##VIDEO ID:XtH6FVsTcLg## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e let's go live here he it's to call the meeting to order at 6:02 p.m. what nothing I'm mumbling it's my fault I saying I was mentioning we look short on staff yes we are tonight we're definitely to shy maybe three okay please listen to flag salute IED algi 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 and there's the opening statement according to the agenda can you please call the role Mr henb back uh Mr Falcone is absent Mr DeStefano present Dr Capello present Mr citr is absent m gulan is absent Mr chaffy here Mr Francis yes here PA is absent Miss Falcone Schubert here can I please have a motion to go into executive session I'll make it I'll second I'm in favor Mr Falcone is absent Mr Deano yes Dr Capello yes Mr citr is absent m gulan is absent Mr chaffy yes Mr Francis yes Mr paach is absent Miss Falcone Schubert yes all right and we will uh convene in executive session okay e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e with cave sttion Park all right and we going to resume we are back live hi everybody can I please have a motion to reconvene move it second I'm in favor and let me get a roll call here real quick Mr Falcone pres Mr Deano uh present Dr Capello pres Mr citr is absent Miss gulan yes Mr chaffy present m Mr Francis present Miss Paula Chana is online and Miss PA Chan are you with us this evening yep there she is perfect thank you and Miss Fone Schubert yes can I please have a motion to approve the October minutes I'll make a motion second please call the roll on the motion 6A 6B the October minutes yes Mr Falcone yes Mr Jano uh yes Dr capella yes Mr citr is absent Miss gulan yes Mr chaffy yes Mr Francis believe I have to abstain that's true Miss paa how do you vote on the on the U minutes thank you and Miss Falcone schuber yes next we will move on to the superintendent report and the Hib report all right this evening I'm going to turn over um my presentation time to Mr Matt Robinson our assistant superintendent um he's going to have an opportunity to uh go ahead and uh present our NJ SLA testing uh report there is a copy for each of the board members underneath your packets and for the public in the audience and the public at home copy of this presentation will be on our website tomorrow morning um so that you can review that information as we make sure that the laptop reachs up here for him and there we go okay so thank you Mr halenbeck and Board of Ed members we're here tonight um I'm going to be discussing our njsla results from the spring of 2024 as well as our Dynamic results um so let's get to it so just a brief primer on the njsla it stands for New Jersey student learning assessment it's a Statewide Assessment program for New Jersey Public Schools it's given in every new Jersey Public School across the state measures Proficiency in ela math and science science is assessed in grades 58 and 11 align with the njsls New Jersey student learning standards and it replaced the park Assessments in 2019 the njsla uses five performance levels um one would be not yet meeting expectations that lowest tier ranging all the way to exceeding expectations and levels 4 five indate grade level proficiency and for our um high schoolers graduation and Readiness purpose and benefits of the njsla it's one data point that we utilize across um everything that our students do in order to ascertain their academic development we're able to take this data and utilize it in order to make uh areas uh identify areas of improvement in our curriculum it informs our Educators about individual student needs so they have some information about their kids before they have their their kids in their class which is a good thing and it assists Us in measuring our school and District performance and again it's administered annually in grades 3 through n for ELA and math 58 and 11 for science it's a computer based test with accomodations available in some rare cases students do a paper based test results are reported to schools districts and families you should have gotten a letter from me in September with your test results and the data used for State accountability measures and school Improvement planning why is this important that well it helps us review districtwide performance Trends we can use our data to inform policy decisions and resource allocation to different schools or grade levels based upon how they're performing supports initiatives to improve stud achievement and helps us ensure our alignment between our curriculum instruction and the assessments that we give so what we have here is a table of our Ela performance for the 2324 year what I've done is I've circled and drawn some lines here but it'll make sense in a moment so this is um how the grades individually performed and what I've circled is our overall performance so what you see um the left the 29.1% that was our percent of students who met or exceeded the expectation across the district in um school year 2223 versus 31.9% in 2324 so that's a 2.8% Improvement overall um so that shows growth and that's a good thing we're always looking for growth across the board this is a breakdown of how each grade level performed across those different performance levels that I mentioned earlier so we can see for ELA we have a lot of of yellow in some case the Y cases the yellow surpasses the um students who met or exceeded and to me that's the lwh hanging fruit those are the students that we really need to focus on in order to propel them