##VIDEO ID:W4dYOyEtMy8## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening everyone I'm Rosa munz I'm The Interpreter for tonight's meeting thank you thank you Miss um I apologize that we're getting started a few minutes late um welcome to everyone here and those of you joining us virtually to this August 20th do Board of Education meeting for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district at 6:30 p.m. and those remote comments will be addressed in the second public comment section com this meeting which is hereby called to order at 6:44 p.m. is in compliance with the notice requirements of the law public notice was posted in the office of the Board of Education and communicated to the municipal clerk and daily record on January 9th 2024 can we please rise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the repblic for it stands one nation under God indivisible withy and justice for all Mr sabahu may we have a roll call M ESO present M DS present Mr Miller here miss nothing here miss Phillips Miss penales Dr sener present Miss SES here miss mandz here Mr Miller will you please read our mission statement certainly working together as a community our mission is to Welcome All and provide opportunities for our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and who choose to make an impact thank you uh we are going to jump into our presentations this evening Mr Heyman good evening good evening we got to be real close I think Clos good evening my apologies good evening everyone uh our first presentation is by Miss Rodriguez and Miss Norman on our assets and weita scores and data thank you good evening everyone just give us a moment while we finish setting up ready right so New Jersey is part of the WIA Consortium for the Northeast this Consortium is made up of 41 us States territories and federal agencies and their mission is to advance academic language development and academic achievement for Children and Youth who are culturally and linguistically diverse so some background about the access for elll it is a standardized test used to measure the English language proficiency and it is administered annually for grades K to 12 to our MLS or multilingual Learners and it meets the US Federal requirement for the Essa act um and it monitors and reports English language proficiency progress it is anchored in the weda English language development standards and it assesses the four language domains listening speaking reading and writing this test uh helps Educators understand the areas where students may need additional support and its results are used to make decisions about program placement we monitor their student progress and guide instruction and they also help in determining when a student is eligible or ready to exit our program so the English language development standards that Thea um assesses are the social and instructional purposes language arts math science and social studies it's hard to read once we get our results back we get a English language proficiency level and they range from 1. to a 6.0 students who score between a 1.0 and 4.4 remain in our ESL or bilingual program and students earning a 4.5 or higher uh are eligible to exit our program this is a sample score report where you can see all four domains are listed we have our listening speaking reading and writing underneath that you have your oral language which is combination of the listening and the speaking and the literacy which is our reading and writing yes then we have comprehension which is our reading and listening and each of those has a different percentage attached to it and then our overall score is the last score and that's the score that we use to determine if we're going to look at a child to see if they're eligible to exit all right so this is a sample test item this is a writing sample for 9th through 12th grade and you have the part B and part on Top where this is just the second portion of a test and then on the bottom they have to identify what they see in those pictures and then you go to the other side where you have B and C it gets more indepth questions where filling in the blanks and then where they actually have to create a an essay and this is a first grade sample you can see the difference between high school and first grade pretty much same thing where there's the picture they identify what they see and then they're asked to provide sentences at this age okay I'm going to dive into our results and other data um just so you know uh in June 2022 we had 749 mls in our district by August 2023 we grew to over a thousand and as of last week when we put together the presentation we had 1,213 MLS 59% of these students have been in our district for less than two years or two years or less I should say 6% are cyth or S um I do want to mention that there are an additional 189 preschoolers that are now considered MLS which actually brings our current total to 1,42 I didn't want to list that for August 2024 because the previous years um we were not yet identifying preschoolers so I I wanted to show like a Apples to Apples sort of thing um overall 40% of do students are MLS okay here are our scores um on this screen we've got grades K through five you can see each line uh gives you the exact data for each grade so it tells you the total number of students tested in that grade across the district and then how many received the uh different scores so entering would be the mostly we are hoping to see just new newly arrived students there but sometimes uh there are some students that even if they've been with us for about a year year and a half they may still be in that level one uh next is level two which is emerging level three is developing and I want to point out that once they hit level four expanding they're coming very close to that 4.5 exit once a student receives a 4.5 they are eligible to exit we do not automatically exit them we do uh take teacher recommendations and look at their grades to make sure that everything supports uh their success in moving forward without the extra support from ESL or bilingual now when you look at bridging and reaching you'll notice it's pretty blatant that we don't have a lot of students in those categories but what I want to point out is that we stop testing them once they hit that 4.5 because they exit the program so there are very few students that are staying with us beyond that 4.5 at the bottom you can see the grade K through five uh across the district and you start seeing which categories we have greater numbers in since most of our students are have most of our MLS sorry have been with us two years or less obviously we're going to see a lot of entering and emerging okay and here we have our middle school scores we test less students in the Middle School you start seeing the numbers sort of shifting a bit where we have more students hitting those level two and three and again this still represents students who have been with us for two years or less okay um I apologize I did not say that correctly it represents all of our students but 40 uh 7% I believe are with have been with us two years or less all right the high school 44% of our high school MLS have been in do for two years or less and here we have grades 9 through 12 oh no it's okay um and this is really more for visual Some people prefer bar graph so I I wanted to give you that that um what's the word oh visual thank you no I'm gonna I want to point out that this year we had 48 students exit our program I'll say that last year it was about half of that that exited so that means a lot of our students are really making good strides in in their language development um and also just a little extra bit of knowledge we close clly monitor our students during their first two years After exiting the program So currently this year we'll be monitoring 61 students and if a student is struggling we can look to have them come back into the program and receive ESL support again all right just to give you a little update on what we're doing this upcoming school year for our m our dual language program has expanded to grade three we continue to offer our bilingual and ESL teachers extra support with our bilingual and ESL coaches our focus is keeping dual language and bilingual classes smaller the class size I should say uh additional books for classroom libraries we I feel doing really well in supplying the teachers and the students with plenty of choices for reading in both Spanish and English and whenever possible we like to choose some culturally inclusive literature so that the students can identify with the characters in the stories or whatever they they happen to be reading uh we continue sheltered instruction training for Content Area Teachers when we ended the school year we were at 30% trained districtwide and and we have our first cohort in the works we plan to train another three cohorts cohorts of teachers this year we continue our new cumber what was previously called foundational is now fundamental and that was just a switch for to clarify uh there are many other courses in different areas that had similar names and so this just makes it clearer for the students for the counselors and for us and we have new resources for our MLS such as litterly and I station and that is [Applause] all Miss Rodriguez and Miss Norman thank you um for you know Gathering all this data which I'm sure was a tremendous undertaking and putting this um Val valuable presentation together um for us truly appreciate it I know board members have questions I saw Dr ser and then Mr Miller thank you very much um I really appreciated seeing the bar graph data um that was great um thank you for providing coaches um I know coaches can make a lot of difference in what teachers can do for their students in the classroom um love culturally inclusive library books SEI training and the newcomer courses um I did have some other questions questions um are the weda score reports available via Genesis for um non uh MLL teachers right so if you're in the high school or middle school if you are um teaching a special or something else where you are not a uh MLL teacher are those scores available yes they are so first we send scores to every building which they keep in student files hard copies we mail home the scores and then for the teachers or any other staff that would need access we have the scores available on Genesis and through linkit and linkit actually allows the teachers to do all kinds of fun filtering and growth comparisons and things like that so yes it's available wonderful um how are weda scores used in conjunction with I ready um that I know we're using are we using I ready in our MLL class rooms are bilingual how how do we use them together to maximize student growth so first thing okay I ready it depends on the program the student is in some of our students are actually working on I ready in Spanish because they are newer to the country and their English proficiency is not yet um strong enough to really just throw them into Ian English so the sort of glitch we have with that is that that's not an Apples to Apples comparison because the programs are not 100% equal there's a real difficulty finding Spanish language programs however we are bringing in I station this year which is going to be able to provide us with a lot more um data on our students who are you know completing these programs in Spanish and the comparison was with weda okay so it's a little difficult to compare them because weda is really looking for very specific speaking listening um reading and writing where I ready depending on whether they're using it for math or for language arts in Spanish the weda is testing them in for their English so it's it's not really something that we can measure growth right like is the student growing in English Prof are they growing in I ready or I station but as far as really comparing the two it's it's a little tricky because they're not really looking at the same they're not doing the same things so would I be correct to say that I ready is um helping them more with content as opposed to language acquisition correct okay perfect um how do we ensure you said that we monitor students for two years after they leave the program what does that look like well how are we monitoring the exited students so those students you know we have them identified through Genesis teachers are made aware that they have students that have recently exited the program uh through Genesis and then we have either our weda