##VIDEO ID:47zMUnevXiQ## is this on might check y yep like to call to order of the Highland Park Board of Education hybrid Workshop meeting today Monday October 14 2024 the Highland I'm sorry the New Jersey open public meetings Act was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of the public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in compliance with the open public meeting act the Highland Park Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting setting forth the time date and location to be submitted for publication to the home News Tribune and Star Ledger and posted on the board's website at least 48 hours in advance of this meeting members of the public who wish to address the board will be given the opportunity to do so before the board adjourns for the evening may I have roll call please Dr batty here CH Calon here Dr Coleman here Dr Pixley here miss Bruce here Dr Swan here miss stel here miss bman miss Bor here stand for the pledge I pledge allance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we had several Communications um since our last meeting uh one strategic plan question um some comments about our audio hopefully it's working if not please shoot us an email um uh question on the state report on special education and ceg's involvement in special education of program evaluation the next item on the uh agenda will be to approve the minutes from the hybrid Workshop voting meeting on September 23rd 2024 and we're going to move to our s uh student representative report Shing ended the week with a visit from Mr R song about and St thank you all the families for supporting with p m sale and for taking Parts in SC and St love wel the Highland farm fire department hering enjoy the big trucks and seeing the s in the GE iring had a record turn on for a walk and R school day sponsored by keth moving support the importance of physical activity and safety our street sidewalks with Miss MCN stff the students and their families walk like student enjoy the gorgeous weather for dental health month for Irving welcome kids sent to did a presentation for our students on healthy D dental care and coming up Irving head a PT glow party on October 22nd and picture day oner 23rd they fors welcoming your families and for for ble um Irving posted from October 7th to 11th the we respect we different themes bring awareness the de each day there was a b PV announcement which was made about about stack of the challenge and schoolwide both board was created saying find out what means to name classro lesson Fus stack and follow with all staff along with virtuals weapons were T by Miss nen focus on on October 8 B celebrated there was a fire safety ass for all gra and on October 9th as Irving B participated the national walk school day um all Mar F strollers B scoters inv to Jo this staff as police department and on October 11th the small picture day foren costume swap cost that are collected will be available families after teach conferences on the 15th and then before book fair be the book Fair will be open during par for the middle school last week was spirit week and the week of respect on Monday uh students sports day and students were giving challenge thanking and CH appreciation people in the school who their life for respect another Bing statistic was readed and participated in anti Wednesday was twin day and then VI on Wednesday teachers taught a lesson on their respect students were to reflect on what the looks like feel like it sound like on Thursday was throw back Thursday firsto was playing first year first period on Monday the big no boxes were filled with prise way to show respect on Friday was color Wars with 63 white 73 gray and 83 were red our second as well as pictures of students um who the I I and the poster did the presentation of pychological safety andf class then coming up for the middle school this Thursday October 17th is picture day par teach conferences are tomorrow Tuesday October 15th Monday October 28th and Tuesday October 29th the open for Pary sign up if anybody has any trouble high school high school advisory last week for grades 9 to 11 with Comprehensive curriculum on Three A's achievement attainment and attitude this was Bel over the summer using the responsive classroom model grade 12 off class meetings explor ple of upcoming events Chiefs and meetings will also incorporate College and Career awareness and other passing issues this weekend Sunday October 1th High schooled a practice robotics competition with over 10 the won three their matchups on October 7th in collaboration with Walker School of Education and led by our students have the opportunity to Learners with professors and students from the UN they learned about the multi landscape Mexico while we explored our own cultural and linguistic diversity our students engaged in me conversations and our gu toward our facilities and learn about our programs we're very impressed with thought on us Spirit Week will start next week on October 21st with senior Sunrise next mon Monday week will end with the homecoming on Saturday the 26 kids can purchase online and high school sport the girls team are undefeated gold Vision champs for the third year of the row the football team is playing on Friday at home is now 4 and two girls tennis competed St this week and they play tomorrow at 4M the John 4M um and S princi School leadership committee and parent advisory committee starting in the next two weeks PS first meeting on October uh 23rd in the media center at 6:30 p.m. and October 7th to October 11th let is that all thank you sth that was a really thorough report there's so much going on does anybody have any questions well I just wanted to comment too that was so detailed I feel like uh no pressure but we're gonna expect like this high thank you so much it is really good to hear like so many updates across the schools here at this at the table so I really do appreciate the detail that you include in your report thank you I have a request just for Irving um I didn't know about the mum sale I'm so sorry if I missed that but if you didn't send it to the board please do because I definitely would have bought mums I missed out on that not having kids in the younger schools so um let us know next year thank you uh we'll move on to our superintendent's report good evening everyone right so tonight I am going to share some results on our New Jersey student learning assessment so these test results came out in the spring so I'm sorry if it's hard to see you may have to adjust your chairs we're trying a new model one of our brand new promethium boards that are outfitted now thank you to the last of the covid relief money in the middle school so now all uh three schools are outfitted ble Irving and middle with these amazing uh touchscreen perian boards uh for the high school more developmentally appropriate are projectors um but just to let you know if you're not familiar with with promethium boards what we did was we purchased them on the stands and the stands are remote controlled so they can go up or down to be lowered so that they're more in compliance so as depending on your height or if somebody in a wheelchair or something like that it can be adjusted really easily so it's accessible for everybody so we're absolutely in love with these so thank you for the support on them so hopefully it's a little clearer and closer to you so thank you uh Mr odato for setting that up so in the spring of 2024 Jersy student learning assessment so every year um I share the results of that state test all of the reports have gone home to individual students at this point um so just a reminder that assessments are just one part of the cycle of teaching and learning and so um we do a lot that is both in real time formative uh through feedback and formative assessments and summative assessments we look at a lot of those benchmark assessments locally and our state tests when we look at a whole picture of the child that it's not just the state test um but that uh it's part of a whole cycle so just as a reminder and refresher for the math and ELA test there are five levels uh H for test results so if it's in the red your child did not meet expectations for the standards level two is partially meet level three is approaching level four is meet expectations and level five is in the blue for exceeding expectations so we really need students to be and want students to be in the green and the uh blue that's meaning they're meeting the targets or exceeding the targets um anything less puts us um a little bit farther behind um and where we need to improve so our results are um starting to become a little bit more promising so I'm really excited to share that tonight um with with some of this data so one of the things through the data so it's there's a lot of data a lot and one of the things um we're required to present it in this way so qac and the NJ doe do require that we present the data in this format they give us a lovely template and everything so what I'm going to try to do is there may be some of the slides that I'll kind of breathe through a little bit because we've given some summaries at the end but one of the things that I actually want to thank uh Dr batty for helping us talk through in curriculum instruction I know Allison has communicated it is looking at our data by cohort so oftentimes in the past when we were re you know looking at the data we were comparing our sixth grade to our sixth grade our seventh grade to our seventh grade so our seventh grade this year how' they do in comparison to our seventh grade last year and that really isn't really quite Fair because it's a different group of students so we started looking at it by cohort because that's how we're really going to see that growth in that change are the same group of students year to year as they go through how are they improving so that's what the arrows are on the slides and that's what I want us to focus on when we're looking at the data now I didn't go through we didn't go Miss rodrigus and I didn't go through every slide and put all the arrows but that's how I want everybody to start looking through that data to say okay so what you see is the 2023 data to our spring data so last year and this year theoretically for our data so the what you see here for third grade this is last year's third grade group and then where are they now so what you see here is going from so this is levels one two three four and five for uh English language arts so comparing our local data from last year to this year you can see that third grade that cohort moved from 33 students 33% of students being at level one which is the lowest level to now as fourth grade 12% are at a level one which is great news right that means we're less are in the lowest level and that means they're moving up for growth so you can see that here so for third grade last year we had 22% at level two 11% now at from last year at level uh sorry 11% now at level two as fourth grade there were 18% of third grade students in 2023 at level three and now 26 6% last year in the spring at level three so when we get to level four and five which where we want them to be for passing we had 27% in third grade in 2023 in 2024 we're at 35% zero in 2023 at the exceeding expectations and now 16% exceeding expectations for the new cohort so that's really important to see that already third grade were moving the needle so that's where we look at it so same thing here grade four I'm not going to go through all of them I'll be here all night but that's how that's why we drew the arrows so that you can follow the cohort now not every cohort has a huge shift there are some areas that you know were not as um strong but in general you can see a lot of that growth and so that's that's what we want to see here same thing when you look across the state data however we didn't draw arrows because this would get really complicated so I'll walk you through how to look at the data so this is the English language arts spring 2023 compared to last year 2024 but this is our data versus the state so for example that third grade Co I want to click something wrong here the third grade um cohort from out from from our so third grade our district we had 33% of our students not meeting expectations versus in 2023 the 21% that the state had now let's look across that from to 2024 we have to go here right so now they're in fourth grade in 2024 so we went from 33% to 12% so good that means less students in level one compared to the state one from 21 to 13 so I mean I guess the state's data following that is not really as critical so much our data is important but if you wanted to compare where we are versus the state you can do it from 23 to 23 but follow the cohort if you want to see our growth versus the growth versus the state so that is this data but that Arrow um movement would have been really quite convoluted but that's how you you really should should be looking at it to compare where the where the cohorts are and really interesting to see how the states movement of students and each has kind of shifted as well so that was our Ela versus the state data so same thing here so this is the same but now we're at level three and level four for our data in 2023 versus State data in 2023 and our data in 2024 versus the state data and you can see the same thing here with our third grade cohort had 18% in 2023 at level three and then 26% in 2024 versus the state that had 23 and 22% so in some ways you know we're we're creeping up depending like these numbers higher in the lower range versus the state are not as good but over here for level four we're talking about meeting expectations um and moving from 27 to 35 they went from 37 to 35 so you know in terms of alignment we're right there with what the state average is so you can look at this data in two different ways and then same thing for exceeding expectations our data right we went from uh zero in 2023 like I said on that first slide to 16% the state went from five to 16% so you can see that shift that we're shifting kind of as as as well as the state is uh and then overall so our percentages so this is the overall comparison of our data um in term terms of versus the state and so where this is important is the minus sign the negative sign in the levels one through three is good the positive in four and five is good so meaning that just go to my slide here so I get it so our percent changeed so we want to see negative numbers in one two and three categories and we want to see positive in four and five that means our numbers of students that are hitting a level one two and three is declining and our numbers of students in four and five which is passing is increasing so for example our SEC our third grade cohort from 2023 um you can see that in levels one two and three an overall percentage we're down 2% um versus the state is down 1.7% our students then shifted which was that data I just showed you our students shifted from 2023 to 2024 we're up uh 2% in Highland Park versus the state is up 1.6 so same thing grade four we have uh we're down 3% in the levels one two and three category which is great the state is up a half a percent in that category um we are up 4% for levels four and five in grade four the state is down um but I'll just really focus on hours grade five in for ELA in in the first two one two and three categories we're down 10% we're up 10% in four and five so that's good in grade six we're down 8% in levels one two and three which is good and we're up 6% in levels four and five seventh grade we're neutral we're down 1% in in um levels four and five which is an area of concern in grade eight we're up 7% in one two and three which is not good and we're down 7% in levels four and five an area of concern in ela and Ninth Grade we are down 18% in 1 two and three and up 18% in four and five so very great growth there here you can see our subgroups for English language arts now just to let you know the the caveat with the graphs is that this is representative of all the ELA data across all schools so grades three through 12 or 11 whenever they or nine whenever they last take the njsla this is the data for all for all of them so it's not parsed out by grade level or anything like that and you can definitely see areas that we still have concern that we've had concern for a number of years that is still a focus area which is uh including our multi- language Learners are students with disabilities economically disadvantaged uh black African-American students and and