##VIDEO ID:Rx5AnEfq7pw## okay the time is now 7:30 we'll call the meeting to order of the Leonia board of education for the September 17th meeting uh please stand for the plge of Allegiance States [Music] okay adequate notice of tonight's meeting has been provided in accordance with the open public meetings act by the following methods distribution of notice to the record and posting of the agenda on the school district website and through parent Square sorry I did that a little bit out of order uh can me have roll call please miss Choy hi Dr Mis here Miss Molina present Miss depar present missa Miss SEO Miss Thompson Miss Wilds pres vice president Melman and president Lee pres we have a quorum also in attendance is our superintendent of schools Dr Brian gadens our assistant super superintendent of schools Dr exanti caramanos as well as our board attorney Mr Vic leera as well as our three student reps Chan young danan Kim and Renee Kim thank you okay that brings us to our first public comment section on agenda items anyone from the public wishing to speak please step up to the podium provide your name and address push to talk uh Arthur Z 125 Reales Avenue um I only have one item and that has to do with the cameras that are being put in the buses I'd like an explanation as to how they're going to work is it going to be simply a recording on a on a chip are they going to be monitored live is it going to be I saw there was something about Wi-Fi but is anybody going to monitor it is there a panic function in it in the event there's an accident or somebody there's a wild activity on the bus that needs a immediate intervention so I just want a brief explanation for what that is I think it's a good idea but I just I want to know how it works you know if it's just a chip and you know review the facts after that's kind of expensive I think i' rather have a live capability of it um and that's pretty much it I had other questions answered earlier and I'm not terribly prepared today sorry okay thank you um people don't so so we so we are we are getting cameras so tonight at the uh we'll notice on the board agenda that there's an approval of of cameras purchased the approval tonight order we're expect to get them in by mid to late October will be the end of the installation the cameras first things first the cameras and the buses have a variety of Ang right so it's an internal camera to the bus showing both the back and the rear of the bus also exterior camera showing in the front of the bus there um in terms of Wi-Fi we do have the ability if necessary to live stream the the bus if if if we feel it important we could actually have what's going on in the bus live stream directly back to our server back at the board opens in the high school and whatever school we could see all of that I don't know the answer to the panic button but I'll find out and I'll get back to you on that one thing we will do is that following the installation of the cameras we're going to create a public facing uh communication where let the community know that the cameras exist the cameras are there I think Mr Le probably likes that it's good to let people know that the cameras are are present in the buses and we'll outline how the cameras work um besides the the live Wi-Fi function if necessary when the cameras come back into the school if they're parked close enough to the school the information is downloaded via Wi-Fi into the district servers there's also a card that we could pull if we need to get that information out so a very robust camera system on the buses and much more to follow okay thank you um that brings us to our public presentations so we have two presentation this evening um Miss Jenna Russo will present the the annual requirement of the NJ de e School self assessment for grades under the anti-bullying Bill of Rights Act F by Dr caramanos Who will give part two the sequel to assessment results presentation spring 2024 Administration m Russo the floor is yours this the whole time okay wait keep it on okay um thank you for that tip the ab grade the anti-bullying rights grade for each school will be determined primarily through a self assessment that each School completed this self assessment must be made available for public comment which is why we're presing tonight and approved by the District Board of Education the chief School administrator Dr gon will be required to certify the electronic submission of each School self assessment and statement of assurances the school district's grade will be the average of the grades of each School in the district the criteria for scoring is zero equals does not meet the requirements one equals partially meets the requirements two equals meets all requirements three equals exceeds all requirements and not to give you a sneak peek but I will tell you we at least met all requirements for all the questions asked and you'll see what the scores are in a so for the school self assessment the core elements included number one which is includes all hi programs approaches or other initiatives add of 15 possible points ACS reported 13 LMS reported 10 LHS reported 14 for number two the question related to training on the Boe approved hit policy and out of nine possible points all schools met criteria with six for ACS LMS had six and LHS rated themselves seven for number three other staff instruction and training programs out of 15 possible points ACS rated themselves 12 out of the 15 LMS 9 and LHS 13 curriculum and instruction on Hib and related info and skills was out of a six possible points ACS rated themselves six LMS 4 and LHS 5 regarding hi Personnel out of nine possible points ACS rated themselves nine LMS rated seven and LHS 7 number six was school level Hib incident reporting procedure out of six possible points ACS rated themselves five LMS 4 and LHS 6 for number seven on Hib investigation procedure out of 12 possible points ACS rated themselves eight LMS 10 and LHS 12 and number eight for hi reporting out of six possible points ACS rated themselves four LMS 5 and LHS 5 for the totals out of 78 possible points and I will tell you in order to meet all standards um it would be 52 points and 67% so out of 78 total possible points ACS rated 63 points which equates to 81% LMS rated themselves 55 points which equates to 71% and LHS rated themselves 69 points and that was 88% so the district average is 80% like I said before the grades um are all above meeting standards and luckily it doesn't match grades for our students because the 67% doesn't sound like it meets standards but but here it does then with regards to school-based action items the programs that we have that help address proactive approaches to preventing Hib are things like continuing with building based social emotional learning programs and activities such as the wellness fairs that we have at LMS and LHS the campfires at ACS the mental mental health awareness Club at LHS and wellness club at LMS the Hib learning groups at LMS the week of respects which will be districtwide there will be dedicated Wellness fairs at back to schoool nights District wide and fourth and fifth grade transition meetings for ACS and LMS LMS and LHS also held dedic dedicated grade level meetings to review expectations offer