##VIDEO ID:3MMh2wXi2ns## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening everyone and welcome to the business meeting of the Wall Township Board of Education for Tuesday October 15th please rise and join me in saluting the flag United States of America the stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you at this time I'm going to ask our board secretary Mr Smite to please read the sunshine announcement and perform roll call adequate notice under the open public meeting Act was provided notice to the co-star Asbury Park Press the township clerk's office all Wall Township Public Schools and the board Administration office on August 29 2024 take a roll call Mr anio barbier Mr Buffa here Miss D Giovani here Mr malof here Mr Nasser here miss shimo here Mr wandra Miss St here thank you at this time may I please have a motion to go into executive session for the items listed on the agenda I'll make that motion Mr adio may have a second miss dgani all in favor all opposed at this time the board will be going into executive session and we anticipate returning at 7 o' thank you very much 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 e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening everyone at this time I'll be reconvening the business business meeting of the Wall Township Board of Education for Tuesday October 15th please join me in welcoming members of our wall High School n ndcc Cadet program as they present the colors ready forward March left wheel March [Music] ready Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the republ for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all left wheel March forward watch ready home order arms cut guard fall out thank you so much it's always a pleasure when we have our members of the nncc join us um they consistently come to our meetings and we're very grateful for their participation and clearly they are doing an amazing job at this time I'd like to ask Mr Smite our board secretary to please perform roll call yes Mr anesio here M barier here Mr Buffa here m d Giovani here Mr Mali here Mr Nasser here miss shimo here Mr wandra here Mason Adam here Megan Cappy here miss stes here thank you so much at this time we're going to be opening the floor for public comment if you would like to contribute to this evening's meeting you may either use our Podium at the top of the stairs or the podium right here down below so please come forth and share your thoughts and ideas Betsy cross I live in Wall Township uh glad to see the color guard back again uh just wanted to mention I put in an Oprah today I had gotten a um a text message from Michael Shelton and I I don't want anything to do with him and um I wasn't sure if it was meant to go to somebody else like Adam Nasser on the board or maybe Brian SMI so I put in an open for any uh text messages phone calls to Thomas buffer Brian SMI Adam Nasser um and Ken wander where is he right there um Mr Shelton has had me blocked on Facebook for years thank god um and if he unblocks me I will I will then block him but he's had me blocked for years he keeps telling you false information uh happiest day of my life when he did um so I'd like those documents back feel free to say if you did not get text messages in the last three days uh because I I want that back in writing uh Mr Nasser and Mr SMI in particular uh so I hope you talked about it in executive session um I did find out um we do not have lawsuits on here again on the Central School trailers on Miss Warick uh a new case settled um and that is not on here so I keep sending them uh to the attorney general and to the controller's office so I'm glad you're shaking your head Miss Cornell we got so many conflicts of interest in this District you can't even keep up with it and I see Athena Cornell is laughing and writing it down so that's good um I see finally the executive minutes came back so hopefully when Mr Smite give us his update he can let us know that he had mentioned that he doesn't check his spam folder being the sophisticated business administrator he didn't check his spam folder in a month sounds ridiculous uh so he didn't get it to get the opras so they came back today I will post them all up on Facebook um um August 20th uh Dr hran talks about our phone call while I talked about the um activity for falsifying documents um and I mean we can't just have if something's criminal then wo gets involved you have to get involved when things are not criminal and that's why I pointed it out to you dror handan um there was no enrollment for September I don't know what's going on there I've never not seen it posted in October for September uh I can't believe we're spending $18 million on HVAC upgrades if you could go over that tonight before you vote on it I don't even know if the board knows why you're doing it but I don't think we even spent 10 million on on the uh HVAC equipment how could we be possibly be spending $18 million just on upgrades thank you Mrs cross and then also the interior alterations at multiple schools if you can go over that as well thank you thank you cross do we have anyone else for public comment do we have anyone else that would like to share their thoughts or perspective either at the top or the bottom microphone seeing them we'll close the floor for public [Music] comment at this time it's my pleasure to introduce um Mason Adam and Megan Cappy two of our seniors class of 2025 who will be uh giving us their student representative report this week at wall High School is a fun week as it is Pep week last night was the junior vers senior Powderpuff game and the seniors took the win winning 35-7 tonight is volleyball night and each grade will compete against each other on Friday it is the homecoming football game versus Howell at 7 this is our annual pink out game game and during halftime the school will award a king and queen of homecoming lastly the homecoming dance will be Saturday the 19th from 6 to 9: it'll be a great time and we can't wait for a fun rest of the week next week wall High School will participate