##VIDEO ID:QufBiE-uR5k## 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 okay we're going to call the meeting of vship Board of Education Thursday October 17 2024 to order may I have a roll call please Mr slam thank you Miss Aon here miss Brock here Mr smaga Mr cantino Mr Krauss here miss pallet Dr Ross Mr Sweeney here Mr Zimmerman here we have a quorum okay so did recommend that the board enter into close s session for the purposes of discussing legal personnel and student matters may have a motion please move by Mr zerman second second second by Mr KRA all in favor I oppos we are in Clos second Mr 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 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 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 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 okay we're gonna start oh I have no problem recommended that the board return to open session may I have that in form of a motion so move M patino second second second by Miss Brock all in favor we are back in public session may I have a roll call please Mr slam Miss Ahern here miss Brock here Mr smaga here Mr cantino here Mr Krauss here miss pellet Dr Ross here Mr Sweeney here Mr Zimmerman here miss chanella right yeah here thank you we have hor okay please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to flag thank you slam the reading of the meeting notice the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to advance notice of and to attend the the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with provisions of the ACT Vernon Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published an adequate notice has been provided and notice this meeting has been properly posted in accordance with the New Jersey open public meeting law our next meeting is a work session on Thursday November 14th and a public meeting on Thursday November 21st uh we uh also are planning on having meeting on October 28th Monday which is a Monday I G do you want to take care of that Mr Rogers or would you like me to okay we are Beyond excited and proud to announce Christina chanella as our Board of Education student representative for this school year Christina has been an active member of our HOSA program what's HOSA um it's Health occupations students of America thank you for three years a vths marching band for three years and is a member of multiple honor societies including science math and the National Honor Society she's a two-season athlete participating in girls lacrosse and swimming Christina always has a smile on her face which we have noticed already she is kind caring and always willing to help she absolutely adds to the positive culture at beron Township High School and is going to be a great addition to the Board of Education her fellow peers are lucky to have her representing them for the 2425 school year congratulations Christin and welcome welcome okay our first item will be item H uh presentation the njla AP sat and dlm results by Mr Vincent gagliostro and Dr Lee sheep thank you everyone uh tonight Dr shef and myself will be presenting our njsla for English Math and Science as well as our AP sat and dlm results I have some post presentation notes to the community here uh just for clarification once it is posted on the website uh just to clear some things up if you're just perusing the uh slideshow afterwards so to start uh we're just to go over a New Jersey history of State assessments we wanted to show you that since 2002 the State Testing uh has changed significantly so we started off with the hespa in the spring of 2002 and at that point grades 3 through eight still had the New Jersey ask uh those were the standardized tests and then in the spring of 2015 the park was released that is what uh switched up uh from the NJ ASK and it was the first really computer-based assessment so there were lots of committees and lots of uh talk about uh the park before it came out uh and even the park in itself switched several times in its formatting and uh the various pieces of the test uh then spring of 2019 we uh lost the park and it became the njsla which is what we currently have in grades 3 through eight where literacy and Mathematics are uh tested in grades 3-9 and in science in grades 5 8 and 11 uh and then in the spring of 20 22 a new assessment was added which was the NJ GPA uh we recently did our presentation on the results of that and uh that is a graduation requirement for grade 11 students I think it's really important to note that there's a big difference between the HSPA the hespa and the park and the N GPA with the park came the 21st century skills critical thinking there is a greater emphasis on literacy even within Science and Mathematics if we can all remember back in the first role out of the park days there was tremendous push back from the public because of the intense nature of these assessments they really ended up rebranding it as the NJ sln yes right and now here are the results timeline this is something that is uh similar each year but the specific dates shift a little bit depending on when we receive individual student reports from the state so in May of 2024 uh our students took the njsla uh in August to early September we did get uh embargoed results from the state um that are not confirmed yet which is why they're still embargoed and they can't be released um eventually we got them September 12th the uh individual student reports are sent to the districts along with the final uh districtwide Report with the finalized results uh from that point the day we get the independent uh student reports that is uh when the clock starts for the deadlines of reporting on the assessment so because it was September 12th we had a deadline of October 15th to mail out our individual student reports which is 30 days after receipt of it uh and the Embargo lifts all right we are presenting October 17th for our Public Presentation but our deadline to present was November 12th technically uh but as soon as we were able to get the data and process it we felt it was important to uh share it with the public as soon as possible and uh when you do look at this on the website uh on the top right there that is the broadcast link from the state that explains all this okay so our first set of slides I'll just go through fairly quickly this is just participation percentages how many of our students actually participated in the assessment you're going to see a lot of data tonight and some of this is actually required by um the N we to present so this would be one of those like required slides okay so uh you can see uh over the years 22 23 and 24 the number of students that were tested and the difference between those a lot of that has to do with just the number of kids per grade bubble sure and uh and on the bottom it's the total for those grade levels uh and here's the mathematics comparison again with the total at the bottom being just those grade levels that are tested not the district as a whole and this is the science participation okay and now we'll get into the actual results uh so for here uh Rolling Hills our average scores for mathematics and for English uh from last year you can see our average went up from 740 to 747 and in English we had tremendous growth from a 723 average to 741 and what you're going to notice is this time we're really going to give you a context you're going to look at about 10 years of data so you can put it in context to preco versus postco and you can see how we are developing since Co I think putting things in context becomes very very important and not just looking at an isolated piece of data and another thing to keep in mind is as much as we're showing okay we grew from 2023 to 2024 our average went up from 740 to 747 and from 723 to 741 these are different groups of children so in English third grade 2023 those students scored 723 as an average those students in 2024 are fourth graders now so the the third grade report you see here that's a new batch of students so just keep that in mind as well as much as we want growth and we want to see that uh it is different groups of kids so you're kind of comparing apples and oranges okay we want to put a little visualization to it in the past we've shown Table after table of numbers I think the visualization really can put it into context about where we stand as far as where we see challenges they become very evident and where we see growth they become very evident as well so you can see our mathematics and our Ela scores for third grade that's the first tested grade in our district in any District actually in New Jersey you can see the preco results to the left and you can see where they were you can see that covid slide for the years that we didn't have um testing and then what where we were after covid and then you can see the progression since that time so it really gives you an idea about where we were before and where we are now and how we have evolved as a district in that time okay uh and now these are the results for Lounsbury Hollow for mathematics and for English uh so in math our average from 23 to 24 went down slightly from 7:41 to 737 uh in English we went from 742 up slightly to 744 uh math in uh grade five we were reduced our average score by about 10 points and in English we went down by about eight points for fifth grade our science score also went down by about seven in fifth grade and again that put into context with the line graphs you can see in English the slide down um during covid mathematics it it stayed almost even and slightly down the last year so when we put this into context and I think you can really start to see it from the visuals if you put back one more slide sorry when we're looking at fifth grade and we're looking at fourth grade fourth grade students were in kindergarten during the time of covid when it shut down and they were in first grade hybrid this fifth grade cohort was in first grade when we shut down and in second grade they were hyrid and I truly think that we're starting to see some of those long-term impacts as we look at what's happening with fourth grade and fifth grade right now because you don't see a distinct difference between math and Ela and science you see them as a cohort of students struggling with academics so I just wanted to point that out because once you start to see the pictures you see the trends when you're looking at isolated you know data you don't see it but when we're seeing like a fifth grade cohort that needs more support we want to know why and that's what we've been looking at and here's the line graph for science uh and just you know as you can see the sign scores are completely different scale um so uh that's all uh also on the website where uh it's explained a little further and also in your individual student reports it's it's explained on there so here again we want to be very clear on what we're looking at as Administration to see the whole entire cohort what they're experiencing this cohort that tested this past year that's now our sixth grade students so we're thinking about where we need to focus specific attention we want to make sure that we are focusing on this cohort of students right now in Glo uh for sixth grade in uh njsla math we went from 7:32 up to 739 in seventh grade math we we stayed exactly the same uh in eighth grade math which again is a very small cohort of students you can see under the score number that this year was 22 students uh because most of the students in grade8 take Algebra 1 assessment uh so our Algebra 1 assessment in 8th grade went from 743 to 737 and the science was a very small change of 167 to 165 and here it is in line charts as well I think illustrations really can just really help us comprehend what's happening if you look at math six and math seven you can see pretty much what's happening at the top when you look at math 8 versus Algebra 1 you can see prior to covid all of our students were taking math a and we've talked about that in the last couple years like this is what happened but now you can visually see what happened once we then split up the cohorts to have a small cohort of 22 students taking um math 8 versus the rest of the class you really can start to tell what's happening I also want you to notice what is happening with math 8 math 8 if you're taking math 8 if you're taking algebra in eight or if you're in science 8 and we're also going to see the similar Trend in ela 8 that entire cohort is something we're going to want to focus on too because they all are showing that same Trend so what we noticed this year is there's a trend in Fifth and a trend in eighth for English in sixth grade we had uh growth by about 12 points in the average scores from 743 to 752 again that was a tremendous amount of growth uh and in English seventh grade another uh good amount of growth 746 to 753 uh and 8th grade we went from 750 down to 745 so uh you know we are again in that eth grade cohort targeting support there and here you can see the visual again comparing grade six grade seven and grade eight grade six and seven both saw an increase this past year grade eight just like in ela and math and science you can see that Trend and that's holding it together again trying to be very very Visual and very very clear so our public can really start to look at data and have a little better understanding of instead of just looking at some charts all right for the high school um for the njsla portion for Algebra 1 we went our average score in grade nine went from 725 to 733 geometry a very very small cohort of students we uh averaged almost the same a little lower 754 to 752 uh with more students 23 students were tested as opposed to 15 in Algebra 2 we cannot share the results any amount of students lower than 10 the information is suppressed by the state due to a potential risk of identifying students uh so those cannot be shared tonight uh in English grade nine we went from 744 to 758 uh a tremendous amount of growth and in science 11th grade we went from 164 to 178 another uh very very large amount of growth I just want to point out because somebody was asking me this I I thought it was interesting Algebra 2 the only students who are up there are ninth graders taking the algebra 2 test so these would be students who are Advanced taking the algebra 2 test we have a lot more students taking Algebra 2 at the high school this is only those that are taking it in ninth grade correct and again here are just the line charts of these uh tables that we had shared with you so we see the increase in grade n Ela we see the increase in Algebra 1 we see that pretty you know standardized look of geometry what I love about this is you can see preco versus postco and how our program has adapted we also see that increase in science okay so uh this is the part of the presid ation where the state mandated breaking down all the results we just shared with you in every way you can think possible so there are tons of charts uh in in various manners it's all the same data just broken down by performance level or gender or race or um program whether you have an IEP or free and reduced lunch anything like that it all has to be broken down so I'm going to go through these slides fairly quickly as this is not a good forum to view that data but again this will all be on the website where you can really sit and look at it and if there are any questions once you have time to look at it and kind of absorb it please feel free to reach out to Dr sheer myself uh this is something we love talking about so uh I would definitely welcome conversations regarding it the thing about and I I know why they want us to do it when you see a percentage that is just a number the average of all our students data what this here tells is how many we have at a one a two a three a four or five because an average is an average you can have a lot of different numbers in a lot of different places to come up with that end result this tries to show you and it actually is very helpful for administrators to see where the distribution of the scores actually lies so we can try to interpret the data more than just an isolated data point so as I said this is a tremendous amount of data to look at especially in this format um we did the last three years uh just so that you had a bit of a comparison um right here we have the not meeting expectations level one which is the lowest of the scores over to exceeding expectations on the right uh as well you'll see on the last two columns on the right uh it gives you the changes in level one and level two from 23 to 24 and the change from level four to level five so what's cool about that and to be very clear we want less students in level one and level two that's not meeting or partially meeting so we want that number to go down going down is good in that column the column all the way on the right that's sort of in that burnning gold is what we want to see go up we want to see the percentage of students getting meeting which is level four or exceeding which is level five to go up you can see those percentages totally align with the scores what the state does is it averages all that data to give us an overarching understanding of what's happening in ela from grades three to nine and then you see all grades at the bottom and that's a summary and that little green box is saying overall if we took our entire Ela program it has improved and we've seen 6.7% more students in the four and five