positive reinforcement and Foster a positive School Community we also have continuing support from our district mental health and wellness coordinator in terms of program development training and student social groups to support Wellness that coordinator often was is very helpful in terms of intervention plans following Hib but also programs to prevent Hib provide training opportunities to anti-bullying Specialists and the school safety climate teams on Hib topics we also have opening day faculty and staff meetings that included specific reference to hi policies and expectations to set off the year the right way district and School web pages have been updated to provide information of resources and we have Wellness Resources for families and students that we share regularly through methods like stop it newsletters via parent Square I saw a message that went out today um eepic parenting program student assemblies and awareness events in terms of information going forward the NJ Dy doe will create district and school grade reports of the district reporting ratings for each each core element for each school and for the school and district grades districts and schools are required to do the following each School must post the grade received by the school and the school district on the homepage of the school's website as well as on the District page districtwide districts and schools must post the grades on the websites within 10 days of the NJ dooe notification that the grades are available districts and schools must use the district and school grade reports for posting on their appropriate websites and School District officials are required to review the school and district grades with the Boe at a public meeting we're doing that tonight this will provide the Boe and the public with the opportunity to learn about the district's implementation of the ABR and address any concerns there's my contact information and I'm here for any questions that you may have so the sure so the hip Specialists for each building meets with the climate team and they review the questions and talk together about the responses in terms of self assessing for the school uh I've only been here a couple years but in the past couple years they so between like last year and this year um they did drop just slightly by maybe 1% 2% for each School nothing significant um and it could change year to year obviously if you're reading with any Integrity you're not going to have stagnant scores they're going to shift up or down depending on the programs that you may have um for instance some years we might have more emphasis on on Community um or on police or on families you know um and some of it is is consistent you know we we certainly H meet at least meet the requirements each time each year um but it is something that we are looking at to improve to look at where are the areas that we rated ourselves a little bit lower so that we can improve for the following time that we rate I have a question um so the reporting requirements by NJ dooe that is uh the reporting from the self assessment or do they actually review it endorse it is there any um we we usually don't hear back from the NJ doe on the self assessment reporting yes but reporting is a requirement mandatory we have to post it exactly oh is there like a particular reason that uh because I ought toore I mean the element seems to be the kind of lowest those by far is there any explanation for that I can start with that first so LMS did a wide variety of training several years ago and so their score was on the higher side they had done those student trainings and and because they don't have the trainings last year because they' done them previous years their score dropped in relation to previous years okay thank you I'll just so add that they they did a lot of training they did they they did a lot with students a lot of interventions um but in terms of the self assessment sometimes the questions when you read them you see that they're looking at did you involve the police in training and they might not have that particular year but they did the year prior so it's not necessarily something that you know obviously is required each year um but they they definitely are looking at areas to improve and and focusing in on them um like I said that they do have a a wide variety of interventions that they have in place and programs that they are looking to you know to help proactively prevent further incidents for e e thanks for sharing that so I do want to just reiterate that when you say um that we did not have 100% compliance to meet compliance would be meeting standards and so we do have at least that but you're right there is room for growth and that is something that we're striving for um we are going to be continuing to look at the areas where we rated ourselves lower areas that we could improve and Target those areas with action plan no no no I don't take it personally but I do agree obviously none of us want bullying to be occurring in our schools and we want everyone to feel safe and part of the community and be welcomed and and and and be in an environment that's really open for learning um so we do take it seriously it's not necessarily just about the numbers we want you know we want to make sure that everyone is safe in our schools so regardless of numbers yes there are areas to grow and we are looking at making those mbers grow as well as having our programs improve and grow as well I concur with you Arthur it's good on one hand I applaud the schools for being very thoughtful and being hard of themselves in regards to the programs they offer making certain they're not they're not juking these numbers right they could walk in here and they could say we're 90% across the board and there's no data that shows that we're not right so so credit for that on the other hand there's still a clear path to doing a better job when it comes to this and therefore the better we do that the more likely we expect the correlation between a decrease in harassment initation and bullying events that were seeing um it it's it's worth for the for the context of the conversation that I I applaud the administrators and the climate teams for for having such a high level of honesty but it does provide an opportunity for growth for them and when they and let's be very clear about this they report these numbers to the board office the then reports the board to you we do not get involved in the school-based work it would be unethical for me to push myself into that but but very clearly when they did the self assessment made sure the scores that they had it provides an opportunity for them to be reflective upon their practice and the fact that this receives a lot of attention at the board level which then they can then grow from there so we're in agreement with that and it provides an opportunity for them to to do better so thank you for that I was just curious Chen and thank you for the presentation I'm not I don't think you went over but what happens if we don't meet standard like is is that reported anywhere or does that go up to anyone does have any implications so I've not been involved in a situation where we didn't meet standards or you know sort of got um targeted you know with with