##VIDEO ID:nR88ijtcyMk## 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 District in partnership with its Community is to honor and support every learner every day on the journey to become curious and engaged members of a diverse glob Community a notice listing the time date and place of this meeting was posted on the public bulletin board of all Freehold Township Schools on the entrance door to the administrative offices Board of Education on the district website at the office of the Freehold Township Clerk and published in the Asbury Park Press on January 7th 2024 I'd like to invite you all to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alce to the FL of the United States of America and to the for it stands Nation God indivisible withy and justice for all okay just in time roll call Mrs brand Mrs calino here Mr rojulo here Mrs oan pres Mrs spieler here Mrs vendi here Mr Williams I'm here now M Lambert here Mr amaroso for okay I'd like a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from October 15 second I all in favor say I I any abstentions or NOS um I'm ja the minutes as written uh specifically in reference to public comment where a resident by came in to discuss issues with uh the current transportation for do students she also brought to the attention of the board that a population of Donovan students were being dismissed a half an hour early uh 3:15 rather than the scheduled 3:45 uh from Erikson without notification to the parents uh this was significant it should be reflected in the minutes okay noted I bring if you're gon I'm I'm an abstention I was here okay so just one comment did reach out to so but you could reach out to me directly on last Wednesday when we went live yep okay yep so understand but I you know depending on when I read the minutes I you know I can't say I read them the second I get them I read them I notic and to Mary's attention Okay yeah and I probably won't be able to make any changes come Tuesdays so if you see something going forward and that's fine I'm you can make a motion to [Music] we're good or is he making a motion everyone okay okay all right so he's a no I'm I'm an abstention okay um enrollment all right enrollment uh September 24 we're at 3,46 students October 24 we're at 3,417 compared to October of last year we were at 3,400 okay um president's remarks I'm filling in for Mr Amoroso um so I will be brief I just want to thank everyone who's here tonight and also send a heartfelt thanks to all our staff and all our students to have a wonderful Thanksgiving break and in light of World kindness day tomorrow um a nice reminder for everybody um to do one thing be kind make your mark on this world and happy world kindness day um with that I'll move right into the administrative report um we'll do the board certifications sure right and there are two this month so I'll just do them together though okay I Robert deid the school business administrator board secretary certifies that as of September 30th 2024 and October 31st 2024 no line item has been overextended in violation of njac 6A 23610 C3 that sufficient funds are available to meet District's Financial Obligations for the remainder of the fiscal year okay okay and then do you want to do the bowling investigation report can yes can I also um yes you're you're admin yes I'm sorry Y no no the Bulan investig ation report is uh easy there were 11 since our last meeting and seven were confirmed yep and then also your administrative report so before we head into um a presentation from Miss Montgomery since our last board meeting um one of our staff members passed away and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Colin Monahan who Not only was a TA at the baralo school and he was just accepted in the TA to teacher program um which a few of our Tas are availing M themselves of Colin was one of my students when I was the principal at the Eisenhower School some of his colleagues are here tonight so I think it brings a lot of perspective to some of the things that uh we bring to this table um that a a young 28-year old man lost his life with a battle with cancer eight year long I want to thank my committee for allowing days to be donated to Colin at our last meeting and unfortunately he did not um need to use any of them so at this time I'd like to take a moment of silence to acknowledge and celebrate the great kid call him on him thank you okay with that we will move into our njsla data presentation is this coming down yes yep I can't read the board you're planning on my my blindness whoa okay thank you um this presentation is an extension of the presentation that I started or I gave back in September where I presented the uh dlm and the access access scores with you to you um as I am required by uh the New Jersey Department of Education the um I'm required to present our students performance on all of the state mandated tests that students take um and the last that I'm going to share with you for this year is our njsla data from the spring of 2024 um I added slides to the slide deck that I shared with you back in September and um I'm going to respectfully ask Ally in the morning if she'll post them on our website so that um the public can access them as well so tonight we're going to take some time to look into the exciting world of njsla um that's the assessment measure that students in grades three through eight take in the areas of language arts and math and our fifth and eth grade students also take this assessment in the area of science um I've broken our presentation this evening into three sections we're going to look at achievement data we're going to look at our subgroup data that's um disaggregated data by student subgroups we're going to look at um growth data um so we can see kids how kids performed groups of cohorts of kids performed over time and then I'm going to share some recommended next steps with you um I did include in your um packets tonight a hard copy of these slides so that you can see I know that um sometimes those charts of data are difficult to see on the screen um and I did add a slide since I printed hard copies for you that just has a little bit of summary information that I wanted to share first um one thing that I have had the wonderful opportunity to share with you in the past is that our students in freehill Township continue to outperform students across New Jersey in the areas of ela math and science so um and that is true of our test data this uh this year as well we are continuing to see student growth for cohorts of students and I'll show you some nice graphs that show that um so as we follow a group of students through their time across um several years we are seeing growth for those Stu groups of students in particular we're seeing some nice growth growth in some of our subgroups as well um I know that Neil talked with you last month um as it relates to qac and and thinking about how when we see growth for cohorts of students that growth starts to impact achievement and then we can see and