##VIDEO ID:rrep9KTdNNc## here Mr Gentile here Mrs herel here Dr Basher Blau here and Mrs Corman can we please rise for the flag salute um led by Mr da salute to flag of the United States of America to the for it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all I want to sing my thank you we do have minutes from the August 12th meeting can I have a motion to approve the minutes so moved all in favor any opposed abstentions thank you I'm moving on to reading of communications good evening so attached uh 3.1 is a letter from the go Township Police Department chief of police and appreciation of the goway Township School District's participation in National Night Out I'd like to certainly thank uh my central administrative team uh who was able to attend as well as building Administration uh we got to see a lot of families and students and um and also other colleagues um from the surrounding area and within the community so it was a great night uh had by all thank you moving on to presentations at this time I'll transition down to the floor uh we are going to be providing an update um of our student uh New Jersey student learning assessments or njsla our access for ell's testing and also our New Jersey Dynamic learning Maps or New Jersey dlm uh District test reports joining me on joining me on the floor will also be three of our directors um so I will introduce them and they will be assisting in the uh presentation and sharing of the data testing testing testing Can You Hear Me All right so this evening we are going to present the spring 2024 test Administration as I mentioned for New Jersey student learning assessment uh New Jersey uh Dynamic learning maps and then also our access from L's test um not in any specific order but we are going to be starting with our dlm data U please know that depending upon the level of um data that we have at this time um more information may follow but part of our our um normal updates is to yearly be able to present this information in public in addition to that each parent will get their individualized student score as well that is also part of our communication at follows and for those of you that are new to a presentation like this um ultimately we are going to be taking a look at percent um across the across the district broken down by grade level at times broken down by subgroup and in addition to that we are going to be taking a look at some cohort data so our directors will lead us in in that information um the focus for um New Jersey student learning assessments is going to be a focus on English language arts mathematics and science um but each of them will get into each of their areas as they present this information first up is our director of student services for special education Dr Jennifer PS good evening everyone and thank you for coming uh the first section that I will talk about is dynamic learning Maps which uh is an assessment that uh is limited to only 1% of our student population um this uh students who are qualifi for this type of testing this is a conversation that occurs at their IEP meeting um and they have to meet uh four criteria to be able to even participate in this test type of testing uh one thing that I just want to point out when you think about the um students who fall into this category um many of them when we even evaluate them for child study team and special education services uh are not able to be tested in traditional ways um all of our assessments are standardized at the child study Team level so the students um that fall into this category will in many cases um when formally evaluated using Norm reference items and things like that will test at least three years behind in grade level and or be untestable um something I want to say about that specifically as the Director of special education is that's not really truly representation of the children and what they know and what they can do um just like the testing that you'll see here that we talk about tonight there is some level of standardization about this and there's also pieces of it that is it is on grade level so um in inclusive of dynamic learning Maps we are testing students on the grade level standards in a different format uh in this case this is done uh through iPads uh the children in many cases have to be able to navigate the iPad or are um supported with this um help of a teacher um so I just kind of wanted to point out uh some of those things when when we're looking at this um data uh the other thing I want to point out is the students who are assessed in this manner do um or are instructed in a completely different curriculum than general education um so they are in a self-contained setting um and uh their curriculum looks completely different finally as you go to look at the information that you see here I'm sorry you have a little button thank you um he's like ahead of me here um the students that you see here uh the other thing you'll notice right away um in each of the grade levels are how small the group of students are that are tested um so you will see grade three we're talking about three students um our highest cohorts being seventh and eth with five students in each of those core cohorts so um grouping together emerging and approaching um Target and then at Target and advanced I think one thing that you'll see keeping in mind that students are performing um maybe lower than the grade level expectations is really how children will grow and develop over the grade levels being in our programs um so I do think that's indicative if we were to look back at previous years you'll see how they keep making progress as they go through this testing um so that is uh the information that I'd like to share about Dynamic learning maps and we'll move on to the next thank you thank you Dr PS moving on and joining us is going to be our director of curriculum uh Miss Betty nap has been with the district uh for a few years and um ultimately her work and focus is not just going to be for Access for L's um but also she is going to be uh working and presenting information for njsla math data and also science these are the areas in which that she oversees her C curriculum and instruction and Dr gri will be joining her in a few minutes um to discuss English language arts as well so this is Napoli so first I just wanted to explain like access for LS it is a test that is given annually to our students that speak a language other than English and on the next slide actually shows some information the state has changed the name of these students over time the most recent name is multilingual Learners and part of the reason for that is so that we can kind of promote how good it is for kids to be able to be bilingual and that they are multilingual Learners not just learning English as a second language the program overall is still called ESL but the students themselves are now being identified as multilingual Learners just a a few basic pieces of information we have approximately 120 students in the program across all the grade levels from kindergarten all the way up to through 8th grade they speak up to in the district we have about 35 different languages are spoken uh Spanish Portuguese and Gujarati are the top three if you were curious and you can see on the slide it talks about the different tests that are given all of them are done online except for in kindergarten and the students are assessed in addition to reading and writing which they also are assessed in uh the njsla test they are also assisted in just speaking and listening so that's an extra piece and then we talk about the score um that they must receive to be able to be exited out of the program most students are in the program from approximately three to five years and even if a student enters our district a week before testing we still must test them