screener or it's our district assessment specialist and or our coaches check in with the teachers and we also monitor their grades and speak to the counselors about their progress thank you both very very much okay uh first I want to say that I love all the visual charts it's very easy to read I it's really nice I really appreciate that and also you know I appreciate the challenges that you're going through with an increase in student population it it cannot be easy um I know um that when we talked about the Dual language classes in the past um I'm I'm not sure what's the level the number of students it starts at kindergarten or first grade I can't remember kindergarten kindergarten okay so um what is the percentage of the students that choose to be in the Dual lingual language program so K to 2 this year is only our students who are identified as MLS third grade which we expand to is the only one that has the option and we asked every single family if they wanted to continue or they wanted to go out and and how oh so we don't know what's happening yet with the third grade until school starts or do have they already identified that they want to be in it yes they've we've we did that last year for this coming year and so how big is the class for the third graders that we have several different classes at different buildings oh okay that's great I'm glad that uh families are taking advantage of it um because I think at that age it's such an opportunity I'm taking a Spanish class now I'm in past tense right now so I'm starting to get it so thank you very much for you do Miss Mendes I have a question if I may um actually have two questions um so it's proven that children who are 10 years or younger have a better um not better they are more AP to have language acquisition at a faster rate um do you see that Trend where children who are perhaps in kindergarten or first grade are able to exit our elll program at a faster rate than uh children who are older so we don't actually see that Trend which is surprising we have a lot of middle schoolers who come in in seventh grade and by 9th or 10th grade have completely exited um we have yeah I I can say that we can see that our students who are now going to be third graders who were in The Dual language program and I'm speaking about the MLS that are in it their English has grown to their proficiency levels were higher than we anticipated let's put it that way when we start you know figuring out the budget and numbers and how many students will have for each section we underestimated how many students would be eligible to be in what we call a general monolingual classroom uh so that surprised us so those students who had been with us since kindergarten receiving that 5050 instruction really benefited from it okay thank you um can parents refuse to have their children in an elll program yes when we send out our notification letters which we just recently finished sending over 1,400 um it's it says very clearly in English and in whatever the family's home language is because we have more than just Spanish as the second uh the other language I should say and it says very clearly that they can Decline and we do get a lot of phone calls and emails this time of year from parents who are reading over their reports and just either have questions before making a decis decision or have already decided um that they just would like their child to be taken out of the program the state of New Jersey through the bilingual code in chapter 15 requires us we we do have a meeting either telephone if Poss or I prefer in person but as we know not everybody can take time out of their day to come and meet with us but we do explain you know everything about the program and what their situation may look like if they opt out so yes they can opt out so what what happens if a parent decides to opt out have their child opt out of the program and the child is struggling are there any how do you how do you support those students who because of A Parent's Choice they're struggling in school because of a language barrier yeah so that's a great question there there actually is a tremendous support when the students when our mLs are in monolingual classrooms with a teacher who does not speak Spanish and is not bilingual certified um we have already targeted especially in elementary most of those teachers have received that sheltered English instruction training so they are able to make accommodations our coaches also work with them to help them look at those access scores and determine in different areas like what they can expect from the student and what are reasonable accommodations um I can tell you that our teachers are amazing with our MLS and always are so proud to you know to point out all the progress the students make throughout the year and of course we always keep the parents informed and there have been situations where a parent ends up sort of resending their choice and saying you know what I didn't realize that my child was going to struggle so much can we get them additional support or back into the bilingual program and and what exactly is shelter instruction for the public that doesn't know what that is of course do you want to explain had this training we had this training yesterday it is a way to help our students access the con grade level content areas so different ways of like providing visuals giving background knowledge uh making sure that they are working in peer peer groups so it's just different ways to make sure our teachers know how to access that information for the child because it not it's not necessarily that they can't do it it's that they don't know the language so how can we make that Gap smaller so it in Ence is like applied methodologies different types of things that you use different tools it's different strategies yes okay um one more question I know I'm asking a lot of questions um for the Dual language program I'm not sure if you can answer this question now so how is the district gauging whether the students who are in a dual language program are um up to part with their monolingual um peers in terms of uh standardized testing is it is the third grade the incoming third grade um CL uh dual language students will be taking the test right so that's when we will know if more or less if I mean we can use I ready or we're hoping to be able to use ey station this year that will allow them to and we'll be able to get a biliteracy report and see both of there where there are in both English and Spanish but a lot of that if like you want to know like standardized test it's going to have to wait till these guys actually take the when we will see those results like if if they're taking it this year so we will see that for September of the following year is that how that works August I think usually come about September we should okay thank you any other questions I I will say that I am I am profoundly impacted by the um data in this presentation when I think about our um student population of was over 3,000 uh I don't what are we at like 3,600 let's just say a, and 400 of which are you know um in this program and 59% of those students have been in the district for under two years right so and when I say I'm impacted it just makes me appreciate and grateful for the amazing teachers and staff that we have right we saw that there's progress being made um despite the fact that we've only been able to you know connect with with these students for under two years so I just kudos to our staff and our teachers and to y'all thank you so so so much so one last thing since you said that it kind of triggered something I remember Dr serer had specific concerns about our s students and with the most recent presentation of like standardized testing and we did take some notes we last year had 26 s students who participated in our um s program the ESL and language arts is called last year it was foundational um so out of 26 12% are going to be taking the foundational again they still haven't made enough progress now let's keep in mind that some of those students in life have never been to school before but we do have less than 1% are going to our beginner level that's the next step and 81% are going to the intermediate level which is incredible progress from them for them they basically completed two years of progress within one year so I just wanted to mention that thank you thank you so much for highlighting that thank you for all the great work that you do day in and day out um thank you we appreciate you Mr hman uh you want to introduce our next presentation sure our our next presenter is uh Miss Flores uh she's presenting on tiger rep uh last time Miss Flores and I had a conversation uh it's been a while since we share some data from Tiger rep so it'll be great to share that tonight with everyone hi good evening everyone um so I'm a little tired I'm so sorry but I'm going to do my very best to do this um so I'm Rosemary Flores I started out here as a program coordinator um and I've worked here as a program coordinator up until the end of this year and I have just been promoted to the program manager which means I'll be the person presenting to you and Gathering data from here on out um um but that also means that I know the program very well I know the staff I know the needs of the students and so I'm able to better guide uh the clinicians as they ask questions or as their needs that uh come up all right I'm not sure if this is there we go so the program here consists of all of these people so there are about nine people that work um directly for the program not including myself um we currently have a new coordinator his name is LS Martinez um we had the psychiatrist still Dr Khan uh we had a doctoral intern named Rachel Hoffman we have a new one um she starts next week or so to meet with students um what the doctoral intern does differently from our psychiatrists is that they're here every week for three days and they meet with students and they have a case load but they also are available to do assessments for the child study team um for Behavioral assessments and they're also available to do psychiatric diagnosis which takes several day um weeks of meeting with the student so they get to build a relationship with them and they can give um testing to diagnose students differently um we have three fully licensed clinicians and they're spread out over the district um and then we have three entry-level clinicians and I'm so sorry sorry the PowerPoint isn't showing correctly but we also have a Youth Development coordinator who's new to this District uh this year her name is Allison ianz um and she has done a fantastic job um revamping what we do here at the high school this means that everything is going to get messed up I am so sorry it's stuck is there a way for me to present this differently from my laptop oh I did it okay so you're not going to be able to see everything for whatever reason when it was sent it wasn't set correctly um this is actually two pages of tier one interventions do you want this so the tier one interventions when I presented to um Mr and to um everyone who's present at the meeting I'm so sorry um they were like you know what you showing us everything that you guys do in the building can you show it to us as the tier supports and so our tier one supports um when you think of Tiger app you really just think about the mental health component um but because of the DSF the DCF program um Grant at the high school we are required to do other things which cover tier one through tier three over the years we've realized that tier one supports are really helpful at the elementary and middle school level and so we've started to implement them at those levels as well and we've actually seen a huge um Improvement in how our referrals are spread out throughout the year and so we've started to do that in the elementary and in the middle school as well so what you're seeing here are our high school tier one interventions um the biggest push for DCF this year year was for us to bring in evidence-based programming and the one that we decided on was youth mental health first aid and youth Mental Health First Aid was um implemented throughout the entire school year it required us to present it to the staff then to parents and then we did our implementation to students we also sent 10% of the high school staff to be trained in youth Mental Health First Aid so when the students came to them and they were bringing their concerns 10% of the staff