the meeting and exceeding range so as a programmer I can look at that and see an overarching scope of our entire bla programing now for math uh same kind of thing all the way on the left is level one not meeting expectations all the way on the right is level five exceeding uh it's broken down the same way um Algebra 2 again uh you'll see where it says 10 SS those are it's less than 10 students so the scores are suppressed and the percentages as well now unlike El Del which we can do a total of the entire programming because once you get to 8th grade 9th grade 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade your courses are different so this is all of the ninth graders but they can't summarize because of the difference in courses so you don't see that wish they had it but you don't have that all grade with the number of the programming um to to pull all together which is unfortunate again in that column that's one and two we want to see that decrease and in the column that's four and five we want to see that increase that's really what we're looking for as you look at the data the same thing is true for science but science doesn't have five levels they only have four level one two three and four so when we talk about passing rates they're talking about level three and four when they're talking about passing rates with Ela and math they're talking about four and five so they do the same type of thing it's segregated across the the chart all the way on the right you see level one and two again we want that number to go down and level three and four we want that number to go up okay now here are comparisons of proficiency and average to the state okay so for mathematics grade three we did the last uh we did 24 23 22 and you'll see we jump all the way to 2019 because of the covid years that's why there's a break there our average score uh matched New Jersey at 747 but our percent passing was 50.8% which was above the New Jersey state average of 47.5% so what this does and I really appreciate what we have to do with this for the state if you were just to look at the scores themselves 747 to 747 you would just if we only looked at that in isolation we would say they're the same but when you look at them in context prare comparing them to percent passing you see that 7 47 actually ends up with 50.8% passing so you need both both data points to really understand what's happening that tells us as administrators how many kids we have in that bubble that are close to passing that actually pumps up our average so that tells me we have a lot of kids really close in three we just got to pull them across to to get them into a level four and here's the same information just in that line graph where you can see the drop from covid and then the growth uh once we've rebounded from Co so the blue is burning scores the yellow is the state scores you can see where we were preco you can see postco and you can see now where are where we are with the state and here's also just another way to portray it in a bar graph uh you can see uh 50.8% going uh over the state average uh and consistent growth each year going upwards this is my favorite graph I just love that you can literally see in grade three mathematics um how we're improving and getting above the state average all right and now here is the same information for English uh you can see our average score was 741 with the New Jersey state average score being 736 so we surpassed the average score but our percent passing was 36.1% where the New Jersey percent passing was 43.6% again data in context so if we were just to look at the scores on the left we would say okay we're above the state average we are but that means we have to get more student scores over closer to level four and level five that's why that percentage is lower and that's where those previous charts with the distribution really help us as ad Administration to Target areas for support again the same information but as a line graph just to visualize what we're talking about so New Jersey is in red Vernon is in blue and you can see how the scores have changed over time and Vernon is now above the state average again same thing with percentages for ELA although we are above the state average in test score we don't have that we haven't quite caught up to the state average but you can see that growth so we went from 23% last year to 36% this year uh passing so there is a tremendous amount of growth but we still haven't quite met where the state is at all right now here are comparisons at Lounsbury uh our average score in math in fourth grade uh we are at 737 the state's at 7:44 and uh our percent passing is at 29.8 and New Jersey is at 44.9 so this is obviously an area we're targeting right now uh the same with English we went from 744 up to 7 uh compared to 749 for New Jersey and our percent passing was 42.2 as compared to 50.8% for New Jersey so this is an area that we are targeting and again remember this is the cohort of third graders from 2023 where we're looking at the pth scores so look at how the cohorts move up and where they're struggling and these are the areas where we're really focusing our supports mathematics in fifth grade Vernon average was 736 New Jersey was 741 we had about 33.5% of our students passing and where the state was at 40.2% our English uh for grade five our average score was at 737 with New Jersey at 750 uh that's 39% of our students percent passing and uh the state is at 52.2 and with science we are at 176 the state is at 169 with our percent passing being at 29.8% and the state being very close to 27.6% so when we looked at science in context we went down a couple of points but when we look at it compared to the state we're actually above State average and I'm going to throw out there any state that makes a t a percent passing 27 for their state is concerning for me as a science educator just just saying all right moving on to Glen Meadow at the middle school all right our average score for mathematics in grade six we were at a 739 which was a little above the state average of 737 uh but our percent passing was 35.7% and New Jersey was at 36.2% so very very small percentage points away uh for mathematics in grade seven uh we were actually exactly the same with the state 739 and uh our percent passing was 37.3% the the state was at 37.5% so almost identical uh in grade eight again this is only 22 students because the majority of our eighth grade students take algebra one uh we were at 686 and New Jersey was at 719 that is 4.5% of our students passing as opposed to 19 16.5% of the state and our Algebra 1 which is the majority of our students we were at a 737 the state was a 738 um very close and our percent passing was at 34.5% where the state was at 39.5 and in science again very very similar we are at a 165 the state's 164 and uh our percent passing was 18% as opposed to an 18.8% with the state is that same in oh no we didn't do the line chart okay we did oh it's late okay uh now for English uh in English our average score was 752 uh the state was 751 so almost the same uh our passing percentage was 54.6% where the state was 53.2 again very very similar um in English 7th grade we're at a 753 New Jersey is at 752 and our P percent passing was 54 6 and 54% 8th grade we're at 745 as opposed to 751 at the state level and our percent passing is a 46.5 as opposed to 52.9% at the state level and uh for the high school our Algebra 1 results we were at a 733 the state is at a 738 our percent passing is uh 33.3% and the state was at 39.5% geometry we only had about 15 students that were in ninth grade taking this this year uh we were at a 752 the state was only at 746 uh we had 60.9% of our students passing and state average was 49% algebra 2 again we had to suppress that data due to the limited amount of students taking it uh English in grade nine our score average was a 758 where the state was a 755 and our passing rate was 65 5.2% where the state is about a 58% and finally in science grade 11 uh 178 was our average score the state is only at 169 so tremendous discrepancy there and the percent passing is 34.7% for Vernon whereas the state average is only 28.1% and here's that same information in the bar graph form you can it really allows you to compare year to year and show the growth we've made over the two years so we've really been concentrating on you know certain like grade three and out for one you can see the growth in those two two grade levels that we really were focusing on this past okay and this is again just a breakdown uh comparison of vtsd in the State uh for percent change so on the left there's the change in level one and level two uh for our district and then just to the right of that is the change in level one and level two at the state so these are basically those last two columns that we had on those previous slides with the distribution uh but it we they also gave us the distribution this year for the state so we were able to compare ourselves there uh and then the last two columns are are change in level five four and five compared to the state level four and five so again in those right two columns we want to see a positive trend and in the left column we want to see a negative trend so the increase we saw in grade three you can see here even compared to the state burn an increase by 12.9% as the state actually went down and you can see really grade nine did a tremendous amount of growth and okay and here's that same kind of chart with math uh broken down again in the change in level one and two you want to see a negative Trend in change in four and five you want to see a positive trend that's the goal and we see that again in math and grade 3 by 133% where the state went down by 1.4 we see that in grade uh high school algebra particularly went up by 6.6% where the state went down by 3 and here's the same chart for science uh we we you can see we had a good amount of growth uh in grade 11 and we have uh some targeted areas we need to work on in fifth and eth even though they are above the state average they are above the state average okay now here are comparisons of our district and the state broken down by specific level um so again this is the same kind of chart as the previous slides but they did share this information with us now so we can compare to the state it goes on level three level four and then level five okay so again this is something when you're at home and looking to have a good time you can sit down and look through this I know it's a tremendous amount and I'm really very serious please reach out to Dr Shep I because we you know any questions with how to navigate this or any questions about data on this we're happy to answer and and sit with you and talk with you about same thing for ma the distribution of level ones over time level twos over time level three over time level four over time and level five and then the same for science so there's a tremendous amount of data that we wanted to share yes and you know in a positive note we are getting more and more data from the state that we are able to use to compare ourselves to instead of just getting an average score and that's it and a percent passing they are giving us more information to help us uh guide where we're supporting our students and make data driven decisions that's right so that is a positive way to look at it too uh now here is the demographic analysis it is all of the same information like I said just broken down by uh various demographics so gender race uh program anything you can think of so I'm going to go through these fairly quickly because it is the same data um and again if there are questions about any of these slides please don't hesitate to reach out you can barely even see it that's how ridic um so uh you know sorry this is yes so again this is a breakdown by subgroup of race okay and here is the bar graph associated with it I'm a fan of bar graphs out yes here's the subgroup for Race Across all grade levels so this is an average for all grades and uh broken down by year so we did the last three years 22 23 24 and here's that distribution chart where you can see what level they scored in based on race that's for for math again I'm kind of going through these fairly quickly uh basically letting you know what information is available yes and I will have this posted tomorrow on the website so everyone can look at it here it is uh broken down by gender the last three years here's math by gender over the last three years and the distribution by gender science for Science and here it is for English by program uh so program meaning uh free and reduce lunch IEP 504 whether they're an ml student or English language learner um things like that so it's broken down there specifically uh this is particularly useful to us just because we want to make sure that we are supporting all of our populations um especially students who already have some supports in certain areas are they effective are they working do they need more support do we need to switch the way that support is being delivered broken down by all grades and across three years same thing for math and sence okay so summarizing all of that yes we have some achievements and interventions so what take home points significant notable achievements grade three math significant Improvement in both average scores and percentage of students meeting and exceeding expectations with a 13.3 increase in levels four and five bringing the district to 50.8% compared to the state 47.5 in out for one significant improvement with a 16.6 increase in levels four and five that's meeting and exceeding geometry we saw it looked like it was like just leveled out but what that actually equated to was 60.9% of students met are exceeded expectations outperforming the state average of 49% and in English grade three the percentage of students meeting in exceeding expectations Rose by 12.9% while the percentage of not meeting expectations decreased by 11.6% and this was a grade level that we were targeting last year with sports and intervention in grade six we had a significant 15.8% increase in uh meeting and exceeding expectations and our district was at 54.6% compared to the state's 53.2% I know I can do that uh grade nine a student a significant 21.2% % increase in students meeting and exceeding expectations bringing our district passing percentage to 65.2% compared to the state's 58% so kudos to the grade nine teachers absolutely and grade 11 the percentage of students achieving proficiency increased by 99.2% bringing the district to 34.7% compared to the states 28.1 okay and along with that as we said there are areas we're targeting each year to support um so how are we doing that we have a multi- tiered system of supports throughout the district to help uh support our students who need extra intervention so we recently implemented instructional coaches K to 12 which act as a tier one support they are pushing in the classrooms they are working with teachers on their pedagog pedagogical approach they're helping analyze data to see where are areas that students are excelling that we don't need to spend extra time on and where are areas that we need to reinforce uh we have dedicated math interventionists now in K through five which is a tier two and three support and we have comprehensive progress monitoring in instructional and intervention tools so we have I ready which allows us to Benchmark our students throughout the year which gives us a very very indepth analysis of of where students strengths are and where they have opportunities for growth and it allows our interventionists as well as our teachers to support the students exactly where they need it and that is a recent uh addition this year already uh dream boox is a similar program but DreamBox is an Adaptive tool that the students can go on where it is dynamic to their needs so it will go through uh math and English the kids will work on it and if a student is in a third grade classroom and has a fifth grade math ability it will be giving them fifth grade math questions but meanwhile that same student might be at a third grade level for English and DreamBox will give them third grade English material uh so it is dynamic based on the student need it will challenge where it needs to challenge and it will also support where it needs to support uh we have win periods which are what I need periods uh strengthened in K to three and it's integrated Within fourth through 5ifth these are periods where the students can work on things like DreamBox and they'll get supports from interventionists in the classroom where they'll get more small group instruction to uh to support and reinforce areas that are Target standards and the grade uh five math curriculum adoption and rollout is still underway uh so that is an ongoing process but it is something we're looking at as a means to support areas where we have opportunities to grow uh in math for 8th grade Dr shef yeah in eth grade we restructured the math curriculum we actually added another level to support so we will now have Algebra 1 we have will have an algebra 8 and we will also have math 8 that's meant to differentiate instruction and make sure we support students exactly where they are in those grades so you will see when we present next year many more students taking the math 8 njsla assessment uh so you should see a change in scores there as well uh so the algebra 8 students will be taking the math 8 exam