so there are some students that have been with us for a very short period of time that are taking this test and we don't expect them to pass the test because they are just beginning to learn English so this chart just a quick chart where you can see across the grade levels how students scored they score in a scale really of 1 to six but if they scored at a six they probably wouldn't be in the program anymore because they would have tested out and you can see across the grade levels the numbers vary what I think is more powerful is actually what we're going to be talking about in the next two slides where we did an analysis of what the growth looks like from year to year because as I mentioned it depends if a student is at a level one it's going to take a little while for them to move across those grade level bands and it won't happen in one year so if we look at the next slide I won't get into all the details of this but it shows us based on the grade it's not really a grade level band it's the band of how they perform the prior year on the test so if they are a beginning level student very very limited English that's what a 1.0 to 1.9 represents if they score a scale score increase of 60 points or more that's considered high whereas if they in the previous year scored close to four which is exiting a high growth perspective would be 27 points so it varies so so you don't have to figure all that out the next slide shows how our students did so we compared the 2223 school year where they started to where they scored the end of last year green is good so overwhelmingly as you look students that were in our district less than a year overwhelmingly scored at the higher average rate even for students four plus years all the students that we assessed scored at a high rate so overwhelmingly students are making adequate progress and even higher than expected progress on this assessment next njsla New Jersey student learning assessment so first just some big picture each of these tests has different CR criteria and expectations in terms of performance levels access had a Sixpoint scale njsla has a fivepoint scale four and five are considered passing in the past and I will say it's been a few years now even prior to the pandemic a piece of data that was actually convenient for us to receive from the state was comparison data based on something called a district Factor group when we look at our data compared to everyone else in the state we're being compared to all districts one's from Bergen County all the way down to Kate May County and obviously there's lots of factors that go into how a student performs on assessments so that data had been convenient we do internally when scores are available do try to compare ourselves to other like districts so so we have a better means of comparison at this point tonight we did not have enough time to be able to access that kind of data because it's not been published officially yet for all the other um school districts so first we wanted to look at participation how many students participated across the grades so you can just see it in a glance how many students took the grade three through eight Ela math and science tests and obviously the numbers are reflective of how many students happened to be in that grade last year next I will pass it on to Dr gri to talk about English language arts so I'll be reviewing the ELA test scores with you this evening and we're going to take a look at the data in a couple different ways we're going to look at the data and grade at the grade level and then we're also going to look at data AC Ross a cohort of students because it's important to us as we're having conversations and planning that we're kind of working with this data in different ways um on this screen you'll see the overall passing for um last year's njla assessment in ela and you'll see the state passing as well as District passing state is indicated in red uh the district is indicated in blue for all grade levels when you look at the percentage of students passing the assessment getting that four or five on the assessment at the state level we know the state is hovering around 50% passing rate amongst all students in the state and so that gives us a little comparison when students are taking this test they're working with informational and liter Lit Literature so they're reading in um the literature domain as well as working with informational texts and they're also writing so we're looking at all those skills that fall under that umbrella um for reading and writing so the first set of data points we look at are the grade level um data pieces and that helps us kind of drill down when we're working with our teachers when we're working as an administrative team to kind of think about how our curriculum um is progressing at the grade level and how students are performing Against the Grain level standards so the first set of data points we're going to look at is our third grade and we have now some historical data so you can see these data points go back a few years couple years so that we're able to kind of see those Trends and patterns when we're asking questions about curriculum and the next set of slides really is every grade level so here we see our fourth grade students how they've been performing as a grade level over the last few years these are different students this is not cohort data we will look at that this is really how the grade level is performing against grade level standards it helps us inform decisions about curriculum and professional development our fifth grade ELA passing percentages Sixth and now we'll look at our middle schoolers our seventh and eighth graders the next set of data points are data points that are particularly compelling to us this is when we start to look at how student students a cohort of students are progressing with their language arts skills over time so we're going to look at cohort data this will represent the same group of students so we see who they are as third graders we're able to identify their strengths their growth areas and then we're tracking that Development Across their career here so in fourth grade we only have one test to kind of look back at because remember this assessment starts in third grade so our third grade students are taking that Ela assessment for the very first time um so if we look at last year's fourth graders were able to see how they did in the spring of their fourth grade year as compared to the spring of their third grade year and so we start to see how they're developing with their literacy skills over time in grades 53 we have more data available to us so it gives us more information as we're making decisions so now we have have historical data that can go back to testing Cycles so again what you're looking at is last year's fifth graders how they did in third grade then how they do in fourth grade and how they did finally as fifth graders sixth grade following that same cohort of students last year's sixth graders how they performed in the spring how they were as fifth graders and fourth graders so we look at this data to really understand the strengths of our students and the growth areas so that we can make decisions for cohorts of students and we can have those conversations at the team level and our middle school students their cohort data after we look at the cohort we pay very close attention to our subgroup data so again we're looking at groups of students to make decisions about how to support them how to accelerate their learning as well as how do we um make curriculum decisions to make make sure that all of our subgroups are growing and Performing every year so when we look at subgroup data we're looking at ethnicity we're looking at different um comparison points and our goal is to see growth in those subgroups over