forward um so that they can meet or exceed standards next year so I see that as a positive because I know that we have students that are right on the cusp and they're ready to um you know take that next step and we can hone in on them and focus on them what I've done here is um I've compared our level one and twos for um two different school years prior school year and the school year that we are talking about tonight so in red quite simply red is not good and green is good so we saw a slide back in our grade three performance um they went down 20.2% in grades four in levels four and five and they gain 19.2 in levels one and two um it's worth noting that these students um were in kindergarten during the um the First full covid year and they were in and out of school they had that hybrid environment so they really didn't get that full kindergarten experience and we're working to catch them up um some positives in the data here is we gained 21.6% um meeting and exceeding in grades four in grade four and 12.1% meeting exceeding in grade six with a subtraction of 10.9% in that level one and two which means those kids are moving out of those lower tiers perhaps into that mid tier and maybe even um increasing performance and then we see over there overall the 2.7 2.7% increase this is a longitudinal uh look at how we performed hist so you can see the the light purple is great is uh 201819 we go all the way to 2324 and we can see how we've performed historically um and I have a little bit of a breakdown on that on the next slide you take aways from the data the percentage of students who met or exceeded expectations increased by double digits in grades four and six grades 58 and N also showed growth while grades three and seven experienced declines in performance grades four and nine have now surpass their preo performance levels while all the other grade levels are still recovering so I saw that as a positive in the data that not only have we recovered in those grades we're actually exceeding how we were performing previously so I'm going to look for that to grow in other grade levels and success performance as a whole bu rough three percentage points last year n points away from the co levels over what I'd like to do when I do these presentations I'm not only going to give you the data the numbers but I'm also going to tell you what we're going to be doing about and things that we've already done so of course we're continuing to work on the board goals of decreasing chronic absenteeism increasing teachy so what we've done in terms of chronic absenteeism believe it or not we already have students who have nine or more absences for the year um we've reached out to those families we conferring with them on a onetoone basis to ensure that we're trying to get kids to school because if you're not in school you're not learning learning plain and simple um and as far as teacher data literacy is concerned October 14th we did a big PD day with our new um benchmarking platform linkit where the presenter really dove in and showed our teachers how to manipulate the data and use it to their advantage as they plan their lessons we've also taken our staff meetings we turn them into uh data talks um and what we're doing for that is we're taking a look most recently at nsla performance descriptors looking at each one for each standard how we perform versus how the performed we're really trying to hone in on the areas that are weakest so that we can focus on a bit more with performance in those areas one other thing that we're going to work to do is develop a districtwide RTI protocol we have RTI here but it exists in in different variations across the buildings one thing I think that makes sense for our district is to bring that across the board sure that schools are communicating with one another what have you done at this grade level what can we do um you know middle to High School Tulsa to middle so on and so forth we're going to have a universal tier one checklist that teachers fill out if they feel a teacher a student is falling behind going to fill out the checklist and it's going to lead them toward um providing some interventions for their students before they're actually referred to RTI so the onus goes back onto the classroom teacher and the classroom teacher is tasked with working with that student and trying to intervene within the classroom environment before they're referred to tier 2 or tier three RTI and we're also going to work to develop uh Universal RTI plans both academic and behavioral RTI plans other things we'd like to focus on is explore opportunities to further individualize support to address learning gaps um one thing that we are doing again kind of kind of a mixed bag is what I call wi time what I do now right so we'd like to do is reserve a half an hour a day for students in grades 1 through seven or K through 7 where they're going to actually receive intervention in the areas that they need it so the school day in my mind will kind of stop and each student will be working individually whether they need remediation or whether they need enrichment and perhaps they're going to uh g&t at that time or or something of that nature or they're visiting another teacher or another teacher pushing in to provide them with that onetoone assistance that they need um I am working with the principles on working to schedule that and hopefully it it bears fruit and we're able to move forward um I also would like to see teacher availability for Student Assistance built into the