the achievement I know he's used the term with you when we see growth achievement catches up you I will show some of that to you this evening um and then also you know our njsla and our district Benchmark data continues to be a really important analytic tool that we use in the district to drive curriculum and instructional decision-making and so we're going to I'm going to share some of that as well so we're going to start with our Ela data these first three slides are going to look specifically at achievement data in English language arts and in math and then in science um again this is for um students in grades 3 through eight so again I apologize to those of you in the audience um our grade levels of students are down the leand side of the chart and then our performance levels across the top five levels of performance um that students are measured by Within those performance B performance bands this chart looks at um student data over the last three years so we can see student performance by grade level within a um within a performance level from 2022 20 2023 and 2024 um these are this is the first time since Co that we've had three solid years of data to look at which is really um exciting and Powerful because we've you know for the last few years that I've been doing this we've been looking at data and then we've had that that covid Hiatus in the middle um so um some things that you will also notice on the far right hand column of this chart this where it says change in levels four and five this shows um the percent increase or decrease of um proficiency from last year 2023 to this year 2024 so you can see um if our students have gone up or down in Proficiency in the last year in each of those grade levels so just some summary data that I can share with you from this slide 63.7% of our students in grades 3 through 8 are meeting or exceeding expectations language arts this is an overall increase for our students of 1.2% from 20 2023 and a 12.5% and is 12.5% higher than the state proficiency rate of 51.2% so again we are seeing growth in our achievement as well as um exceeding performance um um to the compared to the state average um in math mathematics this chart shows our student scores for grades 3 through eight um it also includes algebra um across again those same five performance levels students scoring at the levels four and five have demonstrated proficiency based on state requirements this chart also shows performance at each level over the past three years again um postco 56.7% of our students in grades 3 through eight are meeting or exceeding expectations in math this is an overall increase of 6% from 2023 and it's also 18% higher than the state proficiency rate so again we're seeing increase in our achievement as a district and um again compared to the state average outperforming this chart shows our District's science scores for grades five and eight um science is scored across four proficiency levels not five different from Ela and math so students in uh so proficiency levels of three and four are considered proficient um on the Science assessment again in the right hand column you can see that um percent increase or decrease by grade level um this time last year I stood up proudly and shared with you how our district had grown by over 4% in the um performance in science and um this year I'm here to tell you that we've lost th that same 4% we've gone down in science um we have seen some um impressive growth in our subgroups and I'll share that with you when we look at our subgroup data however um this year in um looking at our students in grades 5 and8 24.6% of our students are meeting or exceeding expectations this is a as I said this is a decrease from 2023 but it's still more it we are still outperforming the state the state average is 23.1% the next batch of slides I'm going to show you is even harder to see on the screen which is why I gave you hard copies um looks at our disaggregated data we're going to look at um our students by Race by gender and by program over um English language arts Math and Science um so these next series of slides are going to do that in each of the content areas by um by subgroup this slide demonstrates student proficient across grades 3 through eight in language arts reported by student race Hispanic students represent our largest subgroup um demographically representing 133% of our population that was tested these students have demonstrated consistent growth over the last three years increasing their Ela proficiency from 47.2% in 2022 to 50.5% in 2024 and while our black students dipped a little bit from 22 to 23 they grew overall 3.8% in ela proficiency over the last three years so our students of color are are are growing in Proficiency in language arts in the area of mathematics again we see some impressive growth from our subgroup of Hispanic students their proficiency increased from 31.3% in 2022 to 40.4% in 2024 just like in ela our black students have a little bit of a dip in math um from 22 to 23 but showed growth overall over the last three years increasing proficiency by 1.7% and in the area of science as I shared overall our district saw a decrease in scores um and that is true for our subgroups of students as well this next these next three slides look at the subgroup of students by gender right so we're looking now at performance um for boys and for girls so this slide shows uh students Ela performance male students um experienced a decrease of one of less than 1% between 2023 and 20 24 while female uh student performance increased from 68.9% to 71.1% in the area of mathematics both our male and female students uh demonstrated increase proficiency over the last three years male proficiency scores increased from 54.4% in 202020 2022 to 58.4% in 2024 so a four 4% increase for male students female students increased as well with a 48.4% proficiency rate in 2022 to a 55% proficiency rate in 2024 go girls in math um and in science um the concerns we saw with scores dropping um is evident again across all of our subgroups both male and female student scores dropped from 2023 to 20 24 um with males experiencing a greater percentage Point drop um male students dropped by five points um while student uh female students dropped by 3.2 points points percentage the next three slides are going to look at our student performance by subgroup um by program so these are student this data set looks at students identified as our students who are economically disadvantaged these are students who qualify for um free and reduced lunch based on federal guidelines they live below the the povert poverty level um our students who qualify under the Section 504 act for 504 services are English language Learners um as well as our students who are um eligible for special education and related services so we look at these data sets as our students who are um most at risk um and we want to look and make sure that these kids are continuing to grow and make progress um comparable to their general education peers in