##VIDEO ID:mGgxScFiHSc## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e microphone check one two e just you anywhere there is good I'm just bringing them all up to preset it okay I told little sound second one more time mic test one two sorry here we go I don't know oh okay love you soet I e try again all right one more time one one two and go we e e e up good evening everyone you don't want to hear me twice okay good evening everyone um we're going we're uh call the um meeting to order um may I have a a role call we were um I'm sorry we were meeting an executive and I have to find that statement right the Ridgewood board of education has been meeting an executive session pursuant to njsa 10 col 4-12 the minutes of this meeting will be released when the need for confidentiality no longer exists we'll open our public meeting with a roll call Mr Donnie Miss Clark here miss MC here M mmud here miss Brogan here have a quum please join me in a flag salute and Pledge of Allegiance so we have an exciting uh evening tonight and when you see all the board members come to the back to listen it's because we want to enjoy the music so um I think uh Dr shores would you like to introduce um our staff are they gonna make a few remarks I think absolutely so first of all I just want to welcome all all members of The Ridgewood High School marching band and a round of applause for them and I should really should have introduced them as the 2024 State and National Championship marching congratulations to all of you and we have with us our band director Mr John luckenbill to introduce the band say a few words and then we're going to be graced by a performance by everybody to celebrate our students celebrate uh really an awesome 2024 season um like Dr Schwarz just said New Jersey state champions and national champions and we're we're super excited to uh to be here tonight this is just the the leadership team of the marching band um we have many more that couldn't uh fit in here um but they wanted to be here um I just wanted to give a a couple of quick slides just about our season um and just to give a little context for for everything that we uh were able to accomplish this year um starting with a little quick history and those of you who have been here before uh on the board for a few years we gave that hundredy year anniversary um you know talk a few years ago but um really excited that we're able to continue that uh tradition of Excellence there in the Band program um but this is actually the fourth championship year in the band's history um started in 1980 uh with Dr Chris Wilhelm who's still in the area conducting the New Jersey wind Symphony here and then of course with Mr hos in 1992 and 97 um and then I I think it's important to note too we've had a lot of success over the past uh decade which I noted here uh we finished in the top three at usbands Nationals um we've been second and third for many many many years um so finally you know getting that first place finished was really really uh an awesome celebration of the hard work um that not only this year as band has has done but really over the past hundred hundred and so years but the past 10 years for sure um I think just a quick story of after championships I think the coolest thing for me has been the alumni reach out uh in addition to being able to celebrate with our you know current students and parents and staff members but the alumni reach out because we've had so much success um many students and parents have reached out to me uh you know we finally did it and it and emphasis on WE and it was really cool for the students you know they were reaching out and saying we worked so hard we worked to try and get that Championship um and you finally did it the band finally did it we finally did it and it it that that has been so cool to reconnect with a lot of the alumni who said they were watching the awards ceremony and crying with their their friends from when they were in the band 10 years ago and and who they're still in touch with so that's been kind of the the fun thing for me in addition to celebrating with their own students um this year we had an awesome year obviously but we also took a really big highlight for us was going down to Annapolis Maryland uh we did an overnight trip there to the Marine Corps Invitational uh and uh we spent a weekend there and did a competition there and we also were able to reconnect with one of our own who's a band alumni who graduated last year Henry Rivera who's actually at the Naval Academy was able to get some release time and come watch the band um so that was a fun weekend in addition to uh you know the Championships at the end of the year we had an awesome show this year called Teenage Wasteland started out with uh you know the the who babo or riy and we had some really really fun moments in there so hopefully some of you got to see that show this year um I want to introduce because uh you know we want to celebrate our students and we have awesome students in the in the program um and we have an awesome drum major this year uh so Danielle hos represented uh the band as a drum major on the on the podium on the ladder uh starting the band on all the tunes uh including bosni udashi too uh as field cat who will be the drum major next year um but I wanted to hand the mic to Danielle just to talk about her time in the band and her her season this year um good evening everyone I'm Danielle uh I'm a senior I've been the drum major this past season uh in my four years in this band I've created memories friends and skills that I'll carry with me into the rest of my life through this season I've seen people start to integrate the band's core values into their own Liv Liv outside of marching band I've watched this activity help so many people come into their own my friends who could barely raise their hand in class freshman year are now some of the best leaders and teachers I've ever met kids who I knew nothing about this summer immediately became my close friends come November I've only recently acknowledged how much I've grown through my four years too I've learned how to communicate with my own peers and with adults and part of my job has become to has been to become the bridge between the two being in this band especially this year year I've learned how interconnected we all are with people who have graduated years and years ago the fact that alumni visit often and that most of our staff is made up of rhs Alum says a lot about the community that's been created both by the staff and by the students it really doesn't matter how talented the students were this year if we hadn't believed that marching band was a home for us a community we wanted to be in we wouldn't have been so successful everyone's commitment to being great is what helped us win state championships and the mutual agreement to work harder until the end pushed us towards our victory at National Championships I've never been more proud than I was accepting the first place trophy on behalf of our band because in that moment every single minute of rehearsal paid off we were able to accomplish something that hasn't happened in 27 years and that and that we will remember for years to come I'm so proud to have dedicated my high school career to this band and I'm so happy to be able to speak to people on a subject I care about so deeply win or lose this band truly is something special and something that connects generations of rhs students I'm so happy to have been a part of something bigger than myself and have worked with my friends to create something Unforgettable so of course we want to play for you uh so we brought two Tunes with us uh we're going to play an excerpt from our show Teenage Wasteland um this is called uh asphalt cocktail which is from our uh from our show it's the opener of our show to kind of set the scene of uh of Chaos in a sense um hopefully everybody uh can hear the band well enough they're at home I know we will hear um and then the second tune of course it's the holidays and we're going to play little Jingle Bells for you on the way out so here's asphalt cocktail and then Jingle Bells set up supped to n I what's up what's up la he good thank you sure a e e e that so much that awesome okay guys yeah really wonderful all right oh okay hold on a second SG is R camera when I'm e my candy right what's next yeah I agree hey we're back now um I realized as I was standing there I just um did not do the opening statement so let me just do that real quick um pursuing to the requirements of the open public meetings act Advanced not notice has been given to the Star Ledger the record in the clerk of the village of Ridgewood in addition notices were posted in the office of the board secretary and in all school buildings so alrighty um is Mr lit back here yeah all right at this time I'd like to invite up we have a very special Honore with us here tonight um it is with uh with great um with mixed feelings let's say we have uh we want to honor a legend here at Ridgewood Public Schools um who is retiring and give him our congratulations but also to uh to express our appreciation for his service Mr litvac can you join us and we're also going to have and with him is George Washington Middle School principal Mr David Bailey as well as Benjamin Franklin Middle School principal Miss Stacy wisneski thank you for being here with us Mr litvac we're excited to honor you tonight okay so first we'd like to thank uh thank the board of education for the opportunity to be here tonight to honor Mr Roman lpck well-deserved retirement uh we'd like to we notice that both Middle School principles are up here and you might be wondering why well we've shared Mr lpac between BF and GW for 16 years so we figured tonight we would share this speech Mr litvak's Journey here in Ridgewood began on December 18th 2000 when he joined us as an eighth grade math teacher at George Washington Middle School then 16 years ago a need arose at Benjamin Franklin Middle School and Mr litb back stepped up splitting his time between both middle schools for over 24 years he has been a constant positive presence in our Ridgewood family guiding students through the sometimes daunting world of mathematics personally I would like to thank Mr L litvac for these past four months working together I wish we could have more time he claims it's not me that he's leaving he has taught me many lessons in this short period of time about the importance of the middle school years in a child's development he frequently stops by my office and always gives me words of encouragement and advice it has been very impactful for me to have such a respected experienced teacher take the time to help me each day I'll always remember the advice you've given me including today's advice congratulations and thank you Mr liac so as we were preparing for tonight I had the chance to sit down with Mr litvac and get to know him a little bit more and I love the story of how Mr litvak's career began it all started one Saturday morning when Mr litvac went back to his old neighborhood to help a friend tutor students his friend quickly noticed the joy and natural e Mr lvac had with the students and suggested he pursue teaching Mr litvac took the advice to Heart earned his substitute certification sat for the practice exam without a calculator sure to let me that and the rest as they say is history beyond the classroom Mr litvac has been a passionate Mentor Le students in math petitions under his guidance teams earned accolades including a county and advanced to state level competitions achievements that reflect his dedication to nurturing talent and inspiring a love of mathematics Mr litvac is more than just a teacher he's part of the fabric of our schools and our community many of us have seen him riding his bicycle or serving coffee from his van always with a smile always embodying the joy of Simple Pleasures these sites and the chance for one of his impromptu coffee visits are something we will truly miss to to his students colleagues any lives he has touched Mr litvac holds a special place in our hearts his love for teaching an unwavering commitment to his students leave an enduring Legacy here in Ridgewood Mr litvac as you embark on the next chapter we wish you nothing but safe travels and wonderful adventures something we know you'll fully Embrace as the Avid traveler you are your Ridgewood family will miss you dearly but we celebrate this moment with you congratulations on your retirement and thank you for 24 incredible years um you know I'm going out with a band not with a bang right so I want to thank The Village um and the board and the community for um making this place um my career um and allowing me to um share my passion for mathematics with the children of this community thank you very much and uh good luck thank you and Mr Mr liac can we uh can we steal you for a picture as well and Mr lck um I I just wanted to personally thank uh because both of my daughters have gone through your class and uh both of my daughters have gone through your class and I can confidently say now they both are confident in math because of you and my older one is taking math as like one of the she's taking advanced math in college and younger one is also on that path and um one of the comments that I heard from my younger one was that Mr lwag is one of very few teachers who actually showed interest in different cultures um talked about different foods different the cultural aspect also and felt them welcome in this school so it's not just the math that they they'll remember you for but also your discussions about the food the cultural aspects the um geography like like everything that um happened in your class so the those are they'll always cherish your class and we'll always be um obl thank you all e all right next up we have a presentation from The Ridgewood High School World support Ali sence do we have our students with us here today all right welcome all right and we have Mark dwe president of the rhs world support Alliance and Natalie deer did I say your name correctly Natalie Natalie can you help me I want to say it correctly de de Muer very good thank you so much Natalie Natalie Mark thanks for being here today uh you got the Board of Education in front of you and we'd love to hear what you have to present to us here today so I'm Maru he I'm the president and founder of the world support Alliance we started about a year ago and we've grown a a lot so we're going to kind of talk to you guys about our success and our kind of expansion SL future and I'm Natalie deer and I am president as well as membership director and I have recently been integrated into the world support Alliance this year so just to talk a little bit about our club so the world support Alliance is dedicated to helping more than 130 countries with impoverished children as so with basic needs such as food water or even educ and we do this through our connection with our charity which SOS Children's Villages and we would love to kind of present and get take you guys on a quick tour of our club and how we operate so over the um past couple years um we've done a couple of events so the first one we've done is a hot chocolate sale in all the middle schools and that was a big success that started us off with $600 then in March of 2024 we hosted an eighth grade mixer to be able to welcome the eighth grad of the high school we had around 400 students attend and $3,000 in profit um summer 2024 we worked really diligently to plan for this year's um events um and in October through November we went through and did a website revance to kind of um first make our website ADA Compliant as well as add Google translate inte Creations um the new calendar software alert system and streamline navigations those features are very important for us because that's how we get our tickets that's how we get our word out and that's how community members are able to um learn about our organization and then actually two days ago on Saturday we hosted a winter wonderland event with around 180 students and profit $2,000 um it was a very successful event lots of fun to hang out with little kids and um a lot of parents were and students enjoyed it so for our website um we went through and picked a very nice modern um kind of template to not only specify our needs as an organization but also provide our success and also our expansions so whenever we try to expand we're also able to expand via our website so I'm going to go over quickly just a few goals that we have for our club since our beginning in 2023 and I would just like to address some short-term goals for the meanwhile and these include a quick awareness campaign to really bring ourselves more into the community and kind of raise awareness for not only the children but also our club and what we're doing to try and help these kids and this can be through social media or different kinds of platforms such as our such as Ridgewood moms and dads to really get ourselves out there and spread the message about these kids and how we can help them additionally we have another fundraising event that we would love to host and these are kind of more somewhat smaller scale events and these really help to not only raise awareness as I said earlier but also really familiarize the community with our club in ways that are a little bit smaller and a little bit more personal and familiar to people lastly I would like to just quickly address event planning in addition to our smaller scale fundraisers as you heard of the hot chocolate stand we would also love to in the future hold larger events such as the winter wonderland which we held two days ago however these do require a little bit more planning and we would love to kind of work with our staff and our faculty and our team members to really bring more fun events to not only help children but also engage the community further so um for the long-term goals um for around 2025 2026 school year we want to kind of integrate our clubs in the middle schools to kind of start the process of learning about our organization not just from the middle schools but then when they hit the high school level they're kind of aware of what's going on um District collaboration's kind of in sync with the um integration when we have District collaboration we can handle a bigger scale events with um all the middle schools and all the high schools and that kind of gets them a little bit more involved as like a pod and then lastly kind of staying with our annual events rehosting the winter wonderland and yeah so lastly I'm just going to give a quick overview on club membership and leadership as I said earlier we started out in 2023 with actually just about 20 members with kind of a goal in mind this was not a school project and this was not for our own gain but this was rather to kind of really help children around the world and as you can see we've kind of exponentially grown to more than 120 active participants in our club and these are the people who give us support ideas and T and their time which is really crucial and essential to our operation additionally we have a structurized leadership structure that really helps us go over where what needs to happen and when and how we can divide up the work evenly to make a more to make a more efficient and faster running club of course we would not be here today with our wonderful adviser Madam pulk so hi and thank you for all that you do and keeping us on track and guiding us through every whatever event we that we do as you can see here on our slideshow We additionally have different officers assistants and directors to help us and assist us in our processes of creating these events that we bring to the Ridgewood Community we thank you for your time and if you have any questions we would love to answer them thank you do anyone have any questions congratulations um you really from from what did you say you started with 20 to now 120 and your activities so how do you um besides your website how are you publicizing your fundraisers um we go through Instagram um and the winter wonderland we tried to go through the um Virg moms and dads which really did help congratulations and keep up the good work yeah yes are you both seniors this year no we're sophomores s oh sophomores oh so you've got got two more years to yeah grow this club right yeah congratulations thank you okay next um we we're really honoring uh huk quak for her tenure on the board of education and um so may I'm going to read this and uh and you will get a printed form of this and in a folder um um at just a little bit later date when it's all into the minutes and right I think that's how we're going to do it so resolution honoring hanuk quack whereas huk quac has served as a trustee of the Ridgewood board of education for five years of service to the community the staff the administration and most importantly the students of rwood public schools and whereas during her tenure on the board huk quac was chair of negotiations and a member of the finance facilities curriculum Fields joint review and policy committees and whereas hanju qua served as President and Vice President of the ridgwood Board of Education was appointed as a liaison to the Ridgewood Education Foundation and as a member of the Garden State Coalition of schools whereas huk qua received the new board member boardmy certified board member and master board member and certified board leader uh cert certifications from the New Jersey school boards Association and whereas hanuk qua completes her tenure and leaves her formal service to our schools the board wishes to express appreciation for Mrs quark's service years of service to the students of Ridgewood schools therefore be it resolved