school day in grades 8 through 12 at the high school we'll see how that goes I also want to um better leverage and explore our Blended learning platforms right now um students are probably familiar with the ISL platform um and you know I know you use that in math and Ela in some cases is your Spanish classes as well and that's great but I want to explore whether or not it's the most effective platform that we can utilize or if there's something better out there that better suits our needs so we'll be looking into that and finally um we're going to look at reading benchmarking platforms for middle and high school um we don't want reading benchmarking just to stop in third grade and we never address students again we want to make sure grade level so we're going to look into question is that Focus middle school or that's that would we do have focus at the middle school and it's a model that I like and I'd like to better leverage but I'd also like other teachers available during that time or students to be able to like let's say I'm struggling in math but my focus teacher is an Ela teacher I'd like the math teacher available well and be able to rotate with FIB have our students be able to do that thank so here's our math data again I've done a similar model to what I did for ELA um simply for 2223 we're at 23.8% uh proficient and last year we were at 22.8% that's a slide of one percentage point back again this is our um how each level a lot of yellow there as well but I also see the red creeping above the yellow in some cases which means that we really need to commit to some intervention strategies for those Learners who are really struggling strong good news we slid back 1% but we had a third grade who slid back 177% okay and they grew 10% in that level one and two so that tells me overall the remainder of the grade levels and if you take a look at the data there we had some good growth in grade four we had some decent growth um in geometry and we're relatively static across the the other grade levels so we do have that anomaly in the data which I do think made us slide back so moving forward I'm hoping that we're able to intervene with those third graders and boost their performance thus increasing overall performance this is a longitudinal look again at the data for math so you see there um how we performed year over [Music] year so again key takeaways from this data grade four and Algebra 1 in grade 8 showed strong growth while grade eight grade eight math and geometry showed some modest Improvement all other grade levels showed very modest declines of performance except for grade three which again saw that 17 percentage Point drop grade four in Geometry have recovered and surpassed pre-co performance which again is a good thing and like I mentioned overall performance decreased by 1 percentage Point PRI are we missing data on Algebra 2 are we just missing the data not right albra Algebra 2 zero for what year there's no testing in uh the math the requirement for mathematics only requires um high school students to take one math test during their High School career predominantly they're taking the algebra one test in this case all of them with a few geometries yeah Algebra 2 is an optional right yes we should put more incentives around it though so our action plan for math looks pretty much similar to the ELA because there are things that translate across both subject areas with a few exceptions so um if you look toward the bottom there I want especially at the middle and high school levels to evaluate our current math resources and I want to take a look at them for alignment um with the current standards especially given the fact that we had new standards in 2023 I do know that we're utilizing some texts that are relatively dated especially in grades six and seven which may be affecting our performance so that's something that I'm certainly going to be looking at Via committee and I'll make a recommendation to the board by um probably during the regular meeting in January in terms of where we should go with that I'd like to expand mathematics instruction time at the primary and intermediate levels in some cases they're getting sign ific anly less math instructional time than they are literacy and of course we know we want to focus on literacy at the primary and intermediate level but not at the um at the cost of math minutes so it's something I'm going to be again working with the principles to try to get into their schedules and see if we can increase that that time and we need to explore PD opportunities for uh Math teachers with the focus on differentiated tier one instruction we don't want to be just teaching down the middle to our students and just delivering the cont content and not differentiating it we need to find ways whether it's via station rotation or other models to try to make sure that we're differentiating instruction for every child and not just delivering the lesson uh doing the independent work and and calling it a day and moving to the next lesson so that's again something that we're going to be working on here's our performance in science science is an interesting one because it's very cohort dependent because you're only teaching in grades 5 8 and 11 so we did slide back um to 14.6% passing as opposed to 18% in the prior year there's our breakdown we see that grade 11 was really the the outlier there where they de their performance decreased by um 14% this is your longitudinal data you see it's relatively static except for grade 11 last year