##VIDEO ID:cjoaCZWu4Bk## okay ready call to order the re reorganization and regular meeting of the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education uh flag salute stands andice adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by mailing copies of said notice to the record filing copies of said notice with the municipal Clerks of Hillsdale male Riverdale and Woodcliff Lake and Publishing said notice in the record on August 26 2024 go to the election results the Board of Education three-year terms uh Gia Guzman bdale 4,24 votes ktie Keller Rivervale 3357 votes and Deborah stepan of Mel 1,334 votes uh now I will administer the oath of office first up is Gia Guzman you go to the okay right okay IIA Guzman that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United States and the stat under the authority of the people I Gia Guzman do that I possess the qualifications prescribed by lawed for the office of member of a board of education and I that I am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to rs1 1941 crime nor disqualify due to conviction of a crime or offense listed in njs 18a 12-1 that I will faithfully impartially and just form all the duties of that office according to rest of my ability so help me go con thank you okay okay I Katie Keller solemnly affirm I that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will be bear true faith and allegiance to the SA and to the governments established in the United States and the state under the authority of the people I Katie Keller do solemnly affirm that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education and that I am not disqualified as a voter uh pursuant to rs19 col D 4-1 nor disqualify due to a conviction of a crime or offense listed in njs 18a col1 and that I will faithfully impartially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability this one's fre thank you all right yeah okay yeah all right Deborah stepin doly that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the United stes State under the authority of the people so help I Deborah stefins that I possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education and that I am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to rs19 col-1 nor disqualified due to conviction of crime or offense listed in njs 18a 12-1 and that I will faithfully andul and justly perform all the duties of that office the best of my ability so help me God hey can I have all back okay I will take roll call now now that Miss Calderon here here Mrs Swang here M here Mar here Mr Stanis here M St here M fares here Mr I will now take nominations um so motion needs to be made to nominate president uh for the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education anyone nominations I would like to nominate J fear our fearless leader no need for a second okay is there are there any other nominations seeing none I'm going to close the nominations so I need that moved so moved thank you we'll take a roll call on that is Kon yes Miss Guzman yes M Swang yes on second just to be very clear right now you're voting to close Nom close nomination yes Miss yes Mrs yes Mr sankis yes Miss stepin yes Mr Weaver yes bares yes okay so now I need a motion to vote for Mrs VES so moved second take a roll call Miss Calderon yes Miss Guzman yes M Swang yes Kell yes Mrs Martin yes stankis yes stens yes Mr we yes Mrs varis obain okay this is farges you are the new you are the new president you again once again um we will change places gladly and oh thank you everyone I really appreciate I really do um okay so next we have the nomination and election of the vice president so same as for President we will have a motion and a nomination go ahead same nominate Deborah stefins so moved so now we're going to close and are there any other nominations okay so now we're going to do a roll call to close nominations we need a motion so move close it yes roll call please nominations for vice yes yes yes yes Martin Mr stanus yes St yes Mr we yes yes next we will have vote in favor of Miss stefins motion a second and then we'll do roll call move second roll call please Mr Yami yesman yes yes yes yes yes abstain yes yes okay next we have the code of ethics for school board members which I will read aloud bear with me it's a little bit lengthy but it's important school board members shall abide by the following code of ethics for school board members I will uphold and enforce all laws rules and regulations of the State Board of Education and court orders pertaining to schools desired changes shall be brought about only through legal and ethical procedures I will make decisions in terms of the educational welfare of children and will seek to develop and maintain public schools that meet the individual needs of all children regardless of their ability race Creed sex or social standing I will confine my board action to policymaking planning and appraisal and I will help to frame policies and plans only after the board has consulted those who will be affected by them I will carry out my responsibility not to administer the schools but together with my fellow board members to see that they are well-run I will recognize that Authority rests with the Board of Education and will make no personal promises nor take any private action that may compromise the board I will refuse to surrender my independent judgment to special interests or partisan political groups or to use the schools for personal gain or for the game friends I will hold confidential all matters pertaining to the schools which if disclosed would needlessly injure individuals or the schools in all other matters I will provide accurate information and in concert with my fellow board members interpret to the staff the aspirations of the community for its school I will vote to appoint the best qualified Personnel available after consideration of the recommendation of the chief administrative officer I will support and protect School Personnel in proper performance of their duties I will refer all complaints to the chief administrative office officer and will act on the complaints at public meetings only after failure of an administrative solution next we have consent agenda items 7 through 22 can I get a motion please so moved second any discussion so I Dr Botti uh just looking at the uh Services the Professional Services