the area of life anguage Arts are economically disadvantaged students um again those living below poverty demonstrated growth over the last three years in language arts proficiency starting at 38.5% in 2022 and increasing their proficiency to 40.7% in 2024 students qualifying for services under the federal 504 act demonstrated strong growth in ela also um beginning with a proficiency rate of 55.6% in 2022 to a uh proficiency rate of 64.6% in 2024 and our multilingual multilingual Learners represent a data set that's really too small for us to report um I know that I shared this with you when we looked at our access scores when we have less than 10 students in in that particular group um I am obligated by law to not report that data because it could be um it could be self it could be identifying for students um I will also tell you we'll see more um of those multilingual students when I report the math data on the next slide students who are newcomers to the country are not required to take the reading or the ELA portion of the njsla so that's why there are fewer students reported on this in this data set as well certainly we have talked about that before yes absolutely you could be a student who is identified as an English language learner um if you are a newcomer to the country your data isn't going to be reflected on that in that category you could also be eligible for special education services um and you could qualify for free and reduced lunch you could be all of those in all of those subgroups yep um last subgroup on this slide I want to talk about are are students eligible for special education and related Services uh those students began um their Proficiency in 2022 was at 20.8% and um increased to 21.7% in 2023 and 2024 in the area of mathematics we also saw some nice growth from our students in these subgroups um from our students qualifying for free and reduced lunch their proficiency rate in mathematics was 25.7 in 2022 and was 37.2 in 2024 our 504 students had a proficiency rate of 50.7% in 2022 and a proficiency rate of 57.5% in 2024 our English language Learners we don't have data from um 2022 but from 23 and 24 those students Grew From 17.7% proficiency to 2 1.5% proficiency and our special education students Grew From an 18.8% proficiency rate in 2022 to a 19.5% proficiency rate in 2024 um our final subgroup of data we're going to look at this evening is in the area of science um interested ly our subgroups performed really well in this category even though um across the board our science scores were not necessarily where we would like to see them our students qualifying for free and reduced lunch increase their Proficiency in science from a 6.4% in 2022 to 133% in 2024 our students qualifying for 504s their um proficiency dropped consistent with the rest of the district um are students that data was suppressed because again this test is only given to Fifth and eighth graders so we had too few students in that area um but our students qualifying for special education and related Services demonstrated some really impressive growth over the last three years in science 4.6% Proficiency in 2022 7.5% Proficiency in 2023 and 10.2% Proficiency in 2024 really proud of those kiddos and their teachers um for both Ela and math I'm going to share with you some data um looking at the last five years of testing um this data set is compiled by linkit for us and allows us to follow cohorts of students as well as well as to monitor trends for curricular decisions and this is something that I have been you know sharing with all of you for um the three years that I've been doing these presentations um just as a reminder as we look at at the test data there is a a gap in years we have the two years of testing prior to covid and then we have a two-year testing Gap with covid in the 201920 and 2021 school years and then um the three years postco so again I'm going to focus on those postco um years of data because we can follow cohorts of kids um across time so I'm going to draw your attention this is English language arts these are our students who met or exceeded proficiency on the ELA assessment the F the two bars to the on the left of the graph the very light purple and the just a little bit lighter purple are the two years preco um the arrows that I've highlighted follow a cohort of students across three years so this first one here looks at students when they were third graders in the 2022 school year okay those students in 2122 were 55% proficient so 55% proficiency rate in for those students as third graders when they moved to the 2223 school year as fourth graders those students demonstrated 62% proficiency on Ela and last year when those kiddos were fifth graders their proficiency went to 68% so well we look at these graphs and we sort of see this like roller what looks like a roller coaster when we follow Co of kids over time we are seeing that growth and so what's going to happen over time is the um the the years of achievement that are lower are going to fall off and we're going to add on you know higher years and that's sort of the visual to explain what Neil had shared before that you know when we see growth achievement catches up this is the visual that sort of explains that does that make sense okay um we can see the same thing at the middle school level when we follow a middle school cohort so here's sixth graders from 2223 those kiddos were 59% at the 59% um proficiency rate as sixth graders in as seventh graders in 2223 they were 60% proficient so from 59 to 60 and then as eighth graders in 23 24 their proficiency rate went up to 66% so again as we're watching kids over time we're seeing that proficiency increase do you have a question okay go ahead so I'm looking at this right now but this chart right now I am looking at fifth grade to sixth grade right I'm looking at that 72% and then it ends up at 60 so as fifth graders these kiddos yes were in 20 2 23 had a 72% proficiency rate and then when they went to sixth grade their proficiency dropped to 64% you're correct and I'm seeing this a lot drop off to Middle School um it's not only in our numbers it's in other surrounding districts numbers and I'm wondering what is our hypothesis about what is sometime between the end of fifth grade and the beginning and the end of sixth grade um um I have not looked at that Trend over time to see if it is a trend over time or if it's just noticed this years yeah so I'm just curious if anybody is thinking about that and thinking about you know how we don't have that learning like how do we yeah I I so I don't have an answer for you tonight about that I I haven't looked looked at it in that narrow capacity between one grade level to the next what we have been looking at obviously is the alignment of our curriculum to the new standards in the hopes that whatever gaps that we have will be filled by you know by by aligning our curriculum with the standards and teaching to those standards and maybe it's that maybe it's justel I mean listen I from