[Music] stands Nation indivisible withy and justice for all public meetings act adquate notice of this meeting has been provided as follows by having the time the meeting posted on the bu board in the administration building January 26 2024 by sending a copy of the meeting announc seeking a candidate for one board member vacancy created due to resignation to serve until the end of December 2024 the minimum qualifications are set forth in state law all candidates must reside in the township for at least one year at the time of their app interested people should send a letter of interest and other available information indicating their qualifications this information should be presented in a form that will assist the Board of Education in making an appointment requested information should be emailed to the attention of Dr David ien Holz business administrator or secretary and must be received no later than 12m on Tuesday February 20th applicant should expect to be present at the Thursday February 22nd 2024 meeting at 6:30 p.m. for a review of applications and interviews of candidates with an appointment being anticipated at the meeting um now we will have our superintendance report by Mr good evening good evening good evening first and foremost I want to say that we appreciate members of the community being patient with us as a board of education as a district we know that this evening meeting was not planned however it's still important to make sure that the business of our district is taking place in an orderly fashion and I just want to say thank you to the members of the community members of our staff and those who are watching for being patient with us at the end of the day the goal of us collectively as a body is to do what's in the best interest of our students to make sure that we do it orderly and that even though sometimes we may Sid Step at the end of the day the goal is to do what's going to make our students and our staff operate in a great District district by which I am proud to leave a district where we have a clear mission and vision Mission that's repeated at every board meeting that exists within our building walls and by no means are we perfect we are definitely on the path to making sure that our students become world class citizens become citizens of This Global society that cultivates character cultivates Innovation and cultivates Le it does not mean that mistakes aren't made but that's what education is about to learn from those mistakes our five priority goals that we have been operating Under And while it says 2123 we do recognize that this current board will come together real soon to establish our new priority goals when we have our board retreat but I doubt that we will deviate very far from where we're at because at the priority is Student Success student well-being and engaged Workforce operational excellence and Partnerships Contin to drive home our why our role the reason why we get up to do this work on a regular basis in our current Society it's very interesting I was reading something this morning read a few articles this morning it just reminded me of the importance of creating spaces where folks can enter happy safe and maybe those who sometimes challenge if our district is doing that consistently but as someone who gets a chance to walk in every school of our district I see more happy faces than sad I see more joyous activities I see Scholars who are inventors in fact we have a group of Scholars who will be going to New York City tomorrow our high school Jets engineering students they are I'm giving away a little bit of information they are in a competition and they are finalists and building a robotics a robot if I'm not mistaken yes it's a device that goes through the tunnel uh to help uh vehicles that are um sto brok installed in the tunnel the Holland Tunnel Lincoln Tunnel students from Hillside High School maybe on to when you're going between here and New York [Applause] City how about our high school students this weekend that participated in competition are the cathon students that group of students that have been winning for several years so I can go on I could go on and on about all our schools but the joy and happiness that our students feel is because they come to a space that does recognize the potential that they have every month I'd like to remind us of what we have on store for us in the month of February While most people recogniz the month of February is Black History Month to me it's also about recognizing that it's National heart month among other things but National heart month and world day of social justice and if I'm not mistaken February the 7th February the 7th is World reading day is that right Miss Candy yes it is World read alloud day world read alloud day forgive me I forgot the word read alloud I think we have several invited guests that will be in our schools so please make sure you support that but reading is important every day but definitely on that day which is February 7th our schools will be participating our expectation one of our priority goals is to make sure that all of our students leave by of first grade on point and ready to go tonight I want to launch and I want to surprise many with a little recent PSA that was put together by Ron Williamson and staff as we highlight our partnership with Amazon boot up and for those that do know Amazon boot up is a very important Venture that we have embarked upon here in Hillside not only we are the only School District in the state of New Jersey to have this honor partner with Amazon and Amazon boot up we were also creating Engineers coders students who are in first grade through fifth grade fourth grade who are working on coding this year as we prepare them to become great scholars in the field of