time and to be able to support students or make appropriate decisions to respond to the needs of subgroups as we as we need to as the data shows us where our growth areas are one thing that we continue to be particularly proud of is here in Galloway we know that the continuity and consistency of instruction is essential to student achievement the longer students are with us similar to what Miss Napoli explained with um our access testing the longer students are with us the longer they're exposed to high quality instruction a common set of language our curriculum and our pacing guides we see a longer the longer a student is with us the more likely they are are to achieve on the njla assessment and I'm going to turn over to miss Napoli for math so we're going to look at basically the same kinds of slides for mathematics again at first you see a GL at a glance last year how our students performed and again Galloway is in blue across the board one thing that might stand out to you is algebra 1 yes our students do perform well in alge number one um those are some of our highest students that are handpicked based on all like different kinds of criteria to make decisions so they are being compared in the state to everyone who took Algebra 1 the prior year including high school students so I will mention that the reason why the state's um level is a little bit lower than ours because they're being compared to both eighth graders and ninth graders possibly even 10th graders where our students represent some of our highest students just like we looked at in ela we are going to look at each grade level we'll take um a moment just to review those slides each at a time as uh Dr G mentioned these are our different students the third graders who were in third grade in 2122 compared to who happened to be in third grade in 22 23 and so on you can see at a glance the comparison of how those students did also in fourth grade you can see the data and as you go through the different slides one thing that might stand out to you I'll use fifth grade as an example notice even in fifth grade and in sixth grade less than 40% of students in the state passed the test just um a highlight less than than that in sixth grade math similar in seventh grade math and when we get to 8th grade notice in the state 20% of the students passed this test we did have less um and our numbers went down there are lots of factors we continue to review our curriculum we look at ways to support kids any way we can with resources to be able to make them as I don't know as positive as possible to be able to help with their achievement but one thing that we do do in the district is beyond just these assessments we do lots of Assessments all throughout the year to show progress something Dr Paul's mentioned um in her presentation that I thought really stood out to me was that this is one number of one test our students are making such great progress in so many different areas that may not be reflected here that doesn't mean that we don't care about these results and it doesn't mean that we're not going to continue to work to do whatever we can to support our children and to identify needs but just want to see part of this big picture and then as I mentioned earlier our top students are still continuing to perform very well next we'll take a look at math from the other perspective looking at the same students over time so in the first graph you can see that we can look at our fourth graders and how they performed when they were in third grade in some cases in the state the students went down from one grade to the next and alas our students kind of felt you know the same thing sort of happened ours actually increased slightly where the state went down slightly so if we look proportionally that's something we continue to look at and then on the left you can see the comparison over three years of the same students in both fifth grade and then on the right side you can see our students in sixth grade as well as our middle school students we also I look at our subgroup data for our students trying to use all kinds of other um means of identifying strengths and weaknesses of our students looking at them from all different perspectives ethnicity economically disadvantaged status as well as special education so we're looking at all those areas to try to see what can we do to support each of those groups so that we can meet the needs of every child just like in ela a little highlight is that as um Dr G mentioned the longer the students are with us they do perform better so our students that are with us for shorter periods of time don't perform as well as if they are with us over years getting our curriculum with our teachers they tend to perform better next I'll transition into science this represents different students over time since this test is not given every year it's only administered in both fifth grade grade and in eighth grade you can see the percent passing notice in fifth grade less than 30% of the students in the state are passing this test and in eth grade less than 20% of the students in the state are passing this test we're close on par and then we also look at the subgroup data in science as well next I'll turn it back over to Dr gri to talk a little bit about things we're doing to help support our students in Eli so as Miss Napoli shared we look at a variety of data across the school year um we understand that njsla data is uh is One Moment In Time in a student's career and so it's important to us I think this is where we get most excited about our work because this is what we do day in and day out to not just support our students with the njsla but to make sure that we're equipping our students with the literacy skills they need to be to be successful for whatever is next and so when thinking about what we're kind of putting in place to ensure that success I kind of think about these big buckets so the first thing that this data does guiding our work is getting us thinking about professional development how can we support our teachers best so that they feel best equipped to deliver high quality instruction every day aligned to what this data tells us our students need so um we spent a lot of time last school year getting ready for the implementation of the 2223 updated standards in language arts that I am happy to say have a strong emphasis on reading and writing foundational skills so how students decode or break down words when reading and then how they encode how they spell um and to kind of get ready for that um we were able to train about 81 of our staff members in a multi-sensory reading approach partnering with brainspring Academy so we're starting to see that professional development in action our teachers used it um during summer Academy they're using it um as they're supporting students with those decoding encoding pieces this school year additionally we met with our 3 through 8th grade teachers this summer to kind of unpack and update our curriculum so that we are updated to those new standards in addition to the strong emphasis on foundational skills in reading and writing there's a strong emphasis on what it means to be a skilled reader in the upper grades and so we've unpacked that we've updated our curriculum we continue as a district to look at mtss or multi-tiered systems of support and to help teachers use not just the data that was presented this evening but curriculum based data to to support students in small group instruction so our teachers are taking a look at Exit tickets they're looking at quizzes unit assessments and identifying what students have strengths and what students may have growth areas so that they can kind of triage any skills that need to be triaged in the upcoming unit and certainly enrich any skills that need enrichment because when we