um Hispanic students are still underperforming uh versus our um whites um our Asians two or more races um and maybe even our students with with disability 504s are are overperforming so we still have some issues with our students in those subgroups still not um uh doing as well as our other subgroup populations for English language arts for the math data so our comparison of our spring 2023 and 2024 math percentages so just a couple of notes on that our grade eight data some students in grade eight participate in the algebra 1 assessment uh in place of the eth grade math assessment thus math 8 outcomes are not representative of grade eight performance as a whole so when you look at the grade eight data it doesn't represent the entire grade level just the students that sat for that test and in Algebra 1 2 and geometry data students in grades in 11 grades 11 and 12 were not included so for some reason they didn't take Algebra 1 or geometry either in middle school or freshman or sophomore um in high school but they took it in 11th or 12th grade that data is not represented here and again like all the other slides the percentages may not uh total do 100 due to rounding so same thing as with the ELA data with the math data so we look at it from cohort to cohort to follow um that follow those groups from same sort of level one to five proficiency so for example if I follow that same grade three cohort uh we had 21% of our students in grade three in 2023 at about 21% of them were at level one last year in the spring of 2024 we've shifted that to 18% we had 19% at level two last year with 2024 now we have 15% in 2023 with our grade three cohort they were at 25% now as fourth graders taking that in the spring of 2024 it's 23% and then at level four they went from 24% to Fourth Graders 39% which is good and uh the level five from 11% to 6% so you can see that shift uh it stops at sixth grade and the reason why we have it stop at sixth grade is because that is when um the our our gifted and talented mathematics program changes so just to remind everybody that the math 6 Plus is the drack class so all students are in the heterogeneous grouping in up to sixth grade after sixth grade the students have an option of taking either math 7 Algebra 1 or potentially Algebra 2 in seventh grade so that's where our gifted and talented program beers off into uh more tracked classes um or homogeneous grouping so that's why the arrows stop there because you now can't compare cohort to cohort because not all seventh grade students took the seventh grade assessment not all 8ighth grade students took that assessment so um you really can't compare the the cohorts at at this point but you can see the shift in general of of the numbers so our math percentages um so here is so we divided up the algebra one and the geometry based on middle and high school because some of our students take the test in if they're in middle school and some of them take it in high school so um you can see in our Middle School in general we had no students either in 23 or 24 get a level one um at level two we had uh some of our students in in algebra um in 23 and 24 6 and 8% uh get a level two geometry in 2023 get 10% of them got a level two and um in the spring none and then now you can really see a shift that a lot of our students are in the grade in the level three through five range in middle school which is really not surprising because it's more of uh like a gifted and talented program at the middle level um one of the things that I want to highlight is the big chunk of numbers in both the high school and the middle school in that level three range that's a really good sweet spot if you think about intervention there's two schools of thought when it comes to intervention one school of thought is take the lowest students that you have put them in intervention and just hope that we're kind of closing whatever gaps we can another school of thought which um we try to hit first here is those students that are on the cusp we try to get them in intervention and out because intervention shouldn't be a life sentence get them in close some gaps get them strategies get them back into their classroom so that they can be successful and so these are really good target areas for us because those are students that you know may have just missed it by like a question or two or one particular Topic in operations and algebraic thinking or something like that and may just need a little Gap filling and then we can you know get that for the next one so unfortunately it really wouldn't necessarily be with geometry especially at the high school level however at the high school level for our Algebra 1 students that 34% of students at level three they're still time because now they're sitting in a geometry class so even though the test is different they're not testing again on algebra there might be some mathematical Concepts or the standard mathematical practices that we could work on with those students stents to shift the needle a little bit for this coming year so that that is the hope it's a little harder with math because the the content differs so greatly between algebra and geometry and things like that versus Ela which is a little bit easier because a lot of the standards are the same just the amount of something or the level of evidence or the level of writing or the level of reading and comprehension uh just increases from year to year so again the same with looking at our comparison of um our percentage is from 2023 to 2024 uh versus the state so you can see we'll take that same third grade level for ex third grade cohort um like I said our third grades students in 2023 we had 21% at level one and now uh we're at 18% for 2024 versus the state they had 133% and now they're at 12% so again you can either just kind of do a comparison of our data versus where the state is um or just looking at how our data just um you know kind of for the most part keeps in line about uh with some of the the state data as well and in some areas we are um our groups are doing a little bit better than the state and other areas we're not so that was levels one through uh one and two uh this is level three and four for our math data as well again harder to compare after the the sixth grade so just remember after sixth grade um the seventh and eighth uh this is where the seventh graders are only taking the seventh grade assessment any other seventh grade that are that are in algebra or um pre-algebra are taking a different test and then same thing with our eighth grade and then same thing with our level five or exceeding expectations and then really what I think this is the more important slide all that data is great and it it can be a lot to look through but I like the summary data by looking through where we are so again our negative numbers in levels 1 2 and three are good that means our percentage of there is decreasing which hopes then our levels four and five we should see plus signs uh and hope for the best so in math grade three from 2023 to 2024 um we had a 0% change in our levels one two and three and a 0 per change in four and five uh fourth grade um an A A 9% change which is good so we were at a minus n for grade uh levels one two and three and we're up 6% uh for four and five levels four and five so that's good for fourth grade in fifth grade we're up 2% in levels one two and three which is probably not good but even better we're up um 7% in levels four and five we're down 3% in levels one two and three for grade six uh we're up 3% for four and five for math 7 um we are uh up 8% for levels one two and three which we don't want to see and we're down 3% for levels four and five so math 7 is an area of concern in eighth grade those that participated in the eighth grade assessment we are down 1% in levels 1 2 and three and up 2% in levels four and five so that's not huge but promising uh in Algebra 1 we're down 4% in levels 1 two and three and up 5% in levels four and five in interestingly enough some big changes for us uh geometry were down 22% in levels 1 two and three and up 21% in levels four and five and down 22% in levels one two and three in Algebra 2 and up 23% in levels four and five and that actually could be because our sophomores weren't counted which is really interesting we're actually going back and looking because we're thinking that some of the students should have tested but didn't so we're not really sure because those were like like we looked at it like something doesn't seem exactly right we four of us looked through the data and got the same results so uh we're just going back to um you know we we brought Miss kessle in our our she wasn't here last year when we were doing the testing but looking at sort of what what happen so uh there may have been students that just didn't test that should have tested it's not for they'll it doesn't impact their graduation requirement it's just that now their data is just not indicated here and that's pretty important too because if we have students that opt out their data isn't represented so if students don't take it it can skew us especially in a smaller District having a couple of students not take a test or a pocket of students not taking the test can really skew our data which is why I know um for as much as we we don't one test score doesn't make or break our students and these test scores are one piece of a large puzzle that is the whole child here in Highland Park these numbers do impact you know our stance in terms of being a focused group uh or a focused School for um Title One funding and where we're we're placed in terms of performance report and things like that so we have been trying to shift to taking the test slightly more seriously um and and um you know that data is important to us so I brought that up to see that even sometimes just leaving some students out whether they opt out or they just didn't test at all for whatever reason can shift um our data same thing so this is our subgroups for math which is indicative of the entire um anybody from grades three through geometry that took the data so you can see same thing where some of our struggles again students with IEPs are struggling to meet the expectations are students that are economically disadvantaged um our black African-American students and our Hispanic students are still underrepresented same thing that we've been communicating for a couple of years now but but I wanted to show that we're moving that needle and so I think that's that's really hopeful and I'll talk about that shortly versus um you know our white students and um you know I guess if you put the bars on top of each other maybe our students with 504s and our Asian students that are are overperforming uh lastly the third assessment that was taken in the spring is the Science assessment it's designated to measure students Proficiency in three grades so it's only taken in fifth grade at the end of fifth grade at the end of 8th grade and at the end of 11th grade so this one's a little bit harder because there's such a gap uh from when they take it um and it measures students ability to utilize the science and engineering practices to explain scientific phenomenon appropriately so that was a lot a big to they adopted ngss so the assessment is really quite interesting I know you're not supposed to see it but uh sometimes when you see the test after it's been administers a really good example that I've seen was um students were given a scenario of a town that was having a mosquito population so the information that's given to them is here is the mosquito life cycle here is information about mosquitoes here's information about the town so they're given a whole lot of information and data and then there's questions to say create a solution for this town and that is really what if you read the science and engine the the the standards for science every standard K through 12 and Science Education is levels five and six of Bloom's taxonomy the highest level constructive an argument develop and use a model use data so it's a lot of creating and that higher level thinking and the assessment really truly reflects that so no longer if anybody I'm going to throw back the NJ ASK the ask the Science assessment where it was more like wrote memorization of science facts it's not like that so students are really have to it's a a lot of critical thinking and our Science Education really should model that and mirror that that what the students are doing in class should be um discovering phenomenon making sense of phenomenon using data how does you know what does that data mean how do we develop a model how do we refine that model how do we use that model um so in addition the Science assessment only gauges us on four levels below proficiency near proficiency proficient and advanced proficient so our science data um from 2023 and 2024 so you can see again I wouldn't do cohort to cohort because it doesn't it really doesn't sort of work that way at grade five so our grade fifth graders so here we're really actually comparing apples to oranges not Apples to Apples but our theoretically our fifth grade would then become our eighth grade eventually but not year to year because they didn't go from fifth grade to sixth grade so our fifth grade students in 2023 37% got level one and 28% in the spring of 2024 got level level one so now theoretically hopefully our numbers should increase as they as they go on here but we have 29% at level two in 2023 and 39% in 20124 in fifth grade 26% at level three and 21% at 2024 and in level four uh in 2023 for our fifth graders 9% at level four and 13% in 2024 so you can see that shift as you go uh through the grades again the hope is that less students are going in level one and two and more students are um hopefully approaching if not meeting the expectations and just to let you know we don't have science intervention isn't a thing so the hope is that the as they go from fifth grade they get a couple of years of um you know more work in the same standards the same languages used over and over again K12 so hopefully the more exposure they have to it the better they are at solving those scientific problems um here is our data compared to the state data um so what's interesting with with this particular data is in some areas we're doing a little bit better than the state like our percentages are a little bit better but you can see the state's not really that great either um so you know in some areas we're you know about on par with where the state is uh we're not the only District um facing this a lot of these issues but in particular science it's it's not going well across the whole state I think the shift has been a little bit harder for teachers especially at the secondary level to wrap their heads around at the primary level I know for example when I started here in 2016 apparently every grade level in elementary school was teaching butterflies because they love butterflies but butterflies themselves are not a standard you can use butterflies and larv to get to a standard but it can't be every year so uh there's been a lot of shift and and movement um you know we're we're trying to move the needle a lot in math um as well and and hopefully uh continue doing so in science so that's what you can see here in terms of um in some areas what we're doing better than the state for example our fifth grade students at um Advanced proficient we have you know 133% um in 2024 versus only 6% across the state so in some areas you know I think we're we're doing a little bit better in some of our categories um and and having more you know higher percentage than the state um but you know States it's it's not that great overall either uh and in terms of the percentage same thing here for science so in fifth grade grade 1% of our students um shifted from levels one and two in Highland Park um so we were up I'm sorry we're up a percent in fifth grade and we're down a percent in level three and four from 23 to 24 so that's not so good um but we have um in eth grade uh we're down 4% in levels one and two and up 5% in three and four so that's good um not so much in 11th grade not sure what's happening in 11th grade but that's not so good we have 20 uh we're up 20% of students in levels one and two in 11th grade yeah sth looking at me like and uh we're we're down 21% in levels three and four again uh it you know I don't know the number of students it's not compared to the number of students that took it so I don't really know um what that overall like what our end number is