along with the math 8 students and the algebra 1 uh students will be taking the algebra exam as they have in the past we will We are continuing to provide professional development and support for new curricular last year we rolled out quite a few new curriculars across the board in ela and in math and we're also in the process of doing a K8 science curriculum mapping with all the changing standards and such yes okay uh Dynamic learning Maps this is an assessment for some of our students with IEPs who are not able to take the njsla due to uh their specific needs um so in this report you'll see that we had 16 total students in District uh who were eligible to take it uh the actual number of students who took the assessment were 12 and uh the reason those four students were not taking the assessment were a combination of parent refusal or the student moving out of district and uh unfortunately we are not able to share any of the results uh for the dlm as the numbers all were under the suppressed number of 10 moving on to AP Dr shf yeah okay advanced placement I'm the AP coordinator so I get a little excited okay advanced placement uh this past year we offered 17 AP courses two new courses we offered psychology for the first time and pre-calculus we also had an AP course resume that hadn't been offered for a few years which was environmental science approximately 136 AP students were involved in the program and 10 136 students were in courses that totaled 278 exams so there are many students that took multiple AP exams 106 of the students had a score of three or greater and that meant that 78% of total AP students scored three or greater which is the typical College number for what they would accept depending on the college you can see the Distribution on the right of the number of students taking certain courses and it just gives you an idea about how many students are taking specific courses so we can see a tremendous amount of students are taking English Lang which is um an 11th grade English course we also have quite a few taking English Lit which is a 12th grade course all the way on the right we have US history but again that's just numbers that's not performance that's numbers here we see enrollment I thought it was important when we start talking numbers to actually make sure we understand it in context so that's why I put that on on the slide this year last year we had approximately 93 students at the high school and we had 36 students taking one or more AP courses so we have 15.1% of our population taking AP courses one or more and the number of exams was 278 I think that's very interesting to compare that number to the previous year um when the board that paid for the exams there was actually more exams last year the column to the right we want to look at growth for the AP program itself these are the the number of students who are enrolled in the course we can't say how many are going to take the exams yet right because we didn't take the exams yet but this is how many are enrolled in the course so we have approximately 165 students taking one or more AP courses that's 18% of our population and if every single one of those students took an exam we'd have 344 AP exams so comparing 2223 to 2324 what you're seeing here and I have a picture of it of course so you can actually see it in pictorial form so let's go to the next slide where you can see what we're seeing here on the left is 72% in 2023 had a score three or higher last year 77% had a score a free or higher and the graph to the right the gold was 2023 and that shows you how many ones twos threes fours and fives and then the dark blue is the percentage in 2024 so you can see we had less ones and twos and threes and more fours and fives excellent this is just a breakdown of each of the actual courses the average score within that course and the percent of exams with scores of three or higher so if you look at biology we had 100% of our students get you know three or higher um and it gives you you know the average score you look at scores of 100% in Cal BC you look at scores of 100 in drawing 100 in environmental science and across the board 100 in USG 4.8 was the average score of our students in usco and here's just showing you again the number of exams for summaries here's the average AP score per course now we also have to realize some of these courses have less than others so you know when we do averages I get a little funny about that but this shows you of the students in that particular course those were the average and you can see a lot of them you know over three you know over four here's where we compare test scores of three or five over three I'm sorry here's where we compare the test scores that are three or higher over a five-year comparison so this just shows you where we are with the percent of students and what they scored again putting things in context I think becomes very important and we don't want an isolated data point so you can see how we changed over time prior to covid like that Co year we had 273 um exams taken we're we're getting back up to that score again so that's the trend we want to see and again here's the same thing the percentages uh scores of three are higher we're we're getting to where we want to be over time okay and uh same thing in arts and humanities uh comp govern politics you can see here's the number of exams the means across from 2018 through this year um so these are the individual courses broken down by number of exams means and and then the exams with scores of three or higher so you see last year we didn't offer comp for European history next year we're planning on offering comp uh go again but we did offer human Geo and you can see the scores there and then what we have this year approximately 28 the number of students has doubled here in usgov we had in 20124 16 students with an average of 4.8 for 100% of our students scoring three or above you also see us history as well as last year's new course psychology had 22 students taking the exam this coming year we have 55 students um enrolled in AP set Spanish language we had approximately nine students uh for 89% we do not offer French or Italian unfortunately anymore right uh an Italian just uh as a point of reference we did not have a Italian these were students in the class that were willing to try they were motivated and wanted to take the course and our Italian teacher assisted them in studying for the exam on their own okay here we have English Lang we had 48 students taking the course we had English Lit we had 33 we did not offer and have not offered music theory okay 2D art and design uh we we did not offer art history we have not offered for several years um and drawing uh we had about three students and we have four enrolled this year again with all of those students uh getting a three or higher uh the art exam is a little different it's a portfolio submission so there's an upload of their drawings and then they are actually evaluated by uh college board and any time the students in drawing right now might decide to be submit their portfolio to 2D art and design that number could actually be spread out of a couple different AP categories right as far as the stem component Cal AB we had 19 students for 89% um three or above average is 4.1 Cal BC 100% uh with an average of 4.4 and statistics we had 11 students um and about 64% had a three or higher preal first year offered we had 22 students take the course the average was a four and 91% had three or higher computer science principles you can see about 70% at a three high with a mean of 3.1 we have a lot of AP courses biology we had 100% getting uh three or higher chemistry we had 12 students and you can see the increase too I think that's important to note like when we see these increases in the courses um 83% and environmental science came back last year of we had 100% getting three or higher with an average of four 24 are signed up for that course this year this just shows you the number of students by grade level taking AP classes we had a couple students that were freshman that took AP classes we had about we had 14 that were 10th grade but you can see the bulk of our students are Juniors and seniors more detail more breakdown by grade level and it gives you how many one two threes and fours this is one of my favorite slides because what the gold means is that Vernon is above not only the state but it's also above the global average so if something is in yellow like biology Vernon scored at 4.0 that was their our average the New Jersey scores average was 3.42 global average was 3.15 therefore it's all gold and everywhere you see gold we're either well we're above the state average and for above the global average so you can see there's a lot of gold there so we're doing really well with our AP programming excellent so the perspectiv for next year always moving forward right next year we plan on offering AP seminar to grade 10 what that will allow us to do is then the following year offer AP research to grades 11 and 12 you can't offer AP research without AP seminar so AP seminar would take the place of an honors um 10th grade curriculum you also see AP Physics that will be offered next year as you know hopefully having the the interest we've had students already reach out about it um there are a couple students interested in taking AP Physics this year without the course we'll see how that shakes out um we also plan on bringing AP government politics back the following year is AP research and we're looking into AP preap courses which are a curriculum that we could adopt that would be for the honors level classes that's not AP class but it's a rigorous curriculum it's something we're looking into all right SATs okay so here's our average scaled score summary um again we have it broken down into bar charts as well as uh tables underneath which are kind of hard to see from this distance uh but the year-over-year you can see we've had significant growth in uh both the uh literacy comp component and the math component uh as well as the composite together so we're scaled SAT score comparison so for the literacy which is purple there uh it's ebrw evidence-based reading and writing uh so you can see Vernon Township School District we went from 539 in 2020 to 2021 uh to 55 556 this uh past year um and in in uh last year that's about a 11 Point growth uh in literacy in uh math we went from a 538 to a 544 which overall composite our average went from 1083 up to 1100 for the high school um which is well above the uh national average so that final column on the right Compares uh the differences from our district to the national average uh and you can see we're well above in those areas which we're very very happy about yeah the green is good and the fact that we're 25 points 30 points above the national average is great okay and again here's a comparison with the scaled scores uh just broken down into bar graphs but you can see the significant growth uh from one year to the next moveing up and here's another just awesome slide which just goes to show you us how we've improved our scores over time and compared to the National averages how much better we are doing than the national average we are going up and the national average is actually and here's our Benchmark comparison again just another way to to break down the percent meeting uh so we've gone up last year literacy 77% we're up to 81% % uh and in math from 52% to 54 uh again National averages being 65 and 62 and then 45 and again going down to 42 so that final column on the right again shows the difference this year we're about 15% higher in literacy and 10% higher in math and here again it's just shown as a bar graph to give you a little visual and for math you made it for 125 yes congratulations um questions yes any members have any questions yeah Melissa yes um so first of all thank you for putting all of that information together and for crunching all of that data and making off first slot that was a tremendous amount of War um I did have I think just two questions um the first being based on one of the more recent slides regarding the SAT scores there's a lot of data comparing us to the national average but did I miss a slide about the New Jersey average uh no we have the national so we we can look into it more we'd have to actually go and pull yeah they don't actually provide that they provide it so we have to look at every that would be something you have to do on the side yes we'd have to look at every District in state in addition yeah I was just curious I want to make sure I didn't miss it oh no no yeah anything they provide us we like we said it's nice that we're starting to get more of that data yeah you know so hopefully in the future maybe we'll get that okay um and then just one more quick question if you don't mind I think this goes back to the njsla again the tons of data that you presented there were a lot of slides that I'd like to take a look at later but um my question concerned the groupings of race gender and by program um like looking at some of the bar graphs it's hard to tell again I'll go back and look more closely but some of them um I think for gender and one of the results look pretty significant I was wondering if any analyses are conducted to see if there is a statistical difference in that scoring between race gender just so we can identify further opportunities for growth yes yes that this is the first year that they provided us with that much detailed data and then we took it we made it visual because I'm a visual person I want to see visual so we're getting together as a team and we we only had this for about a month you know so we wanted to get it out to the public as fast as possible um and then our next step is to break it down individually by program by gender all that kind of thing and see where we are with that that's our next step great thank you thank you again now we can get feed back if you would like us to come back and talk more about it we are too so thank you I love numbers too so thank you for putting all that together of course Mr Krauss yeah thank you guys it was great but I have a question that grade three is this the first year they've been tested since they've been using the Innova mat curriculum yes and they've jumped 133% which is huge numbers I I just want to make sure that people out there understand we have a new curriculum it's the first year it's tested it's actually working very well and I I'm think we're moving it up to the other grades as we go along we're doing fourth grade with it next year yes well we did fourth grade this past year okay so it was third and fourth but the concentration honestly was with third this year we're we're supporting more with fourth and we are doing a soft introduction to five we'll actually roll out five the following year it's really important that you roll thing out in a stepwise manner sure because what we found out this past year especially the further you get away from the beginning the more there's deviation and gaps to fill and that's really what we noticed in like this year fourth grade there are gaps that needed to be filled and then that's that's where we're doing with the intervention I also have one other just a comment we look at all of these State averages New Jersey is one of the top states for schooling in the country right we're always in the top three and 50% or or or more can't pass these tests who who makes these tests well this I love that question well because we don't have the same test as New York we don't have the same test as Pennsylvania or Florida or Texas or any of these states so it's important that we realize that NJ dooe is actually making these Assessments in in coordination with Pearson Pearson right so they're coming up with these tests and they're making the you know the cut scores and they're doing all that kind of thing so when they put out a test it's 25% passing 37 passing 40% passing that's based on a test that the NJ dooe is actually made and you cannot compare that to other states they're very different tests okay I understand that but now the thing is I think the test is is flawed if nobody can pass the test and we're doing much much better than those averages a lot of things and I congratulate you guys and commend you on that thank you but do they ever send you a curriculum and say this is what we're testing to look at this this is the kind of stuff we're gonna be to test on I know I'm I'm a retired teacher so I I feel your pain I do so they do give us evidence statements where it it goes through every standard and it shows uh you know what standards were tested and how many questions things of that nature and then they give us samples of what those questions could be uh they release some questions every year um for us to use and look at and we practice with those and then we'll make similar ones to them uh you know altering various pieces of it but uh you know and it goes they scale it from the easiest you know level questions to the hardest um so what we do is we do data carousels with our faculty and we'll sit and we'll go through and look at those and say okay so in what areas are we at State average or higher at what areas are we below State average and we take that and look at our curriculum di in other words sure where is this because of a gapping curriculum or is this because the way we're teaching it isn't working or you know where where was the falter