good evening and welcome to the June 25th 2024 Board of Education meeting at this time I entertain a motion to reconvene an open session move second been properly move and second to reconvene an open meeting all those in favor stay I I all those opposed same right motion carries roll call Mr Trent yes Mr Carlson miss filac m frankco Herman present M naron present Mr Todd pres thank you please rise for the salute to the flag I flag United States America to the stand Nation all right we'll start out with superintendent report presentations superintendent M good evening everyone thank you all for coming I'm going to get right to your presentation I know we started a little late so Mr Jason Sullivan our supervisor would you like to introduce your team tell us how wonderful they are so thank you again for inviting us to come and uh celebrate another great year of Science Olympiad um give you a real quick recap we have all the blue shirts over here our uh Science Olympia team members and uh we had quite an extraordinary year uh some of you have seen some of those uh slides already uh po president uh Mr Todd uh came and enjoyed our community outreach night back in May and uh so I'll give you a little um couple quick little slides up on the front uh so Science Olympiad give you a little idea of what Science Olympiad is and speaking mostly you know then to uh our public uh Science Olympiad is 23 separate events so think of the Olympics that are about to take place where you're competing in all sorts of different things uh in our world it is maybe a t biology event or uh an inquiry event where you're um code busting or doing pery questions or an engineering event that you're going to get to see a few demos of tonight uh we called them study events versus uh build events there are 23 of them and at some tournaments there are more as they do trial events and we'll talk a little bit about some trial events our our season was uh full of lots of fun so you can see here here uh celebrations after various tournaments uh that we attended and activities that were going on some highlights some photos up there to remind us of the good times that we had and then also to remind us sometimes of the epic failures that we had uh top right photo uh can be reminded of that so here is our season uh to start with We Begin uh as the board is uh kind of AP to do approves us to go on a trip to Cornell University in November uh for our first overnight these are really important events because we get to spend time together uh the kids go to bed really early uh as you would imagine uh it's not very tiring for the coaches um Miss West St will tell you that I can nap really anywhere uh that I need to after these events so uh we went up to Cornell and uh took second place and fourth place respectively uh when we go to these events we take two teams uh and we don't always compete as you would think JB Varsity uh sort of sometimes you're mix and match sometimes you're not most of the time we're trying out different parings and helping students who might have just come into science and fad uh gain some tournament expertise the next one we went to was regionals uh regionals is our easiest tournament you might say oh that's strange because you finished second um we we don't always Place uh put a lot of stock in regionals because we have to just finish in the top seven or eight and uh we try some different things one of the things that we tried this year was uh in the top right hand corner uh attending the tournament without our launcher for our car so uh I was not on the bus that morning CU we were running the tournament and they got there and realized they brought the car but nothing to launch it with so our students uh uh did a little bver uh and buil that little ramp which is not part of the rules at all but uh they got some participation points so uh second place at regionals we lost to one of our trials uh at regionals and then the rest of the year we're going after that highlight again we went to MIT for our January overnight competition and finished in eighth place I don't know what the uh uh the second team finished it was substantially lower MIT is by far our most difficult and challenging competition of all year uh we have some excellent teams that are there and we left that known we were probably better than eight so we kind of did a would a could have should on some of our events and recognized at that point I think in the year there was something in our mind that said yeah we're sort of legit we we could do this uh came back to Colombia took first place at Colombia uh and we did have a second second team and I don't remember what score was uh Princeton uh was an interesting time this was the first uh tournament that I missed in a long long time and it was uh sort of meaningful for me to be a way and them to just totally dominate so I realized that I'm not that important uh and they are very very good so uh second place and third place we mixed our teams up so in a world of really highly competitive teams uh our two were some of the best there uh University of Pennsylvania ends our competition season we took first place so we are trying to peek at the right time and then moved into our uh not necessarily most difficult competition that we go against but it's really uh winter go home at States and you've seen us here before where we did win we came very quess a couple times and then 2022 we did so it had been a little while uh and we went and just totally dominated and so they uh they had a great day um I think we still probably felt like we could have done better uh on a couple of the events but at the end of time we were first place uh clearing away from our our rival competition so uh students did wonderfully we went to Nationals with a bit of a purpose uh so again another trip that was uh sent your way to approve for us to head over to Michigan State University and at Nationals uh Montgomery has been I believe 10 times Nationals uh something like that in our history maybe 11 maybe 12 somewhere there but uh quite a few times we have never finished hired at 12th Place as a team uh and New Jersey come to find out what the kids tell me uh they are ridiculed most of the time on their little Discord servers that New Jersey doesn't usually show up for Nationals and uh we don't do well as a state so I think they had a little bit of a uh motivation the other motivation was this year just happened to be on Memorial weekend and there was a second offering for a New Jersey team so our our tribal slid in uh even though we kind of dominated event at States so they got a bid uh so our goal was to beat them uh and then to have the highest Place uh finish that we have ever had as a coach this was my 29th year as a coach of science lad and this team uh earned the fourth place Nationals and that was the best I'd ever done at a Nationals with a team fifth place before that years and years ago and they did an extraordinary job uh so I'd like to give them most many of them in attendance not all uh but give them a nice round of applause question so for National fourth out of 60 60 yeah 60 yeah 60 of the and uh most of those teams I I think two or three of them two of them above us uh were above us maybe at at MIT and then we beat some teams that beat us at MIT so uh we we kind of gauge oursel against that so uh they have kind of establish themselves as you see a strong team nationally and committed to continuing to improve this and they believe that uh their best days are to come and I I wouldn't uh hesitate to agree a couple other pieces that I want to share with you uh individually at Nationals here are some of the places that uh we earn so uh gold medals and chemistry lab which was a repeat from 2022 first place in codebusters which was uh probably those two chemistry lab and codebusters uh were no surprises uh our codebuster team is the best in the nation and it has been for a long while uh and uh if they get the Nationals everybody else knows they're uh our detector building surprised us a little bit this detector never worked for anybody all year long and I don't know if it worked this time or not but first place it it did well Experimental Design This is team of three they get random items uh when they show up and they have to design and conduct an inquiry on the spot in 15 minutes we place first there disease detective a study event uh Dynamic planet third place firy questions which is kind of an inquiry uh event have to uh sort of guess like how many air molecules are in this room uh and your answer has to be the exponent of that scientific vcation so I I wouldn't greatly close to them they're probably thinking on it right now uh architectural uh science is an alternate event we there were three alterate events we competed in all three of them we took fourth place in one of them sixth place an engineering cat and I didn't put up there but I think it's noteworthy we had one other event that was um uh solar right yeah solar power I couldn't remember the name of it just what they built and they took seven so it was right out of the uh so there were no other teams that finished as high as we did here couple thing whoops a couple thank yous real quick before we get into some uh demonstrations uh first off uh there are some coaches behind me that uh would not have made this happen without them so to recognize uh some great faculty that we have on staff and some that we have sometimes and then not and then that and this question so she'll be back later I'm sure um as as we see that um but uh first off David English uh chemistry teacher at the high school and rusu also chemistry teacher we just kind of no where all four of us have chemistry degrees so uh and then Stacy West and I'm going to have you say of Applause because the students might not know this but all of what you see up there for Montgomery competitions probably doesn't happen except that Stacy when she left Montgomery last June she stayed in involved with science and bad and ran most of the invitationals or the regional competitions this year and is now a member of the State Board and was instrumental I don't think uh New Jersey Science Olympiad happened or it didn't happen like it did this year without Stacy so special Applause for Stacy and then uh then we brought it back on staff and she uh continued to do that and continued to be part of the the coaching and support staff uh could not keep her off the bus to go to Nationals and uh we had a really wonderful trip uh thanks to our sponsors we had some local sponsors you'll see on the back of the t-shirts and also uh here in the district um you know from uh MTA or or um sorry PTSA at the high school uh sponsored us and uh just support that we get every day from Administration uh when I go and talk to Heather uh Pino uh it's always yes it's always yes how can we do that how can we make that happen uh her kid your kids are great um and then you got to all hear them uh at uh at graduation because you have the salutatorian and valoran as two of the captains so i' like to quickly introduce my captain where attendance today so you can just step forward uh NE K go [Applause] D jior so he'll be back next year as is Maxine isan car ran charma CH coaches we'll be the first to tell you our team doesn't happen without these uh wonderful captains they take care of everything and uh put the team together keep the vibe the way that we need it to be uh it is a great group to be around and we look forward to uh all of those opportunities that they have in front of them uh I would I would tell you some things I was thinking about this about announcing like oh where are they going to school on all of this they were going to some really fabulous uh universities uh mostly because they're going there uh if you think about what makes it the university so wonderful it's a people and we're sending some really really fine monover high school graduates here tonight and also some of their classmates they're they're going to go off and do wonderful things because uh you know our community supports them their parents support them their teachers support them um administration supports them and they're super talented uh individuals so congratulations to all of you can't wait to uh stay connected uh it's now okay to be on LinkedIn with me and connect through that and I will be uh contacting them as alumni uh officer as uh test writers that different things so they're already talking about going to their schools and getting involved with the had so we will see them at tournaments and we see them uh our alumni almost every one of our tournaments that we've been to so uh thank you and uh to end tonight i' I'd love to invite people up a little closer look we have a couple of our engineering events that they've got set up for you if you'd like to take a beak and we'll run through them pretty quickly so we don't keep you into thank you I'll tell you a little bit about the event okay first one that we're going to show off is air trajectory so we're