for the students that took it but that's an area of concern as well we got to work on those 11th graders for Science and um you know honestly no big surprise here that um our students with disabilities our multilanguage Learners our students at economically disadvantaged our black students and our Hispanic students are struggling with science as well um you know our two or more races are doing really well and if you pile on our two the blue and the green for students with 504s they're doing really well um not really our white students either maybe our Asian students maybe in science science is a big struggle for us so overall uh so definitely an area we have to work on for our subgroups so some notable achievements and I do want to say that we you know the work that we're doing especially in the world of math and and English language art intervention has been incredible and so just to remind everybody that we did make uh the board did make a commitment to taking in some of the salaries of our interventionists into the operating budget was was really amazing we were going to have to cut some because our covid money uh ran out but we were able to use our Title One funds and some operational budget to maintain them and so I know some of that data has gone back to curriculum and instruction to show that we are moving the needle getting students in intervention where they need it closing some gaps and then getting them out so that's been really great we've seen a lot more success and I'll go through our notable achievements at Bartle um and I actually probably think now I don't have any statistical data about this but our hunches is because our ble staff has not really changed dramatically so they're getting the OG oron Gillingham sorry the Orton Gillingham training they're getting a lot of the complex task training they're getting you know they're we're moving the needle because there's a lot of consistency with that ble staff and they're implementing those things we haven't moved the needle as much in middle school I think partially because of our staffing we had two um I mean it's unfortunate because it's a small school so we had a couple of um Math teachers out on leave for extended amounts of time for unforeseen circumstances last year and we had to put at the rate we were going with everyone in the state we had to put daily subs and then if you remember people were writing plans for those daily subs so to get really great math instruction wasn't consistent for some of our middle school students um and then Ela we had two brand new teachers and if you remember last year we um retired a couple special ed teachers in the middle school and now we have some new actually we moved some from Bartle up uh some of our strong Bartle special teachers up so we're really hopeful for the middle school and I think those shifts that we're seeing as long as we can maintain the Personnel here and have that consistency with the professional development that we're doing I think is going to be great they're starting to get their won Gillingham training um Miss Brady went alongside with them this Summer and they were in ble getting OG trained so we're now scaling that up so as long as we can maintain that I think we'll start seeing that needle but that consistency with staff is really really huge um in an area that we're we're missing in the Middle School unfortunately just due to circumstances outside of our control I can't help that people you know have uh get sick or or have issues and things like that but some notable achievements so I want to end like this is some really great stuff we are moving the needle and this is awesome so um the first uh group that you'll see here is our students our rates of achievement where we're above the state average for 20124 so in ela our grade five 47.4% of our our students met achievement in grade 5 12.8 exceeded expectations and in grade nine over 50% of our students uh met expectations so we're above State average in those areas for English language arts great job in those areas for math grade four uh over 38% of our students met expectations in grade five 10% of our students exceeded expectations and in grade six 8% of our students exceeded expectations so those are above State average and that's and that's really good and I really want to highlight that because again I'm not dis discounting what's happening here but when there's a there's a problem collectively in the state of New Jersey as well we're not the only District facing that um but you know our population does give us some unique opportunities presented in science our fifth grade 12.8% of our students um are Advanced proficient 18 at grade eight 16% are proficient and 6.9% are Advanced proficient and grade 11 over 27% are proficient and 14.8% advanced proficient in science salute and so we're we have again above State average kudos to those groups um and we're moving the needle um in areas where our above State average increase and that's really important that was that plus sign that I want to show you that we had tremendous growth in a lot of areas so though we have areas that are still areas of concern that we're still addressing um in ela um we are now over 2% uh over what we were for grade three in meet and exceed expectations and Ela for grade four we're at over 4% uh a 4% increase in meat and exceeds expectations in grade five we're at um uh you know over 10% at meat and exceeds expectations of an increase in grade six an increase of 6% meeting an exceeding expectations in grade nine we're at 18% more of our students are meeting and exceeding expectations so that's really great news and moving the needle in math we have even more gains grade four 6% um increase in meeting and exceeding expectations in grade five we have a 7% increase grade six 3% increase grade eight 2% increase Algebra 1 5% and for whatever reason that were still unknown to us but yay our geometry is uh 21% and Algebra 2 is 23% increase in meeting expectations and in science our grade8 is um 5% over what we had from the previous year in meeting and exceeding expectations so like I said uh fantastic work we're we're not done obviously we're still moving the needle but quite honestly you know in in situations where it just kind of looked like it was getting worse before it was getting better I I feel really confident about the data I really feel confident about the programs we're putting putting in place this year is going to be a very very very tight budget year for us um so we have to make some hard decisions potentially this year and it's it's my hope that if we're moving the needle with the great things that we're doing that the board would still continue to support those great things to let us continue moving moving those forward so in terms of cohort growth because that's a real big area that we want to look at uh some notable achievements in our cohort growth our current fifth so this is our current fifth grader sitting in fifth grade right this moment well tomorrow morning sitting in fifth grade at this moment uh their Ela scores um from third grade to fourth grade they had a 24% growth so our current fifth graders sitting in that classroom for ELA at at a 24% growth and for math they're at a 9% growth so that's a great grade level to watch that they're growing from third grade so that's a really big deal and our current sixth graders so the students sitting in in this building in sixth grade come tomorrow morning uh from Ela they have a 177% growth from third grade that's really awesome so they are making some great gains and in ela from fourth uh from when they were in fourth grade they're at um uh 133% growth so again we're we're seeing that needle unfortunately for them for math um for our current sixth graders it it's not as um not as promising but again trying to move that needle trying to to do that work but again I I want to capture some of the cohort growth and where we are versus the state and where we are within our own increase um you know to to highlight that good stuff so what are our next steps uh we will share our reports with students parents Guardians staff and administrators so they will get their individual student reports um our administrators get their school reports we want to continue to assess the skills of students using a variety of assessment methods I know you've heard that um throughout this year and last year was using assessment data that really captures where our students might project to be so for example it's using that map assessment map is a really good indicator of success I know we're still looking at ways to do that in mathematics we don't really have those uh benchmark assessments they were homegrown but I know Miss Saka has been doing work with um some programs that she's been bringing in um inspired instruction's been doing a lot of work with our teachers to help um close some of our gaps and and working on creating more valid and reliable assessments that are good indicators locally of predictors of how our students would do on those tests we're not teaching to a test but it's about creating higher level thinking questions for our students so that they have more opportunities to practice that higher level thinking um so that they can be more successful and we'll continue to analyze all of that assessment data and use that data to make instructional um or programming decisions and we'll continue to reflect a monitor of the progress of individuals and groups of students to adjust accordingly thank you all right um thank you so much Dr cisa for that report was extremely thorough I personally love the new lens of looking at it through a CO cohort model um trying to track the growth from year to year so thank you for showing us that um any questions from our board I have a question is my mic working I think it is sound like it doesn't sound it doesn't sound like it oh yeah it is it is okay have to speak up very close um will this report be shared with parents the presentation itself okay yeah so the presentation will go through the board bulletin so every board bulletin that goes out always has the presentation I try to get these things ahead of time Unfortunately they uh give us the data and then they didn't give us the template until like Thursday morning to put it all together and what their expectations are so we can only work as fast as the state so I apologize to getting it to everybody over the weekend usually that's not my um what I do but it's unfortunate that I work we work at the pace of the NJ doe sometimes but yes this will go out to everybody as part of the board bulletin thank you um I also wanted to say I really liked that you separated the um algebra and geometry by middle school and high school that was really helpful to see um because I know there's you know that's all taken at at different years um at I thought the report looked great as is but that would be helpful maybe to see that in the cohort as well just to show that you know this is the Middle School percentages that are in taking algebra versus the high school percentages taking algebra but having it on a separate slide was great so thank you for that um I had a question about seventh grade do you know if kids are taking pre-algebra or algebra in seventh grade do they take that test or they're too young do they still take the seventh grade test no they would take the math that they're in so there's no pre-algebra tests so I would have to double check um I don't know Dr batty if you know but I think they take the grade I think they take grade seven gr seven they take grade seven but algebra takes algebra gotcha okay thank you um I want to just make a couple comments I think more than questions but I think the first one is I just want to recognize the hard work of teachers and and know like so many areas of growth that um that I think are really important um in in just signs of of work within the district the my other comment is uh about some of the test scores by subgroup and I know this has been a challenge in the district for a while but I'm really worried that this is becoming normalized um that we're accepting that these differences in um are happening and I even think it'd be a shift I think sometimes to talk about these are the students were serving well or were not serving well rather than this is how students did um because they're learning based on the kind of quality of Education that we're providing and I think across the different data whether I think it's Benchmark data or the state data we're seeing students with disabilities we're seeing multilingual Learners we're seeing black students we're seeing Hispanic students like consistently not served well in the district and I think changing the language around that can also change the sense of responsibility that we have as Educators around it and I just think it's really important to kind of disrupt that as a narrative that we keep repeating and to actually think about how do we shift this fundamentally and it might require like big shifts right instructionally or how we think about students um because while we do see like achievement gaps created sometimes and by students who have access to different things not meeting the standards is actually what's happening in the classroom and I think that's important too these aren't differences that are that are these aren't just um rank order differences that some students are 999 percentile these aren't percentiles is just are you meeting what is taught in that grade and I think um all students can be taught the standards in the grade and and I think that needs to be the kind of Baseline and then well what are we doing to serve them I think um so I just I just want to say that to kind of hopefully kind of shift the needle and how we think and how we talk about um some the some the data and and in the repeated kind of nature of it the more we repeat the more times we accept it and it becomes a norm rather than we can serve these students schools serve these students all the time right each of these kind of subgroups and then figuring out how we can serve them um better so I just want to say that because I think yeah because I I'm I'm worried about how the data being repeated maybe us not figuring out how big shifts that that need to happen and and not Wan it to be kind of normalized too uh yeah I just kind of my thoughts were very similar to Dan's and you know I will say as much as I was am very pleased to hear all the areas of growth um I am you know deep it's deeply tempered I think by my concerns about this continued and I mean we're talking about more than a couple of years with our challenges of not meeting the needs of a significant percentage of our student body our students who are consistently underserved and it's it's it's really to me it's frustrating um you know just being a board member since 2018 and having this problem since my knowing that this has been a problem since my students my own kids were in the school district in the middle and high school around 2014 um at that time I learned that the uh College Prep courses uh the CP courses were nicknamed the colored people's courses in this um School District you know that was kind of the clo term maybe it's still used um because of the kind of hyp segregation we have within our schools our classrooms um and I think you know as much as I definitely take standardized test data in a very compartmentalized view because we know sort of the limitations um it is a reflection on as as I think Dan mentioned sort of the instruction and our how we're serving um a significant group of students in our our district um so I think one of the things I mean I could I can't say really better than Dan in terms of not normalizing this and I feel like i' I've been at this table for long enough that I know I internally am not normalizing but I feel like I'm part of this process of normalizing this reality um and we can't accept that I mean this is not something to just sort of take and stride that this is work we have to continue this is a problem this is something we have to prioritize and that means Shifting the frame of how we look at it applying more data in terms of why don't we have an analysis of the cohort and and changes in growth with in these subgroups if we know they're consistently underserved are there any notable achievements um in Within These subgroups or are we constantly seeing a lack of growth we don't know because it's always sort of smothered in the global data um and so I think a part of what we need to do to figure out how