think about mtss we're not just thinking about supporting growth areas but we also need think on the other side of that Continuum how do we enrich when students have proficiency or strength in a particular literacy skill we're improving our assessment practices to be better aligned with the updated standards we're reestablishing our relationship with Dibbles by um partnering with aadience reading in kindergarten and first grade these assessments give us more information about those foundational reading skills we're partnering with nwe maps for 2 through 8th grade again to give us more information about what students have command over in terms of their reading and writing continuing to always look at our curriculum based measures those are our unit assessments and we continue to work on our report card documents to make sure that all of us as a community understand what a particular skill progression looks like over time we know at the end of the year the standard call calls us to do X so what does that mean in the beginning of the year how do we know when a child has it and then what does it mean in the middle and the end of the year we continue to work with our teaching staff and our intervention teachers to look at how we use our intervention or Workshop period to give students what they need and then lastly we continue to retain and secure high quality resources things that are aligned to the research best practice um so again that's kind of how we reestablished our relationship with dibles we know the research supports it so we're bringing it back all of the um materials we're using are research based and so I'll turn it over to Betty for math so first I wanted to mention about our staff and looking at what is our staff doing to help provide these intervention strategies right at the classroom level breaking down into small groups and providing differentiated instruction based on student need is critical we also have access to intervention teachers to provide even more targeted supports and we continue to work with our instructional coaches that we often call tlfs to provide ongoing job embedded supports through that we are also working on ways to provide continual ongoing professional development using some of our Esser funds from from last year we were able to have a partnership in math with an organization that provided workshops called building powerful numeracy through all the data whether it's njsla data or Beyond we continue to identify that students really struggle having basic number sense and problem solving skills so we partnered up with a group that offers different workshops that are deep dive workshops that were 16 weeks in length over time that provided teachers with flexible time to complete them and they learn specific strategies from basic counting and addition all the way up through linear functions depending on their own grade level over 60 teachers participated in these workshops we also went through last year and identified a new math program also to ensure that it was aligned to the standards and in math they were slightly updated as well and we're continually working with our intervention staff along with using programs that were actually listed like the mtss module in encourse to be able to really have stronger goal setting for our students talk about best practices in the subject and continued progress monitoring so that we could really provide datadriven instruction and then some of the supports that we're using we are looking at improved screeners nwaa was mentioned by Dr G we are U izing that in math as well this year as well as in K and one a numeracy assessment to really pinpoint the exact needs of our students at the beginning middle and end of year as we watch their progress and then some of the programs are listed next that we use that we found our high impact strategies to be able to support the needs of our kids this next slide talks about how we're supporting our multilingual Learners all of our students in our ESL program do receive targeted supports with a certified teacher our newcomers get a minimum of two periods because they need additional supports we've really focus on all four areas Reading Writing listening and speaking and the weeda standards themselves really look at how do we Implement all of that with the core content areas so we look at everything from a multi-disciplinary approach and in the last two years we've identified some specific resources and we're able to levered some of our title three Monies to be able to buy specific resources to support our brand new newcomers in the primary level we implemented grape seed last year and overwhelmingly the ESL teachers were over the moon about how great it's really supporting their kids um and it's really game based in songs um and very very literacy focused and then this year for the first time we will be implementing a new program called language launch that connects with nwea data and a program we use called read 180 to support those students as well all right we are almost there I promise lot of information but one of the things that we also focus on and the board has approved and and we put together as a district is also our district professional development plan you can see the three goals here and I'm I'm not going to read all of this but you can see it ties into also our Mantra and our theme and it's connect cultivate and create and ultimately that focus is is as you heard a focus on mtss multi-tier systems of support and focusing on really taking a close look at all three tiers of intervention will all students get at tier one with some students would get a tier two and then a targeted Approach at tier three in addition to really focusing on our climate and culture I think we all know that yes this data is important for academic for the academic lens um it is a snapshot in time of course coupled with all of our formative assessment data that the directors talked about but really what it comes down to we know and and we do that work in in other committees as well for youth advocacy committee and behind the scenes making sure that um we focus on our students mental health the things that they have going on in the community that also come here within school so it's not just about the academic side but it's also about that social emotional side and then of course our Community Partnerships and a lot of this work isn't going to be possible without those Community Partnerships and that continued engagement so that's why we have some pretty robust plans in place for professional development and continuing this work through all three lenses this will also transition into our strategic plan and our goals and initiatives that will be presented in a very near future uh with the work that we've been doing and unpacking there as well and finally just a few other things across the curriculum this is just again a snapshot you heard a lot about the resources and instructional supports that are there throughout the district um it's been a work in progress over a number of years to get all those pieces in place and you can see here further programs for students and again I'm not going to go through every single one of these but between the work that happens with the three directors that are here along with uh Mrs Burgess our other director of student services um making sure that students have what they need throughout the summer this is 12 months this is not just 9 months 10 months out of the year we do this work and when I come to this District this work is truly 247 12 months out of the year um this school especially gtms was buzzing this year along with reads with extended school year summer Academy and for the first time in well over a decade our summer enrichment Camp which gave students another opportunity to be engaged and continue that