uh G and H are new this year so if you could just give us a brief idea of you know where they came about and you know what they do and that sort of thing sure I'll actually turn that over to Yas okay so Nords engineering this isn't their first they've been around a while okay we've used them in the past yes we have used them in it's someone that Mr Donahue are capital Improvement he has worked recommended that and uh worked out very well so far perfect uh FKA Architects we appointed that last time um they are the architect of record for us uh we had gone through a process of uh parting of ways with our former architect and what we did was we had a number of projects and we um asked architectural firms to send us proposals and uh landed on FKA we thought they were very responsive they did a very good job not saying that the others did not we just thought FKA um had done a very good job managing the projects and stay t us okay perfect any further discussion The Architects is this the same that presented to us on the referendum no not or potential projects for a reference did not I think they did on they I thought they came in um we had two presentations yeah I say we've had a couple of presentations most recent the most he came in he is um offered Westwood as a he has um he is the architect record at Westwood Regional as well as mville he oversaw both of the U there thank you sorry any further discussion can we ask questions on of course just what's the difference between J and K one is Board of Education one is ucation School athletic physici for Hills I didn't see what was it for Valley so uh I can answer Valley one I asked to be remov sorry um Jay so we have one for the board and then one for each it's there's Dr Michelle mayor on J is um the person who does all the physicals and all that sort of stuff for this got it okay any further discussion okay roll call please Mr Yami Miss Calderone yes go yes Mrs Swang yes Miss Keller yes M Martin yes Mr stankin yes stefin yes Mr Weaver yes Mrs fares yes next we move on to our regular meeting agenda we have comments from the public citizens are invited to make comments regarding agenda items and are limited to three minutes according to the pasak Valley Regional High School District Board of Education policy number 0167 persons wishing to speak must upon being recognized rise sign in and state their name name town of residence and which agenda item they are referencing anyone oh yeah they when you came in I'm so sorry about that you want to see if there's agenda so you I'll get we'll give you a minute to look through it but cannot find it I mean in in a few minutes we're gon be doing the next comment unless there's huge discussion on something else but I'm gonna give you a minute or two to look I apologize for the pressure luckily it's going to be a brief meeting where we don't have presentation so the next opportunity to comment on anything uh will be in a few minutes um so next we have policy for which we have two consent agenda items can I get a motion please move second second any discussion full call please Mr usami missone yes Miss Guzman yes Mrs Wang yes Miss Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr Stanis yes Miss step yes Mr Weaver abstain Mrs fares yes next we have human resources for which we have three consent agenda items can I get a motion please so move second any discussion roll call please Mr Yami Miss Calderone yes Miss Guzman yes Mrs Wang yes Miss Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr than yes Miss stefins yes Mr Weaver yes Mrs VG yes next we have Finance for which we have seven consent agenda items can get a motion please so move any discussion roll call please Mr usami Miss Calderon yes Miss Guzman yes Mrs Swan yes M Keller yes Mrs Martin yes Mr St yes Miss stefin yes Mr Weaver abstain six yes everything else Mrs Baris yes next we have old business any discussion for old business kind of old kind of new um just a request I know we've had this discussion in the past um regarding minute the agend if possible if we can I just felt today um kind of at the last minute was a little bit overwhelming if we make every effort to um stick to whatever we have on Friday or Thursday or Friday whenever we get that original agenda um that would be very helpful I know that's that's come up in the past so I think what we got today was the hips yeah right and there were a couple changes I think from last week's as well okay um Dr bot correct me if I'm wrong but is there a certain timeline where we and pass them and that sort of thing so it push them to the next meeting yes so the um there was one H that we handed out today and that was because we had a technical issue with the program that we used we couldn't get it out on Friday because what we do is we actually take it from hipster and then um M actually manually redacts them we we just couldn't get it through the program in time to get it to you on Friday and then the other Chang were the changes that were requested yeah we try to be very mindful of that because we know come um that would have to be done today right yeah yeah so unfortunately if they finish the hi before our board meeting we do need to take action on it we there our our teams at the buildings know that and they're usually so good at getting it in if we didn't have the actual system we would have had it in on time um but we had to we had to actually reach out to their Tech but yeah I hear you yeah I was just like especially this particular because it was like two courts there was something way back and something more recent so I was having a hard time following it so I figured it out but like sometimes we'd like to have to ask questions absolutely yeah no absolutely thank yep next we have new business yes I had a question I was reading last week um that New Jersey teachers no longer are required to pass the prce core test what does that kind of mean for for us I don't think really is gonna affect us yeah but yeah it's funny that you bring it up because there was an article that I saw this morning a couple people had actually sent it to me some parents in our community and some teachers the article was written kind of oddly that made like we were requiring our teachers to have basic skills any longer what actually happened was there was a lot of that that test was redundant because