outside action plans that were needed um I'm not aware of that happening I'm not sure if you are Dr Gaines yeah it it's it's it would be tough it would be difficult to find a board of education a school district that that says we didn't do the job we're supposed to do right so most likely don't report that where this plays a role is and this this is why we're very thoughtful about about about being truthful and filling this out the way it's supposed to be filled out is that if there's a significant complaint against the district regarding HIV one thing the state does when investigating that complaint is that they go back and they push into how these numbers were determined right so if a district says that they were we were all 98s across the board and things are beautiful and it's high fives for everybody and then there's significant complaints that are coming in the state will then hold the district's feet to the fire and say where did you get that number from how'd you get to that number and so that the counterbalance to running up artificially High numbers that if there's issues the process in which you determine those numbers becomes a point of conversation so it actually helps the school district to be tougher on themselves because if there ever question ever brought into the practice they were very thorough and efficient determining those numbers that's where it comes from I I of the 600 districts in the state I don't think a single one at this forum said that we didn't meet the standard I'd be shocked by that any other questions thank you very much so it's two for one tonight fora um she's also going to so as part of our part two of our assessive presentation Miss will will switch gears and we'll present on the dlm we're going a bit out of order on the presentations just to give her a chance to be done uh with her presentations and then be uh done for the event so this is part two like we said so now I'm wearing my other hat here I'm the director of special services reping on the dynamic learning Maps which is the alternate assessment for special education students who do not take the state um the state standardized testing I'm going to see if I can operate with two hands okay so the uh the dlm replaces the njsla or the NJ GPA depending on the grade level for students with significant intellectual dis disabilities and or developmental disabilities so it's a small percentage of students that take these tests the dlm assessments offer DM eligible students a way to show what they know and what they can do in language arts mathematics and science students assessed include IND District students as well as students we receive from other districts and we are assessed we assess in these areas depending on the grade so language arts gets tested in grades 3 through 8 plus grade 11 mathematics gets tested in grades 3 through 8 and 11 as well science is only tested in grades 5 8 and 11 the readings include emerging level which are when students demonstrate emerging understanding of an ability to apply content Knowledge and Skills represented by the Essential Elements the approaching Target rating would be when students understand and have the ability to apply targeted content Knowledge and Skills represented by the Essential Elements is approaching the target at Target means that the students meet the target so their understanding of and app ability to apply content Knowledge and Skills are represented by the essential essential elements that is at Target and advanced is when students represent abilities and knowledge that is above the essential element Target The District results from last school year in 23 24 for each of the subject areas cannot be reported because you cannot report when publicly when the group is less than 20 and our groups are have been less than 20 so we have only asterisks here um but we still do as a district analyze the results and look to see is that we can continue to grow and improve and our interventions and strategies we have teachers meeting in plc's across grade levels in elementary focusing on reviewing the data and using the data to drive instruction um on a district level we're you know focusing a lot on on our data our um our professional development plan at incremental growth and and overall meaningful growth from year to year for each child we utilize multisensory modalities to deepen understanding of Concepts teachers work on transferring skills across settings we know that that deepens understanding and Knowledge and Skills when students are able to perform skills outside of just one setting that they can use it in um in different classes or in the community and we also have added additional instructional resources including Aris Lexia unique Learning System and news to you and that is it for the area of DM are there any questions the right so for my for this part the U the individual student reports were sent out so um they they get sent out for for all the state tests but I'm just speaking to the part that that e has individual go so there's depending on their needs and um and what the evaluation teams determine are the areas that students need the most support in um the the teams develop individualized goals so they look very different from student to student um in terms of dlm the so all students have grade level student learning standards right for dlm we I mentioned in here with the the term Essential Elements so the Essential Elements is taking apart the standard and looking at what is the essential element of that standard what so a student with an IEP who has a developmental disability may not necessarily be able to achieve the full standard but the target is to look at what is the essential part of that standard that is most important for that student to learn so that part it's still grade level in terms of looking at what is expected for that thank you very much you all have a good night yeah so um you remember back in August I did part one of this assessment where we talked this assessment station where we talked about so this uh some of this informationa standards that standards that were required to engl langage English Language Art uh they focus on writing effectively when they're analyzing Tex that's really the big piece of the ELA assessment in math it's a lot about applying skills to real world problems um and then science are investigating sensing anding um so first for the first part of this presentation I'm going to go through the NJ slaa and math and then uh I'll do science the ELA and math have the same the same performance levels so those are scored out of five levels level one being did not meet expectations and level five exceeding appr um whenever we talk about uh students meeting expectations we're talking about levels four and five for their meeting or if a student scores a level one to three that means they have not the okay so before we get into the data we'll just go over some of the overall District achievements that we've seen uh first uh being that we are continuing to see Positive Growth uh when when we get into the actual data you'll see um you'll see growth over time over the past few years especially postco our scores keep increasing which is great to see um we see that our students and our staff are really