that this resolution be entered into the official minutes of the Board of Education meeting held on the 16th day of December 2024 so uh and also um at a recent uh School boards uh the legislators um signed a certificate of thanking you for your service to uh the Ridgewood Board of Education so thank you very much for your service hu I'm just going to say a quick short sweet and to the point because we have a long day ahead of us um I wanted to thank thank Miss brogen and the entire board and and the administration who uh we've worked together and it's been a journey and I have enjoyed and appreciated working with each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart truly it's been a privilege and an honor and the work that we have done together you know congratulations to all of us like we really worked and you know I really enjoyed the time when I stepped up to run um years ago four or five four or five years ago in 2020 it was to serve the community and um this was my weight of giving back and I'm thrilled to have served in this way and give back in this way and I encourage each and every one of you we have annual Schoolboard elections take the time to step up and serve you will feel so ened the impact that you will have on this community is profound and look at the work that we're doing together it's just been an amazing experience and I thank you for this opportunity thank you so much um would you like to have your picture taken uh yes and then we'll open for publish oh you're welcome than e and then we'll open yeah and I'm sorry just one more before we get to public comment first of all I just want to say just on behalf of the administration Miss quac it's been such a pleasure to work with you thank you for being a big part of the reason why I came to Ridgewood and uh really appreciate all the time and service that you've given and you've always been very helpful and very forthright and I really appreciate really appreciate the opportunity to work with you um and we also have another honorary tonight with us uh we have a uh a good a good friend of the district um and a and a and a fantastic colleague and Mentor for our administrators uh we've had a chance to have Dr Murphy join us um it albe it for about four or five months um he was going to join the team originally just in kind of a relatively small capacity I shouldn't say relatively small capacity that's the wrong way to put it he was going to play a role within our administrative team um and then Mr fredman who is serving uh as the Director of uh curriculum and instruction uh was given an offer to become the superintendent of another school district uh we had a leader a rather high level leadership vacancy and so uh I had a conversation with Dr Murphy about his interest potentially in doing that it wasn't originally what he had committed to um I've known Dr Murphy for quite some time he's a a parent and a resident in Ridgewood if you haven't been to the meetings he was superintendent of Ramsay um and uh and has been for for 10 years and had a story career before that um he's someone who actually I was connected to just via social media as one of very few people I'm pretty selective with who I follow on social media and I just really thought that his content um was really professional and positive and I really appreciated that and um so it was a privilege to get to know him a little bit just as at first just the superintendent of Ridgewood and and and um and him him as a as an individual who was in the community and a colleague but then to have had the opportunity to work together has been a real privilege and an honor um it's been very edifying I think it was I think we knew that we saw things kind of similarly when we when we first met and we started working together and then we found out like every month that went by just how much more aligned we were and I think it was a great your great addition to the team M Dr Murphy and you're uh and you're you're great to have here all right so so uh so we have a resolution here and um I do um Madame President would you mind reading it as you are the president but uh but the team did put together resolution here I know the board's interested in honoring you and so we'd like to memorialize you at this meeting as well resolution honoring Matthew Murphy whereas Matthew Murphy has served the entire community staff and administration with integrity and administrative Acumen as he as an interim director of curriculum and instruction from August 2024 to December 2024 I just had a piece of candy not a good thing whereas we owe Dr Murphy tremendous respect and gratitude for the educational leadership he has provided to the district's administrative team whereas Dr Murphy has shared his expertise in the district's curriculum and instruction and has guided District supervisors with our elementary language arts programs whereas Dr Murphy has provided mentorship and coaching to administrators and teachers and has been an invaluable resource to all staff members and board trustees resolve that we the members of the rigid Board of Education wish Dr Murphy all the best in his next Endeavor as an interim superintendant of the wanu school district and be it further resolved that this resolution be entered into the official minutes of the Ridgewood Board of Education meeting held on the 16th day of December 2024 congratulations thank you Dr h you know for years I've wanted you to come and work in the district so you it was a dream come true when you um came in August so thank you very much for your service um we are going to need a picture at some point so so I think's fresh should we just do this very quickly I think we're come on let's go in case we forget you one more all right right e okay we will uh now open uh for public comment when you come to the microphone please state your name and your municipality um and um limit your comments to four minutes please L Lori Weber 235 South Irving Street uh oh sorry I supposed to tell you that I'm I just live in ridgwood okay good okay um I I came tonight to uh say A Farewell to miss hunu quack who I feel uh being sworn in in I think 2020 and literally hit the ground running that was I think the year that the budget failed and she was on that small team to rectify that and do damage control quickly and literally as soon as she was sworn in so I I really think that that was the Hallmark of what she was going to bring to the community because Miss quack always prepared always responsible always ethical she took on the sometimes difficult job of bringing about robust conversation on board topics which as a community member I am grateful for because it makes makes the process so much more transparent to the community and also I believe it leads to the best type of decision making so what can I say except thank you and I hope that the person who fills your shoes does half the job that you have done and leaves behind the legacy of positive results that you were very much a part of thank you good evening Ann loving Ridgewood resident I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to speak and I also want to always thank you that you give us the opportunity to dial in from home it's very much appreciated I came to evening also to publicly thank a board trustee Miss hju quak for all that she's done for the village of Ridgewood by serving two terms on the board of education I thank her for her honesty her Integrity her diligence her intelligence and her absolute determination to do the best for our Ridgewood schools for the children who learn in them and the teachers and other employees who work in them we will miss you on the board of education trustee quack but I have no doubt that you will continue serving this wonderful community of ours in some way or another and if I may approach I have something to give you beautiful good evening everyone I'm delighted to be a lifelong Ridgewood resident my mother graduated from Ridgewood High my son graduated from Ridgewood High so the school system is particularly important to me and I just want to express my appreciation and gratitude for all HJ has done and I'm just I'm just an a when I read this list of the um bread of what she's worked on finance facilities curriculum Fields joint review I'm not sure what that is but I'm sure it's something important and policy so with all my heart thank you and I can't wait to see what you're going to do for the village in the future uh good evening members of the board uh Boyd a loving also a Ridgewood resident longtime I am here tonight also to thank Miss quac for her service to the Village uh echoing a comment from one of my neighbors Miss Weber Miss quac was always always prepared before she came into the meeting room and we appreciate that we appreciate uh what you did for the school system the students and most importantly for me I appreciate what you did for the taxpayers we have to remember who's paying the bill and uh taxpayers are do pay the bill and we appreciate you watching out for us all the time that you were up serving us for the last five years and uh as many of you may know I'm not shamed to ad Miss Miss qua is a personal friend of our families and we're looking forward to seeing her more often now in our yard with her dog playing with our dog thank you very much for what you've done for the village thank you I'll see if there's any uh hands raised there are let's see uh Steve you're on with the board um can you hear me hello you hear me yes we can okay great um my name is Steve Kim Rood resident and most importantly hu's husband um I would like to congratulate yanu remarkable service to the rwood community she has given her heart and soul to help the students of rwood to improve their learning experience during tenure during her year she's been able to achieve many of the goals she set at the beginning of her journey on the board of ed her steady leadership during the challenges of Co was inspiring under her Guidance the school district finances are stronger and rankings have steadily improved H has served our community with dedication integrity and vision she and I each grew up as immigrants with impressionable experiences that taught us never to take anything for granted one of the most profound lessons from our life lessons the value of hard work and unyielding Integrity it's a lesson we live to pass on to our own kids but we wonder each work EIC integrity and the importance of giving back how do we show them that as the same ghost to whom much is given much is expected henja has been an extraordinary role model for our kids and for other kids in Richwood she's shown them that what it means to serve with both heart and mind to stand by strong ethics and to work tirelessly for the good of others there were many Monday evenings when education meetings our kids wondered where she was initially our kids asked why must mom be there however as they grew up seeing hu putting in our effort and passion her goal of giving back they began to understand they saw the hour she devoted the care she brought to every decision and the impact of her service over time their questions turned into admiration which turned to motivation and initiative they started to ask how they can give back and are following through in their own ways while H was at a board meeting recently I told the kids this would be her last year serving on the board our oldest paused momentarily thought said rid was very lucky to have her and I agree indeed rid bard of Ed has been very lucky to have hu congratulations thank you thank you Cynthia okay you're on with the board hi hi good evening can you hear me yes we can wonderful thank you for the opportunity to speak uh I'm a ruid resident by the way um I ALS o would like to express my gratitude to miss quac for her dedication and Service as a board trustee I so admire her professionalism her preparedness and really Grace Under Pressure um you know what you all do is not an easy role and to to give of yourself um as Mr Kim mentioned you know these Monday nights and all the work that happens behind the scenes not just on those Monday nights there are many many um you know hours of preparation in order to get prepared and you know one of the things that I so admire was her ability to really be um you know always professional always have a smile on her face but really to ask critical questions and to get to the bottom of you know um finding really Creative Solutions to things that are really difficult problems so that we all benefit as a community and for that I'm grateful and I know you know someday um she will be able to serve in our community in another capacity because you know she is really a gem and I I believe that you know there's more to come I I don't think this will be the last that we see of you know her tremendous efforts on our behalf and I just wanted to say thank you thank you Christina you're on with the board Christina Millian Ridgewood resident uh first I just wanted to say congrats to the Ridgewood band and all their accomplish accomplishments thought that was excellent and um you know just really Applause to them and of course thank you to miss hu qua for your dedicated service on the board over the many years um just wanted to say that I feel like you're commitment to prioritizing our community has been nothing short but invaluable and you've just put in so much work for so many of us and all of your efforts have been noticed and I truly feel like your departure is such a significant loss uh for all of us um and also just wanted to bring up that in one of the recent meetings Miss qua actually proposed if my memory serves me correct um a a great idea bringing together a meeting with both environmental and medical experts to help the board and our larger Community you know hear from them about decisions that are being made and Investments that are being made in in the future of um our fields and particularly an investment in plastic and so I just wanted to follow up and ask you know what are the next steps for that idea how does it move forward any any uh you know further information would be really helpful and again just thank you so much Miss quack we really appreciate everything you've done thank you Peter um Molton you're on the um with the board now hi Peter Malton our Ridgewood resident um also calling in to um thank Miss qua for her service and it's often a thankless job you know you've heard my voice many times on these meetings and I I I I appreciate uh uh the uh the thoughtfulness and obviously the time I mean it's you this is a I can appreciate in some fashion how difficult the job is for all of you and um I I just want to thank you very much for your your time and service to our community thank you that's all for public comment anyone else I'll close public comment then and um Mrs quack Andre it's lovely lovely statements for everyone so congratulations on that um we'll go to um our presentation now all right welcome everybody uh so um we're not report yet so I'll see my report items but uh the next item the next item that we have on the agenda is a presentation uh would you like me to do it for you you you want to we're g to do this it's okay yeah do this first um so I just want to welcome uh Dr Michelle Fenwick uh up we have had a long awaited uh presentation that we have tonight um we've had a lot of conversations over the course of this last year with our community with some of our community members um and uh and our board members regarding uh the state of special education in the school district last year in the spring we gave gave a special presentation that we called the state of the schools address uh it's a it's a presentation that I've given in my prior District as well um and it is something that we're going to we're making an annual tradition here um in response to that we did include some some data regarding specifically um different subgroups of students and their experience in our schools which included special education students but our community members uh some of our community members really wanted to have they had more questions and they wanted more information about um how we know what our progress is and how we're doing specifically with respect to the important area of our programs uh that are that are that qualify as special education so in some conversations at the end of last year uh we particularly had a cpag meeting we do have a a special education parent Advisory Group in the district um it is a it is a it's a group that is there to support families and and parents uh with students with special needs it's there to be a resource to families and a partner to the school district and we used one of the meetings in the spring to talk about what some folks concerns were uh We've created an open mic kind of environment where we let people uh come and share their thoughts we had some follow-up meetings with some individual families that had concerns um and the reality is that our families uh who who are who are concerned about special education um come from all walks of life in all different circumstances um there are a wide variety of different types of disabilities and challenges that students can have that would qualify them for an IEP uh and there are parents and community members who who don't even necessarily have a child with an IEP but are are concerned about the mission of special education in our schools and so uh after many conversations one of the things that kind of came about was this this notion that um we would really love to be able to make it a regular practice to review our data regarding our special programs with a level of depth and Fidelity that we evaluate our all of our programs together in the state of the schools address so uh we we came up with this idea for a state of a state of Special Education address um which has been an ongoing process we don't have a template for it I've never seen a school district do something quite like this certainly not with the intention to review it year upon year to to evaluate what our Trends are um and so I commend Dr Fenwick because this has been she's been working on this pretty consistently for months now we've had multiple sessions back and forth and this started as uh some board members you saw some early slides that were just kind of conceptual um as a sense of kind of the direction that we were trying to go in um but since then uh We've replaced Mo almost all of those slides um we've refined the data presentations to try to really tell the story and to speak to the concerns that folks had um so I just want to be clear about this what this presentation is and isn't uh so first of all this presentation is intended to give everyone who's interested a deeper dive into what this the trends are within the specific special education budget budget excuse me budget's a part of it but with respect to special education in general that includes budget that includes um our our classification rates that includes the types of classifications that includes um our vision for what we're trying to accomplish within special education and the goal of that is really to Norm the community around what uh what our values are and what our goals are and what our metrics say about what our Trends are within those programs so this is intended to be a starting point so and in being a starting point of conversation um it is inherently not an ending of conversation quite the opposite um the the the the presentation ends with a couple of General observations and trends that we think that we're seeing um and then it identifies where Our intention to continue to uh investigate and grow and look into the trends in special education and to gather new data points and better data points um uh where we think we have uh where we think we have the best next steps and also where that fits into uh the mission that we have if you've not if you're kind of new to this conversation I would encourage you to go back and look at um our prior conversations around the state of the schools address um and our district goal conversations because inclusivity and special programs and meeting students where they are uh is something that has been endemic to what I have tried to bring here certainly we've made it explicit in our language at the district level and that we work with our administrative team and we impress the importance of inclusion with everyone I have to tell you firsthand experience it has not been a heavy lift working with our leadership team to understand the importance of inclusion and uh with the work that I've had an opportunity the engagement I've had a chance to have with our special Educators um truly they all value inclusion and that's why they do what they do so again this is meant to be an initial first step it's a first goor round so I think I again I I commend Dr Fenwick on putting together some pretty robust data and I we apologize in advance if if it's a little overwhelming there's a lot of data there to be clear um we've had some conversations about how exhaustive this presentation should be I do air on the side of giving more information than less so I apologize if it seems daunting it's not intended to be intimidating to anybody um and it's not intended to to be exhausting to anyone but we know that lots of different folks have different questions and in order to be able to speak to all those various question that we've had over the last year it does require quite a few data points as time goes on we'll try to refine this um we'll try to make the data presentations a little more dense so that we don't need as many slides but in the meantime we are going to try to move this pretty quickly we did some dry runs of it and I think it was about half an hour 45 minutes was a was a presentation