the perspective of our district in particular well that's I mean that's de developmental absolutely yeah I mean developmentally that makes sense developmentally that makes sense did you want right so thank you that's actually in coming up yeah um yeah so I'll speak to some of that also come I've got a slide that sort of speaks to next steps okay let me I got just a couple more slides okay thank you I appreciate it um okay so this is the same uh lens looking at students math performance over time um this data represents again percent of students in that meeting and exceeding levels um for so those are the kids who are meeting proficiency with math requirements um the this data doesn't necessarily show the same patterns again and but I think that that I know that that is something we've talked about here it's certainly something we've been talking about in the curriculum Department um in terms of curricular changes that we've made to be responsive to that so if you look at cohort a cohort of kids or or try to follow a cohort of kids through Elementary School post pandemic you're not going to see that same level of increase there's there's ups and downs sort of a roller coaster if you follow an a middle school cohort um starting with sixth grade you can see these kiddos these sixth graders um started at 43% proficiency as sixth graders when they moved to seventh grade they were up to 52% proficiency when they moveed to eighth grade um while this number looks really low remember that this is a very small population of our kids because a good chunk of our kids get pulled out and are taking these high school level courses of algebra and geometry so we do we can follow a cohort and see growth over time in in Middle School um and I'm going to speak in the next slide to some of the things that we've been doing to be responsive to this because this is consistent with the you know with data that I shared with you last year and our our plan for improvement um so next steps what are we doing as a district to be responsive to this data um at the in the area of language arts um you know we have implemented fundations as our foundational reading program for grades K and one and we will be um adding on grade two to that next year um in both language arts and Mathematics we are um aligning we have aligned our curriculum to the new um 2023 New Jersey student learning standards and specifically in language arts updating our reading and our writing units and support resources to include word study and conventions of grammar because those were pieces um in our uh curriculum that we have known over time and we've been adding to over the past several years um we have implemented I ready and not just from The Benchmark assessment perspective but the I ready my path instruction so for our students all of our students took their fall I ready Benchmark assessment back in October and every single one of our students that took the The Benchmark now has a personalized pathway that is aligned to both um language arts and math standard standards so if you take the assessment and you are struggling in a particular area like comprehension and in the um domain of literature you're going to get specific instruction based on where your assessment level was in that area in your my paath um and that will be for every every student k through eight in language arts and in math um additionally we are targeting um we have targeted goals in the area of language arts for K to2 around foundational reading as well 6 to8 through writing when we looked at our njsla writing scores last year um that was an area of improvement so um our curriculum team built um or re-evaluated and realigned our um rubrics that we use to assess our student writing and we have goals for sixth grade seventh grade and eighth grade um aligned with those with those to assess student writing and and teach to um students needs around those standards align rubrics um obviously continuing professional development for our staff um and our mtss model we've talked um over the last two years about our transition and intervention um and that intervention model and what it looks like and and Mary to speak to your question both in the area of language arts and math that intervention model is is is a big shift in our middle schools right small group instruction tier 2 instruction happening in the classroom being delivered by the teachers really identifying who those tier two kids are um is not something that we have done prior to this so um that we're going to scoop up a whole lot of kids in that approaching area and move those kids closer to uh proficiency through this model um in mathematics we implemented our enVision Math resources um aligned with number corner for grades three through five again when we looked at that uh at this slide and we talked about how we had seen this declining Trend over time you might recall that we uh piloted several different math programs last year to look to transition and um the committee ultimately selected The Envision program we've done a tremendous amount of professional development for our third fourth and fifth grade teachers um and are implementing um implementing the program in conjunction with um Bridges number corner to continue to build that um underlying knowledge for kids um and and the program has been really successful so far we've gotten some really great feedback from teachers um from administrators Bonnie's done some um great training and collaboration with the teachers as well as with um our instructional coach around supporting the successful implementation of the program with Fidelity as well as aligning um uh the envisions program with intervention resources and supports for teachers um at the middle school level We are continuing to use the big Ideas a math program but we updated our materials we had been using materials um from I believe 2012 maybe even earlier than that so we adopted the new mat materials that from the 2022 materials so those are aligned with uh new standards which will um certainly impact um support for teachers as well as students um and alignment of our curriculum with the newly adopted standards that I already my path instruction is happening in the areas of math of math instruction as well and I had shared with you last year one of our district goals was the development of Standards aligned common Assessments in in math so regardless of what sixth grade math class you're in um at a given school or um having a given you know whoever your teacher is um those standards align common assessments are being given across all of our middle school math classes um and then that's data that we can analyze as a district to see how our students are performing against those standards as well um to make decisions around perhaps changes we need to make in our curriculum to um better prepare kids for particular areas of the assessment um we have District goals this year in math for grades 3 through eight and again that intervention model that we have implemented last