working hard um and really focusing on getting getting back that getting towards positive growth in um in all of our different assessments uh we are still scoring higher than the state you know we talk about that often um but we are still scoring higher than the state um we are seeing positive growth in subgroups uh and like I said we're we're moving towards pre-co proficiency levels and then some of the district interventions and strategies that we've been putting into place and that we're continuing to put into place um we we've been having uh we've been focusing a lot on our multi-tiered systems of supports so what type of supports do we have for the different learner needs that we have in our schools and in our district we've uh we're in our we're launching our educ climber platform which is a data warehousing software which will be a a platform which is a platform where staff and and administrators all staff can see students a whole picture of a child in one screen versus trying to go to all these different uh locations for different types of different pieces of data uh we continue with our high quality professional development and that's the different types we have staff developers that come in we have we send staff to conferences to workshops um we have different organizations that we're a part of that provide opportunities for networking to staff and sharing best practices and then probably the one of the most important pieces is that we do a really good job cing of providing staff with time and resources um you know most districts uh you know they give the resources then they don't give that time use our PS and use our time with staff to give them the room to review these so they have all this data they have access to educ they have access to assessments they have all this stuff but then they don't have that time to to actually look at it so our you know the one way that we feel we support staff is giving them that time and giving them those uh those opportunities um and then uh Implement implementing uh high quality instructional program program so we've done a lot of work around our instructional programs and how which programs um really provide effective results for students and then how those programs are linking data so we're looking at programs that connect with each other versus just being one program for this one program for another we're looking at programs that work together so that way we're not getting different pieces of data from all these different programs okay so we're going to start with Ela so these are our major notable achiev AI Ms uh overall you'll see a 1.3% increase in students who met or exceeded expectations um and then we broke down by grade level all the different growth we did focus last year in literary literary and vocabulary development um that was one of the focuses that we had through through our professional development so you'll see some growth in those areas and then we'll go into participation rate so you'll see participation rates vary throughout the years um participation we're very close to 100% participation really comes from um from uh students student refusals students are still allowed to refuse uh njsla assessment so they don't have to sit for the assessment if their uh parent guardian or caregiver chooses not to they write a letter and then they they don't sit for the assessment um which is very rare but it does happen which is why we're not at 100% across the board um it also the ELA numbers you'll see when we get into math are slightly different than the math numbers because uh there are some when multilingual when students that are identified as multilingual Learners come into the district they're exempt from portions of the ELA assessment okay so this is our district uh comparison multi-year comparison so you'll see 2018 2019 our pre-co scores and then you'll see in 2024 we scored 69.9% of students in grades 3 to9 um scored at meeting or exceeding expectations on the assessment so you'll see continuous growth towards proficiency this is a comparison of students versus state so you'll see Leonia you'll see the district score in the maroon and then you'll see the state scores in Gray so like I said in the beginning we are consistently scoring above the state the state averages so now I'm going to go into the cohort comparison so this is um this the next few slides compares the students so in the last few slides we're comparing the whole as a whole but now we're looking at cohorts of students so this is for these are current fifth graders for the class of 2032 these are current fifth graders so in 2023 they took the njsla in grade three and then this group in 2024 so in the spring were grade four and they took the njsla as fourth graders and then in 2025 they'll be fifth graders so next year you'll see them on the fifth grade slide so you'll see the growth across um the grade here uh which we love to see that significant growth um yeah yeah yeah yes absolutely you know as we're getting postco too you know we're starting to see a lot of this and we did a lot of work with third and fourth grade teachers last year on vocabulary and literary work so you'll hopefully we'll see more of that so students in grade so this is current sixth graders so last year's fifth grade so you'll see their third grade score their fifth grade score and then their fourth grade score and then their fifth grade score um we do this is actually so you'll see if you look at a lot of test scores across districts you'll see in transition Years you'll see a lot of dips in scores just because of that transition plays a big role as a big variable in the assessments um we are very proud that we did not see a dip here uh we're very happy to see that our grade four and five our teachers in grades four and five are consistent in their practices and being able to support that transition um and LMS is you know as you know is tricky because we have two transitions in one school so it becomes a little hard to see that over time so this is our current seventh graders so you'll see in fourth grade and then fifth grade they transition to LMS and then from LMS grade five to grade six their score increased 78.7% and now they're our current seventh graders so we expect the same thing this year too and these are our current eighth graders so this um similar scores so no major dip here sure we do not have we right it's not that great so that's that's part of the reason why we'll see some changes in our scores um in grade seven and up because of the population addition of our Edgewater residents um but you know we don't differentiate we don't separate them out because they become our students in seventh grade so so I don't know if we can rep report that publicly but that's definitely something and we do do that through different modes of assessment like we look at that through our star assessments Edgewater in the past was using star um so we we've been able to use a similar Common Assessment to be able uh to support that learning we've they've been using it since 20 we've both been using star since 2019 have multiple years um they've moved away from it at this point but we're going to continue using it so we still have that information um but I don't think public