engineering stem I hope this video brings element of joy as to why we do this work well I guess I'm gonna pause it for a second can we turn it up while we're teeing that up I'm going to go pause it for a second we need to turn it off back here video about sound doesn't give the full picture that's all right so let me give you a little history about a year ago while visiting a conference I ran into a representative from Amazon and Amazon Bud up and we began a conversation that spoke about looking for districts in the state of New Jersey to partner with so that our students could be introduced to Cody and it was a venture that Amazon has invested money so I got a chance to talk to representative Amazon representative from budha and they sold me on the idea the potential of having our students engage in activities all of our students in the elementary space engage in activities that prepar them prepared them from Cody an advantage to this was it didn't really cost us a lot of money in fact they provided the profess development it's a threeyear grant they also provided a coach that came in the district and is supporting the teachers and they also spoke about what technology devices we needed and we were already in shape there kudos to our teachers who are currently in our Elementary grades making sure that this is happening for our students on a regular basis and once the video plays you'll get a chance to see just how excited the teachers are to be doing this work as well [Music] for [Music] just put it back on presentation and I pass it don't worry about doing executive session perhaps you can get it together and then when I come back out we can show the community before we leave folks I apologize one other so as move along the presentation like I meant want need show it right now but we'll get it together Hillside has been fortunate enough to receive receive a grant to purchase local foods that will be used in our food service program for our students if you haven't had a chance I can only speak for what I know when I came here we had a conversation about just how unappealing and unappetizing the food was at the high school and throughout many of our other schools right I'm not saying that it's 100% better but it has definitely turned the corner and when we can start sourcing from local farms and local spaces to provide food that looks like this I think that we have definitely come a long ways that's [Applause] our I don't know how many teachers have had a chance to partake of it but we have one person here and I don't know if my students however I do know that the students are enjoin the lunch because when I go through many of the spaces they are speaking about certain things they do like so I want to give kudos to masio for listening and Contin to support us that's the positive of lunch the the scary part folks we still have this negative deficit that has caused my heart to um do some skips at night I don't like to be harsh in this but it's unacceptable in this day and age for us to run our balances and the rear I'm happy to say within the last two weeks we have captured about $10,000 and that also means we have slowed down the negative accounts that were steadily increasing to be quite candid folks we have approximately um 700 students in our district of 3,000 that have significant arear over $50 as high as 1,000 now you might say well how did it get to that point Department of the US Department of Education and as well as the US Department of Agriculture as well as the state of New Jersey does not permit us to cut off food for students never should do that because it's not the students fault we are required by law to make sure students eat and we will continue to do that we are required by law to make sure students also receive all their full compliment of academic activities we can't take those away from them we're also required by law to make sure that we do not embarrass students it cannot come through the line and we put a flashing light above their head or we cannot say publicly you have a negative balance I can say to adults because that's part of being being a parent please be responsible it does not and we have payment plans payment options are available but the bigger thing that I've learned over the last several months is that many of our parents for a variety of reasons are reluctant to fill out the lunch application free and reduced lunch form and what we have found is that once many of our parents fill those applications out they qualify it slows down that negative balance just to put things in perspective if our district continues to operate in a at the $140,000 that we were at a couple weeks ago that means we would have to potentially cut some things that students enjoy I may not be able to have those beautiful clubs where our students are performing well I may not be able to conduct those beautiful field trips to Liberty Science Center students to science and other spaces our students may not be able to compete in Jets the Calon and other activities by no means am I looking to cut those things off but folks I am asking that as parents let's be responsible if you need supports and help we are here to do that I will never embarrass a student and I will not tolerate any of our staff or Personnel embarrassing students but as adults this is part of what we have to do and be responsible and I'm going to say this on the public record I have made it very clear of my administrators those beautiful snack lines and perhaps you're giving money for your children to go and buy the lunch if they're spending it on the snack line they will be denied snacks because the snack line is not part of the required meals that's extra so pay your bills first and again it's not for the students to be embarrassed but again