you know their their 30 versus their 16 this year and then the 18 uh versus 15 I've already mentioned those so we'll move on to an action plan for science we've already implemented science benchmarks for lincol in grades 5 8 and 11 and we'd like to try to expand that to grades 2 through 11 that next year and the reasoning for that is really um just going to be to make sure that students are acquiring the information they need in science and will be able to build a you know successive data year-over-year in order to make sure that they're they know what they need to know U another thing and I've talked with Mrs Martinez about this is a potential realignment of Science High School offerings to ensure students have been exposed to the three domains of science that are tested before that grade 11 test often times we'll have a kid who takes science um pressure in a sophomore year and doesn't take their other science until senior year that's okay because you only need three years of science to graduate high school but for the purposes of this test you only know two-thirds of the information okay so that's something to really look into I think we need to dive into the curriculum a bit for Science and make sure it's aligned to grade level expectations um for a possible revision and we need to evaluate again ourr instructional resources and have possible shifts moving forward so I'll make sure I have those discussions with staff as well that's everything for the njsla right now I'm just going to briefly go into Dynamic learning Maps it's a computer-based assessment for students with significant cognitive disabilities that means a child who is unable to access the content on the njsla because of the cognitive disability Tak the dlm it's administered in grades 3 through eight and high school for ELA and math and grades 58 in high school for science um the report provides results related to a student overall performance level for the subject the four performance levels are emerging approaching Target and advanced and the report also summarizes results and gives an individualized snapshot of each student which is really helpful for your um special education teachers in terms of what they need to work on with with their individual students and then finally This Is How We performed um we had 60% of our Ela students emerging uh 30% approaching and 10% at the Target and 50% emerging 30% approaching and 20% at the Target and the due to the fact that the Science assessment is only given in grades 5'8 in high school I can't report out on those students because they're less than 10 and that's that's going to be um I would violate student confidentiality I don't want to do that um so that's a rundown of our njsla and DM data and now if if the board or anyone in the audience has any questions I'm happy to answer them is it possible that some of the data um might differ depending on how many students have been added to that grade level if they came from out of town too yeah I do and I can share that with you I do have um a cohort Mobility uh report that I can share with you what I I can say is that overall it hasn't skewed the data that much because those numbers are so small okay but I do have that and I can certainly share that with you what's your expectation for next year it's my expectation for next year in terms of growth yeah that we will see growth I can't put a number on it but um I will be reporting out on our benchmarking throughout the course of the year we've already taken our form a assessment that was our Baseline ense assessment we have another one in mid to late January we'll collect all that data we'll compare how students did on form a to point uh to Form B and we'll report on that for the board and we should have some rough data in terms of how they predict that we're going to perform on the njsla any major changes you expect to make over the next year as far as like you you mentioned curriculum I'm sure that yeah so yeah we've already fully revised the ELA and math curriculum which is being implemented this year so it's my hope that if that is being um implemented with Fidelity that we will see score increases because it's aligned to State Standards fully now um I do think that a big part of what we're seeing has to do with the instructional resources we're leveraging perhaps some teaching strategies that we're using and that's I think the next piece is really not teaching teachers how to teach but making sure they know the most up-to-date teaching strategies for math instructions okay and by doing that I think that we'll we'll see grow is this um third grade is that the one that has like the larger class sizes that we were talking about like remember there was a group of kids yeah so yeah so second and third grade class sizes are larger than we would like um that's an area that we'll try to address in budget development for next year um that's also the group um that we're seeing come through either from kindergarten with covid or prek with covid um so it's going to be interesting probably isn't the right word but it's going to be interesting to track those students over time to see how different their academic growth and and progress is compared to students who maybe had been enrolled in school for a year or two prior to covid hitting and you see that in grade four and grade 11 some of those groups have recovered from Co learning loss pretty well um we'll continue to try and Target some of those other students and other grade levels um with some of our interventions um