in the Red Ribbon Week activities will be held all week to raise awareness for drug abuse prevention there will be a Beatles tribute concert on Friday October 25th to benefit the Wall music Honor Society the concert will be in the IA Applegate theater and last but not last but certainly not least there's no school tomorrow thanks very much you guys um I'd like to congratulate both of you for being nominated to homecoming Court I think that's a really great honor um coming from your peers so the board is very proud of you as well and I hope you guys have a great time for homecoming week and now I'm sure you've got some other things you probably like to do tonight so feel free to to get on your way Dr handerhan I'm going to turn the floor over to you for special presentation introduction thank you very very much Miss Stites it's my pleasure to introduce to you the uh the first of two special presentations uh providing some insight into our week of respect and focus in on everything is possible is Miss kayn Gil come on down Miss Gil hi everybody all right all right first and foremost I want to say thank you so much to all of you for having me here again tonight um Miss Tiffany Seer was unable to make it tonight but she sends her regards and she appreciates the availability of us presenting again tonight um I just wanted to go over some of the new activities that were going on for seven mindsets we have kicked off and we have enjoyed a successful first month and a first mindset um week of respect really fell perfectly with our mindset of everything is possible so so we want to kind of just highlight some of the things that we've done this month throughout the whole District all the buildings they've done a fantastic job um and we really appreciate all the energy that the staff and the kids are really putting into what's going on so as you can see our four core um ideas dream big Embrace creativity think positively and act and adjust we've kind of explored this last year and um part of what we wanted to take with you guys now is Beyond just the vocabulary Beyond understanding that we have lessons each month how we're breaking it down we really want to see it in action so as always actions speak louder than words so there's a lot of new things that we've also kind of implemented this year and we're going to keep going with and ways we want to keep recognizing what's happening in District so one of them is when we look at respond we want to know that the wtaa special services and the well the um Wellness Department excuse me really kicked off the beginning of school with another family night um they did a solid start to the year we had integrated Care Management come and do a presentation it was a really fun night for the kids um and for the parents to learn great ways to interact um okay stop saying um innovate obviously we have Miss mccc's News section where she collaborates with u Mr pittington who is our director of Food Services um and it's called chicken soup get it for the soul um and this is where we're really trying to through um through the wellness workshops and everything really give you a chance to shine through your books and what you love and it gives us a chance to get to know you and to really get a sense for the district to understand what your true passion is along with our food service director is now creating soups for us so what's happening is we're looking as another way for our families to get together in the in the family kitchen make a soup read a book have some time together and really enjoy what's going on in your life sometimes those family dinners are so key so that is our new Chicken Soup for the Soul we will doing it each month so we thank you very much Mrs mccan for for being a good sport about it um we loved it and then dream and Inspire obviously parent and teachers you can see some of the Stars up there that's specifically from the high school but really identifying and looking into how do we keep inspiring our kids how do we keep letting them dream outside the box those are through the high school I think it's just a great idea to see that even though it's not a lesson in the classroom it's throughout the building so the kids are still really getting involved um we also have our head nurse Mrs Penn who continually will give us each month a wellness strategy however she wants to take it what it does is it's really looking at different ways of of increasing Wellness whether mind body or Spirit um she's really using a lot of the medical aspect of how to keep us healthy this is going to be in every one of our newsletters and I think it's great that we have the nursing department also getting it and getting some more ability to really get their word out there too because sometimes we forget school also means Mind Body Health Medical all of that kind of stuff so we're really trying to incorporate all different areas of the district we also want to just we also want to show courage and that we have um Mrs skurowitz who is here who we are so excited to announce that she has just signed to be a published author um with Starlight books publishing and she wrote and Illustrated a children's poetry book and she will be this has been a lifelong dream correct and we're so super proud of her and I think it's just amazing that she's on staff she uses her creative ability every day but she continues to dream outside the box and we're so super excited for it so congratulations on that let's see what else so all during the week of respect you can see that we've done a ton of stuff too so I just kind of wanted to highlight a few things I don't want to take up too much time because I know it's a busy meeting tonight but as you can see we are still trying to really hone in the state the anti-bullying um Bill of Rights all of that which is so important for New Jersey and for us that we wanted to align that with everything as possible and it did it aligned quite nicely so you can see as we chose topics that were really relevant to what we were doing showing how we're displaying our