learning 12 months again out of the year in addition to expanded preschool and those opportunities that are in front of us as we continue to work with the state we know and the data supports the fact that as we continue to expand our preschool options the sooner we get our students in the seat the sooner we can start to educate them and see them continue to grow and learn the data was also in front of you because take a look at that transiency slide for academics for language arts and math and the students that are here with us for continued periods of time and continued years show more growth and success so hence why the expanded preschool is so important in addition to the professional development and again those areas of focus that I mentioned that are part of our professional development plan and also the structures of support that we're going to continue to work with and get back to what I call Getting Back to Basics professional learning communities you've often heard as plc's being able to take a look at the data that is there not just the summit of data but also the formative assessment data and that is work that we are doing from my office and the directors in conjunction with our staff and most importantly some of the work that we're doing is working with our building Administration to also make sure that we have not just great managers of our buildings but more importantly instructional leaders to help also support the work in the trenches with our teachers because I can tell you the one thing I continue to hear over and over again is time is of the essence and there's just as you know never enough time so at the end of the day we want to be able to support our staff to make sure that they have the time to really truly understand the data that is in front of them make decisions around that data to best then deliver instruction to our students to best meet their needs so with that we thank you and I'd be remissed if I didn't thank the directors that are here Dr Paul's Dr gidry Mrs napi for your support um and the support uh for our staff in the trenches every single day and most importantly our staff um Miss Smith our GTA president is here as you know and most importantly thank you to your staff because without them a lot of this work wouldn't be possible with that that concludes our presentation thank you thank you so much for such a comprehensive presentation are there any board questions or comments I have a com I have some questions but go ahead first go ahead um my first I just have a comment about kindergarten elll students being tested because if they have a a language issue I'm sure they're not reading so how valid could that possibly be that's just my personal statement out there on that and elll students during the school day are is there like a like in grades 1st through 6 is there like a pull out for them to get remediation and is the pull out among students that speak the same language or is that not possible and thank you for the presentation sure we have between I want to say 20 to could be up to 40 E keep changing the name MLL students at each um school okay I said ell I'm out no problem I wanted to make sure I didn't say the wrong word um so no it wasn't about you it was about me um so we have again between about 20 to 40 we have two um teachers covering those grades from kindergarten up through sixth grade in our elementary schools as best they can schedule we pull students out they get at least one pull out period where we target instruction based on the grade level typically there are absolutely times where we take multiple um grade levels at the same time if their skill needs are similar at times where possible we try to connect languages but if there's a first grade group in one building where they speak five different languages they may be in a class together we are also mandated by the state if we have more than 20 students who speak the same language to offer a bilingual program but because we have six schools across a large um area area and students are live in all those different areas and on all those different grade levels we don't offer a bilingual program so we fill out a waiver each year and in lie of that they get intensive supports and they must have two periods of ESL Services a day but any student that's a newcomer regardless of what language they speak we are not required to provide them additional support but in our hearts we must give them additional support so they even work in sometimes smaller groups with the newcomers again over 35 different languages are spoken thank you Mrs Chester yes my first question is could we have a copy of this presentation to be able to look at it a little more absolutely y we can uh we can we'll PDF that and um myself or Mrs nion will get that out um tomorrow sometime great to the board yeah absolutely no go ahead I just had a couple of quick questions sorry we okay um first of all I see that special education seems to be going down every year but I have a couple of questions on that and actually this is not just special education I my this is kind of an overreaching question and that is it seems like the young the the students who were the youngest during covid seem to be having the lowest test scores so outside of these test scores you said that there are other testing that we do are we seeing an increase on that more frequent testing um or is it still decreasing like do we see some progress going up particularly with those students to speak to certainly I'm happy to speak to the area of literacy whether it's general education and I would say uh Dr Paul's would agree with me whether it's special education I think certainly we see that there um is gaps in those foundational skills um certainly impacted by uh the pandemic SE time language development and just how language develops um I think was impacted and we know that language oral spoken language must develop first before reading um any of those literacy skills we um naturally are wired to learn language our brains are learn to wire um or wired to learn language through you know interactions spoken language reading really takes um a set finite set of instructional patterns and progressions that have to happen in a timely manner and so I think um as we've been working through that we've made some adjustments to the way that we're delivering um foundational reading instruction we chose a structured literacy approach last school year now we're going to start to see that be more consistent and it's to speak to some of those foundational gaps that is consistent in this data but I would say also consistent in our everyday data um um thank you for the question because I think it's super important that we understand that this third grade cohort um were in kindergarten when Co happened uh and in those two years um in K and one families could choose to keep their children completely home um they could come you know partial days uh all the students were coming on partial days but the thing that I think that we don't have information about yet that I think is something worthy for us to explore is we are um we don't have item analysis data we need to look at the progressions one thing I'll say when you have uh scores that are this low just in my uh former life um one thing that I think we want to start talking about as a district is if we know those third graders were our kindergarteners and the fourth graders were our first graders the most important type of data we can be looking at right now is Progressive data so these are Summit of Assessments based on standards in the content of that grade level what we want to start looking at is this is the cohort of students this is where they were at this point in time and then how are we progressing them so we can't really change the situation that has occurred we can't