reporting because they're not you know with confidentiality rights and everything we can't publicly report and compare Edgewater scores before 7th grade um but it is something we do internally and then grade nine so the this is current grade nine students so this was last year so and then these are our current grade 10 so this is our freshman um which this the dip in eth and 9th grade is something that we see again a lot of it is due to the fact that they transitioning to a whole new building whole new expectations um so we do see that across the board usually uh and just as we do every year we have to report on our subgroup uh data and the subgroups we report on our gender race ethnicity uh and the and then certain special programs so we uh use we report on students identified as economically disadvantaged students with IEPs uh students with 504s and multilingual Learners uh there are as Jenna said there's a reporting minimum you have to have at least 10 students in a reporting group to be able to report out publicly so these four groups uh we do not have more than 10 students in these groups so we cannot report them publicly so they are not on the next graph so you'll see gray in the gray is 2023 and then in the maroon is 2024 so you'll see we're right about there um you know there's not much of a difference between the two years um we really dive into this data when we're working with the administrators and with the teachers to really pinpoint like this is this is overall data but when we dive into it we look really deeper into it like specifically how manys you know what you know what grade levels these are and kind of really dive into that data dat that way and then these are uh a comparison of our special programs so again not much of a difference in the scores um which is good but also something that we're continuing to Monitor and look at and our interventions and improvements um so over the last over the past summer uh we've done a lot of curriculum revisions to meet the new njsl uh njsls the standards uh the NJ dooe had uh new standards for this year and those standards uh focused on grammar and vocabulary and put more of an emphasis on K5 phonics and then there was an overall realignment of the K12 standards like which standards went to which grade levels so we did a lot of that work over the summer with the teachers and we're continuing to build on those unit plans and those um curriculum documents throughout the school year uh we're continuing professional development last year we did multisensory reading PD with the 3 to five grades 3 to five staff this year we are take we are doing that PD with K to2 so then everyone at ECS will have that multisensory reading professional development we're also continuing the the professional development on differentiating for our multilingual Learners we've been picking departments um so we're just moving on to the next Department in LMS and LHS to be able to support that sheltered English instruction and then uh we're continuing to roll out different platforms to be able to analyze the data across the platforms so some of our PD this year will be focused on how do we use the different platforms that we have to make sense of the data that we have and then and programs that we are continuing and some new programs um the after school tutoring through the high impact tutoring grant that we have uh will'll continue after school tutoring opportunities uh we are we did revamp our credit recovery program um so that will be launching this year to be able to better support students in Credit Recovery through alternative Pathways and that platform we use is Imagine Learning um and then the additional resources that we've added this is our second year with Lexia so teachers are just getting comfortable with that program um and then we've add added no red in defit uh we're piloting age of learning and we have near pod and DNA which is an assessment tool any questions on Ela before I move to math that's a great question um so uh the state does not provide that information however uh someone from somewhere in New Jersey coded this website last school year with last year's data compare that you could compare basically districts you could choose which district so I could choose right so you could choose Leonia compared to Pal Park and you could as many comparisons as you wanted you could create you could do countywide you could do schoolwide um and then a crop so we're all hoping all of us all of the administrators in Bergen County we're all hoping that person codes that website again because that's the only way we get that data the state does not provide that and does not readily support us in that yep AB right right right it's hard when you're like it's that we meet that we're above the state standards but I expect above the state standards and you know that's that's a right right so hopefully person codes that website again so that way we have that information any other Ela questions okay so math so math is the same as uh Ela in terms of scoring oh and the so to go back to Maria's question earlier um the way that we can't send out the reports until we get the official copies from the state so those just arrived to the board office on Monday so those will be sent out you know we have they they we Dr G signed the letter today they're getting packed and ready to ship and they will be shipped out by the end of the week hopefully or the next few days yeah so they're coming but yeah we have to we can't release any of that information until it's provided by the state so these are the notable achievements you'll see uh for math spent a lot of time last year for math uh on modeling and reasoning our Middle School and High School teachers went to uh a lot of sessions with scholz from mathematics uh she did a lot of work with our staff on modeling and reasoning so we're very excited that we did see growth in those areas and participation rates so you'll see here like I said earlier these are based on you know parent refusals um and then they're different than the ELA because uh multilingual Learners have some uh opportunities for exemptions in ela that they don't have from for math so this is our fiveyear or multi-year comparison so we're inching our way closer to our pre-co numbers uh we're very excited that our math SC going up a lot of districts around us aren't seeing the same successes but we are very proud of the work that we're doing in math and the the team that is you know kind of looking at the standards and working on all these revisions that we've been doing so we're really proud of this work here's the state comparison um you'll see Leonia is in the maroon and then the state is in the gray and as a reminder you'll see the dip in that seventh eth grade because Stu that's where students are taking others outside of their grade level assessment so um in grade seven if students have the option to take or if they take an advanced course they can take the either the grade seven assessment if they're in if they take Algebra 1 that year they take the algebra 1 assessment so they're excluded from Seven assessment so the scores like the grade six scores there's the the it's not the same group of kids in grade six that go to grade seven and then grade