing everybody to come and support their peers um we have this counseling slide next month there is a more in-depth um presentation but we didn't want to just exclude that so that you know that there is more going on um we did the PSAT school day we have the advanced placement program College visits have been coming um they did a financial aid night as far as the um the College Planning nights as well so next month there will be an inp presentation for that thanks missart um also um Miss Kimberly hollenbach joined us in November she's our new director of counseling so a lot of um you have not had a chance to meet her yet but we certainly welcome her she's working very hard with our uh counseling crew um they're getting into scheduling season right now um and again you'll hear hear a little bit more about that next month um my name is Mr wayon I'm the assistant principal for 9th and 10th grade uh I'm going to talk about two of our um major initiatives looking at kind of student behavior and culture um and then non-athletic Student Activities so last year uh we took a really hard look at our student dress code and it was very empowering and the kids got to express themselves much more and the kids were really happy when they heard about it last spring we met about another major facet to students in 2023 24 and we took a look at electronics screen time and cell phones and for those of us who have kind of lived through education from the Advent of the smartphone into our current times we went through kind of a phase of techno optimism where we felt like these are a part of life they just have to figure it out and coming out of covid we've noticed a lot of dearius effects of those devices um some of the research is coming out and we looked at our specific um procedure for handling Smartphones at the high school level which when we met as a group we decided was really an unenforceable wish keep them away and I was talking to a parent this week who was having some issues and she talked to their son about giving up the phone and it was akin to giving up his arm so we took a look at some of the research that came out last year from the Surgeon General from the American Psychological asso Association and decided that we needed to take a little bit Sterner um stance on removing that aspect from the classroom specifically and so um this is a work in progress um if you subscribe to our s'more we've put in some reminders there as we turn into the new year um that our ask is that the phones are away in these pouches during class time so that they can focus um we're looking at this not as a punishment but as a a mental health support for those kids to be able to regain that Focus we certainly are not Lites um I am I I I often you know you teach what you need most and I know that my own children have seen me needing to put my phone away myself so we're trying to work with the kids we're trying to give them this gift of that attention and focus and we're actually meeting next week that small group of us of um faculty some of the tech department to look even further as artificial intelligence makes even bigger strides and that technology just kind of accelerates beyond our you know rudimentary cavemen selves okay so stay tuned the second big initiative um that is going to be a little bit more stressed in the second semester is um restorative practices so last spring a small group of us um were fortunate enough that to um attend a training by the NJ Bar Association um where they um really focused on tier one restorative practices which are focused on community building circles um and and building up that capacity to really look towards um less punitive measures for students in the fall that small group that that uh underwent the first training met again again with the NJ bar and focused on tier two and three our current focus is really staff wide buy into tier one um we're looking at using circles with staff we've dabbled in it um and again that's going to be more of a focus um semester two with staff to continue to build that Community it still has pockets um when I talk about our clubs we have a 3G Girls Club who meets for Circle time um our Wellness cent center is certainly using circles and then also In Pockets between our um alternative instruction room our Wellness Center we're we're touching on those tier two and tier three responses as well um and we'll continue to to kind of push those um types of interventions so much like Dr Jack spoke about we have a plethora of Student Activities at the secondary level um I'm going to talk about the non-athletic ones on the left is this is I believe our second annual senior Sunrise um which was really driven by student desire to um they they saw some other schools that had this tradition where they come out on the first day of school it's kind of ironic the seniors come out really early on the first day of school and then as the year goes on they don't want to be here as much um so senior Sunrise they welcome the school year bring the sunrise all right and then on the right hand um with the help of Mr Adams um and all of our advisers we held an activities fair in the fall during lunch uh right out on the street here all the clubs come out they have signup sheets they have demonstrations things like that to try to welcome all the new students and especially the freshmen into the various offerings that we have um student council is kind of the Hub of a lot of our major events and activities at the high school um every single student is welcome to join student council a lot of times students start in high school they think they hear student council and they think it's only an elected position and what while we have them every single student is welcome to join us at every single meeting um they are held the if I get this wrong my wife will kill me the first Friday of the month I believe in the LMC and um again come put your time in we also have an executive board for student council which is a specialized home room um those students kind of spend have demonstrated spending the most time attending these activities planning these activities driving that change um our homecoming event um we had about 525 students come out for our homecoming dance um which had to shift to the gym for the second year because of its popularity uh leading into the holiday season we did a cathedral d uh kitchen donation where we donated about 250 300 sandwiches uh that were uh made by the student council as well as our interact club we also had a lot of centerpieces and place mats created by our art classes um the student council is a member of the njasc um the New Jersey Association of student councils there is a fall winter and spring conference uh there is a state charity that we always raise money for and donate to uh and we every two years work to um have one of our students Run for the State student council uh it alternates between the North and the South leading into uh uh the Christmas season the holiday season um we have a staff breakfast uh very early get here at 6:30 right here and the students serve us it's always a very uh heartwarming event for myself uh this year and I've been at almost every single one we had more students come than I've ever seen in my history of the breakfast they come they are we we almost had a personal waiter per staff member for them to serve them to breakfast um reindeer games which is the staff's favorite day because we always win uh is the last day before before the break uh competition I still don't understand how the staff are able to do a human pyramid quicker than the limber teenagers but somehow they pull it off uh so the freshman sophomore juniors seniors and staff all compete uh this year Mr Herman took over um the MC duties if you have not seen his uh Jason Kelce speech please look it up on bartool and YouTube um he's a very deserved man yes um reindeer games is also part of spirit week uh it's a ton of work by our I should introduce our student council advisor for the 17th year 16th year Mrs whan um spirit week is a ton of um ton of work ton of activities a lot of fun for the kids dress up days competitions things like that leading into the spring we will have um the Red Cross blood drive we are one of um the only schools I think in the state that host two blood drives um because of that the Red Cross um gives a scholarship to a graduating senior um both student council and our interact club uh host those blood drives which are a lot of work and our kids are always very very gracious and willing to donate we have a senior citizen prom in the springtime it's very unique um people really like that free meal it starts at 5:30 but they're in line at 4:00 um and our kids do a wonderful job serving them dancing with them you know um last year one of the seniors actually had their own Tik Tok Channel um it was really interesting um and then finally the Last Dance um which is as our seniors getting ready to graduate um they invite a special guest uh you know Guardian parent Mom Dad whoever grandparent um and bring them for the last dance at the community center it's a ton of fun as they're getting ready for prom and graduation um so like I said student council is kind of the Hub but that is one of several activities and this is not even all of them um what I would like to highlight from our clubs and activities is that we have a lot of new advisers this year taking over for really big responsibilities um NHS is obviously a really important part of a high school and our high school um and shout out to shanon mcdevit for taking over her first year got through um the application season the approval the meetings um and the induction all in the fall really great job um interact is led by Mr Herman and Miss Hall again lots of volunteer activities um lots of service um I'm going to forget an advisor if I keep going this way but um yearbook and paw print are a ton of information Mr King retired last year and like on Friday on the snow day Mr King probably would have snuck into the school to work on the yearbook um so miss Chrisi has taken over those very large responsibilities and getting them right um the bike bike maintenance Club Mr brush has started brand new club he's raising some money um he's worked with uh the folks downtown who um rehab bikes to teach some kids about bike maintenance um we have our world language clubs it was mentioned that we've had a October Fest in the fall our model un our mock trial they have tons of events that are coming up in as the spring gets going Pell service along with the Middle School social justice led by Mr fieldman um women's empowerment GSA um and girls guide to Greatness um all work kind of together um and the dance team is doing a wonderful job I think they're dancing before the basketball game tomorrow um and several more options we always have staff who are willing um and looking for other opportunities to help kids start whatever Niche Club they want to so very proud of our our non-athletic Student Activities and then to wrap it up with our Athletics I'm going to hand it back to miss Hart thank you um so as going right along with it there are plenty of activities so we have um tons of sports available and this year we are actually starting a um girls flag football um as a club so this year it will be a club sport that they can um participate in both a sport sanctioned by njsiaa a regular Sport and then do the club as flag football as well um going forward next year it will be considered an actual uh sport njsa has started a pilot for next year so that will be um considered a new sport for next year so we are bringing that in we had a lot of girls who were interested so um that is exciting and that is new and the first year um the Philadelphia Eagles are sponsoring it so it's actually they give us a grant so it's not costing us anything right now for the first year year they paid for the uniforms and they give us a um a sipon to help pay for it since we weren't really planning on starting it so that's awesome um and we're very excited the girls are very excited um we are going to um to do another Signing Day for our seniors um they get very excited about it when they decide where they're going to go to college and they want to do it and we have an amazing backdrop kind of like the one up there but it says Collingswood has got the panther all over it so they love it they bring all their friends and family and they get to sign and they take all the pictures that they want and they get to post it so it's a great day and we're going to hold it in March this year um again and that's also a great day that they're excited and looking forward to um we have a student athlete leadership team which we started last year and we are trying to build upon again this year um and do more things one of the things that came out of it was that they uh wanted some more um fun activities to do to support their teams and one of those was that we usually just had one um pep rally in the fall that was kind of like the fall pep rally where you got to do this fall Sports and homecoming and that's all and the winter sports got left out and the spring Sports got left out so we're changing that up so now we're going to have a winter pep rally and we're going to have a spring pep rally so that everyone still gets to have that experience because only one season before got to so the students said this is what we want we want to be able to you know cheer on everybody else so we're going to do that so actually our prep rally is Wednesday um so the spring Sports look for those if your child is going to sign up for them they'll be coming out soon if they haven't already come out um the game schedules are on the website um we've had some really cool things and um one of them is um I have a couple shout out announcements because we've broken some some records school records and we have some really great stuff happening so one of them I'm going to embarrass him because he's actually sitting in the back um is Dr Carl Lang so he was just Inu Ed um two weeks two weekends ago into the New Jersey state coaches Hall of Fame so we have not had anyone for a long time inducted into the state Hall of Fame and so Carl Lang is our athletic trainer and he does an amazing job we are the luckiest school around because Carl is the man um anyone he fixes it so if your child ever gets hurt you're lucky they're going to Carl um he's got it so Carl back there is amazing um so he was just inducted into the New Jersey state coaches hall of fame um Dean Moody for wrestling just had this past weekend his 300th win as a career coach um so that's also amazing Kenny Chambers about 1 hour ago just from for Middle School wrestling just got his 100th career win as a coach so that was very exciting the kids the kids loved it they all jumped in they all have T-shirts so everyone was there it was awesome um now on to our kids because our kids are the reason why we're here so um another awesome is that Andy Ki um he broke the 500 freestyle High School swim record by 4 seconds which is awesome and he got into his college that he was hoping for with a really good financial aid package so that's even better so kudos to him and then Maddie goolia she actually broke um the school record for the number of rebounds in the girls basketball game so that was another awesome so these are all the things that our kids are doing and that we want to keep you know um bringing to the Forefront and we're excited for them we want to keep sharing that so thank you that's it that's it thank [Applause] you uh thank you so much to the secondary team um for that