there's already a GPA minimum and there's already a skills based subject area practice test that they have to take and the subject area practice test covers the basic skills the basic test you take when you're like a freshman a lot of schools actually we were looking at doing it for our teacher cadets for kids to do it while they were still in high school a lot of schools have actually said to people if you're interested in being a teacher we'll help you take that test now it's expensive um and it's like the first big test take and they identified it as a barrier for people to actually not go into education their freshman year which then puts them at a disadvantage for Education tracks so they decided to do away with that initial test because there's already metrics in place to make sure that our teachers are well prepared um I think it hopefully will help us with Recruitment and Retention and getting kids into those teacher prep programs the way the article is written because somebody actually the first thing I got was this morning was screenshot that said New Jersey teach no longer required to read and write was literally that I was like what am I it took me a second to realize what they were talking about but I think it's actually a good move um for our state because it was really um there's a a testing company that was getting a lot of money from it and it wasn't necessarily helping us to identify what who was prepared because there's already subject based tests that everybody has to get so yeah they eliminated the Fantastic question right any other new business can I ask about the honors music class so I'm asking about the honors music class I think it came up on our update on Friday and I asked about it and you had a clarification for we should start in September 20 so where so I have um we actually are meeting with uh some of the teachers uh tomorrow and the whole department on Thursday to come up with a plan for how to get that place so I don't have like the details of it yet um but that's what we're looking at doing thank you just a question they still have triam yep yeah very active yeah we also actually just to clarify that this is the department where um Dr Safari was the interim and then um Miss Rodriguez just started on Monday so we also have a little bit of uh some supervisory oversight so we want to make sure that there is that transition between the interim and the new person and that we are like to without so this is going to remove when kids music class get penalized for their GPA it's not quite that simple but it will give option to help it count as an honors class and I'm only reframing it that way because some kids it's not necessarily penalizing them this the issue that was brought up last year from student GRS they felt that they were penalized because they weren't able to take an honors class this will address that issue yes great yes thank you any further new business okay next we have comments from the public citizens are invited to make comments and are limited minutes according to the pasac Valley Regional High School District Board of education policy number 0167 persons wishing to speak must upon being recognized rise sign in and state their name and residents so you can speak about anything and we don't have to use the agenda so anyone want to speak good evening my name is Elizabeth gugler and I have a freshman and a junior and P Hills High School and um I wanted to thank you all for two things um as parents of kids who are in marching band concert band um jazz band um music theory AP music theory um do I have them all Tri am I modern rock thank you that was the one I was forgetting and modern rock um I want to thank you all first because this year is the year that um the music curriculum is being looked at so that's just an amazing thing so thank you but also I want to thank you for the possibility of there to be honors music atct this is going to I think enhance our music program it's going to be a great opportunity for our kids and especially for our kids who are involved in a lot of music programs it's going to be a great additional thing so um we as parents are super excited about it I know our kids are too so I wanted to thank you all for um that opportunity and hopefully for that opportunity happening so and happy New Year everyone thank you happy new and I I have to also say because um both of you are at all of the games doing lot of work so I have to thank both of you as well because you give such support to our music students like for real yeah I I I see you doing actual physical labor to support our students so thank you for that anyone else okay um I would just sort of like to to follow up with what sort of combined what Stephanie was saying and what with what this GL GL gler gugler okay I apologize uh was saying I I do I am very exited that we are looking at this curriculum I am and I said it last to I am concerned though that student who have a certain goal in mind for a school that they would like to get into are in the band or if they they don't realize how that affects their GPA you know what I'm talking about Dr bot but um this isang saying that you know that point is really important to me because I feel like if students don't know how much to be affected by taking these courses it might discourage them from taking it and I don't want that to be an issue at all whatsoever I also don't think it's B it once they get to that time of graduation they I I didn't know how to calculate that so I know we have talked about score um but I I don't feel clear does score or help the students because I know there's also that part it's counselor uh input the information does that make sense the counselors input it and that's what kids are looking at to get what their estimated GPA would be does that make sense to lovely students here um so would that help our music and our band students um to have a clear idea of where their GPA potentially be with whatever classes they take so theoretically yes but I would actually kind of put our do you think it's easier to figure out your GPA with score or looking are you looking in Genesis way I know it is score okay but that might just be like a yeah yeah well no that makes sense to me that's why I was wondering you thought but I like I looked at school first and then Genesis okay yeah thetically that's how