component but of course we want to leave some time for questions and uh and um uh and then of course we'll have time for questions from the Board of Education and um and miss miss bro I think we wanted to do an opportunity for some for some uh for public comment afterwards so we could respond to some questions from folks great so so for members of the public I know we have some members of the public who are here with us tonight thank you for joining us in person and I know we have some folks who are um with us virtually you will have an opportunity again public comment isn't typically geared like towards questions but given the nature of this presentation if we can limit those questions specifically to the presentation then we'll do our best to try to get answers we'll have everybody give their comments I'll write them all down and then we'll try to kind of talk make our way through them all right and I promise I will not say much more and I will give uh Dr Fenwick the floor and an opportunity to uh to to to give the to to to show show the product of her work so thank you thank you very much Dr Shores um and I thank you board because it is a thorough um report and review and it will take a little bit of time to unpack um that being said I know everyone's time is valuable and um this is an investment in um trying to really provide a comprehensive overview so I am very appreciative and I welcome and thank members of the community who have come and who are watching online um since you're honored to represent uh special programs office um with Janelle nii and Amanda zenis um and all of the special ed staff um and members of the community who have um had their children and um um and their families work with special education so the presentation objectives um are you know multifaceted one is to establish a shared understanding of the purpose um and the goal of special education another is uh Collective understanding of how special programs function in public schools specifically here in Ridgewood um to provide an analysis of the state of special education which are data points that were included in the uh 1718 uh audit report and to address specific Community concerns I always begin any presentation that I do um with the special programs mission statement um when I came to Ridgewood um this was an important uh Collective collaborative effort on uh the at the time lssa members of the community uh parents students um all gave input in what our mission statement um would be and our mission statement is to model dignity and empathy while providing support to students with special needs and recognizing their abilities skills and strengths to Foster Independence and success as lifelong Learners and productive members of an inclusive community um that is Our intention and to begin every presentation to keep it in in our mind as we move forward so this is a infog graphic that was created to offer some some dialogue around the goal of special education when you look online and you look at um often when people describe the the goal what is the goal of special education usually it ends with uh either the student um receiving specialized instruction or the contract which is the individualized education plan IEP um what I wanted to propose was really the what the true goal of special education is if you would um allow me to move through this this graphic so Mo uh students through general education which is a typical program navigate it um with some natural strengths and weaknesses when we see a student struggle where they have help that is is needed for them um we provide some sort of record review or some allow uh student review through observation and we collect some data and we typically move on the left of the slide down through intervention and referral services and we might offer tier one supports which are more um uh Global at the gened level tier two which are a little more focused or tier three which are more um hyperfocused and intensive um as we move through those intervention um through either academic or behavioral supports that are needed um we make some determinations on those interventions what was tried was it effective did it meet the needs of our learner and if we find that the child is able to um if it has met the needs of the Learner in that General Ed environment we continue on carefully continuing to review and ensure that the students needs are met however if they're in tier 2 or tier three and more greater evaluation is needed and the difficulties are impeding upon their progress and we uh conduct evaluation and find that students meet eligibility um we provide that specialized instruction through that contracted IEP and that's purposeful in its intention to increase the supports that are available to the student it does modify their exposure and um ability to navigate with the General Ed curriculum and they're not uh their typical peers um it's a specialized targeted plan which um will have very carefully aligned uh goals and objectives to meet their areas of specified need we create those specialized instruction and uh strategies and they're put in place for only as need as long as only as needed only as long as they are necessary and for some students that might be quite some time for others um they may only need a short period of time um it could be less than a year for them to meet their goals it could be more than three years but the idea that the specialized instruction and and special education should be a lifelong um different path than the general environment um is a a flawed concept that the goal should end with an IEP and the IEP should be infinitum year after year um we have a responsibility in special education to carefully review what are the needs of the child what's the present level what are the goals how are they being met are we closing the Gap and if we are making those gains um whether or not we're making those gains we're continuing to also re-evaluate if we determine gaps have been closed and they may not be closed completely but we have moved to a point where they can be uh a student can be successfully met with support for their academic and behavioral um relative areas of weakness we exit a student from special education and we allow the the opportunity to have those supports um be available and offered to them in the general enal Ed setting which is more geared for supporting them through udl which is a universal design of learning setting up the learning so that a student with um some struggle some need is being met and multi-tiered support systems similar to inrs structured supports that are available to them um and in this way we're able to align the General Ed education so that it is available for all Learners and this I believe is a a a better visual representation of the true goal of special education so moving into the review of the 2018 report this presentation will provide an overview of the findings and the recommendations from the original report that was conducted by Bryant Ma kinoi and coslet that began in 2017 18 school year um they um conducted a review similar to a monitoring cycle they did a desk audit they reviewed data they interviewed uh staff students and and families um they did surveys um and then they came up with some you know overall Impressions and some findings um it's important to note we inherently do those things both through external um evaluations such as these quality assurance measures that are um included at the state and federal level we have integrated monitoring and and fiscal management we review our data validation and reports on regular basis we have the uh annual performance report and the state performance plan and we look at snapshots of our data each fall in the October 15th count and each June June 30th at the end of each school year we also do internal um evaluations of our students progress through progress monitoring through our teacher evaluations and through our program Effectiveness so um you know I wanted to include these because I think that if you if you thought um that we had created uh an audit or that we followed with an audit in 2017 and 18 there may be some concern that the district had not been doing its due diligence to look at all of these metrics uh continually over time and that's just not the case they're important metrics we're highly data driven and we use that data to inform on our practices the trends help us to shape our programs and our services that are available to our students so the overall Impressions when the 201718 report was conducted um they had these focal areas for for plans for moving forward um number one being the IEP they they sought to have us uh improve our software utilization and compliance and um suggested that writing of present levels of academic achievement and functional performance and students IEP goals should be reviewed um they spoke about our power professional um use and the add to address the high number of power professionals and to offer some management and training to um those uh staff members who need that training they're highly well-intended and they needed those um aspects to do the job and do it well um there were recommendations for professional development to advance multisensory reading um which has become structured literacy so I will speak to that as well um child study team procedures uh they recommended standardizing the operating procedures and increase effective communication they recommended that transition services that we expand on our Transitional services and support that we also develop districtwide services and support that would be be offered for emotional and mental health support services and continue to grow our IND District programs so that less students needed to go to outof District settings to have their um IEP goals met in a um free and appropriate public education program in the least restrictive environment so unpacking each one of those for the IEP um back in the 17 18 school year we were using Skyward and moving into the use of realtime IEP which is a computer computerized system that sole purpose is to track and manage every phase of the specialed process and in adding real time as our management system um it helped to ensure um that we were increasing our accountability and stream lining the the timelines and also ensuring that all components of the IEP the present level of academic achievement and functional performance the goals and objectives were highly identified and retrievable for when we wanted to create programs understand which student might need a a new service so if we're adding something like uh additional Behavioral Services knowing where we can extract that from the ie P where we couldn't do that in Skyward um as readily this was extremely important um also in using real time real time is a a fantastic computerized uh program for IEPs because it also allows that professional development which doesn't just speak to the program itself but also gears you to a better understanding of all of the processes and procedures for special education so this particular initiative helped us to improve the quality of of education for our students with disabilities and enhance the efficiency of our services and also to increase our accountability and understand better Trends our power professionals um at the time this 201718 report um had cited that we had an extremely large number of um Power professionals we were in the range of 140 to 150 power professionals throughout the district and there was no real structure around um the process of who had uh um the support of a power professional was it a one: one a two: one a small group classroom setting it was not defined very well the programs and the systems um needed to be more defined um so we structured those roles and responsibilities um securing the needs were definitely a challenge postco um I have to thank Jamie Murphy when she came on um within the more recent years we we dove into this uh goal um I think on day one I'm I'm fairly certain it was day one um and built stronger communication we invited um the power professionals to come to the Ed Center to hear their feedback and get collaboration on what the needs were and by doing that we were able to identify four subsets of paraprofessional roles which um had different job descriptions different requirements and we were all able to um invest time in understanding how to provide each one of those groups a different level of training and a different level of compensation for the work that they were doing um in this way I think that they understood the the recognition and the value that we put um to our very hard workers in this field of paraprofessional support support to our students with disabilities the changes that are um highly significant are the improving of specialized design of literacy instruction um here we've done a lot of work now um if you recall this at the time of the 1718 report was multisensory reading and we had done some initial work in that area since that time and I think right at8 we had secured a structured literacy staff developer who helped to create a um community outreach with the international dyslexia Association bring in uh additional training to our staff and um directly with our students so the support that we offered with instructional practices and our program implementation has since included um the hegerty phic um phological awareness Ness um uh Lexia power up um framing your thoughts and uh sounds and motion just to name a few of the structured uh literacy strategies and supports that have been added to our program to meet the needs of our Learners who have difficulty in any one particular area of literacy we've provided professional development in structured literacy training and we have a relationship and partnership with um fairly dick and other um other program supports um any of those uh supports uh programs that I just mentioned have uh done a deep dive into the support of training for those different things hegr it's a comprehensive program and you need a lot of support to learn it and to provide the instruction at a high rate and by having a a structured literacy staff developer um we're able to Target that um directly and improve the Fidelity of the targeted specially designed literacy instruction for our students we've also spent a lot of um of investment in taking the state dyslexia handbook and modifying it for our district use so that it made um logical sense for how the district operates um and also taking the universal screening that is applied to every student and when recognizing the need deeper diving into a a dyslexia screening that is also a requirement um to have additional multiple data points in order to review the needs of our Learners who may be struggling with uh reading at any level fluency comprehension um etc etc um these initiatives all demonstrate the commitment to improving the Fidelity of targeted specially designed literacy instruction for our students the fourth uh recommendation to standardize the districtwide child study team procedures at the time of the report they the district child study team um didn't meet for professional learning communities at the rate and intensity that we work on with now um we also used the code the New Jersey Administrative Code 6814 special education code to um navigate through different processes but nothing was um brought to the the districtwide level we have used um professional development we have integrated use of the IEP system to help us support stops and starts in our process and again meeting as part of the um professional Learning Community has really done uh best practice for us we've brought in tremendous um support presenters um to ensure the quality and the consistency of our evaluation procedures an example of um having Dr Patel come and work on just um the fact of multilanguage Learners and um is you know are we able to dissect whether or not it's a language learning difference or if it's a disability something so specific is um invaluable to our child study team and really does change the course of what they're what they're doing in um best practice number five was Improvement of transition to adulthood services and similarly to securing a um a literacy staff developer our transition coordinator was secured um around the 201718 year um the if you consider the website to be kind of the the map the coordinator is the guide and the website that we have also developed online has a wealth and depth of accessible resources of information for our soon Tobe uh adults with disabilities or are you know still in school students who are trying to navigate their very next steps um having this support coordination having uh a person whose sole purpose is to look at transition be at the IEP meetings in the last few uh IEP meetings um to establish Community Partnerships so that our families know where they're transitioning and what some options are um to work on uh employment both volunteering and paid employment and to offer additional support Beyond High School um has been an important U next step for us and the Improvement of transition to adulthood programs also includes uh the development of our steps program uh steps uh is our school transition for Employment Program for Student Success it's for our students who have met their graduation requirements but have not yet um solidly completed the goals and and objectives in their IEP intended for transition so this program off campus but centralized in our in our village allows our students to have the specialized instruction they need to to meet their individual needs um community-based learning opportunities College and Career Development uh travel training social skills development and individualized support um these students everywhere in our community our community knows them and they know our community they go to the why they eat together um or individually in throughout the The Village um they have jobs here they leave and go to to Community College they come back and they get support um it's amazing to to see them so integrated and so understood and uh I'm I'm most proud of this the recommendation for six was to increase our mental health supports um and for this in 20171 18 we had some level of Care Plus as our mental health supports uh but this was only at the secondary level and since that time we have um Westberg and mental health we have additional Mental Health Counselors and support Personnel at our secondary level but we also have extend exensions to the elementary level in addition we have increased our guidance Department to have um Elementary guidance um counselors in our K uh k5s and that has allowed for greater expertise and understanding of mental health issues and Early Intervention which is so necessary um it also helps to reduce the stigma that we have people speaking about um our our mental health When we struggle how how um we need to if we are struggling be okay with the fact that we can identify that and encourage our students to seek support um which is you know taking you can have seal uh curriculum but then you have to bring it to life and these people help to bring it to life um it's enhanced the staff support and our school climate and we partner with uh Community um establishments like the ridge house Ridgewood Lighthouse uh initiative to promote positive mental well-being for our individuals not solely when they're in our schools but to understand the resources that may be available outside of the school and also for those resources to understand the expanding capabilities that are available in our schools again a really strong improvements over time that I'm I'm quite proud of in addition we have our uh Pearl program at both the elementary and secondary level so back in 201718 this was a Bergen County satellite program that was inside of one of our elementary schools and while that had benefits it also had limits because those weren't our staff wasn't our curriculum and so by owning it outright by taking those uh programs and making a programs specifically for emotional regulation um and having our teachers go through professional development with uh not just behavioral professional development but understanding the curriculum um and understanding the goals of our schools and our academic structures provides additional supports and Scaffolding for our students that may have self-regulation issues but they also have learning that they need to be doing and we want to make sure that we have it at a high level that they're able to receive um in a nurturing way and so this this allows us to do that and growing the program from the elementary level to the secondary level to be at BF middle school has supported students during that Middle School transition in Ang where there may be some more school refusal or there may be some misunderstanding of how to control their their emotions um it allows for space for not only the special ed uh students with IEPs but also for G students that are general education and need safe and nurturing environments uh on a temporary basis to to go and be supported and that environment does that and does it well um adding special ed programs in District programs was there last recommendation because it allowed for um greater opportunities for us to have programs within district and therefore not seclude students and move them into out of District placements and some of the increases in our programs we've increased preschool classrooms rise programs um that are now Elementary all the way through um our Pearl program which I just mentioned at the elementary and middle school LEL prep is our multiply disabled program at the um at all levels our steps program which I've already mentioned and the addition of our in-class