change all of that but what we can be very much in tune to is how we take students who did have a very clear this District offered more than many other districts in the state when that all happened in terms of um covid we did our very best but that still means that there was a learning loss or a lack of instruction for those students no matter how well we tried to go about it so now what we need to look at are the progressions of those students how are they progressing over time specifically to special education I would also say that all you're seeing is the summi of and if you know that there's self-contained students who have to meet a minimum criteria of being 3 years behind to even be considered in a self-contained and then you have your pullout kids that are over two years behind inclusions well over two years behind um that is testing where are they at at the grade level standard to me the more interesting piece of data is based on where the kids are how are they progressing in those standards and how are we growing them so we we'll never really quite get it out of this that's that comes from our own internal assessments um and item analysis that we P get once the state releases that and we don't have it as of this presentation date okay um I have another question it's actually for you Dr P okay so we partnered with the bogs Institute last year and there was kind of a change in how we were working with a group sorry can you talk a little bit closer to the mic oh sorry thank you so we kind of changed how we were working with that little group of children we were working with is there any data that you're keeping on how that group is doing in comparison to children as a whole whole because it just seems like that group is always going down and that could be a reflection of a different look in what the disabilities look like I don't know but that's what I'm just kind of curious about so um our work in terms of the bog Center really had to do with IEPs and and where kids are in IEPs um to me the data that I would look at is we develop very individualized learning plans for those students that are based on standards the question that I would be asking is how does that I grow and develop over time and are they moving through those progressions as well and most of the IEPs that we have in the district were not repeating the same goals every single year the kids have mastered those goals our progress monitoring tells us that they did and now we're moving to the next goal um so I think we are setting realistic goals based on what we know about those children and we are moving them individually and the progress monitoring data within our IEPs tells us so okay okay um thank you I think that was it thank you also just as a reminder this is that 30,000 foot View and I think that's what you continue to hear um and as a as a reminder the district Factor group uh data once that is released that is something else of course that we would look at um not to not to mention the item analysis which is important and one other thing that we've had conversations around is also upper elementary and middle school and what we have seen in terms of time on task and that is another piece to the puzzle that we are starting to making you know really making sure that we explore because time on task is important how long students are actually taking in order to take the assessment and we notice that over time when students don't feel as if they are vested in terms of putting forth a true intent and effort for that particular assessment especially for a standardized test what ends up happening is we see them not spending the time or the allotted time given to be able to read through all the passages whether for mathematics and or for English language arts again work we have to do but more from the social emotional side more from trying to build up that grit to make sure that they understand the importance you know we don't want to paint this picture of of you know all you have to do is test test test but we also know that there is going to come a time in high school that they are going to have to pass certain requirements in an effort to move on either to get a high school diploma and or have acceptance into higher education so other work that we've noticed as well any remaining questions thank you so much for the presentation thank you okay so I'm going to open it up for public comment for agenda items public comment for agenda items only okay seeing none we're going to move on to the superintendent report absolutely all right first we will start with item 6.1 our attorney's report thank you happy back to school for everybody since the last time we met I've had the opportunity to work with the district about some student matters Staffing matters and contractual matters thank you thank you Miss halelo also we have item 6.2 which is our student enrollment report as attached and as a reminder there is no vote needed for item 6.2 it's an informational item only thank you moving on to curriculum and instruction so with curriculum instruction we're looking to move items 7.1 through 7.2 as listed and attached can I have a motion to approve item 7.1 through 73 under curriculum instruction so moved second for comment roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Laria yes Mrs Avery yes Mr Dace yes Mr Gentile yes Mrs hermano yes and vice president Basher Blau yes moving on to facilities um for the finance committee update we did have a meeting prior to the board meeting uh we did a review of the July and August bills list and went over some questions for the agenda we did receive another update on the gtms chiller we still are on track for that to be delivered sometime in mid June and then we just had a reminder that the ARP Sr Grant does end on September 30th are there any questions right moving on to the rest of Finance thank you items 8.2 through 8.20 are up for your approval can I have a motion to approve items 8.2 through 8.20 in finance so moved second board comment roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Lura yes Mrs Avery yes Mr Dace yes Mr genel yes Mrs hermano yes vice president Basher blow yes moving on to facilities Mr da was there a facilities meeting yes there was I was at the facilities meeting tonight and we went over the chiller update and everything and we were also given an update on all the maintenance and project projects that have been done at the different schools throughout the summer and everything keeping everything in good shape so everything sounded real good and uh Joy did I mess anything up no that was all thank you items 9.2 through 9.3 are up for your approval can I have a motion to approve items 9.2 through 9.3 under facilities some moved second board comment roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Lara yes Mrs Avery yes Mr Dace yes Mr Gentile yes Mrs herel yes vice president Basher Blau yes moving on to Personnel so under Personnel we are looking to move items 10.1 through 10.8 as listed and attached can I have a motion to approve items 10.1 through 10.8 under Personnel so move second any board comment roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Laria yes Mrs Avery yes Mr da yes Mr genel yes Mrs herel yes vice president Basher Blau yes do we have any introductions uh yes I believe we have a few folks with us uh so we'd like to give a warm welcome for the first time as Gall Township School District employees first Janelle noo welcome our G TMS math teacher [Applause] congratulations also Andrea keading our new preschool teacher at Roland thank you congratulations welcome so moving on to policy Dr Parmenter is not able to be here this evening was there a policy committee meeting yes there was I can uh go over the policy committee report that was attached so all new policies for the first reading