we can better serve these students is really unpack their data specifically like we have to be very targeted in doing that and then thinking about resources and programs support for instruction that's going to that has been known to be effective with meeting these these the needs of the student population and putting them in place and I know that's going to be difficult to do when we have the kind of budget uh constraints that you um mentioned Dr Susa but you know again I I really I'm I'm deeply troubled by this so I did want to say that and then I think the other thing I wanted to um kind of just mention is you know the math I don't know about the math 7even changes if there are any thoughts on that yet you kind of alluded to there's something you're looking at have you started looking at that yet or the administration or is that something I know this is brand new for D tracking seventh grade we're we're not there yet algebra it becomes really complicated at algebra coupled with the fact that there's actually a reading level that's required for the algebra assessment so it's something we have to look at very carefully and closely I'm not sure we're there yet with those conversations um I think we're still working on um the math 6 instruction math 6 Plus instruction and actually we've kind of focused to our concentration at the now like third fourth and fifth grade for increasing that instruction to help close that Gap so our students can find greater success at the math six plus group so I don't think we're there yet one of the other things that um we're actually going to start from Preschool On Up is look at our data in preschool now that we're full day um and track our students from there through to look at that data as it aligns with when they enter into the Highland Park School District uh we think that might be really important to track um and so that's where because Middle School actually has a I I I don't have the data yet but we're actually looking at between fourth fifth grade and middle school is where we get a higher than usual transient population of students not I mean Irving has a lot because it's new so we do have a lot of enroll higher enrollment in general at Irving but our fluctuation of that and we'd have to look at the principal report comes a lot at like the grades like four through 7th is really interesting so that's where we want to look at and see where where we're at with with that first too so there's a couple that's why we're we're looking at some key data points to further unpack this data to see where it is that our students are struggling what is the um the uh what does that student look like what do those students look like what is the bigger picture how can we create like sort of a story of those students based on that data to really figure out how we can help them so I think that's where they're at for the math instruction in particular thank you and I would just say I would love to have a conversation in equity and Excellence about how we can unpack the data for the student subgroups um because again I think this is just something we have to come back to Beyond this conversation um I wanted to follow up on that as well when it comes to the student subgroups can you can you hear me um because the subgroups are speak closer to the microphone sorry that's okay the subgroups the data that we have are districtwide correct all four schools yeah that's all because all three schools one of the things that became clear through the data we got here as well as the data we got last week around discipline data is that um interventions that we've been doing at ble have been extraordinarily successful um and with discipline and from these reports that is less successful in the Middle School um and so if we could sub um also separate out the these by school these um cohorts and see are we actually are the interventions that we're doing at ble that are successful are those benefiting all students or are some students being left behind and similarly while we're not we're not seeing these advances in or in the test scores really in the Middle School are things also worse there and then I understand the issues around Staffing um you know that were unavoidable last year but this really does seem to be just it's two board meetings in a row of we are doing these interventions they're working at ble um I'd like to know exactly like I said from this are they working for everyone but it's really remarkable and just excellent work all around and why are we not able to achieve those same things in the Middle School right I me I guess we really don't know I'm sorry I guess we really don't know if those kind of achievements are happening at ble with these subgroups yet but point that we really need to have that data we would hope that that would be the I'll ask Miss Rodriguez to parse that out and see where she can she can pull with that it's unfortunate they don't give us it's that's a lot of we can do it it just need a little bit of time sh I don't think I'll have it for Thursday's meeting but I could definitely have it for next month's meeting just because the state unfortunately doesn't give us the data in that way so even getting to some of this was just a lot of leg work for us to un unpack it because they just don't send it to us like that and you know but then they ask us to fill in the spreadsheets like that so and that's what they give us as a model not to say that we can't do our own unpacking but it'll just take a little bit more time which I know uh my team can certainly do they'll just need a little time to to do that and then I'm sorry you want to go go ah oh Dr scholman yes hi everybody can you hear me yes yes yes okay I'm gonna speak in a bit of a hush tone here yeah um you know I I couldn't agree more uh um with um uh you know with Monique and uh that we don't um want to normalize inequality that you know absolutely couldn't agree with that more um I I didn't hear that happening in Dr susa's um presentation um I I didn't feel like inequality was being normalized I felt like the inequalities were being um existing inequalities were being highlighted and and and pointed to so that they can be fixed and addressed and I think it's important to you to know inequalities where they exist so that we can do something about them um and that's what I heard Dr Dr Susa doing that's what I think this District generally has tried to do perhaps not always but at least um in the in the very recent uh uh past um I'm also I don't I don't I'm not sure um how uh you know um how uh how much I don't love the language of switching uh saying you know certain sub students is not is performing at a certain level and switching that language to say you know we are not serving these students well I think that um takes what is a neutral um construction and makes it a blaming construction on the student on the teachers and the administration and I don't think we should assume that the district is doing something wrong in how we talk about it anymore than we should assume students are doing something wrong when we know often times they're not they're trying as hard as they can as Dan was saying they don't have the resources they need um so I think I see out eye on the board members have already spoken on what the issues are I just wanted to raise um some points about the language that was being suggested that we adopt thank you I think it's interesting that oh sorry I know there have been conversations at this table where there were concerns about um certain um concerns about reading performance in our schools um that were discussions that were had about the student population more globally not the subgroups and the emphasis there was on what can we do to better meet the needs of those students how can we approve our instruction so we talk about that in the context of these subgroups it's the same kind of conversation what do we need to do more what do we need to do better what do we need to strengthen to better meet the needs of our students who are being underserved and that is clearly reflected so I don't think this language shift is anything different from the kind of conversations that you yourself Ethan have initiated here at this table around how we can better meet the needs of students to see in improved growth in academics and I don't think it's neutral language to put it on the students and say the students achieved at a certain level that almost always falls to blame the student when if you're putting it on adults whose responsibility is to look to teach so students learn that's our responsibility to figure out how to teach in a way that seres students so I actually don't think that is neutral language at all and I don't think it's about blaming teachers but I do think they have a job they're respons ibility um I'm an educator myself right and I put it on myself if I don't have students learning to a level I think they should right and I think that's it's about a shift in in in the responsibility I don't see it as a uh as blaming teachers um but usually if you put it on students it does blame students um and so if you're blaming students over over or this becomes repetitive and we say the students are achieving at this then I do think that blame actually falls on the students anybody else all right um so very thoughtful discussion um I share so so many of the same concerns I want us to all take this back to our committies because we all have a hand in addressing the gaps that exist in our district so you know this is wonderful talk but let's bring it back and turn it into action um um and we'll share some of that later on with our committee reports um but right now we are going to go to public comment um the Highland Park Board of Education welcomes public participation and has reserved this time for your comments board policy number 0167 establishes and regulates the right of the public to participate in public meetings Angela do we have anybody online how many people do we have eight is there anybody online for public comment all right last call there's there's playoff baseball tonight yes that's true Night Football yeah Angela what is the Mets score the Mets one the Mets one one the Mets one okay all right guys we can no one from public comment wants to give us scores okay all right um so I'll begin uh with curriculum and instruction so guys we are reviewing curriculum a lot of this work is on us um so our curriculum committee met on Thursday um last Thursday and we started to go through um our K to5 Ela and K to8 math curriculum um to look through the revisions that were worked on over the summer um so this is a this takes a while um it if you've ever looked at a curriculum map it is very long there's a lot of numbers and letters and you know not everybody is familiar with the content so we all kind of bring to the table something a bit different um while we talk about the curriculum and we send uh or we you know discuss everything with Miss Rodriguez and um share feedback with Miss saaka and um you know continue to work on this so everybody is on the same page that the curriculum that we're reviewing right now is a draft of the like a firstr draft because to really revamp curriculum it takes a lot of time and it takes some trial and error so um you know keeping in mind what we spoke about just before about how we are um seeing some growth in some students but we're continuing to see gaps in our subgroups we really need to bring that lens back to our curriculum review um and you know when we're looking at it think about how our curriculum is targeting those um Learners so for example um one of the pieces of feedback that we shared was that in The Curriculum maps there often is a very standard list of uh ways that teachers differentiate for gifted and talented um students with disabilities um multilingual Learners and so we gave feedback like hey we should really kind of eliminate some of the things on these lists that aren't applicable or developmentally appropriate for the learner so that we really show intention behind each strategy and modification and piece of differentiation we um select because we know it works for this particular population in this particular grade in this particular content so really kind of trying to be thoughtful about that um and Miss Rodriguez did share that she is um revising those differentiation strategies um to be more content appropriate and more developmentally appropriate throughout the year um we also discussed some new uh how the new units in ela are structured previously in K to 5 they had separate reading and writing units which is something that's um been around for a long time ever since uh Lucy Caulkins Reading Writing Workshop um now that we are shifting more towards science of reading integrating um foundations um hagard for writing um we are the units are now constructed around themes so to build that content knowledge to explore theme deeply um and really integrate texts of all types so students are no longer just reading um historical fiction for six weeks they might discuss immigration as a theme and read articles about IM immigration and watch read poems about immigration and stories about immigration and really try to build a deep understanding about the topic through those literary and informational texts in addition they're now writing all throughout the unit so um there's no more now we're just going to write for four weeks they're writing in response to what they read so just today my son brought home which he's never done before a reading reflection homework so he has to write about what he reads at home so we're seeing that shift in how the units are planning and how the units are planned and how they're integrating writing um we are going to continue reviewing the k to8 math curriculum and um we also had new curricula for zoology and chemistry um so as we continue to review these we will submit feedback to um Administration and share obviously what we um discuss with you all um but this is a very long process so you know um just bear with us um we also discussed future considerations around the um grading policy the last time the grading policy was updated was in 2000 um and the district has recently uh well I guess for the last few years done some professional learning on Equitable grading practices so um it may be time to look at our grading policy and explore how we can integrate some of those Equitable grading practices um and and let's see what else did we discuss uh field trips so we looked over the field trips um I will uh share they are attached the agenda next week they will be there um and then we also uh uh Marilyn and I went to the middle sex County njsba meeting and we saw a fantastic presentation from the supervisor of educational technology at East Brunswick on developing a strategy with artificial intelligence um so we shared those notes with the committee um and Dr suska shared notes for her most recent PD on AI as well um so we're going to review those for future discussion um on the agenda we have a resolution for field trips um the resolution to approve a correction of um a home instruction end date a resolution to approve a ble crafting club with Miss Joby and that's it so the second and third grades um will be in November and December and then February and March will be fourth and fifth grades for crafting and that concludes my report equity and Excellence have nothing to report finance and Facilities finance and Facilities is is meeting next week so I can just go over the agenda um so on the agenda that we'll be voting on next next uh meeting is there's General Bill list um there'll be a resolution to approve travel uh that's attached to the um agenda uh resolution to approve the following contractors for Professional Services that was Mr Ray that we heard about at Irving and Janna Lee Consulting um working with our K12 ELA teachers um we also have a resolution a pass through for the non-public schools of a technology purchase um resolution to approve the donation of a step two Playhouse going to iring Primary School for the preschoolers um uh can add a district placement for a student um montgom Academy resolution to um replace the refrigeration system for the walk-in freezer at the high school uh the cafeteria there are two um uh proposals here and resolution to accept uh the uh the quote from Jay Hill repairs to take care of um the refrigeration problem at the high school that's it expect the agenda to be longer uh Finance when we meet again any questions for finance okay um personnel