dropping a mass uh unlike tonight where they just did try on in there put the bucket out there to make it look good uh when we go to competition uh they know uh dimensions of what they had to build they had practiced this and we can shoot anything from from like 2 m to 8 m there are two Targets one of them is right on the center line one of them is off center farther away and then there's a third uh component that is the bucket shot that you're going to see you get closest to the center on all those shots you get four shots essentially and uh you try to score the the most points I think remember like 11th or 14th something like that uh ninth nth okay yeah so on you short sorry so Ninth Place at National go ahead and Sean first time he's remember this gole all year so just in case wait why is DAV that didn't happen at Nationals but uh just uh we did hit hit the bucket so there's many different aspects to all of these and you think okay build this and shoot this and make it in the bucket but because you don't know the distances uh beforehand it's a little bit more complicated than that they have to test and test and test so they spend hours and hours and hours the next morus SE is uh our robot tour and so there is a 2x2 M uh grid on the floor uh there are usually uh 16 different cells and the uh event supervisor will label them so that you have to try to get in as many of those cells as you can they're little half meter by half meter with the barriers that are out here but again the barriers we know the number we don't know where they're going to be placed the other component is is that they have to time this to go from their starting point through all of those Gates we call them into those other things and land on the end spot and try to do that with a particular time like it might be I think 72 seconds at National something like that what was uh uh for this one we'll be doing uh one minute one minute so uh again that when they go to competition that's announced to them so they have to adjust this they have a computer program that they've worked on uh adjusting to make this happen and you have several different runs so you can adjust a little bit during this uh we'll see if they've uh made this happen so we'll give a little 3 2 1 somebody can if you're really interested want to do your stopwatch you can see how close it comes to 60 seconds okay 3 two wait actually wait sorry uh sorry I I need to start the program first okay 3 2 one go we added this uh some music to it that's not required that was just a bazzle we wanted to do we didn't actually run this program on at National no I don't think you ran the sound did you yeah yeah no sound we didn't want to show off so right now it's just going and trying to go into all the cells that are labeled and they have to go into those the ending Point's over here end point okay and have to enter into it try to get it how we doing on time somebody got that for [Music] maybe that's it so after that they would have time to reprogram and they could adjust that the first time that we did it at Nationals it ran into all the barriers and all kinds of crazy stuff and by the time we finished it uh it was I think 5 cm off right that so that is robot tour uh so again they don't know all these things got to work on the program for months and months they are starting already uh right now we have prints going on our high school printers to make that happen the last one we want to show you is Scrambler car we are not going to do this real life CU we're low on you know we work our custodians too hard already in the summer to actually put a live egg on the end of it so typically this car will have a real egg tap to the end and there are a couple things that you want to do one is that uh we have to Arc around this I don't know if they're going to put it in there today Max or not but typically there's a 5G bucket that is sitting right in the middle of the start line and where theyve declared they of this car needs to stop it's anywhere between 8 to 12 M and you don't know that until after you Dro your device off and they reveal it uh that morning as a competition so you you have to test it out all of these different lengths this year you can't just shoot straight down the St the track you have to go around this bucket so we have to Arc the car uh which you know takes a little engineering and design uh many different cads and putting that together um and then the other feature that uh is obviously we want to get as close to the end Target as we can breaking it on the wall but the other feature is is that you have a line we didn't put that tonight line at a half M another line at 7 and 1/2 M and you time it and you're trying to get your car to go as fast between those two points as you can so you've got to go seven roughly 7 m 2 some ft um and and then afterwards stop your car without skating so you can have some reliable runs and not run into the wall so you kind of go as fast as you can it's kind of like a T driver right you just go at the light on so in this our car typically goes those 7 m in about 1.6 seconds so it's it's flying and it looks like Children built this right I hope and work I'm not much myself so it could be me but uh they uh they work on this and beauty is in the eye of the holder our car really fast and and we didn't go quite as close as we wanted to at Nationals but uh it is it is fun to all right three 2 1 go woo all right we will clean ourselves up thank you everyone uh students stick around I have some certificates from Nationals for all of you and uh we'll get cleaned up and then uh maybe we can meet out in the lobby so we don't disrupt the and the hardware so you can come by and stuff and see our [Music] our next presentation is our demographic and enrollment report and we have Dr Ross Haber here to present welcome thank you well first first of will good evening and second we thank you for we having follow that yes that was that was absolutely amazing okay truly amazing um and so what I want to do is a very brief overview of the study um and go through this very quickly and answer any questions that you might that you might have so the first guess second can contr okay so the first this first slide just takes a look at all of the schools in the district between 20189 which was the base year of the study uh in 2023 24 which is the current year and then it shows the enrollment change by school and by District in each one of those um in each one of those schools and then the second set of this shows change shows the projections up to 2028 29 um which which would show a gain of about 53 students without considering any of the new housing the district and with the new housing that's coming to the district we're looking at a normal change of about of about M we overall we're minus 191 without housing and um with housing we're minus 6 so that's what the long range projections uh showed you say that again looks like I confused a little one thing to keep in mind as you're looking at this is that in 2010 there were almost 5100 students in my time school so the enrollment has gone down considerably over the last over the last 14 month and so just don't have to read this this is kind of methodology that I use u in the study I used a standard cohort cohort survival study which is required by the state especially when you submit L range facility report and the way a c study works the way C study works is that um you you follow groups of students they move grade over 6ear period and you get an average growth rate in each grade so for example if you have 100 kids in first grade and they become 110 kids in the second grade that's a 10% growth rate and you just average that growth over the years and that provides you with your 5year projections okay kindergarten is projected a little different kindergarten you take the births accredited the live births accredited to the School District 5 years prior to the kids entering kindergarten so if there are 100 kids born in 2018 and 80 of them become kindergartens it's it's a it's a08 growth between birth and kindergarten so you do that average over time so that's that's number one so you you develop a projection based upon enrollment history over 6-year period and the difference the average difference between kids attributed to Montgomery Township in terms of birth and numbers of kids as they actually come into into kindergarten so that's one method the now that is the method then on top of that we consider new the impact of new housing on the school districts so we take a look at what's been approved by the by the board by the by the planning board zoning board um and we have formulas that tell us certain kinds of development certain kinds of homes produce a certain number of kids and each one of those has a growth parameter um in this in this study the Baseline Baseline most demographers used in the state is the ruter study the 2018 ruers study however I've been doing this for about 25 years and I find that the record study tends to underprojected communities and I formulate I formulate kind of an average between what the record study says um what and what the average for communities are very similar uh to this both economically spacewise and those kinds of things so for example um one of the communities that's comparable in terms of space uh in terms of income and things like as Monroe Township which has some has growth so that's one of them I used others that don't have as much space to grow like like a chadam um like a Milburn those kinds of things but I come up with that parameter so I take those numbers add them to the cohort growth and that generates that generates the projection with with the with with the new housing developments so one of the things I wanted to take a look at in terms of this community where community demogra graic um and uh the so I took a look at the population 2000 overall population in 20189 and it was a b 22955 the estimated estimated to 2024 is 23558 which is a change of about 64 the median age in the district um is about was about 42.6 it's projected to go out to about 43.3 about 710 of% grow median income since 2018 has gone up fairly substantially in this community up about $32,000 and mean income by about $43,000 so the community has made progress economically over time now did some racial breakdowns Community Wars so the white population in in Montgomery is about 57.61 um going out projecting out in 20 I'm sorry 2024 estimat Dr .08 there was a drop of back 1426 um that 7% drop black population dropped just uh grow just just slightly over that period of time um the uh actually grally over that time the Asian population also also grew over that period of time Hispanic dropped a little bit and then the other the others were uh the others including two more races that came up 2.78% of the of the total population so I want you to compare this to the statistics of the schools so in 20189 there were 4,696 kids and in 2024 2023-24 were 455 uh the white population increased by about 9% the black population increased by about 3.62% hispanic increased by about 6.86 uh the Asian went up by that went up to 54.87 and then the others had less lesser contribution so that's so the U the comparison is pretty consistent with the changes in the community the changes in the school fairly consistent I don't try to the report that I stion I just wanted to point out this that when you read this table the year the years 20189 through 202 24 um those are the historical years the next tent are the births the next tent over is the difference between children born uh 5 years prior to kindergarten so the kindergarten in 2018 19 is based upon children born in 2013 and I carry that in the bottom line which says average which is just above the grve line there that's the average growth or decline between RS and I take that as you see the projection here is that 455 now and it start deine after about 4313 so the decline is going to continue to some degree so the next thing I wanted to see was how does housing impact uh new housing impact how might that impact District so for the planning board I got I got the um the the approvals things that are only sure to be built over the next 5 years and I built an into the study over perod so we're taking a look at about 573 about 657 units 573 market rate and 8 for affordable and we expect that to reduce about 256 children so over the next 5 years as these units come in we're projecting about about 256 children we don't get a lot out of Studios don't get a lot out of one bedrooms there are some single family homes that are coming in and use a higher parameter or higher m the single family homes that generally produce more children so with that the projection then goes to projection then goes to 4498 so we're going from 445 to 4498 which is which is 185 the housing don't produce 256 so 256 com from housing and I've got 185 total okay uh the difference is it's a net okay it's a net gain in other words remember I'm adding this to the declining enrollment in