and previous policies for the second and final reading are being recommended to the board as listed and attached in board docks and all the policies being recommended in new business at this time are new and therefore not only require two readings but do not have any new language in bold or have old language being strikeouts being removed all the policies and old business section of this report are being recommended for board approval for a second and final reading finally within a policy approval section of board there will be two roll call motions that will occur the first roll call and approval will be related to all policies requiring a second and final vote with a second roll call and approval for policies or bylaws requiring the first of two readings that concludes our report thank you can I have a motion to approve P policy items for a second reading 11.2 through 11.11 didn't ask for comments sorry the yes so moved second roll call a board comment then roll call uh yes um I will vote no on the policies up for a vote tonight I have two concerns I would like to address first when a new policy is on the agenda board members are not on the policy committee board members that are not on the policy committee like myself do not get a copy of the new policy until late in the day on Friday before the meeting this is not an enough time to adequately review the policy and prepare I have asked the administration and our board president to provide all board members with a copy of any policy we will vote on as soon as we re they're received so that I can and you can have sufficient time to prepare the board president denied that request second I would like more clarification on when policies are mandated and what the terms mean specifically when we are told that a policy is mandated I think the board should be told by whom is it m ated by Statute if yes what statute if Strauss Esme mandates it what is their basis for this we need to make sure the public knows about what we are voting on and why I appreciate your consideration thank you I just want to make it clear to the public and to the board that these items up for voting right now are second readings these were available to the board at the last meeting which was held in August approximately a month ago thank you like say that one of them is for first readings if you look and read it says first readings we're doing a roll call right now on second readings I'd also like to respond my my recollection with regard to the policies is that at the end of the policies there are annotations which site to the portions of the administrative code and the statute which the uh policies rely upon to support their both statutory uh mandate and their Administrative Code enactment uh those are of course always subject to analysis by the board members to take a look at but that's what the sites to njsa and the sites to the njac are there's disagreement with they're readily accessible on NJ courts.gov they're readily accessible on state websites uh I have looked at them in the past when policies have raised issues in my mind um so I I feel that that that information is also read available to the board and that is uh something I look at with some frequency thank you roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Lara no Mrs Avery Mr de yes Mr Gentile yes Mrs herel no vice president Basher Blau yes so at this time we're looking to approve items uh number 11.1 through 11.13 through 11.22 can I have a motion to approve items 11.13 through 11.22 for first reading so move second board comment roll call Mrs Chester yes m laa no Mrs Avery yes Mr Dace yes Mr genel yes Mrs herel no vice president Basher blous yes moving on to Old business so under old business we are looking to approve items 12.1 through 12.2 as listed and attached can I have a motion to approve items 12.1 through 12.2 under old business so moved second board comment roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Lura yes Mrs Avery yes Mr da yes Mr Gentile yes Mrs herel yes vice president Basher Blau yes moving on to board informational items I'm sorry uh new bu new bussiness so under new business 13.1 uh as listed and attached is our 2425 mentoring plan we're looking to get approved I have a motion to approve item 13.1 under new business so moveed second board comment roll call Mrs Chester yes Miss Lara yes Mrs Avery yes Mr Dace yes Mr Gentile yes Mrs herel yes vice president Basher blous yes moving on to board informational items so first uh item for the board is our uh new calendar uh just wanted to point out um our board Institute uh next week or board retreat um so that is listed in the calendar in addition to that uh there are special events listed uh those that are remaining for the month of September would be the Education Foundation annual golf outing uh we certainly uh would appreciate the continued support of the Ed Foundation as well as the designer purse Bingo is listed on October 18th uh right here at gtms in addition there are other back to school nights still uh forthcoming in the month of uh September um next is uh Pomona preschool um and then the rest are listed there again if you are going to participate uh we would like you to please contact us so then that way we can make sure we have adequate um information that we hand out um we have tables set up uh in most of the comment areas for our back to school nights and our Board of Education can certainly meet and greet um families during that time and then of course the FSA meet the candidates night is also listed on here uh run by the FSA here at gtms on October 23rd at 6:30 p.m. thank you now going to open it up for public comment is there any public comment this evening thank you if you please come down and sign it at the podium the board values and welcomes comments and opinions from residents this meeting will now be open to public comment 5 minutes per person if your questions pertain to litigation per student or Personnel items please see the superintendent after the meeting as the board does not discuss these matters in public depending on the nature and complexity of your questions the board secretary may ask for your contact information so that someone can get back to you with a response as a reminder this is a public meeting and all comments should be appropriate for a public setting and made in a respectful manner man thank you for coming up to the podium please State your full name and address evening good evening my name is Kelly Grace address is 27 Veil Court Galloway resident for over 30 years um I first of all want to thank you folks for your commitment to doing right by our community our students family so forth I really appreciate that I also want to thank you ladies for a wonderful presentation that was very interesting a little bit of over my head you know with just seeing all that information but for the most part I got that you're really working hard for those kids so I appreciate that thank you um back to what I want to say and I did contact a few of you at the schools and I want to appreciate Mr senly um talking with me a big disappointment in learning late in the hour of when my grandson would be going to your school over at Reeds Road he's a preer my question is at what point in the school year last year or this year was it decided that you would Place pre students over at the high school abami so this is just public comment so I would ask all of your questions during this time period and then it would be up to the chair if we're going to respond at this point all the questions yes if you have any other questions well I would like to know when that became a subject matter and from what I'm learning parents were not sent an email about that and until August 21st which that raised a lot of questions so my public comment is that was too short