great presentation I think it's really important to highlight um uh everything that we're doing at the middle and high school level to promote uh a culture of community because without that the that Foundation the the academic piece is going to be a much harder lift um so so thank you for for all of that information uh at this point we're going to move on to section four Committee of the whole a motion to enter Committee of the whole so move and a second second uh okay so this month we have two things that we wanted to discuss what sorry I'm sorry all in favor thank you thanks all right now that we're set we have uh two items that we wanted to discuss uh tonight the first uh was surrounding curriculum um we are hoping very much that starting or that for the February meeting we will have uh for approval an assistant superintendent of curriculum um but knowing that that is is not here yet and just to to to clarify for the remainder of this school year that would be funded through Grant funds uh because we feel like that's a position that is important to have sooner rather than later one of those reasons being that the New Jersey Department of Ed has uh released new standards um pretty extensive standards for uh math and Ela they went through a pretty long process beginning in 2022 um to to go through the reviewing all of them and had published them uh at some point in um 2023 I see uh from their release it was October 4th 2023 that um it was presented to the State Board um I've been asked I've asked some of the teachers on our board to help me with this uh since they are digging into the learning standards much more than we are but um just to be clear we're not here to tell anyone how to implement those standards we wanted to this to be more of a um a heads up to the community that this is something that the district is going to to need to be reviewing and looking into how it will impact um the curriculum and what refreshes may need to happen and specifically of interest um for the English language arts it it appears from the the summary that a lot of it goes into more detail particularly in in K through five of emphasizing foundational aspects of reading and writing um that we think would would be well everyone thinks would be very important but that could help with concerns about um those same sorts of issues for reading and writing in um middle school and high school so Mary who has at her regular job been digging into these standards for the elementary level a little bit could I ask you to just give some highlevel info about what um parents maybe could be looking for coming down the pike okay well I don't know how high level it's going to be but I do have my bind if you'd like me to read through them I could um but um so I have looked at primarily the move that away the K through five um Ela uh standards um and they basically focus on modifying redundant standards that are repeated across the grade levels um and the one thing that I found um I don't want to get too deep into it because you said to kind of stick to the top so I will um but they prioritize as you were saying the language domain um and basically um they one thing that I read that I that jumped out at me um was they wanted to sort of they talked about the the need to have fluency with writing as well as with reading because I think when we talk when a lot of time with when we think about uh fluency we think about reading so um they talked about the need to have fluency uh with encoding or with spelling um because that will free up uh working memory when kids are writing so that they can have um that working memory for the rest of the writing process and So within the standards some of the standards were not touched at all um because I think that Kate when we had talked about that you know when they update standards they don't sometimes they don't touch anything with with standards and so some of the standards there's they didn't touch anything but the standards that they did touch when the uh with K to 5 they did do um work on making sure that kids in K 5 are getting more of the um phonological um awareness piece that's definitely there's more specificity in that and and also in the writing process there's more specificity in that um and also um the standards are more specific just across the board and we had talked to um rean and I had talked just briefly on this um I think and that's a good thing because across a school district whether it's a small school district or a large school district that's going to lead to you know nobody wants cookie cut or classrooms but that's going to lead to um a more standardized uh curriculum and less vague language which will lead to um more commonality so whether your your student is learning at school a or School B in the school district they'll be getting the same instruction so I hope that made sense and Roger I didn't forget about math there just was there was just there was less um updating in math basically in in math um they they they did a little update um with um including money for kindergarten in first grade and then the rest of the way they just basically um they included some examples in clarifications and real world stuff that's it so hope hopefully that made sense my brief no it did and and I just wanted to give you you know not to put you on the spot you don't have to but I know you know rich is is a curriculum director in a different District Sarah and Megan are both teachers as well if if you guys have any um extra input either about implications for for what these new standards mean or or thinking about how this might impact um curriculum apparently Mary's gonna speak first though sorry can I just say one more thing um um and also and thinking about if if we get the kids so through K through five if they're getting that extra those extra things in K through five then um hopefully the supports they're getting that extra the extra specific instruction K through five um then we're going to know hopefully earlier on if kids are struggling so we can get um kids you know earlier into mtss and we can get them earlier the extra supports that they might need if extra supports are needed I was just going to say my understanding of some of the new standards is they um like I guess going to what your point about specific specifics is they are much more like grammar is now included in k35 instruction phonic uh awareness is included in so kind of um moving beyond just the reader Workshop or readers Circle um which should hopefully help with like you said identifying um weaknesses um which will hopefully translate into more fluency at the upper levels um but it's going to be interesting because many of the graduate programs are continuing to teach um FMP reader Workshop so it's going to be I think a larger shift um that's going to have to take place across the board um I think it's also uh this is all good conversation I think it's also important to uh make sure that we are seeing what's going on in the classrooms talk to the teachers see how they're implementing things and what they need to see um The Board review and adopt uh in order to better facilitate those things as possible um just just for clarity I in no way was suggesting that that wasn't what the process would be this was truthfully just to I wasn't okay I just wanted to make sure you said for teachers to contribute so absolutely I all I the to clarify this is no way shape or form the board's role to to dictate anything more than you know our being aware making sure that the whole board is aware that these new standards exist because not all of us work in education um and that uh that it is important for us to just keep an eye on or listen out in curriculum committee and everywhere else for for how that's being implemented um so thank you for saying that because certainly didn't mean to imply in any way that that this was something that the board was was dictating um it absolutely will be the work of uh the the teachers the new assistant superintendent when that person arrives um as well as as the rest of the the curriculum team and again I was I was certainly not suggesting that would not be part of the process at all uh quick question uh will these be implemented in 2425 is that when these are supposed to go into effect or they go effect immediately oh it's okay he wanted to know when they would be implemented I guess we all need to lean close to our our microphones apparently sorry um so I think that they've been released in 2023 um the the the goal is for folks to look over it in 2425 school year I I don't I don't know the answer to that I don't know if I'm looking at you as a curriculum director in a different District I don't know if you know the answer or if you know the answer to that question my my understanding is that uh it's a go for 2425 but that's been an ongoing debate uh at the county and state level just because of the quick turnaround time yeah right that's what I was thinking that feels like a fairly unrealistic ask not that the doe isn't famous for unrealistic asks um to fully Implement new standards in such a short time so I I was assuming that this would you know wanted to put this on the board's radar um at the suggestion of Mary which was a great one uh because our district would begin you know digging into this deeper um in the next or as you know as we speak kind of thing but that we were aware of it as well um that's truly all I wanted to do with with that section was just to let us all know that it was um it was something uh to keep an eye on the other thing we wanted to talk about um was that the the board received some information from Dr McDow about some Black History Month initiatives that have been planned um throughout the district and we wanted to to be sure to celebrate that proactively um trying to be responsive from from last year I think that's exactly what the district is doing as well and I think that they are to be commended for that um not going to go into too much detail because we're all going to learn what those things are through our children in the schools and and I'm sure that different teachers and schools have surprises in mind and I'm not looking to to ruin that for anyone uh but you know we've we have the media specialist in the uh at the elementary level working with the teachers to come up with really solid uh read alouds and book lists and resource lists of uh things that the teachers can be doing as well as things to send home for parents to be uh doing and talking about with their children um providing a list of blackowned local businesses that both the teachers can um uh Source books from as well as suggesting that to families and then at the secondary level there's already a lot happening in the curriculum um when it comes to um African-American history as part of the the Amistad commission um but in addition to that I know they have a lot of activities that they are working on planning that the students are uh working on planning which is why that's pretty much where I'm going to leave it uh for right now but wanted to point out that that was something that has been on the radar of the board as well as the district and um that I think that they're they're making the the right um effort to to be sure that that is more prevalent and implemented uh this year on my list was the the wonderful inclusion night that um do McMullen more thoroughly explained than than I could have anyway so so that's one thing to look out for along with with other events in the various s'mores that will be going out to all of us um from our children's schools in the coming weeks uh so unless there is anything that folks wanted to discuss either about the uh secondary uh program presentation or either of these two topics we can exit Committee of the whole all right motion to exit Committee of the whole so moved and a second second all in favor I all right uh section five is future dates and miscellaneous information you can uh check on there be beware that we've got um a a break for for the president's PL staff professional development days as well as as President's Day in February um so that's something to look out for as well as uh there's a February 27th is a cmscs Black History Month Coral concert um starting at 7:30 open to all uh section six is routine business moving on a motion to approve the minutes of the December 2023 regular board meeting and the January 2024 reorganization meeting um motion to approve so moved and a second second roll call or all in favor all in favor all in favor I okay um to uh ensure that we are not holding up our amazing student rep um during the public comment section I would like to give um Mr ramsburg the opportunity to give his uh student board report which is section nine um before we move to section seven there hasn't uh been much school for uh the period between the last uh meeting I attended and this one but as far as student affairs go the winter sports season has gone up to a strong start I know uh Galilea can't be here today because she's busy dominating the girls bowling team uh I speak for all students collectively when I say I'm grateful for the snow some of the closures letting me not work as hard as I needed to uh the M trial team in the first couple weeks of February will be having its first competitions uh during which I hope we will beat Eastern who stole the county finals from us last year by one point uh as always uh I encourage students at the school level uh be in the high school mid or Elementary although the last two might be increasingly unlikely to uh approach me uh Xander or Galilea with any concerns or matters that they uh would like to bring to the attention of the board uh thank you TR also wanted to congratulate you on uh after I saw the the picture that after your last uh student report where you mentioned that uh the the Bowling Club wasn't getting the love they deserved I saw that they really did so so way to use your voice for good because that was a really cool thing and kudos to all of the sports teams that I know go and travel and and watch um other sports uh cheer them on that kind of thing that's a really really great Community thing that I think our Athletics uh teams do so um so that's really great Tre as always you are more than welcome to stay for the rest of our meeting but we ALS also fully understand that particularly since you haven't had school in a while you might have some work to do so there we go um moving backwards now in our agenda a little bit to section 7 the this is our first opportunity for public comment the purpose for this public comment section is to discuss items listed on the agenda additional more General comments may be made later in the meeting the public is reminded that attempts to resolve all concerns and complaints should first go through appropriate staff members and administrators the intent of public comment is to give the community the opportunity to provide feedback to the board we will be actively listening and taking notes so that we can take all that is being said into consideration if appropriate clarifying comments may be made at the end of the public public comment section for more detailed responses to concerns communication may go out later in the week by the appropriate staff members or administrators or be discussed by the board during future committee meetings members of the public are welcomed to speak and expected to do so with the utmost sensitivity for everyone in attendance In fairness to all who wish to speak there is a strict three minute time limit per person during public comment Miss Coleman will be using her timer