resource our collaborative model and consultation uh consultative programming um to increase our inclusive practices um benefits again for having in District versus out of District we have improved student outcomes of their access to specialized programmingsoftware our least restrictive environment and within our community we also have an opportunity then for en enhanced parent involvement because they're here um increased efficiency we're not spending hours in transportation and coordination burdens um if our students are here um we reduce that that stress the logistical stress that can be found for students and their families and we stren the school community in their understanding of what disabilities are and what's reasonable supports to put in place for students um when they need interventions um these enhance our student opportunities to be in less restrictive environments and benefit from greater inclusive efforts so those were all of the recommendations that the 201718 report had um had focused on um these are additional improvements that just re needed honorable mention um the establishment of Unified sports as an offshoot of Special Olympics um and morphing it into Not Just Sports but also programs and electives um is extremely significant in the life of students with IEPs um it really does open the the um community School Community wide open for them where they may struggle with an academic piece these are places where they can find a lot of support in non-academic aspects um increasing the collaborative and consultative classes those in-class related Services um that's been another area where we've grown and we've done that through the partnership with New Jersey Coalition for inclusive education and jcie where we've received numerous grants and they continue to partner with us um right through today um this year we developed parent and high school student preep meeting surveys and those are helpful to inform and engage our families in you know new creative ways of talking before we sit down to the IEP meeting where we better understand what the family needs are and better understand how the student understands their disability may wish to disclose their disability um and understand possibly how to embed that into the next plan moving forward as I mentioned the other areas where we've had a targeted coordination we secured a district behavioral coordinator and we have behaviorist bcbas in uh assigned to our buildings and our programs but to have somebody be the coordinator again increases our FID uh Fidelity and ensures best practice in this area area and um where it it's necessary to ensure best practices in a applied behavioral analysis and behavioral integration for uh functional behavioral assessments as well as behavior intervention plans we have to make sure they are solidly approached with a science of Behavioral practices and implemented until they are no longer needed um and this helps support that practice we have we've had a Lead Teacher in special education at our high school and um this is our second year in having a a lead special ed teacher also at our Middle School to help coordinate those programs um having those people provide oversight and be an additional level directly to teachers who might be struggling with a piece of the program an aspect of modification for the curriculum um how how to assess our Learners in a variety of different ways um having those those specialed lead teachers has been invaluable um our programs have been recognized by New Jersey school boards and the association um affiliated with uh private schools for special education our Pearl and step programs received um recognition um I received on behalf of the district uh director of the year in 2023 which is really a reflection on the district's practices um we have increased our community- based instruction opportunities in all um in in preschool through age 21 um creating more opportunities for our students to go out into the community navigate it but doing this as a targeted practice to ensure that there's understanding of what they're doing it's not a field trip it's a targeted level of their instruction in better understanding the community and understanding how to navigate throughout that Community um we were contributors we have contributor status for the autism program quality indicators they were revised last year and actually myself and the director of uh the district behavioral coordinator we're going to be sitting on a panel um in uh when we return after January um it's a three-part panel for districts that are interested in building programs that support students with autism so that's another um Improvement another shout out and lastly um this past year um Innovations of special education award they Grant four of these to uh through each year um our unified electives program at the high school received that um award so these are all nice additional pieces now I'm going to move on to data analysis and I'm beginning with classification rate and uh for those who may not be familiar with special education probably lost through by now by by this point but um this is classification rate refers to percentage of students identifying as meaning eligibility for special education services so they've met that criteria um the Richwood District the state of New Jersey and the federal education department all collectively have a vested interest in ensuring that we're doing this accurately and equitably that we're looking at classification rates for students with disabilities um we have a responsibility and that responsibility in code is identified as child find and we have that responsibility to provide accurate information on classif ation in order to provide fape a free and appropriate public education within uh the least restrictive environment and that is the LR um in special education we love acronyms so I'm trying to make sure that anyone who is uh still listening can understand all of those um acronyms as I go along so the the state um this next slide recognizes that we are below the state special classification rate when compared and we pretty much kept a um typical amount of uh reduced rate when compared to the state of New Jersey uh throughout the years um some with a bigger Gap than others but actually in 2023 it's starting to close um I have two links on the bottom one is a report that says New Jersey ranks last in the United States for uh students with abilities and the other identifies that we're one of the most restrictive states in the nation um so the the state classification rate um may not be a great metric um because we know that in this state we have a tradition um which at one time was very quite Noble um if you go back in the history of special education we were one of the first states to identify students educate students with disabilities um blind deaf we had specialized programs and had specialized schools um but we've moved so further down that pendulum to having students be isolated for their education and be um uh met in in inclusive settings it's quite different um but some of those uh pieces are still evident in some of the practices in in the state of New Jersey so on the other side I gave you the the state um percentage over time as well as the district percentage over time and I also gave you a quote from the New Jersey Coalition from inclusive Ed it's one of their podcasts where um there there's leader from uh lead administrator uh had had was quoted and saying from a Statewide perspective the classification rate in New Jersey has been inching up year after year and you know there is some measure of that that you can see visually with the blue dots and the response from at that time a school uh superintendent and director was some ways to deal with that or to have better programs better interventions and multi-tiered systems of support so I you know if you can think back to one of the the First with the infographic um those are the things that we're putting in place to maintain that lower classification rate uh by by by strictly keeping to the criteria to ensuring that we have supports in general education and that we're looking carefully at the goals that we're identifying and uh targeting that instruction in the gened environment perhaps we're able to keep students in the Jed environment and then continue to keep their trajectory of their learning um with uh more consistent with their uh L learning peers so if the state is not the the best metric looking at District Factor groups might be and here um if you're unclear on what a district Factor group is that's a districts of similar socioeconomics similar constructs similar levels of achievement are usually grouped together so that you can kind of take a better understanding of where um you know uh certain practices certain achievements are measured um so this might be a better metric and here I gave uh 10 metric points nine districts that are of similar um scope um Milbourne New Providence Livingston uh the cadams uh West Windsor Westfield Montgomery tenly and us and then plotted them along with their classification rate and the dotted line is the 10th uh which is the state of New Jersey and what this is illustrating is yes um we are below but we're in good company because this pretty much maps that some of our similarly performing districts are above the state um classification rate and it's a pretty even split with those that are below the state classification rate this uh chart looks at our initial referrals so initial referral eligibility data um from year to year as well as our declassification data so who's coming into special education and then who's who's leaving us and what you see is um you know a basically similar amount of uh students coming in and uh you know relatively less students leaving us um but for each year to year it seems about similar pace of our initial referrals versus our declassification and some of that is coming in some of it is graduate data um but I think it's important to be able to see the trend in true numbers who are our recent gra um classifications um in 19 uh 2019 20 uh 201920 um I have a snapshot here of our students and comparison to the 2324 um really the most significant piece of this snapshot is that our an increase of our female population being classified um I I think out of all of the data points of that demographic that is the most significant and this this slide is a classification snapshot so what this is informing us of is I took the top um four or five eligibility categories in special education there's 14 categories um autism uh blind deaf communication impaired other health impaired and so for the highest percentage for our district uh lie in other health impaired specific learning disability communication impairment autism and then there's also an a separate group eligible for speech language Services where the child study team is not the entire team but the case manager is the uh speech language specialist and uh the IEP is housed with that case manager of speech only um so the trend here shows uh that it's very highly consistent with other health impaired you do see a slight decline of overtime with specific learning disability and it's helpful that all of the investment in structured literacy is supporting that um decline autism shows a slight but steady increase over the period And I think that's consistent with autism diagnosis and our communication impairment shows a gradual decrease over time with speech language Services being remaining stable throughout the time frame so some of that is communication impairment use um either may have been Mis uh identified or misclassified there might have been two um classification categories where eligibility for speech services may be the more appropriate um I I believe that is um an accurate um Theory moving into IND District special education enrollment so here um the umbrella which I love how it just came up that way this is a list of all of the programs from um are least restrictive all the way to our other um IND District uh self-contained programmingsoftware spend time on on that in particular what I did want to give notice to on this slide was that our special education enrollment uh year after year has uh been that the special education um offerings uh are within District so special ed programming 90% 88% 88% 89% pretty stable ability to educate our students with uh special education within the district at a high level so the opposite side of that would be well who you know what is the uh composition of our students in out of District enrollment and if here in the um bar graph you have special ed total enrollment next to it you have total outof District enrollment and so if we had 89% in um within District programming then we have 11% in out of District programming so that smaller piece is representative of um those different years of our total out of District in um placements the next subgroup of bar graphs are who child study team and IEP team placed out of district and when you look that's you know only a few students less um each year that are placed um most are placed through child study team and through I AP team um at a uh determination and then settlement um the percentage of students who are placed in District via a settlement or a disagreement dispute with the district are significantly less Dr F can I ask you something because um in the previous slide and this slide it doesn't include um steps am I did I miss something oh I'm so sorry forgive me steps I gave them so much time in the other one I must have just forgotten it forgive me but is it's it so it's it's not it should be included in this slide forgive me all right well maybe I needed a couple of months and then one more day I have to start over oh no let's it let's start one more time um so funny so who is in our outof district snapshot so this this slide represents Who currently is out of district and it's 77 students are in out of District settings because that might be where they need to be to be educated and it meets their needs and that is their least restrictive environment um of those students it's twice as many males to females and when you look at the grade level bands are preschool um elementary students take uh are a smaller proportion our Middle School is even less and the most significant percentage uh 70% are our high schoolers uh and our 18 to 21 uh year old students that are still remaining out of District some some of that is due to students who have been in placements over time but some of it also is due to what's on the right side of the the slide which is um you know who is out there and what their classification is and when you look at this slide over 44% have sign you know are on the autism spectrum disorder and them and the students with emotional regulation impairment and uh may have some very strong behavioral aspects to their programming where we don't have certain things in our Public School setting where it's viable to have them participate with us because they may be unsafe for themselves or unsafe to others um multiply dis disabled uh population is 133% Ohi is 10% and the smallest percent of out a district students are our students with uh specific learning disability now moving on to special education costs um the district last year had 138.5 million budget and this District commits 23.6% of their overall budget $32.6 million to providing instruction tuition Transportation child study team oversight related Services um and legal fees are all included in that special ed budget breakdown and the percentages are there um the most significant is our special ed instruction followed by total tuition costs of AD of District students um and Then followed by those trans uh child study team and transportation costs the smallest parts of the the pi are the related service and the legal fees so so our legal fees we use Bush Law Group and the masado Law Group when we're conflicted with bush law so that maybe they have somebody in their group that um is used with um the family that we're we're speaking to maybe we've both uh Mado I'm sorry Bush La may have had a a public witness that they use and they've also using them for evaluations so when we're conflicted we also use masado Law Group um this bar graph shows the the different amounts that we have expended in special education um legal support over time um we've had some trending times where we've gone up um certainly the dips significantly downward during the covid years because the instruction even if you had wanted something different we were all constrain restrained by you know not coming out of our homes during that time um and then we've had some additional uh you know rise back up to uh the amount of legal services that we expend on but again a small percentage when you look at the last piece of the the data chart 62. 7248 um this is settlement Trends by year and here what you can recognize is it looks like we're trending down however the snapshot let's be realistic is of the October 15 count for the 2425 school year um we're not all the way through I would love to be optimistic and say this is the picture for this year but we don't know what we don't know I'd be remiss if we only talked about expenditures we have Revenue as well and our reach program our preschool um general education programming um and our tuition students so in having a wide array of ad um of uh IND District programs that meet the needs of a variety of Learners we are able to invite other districts that may not have that wide Cadre of of supports to have their CH students be educated via tuition um into our district um we've done that at a at at a pretty good rate you see a slight Decline and the decline is um I is represented due to the fact that it's been more difficult to ensure that we have the appropriate staff we need for us and the appropriate power professional staff and the appropriate related service staff so um kind of like that idea of you put the oxygen mask on your first we're ensuring that we have strong programs for our students first and we've been a little more reluctant to say come on in other districts sorry Rich Matthews a little less um you know inviting of other districts to accept tuition because we want to make sure our programs are running well for our students we will get back into that game but it's it we look at it very carefully because we don't want to do a disservice by bringing students in and then having the support that we're guaranteeing extraordinary Aid so one way that we um also receive um funding is by identifying our students who are in ad of District settings who meet the criteria for Extraordinary Aid so that might be the criteria is they're in a three to1 learning environment or they need um consistent medical care of a support by a nurse or they need specialized Transportation with wheelchair access but they have to meet some level of criteria for Extraordinary aid application um what you see here is uh over time growing numbers of applications so at the bottom in the 201920 school year you see 126 applications but by the top of last year we uh we made um 160 applications the funding yes has increased but it's taking us a lot more applications to actualize those funds um so you know um extraordinary Aid is supposed to be 100% supported it's not always 100% supported um and the last data point for for this section was the staff to student ratio um similar to the the district's uh general education trend of a hovering between 11 12 uh to one we've hovered um anywhere between 9.7 to more recently 8.5 uh to one uh for our special education programming so you have to remember that's higher than like a self-contained program perhaps but this is a collection of total number of teachers and support person and um we have many students in less restrictive environments so the number of um students per per staff but a 9.7 wasn't bad at the time and an 8.5 to1 is um highly supportive um njsla performance so this was previously discussed so I'm not going to spend too much time on it but they are important data points and they will help Drive uh direction for us moving forward so we have the trend in stable cohort um data that was presented on the New Jersey student learning assessment data and it showed that the Ridgewood IE students with IEPs consistently exceeded the state average in ela and math and demonstrated consistent performances in science exceeding the stra the state averages across all tested grades there were however participation um differences and proficiency gaps noted for students with IEPs and versus their non-disabled peers and this was particularly evident in their higher level math courses so if you recall this part of the chart um yes the um students with I AP PS are identified in that green band and you do see a a a slight word upward trend for their mean scale scores for uh English uh Ela stable cohort over time um and that is consistent with the um Ridgewood Public School Trend as well but you do see a gap that proficiency Gap where our students are significantly below where their typical peers are um is an area that would be something that we would highlight and say okay well why and what can we do differently to um close that that proficiency Gap here our IEP trend is um stable but also not doing all that well in comparison um our math has uh some slight Decline and again we still have that proficiency Gap so participation in Statewide and Prof um proficiency are are two different types of aspects that we have to look at when we're looking at these measurement challenges and I did want to pause here to speak to differences in how how and why our students with IEPs approach standardized testing like the njsla um our students to become eligible for