respect for each other and what it means to be a wall night we really learning from our M our mistakes and Rising above challenges it really helps for our community goals to also be set and and to be looked at um as you can see like the first couple pictures comes from our new Wellness webinars where we have Elementary and Middle School taking part in a wellness webinar once a month and the kids get to interact online through a Google meet and really learn D digital citizenship also so this allows them to keep knowing and keep understanding what it is to have a digital footprint to interact on a digital platform and learn also ways of respect that included in the seven mindsets um these these um excuse me Wellness webinars also we've created the mindset mentors so if you see them in the middle these are elementary students who have been nominated by their very own classmates and these are students that are recognized for being somebody who is always there to help to listen to care um they've gone through their own little boot camp of training and what they do is during the mindset webinars they act as a leader or or like a foreman for the for the class and really help engage in the conversation and report back via the Google meet so it's a great opportunity them for them to really display leadership qualities and also strive for that um leadership aspect of what we're going to hope hopefully train them for as they keep going forward um which I think is just wonderful and I have to tell you the the elementary kids are so excited to do it and watching their little faces it just kind of brightens your day you can't not smile at it so we love it hopefully it will make its way up to the Middle School this year we'll see uh hint hint Mrs Steiner um let's see what else the high school did wonderful door decorating and that went to it wasn't just respect it was the class's idea so each individual classroom or Home Room what that class passions were so again we're not just looking at how to display respect we're talking about why is it important to us why is it in important to them and they got to learn how to work together but also a lot of those passions aligned so you can see and I I know these are small um pictures but they're really learning how that this verbage and this ability to identify and follow dreams just as everything is possible is really eye opening for them so we're super excited for that the middle school did tons of great stuff they had different outfits every day same with most of the other schools they did a pledge of respect um most of them had like Wes belmer had the Peace Tree and Allenwood had a peace sign where they either used their handprint or leaves and they wrote all these messages of peace and respect it was really quite beautiful um um the middle school also engaged in a Google Classroom activity that they could digitally thank a teacher for all they've done so we're really trying to just explore new ways of getting it out [Music] there so what's next passion first I'm not going to give you I'm not going to give it away but this is what we're looking at in the next month we're looking at again three lessons and one Wellness webinar all aligned to Passion first we have a lot of evening presentations coming up for our community because we know how important it is to engage our parents and to engage our community we're super excited about our Kinder meet and greet that's coming up this month where the kinderart um parents are going to get to meet kindergarten staff learn about seven mindsets and really get immersed into this great new environment that we're that we're working and living in um we've also invited the executive Boards of all the pto's and Cape because I know they call themselves Cape um to really come in learn protective factors for students we've coordinated um an MH Mental Health Association of Mammoth county is coming in and they're going to do a presentation on protective factors and how to keep our kids safe so it's going to be a great night um we're using the community Wellness in the works again so you're going to continue to see those volumes coming out there is a new Wellness website excuse me it's not new but it's updated so what we're doing is Miss Steiner has really done a great job in really trying to get not just Mental Health Services not just academic services but services that go across the board so she has a link for the navigation system warmline what that means is you can go on to the website if you have any questions about housing food food insecurities mental health Child Care employment we're going to have those resources there for you so we're really trying to reach every single member of our community if there's anything that they need assistance with that's a link that's going to help them get there um and we do have our next Leadership Council we're going to have another presentation with Maj but we're bringing all the members of our community leadership in and really talking about the difference between community and school response and how in a crisis and how we can work together and make it a seamless interaction for the betterment of our community and our kids so we're super excited about everything coming up thank you for listening to me ramble one more time um but I really appreciate all the support and uh I hope you're excited to see what comes next and that's all I got thank [Applause] you thank you so so much Miss gilver I really appreciate you coming out tonight to share the amazing things U that our students and our uh faculty family and staff family have been working on um it's my pleasure for the second presentation this evening to introduce our assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction Miss Jennifer mccan and she will be sharing you with you an update on State Testing so miss mccan mik not there we go I was saying I'm not sure my presentation will be as exciting um seeing it's all data related but I will do my best um to keep you engaged as we go through the results of our 2023 2024 State Testing