and will'll indicate to you um when you are close to your time being up please come to the microphone and remember to state your name and address for the record uh Wayne Rossy 114 East Palmer a um yeah I noticed in the agenda that um one of the items was a um contract for the next several years for Dr McDow and I think that that's very positive um move on the board part I think um you know it's hard to think of a more challenging circumstance to have thrown an educator into and uh while I don't think everything's gone smoothly I do think that there's been a lot of listening and a lot of growing that the administration's done in the last several years um I think Dr McDow uh particularly in the last year I've seen a lot of efforts uh from him on the um on the racial Justice front I think that you know bringing in uh restorative justice practices working with de committee making sure you know really seeing that we're uh creating a more ex uh more inclusive curriculum uh has been really positive and I I also agree uh with the item and Committee of the whole that it's going to be so important to get a really great person uh in for that curriculum director um but I I do think that uh that's something you know I I'm not uncritical and I I will not hesitate to call anyone who I think is not doing the right thing uh out on it but uh I do think that this is the right move to go ahead with a further contract for Dr McDow thank you for your [Applause] time hi Robin Hogan cea president so good evening and on behalf of the ca I want to congratulate Matt and Roger and Sarah Sherman on their election um also oh I'm sorry did I cut somebody off from Applause okay sorry okay I also wanted to welcome our new Oakland liaison Mr tabi am I pronouncing that right okay great okay so welcome um and even though he is not here I want to publicly thank Mr Bill staltz for all his years of service in his role as the lead AIS on from Oakland over hey Robin and I just want to say he's been on the Oakland board I had to look it up is this coming from my time by the way yeah I'm I'm giving you three seconds back 49 years okay really yes it'll be 50 next year so just FY all right thank you okay so um over the years bill has become a public institution at our Boe uh meetings and um we appreciated his noons approach the tough questions that he was not afraid to ask in his steadfast sense of fair play bill is going to be greatly missed so from the members of cea thank you Bill for your dedication to Collingswood so finally on tonight's agenda the board is seeking approval to send a contract for the renewal of the superintendent to the county office so we are just asking the board share with the public the process and the metric that was used the result of which led the board to take the step um teachers were evaluated on the Danon model um the process is spelled up by regulations the metric and the process is visible um when the students are in my math class uh they know they know the learning attention and success criteria um they know what they're expected to do and know and understand by the end of the lesson um so they understand the metric and the process so the ca is just asking what the metric and the process was that was used by the board that demonstrates their due diligence um this is an excellent opportunity to build trust and demonstrate that as board members you're committed to transparency and due process we look forward to hearing your [Applause] response good evening my name is Lisa Hall I'm a math teacher here at the high school and this is my 19th year teaching at CHS I'm speaking this evening to the Board of Education to express my concern regarding the recent lack of retention of my talented colleagues specifically but not limited to the math department collinswood was once considered a district of choice for top talent however with the influx of Departures over the past few years and a continued negative impact of larger class sizes on both our staff and student body this is no longer the case the math department specifically has lost two veteran teachers to neighboring districts since June 2023 and a third is leaving mid-march each with 20 years of experience with two of those positions not being filled leaving most in our department with inflated class sizes this has had an impact on providing individualized attention to students and maintaining a um conducive and rigorous learning environment in a personal effort to recruit I recently reached out to an alumni regarding the upcoming opening and their response was and I quote I would have to take a pay cut and that place is a hot mess the lack of stable teacher student relationships is negatively impacting student engagement and success to summarize we have a talent attract problem we have retention issues as we continue to lose talented tenure teachers in order to maintain educational Equity within Collingwood School District we must address these issues the students and faculty need and deserve this to be addressed immediately and at some point it has to matter thank [Applause] you hello I'm Stacy Brown downam 309 oaklan Avenue in Oakland I'm sorry I didn't hear that from the Clapping I heard Stacy not last name Stacy Brown Downham 309 oon Avenue in Oakland I'm an Oakland Public School parent and a High School parent as well um I am here though as a haddenfield special educator proud public educator and I'm here in budget season and with the news that you're also bringing in a curriculum supervisor to urge you to bring in someone with a science of reading background Across the Nation 60% of our students graduate on able to read at grade level 20% are functionally illiterate um in New Jersey we just recently while we rank in the top of public schools um our literacy scores are low um we do have students entering fourth grade I think 40% um unable without without basic reading skills um this is a problem Across the Nation if you want to learn more about it you can listen to the podcast sold the story which talks about all the money that was brought in for balanced literacy your Lucy ckins your font and panel um we would like I would like to see those replaced with something that is more based on the science of reading um it's also less something that less intensive for teachers for evaluation something like Dibbles um and this has to be a k to2 uh initiative not just a special education initiative but also regular education starting in our prek with our phonological awareness skills um then moving to our phonic skills um you really need to invest in robust training for educators it's not enough to have a 3-day Workshop in haddenfield um we had students coming to the high school unable to read they did not know what their uh letter sounds M were they did not know how to break R into syllables and then a group of parents pushed us to invest in education we took a cohort of Educators from every school building we were trained in Wilson intensive we were coached for an entire year I was expected to have my practicum student uh do three full units in dur during that time and master that demonstrate growth on the Wist which is a word identification and spelling assessment that revolutionized my teaching um I can now teach students how to read and what that mean it's their right right to be able to read um but I'm noticing in this District in the middle and high school and I was caught in assistant it wasn't like I didn't want to teach students that to read I was caught in a system that wasn't funding it that wasn't training us for it um it wasn't prioritizing it so I'm not blaming the the Educators here there's wonderful things happening callings with schools but this is an area that we need to to work on and we need to invest in coaching supporting and we if we already have Educators that have that training elevating them into these roles where they can really maximize their impact in the building um we only have re10 in the middle school and that's not enough you want a robust program that's going to allow you to focus on encoding and decoding skills for students they cannot build fluency they cannot build their comprehension if they don't know what sounds letters make they can't break words into syllables um so I encourage you to reach out to haddenfield to see what kind of money they invested in it um we continue to invest and to change our programming we're still kind of pulling fondas and panel of our system we're taking some Lucy cockins out that made Reading seem like it was magic look at the word look at the first letter look at the picture guess what word that might be right it's there's a science to reading we don't want to make reading so clinical that students hate it we want to have our book Nooks we want to have access to robust reading resources but we need to invest in high quality training for our Educators so that all students leave calling would able to read and to write thank [Applause] youor I'm gonna go sorry I'm talk uh good evening my name is Jeff Herman uh teach here at the high school um coming around to you is a piece of paper um that lists 37 staff members that are current ly no longer with us at the high school um last year I came to speak to you when the budget for the school year was presented uh I spoke about the high number of teachers who had been leaving the high school and how I felt that that would create problems for this year uh while we are here now in the school year and these problems that I spoke about last year have followed right along with it larger class sizes less programs um all the problems have been mentioned before I won't get into that we certainly are being asked to do a lot more with less my main concern tonight is Staff retention uh at the chart in front of you you will see that since the start of the 2022 2023 school year like I said 37 staff members have left the high school of those 37 21 resigned and went to other districts if you take a look at the list you will see those districts include those as Haden Township haddenfield aaban lald Burlington Morristown West stford these are some of our neighboring districts while while we are losing so many good teachers to other districts is beyond me I implore you the board to answer this question as to why we are losing so many good teachers to other districts I spoke with the other districts uh and I've gone through some of their board minutes and not a single Local District in our area has had double- digigit resignations in the last two years yet here we are trying to reason with the loss of 37 colleagues and wondering how it is that we are the ones that are left stuck with the problems of 37 people leaving I ask our school Community to continue to question the board and District leadership about why this is and what they are prepared to do about it thank [Applause] you hi my name is Carrie Randazzo 829 Stokes Avenue I'm here as a parent um I am our district is in dire need of reading intervention and I'm speaking because I have a daughter that graduated from Collingswood High School last year and I have another daughter that is in sixth grade at the middle school I will um reflect mostly on my experience with my second daughter she was um was identified when she was in first grade that she had she was at a lower reading level from there she re she received support um she was evaluated by the child study team and in third grade she was put in special education for reading third fourth and fifth grade uh she went to Zay North she had a wonderful School experience in the sense that my my child loves school um it was very positive in that direction yet she is currently in sixth grade at a second grade reading level I find this unacceptable currently she is reading she is receiving no reading intervention for decoding an encoding without this skill she will never become a proficient reader she gets by by memorizing what words look like and simply guessing a multisyllabic word she cannot do on her own she will if she does not receive the intervention she will continue to struggle throughout school and we all know that once kids the simple the ability to read what that can mean to them their Mental Health their overall well-being they suffer greatly and their behavior they will act out I do not want to see this go ahead and happen with my second daughter she deserves the intervention that is needed for her the basic skills of reading I am not someone I I never had a reading disability so it's hard to understand that someone doesn't have the ability to sound out a word yet for kids with dyslexia that's where the weakness lies that phonetic awareness and they need more instruction for that it's not reading comprehension she's a bright kid her IQ runs between average to high average it is not related to her cognitive ability yet she her reading scores fall between low and extremely low and as of right now she entered middle school with absolutely no no additional intervention for phonics I find this completely unacceptable sorry to carry your time up okay thank you very much thank you [Applause] shist good evening my name is Tim phoh I live in 91 Park Avenue I want to talk about the item on the agenda which is the R of the superintendent contract I'm going to follow up on what has already been discussed to start but in general what I'm doing here is a job performance evaluation this is not a personal attack on Dr mcdal it's not about any personal characteristics of Dr mcdal it's simply about Job performance when we talk about Job performance in the corporate world when we talk about an issue that was just addressed here by one of our teach feates which is a record pace of loss of our staff no Corporation when they're evaluating their CEO is going to Simply say it's a national Trend they're not going to do it they're going to determine is there a connection between that and their leader and we all know the next step that the corporation would take is they would take the step when we're in a drastic situation that we're in in this District currently in terms of the loss that we're experiencing of our staff is they would take the action of going to the leader and taking the appropriate action when we're talking about evaluating the performance that he's had over the last three years the next question is what's the connection to this drastic situation that particular high school is in and when we talk about the performance we can look at starting at a recent issue with something as relatively minor and silly as a snow delay but the fact of the matter is it exemplifies the the problems that our staff and everybody in our district has been experiencing and that is a decision that should be an easy one to make was made at the 11th Hour causing major issues for our staff and students when school is delayed at 7:00 in the morning when school's about to start we all know the problems inherent in that and then what happened is the immediate first response was to blame others to blame the buildings and grounds to blame the burrow for not clearing the roads I'm not saying that Dr McDow is trying to do this that this is his personal Vendetta that he has but it's the action for some reason that's his first response and then after that it's corrected with a lengthy explanation it's corrected with lengthy emails and texts when it comes to next making a call about weather related closing that happened later in the week and it's forming perhaps other committees to deal with the situation that's that's the pattern and why did we have to do that perhaps because he was worried about students having their time in school because we have a