and communication Personnel did meet unfortunately I was unable to attend but Marilyn thank you for taking notes for me um we went over the agenda they went over the agenda it was Dr cesa uh Nikki and Marilyn in attendance um just of note uh what I'll be going over the agenda two of the resignations actually they were hired but didn't ever start the job so when you see there are multiple resignations but they they didn't they never started um also the county superintendent approved a revision to Dr sesa's contract so that she can be the sponsor for um ASP um to review the weekly report to DCF and perform the other needed functions for the program um under Communications Dr sesa is planning to set up meetings with parents to get input and feedback on strategic planning updates as it moves forward so they discussed options on what to call the groups and when they might meet Etc um and over the agenda um we have resolution to approve the amended contract as I explained for Dr cesa for um backd to September 1st through the end of the year um resolution to approve four leaps of absences resolution to approve three resignations um resolution to approve uh appointments I don't know how many letters that is on multiple Pages um and a resolution to approve um corrections to start and end dates for the interm supervisor of stem and a job coach parah and that's it short agendas all along all right and uh questions for personnel and Communications all right uh policy uh policy did meet we met uh I guess on the ninth um it was Alison Jen uh Dr ssco and myself um and we talked about mostly we talked about are things that are not yet actually all of them are things are not yet coming coming for a vote uh we discussed the field trip regulations actually for field trips the Administration has requested some uh changes to the process or maybe process changes are needed to uh improve the process um so some of the revisions to the policy that we looked at um was extending the number of days of notice that a teacher need or an advisor needs to make when requesting a field trip right now it's 10 days um it's not enough time to go to uh check on chaperon and get the general approvals that are needed um so the policy we looked at the suggestion was 60 days that seemed a bit long so it's going to go back to Administration to find out figure out what they really need you know to make this work the other piece of the policy was the process for getting chaperon for the trip there's some changes in that as well that are being proposed um for example having an administrator uh attend trips that are either International or outside of New Jersey so administrators near in case of a problem comes up so um was initial conversation the feedback goes back to leadership team and they discuss it and it'll come to us again um the other discussion that's keeps coming up on our meetings is um the idea when we when we abolish the um emergency meetings policy that was covid related um the there's been a conversation about whether at board meetings we should pick up the provision that that the public could send emails as a way to comment at meetings um and we've had a range of opinions on that we're kind of split um so we really would love additional board feedback on that question um so that's still for consideration not moving forward um and then we had also had the conversation about the uh the um uh meeting that that Alice and I attended about AI policy East Brunswick has a so ston es has put out a directoral policy it's actually was attached to the minutes if you like to take a look at it as is the um the workshop presentation that Dr cesa went to and that we went to um it seems like it's needs to start from the district at some point the district creates a plan for AI and or ties to policy I'm not actually sure which comes first any case it's a long process it's not something that's going to happen overnight but definitely conversations are starting and it's you know if you there's there uh these conversations starting in many districts as you know as the need is there um and that's it on the agenda there are no new policies everything on second read we talked about last time so um that's it I'm done there's any questions um sorry quick question yes so for the rule with the administrators attending International trips is that something that's been put in place or is that something that's being discussed of being put in place oh great question yes so uh we're gonna we want to put it in place starting this year so when I started here in the position I realized that administrators weren't attending these out of state and out of country conferences just to let you know that um in the event that something happens especially if it's an infraction that is pretty serious um or disciplinary nation in nature only people that hold a a principal certificate or Certificate of Eligibility are able to actually act in that capacity so in light that if something happens at that point uh certified staff members that are teachers um are uh not able to do so and so that was a little bit of a concern going outside of the country or outside of the St if something were to arise or happen um you know that there was an administrator there to act um in you know in the context of that in the context of you know your parent when you're away and that kind of thing so I think you know my previous roles and in other districts and just kind of taking the pulse of things that it's something that's very common practice in other districts that wasn't here uh for many reasons as I was told when I started in the position so I think it's it's really important to have one of the things we talked about was local um when local overnight trips happen so for example model un is going to Ruckers for their annual trip we didn't feel that when we discussed it that a a administrator had to necessarily be there on site because it's local in New Jersey but that an administrator would be on call so whether it's the building principal assistant principal myself U Miss Rodriguez you know whichever one of us is available we would decide that in advance and the person leading the trip would know that we're you know Mr Gold knows he's going to Ruckers and I'm his administrator on call in the event something happens I have to be available at any time throughout the duration of that to head to Ruckers to the Hyatt and address whatever problem it would be so that was kind of what we had talked about um to make sure that that was all happening we had very similar conversations last year hence there was a sidebar for our nurses agreement on paying nurses as chaperon because students can't especially if you have um medication that is a narcotic that's a controlled substance students can't travel with it themselves unless they're with their parent or someone thing for their parents uh but I can't do that as an administrator a school nurse someone who is certified as a school nurse has to hold their narcotics it has to be transported in a certain way under locked conditions in their own hotel room in a locked situation it's very very detailed for the protection of everybody so that was something that came up too when nurses weren't going on these trips I'm like well who's carrying their meds and it led us kind of down this Rabbit Hole of something that you know we've been wanting to clean up for a couple of years it's just um you know priority of of things uh to clean up our systems and processes so it'll start this year um and everybody that is involved in planning those trips does know they've asked some uh some very great questions and um we're we're putting those systems and processes in place thank you for the you're welcome yeah sorry I was long detailed answer I'm sorry the answer was this year but this is why so it's part of a larger conversation working hopefully hello hello um my question is about the AI policy because there isn't one currently um what happens because if there's no policy can someone be you know said they're using AI for you I just don't know if it takes a long time what what happens in the interim that assume each teacher have a policy and yeah so I mean it depends on what like if they're using AI to uh the talk the example we had talked about in our policy committee was if they're using AI to cheat so if they throw something in an AI to create their essay and it shows up as plagiarism it's the same thing as our plagiarism policy so that uh is a really good example of what we discussed um and so just to let people know that that's actually been quite around for quite a number of years so I the last year I taught was 2015 it's been a little while since I've been in the classroom but I teach um at uh some University as an adun professor and ours is built into canvas um our platform but we actually have it Google Classroom has it automatically in there as well um throwback to 2015 it was called turnit in.com so turnit in.com was a popular one that I think is still being used at middle sex College uh for it so you throw it in you throw it in that and it gives you a plagiarism check so those things have been around for quite a number of years already so some of that isn't new plagiarism and all of that but it depends on to the extent of what they're using it they we also have um uh categories like inappropriate use of Internet so if somebody is using some of these AI tools are remarkable I could put myself in a video and it could be speaking French for me you know or or photo the photo editing and the video editing is absolutely crazy remarkable um but we have if students do that we have um code of conduct for like inappropriate use of internet or something like that if that comes up so to say we have policy we have procedures and ways to support students growth and development in using these tools it's just it's it's in like different categories not defined as AI as a whole group does that make sense okay I have another question I guess about that well first thank you for sharing that presentation I haven't gone through it yet but I'm excited to just hearing how much you all have sort of hyped it up right Che it out I hope it's actually good and you're not like oh wait this is it's true I believe itally you got me sold um and I mean this has been definitely AI has been the topic of conversations at educational conferences everywhere and I just wanted to insert kind of the special education role in that because it's been big in our our conversations as well and I think in a positive way like how are we enhancing accessibility for students through Ai and then what are the limitations so I don't know if that was in this presentation but it'll be curious probably not okay I smell Consulting work for you may right right for someone I know um but yeah I I'm just really curious to hear those kind of conversations and to see us really figuring out how best to use AI in a way for our students with disabilities for way that's going to enhance their access and their learning opportunities absolutely and I think that's part of the conversation too is you know I'm of the mindset of like sometimes limiting those things doesn't really teach our students the most appropriate use of it so but it it's a careful balance of educating a bunch of adults that don't know how to use it on how to right same thing with social media and use of those kinds of things you know I didn't grow up with social media so now as an adult I have it and do I know proper use of it and if I if I don't what am I doing to to help students do it right so same thing with AI and how do we how do we work with the staff to really understand its capacity to understand how we can use it for good um but also how we help to make sure it's not being used for the the wrong reasons or inappropriate reasons or things like that so there's definitely a balance and a challenge but there's some really great ways we could use it um but there's definitely some scary ways that could also be used and look it's it's here it's not going anywhere and I feel like the approach somehow has to be um that it cannot be sort of a punitive approach to knowing students are going to use it to help them write an essay or report like that's just because it's out there and just figure out how to use it and how to guide them in using it effectively to generate ideas to you know help them with their writing right exactly um I saw what I thought was a really wonderful uh learning opportunity and prompt which was a uh professor uh had their students use AI uh to answer an essay question and then the actual assignment was to go in and find all of the errors and footnote and try to find what data that the AI was using and that the generative AI was using and all the students came out of that assignment absolutely horrified and was like I'm never going to do this again everything's wrong um and that just seemed like a really smart way of doing it like what can you find wrong here yeah um I wanted to just bring up for discussion the policy change regarding emailing public comment I'm curious asking for feedback yes we are asking for feedback we are feedback um so the you know we have not since the policy was implemented for the the emergency policy we have not received an email public comment ever um so we would be designing I guess what the um parameters of submitting an emailed public comment would be so separate email address you can submit in this time frame have to put name and address like things like that so I'm just curious um what everybody's reaction to that is or what your thoughts are on it if you have any so is the thought that because there isn't a current mechanism for this we may be I mean we have to be someone will have to be monitoring this right as as another level of monitoring um yeah to be honest I don't I haven't thought about this I don't have much of a point of view um you it seems like if it's you know is it broken you know do we need to do we need to change it it doesn't seem like it given we've not received an email but I I thought about this just now I was kind of excited about it just back pre Bard that I I really nervous public speaker I'm sure you can tell it hasn't really gotten much better um and I you know I was really nervous to call in and speak at these meetings so I thought I probably would have taken advantage of something like that like something timely that I wanted the public to hear that I shared not just you know I know in our agenda it shows the title of the email the subject of the email so people know that parents might be emailing us about a subject but not hearing the content of that so I thought I would have used it but we offered it and nobody's taking advantage of it so far so maybe that was just me I don't know so you know I don't necessarily feel super strongly about it but I'm willing to read them if people want to take advantage certainly in accessibility feel comfort that Mak sense I was probably the naysayer on the policy committee I you can tell what I [Laughter] so I'm feeling that it's not maybe it's not broken so what why we have we are hybrid so um public has many opportunities to communicate with us and they don't have to come up the video you know so there's those opportunities um we are not aware of any other District know this is not a reason not to do it that any other District does this of course most of districts are not even hybrid at this point so I feel we have opened up a lot of accessibility I wouldn't be concerned about an occasional email my concern is when there's a very significant topic for the public and we get a lot of emails and depending on the tone of the email I'd Rather somebody share their opinion rather than me reading their opinion if it's not a tone I'm comfortable with not me personally but the board in general so that was the the pro and con you know between us which is why we were gonna you know look open up for any other board comments one way or another I can kind of at first I was like I'm not really sure how I fall on this because I can see both sides of it the accessibility and the you know but again with Marilyn said um it couldn't be abused um maybe maybe I live through covid here on board so maybe I'm feeling that way I would not have wanted to read the emails people same time we do already have two very accessible ways of having your voice heard and if it's really that important you might have to step out of your comfort zone just a little bit because I hate public speaking too but you're on the board the school board I yeah very