of time for parents and I'm I play a big part in my grandchildren because this is a Time the world we live in requires more than just parents requires more than just you the board looking at policies and so forth that will represent what you did in this time how it's going to help the future students so I say that was not enough time to let the parents know where their kids would be going it generated a lot of concern as you know what I spoke about um there was a scrambling because in the end we said no so that's going to cost $4,320 out of grandparents and parents pockets to scramble and cover and and you know you know yourself when it comes to trying to get the student into a private school Christian School whatever you want to pick to help with easing your mind of a good place for them to be um that wasn't enough time we really scrambled and had to do due diligence and checking with people so that was something that really was not taken in consideration for people who were part of that and um there was a notation saying well these These are free classes let me tell you something 60 cents on the dollar of my taxes of everybody in Galloway that pay taxes 60 cents on the dollar goes to schools and that's a big amount of money so it's not free um so that's that's my question and that's my um opinion that there wasn't enough time given for people of Galloway that have children that would be going to Reed Road only to find out that no they would be going over to absam thank you very much for your comments Mr Santi will be reaching out thank you very much is there any other public comment seeing none we'll go around the board Mrs Chester okay so um and this was not planned at all but um I was at the or the um back to school uh a couple nights ago for um or was that last night anyway for abami and um I have to say I was really impressed with the way that's been put together and it was really reassuring to see the safety measures that have been put in place and um it it's unfortunately unfortunate if you don't um if you didn't give us that opportunity to show you that because really um those children are being very very well secured and taken care of throughout the day um and that there's really been a lot of thought put into it um so I I just have to say I was really impressed with it and um I was impressed with the teachers who are in there as well um some of them I knew from previous uh years when my own children were in there but um but again it was it was really uh very nice to see that and um and overall overall I just want to welcome everybody back to school um I know my kids are excited to be back to school I'm excited for everyone to be back to school and um that's it thanks thank you Miss laa welcome back I'm excited myself especially as a grandmother so and all the things that they're coming this year and I'm really proud of everybody that's so concerned about our children because we really need to be concerned at this time thank you Mrs Avery as you may or may not know I am the board rep to the Ed foundation and uh we have two events this fall that we hope board members support I heard Jim gentil wanted a ticket for the pocket Bango the bag F I just like to I like to herang Jim once in a while but I'm only kidding Jim yeah I will um anyway I hope uh board members support uh the pocket book Bingo and the golf tournament uh this sometime this month I believe uh teacher grants will be going out by Mr through Mr Santilli who by the way is the executive director of The Ed Foundation he didn't know that at when we hired andbody knows it now and uh we will be looking at teacher grants and they will be awarded this fall so some exciting things with the Ed foundation and thanks for your support everybody thank you Mr da I just want to say welcome back to all the administrators and the teachers and our young men and ladies who are in our schools and I'm not an academic or education person but the four five things that the teachers should teach to our children or boys and girls are four RS in 1D Reading Writing arithmetic respect and discipline and whatever R you want and God bless you all thank you Mr jle um first off welcome to the new hires uh I hope you find working here to be rewarding we're very pleased to have you coming on board be part of our district I also want to welcome back all of the staff both those who are present and those who are not present uh and also wish the best for the kids in the coming year I I think it would be remiss if I didn't note four names uh today for our public portion or comment two of them were 14 years old they went to school last week and they were killed by a fellow student two of them were teachers who went to school last week and were killed by a student why we cannot as a culture protect our children why we cannot as a culture protect Those who commit themselves to education is beyond me what we see in this country every year through these shootings is a veritable Slaughter of our innocence not our innocence with the CE but our innocent children and why our politicians why our governors why our so-called community and religious leaders cannot take this issue by the horn and protect our children boggles my mind the student's name was Mason shermerhorn he was 14 the other student was Christian Angelo Angulo excuse me 14 one of the Math teachers was Christina iry iry 53 years old and the other was Richard Ricky aspel 39 years old I'd ask for a moment of Silent before we adjourn thank you thank you Mr Gentile that was very well said Thank you Mrs Herman now yes I'd like to welcome everybody and back to school and I was there for the preschool night and I was very impressed with u Mrs Gentry is am I saying that right Dr Gentry okay you did a really fantastic job um I I think as an outside just you know OBS observance that I noticed when I was there is um there was no windows in any of the the in the school rooms which isn't your fault you're doing your best with what you have I get that um so there's no natural light which I think might be one issue with the kids but then again you can change that I guess going forward and the bathrooms and the hallways of course that's a little concerning but you have a great system set up with only four Keys you said that only four people have so I think it is a little scary for parents because it's in a high school yet yes we know the kids the bigger kids love the little kids and the you know the little kids probably think it's really cool but like Mr Gentilly just said it is scary today in the schools with the shootings and things like that bombs bomb threats and all that so yeah I think uh we we do need to do more and I hope that this works out in the high school however I do have my doubts as well but I do think it's great what you're doing thank you thank you I just want to say welcome back welcome new hires and welcome back to a new school year um I did Dro My Two children off last week and just the sense of excitement for the first week of school and the smile on everyone's faces from um the teachers to the staff to all of the students it it's just so heartwarming and I have to say that my youngest one this was the first time she did not cry going into school her first time in a public school and just seeing her go in happy as can be was absolutely all I could ask for as a parent so thank you for making it such an easy transition into this school district for her and just thank you everyone for everything that you do for our children um I do just want to remind everyone I know it was already brought up but we do have our board retreat on Monday I know everyone was asked to RSVP to Mrs Carmen um and I really hope that everyone is able to make this thank you uh there is no executive session this evening so can I have a motion to adjourn so move all in favor I I