the cohort projection so it's bringing it it's bringing the enrollment up okay but it's not bringing it up by 256 children so we're looking at a net gain of about 185 children with a new housing over the next 5 years um again uh and as I said the Montgomery Township Schools decreased in enrollment between 2819 and 20224 uh when I reviewed earlier going back to 20101 there was 5,091 students in the district uh and that indicates that not withstanding um not withstanding repurposing of classrooms or addition of programs that the um that the district should prob should not have problems facility problems or things like that over the next 5 years you should be in in in pretty good shape in terms of ability to accommodate programs and accommodate those kinds of things so I think the um you know getting decimated by uh by the the at the moment where some districts in the state really are um I um unfortunately one of the really nice one of the things that I don't like to do is make the recommendations of closing schools and that's becoming more in more of an issue not only in this state in all states so um uh but I you're you're not even close to that kind of um situation so that's an overview um I'd be happy to entertain any questions uh by the way the the PowerPoint when it transferred over there's a couple of scrambles in there because the PowerPoint that actually printed out the um everything is fine so uh if you want to use this publicly let me send make sure that you have a good one okay um I don't know how it got scrambled maybe I'll just send you a um I won't send a PowerPoint I'll send as a PDF okay any questions or concerns y yeah so your projections um I guess gave us a piece of mind that for the next 5 years our facilities will be will not be overcrowded and then um we will have sufficient space to accommodate all the students but at what point um would we know that we need to plan for a potential expansion so if there is an expansion after those 5 years how at what point would we notice the growth and how would we at what point should we start planning for uh expansion because expansion doesn't take a year right like it takes multiple years Bing is required I would say probably some districts I say you should update every year because they're so dynamic in terms of growth in District like this I would say maybe want to revisit in 3 or four years okay I don't you know I mean I if I'm not mistaken there's a lot of preserve Farm land around here um so there's you know so even though there's a lot of open space um there's more limiting in terms of new construction um I'm not I'm looking at the median you know I'm looking at the median age of the school of of of the community it's not an old Community okay so I don't think you're going to be seeing a whole lot of sell off in this community and even if it was older given interest rates and housing prices Pro so I think I think I can safely say that this is a very stable community okay and I think the schools are stable in terms of enrollment um ethnicity might change a little bit it's shown some indications but you know that's it is what it is right has a question so I see that housing is is going to can you hear me okay I see that housing is going to be a limiting factor obviously I'm wondering with all the the current push and immigration how that will affect your your model is that going to change model Echo sorry so so the current the current push in Immigration that we're we're seeing is that going to affect your model greatly it'ss like you're you're projecting from a certain slope I I referring to immigra referring to immigration into the country right now um frankly the type of immigration that we're thinking about in this country has absolutely no impact on a district like this okay it's it's hard you know it's it's you know even even if you took in a lot of there's very very few places to put them it's it's you know I don't see that as a factor in this community okay it's a factor in urban communities it's in factor it's factor in some closer to the inner cities kind of a thing I just don't see that here and um frankly the this has been an issue for the last year or two and it's not really show as I said I don't see that as an issue with this community I have a small questions about uh does private schools impact our school enrollment also so maybe if any of those private schools close uh then that will have some money back to our enoll well that's that's a great question about private school of Clos that's probably kept your enrollment from declining even further okay so um you know I don't there's not a lot I think I'm going to wreck your entire system here um there's uh I I don't believe you send a lot of children to Charter Schools I think that as private schools can consolidate I think that you're you're the benefit you know 10 years ago I might have said well private schools kind of taken over from you guys okay I don't see that anymore first of the terrible expenses and secondly where do you get a better education than here right I mean just those kids are amazing so uh and I'm sure it's a very small sample of the population um I just have to break my grandson is is one of those he's he's he's he's going to be puru on jber so I'm sure you got a bunch of kids from here too so uh identify any other questions in that case thank you very much I will get you the the PDF tomorrow okay thank you all for your kind attention and um actually that was really enjoyable so thank you for the entertainment you coming out and pres pleasure our next presentation is our special education audit summary this is Mary Pat publicover our interim director of special services who's with us through the end of this week so we did her well thank you going out I know going out I just want to thank you for having the opportunity to work at Mony toown School District um this is a valuable place to be um I am impressed with your staff um your students um and your Administration I was very fortunate to be here for the last 22 months and I will miss this place so I'm here to present a summary of the special education audit so that was the first thing I was tasked with when I came here um the special education audit began with um I guess you had an RFP and then there was no answer so we went out for bids and Brant yza kinoi and K they are specialized in special services for students conducted the audit they actually conducted your audit previously in 2018 so this was a 4year gap usually you kind of have a fiveyear gap when you're were looking at an audit and what they did is they wanted to identify the strengths of your special education program in their process we looked at areas of improvement and we they're also making recommendations what I'm going to give you today is the summary of those reports um that we have regarding the audit they looked at seven different areas we wanted to look at our policies here at monary Town School District we wanted to look at our child study team records those are legal documents that really need to be maintained and techly and have certain information as how within it in addition we want to look at our state testing how are our students doing um in relationship to our other uh their peers in other areas they surveyed your stakeholders um and they also interviewed your stakeholders um they did a comprehensive analysis of all the practices that you have here um and they identified the strengths and weaknesses and made recommendations for improvement we're going to first look at our policies first while your collaboration with strap's SMA is impeccable it's important to maintain that they are an agency that focuses on state and federal laws and maintaining compliance so every time something changes which happens frequently in um the state and federal that code is then sent to us and we then evaluate that even in the world of special ed things happen over time while that is happening wanted to we adopt those policies and regulations then we start to update our manuals they found that montgom was doing a very good job for that we were really on point with that and on target when they went to interview our Administration which encompassed all of our building and District level administrators they found out that the special education department was really running well people were pleased with it um they were concerned that they wanted to hire a permanent director and from that time who have now since hired a permit director that will start on July 1 they were pleased with the occurrences that happened with the interim director um since 2018 modifications and accommodations were really uh beefed up in IP documents they really kind of were specific to subject areas and they were appropriate they do believe that um your an irns process which is really a general education initiative that happens before a child comes to specializ is trending in the right direction we're starting to look at what interventions need to take place we're starting to kind of work as a group across your five schools so they were pleased with that um they really the administrators were concerned with our pullout replacement programs those are kids that aren't in our general education population that come out and learn in a modified curriculum they want to really kind of look at how to schedule those students more effectively I will say that that was a strong articulation component among the administrative team for this year so um they were high they were focusing on that and that was a positive move um for the parents and I know parents um you know have all different opinions but overall that parent survey and interviews they were satisfied with the programs and the services you offer here at montomery Township their biggest concern was if a child needs an inter intervention and they needed to be cooled out from that general education real sometimes they miss their Cycles or electives I'm I'm very pleased to announce that they don't have that issue anymore we have really kind of created an alignment that our students at Montgomery Township will not miss their electors or their cycles that was a huge push with your administrator te um they should be commended for that it was taking people across multiple disciplines and having them evaluate and effectively schedule those students um they wanted an increase in coordination between transitions between schools you know they were concerned about the separate entities of you know your elementaries moving up to your middle and your high over the last 22 months that has really happened to in result to this audit um and as a result of um the team that works in the special education department over these past two years we've had transition nights for parents where they have come to meet with their new supervisors and the new teams at the elementary secondary and Middle School levels and taking them on tours um we have also coordinated articulations between those um school buildings that were always there but they just didn't know about them um they parents really feel that your district is resp responsive to their child needs and that's key that's really important sometimes we don't ever hear that but we need to recognize that and that came out in their surveys and their interviews staff um expressed a concern about um many of our students and we kind of see that in other studies that we received from the state that students um in reading and language having language difficulties we having difficulties in the early ages and they were being referred earlier since um for this year and probably for the next two years there's a big push for an intervention with that and I'm actually after I'm done you're going to hear from um Miss Borland and miss Monica about what we're going to do with the regarding that articulation that was there before I mean it's just now entering a new stage um the biggest um information that they found that was really kind of consistent in 20 19 is really consistent in 2024 has started to slightly turn since they have had their survey is the number of power professionals that you have and as um the new director enters your team with along with the supervisors and special ucation department they really going to start to evaluate that criteria you have a high number of power Professionals in this District um so they really want us to look at the evaluative criteria and what are the correlations two interventions in might you know before we put an adult on a student in those STS the one thing that's really positive and often times we come into districts and that is I always see this is your outed District placements have been reduced um because of your programming because of what you offer your students and um basically because of the interventions they appli here that are successful for those students to maintain in their Community um they really think you should consider some evidence-based instructional materials um which are probably being implemented and also you guys that