uncomfortable with cameras too so but I mean I think and I have seen people who are uncomfortable step up and step out of their comfort zone and really you know it's it's different when you read it in your own voice than it is when somebody else reads it and the context is missing as well if you don't hear it from a voice rather than just reading an an email um and it can be misinterpreted I think if one of us is reading it for another person um because you're not hearing their contacts or seeing their facial expressions or you know the tone in their voice Ethan um so just to clarify so our rules currently do permit email public comment and the question is should we change that we abolish that policy well no no um not currently we just abolished the policy um from the emergency meeting policy from um covid times and that had the email option in there as part of virtual way to participate so we held on to the um virtual meeting structure um but once we abolish that we have to decide now do we want to move that piece over to our regular public comment policy or not I see um I think I agree with Marilyn and and Nikki on this one uh is always a balancing act just to connect back to our earlier discussion we only a short step away from AI generated uh public comments and um I mean you know I think 99% of the time it's a it is funny it's hilarious but the 1% is would not be funny at all um so I think it's it'd be good to keep you know I think Maryland makes a good point by having a hybrid meeting we've made ourselves more accessible than just that every other District in the state as far as I can tell um I think keeping a measure of iners public comment is probably the way to go that's what I would vote for yeah I think I find my S swayed in that direction as well I wasn't particularly kind of on one side of other but I think you know members of the community can email us and and we can and communicate with us that way right and then they can have different ways they can be in person they can comment online and that feels like multiple ways to you know give feedback to the board and participate in this um I did actually think of AI starts sing comments to us just that discussion so um I was in the same head space as Ethan I guess but yeah so I think I'm I'm kind of more persuaded to to not having it at this point well I'm on the committee and so you know that I was I was holding back um because you know in the in the committee meetings I think I was the one who was like you know maybe we should consider this just to open up more access more I'm never a believer of well we're accessible if it's not 100% accessible that it's not good enough um but and I mean confidence is one thing and people should perhaps work on those kind of skills but not everyone is at that place at the same time so I just wanted to kind of give space for that but I also said that I was also not 100% um adamant about the fact that I think we need this so you know just listening to the conversation if it's generally held belief that we don't need to open up this uh new mode of access for very valid Reasons I'm fine with that as well um I mean yes the AI situation is the most scary to me so just thinking about that thank you Ethan and Dan um that's probably will push me over the edge so um so yeah I'll just say that okay all right I just want everyone to know I I just want everyone to know I'm really here this is me not well I can't prove it thank you um all right so speaking of that it is time for our second public comment the Highland Park Board of Education welcomes public participation and has Reserve this time for your comments Angelo how many people do we have online do is there anybody for public comment online hi all right um hold on one second um okay um do we have any Lea on reports I have something so I have something for quite a few things actually for the human relations commission um so today is indigenous people's day a day which is observed and dedicated to commemorating and honoring the history culture and resiliency of the indigenous people of the Americas um the historical commission is holding or was holding an event featuring a lecture on Native American participation in the Revolutionary War by Claire Garland uh that was tonight at 7M at the reform church uh Reformed Church Social Hall sorry I can't really read it that far there will be a trunk or treat event by the Highland Park Police Department on Tuesday October 19th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Highland Park Community Center parking lot it's a fun event um there will be a Halloween costume parade and Festival on Sunday October 27th from 1: to 4:00 pm at the Highland Park Community Center and windows of understanding is coming up in collaboration with the human re relations commission hland Park Arts Comm Mission Zone 16 Center Highland Park gives a hoot Pride Center and is organized and supported by the new brunic cultural center and Rucker Maz and gross School of Art the theme will be climate change wellness and food insecurity and will be more youth art and will be more youth artist centered the goal is to have youth of all ages involved and would they would love to have students from Highland Park schools be a part of it so if anybody wants more information you can email the chair of the HRC uh Norma Norma Vargas at HRC oh hpb.com um for more information and how to participate and last the human relations commi commission is also currently looking for volunteers to join the commission and if they're interested they can contact HRC hpb.com Nikki would you be I'm going to send you an email tomorrow morning but would you mind sending that to me um I'd love to put it in the board bu bulletin to be able to communicate that out just there maybe more than eight people will you know there's eight people watching but I would love to share that with everyone that's great stuff thank you you got something or no I have Board of Health so may pass on I attended the Board of Health meeting um the other day representing the uh representing us and um couple of topics that came up there the first of the Board of Health is very eager to work with us as they have in the past um and um had some questions or or thoughts one thing they'd like us to do is to share a flyer um about safe storage of guns there's a representative um from The Brady group in town here that is looking to um kind of spread the word about that seems to be an increase in the number of applications for guns so she was would like us to be doing that um other topic that they raised to look for school information um was about our um vaccination rate uh apparently there's also an increase in measles in the county I believe um but in fact so I Dr cesa helped me with um with the data which I'll share with them which is that we are at between 98 and 99% compliance on vaccinations um and I'll share that with them and um the other area there of concern related to our schools um was asthma safe schools which is I guess like a state program um and they were questioning whether we had asthma health plans for our students which we in fact do so I'll share that template with them um and policy on vaccinations I'll also share um and the as the reason for the the concern asthma that is also that Highland Park has a higher number of students of people in the community that are according to the middlex County Health Report we had a higher Asma rate in our community as opposed to some others so that's why they're raising that topic So within the county our Highland Park is high with a higher than the county average there's there's a County Health Report I could share with you that they had that's it that's my report quick question Marilyn was that gun data like on the gun purchases or was that local I think applications application was at Highland Park yeah yeah oh yeah wow interesting yeah I believe that's what she was saying yeah increase in applications for guns I believe and that's been increasing since I was on last year that was already increasing so it's continuing I guess yeah so so there there the flyer was about safe storage scary any other liaison reports all right um I do not have a president's report this evening any old business um I have old business I would like to briefly clarify for the public the intention behind the um special education program evaluation Dr Susa can you explain please that it's not to cut oh I had to I had to like finish my thought that it is not in fact to the I'm sorry we're almost on hour too um it's not to cut or try to cut services to students it's to improve um how the program functions so if you want to absolutely so I I shared uh at the cpeg meeting um a a lot of information but really the Crux of it is there's things in the district that were we're that are that are good that we want to make better there's things in the district that are better that we want to make best and I think that's a a really good philosophy so when I started in superint tennessy there were a number of things hence you saw with like field trips for example where like our systems and processes weren't as tight as maybe they should have been but just you know there's a ton of things that are always something to do so it's just we're always a work in progress so one of those areas was intervention and referral services with multi-tiered systems of support and what we found uh when we did an initial program evaluation of inrs a couple of years ago was that um we had some in we had some things that were going really well in all four buildings but one of the things we were lacking was that uh we didn't have a system for Data Tracking for using that data to inform further um in interventions um to to track if our students were really making gains because that intervention Referral Services oftentimes a springboard to special education um classification um we didn't have exactly full vertical articulation across we had horizontal articulation but not vertical articulation from school to school so if a student was leaving irsa Bartle what was happening when they were going to middle school for example um the other thing that we found even to this day is that our students um can find success in special in uh intervention and referral services but sometimes they're just not making the gains for which we want to see at a pace we want to see right every student learns at their own pace and I think Monique made that abundantly clear with adults as well that we all learn at our own pace and sometimes as a teacher you're like but they're not hitting grade level they're not hitting it they're not hitting it and if they're not it's like okay well I've got to refer them to somewhere so even after I interrup if they're still not making the gains that a teacher might want to see even though they are making some gains what happens to the students and so oftentimes the teachers are like all right want going to refer them for special education but that might not actually be appropriate so what what an area that we're finding is with our how do we keep students in the interventions within that multi-tiered system of support to continue making those gains because if they're not making any gains and we've exhausted our Tools in our toolbox then we have to look at referring them for special education so we have some of those those systems in place and some of them weren't exactly as strong as we wanted so we looked at inrs we worked to streamline that we brought in a group to do a program evaluation they gave us recommendations they provided professional development we had a lot of trainings a lot of support and now we're working on making that stronger so it was good but now we're making it better and ultimately we want it to be the best so now we want to take a deeper dive into that connection the other thing I spoke about a lot is that one of the things I noticed was we we work in these silos general education and special education as these silos instead of working more collectively for example um Orton Gillingham training for example so we've been training all teachers now on Orton gingham we're not just focusing on general education teachers or special education teachers but we're really trying to bridge that Gap because we're looking at inclusive education how do we provide more inclusive inclusive education for our students in a least restricted environment and that's really what we want to look at so closing the silos closing those those gaps to figure out where we need and and really that why is you know why are we doing this we really want to make sure we're providing inclusive education for all students in the least restrictive environment in a manner that works for all of our students so it's not about getting less resources it's about making sure we have the appropriate resources and that we have enough and and are we servicing our students you know we always look at our um out of District population for example you know our number of students going out of district is actually down and last budget presentation we talked about that that's great news that means we're servicing more of our students in District which is where we'd love them to be however not all of our students it is an appropriate replacement and we have to find an out of District placement but what we're seeing is that out of District tuition is going up the transport for them is going up so therefore our numbers are increasing so there's all of these buckets and unfortunately it all plays a role as you can see our special education population is still underperforming that has been on our radar there are issues with our special education students with discipline reports and that data is not okay so we really need to look at so many different lenses of our special education population to figure out what kind of programs what kind of services our budget our comp sence pieces because specialed is so deep um that it's important that we look at different facets of it and that's really our why for it so it's not about decreasing Services is I want to know are we providing the right services and how can we do better how can we be the best and how do we push that needle and with a fresh set of unbiased eyes through a program evaluation we can really get that that information so we'll review some proposals and every proposal is going to have slightly different lens and it's important that Administration and the board kind of look at each proposal to decide is that really are these the lenses we want to look through with those goals in mind and that's going to be really important I hope I summarized two hours worth of a meeting in five seconds thank you so much but I'm sorry I sounded like I was yelling at you please explain um all right raise my hand and say I tell the truth the whole real truth any other questions sorry any other old business well I just want to say I attended the cpag meeting well a few of us I think here attended it was great I mean I just for me I I felt good to be there to see sort of that coming together of administration and um parents um and I stayed for almost I think the whole meeting was able to hear your full presentation and hear some of the um Q&A I think one of the there were a lot of concerns around this issue that you rais Alison I think there was also this misunderstanding I hope a misunderstanding that there's an intention to try to decrease the number of um um classifications in certain disability categories because there were categories that were dinged for us in the past um so I think that's a slightly different um question I think than what you may have posed just now Allison but I believe you also addressed that in the meeting as well making it clear that um yes this was an area of concern that was kind of um flagged by the state but that's not going to necessarily be the driving goal or not at all the driving goal behind you know this um look at the program and the need to kind of uh reduce classification of any particular student yeah group although you know in oh we do know in special education there is certainly disproportionality and um you know over um disability categories so we do have to be very um clear about recognizing that as well and I hope that the evaluation would look at where we stand where that's consider absolutely and that's why I think you know bringing those proposals to the committee because you know the we're in a really awesome place here as the Board of Education that so many great areas of expertise to be able to look at these proposals to know