##VIDEO ID:ktUG9TA6Cis## Regional School District is hereby called to order this meeting is called in conformance with the open public meetings act with adequate notice provided as follows notice sent to the Berlin County Times in the times of Trenton on June 19th 2024 notice filed with the township Clerks of Chesterfield Mansfield North Hanover and Springfield townships on June 19th 20124 and notice of the annual meetings advertised in the burin county times and the times Trenton on January 7th 2024 I will now call Ro Mr FS present Mrs Bond Mr iminente Mr bucks present Mrs gamble Mr narwood here Mrs Janice here Mr Spence Mr Zimmer here Mr Haynes all right thank you very much board at this time I'd ask everyone to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a Moment of Silence to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all has any Board of Education member received Schoolboard related emails Andor correspondences that they have not yet shared with the superintendent all right uh Dr Zuckerman if you could please give your superintendence report absolutely thank you so much first of all I hope everybody's having a uh wonderful summer it's um obviously by the August board meeting we realize that it's coming to a close soon so hopefully you have a great couple weeks planned um I want to start by sharing a few dates of things that will uh bring us into the 20242 school year all of these dates are listed in my August superintendent report the first day for all new students will take place on September 4th as we did last year this this day will be for all of the students who are new to our school or our district uh 7eventh 9th and new new students this will help the students become familiar with the school their teachers the layout of the school um while having fewer number of students in the building the first day for all students will be on uh Thursday September 5th the Middle School back to school night will take place on September 11th and the high school back to school night will take place on September 19th more information about these dates will will be shared from the building Administration just an update for the security monitors um we have conducted uh quite an extensive search and a number of interviews um and on this evening's agenda you will see two people who are recommended to fill the security positions both of these recommend recommended candidates come with a great deal of experience working in school security uh while they will be assisting the overall Safety and Security of our of our students and our staff they will be also be specifically helping with the bathroom situations that we have been that we have discussed on several occasions two weeks ago we concluded our extended uh school year for the 20242 uh I'm sorry the 2024 summer this year 37 students participated in the program the program was filled with some traditional academic instruction and reinforcements um along with some uh non-traditional learning activities as well we also had our career Orient oriented program our cop which brought students to seven off campus placements thank you to the teachers administrators for putting these uh together wonderful and meaningful um academic programs and also thank you to the area businesses for working with our students during their Coop placements at the end of June we sent out an end of the end of year survey uh we distributed this survey in the to the parents and Guardians in the end of year um end of year newsletter sorry uh that was that was sent out I shared the summary of these results in the with the board my August report and I will certainly be reviewing them in more depth with the community relations committee at our at our next meeting just a few other things that are on this evening's agenda uh this evening you will see the comprehensive Equity plan on tonight's agenda this Equity plan is directly connected with our board policy um 1523 this policy actually identifies the components that we're required to have in this plan also on this evening's agenda you will see the remote learning plan this is Al uh this is also a required plan um and this does not mean that we're going to be going back to remote learning what this means is that if by chance we are we are forced to close or the or the district is closed or school is closed for three consecutive days or more then the district can go into a remote learning opportunity again this is just the plan so then it's approved by the board if we should need this um late at some point during the school year I hope everybody enjoys next few weeks and I eagerly await the arrival of the students and the staff in September that concludes my report thank you Dr zakan uh anyone have any questions report right uh Mr Cass if you could please go over your business administrator report sure uh on January or January excuse me July 29th um filing petitions for the three vacant board seats uh were due uh I'm pleased to uh tell you that uh Mr Spence filed a petition for the oneop seat representing Chesterfield uh while Paul narwood and Christa epate filed a petition for the two open seats representing Mansfield so all three candidates will run unopposed and we wish them uh all the best and look forward to working with them uh in my report I uh informed the board of the activities for the upcoming Workshop in October if you need any hotel accommodations please let me know bya email or after this meeting um I need to pay for the reservations by the September 20th headline so