you know the tough part is is as we've talked that learning loss funding that was available for the federal government that money is all gone right the federal government all of those funding streams have ended um so that puts the onus back on us as a local school district uh to fund those programs there is no additional money forthcoming from the state um I don't anticipate there'll be additional money from the state this next budget year um because just like we lost the federal money in our budget the State lost the federal funding in their budget as well um initial indications from the state are they're facing a budget shortfall of somewhere between two and three billion with a B dollars in their state budget um so that'll be interesting to see how we progress through that as well thank you I don't know where you compare other districts do they find the same thing with those kids the kindergarteners I haven't done a full analysis on I would assume these scores aren't public yet either once they're made public and I'm able to dive into how each and every District performed I can report out on that as I know I can I was given a similar packet it looked very similar similar yeah I'm assuming I mean I know it's just our town thanks Matt thank you Matt I appreciate it excellent um second part of superintendent's report for this evening is um the Hib presentation um and we have some Hib reports that are uh a second reading and then some new ones for this month make sure I get my right folder so on second reading as the board discussed in the executive session we had three Hib reports that were filed one one of them was a confirmed Hib no change from the first reading and two uh Hib complaints that were filed that were determined not to be hibs they were code of conduct violations um no changes from the first reading for those and then for the month of November we have three Hib complaints that were filed in the district one of wi excuse me two of which were confirmed to be Hibbs on first reading and one of which which was neither a code of conduct or a Hib um as we move forward the November Hib uh allegations will be before you during our December meeting on second reading so this evening uh with a motion to approve here in a moment you'll approve both Mr Robinson's testing presentation and our Hib reports for first and second reading for the month of November is there any questions or discussions about the presentation or hip reports for the month I should abstain from the hip report because I feel like I missed that you certainly can okay absolutely can I please have a motion to approve 7 AM B move it second Mr Falcone yes Mr dhano yes Dr Capello yes Mr citr is absent Miss gulan want to sustain from the h report Mr chaffy yes Mr Francis yes Miss Pacha thank you yes and Miss Falcone sheber yes all right he we'll move on to all the good news under acknowledgement and correspondence I have absolutely so uh congratulations to our high school students who made honor roll and high honor rooll for the first marking period also congratulations to our middle school students who made high honor rooll and honor rooll uh for the first marking period it's kind hard to believe that a marking period has gone by already and and Thanksgiving is just around the corner so congratulations to all of those students um and my congratulations and my thanks to you Kyle for sitting through all of that this evening uh and so um I want to uh acknowledge uh our students of the month students of the marking period for their outstanding performance I know I have Kyle uh Farrar with us this evening Kyle is in grade so I am going to embarrass you by bringing you up here and we want to get a photo we want to recognize you yeah would you mind takeing a pH for me come right down in front Kyle and then we got to get all of the family up here afterwards too because I got to get out of this photo right so look right there hopefully I don't break the camera [Laughter] camera and we got to get the entire family up here come on let's go either why aren't I surprised better way to do wi angle have to spend money to get the people to come hug me nice been smile forever everybody one more back here thank you very much congratulations for we are not going to make you guys stay for the entire meeting you are more than welcome to head home this evening thank you have a wonderful holiday thank you actually do that yeah report like that yeah all right and I want to acknowledge our other students this evening in eighth grade honorable mention uh Angelina oraa uh Owen ker Jacob galone and Tara McKenna in grade nine we have Joseph TJ SE honorable mention is Jacob Leos and Reagan gravat in grade 10 we have Olivia Buckley and Carolina tatos uh honorable mention is Sarah jurki Tony Lynn Alfredo Merlin Valdez Reyes in grade 11 uh honorable mention to Jonathan Cortez Justin Endo uh sayia Lebron Samantha oh boy kigan and Jacob Appel and in grade 12 Megan hinski honorable mention is Leila Gonzalez and Amal cido uh congratulations to all of those students and my apologies if I have mispronounced anyone's names um I appreciate all of our students hard work and it is so great to be able to acknowledge them also want to congratulate uh the following students who were chosen as middle school students of the month for their outstanding performance I know they already got their certificates at the middle school earlier um for October grade seven is Riley Stewart and zavan Valentin and Bryce ireri and in grade six is Alexa emblem