results a couple of months ago I went over um some of our other data our access for L's and our NJ GP PA results and now it is time to go over our njsla which is our New Jersey um learning uh State learning assessment and also our dlm results so our New Jersey student learning assessment was administered in the spring of 2024 to all students in grades 3 to 8 anyone who was enrolled in Algebra 1 Algebra 2 and geometry as well as any student enrolled in grades 3-9 for English language arts science is um administered to students in grades 5 8 and 11 and all of the assessments are aligned to the New Jersey student learning standards there are five performance levels level one is did not meet the state expectations level two is partially met the expectations level three approaching expectations level four meeting the expectations and level five exceeding the expectations at this point all parents um should have received their students individual Report with their specific um performance levels for each of the assessments that apply to that child so when we look at our English language arts achievement and growth over the past four years again I'm sorry the numbers are small however to fit everything on the slide and not make this go on forever um we did put it all on one slide um but what I would like to highlight is as you look at the different variations of purple in each of the grade spans the lightest purple is from 2018 2019 school year which is prior to the pandemic and the darkest bar is our current results from 2023 2024 so if you look at those two bars specifically in each of our GR levels we have started to either um match up to where we were prior to the pandemic or um get just about there either by outperforming by one or two% points or just shy of one or two% points um so from my opinion um all of the supports um that we and interventions that we have put into place over the past couple of years to assist our students um in recovering from the pandemic are working um and now we can take off from here and continue to succeed this is another way of looking at that same data but instead of just looking at the students who were meeting and exceeding the expectations this gives a year-to-year comparison in each grade and Ela of all of the performance levels over time um essentially what we would like to see from year to year is less red and orange and more yellow light green and dark green over uh from a year-to-year um uh administration of the test keep in mind when comparing from year to year you are talking about different students this is not cohorted data which we will get to um but this is just the same uh assessment given to different sets of students from year to year now we do get to look at the cohort so the first two bars in each of the grade levels so the first I'll actually say first four sets of bars there we were provided data through our new assessment platform linkit that allows us to look at students from a cohort which meant that it was the students who were able to take the administration in grade three and then in grade four and then we were also provided information of students who were non- cohorted which meant they there was an anomaly they either took it in grade three but not in grade four or took it in grade four but not in grade three so there was really no Apples to Apples comparison so let's just focus on the first two bars in each of the grade levels but if you look at the first set of grade three to grade four the students who were in grade three last year were at 52% those same students were now at 71% being proficient in our previous grade four students were at 64% meeting or exceeding the expectations last year and this year we're at 75% with them um being in grade five the next set would be our grade five to grade six we had a little bit of a drop from 77% to 74% the following uh grade levels six to 7th another little drop um 79% to 75% however our grade seven students who in the previous year to uh 8th grade from last year did go up 77 to 81 and our eighth grade to 9th grade uh were 62 to 61 and then overall in all grade levels we were at 69% meaning or exceeding to an overall 73% now we also are required to look at all of our data from a demographic standpoint so we first look at it by race um so from again last year to this year in terms of our different races of within the District of Asian black Hispanic multiple um races or white um these are our results in terms of how are they performing this particular set of data allows us to really hone in on what we may need to do moving forward for a particular set of students different types of supports different types of interventions different types of enrichments depending on how the the data is representative of a particular group we also are required to look at our data from a programmatic standpoint in terms of our elll students or multilingual students our free and reduced lunch students our 504 students special ed students and our gened students um this provides us a completely different lens in terms of the specific programming and instructional resources that we provide to each of these different um programs um and what more we would be able to do for our students and similarly in math again instead of purple we now have different shades of blue to represent from 201819 school year to our current school year of 2023 2024 um and you'll notice in grade three we fared um from prepandemic to now just about 70% in each one um in grade four we dipped a little bit um however we did go up from last year to this year in grade five we are above where we were pre pandemic grade six also above where we were pre pandemic grade seven also above where we were pre pandemic grade eight we're climbing back um and making huge strides in our middle school algebra 1 class um we are about at 95% of students meeting or exceeding the expectations we also have Algebra 1 at the high school um where we're working on our curriculum and the students who are in those classes and ensuring that we're providing them um with the accurate