uh buildings and grounds we've been very busy with our capital projects we just came from a committee meeting and I highlighted the committee on uh and the progress that we've made obviously we're renovating the uh the West and East uh kitchens and cafeteria is they're coming along um quite well and should be ready for the time we open uh we did major LED lighting project here in the high school and middle school about uh 1,000 uh lights have been converted to LEDs um we've also done uh electronic door locks they still being uh uh installed at the middle school so that it matches the high school we did a new uh paging system over there in the middle school and security film as well is just started this week so that is coming along uh on the agenda there's a couple recommendations for Professional Services related to the auditorium uh there's a recommendation for the construction manager of new road construction and also uh van cleff Engineering Services uh as always uh m Mr uh mcke has provided a picture summary of uh the the progress of the renovations and work that his uh his department has done um uh Transportation you'll see that we bid uh 10 routes uh five five tiered routes uh so uh and we recommend an award to GST of those 10 routes and then also on the agenda uh you will find um that we we have the routes uh our school routes uh to be affirmed by the board as we do every year and the route book is attached so if anybody has any questions uh please feel free to uh to ask um basically we're increasing one route to high school two routes at the middle school and about six uh out of District routes uh for special needs purposes uh I don't know if you remember it seems so far away but it just was a couple weeks ago July 19th we got hit uh by crowd crowd strike upgrade Mr Lee and his Department work diligently on Friday to uh uh provide a fix for each um PC that had to be uh reinstalled and it did not cause uh his due diligence did not cause any um any inconvenience to our staff so that is uh wraps up my report for August any questions all right thank you thank you Mr Cass uh item 2.03 is consent agenda item for the approval of the superintendent reports um for committee reports I will give the curriculum committee report since Mrs bond isn't present tonight uh the curriculum committee met prior to last week's work session uh during the meeting um Dr Stella gave us a uh pre um presentation for the State graduation assessment data that you guys will all see shortly um it's basically just same nothing changed particularly um after that we reviewed the teacher evaluations that the administration um does this year the administration updated them to uh provide better clarification between the various levels that the teachers could receive um there was a little bit of a gray area between the effective and the highly effective so they created more detail to be able to better assess the teachers and provide a better uh feedback um We additionally discussed their professional development for the staff this year um I know they let us know that they're offering a professional development day before the school year starts optionally between the November 11th and the end of August date um it seems like that August dat is actually really popular I know they said a lot of the staff are choosing to come in in August um which is kind of great to have the professional development before the school year even starts um get get it going in the beginning um we discussed the new courses that were added to the curriculum this year um brief discussion on the home run period that that falls into the new block schedule and um as well as the just the introduction of that emergency virtual remote instruction program that was mandated um you know it's similar to we've had in the past with no changes from previous years um any question questions regarding the curriculum report um the minutes will will be published in in the upcoming week to to the board um once they're fully compiled all right uh Joe do you have any updates for njsba no updates okay uh there was nothing burington County Wise from Frank last week I said legislation wise there was the only thing is the electronic buses legislation which doesn't really affect us out there uh at this time Dr Stella if you ready for that presentation good evening everyone I'm pleased to share with you the graduation performance of the class of 2024 as well as the progress of our class of 2025 towards meeting their graduation assessment requirement and this presentation is also linked as administrative content you should have access to it in that U resolution item okay so on in June we had graduation indoors which was a bit of a challenge but we did graduate successfully 367 students from there we have the data that indicates the various mechanisms by which the students met their graduation assessment proficiency we had 84 of them use a substitute competency test which you'll hear about in a moment we had 39 use the graduation portfolio appeal and we had one who uh was exempt from passing after taking the J GPA no students were denied graduation due to the graduation assessment uh process and so we move into how our students are prepared for graduation Readiness for the class of 2025 already and so we know that the NJ GPA is administered to all students in grade 11 this is our annual review for you know any new board members who haven't um been well uh exposed to this content so far and this again measures graduation Readiness in the