I cannot continue to have us operating in the rear at the mount weard that money comes back into our schools it benefits our students and it also from a taxpayers perspective keeps the taxes down I would not want to impact our community some key academic highlights we had our Martin Luther Day Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service for all my high school students and middle school students who participated thank you job well done we have something special Coming For You beginning on February the 8th next week this is a first for High School in this region we will be having a compt certification course what's compt superintendent it is a certification course allows our students to be on the pathway to being able to get a job in networking cyber security and other technology areas and making a decent salary while you potentially could still be sitting as a senior in high school so thank you to our high school students for we have about 20 if I'm not mistaken principal Willard uh yes 17 17 students will be participating it's intensive these this course is the same course that adults take this is the same course that adults take so it's intensive thank you for principal Willard and his staff for making sure that we get our students in the right I want to celebrate some other key academic highlights I'll move through this relatively quickly I want to just acknowledge the fact that if you look where we were at in 2023 compared to 2024 we have more students our attendance unlike some districts attendance is going in the wrong direction thanks to the attendance Improvement plan put together by our data team as well as M shelle Smith and our principles we have our students coming to school we are reducing The Chronic absenteeism that is existing in our district still have some students who need have some work to do but I'm definitely pleased to see that our students are coming to School njsla sixth grade English outcomes was the highest that has been in the last five years remember there's a gap there with two years that weren ass sessions taken but just our sixth grade students I want you to see how you were performing we're at 53% I'm not bragging about that because I believe we should be at 70 or above however the trend is going in the right direction double digit gains are current a little small for some people to see but it will be on our website Deana G teller Academy in grade for English tremendous tremendous gains and growth from 20 21 to 2022 23 school year 24% gain where our students went from 27% proficiency to 51% proficiency same thing in English we had a 16% gain for our sixth grade students when we talk about students at herur and looker similarly cohort analysis of our students when they were third grade students they were at the 31% when they became fourth graders at 52% significant gains for those students I heard and look at that was our grade three students who are now sitting in fourth grade similarly at heard and looker you see equal significant gains 133% of our sixth graders met or exceeded but we also had our students continue from cohort 2122 when they were fifth grade to 23 to show again significant gains I'm showing this folks because there are those who believe out there those in the community that believe we may not going in the right direction just want to prove to you that our teachers and our students are definitely trying to meet the expectation and our parents are holding us accountable as well as their children again her and look of grade three math scores from 27% and 2122 to now at 43% Ola Edwards outperform the state and the rest of the district in grade three language arts literacy Hillside innovation academy not only outperform district county but also in the state of New Jersey they are measuring up hiia grade 8 students and grade 6 students same thing in math our students doubled and at w we have significant gains and growth curring for our students folks all of this is leading towards explaining why we're on the right path and we're moving in the right direction to make sure our students are career and college ready in order to make sure we stay on that path our district needs to have a strategic plan in order to have the Strategic plan rolled out by June a board approved and ready for July one of our new academic calendar year we will be hosting several superintendent talks where we are listening to what you expect to see the portrait of a high school graduate here in Hillside as well as what our strategic plan should look like first superintendent talk will happen on will take place on February 7 at Ola Edward Community School well it's good to know what time but it will probably be at 6:30 but I will make sure I note that I want to give parents we these are in person these are work sessions these are not com to listen to someone talk this is truly taking notes our team making sure that the resources and ideas that you have are put on on on the table and we begin to craft a strategic plan that we all can be proud of and becomes a living document I will definitely try to get you to see the video because I'm proud of it I think you will be too in the meantime thank you very much and have a beautiful evening thank you superintendent for your report now I'll take a motion to go into public comments motion second second all in favor residents are requested to State their names addresses and subject matter in the event it appears the public comment portion of the meeting May exceed 15 minutes presiding officer limit each statement made by a participant to minutes duration issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of the state of New Jersey the board Bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments Eric M BOS and subject matter is the H