understood what they were being presented um we're also looking to send more staff to get trained in it and hopefully throughout the years more and more staff will be trained and everyone eventually will be trained in it um it is a three-day training which is why we're doing it slowly for all of the high school staff um at the very bottom which you cannot see I'm so sorry um we did diversity and inclusion classroom presentations at all the middle school that was our tier one intervention we also did diversity and inclusion classrooms for all fifth and sixth graders at northover and Eastover uh we did healthy relationships push-ins at Academy Street um emotion regulation push-ins at Academy Street so we were really trying to help do preventative work at those levels to see if it helped teachers with behaviors in the classroom which usually leads to a lot of our referrals and to see how that would affect the quality referrals that we were receiving whether or not they would be the most appropriate ones by putting in all of this prevention work in at the high school we did something brand new which you can't see there I'm so sorry we did a volunteer and work fair and we did that in March so that fair took a lot of preparation for we actually um trained the teenagers and and the students here at the school on how to write resumés on how to have an interview and how to present themselves and then we brought in Community Partners and we had volunteer opportunities for our students and work opportunities for them and the reason we did that is because a lot of our Refugee students are unable to get paid work so we didn't want them to miss out on the opportunity of the experience and so we brought in the volunteer opportunities so that they could at least get the experience to put on their resumés um and it was a huge success I mean for the first time we ran it this place was packed um we had about 30 to 40 organizations here present um and almost everyone who came to it left with an opportunity for them to follow through with in the summer so our tier 2 supports which hopefully will show up soon there we go okay I can actually just talk about them to be quite honest because I'm I'm well versed in them and I have it here as well um so we did a newcomers group this is something we piloted first at the high school um the newcomers group is where we identify students who are refugees to the to the country or who are newly enrolled into our program into the school uh we partner with the school counselors and we also partner with the sac and we present to them what it is that they're experiencing right so we have a discussion with them of how is it to be here um what's different What's um better what's not what you expected and we give them an opportunity to put a name to their experience and so we brought that into North do as well which this year had our highest population of newcomers to the to the district and the way we ran it there was we did it once a month and we would bring in um all of the students and we would have conversations with them about the same things so you wouldn't think Elementary School students would be able to put a name to their experience but they absolutely did and they did so in such an elaborate way that they kind of put the high schoolers to shame um because they were just free with it they didn't care about what anyone else thought they were just like this is not what I wanted right most of them were like I'm here because my parents brought brought me here or because I had to be here and so it gave them an opportunity to explore that before going into the classroom and then having maybe behavioral problems show up because their concerns um and so it was fantastic I absolutely love that we did that um we also ran social Skool groups in all of the um lower level schools um that look differently in each level so at the high school what it was is we had a group of five or six young men who were diagnosed with ADHD um and that was a very challenging group to run from my clinicians um but they did a fantastic job adjusting to the kids right so we kind of modeled for them what would be expected for them from them in the classroom and we set limits and so when students just wanted to jump in and talk we would ask them is this pertaining to what we're talking about and do you absolutely have to say it now and that helped to reduced the behaviors in the classroom because it helped them to stop themselves from just blurting out whatever's on their mind um and it made them remember that what they say or contribute to a group has to be pertinent to what the question is we also ran um boy motion regulation and female um self-esteem groups uh there was an impulse control group at East and a healthy french group friendship groups at every Elementary School and the way that's run is um by lunch it's lunchtime groups where students can come and kind of experience what a healthy friendship would look like at each building all right so these are Clinical Services demographics this is just showing you uh the percentage of students by gender and then the percentage of students I'm so sorry that's incorrect but that's fine um it's really supposed to show you gender and then um grade the biggest thing to take from this is we had 533 students who were referred to us throughout the entire District this school year so the next one is number of students by grade um the number of students by grade if you see there's a huge jump in 11th grade the reason for that is we ran the um youth mental health first aid for the entire 11th grade so what that means is we partnered with the school counselors and we were in the classroom twice a week every period that health class was being given and so every 11th grader had the opportunity to be trained in youth mental health first aid and so every one of them was put into our system as a referral because we interacted with them over the course of five weeks and we um taught them and educated them on what is mental health what is substance use and how to talk to a trusted adult if anything were to happen or if a friend were to come to you and explain to you that they were experiencing any sort of struggles with mental health or substance use um so this is presenting symptoms at admission according to their education level um again you see that huge spike in Prevention Services because that is what youth mental health for state is um it is Prevention Services and students can ID be identified by multiple of these um identifiers the thing that we see the most identified is anxiety and depression usually as a clinical uh term the reason for that is because that's what you see so you see them feeling sad or withdrawn or you see them anxious and not able to really Express themselves and so we'll see them primarily for that or that is the first reason we'll see them and then over time we'll kind of dig deeper to figure out what's going on for them and over time we'll see other stressors appear for our students so these are environmental concerns um the one and this is a a comparison over all the years I'm confused as to why it's black in the background I'm I'm so sorry but what we've seen is that the comparison over the three years that we were sharing this data with you all is that there has been an increase in family concerns so we don't know if that's because they're able to voice that more or if that's because they're able to or we're doing a better job of obtaining the information um but family concerns is our number one issue that our student students are dealing with so home issues or dcpm P situations that's really what our students are facing and what's affecting their education the next thing is transition issues so the second thing is transition issues and what that means is they're struggling with either going from grade to grade or going from class to class and that's what we're seeing in our students so this is additional um information that I thought was super important for you all to see which is the number of referrals per School per year at the high school again there's that huge jump because of the 11th grade attending the um youth Mental Health First a but even without that there's actually still an increase it could be that we're doing a great job of identifying the students or it could be because we're there are more of us and so we're seeing more students um or could be that that's this is real we're really seeing just a higher need of students um in the district so if you look at last year's for North Dover you see that there is 42 referrals last year North Dover actually experienced a high incidence of hibs and so a lot more students were being identified and I really think that our prevention program so us pushing into the classroom and doing all of that prevention tier one supports led to a huge decrease in referrals um because you were going into the classrooms and providing the groups in the language that the students were speaking and we were giving them the supports that they needed to kind of identify their behaviors and their emotions before they became hopefully hips right so uh the next slide is Psychiatry um the psychiatrist completed nine evaluations uh they worked with three students for psychiatric clearance and six students are currently on medication management um or were refer referred for medication management and of those six three students have been consistent with followup so I want to qualify this for you all a psychiatrist evaluation can take anywhere from 3 to 6 hours if it is a bilingual family and a bilingual student we have to translate the entire thing and then our psychiatrist has to also have a meeting with staff members usually they'll ask for input from teachers they'll ask for input from other Prov providers um so that we can do a better job of making an an assessment as to what is needed so next will be our crisis responses so in the elementary school we did 40 crisis de escalations which is really high what that means is that we went in and we were either called to consult or to assist with um de-escalating a student regarding suicide or or homicide um next year what I will do is share with you each school and the reason for that is because that is really important in understanding why we have clinicians at each Elementary School um I can tell you that the majority of those de escalations were at north um and so we did provide a lot of De escalations at north um and what that ended up being was almost every clinician at one point was at North uh providing a deescalation or an assessment for some sort uh at the middle school um we had six crisis assessments and three direct admissions a direct admission is when we send a student to the hospital so that they can be admitted um because we are Ruckers University usually we can do a direct admission directly into our hospital but we work uh with st cla's and we do our very best to make sure that if we're sending a student to the emergency room that they are being admitted um but at the end of the day St cla's does have a final say as to whether or not the student actually makes it onto their unit um and then at the high school uh we had for 14 crisis assessments um and five directed missions so I wanted to give you a visual of what it is that we do um this is all high school students we work with them on a day-to-day basis on lots and lots of things not just mental health supports we educate them once a month on a topic that is decided by DC PMP um and so we will have tabling events in the cafeteria and what we do is we actually have this group of of students that we identify called peer mentors and this year we identified 65 students who will be leaders in the school and will assist us with uh put putting these um programming events together but also enhance in in doing other things like conflict resolution um and with helping us promote uh youth Mental Health First Aid um and what they do this what they did this year which I will credit hugely to our Our Youth Development Specialists is they would plan the entire tabling event so they would plan an activity the information being given to the students and how to draw the students in and we had such a great turnaround at turnout at these events that we are making it a thing from now on that they're going to help us kind of plan all the things pertaining to their peers um because they know each other and they know what works best um and that led to such a huge success that over this summer we had over 