eight is the same and I'll show you when we get into the cohort I'll be able to show that a little bit better speaking of the cohort um so this starts the same cohort analysis as we did for ELA so you'll see this is our current fifth graders uh from grade three to four our current sixth graders going from grade three 4 to five uh this is our current seventh grade ERS so this is so this was our current seventh grade this is the last year that they are they all took the grade six assessment this group of kids moving forward will now be separated into different assessments so this graph what we did here to to better show the actual scores of the students over time um we took out any students that were um that took an ADV aned course and that did not take the grade seven assessment so if a student took in grade seven instead of taking the grade seven assessment took an algebra 1 we removed them in this graph we removed them from the grade six and the grade five so that way we could see how the actual cohort of students is progressing over time and we did the same thing for grade eight so this is grade eight students have the option after grade seven if they take Algebra 1 in grade seven they can take geometry in grade 8 so we took we removed those kids from the grade six assessment so we can also see just the cohort the true cohort of students and these are current freshmen so same as our Ela who report ons um and then there were uh the same four subgroups that we couldn't report on in ela we can't report on because they do not meet the minimum reporting size so you'll see them at the bottom and here is sub our subgroup uh report and then this is our for our special programs and now the interventions and the improvements that we've done in our math department um similar to ELA uh the state also released new math standards that were for uh implementation for September so we spent the LA the end of last year and the summer working on the new math standards um so we again realignment of the K12 standards they really defined what the expectations were across grade levels um they measurement and data used to be the same domain but now they separated them into two separate domains um Elementary standards removed money at one point but now have added money back in uh grades three 3 to Five Focus on reasoning about fractions with visual fraction models and grade eight uh includes radical expressions rational and irrational numbers and then there also all of the content areas now have the climate change opportunities so along with the math standards there's also climate change for math so there's standards specifically to be used within the math curriculum that um support climate change standards uh over the past year and moving forward profession our professional development uh really focused on differentiating instruction in math uh we focused the math task force uh created unit plans and that's we're continuing that work throughout the the upcoming school year within the grade levels is really creating those unit plans and each having differentiated resources so that way teachers don't have to go find resources to better support the learning and the lesson they have access to them in one document uh we also continuing our star data training for the high school um at this point uh Kate starting from kindergarten to grade 10 our students test uh use the star as a benchmark assessment um so we're continuing training at the high school and then LMS has a new math program experienced math um the old program was connected math and it expired uh the contract ended but also the program was no longer uh but it just expired the company didn't have we didn't have access to the program through the company so we went with uh experience math moving and then some of the resources we're continuing uh the programs uh the after school tutoring opportunities again through the highing grant we're we're able to provide additional tutoring opportunities for students um then we do have our smile our smile math program in the summertime um it's a summer math Institute where students can take remedial classes but can also take and then we really focused this year on providing high quality resources for our staff across grade levels and really targeting the grade levels based on our needs so you'll see um like generation Geniuses for K8 we did reflex and refracts for grades 2 to four because that's where we saw um the biggest need for fraction support and number fluency was uh Freckle buz math for six to eight and then some other programs that we have any question question on math before I move on to science yes so the njsla the njsls uh climate change standards uh the state has created this climate change these group these group of standards that are based around climate change and basically has aligned um different standards to different content areas so a lot of the math ones are problem based so if there's you know some and off the top of my head I can't think of a a math problem but you know maybe in elementary school we're comparing temp over time to see you know so that that's kind of how they they've been able to adjust it to the different content areas okay that is eighth grade math that is too high for my math I am not sure yes I'm sure it is something that has to do with square roots and you know I don't okay so science uh science is slightly different than math and Ela science is administered in students for students in grades 5 8 and 11 um and it provides a snapshot over the over the years that they're not assessed it it kind of groups it assesses all of the standards from or the uh an overview of the standards for the years that they have not been assessed um it focuses on the application of science skills so it's not you know what is the sun it's more about about you know the application of the skills that they've learned about the sun uh and it focuses on designing solutions to real world problem so there's a lot of uh investigating sense making you know critiquing if there's a problem the here solution what would you do differently so that's a lot that's what we see a lot with the NJ SLA Science assessment uh this uh it the performance levels for science are there are four levels and njsl math and Ela have five but for some reason science has four uh and they are level one is below proficient and four is Advanced proficient um and levels three and four when we talk about proficiency and we talk about meeting expectations we're talking about levels three and four no there might be a multiple choice question or two but most of it is written response same with Ela and math there's a lot of written response yes no no it's a it's a lot of written response yeah a lot of written expectations in the in these assessments notable achievements these are some of the things that we saw this year we saw increases in uh grades five and eight um and I'll talk a little bit more about grade 11 when we get there but we are seeing positive positive growth in science as well you see participation rates here um grades 5 8 and 11 similar to uh njsla so this is over threeyear comparison so the state only we only have three years this is this will be the four year of njsla science so we don't have we can't go far further