year um for supporting math success um and next steps in science um We are continuing to implement our Mystery Science units um you might recall that I shared last year we started at the Upper Elementary grades and we're working our way down to get those resources in place um in all grades so this year we'll have Mystery Science um resources available for all of our students grades K through five um again those standards aligned common assessments that the um science department teachers uh built with Bonnie last year to support really building assessments that align with njsla um and so kids have some experience taking njsla like tests um in their classes that give us as a district and their teachers some information about one how kids are going to perform on tests like this but also how kids are measuring up to the standards that are that are going to be measured on the test um and then of course Bonnie's continuing to do professional development and provide curricular resources for middle school science teachers focusing on those science and engineering practices and crosscutting Concepts so that teachers are really preparing kids not just for um memorizing content but really how to read a text tackle a a data literacy set on an assessment and be able to um understand and make sense of data and be able to respond to it around science okay now I'm ready thank you for your patience go ahead okay um and I know that the challenge here is you implemented a lot of change in a short period of time and you've implemented a lot of change in a short period of time and you know you look at these numbers and Science and I as a board member can't help but be alarmed um as to whether we're on the right path here um you know have we I'm sure you have so I'm just asking you what your thoughts are really um the Mystery Science Program maybe that's not well that's that we are adopting that to be responsive to the science scores that have been this way for the last three years so okay so we we're not into mystery science yet or you just don't feel like we've had enough time with no no we just started implementing last year okay yeah no we are not we are not fully implemented across across k k to 5 in Mystery Science um and remember um was I feel like it was this time last year but I remember me thomman sitting across the table from me and saying like when can we anticipate seeing some of the fruits of this work and I said three to five years and she said can you make it happen sooner and I said three to five years right so um so we're starting to see some of that in language arts and we're going to start to see it in math and then we'll start to see and we'll start to see it in science too I mean I think science is a bigger issue across the board when less than 20% of kids in fifth grade and eth grade across the entire state of New Jersey are passing the test one could speculate perhaps there's something wrong with the test um uh you know I will say I am grateful that um that Miss Hil continues to um a Avail herself of the opportunity and and um volunteer to be part of the state committee that works on the development of the assessment um because she brings the lens of what it really looks like in practice for um for teachers and for kids to the state level to those people who are building the the assessment questions um but I think that this is a bigger issue I think that the state needs to be looking at it and I think um it it it's also wrapped up in what Neil shared last month about CAC right like so much weight was put on that test to for a test that isn't given to the same broad population grades in grades three through eight and so I think the state is figuring it out as they go and I I also wonder I mean we obviously have a very close relationship with the regional how our kids are doing when they get into their High School science class like do we get a do you ever have a barometer of how our kids are performing on like in their science classes like are they coming back and telling us anecdotally we talk about it at our regional meetings and anecdotally I can tell you that they aren't the least bit concerned about what our kids science test scores are okay it does not impact their placement in their science classes it does not impact their their selection or their success in their science classes it's not like they're telling you pre-old Township you have a problem with science because are coming not even remotely they pay they they in all fairness they pay very little heed to that score and they pay more attention to how kids are doing in language arts and math um and how they perform in their freshman level courses because that will dictate how they do in their higher level courses as they move through school okay and I guess my last question is looking at the subgroup scores I see that they are growing but they're still lagging far behind their their um Rome wasn't built in a day I understand um but at the same point they were growing whereas some of our kids seem to have not yeah so I think it's really exciting it's I is that the intervention model that you think is working or is that the the the high impact tutoring like what do you think is so I I have not teased that out I mean I I so and and it would be different for different subgroups of kids right like our kids who receive free and reduced lunch may also be kids who received uh high impact tutoring may also be kids who received intervention services but may not be yeah so I I didn't I didn't disaggregate those variables okay that's it sence also over the last years it wasn't something that we were always testing for science correct like it's it's more much newer absolutely absolutely yeah I mean we don't have we don't have long-term historical data around science that is correct the LA and the last three years have been Le I mean we haven't ever had a with this test with this new science test we haven't ever had a year across the state where we're seeing 50% or more of kids proficient okay thank you thank you okay okay um this is the first opportunity for public participation as you may or may not know this board offers two opportunities one now on uh agenda items only and one later in the meeting on all items that you wish to address the board regarding our school district so if anyone wishes to address the board please write your name and address on the signin sheet and state your name for the record um statements are limited to 3 minutes in length and should not be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature so if anyone would like to address the board on agenda items please step to the podium okay okay um seeing no one we'll move on to uh the business portion of our agenda and begin with Personnel policy and Communications Mr gulo good evening everyone we uh met today briefly for 15 minutes or so in attendance was myself um Mrs O Sullivan and Dr bre Hower might was not present I'd like to move the following items number three first reading of regulation number four resignations