30 students show up to our uh summer programming events um which was volunteer work um we visited a university and we also just had like a fun day at Funplex for them so we're trying to like get the students more involved and um more aware of mental health supports so that they're not afraid to access them when they're referred to us and so that if a friend is in need that they feel comfortable coming to us so that we can have have them access to Services all right so these are the faculty presentations um that we have done or meetings that we've attended here so so we attend um the inrs meetings the IEP meetings for any student that's referred to us um what that helps us do is give information to them that we have that can help create the IEP or help to Foster the IEP creation or continuation um we have also helped with um faculty meetings uh we provided suicide screening training for all coun all counselors and child study team um and we have also assisted with creating the crisis and threat assessment protocol for the district all right so here's some data quantifying our our kids' experiences um so the black is the in the first or the pre um assessment that we give all of our students and that is the average for the entire District so 2 or the entire School sorry so 22.7 um is what our students came into us with at Academy Street and at the end of the year there was a decrease of 15.8 and so you'll see that at every Ed at every um school there was a decrease in symptomatology for students externalizing um internalizing like depression or anxiety and um also externalizing with problems with conduct so our whole philosophy is that if we openly discuss mental health um from primary school all the way through high school we can ensure that our children know how to reach out and seek help before tragedies occur and this is a great quote that we always use from Frederick Douglas um it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men or women any questions you [Applause] have Miss Flores thank you um for this um informative presentation once again Gathering all this data um and congratulations on your promotion to program manager thank um and I'm sorry you're tired I'm tired too um uh Dr serer then miss nning thank you so much um at I I don't remember the total number of uh members of your staff that you have but what would can you ballpark Your Capacity are you at 50% capacity 75% capacity 100% capacity in terms of I guess my real question is are you able to meet all the needs of our students so that varies from year to year um depending on severity so at Ruckers we try not to put a number on it because we can say 10 and there are 10 really intense cases and so they take up all of our time or we can say 25 um I can say that we had to put a weight list this year so this year we had about a month or six week weight list at the high school um because we were at capacity and the clinicians couldn't do more intakes at that point um and so we did have to reassess who was open to us who was close to us and who we could close so that we can make space and time for those intakes for those students if you have a student who has a need and I I at the high school to year you had a waight list um do you have Community Partners that you are able to connect them with in the meantime so what we train the school counselors on is um to give them multiple resources not just us so that if there is a weight list that the families can access perform care where that becomes a challenge is for our students who do not want their parents to know about the services um so what the school counselors will do and I've I I've encouraged is to let us know which students need immediate attention um so that we can reach out to them if they're put on the weit list so if they they are put on the weight list they will reach out to us and let us know please reach out to the student ASAP for X Y and Z and we do that okay thank you very much mhm with uh mental health being a an issue um for a lot of people even adults um the mental health first aid you guys taught the 11th grade class Is it feasible to say that it would be something that would be beneficial to do as an Corporation into like a health class across the board at every grade level and what kind of idea would you have if that was something that was uh feasible one for budget and um if we had all the Staffing to buy into all of that to help all of our students at once so that's a great question so youth Mental Health First Aid is really um catered towards 10th through 12th grade um so we would have to cater it to that grade level the other thing that we would have to look at is uh the health course or the health curriculum um so the reason we brought it into the 11th grade is because we had a huge conversation and we looked at the curriculum and we realized that the 11th grade was where it fit in seamlessly um because we're taking time from the health classes we want to make sure that we're allowing for um education and um expectations to be met um so is it possible potentially we would have to look at everyone's curriculum to make sure that it would fit in seamlessly for the teachers so they can meet every criteria set for them for the year um as far as Staffing goes it would probably be challenging um simply because you're pulling all the the Christ the clinicians at the high school to to be a secondary in the class um so in the class there is a teacher so it's it's a teacher from the district teaching the class and a clinician in the room as a secondary to clarify anything that's being taught or to help if there's a crisis um so like at one point I was in the classroom and there was a crisis I stepped out with a student and we kind of processed it um so there are things that can happen during the class that you need a secondary clinician for um and I'm not sure if we want to spend um six weeks every quarter on pulling clinicians and school counselors because they also assisted with that so I'm not sure if it would be feasible I can say that what we do for n9th grade um and 10th grade is we do conflict resolution um so we do um pull them out during their health class for one day each um quarter that they're in health classes and we do instruct them on conflict resolution and that's a peer mentor-led curriculum um and so the peer mentors go in and they teach them about conflict resolution and how to best meet those needs um we had taken a break from it and then we saw that it was needed so we brought it back um as far as implementing youth Mental Health First Aid I honestly I can reach out to my partners and see if they've done it but I'm not sure that it would be feas ible okay thank you so I just have a question about um new students how do they learn about tiger rap um but my thought was um probably every year the beginning of the school year there should be an assembly of each of the schools to talk about the programs in Tiger wrap is that something that we're doing yes so every year at the beginning of the year there is usually a class meeting or an assembly and we present at each one of those um meetings to everyone to let them know who we are what we do um something else that our clinicians are involved with is that they will be coming out to technology night um and they do come back to back to school night um so that they are present they have a presence at each of these events so that the families know who we are um the other thing that our elementary school clinicians do is they're there at dropoff so uh they see all of the kids they're seeing a lot of them at the drop off center uh at the drop location and they get to interact with them there um and then at the middle school um we present all the time at the middle school so the kids have no problems finding Miss Jennifer there um a lot of kids seek her out um who don't really need her so I can tell you that the kids do recognize who we are and what we do at the high school since we're at the table so at the beginning of the year at the high school we have a tabling event the first two days of school that is who is Tiger gra how can you access those things like that and the the last thing is could we have a copy of the presentation so that because it was kind of hard to see you know some of the numbers and the other thing is could we see the numbers for the high school that don't include the special program to find out you know what were the real number of cases that you had I can actually I can do that thank you I have a question Miss if I may um thank you for that present presentation um I know that you mentioned that you particip your staff participates in Iron process and IEPs um maybe the question is not for you but Mr Heim can you explain to the public what those acronyms mean irrs and IEP so that they know what we're talking about sure our rnrs is our intervention and referral service and the I is individualized educational uh plan thank you okay um my other question and it just kind of like popped into my head do you recommend because I know you said that there are teachers that you know would recommend the student or you have other peers that see something to speak up do you recommend that um for our families if they see something at home to if they feel comfortable um or to come and who would they contact if they didn't feel that they couldn't talk to their student or their child or if they happen to notice a their child's friend having an issue and they happen to reach out who would you recommend them calling so for community members and for parents they can reach out to the school counselor at their building or their principal or their vice principal and they can get the student referred to our services perfect thank you any other questions Miss Flores um I have a couple of questions for you um in the presid presentation you highlighted that family concerns and transition AKA grade to grade to grade or class to class has been um an area where students have you know struggled with um so can you speak to with this now that we have this data what specific tiered supports um do we intend to implement to address those specific needs of our students so with the family supports we've attempted to integrate ourselves with the parents um we've done parent University for parents um we've been trying to include them more in therapy sessions with their children so that they can be educated as to what's going on for them uh the other thing that we've done is we've done presentations at back to school night or at um I forget what you guys call them but they're like open houses for the families or family fund days um we've done presentations at the family fund days about mental health so that parents are aware of what their children are struggling with um the most difficult um task that we faced is integrating our parents into all aspects of Education um and understanding that culturally um schools are seen as community centers for us but for them they can have had difficult or different experiences with Ed education and with education systems and so we're trying to bridge that Gap with them as far as prevention comes it's challenging just trying to figure out what they need from us as parents um but what we have done is really con um connected parents a lot with the community Liaisons um because a lot of the times the family concerns are really what we call maso's hierarchy of needs initial issues right um housing instability Financial instability um sometimes it's medical instability so we're trying to connect them to services that we have here so that they realize we're not working against them we're working with them um and also teaching children that their parents aren't their enemy um and so that we do a lot of that in our sessions just kind of reinforcing what a parent's role is um and modeling that for them in our sessions I'm so glad that you highlighted um you know Low's hierarchy of needs because when we think about you know School often times we say well it's just about math and science and reading but a student is not going to learn if they're hungry a student is not going to learn if they have a tumultuous home life right so when we talk about meeting the needs of our students it is so complex I'm so glad that you highlighted that um you brought up uh the time that it takes when we're doing and I forgot the the term for it but the assessment with the psychiatrist and how it's like up to six hours I believe you said and then if you know students need things translated it's