the two content areas of English and Mathematics the English is aligned to the grade 10 standards and the mathematics to Algebra 1 and geometry the State Board of Education provides the cut scores the proficiency levels for each of the areas those are set for the NJ GPA and they're also set for the substitute competency tests so once a student sits for the NJ GPA they are then able to access if they're not uh if they don't reach the proficiency level on the first attempt they do have two attempts two times that they can reattempt that test either in July or October and then subsequently in March if needed as well but once they've taken the assessment once they're then eligible to use some pathway scores on a secondary assessment such as the PSAT sat or accuplacer and as a final step our students can participate locally in a graduation portfolio appeal where they work with a Content teacher for either or and math and language arts compile a portfolio that the that is in internally scored and then we guarantee or we um indicate to the state that they have met their graduation requirement uh in that regard so from Spring 2024 we had uh the data here for our students the first time attempting the NJ GPA for math and language arts so comparing their graduation Readiness relative to the state so in the First Column you see the number of our the percentage of our students who are graduation ready in English and math compared to the state so you see that we are outperforming the you know the metric provided by the state for student proficiency across the state and then conversely our number for the students not graduation ready our percentage is lower than that of the state so that is just an inverse relationship there showing that um it's you know in the same regard that we're performing better in terms of proficiency then the data shows the same for the not graduation ready while it's not Apples to Apples we do have cohort two different cohorts to look at to compare our data from 2023 to 20124 and so again consistently uh performing slightly better than students across the state for both years uh we see a a increase in our English profession icy from 86% last year to 89% this year and our math while it's 67 last year and 65 is this year it's not a significant difference in performance again this is also um cohort data of two different groups of students once the students take the assessment we take a look at how they are also doing as demographic groups and so we are um reporting out the students that can also be represented in multiple groups we have all students represented first their graduation Readiness in English and blue and Mathematics and gray and then we peel off the students that are or we also indicate the students that are economically disadvantaged as well as our students with disabilities and we do show that in mathematics we do have some areas for growth in both of those subgroups in in all of the areas but particularly in mathematics we also look at our subgroups demographic groups by eth and we see that there aren't as wide of a dispar disparate um proportionality between the groups but again students can be multiply identified they can be represented on this slide as well as the previous slide as members of multiple groups so looking at the students performance again now 333 members of the class of 2025 we see in green the students who were graduation ready upon the first attempt and the students who were not and the students at that point in time who did not have a score and then we peel off the students who met by a secondary pathway and we've now taken eight additional students in comp being competent in English and 46 in mathematics to reach the proficiency and be eligible for graduation and then we still had a focus area of 27 and 10 in English and 69 and 10 who hadn't didn't have a score in math so that was the population of students who was offered in July to take the assessment again we had a two-day window that we provided as well as they will assess in October based on the results if they sat in July so overall yes we are um performing slightly better than the state so that is an area that we um you know can celebrate an achievement and we know we have uh some work that we want to focus on in u the coming months again the retaking opportunity has occurred already in July and will again in October prior to those students taking it in October we are going to have them work with Stu teachers during the opportunity period for a few days leading up to take some practice style assessments and better prepare for that uh so that's the support that we will give them before the October assessment these students as grade 12 will have the option to retake the PSAT in o October we also encourage their participation in the SAT as those are the competency tests they can substitute we'll you utilize assessment style questions in the various courses and we know that the major shift this year is the concentrated time in English and math in our schedule change in both buildings as well as common planning time to ensure additional consistency of instruction and that our teachers are designing the best lessons to meet our students needs in mathematics as um the Cur ulum committee heard last week we're introducing a gamer mathematics course for grade students in grade nine who are scheduled for algebra as a semester elective to then reinforce the skills in Algebra 1 to hopefully um show them application of the mathematics to then again contribute