have approved really over the last um 12 months with me um and also considering behavioral programs um that can address students needs that are a little bit different than the behavioral programs that you have here um that could kind of be a tiered approach they you like that we would continue to use instructional resources and programs that are consistent and Equitable to the teaching in other words having general education materials that are in the general education realm also be used within our special education realm we are we have begun that process um and actually infusing those programs with Fidelity when you introduce a program it takes two to three years for to really be implemented so not changing your programs like not very had teaching one program and somebody else teaching another program that we teach the same program because we all learn from appointed reference our kids need to have that reference too as they progress throughout their academic career when they looked at our programs we had to look at that general education component that kind of feeds into your special education realm and irns is the intervention referral service in the state we're also looking at what's called a multi- your system of support we're trying now to consider training and merging those two systems together to forge ahead for the upcoming 24 25 school year as an administrative team we have sat down and we've created explicit training sessions for our general education partners and our special education Partners which is really nice and they're going to focus on tier 2 interventions for not only general education stud students with special education students and the one thing that also came out of it which was pretty apparent is creating guidelines for your special class programs we have special class programs in our district and um the program should be designed to allow that student to be fluid between that program's needs and also general education so that's where they kind of focused on when the teachers came and they Valu them when they actually went into the classrooms and they said that they have an extreme knowledge regarding accommodations and modifications but when they went to look at our data in our child study team records when you go to report on a child every year you need to look at what those goals are and how those goals are being achieved and sometimes not across the board but in little pockets we need to go back and give refresher courses to say you know it's nice to say that the student is doing well they might be getting a certain grade in the class but we need to be very specific about their goal achievement and the data that's around that starting in April of this year and all the way through June every um staff member across your District as a special education staff member has already received training on that and that training will be then continued for the upcoming year just so you have that information when they review records They didn't come in and physically touch our records They reviewed it through our electronic platform which we use Frontline and what they wanted us to do is talk about smart goals smart goals will be important for us to have and we're actually not only going to do that for our special education staff members for the 2425 school year but we're also going to look at implementing that for our general education counterparts um I did reiterate the thought and statement about goal achievement and relationship to we want to look back at general education the constant goal of a child and special ed is not to stay there it's not a permanent sentence it's to buly intervention to give them what they need and then make them go back to general education that's the ultimate goal right that's how we know we're there um in our platform we have this little um component that's called the document repository and they wanted us to upload we upload documents in there and they want us to really create a procedure so more streamlined um I that is a a topic of interest for your new director that's going to start in July and look at focusing that with your supervisors and your special vacation department overall I they were very impressed they really liked on the fact that you guys are in you're in the top mistake you're one of the top programs in the state you really are I mean you should Comm make yourselves it's a beautiful place it's a beautiful area um and that there was noted improvement from the previous study and really think about it it's only been 4 years um so that was significant that if you continue with instructional strategies and databased decisions and I development that you can only grow further right um from where you are today uh they thanked us for having them come in I think it was useful for our team it was useful for me as an inter director to have an audit um um and I wish you the best I'm here to answer any question you have on my last week my final countown and um thank you for allowing me to be here so have a couple of questions um do you know the percentage of parents that were serving um for that study that's one and then the other question I had was what is the right ratio of par professionals to students if we have ours is too high then what are we looking how much are we so you have um your ratio for power professionals to students you have probably um uh well you have about 610 students and you have probably 98 power professionals that actually is being reduced for next year the upcoming year um the projections are for the power professionals a lot of things have happened to significantly change that um one is that we have um taken our preschool disabilities program that and we moved it to the ECC with that move there was a lot of preparation that went on what it did do is it made us Focus that being having those students in a a smaller building in a in an area that's more self-contained allowed us to remove um Power professionals on a gradual basis based on need um I think often times statistically um people naturally think that that power professional would be helpful um I think that they're working on a way to we all went for an education to think about what we wanted to do in life and we studied for an exam right and we knew what we had to do for that end result we need to know what our end result is to reduce that so um our Paras have been reduced over time time um I think it'll start continuing to be reduced over time as as we become more proficient with that role um so I can't do the maap that quickly but it's like you know 100 it's maybe us I think well six I don't know one is I mean I think it's really one down I don't know 60 because it's really not you know in that realm but it's also a need like when they're younger there's a higher need than when they're older okay um and I missed your first question um do you how many parents for stud which just curious how many parents yeah um the parents I I have I don't have the exact amount because they wouldn't give that to me because of fidelity purposes um but it was pretty it was significant like I know the administrators were interviewed um and the staff was around 200 but there were there was a significant amount of parents that were there um to give us that range because I do know that at that time there were parents that were very concerned about the special education department so to counterbalance what what what the end results were was had to be significant for me thank you I just have one question um just a curious question do we have anything like CBI them Community Based instructions for older kids do we have that yes we do and actually I'm going to I'm getting very transparent your new director um that's her forte okay so you know um and you have a community based instruction program that we have begun the Artic we have it currently right now and we've begun the articulation of how to boost that up and make that into that next realm but that's her forte because she's worked in a Regional High School District she's also worked in a preschool to um High School District too but I mean there's a lot of success stories um and they have a strong Community Based instructions when the kids become 21 and 18 out and to get into the community and as a job um you know so it has its own advantages it yes it does I'm a huge proponent of it so I'm still thinking about the demographics talk before you oh no that's okay I and this sort of bleeds those two together but we've heard for I think uh about a year or so that our demographics will be changing uh and so we're going to have fewer students I guess but we're going to have more people living here and our property taxes I assum aren going to change them lot so does that mean there's an opportunity to make our sharpen our offerings maybe for for the students that will be here including a special ed maybe science and sports so it's kind of this big picture future question there including special ed so how do how do you think a special ed could benefit from you know Focus like that um I do think that your continue to bring students from an out of District placement and allow opportunities to have them in District I do think that some of the demographics and special education will change based on your study um I have seen effects of that even this year um and uh I do believe that it will allow you to create programs that will be recognized in the state um for example Community Based construction programs maybe programs that address students emotional needs you know that we really you know that can do that for them um but I do see a decline in enrollment with regard to certain aspects I also see a huge inclusive practice here that's been an initiative over the last 22 months where kids are included in programming and a lot of support is given to the staff members with regard to that so I think could be very positive the smart oh yes y anything else you guys thank you very much and I hope you have a wonderful summer thank you our last presentation for this evening Miss field Borland Miss Amy mon will present on an update on our langage add program okay hi um I there you go um I'm not sure all of you know Amy Monaco she is our K4 supervisor of language arts and social studies and as you will see in our presentation tonight um some very significant changes are coming in the way of K4 literacy um and so I did ask her to join me because she's the expert on all of that and I'm very grateful to have her um so I'll get us started and move from there I want to lead off with the reason that um we you know we're here tonight is that later in the summer the Board of Ed will be asked to adopt the new curriculum and so all of K12 literacy curriculum is being um revised this summer as well as the K12 math curriculum um there's more significant changes in the in the language arts and that's why I wanted to come you know tonight and share those updates and share those changes um so that we can you know let you know what is going on over the course of the summer a couple months ago I think it was this year but it's been it's been a busy few months um I have the opportunity to come and speak to you about curriculum and how curriculum gets written and how it is designed and and one of the you know two two points that we made that night is that the way that we get new curriculum is that the state of New Jersey gives us new standards and that is what has so the state of New Jersey has produced new language art standards and new math standards they are called the New Jersey student learning standards 2023 they have to be implemented and put in place in your District by the fall of 2024 that's going pretty well because the njsls 2020 didn't have to make place in 2023 so we've made progress we're getting a little faster in this post post pandemic um and so we've got a new collection of standards and those changes are driving our re our rewriting the other thing that if you go back to that presentation you might to find on the website is we talk about the process of what do you do when you get your standards and the very first thing we do is what's consider the curriculum AUD which is the teachers and the supervisors that manage each curriculum they start with the curriculum that we have and then they match that to the new standards and they say what's different so what you're doing is you're not looking to reinvent the wheel and you're not looking to reinvent successful Wheels you're looking to say where are their points of weakness what are we missing what do we have to revise and that really creates um both a fiscal intelligence that you're looking to just to just support what you need to and also from a standpoint of professional development and What do teachers need and how much change is coming so it really is an important step um the state of New Jersey also does produce a document called a crosswalk that that says you know these are the major changes and again there is not been a radical shift but the most important shifts did happen in