special education and related Services you've performed differently than your typical peers on a high level of of very um specific standardized measurements IQ tests learning tests um different related service aspects they're all standardized and normed test measures and you've not performed well on either one or a series of them to meet eligibility and special education so what we do in special education is we provide accommodations and we provide instructional strategies but when we do that um while you're within your your instructional time we accommodate for that when we provide tests at your level in your program when we take standardized testing you're afforded a very small subset of accommodations extended time small group setting but the things that we teach you in your instruction aren't necessarily afforded to you during that high stakes testing there are also learning differences that can't you know you're not going to be able to you might have been supported in your instruction which not not going to be actualized when we do these high stakes testing if processing speed is an issue or you have stressed additional challenges or executive functioning limitations it's those are going to impact on your overall performance if you have reading comprehension yes we're still working on that as a goal but if you're taking that high stakes testing it's going to impact on it so understanding test anxiety understanding how to minimize these these aspects and creating goals around understanding the differences but also systematically reducing out the supports that we provide and seeing um how our students do because you can assume some level of Competency and trial them um and then see what the strengths and weaknesses are and make even you know different minor adjustments um I also failed to mention you could have any one of these aspects that are considered challenging and you could have multiple overlapping learning challenges going on another important fact in this is when we have those 77 students who are out of District if they're in those grade bands taking that Statewide testing they also impact oh no no no um impact on our um difficulty in um you know uh participation because they may not participate in the testing and they may not have G been given um a level of curriculum um and program support that is uh standardized to that grade level standard student climate survey so we also had discussed disc this in the state of the schools address and there was some positive indicators that came from it when you looked at the students with IEPs and the students with 504s we saw that they perceived themselves in a more positive climate they reported similar or higher confidence in their academic abilities um comparable satisfaction with adult support and safety and the overall School experience and what was really exciting was that they had F you know they reported high levels of care and encouragement and understanding from adults um so when we look at those heat Maps where you know higher levels show a significant need those higher levels in red um you know the first thing that comes to uh your notice in students with 504s is they don't find the work all that interesting I don't think that's any stretch of the imagination um and they might not always look forward to participating in school on most days but when you do look at the overall if you step back a lot of it is very similar to their a you know uh non-disabled peers um in their academic culture and their organized uh their their overall impression of school and even better um were the indicators here designed to look at um measures of belonging that you know they they were able to reflect that student uh adults care about me and I can work out disagreements when I'm at school and I have uh respect and value differences um the special ed team recognizes that you know the survey may not have captured all of this um um consistently for all of the students with IEPs so something that we're going to go back and do is a more in-depth survey of our students um in moving forward and that will be one of our one of our additional goals um and lastly the New Jersey Department of Ed office of special education annual performance review and state performance plan so as I mentioned if you can remember way back when we started this um and I showed those puzzle pieces from the state and the external reporting that they do on an annual basis these are two of those annual types of reports and the first one is the idea determination for Ridgewood and if you if you do not meet your requirements um for district and good standing um a they'll create a um area of improvement for you but more importantly they'll withhold your funds so um it's very important that you meet those parameters and of course we met those parameters um you know they're reasonable on to meet um The Ridgewood performance plan indicators um for the state local educational profile did show some areas where the targets were not met and that we do need to continue to look at and those were as mentioned with the NJ SLA um our participation rates our performance in Statewide assessment and that proficiency Gap that I mentioned between students with uh uh typical peers and versus our students with IEPs um in addition uh family engagement and parent participation because that in uh information is extracted from a survey that was conducted a couple of years ago I think it will be very important for us moving forward to do more IND District surveys of our parents to get a broader scope of what the overall experience is I know that you know there are many families where they're frustrated and you know it is never Our intention to frustrate it it's a partnership and um these are important aspects of understanding where each party is coming from and working collaboratively to meet the needs of a student um but if there are those experiences we need to unpack that and better understand it so that we can move forward together um so that that is an area um of recognition our LR data would suggest that we need to continue the good work that we're doing in inclusive practice and have uh opportunity for more students to be in gened settings in more than 80% of their day and uh continue to reduce our out of District program um our students who go to out of District programs um so key takeaways and next steps you're almost there guys the key takeaways are that um if you look at where we were from 2017 2018 we've made notable program improvements it doesn't mean we sit on those Laurels um this is a continuous Improvement type of aspect um to education special education is always looking for further refinement as I've mentioned we have a lot of internal and external evaluative procedures that we do on a regular basis um and they're important to continue to keep the quality of our programs um special education students reporting a positive experience in school as I just mentioned where you know while they are in some indicators experience noting that they're having more positive experiences than their gened peers we want to make sure that that in fact is true on all parameters that we offer parent level survey analysis of what was originally conducted in our um state of schools surveys and also expand the scope of student and parent surveys preep meeting and post IEP meeting to get more comprehensive feedback on what the experiences um in in us on better better practices moving forward um the IEP students academic growth uh appears stable in njsla however as mentioned two indicators are identifying to us that additional measures need to be reviewed those achievement gaps need to be addressed even with the the rationals that I mentioned um they help to Target and plan for looking at those achievement gaps in an intelligent reasonable way um and that providing additional multi-tiered support systems uh efforts will help in this uh academic growth area priority areas for next steps um aligning our instruction curriculum and assessment um using professional uh development opportunities to look at our programs and specifically Ally what our tests are um testing are they testing are they assessing the right aspects of the evaluation of the instruction um of our performance is it program uh performance or is it student performance um enhancing our our levels of accommodations and progress monitoring to expand on our support services and multi-tiered supports um we want to continue expansion of the pre-intervention uh program and inclusive practices while maintaining cost-effective resource allocation we want to um provide deeper engagement of family Partnerships and that will include structuring time and um shared goals with the cpeg the special ed parent advisory group um and also providing strategic alignment and annual review so reviewing this type of report on an annual basis I think will assure uh the community at large that we're continuing to bring these data points forward and that we're showing our efforts because um this was a great opportunity to provide all of this information I know that took a long time to tell the story of special education tonight um but I think it was a valuable investment in time because we really are doing very good things um and we still have a lot of real work to be doing um but I recognize where the work needs to be and I'm also very encouraged to move at the next level of being an assistant superintendent to have a better View and a better um way to integrate into general education and the goals that they have that are very similar to our goals I thank everyone and I welcome questions thank you thank you Dr Fenwick um are we'll start with are there any questions uh from the board um at this time uh and then we're going to um open up for uh some public comment to allow anybody um here in the audience who has a question related to the presentation here or online so did any I don't have too many questions thank God right um I I wanted to thank you very much for the um comprehensiveness um I really appreciate the amount of work that went into this and I personally appreciate uh no pun intended but the education for me in special education and I think that it's very very important for the entire Community to understand what the goals of special education are what our philosophies are and how we approach them um I want to applaud you on that I want to applaud you on um not only highlighting the very good work that's been done you I remember you saying at one point that when you started here somebody handed you that audit and said here you go Michelle knock yourself out and you did and so I thank you for that but I also want to applaud you for acknowledging UPF front where we have more work to do and we always have more work to do but I do appreciate that you specifically identified certain areas where you know like you talked about the proficiency gap for example um I I took a lot of notes and I'm not going to go back over them all but you know and you talked about specific ways to increase communication between parents and the the staff and and the district with regard to their child specifically with regard to IEPs I think those are some good initia and I also appreciate and you know that I've been you know I've told you this that I think that part of this annual review it's really essential that we have the parent voice so the fact that you're you know going to be putting in um an opportunity for the general parent voice and you even acknowledge that we have our students and how they experience things but that doesn't necessarily capture everybody so you you know we're going to make that effort um at the same time you're putting in a um a consistent um opportunity for parents to talk preep postep which I think is um probably a very effective way to get some of the um essential conversations done so um I I really didn't have any questions after that um but I did I just wanted to thank you I really did because I think you did a fantastic job tonight so thank you very much so I would just say um thank you Dr Fenwick and for the questions I would hold on first let the audience ask because we have a lot of parents waiting so I most likely they will cover all the questions yeah but there was a lot of work that went into it so thank you so much for that you're quite welcome yeah um I'm going to wait for the um the public comments because I think there'll be a lot of questions there but I it's the first time I've seen such comprehensive data so um it's it's really um helpful thank you thank you you know I'm not sure because it's I've been sitting with this for you know days and weeks and looked and really understand it but I would imagine there'd be some questions that maybe won't come tonight but might come after they've either reviewed this online or looked at the the pre presentation um and uh I've spoken with the c cpag and Jamie Davis um that will allow for you know uh greater communication because it uh it it's too important of data points to not have better understanding and understand also what it informs us on and where our goals are going so um I welcome the the questions if they're not tonight um that we move forward and having good questions because it will allow for greater understanding and collaborative efforts moving forward thank you very much um you know I am in agreement with Mary the importance of the parent voice and to you know understand that what we hear sometimes is about weight times and lags um and it's important to have us understand that parent perspective and parent experience so um I look forward to the uh um surveying and and and more information um but thank you for this lengthy um but you know full of full of good information that's really our our base yeah and from there um we build and refine and really work on and you come back with the successes that um and implementation of some of the things that you're looking to do so I look forward to that at this point I'll open for public comment um again if you could give us your name and municipality and keep your comments uh to four minutes uh would be helpful thank you I mean you're always prepared you're a useful Counterpoint to other points of view we really have appreciated your voice and so thank you um and thank you Dr Fenwick for that great presentation it was lengthy comprehensive and sub so thank you um I want to back up and give a little history to that 2017 report because I was there um and I was there when they gave the presentation um when the the um outside evaluators came and gave a presentation and they had done a very comprehensive report but during their presentation they had focused on the positive one page of the report was very positive and so that got a lot of attention and everyone forgot about the report there was a lot of thank you great job and then three months later I just happened to see a little note on the website that the report was there and I took a look at it and I was like what and I printed it out and I got a highlighter and some stickies and I could not believe which was in the report which did not come out at the time and I outlined seven or eight items which which Dr Fen brought tonight but those issues were not brought out at the time um and so it just seems weird that like a random member of the community actually was the person who read the report and felt the urgency that we needed to do something about it so um what I came across you know think I was looking at all this wonderful you know things that are happening in the district I think we should actually have those same evaluators come back and quantify some of the information that is in the report um are all the students goals and their IEP being Quantified are they being um related to the present levels of academic performance are we see are what is how many students are really being included do we have are is everybody in the least restrictive environment are we compliant with federal laws which says that students must be in the least restrictive environment or are we putting students in half-sized classrooms all day and not letting them leave the room for three years at a time with the same teacher is that happening um I don't know I'd like to see data on restraints and and seclusion I didn't see that in this report how many students are being restrained in Ridgewood public schools are what kind of training is the staff getting on this matter do we have students who are secluded within a regular classroom are permanently kept behind a barrier behind bookshelves for a portion of the day is that happening um I would like to see not just a parental survey of the existing parents I'd like to see an exit interview with the parents who've been through the whole process who have the War Stories I'd like to hear what they have to say what is happening to the kids who graduate with IEPs do they have a plan do does their transition section of their IEP their IEP is supposed to say um are you going to go to fouryear college are you going to go to a two-year at College are you going to get a job is that correctly outlined in the IEP and what is happening to our students who are graduating with IEPs do we know um so you know I I would like to make sure that not just that you know we have we know that you guys are everyone is working hard but it would be good to have an outside evaluator we could see the value that happened in 2017 by having an outside evaluator would that be useful again today um and then I'd also like to point out this report happened in 2017 and a lot of things have changed both in the world and legally since 2017 we had a really important Supreme Court case Andrew F which raised the bar for special education so that there's a higher standard specializ special education there was when that report was done there's higher levels of students who are identifying as neurodiverse with social emotional issues these are big changes that happened since 2017 um so um and there's just greater understanding of what transition what needs are so um I'm sure I've talked too long thank you very much thank you for all you're doing thank you Lori Weber again and I still live in bridgwood uh 41 years actually um I put two children through the school district uh I don't have as my questions are not nearly as sophisticated as the prior speaker I'm going from my experiences and I'm wondering if they've changed uh one child right through said not my oldest child had a 504 um and she did struggle um and it wasn't until she entered the high school that Betty gy her Gardens counselor called me up and said you need to get your daughter tested um and so I'm just wondering what the change has been and how do you identify these children that have these issues because then the other issue happens you have teachers how are they educated to recognize this because some of them get fed up they think it's a behavioral issue they think it's obstinance they get mean one in particular in third grade was downright physically and emotionally abusive and so I have to ask what kind of Outreach do you have what kind of education do you give the teachers so that they recognize this so they have some training on how to deal with this and that they don't automatically look at a child who has issues and look at them as a problem and then uh I guess lastly is that there was always a strug struggle to get those that 504 plan implemented in each classroom it was a constant struggle and I'm lucky that we had enough money I literally had to hire someone to teach my daughter Spanish I mean and she got through school she did well and she went through college and in college they actually did honor her 504 so I'm wondering what is done also to follow up with these teachers what are the statistics of teachers you know are are you interviewing these students and their families and asking how big that struggle still is and whether they're getting the support they need from the classroom or whether they're fighting for it like every day so those are my three questions thank you I'm GNA list to all public comment and then if what questions we can answer tonight we will um our staff will and I am writing feverishly Marisol Romero I'm a Ridgewood parent Ridgewood resident um first thank you Miss qua for your service I appreciate the time that you've taken to volunteer for this position um second my oldest's special needs and I've been home um listening to the presentation given by Dr Fenwick and forgive me I'm trying to take a deep breath because I don't want to get emotional um I was here also I've been in the district since 2012 so I've gone through the past iteration of these um Audits and such and unfortunately it's deja vu all over again and it's sad because by this point we could have been further along uh when I took down some notes I was trying to think about for example I'll just took down these notes real time when I try to access it as much as it might seem like it's a great thing I can't really access past IEPs on there and honestly the goals are weak they're not specific why because there's no progress monitoring so the goals are very weak uh structured literacy where is it at the high school I mean it seems like we're using AI to teach these kids uh to improve their structured literacy children that have attention issues children that need explicit training and teaching not from the computer software um a coordinator transition coordinator yes but all I keep getting is a lot of emails specialized uh preep meeting surveys I don't know if this has been implemented I've never had one so I'm curious to see where it is this has never happened for me and when I've spoken to other parents I've never gotten it as well started this year okay I had my IEP meeting just about a