record amount of half days that have been complained about this year and what response did we have about the half day issue we had a response that it's our staff that wanted the half days and we know from our staff that's not the case again it's blaming others for what was otherwise considered a problem so in the end I just say ask that you consider the pattern thank [Applause] you hello my name is Dash career Fisher I live at 1017 Eldridge AV and I am a junior in the High School uh I was not going to speak today or even show up today so it's a chance that I'm here and um a point that I would like to raise is the lack of actually I wouldn't say the lack I'd say the ample amount of what I'd call filler classes and those are basically classes that you take where almost nothing is put into it and then nothing is taken out of it from the students and the teacher and I have noticed that this has been a rising issue because of the resignation and the departure of many teachers from um the school and from the the district but I don't know about the other schools if this is the case but I've noticed this with a lot of um you know of the extra classes not so much for the um classes that have teachers that have been here for a long while but um t uh students that want to get something out of their education and students that don't Both Deserve the Equal Opportunity of having the top teachers the top education and the top knowledge and information on the subjects that they intend to learn or don't intend to learn it's not up to the students to decide um what they are taught it is only what they are to take out of but if there is nothing worthwhile that is being shown to the students and they they are left with nothing and that's it's an unfortunate case and I'm not saying there's um teachers that I'm pointing out specifically I don't I can't say that I am with any type of spite but you know there there are um teachers that need other teachers to do their job I've noticed and this is not okay especially if they're not you know contributing anything to their own class and their own curriculum and either the students are going to take this and not listen to a single thing that the teacher says and they're going to end up flunking or whatever could arise from that or you know the teacher is going to leave because the students aren't doing what they're being told which is very little yet it's so uncoordinated that they are confused and have no choice and I would just like to raise these points because it's it's a rising issue and um I'm in at least two or three classes where uh that's the case and I probably should not have just said that but I'm not going to say which ones they were um but thank you I'd just like to raise those points so Leah Foreman I live at 501 South Vineyard Boulevard and I think we can all agree that context is king um we live through an unprecedented time in 2020 Dr McD came in with a lot on his plate for postco and I think when we talk about results we need to talk about revenue and the revenue that was brought into our district and Dr mcdal brought in over $4 million in revenue and his predecessor did not and I think it's really important that we talk about the wellness center and the responsive leadership that we've had during this unprecedented time I think it is really unfair and I think there's a lot of misinformation coming out and I think we I don't know why we refuse to talk about the hand that we've been dealt here Co was a big factor and I've seen the leadership not do everything perfectly not do everything right but be responsive I've seen feedback be been taken and received and implemented and I think that that is as important as anything as we live through and continue to live through this post-pandemic world thank you I probably don't need this uh hi I'm uh Mrs Tanner I'm an English teacher um in the high school for a bazillion years and I guess two things I wanted to address first of all that um kind of our lack of retention I am one of two tenured English teachers in our English Department right now generally in high schools English teachers retire from their Department we have great kids and we love them and the fact that we have so many subs and the subs are overwhelmed um is because of teachers leaving last year we had teachers leave mid year leaving students with very little recourse and it was very frustrating um but the other thing I really wanted to talk about and it does touch on funding is I'm conc concerned that we are using grant money to pay salaries because grant money runs out we should be using grant money to buy books and to buy programs things that are concrete that will last if we have like our whole Wellness Center which is a great idea those people working up there are for the most part on Grant funded salaries if that Grant runs out those people have to be let go and the wellness get shut down and I do understand that finances are difficult for everybody but if we do have this grant money wouldn't it be wiser to invest in some of these new reading programs some concrete stuff that will Outlast two or three salaries that will then leave us with a hole in departments [Music] or make us be make us be forced to deal with a loss of services and so I am really concerned that that seems to be one of the things to fill our holes we're using grant money and that grant money should be used to buy concrete things more materials more um you know reading intervention programs that will have a longer lifespan than the actual Grant if the grant is three years and we are hiring people with that money when the three years are over we have to let those people go and so unless we can fund them ourselves and we can't so these great services that we're getting and that are really going to become part of the community are going to be something that may be lost in three years unless we find an alternative funding so I do caution you in to really look at how we're investing that grant money because I feel that we are simply rolling the boulder up the hill and it's going to roll back on us when those grant money runs out and we're going to going to have to fill those positions by taking away more resources thank you so [Applause] much I apologize for my Clinger I'm Kristen TSH you can find me in the Middle School room 202 um in addition to being a teacher at the middle school and several other roles I've taken on over the years I also have the pleasure of being Collingswood education association's early career members chair uh in this role I get to welcome all of our new staff year to year um and I offer support to them until they receive tenure it's been a rewarding role in the past but has become increasingly more stressful over the past few years uh you may remember as Mr Herman had mentioned last year several staff members and community members expressed their concerns at many board meetings about teacher retention well I get to see firsthand in my position how this has not improved knowing that teacher retention was such a Hot Topic I was wondering what plans and discussions have been had among the members of the board my first year as the ECM chair I welcomed 15 about 15 new members in 2022 we had 46 New staff members and this fall we welcomed an additional 38 as exciting as it is to have new teachers these numbers prove that teacher retention is still a problem it takes just a few minutes to review the board minute the board meeting minutes over the past three years to see that our district has had 97 resignations most teachers in neighboring districts or most of those teachers are now in neighboring districts I need to protect our newest members encourage them to stay and support their Futures here and at times this feels like an impossible task our staff has been working tirelessly to improve the culture and morale at our schools we are doing our part we want to know how you're doing yours another concern of mine in this role is whether or not several of our first year teachers are going to be let go with the with any of the numerous grants that we pay staff through that are going to expire how can we expect quality applicants when we can't promise them more than one year of their time have the salaries for our mtss coaches and the wellness center team been budgeted for or will they bump out our newest teachers as their grants come to a close I welcome your comments insight and feedback I'm fighting to keep teachers here in Collingswood and I cannot fight that battle alone thank [Applause] you all right let's see here I'm GNA take the mic off like a Frank SRA style here um I'm I'm Mike paluchi I'm the other 10e English teacher um in our department and uh so we have 100% of our 10e English High School teachers are here tonight um and uh I just wanted to take a moment to address some of the similar topics that have been brought up tonight um and I'm going to say one thing and then I'm going to say something that kind of bothers me um I'm also a parent in this town uh you know I have young kids in the elementary and preschools and and you know it's kind of hard when you feel a professional obligation to kind of speak about what we're experiencing in the district but also as a parent you know I want you know I love this place I want my kids to have a great experience here and I think that we have to ask ourselves you know we talk about National Trends you hear it all the time it's a national Trend can we just need you to address us that's all thank you I'm guing you I know but just St facing this way that's all thank you I mean they're not giving me like signals or anything I'm just I understand that that's just the format for the that's all that's not cutting into my time right we're good okay all right so I'm going to face this way so um one of the things that I just want to point out also though is you know we talk about the wellness center um and rightfully so those folks do a great job I've personally seen them come in and take students out um who needed their resources and get them the the help that they need it's fantastic they're all great people um but they're responding to a national trend of student mental health issues that's not something that only happens in Collingswood and so how come we don't say well it's a national Trend we can't do anything about it so even if teacher you know even if we're losing teachers and that is take that at face value that it's a national Trend what are we going to do about it in Collingswood and you know I think that we have to think about you know I don't understand there's a tendency from some of the folks in our town and in quite frankly in our district to talk to everyone else before they talk to us I guarantee you nobody cares more about the students in this District than the people who work with them every day and we hear a [Applause] lot we hear a lot of buzzwords we hear about Equity we hear about our you know our our lower and lower achieving and disadvantaged students how are we providing an equitable educational experience for a student whose teacher has 150 other students you know how like these are not just buzzwords these are things that those of us who do the work day in and day out care very passionately about very deeply about and I guarantee you that nobody cares more about Equity about diversity and inclusion than the people in this building that work with our kids every day [Applause] okay [Applause] hi how do I make this not fall down oh okay um Alexandra guidos Smith 311 Lake you drive I'm speaking today as a an educator a reading specialist a teacher with more than 20 years as a public school educator um the parent of two children of color and I am speaking here because my family and families that look like mine have found a home in Collingswood and I feel like over the past couple of years my children can look at the leaders of this school of their schools and they can see themselves and they look at the work and how the people are being treated at how the leaders are being treated and they can see themselves and their opportunities and that is something that doesn't happen in the district where I work and it doesn't happen in any District where I where I have worked before and so I feel like when we talk about losing teachers it is a terrible thing and my heart goes to a year ago when those high school students were walking out I would like to bring that Focus back here those children their safety that is what you are tasked with that is what the staff are tasked with that is why we're here as a reading specialist there is a far way to go and I want to tell you how happy I am that my kindergartner gets phonological awareness practice every day with heger every day gets phonics instruction on decoding and encoding and breaking up syllables and diagraphs with foundations there is a very far way to go and I am so glad that collinswood is starting where we are because of the leadership that we have and the programs that you have chosen we're not 10 years behind enwrapped in Lucy and found us in panel with good instruction there is a way through and so I beg you to be here is a privilege I have a babysitter and I can speak to you please continue doing what you are doing it serves my kids it serves all of our kids thank you hi everybody I'm Brenda Borowski I live on Harvard Avenue here in Collingswood um I am a parent of a kindergartner and a fifth grader at Tatum um I would just like to speak to the board um to recognize the accomplishments of the district under Dr mcdow's leadership of which there are many as has been mentioned record high grant funding the Fantastic New Wellness Center that makes it clear our district prioritizes Student Health at a time of historic Mental Health crisis I also appreciate the Deep dive into Data surrounding discipline disparities um that laid bare the racism inherent in collingwood's historic patterns of over punishing or one might even say overp policing students of color particularly black boys I also appreciate the emphasis on restorative justice practices that will help to resolve that discipline disparity and promote anti-racist practices in our community the list of accomplishments goes on but in my view the most important accomplishment has been the Recruitment and hiring of black administrators in our district during the time of Dr mcdow's leadership Collingswood has gained not one but two principles of color one black man and one black woman this is an immense gift to our community especially to our students of color as I believe it will serve as a powerful tool in recruiting teachers of color seems like maybe teacher recruitment is something that might be on everybody's mind right now from the the other comments I've been hearing research shows that black students who have one black teacher by third grade are 7% more likely to graduate high school and 133% more likely to enroll in college after having two black teachers black students likelihood of enrolling in college increases by 32% my children are young black men they have not yet had black Educators during their time in Collingswood Public Schools but I believe believe that with black school administrators in place there's a chance that may change to the benefit of my children and the other many many many young black students that do not see themselves reflected in collingwood's large pool of teachers Collingswood is changing the student body is changing and now I believe the student body will change and it might change for the better I welcome the new Collingswood and I'm grateful to Dr McDow and the district's leadership in ushering in the future one that