Community CH I just want to say good evening to the board and all attendees of today's meeting as a student of Hillside High School I'm here to express the growing concern that many have in regards to the charter school that is currently in the works I'm on the board the student council that H high school has to offer and it's important to note that although you only see the two of us here today they we are representing 500 people who stand beside us these 500 people are accounted for Via petition opposing the addition of the hillside Community Charter School I would like to address the fact that Hillside is an extremely small town and a charter school doesn't seem fitting for numerous reasons the addition of the charter school would take funding from various clubs and sports these schools have to offer as the student who attended all his high schools K through 12 this funding is already very little any less would be detrimental with this lots of faculty and students would be pressed to leave as resources needed to have a growing environment with be scarce that is all and hope you guys have a wonderful day Brandon gavar 825 West Minister Avenue um the subject matter is the charter school good evening members of the board I first want to thank you all for all your efforts towards making Hillside a better place as a student who is prideful of the hillside community and what it has to offer I was very concerned when I heard the news about building a charter school although charter schools in the past have displayed remarkable results myself and 500 others believe this is not the route to go being that we are a small community which means less resour ources when I think on an economic scale it's a really important factor when speaking about clubs trips and school events all things that make us unique building a school like this will not only limit the resources and cut programs but will ultimately create a ripple effect which entails a significant amount of students and faculty leaving the district itself because of the lack of resources instead of building a new school I would propos we contact investors who are willing to help make a change in a community in a community that has so much to give I thank Hillside for everything it has given me and I'm honored to say I am a comet and I would just hate to see it all go down by decision myself and other students had the power to stop thank you for your [Applause] time if I could just say to our students thank you very much for your leadership representing your students EP from Reyes 1289 State Street the subject of the matter is O CS uh last Thursday a suggestion was made by one of the faculty members of the oecs that it would be in the best interest and our best interest that we not share my concern with the school board but as you can see I'm not easy intimidated I come from a tough neighborhood a rough district and a disadvantaged public school system in Georgia city despite these circumstances I was inspired by my teachers men and women that encouraged me to stand up for justice righteousness and Truth this district has set in place the anti-bulling anti-bullying practices yet staff members are bullying other staff members parents and children how hypocritical is this staff members are not practicing what they preach but to address my initial concerns on January 18th 2024 an initial email was sent to various faculty members at oecs along with the director the supervisor of special services the initial email concerned the incident that occurred on January 11th 2024 where a student demonstrated violent Behavior towards their teacher and a threat to other students the threat was severe enough to relocate my child to a different classroom later on that evening my child expressed emo of sadness as her therapist to her therapist about what had transpired as a parent I was concerned about the safety of my child and was expecting an explanation of the occurrence and a reassurance of my child's safety it was not until a second email was sent on January 23rd suggesting my presence here last Thursday before the board that a response was given to our concern regarding my child's safety and education it took approximately 8s business days to address the concern about the initial email this is highly upsetting with 17 billion went to school taxes a 2.3% increase since 2021 yet we can't get a response to our concern in a timely man it won't be until another five more business days at a meeting with the director of special services and the school psychologist is even possible a total of 14 business dayses almost 3 weeks later and to make matters worse the scheduled meeting for tomorrow will due to an urgent if this is not a lack of professionalism demonstrated by the administration for the concern of the parents and students of this districts and I don't know what is I understand that there is protocol to follow but my suggestion is that these protocols should be revised or reformed to advise parents of the potential threats their child may have faced on any given day also a followup should be initiated by the guidance counselor for the school psychologist to check on the emotional state of the children affected by my Ence something my child has yet been able to receive but this is not my only concern secondly my child's academic success is in Jeopardy because of the behavioral disturbance which is taking place in the classroom this is an ongoing unresolved situation since last year teachers must constantly draw their attention to addressing behavioral issues rather than dedicating their limited time to effective course material and strategies these this reflects an inadequate assessment or the lack of that is contributing to the academic success of my child my child is already struggling