here so once again thank you guys great job Mr Zimmerman so on the slide intervention strategies those are obviously areas of concern you know throughout the district and I seen a lot of the interventionalists and the coaches which are all part of the group hired in the past with the tax increase that have directly thrown into students you know with you know for me building the grounds we did all those 41 projects it's kind of cut and dry that but this is the support that the kids need that changed the way you know by bringing them back and putting them in the teachers hired with that tax will directly be dealing with the students in areas that we still need to work with well a lot of was very positive which was great but I'm glad that you did identify the strategies for the areas that we still need it's a big District you know a lot of things going on but I just wait to see that I get great Mr Contino did you have some yes so I noticed there were different cohorts of students moving through the system and some were performing a lot better than others like for instance you're showing the third grade test scores a lot and they were doing really well but then I think it was was it fourth or fifth and it where the ELA was a lot weaker besides the pandemic because I noticed this was also a pattern in the upper levels of the middle school and I believe one grade level in high school I wish I had it in front of me um what kind of factors do you think might influence those test scores and what interventions are we doing to try and make the results more consistent and also is that normal like this is is this something that we see every year when we give the njsla do we see certain cohorts of students doing significantly better than others or is this something unique to a post pandemic environment I know that's a lot wonderful question wonderful question um it it's hard to say so so you know the these cohorts of students obviously were tracking as they move through the district you know last year you mentioned fourth grade those students in third grade uh similar scores we showed you know if you when you're looking at the data on the website and you're going through these slides one thing I like to do is to take you know this year's fifth grade students and then look at their scores from fourth grade and 23 and then you know in third grade and 22 because you can actually track that and just see you know because really if a student scores you know if the average was 750 where they met uh in you know third grade and then in fourth grade they score the same thing that doesn't mean they didn't grow right because it's a different test it's a Year's worth of growth so even the kids who were well below at 720 if they got a 720 the next year yes it's below but they did show a full Year's growth so now what we have to do with those students is over a Year's growth to try and catch them up so these areas where we're showing growth in these cohorts that means the teachers are not only teaching them everything they need to know for that school year they're going above they're going above and beyond which all of our teachers do so they're filling in those gaps they're they're uh giving support where it's needed um of course some of it's associated with the pandemic you know we had a half a year where the kids were learning online which you know I think we all can now say doesn't work it doesn't um then we went to an Adaptive you know blue and gold weeks I know I'm having flashbacks now but people were learning how to read in in like that half you know little kids were learning how to read in that situation which is very challenging sure so I'm sure that of course to Discount that at all it had some effect how much you know depends who you're talking to um so yes some of it I count to that some of it um is getting back on our feet from the pandemic you know so so as a teacher teaching in that kind of environment you're lecturing right you're on Zoom so you're that's all you can really do uh then getting back into the classroom getting back to small group instruction doing centers and stuff you know we we jump back onto it but there there was a lot to come back from so for those certain cohorts uh it seemed that impacted greater the higher grade level it was really e8th grade uh where we saw that um we rolled out a new curriculum last year we were focusing 678 right so six we really locked it in seventh we were working with um e they were working with it but you know we we have areas where we're rolling out like Dr Shep said you know step by step uh so we're we've already met with the teachers at the end of last year to talk about the new curriculum and we're what were positives what were things they want to see grow what were things they want to see change we work this summer on adapting the curriculum and even the beginning of this year what are we rolling out we're talking about adding another novel or two in certain areas you know there's all discuss you know we really believe curriculum is a living document it's based on the kids needs and what they're learning that year so using this data the evidence statement reports we are adapting on the fly as we need to based on the kids' needs but going back in the past looking at those cohorts and seeing differences that are that noticeable is that something that's happened in the past or is that something particular to this I would say that you have that happen every so often for sure I don't think that's unusual you will have a cohort for a certain year that you can actually track all the way through the system whether it's Behavior whether it's a certain academic or something like that that's definitely something that's why every year you will naturally see a fluctuation in scores that's to be expected um the thing for us is to if there is something there's change in programming there's change in numbers we lost teachers last year we had that performance when we lost quite a few teachers so there's a lot of things that could go into it it's not as simple as one thing it's so multifactoral that we have to look at the whole picture to see where we're at the intervention piece our our literacy coach is you know thank goodness for her she's amazing our new literacy coach that's K12 she's going in and she's working with teachers new teachers veteran teachers People Who coming back from Co that was a thing you know coming back from covid now we're going back to centers students we had to get them used to working in groups because some of them forgot how to or never learned how to so the progression to get to where we want to be with many lessons and you know small group instruction and that kind of thing it it it's taking a little bit of time to to get students acclimated to that type of learning but it's going really well I'm asking um this partially because in where I teach I'm noticing my eighth graders are sometimes at a lower reading level than my sixth and seventh graders so I've been thinking a lot about cohorts and the factors that influence groups of students going through the system so I find this really fascinating and you guys did such a good job presenting that data in a digestible way that was just brilliantly done thank you thank you well just so you know about the eighth gr I'm sorry about the eth the eighth graders they were in fourth grade when the shutdown happened and they were in fifth grade during the hybrid and I'm not sure how your school did it but you want to go back and what I've been doing is going back and seeing what standards were happening that's where you're getting the critical thinking that's where you're getting thematics that's where you're getting all stuff initially developed is in fourth and fifth grade just like some of the things we're seeing in fourth and fifth were developed we're talking first and second grade that's when they're learning how to read That's when they're learning addition and subtraction and then you get to grade two and they're adding and subtraction two and three digit numbers and that's what you see certain standards impact later on because if you look at the doe curriculum it's very cyclical in nature yep they'll start laying it out here and especially Ela they lay it out here we're going to cycle back in this grade level we're going to cycle back in this grade level so the fact that you're seeing it in grade five and grade eight is very intentional well actually it'd be grade 58 very intentional to how the curriculum's designed by The View I can I've noticed it and it's interesting to see that the same patterns happen here and in my district yeah and really that's why it's so crucial to do these kind kind of score analy and why we Benchmark at the beginning of the year because those coverts are so different and they'll travel with each other and like Dr Shep said that's why you know our literacy coaches um and our math coaches are so invaluable because that data dive and that work with the teachers is imperative because it's a new group of kids so what do they need yes we have a curriculum that says what we need to cover but what those students know within that curriculum already varies so you know all of our coaches are are just integral in that uh you know we have a great team so we're very fortunate so the real results will be next year when we have when we see the results of all the coaches and interventions yes very excited yes and of course all of our wonderful teachers Charles um well the first thing I I just wonder how many how many more slides until you totally lose your voice oh borderline borderline yeah um um I want to say something and you know there there's two sides of this so we sore scores and and I really appreciate how you guys laid it out this you guys I mean have been improving with these slid shows um thousand slides probably the next one but you're doing really good with them and giving us the data that we we like to and and I I see the the data because that's a good point when you bring up the the the how many points we got versus the state points but the percentage is really because now you look at that and you say there are some places right and you know hopefully people don't take too much is like you know it's more likely you're better to you're better more likely to pass if you went to a different School obviously we have a lot of them that we are better you're better coming the Vernon than the state average because our we're above that your that that one slide so um with that there was what I'm worried about is this this um and and and again there was I think there was more we were above the state average proba percentage wise passing so we're you're more likely to pass it um the the the average slide I don't want to go back because it's like real far was that averages of averages at the end that the gold bar or was that um total number you don't know so the one was the the distribution so where it had uh the level one and two versus level four and five yes and then they gave us like what our percentage was overall yes yes so that was basically how many of our stud students changed from ones and twos to fours and fives so where was the shift of our distribution so we wanted a positive trend in the four and five columns and a negative Trend in the one and twos okay there were also some slides that at the very beginning the gold was to highlight where we are this year because we had 10 years of data right so the gold was more like this is where we are because I know you're looking at a lot of numbers yeah and I think unfortunately even going back to park there's different assessment right it's even harder even say supp we were higher there doesn't mean we're necessarily worse now the different tests right so well just like even anybody talking about anything prior to 2015 when the hespa the hespa test proficiency at a certain grade level it didn't test critical thinking it didn't go into the literacy piece there were so many things that differentiate what happened before 2015 and what we're seeing now so that's a whole another topic yeah but so the where where we're lower you got I I I think you mentioned it I just want to make sure you got that's what you're targeting we're lower than the percentage than the state right oh just because we beat them in numbers right we're looking so um so that that's good but I'm worried more about the fifth the eighth graders so you look at the eighth graders and we have a large majority and or that didn't do well was in the eighth grade math right that was the worst out of algebra did well Algebra 2 those are the more higher performing children those are the ones that going to be on the more of the advanced track but the ones that in eighth grade are more of the probably the kids that need a little bit more help and and I know you guys said you have a plan for eighth grade this year building it up that's great we have a overa manth starting lower what's happening between Fifth and eighth grade how are we going to because those kids if they're falling behind in sixth grade if they fell behind in fourth grade another in fifth grade another sixth grade they're going to fall behind even if they had the Nova man this year are you talking about the kids that are currently in fifth tracking all all way up no well yeah because if we're we're having that problem in eighth grade with it looks like over time eighth grade regular eighth grade math was L grade eight math just grade eight only 20 kids there was 20 kids that's why it wasn't the majority of the grade level right one class but their scores are low and they're the ones that are falling behind so what are we doing to them in seventh fifth sixth grade everybody in grade eight math grade seven grade six it doesn't matter what class they're actually in they take the same test so no matter what level of class no matter what level they are in so for instance if I'm in the high school I might have a CP level an ACP level and honors level and an AP level each one of those courses offers different supports but every single one of those kids would take the same state test and that test is not differentiated that test doesn't have any additional supports so the same thing is happening in grade eight eight right so in e8th grade the entire grade level for this report took the algebra one test except for one class that one class uh was getting significant supports um so that's one because if they now if you take that and they're they're Blended in in seventh grade with the numbers it's almost like you guys don't even have anything to see what these kids are are feeling a 2 A3 when you're separated them out of there and you and you take the test we have stuff that we don't have there the demographic yeah yeah yeah the demographics when it breaks it out by program that's when we can actually see it and that's when we can actually track it okay but we can't put too much up here because once you start to break that out the numbers are too low and then they become identifiable right you could actually pick out students then but like on our end uh as teachers when I said we're doing those data carousels the teachers can actually see all of their students and how they did on our benchmarks so like when we give the Benchmark that's how they're doing what you're saying like so obviously this group of kids in seventh grade you know they needed supports in these areas same thing in eth grade when they moved up so they are getting those supports um but you're right it's it looks like how would you even tell right yeah you know but in our internal testing we can divy them up because it does break down by class level for us okay yes and and and I want to say to you know you guys I mean that last that one slide I had all the gold boxes I mean it's great to see that Vernon is doing that much better than the state and I mean it goes to show what we're doing and the curriculum you guys have put in place and the teachers that are doing it right in administration so I don't want to take away from that I just you know I'm worried about the ones that I'm not making it oh yeah as as we all are yeah and then and then I had a question about AP um English uh language so that looked like that was the highest percentage of of or keep people of students students the lowest number of passive yes so are we deluded too many people in those classes like how many tack I have a perspective and it's my perspective I would personally prefer more students exposed to that rigor of class and have that exposure and have that challenge and have that preparation for the next level then decide not to take an AP class and get an A or a B in a lower level class to me that shows that there are a lot of kids willing to stretch for many kids that was their first AP class um the teacher was amazing at like promoting it we were very interested in promoting it and we want to get kids taking those High rigor classes even though they didn't score high on the test I know there's like a philosophical difference where there's some teachers where they might not want a certain certain students in their class because they don't think they'll get a four or five I'm much more under the mindset bringing in because we're teaching that curriculum it's AP curriculum you there's no deviation from that you got to teach what you got to teach for the AP test I'd much rather have our students have that challenging and that rigor and stretch themselves