even longer so my question is do we not have uh uh access to a bilingual psychiatrist currently no um we are working on um making that more available they are difficult to access I personally only know one and I've been doing for 17 years um so getting access to bilingual psychiatrist is challenging thank you and then my final um question is you highlighted at the elementary school um North do specifically that there were 40 incidents of Crisis deescalation can you um because when I think about you know elementary school they're like babies so can you kind of highlight what those you know you know 40 incidents kind of what what were those needs and and and you know how how did we address them so as I saw this happening at the elementary school I went to my own kids and I was like so help me understand why kids say I want to die or I want to kill you or just die and what um a lot of kids are using is when they're gaming or when they're playing video games they're talking like this regarding the game the like the player in the game um and so when kids are communicating or if they don't have the emotional capacity to say I am tired I need a break they'll say oh I just wish I wasn't here or I I wish I I I I died or I wish that I would go to sleep and not wake up and so it's processing that with them so crisis the escalations is us going in and processing the words that they say and helping them find alternatives to what they're feeling or how they're expressing their feelings um and the other the other cavetta that is the language barrier so many times kids will just say what they think is easy as opposed to what they mean um and when they translate it they have a difficult time with that and so they'll say something that's contrary to what they mean um the other concern that we were facing over at North um was that a lot of the students were either on the Spectrum or they had other um developmental challenges and so they would say something to grab your attention fast so that they would have to stop what they were doing at that time and so it was really teaching the students how to use their words differently or maybe how to ask for a break as opposed to using their words in a negative or a scary terminology Miss Flores thank you um so much for all the work that you do day in and day out for um our students it's extremely important um you can't even describe it in words um so thank you much appreciated and thank you for the presentation of course thank you go get some rest uh we are moving along to public comment on agenda items only um the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments limited to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discre of the presiding officer please understand that public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation with that public comment is now open is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak on agenda items only good evening Mary S 27 Baker Street um I just want to start off with um the list of resignations if Miss Emily James is watching um we just want to tell you I think on behalf of a lot of parents at Nord over and students as well that we miss you so much we wish you the best and we love you and miss you uh in case she's watching um and I'm so sorry that you're not going to be around um and I just want to ask the board to consider I know Mr Miller mentioned he hadn't gotten the second presentation yet so I don't know if you guys know ahead of time what you're being presented these are two different presentations and um you know I want to comment and have a lot of input on both of them and it's just a little bit too much to have both of them I mean I know we only get one meeting a month and you can only fit in so much uh but also maybe sharing to the public the presentations I had would also help you know the public kind of know what what being presented and what questions to ask um I'm going to just um comment um mostly on the tiger rap presentation um I just want to thank the staff for addressing all our kids needs and I want to say as a parent I find it unacceptable that there's a waiting list for children to be attend attended to um when when you're getting to that point you already have a recommendation or a request from either the school or the student themselves or the parent side um tonight's list of approvals for um substitute positions include teacher substitute par professional substitute permanent nurse um substitute uh substitute nurse and secretaries um and the list of contracts throughout the year that you guys approve is endless and um contract with the local you know psychologist agency that can send some help when needed um um they did explain in the presentation that it varies throughout the course of the year and I just want to point out that um as a member of the community I and you know representative of the Spanish Community as well I have oh I like the timer um I have um understood myself and I can speak for many others that nor over is considered the quote unquote Spanish school so um I know a lot of the cases are being treated like oh they're coming from nor over so I don't know have um in Miss um Rodriguez explanation on the presentation she didn't quite um I really didn't get whether all the ml's students are now distributed through all the schools or is northover still considered the Spanish school um which is understandable we have a lot of these cases for Tiger rapper coming since they're all incoming students throughout the year um thank you so much for the presentations that were wonderful and um a lot of information and if the public could also have that in Spanish in the presentation I know the subtitles are available once the video of the meeting is up but it's something that you know we can share amongst parents as well thank you thank you is there any other member of the public in person wishing to speak on agenda items only good evening everyone Susan shower 346 West Clinton Street in do um thank you everyone the presentations were fabulous both of them uh to see the breakdown of detail in the language presentation was awesome great job I appreciate that uh the tiger rap one was fantastic also and of course it's a big change now that ruter is so heav involved in our program and not just our independent tiger rap program of days gone by but I do have a question about the students that are involved in the program mentoring and helping other students um is there an issue of confidentiality that those students then are exposed to the issues that the students are coming up with um so I'm just wondering is there a uh tutoring to those students on confidentiality and the protection of the information um and then the other question was with all of this information going through the ruter program is it shared with anyone outside of the district um because there was a a mention of some of the students are concerned that their parents find out is the information shared with ruers but not with the parents is there a permission slip per se for students under the age of 18 who um or even 16 I know in some circumstances so that there can be discussion with outside sources and not just in the school district that's just something that popped up um but otherwise I I think it's fantastic and I appreciate all of that thank you thank you is there any other member of the public wishing to speak on agenda items only seeing none public comment on agenda items only is closed um I will say that I agree that um more than one um presentation that has uh the extent of information that our presentations this evening had is is a little rough but as you know we do only meet once a month so um sometimes it happens but I think moving forward um I think we all agree that we'd like to keep it to one presentation per meeting um as far as receiving the uh presentations ahead of time I will share with everyone that most I mean in the past we have received presentations ahead of time but um recently we have not been receiving the presentations ahead of time um as far as the you know we also receive the agenda along with everyone else um we don't necessarily get any special treatment um I think think that I think that moving forward we should try as much as possible to um receive these presentations ahead of the meeting as a board but also as a community so that um folks are able to you know review all the material which is quite extensive and also um you know formulate for us as board members formulate well thought out questions and not on the Fly um there were some other questions that came up doing public comment that you know unfortunately Miss Flores is not here she was tired um so uh I will ask Mr haime to connect with Miss Flores to try to get some of that information and um disseminated it out and present it to everyone if I miss some stuff that came out of um public comment I'm sorry I uh I have foggy brain right now too I guess I'm right along there with Miss Flores I'm tired so I apologize I didn't intentionally not um respond uh where are we moving to now uh approval of minutes um is there a motion to approve the minutes from July 23rd and 27th so moved second you have a motion by Mr Miller was that Miss nutting yes a second by Miss nutting is there any discussion seeing none we have a motion and a second Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please M ESO I will abstain from July 27th 2024 as a special meeting minutes and a yes to July 23rd 2024 okay m d yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes to one and two and number three abstain since I had a family emergency and I had to leave early okay Dr sener yes Miss sones yes Miss mandz yes we are moving along to communication um there are no whole board Communications that I am aware of is there anything that I may have missed no thank you so we are moving along to we do not have a student rep yet so we're moving along to board president's report um my report tonight will be short but hopefully sweet um we we are happy to report uh after preliminary interviews with over 35 candidates and three rounds of rigorous interviews with finalists um the DOA board of education is moving forward with one extraordinary um candidate so over the next few weeks we will finalize the details and we look forward to presenting our next permanent superintendent to everyone in the next month or so um and that concludes my report uh we are moving along to administrative reports uh Mr Heyman good evening everyone so I have a few things to report this evening for everyone um we're excited to share that this past Saturday uh here at do high school we had the class of 74 a 50th reunion uh and I want to thank Dr Nunes for being a host and a guide with the most as he took our class of 19 of 1974 uh around the building during the uh guide uh just want to report a little bit on the building construction we've had a lot of projects done this summer at Academy downstairs near the media room the rooms have have been final finalized by painting and carpet has been installed there was also a small gas leak on the outside of the building that also has been repaired so that's a a thumbs up and that's great to hear uh the DMS vestule has started and the progression is on schedule and new padding has been added to the gymnasium wall as included with the floor so that's fantastic and uh Ed evest and main office construction is on schedule and just waiting for inspection to continue on with the progress uh our gearing up for school par Forum which was hosted on August 12th uh was a great success uh thank you for everyone who assisted in uh disseminating that information to our community we had over 70 parents join us uh at door Middle School that evening where we were having discussions about lunch applications Genesis Parent Portal transportation and Technology ready event uh during that evening we had a staff member assist with uh our parents and we were able to sign up 25 parents for our Genesis Parent Portal our technology ready event is kicking off tomorrow at Academy we're excited to inform everyone that our technology ready event uh that we're hosting is going to give us an opportunity uh to get the technology into our students hand as soon as possible as well as providing guidance and assistance for our parents when filling out the insurance form uh lunch applications Parent Portal and of course sharing out any resources available to our families and that will be the date uh for the day uh events will be August 21st at Academy and then