back than 2022 um but you'll see we're steadily steadily increasing those meeting and exceeding expectations because it's a newer assessment as we learn more about the assessment and the expectations and the type of prompts that students are getting the better we can modify our pacing and our our curriculum to support the needs and the expectations of the the assessment this is a comparison over time so you'll see grade five overtime grade 8 and grade 11 um the one thing I do want to point out grade 11 which we talk about often in our administrative teams is these 11th graders take this assessment after already taking the NJ GPA already taking a full month of AP assessments and after they don't take the the they don't take after grade nine they don't take an assessment in grade 10 so they miss a year of taking an assessment and then they're bombarded with all of these assessments so when you look at the grade 11 scores just keep that in mind that our students are you know are in a difficult situation at that time of the year when they are trying to get to the end of the year and have a bunch of Assessments that they need to take from the state but we do see positive growth in the other grade levels so this is the percent of students compared to the state similar to the other two the district is in maroon and then the state is in Gray and just like the other two assessments we also report on um on subgroups yes ask my question so my perspective these numbers are not 60% of our students expect right but then you look at the State 28 % own immun that's more than 70% in the state don't meet expectations so I guess just s curious do you have an opinion on how relevant this test is but that's a that's this is an outstanding over 70% of the students in the state don't meet expectations right I mean that's that's my so so that sort of begs a question like how relevant is this are like are we so bad in this state or is or is the test not particularly not that relevant so sorry the um the first part of that is we're this is the they meet expectations on this assessment right so it's not they're meeting expectations towards the standards because we have other data to show us that and other information like if you look at our AP scores at our national assessment or our or our PSAT like those are National assessments that are our scores are we do very well on those so this these scores are just on meeting expectations of the njsla Science assessment um so that that's the first piece and the second piece is clearly Steve you're absolutely right grade 8 18% of students are meeting expectations across the state it's a state conversation um you know part of my my role I'm part of the Burton County curriculum Consortium and one of the things that we've been talking about in our Consortium a lot is just this assessment just this just this not Ela not math just this assessment because the expectations on this assessment don't match the instruction and the standards that are actually being required of us so the state is looking at a new assessment platform and we've been advocating with the state to really take the Educators into consideration when they're putting when they're making a decision on what kind of assessment that they're going to purchase next at the state level so yeah you exactly correct this is not the best but it's still a requirement and that's the part that is hard the kids aren't learning what they need to learn or they're not tested obviously there absolutely is and it's it's also the way that it's tested when it's tested the testing environments it's there's a lot of variables that also play into part that like you know it's it's not fair it's not fair to the kids that you know our our kids especially in science and math our stem programs are phenomenal we've seen you saw the AP scores last time like our kids do very well in those scores and in those content areas that this is just this is not a great representation it's not fair that districts have to present this when it's really it's not on the districts it's more it's a bigger picture of the state state assesses these students going back to here to our subgroups um you'll see that our our subgroup for our uh students our black African-American students it is zero because not they didn't score earlier last year but because they were under the reporting group so we could not um we could not report them same students with 504s and our interven and improvements um along with the curriculum so the standards for this for science weren't new this year but we focused a lot of professional development and we will focus professional development this upcoming school year on how to incorporate real world cases and data analysis into Earth Science um and and into existing science courses so we don't have a standalone earth science course at the high school which is normal that's not something that's you know that is specific to Leonia but um our one of our focuses this year for the science department is to think about more think more about how we can combine the earth science standards into the existing courses and giving real more real world cases for those uh earth science standards um and professional development you know continuing with the just the theme of the whole PD for the deer and part of our professional development plan is using our district assessment data to inform and you know determine our instructional strategies that we use um and then using those tools like we've talked about like our DNA platform and our near pod um and linking that all to our assessments and then we've added some additional resources as well and this goes back to Jenna so I am any questions any final I I have some questions um sure sorry you know uh the state requirement to report by like softw like by gender by race are we actually using that data to I don't know improve our that our curriculum like looking at the score by female male Asian not Asian it just I it makes me wonder like why do we look at it this way and how are we using that information so that information is important when you see discrepancies right so if we see a higher so when we look at a higher this is 40% of our students but then our subgroups are showing below 20 20 or below that's where there's a discrepancy right that's 20% difference between that makes sense but it's more for gender and race so the same thing for that too right the same thing if we had so this is a bad example but if we had uh well actually so right we have 40% of our all our whole population's grade 58 and 11 are meeting expectations but only 22% of our Hispanic population is or 28% of our Hispanic population is meeting expectations so there's a discrepancy between so that's what we really look for is discrepancies between our subgroups and our general population and that's where we focus that's where we really Target that instruction what can we be doing better to meet meet the learning needs of our students in these populations thank you my other question is about uh the resources and programs especially for LA and math I I saw a long list of you know these resources um how are they deployed out to the teachers we have a wide range of age groups with the different levels of experiences uh some teachers