then then take a lower class and and they don't get that that riger so that's is is that more of a sophomore year class that well that's why we're thinking about the a seminar uh for 10 to lead into that AP run Katie I'm sorry you're still going Charles I just wanted to give do I have to like close to this or no no we can s my first time guys um so I actually took AP I was one of those 60 however kids speaking to the mic oh okay sorry guys um so I was one of those kids and I would say that Miss aen don't mention anybody's name it's okay it's okay our teacher did a very great job of preparing us for the test um but a lot of the stuff that's on that test it's rhetorical analysis it's a lot of stuff that I have never seen before any of my peers have never seen before so it's very um like Dr sep said it's a good way to get us exposed to it um a lot of the kids I would say did struggle at the beginning but by the end when we were getting towards the AP test more and more kids were getting it during class during our time writings during all the stuff that prepares you for the test and there's been a lot of different teachers for that class I would say that I've seen but I think that in the future I think that number will go up because the teacher who is teaching it now is doing a very good job at preparing for all the kids for in the future um so I do have a perspective on that so I would say that it's definitely working but also I think part of the reason where it's not as high of a passing rate per se is because we're so I've seen um we're writing book report not book reports we're writing papers or doing literary analysis and that's rhetorical analysis and I had never seen any of those devices before in my life and they're sitting in front of you and you're like what the heck am I supposed to do at this AP exam I have 45 minutes to write this and like oh my gosh but it's it's new and it's that's the reason why it could be so um different I'd say but it's a good different you got exposed yeah I'm so sorry okay okay we appreciate your input make one comment about AP that a kid that takes an AP class no matter what score they get on a test does much better in college than a kid that does not take an AP course okay I I'm I'm an AP teacher too so I mean and I know that whether you K get a one or a two doesn't matter they still do better in college than a kid that got an A and A CP class okay Charles you still have the floor I'm sorry I just want okay um sat so we looked at how they're growing which is is great that's phenomenal right because that's most of our kids who want to go to college they have to take that are we how is that happening are is it the course we're teaching the SATs or is it because we're just our curriculum is just being fine-tuned enough to to yeah we're we're always adjusting our curriculum and fine-tuning it um you know doing those data carousels our teachers are constantly working with each other to review curricula and you know what's working what's not working uh adjust you know uh not necessarily novel selection but what skills are being focused on Via those those novels um so it's it's always a game of of going through and what are the needs and at the high school level it's especially challenging because you may have various you know levels of students in those courses so it's uh you know it's just a group effort and they do a phenomenal job of a adapting or and finding the why is always hard Charles especially with sat squares because we talk about this all the time that's why we offer our Juniors our Juniors and our sophomores to take the bats so they have exposure to that test and the more exposure you have to that test you have the opportunity to to grow when you take the SAT but you also have the opportunity to see where you're at sit down with your guidance counselors to see what areas of grow you need and there's some great online tools now too where you can plug in your PSAT scores to see what you need to do for your SATs as well yeah I it's great because it my kids I don't think I just had to sign I had to go actually sign up my son to to do the SATs yesterday so um I don't understand where it's coming from I mean that's great if you're not teaching teaching the pest because it just shows that a little more help these kids could be get really really good schol you know awesome school sure sure I have some studies study tools for you later okay Charles for son not for heav anybody else thank you thank you so much it was lengthy but it was well worth oh good I'm glad right moving on to item I approval of minutes the minutes from the closed work session of September 12th and then the work session from September 12th as well as the closed public session from September 19th and the public session from September 19th I have a motion please so moved moved by Mr KRA second second second by Mr cantino any discussion s I'm sorry mag I apologize I apologize both of you any discussion uh roll call please miss Brock yes Mr smaga yes Mr cantino yes abstain we're noted Mr Krauss yes Dr Ross Yes abstain we noted Mr Sweeney yes Mr zaran yes Miss Ahern yes motion carries thank you president's report I would like to provide some insight regarding the public sections of our regularly scheduled board meetings the Board of Ed meetings are held to conduct the business of running operating the public schools in this District the Vernon Board of edge strives to follow Robert's Rules of Order when conducting our meetings a public comment period is required in conducting Board of Education meetings in New Jersey the first public comment period is limited to agenda items only except for students who may comment on any school related issue any person who would like to comment on agenda items should come up to the podium identify themselves and identify the municipality in which they reside and then they will have five minutes for comment clarification input or questions all comments and remarks will be addressed to the presiding person the board will not enter into a back and forth exchange with the public we will note inut or questions from the public and provide spon responses at a later time or date this time is intended to be for comments not discussion the board May set limits on what subjects may be addressed how long public comment will be and how many times a person may speak we have set five minute time limits in the past we have not limited how many people may speak the board May or how how many times a person may speak the board may visit that at some point in the future the second public comment period is not limited to agenda items it is designed to provide a means for the public to comment regarding any school related issue that they oine is necessary this second public comment period is also limited to five minutes further the board has previously not placed subject limitations or limits on how many times the person may speak again this may occur in the future the public comment section is not a platform from anyone to Foster political agenda it is not a forum to falsely and negligently accuse someone who has volunteered over 20 years to the Vernon School System of criminal coercion by citing some uptu State Statute is not a medium to equivocate regarding statements made in local media is not a platform to vaguely falsely and dispassionately assert an employee is taking enticement from a Textbook Company these kinds of opinionated attacks will be shut down immediately this type of ethically goated negativity is not part of the business of operating a school system please understand that this does not limit the Public's right to comment at school board meetings in any manner the board members will model courtesy and respect and encourage members of the public to do the same on a high note this Saturday the Vernon High School marching band is sponsoring music in the mountains 22 marching bands have been invited to our high school for a band competition the weather forecast looks very promising and the location during this time of the year is truly one of the most beautiful settings in the state please come to the high school this Saturday for a very special event that is the end of my comments and the next item is board reports Finance and bilings the ground Mr Zer yes so the finance part on the district has had an opportunity to relook at the health care benefits we are still investigating it along with the Union participation to come to a better hopefully a better deal for all involved um building grounds we still have many projects still completed or ongoing throughout the district and you know once we're done with this 40 group of 41 there's probably 41 right behind it to go again so this will be an ongoing hopefully subject thank you any community relations I no reported this okay curriculum Miss pellet is out Miss Pet's not here but I she asked me to get the notes which I will okay thank you so um we met on September 30th and we were following up on the preschool update and while we were talking about that it came in so we're everybody knows all about that I don't really need to go through all that again um we had a math discussion um reported satisfaction the administration reported satisfaction with the new math curriculum in place in K to 4 and the company's support and rolling it out um which was pretty good and we talked about QC the prep preparation for QC is ongoing um the also the class sizes the committee received data on current average class sizes which were reduced by recent hires I'm not going to go through all them all I believe they're online right the class sizes I I maybe maybe not but we're all under 30 most of them are like a 25 ratio depending on the on the class okay uh let's see no classes other than fizzed currently have more than 30 students in no there's a couple more there are yeah I clarified that oh you did okay all right because when we had this meeting that that wasn't clarified just yet so I call the chair clarify okay I'm sorry I didn't get that information but okay thank you all right so then uh let's see no CTE participation board requested CTE participation data for our next meeting also discussed the lack of a manufacturing technology track due to difficulty finding an accredited instructor um we went over the uh the assessment update I'm not going to go through the scores the AP scores were very very good we and the SAT scores so all of that and just quickly for the building and technology updates um the are the Ben Q boards were funded last year is currently being installed by maintenance phone system upgrade is underway Varsity tutor service available to students is being pushed out through the guidance Department I believe and then uh we had an open committee discussion uh there was an idea proposed for family Tech knite that would provide families with information on best practices for device use and monitoring at home and programs that can be used like Life 360 bark Etc and that's that thank you thank you questions the uh partnership committee partnership committee met on 109 in the conference room at walner Ridge 22 people attended including teacher representatives from each School the Board of Education Administration administrative represent representation from each school and central office Personnel agenda items included pest issues at se Mount mostly bees not not pests that could be a lot of different people uh the air conditioning uh after 6 pm and during the summer mainly in person parent teacher conferences was discussed half days at the during the first two days of schools was an item of discussion uh candidate night is sponsored by the vtea and the a vtaa uh the next meetings will be scheduled for 2525 and 5725 that's the end of that report next is uh policy Mr samaga hey we uh we met on the policy committee met on 10 um I'm sorry October 3rd uh from 5:30 to 6:20 uh in in it was uh Russ John Melissa and myself uh we met uh via Google meets um I'm just going to go right through we had we went over the SEC readings um this is what we went over in uh October 17th meeting and um first one is is just the board participation I just want to point out just take a look before we finish this wrap this up this really uh affects us so if if you do oppose it but the board the committee does agree this this is what we um should do the one change was that um which we said before we voted last time was to the would be calendar year not uh school year as far as the number of uh doing the maximum days for the um for the board members to be out um service animals last chance to get that miniature horse once so that's never going away is it the more important ones are are this um the first readings for this this month um just because we haven't discussed them and uh we there we we're going to pass the the regulation for attendance 5200 um we we are going to review the policy at a later date uh we got some feedback from the uh from the ad hoc committee um they are still looking at stuff so they're want to evaluate more and I think they're meeting once or once or twice more I think uh Jen said in the future so we we'll come back and revisit the policy for attendance uh see if anything needs to be changed a later date um the next one the next two are are policy and regulation for suicide um nothing just minor changes in wording on on those so if you just take them there it's highlighted um the board the uh committee um recommends that we approve them as going the there is uh actually I'll bring it up later but and that's will have all right thank you um Miss AER special services yep so we also met on October 3D um we discussed the concerns from our recent Board of Ed meeting regarding restraints um for students given the student safety data reports um teachers and educational staff go through an extensive training yearly this is this technique is more of like giving a hug to protect the student from harm staff will utilize this utilize skills and techniques to deescalate the situation first restraints are viewed as the last resort in order to prevent the student from harm after a restraint occurs protocol is to call the parent right away and discuss the matter at hand um even with the increased size of the Vernon ER program and ABA programs the restraints of appear to be lower than in Prior years within range in comparison to other districts of our size we also discuss current successes of the year um our multi-tiered system of supports mtss with the help of our interventionists and coaches students are getting help right away with math and language arts coaches are also providing new strategies and techniques uh with the child service team csts um they're in the classroom observing in and assisting for ER the this program is new at Glen Meadow and Lansbury Hall this year and we're off to a great start as the programs are doing very well for ABA this is new at the high school this program is also doing very well as the new teachers are taking the bowl by the horns there are two new classrooms one being a sensory room with a dining room table to learn life skills like setting a table we also have a successful win for with play unified they are providing us with a grant for $500 for Club shirts and also funding for special projects and Technical Support um we have unified program a class a resource class for life skills with peers we have a unified Club where kids with and without disabilities sit down and connect both of these programs provide special bonds and experiences and are a huge success and we would hope that we would have similar programs like these for Cedar Mountain and Rolling Hills in the future thank you is there an absentee is report about two okay we uh we met September 24th um and the standing purpose of this committee is to reduce the district's chronic absenteeism rate or the number of students that are absent more than 18 days during the school year and it's currently at 20% so and I take up the measures taken thus far were more robust communication prior to the excuse me prior to the start of the school year at back to school night signage in school buildings Flyers distribution of attendance success plans to parents parents surveys proactive reach out to students and families when absences occur to discuss reasons and set goals administrators looked at previous year's data to identify students with excessive absences in the past and ask the counselors to have individual meetings with the students after three absences to set goals for attendance and then weekly meetings after five absences they reported that the parents were appreciative of these reach outs um there was a status report I'm not going to go through all of the schools for the first 12 days of school they went through their absences not including there was a large amount of people absent on September 12th because of that um that safety alert that went out it was the day after September 11th obviously um there was a a lot of reports of the surveys um they received a lot of responses some percentages were just because of anxiety mostly it's illnesses and and and the kids sometimes they missed the bus dependent on most of these things were health related issues why kids were absent um so committee members discussed District policy on absenteeism did not see a need a change for this time and the next steps we're going to wait until after the first marking period and go through the numbers and see what how we can deal with that also I