August 22nd at North Dober and then at the evening event we're going to be providing August 22nd will be at do middle school and East do elementary and on August 27th at do High School uh the times for the evening are 5: to 8:00 p.m. and the times for the DAT events are 8 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. uh I would like to acknowledge that the community aison for hosting a backpack distribution yesterday at Belmont I had to say that the numbers were staggering as the lines were going around the corner from Belmont all the way down the street um it was quite a sight to be seen uh our families were very gener uh very excited at the opportunity to pick up not only bookbags but also resources and and also f lunch applications for the community so that was great and thank you to our food service a bookkeeper who was very busy assisting our families with lunch applications it was all hands on deck and it was a great opportunity for our families to really come out to Belmont and get all these great resources and opportunities uh our school website was launched on August 1st and it has been enormous undertaking to ensure that it's ready for the beginning of the school year so we're still continuously progressing and thank you for all that have reached out to just share their concerns about the website and we're continuously working towards making the website what we want for our community uh new administrators that I want to share uh we have three new administrators that today have begun working and are on one that will be joining us on August October 1st my apologies our supervisor Transportation who started on July 1st we have our super uh sorry Ruth Perez we have our supervisor of guidance uh July uh 1 who is our Dr Jordana Bradley and our director of special services who was appointed this evening who is here also in our Mist Dr Sable thank you for joining us and our supervisor pre uh Miss Stephanie Vargas will be joining us October 1st we're looking forward to having this team complete by October 1st but it is exciting to have everyone on board and moving forward as we progress to fill the needs of our community as well as support our staff and sorry sorry administrator of so for administrators also for for the administrative Summit week which started yesterday I want to share with everyone that the administrators are working together in the last two days and we're doing a lot of great work and we've done a lot of great work throughout the summer as we've been meeting every Wednesday to make sure that we were all in safe patient moving as a team moving forward uh we so far the the last two days the administrator received training in shelter English instruction Hib Safety and Security uh the administrators will now at the end of the week will be finalizing our district goals as well as our school individual school calendar so that we can then provide those updates into our school websit uh which I think is you know it's going to be great and convocation will take place on August 27th and 28th we're going to be welcome back our staff uh we're opening up convocation with a theme of coaching for Success a as Educators coaching is at the heart of everything we do to promote support and encourage our greatest resources our students we're excited about the next year and we cannot wait to have our students back with our staff um and that is all I have thank you thank you Mr he are there any questions or comments from the board based off of his report seeing none Mr Sab good evening uh we got the final approval from the state for the launch applications packet for 20254 25 school year we already received a lot of applications for free and reduced lunch uh but I just uh want to remind all the parents that if you qualify for free reduced launch last year the applications carry over 30 days after 30 days if you don't fill out a new application they're going to turn to paid so make sure you hand in the applications on time and besides that uh we already processed the direct certification this year this year is uh much different than last year we only had 753 students directly certified last year this year it number came up with 1,459 students so if you receive a mail uh if you receive the uh direct certification approval notice in the mail you don't have to fill out the application your automatically free just want to tell everyone and this uh actually number also helps the district because half of our students free reduced so they don't have to pull out the application on the agenda you will see RFP which uh means like a request for proposal results for one to one nursing services for the district the Stepping Stones group offers the lowest rate so it's recommanded for the contract approved for 2024 25 school year also on the agenda you will see uh also see a few voluntary benefits for our staff uh we would like to all always offer more benefits for the staff and these Services have no cost to the district up for approval on the agenda you will see a proposal from our board architect for the high school generator project that was budgeted for 2024 25 school year it was approved in the budget so most likely this going to take place if everything works out pretty good uh next summer so we can have a generator for the high school that concludes my report thank you Mr sabahu are there any questions or comments based off of his report Miss menis I have a question um so if I'm understanding correctly parents are supposed to fill out the lunch application for this coming school year within 30 days of the start of the school year is that correct if there are newcomers they have to uh FL out right away because we don't have the record from last year to car over okay newcomers right away yes and if they were paid last year they think that they're going to qualify for free reduce they have to fill out right away also but if they have a free reduce from last year they have 30 days to fill out and we need to have some time to determine the application so okay may I suggest that we blast that that we put that on the website because this is going to become a problem I just I just know it so I think that we should inform par that they have 30 days if they had pre lunch or reduced lunch or breakfast um so that they start making arrangements to get that application in we always give the word out and this is same every year this is not something new but we always try to promote and reach out to that we need we need to put that on the website I feel yeah we can we can put on website uh Miss Miss ESO brings up a good point Mr him I know that you have been working extremely hard to get out the word in terms of um gearing up for school right um with the technology events and um you know and and making sure folks are filling out um lunch applications um is there anything more that we can do to get the word out in terms of of that I mean perhaps like Miss asabo suggested putting it on our website do you think that that will help no absolutely I think putting it on the website will definitely assist with our families to remind them of the launch application as well as doing a complete uh phone blast to the entire District uh I think also sharing with our families that there will be someone available at each building to assist with the lunch applications which will be our community aison we'll also provide some assistance with the applications I know they can be very worrisome at times uh so we'll definitely make sure that the communication is going out to the public as well as letting him know that do will be someone to assist thank you thank you Mr hman thank you for that report Mr sabahu um we are moving along to Boe reports Mr Miller any updates from the Morris County Education Services Commission well we met last Wednesday um but uh there's nothing to report as a result of that meeting thank you Mr Miller Dr serer legislative report the legislature has not been in session so there's nothing new to report thank you Dr serer Miss DS mois County njsba report there has not been any meeting but um as a reminder the next meeting is October 2nd uh 2024 at bonic High School thank you Miss DS um we are moving along to uh administrative approval is there a motion to approve items one through 4 tabling item five the the addendum until we until we get to community relations I so moved second we have a motion by Miss nutty a second by Mr Miller is there any discussion Dr serer um I have two quick questions um were teachers and other staff involved in the creation of the district PDP and mentoring plan yes there was definitely feedback from our teachers and they were part of the mentoring plan thank you and um the old job descriptions are missing from the new website I understand that's still a work in process but could you highlight the significant changes to both the assistant ba position and the director of curriculum instruction and PD job descriptions I have right here give me one second there it is so the assistant ba and account position is a combination of two positions uh the revised job description reflects uh the changes and the only change to the director of curriculum instruction and professional development uh the change that was made is so that the activation of the principal certification can happen thank you very much any other questions Miss n um for the doctoral student study can you just kind of explain that for the community and what that kind of study is the e study yes yes sure no problem uh we currently have a staff member in District who is going for their doctoral and part of their studies is they do an ethical study to kind to uh look at the accountability within the district and then uh write just on how each group is is is working within the ethical um act and then provide information and then they'll write a research paper which will then request in return okay thank you any other um discussion seeing none we have a motion by Miss nutting a second by Mr Miller Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote Please Mr yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Dr sener yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes we are moving along to Personnel Miss NY I'd like to make a motion for us to approve 1 through 17 upon the superintendent recommendations we have a motion by Miss nutting is there a second second second by Miss ACO any discussion Dr s it is always good to see former students and retired teachers returning to our schools um I have two questions the first one is we are now paying leave replacement Personnel $345 per day how is this different than what was done before when we hired a leave rep placement teacher uh in the past uh Li PLS have been offered of the years of experience for example they could someone retired right coming in would be offered a guide uh a step 20 right and uh which translates you know step 20 which mean uh 95,000 a year which translates into $517 uh per hour I per day my apologies not per hour that would be out of the world um to keep in mind we we want to be um we often want to make sure that we're paying the people who I on leave and keep that in mind that we want to make sure that we're not we're also paying two salaries right so the leave replacement and the person on on leave um for us to be a little more responsible and in leave Replacements and for that year uh what we're looking at is instead of $517 and22 per day we're looking at $365 uh per day uh which is fair and equates to $63,800 um that also just allows us to be a little more accurate with our numbers and an assist within the business department and making sure that it's accurate and we're not just um and also the other sorry the other piece that I also want to mention is the fact that lead Replacements are not in the CBA or the DEA as well and could you explain what a technology night monitor is technology night monitor I do not believe you answered this question in the email sorry uh the technology night uh monitor sorry why I'm drawing a blank um does have something to do with Gaggle M oh yes my apology sorry I for a moment that I had a blank on and on I want to say I'm also tired but I'm okay um the technology my so the the the position is once again when with this firewalls that we've installed within the district right to maintain Safety and Security to our students um we have security and we have gagle these are two security walls that assist with any inappropriate searches that may include IDE uh suicidal ideations or homicidal ideations uh