month ago was never given a survey uh District Behavior coordinator don't know where they are either because when you're being told that your child might have some issues never had a discussion or never involved a district Behavior coordinator lead special ed teachers at the high school that's new it seems like everyone works in silo teachers are not speaking to each other I I don't know where that uh lead special ed teacher is there's no collaborative working there within the special ed teacher group um classification rate has it gone down well it will go down because when you have to be in the 25th percentile or less to qualify for an IEP you're only going to get the kids that really really really really uh need help and I know as a parent if your child is in the 30th or 35th percentile who wants that communication impairment you talk about the classification well my son was in communication impairment still applies to him a lot but I was told in the Middle School autism is a better is a better class ification so when you see that number kind of correlate it just steady that's that's my kid uh student climate survey data reported more positive climate when did the autistic kids like my son receive this survey I don't remember anything about the survey nor did he ever mention it to me and if they're having a more positive environment quite frankly it's because the standards are lowered so of course you're going to have a more positive climate the standards have been lowered for you so I end with I listened to this again I was involved with the call with just like I was back in 2017 2018 I was involved with speaking up when the external people came in to get our feedback it was Deja Vu hearing everything that was said but Amplified even more so because of the pandemic and pandemic learning loss and again Deja we're hearing your um presentation and unfortunately probably four to five years from now it's going to be deju again because I really don't think that anything much is going to change thank you are are there more um public comments from out here or I will go to the phone hi I'm Megan beerley Ridgewood resident I wanted to thank you Dr Fenwick for the time you put into putting this presentation together and I also wanted to thank you Mary mcau for um really highlighting the importance of the education for the School Board in understanding special education um I have many questions but I think to to get them uh I'll follow up with an email or hopefully a meeting um and I have parents sending me messages throughout the entire presentation so I know we want to be involved and engaged and there are definitely lots of questions um tonight though I want to just focus on highlighting the areas that I heard and hope we can work on so I'm really eager to to hear more about the in District surveys and how the district plans to engage parents um and I'm going to hope that in that engagement that the district's really open to hearing our stories our experiences and working together collaboratively a lot of the things outlined um in the presentation tonight are not um implemented here consistently across the district um and I'd say that if the things were uh my daughter would have gotten what she needed so um I really look forward to having timelines on when that parent engagement is going to happen what that's going to look like and how we can get involved the cpag is a great place to start but because of the history of the cpag in our district there's a lot of parents that aren't involved in it so um uh I just I hope you'll engage parents and that that was a a statement made with integrity and genuine commitment I look forward to that thank you thank you okay uh let's see I have um some hands raised here Susan you're on with the district with the board yes hi um Susan Ruan I'm a rwood president I normally call into the board of I mean to the Village Council but I am following up here with some questions I do want to begin with a thank you to um Miss qua for serving on the board of ad I know her time is coming towards the end I also want to thank Dr Fenwick for the presentation I am a numbers person so I do have questions in regard to the presentation directly one is what is the price tag for the legal fee and how many lawsuits does that actually entail um I know that there was like a small percentile that was shown for the legal fee but does that include two lawsuits or 75 I'm not certain and what is the exact um you know breakdown for that like how many parents um the next question is in regard to the special needs um students and the testing um I did see that there was a breakdown for um the special needs students how many we had what percentile Etc given the classification however when it came to the testing and how well they fared on the the general testing there wasn't a breakdown there on how well each classification fared on the testing and how well out of District students fared in comparison to IND District students I will use my son for an example he went to palmton lakes in eth grade he scored for math while the IND District students scored Far Low below that so he was um not one person that Dr Fenwick ref refed and Dr Fenwick was um the director at the special needs services in palmton Lakes at the time when he was there um I also would like to know as for grade level again a breakdown per classification and for in District as well as outou of District students those are things again were lumping them saying you know this they're scoring low how are they scoring each year per grade and are they at grade level a child who's dyslexic usually is strong in math so their scores should in math should be comparable to a grade level student um or a typical student the next is um how many kids actually receive high school diplomas that they can go on to college with special needs again part of classification and again out of district and in District and then finally I do have to talk about the website because I realized I know I I advocated for Doctor um fishbine to improve the website to mimic the New York City website many years ago and he to take some of that advice however I do realize that they do not have a comprehensive description for all the different supports speech OT PT and resource room resource room is something different that does not happen in New York city so again a description for what that is here is important as well as the different classroom settings I believe in I was just recently told that the elementary schools have a collaborative T um ter teaching um model but again again there's nothing of that on the website and I was always told to begin in the middle school so I was a little surprised it did begin in the elementary and these are important because kids I mean parents need to know that are in District as well ones that are coming into District what supports are here um and that was pretty much it thank you for your time and thank you again for the presentation thank you Peter you're on with the board hello again Peter Molton I am a Ridgewood resident um thank you very much Dr Fenwick for the uh exhaustive presentation I'm sure it took a lot of time and effort and very much appreciate um uh what what you put together tonight um uh I just want to actually something that came up with the previous uh speaker um the data by classification to know where we can do better with classifications where with types of students and so um as as an example one of the items that was presented was uh that uh we haven't been able we've have most of our out of District uh via male um autistic in the high school and was why that's Thea why is that the case and is there something we can be doing better for our community for that uh to to represent that Community better um exit interviews um I think uh leaving District or having tests or not having tests given um if there is there data on um teachers that request tests and don't occur um where parents requ tests they don't occur or tests occur and and maybe the services aren't what the parents believe are are necessary therefore they also uh do not stay in District um and some type of an exit interview for um for those students as well um because maybe they don't even hit some of the data um that that that was here um so a big issue we had in the last handful of years um was Staffing and um that one of the answers uh when and and this wasn't you Dr Fen but just general General answer was when we were having staffing issues with um with especially power planners um this was all schools were having this issue and obviously that we don't I didn't believe that was the right answer that there was something else possibly occurring in the end it it turned out some of that was because they weren't being paid properly and when those types when issues are raised that um seem to be a barrier like that in terms of Staffing or is there again that that we we're not able to uh currently provide you know Mal autistic kids in high school the services what are the ways that we're going to um implement the plan to do better and to really take out the well this is just the environment answer um and fig and really drill down to how we can do better as a community and as a district not just a a again I when it was just this is the environment in the end it was it was a lot of pay issue because I think a lot of that issue is um has now gone away um so um in terms of emotional services this is something that I've raised a number of times and um there um there there doesn't seem to be enough support for spe special ed students especially with the various needs that that exist uh of special needs students um for emotional services and being um proactive in regards to uh their needs and also understanding on a reactive side how their needs are very different than the general population and how to address those properly um and so um the last is uh that goals can be met from IEPs um in in a temporary fashion and um but that is not necessarily a long-term solution uh for that student and so we we actually had this issue at one point where certain things occurred during covid so you meet goals and then it was you maybe we maybe you don't need the services um however that's especially when there are social issues uh that that's not necessarily the case you can meet you might be able to score well on tests but if you have social issues that that might be there indefinitely and those might EB and flow um over periods of time and so I if there was a way that we can better identify uh when certain types of maybe looser goals are Mets or test goals for certain types of students however also understanding that um their their needs might be uh more social and may need to be uh that may arise uh in in other ways at other times so thank you thank you no more uh comments is sure hi good evening Jamie Davis uh Ridgewood resident um president of the the cpeg which has been brought up but I am going to speak in my personal capacity I don't want to speak on behalf of the organization um of course been taking this all in I just want to make kind of an overarching comment um something I've been thinking about as we've talked about this issue and have had these conversations with Dr Fenwick and Dr Schwarz and members of the board um I think something that's true when thinking about anything in education but I think this is particularly true with special education is the topic of trust um when thinking about families B of the uh school district and sometimes I think of this in terms of the type of parent I've needed to be for the children that I have in particular my younger child who is not fully verbal um and I think of any child any parent has to have a certain level of trust when they send their child to school each day they're sending their child off with other adults for six or seven hours and saying here you go here's my kid you know educate them um but when you have a child like mine who can't come home and Report what they've done all day and what I'm hoping the school will do with my child is not simply educate them but a child like mine I'm hoping one day my child might be independent you know there's the stakes are a little higher um and so the level of trust is that much is much is the the level of trust needed um and put on parents like me the stakes are that much higher um and that may not be as a parent because when when educators are looking at parents a parent is a parent and I'm not saying that they see us all the same but as we might be seen in the aggregate but when you're looking at each of these parents individually what these parents are dealing with at home what they're putting on you as Educators we're putting a lot more on you sometimes with some of our kids which is why some of these parents might come at you a little bit more because a lot more is put on them with what they might be dealing with um and so in this process when I want to say when not if but when these this parent feedback is sought and obtained I hope it's not simply to just um fill out the the the the data um which is important because I think some this data was phenomenal and thank you Dr Fenwick for putting this together I think it's a great Baseline and I know that was the purpose and and it accomplished that and I think there's going to be stuff to drill down on because people are going to look at it and say hey what about this what about that um but I hope that this parent uh inquiry is also going to get the parent experience and not necessarily because that experience is going to directly change anything but I think it needs to inform how you all approach these decisions because you all might be spending X dollars on your legal fees parents are spending many X's times that and it's not because we're litigious not we but it's not because parents are litigious people who love spending all their money it's because what it's what they feel they need to do for their children um and just like you might be analyzing how much parents are spending on tutoring instead of what the district is spending on educating children in math and reading why are parents spending so much on their legal fees that's not okay um you know and and so I I beg you in this process to provide an a trusting environment where parents feel they can share their story so they can feel that you understand their lived experience with this um and I hope that that might then build an experience where on the most basic level when child study team is then interacting with the next family they might better understand where that family is coming from and it makes and then maybe that process goes a little differently um but you know there are reasons why there are so many feelings behind where these parents are coming from you know it's it's coming from somewhere and I really hope that we're not just looking only at the quantitative data but the qualitative data in particular in special education is very very important and and I really urge you to take that part of the data very important very seriously because I think without doing that it's going to be very difficult to obtain the trust that I think is very critical especially in this area and I think if we do that difficult and possibly uncomfortable work to obtain that trust then then all the stuff can get done you know I think so that's my you know so what however uncomfortable and difficult it is like whatever let's just do it and and then and then do all the then the rest of it's easy so anyway that's my that's my my request thank you whatever we can do to help thank you okay so is there anyone oh there is I'm sorry there is another someone on a iPhone please state your name Hi how are you this is Evelyn um I have a high schooler and I wanted to say thank you to um p and to everyone who's doing this uh I never been in one of this meeting but it's very interesting however I want to mention um I would like to know how um you know for the past year all these meetings and all these improvements that in being in the high school I'm very grateful for this as well as I'm following how uh it's been working Improvement in um the social and the emotional and the academic you know transparency and communication in the kids and also the engagement with the parents and the families within the um the activities it's been um Improvement but I know there is still work to do especially in the high school um you know the high school is a little bit more you know competitive more pressure and the kids needs to be um you know M maintain the focus in the in the academic and it create um healthy environment and the social environment around then right so maybe Shayla remember me I I have my daughter engaged in the super SCI Saturday since since kindergarten my daughter is now in high school and it's kind of not so much interesting but I think I want to I would like to work together to see if we can maintain this tradition and working to keep the engagement and even if it's something simple for the kids it's very important to maintain this this tradition and to work together with parents so I want to know how can we improve this a little better especially in the High School uh for my experience it's been easy elementary and middle school but it's getting a little you know challenged in the high school so that's it and thank you and happy holidays everyone thank you for doing this all right um I will close public comment now and um would you I know you've been taking notes would you like to um yes thank you so much thank you everyone for being here with us this a rather late meeting um and I really appreciate everybody's time and I really appreciate all the suggest suggestions um so as not to keep us here too much longer just I'm going to identify a few themes uh there were a variety of requests put out there and inquiries for more data there was a theme about um breaking out data further and and again as we said before this is an iterative process in the same way that with the state of the schools addresses an iterative process so we want to be able to keep revisiting and I really appreciate those suggestions the idea of breaking down some of those metrics by classification is a really interesting idea it's like a subgroup of a subgroup so I like that I think we'll play around with that again we we don't want to overwhelm people with so many slides but one of the things I've done before with other presentations is if we have too many slides rather than elongate the presentation is we can attach them as supplements if people are interested in seeing them but drilling down into the data is really important and recognizing you know we have a tendency with these presentations to present things as averages but the reality is that an average depending on the numbers and the distribution of data can be actually very misleading so we do need to drill down a little bit more so thank you for all of that um there was a uh definitely com there was a comment I know Dr McKenna joined us and she was recommend she was expressing interest in us bringing out uh the same firm to do a deeper look um that's something that I think is H is as a conversation with the board is the extent to which we feel that uh putting money in that direction is is is what is necessary um but we'll definitely definitely follow up and take that to con to a further conversation um we'll Circle back um I appreciate everyone kind of sharing their anecdotes um and again I know there were concerns stated I know uh Mr Mero had concerns about um variety of very specific concerns uh around processes um we can certainly have a follow-up conversation with her on those um there's a lot of conversation about the IND District surveys um certainly we want to there's a couple different types of surveys that we've been talking about here tonight so I think we when we regroup and re debrief all this we'll identify what's the best types of surveys to focus on because we don't want to also overwhelm give people survey fatigue so we want to really pointed we want to make sure that the surveys that we're asking like we we know what we're trying to answer with those surveys so that way that data is in fact actionable um I would say that um and Dr F I'm GNA give you an opportunity to speak um if you want to add on to anything um but I would say given all the level of detail we'll do some individual followup but most importantly um as I said with the iterative quality of this uh what we do with the superintendent coffees we'll have another one in January and we'll do a quick overview of this again so I'd welcome anyone who's a part of this to come join us for some followup be happy to talk about this further um and then also we're going into the budget process so some of the items that we spoke about um some of the the types of initiatives that we're talking about mtss efforts um those things will be memorialized as part of our budget efforts because we have to there are resource allocations that'll go along with that so this will be a consistent part of our conversation we'll talk about District goals I'll do an update probably in Janu probably January I'm thinking it a little update on District goals a short presentation don't worry um but uh but we'll do a we'll give an update there we're doing a lot of this work as memorialized in our district goals we're in strategic planning I know we've had some interest from folks to be involved in strategic planning which is great we need people to be involved in that process particularly in the action plans so some of this work will be reflected there as well so this will be a part of our this this these themes these conversations these inquiries will be part of our ongoing conversation Dr fck is there anything you wanted to add to that no