noticed that uh we're going down to the workshop next week there's a lot of uh seminars on absenteeism and chronic I'm going to attend a couple of those and see what's going on that thanks good yeah thank you thank you cell phone ad hoc Mr zerman so we have not met I've only heard positive things about it so far so I was hoping to get a meeting in November discuss how it's rolled out if it needs to be tweaked or changed or left the same and if we had to do that we could do that when they come back from Christmas vacation thank you Mr zman okay that's it so we're GNA open the meeting to the public and um once again identify yourself identify the municipality in which you reside and you will have five minutes for agenda items only we are open to the public Castle from Glenwood Castle Le but I think I saw most of the the score presentation um I have some comments that are similar to ones I had the last time with the scores which it seems like we are still striving to have the state average be what we consider our top goal like if the state is uh you know 35% and we're 37% we're like look how you know look how good we're doing um I feel like the state average I tried to do some research today on it and of the I couldn't find all the districts but of the ones that I could find the state average is really weighed down by a lot of bad districts that are in the state you know we do have some uh higher uh achieving districts but they don't even come close to how many bad districts we have so for me um you know while I'm happy to see some of the improvements I think the uh the AP and the SATs are great I think that's a special group of students too and I I I'm glad that they're doing as well as they are um I think we need to taper some of our excitement over it because of the general uh categories that I saw I I didn't see a lot of great improvements there and to me I saw a few that were below the state average which is extremely concerning to me um so my questions were and I know you don't answer questions but I'm going to throw them out there anyway is do we or can we have a goal per category that we're shooting for and then we track against that and a realistic goal that we're shooting for so we we got you know 34% we're not shooting for what the state average is we're saying in two years we want to be 44% on this specific subject whatever it is um um instead of just having you know just basing everything on these horrible State scores and the average you know average itself is not that great anyway I'd like to see like median numbers as well just to kind of see where where things are um along with that could we not also find districts similar to size and maybe in the relative geographical location in New Jersey that we could compare to I mean we're never going to have you know Apples to Apples but see where they stand with us and track against that um just to kind of get some other other data in there um and look at you know the the very top districts that are scoring the best and let's see what the differences are with those because for me like I do a lot of this at my work um and when you're you know trying to do like a performance analysis you don't just track against one data set you you want to get as many as you can so you can kind of rule out anomalies that are out there so I didn't see any of that and that may be something that we have and it just wasn't on the presentation but that's um that's something that I had so um I did let me just see here so the only other thing I'll say and and I'm not trying to be a jerk about this but I know when I had brought up scores the last time uh scores were kind of minimalized like they're not that important that's not what you base everything on but then it's seems like when any of the scores do slightly improve all of a sudden we're saying hey look at these scores you know we're getting we're getting pretty good now so I think we've got to put a a standard um or the board has to have you know a standard approach to the scoring is it important is it not important you know what are we going to do we can't pick we can't pick when it's good and say it's important and not when it's not good and say it's not that important other other changes are happening so um hopefully that'll happen but that's it for me thanks thank you Mr Castle anybody else in the audience we have anybody online Angela uh yes we have Martin parer Mr peringer can you hear me yes good all right uh I want to take it back on to what the guy perform me said unfortunately I didn't get his name uh or remembered it uh uh the data a lot of the advances go away if you look at cohorts like if you look at third grade 22s fourth grade 24 fifth grade 24 54 then you don't see that much improvement on the one hand also what is if you compare to State average we had an extreme drop during covid I know that was not your Administration but uh you're not even back to preco levels it seems and that is of concern we're not back to levels that we used to be I remember my daughter graduated in 2014 and while she was in school uh we were nipping on the top 33% we were ranked like hundreds 110 out of like 280 300 schools not where we are ranked now if you want to use ranking numbers so there's a lot that can be done I would also what I'm missing is a different approach to view the numbers in my opinion and that's entirely my opinion the purpose of the school is to prepare the students for time in their lives after school we never I've never heard in the past 25 years statistics or mentioned how well do we prepare our students for after school except we are sending 60% of whatever to a four-year College how do they fear in the four-year College um my daughter created C PC with my help with Dr hme and with uh Dr alfi in the administration because she got eight students together for that we still have eight students now each AP class may or may not get your credit in college my daughter took 17 AP classes in high school but she only wound up only maybe under quotation marks 28 credits when she went to Corell because they only accept the five so not every AP class will uh give you credits but what it will do is you as a student get a whole year except it was for AP bu which was Tau in one year when the call was taking it you got a whole year to take a one semester course so each should take you tell you as a student if you can hack let's say AP math AP science whatever in if you can hack the course because there's not that much difference in mental development between an 18 year old in your senior year and a 19y old in college that one that two months over the summer can be very uh and you can have an epiphany but most most people don't you know so uh it would be a very good measure if a particular College pass is for you C PC we have 10 or less constantly yeah it's necessary class that you have to take in college if you do anything except liberal arts okay you want to become a computer programmer you got to take it you want to become an engineer anything engineer bioengineer chemistry you got to take it you want to become a doctor you got to take it etc etc you want to become a painter or or a actor you don't have to take it so that should give you an idea if you 30 seconds Mr perer 30 seconds it's always very much true second with me I have no special rights here so I might have to go to different formats to to voice it so the question is can we uh see in the light of that and all right now the CPC wonderful data just shows that our top 2% of the students can hack it that's all it basically the data what it means unless we come to a point where we have like 30 40 or 50 students in C Business which we don't seem to want time up Mr parer yes thank you thank you that was it okay close the meeting to the public and looking at uh item M which I'm very looking forward to student representative report from missina Chanel there is somebody with a hand up he just said that that was after we CL okay who was it we can open it yeah Mrs paladini I thank you I did have my hand up the whole time but anyway okay we opened it okay thank you first I want to make it very clear that I think our teachers are fabulous nothing I ever say is a criticism of our teachers um I want to ask a couple of questions about the test results and try to do it as quickly as I possibly can aren't these scores in the aftermath of covid when the scores were so low oh that's right you said you weren't going to answer questions so I guess I'll have to ask the questions and hope that you'll later answer them um so if these scores are the aftermath of Co when the scores were so low how could the scores be attributed to Inova mat um the other question that I have is did and and this one I would really like answered uh because it's important did the teachers of these classes that scored higher in math did these teachers supplement with any other math instruction or did they only strictly use Anova mat um and the comment was made that they were getting back on their feet from the pandemic and yeah that's probably true and that the real results will be next year but what I'd like to know is what factors influence these test scores and um only grade three went up the others went down so my question is did the teachers in grade three supplement the Innova math instruction with anything else that's my question and I guess I have one more comment if I have any time left you do thank you um you mentioned an opinionated attack Joe Sweeney I don't know if you were directing that at me but I asked a question whether any teachers were getting compensated based on the clause in your memorandum of understanding that said teachers may be compensated with things of value or stiens that's almost a direct quote so my question was simply that are any teachers being compensated there was nothing whatsoever attacking in what I said nothing and when I see all these promotions and ads and presentations and everything else that were done done prior to the district purchasing the curriculum it's a very valid question to ask whether or not they were compensated so I don't consider that an opinionated attack and would appreciate it if you wouldn't characterize such questions in the future thank you I'll come back later but please I do want a response to my question about compensating with other math instruction thank you for your time thank you and any other comments no all right we got she's next all right we're gonna move on to item M I'm is yours okay hi everyone um I'm Christina chanella you can call me Tina though um I'll answer to both but doesn't matter um I'm a Senor um thank you so much all for having me this is very exciting I'm very excited um so high school has been off to a great start I have some like little Student Life reports um we had a great homecoming dance and homecoming game and just yesterday our driver at sophomores made a mural to advocat Against Drunk uh drunk driving reckless driving and unsafe driving um the project was held and directed by the nikel bedani foundation I'm so sorry if I butchered that and um um they're going to be hung up to display which is very fun um some upcoming events Mr Sweeney mentioned music in the mountains um I was a member of the band for a very long time so I do have lots of respect for them and if you can go you should go um Emma the fall play is coming up too I have a lot of friends that are in that so it would be really great if you guys can come and support anybody um and then we have the senior night football game which is a very big event for a lot of our students and then also as the host of president I'm going to hug the host of blood drive it's on November 1st so you can find out your blood type and all that kind of fun stuff um so I do have one thing to talk about it's about painting parking spots I know that this is um a little controversial for the board but I thought that as a senior I should bring it up um so two years ago when our principal came to for sship high school she allowed the class of 2023 and class of 2024 to paint their parking spots um something that wasn't done done before and as a sophomore I actually helped a couple of my friends paint them so I'm looking for so I was looking forward to getting my time come to paint my parking spot but this senior parking lot was recently repaved as was the back and it was very beautiful I will say it's very nice to go in there in the morning I love my parking spot um but after speaking with our principal on the behalf of the senior class um we decided that it'd be best that I brought it to the board um as the issue so I have a solution I brought pictures so I'm going to pass them around and then I'll talk about it so you guys can have this one and then I have three so can go down that way so what did the principal say oh um she just said that I should bring it up I have that and she's not here well it is her birthday so happy birthday I don't know if I can say her name I'm I'm a little scared but okay so basically what I'm proposing is that so the typing of the parking spots which I understand is very expensive I don't know how much but I know it's expensive um so as you can see on the pictures I provided um Dr Shep said it looks like a recent graduate um a little fun fact but it's not I promise a different School uh anyways so basically I'm proposing that we can leave six inches from each side of the um recent striping so that the students can still paint their parking spots um and allow for some Crea a freedom and get our turn to do our make our mark and um that way the lines are prefer preserved and everything can get maybe approved I don't know um and then I know that it's a kind of a hefty ask but as a senior class I think it's only fair that we get our chance to leave our Mark as well um in the past the school climate committee has been in support of the idea and as the weather gets colder we're hoping to have a decision by the end of October the weather looks nice for next week I know it's Thursday and next week is on Monday but just to saying and um I think that's what I wanted to bring up for that I know that's a pretty steep ass I know I'm sorry guys um Rogers you have a first the first I've heard of it today so it would be a good discussion to have with the principal principal yo to see what her thoughts are on the process as well okay so we're not the bad guys here oh I know we have to make sure we maintain the Integrity of the spot yes I completely understand that um and then I'm not pushing you off we not it's really their decision yeah no I I think it's a wonderful idea I agree I've seen I'm not gonna influence it one way or it's a wonderful idea it's just an idea I I would have one question is the paint removable after you guys have graduated so unfortunately perent it is not it is per it so that is a little thing so next year's seniors would have to like put a coating a whitewash over it to start their yes so I was actually um so when the class of 202 24 painted their parking spots the class of 2023 is were still there and they ended up just painting over them yeah maybe they can s the driver s we can get the sail it us that's where the diploma after the day after graduation we'll have them come back black top sailing and that's a wonderful suggestion really yeah so at the end of the day it's just a suggestion but I did want to bring it up on behalf of all the seniors and you know for the students that do come because you know I leave this year so um I think that's a good thing I'm glad we brought that up really um and then I have just some I guess good things to say um about the cell phone policy um so I'm an AP student and a lot of the people I surround myself with every they are and um I think that it's been a great thing I don't go on my phone at all during school I find that I can focus on class more I do my homework more I still I did it to begin with but still I think that it's a really good thing and I think that um it's implementing well into the high school climate good and to hear I don't know if that's something I was supposed to say but that's my input on it it's it's good to get feedback yeah so um that's on the behalf of the cell phone policy and then that's all I have so we're looking all everybody's looking forward to a good rest of the year so great thank that's all I got J job okay M Mr Rogers superintendent report um we had the opportunity to benefit our staff as well as a district with an insur insurance switch I apologize for the timing of this consideration but cannot pass up this opportunity for our staff and District uh information has been sent out to all employees and there will be a virtual question and answer session on October 23rd at 4:30 that will be recorded for all employees I also was gonna do a shout out for music on the mountains I guess I'll be there tomorrow I hope to see others and the fall Saturday yes sorry Saturday I'm gonna be yeah don't show up tomorrow it'll be on Saturday thank you Mr s um music on the mountains and also the fall play as well will be in attendance um we're we please announce ver Township school students as a district artist of month for October and their artwork is displayed at the board office um I've attached part of the districtwide week of respect October 7th to October 11th activities uh that are conducted at all schools are in attachment a uh letter C the following certified staff members recognized for receiving tenure in the month of October congratulations