academically not only did the pandemic have a negative effect on our children physically emotionally mentally but also academically these children need to be properly classified to best meet their educational needs this is a major concern for me because I've noticed the behavioral change in my child's attitude at home which gives me the impression that this is an effect of one of her social en en for someone who studied the bit of psychology and undergrad I know that social environments can greatly influence the child's Behavior belief and value school is a place where children should be encouraged to be greater than our generation and not a place of academic hindrance so I ask here today what are our children really worth in this district is my child's mental and emotional state worth anything is my child academic success worth anything I tell you one my child is worth more than a 1.8 million awarded in state aid for special education out of the 29.6 million fisal 223 state aid awarded to Hillside Township the numbers don't add up either they don't add up or this District doesn't care either or my child safety emotional state and education is worth way much more so I ask again what is my child really worth in this District according to the New Jersey performance report from the Department of Education the hillside public school district is failing oecs is failing in English language arts which I have the 2122 I did not see the 2324 up on the state uh department so I'm going by with this the data that I have here um they're failing English language arts the children are being assessed at 41.4% which categorizes them below State Standards they're not even reaching the minimum in mathematics the children are being assessed at 13 .9 way below the state standards Hillside needs help and it begins with the professionalism of the administration and the intelligence of the instruction instructors Hillside needs help if you want to equip these students with the necessary tools to be successful in life Hillside needs help I thank you for your time and I pray that this concern that I brought up will be taken care of and uh I have other concerns I wish I had something good to say about a hillside District but since I've came here I had so many problems with my children and it's totally unacceptable and I'm standing up and if I have to be an advocate for all the parents that don't want to step up and don't have the courage to come up here then I will do thank you for your time God bless you all good evening Andel laer 54 herden Street um first I would like to ask what is the status of the resolution um that I presented to the board at the last full board meeting I know you can answer with it I um I would hope that the board is considering approving that resolution this evening um in regard to uh the charter school the hillside charter school that is attempting uh to opened in our town um I know that the hillside Success Center is currently has moved already and is now relocated at Hillside High School um I did have questions about them being there um there's already issues with parking as it is at every school um I know that parents need to come and get services uh valuable services that they do offer but it's going to cause an issue in the school uh with parking if someone leaves to go out to lunch and they come back they're not going to have their parking space um parking spaces at the high school are assigned and we do not have enough already for all staff in the building so parking is a major issue um the additional security guard I know I did speak to superintendent Glover and he did say that we would be getting an additional security guard but they came yesterday they were in the building today we had no extra security guard and people were coming to the front desk trying to figure out where they were staff is trying to redirect them as to where to enter um they weren't able to find the entrance which tells me they're going to walk around and go to a door and whatever they can pull on or if they see someone walk out that's how they're going to walk in I think there needs to be clear uh signage to tell them where to go so that you know when they see it they know that's where the family Success Center is and they know exactly where to be and security needs to be present there we need to have a security guard dedicated only to the family Success Center as we have over 100 staff members at the high school and over 900 students and we can't just have anyone coming in off the street walking through the building um we did have Sirens installed on some of the exit doors not all of them it is it does seem to be working students are reluctant now to go near the doors with the Sirens so I do appreciate that that did work at the end of the day I will tell you I have a little bit of a headache though because as it just keeps going off but they're exiting the building so I understand kids want to get out and they all don't want to go out through the front door but that's okay um I noticed on motion seven under education Nella I don't know if I'm saying it right um the attachment has an invoice that says zero and then it also says that it was only for hiia yet the motion says that it's for does it say um W the high school and H but the attachment doesn't reflect that okay I'm just concerned about that it should match up if at all possible okay um and then I just have a brief statement about what occurred last week um in regard to um there not being a quorum for the board meeting and I just want to make sure everyone is aware elected officials have a fundamental obligation to attend board at Board of Education meetings as their presence ensures active participation accountability and the representation of the community's interest and