supposed to help kids to navigate that that was the feedback we had had I forget when but in the in the recent past and the information that we had gotten from G that score should F that Gap so I'm hoping that it this I was just wondering if you felt like you knew what youra was when you look at for yeah I think for Genesis if you get like a transcript it'll say what your not on like a daily Genesis yeah M students usually check score multiple times a day GPA yes okay that's because Genesis is shut down all day all right so now you transferred it from Genesis before you can actually look at for all day doesn't change from the morning to the afternoon does it you know um okay thank you I I appreciate that question I also would love to get like feedback from guidance in this and this doesn't Happ be you know I would just love to know because I personally to me it's super important to have these other programs um and I would love to know like guess guidance getting good feedback about that because they're the ones who are gonna hear things so feedback on score yeah are there a lot less issues with students with uh GPA and calculating GPA because you know we heard it in the beginning it was Google and that's not okay I want something I would think that it would be something a little more so I want to make sure that the students are satisfied with that particular program I just like to say a few words um I had four children go through pasag Valley all of them went through marching band they all went through music and um I understand the emphasis on the GPA but you've got to make it part of your resume got to sell it to the college when you go on that interview either talk about multimedia courses that you took or the films courses or the music and colleges for that consistency over the years how dedicated you were to something uh so a lot of these don't reflect in the GPA they're tremendously time consuming they do pay divid s when you're writing that application well one for instance is robotics robotics pays dividends down the line when you're writing those applications and you're going on those so you know I know the focus is on GPA everybody sees that as the competitive measure but you make it who you are make it about the college and that you want to be there and can contribute that's just my take thank you anyone else any just one from when Mone asked about um the students going through their own personalized path not everyone going through a fouryear two-year program and we talked about a survey and Ella had said well there's a survey that ask me do I want a four-year or do I want tons of students or less students so today we had a PFA meeting I'm not doing an update I'm just clarifying one thing there's a survey from brags BR I don't know it's but a brag survey that's about colleges but then every guidance counselor has their own specific survey that they give to every student and that's supposed to say hey do you like you want to go into army or culinary or specialty or trade school is that I mean that's what I learned this morning if that's for of us who needed to have clarification they're doing like their like counselor is doing their like own branch of like the future planning meetings so I assume that's when that survey or like further like happen I haven't I haven't had mine yet miss theil I'll go home and check is this survey new no I think there so so going into junior meetings the counselors are sending surveys to parents and to students Bally saying what are your goals and those goals are Broad and they actually revamp the survey even from last year to this year to make it more Broad and with the of making sure that the survey itself isn't setting up students to feel that they have to say something like a so that's what we've been working on like revamping and they've over the past three years they've I think done a great job of being very mindful about what that like that's going confence and actually I had a meeting this morning that um with uh some of our building admin who had gotten feedback as early as today from parents who said it'd be really helpful to actually have a junior meeting of parents like maybe via Zoom before we the individual meetings so that way everybody's on the same page to start setone of like the world is our oy and then what is your actual goal so I think even by the time we get to this process next year we have kind of find change a little bit more the survey that's going out to students when they are fresh is through score and that's where you're getting that career I'm gonna call it career analysis um I think CS it much fancier but they sort of do these they're not aptitude but they are interest surveys and those would be going out as early as freshman if we also had a middle school connected to us we would send that out as early as sixth grade we're trying to see what our middle schools are actually doing I'm not sure um to see if we can actually help support that at the level because there are um interest surveys that are designed through Navan and score for Middle well to start that conversation then have kids thinking about it and start really looking at it there's actually a number of surveys you do and score so there's one that everybody has to do and a number of and I I think you guys mentioned that you're like some people do them all and some people don't do which is um and I think it really also depends on do you have a strong sense already of what you like and what you want to do or do you not and if you don't then you can do more to try to do that and if your counselor sees that you're all over the place they would encourage that so it's um this is you we haven't had score yet for a full four years so we'll see kind of like we need to adjust that further as we move on they've made a lot of I really positive adjustments last two years to try to make this as meaningful as possible students and parents and to really have those conversations on that individual level but also maybe the group level these are great questions thank you and I appreciate the students always being willing to chime in and share their experiences it's so helpful any further comments discussion okay uh I don't think we need a executive session unless anyone has specific questions on the hibs okay so uh can I get a motion for adjournment we are adjourned