the K4 Creek okay so this is kind of a great um graphic representation I will give credit too for this the state one is terrible um just terrible the same one just doesn't really capture the changes that were made um there used to be six domains and that's the big ones that we got over there speaking listening reading language foundational reading was own down domain then writing and then the companion standards were considered the six domains of ela we've now gotten down to four uh the companion standards are actually gone now and they just embedded into the curriculum as exists but some new um two new highlighted areas are the foundational reading is now embedded under language but it was also expanded and then the state really got very clear with foundational reading standards now when I say something like the state got clear what do standards do for us is they tell us what the outcome is expected of each student at each grade level and so standards can be vague and then they can get very very specific and so the writing foundational standards really started to say a student at this age ought to be able to write a sentence a student at this age must be able to write a sentence with um with compound predicates or compound um compound subjects um and it gets much more into how the then then wday be able to craft a paragraph and all of those things really get broken down and then they create this spiral staircase of how our students look so the clearer that the state standards are the clearer our curriculum can be and we can really map out learning for our students okay I will for warn you that the next three slides have a lot of overlap but I didn't want to pull them out to try to highlight the differences at the different grade levels so to start with K5 updates um obviously the very first step is just to align them to the 2023 Ela student learning standards in our public curriculum documents that our families can access to see what their students are going to learn each unit and each grade level this is the first thing our parents see what are the student learning standards that are included in this course and they can read them um in their in their full their full n um again again we will be spending our time really um focusing our emphasis on foundational reading and foundational writing in the K5 updates the other thing that we really want to do is make sure that we have a clear focus on the student learning outcome so when you're teaching a lesson when you're teaching a lesson about you know what be what do what are behaviors that strong readers have or you're teaching a lesson about how to craft an arguments in an essay um or how to do literary analysis you want to be thinking very clearly to okay so when I'm done this lesson whether this lesson is a 6 to8 minute lesson on the rug or whether this lesson is a very comprehensive PowerPoint that a 12 grade English teacher is presenting what do I need my students to know and master at the end of and so we're really making sure that when when parents and teachers open our culing documents it's very clear what the outcomes are that are expecting um we also want to create more of a cohesiveness so when you think of literacy in the early Elementary grades it's everything it's how to read it's phonics those two things are not are not um are not syon by themselves so how do I read how do I become a reader how do I comprehend reading how do I sound out words how do I um you know how do I spell words my vocabulary my writing skills my grammar skills and my spelling skills all of these things are plus many more are all parts of a strug literacy curriculum and we want to make sure that both our parents and teachers conceed connected pieces in our curc backs um and vocabulary is another piece of the puzzle where it got a lot of attention inside um standards often related to comprehension so when you increase students vocabulary you increase the number of texts that they can engage with and then they can have confidence and understanding it seems to be like a very sensible thing but the more familiarity you have with the world around you the more topics that you're familiar with the greater your vocabulary the greater your reading compreh at the 612 standards that what drops off at 612 is that foundational writing and foundational reading standards they no longer exist so that's the big shift and why even though our schools are you know at at like the fourth grade and our lower middle school starts at fifth the fifth grade still has foundational reading foundational writing standards 6 grade does not so 612 curriculum updates we will be aligning the standards we will be clarifying the student learning targets and again a very specific emphasis on vocabulary and grammar Construction in Gres 528 to align with those maity student stands across the entire District just you know to kind of summarize this is that we're looking for clearer aliance outcomes um very specifically targeting um what what is the student learning standard that a teacher is teaching this week or this in this in this unit um or in this lesson we've also had a um we've increase our collection of curriculum resources we don't buy a single resource and teach it from the front first page to the back we collect resources that match the standards that we need to teach and then we produce curriculum doents that line those things up so we've got a new products and work study program in grades 1 through four um we still got resources from hin that are our reading and writing resources we have many new literary texts some of which are hopefully being through this evening we've got supplemental resources for vocabulary and grammar that have been added to our middle school and our Elementary School curriculum and then we've got revise themes for our grades 11 and 12 so in our 11th and 12th grade classes the students take a person semester and a second semester course and these these uh courses are themed and so we we the high school teachers have refreshed them um picking new books and New U materials that will really tighten those tees up and help our students achieve the STS so it's very exciting project as I shared with you one of the biggest changes were the foundational reading standards and I'm going to hand over Qui for a little while and let her take hi good evening everyone um to direct you all speak with you all directly that I'm excited to be here tonight um so as Fiona shared already when we're talking about the new 2023 Ela standards um there is certainly an increased emphasis on the language domain which encompasses the reading foundational standards and the writing foundational standards so I had the privilege of working with teachers across grades 1 through 4 this past year um as a word study pilot committee and through the process of that committee we developed guiding principles that really served as the lens that we were able to look through when reviewing possible programs um from there we were able to sort of narrow down the programs that we wanted to Pilot in classrooms over the course of the school year um we rolled out that pilot I collected initial feedback from the teachers we reviewed student data we had the opportunity for teachers to get into other classrooms to observe um programs that they were not piloting collected another round of teacher feedback data and from there we selected a primary curricular resource particularly for the areas of reading foundational skills and writing foundational skills so the resource that we ultimately selected is um last and HD word which is by the company really great reading um last is you'll see it on the on the left hand side is the first grade version of that program that program is designed explicitly to start and end within first grade first grade is the year for reading foundational skills for fonic foric awareness essentially you know this the year that most students are developmentally ready to learn to read and then that program is called HD word in GR 2 three and four so it's one cohesive program but the name does change um across those grade levels so GL HD word they very explicitly and systematically teach the awareness phonics word attack skills um they focus pretty heavily on accurate reading um which you know of course makes common sense and it would translate to that our comprehension um it's multi sensory it's research based um and we are really excited to implement it for the 2425 school year there are professional development courses that um are included within this program and courses one and two are recommended to be completed by teachers prior to implementation and many of our teachers have already completed these courses and if they haven't the remainder will be completing them over the summer um teachers are excited materials are ring so um we are are really looking forward to to this rooll out in the coming school year additionally um you know when you have a primary curricular resource you wanted to be able to reach the the maximum number of students as possible and it's going to reach most students but there's always going to be students um For Whom the primary curricular resource is just not going to be enough they're going to need a little bit more by way of small group instruction individual instruction classroom based intervention and so um a research that we also are moving forward with for um that we that we started to to imp a bit in the 23 24 school year um that we're moving forward with as well is ufly foundation so youly is the University of Florida literacy Institute um it is also an explicit systematic program um and it was developed by former teachers um it's you can tell it's very well organized a teacher meeting and um and that's something that we're going to be utilizing in all general education classrooms as a small group resource so when we have teachers or students who um need a little bit more reinforcement and some of these skills or perhaps you know taught in a bit of a different way will have a goto resource for teachers that they can utilize and many of our teachers tried it out this year and have had um lots of positive feedback about that resource and then finally um in terms of teachers own Professional Knowledge this will not be a student facing instructional Source but this is a professional text that will be sharing with teachers it is a book entitled Shifting the balance um Fiona and I both read it we were excited about it we were each other in the evening nerds that we are um and we were able to purchase copies for all of our um teachers general education special education um and this is a book that many teachers are planning to read over the summer but we will also be strategically um rolling out as a schoolwide book study at orcher Hill this coming school year so there are six ships um that that are emphasized in the book they are based on on current research their evidence based and what I think you and I both really enjoyed about this book is that the focus is always on you know the goal of foundational reading and writing skills is ultimately producing proficient readers and writers who are reading and writing authentic test and and this text only sort of goes back to that idea um so we have a lot going on and we are really excited about all of this so I'm going to turn it back over to f onos um I also just want to kind of highlight that in addition to being able to purchase the book for all of our K2 teachers and the when we say teachers we mean everybody because literacy at the card Hill level is for everybody is everybody's job and so everybody got the book um due to some of our ARP and Esser grant money that is designed and specified for professional development we were also able to buy an online course and so we will be using that online course throughout the school year um and it's just also a professional resource for teachers so we spend a lot of time talking about Universal Design for Learning for our students and saying how does somebody learn best so some people can read some people can participate in a course at their own level at their own speed and there's also like an incredible podcast that matches this so we've been really impressed with this as a resource that helps focus in on critical shifts without having to reinvent the wheel again the parts of the wheel that are working so we I think we're very excited about that it also validated the things that we knew were great and that we didn't feel like we had to make a big shift that okay um just a little bit of summary here we've got the really great reading company um I think one of the critiques Amy pointed out is that we' like them we'd like to know why they had to name the programs differently um as part of what Pat shared earlier it's really important that a resource covers multiple grades and that students as they progress through the grades and also as they move in and out of different levels of placement that they have consistency and so the one the really grade reading