grade five is Carlos chimazo and in grade four is Alicia Galvez so again congratulations to all of our students who are demonstrating outstanding academic uh performance in our schools um you continue to make us proud and uh and I really appreciate all of your efforts and hard work thank you um do we have any parent teacher organization Representatives here oh yay um on hepto and the ptso I normally can't come because our Girl Scout tro meets at this time um but hepto has been really busy I know Nicole's been keeping up to date on the btsm um hepto we did a breakfast a welcome back breest for the teachers we did our um Book bear ppto donated over 300 books to the schools teachers pick out the books and we buy it for them um we have our holiday bouti coming up we did a dance and we prilled um I'm going to say probably about $2,500 in Grants um for Teacher so far this year um and we have lots of fun stuff coming up we also did an ice cream social we have several activities planned for the rest of the year and the ptso we are our next meeting is December 11th and we are working on the tricky train we need donations and volunteers so that's it thank you um the ptso and hepto actually came together and they purchased these really pretty banners that are going to go up all throughout the district with our logo um like the ones that you see in town lampost so we're excited to get those up I have to get fresh I love it over yeah it as you look around the school district we have some of the banners out in front of the high school um they're showing their age um so my thanks to um to hepto and ptso and all of our organizations who support our classroom teachers who who support our students uh whether it's ice cream socials whether it's the dances uh those opportunities and certainly um I know the value um working with with the ptso as a former building principal and the donations that you make and the grants that you make to our classroom teachers and our students um is invaluable and so that upcoming meeting on December 11th um we'll make sure we send out all of that information um tricky te Trey is a huge fundraiser for our organizations um so if there are businesses out there and organizations that want to donate that want to sponsor that want to be part um of these Endeavors um we'll we'll set you up with the contact information so that they can reach out to all of you and thank you for being here tonight we app appreciate it high school representa speak now yes yes so I have on I have a few things oh for oh for so season's over however once we are in November the kids start ersing for Holiday Ensemble they will be at the tree lighting on Sunday if anyone's going to be there um we had several of our students audition and were accepted into the Sussex County honors band that occurred last week or the week before it was great they have a choir um and next they're going to be auditioning for area hopefully everyone who dishes will be accepted and then after that regen and the drum production opens on December 5th it goes December 5th through December 8th comy Puffs um it's seven years in a Wizarding School everybody knows what the story is and after that we'll be starting auditions for the spring musical okay good thank you and my apologies to our student board Representatives I just talked to you but it isn't on my agenda so I I promise them I need to move them up in my superintendence report so that they get a chance to to go before I do um so I don't steal any of their Thunder and I just had that conversation with them so ladies let's turn it over to you so you can give the board an update on the uh student reports okay so we have um a decent amount of news on the sports teams um ESP Sports competed this past weekend in the state championships and placed second um miles AR placed second as an individual in the ESP Sports state competition uh the boys soccer finished their season having played the first round of the state tournament and it's the best boys soccer team in many years yay competition cheer which I play second at the vores cheer competition this past weekend congrat we've been working very hard with that and then uh today starts basketball tryouts wrestling tryouts bowling practice and ice hockey practice um and lastly the 2024 to 2025 passed along scholar athlete is Kelsey Weber also I am part of the production um of Puffs for drama it's a very fun show I would definitely recommend come see coming to see it if you get the chance thank you thank you okay so today was the third week of our second marking period um today we had a Timothy Shoemaker coming and Municipal Alliance funded two presentations the eth and nth graders had a presentation about cyber security and the 10th through 12th graders set their presentation about the harms of vaping um they were good present there were good presentations I personally enjoyed the one that we sat through um uh we have a new psych teacher uh she is or replacing Mrs mortella and her name is Mrs deato uh The culin Culinary had their friends giving last week uh share the keys happened at 7 o'clock today and blood drive will be happening December 12th I believe I'm December 12 and that's it perfect thank you thank you ladies congratulations to all of our our fall sports teams who wrapped up their Seasons our cheer program um and again if you have an opportunity to get out and see the uh the fall drama production um we'd love to see that audience full uh it usually is that uh you guys do a tremendous job and thank you to our