um um I know they have developed their own excellent way of instruction they may have their own preference uh how are we um balancing all those differences so we like to take a slow and steady approach here um you know we like yes our teachers all have access all of these different grade levels and content areas have access to these resources right now but we do this over time a little bit because we don't want to overwhelm or bombard right because there's very different levels there's some teachers that or some staff members that will just jump in and start using these products right they'll just be like oh cool I'm going to start using generation genius tomorrow that's great and some need a little bit more support so we plan our professional development with our vendors throughout the day throughout the year so we have um like a reflex that's our new math for number fluency for grades 2 to four we have a PD scheduled for November our November PD day we'll have the vendor come in and do a training for the staff then so they'll take an hour out of that PD afternoon to do that training um you know we have uh generation genius we have you know we have that scheduled for later in the year um we have age of learning we have um because it's specifically for grade levels we're going to do it at a faculty meeting so we do these webinars and we do these um we share these programs with our teachers we give them the access and then we slowly kind of roll them out so that way they they can figure out what works for them and then there's obviously no there's no no mandate to use these in the first year we like to see them get comfortable and get exposure to it we provide them we want to provide them with opportunities to see that in action in other school in other um classrooms within their grade level so a lot of these plc's and common planning meetings are helpful because that's where teachers can share these resources and share the excitement for them so if I really like reflex I'm going to share it with you and then you know you're going to get that excitement as well right thank you any other questions yeah I had a question um I know they didn't do the testing during the co years but with the testing having started back up again a like before and then after um is are these results being used to look at the impacts of education and learning um that were created by covid and if so like does it show any particular grades were more severely impacted by it you mean in Leonia at a broader level well I mean ideally Leonia but it seems like what you're saying this is more like for the State state's use but I was curious well I mean to be specific I mean have has the administration looked that to use results to see if it looks like there was an impact in Le Leonia so I mean yes but we're also like we're making assumptions that you know it's hard to tell that right cuz there's obviously a lot of variables that are involved when you're looking at assessment data but that's why the more we look at the data and the more we really dive into it and then we can figure out you know uh we we we can go deep deep enough to know if a child has been here even for their entire like if we're looking at math data for a subgroup and we see that you know grade five is really struggling with math we can really look at okay where are they struggling right if they're struggling with fractions grade five that was 3 years ago in grade 2 three fractions is a major part of grade three it's a major work in grade three that's where their fraction development starts so that's what we kind of piece together here when we look at data we really kind of think about okay let's look back and figure out where the holes are and maybe why um and then I'm sure at the state level they're looking at this across the board and saying you know there's areas and gaps too but I think those studies will be hard to to do right now but I think in a few years we'll start seeing more of that research on covid postco development and the state has the I know the state and the the federal government has started changing the developmental levels of student of expectations for children so that's a whole another topic thank you yeah because the concern is I mean from anecdotal just you know things I've read in articles I've seen that students that were in elementary school during covid were were the most impacted by this um you know you're middle school high school you're a little more developed and you have you know better skills to manage but the kids that were younger were really hurt the most just curious if I mean there's so much data here like is the state doing anything you know are we doing anything to really look at and see and and I think there were some I believe I remember seeing that we had there were either grants that were issued or we may have even received some of those um to help with the kids that are I think they're the ones that are still in elementary school now but what about the kids that were in ele school and have moved on since then that are still struggling are they being looked at you know is there anything being done to to assist and make sure that they're doing okay so we we had covid money we prob speak to that the high impact tutoring Grant things that we had along those lines what's interesting about using this data to look at a CO impact is this and Dr this goes back to the point that Dr Miser made before what the state does the state changes cut scores from year to year right and so the so the the the validity of the data from a year to year cohort comparison is is really rather suspect and I one of one of the slides before it showed like an 18% difference between one year to the next well the kids didn't become 18% smarter one year to the next right someone somewhere a psychometrician um changed that score right and so I think to the purpose of your question Mr Lee there's been a wide variety of data on the national level that shows that on average students in a variety of districts have lost up to two years of reading level based on the co impact that number uh what all the data shows and the research shows is that that number is mostly driven by socioeconomic status and support inside of schools and so what we're seeing is is that we are not seeing a clear downturn in the capacity of our students either anecdotally or on paper right now where that will come alive and we're years away from it is when we begin to see when they take these massive tests that are nationwide the SATs the PSATs when they're given to tens of thousands of students over the course of many years you begin to get a sense of that data what we're not seeing what we're not seeing is is that we're not seeing a behavioral learning component in which it's very very clear that the co impact of being home and being having the difficulty in in in supporting your child while also working remotely has had a long lasting impact upon children and each year we're finding that the children as the younger they are they more and more revert to the expectations that we had over the previous years so a town such as Leonia and a town such as Edgewater they weather [Music] you did so f [Music] right Prov thank you see you next year e e than 3 we you I'm come