reflects our fantastic racially diverse student body I look forward to seeing what the next few years bring under Dr mcdow's continued leadership thank [Applause] you hi my name is Morgan Lair I live at 419 woodon Avenue I am both a Tatum parent and teacher my daughters are in second grade there and I've been the resource room teacher at Tatum for the past six years and prior to that I taught at Garfield for 12 years since 2021 I have seen many talented teachers and staff members leave Collingswood for jobs in neighboring districts where they are finding better pay and better work life balance we are struggling to attract new staff members because our pay scale is not competitive also since 2021 funds have been used to hire outside firms for Audits and consults in an unprecedented manner for this school district has the return on investment been sufficient to offset the vacant positions and student services that are going unmet as a staff member and parent I have watched a disconnect grow between callings with teachers and staff and its board without any genuine attempts to repair it thank you hi hi my name is Tom Howard I live at 16 Fraser Avenue um I am a I'm a parent of a Tatum uh student actually she has Mrs Lair and Mrs Lair is awesome uh so she's doing so Kudos she she rules um and generally the teachers that my daughter has had here have also rule um I'm also educator I I've been teaching for now my 24th year not in Collingswood but in a neighboring district and I come concerned uh about the uh you know the potential for renewing the leadership uh uh for Dr madal particularly because of the teacher attention issue that that deeply concerns me not just as an educator but also as a parent um I know that teachers I mean being a teacher for 24 years I know that teachers don't leave schools especially to other districts um unless there's something something wrong um they they don't want to disrupt the connections they have made with their students with their colleagues with their Community it's a huge huge thing so to see the mass Exodus over the couple last few years is deeply concerning to me um as a teacher as a teacher as a parent and so I would really like to see some honest evaluation of of why that has been happening and to uh really see if it's something that can be addressed uh you know effectively um because uh a lot of teachers have spoken very effectively about uh the high school level I mean it's also Al happening at at the the Tatum the the elementary school level too uh where you know two that my daughter's case her her case manager that she had last year now is now went to another District uh the teacher she had last year as a resource teacher went to another District um and so it's not just affecting the high school level it's affecting all levels um and my daughter has dyslexia she has real needs so I'm worried about the continuity of of teaching that goes on and the teachers are great and she loves again Mrs Lair she loves the teachers in the school but I'm concerned of what this loss will do to her future education as she goes into middle school and Beyond and I'm hoping that a real honest evaluation of the leadership can be had and that it can't be just again uh Cast Away as a national Trend or to say it's a few bad actors who just are leaving because they're disgruntled because as an educator that can be insulting um and again it's not truly reflective of the Great great disruption in in Educators lives when they leave to another District thank you very [Applause] much my name is Lori lewig and I'm a music teacher in callings with schools my job responsibilities include K5 General music classes Elementary instrumental lessons for grades four and five the seventh and eighth grade concert band High School concert band Elementary District Band The the secondary music PLC leader marching band and the indoor marching program if anyone listening is thinking wow that's a really long list you'd be right in fact anytime I answer fellow music teachers who ask about my job responsibilities the responses I receive range from how are you managing all that two you need to get out of there I've actually had a couple of colleagues offer to give me their job in a few years when they retire now I didn't come here tonight to complain about my job I love my students they're their parents my colleagues office staff and I have felt supported by multiple members of our school administration team I came here tonight to express concerns about what the renewal of Dr mcdow's contract would mean for the music department every one of us wants to be able to provide our students with a better education than we had ourselves but the experience that I am able to give our band students doesn't even come close to what I experienced there are too many structural barriers to success that were encouraged by Dr McDow through his lies spread about the music department first Dr McDow told parents that Mr Lurch had enrollment as low as one student in a class as justification for not hiring another music teacher after his passing this is absolutely false it never happened second Dr mcdal said that band is more of an Afterschool activity this statement is unequivocally false band programs throughout the country happened during the school day our nine year fourth through 12th grade Band program is an elective course that must reside during the school day third Dr mcdal has also said that the music department doesn't have everything they want but they have everything they need and no one is overworked I prepare an elementary load and a secondary load in addition to extra duties working 14 hours a day a couple of days a week our Orchestra teacher is teaching two different curriculums in one class period doubled his music technology student load and is teaching sixth grade band one of my elementary colleagues sees 135% of the student load the other one sees the amount of Elementary lesson slots have been inadequate for years and this year there's a small group of 18 clearly not a small group along with inappropriate groupings we do not have everything we need and several of us are absolutely overworked regardless of what the contract says because of this students do not receive receive the quality of Education they deserve their opportunities to learn are limited and they're disadvantaged when compared to other schools those whose parents pay for private lessons find themselves able to compete so here at Collingswood we have a wide range of musical ability which is largely based on the halves and the Have Nots for miss lwig your time is up thank [Applause] you [Applause] hello my name is Renee Krauss I live at 724 Park Avenue I'm speaking as a community member but also as a parent of a junior I have a lot of concerns approaching you tonight and again I will repeat what another of my commun community members said this is nothing personal against you Dr McDow but I think if the board does not assessing your performance by the use of information about the multitude of teachers and students of talent who are leaving this District then you're not doing your jobs that we elected you for automatic rehiring or continuing a contract is not acceptable you are letting down your community if you do that it's not acceptable I could go on but I won't thank you very much [Applause] hi everybody Nancy O'Neal 120 Fern Avenue um I basically have spent my whole entire life here I grew up was born went to high school here went to middle school here came back and I've taught here for 33 years okay um my speech is a little bit more emotional than everybody else's because everybody took all my ammunition so everything B basically has been said but I am standing here in front of you tonight and it's not because this is going to impact me 33 years I don't have much longer I promise for those of you who would like me to leave I promise I'm leaving soon my children my friends my colleagues they ask me all the time why don't you leave you can retire walk away I can't walk away and I need you not to walk away I need us to make a change I needed to figure out something because this doesn't work this is not Collingswood I'm not asking to go backwards I know everybody says we want to get the teachers want to go backwards I don't want to go back I want to move forward but we have to have passion and we have to have people who support us and communicate with us the biggest issue in this school district right now and the reason why people are leaving is because of the lack of support and the feeling that we are appreciated I'm a gym teacher okay a physical education teacher I've never really I'm not I'm not going to compare myself to the two 10 year 10e English teachers my job is different my job is to build relationships with students and I believe I do that if your children know me your children know that I care for them and I love them okay but every teacher in this District feels the same way they have much bigger responsibilities in the reading aspects and the math aspects but we need a change because I can promise you this school district raised five of my children they went on four of them are Educators two of them are working in other districts that they love I have two that are graduating in May with Masters in special education and I wouldn't let them apply here today and I know there's jobs but right now I could not consciously look at any person that I taught or that I raised and said this is a place you want to work and it should be that was their goal when they left high school was to come back and be collinswood that's what we are we're Collingswood like the O'Neal girls that's what we do we're Collingswood and I need you to as a group you got to figure it out because this is not working people are leaving faster than we can replace [Applause] them good evening Dr McDow board members parents students faculty staff friends Trey my name is Kevin Adams a member of the Glorious collinswood High School counseling department I've been dedicated collinswood employee for the past 5 years this year marks my 19th year in the New Jersey public school system I will not speak tonight on the number of faculty and staff vacating their positions in our district I will not speak on the overall decline in the climate of our buildings all of these statements have already been said or will be said by the people in line behind me tonight I will talk about a random encounter I had with a stranger an encounter that led to conversation that has had one statement burning in my brain for the better part of this past month roughly two weeks ago I sat in the bleachers at the deer Township Rec Center waiting for my boys wrestling match numbers to be called in order to ward off my nervousness and yes I'm more nervous than my own boys before they wrestle I fell back on my greatest coping skill small talk I struck up conversation with a woman next to me we both talked about our professions and family and then she asked me about my family and which school district I worked in I told her I was a school counselor married to a fizzed teacher in the back of the room there father of three children I told her that we were both employed at colinwood high school this being my fifth year my wife her 18th and then I waited I Waited For What so many people have told me in the past I waited to hear the same thing that people have told my wife for almost two decades collinswood what a great small town and school district and the restaurants those restaurants are amazing what I actually heard was something totally different than I anticipated oh I heard it's not going so well there now if you're sitting there in silence thinking what do we care about the thought process of some random stranger that Kevin ran into that I'm going to ask you to ask yourself to look in the mirror and ask why you ran for a second term or contract renewal because if we don't understand what a potential stranger means then we are missing the bigger picture towns that are successful are built off the people wanting to come to them based off of Home Value thriving business a secure infrastructure and most of all an educational system that is top tier I said last year in a meeting with staff admin concern members of the community that we are in a decline a complete stranger sitting on an uncomfortable plastic bleacher sees it and if there is someone within 5T of me that knows it then there are hundreds if not thousands of people who know the same thing maybe one of them planned to move here maybe one of them may have had a child that could have been our next Val valid Victorian star Varsity player lead actor singer performer Club adviser or teacher's favorite student or possibly the next Trey ramsburg but we may never know if we continue in the direction that we are going never before have we seen so many of our cols Oakland and Woodland students transfer elsewhere how many people from outside towns are are going to want to come here and raise their children and ultimately say if our foundation which is our school district is broken and while this sounds like a stretch I've seen it firsthand of those 19 years I've served in public education the first six were as a classroom teacher in a small town that was built very much like ours on Pride Legacy and small town Vibes a town whose infrastructure was Secure until the town began to falter I can go into more detail all you got to do is call me who is to say the next stranger I meet this upcoming weekend isn't a business owner looking to expand or a parent looking to move the little old collinswood who's to say their child won't be the one that carries our calls colors for the Next Generation I'm 100% secure in sending my oldest son thank you sorry your time's up thank [Applause] you hello my name is Tim serabian and I have been a science teacher at Collingswood Middle School since 2018 when I joined the middle school I was welcomed with open arms at this point my my co-workers are my family when our superintendent joined us in 2021 I was prepared to welcome him to our family in one of our his earliest emails he stated that he wanted to further the goals of Collingswood to inspire confidence critical thinking creativity and perseverance now in 2024 I must ask if he is furthering those goals is Dr McDow a highly effective superintendent does Dr McDow Inspire perseverance well perseverance is roughly defined as the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties failure or opposition since Dr McDow has been superintendent our school district has seen 32 retirements and 97 resignations making combin 129 people that's 38% of my family lost in 3 years I will admit I do not know all the circumstances of those departures but that is a worryingly high number so I believe the answer is no does Dr McDon Inspire creativity or critical thinking I believe Dr McDon should be proud that our students create incredible murals portraits sculptures plays musicals and concerts that can rival any District in the state however does Dr McDow Inspire the creativity of the students well it would help if Dr McDow attended those concerts and art showcases but he doesn't how can a superintendent Inspire students when he is not present to see them in addition after the protests of last year Dr McDow had promised a comprehensive plan two and I quote improve diversity equity and inclusion in our schools more information was to be forthcoming coming but it's been almost a year and nothing has been done except having us watch scripted and uninspired training videos has Dr mcdal Inspire creativity or critical thinking no if anything students