company is going to do that and our adoption of the use of this material grades 1 through four is going to do that but your child might come home with last in first grade and then HD word in second it's still the same continuous cooking um we've got the schoolwide focus on our on our new book we've also got our continued focus on data so we have two really big data tools that we spend a lot of time looking at the first is the early bir literacy screener we give that to our students in grades uh kindergarten and grade one they take it three times a year and they are normed against um National National Norms um of at the beginning of the year the middle of the year and the end of the year um it Flags our students who are at risk it gives our teachers information about what skills pockets of kids are missing um and we spend a lot of time you know supporting our teachers and that's really where that uh the youth fly resources come in as an an additional alternative resource when you have to rete and back something up and be more targed we also have S 360 which we use in grades 2 through 10 um and that also gives us a reading score a lefty score and pockets of places that are kids need specific support in um and again we spend a lot of time in our professional development helping teachers see the data um interpret the data and then making structal choices around that data and finally really just um looking at our academic Support Services they live in the world of General Ed and so they are a critical place to get kids back on a track um students can fall behind and not be a Tre Benchmark but the goal is to do an intervention if the classroom teacher can't provide enough support our academic Support Services come in and we based on the work that we've been doing um with disproportional and with Eddie Fergus we really looked at a place to make some improvement about that was in our academic support services and having new research research based resources that would progress over time and students could stay in for look together and so that's another another thing that we're doing ironically we didn't plan to do this on the same night Mary Pat and I so I think it's kind of like a little dbil um just summarizing what we said tonight um really we're going to be making sure that we can achieve The Parting standards as are directed by state New Jersey um in the world at K5 where there were ships we worked very hard to make fiscally responsible decisions we did throughout everything that we've ever done trained our teachers on purchased and and started from scratch but instead we really made strategic decisions about where our students needs were um we've been able to make sure that we've integrated uh new research align resources um I am always I'm going to shout out for here I am always impressed by Miss Monaco the level of reading that she just does on early literacy and the passion and the articles that she shares it's a deep love of hers and it's wonderful to have her on the team because she is always up to and can speak proficiently about the researchers what they're talking about and what the shifts are in L res you I'm offes um and then again this just ongoing job job embeded professional development to support the teachers both from our supervisors and outside Consultants that we do bring in to help us um we brought in a curriculum consultant um that has been working other as well to really help get our teachers focused on some of our um that is really what we have to bring to you tonight and I don't have a handy questions but questions can I answer your question here well first of all I just there's there's this idea that when you go to college especially if you you're going you know doing something technical you hate reading after that I guess we we know about that concept right but you you said something you said uh uh falling off uh 6 to 12 I said you said the standards drop off could you clarify what that means yes so foundational reading standards which are your phonics your phonemic awareness um your encoding those standards don't exist anymore so when you just those domains don't so foundational reading and foundational writing go away because there's an assumed Mastery of it okay so how how do we continue growth after that when we assume they have Mastery how how do we continue right so you don't stop you don't stop reading um and one of the other one of the other scores that we follow or that I like to follow probably a little bit more than you um is is Al leile range there's there's lots of different there's lots of different tools out there that measure where a kid is reading at um we use uh Running Records we can use the fontas and panel letter scale um one of them what I the reason I like Lexy and bringing for your answer is that our average high school books hang out at around 11 and 1200 at the Lexile level and the college jumps you up to about 1,400 so it's one of the reasons I was really excited to get star at the high school level was to be able to see our progress and get our reading levels of our high school kids which are great and fabulous and really fun to see but you never stop reading so that's why you pick different novels at your fifth grade your sixth grade the complexity increases the um complexity of plot the complexity of words syntax grammar and so all of those things still are occurring under the reading standards what drops off is what sound does the letter A make um magic King Ed King King p y the actual how to what what are the how do I put letters together to make words and how do I put words together to make senses that goes away question just that the new phic program that uh you will be bringing can you give a specific example of what will be different about that FX program versus what we have been using so far because I think the a lot of um gu concerns that we've been hearing from from parents is like when children have some uh you know like learning disability or dyslexia or you know like some other challenges with uh learning so how does that program going for it's a great question so up until this point we've been utilizing the units of study in at grades 1 through two that's also a research-based systematic program um but what's different is that the instructional methodology in that program changes almost Lesson by lesson um and so what I was the feedback I was getting from teachers is that they weren't able to really gain a lot of traction on the skill progression because the instructional methodology the way they were teaching was changing so frequently um so what's different about this program is that the instructional methodology stays consistent now across grades 1 through four um and so you know students will come to have an expectation of the way they are going to learn to you know attack words that are unfamiliar to them in grades three and four um teachers have been using um Words Their Way previously Which is less explicit and more implicit so it's more about let's look at a collection of words and how might we sort them what features do they have in common what features are different many students can can sort of you know utilize an implicit methodology and gain an understanding of words and and how they work but for some students that was not enough and they really need something more explicit so by shifting to a more explicit model in the Upper Elementary greets we're going to be meeting I would say we're likely to be meeting a larger range of our population of students I have one one small question how do you differentiate teachers get any training on to see whether the kids wrote it or the chat PT wrote it yeah that's probably so I'm I'm hopping in here because that's a much more of a middle school and high school issue um we actually have some we have some digital tools that help with that um Google has the built-in tools um you can actually put the do document back in there um a lot of it is so like I will encourage really give teachers a teachers credit that you know a student's right right and so and you also know a student who sits in your class and it is a really good time to be able to say hm this child who shows up in my class every single day who does not speak like this who does not engage at this level has now produced this document that sounds nothing like them um at that point you still have to prove it and go through it what we're really doing um I don't think I've been to a conference this year that hasn't addressed AI but what we're really the focus of the the high school and the middle school is what should the guidance be what should the policies be um it's it's not all evil and so trying to figure out how you help kids know what is the right um both academically in with academic Integrity but also with hey it's a new technology that exists that these kids will always have um and so that's a little bit of a convoluted answer but it's in the Forefront of everybody's mind some digital tools help us some human tools help us and you know we go from there okay thank you very much we'll see you again I'll see you again in August thank that concludes our presentations for this evening thank you superintendent Blackman we now move to committee representative reports first up mtaa report Mr do Little Too Close good evening everyone it's good to be back took a little Hiatus for a little while as I was enjoying uh my son in his last year of high school and all the activities celebrations and baseball games uh that go along with that and uh they just kept winning so uh we had to stay tuned for the next one sorry the beatun up here too so it's good to be back um this will be my last MTA report that um as my second term as MTA president concludes pretty much at the end of this week or end of the month technically um it's been an honor and a privilege to uh lead the MTA um for the past four years work with an amazing board work with amazing administrators of course our staff who do the daily jobs um for and in supporting our students so we've accomplished a lot of great things over the past 4 years we've even navigated the pandemic uh together pretty much means we can navigate any trouble even though I'm not asking for any or asking for another pandemic or anything else but I know we're prepared for that because of what we've been through together um the great work of the MTA still continues uh even though it's summer and staff are out uh but they're continuing to deliver the books to prevent the summer slide providing books for children who have been identified uh as needing read needing reading material and or just materials to stop that summer slide that we often see so our little mt's will be delivering those over the summer taking care of those um students in our community um also want to just uh acknowledge you've heard a little bit about it already from the previous um presentations that staff will be busy doing a lot of PD over the summer so even though you know School's Out teachers are always learning always taking professional development whether it be provided through the robust courses through the district or uh providing you know looking for uh other areas that they can do it themselves um and just enriching themselves whether it be here or on their own uh also want to acknowledge that hey this is a challenging profession and teachers be recharging and that's what they need to do over the summer as well and you know it's evidenced by the teacher shortage that we have nationwide and also the teacher programs we're just not getting the the students to the colleges through the programs that we have before some of them are down by upwards of 60% and some are even closing so uh the reason why I do mention that is we have negotiations coming up for the MTA starting in the fall and we want to make sure that we have and continue to have the reputation to retain staff here in our district to also attract new staff members in our district and also grow staff members within our district we see a lot of Staff members that start maybe as a par professional or secretary get interest in teaching and then want to go ahead and and get their accreditation to become a teacher so that's something just to keep in mind because we really want to maintain our excellence and even grow beyond that and the only way we can do that is by getting wonderful staff members um you know through colleges and through other means of uh getting them through uh other districts and attrac them the talent that we do need and deserve for our students here and though even though school is technically out there's plenty of work that goes on our grounds and maintenance and custodian workers are making sure that our districts are getting cleaned and making sure they're safe and maintained um so plenty of that work goes on even though grass hasn't grown too much right now thanks to the heat um we also have office staff and support staff who are making sure schedules are getting made and all the preparations believe it or not that school's out