I appreciate um everyone's input and suggestions how to even more greatly inform the next few steps so um that people stuck with the presentation and had really valuable input um you know I'm highly invested in in making things better um that is my ultimate goal um in pretty much everything I do that just want to make it a better you know since Girl Scouts make it a better place so um if this is the beginning of those steps I welcome it and um you know I enjoy looking at the data and would love to um you know spend more time with it and um create more things uh more findings from it so um I'll be happy to sit with uh anyone uh before during and after the coffee to do that too thank you and there's a lot here so we'll and we'll we we'll we'll debrief all this as well um so thank you very much for that would you like me to move into the superintendent report at this time okay um so just a couple items that I just want to highlight real quick um I'm not sure if any of you saw the news today but there is real unfortunately another tragedy uh in uh in in in a school in Madison Wisconsin the Abundant Life Christian School had a an unfortunate school shooting event today so details are emerging but um I know it's sometimes unfashionable to say you know think sending thoughts and prayers but there's not much else that we can do right now other than you know send our warmest wishes and for those of Faith to certainly send your prayers for those folks who are going through a hard time and I just wanted to clarify that this is school security is something that is important to this board and certainly important to our Administration um we formed the security committee we actually have another meeting coming up in January we have our SRO program that we've been developing um there's a variety we'll be setting setting a portion of every budget uh I'll be recommending a portion of every budget to be added to be allocated towards additions in school security um and we also engaging in a pretty significant process um to upgrade our um our threat assessment teams we passed board passed a policy last year um that was compliant with a law to requires school districts to have behavioral threat assessment teams uh we are compliant but we want to make sure that we are really thorough in that process so we're actually doing a even though we have these systems in place we're actually doing a separate audit we actually a meeting today uh uh Mr rinky our office our school our school security officer and Dr Fen and I and really it signals a bit bit of a different approach the the research on school school violence has been really actually solidifying it used to be about 10 or 15 years ago they used to say there's no profile of a school shooter and that's really changed uh there's a lot that we know and we know that really the school shootings and people who do violence in schools typically have some things in common and one of the things that they have is that they are often have a grievance against the school and they show signals and so one of the F first and best things that we can do as a community is stay vigilant and recognize that when a student is any any kind of state of struggle if they're going through changes that there are various stages on the pathway to violence and intervening early and staying Vigilant um for all of our students when they're showing any signs of not thriving and especially if they're showing any signs of being in crisis is incredibly important so we're committed to that work um we're doing everything that we can we can't stop everything bad from happening but we certainly can make sure that we're creating a positive and safe environment in our schools and you have my commitment that that work is ongoing as I said before I wanted to thank Dr Murphy it has been a pleasure to work with you I said some nice words before and I don't want to say too many nice words because you know never going to get you out the door here but uh but uh but in all seriousness it's been a pleasure to work with you I wish you the best and uh and and we look forward to staying obviously we'll be staying in touch and everything but thank you for thank you for your work and everything that you've done um we also have something pretty significant on the agenda here tonight we have a really important recommendation to the board um we have a position of director of curriculum and instruction um that has been a position that we've been endeavoring to fill for some time it is the position that Dr Murphy has been filling for us um we had a very rigorous search process um and after uh many rounds of uh interviews and venting and stakeholder panels and then follow-up conversations um I am moving forward with full confidence recommending Mr Brian Ross to be the new director of curriculum instruction of the Board of Education uh we've had Dr Mr Ross has shown um his leadership and his interest and his capacity uh in in this area for some time even as a principal even even in in even while serving in a dedicated principal role um and I really look forward to opening up his abil his leadership ability and his uh create creative thinking and his his collaborative problem solving to the rest of the district this does of course present a concern for travel because he is their principal so concurrent with our conversations about moving Mr Ross in this position we've had a variety of conversations about what would be the best uh plan of action to ensure the we have consistent and positive leadership for travel we talked about a variety of options but I think what we've settled on is really the best option uh which involves uh leveraging uh some really great um talent that we have internally in the form of Miss Lauren Carr who's the assistant principal uh at Benjamin Franklin Middle School she will be recommended to the board tonight also as the interim assistant principal at Travel uh the permanent position will be we will do a full search for in the in the in the coming um coming spring but miss car has been a really um uh flowering member of our of our administrative team she certainly has Ambitions to be a principal and this is a great opportunity for us to put someone trusted and known uh with with a very strong Elementary background uh she was a teacher at Somerville for some time uh in an opportunity where she can grow and get some experience being a principal but we know that travel is in great hands um while at the same time we can know that uh that uh Mr Ross is able to start to to begin his work in January as well of course the virtue of this Arrangement is that Miss Carr is known to us and also M Miss Carr and Mr Ross have a working relationship already and they can support each other certainly in that transition and making sure that Trel is cared for so congratulations well I'm not going to congratulate yet because we have to we have to make the recommendation to the board but I'm very pleased to be recommending Mr Ross to the board and I'm very pleased to be recommending Miss Carr Miss Carr's Position will be filled uh will be recommending uh a retired educator um and actually Miss Murphy you have some experience with with our our inum you want to just share a little bit on her real quick um so miss Virginia galitzia will be joining us um in an interm capacity at BF helping to help Lauren Miss car transition over to Delle and they'll be working together and and Miss galitzia is uh taught taught and was a principal um for more than 40 years um and retired and has continued in um leadership coaching for um Rising principles and um and other school administrators so we're happy to have her joining the district um and look forward to her joining the BF Community um in her role um in January in the new year thank you very much and then I just want to remind everybody that the superintendent coffees will be listed after the board uh in as his reorg meeting as establishes its meetings but we do anticipate that there will be a superintendent coffee in later January you would be uh if possible that you would please consider joining us and then I want to wish everyone uh peaceful peaceful break and for those celebrating a very happy holiday and happy New Year may I just say first of all thank I would love for you to sh thank you this has been a worldclass experience I love this community I love serving it you guys are fan fantastic I want to say congratulations to miss Carr she was our favorite kindergarten teacher in Somerville so it's so great and I think you made a great choice for Brian Ross so Brian come on over here okay I'm passing it on officially to Brian you're going to be well served everyone and merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah we'll we'll try to get for that hey did do you have anything else that is it thank you so much so we're going to go into consent items regular and routine issues um and I will U Move attendance at conferences as listed on attachment a do I have a second I will second it yes yes yes but I want to um just not vote for the conference that I'm attending so just exclude people yes yes um oh uh Administration I move Administration and we have second reading on the uh two one regulation and one policy and regulation uh mostly wording uh changes on those second thank you roll call yes yes yes yes yes okay curriculum instruction someone like to move that curriculum instruction I'll second and just um on field trips there was uh it was just one right yeah and if I if I can just um make a if I can just ask to uh that we are going to just amend my recommendation so on the there uh if you can put memorialize this in the record Mr Matthews uh on the field trips there is uh there's a service trip four actual service trips to Bali over the summer um and the estimated costs were L listed here erroneously uh those really the actual cost but the costs are to be born by the students it's not born by the district so that so there's a so where where the amendment is striking out the estimated total cost to District so there is no cost to district for those four trips and again those are the trip those are the four trips to Bali so that so I'm just the record can reflect me changing that recommendation please move that with that change recommendation is that on this amend field trip that was is this a walk in that Amendment I'm just trying to be clear yeah you have it do you have the updated version um def find it now on to the very end internal yes it was updated okay so I so your copy is correct so so so my change that was for the sake of the public record because the original public document was uh okay so you want me to remove it so so move it as revised okay so okay so I'm going to move curriculum of instruction as as revised by uh Dr schwar and I second that yes yes yes yes yes and I would just like to um highlight of the high school program of studies and the um unified uh semester courses um I think that's great that we are um not only doing sports and extracurricular but also of the coursework so um a really good list of um of changes there okay Human Resources I'm move Human Resources seconds any questions I think we have uh some big uh you already made the big announcements so uh move forward R call yes and I I see some of the um newly appointed teachers that are on the uh agenda they are dialed in on Zoom so welcome and congratulations uh Brian andar yes yes yes yes congratulations Brian and come on up and all the best to Lauren par travel okay um and um now Brian would you like to make a report no I'm only kidding okay um yeah because it's only quarter after 10 and you know my goal is just to start end the meeting in the same day so we've got time okay we're in finance now um I have a revision for this as well yes again our apology here um under the donations there is a gift in kind in the amount of $ 8,976 it erroneously says Ridge Elementary home school and again not the one for 33 or the other or the other ones specifically the one for $897 it's the third item that is for Willard Elementary School so I believe you have an updated agenda but if you don't that is that is the revision making that revision to the recommendation so if you could move it as revised for uh for my recommendation that would be great yes oh no we haven't moved yet I'll move as revised second yes yes yes yes yes and I'll just read the Dona uh donations into the record and um thank everyone for their generosity Paul's Elementary uh home and School Association $1,540 66 a gift in kind of birthday books for the Halls Library Ridge Elementary uh School uh home and School Association for $830 a gift in kind of board games and activities to support indoor recess at Ridge Elementary School Willard Elementary School home and School Association 8,976 a gift in kind of three prometheum boards Ridge Elementary School home and School Association for $3,300 a gift and kind uh for a school assembly Ridge Elementary School HSA $2,840 a gift in kind of outdoor Courtyard Furniture which includes two tables with a base and umbrellas and Willard home and School Association for 5,325 a gift in kind of several School assemblies thank thank the home and schools for their generosity um sorry um moving to resolutions and motions not included in consent agenda are we comfortable that we can move the whole thing or do you want to do each one separately what's the wish of the board go all together unless someone has objections to anything okay so um I will move resolutions and motions not in included in consent agenda a b c um I do have a question about D but I'm uh e f that's it second okay yeah I just had one clarification I wanted on D and that was um to maintain uh the um the fourth bullet plus not to exceed $4 million budgeted fund balance to be appropriate appropriated into the fiscal uh the school fiscal year 2526 is that a not to exceed okay and the um because last year it was about 2.7 yeah and then we did put money in uh from um some extra the um yeah so the way that it was written didn't seem like we had the ability to do anything above the 2% for budget and fund balance right only the only the restricted reserves were earmarked for not to exceed amounts so was nothing near for Budget of fund balance so we wanted to just make sure that we had the ability to put money there and we used the $4 million as are not to exceed at the safe number realized then we did 27 uh this current year and 26 to Prior year but we'll just kind of come up with a safe number our goal is obviously not to get to that number you know stay within what we've been or even less if we can oh that would be good because I my concern when I read that was the building of a big hole that we won't be able to climb out of in future years yeah if we were to use that that much no that was just a not to exceed number so our goal is to to again the donut hole hopefully you know we can stay within the past couple years or even lower we can okay okay great thank you yep did anyone else have questions okay I think we could do a roll call yes yes yes yes yes is that for approval the bills that are list here on page 19 of the agenda that I ruts by second yes yes yes yes yes okay board member announcements I just had a couple and one um was um at the uh school board's um um where they delegates assembly just just a um interesting res resolution by subcommittee that was passed um and it reads njsba believes that boards should be permitted to publish all public meeting notices and requisite reference materials through Electronic media in Li of Publications and physical newspapers as required pursuant to the open public meetings act or any other law regulation requiring public notifications of a meeting of the board including but not limited to regular meetings special meetings in public meetings so what's happening I understand is that the Star Ledger may be going all digital um I know um the record has not yet but may go in that same way so just to put that on our radar screen and see what's happening um as we are looking at at Publications I don't know if you did go to the my understanding on that one is that it's njsba policy resolution but that cannot supersede the law no and the law is still uh two print media so we until the law is changed at the state level we have to continue to follow the law uh but I think the other interesting resolution that I found very interesting there was um the most of the members demanded basically that if a municipality is approving any pilot resolutions or Pilot um development then border of Fett should have equal uh opportunity to sit at the table uh during that negotiation and the U incoming taxes should not just go to the municipality because I think in rewood in the past few years there were some discussions about pilot programs or Pilot developments and um Board of heads don't get any share of from that and uh majority of the members felt that uh they B ofhe should have equal uh opportunity to sit at the table for the negotiation you should just clarify what pilot stands for payment in Le of tax payment in lie of taxes so what happens is um if there's an area in need of development then municipalities can give um that offer to developers to come in and build something there because but not pay the uh the ongoing rate like if our taxation is 2.2% or 2.3% whatever it is they would say okay let's negotiate for next 10 years you'll just pay 1% and that will just go to the municipality so Board of heads don't get any share from that usually right the so the school budget um will can get stressed depending on the um student population that um comes in for the development so that is uh that's that's a that's a concern and that's something that um people should be on the lookout for right and then um just uh a word on the strategic planning um that work uh continued through uh November early into December uh and the task force um of about 20 people made up of community members and um Mary mcau myself um sta uh staff um and some students um um developed a vision statement mission statement um and a portrait of a learner and uh that and goals um and that will go now to all the different task forces um and we should most likely be hearing in public a presentation in the beginning of March I'd say is our timeline right so aiming for um whatever our our first meeting in is in March um but it's on time and on task and um I thank you because I know uh Dr fanwick was very much involved with that so thank you and end of end of March oh sorry okay end of March yes oh Brian was on that as well yes right um board committee reports um a lot happened in our agenda tonight so uh they in for curriculum um it is all on the agenda I did in addition to what you called out for the um expansion of the unified electives I just wanted to um make a note that um Ashley and nembo in particular in the math department is continuing to really um add classes there uh including now we have I wrote it down calculus um BC um which is uh and and multivariable calculus um and there's also now going to be a new uh data science class at the at the high school which I know is a very popular major when she gets to college so I think that's great um and we're actually going to have robotics too with AI specifically um and there's a ton of other things and so by not mentioning them I don't mean to cast dispersions I think you know as always the uh offerings are fantastic um uh I also want to give a shout out to Eliza sudall who works for the community school because she sat down with the curriculum committee and told us about all the new classes that she's putting in for um I think it's for the summer but also for the winter and she really spends a lot of time thinking about what the current issues are and and things that people are interested in to bring in consumers and um she's I I think she's doing a fantastic job and I think she should be recognized for that so um I'm going to move quickly into it One cpeg update um uh before we go there I I do had a question actually um I it's already approved but um with the tech uh in the curriculum um what was deleted uh per this agenda was technology literacy it's a quarter course um instead of Technology literacy I mean I I'm hearing some concerns about um the fact that especially middle school students and maybe Elementary as soon as they get the Chromebook um the idea of digital uh good citizenship what it means to have a digital footprint the notion that anything you you post never gets deleted so I don't know if this if that's part of Technology literacy or is it because it'ser school 101 I see so they they um they specifically address that in Middle School 101 okay and then there I think there's an intro to coding that they also added now which is different than the technology technology literacy but you may you made me think of it so I thought I okay so it's just being diffused into more of like a standard rather than an elective perfect correct okay corre you so um yes um with regard to cpeg um we had our meeting last week it was very informative it was great the only thing I just want to remind people to save the date because cpeg is going to have a Gala uh on March 13th um and it's going to be one large fundraising event and so I think it's something that's certainly worthwhile to support so save the date for March 13 2025 that's it thank you thank you um Finance um is there anything that's not on the agenda that you wanted to highlight um well I I did actually have a question it's already approved anyway but when it came when we discussed so in the meeting everything that we and it was a very comprehensive meeting uh everything that we discussed you do see reflected on the agenda and one of the items that we discussed was the ion gate