interventions from when they were in uh previous grades of missing foundational skills and Concepts um from during the pandemic we have our middle school geometry students who were at 88% meeting or exceeding our geometry high school students at 40% and I want to highlight our Algebra 2 high school students who moved from 60% being um exceeding or meeting the expectation to 81% this past school year and that was really intentional with things that we changed within our curriculum and in our instructional Methods at the high school and overall with all of those grades um we are at 63% across the district this is that same type of view that you saw for ELA of grade to grade from year year to year and again the same premise we want to reduce the amount of students who are in red orange or yellow and start to increase the number of students from year to year who are in the lighter green of meeting and the darker green of exceeding and this is that cohort data um similar to what we saw in ela of students of where they were performing as um a cohort in one grade to where they grew or decreased um to the next grade and similarly by race we look at our math data the same that we do our Ela um and take that same approach of deciding what uh interventions or enrichment we can provide to different students and also by program and we also do a school comparison so um seeing all of our previous achievement data in the previous slides where for the past four years uh I felt it was uh worthwhile to show each of the schools over the past four years you'll notice all the way to the right um and there is a c column that is highlighted and they are ranked by how the Stu schools performed in both Ela and math across the district so we have Old Mill at 78% West Belmar at 68% Allenwood at 65% and Central in grade three at 44% in terms of math it's Old Mill at 83 Allenwood at 79 West belmare at 68 and Central at 54 and similarly for grade four same type of approach they're ranked from um highest proficiency um and down so we have Central at 72% in grade four West belmare at 72% Allenwood at 71% and Old Mill at 67% West belmare for math at 83% Central at 66% Allenwood at 63 and Old Mill at 53 and the same for math 82 at Central 80 at Allenwood 68 at West Belmar and 60 at Old Mill and then for math we have Central at 69 % Allenwood at 69% Old Mill at 62% and West Belmar at 53% now one of the other thing um pieces of data that this particular program allowed us to be able to do was to not only look and see who's meeting and exceeding but also look to see how our students were doing from a year overy year were our students growing or are they moving up a level are they moving down a level um and how can we help support them in continuing to move forward and not necessarily regress so we have um the red shows the percentage of students from grade three to grade four or one grade to a next that moved down a level or multiple levels um the yellow represents the percentage of students who remained the same in terms of a efficiency level and the green represents um the percentage of students who moved up one or more levels in ela and we also have the same for math this data is particularly important from a building level um for principles and teachers um to sit and look and say okay what happened with this particular student or groups of students was it something within the curriculum do we need to make adjustments is it your pacing is it the sequence um so that we can then ensure that like I said we're moving students forwards not backwards and I'm sorry but we have to go through the same for science um but science is shorter um because there's only three grade levels we have grade five grade eight grade 11 um the way in which uh our data comes back from this particular assessment is different than math and Ela and math and Ela the state provides us what they call evidence statements which allows us to be able to see what standards were assessed year-over-year on the assessment they do not provide that information to districts for the Science assessment um so it is from my perspective a guessing game in terms of what content will actually be assessed from the standards in each of the grade levels and the same distribution for all of our performance levels from each of those grades also by race and also by program so after looking at all of the data and from a district standpoint I look at the data with my supervisors and my directors and we analyze what we feel um from a district perspective needs to to uh be addressed um and what were our challenges and our accomplishments we were really proud of the fact that like I said look while looking through the data that we're back where we were as a district pre pandemic um it really gives us a a foundation to really start from scratch from here and know that we're sort of where we were before in order for us to really start moving forward um and providing even more supports and interventions for students who need it as well as pushing those students who are meaning expectations to exceeding expectations we were really proud of our accomplishments in Algebra 2 at the high school and moving that Mark from being in the 60% to being at 81 % for those students that's a huge accomplishment and it just goes to the Testament of looking at curriculum and working with those teachers and what they did throughout the school year to move those students forward in terms of our challenges in looking at our data we continue to need to look at informational text in terms of vocabulary and comprehension um and providing more opportunities for our students in the classrooms with that as long as as as well as analyzing literature and being able to answer specific questions related to the literature that they're reading in terms of math um we continue to work on fractions solving equations and functions so what are our next steps we continue to do data Dives with this new uh assessment platform and data platform that we have link it all of our data is in there um our teachers are getting their