but getting ready for September I know that's a bad word to say right now September but um they are getting for all that so I know all of this good work will continue um and I'm proud that I've been able to work with everyone and serve the uh the staff and MTA and also the students because that's what we're all here for um and I think we've done a great job and I'm sure that that will continue and even though my term ends and I was proud of that term I'm also proud to be back into the classroom and doing what we all do best and supporting our students so thank you all for the time it's been a pleasure for the last 4 years um you know at the podium and working and talking individually going through negotiations and everything else we do as you know a school district to make sure we're doing the best for our students so thank you thank you for this commitment you've given to our staff and students serving as the MTA president thank thank you Mr Doan are there any board member delegate or representative reports tonight are n we'll move into four committee reports first up it's assessment curriculum and instruction committee this committee met on June 14th um first order of business was several or several textbook recommendations first one being black cake for English 10 convenient store woman for English 12 crime and hm for English 10 honors exit West for English 12 honors Gil mesh a new English version for English 12 honors Palace of Illusions for English 12 honors and The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea for English 12 honors uh the only replacement these are all additions the only replacement book is cryan and Hmart and is a replacement for the Joy Luck Club however the Joy Luck Club will remain available for any students as an option we next talked about uh udl and Dei walkthroughs um there were brief 10 to 15 um minute visits to O OES VES LMS and MH MHS with udl consultants in April and May variety classrooms R visited Ela social study special education Next Step supervisors will debrief observations with udl consultants and determine when to share ideas of strength in areas of improvement with the respective departments lastly we talked about performance um new schol will address reading and writing we're responsive to all our students by using the new standards and adapting to what students may need to further help them outside of that scope Fabs report that kindergarten is joing a amazing also when a teacher identifies a child as lacking some skills they then go to the multi-tier academic support which we heard about some this evening and adding this will hopefully fill the gaps caused during the pandemic and one additional thing is we also talked about Mental Health Awareness Month share out uh K through 4 they have days of plays get out of the routine and have some fun grades 5 through eight was emphasis on self-care and grades 9 and 12 for daily activities and messages led by student groups screens and stress event held for the community approxim 150 uh parents attended we have presentations by the municipal Alliance and the MTSD staff any questions sport members you know I was looking at the the book list from that and yog mash looked interesting I'll have that check that out but I I a lot of them look a little you know down little depressing like that how do we how do we choose the books for the kids and you I've never really thought of this right but you know there are I think there are books that encourage kids to uh you know to read about adventures and and build science what that how do how do we choose uh the books that we we offer the children for some Reon do you want to take a step [Music] back um I'm gonna the process first is that um books come into the curriculum and suggest it in all in all different venues some of them come from students um students will bring them to their teacher and say this is an incredible book I think that we should all read it um books will come by teachers so teachers read English teachers read the most maybe they don't read the most but they read a lot um and they'll come to their supervisors and also say like I think this matches I think this is a great support this has a theme that aligns with our curriculum or this has uh qualities and characteristics that will help us achieve those standards um Sometimes they come from recommendations from the College Board um and we look to add those in as well so um they they come from all of those standpoints once they are suggested they are then read by multiple teachers and read by the supervisor um we do turn things down so as you um as the there's a literary textbook evaluation form um it asks everything from how are different people represented in this book are there different people represented in the book what are the what are gender roles what are race roles um does this accomplish the goals of the curriculum that you have is there violence is there um is there sexual content is there language how is why is that in the book and how are we dealing with that if it's if it's there um actually in these books that we've suggested tonight but have been being proposed tonight um they've all been read they've all been read by the supervisor they've been read by multiple teachers um and so upon getting to a place where we say yep it meets our criteria it meets our standards um it's ped the uh textbook evaluation form in a way that we say Yep this definitely um is something that we believe that all students will benefit from then it is added to the curriculum um as uh Patrick pointed out as Mr Todd pointed out um these most of these are additions and I think it's really important for the community to know that when you go into Atlas you can see the different books that are assigned to the um different the different grade levels and the different courses it's very important to look at any single book amongst the entire course so where you might see a um like a new modern book like crying at Hmart you might you're going to see that in the same class that you're going to read uh 1984 and catch her in the Ry and To Kill a Mockingbird and so it's not just you get a single book tonight you see hey we want these single books approved for these courses but it just fits into the larger context of the course um you made a reference to um to the overall tone of the books and I would actually say that like as you I I would say that I think that the overall tone actually has a lot about overcoming there's an a lot there's a lot there's a theme of hope that permeates through all of these books there is coming a of age there is resilience there is um there's love there's family relationships there's finding finding happiness in finding my true self and these are all throughout all of these books so I think it's really about um it's about giving our students texts that they can either see themselves or they can develop compassion and empathy that they can read critically um but I think that these books actually have an enormous a a good collection of these books have an enormous amount of hope I have a question sure I personally love um Jo Lu Club when I read it it made such an impact on me and I think this is a book that teaches Val values teaches resilience shows um you know like how different families coming to the US uh adapt to the new culture how the first generation um learn how to adapt to the culture how the second generation um adapts to the culture so in my mind uh that book is extremely relevant to our community so my question to you is how did you decide to replace that book with another book and what is better about the other book to to become now the the this so I'm going to I I wouldn't use the word better no it's a great question so I would use the word but but I want to um I I also want to lead with I have not read it yet okay so I don't I'm going to stand up here and give you some summaries and recount what has been recounted to me by the people who selected and picked but I don't want to give you the impression that I've read um crying at Hmart yet it's on the summer reading list um all of the things that you just mentioned in Joy Luck Club are the identical themes that are in crying at Hmart how does the first generation immigrant family immigrants experience it how does the second generation there is mother daughter relationship in this in crying and hmark there is a um how does the mother impact and the mother relationship impact the the way that the second generation engages with American culture and their experience it's also surrounded by food and the the same you know the same pieces of the Joy Luck Club where we see in maang and feasting and all of that is comes out in the Hmart experience the biggest chip the biggest shift is that Joy Luck Club was written in 1989 which is I don't want to say this it's like when I don't like to say that I've been in public education for 30 years um this is 30 I don't do it but it's 35 years ago right so the crying in Hmart um I now I also say to you I have not been to H but both my children have and so harbart is a thing in a place that are so some of you have been here it's a place and a place that a place and a thing that our students are familiar with and so to have all all of those important themes that we experienced when we read The Joy Luck Club is what we want our students to experience while they now read crime and H1 so is it um is it going to be eliminated it's not being eliminated but is it going is did it get a modern upgrade it got a modern upgrade to allow our students in 2024 to relate to it so I think that um you join our summer reading and just to put it on your list as well and I think that you're going to be surprised at the parallels thank you I have a small question um all these books I was just reading the synopsis of it they are wonderful books and I do I did see that um it it's a lot of these uh books are talking about other cultur right and I'm just trying to understand like when reading it what are we asking kids to get out of it are they character building or is it uh women's liberation or is it have hope and you you did mention that so I was wondering when we selected in the uh what the public is going to read in the agenda if we could add one or two sentences what we are really getting out of for the kids would be helpful for the public say oh we selected this book oh this book will give this character building for my child and need something like that I'm thinking me back um I would I would like to say that part of that is answered through our curriculum documents so I am cheated here I have little summaries of the books in front of me as well and I also pulled out the summaries of our courses so I'm just going to give you a moment and say that um in grade 10 and this speaks to our our CP level as well as our honors level so in grade 10 students are expected to study various literary genres students will participate in literary analysis in which they are expected to be able to engage in critical thinking using valid reasoning relevant and efficient evidence providing students with compelling relatable and challenging texts are necessary for them to do this so when you open up our curriculum documents and you say what are we learning in 10th grade English we're learning genres we're learning critical analysis we're learning literary analysis those are the goals and we're what we try to do is select a collection of texts in which students will see themselves students will see others students will see history that they can't access students will see cultures that they're not a part of they will also see cultures that they are a part of and so I was very I'm very proud of no car is Miss Kowski and Miss Pino in the consistent inclusion of cultures that particularly represent our students here in the school but I would also say that um again looking at go to any grade and look at the entire collection and you'll see that this is one port one piece right so there might be other five other books that have different cultures or represent something different so it's it's always within the collection of the entire course thank you I probably talk too much can I just sorry to keep you up there just one I want to pursue the science angle a little bit here you know it it strikes me that there there are beautiful stories behind a lot of science um I I wrote down a couple here we were talking about cernus earlier with Joanna uh Newton and calculus uh the human genome it's got a couple of really good stories and I wonder do we do we include books with stories like that in here are there are there a lot of those books so not in English and I'm going to you know I a minute ago I said I've been in public education now for almost 30 years I really don't like that there's a um there was a book about probably written about 20 years ago um by an author named Chris tovani and she actually spoke and address Congress on literacy in the state of um education at that time and there were studies done on how to teach