Miss Brady uh number two and that's for informational items uh number two recommendations as recommended the board to approve the following faculty staff appointments Etc I want to make one note of a year change online for it should be 1:18 2025 I'll give you some time to look over all those uh appointments and start dates I know a lot of you looked at them before the meeting so it Item B it is recommended that the board approve the following Corrections of six peror appointments as it below wait um there's an addendum to item two right yes there's a couple addendums thereo let see two 2A there's uh on page one in the addendum line 25 through 30 go back yeah you have a certain point two it's uh recommended the board to approve their final following professional development that's uh title two Grant funded on page uh eight and N some of that training is well preschool letter D it is recommended that the board approve the harassment intimidation and bullying school safety and random drug testing reports uh letter e it is recommended the board approve the following policies and regulations for first reading r5200 attendance and P PR 55350 student suicide prevention item F it's recommended the board approve the following policies for second and final approval p0155 point1 board member participation and board meetings using electronic device P 5337 for service animals thank you Mr samaga for discussing that earlier and after this uh letter G it is recommended that the board approve the district's professional development plan for 2024-25 attachment b letter H it is recommended that the board approve the nursing Services plan for 2024-25 school year attachment c letter I it is recommended the board accept the district performance review DPR responses regarding the quality single accountability Continuum qac requirements and approved submission of the qac document to the state NJ dooe letter J it is recommended that the board approve the chronic absenteeism corrective action plans for each school and attachment d letter K was recommended that the board approve the following it Department staff or additional work beyond their normal work day for PA implementation as listed below and that's in an attachment okay may I have a for a motion please move move by Mr cantino second second second by Dr Ross all right let's see any discussion um I do have Mr cantino so it says it's recommended the board approve the following corrections to sixth period appointments and I'm noticing that the numbers are going down and it says period one Algebra 2 what what's happening there that's causing I asked that question right before the meeting I think in a response to it I will I will reach out tomorrow to get the reason why the adjustments were made okay okay thank you um z um for item J with absente tees um is it possible I'm getting a lot of question that we kind of collapse this down to like a summary she or maybe you do a podcast about just what it means in totality how people are receiving information What's um what's an excuse absence vers un excus like there's just I feel like lots of questions about these items and maybe even reference the NJ dooe right like that there could be an impact that over your child's school life right that they're going to miss one one year of schooling which is impactful right like why this is a burnning issue why it's kind of all over the place right um similar to the cell phone presentation and I know I was volunteered uh for a podcast at another ad hoc I think this would be an excellent ad hoc uh uh committee discussion to have and I think we have some people that would be more than willing to uh present how they do it at their schools because I think it is a school by school uh type of situation and uh the parents will be interested uh for that as well so I look forward to at the next uh chronic absenteeism ad hoc committee if we had that discussion and I'll put that out to the administrators as well to see what I could uh what I could do to provide some information further information on chronic absent theism similar to what we did with self the sell that would be wonderful and then just one other question or maybe the ad hoc committee can look into um it seemed like absentee isms were going down generally right for 23 24 except for there was like a spike in Lounsbury Hollow just want to make sure that we're a tune to just making sure we're doing our due diligence as to maybe there's something that extra we need to do to facilitate that rate going down um and if this is in line with other districts in our area and you know just kind of keeping a price on it as you guys are I think there are only two or three schools in the entire district and some of them were smaller schools that did not were not put on a cap for chronic absenteeism but on that percentage um but we are like I said we we've talked about it in our meetings you see the submitted corrective action plans for each building and what they're doing and uh like I said I think i' we'd have to report out on some of the data at a certain at certain uh snapshots to see where we're at and what we can do to improve things or where we're having success as well and share that out with other other buildings as well great then the absenteeism Ed committee can get back to us yeah chronic absenteeism quick question about the same thing why are we put on a cap it's a percentage I think if it's over I'm GNA get the I might get the percentage wrong if you're over uh we're at 20% if you're over 10% of chronic absenteeism you're put on a cap and who put us on C the the state of New York State okay right and like you'll read article this is a discussion across the whole nation about getting kids back to school kind of what happened with with this situation from several years ago how to get kids more engaged back in the school um it's hard and again my My Talking Point it's hard to teach them when they're not here sure anybody else defin um quick I had um I just I know it's it's true but I just wanted to just double check that everything the Wen Bridge people are part of the paa grant the hirers in AIDS I think most school teacher um it's all it gets it gets very tricky because some current teachers go to different roles okay and so any any additional staff is for either IEPs or the Pea expansion okay now it gets tricky because a teacher currently that's part of our may be part of expansion but their role may be changing okay so it's not a simple question but yes um I have I don't know if I could name this person but on item C up of page nine um I'm just interested that this person is going to uh T TLC annual Suicide Prevention conference we just passed the policy um would it be fine if you can ask that person if they can report back to you and see how our policy aligns with what they learned there and maybe we we can revisit our policy if we need to change it yeah I have no problem reaching out to that person okay and then the last thing is uh I I think the uh your corrective action plans I like thank you I'm glad that they all put it together I know that I don't think they had a choice but um they put it together the other thing um I think you said we're going to report back or through the committee is going to be get report back to how we're doing with that stuff um the one suggestion I do have is see like that which is great everybody did a survey looks like to see what the the problem causes are um but it's kind of hard just to to narrow it down the way uh each School seem to have different questions so maybe in the future or something we can just make maybe they're they the way they approach fixing the problem could still be up to the the thing but how we collect the data is more uniform just so we could say sometimes they group it together and sometimes people one school like went very into detail where some schools were I think I think because this is this was a uh started over the summer where I said these corrective action plans Vernon was one of the leaders I think a lot of other County Schools used our our our template what we did so I think at different times the uh the uh surveys were sent out yeah but I think with through the ad hoc committee we could we could re-evaluate them look at them and try to standardize them a little bit more yeah it just be a better so we can get a better understanding some people got on it right away over the summer some people it was closer to the last month or two that the surveys were set down but they look good I'm I'm I'm interested in see how because we didn't we didn't get specific guidance from the state as to what we were supposed to do with these and what until until the last mon yeah no yeah well that's good because I mean you guys I think you guys know how to to handle thank you anybody else a roll call please Mr CL Mr smacka yes Mr cantino yes Mr Krauss yes Dr Ross yes Mr Sweeney yes Mr ziman yes Miss aern yes Miss Brock yes motion carries thank you I a motion oh we have uh information items first use of bildings of grounds as noted below field trip as noted below letter B uh then item two is recommendations those recommended the board approve the following Financial reports as noted below letter B approval of the board secretary and treasures reports as noted below letter C is a recommended the board approve Transportation as listed below that includes quota trips uh and Joint CH letter D is recommended the board approve the disposition of the following items as either obsolete or indust repair that's noted below letter e is recommended the board approve the comprehensive maintenance plan for 2024 2025 school year that's attached from F7 letter F is recing the board approved the M1 report for the 2024 2025 school year that's attachment f8 letter G is recommended that the board approve the agreement between the buron Township Board of Education and the Vernon Vikings grid iron booster club effective 1018 through 630 2025 attachment F9 letter H has recommended the board approve the agreement between the buron Township Board of Education and the biking Hockey Club of Vernon effective October 18 2024 through June 30th 2025 attachment F10 letter I is recommended the board approve the mutual license agreement for the use of trademarks between an NOA mat and Vernon Township School District attachment f11 letter J is recommended that R Consulting be authorized to act as an agent of the Veron Township School District be1 22853 in connection with eay crant program uh as noted below it does also further just want to point out at the bottom here is far the recommended the board resolve to accept the E funding grants a word based on such submissions and that's districts had a three-year agreement with the RC which will expire June 30 2025 and then letter K has recommended the board approve the agreement with Crystal Spring Resort of high school senior prom that's attachment F12 on theend you got l and m good catch thank you uh letter L is recommended the V approved to accept the Nita M la la Loi 21st Loi 21st century continuation Grant in amount of 400,000 for the 2425 school year excuse me I apparently forgotten how to speak uh letter M is recommended the board approve the 2324 carryover funds for the following grants you have Title One $1,353 Title 1 a-s $2,552 title 2A $1,219 and title for $2,086 I have this one of a motion please moved moved by Mr gtino seconded second Dr Ross discussion um I do have a question Contino so it says joint you with the Highpoint Regional Board of Education to transport Highpoint students for the 2425 school year on the following Vernon routes can you speak a little bit to what's going on there I have to looked in that one specifically but generally means that we have an existing route in that are area um and depending on which locations uh these students are being picked up at right here it looks like we have Sussex Tech um and then a couple that're going to the high school so it's most likely Choice students uh and students going to Tech so since we already have routes going there and it's on the way uh we're able to recoup some funds uh by offering Transportation so it saves them money and it acts as a revenue for us that's good thank you Mr CRS I have a couple of questions tonight first of all what is eate Consulting what what is that how does it benefit us uh so we receive e rate funds um and I forgot the term I think it's every three years uh yeah I think it was three years yeah so uh so we we receive eay funds that are that go to specific items uh so one item that occurs every year uh there's two categories one category is internet so it offsets our internet costs and then another category would be equipment items like maybe servers or things like that need to be replaced um so one thing I think it's important to note right now as I'm talking about it is that we always kind of talk about how free and reduce lunch applications are important not only because of the benefit they provide uh to our students and our families in town but also because they provide benefits to the district sure so the higher that our percentage goes on free reduce lunch applications the higher percentage of funding we receive for those items right um so I think last year when the district broke I think it was 20% um free reduced lunch that actually increase the amount that we get reimbursed uh for the for internet and for those those equipment um through e and essentially this this uh company helps us apply make sure all the forms are in um and basically helps us kind of get those numbers in to see what our reimbursement amounts will be awesome thank you my other question is with the checks there's a check for like $218,000 to Matthew SE Incorporated is is that the Inova M people or what is that it's on page 194 that's the repairs to the tenis sports that's what that is okay thank you I didn't know what that was all right thank you I'm good Miss Brock uh this kind of a basic question so I'm making you repeat yourself I apologize um when we talk about items that are broken and they we need to vote on the disposition of that um does it necessarily follow that all of these items are going to be replaced So when you say we need three smart board are you saying we need three smart boards or are you saying uh so no it doesn't so basically um as we're getting ready for the preschool there are certain items that were in some of the areas that being used as storage and as we're going through we're seeing there's no value to them they broke and we can't use them um so we require a board resolution in order to essentially either recycle or get rid of these items so it's not necessarily saying we need permission to buy all these materials no understand that I don't want anybody to sit in a broken chair like I'm not not saying let's sit on broken items but I just wanted to make sure because it's a pretty lengthy list this particular meeting okay thank you s say all right so I apologize there's quite a few Finance questions so for 2B for your board of secretary and Treasurer reports for general fund 10 revenues are down by 1.16 million or is that just a timing issue for local state and federal so I don't I don't have it in front of me right now hold up are you looking at the um column all the way to the right um attachment S5 page three you want me to show you go let me go grab it F3 you said F5 F5 yep no problem uh so basically what that's saying so it's showing a variance in Revenue so we what happens is when you have your Revenue set up you also have um receivables set up uh so that's just timing as we go through the year we'll receive those revenues just want to make sure and then security salaries of 600k is that appropriate like I assume it's because we have a lot of different schools but that just seemed a little bit higher than some other General hold on that's on a different page page 11 y so that wouldn't just be salaries that will be everything that's security related in the district okay that makes sense and then um special Revenue fund fund 20 it looks like it has a negative balance but I assume that's probably just also timing difference of 1.6 million Federal souring let me pull it up um where is this Ros um should be an attachment F5 sorry there's so many reports this is why I printed them out what page I have H what page I have it up now you do yeah like you see it on ph one are you looking at page one of fun 20 you said yeah and it just seems like we didn't get funding yet but I you know I just don't I have it if you want it I'm almost there to the sign page of fun 10 so uh so you're saying the negative cash in bank so basically what that means is with fund 20 um it's made up of generally mostly federal grants what they're reimbursement based grants so we spend the money at a fund 20 but then we have to request reimbursement so whenever you see a negative like that that basically means that either we haven't requested reimbursement yet or we have requested reimbursement but we haven't received the payment yet from the federal government understandable um so another kind of General right like it so it looks like we are getting interest but are we getting interest for all of our different cash counts I know think you helped us get a higher interest rate like are we just kind of keeping that in line especially with Providence or Lakeland changing over to Providence is there any better interest rate for us to be had especially given the current economy