you know are we really good is this group really going to be able to help us get our goal it's a very expensive uh proposition and undertaking and we want to make sure we get it right and just like I told the cpad committee and I'll say it publicly here too is you know if those proposals aren't hitting the Mark we will go out and get new proposals we will keep you know pounding the payement we want to get this right um and uh and and make sure that the information comes to really help us um with with so many you know uh of the areas that we we would like to get some feedback on and maybe some areas you know for recommendations um so that's really important to us I know there was I know you had two I'm sorry you had two proposals you already received correct or well add it today three oh nice I did so equity and Excellence tomorrow I haven't put the new one on I just got it today but we have three I I reached out to five uh groups um one that cpeg actually gave me as a recommendation um Unfortunately they have not gotten back to me yet so and that's what I told CPC too is that you know I reach out to a lot of groups um I talk to each one of them the same thing that I just told everybody is what I tell each group they ask questions a lot of them have done their homework already and looking at you know whatever data is available online and then they come with very specific questions um I tell them the same thing that I want multiple stakeholder input I'd love parent input like these are all the things that we want um staff students you know as much as we can get um and then we'll go through their proposals to what we can afford of course um and and it is a robust budget for it um so I reached out to multiple groups for that and um some of them are Law Firm some of them are like retired directors of ed services that that do something like that and again wait till you see them every proposal has a quite a different lens um so we'll just look at them and like I said if none of them are are speaking to us and we're just it's not hitting the mark on what we really want then we will try again uh I started with reaching out to uh superintendant for their recommendations because it's a very important high-profile high priced program evaluation I wanted to get referrals of groups that actually did this really well in that superintendent and other directors of V Services said this was so great like we had this done the recommendations were awesome and we're putting it in place and we're seeing change like that are great things and continuing those and here's where we're improving or making change and that's ultimately what I wanted to see uh so we took those recommendations as a starting point some recommendations from cpeg and now we're we're we're going from there um even just my group of of colleagues across the the the state in special ed who do you use uh DD went out to her group who do you use just to try to get that reference it was um to us a better place to be than a more formal RFP oftentimes or sometimes with an RFP uh depending on how it's built may end up having to do low bid and we didn't want to limit ourselves we really the recommendations was really really important to make sure that we get it right as you can see from sometimes when we get lower budget program evaluations that we don't always get you know what we want to see or or we're limited uh we budgeted quite an quite a bit of money for this and I really want to get it right absolutely thank you and that would just also be something the flag is that you started this process and the board approved it a long time ago this is not something that just recently came up this has been something that was budgeted for and has been planned for a long last since last year I think my only I'm sorry this is really the last thing I think my only um concern with with this com with this discussion generally was just the the fact that I don't recall us having a substitute conversation about the IR irns like evaluation and I don't know how that how I missed any kind of robust sort of conversation about that process when it was completed um at the board table either in curriculum or EO and Excellence so I'm not sure how or why that didn't happen but clearly I feel like that is definitely something that should have been um discussed vigorously um in our committees and then of course at the board table but that is clearly being corrected with this process um which I know is bigger and um more involved okay um any other old business any new business I can just maybe end I don't know if El to say is that um Dr susco shared the other day that Highland Park High School was rated as one of the 10 best public schools in middlex County we're actually number eight n.com n.com is that good or not good I don't know I don't know looks good in P I don't know is pretty yeah okay so we okay so we we came out number eight in the county for high schools and most of the other high schools are way bigger than we are with way greater resources so I was pretty happy with it it's nice to see and then uh I think Dr Donovan shared it on her Instagram too which if you haven't followed the high school even if you don't have a high schooler the Highland Park High School Instagram is very very active and it's very yes it's very great um so my new business is just um to ask you to think about something uh moving forward we get uh right around December Denise starts is asking me for dates for meetings for next year and last year we had a discussion because Denise came from another District um and there's like two models of boards there's the committee of the whole where you have two meetings a month and you Workshop everything through the entire board and then uh you have your voting meeting later on in the month and then there's the committee model which is the committee model we use that um and the committee model is we have our subcommittees we discuss things in our subcommittees we work through um the agenda items um and then we report back and um then we have a voting meeting some districts or most districts with um committees have one meeting a month that's public for voting and at that meeting they report on everything that the committee has done since the last meeting um the thing with that is that it's really important that whatever you're discussing that's up for vote has been shared multiple times so it's nothing that is a surprise to the public um so like you know things like this evaluation or um the you know the budget um prioritizing interventionists um working towards a cell phone policy like we've been talking about these things for a while prior to actually doing any voting and now that doesn't account for everything right there's always something like people that we need to hire and things of that nature um that do show up so the the board had prior to this year mostly um two meetings a month workshop and voting and then also the committee meetings so this year we tried some months with one meeting and some months with the committee and the workshop and the voting meeting um now I've had several board members share feedback like it's confusing because sometimes there are things that we want to move you know on a workshop agenda but we can't because it's the workshop agenda and you can't move just one thing because then it's appears it's more important or you know well why can't we vote on everything at every meeting so there's a lot um to consider but what I wanted to ask you think about is um whether you want to strengthen your committee work and move to one voting meeting a month or if you want to continue with this model but perhaps kind of I don't know you know try to lessen a little bit of what we do in the Committees because we're all stress we're all you know spread very thin to put it plainly to put it plainly um and we want like board members to be you know we want this to be a sustainable situation um and then and then the other model is the committee of the whole where you have two meetings a month but there are no committees you do everything through um the whole board except for personnel except for personnel Yes except for personnel that's exective right um so anyway that's what I want you to think about my request if we do um decide to shift to you know to to deepen our committee work is that we take the time that we would have spent in our second meeting and we allocate that to the Committees so that we can kind of have deeper conversations some of our some of our conversations um go on for a while and we have to cut them short and sometimes we don't get to everything on the agenda um some of our committees meet for a long time and some of them only meet for 45 minutes and that's you know not really enough time to get like some real work done so if we do shift to to that model I think that we would discuss maybe um you know extending some committees to an hour to kind of account for that change in time um so that we could be more thorough on things um and I guess it's a good month to think about it because we have two meetings this month and two meetings next month um so just think about it as we move forward um so that we can kind of come up with a plan so just to be clear are you asking us also to consider the committee as a whole uh okay even though I know that's not what you're okay think too deep on that one don't think about that too much um you can I mean you could go online and like watch some meet committees that do committees as of a whole um it's very long um and can be pretty draining um you know the the reason I like committee work is because you really get to specialize in something um and kind of carry it through um but what the only way committee work is is successful is if people you know keep up with the reporting and you know show up keep up show up keep up and um also that they trust other committees to do the work that's a big deal um so you know knowing like I may have a question about you know something that policy is discussing but I I'm not going to question everything that policy does I'm just you know like I'll get their report and then I'll you know ask a question if I have it so really just trusting that everybody on your board is is doing um you know what's right and you know really making the committee purposeful um along those lines uh as we think about that could a committee agendas be shared um with the whole board before the meetings in case I mean at this point we're asking questions after the fact if there are questions before the fact would that be a possibility I think it's a possibility but again I think that goes back to trusting the Committees right because very often our committee agendas have a lot of documents linked to them and that's what we discuss so for example like we had like hundred of pages linked to our committee reports I don't want us to die go into the Weeds on committees that we were not on right so if you know that I'm discussing like curriculum you might have a wondering about curriculum overall and send me that question but I feel like it would not be um someone's place to then dive into all of The Curriculum maps right and do the committee work for the committee that already has members on it if that makes sense so I think it's fine to notify like members about topics but I don't want things to get too muddled I don't know if I'm explaining myself correctly but I'm just worried about like well you're sharing it after the fact though we are getting all of that information ultimately it's just if if there happened to be something that stood out to you on the agenda that maybe we could then extend that question ahead of time that's what I'm saying like just timely right like the topics that we're talking about so like you know like oh we're going to be talking about AI in the next you know few cnii meetings do you have any wonderings any questions but like for me as the committee chair I don't want you taking on the role of someone in the committee to go through all of the things that are linked there it's you know what I mean like send me your questions but don't get into the weeds so to speak like let us do it and report back to you like trust us to do our work Point too is that then we just all we're a whole committee then we're doing Committee of the whole anyway so it's a it's a balance but but I don't think you're you're saying you know you can't ask question yeah you know but but I think that that's that's the decision if we all want if you either go deep into it all or policy for example you know we might have General policy questions but it's helpful to know oh you're reviewing the AI policy right and then might say oh yeah we have to watch that presentation that you shared or maybe there's a question that would come up to the agenda right I agree with you so I'm saying like sharing the agenda but just understand that like you know we're have we have topics on there there's no expectation for you to go in right to that would the purp things yeah that defeats the whole purpose um and it it would you know it would be honestly a lot for me to communicate guys so well I also want to add to so the majority of the agenda building happens at at my level Denise's level Miss Rodriguez's level and then we always reach out saying sometimes we just keep the some of the same topics right but the data and then often times what we do is we will email you get my email saying here is the agenda if you have anything else you'd like to add please tell Jen and she will communicate it with me to add it to the agenda and that's part of it too is that a lot of it is built sometimes from our continued conversations or like Mo'Nique will reach out and say hey we really wondering like she told me hey looking at the I'm writing actually you're all talking I'm like okay I need to add that to an agenda I need to add to the agenda and sometimes that's part of it but like Personnel is a really good example right everyone's going to get in the weeds but if there's Hot Topic items a recent Hot Topic item I said to Marilyn or I'll I'll call and saying I really need everybody to know about this and then that way from the board level or Jen like hey communicate this I really need this to say where are we with support on this or hey this needs to go out because it's a Hot Topic item you all find out eventually so that you come to the table with that information so I think to some degree is communicated when it's a very hot topic item or one that right am I making sense with that okay yeah so like if there's something that's very pressing um or something you know that um we have like sometimes we haven't had to since I've been on the board but occasionally we would have to call a special meeting and that's kind of one of the things with like the one board meeting a month you tend you you know sometimes something might come up right um so you know I think that that's kind of where where we're going is we want to make sure that everything that's being put here is something that everyone's clear about um and sharing the agendas can definitely add you know help us with that um but what I don't want to happen is like 15 questions about minute details and all of the committee notes going back and forth because the purpose of committees is to do the work of the committee um and to share out but also you know if you I agree like if we are sharing the topics of what's going to be on the agenda with the rest of the board like those General questions that someone might have are really good to bring to the committee or to send to the committee chair ahead of time so that we can get that information ready for committee um so something like that so do you have a specific what you want us to do now for by when is to come up with because I really just trying to figure out what I need to yeah and yeah and I think for me this is the only model I know since I've been on this board and I do know that this model was instituted um I believe at Darcy's um ADV advisement and her leadership under her leadership because there was an a need to increase the transparency of our committee work and to ensure that as you mentioned all kind of discussions that or topics that are voted on have been thoroughly vetted in a public that was the main thing and discussed it didn't just show up on an agenda to vote on that day exactly had been an issue in the past so you know that this is all I know um I'm totally fine with staying with the also am fine with considering another option my concern is I still can't and maybe you can help