reading informational text and what they talked about is that the very best person to teach reading informational text particularly at the high school level and at the secondary level are content area experts so if you put Jason Sullivan and I next to each other and you both have us teach the article or a book about um the Human Genome Project or about uh Wildlife Conservation Jason's going to teach students how to read informational text as a Content area expert incredibly different than I'm going to teach it as a literacy person and so what you find in our curriculum is that the English curriculum is where you have a bulk of the Reading literature standards attacked yes there are reading informational text standards or students learn to write research papers but with what you're speaking about those things are incorporated into our science classes our social studies classes and those and that's based on those instructors are most qualified to teach it right but putting looking only in the science classes put that lot of touch uh for people who AR pursue sciences and I I know there are there are poetic stories about about these things that that could be incorporated this no would be interesting I wonder if we look some absolutely um I think that that's great you know great feedback that I'll go in and also you know get back to Mrs stolowski but I also just want to say you know in the state of New Jersey we're lucky that um you know other states require one year of science we require three um so we have it's not that a a small group of students get science in hist history a large majority of our students get multiple years of Science and History and it is where they really do get to engage in this kind of you know the demonstration of the kids today they get to engage in uh on content that is taught by passionate professionals right and I know those kind of things these books give you something that's that's beautiful and I think there are something yeah no I thank you yeah thank you uh next up operations facilities and finance committee board member El um the operations facilities and finance committee met on um Thursday June 20th the meeting was dedicated to discussion about developing a new long-term facility maintenance and capital Improvement plan and determining the funding needs to pay for all the capital projects that we need to complete the last long-term facilities maintenance and capital recuitment plan was created in 2019 the committee asked for a copy of the previous plan and a summary of of the status of each project included in the previous plan in order to understand what was completed and what still outstanding we also asked for documentation um related to the bonds that were issued to fund the past couple of projects once we completed the we will be able to um assist and hopefully provide some useful insights to the business administrator um to to come up with the funds that will be needed to uh fund our future projects currently the business administrator is working with the architect and the director of the facilities M to complete the work through the whole district and assess the condition of the facilities to prioritize the projects our high school building is reaching with 20 year anniversary so we need to plan for Cal improvements to maintain our facilities in excellent working conditions some of the improvements needed are roof Replacements in high school the humidifiers in the pool area floor replacements those are only just few examples after full assessment is completed the administration and the command will review available funding options to pay for the uh Capital Improvement projects during the summer the district will undertake some urgently needed repairs at UNS the sewage pipes are damaged and they need to be replaced the cost for that replace the cost of that replacement is $75,000 the committee discussed the conditions of sewer pipes in high school we asked about the recent incidents in high school when the bathrooms were out of order due to toilet over flog the reason for the most recent B outage was not really the failure of the types but it was impr proper disposal of vaves by the students multiple vaves were removed from the toilets we asked parents to talk to dir children about respecting school property and refrain from causing damage that impacts the whole school the administration is working on assessing the needs of the transportation and grounds made themes several years ago both themes have been placed in the trailers uh which were to serve as a temporary solution to provide workspace for these departments the trailers have been damaged by where and there as well as by the weather conditions the administration needs to address these issues the maintenance and ground trailer has been the commission a few months ago uh the administration planed to repurposed the banker building and renovated it to provide quality workspace for the vs and Drug team the cost of that renovation however appears to be higher than originally expected so more work needs to be done to provide sortable accommodation for the GRS of employees the transportation department trailer requires substantial repairs as well the trailer requires a full floor and exterior door replacement the proposed cost of these projects is about 38,000 um we asked to to review the cost benefit uh analysis of repairing the trailer versus replacing the structure so hopefully at the next meeting we'll be able to to continue the discussion last week we celebrated 8th grade promotion and high school graduation both ceremonies were beautifully organized the excessively had weather a prom profit High School principal to make a t decision and at the last minute move High School graduation Endor special recognition goes to Mike O'Neal and the facilities team as soon as the decision was made the facilities team set up high school G for this gradu for the high school graduation ceremony they were well organized and prepared to accommodate this last minute change the high school gym was beautifully set up and ready for the ceremony allowing our students to create one more beautiful C of monover high school any questions thank you Mr El uh anything from policy and Communications committee and with HRC actually to to for HRC real quick um so for HRC we talked about the um position for the assisted VA the update is there were no viable candidates so we're going to re advertise for that position and also we talked about the addition to the music Personnel budget um because of the exploding enrollment we're going to be adding two sections to Orchestra that's it any questions at this time I'll take a a motion to approve the minutes of May 24th 2024 executive session uh meeting one May 21st 2024 ex executive session meeting 2 and May 21st 2024 business meeting been proper movement second any questions on motion Mr Trent yes Mr Carlson M yes Miss Franco Herman yes Miss naron yes Mr to yes thank you thank you this time the board acknowledges correspondence to the board action AG action agenda item public comments the Board of Education welcomes and encourages input from the public members of the public are allowed at one opportunity to address the board regarding the action agenda items only for up to a maximum 3 minutes per speaker all comments must be directed to the board before you make your comment please State your full name and address and enter both on the Chromebook provided being mindful of privacy rights regarding students board employees and board members and to avoid any liability on the part of the speaker the board discourages defamatory and discourteous remarks the public comment portions of the meeting are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather are offered as opportunities for the public to share the thoughts with the board the board may need to refer an issue to the superintendent if the issue has not been handled through the appropriate chain of command usually starting at the school level responses may be provided at the end of this session public comments on action agenda item isn't that open going once going twice public comments on agenda action items is now closed at this time I'll entertain a motion on agenda items 1 0 through 4 point one uh correction 1.0 through 4.3 with two addendums first addendum is item 1.5 with will be affirming HIV 263 643 D ms-04 8224 and also 3.30 approving membership in the Jersey school Insurance Group second it's been properly mov in second any questions on the motion Mr Trent yes Mr Carlon obain at 3.3 yes I that was 3.3 correct thank you Miss F yes Miss Franco Herman uh 1.2 uh yes to 5,000 series substate for the rest yes for everything else thank you m Nar yes Mr C yes [Music] thank you motion car new business from the public the Board of Education welcomes encouraged input from the public members of the public are allotted one opportunity to bring any new business to the board for maximum of three for up to a maximum 3 minutes per speaker all comments must be directed to the board before you make your comment please State your full name and address and enter both on the Chromebook provided being mindful of privacy rights regarding students board employees and board members and to avoid any potential liability on the part of the speaker the board discourages defamatory and discourteous remarks the public comment portions of the meeting are not structured as question and answer sessions the board may need to refer an issue to the superintendent if the issue has not been handled through the appropriate chain of command usually starting at the school level responses may be provided at the end of the session public comment is now hi hi I'm candy Willis from nicer Drive gy New Jersey and I'm also a representative of the van Haren Historical Society this is my third um bee meeting of the year and um I'm still talking about the beatville schoolhouse um so I um put a little uh the program for the bay in Montgomery uh we had on May 11th it was a very lovely program it's all local history we featured our three uh buildings which are a 1752 um culic house the beanville schoolhouse and the Farm Museum I hope you read it but what I'm here tonight to talk about is we have found somebody who's um eager to be our school mm and from about 2001 until 2019 we had a yearly program uh where sometimes it was third graders sometimes it was second graders sometimes it was fourth graders um would come each class would come to the beatville schoolhouse and for about 45 minutes um pretend that they had gone back to the 19th century um there was a about 20 minutes inside and they would come class by class they 20 minutes inside and about 20 minutes outside learning the games of the 19 century they learned inside they learned how to Cipher um they wrote with quills and it's a very nice program we haven't had it since 2019 when I came tonight to find out um I didn't know exactly how to approach it um since we haven't done it for so long uh I'd like to approach the um I believe his name is Mr vanise from Orchard Hill school and um try to arrange a program for the fall and I wanted to find out if anybody on the board of education had any objection to that to me approaching him I I I want to make sure since everybody thought it was a shed that that everybody kind of knows what it really is and how important it was the 1976 Bicentennial project um they moved it from its previous location to the bo property and um like you know the trees grew and the it started looking like a shed to a lot of people so does anybody is this the right way to do it I I didn't know how to do it so but I want to do it so um I would be fine working with Mr vanis or the second grade teachers um I just kind of want permission to do that absolutely thank you start the program up again before you go I just want to thank you for thaning this initiative because I remember when uh we was came to uh to do the um off committee meeting and we were talking about the future plans for the students to organize different programs so they can learn about and this is really exciting that this program will be uh again re us thank you thank you thank you for that thank any other comments from the public any other comments from the Public Public comments are now closed for new business I'd like to say something about what she was just talking about there so I know there was a there was a a legal agreement there was a legal agreement and what 1976 and I I think I brought this up before but would it make sense for us to to re relook at that again and renew it uh right now I think there uh there are some things that changed from that agreement so I'm just throwing this up here something to think about here yeah thank you um I think that's something we have to discuss in off correct thank you Bo Carl are there any items for discussion from the board here none at this time I p a motion forj been proper moov second any questions on the motion all those in favor State I all have a good evening everyone