and teachers offer Solutions but he has actively avoided them this leads to the final question does Dr MCD Inspire confidence one need only look at the events of last Tuesday to answer that question with a no last Monday evening schools across New Jersey were evaluating the weather and decided on a 2-hour delayed opening my own children's District informed us of a delay 6:00 p.m. that night however Dr McDow did not send out a 2-hour delay notification for callings went until 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning how are employees and families supposed to have confidence in the superintendent where they are not given enough time to make a plan under those circumstances on that morning my own 45-minute commute at 5:30 doubl to 90 minutes due to icy road conditions myself and several others were already at the school when the call for the delayed opening went out but then Dr McDow did something that ultimately made me decide to speak tonight he stated the school couldn't be open because the buildings and grounds didn't finish snow removal in a timely manner Dr McDow had been informed of weather conditions and he knew the local districts were delaying a strong leader does not shift blame for his own decisions so overall no Dr mcdonal does not Inspire confidence if the goals of the superintendent of Collingswood are to inspire confidence critical thinking creativity and perseverance then my personal valuation is Dr McDow would be considered Mr [Applause] ineffective hi good evening my name is Valerie yosway my address is 332 catel Avenue I have four students in the Collingswood School District I have two fifth graders at Tatum and I have two Juniors at the high school when I first moved to Collingswood 14 years ago the school district had an excellent reputation this played a significant role in my decision to move here from Philadelphia overall I have been pleased with my for children's experiences at the elementary school level however I am extremely dissatisfied with the high school experience my teenagers have had they have become desensitized to fights to the extent that they don't even bring them up unless I bring it up we all remember the fight that broke out in the cafeteria at the end of 2022 the one student that was attacked was my daughter's boyfriend and I had to pick her up due to her having a panic attack to witnessing that and when my son came home at the normal school time I questioned him and I said what happened at the cafeteria today and he looked at me and said I don't know what you're talking about he's so desensitized to seeing fights at the school that he didn't even know that I was referring to a fight that was so severe that it was all over the news they believe that it is normal for teachers to frequently leave speaking with parents from neighboring districts I can confirm that the reputation of the Collingswood schools has been deteriorating in recent years as many have mentioned earlier it is now considered a chaotic and problem situation a hot mess [Applause] good evening Jack McMullan Belmont Avenue 34y year Collingswood resident and a parent of children who attended and graduated from our Collingswood Public Schools there's always been a sense of community ownership and genu genuine Community investment in our public school system as demonstrated by the level of Engagement of our residents over the last several years however I've heard from increasing numbers of neighbors and fellow residents that they're feeling disconnected from our school board and in some cases have even expressed to me this has led them to feel disenfranchised from our public school system and I smize this does not come as a surprise to the members of the board because I know you've heard similar sentiments and I've noted your attempts to proactively address that perception I respect the fact that what you do in your capacity as a board member is very hard extremely nuanced and when it comes right down to it a thankless job and I appreciate the balancing act that's required of you to honor and acknowledge the voices of all of our residents that is not an easy task obviously I love our school system I cherish our community and I want all of our residents to share that same sentiment but when I talk to my neighbors who Express this feeling of disconnection they often express that they feel dismissed or that their input is not valued by our policy makers and in school related matters specifically reference a loss of credibility and a loss of faith that they feel toward the Board of Education there are stakeholders in our community who' publicly stated that the process engaged in by the board to hire the superintendent was a process that was devoid of both community input and communication from the board and please note that is not the fault of the candidates who went through that process community members cite a lack of transparency on the part of the board in this process and feel that they were never provided with adequate information about how the final decision was made and regardless of how you may personally feel about this perception among certain members of our community I still believe a response is necessary this current board man of whom were not board members during the superintendent search can't go back in time to address that situation however with the superintendent's contract renewal on this month's agenda this current board has the golden opportunity to take time and make the effort to explain to the community the evaluative process in which the board engaged and the subsequent decision-making process that led to the recommendation for the contract renewal I believe this is an important step in addressing ing the perceived loss of credibility and loss of faith in the board and I further believe that's an essential and necessary step to attempt to reconnect those members of our community who have expressed these feelings of being disconnected and dismissed with a school referendum in our community's near future it's incumbent upon this board that all residents share a sense of faith in our board and their input is value thank you um hi my name is Adrian Earl I live at 409 Comm F to be honest it's difficult to stand up and speak tonight um as an employee both out of concern for potential repercussions for speaking as well as just the sense that previous concerns from both staff and parents have gone unheard due to lack of response or change but here I am um I am a graduate of Collingswood schools a counselor at Collingswood Middle School for 13 years and a parent of two Collingswood students I care deeply about the future of our students and our schools I would ask the board members to consider the following issues all which have been brought up at previous board meetings and tonight um when evaluating how to move forward with the next superintendent contract there have been 97 staff resignations and 32 retirements since February of 2021 there have been cuts to teaching positions there have been cuts to programming not justified by any lack of student requests or enrollment including all culinary arts classes theater classes sewing contemporary crafts sculpture art of cartooning mixed media to name a few and class sections were also cover cut from both our bands and Orchestra programs there have been cuts to Support classes in ela and math at the secondary level making it more difficult to support many struggling students within the regular education program along with all these Cuts there have also been questionable spending on administrative initiatives not directly impacting students like leasing Central offices creating assistant superintendent position creating assistant ba position Etc these are issues that are currently doing harm to our students education and will continue to impact the future of our district these concerns cannot be explained away on an individual basis we need our district leaders to actually hear and believe the concerns of the people who are showing up for our students every day thank [Applause] you thank you everyone I'm not seeing anyone else stand up uh so in the interest of time uh we are going to move on to section eight which is the superintendance report so good evening thank you for all who were in attendance uh section 8.01 is the uh student enrollment report December of 2022 uh student enrollment was 2,299 uh enrollment as of December 2023 is 2276 uh and the enrollment report uh link will be uh updated uh there was a coding error uh so that should be up uh updated shortly uh 8.03 and 8.04 are the uh suspension and the anti-bullying report just had a few announcements that we wanted to share this evening first and foremost we are in the midst of budget development season and so our business office has provided all schools and departments with budget information and uh today marked day one of uh budget presentations and requests in general the process for budget development is that we provide uh necessary guidance to schools and departments schools and departments are supposed to go back um to their respective spaces uh look at their student data look at the needs expressed by uh their staff uh and make recommendations uh to move forward we collect all of that data um curate all of that data and then we wait for uh funding uh information to come in and so in February we will receive student uh projected enrollment we will also receive state aid and then we start conversations back and forth between all uh school and District departments about how do we make sure that we are supporting the needs of our students uh and that we are being mindful of the resources that are available so aligned uh this year to our district goals and priorities we've placed emphasis on how are we utilizing time in order to achieve our goals we're also leveraging feedback directly received from students and staff about how we should be allocating our time and we're working closely with schools to develop student- centered learning days while while honoring the feedback uh that is continuing to come in from parents and caregivers so as a result written guidance and expectations have been provided guidance includes uh Tools around scheduling uh considerations for their instructional days brainstorming of options generally takes place among school and District leaders on a monthly basis and so some of our our budget priorities include uh first and foremost maintenance of our dedicated faculty and staff leveraging the expertise of the Educators on each campus providing opportunities to distribute leadership more effectively and to continue to build capacity around site-based leadership supporting our district leadership team through through the alignment of roles and responsibilities aligned with our strategic plan our objectives and our school-based needs and support in terms of our curriculum and instruction a comprehensive curriculum review looking at the rigor relevance and cultural responsiveness of the resources that we provide to teachers and how it manifests in classrooms and ultimately looking at how do we better Define all of the uh College and Career Pathways uh that we currently have and then how do we put ourselves on a on a better uh pathway for the future and then ultimately using student need and preference to drive much of the decisions where are areas that we need to expand and where are areas that we need to make adjustments the core uh Foundation of our new student learning schedules is twofold first and foremost uh we are shifting towards the elimination of all non-contractual early dismissal days in order to restore that amount of time we've heard loud and clear from families specifically families with small children that the uh burden of the early dismissals it poses on them and so we're making a pretty significant uh change we're also looking to provide our teachers with common planning time during the school day so that they have sufficient time to uh collaborate with each other to look at student data to make informed decisions uh and work collaboratively with each other and so we believe that as professionals it's important for our Educators to have protected time we also are seeking to uh increase preschool we fully believe that uh access to high quality early childhood education should not be uh a want but it should be a right here in Collingswood and so our our goal is to continue to expand uh seats for all colinwood families who want them and so so uh I would be remiss and in trouble uh by one of our district supervisors who is watching on the live feed if I did not make the announcement for preschool and kindergarten registration our preschool and kindergarten registration team are looking forward to the upcoming season colleages with families with children that are three and four as of October 1st and not currently in our program can apply for full day free preschool uh through our Lottery application which opens on February 21st children attending kindergart garden and not currently enrolled um in our preschool program can register at any time the regist the registration team continues to encourage families um to share with their neighbors to look out for additional information that'll be shared in in coming weeks because we want to make sure that any family that has a desire to participate in our program uh has the opportunity to do so uh we'd like to uh Pro provide a grant uh update announcement uh but also providing a um a statement as it relates with uh Grant funds and so in general uh Grant funds are uh created by the different constituencies philanthropic groups federal and state uh lawmakers in order to provide timely and meaningful support for a specific period of time and so coming back from the pandemic there were challenges that each of our schools faced that many school districts around the country were ill prepared to deal with but the money was not provided in perpetuity it was it was provided in order to make sure that we were providing the necessary assistance to our students and our staff uh at that moment in time and so our goal is to build capacity for on an annual basis is to look at our programs to make strategic decisions based on what's working what's not working make those critical adjustments keeping and maintaining the things that we believe are going well and that are of Great Value to our students and our staff and then making uh uh appropriate decisions about about the things that are not and so we are pleased to inform the public that colinwood public schools has yet received another mental health screening and schools Grant in the amount of $62,000 that gives us a grand total in the last 24 months of $ 6.3 million in additional funds that all goes to support the students and the families within Collinwood public schools and so this is a renewable uh uh grant program that will provide targeted levels of funding for the next four years uh renewable of $62,000 and the purpose of this is to provide supplemental funding and resources to allow districts that already are engaged in the mental health services Grant of which we are a a partner District to implement depression screening to identify students in grades 7 through 12 who are really struggling and are at risk and so when we receive these types of funds they go directly to provide targeted levels of support to students um that are in need uh using existing funds our sharp tutoring program is currently progressing with over 30 students receiving currently Afterschool targeted high does tutoring uh K through five we've also received the New Jersey high impact tutoring grant that will begin