me with this how do we avoid not getting to the point where where we're at a voting meeting and we haven't had proper um vetting of this conversation of a topic right in public I still don't see how we're going to well a lot of that a lot of that is on [Laughter] me I don't think that cuts it no I don't think so so I think that that a lot of it falls on the president and the vice president during the agenda meeting to be like hey I don't think we have enough background on this for this to move forward and we've done that a few times where we have said like we can't move this right now right we've done that here with this model several times so we're meeting twice a month even when we're often me yeah so we've had that happen but it hasn't like this year was kind of a trial it only maybe happened this year once yeah once but also you know being courageous enough to say like no we're not going to put that through because we didn't get to talk about it um you know I don't I I could slow things Down's something to Happ I was going to ask about that like do we always have to meet and then vote can we just delay it a month except we want to hire somebody no no no I mean maybe there's some things that can wait some things that can't but it seems like we have the committee meetings we're expected to then vote on those things right away and a lot of that also is with making sure the agenda is prepared in time and the Committees are sharing thorough reports you know like that's where uh a lot of the information comes from as are we getting the reports are we reading the reports are we reading them I I would also like make sure that we're actually keeping up because you know we want to make sure that we're we don't show up to the table unprepared right and I was going to add to that so my board notes may or may not play a role in decisions and how that so I also want that feedback to think about how my board notes could play a role in your thinking about that process too so that was something I instituted when I started as a way to increase communication and transparency especially because we try to get all committees before Workshop but that doesn't always happen because of crazy holidays the way life Falls and the way things happen so sometimes they're in between and then oftentimes what happens is we can Workshop all of this and even tonight you said but it'll probably change next time but if the committee already met now you're throwing things on but sometimes I need that voted on because we have to act on it so there's a lot of things that I try to communicate saying hey between this and that's what try what I do my board notes it's like hey here's some things and here's an explanation for it especially personnel and then the next one you're going to get is in between then and then if commun didn't report here's why these items are on here and here's information on it but maybe thinking about the way my board notes can help help with that communication and transparency just I know it doesn't help with the public because those are confidential board notes but I love the feedback on ways to make that better too I just wanted to throw that in the mix thanks the board notes fabulous love it so grateful that you instituted the board it helps me I know for sure like where to go to there like a quick so I think it's very helpful internally but again it doesn't really help with the public um conversation so but again I do appreciate please keep doing those board notes so I don't know I I just want to put this out there that maybe as we're thinking about this we almost had somewhat of a trial but I feel like even going through a little bit more of an extended trial period with some more months like um under that model would be helpful just so we could all sort of get a feel for how it works for each of us and then as a whole um before we sort of vote to change our our our our format entirely that's so I had a question because I just want to clarify if it's just voting meetings only are we at any point discussing during that day because sometimes another question might come up when when something's read that you might have not thought about when you were reading the yeah so you would go through the same agenda so all of the committee reports would be shared public comment a few times like committee discussions you know uh like we had with policy all of that um still goes still happens and then at the end you know the last thing is well almost last thing is voting on The Action items um so it would really um only be successful if we are really forward thinking you know like if we're making you know if we're intentional on making sure that we're talking about like some of these bigger ticket items for a while prior to bringing them to the table it's not something like we need to change the coach on tennis or something like that right that it's that's not something that's debatable well well I mean I guess it could be but it's not something that you know it's not our call it's not our well right um but also it's not something that any of us would be like oh you you know like something like a program evaluation getting the proposal reading the proposal getting those answers that that's a big thing right and that's something that we want to make sure that we um present and look at and so everybody kind of has to be okay with staying on top of everything would it require more committee meetings then like there's been times when committees have had to regroup I think a few times facil usually Finance in facilities yeah um yeah that's actually where my question is from to Denise or Christina is um are aren't there there are times when you need are there times when we need to meet more frequently because of deadlines and timelines and so like how does that impact the business office how does that impact our that decision is impacted by the business office right so we do meet more frequently during the budget budet season right so that's something that we we automatically see that the the financing facilities committee will meet multiple times to discuss the budget to go through the budget with a fine fine tooth home before we do a budget presentation and those committee Ms are sent to the entire board and there are questions that come back and then we address them at the next committee so um in January and February I think we met like five times um at least uh to discuss the budget in terms of public meetings public meetings whether there's two or one month if we had emergency contract that needed to be awarded we would have to call a special voting meeting um which we which would have to get 48 hours notice and we could do that if there if there was a need to vote on specific um but sometimes we called an extra uh finance and Facilities meeting prior to Executive session to discuss a topic yeah my recommendation to piggyback and I know Dan you have one something to say so I'll just be real quick and then I'm gonna toss it over to Dan sorry Alison um is that if if that's the and we're digging deeper in committee then what we would have to consider is making sure some of our committees aren't back to back for well at least for my sake because I attend all of them that I will jump from one to another and if they're on my zoom I can't have more than four in so I'm like oh this meeting is over because I need have a new meeting starting and so just being mindful I I enjoy them and sometimes we stay on for an hour and a sometimes they're short sometimes it's an hour and a half or something like that and I'm okay with extending the time on that just being mindful that maybe a back-to-back meeting just wouldn't work for some especially if we're on multiple committee some of us that are back to back and maybe just knowing that either we have to extend that time but I know you're all busy too sometimes you're at soccer practices and you're zooming from a phone and from your car and all those so you have busy lives too so is it do we extend those meetings a little longer to have those richer conversations or are we planning to say you know what we didn't finish today let's put a pin in it because the time that we all allotted is over because we all have lives and can we Circle back and do next week or another time that works for every to continue the conversations ahead of a board meeting also something to consider Dan um that was that was going to be one of my issues was to to think about if these committee meetings are getting longer you know the burden that puts on Administration um in those meetings as well because now if you're lengthening you know four committee meetings by 15 minutes half an hour like that that adds up so I think that that's just one one thing to to think about I think the other piece to me is timing so there's a lot to read in just reading other committee reports and then not even if you're getting in detail right and you know we got three committee reports in the last two days as well as the agenda um so there's um well the agenda before that but I mean in addition to the agenda to read in addition to having a you know um committee stuff to work through I only have like 500 pages of math curriculum to look at So currently there's more coming oh anyone anyone want to read that um so I'm just thinking about the timing of getting some of these things especially when it's like a really heavy load like around curriculum and um and there have been times when we've gotten the agenda like the morning in of the meeting there's just no way right to to look through the stuff in detail I think it's okay if it's like just know this is coming look at this for the next meeting that's one thing right um so I think for me it's issue of timing how much work there is on committees at different times in just being thoughtful about when those agendas go out if there's really deep dives into things um and then sharing sharing those committee reports like as quickly possible so that you know we're not looking at all of them like the day before right the meeting because then I think that um that defeats the purpose and it changes the dynamic of this meeting at the same time if we can manage that then I think and we have one meeting a month it actually could make some of our decisions more public as we actually have those conversations around the table which I think would be good for for the public um sometimes and I feel like we've been getting better at having some of those conversations public in this meeting as we talk about the committee reports um just in my year plus on the board and I think that's good just to make those kind of decision public and to show you know what we're contemplating and why we're making decisions so I think if if we move in that direction and shift some of that discussion into the one board meeting I think it could could work can be better but I think it's very dependent on timing how much detailed the work is on the committee and how soon we get it to actually do deeper Dives there's a psychology shift around it because we're removing Tu might it's not working I was just saying there's a psychology shift around it because we're removing some of our meetings and the idea is that we're going deep in our committee meetings with the idea that not all of us need to be reading everything in such a detail because what we're doing is we're working to flag it in other kind of ways and so if you move to this model you must also move to that model otherwise it's going to be not sustainable so I think that's the that's the real discussion point I have a question just because I don't understand it what's the or is there a big negative or downside to tabling something when it comes on the agenda like if if if that came up more often is that really bad is that something that just happens it doesn't really happen that often for us so I just don't know does it happen elsewhere is it something that's okay to do if we're not comfortable with something just a question I don't know you'd rather we didn't you know it depends on the item because you have to remember that at the end of the day this is a business uh that Denise and I are running uh in some regards and our what we do is dependent on you voting on a lot of those things and so depending on what the tabled item is it impacts things there you know I mean something silly um for me that was nothing was the tabling of my appointment because the we realized that my contract had to be approved by the C like if there's a change in my contract has to go to the county and that was something that just kind of slipped off our radar as we were doing the agenda review and you know that's why I was like all right we'll table it it doesn't I mean I mean it's about me but I didn't the level degree that I cared wasn't important enough like I knew it was going to get done so it didn't impact me but I could imagine if I was a staff member who maybe was like looking for that or something like that it you know but that falls on us to make sure we flag those things quicker so just to give you context um my my team reviews um our agendas we have two agenda review meetings uh every week leading up to push out the agenda that comes out on a Thursday so we meet twice we go through everything as much as we can with a fine Toth comb and then I meet with the board president and vice president that week as well and we go through the agenda review again so there are no surprises they ask questions and when I get off I go right to Susan and I say no changes or yes table this or you know what um we do need Executive session because I forgot we had to talk about this or you know and yes they'd like bubbly for for for dinner whatever it is right whatever it is that feedback loop happens so we try to go through it as much as possible to flag things that might be of um of concern or that so tabling doesn't happen that often I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing I would just caution that when it's done sometimes it just impacts the greater good of the business and these people that are dependent on something and so for something some people their level of impact is is I I can't determine that that's allun but we would communicate that I wondered if like if that would take some of the burden off you to get you like you said there'd be more work done on the agenda up front if we only went to once a month so that maybe that could potentially help that okay it it's still all out there but we could potentially table something but I I guess the general idea is no we don't want to do that we still don't want to do that certainly not regularly I mean it's it's there if you need it but I wouldn't make it a regular habit because now it's going to be like well is it going to be table not table then you know part of it like when I for example when I hire personnel I tell them my staff does an amazing job of trying to do as many background checks as possible before we put somebody to to the to the table for you that's something that's very important because and I always tell people when I'm hiring them your your information is now public you are a public person so your resume and everything goes public and here's what the board and myself look for when we're hiring people and I'm making you an offer and doing those things and so that's really important I always tell them like I'm not going to put forth something because we go through committee and the committee has a first eyes on who I'm approving I wouldn't put forth through somebody that is going to be approved like if I wouldn't put them forth your board's like well red flag let's table this or I'm not going to pass the appointment of somebody because of that another good example is you know a recent EV program evaluation we did for another program there were two potential options on the table and the board actually looked at one and and there was some feedback saying you know what I don't actually think this person is probably a good fit and so we we didn't do it and that was a conversation we had we didn't bring that proposal forward and I think that's part of the conversations that that we need to have thank you so anyway just think about it um half hour later um and you know if you have any thoughts or strong opinions or you know anything you'd like to share you know where I you know where I live um he just send me you know just we can talk um this is a together decision all right so um all right that was my new business any other new business all right I move to adjourn second second all in favor everyone