um so back when I did the negotiation what I actually did was I surveyed all the surrounding districts uh actually every District of the county just to see what rates were available and I compar that to the information I had from the rates I had in my prior District at that point we're able to go from the 0.15% to the 4.85% um I do think that dropped slightly just because of the drop uh at the FED level um with with the rates recently I think it was maybe last month um but right now based off of what I surveyed when we had the 4.85 that was the highest out of any any District there's only one other District in the county that had that high and most of the other districts were lower okay well that's a great rate but it's going to be tied to the Fed rate though and it'll automatically adjust now based off of that excellent and one last question on K for the senior prom um do we are we tax exempt I would assume so and like just making sure that we're looking at contracts and getting our tax exempt status right like I think there was sales tax on food and beverage we uh we are tax exempt see yeah so I'll make sure that that is um zeroed out it may just be that is through Student Activities that they may not have realized to get the um tax exemp form to apply for this good catch though thank you anybody else Charles um IEM item D I was looking at just some ofar but we have like 180 IP phones um are we looking to do we look to see if we could sell some of them especially if our systems out of date usually they go up sometimes they're like call books you get a dollar back but that would be a question for Nick but these these phones are so outdated they were end of life we we were very concerned about them but I'm sure he checked into it but I a follow up with with Nick as well okay and then um the in over maath um um contract or license is that that's if I'm understanding that's so they can use we were using their logo and they're going to in turn use our logo is uh yes that's correct okay and we had our board attorney look at it and we did request a couple of language changes to the contract when they accepted okay and I guess this would be on their website most likely or printed material yeah anything else that's have a roll call vote Please Mr cantino yes Mr Krauss yes Dr Ross yes Mr Sweeny yes Mr Zimmerman yes obstain letter A thank you Miss Ahern yes Miss Brock yes Mr samaca yes motion carries thank you Mr slam we're going to move on to the second section second section of public comment we're going to open the meeting to the public for items concerning the schools please identify present and online uh we have Jesse paladini Mrs paladini yes um I'd like a clarification although I don't know how you're going to answer me since you've now said you're not going to respond but since you announced Mr Sweeney that Board of Ed members will no longer answer questions when where and how then will the public residents parents taxpayers get their questions answered okay I'll answer that after you have had your full comments okay my next comment is once again I'd like to know did the third grade teachers for the tests that increased by seven points in math supplement with other math instruction or did they only use Inova matat um that's something I'd like an answer for and I also wonder if you realize I mean it was hard to you know really um take anything in because there was so many slides and so much information that you really have to study it but you do realize that the current score of 747 for third grade math is significantly lower than the years 201526 2017 2018 and 2019 look if a Nova mat is working for our students and they're doing well and they are successful with it I am thrilled because I want nothing more than for our student scores to go up because while you're celebrating that some of them did go up we are still at the 50 percentile and sometimes even lower so this is not having anything to do with me being against no inovat I just want to know the real picture and if the kids are doing better then I'm thrilled but I would like to know if the teachers supplemented and those those are my questions so I'd like to know how our questions will be answered from here on and will this be a forever policy now even though the board didn't vote on that well that mean you will never answer questions for any member of the public at your board meetings I've left you with a lot of things to ponder so I'll end it with that have a good night thank you anybody any else online yes we have more parer Mr peringer okay part two uh same data I talked about the APC C PC which kids should you take and you have or less than 10 students in Algebra 2 in ninth grade when we initially created that program and we talked with Dr H with Mr hak I don't know if it was about Dr Ali the plan was to have either the kids who are qualified to go to college and to end up in C PC take Algebra 2 in their junior year ninth grade and have uh geometry and Algebra 1 sth and eighth grade or have algebra one in seven in eighth grade and have them double up geometry and Algebra 2 in 9th grade so do we the problem I have seen through personal observation in our school is that college if you are college a kid that can go to college you need to start planning in seventh grade which classes you're going to take in eth grade and Beyond we don't seem to do that because I have met L Juniors who said oh I probably should have taken CPC but I have I'm now taking prear so I'm never going to get there there are even some who then try to take C AP and C PC on their own and take the test in uh in their senior year so I would ask to you make a plan where guidance guides the students who are capable to select the proper Mass passway to select the proper AP car curriculum who have that planned out before they come into high school and to not have it a on the Vim decision by a student who may or may not be qualified to make that decision because he or she may or may not be knowledgeable in that fact on the Fly this guidance who then say something like my daughter has heard multiple times oh don't take this class we don't want to run it we don't have a teacher or don't take that class they already too many students in it we don't have more than 20 students in this class why don't you take a study period instead so I would like to hear this discussion thank you thank you Mr per is there anybody else that is all okay so we're going to close the meeting to the public I just want to answer one question that was posed last meeting that the two specific uh employees who were were asked about whether they received compensation from a Textbook Company the answer is no they did not receive compensation uh from the textbook company and we will try to answer the questions uh at the next board meeting at the next public board meeting so the answers to these questions will come at the next public board meeting which is now scheduled for 28th mon Monday the 28th is it yes okay do I have any other uh IQ open board member for does any board member have any items of discussion that they would like to bring up Dr RS thank you um I just want to say that I also appreciated the very thorough uh presentation of datab and I think these are worthwhile questions that folks are bringing up about how much stock to put in test scores and the Very human uh impulse to put more stock in them when they're working for us and less stock in them when they're not working for us it's nice to celebrate things it feels good so you know I think that's human but I think these are really important questions for us to consider there's so much that goes into looking at data what's the quality of the measurement um what are our comparison points are we talking about within the state are we looking across cohorts I mean data can be so interesting and and useful and then it can be so messy and like meaningless at times so I think that um these are a really important questions for us to consider we we want to look at the data we want to use the data but you know do we want to live or die by any particular data point how to think about it in the context of the full context of how our students are doing and the uh you know the academic experience they're having here and The Full Experience they're having in our district so I just wanted to note that I think that that's good for us always to consider like what piece of the puzzle is it agreed agre I just want to pick you back I just want to pick you back off of what Dr Ross said I think like you said when test scores reflect positively a lot of times we celebrate when test scores are not where we want them to be a lot of times we kind of say oh they're not everything going on in the district I think the most important thing test scores do is provide us with data for Intervention when you look at what cohorts of students need more support what cohorts of students are doing well why are they doing well what might they have missed I don't think it's best to rank the entire District or say these test scores are an out um the definitive answer as to where our district lies there's so many other pieces of data and information that reflect how a school district is doing I mean look at our um SAT test scores look at our AP test scores how many students are in AP look at our graduation rate what colleges are students are going to what are the socioeconomic backgrounds of our students is it good to compare a district like Vernon with Sparta when the socioeconomic backgrounds of those two towns are totally different there's so much context in education and I think test scores are a good Benchmark they're an excellent snapshot of where our students are doing but where students are forgive me but remember those tests don't differentiate those tests do not reflect the socioeconomic backgrounds of that student's home and those tests are what they are and nothing more no I'm Charles um yeah actually I just wanted to make a comment too on the same thing same subject um for me i' I've said this before Russ know knows I've said it to him many times numbers are important to me when we get out to the real world that I mean we that's how business runs right we run on numbers so test scores do mean a lot but also in the real world what means a lot to me because I we I do this every day we have development uh crew the development team that I'm in charge of it's It's the Improvement coming back we had Dr Chef here I mean she even said and quote me if I'm if I'm wrong I'm sorry but I thought she said something I'm not happy with the state being out of 17 for for Science and and that shows a lot I think about this team that that it's here now um over the last year I I think the team has has done good a lot of good with with making education number one and and and trying to do better we're not perfect and our numbers aren't good and Russ you know eventually I am going to come back to those those scores and say at you know in you at the end of the year hey there are some of those numbers that are very good Charles but right but it's it's it's not the numbers only it's it's they're not good when some of the numbers are good no I'm sorry I I didn't I'm sorry if I if I didn't I don't think I said I the numbers weren't good what I'm saying is it's the process of what you guys are doing it's a grow I believe in growth just yeah and what happens here is when they come up here and give us a demonstration about what we're doing I'm not I'm looking at the numbers but what I'm more important what it's more important to me is everything that's been put in place and and it Contin that's important we now have the resources in place and a lot of that was restoring kids that don't have that don't do well a lot of that was the board restoring the resources that we got that we had to get rid of because of it's state the cut and state funding you restored the interventions that we need to show this growth uh I'm not all about test scores either but I am about showing growth year to year and we see we saw some growth last year through some tough times and I'm really looking forward to continuing to show that growth with what we were able to restore for the sports for the students this past year I'm excited I'm excited about it like you are too yeah but but like those those high school scores I'm very proud of the NJ NJ NJ GPA have increased the SATs have increased the aps have increased the last two years in the USA news worlds report we're one of the top four or five schools in in the in the area and I I think we we will grow that way as well although I'm not that fond of rankings necessarily either because they are skewed but I I I'm confident that we're going to show growth for you and for everyone in the community as well absolutely and and just one more thing is I think we've we've had presentation three times and every time it's it's it's gotten better with what the plan is being put into place is and and you know I can't ask for more than you guys coming back with a plan to fix things you you see it's it's not it's not I'm sorry now I see what you talked about I said it wasn't good okay okay I I see that's why I was a yeah okay I initially I I see why you see you know there there are there are issues and you fixing them that's I I don't think I can ask more as a parent or as a board member for what being done when you guys come back with better Solutions and some of those Solutions may not work but I am so I'm I'm I'm eager to see what's going to happen at this end of the year because I think you guys are putting good things as a team together I'm I'm EXC I'm excited about uh our our teachers and staff and uh what What's happening in the classrooms I get caught up a lot of times in the office dealing with issues when I'm out there in public and I'm around these schools in these classrooms and I see what the kids are learning I so excited about this year and the future ver and the progress we're going to make anybody else ready so I'd like to touch on something that Mr perin just said but I became aware of it about two months ago but I would like to make sure that we are addressing that when a sixth grader is taking seventh grade ma they know it has consequences five years down the road because I don't know that many kids in sixth grade taking seventh realize if they don't take this class in the end they won't be able to get to calculus so it did come up I discussed it but I do hope we're at least making the people aware or even somehow changing it so you don't have to make the decision so early which I don't know if it's possible a little bit when I went to school calculus was one class it wasn't three so and I avoided it like the plue and I went to college so you know to everybody and that's along the lines I have the same philosophy as Dr Shep about opening up opportunities when I first got here we didn't have geometry in eth grade we didn't have we didn't 10 years ago we didn't have calc BC I know Mr perer talk before that we did re reinstituted that by by putting a geometry class in in eth grade the numbers are up we're trying to get more kids in it we're looking to expand opportunities so this is something we're talking about um and we're something we're trying to uh increase and I believe in the last 10 years we we have 10 eight to 10 kids in Cal BC and if you did you see the scores on on that as well um we're making Improvement there we're not again I want to show growth throughout the years we've had this discussion as Administration all the time as well and and and Dr you know Martin peringer said we're we're trying to that we're trying to make those improvements and we talk about it on a regular basis at an administrative team with teachers good thank you anybody else am I allowed to talk from yes you are um I am one of the people that got to take geometry in eighth grade I didn't end up taking KPC um it just didn't end up working out for me but that's okay um well you took several other AP but I did take several other AP classes I took four last year and I'm taking three this year congratulations um so I just want to give um I guess a piggyback I would call it onto what Mr Rogers is saying is the growth in the high school I think since the time that I've been a freshman there's been a lot of growth I've seen so much through especially Cal PC I knew those kids I was friends with them when I was a sophomore I was friends with them last year fortunately I'm not one of them now that's a m thing but um I just would like to reinforce that there is growth and I see it and I think my classmates see it and I think my peers see it so I know that like you guys aren't in school um but I am so say that no reason no reason no reason whatsoever but um I think it's good that I can kind of give my input on like I am the student I do see the growth especially with the um AP environmental science I took that I love that class it's great what a great input um but I just think that there is a lot of growth especially in the I would say math and stem even in the AP langang industry like that's crazy too but that's nice to hear yeah it's definitely a lot of growth and lots of good things in that especially in the high school we look forward to providing students those opportunities as well yes I think that's a good thing too thank you yeah of course okay I'm gonna move the microphone back now motion to adour seconded by all in favor we are journ don't forget music in the mountain