crucial educational Decisions by not having a meeting last week what impact did it have on the District staff were not hired and we all know we're in dire need of Staff bills were not paid I'm not sure if we incurred any fees or fines because our bills were not paid on time staff were going to be appointed to take on extra classes because we're still in need of teachers that could not happen hence students could not see receive the proper instruction all this impedes the educational process here in Hillside and I'm just confused at you know we have these Bank vacancies and we need to make sure the children are getting an education and the staff are coming forward to teach an ex extra class yes they get paid but they're also giving up a period so to teach six periods straight through and just get one break and a lunch is a lot but they understand the importance of teaching and how important it is for students to have a live person in front of them so a lot of them did decide to give that up to do this for the students but that can't start yet hopefully tonight uh tomorrow or Monday it will we'll see and I just want to ask why are we here we always say we're here for the children but I didn't feel that last week I didn't feel like we were here for the children I know everyone has issues with all human I totally understand that but we have to remember why we are here and why we do what we do as elected officials we put you here to take care of our children and I think we need to remember that for the next time thank you first time I actually to re L that's weird Aro 133 Silver Avenue Teacher W um I just wanted to make you aware I'm sure it will be coming out officially soon um but on February 21st we will be having our lacry month of event uh we have invited several organizations that represent um the historically black Charities and fraternities to join us for the second year in a row last year it was really good I hope you guys can come out again the event will be on February 21st at 6 o' p.m thank you motion to close public comments motion second all in favor so first and foremost thank you for those who came and brought public comments to us as it is a level of transparency and being held accountable again thank you to our high school students for the petition and we do have it received and put it to our record to Mr Reyes we thank you for the comments I do I'm very mindful about how much I say here because I know it involves your child I don't like putting so much out there I am aware and have talked to Dr Mercedes from the office from one of our director of Dr Mercedes and I hope that before the week is up your concerns your child's School get taken care of before I leave tonight I'll go to Executive session I'm ask you a question to myself and I additionally um as La gave us several things to think about the board will comment further about the resolution the Success Center we are aware of the this is their opening week there will be signage that will be out we are trying to make sure we address the safety concerns that may be possible since they've been in our district for several years they were just recently at w they're fully aware of the expectations and we're going to make sure those same protocols stay in place the new social studies pilot is for those schools mentioned just creative funding to make sure it's a pilot that we can give to all of our students it's actually a supplement it's actually a really good supplement because it actually tails the literacy the reading materials to the level of the students so it's a very good pilot I've used it before in my career and I cannot comment any further about what you said because I think you said it from your heart and we definitely will make sure if I'm not mistaken Mr Williamson is working on the flyer to go out for the black hist stre mon performance that will be taking place at W on the 21st thank you very much thank you just in terms of the U request about the status of the proposed resolution as well as last week I sent an email indicating a request of your document which I reviewed on Friday we communicated indicated that I needed to discuss it with the board in advance of determining what what what will happen and then five minutes ago I said the same thing so I guess for a public edification that is something that the board is going to discuss I made it clear that the board would discuss it we will um in Clos session I have some comments from a legal point of view that I'll share with the board and when we come back out I'm sure the board will address it thank you thank you now we'll have committee reports um by president Howard thank you good evening would you give us the finance you give us Finance comme report good evening on last Monday we met to review the finance agenda items one5 yes there was a buiness and ground meeting last Monday 22nd and we discuss the items on the agenda thank you m Parks could you give the report on education last Monday we had a meeting about the agenda of education and items one through 1 through thank you uh I'll give a report on Labor Relations we also met last Monday to discuss items 137 on the agenda primarily to discuss prisions terminations resignations and new [Music] hires thank you vice president Howard now I'll take a motion to go into executive session all in favor the resolved pursuant to the open public meetings act that the Board of Education meeting closed executive session at this time to discuss matters relating to Personnel pending or anticipated litigation lab negotiations attorney client privilege the board will reconvene a public session at the conclusion of the close session the matters discussed in CL session will be disclosed to the public as soon as the need for confidentiality no longer exists