as listed number five adjustment to resignation date as listed six position control as listed Seven new employment as listed eight adjustment to start date is listed nine change of assignment is listed 10 change of assignment adjust date as listed 11 change of assignment salary adjustment as listed 12 extend temporary change of assignment SL salary adjustment as listed 13 establish end date of assignment as listed 14 long-term substitute assignment as listed 15 leave of absence as listed 16 unpaid days as listed 17 volunteers as listed 18 PTO onor areia as listed 19 District onor honoraria as listed 20 advaned compensation safety care training as listed 21 affirm bullying bullying investigation findings as listed 22 student teacher practicum observation placement as listed 23 certified substitutes as listed and 24 non-certified substitutes as listed um does anybody have any questions um before we get a second or roll call I'd like to congratulate uh Rosemary King who's here please give a wave thank you uh yes Welcome to our district we wish you the best of uh moving forward uh with that um can I have a second second and a roll call M brand yes M Cino yes but I'm going to abstain on 18 and 19 Mr gulo yes Sullivan yeser yes M yes Williams yeah M Lambert yes okay moving on to um curriculum committee Mr Williams good evening uh we did meet as a committee tonight myself board member Veni board member spieler and assistant superintendent Montgomery all attended we reviewed all the items on the agenda we discussed the NJ SLA presentation uh that we pre that we had just uh was shared with the board uh we spoke about the I ready fall data summary and I'll just kind of pull out a couple bullet points here we reviewed the data from the fall Benchmark assessment 98% of the students we had a 98% student completion rate which is very high compared to other districts a series of professional development sessions have been provided to both leadership and staff in navigating both the assessment tool and the personalized instruction platform several more sessions are scheduled throughout the year Freehold town ship has demonstrated some pretty impressive numbers in our first assessment Administration outperforming students in New Jersey and across the country couple highlights 43% of our students in G in grades K through 8 are starting the year at or above grade level in Reading 30% 37% kr8 students are at or above grade level in math 38% of students are approaching grade level in Reading which puts them on taret to be on grade level by the end of the school year 49% of students are approaching grade level in math which puts them on target to be on grade level in math by the end of the year continued Focus now and the winter Benchmark will support successful completion of students individualized learning paths and I ready to continue to close gaps and more and more students towards proficiency uh point out a couple uh curriculum Department staff updates we again want to welcome Rosemary King uh supervisor for ELA and social studies and welcome Angela Romanowski uh to the permanent Elementary instructional Coach position congratulations again okay uh and provide a uh hit Grant update the board is approving the additional funds on tonight's agenda high impact tutoring began today for our multilingual students all high impact tutoring will occur during the school day this year with sessions scheduled during station rotation and intervention times during the day day one attendance rate was 100% that's impressive I know I was so excited we struggled to get to that 60% Mark before and after school but great very impressive and I would like to move the following items on the agenda number three course reimbursement as listed number four qac District Improvement plan as listed number five School Safety and Security plan annual review statement of assurance as listed does anybody have any questions I do um I just want to follow up on the I ready um so the learning pathway for the high achieving students who are in seventh or eighth grade that are placing into high school what what is the plan for that um cohort um so it's not really a cohort it's like kids here one or two kids here in there they weren't sure the teachers when they were talking about weren't positive no it's it it's not I mean it's it's not a cohort of kids it's individual kids who were developing personalized Pathways for um on other platforms okay yeah thank you no any other questions can I have a second second all in favor say I hi motion carries okay with that we will move on to finance facilities and transportation Miss calino we did meet this evening um present we Mr deita Mrs Williams Mrs Lambert Mrs brand and myself um we discussed um the LDS update which was sent to All Donovan parents today by uh Neil um we discussed the referendum um and the Drone that will is on the agenda tonight to be approved as part of the information campaign that the district is engaging in to get people information on the referendum why it's needed Etc um we discussed that we're on target with that and that we're going to have probably the announcement of a Communications Committee in December at some point um we also discuss the um 2526 maintenance budget and the Mi sheet that are on the agenda for this evening and we discussed a lighting issue at CA and we reviewed any questions we had on the agenda I would like to move um number three the secretary Treasures report number four the bills and claims as listed for a total amount of $7 m307 m30 th000 and $ 30,60 and 33 cents sorry guys been a long weekend too many zero um the travel and related expenses as listed the transfers as listed um and I will call your attention to the two additional transfers that were added this evening um number seven um the transfers to ratify as listed number eight the out of District contract as listed number nine the commission for the blind contract as listed number 10 The outof District transportation contracts with M moesc as listed number 11 the disposals as listed number 12 the donation as listed um it's $1,000 from the first day of school Foundation to the oblate elementary school um number 13 the PTO honor honoraria update for the Dwight D Eisenhower Middle School upit number 14 the PTO honoraria for the Joseph J CA school as listed number 15 the PTO honoraria for the Marshall Erikson school as listed number 16 the PTO honoraria for the West Freehold school as listed number 17 the high impact tutoring Grant as listed number 18 the Ida basic and preschool fiscal year 2025 Grant ratification as listed number 19 the comprehensive maintenance plan and form M1 as listed number 20 20 the approval of drone use as listed number 21 the approval of drone use as listed number 22 the fiscal year 25 teach stem classes in non-public school Grant as listed number 23 um the fiscal year 25 teach stem classes in non-public schools Grant salaries as listed and that is it and I do want to say thank you we have all those honorary on from the PTO