to increased proficiency and again we'll have the graduation portfolio process in March so that concludes our graduation part there's one more piece of information before we take questions we also reported this time of year on the performance of our multilingual Learners Mr Ramirez who recently joined the district as an assistant principal oversees this area and is very passionate about programs and offerings for our students um learning in in their language acquisition and so each spring we provide the students with the access for L's so that we can determine if they are continuing in the program for um English acquis position or if they're able to exit and the score ranges on the assessment are from 1 to six and an exit score of to to exit the program or the services is four and a half and from the data you see there the number of students we have in the high school compared to the Middle School their score ranges and then how many of them will be continuing in the program and finally from students who've newly registered since then you see the breakdown of languages of our participants and so with that we can certainly return to any of the slides as needed for any questions that the board has at this time I I just have one so uh when when the student is not proficient do they get say a scorecard that gives them the areas that they need growth in or development in yes when the state releases the assessment scores they also give us an individual score report that gets mailed home and has a breakdown of the major standard areas major content and the the areas in which to focus and through the parent portal that is outlined on that sheet of paper it has an access to um some assessment style questions as well and when they retest do they retest the whole test yes so everything gets tested again per content area if it's just math they take the math if it's English they take just the English not both but then it would be the whole English and the whole composite score there's not a um sub scores that gets utilized okay any other questions okay again the presentation is linked to the uh agenda item and then in October I'll be sharing with you our performance on the advanced placement exams as well as the New Jersey student learning assessment so thank you again I look for actually have two questions for you I'm sorry um so when we get these results back how do we actually use them to then I guess inform or design changes because it would seem to me this is probably something we need to start solving in in sophomore year or freshman year like and even prior I mean because we're looking at Trend data and changing sequences and and time on uh course you know components of the course way back to seventh grade wherever we can so yes the data is received by the district it's uh disseminated to the directors principles we review the information together we filter out to the teachers you know what data is useful how can it how can we revise what are the areas that need to be enhanced in the curriculum and it's an ongoing process so then is that change in the scheduling that we're looking to do is that is the idea there that'll help to address some of this as well absolutely particularly in the middle school where our students have had two different mathematics and English language arts classes for the last several years that's been um a little bit of lack of coherence in terms of their instruction and so we're anticipating that that combination not only of the depth of the uh time on task and time on content but also a more coherent delivery of instruction and one last question for you I think it was slide nine um I don't remember the numbers sorry it was uh the percent graduation ready to ready via NJ GPA by subgroup okay there you Go's gonna help me out here nine okay yes um the demographics are these um are these self-identified or is this based on what we have roster for students already the power school information of absolutely yeah self identified via power school during registration thank you okay that's it okay great thank you again uh again AP test scores next as well as njsla in October thank you again thank you Dr Stella uh Mr Lee do we have any public comment no all right thank you in the consent agenda uh items on the consent agenda are believed to be items of routine nature requiring no discussion in which are to be voted upon a single roll call vote to the board any single member of the board may have have any of the items on the consent agenda removed and placed on another part of the agenda for discussion merely by so indicating prior to the vote to be taken on the consent agenda items removed from the consent agenda are identified by an asterisk and will be subject to discussion by the full board 5.02 is approval of the regular minutes for June 10th 5.03 is approval of the executive session minutes for June 10th 5.04 is approval of the financial report for the board secretary for the month of May 24 5.05 is approval of the treasurers report for May 2024 5.06 is approval of the budget transfers for May 2024 5.07 is approval of the cafeteria report for May 2024 5.0 8 is approval of the cafeteria report for June 2024 and 5.09 is resolution of the board regarding the budgetary major account fund status uh any questions for Section Five all right section six approval of bills we have 6.01 is approval of the Bill's list for August 12th 2024 any questions for Section 6 all right section seven is business and financial 7.02 is approval of board and