gagle who does also just check through emails or any information that also speaks on anything about self harm or suicide ideations the night monitor would assist us with monitoring that nothing falls through the crack and make sure that we're communicating uh we have in the past has received Gaggle alerts in the middle of the night and thankfully uh we've been able to get them a right away immediately and provide assistance support where is needed so that is just another extra layer that we're going to be providing as a security to make sure that we're maintaining safety when it comes to our students thank you you're welcome any other discussion I think that um it is important to note um that since releasing the agenda there was I think what we're now calling an addendum to item 12 um salary adjustment um there was a a salary adjustment that has been withdrawn um so with that we have a motion by Miss nutting a second by Miss ASO Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please miss ESO yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Dr sener yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes we are moving along to negotiations Miss nutty is nothing to report at this time thank you Miss nutty uh we are moving along to governance Mr Miller okay the governance committee met on J July 30th I mean I I put the agenda together but I had Co so I wasn't there but I can tell you what happened um we did uh talk about um putting together uh more uh detailed descriptions of all the Committees that we're going to finalize and it will be part of our new board packet so that uh any new board members that come on on uh to join us here will be able to understand exactly what each of the Committees does we also worked on the planning for our board retreat which is uh August 29th at 5:30 um we um put together the information that went out so that each of our board members can do our board self evaluation which we'll be looking at as part of our agenda um and we uh are going to finalize our goals and objectives for this past year and and present whether we made it or not during our board retreat um and I think that's all for the governance committee thank you Mr Miller I think that um you know creating the governance committee is one of the uh best things we've done as a board um governance wise I I I appreciate all the work that you and the governance committee um does and has done I do have a request um which I know you're already working on these things but we will have three new board members at some point um so I want to make sure that we set these new board members up for Success so making sure that those packets are thorough and complete um and the committee descriptions are all updated and um I just want to make sure that we have everything together before we say our goodbyes um and we set our new board members up for Success we'll have it done in September perfect thank you um we are moving along to student achievement and curriculum Dr Ser the student achievement and curriculum committee met on August 6th um the majority of our work was um discussing the 62 curricula that we read this weekend and are up for approval um I would like to thank all of the teachers in the district that worked on these curricula um over the summer um there are still a few more coming in September but this is I want to say 80% of the curricula on the list to be updated or um newly written um I also want to thank Mr Carl uh he set up a spreadsheet where we could ask questions and then he could respond uh or the various administrators could respond that was a really great solution that allowed for um some feedback on the curricula we also saw the new linkit data dashboards um which uh provide a lot of information for um staff at every level from District level to school level to teacher level um and allows teach all of these different levels to group students and identify students that need help um and right now we're looking at doing that before school even starts um we discussed um expansions in our Career and Technical education programming with two new um programs kind of in the pipeline those are computer science and culinary um and then uh programs that aren't in the pipeline yet but are being thought about we discussed um what has been done in the gifted and talented uh program uh students across um all k to8 um grade levels will be administered uh the Nagi are assessment this is an assessment that's new to the district um it is not not language based so it will help identify students regardless of their um primary or home language um and this is information that we will use to correctly identify um gifted and talented students and there's some training coming up for our gifted and talented teachers there's a committee to work that is will be working in September um that we'll starting in September to uh make other improvements in the gifted and talented program at as we uh kind of follow through on the assessment that happened in the spring uh finally we learned about the rising tiger honor rooll um this is new for students in grades 3 through five and students will be um assessed on standard based achievement academic growth creative expression and their um following the Tiger pledge um this concludes my report and I move that we approve items 1 through four thank you Dr sner is there a second second we have a motion by Dr sner we have a second by Miss asav is there any discussion seeing none we have a motion in a second Mr sabahu may we have a roll call vote please misso yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Dr sener yes Miss SES yes Miss madz yes we are moving along to community relations Miss ASO thank you Miss Mendes uh the community relations committee met on August 14th via Google meet to discuss the applications submitted via Google form on the district's website for the citizens advisory committee for the 20 for the 2024 2025 school year upon review and discussion I would like to make a motion to approve the appointment of the TW the 2024 2025 school year citizens advisory committee as listed in today's agenda is there a second second we have a motion by Miss ASO a second by Mr Miller is there any discussion seeing none Mr saahu may we have a roll call vote please M ESO yes Miss DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Dr sener yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes we're moving along to policy miss solz good evening everyone um we have several items for second reading today that haven't had any changes since the first reading including both policies and regulations for policies we have policy number 24530 educational stability for children in foster care 24154 districtwide parent and family engagement 2417 student intervention and referral services and 5460 High School graduation additionally we have one regulation for second reading 2417 student intervention and referral services our next policy committee meeting will be on September 3rd um with that said I would like to make a motion to approve items one and two under policy thank you Miss solinus is there a second second we have a motion by Miss solinus a second by Miss ASO is there any discussion I just want to know miss solinus you did a wonderful job thank you thank you um so we have a motion and a second Mr saahu may we have a roll call vote please M yes M DS yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Dr CER yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes we're moving along to finance and Facilities Mr Miller yes uh for the finance and Facilities uh committee met uh two weeks ago and uh same night as governance and I still had Co so uh Miss ASO will just give us a brief rundown of the meeting thank you I'm glad you're feeling better Mr Miller thank you the finance and Facilities committee met on July 30th at the administrative building on belman AB we discussed the in progress facilities projects such as ongoing security updates HVAC upgrades both at do middle school and East do elementary and the high school generator we also discussed already completed projects such as Walkin freezer for Dover High school academy re building construction and the installation of the modular classroom's canopy at East do elementary that concludes my report and with that I'd like to move items one through 25 we have a motion by Mr Miller is there a second second we have a second by Miss nutting is there any discussion I just like to mention the thank you to Mr sabahul for his uh donation Dr um I also wanted to thank various staff members there's a number of Grant submissions in this agenda that's a lot of extra work so thank you to those staff members who are doing more to bring more resources into our school and uh Mr sabahu our cafeteria balance is high again could you explain please yeah actually during the summer we don't have any Labor uh but with the salary start it's going to go down so we're going to go with that thank you any other discussion seeing none we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss nutting Mr saahu may we have a roll call vot please miss ESO yes Miss STS yes Mr Miller yes Miss nothing yes Dr sener yes Miss SES yes Miss mandz yes oh I hit myself with the mic um some informational items upcoming Board of Education meetings we have our special meeting for a board retreat on August 29th um September 17th October 15th and November 19th um Dr s are there any trainings you'd like to highlight the only training is if anyone has not done their governance one two three or four um there there are options to do that asynchronously you can just register um or on September 16th there are live virtual trainings so as opposed to watching a recorded video training you could actually participate in kind of a remote instruction training if anyone hasn't finished those yet and you can sign up on on the njsba website thank you Dr Sher and if I know that I'm I'm speaking on behalf of of Vicki right now if you haven't signed up for um the convention in October please reach out to Mr saah holu and Vicki um so we can get that situated for you um use of facility requests we have uh do FC and do college promise um is there any old business seeing none we're moving along to new business uh Miss DS did you have something for new business I would like to share um the dver free public library um had free lunch provided Monday through Friday at the library through this dver school district most of the week not many children came for lunch but on Wednesdays and Fridays following the storytime programs several families took advantage of the opportunity um they do also have a bilingual store story time it was very popular this summer with up to 34 children and adults attending Miss Cespedes is taking a break for the month of August and will return in September um preschool story time will return as well as the after school snack time we hope to find some teen volunteers to resume some of the after school clubs such as chess club and the Lego Club and thanks to Mr uh doic um the library director for providing me with this information thank you Miss TOS um any other new business Miss Mendes I would like to say something yes M um so this um school supply drive is not sponsored by the board of education but I do want to uh mention that the community school supply Drive will be take place on Sunday um this August 25th uh from 2:30 to 4 4:00 at Casa Puerto Rico and it's until supplies last it was a it was a great um it's going to be a great event a lot of people came forward with donations a lot of sponsorships from Casio um pops place is going to have a d and donate um event for us on Thursday um please spread the word it a it took a lot of time and um dedication to get that done um if you could spread the word I would really appreciate it I want to take the stuff back home um also um if we can um spread the word about the clinic for the immunization from Zuul that would be great too I think that's it's super important that the parents get our children immunized thank you Miss ASO thank you for um taking you know the lead and really making that happen for our community it's much appreciated my pleasure yeah if you need any help Distributing on Sunday just let me know I will um you brought up the topic of immunizations um I know that uh in the past we have um had you know various issues with immunization so Mr Herman can you talk a little bit about um you know what is legally required by the law in terms of immunizations and how we as a district intend to address that