parent group uh our boosters for our drama program who um go above and beyond on a regular basis as well so ladies thank you for your report I made my notes already so that I get you moved into my agenda so I can't forget you moving forward thank you so much I appreciate it I do not have anybody listed under public comments is there anybody who'd like to speak here okay we will move on can I please have a motion to move um 11 through 16 I that will take us right to the information about the referendum I'll make the motion I'll second it 11 a to 16 I okay um we can open it up to discussion 11 through 16 I no discussion for me but just a comment I just want to thank Jamie Douglas um for that very generous donation she runs the just in athletics and training um so thank you very much Jamie it is uh much needed much appreciated zto I'd like to reiterate that Jamie is an incredible human and uh really dedicated to all the kids in our district so for sure really appreciated any more discussion hearing then you please call the RO Mr Falcone yes Mr DeStefano yes Dr Capello yes Mr citr is absent Miss gulan yes Mr chaffie yes Mr Francis yes Miss PA yes thank you Miss Falcone Schubert yes okay um can I have a motion to move 16 I through the rest of the agenda that would be 16 I through 17 16 I you want to move 16 yes if anybody wants to talk about the referendum yeah I will you need a motion I'll make it second with a really thick agenda tonight so in our agenda 16i is a a culmination of a lot of components tied to our referendum so first let me say um again a public thank you to uh the taxpayers of hakon to our Board of Education uh to our mayor and Council and our community organizations um that took the time to understand the referendum what it entailed um and whether you voted yes or no um the number of votes on the referendum was really as a former history teacher um was was really great to see um we had a number of opportunities to have public sessions um met with the seniors group to to talk a lot about the referendum and what it entailed um obviously I'm I'm very pleased to say that um the referendum passed with 68.3% of uh voters saying yes we we want to move forward with this project um we have already begun tonight with this vote on 16i uh to move forward with the bonding process so our plan is to working with our bond attorneys our our financial advisor who will be responsible for helping to sell the bonds um that we will be noticing and advertising the sale of the bonds uh here in the next couple of days that the bonds will go on sale through uh a bonding proc or a bidding process on December 10th and we anticipate closing on the bonds the sale of the bonds on December 20 20th uh the reason for that timeline as I explained to the board any bonds that are sold before January 1st means that we will actually get our state aid payment the state's portion of their contribution on those Bonds in our next budget year had the bonds been sold on January 1st or later it would have taken two more budget years for the state to make its its payment contributions so um I I want to thank uh our our our Attorneys at porio our Attorneys at mcmin Scotland and Balman who are our bond counsel um Phoenix advisers um who is helping us with the bond sale they have worked tirelessly um over the these last week and a half two weeks to move this process along uh smartly uh and quickly um so tonight you'll see the the resolution to approve the bond sale and if you look at it it's probably 15 pages in length it's the largest resolution I've ever had but legally we're required to put forward the sample bond forms the sample certificates um the maturity dates and all of those things that go forward with the process that's what you'll be voting on um this evening on 16i and then 17 is the regular uh Co-op um contract Awards and and things of that nature I know we talked about the contract um this evening are there any other questions associated with 16i that I can make sure I answer for any of you okay any discussion on 17 16 hour 17 country only huh oh yeah was he keeps thanking everyone else but everybody should really thank Jeff for keeping us informed yes and to put all the hard work I I do want to I do appreciate that I do want to point out um that uh Brian did catch one error and I just want to make the correction before we vote page 10 on your agenda section one the amount um 300 yes it should be 9,897 300 of the 9,897 300 of bonds are eligible um and and were approved by the voters I just there's a missing $300 there I was wondering about that but I thought there was some good reason yeah it looks like a missing finger on the keyboard does this have details as far as like the minimum purchase amount for the public it does it does so um I want to be careful what I say publicly because I don't want my words to be construed as an offer to buy bonds um but in in all sincerity if you are interested in participating in the purchase of the bonds there is a link in this resolution that will take you to a website called mun Hub that that outlines the sale um the online bidding process this will be a sale to institutional investors um however individuals will be able to purchase Bonds in a in a quantity of $5,000 increments um so all of that is outlined in this resolution and is available for individuals through the perspectives and the uh the letter of offering how's that sound you great offset to your tax increase that's all so yeah no it is you know it is fantastic um you know the fact that the