staff travel uh 7.03 through 7.0 7 are approval of Professional Services uh 7.08 is approval of Professional Services for Van CLE Engineering Associates 7.09 is approval of Professional Services for the construction management uh 7.10 is approval Professional Services 7.11 is authorizing the submission of the other Capital project documents to the NJ Doe 7.12 is approval of the 2025 Elementary and secondary Education Act subgrant allocation and submission of Grant application 7.13 is approval of the 2025 idab allocation and submission of Grant application 7.14 is approval of 2025 Perkins allocation and submission of Grant application 7.15 is approval of the textbook disposition without sharing 7.16 is approval of the high school media center fall book order 7.17 is approval of the middle school media center fall book order and 7.18 and 7.19 are acceptance of donations do I have any questions in section s all right section 8 students 8.02 is approval of home instruction Services 8.03 is approval of option two for the 2425 school year 8.04 is approval of extended school year in District placements uh 8.0 5 is approval of a of District placements 8.06 is approval of the senior late arrival early release for the 2425 school year 8.07 is approval of the overnight trip to the National FFA convention in Indianapolis Indiana 8.08 is approval of English language Services threeyear plan and 8.09 and 8.10 are approval of classroom observations do I have any questions in Section 8 section 9 is Personnel appointments 9.02 through 9.04 are approval of certificated appointments 9.05 is the approval of revision of a c certificated appointment 9.06 through 9.11 is approval of non-certificated appointments 9.12 is the appro approval of coaches 9.13 is approval of additional class assignments 9.14 is approval of change in degree status 9.15 is approval of stipend 9.16 is approval of District Project work 9.17 is approval of additional work assignments 9.18 is approval of additional case management and 9.19 is approval of practicum placement any questions for Section n just Qui um quick question on the uh the coaches is that just a change list just pulling it up yep yep so these are just additions um to what was there that either wasn't filled or had an adjustment since then thank you any other questions in section N9 all right we have uh no items in section 10 tonight section 11 leaves of absence 11.02 is approval of leave of absence any questions for Section 11 section 12 is separation of employment 12.02 through 12.04 are approval of resignation 12.05 is acceptance of retirement 12.06 and 12.07 are approvals of recision of employment any questions for section 12 on the recision was that an offer that was made but someone didn't start is that there were two of those and I wasn't clear because we had resignation um items as well so the the um Sandy Colin who was hired as the assistant principal it's to replace what she was doing okay that was one um that was one and then the other one was for the marching band um so it just a change of decision whether or not to move forward with that from the individual not from the district okay so an offer was made but then the the individual came to mind change got you thank you that's what I wasn't clear on yep uh any other questions in section 12 all right uh 13 is miscellaneous Personnel 13.02 is approval of the business administrators Employment contract 13.03 is approval of student teacher replacement and 13.04 is approval of certificated staff evaluation instruments uh any questions for Section 13 all right section 14 is programs 14.02 is the approval of a 2425 bilingual waiver 14.03 is the approval of the emergency virtual or remote instruction program for 2425 14.04 is approval of the 2425 mentoring plan 14.05 is approval of the comprehensive Equity plan statement of assurance for the 2425 school year and 14.06 is approval of the chemical hygiene plan any questions for section 14 all right section 15 policy uh 15.02% of bid award contract and 16.03 is approval of a 2425 Transportation routes any questions for section 16 all right section 17 use of facilities 17.02 is approval of use of facilities for the northern Burlington football parents 17.03.2012 motion for the consent agenda um make a motion to accept the consent agenda and the second okay um Mr Cass if you could please to roll call vote please respond yay nay or abstain Mr figs I Yay with an exstension on 7.08 duy noted Mrs Bond Mr Arman ente Mr bucks yes Mrs gamble Mr narwood yes Mrs Janice yes Mr Spence Mr Zimmer yes all right thank you board motion passes unanimously thank you Mr L you could please check comment list no comments thank you all right um at this time we have uh anticipated community relations meeting September 9th um Mr figs that's going to change um we're going to have the facilities Tour on on the 9th and we're going to um do a couple virtual meetings okay thank you so I believe 5:30 on the 9th will be the facilities tour for any board members who can make it um go through the projects that were completed over the summer um any the updates um at this time does anyone have any uh new business they'd like to put to any of the Committees for any of the upcoming committee meetings all right um so we have September 9th meeting um there's no executive session this evening not this evening so with that if I can have a motion for adjournment please so moved second all those in favor I all posted exensions all right thank you have a very good evening everyone