first Workshop tomorrow during our PD day on what their dashboards will look like and what kind of data they have at their fingertips in order to drive their instruction and make some um adjustments if needed or what types of activities they could be doing with their students continuing to provide our students with targeted academic support whether that be during the school day in intervention or before school or after school for our Title One programs and title one schools and always looking at our curriculum and revising and resequencing topics in order to ensure we give our students the opportunity to see the content before they're assessed on it now the other assessment that we need to also go over this evening is the dynamic learning Maps assessment also known as DM it too was administered in the spring it's an alternate assessment for students students with the most significant intellectual disabilities in ela mathematics and science you'll notice the three content areas are the exact same content areas um for students who are not part of dlm and that's intentional this particular assessment is just that an alternate assessment for these students um in the these three areas to assess where they are they too have four proficiency levels emerging approaching Target at their target or Advanced due to the number of students who take the assessment within the district which is a very small percentage of the students as required by the state um students typically need to take the njsla um but I believe it's 10% Mis Bond one 1% of your total population of your special ed population take um the dlm thank you for that clarification um so with that this is a districtwide not by grade level so of the students who were assessed in science it's 50% of our students were emerging 177% were approaching their target and 33 were at Target and we didn't have anyone in science who was Advanced when it comes to the math assessment we had 40% % of the population who took the assessment at emerging 20% approaching their target 40% at their target and 0% Advanced and in ela we were spread across the board at 20% emerging 50% approaching Target 20% at Target and 10% Advanced thank you for your time um I know it's a lot of data and small numbers and a lot of graphs um but the presentation will be put on the website for anybody who would like to look at it um in more depth thank [Applause] you while everyone is gathering back on the de thank you so much Miss mccan uh for that very detailed presentation and uh thank you very very much and it's terrific to see um the progress of our students and I particularly appreciate the um look over time because we have been working very very hard as it as all of the Educators in this District to get our kids back back to pre pandemic uh levels but also to surpass them at wellth so a lot of great work is happening so thank you for sharing that with us tonight thank you at this time I'm going to be moving into the president's report the first thing I would like to do is recognize our wall High School certificate students for September of 2024 in grade n we had Trevor Ludwick grade 10 Carly Maser grade 11 Conor moli and grade 12 Mason Wells for nights of the week for the week of September 16th we had Gus stad dronsky and the week of September 23rd we had Max curus so congratulations to those students it's fun to be back at our students of the month and nights of the week I know that your friends and family are proud and we appreciate all your hard work um now that we're back in October a lot of our activities are really in full swing um I'd like to thank all of our community for all the work that you put into the schools um obviously our Educators our administrators all of our school staff work very very hard um to make sure that our students have outstanding curriculum and great programming um and I know that our community members who participate on various volunteer groups in the schools um really pour their hearts and souls and take that experience up another whole uh Notch so I'd like to just recognize a few of the activities that are going on around um in wall I know for our Allenwood ptg they are under an initiative where they are selling boo bags and getting ready for their trunk or treat I'd like to congratulate them on the beautiful book fair that they accomplished uh I know that at cape cape is uh currently having a Serial drive and just had a wonderful second grade Fall Festival our Old Mill home in school has its Fun Run with the addition of a great fall festival happening on October 26th and I know they just also had a very successful coin uh coin race West belmare is getting ready for their very popular Fall Festival which is this Friday the 18th and they will be celebrating Los dasas Des morte please Spanish teachers do not come after me on uh October 2th 4th at WS there's always a tremendous amount of activities happening um in our upper grades um they are having a fundraiser parking pass for the Thanksgiving wall versus Manasquan football game um and then they take those funds and reinvest them into activities for the kids including things like picnics and class trips and um offsetting for for students in need who participate and all kinds of really great events there there uh they're also in the midst of a sock drive and at the wall high school as our students mentioned they are very much in the swing of their homecoming festivities um and their PTO is again hosting um the homecoming dance which was actually reintroduced last year um with tremendous success I know that the ticket sales today I believe or at least the the 200 Mark and I think there's quite a few more that was just today so I think it's going to be really really really well attended and I thank the folks who are working hard for that while uh high school PTO also celebrated a beautiful custodian's day and um just lots of different things happening also not to forget our Primary School their PTO is also um constantly coming up and participating along with the administration and the staff there celebrating