in February where some uh students who are uh challenged academically will receive additional support during the school day because it is problematic to ask students who are already struggling to stay after school and so we are leveraging resources when they come in to meet the expanding and the immediate needs that uh our students are facing we'd also like to uh commend the panther Pantry which you heard during our secondary schools presentation they are currently expanding this uh a tremendous program across all school campuses including school district offices their mission is to provide individual students and families in colinwood and Oakland with supplemental nutritional food diapers feminine hygiene products additional uh household supplies and a very cheerful welcoming confidential non-judgmental uh environment and so uh we just wanted to uh commend the panther Pantry team uh for uh seeing a need and feeling a need we heard a lot about uh the importance of curriculum and I want to share that um uh an RFP so a uh Rel for proposal has been um issued for a comprehensive curriculum audit and the purpose of this audit is for us to partner with a firm that has expertise in performing independent equity and inclusivity uh audits in public schools and so we are inviting qualified providers to submit proposals to be able to support our efforts to close achievement gaps by providing underrepresented students with Equitable access to programming and Resources by eliminating policies practices add attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce individual and institutional bias and disperate outcomes we're also looking for experienced professionals to to help us re-evaluate what it is that we're doing and help us build capacity to be responsive to the continuing change of the standards and the expectations uh coming from the state uh and coming from uh local local needs uh and so in terms of uh some of the work that we're doing aligned with our vision 2020 26 strategic plan goals and objectives our focus is to uh uh build capacity in the work of inclusiveness cultural awareness anti-racism and acceptance of individuals through training strategic planning and implementation and support we have partnered with a toz equity coaching for their online self-paced learning management system uh based on feedback that we received last year from faculty and staff about the need for additional resources in a non-judgmental way where individual ual could be self-paced based on their understanding of this really large and daunting topic around uh equity and inclusion and so we have purchased uh access for all uh certified District employees to participate in phase one with phase two being for all non-certified um uh uh faculty and staff with the fundamental goal of of us as a school Community having consistent foundational and common language as we talk about students as we talk about initiatives as we make plans for the future and so what was also referenced earlier and I I just wanted to not go back over but in uh uh uh the from an academic content standpoint we're not just checking boxes and so it is important to note that our schools our school district uh we cover um equity and inclusive topics in a variety of ways throughout throughout the year uh we have a unique opportunity during the month of February to highlight the good work uh but that work doesn't only surface and manifest in February and so uh we just wanted to make sure that we're acknowledging the collective work of our teachers the collective work of our school leaders in those efforts uh and that concludes uh my report for this evening thank you thank you Dr mcal uh we did section nine student reports earlier in the meeting so we are moving to section 10 the business administrator board secretary report Miss Coleman all righty everybody's been waiting for it right uh 10.01 is uh the December monthly budget transfers um 10.02 are your financial statements your board secretary's report Treasures report um cash flow analyses 10.03 are Student Activity cash reports for the month of December 10.04 are your November and December Food Service financial statements 10.05 is a listing of of the purchase uh orders that have been issued for the month of January and a 10.06 is the listing of the warrants uh to be to be paid pending approval tonight thank you uh moving on to section 11 the buildings grounds and finance committee Mr Craig will present thank you the uh the finance buildings and grounds committee reviews all financial statements purchase orders and warrants on a monthly basis the committee also reviews and approves all contracts with outside service providers and oversees all maintenance and capital Improvement projects to districtwide uh seeking approval in the following items uh 112 to 119 is the board secretary report as it was presented uh 1110 is a rate for evalu setting a rate for evaluation for within the district um for students coming from outside of the district that require um uh evaluation Services uh 11-11 is a request to see proposal for a pair of professional instructional AIDS uh our contract uh is up with our current ESS provider so seeking uh um proposals for that service 1112 to 1114 or shared service agreements with oakin uh for a nurse to support our prek students um child study team and tech services uh 11:15 is to rejoin the ed services data uh Co Ed data services Co-op um which we have been in for the last several years and save a significant amount of money 1116 is that mental health screening Grant the four years 62,000 that Dr mcdal shared uh 1117 uh year three of the building capacity Grant um which is the um engineering uh program High School uh 1118 is uh Title One budget carryover funds and the allocation of those funds uh 1119 and 1120 are use of facility requests for Collings with youth theater and then for Acme accordian School uh to do accordion lessons at newbie uh so I am seeking approval for it items 112 to 1120 a motion to approve set items move and a second questions or comments from board members sorry Sarah did you second that or is it Mary okay thank you still trying to learn your voice I'll just say that I'm very much looking forward to the accordion Club um that sounds amazing and so excited for that so thank you Miss Angeles for bringing that there I think that will be adorable um any other questions or comments from board members roll call please and thank you Lisa for doing all that stupid paperwork I made you do for the accordion Club um Mr Chu yes Mr Craig yes Mrs Maya yes Mrs molski yes Mrs saino yes Mrs Seltzer yes Mrs Sherman yes Mr tab yes with extension on uh any items marked with an Asis Mr dolas yes Mrs Kaden yes uh section 12 the curriculum committee Mr Chu will present the curriculum committee overseas and approves the district uh curriculum and assessment programs as well as field trips home instruction co-curricular programs and the school calendar uh items 12.02 12.03 and 12.04 are field trips I have a history of botching these field trips I've written them down today um there are no Elementary School uh field trips up for approval this month uh for middle school there are two there's uh one for a tech ed competition uh and there's one for the Pops concert for the sixth to eighth grade Orchestra uh in high school there's also Pops concert trip for uh 9th to 12th grade Orchestra um there are two trips for the uh multiple disability classroom uh one to the AWA animal I guess Organization for learning about pets and then one to an inclusion coffee shop to learn about um uh possible job opportunities uh and then there are uh trips for mock trial which I think was spoken about during the presentation and also a trip for environmental science to visit the piland commission okay all right um uh 12.05 is overnight field trip uh for mod un um again also I think spoken about during the uh secondary presentation um 12.06 12.07 12.08 and 12.09 are uh ad District home instruction placements um and then 12.10 is Big wow Alpha and Omega working dogs which is a uh free presentation offered by uh that group uh for the preschool uh classes um at no cost we've had a couple of these now so far um and so I'm seeking approval for items 12.02 through 12.10 motion to approve set items so moved second uh questions or comments from board members roll call please Mr CH yes Mr Craig yes Mrs Maya yes Mrs M I yes Mrs saino yes Mrs Seltzer yes Mrs Sherman yes Mr tab yes with exstension on any items marked with an Asis Mr delus yes Mr Caden yes uh section 13 is the Personnel committee uh Miss Sheridan Celia wanted me to note that uh she is very disappointed that she couldn't be here tonight um she knew this was an important night she is unfortunately down for the count with covid and uh to be sure that she is on the mend and that uh she was not uh infecting anyone else she stayed home this evening um so to begin the Personnel committee reviews all recommendations for teaching and staff employment considers co-curricular employment and considers all professional development opportunities for staff members all right let's see if I can do this as well as she does 13.02 to 13.03 are two retirements retirements excuse me and we thank uh Miss Betts and Mr Topeka for their years of service they will be with us until the end of the school year 13.04 to 13.08 are resignations 13.10 uh 09 excuse me is UN employee dismissal 13.10 is approval of an extended leave for a staff member 13.11 to 13.14 are various uh new higher positions um including and I just wanted to make sure that that this was made clear because I know a lot of us were concerned about finding a replacement for a music teacher midyear but the the person replacing them has uh is a retired music teacher and and has that experience 13.15 is uh approving the um the the the hours that Betty Joe Prince worked in the previous summer July 2023 uh on an as-needed basis to help with secondary scheduling before our uh second AR or before our director of counseling started excuse me 13.16 to 1321 are a number of transfers and revised contracts um 13.22 is uh the adoption of or the approval to have another Elementary um School permanent substitute at uh Sharp Elementary 13.23 is the approval of after school mental health support staff uh to be there on an as-needed basis at uh the center in Garfield where um services are given 13.24 is the uh is a revised contract for one of our social work interns at Garfield Elementary 13.25 and 13.26 uh both deal with um Personnel for our building capacity for career Pathways grants uh the first is an elementary Lego Workshop uh facilitator for the elementary um and the second are two facilitators uh for two different clubs um using these funds uh TSA which is not the travel or the security administration um but is what exactly technology Student Association technology Student Association which makes much more sense for school and uh Eames as well 13.27% school psychology interns Saturday school detention folks and athletic event Personnel 13.30 uh is approving the revision revision of the hourly rate for all non-seasonal minimum wage employees from $14.3 per hour to $15.13 per hour effective January 1 uh that is we're staying in continuation with the updates to the minimum wage for the state 13.31% of a student teacher practicum placement uh a music teacher to uh ACC company Mr Hartong which Lucky them 13.32 uh is the approval to send the uh contract for Dr McDow to uh the county superintendent's off office for approval uh to clarify a few uh points here uh the first being that um we had an executive prior to this meeting um to discuss this at length um we are obviously not permitted to get into any details about any Personnel contracts uh or performance but there is an annual um evaluation that is done uh for that is required by law uh for every superintendent we have a tool that we use using uh standards that were uh created through the New Jersey school boards Association as well as the new New Jersey uh superintendence Association it's a a tool that was developed uh that happens yearly as well as um Regular check-ins we do them roughly quarterly uh they're not quite we do it every couple of months um this is a that's a fairly new procedure but um we've been doing it so far this year to discuss um board goals as well as progress and um we feel um that we are doing our best to be giving um feedback on a regular basis uh during the the discussion um while everyone may not be in agreement we did to we did come to a consensus about whether or not um to continue with this uh on the agenda uh 13.33 substitutes and tutors and 13.34% items 13.02 to 1334 this evening is there a motion to approve Z items so moved and a second second uh questions or comments from board members um I have a question about the wellness um I wrote this down earlier the wellness um coverage position um for the mental health support can you just give a little more detail as to to what that is um sure Beth thank you um we have to have somebody there it's Garfield so they have to go to Garfield and they basically let the families in because it's like after school hour so we have somebody there to kind of greet the families and let them in because the school's technically closed thank you no that makes per sense when I when I see Wellness Center I'm thinking some of the initiatives of the at secondary level this is the one this is the one has of thank you any other questions or comments from board members um I do have additional um so uh I I also just want to say again looking at at some of these um retirements and resignations um particularly with staff members um who have been here for an extremely long time um I I think it is very important that we um continue to have discussions on staff retention for the importance of um you know our student population and to make sure that they are uh well served and to um you know kind of really really delve delve more into those topics as a board um and also um just briefly concerning um the sending of um Dr McD's contract uh to the county and while I feel that tonight's executive session was extremely useful um I just feel that um we as board have not engaged in enough um conversation on this very important topic and uh I look forward to having more of those conversations and um I also think it's important to consider um some of the feedback that we heard um about this topic tonight any other questions or comments from board members yeah I do I just want to um add that I know it's difficult to get up here and speak in public for people and and you know we were elected to hear everybody's voices and I think I speak for us all when I say that we appreciate hearing from everyone tonight thank you any other questions uh roll call please sorry Mr Chu yes Mr Craig yes Mrs Maya yes with the exception of 13.32 I vote no Mrs molski Yes except for item 13.32 where I vote now Mrs Saina um yes Mrs Seltzer yes Mrs Sherman yes Mr tabi yes with the exstension on items marked with nastrix Mr delulus Yes except we're required to abstain Mrs Kaden yes uh section 14 culture climate and policy committee Miss szer good evening everyone um first want to thank Mary saino for her service as the chairperson of the of the culture climate and policy committee before this big shoes to fill um the policy uh and regulations committee reviews all updates and changes of District policies and regulations uh there are no policies up for a first read at this time however there are some policies up for a second read as you can see listed here there are are quite a few um we did not have a January committee