so that we are one in compliance with the law but two to um making sure that we don't have any sort of uh health risks within our district absolutely um just to answer the first question so depending on the grade level there are certain immunizations that are required before the child enters the the school district uh we do give our families a 30-day opportunity to get the immunization or at least get the appointment uh on record so we can move forward uh in having discussions with a district nurse we've already had discussions a few weeks now uh number one about our Clinic that we're hosting uh what we're doing is we are targeting our families already who are out of compliance uh to bring them in and and offer them an opportunity uh for these vaccinations uh the other piece that we are also working on the communication that we're going to be sharing out with the community so that the communication is clear and and assertive in regards to what uh it is required from our families uh reason being is that if our children are not vaccinated and they're within our building then we're putting our student population at risk and that's something that we want to be mindful of so we want to make sure that we're providing enough clear communication to our community as well as opportunities to address the needs of our community as well when it comes to vaccinations perfect thank you Mr hee um I want to one make note that um I I intend to bring up the topic of board docs and its efficiency and whether or not um we want to go in a different direction um so I just want to I want our board secretary to make note that at our next meeting we'd like to discuss um you know the terms of the contract and um and then in public obviously we'll talk about the uh efficiency of bardocks and whether um there's a return on investment with bardocks um and then finally for new business I'd like to talk a little bit about our website um I have I have mostly used it on my phone um and I haven't had many issues um I finally was able to also check it out on a computer it's um it's it's it seems like it's coming along I appreciate um some of the changes I'm just wondering do we have a uh a a date in mind for when a majority of the website will be fully populated yes I'll share a little bit about the website so in the uh coming months planning up to release the and open up the website on August 1st um what we found is that with the upload uh there were some difficulties where when it uploaded the website wasn't uploading appropriately it was also pulling information that wasn't needed on the website so with that said we as a team worked and identified these areas to correct them uh right now our set date is August 27th we have uh reviewed and continue to review the website to make the adjusts necessary as we're moving along uh we're also uh putting in some procedures and protocols in place uh for each of the schools to follow as well so that we're making sure that not only is the the website providing the information needed for our community but that the information is updated up to uh with the calendar and it's relevant to uh the community thank you Mr hman um any other new business seeing none we are moving along to public comment uh actually who has access to the document for uh virtual comments it's typically Miss Phillips does anyone else have access can we get another board member access there are there are any okay perfect thank you um if any happens to come in during public comment just shout out let me know um the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments not restricted to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6:30 p.m. remote comments will be read by a member of the Board of Education the Board of Education will alternate between in-person and online comments please understand that public comment comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation with that public comment is now open is there any member of the public in person wishing to speak hello again Susan Cher 346 West Clinton Street and do I have a quick question and then a couple of comments my question is in reference to the generator project here at the high school at least a year ago I recall Dr McLaughlin mentioning that the generator for the high school would also be of use to the town of do for emergency Serv Services since this is an evacuation center for the town of do I'm just wondering was there any partnering financially with the town of do to the cost of the generator uh that's my question and then secondly the William Patterson aspiring teacher project that was listed on the website seems to be absolutely a fantastic idea and opportunity for our aspiring high school students who want to be teachers in the future um my question I think I even commented on it on the website how many of our students were involved in that project and I know that every year the Mars County retired Teachers Association which include an ever increasing amount of Dober teachers um every year they sponsor a scholarship for graduating high school do high school student and every year I know when they give that award they always say and please come back to us if there's anything that we can do and I would think that if there is a group of high school students aspiring to be teachers and are in the William Patterson program there's probably some alumni from the retired teachers who can also Mentor those students and I think that's just a great opportunity and then along the same lines uh I believe it's the second year that the do police department has had now its junior Police Academy and it was a huge success in July and I had asked the police chief if they were going to be in contact with the Dober school system for bringing that to the high school also so that we can have students who are aspiring to be in the criminal justice um area or police area that that's another Pathway to Career so I'm just wondering if that ever did happen and if not could we have someone from guidance look into that because there's not only the um there's the state trooper Academy that we have sent students to before but there's also the mors county Junior Academy for police for high school students so thank you very much thank you Miss shower any other member of the public wishing to speak Mary Mary SAA 217 Baker Street um I if I could give a comment on the Bardo situation um it's I I mostly use my my cell phone as well and it's it's very hard to download every single attachment of list of you know uh salaries or resignation every single thing should downloads separately and it's um very it's all over the place the information and even the printed copy that's up front doesn't include those details that will be hard to find um I also have to say that I was part of the citizens advisory committee last year and um it was an excellent group and everything that was brought up to table um for discussion um any input any suggestions were all addressed um over the course of the school year and um it's all various topics um and you know back to this dark doc situation you have to kind of download that list of current members for the upcoming year and it's something perhaps if they will be willing to share their you know email address and things like that so then the community can you know let us know um any issues that they might be having that we might not be aware of as members of the committee um so then they could be addressed during the committee meetings so if something like that can be posted on the website that there is such a committee and these are the members there their contact info so it's another point of contact for parents that cannot make it to board meetings or PTA meetings and so on but then also those members can also get invited to school events um I'm sure the group various whether you know their parents or you know members of the community and so on um so just a couple thing thank you and good night and um as a parent um elementary school kids um we're all looking forward to making the family bigger starting next Thursday um I don't know about high schooler being excited for this school year but the kids are excited to get back together so thank you um all the teachers that are already setting up their do and remind apps and um you know everybody's excited thank you thank you uh no virtual comments still miss Solis no virtual comments still any other member of the public wishing to speak seeing none public comment is now closed um Mr saaho do you have any information on the generator project in terms of a financial partnership with the town yeah uh I don't have the exact information but last time we talked with Dr ML and he said the town would contribute if I'm not mistaken it would be like half of the project but since we don't have any numbers yet uh when we have the numbers Mr Hae can contact with the town because this is a shelter in place that's why they would like to contribute yeah Mr Herman can you make sure that you um in your um Endeavors with the I don't even know the term of the the group the Emergency Management Group that you you know add that to your list of items to discuss that um Financial partnership with the generator project um Mr Heyman perhaps you may not have this information offand and if you don't it's totally okay let's just um perhaps get this information are do you are you aware of how many Dober students were involved with that William um Patterson partnership I don't have the exact number but I can definitely work on getting that oh uh never mind it's 11 students love thank you Miss kids um Mr he in terms of the junior Police Academy have there been any conversations with um our police chief in terms of bringing some of that programming to our students uh not that I'm aware we haven't had any discussion about potentially bring it to the high school I know that uh we did have uh staff join at the junior uh graduation uh from the middle school as well as our director of security was there uh I was there the year before uh it definitely is an amazing ceremony but I definitely believe in having discussion and see what kind of partnership we can have in the future I agree thank you Mr he um and then lastly there was a comment about the community relations email addresses being put on the website and at first I was like oh I think that's a brilliant idea but then um I thought to myself well um I'm I have a concern with perhaps um you know we are elected to be here and and represent the Board of Education I do have a concern with um you know a Community member reaching out to someone on the community relations committee and perhaps something being misrepresented and then it falls back on us as a board but what I do think that we should do and this is thanks to you missra is I do think that we should put um not only the list but maybe a nice picture with their name just similar to how we have um our Board of Education um landing page where it's our name our picture our our term I think we can do that with the community relations um this I'm sorry the citizens advisory committee members as well I think that's a happy medium um and before I entertain a motion to adjourn uh in in having this um conversation now and and and thinking out loud um I need the board members to send me and I'll send this over to an email I'm just saying this now because I'm thinking about it um a brief bio because one of the things that Mr haime and the team have suggested um is adding bios and and some more information for us as board members on the website I think it adds a humanistic touch that hasn't been there um to our landing page Mr Miller like what well like what do we like to eat you know what we like long walks on the beach you know things like that just some fun facts but I will lay out Miss Phillips and I will lay it allow in an email and send it I just wanted to share it now that I'm thinking about it in scatterbrain So yeah thank you um any items uh board members want to discuss before I entertain a motion to adjourn Miss Mendes I just want to give a shout out shout out to the crossing guards because they just had their meeting today and they're ready to go on Thursday shout out to the crossing guards I have my favorite crossing guard who is at the corner about my house but I won't say their name um I will entertain a motion to adjourn at 848 p.m. so moved second we have a motion by Mr Miller a second by Miss nutting all in favor say hi I any oppos meeting adjourned good night stay and help clean up if you can