our parents really do work to enrich our educational involvement and are very involved in um the education of the students in our community thank you for all those donations um does anybody have any questions can I have a second second all in favor say I I motion carries um okay we'll move on to like old business new business president's remarks to platform of what Mary just said thank you the parents and the PTO I want to remind the board members to look at uh the news uh that you get from each individual School in the district because in those embedded newsletters are the individual fundraisers that happen at each of those buildings so who's selling pies who's selling cupcakes who's doing what fundraiser or Barnes & Noble night or Jersey freeze night and the parents of those schools only they get their own newsletter but they don't see the newsletters from the seven other buildings in our town so it would be helpful um if we if we see it and we can feel free to pass it along to our respective neighborhoods or parents or people and that holds true for staff PE staff members as well as other Town people if you know of a fundraiser you obviously support your own school if you're if you're buying pies but if your school isn't selling pies but another school across town is buy their pies like like you know if we can just spread some of that news so that everybody's a little bit more aware of what all eight buildings are doing it could help each other out even if if it's minimal and the deadline for pies is this week I realized that today as I was scurrying to order pies um I know Baro Applegate you know well I missed the cupcakes that holiday stuff at Baro already with the poinsettas and the so there's a lot of ways that in there is a Barnes at Noble night coming up I think that's for right I think recently did Jersey yes yeah and there's another food night coming up as well in early December so put it out there just spread it out share it on your Facebook whatever I don't go on Facebook but a l oh thank you yes to our local businesses they they definitely participate all the time it's very helpful so I just thought I'd put that out there I think I you know we tend to get caught up in the microcosm of our own little world and we have to remember to spread our wealth that's all um also uh old business new business um uh Miss spieler reviewed the three boxes of bills yes I forgot to mention that I'm sorry yes um and you know had had lots of questions lots of observations and she just wanted to share some thoughts with our fellow board members yeah so um thank you I Bob I mean I don't know when I look at these numbers I don't know how I would even wrap my head around it and I do appreciate all that you do um but since I had the opportunity to go through this it kind of made my head spin a little bit with all the money um it got me thinking about how my neighbors are always asking why our taxes are so high and what can we do to lower them and feel like a deer in the headlights sometimes and now this being me going into my second year as a board member what can we do as a board member to lower our taxes um I you know we're all struggling to put food on our table everything's so expensive and just want to remind everybody if we could just be you know just more careful as the budget like I'm not even sure what month will the next budget roll out in January February January janary so like all the line items and if we could just be just super uber careful about how we're spending money I mean I I love fluff stuff believe me like I I you know love getting new things but and even if it's just Minor Details all these things just add up if there's a way and one of the things I noticed and Bob was really sweet cuz like I kept emailing him like what is this because I don't know what everything is but um and we talked about this at our curriculum meeting but like the township charged us for permits and I was appalled at that I for the food trucks like this is our town like I don't understand you're just writing a piece of paper you're making sure it's correct and accurate but it I can't imagine unless the person was so boggled down that day or something I know this is it's like double diping it it kind of is like I so I was appalled at that again thank you for answering all my questions it was a unique circumstance and technically those uh food truck vendors should have applied um on their own and so we sort of swooped in and saved the lunch um on that PD day so it was a miscommunication and we tried to fix it on that day so right we know we had a lot of hungry teachers and they were kicking them all out they wered to not right so I don't think it was up just so you know it wasn't really us they were charging it was really on behalf of the vendors but since they had missed the deadline we stepped in and they get did us a favor no but I think to that end what we spoke about is that if you are person that does not fully understand what our budget looks like or what it entails and how that translates into approving the bills throughout the year after that budget is passed Now's the Time to take a look at the budget that we have in place get familiar with it look at the line items so that when you are presented with the budget in February you could make some very meaningful input and comments back because once that budget is set and Final it's final like you know we we tend to sometimes come back in August and be like wait a minute what did we approving that Transportation line you know like and the administrator in charge of Transportation will then dispense those funds as needed as you see in the bills and in the transfers and everything else so if you are not Finance you know literate Now's the Time to get Finance literate because you have a couple of months to do it that's my public service announcement on the budget probably said it at the time this year's budget I it passed unanimously so no one seems to have a problem with it at the time like to your point yeah no no I don't think anybody has a problem with the budget I think that there are questions after the fact that relate back to a specific but for example when you're doing the bills and you see a specific school you know um you see Eisenhower purchased x amount of you know whatever iPads whatever like something t-shirts anything someone can question that what what you may not understand is that once that building level budget is set because every building has their building level budget and of course we have our overall budget there is some very little level I will say little CU Bob runs a tight chip of autonomy by the building level administrator in how they can dispense certain discretionary funds in that building unique to that building's needs and population from both the staff and student perspective and they do their best to do that um but not but you have to understand what that looks like what each building budget looks like why that building may be doing certain things that another building may