state is going to contribute uh up to 40% of these costs that is huge for us and I think I think our taxpayers recognize that that you know in an era where we are losing State funding to get the state to contribute towards the cost of these well much need projects is is huge for us as well so um turn it back to you uh I've got the uh resolution uh let me just make sure 16 I fixed 16i and I just got to get to my roll call sheet I just thought it was okay be ready all right 16 I and 17 Mr Falcone yes Mr dhano uh uh uh 17 I vote present uh 16 I Pro I vote Yes 16 I yes 17 present thank you sir Dr Capello yes Mr citr is absent Miss gulan uh yes to a 16 and um stain on a 17 thank you Miss Mr chaffy yes I'm both Mr Francis yes I'm both Miss pachena yes thank you and Miss Falcone Schubert yes right we will end with board member comments if anyone would like to make any okay um just want to take the opportunity to thank the public for voting on The referendum especially those of you who voted yes specifically specifically um this means that we can finally move forward um working towards a uh making our schools more safe more sustainable um and a more conductive learning environment for our students um I want to give my very hearttill thanks to our superintendent Jeff um this none of this could have been done without him um and to my fellow board members who went out there and spoke the truth and made sure everybody got the fact facts about this referendum um that was extremely important was to make sure that the public knew the facts and that we countered misinformation um this success is a testament to the strength of our community to our board to our schools um and to everybody who works in this District thank you again for all your support and Trust um and please let's keep this momentum going so that we can continue to make these schools better okay thank you how do I follow that say good I would love to reiterate that um and I'm really excited for the future for all of the kids in our district I think this is a huge step so okay um keep it rolling regardless thank you for everyone that did vote and thank you to the Past board educ board of education members that came out to help and drive our what we're trying to get out there um and thank you for the endless people that listen to me talk about you know what the the the reasons for you know to vote so Happy Thanksgiving me um I'll be short I think uh my wife my wife found the house in hopac Hong 15 years ago by accident and we bought it and we moved here and um it's a beautiful Town it really is there's so many nice things in town and being part of the board for the last seven years watching ing the way things have changed and how things are evolving it's it's cool so thank you for everybody that's been part of that invested their time in it and I think there's there's a lot of good stuff that's going to happen going forward in hak I'm proud to be part of it um I'd like to reiterate uh what Mr clappy mentioned before which is clearly the case 68% is amazing quite honestly 68% of the voters voted yes for the uh for the referendum um I have one one statement about um our local Rotary Club because I'm a member of the Rotary Club every year we have a Christmas party for special needs children and our our community our our school is sending 13 13 of their students to the uh to the party which is great also their parents and their siblings and each one of them get a present it's amazing ni so uh um it's not a pat on my own back but there on their backs the rotary club members who who fund this and and and and they fund it through basically uh ch and Raffles and all kinds of things so um I want to the kids deserve it we should we do it with the whole Community it's not just the whole Patong schools it's it's also Roxberry and Mount Arlington and the rest so I just wanted to mention that and also happy holidays have a great turkey day thank you yeah have a have a happy and and safe if you're traveling uh Thanksgiving everybody thank you for coming out um I just wanted to congratulate Jen J and and Jay Jay um I'm being reelected to the Board of Education um I'm looking forward to working with you guys for another three years as long as I'm here and congrats to Joe for winning the Town Council seat yeah right there you go there's like a lot of good forward momentum and and that's what we need to to keep um rolling with and with that said you know thank you to the um town for saying yes um we needed this and um we thank you for trusting us and it's going to be our mission to keep everybody informed about what's going on um it didn't stop with the vote um Jeff has been in meetings all week um and they continue and we'll do our best to kind of put it out there what's going on and simplest terms that's what I like simple terms um so you can understand you know what's happening during the process and um even though you might not see the construction happening you know just yet there's a lot of things that H lead up to that so we will definitely continue to keep you informed there is a tab underneath um the Board of Ed it says referendum we'll continue to update um that and I'll do all my normal postings um and I just want to again thank everybody here for all of your help and support Jeff for coming up with this great big idea um and I wish everybody a blessed Thanksgiving spend it with your loved ones and have a a great time and enjoy big plate of food all right can I have a motion to adjourn please Mo it second all in favor I e e e