cyber security one of the questions that was outstanding is it was um in the amount not to exceed uh 62,400 would need so it could be well short of that 62,000 so I wanted to confirm that the contract did have that stipulation I'm sorry please say this what stipulation I'm not I'm not because um when um this was a needed uh uh detection detection and uh based on a incident this was needed however when um the district looked at different vendors to help us with cyber security the programs that are offered was much more comprehensive than what we needed at this time more of a diagnostic post incident um prevention technique um and so based on all the programming out there this seemed to be and and also what the insurance provider said you have to use XY andz vendor so this was it right so in that meeting one of the questions was this is a very large contract we don't need to use all of the 210 hours or whatever number of hours they project because this only runs to the end of June so it's we're really getting half half year and this is almost price as if it's a full-year contract so the question was I I thought that we were going to find out that it was just going to be on a use basis so instead of 210 hours if we end up using 10 hours only that's it we're fine and would still be I'm sorry I had to check with Siri on on those specifics about the contract I apologize I I don't have that detail I'm I'll I've got it right here I'll just review it real quick I'll let you know if there's a problem with it yeah because we I mean it was very clear that this this contract was very comprehensive way in excess of what we needed to address the issue here and now and this was almost price is a fouryear contract we're doing it now really we're getting six months benefit and um given that it was priced not in a proactive prated basis and not even what we really needed for or the contract should allow us give us the the the contractual ability to just use what we need and not be under the hook for a lot of things we don't so I think it says that not to exceed but in the contract I'm not sure if it will give us if there's a minimum like let's say not 6 650,000 maybe that minimum is 45,000 but we I my sense was given what we really needed which is very surgical in terms of what we really need to get have a look at we didn't need this whole Suite of compliments yeah so just just to confirm it says specifically in the payment terms for services rendered okay great the contract shall build the client according to the schedule of estimated fees okay so um thank you so um we did talk about that um the need for this kind of contract um and uh we it the vendor was also recommended uh by the insurance provider recommended meaning it sounded like we didn't use you it makes sense the insurance well um honor uh the vendors that are um identified as being um qualified uh super qualify to deal with our issues and so the other things that we we talked about um was the budget process a budget calendar has been sent out that's not on the agenda because it's ongoing work and you'll see the fruit of all that work in in the spring um and one that is not on the agenda but it is um a discussion point it's not the first time it's come up it's still an outstanding concern um is that um the re request as far as I know is still outstanding in terms of the village asking for Board of Ed contribution towards a capital Improvement on a non-boarded field which would be the lighting for the softball fields uh there was a rant that the village received uh and my understanding was that it would cover all of it I the particulars I I'm not sure where we are on that but irregardless of whether the grant that the village receive covers all of it or not my concern um and I would like it to be on the written record is um couple of things uh number one uh the village can Bond at will we the Board of Ed does not we have to go for a referendum but this a capital Improvement project the village with a super majority with with a majority vote can Bond anything um and this is uh currently a $160,000 ask the second thing is in if I remember correctly uh in Miss Brogan's tenure and which is bans almost over 20 years I don't think I haven't heard of any school district allocating funds for a capital Improvement not a shared service this is a capital Improvement on a nonb ofed asset I haven't seen it uh I don't think Miss broken has seen it I don't think the Bridgewood has ever done this uh and my concern is that yes it is all benefiting The Village as a totality but the taxpayer funds that we collect are for the school property for the curriculum the instruction for the school assets and given that the village has greater financing flexibility than the school does and the fact that this is a com a capital Improvement on a non-board ofed asset I think that we should be very sensitive to the to the legality of it and to what we are SA sacrificing if we contribute towards this Capital project because there are a lot of other needs that we are facing even today I'm talking you know Eis there's so many things that the school district has at any time um even immediately in the past few meetings we've talked about uh filtering system at the at the water fountains we could with that kind of money we could do it today and it would affect it would improve the would improve greatly the water quality for all 5,000 plus students versus a lighting project at a softball field at a at a village field really benefits the students who are using softball nighttime I mean you know that's just one example the putting new putting the filters in the water fountains in all the school districts we can do that with 160,000 you can do gifted and talented you could do so many things maybe you could do the special report I'm just saying be very sensitive to entertaining requests that don't directly immediately impact and improve the students the staff administrations who walk in and use school property so that is what I'd like to share and that's what we discussed so that actually gives me a good um point to that I I had to ask the finance committee so at the facilities committee meeting we have we have asked for what would it take or what's the count or what are the quotations for the filtration system for for the other schools and I think the um the facilities team has been working on that so if finance committee can look into that as part of the next budget that what is what do we have available uh because I think one of my biggest question is we don't know uh yet what was last year's Surplus which I've asked a few times so if uh if even that information can be forthcoming then we can start even talking more uh instead of just at the budget time but if you are aware of what that number is um and then you can um discuss or give some thought about adding more filtration systems or our filtration systems are good um they all work there's only one brand where we have identified that they made PS uh compatible uh filters um so the in the dispensers basically so we may have to change those dispensers to accommodate this new filter so that's to retrofit that right so um that's one of the items that fin if I would request finance committee and the budget whoever is doing the budget at that time that if we can look at how many can we do that in next year's budget it's like an incremental process if not all then what can we accommodate next year and the next question I had was um for finance SL budget team um I received uh a request and then uh one of the parents actually called at the superintendent coffee for this uh on last Thursday so um I'm just going to repeat from what I heard from the parent and from superintendent coffee um the ice hockey team is really looking for some breakdown of uh their perception right now based on their research so they they are they mentioned that they have asked for this dat a few times and they're not even asking to change anything right now they're just asking for information and information they can start filing Oprah requests and they can start filing for all the detail line items but let's not go there let if they are asking for information for a while we can we should be able to provide that information so what they are looking for right now is breakdown of byar City sport because and I I raised a question at that time that we have heard that from a couple of other teams and they they mentioned that those are clubs versus Hockey being Varsity Sport it's it's recognized at state level and they go and compete so that's where they are trying to differentiate that with from other Varsity Sports team what is the distribution for coaches salaries versus is ice hockey paying their own coaches salary like is is District paying coaches salaries versus ice hockey team they have to pay for their their own coaches salaries their transportation um I know we um do pay for the field rental or or the uh the space Rental Right the for the but they want to know um what what is being charged from other players versus what is being charged from uh just one sport and what is the coaches salary distribution maybe per player per game whatever our criteria is what is our criteria for that current distribution and so we cannot even talk about changing it or reallocating it as part of next year's budget until we know what it is today so they are asking for information right now and um one of the uh things they brought up was U there are several students in Middle School who are really good players and they are trying to apply to outside schools because they don't want to come to high school if they have to commit to paying that type of money so that's why it's uh time is of essence uh from their perspective that if those if we lose those some good players who would not come to rhs that's not good for us and um let me just confirm I covered all of the points yeah so one of the parents called at the superent coffee and they mentioned that there is some other sport also where they are spending the same $2,000 and I think we should also clarify that if that is true or if that is uh fee charge by outside the like are is the district charging same amount of fee or was their comment uh reflecting um trainings or other activities that are not charged by District so that we should clarify as part of that was that skiing because we've had no that was from soccer oh I see okay so one of the soccer parents called and they said we are also paying $2,000 but so we I think we need to clarify that what the differentiation between for ice hockey students I think the district is charging that versus for them it may be the training and other uh fees like what how much is being charged by the district right so they are just asking for that information from so that's why I just wanted to bring that to the finance committee yeah yeah and actually uh we just talked about this today so the business office is working on an analysis where we're going to look at the board's contra contribution to all programs by the number of students as well so we'll get a sense of our per pupil contribution to program um and then also we'll look at how much students are asked to contribute to the programs so that way the board can have a very clear perspective in the public as well we start with a board just a clear perspective regarding you know how it looks from an equ equitability standpoint number of students in the program number of contributions recognizing that it's not necessarily going to be perfectly Equitable but it will but you should have a sense as to if it is inequitable just how inequitable it is great and then that that would answer the question about the uh the other cont the other sports contributions as well right so I think at this point they are mainly looking for information yeah is there a report on policy or we um we did meet for policy and as you can see there's nothing on the agenda yeah um we're expecting and AI um policy oh yes been expecting it for a couple months but uh St sesme AI is writing it yeah exactly has been saying that you know they did say I think more recently we should get it by January so that would be I think a good thing and then we have a list of you know what we need to tackle but okay that was the bulk of it and and we did fa we uh had a facilities and Joint review it was pretty robust um did you want to report on facilities I'm um uh the Gan for caros um did a really a cost anal well a um an analysis of the cost of energy for a uh two different systems for HW and Glenn and if you um had read the uh read the report um we're going to go with um option b which is a hybrid um and so it will be natural gas and there'll be energy and U we'll offset those costs a little bit uh the stem Lab at the high school uh ventilation uh we approved tonight to get that going our dust collector system for the um uh wood shop um is a little bit delayed but I think uh we'll be seeing it complete in the spring it was that my my impression from there um there was uh some discussion of the BF Middle School field and um not a lot of movement to the track so there wouldn't be any real um real large disruption to the track and we would have u a full-size field for um was soccer uh football lacrosse yeah um was the material discussed at all or is it still being grass it's we we just discussed U leing as brass um we had just sorted it and again uh we'll see if we can maintain it and the and the utilization of it that we're not really sure so at this point it it is more uh just making sure configuring um that field um we if I just just to be clear we're going to have there'll be a final report in January that will cover variety of questions including what were the cost of of turf as well we had some community members who want to know that as well so the a more complete report but for now what we really established just here is that we don't have any funds set aside for any kind of artificial turf or anything right now we're focused on um trying to get some having a relief field if we have issues if we have flood issues particularly and getting to a place where um the BF field can function fully as an actual as an actual playable official field um and then for jrc uh we did meet uh travel and uh H um there were minimal issues at travel but H um had um some significant um issues in terms of cleaning and um not um having consistent uh custodians not having a head custodian um so um some issues that Aramark is working on and I know um uh Mr Matthews was also following up on um and there and there's been some change again in leadership of aark here in the in the uh in the district so um we're hoping uh that some of those um uh issues at Haw will be addressed and um we'll get a report when we meet again um after the first of the year oh sorry I'm sorry you want to go first yeah first so I wanted to ask um I want to just be clear on what the status of what's going on with the the heating at Ridge and Glenn so we have an option that we've chosen we have a cost breakdown when we still we're still waiting I think on on the on the cost cost on the cost to implement not necessarily energy on the cost to do it yes okay so do we have any idea when this is actually going to happen like is it gonna happen this summer The Summer of 2025 yeah that's that's what we're that's what we're shooting for but we but we already have but we already have heating we already have heat in the schools so if it goes into the school year it's okay but but the goal is to that in the coming fiscal year we'll be we'll be installing systems okay and my other question was as I read it will that be will air conditioning then be a part of it in both schools yes so so that's an improvement right because there's no air conditioning right so right now we have mostly window air conditions sorry say that right now most of schools we have window air conditions except like rhss Chiller but if you um if if you remember um the very hot June day when we all went to um freshman Focus room the it was very uh comfortable right that room is always even in hot days that that has good cooling because that has an external condenser that is dedicated for that and couple of more rooms probably so the the heat comes from boiler and for cooling instead of Chiller that is using U condensers just like our usually most of the homes have that Central split AC so that's the technology that is feeding your unit ventilators so that's the uh technology uh so just think of the technology that is being used in freshman Focus room that's that will be used at Ridge and uh Glenn where heating will be through boiler and cooling will be through uh condenser that is uh that can be on roof or that can be outside that room and that will supply it there so so far from the start so yeah the whole building will have air conditioning the whole building will have heating so far uh we had delays or research and all of that was happening because essentially I was asking for heat pumps and uh um not go through the U oilbased uh heating um it it basically comes down to be the Comfort level of The Architects our Architects are more comfortable in um in a hybrid system they are more comfortable in implementing oil based Heating and yeah natural gas I'm sorry I'm sorry not not oil based natural gas so and that's the the track record from several years that's what they have seen as successful so that's what we have we have settled on that okay we'll go with the natural gas heating and condensers for cooling um so I basically gave up on that but from cost perspective um those numbers were based on that convection heating they their hypothesis was that convection heating is three times more expensive than oilbased heating so they made those numbers based on that but they have to now go back and actually do the calculations and give us the actual the correct price that it will cost us to implement it but uh we we have budget we have a specific uh uh those budgets were based on the um heat pumps uh that FKA created but hopefully we should be able to do the same in um in the same budget and and one last correction sorry yeah and and the last correction was um I'm not sure if if we are committed for the summer because uh as Dr schwart said that that project can be done while school is in session in the evening shift or um we don't need to stop the current system so this new system system can be installed and then yeah while the other one is working and then we can decommission the old one so it does not have to be in summer so it will really depend on the pricing and contractor's availability and all those things yeah so we have an agreement on what where we are going we have money uh it's just the time of a matter of pulling it now basically um I just uh had a uh wanted to add to the policy uh committee update and you just reminded me talk about BF field um one of the policies that is awaiting implementation final review uh by the administration is adding um the uh to the rhs student and athletic guide book on uh Turf safety um guidance around the sanitation heat awareness um hygiene so that is having a final look and Hope it'll be implemented um once again it covers uh sanitation hygiene heat awareness and it would be um comparable to what is already in place for grass discussion items uh new regulations uh is there anything we need to any concerns about that no okay acceptance of minutes I know um uh hu you you weren't at the executive session on correct the 18th so but other than that um I move acceptance of minutes all in favor I I except for the one I was except for other business yeah I just want to um thank hju for um her service um leadership at multiple times um I've seen you uh take charge where when it was needed your Independence um from day one you had shown your Independence your detailed analysis of finances um uh I know you from day one you started to learn and uh you driven to Trenton and uh monmoth County multiple times for njsba conferences and and the short time became Master Certified board member the M the certified board leader uh law forums um a lot of trainings that are not really required we the required trainings are just four that we all have to go through and um I think you have done many many more uh the county meetings the um so all the trainings um that you have gone through uh the when uh I think one of the commenters mentioned that when we originally started um we we had a budget failed and the district was looking for almost $94 million referendum at that time and now we are um I think we able to do more than $20 million from that list uh by various savings and that's because uh without cutting any um programs we haven't uh uh reduced any staff we actually added prr we actually added every year every year uh programs are added even in today's agenda you can see that so and um there there's a long list if I start looking at that um but I think yeah biggest thing is your Independence your um you never were afraid of bringing the point and uh I think uh that that is important and uh we are I feel we are as a district we are at a much much much better place than where we were four or five years ago um so thank you for that thank you Sarah thank you everyone comments from the public I'm going to close comments from the public and thank you everybody who did stick with us and listen and thank you Michelle Brian welcome to the table uh H you the best of luck with uh whatever you decide to do next uh in the community uh or for the community thank you for that um and I um hope everyone has a lovely holiday season enjoy the break relax um and we will be back on January the 6 um and um at that I will move to adjourn the meeting can I I have a second second all in favor bye good night everyone