not be doing it helps to maybe look at the current budget and it's okay to question thing I question I question composition notebooks 10 years ago they'll never let me live it down but you know what the point I was going to the point I was going to make was not this I think this past year there wasn't a lot of fluff or nice nice to haves in the budget but last year we discussed the the snow Rubble thing that in retrospect that would have been collected D you had any spell buy I know but we didn't buy it because another emergency came up where I had a truck that died that we' have no Salter so do I want a Salter or do I want that so I right those dollars and the budget is a template when we make transfers you have to approve the transfers and there should be a good enough reason on there for and things happen but I knew there was a lot of discussion around that one piece of equipment and in retrospect it seemed like a good decision to the right and I understand 80 degrees last week a lot of t-shirts right you questioned the t-shirts so in the those with the staff teacher in the 16 18 years that we've had PBS we usually have building based and with everything that went on with Donovan we pulled those funds together and did a district unifying um and part of the PBS framework is that it is a tier one two and three for Behavioral interventions and um I'd be happy to dig into the why right it seems like a silly thing but um it it is it's about being part of a team and working towards the same goals and um so that was a unique circumstance Bob would never first of all let me do it ever and this was a unique circumstance and we were able to pull the funds from all of our guidance departments to do that I'm also waiting for my copyright infringement letter and he also he also did like that he thinks it's greetings from ASB greetings from as Park a lot of places do something similar so he I think we can win that he refuses to wear the shirt I've been served by letters from the NFL before in Robinsville because when the eighth graders were starting the high school here now they're not the same yeah the font was different so I will I do wear my t-shirt out and do get stopped a lot with that t-shirt so it saying it's a copyright in Fr don't feed into this trust me I'm send a letter to your house anonymously what it represents not it does it we've we've had a challenging year and from staff students sta it was great for staff morale it's right several hundred people packed into the into the eow J all wearing their shirts like welcoming messages from the superintendent and Teachers Association it was just it was all no understood and I I and it's a unique circumstance unique bud but like I also theob Lobster Chuck and now you brought that to my intention the next time I go to Roberto's Diner and he's in there I'll immediately go back to my car thr there go I I gotta but because that's where he's been hanging out in Carmella's defense the one of the single most important jobs a board member has is to is to monitor the budget you're a steward of public funds and it's public taxpaying dollars that pay for every single thing in this District every day so it's okay to question it the more answers you have the more comfortable you become question it it's okay it's not you Mary no question couple more get them get them all in I just want to say that I do believe what you say I do believe that the most important role we have as board members is to be that eyes and ears to ask those questions and um I think that every board member and I know people on this board have done that a deep dive into those B budgets and find you know that's that's not that's not new um I think you rarely find something that we're completely unaware of in that budget right because this board does a pretty good job of looking at that I mean and kudos to Bob who meets with us in small groups and gets frustrated by to every Tuesday night for how many weeks in a board meeting he meets with us during the day and after work in small groups to go through line by line in that budget with our questions again and again so I have a question St you know now that we're talking about all this stuff here but I think we need to get a list of the honorarium and figure out what is critical for the operation of the school kids we have a lot of Honor area don't we a th here a thousand there maybe we could review there's some of it is PTO funded not that one and some of it is District funded Contra but it's contractual in the teachers contract as we're going into a negotiation year I that's all we're going to say about that okay got it most of what we see on the agenda right now is the stuff that we're approving that the pto's have funded and decided with within their own school to fund because I I think the days of buying the statue you know and saying this is donated by the PTO like there 20 years ago right maybe that was an important Legacy now we understand that the involvement of our children right in all sorts of things that they're interested in from chess club pickle ball is now you know very popular um any of those things that are not outlined in the contract and and parents wanted to do something about it so they created the system to raise money not to buy things to buy experiences for our kids right so it's an excellent observation but they're all most of what you see are donations yeah but but right yeah there are some that are district paid for they are contractual they will get examined during the next contract negotiation as they always do yep um okay um with that we will move on to the second opportunity for public participation if anyone wishes to address the board on any item please step to the podium write your name and address on the sheet state your name for the record um statement should be limited to three minutes and should not be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature would anyone like to address the board on any item making sure I get the podium people I know the podium I seeing nobody um can I one more announ sorry I have a kid who would be very upset if I didn't okay go ahead Baro won their Championship I'm sure they will be honoro soccer team yes they did yes congratulations yeah boys and girls the girls made it to the finals but I don't believe they won so the boys won okay right Baro boys won the championship I'm sure they're going to be honor at of the next board meeting or one after but um yes congratulations barcalo boy soccer um any other things that we should mention I'll send that a before the December meeting yes and then you board members want to comment ask me some questions eight already so I'll put that out 12th and then I'll take feedback and then that we have rework I think January 7th it's later this year it's not the day we come back how's my mother's part then I before you okay okay all right um with that I'd like to thank everyone who came out this evening um have a happy healthy Thanksgiving and I'd like a motion to adjourn all in favor say hi