meeting um for the uh policy committee we will have a meeting in early February um and one of the the big items for discussion in the policy committee is the revision of the code of conduct which we know is a big undertaking and uh we're we're excited to dig in we do have a timeline for that work uh over the course of the rest of this Academic Year and we will update everybody body a little bit more at the February board meeting um so I am it's my first time um I am asking for approval of the 14.03 the policies for the second reading motion to approve set item so Mo and a second second questions or comments from board members first of all I'd be the same way so good job Kate and thanks M you did a great job leading that committee for all the time that I was on it as well um and I look forward to more discussions about policy but I just want to you know touch base on the code of conduct one because I know that's something that we're going to be talking about more and more and I just want to reiterate that we need a lot of input from the people who are in the buildings that are doing the work you know before we make any decisions on that thank you any other questions or comments from board members roll call please Mr Chu yes Mr Craig yes Mrs Maya yes Mrs molski yes Mrs saino yes Mrs Seltzer yes Mrs Sherman yes Mr tab yes with extenstion on any items marked with an asri MR delus yes Mrs Kaden yes uh section 15 miscellaneous is uh the approval of the antibullying report or the Hib report uh presented during the December 2023 uh board meeting uh it includes both potential and confirmed instances of bullying and includes the outcome of each investigation um do we do we do a motion okay motion to approve item 15.01 so moved and a second second I have a question here yep um I'll just take this opportunity to uh I guess query uh and and stress that uh I think whenever the numbers are appropriate for us to um be releasing uh the report on what our uh SLO uh interactions are with the students you know understanding that there are concerns about making sure that the numbers included in there are large enough so that uh uh um student privacy is is met but once that's that number and threshold is met uh I would encourage us to to um you report on that public we said that we would any other questions or comments from board members roll call please Mr Chu yes Mr Craig yes Mrs Maya yes Mrs moli molski I'm sorry yes I'm tired Mrs saverino yes Mrs szer yes Mrs Sherman yes Mr tab yes Mr doas yes Mrs Kon yes uh section 16 is our second opportunity for public partic participation uh this one includes items that are not listed on the agenda um I will very quickly go over that uh attempts to um to resolve all concerns and complaints should first go through appropriate staff members and administrators uh we will be actively listening and taking notes as you've seen us doing um and in all fairness who wish to speak there is a there's a three minute time limit um and please come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record Wayne Rossy 114 East Palmer um yeah I I think you know listening to a lot of the discussion that happened today I think the board did the right thing because I don't think you can solve Staffing churn by firing the superintendent every few years I um I think Sarah had said at one of the events that it sounds like a good idea but it's it's just not sometimes you know to just let's make a change um you know for change's sake it it doesn't fix fundamental issues I I do hope to see that this goes on in um you know in in a positive way and that we see again more uh teachers of color specifically um also uh I want to say what once again that uh I would like to hear more from the board on uh how the curriculum crosswalks are being uh integrated through the school district and I would once again like to urge the board that the school eaon officer not be armed in interactions with students thank you thank you Clinton Connor 609 wood law Avenue um I just wanted to ask the board to actually kind of do something with all the retention stuff um as most people probably know the governor about probably about a month and a half ago wave the prais one um but to my knowledge the New Jersey Department of Education has not actually provided any District's uh guidance or um requirements on how they can actually hire teachers uh in the absence of the act the practice one um the uh Rucker policy lab did some research on on teacher retention in the state of New Jersey um and they found that districts post pandemic have ranged from 38% teacher loss um in places like Edgewater and Bloomsbury and Gren uh green Wich Township um to like regular rates of like three and 4% so this is a Statewide issue of teacher retention some of the districts were losing 50% of their newly hired Educators within the first year um um further um they found that only 6.9% of college graduates in the state of New Jersey are Educators um or receiving education degrees um the number of education degrees has dropped 41% since 2009 so I urge the board and the district as I work with like nine uh districts throughout Camden and Burlington counties to please urge the state to provide guidance on how we can actually hire these teachers per Governor Murphy's uh uh legislation that he signed allowing us to hire people um waving the practice one so I just would appreciate if you know people could urge that um and then the other thing is uh I would like to maybe just follow up about some questions that I have about the Freshman Sports and if there's anything that community members can do to support bringing back any of the Freshman sports that may or may not be getting cut um but I'm willing to help do fundraising if there's you know enough students I know sometimes with some of the Sports there's not even enough kids going out for the teams but um more than willing to help thank you thank you Mark brace off uh 904 Park Avenue uh I just want to add to Clinton's comments uh because I was hearing about teacher retention um and did a little bit of reading research on it because I was also concerned about it when I was um building a program at my University and um not only we heard tonight pretty low teacher morale uh which would be one of the reasons but it it is true that we're seeing across the country um but there was research that came out of ran University was talking about um one of the reasons for Teacher retention is teacher autonomy they they lost autonomy um and then in the age and the other thing that happened tonight that was really interesting um was that the students stood up and started talking about disengagement and it was my observation when I went to the high school uh that students are pretty pretty dis engaged and I don't know if we can blame a superintendent for that I think it's a larger system so um so but the thing that is curious um is the way in which the professional learning communities are playing out here the way that I was reading it from earlier talking to you all talking to a committee about it and then what I just saw tonight um it's doesn't really have teacher atomy as the piece of it and when professional learning communities are done well teachers get to engage in inquiries that matter for their classrooms and they get to learn from each other and that is connected to the other piece that's connected to teacher of retention which is filling a sense of community and a sense of belonging and a sense of agency in their spaces this is true for all people but it's particularly true for teachers that have been told what to teach and the content to teach for um now two decades With No Child Left Behind and so what we're really seeing we saw it tonight is um a manifest sttion of a lot of forces that are impacting education uh and we're seeing teachers playing administrators ministr the whole thing it was just tonight was really disheartening to be honest with you this is a really disheartening conversation because I don't actually think the conversation we had is solving any of our problems um and so just a little bit of a side note about the teacher engagement student engagement was there was a proposal or a thought of a proposal about how to handle cell phones in the high school and the thought was prohibition if that's what I heard tonight that like some slight prohibition where students are not going to be allowed to use their cell phones guarantee you that's going to create a lot of problems and that is not the way to go and so reconsider the fact that what we need to do to train our young people to understand cell phones and the internet is that we got to start really young and it has to start happening in the elementary school so by the time they get to the high school if what we're going to do is prohibition you think the teachers are upset now just wait it's going to get worse and so I just as as a consideration so tonight I hear student disengagement I hear teachers are angry I hear them blaming the superintendent I hear that there's budget difficulties which is normal right now in this country and so we have to find a way to talk to people get over this because we're blaming all the wrong things um and so yeah good luck hi I'm Brian molski I live at 124 East night Avenue um I just want to say as a board you guys should be completely ashamed of yourselves you you heard all these people speak and teachers and applauding and stuff and then you took none of that into account and you just voted yes just blindly voted Yes except what two people so I I don't know how you could look at these teachers and be like yeah that's totally cool guys we got your back no you don't you don't at all you don't at all and it's not a national Trend this is a dumpster fire it's beyond a dumpster fire it's the Titanic man it's going down and you guys are just like blindly like just voting yes to everything everything we only have what a couple people saying no and when you when somebody says no you kick them off the board the old man what was his name Bill yeah Bill Bill's gone you know like he God forbid he said no to you too many times you kick him off the board that's all I got Bruce Smith 311 lak view um I'm sorry if I'm going to repeat things that were already said um it's disheartening that there is not full ownership across the burrow the district the citizens teachers board members administrators principles to see how today started with the Cesspool of in the wood of people saying it's this person's fault and this person's fault is not worthy of the kids no one gets to come up here and talk about how much of a dumpster fire it is because if you're saying the district is a dumpster fire then you're including everyone which is not just the people sitting in these chairs it's not just the people sitting in the audience it's not just the teachers it's also the students everybody has ownership and it's frustrating as a citizen to think that three major parts of this District cannot get on the same page cannot take the time to sit in a room and work together with no ideal or no hope for the future it's very disheartening to see people constantly coming up and saying about how much things suck and about getting rent of people people who said no as an African-American as a chair of the Dei committee I'm happy that some people aren't sitting at the table anymore who don't represent the needs and the wants of African Americans in this [Applause] District Alexander Guido Smith 311 Lake Drive again um I want to thank everybody in the board I cannot imagine I've never been on the other side I can't imagine what that last two hours was like and my hope is that you all go home and relax and decompress in whatever way that you do and then tomorrow you get up and you get going because you understand that our goal in this community is to move forward with inclusive schools for all of our children not just the children who look one way all of our children and I want to make sure that the last thing that I say is the people that are here are sitting up here they win an election not everybody gets to come up and speak at 9:00 at night on a Monday but everybody got an opportunity to vote and I'm here supporting the people that I voted for to put them in this situation to make their votes so did you listen to everybody who came up majority of the school teachers you know you listen to the people who voted on the election day and I'm grateful for what you did and I'm happy and I really truly hope that tomorrow you get up thank you Al and you have a good day tomorrow [Applause] Renee Krauss 724 Park Avenue I just want to reiterate I am concerned with following through with the positivity in our school I do resent the implication that anyone who did not want Dr McDow to be a continuing superintendent of our school district the implication is that somehow we are racist because we want to go forward in a different way I find that insulting again it is not personal Dr McDow it is something that we need to be evaluating what the progress is and whether it's been adequate for the last few years I think you need to continue looking at that board members please it does have to do with retention not only of teachers it is not just the public trend is this that we've heard the numbers the local districts teachers have gone to the other local districts also students are leaving going to private schools in other districts thank you uh okay so seeing that um does not appear anyone else is coming up for a public comment uh I just wanted to take a moment to uh thank everyone for coming out tonight to speak uh as Miss Maya mentioned that is not easy to come up to the mic microphone and um speak in front of a microphone uh Civic engagement is a key value and point of pride in our community and it was alive and well tonight and I think that you know regardless of of how everyone might be feeling at this moment that is something to be celebrated that Collingswood makes sure that their voices are heard um and that the varying voices are heard and uh so we appreciate that and thank everyone who took the time uh to to come speak and while we may not always agree on everything uh we do all want the best for the students of collinswood public schools I do genuinely believe that we may not all have the exact same um beliefs about what that like how we might get there sometimes but I do believe we all want it and I do believe we can all get on the same page about what that can look like um and I really hope we do I look forward to working together with my fellow board members with Dr McDow and with the entire Community uh to continue improving upon the culture in our High School uh raising the level of academic rigor in our classrooms and addressing our facilities needs as well as celebrating all of the wonderful things that happen in these schools every single day from the very small things to to the large things some of which um were presented at the secondary program tonight and I I don't want us to lose sight of that sometimes when um our board meetings tend to uh uh have some pretty negative public comment but there are some pretty amazing things happening we have really amazing students who are going to really amazing places uh after they leave here um and I'd like to to end on on that note and hope that we can all find a way to work together in the best interest of our students because that's what matters um thank you very much uh at this moment uh thanks guys um uh can I have a motion we're g to move to section 17 a motion to adjourn this evening so moved and a second second all in favor I thank you have a nice night