our youngest students and doing just a beautiful job um so that really is something to be proud of in the community it's something positive to focus on um and if we are looking for things to get involved in I really encourage folks to take a look at the wall Public Schools website pick the school that you're looking for and they each have really great um newsletters that you can access and they are getting better and better and they come with pictures and we get to see a lot of what's actually happening in the schools it's nice to be able to see see what's going on you know when you drop your kids off and they go to school to see all the positive things that are happening uh I also want to mention to please be on the lookout um for wall at the wall High School the Unified sports initiative continues that is a tremendously important initiative um the Unified sports is a New Jersey subset of Special Olympics where we are partnering our general education students with students who may have different needs and the idea is that partnering through training and team sports leads to friendship and understanding and a greater sense of community so on the 19th of November there is an event that will be coming up I believe I wanted to mention it tonight so that people could be looking for it so we don't miss it before the next meeting but something really exciting to see it happens in um Tom's River the Field of Dreams so please be on the lookout for that and I think that as far as my president's report right now that's going to uh tie that up I hope everybody's having a great fall that you're settling in to your um kind of routines with school I know we're back to lunches and all that stuff again but next thing you know it'll be holiday break so um enjoy the fall and I'm going to turn the mic over to Dr handerhan thank you very much Miss Stites I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the wall High School color guard and our student representatives to the Board of Education May Mason Adam and Megan Cappy for joining us this evening thank you as well to miss kayn gilary and Miss Jennifer mccan for their presentations this evening it is so incredibly important important that we communicate this type of information to the public so I thank you for your for your efforts I am happy to share with you that October 2nd was National custodian appreciation day I was thrilled to see our custodians received so much gratitude in our schools earlier this month on behalf of the Board of Education I wish to thank all of our custodians and operations team for everything they do for us day nights weekends and holidays and somehow it just seems to have a lot of holidays so thank you for all of that so much of their hard work goes on behind the scenes I just want them to know their efforts do not go unnoticed thank you just a reminder the students mentioned it earlier and certainly mised it as well but this Friday Night wall High School hosting its annual homecoming game against Howell High School with all of the homecoming festivities it is a great night and I hope to see you there each year New Jersey school districts must report to the student safety data system or ssds the system collects incidents of violence vandalism weapons substance abuse so substance use Excuse me restraint Andor seclusion harassment intim idation and bullying it also collects Hib training information and programs conducted to support anti-bullying efforts to complete reporting for the 2023 2024 school year with breakdowns is included in tonight's agenda as attachment e under the superintendent report the number of total confirmed incidents for the 2023 2024 school year is the high school 21 Intermediate School 133 Allenwood 1 Central School 2 Old Mill School 1 West belmare School 2 and Primary School zero additionally a requirement under the anti-bullying Bill of Rights Act is for each school to conduct a self School self assessment for determining grades each school's school safety School climate team is required to complete the self assessment and enter the school's rating into the NJ Doe's online system I would like to add that this self assessment does not speak to the number of bullying incidents but rather the compliance and established administrative protocols related to harassment intimidation and bullying each school's self assessment for the 2324 school year is provided as attachment F under the superintendent report wall High School a mark of 70 6 wall Intermediate School a mark of 75 Allenwood 78 Central School 76 Old Mill 78 West belmare 78 and Primary School 77 I've received changing gears a little bit I have received an inquiry from a member of the public about the absence of our monthly enrollment and its companion document comparability of attendance rates on this month's business agenda I would like to address this concern publicly when I arrived in Wall Township I was surprised with how many internal use documents were added to the Board of Education agendas until now I did not have a reason to not add these reports to the agenda this school year due to special academic programming of a small student group these reports would arguably disclose what is referred to as personally identifying information please know before not including them on this month's agenda I confirmed with the New Jersey Department of Education to make sure that these reports do not need to be on a public Board of Education business agenda further the New Jersey Department of Education does not publish details of cohort groups of students when the group is less than 10 students I would like to stress to the Wall Township Public School community that I take personal student information Student Records very seriously for example the general public could potentially know the attendance rate of an individual child or children if these reports were added to our agenda I consider this a student record I had the option of redacting this portion of the report however during my time here in wall redactions can be viewed by some in a negative light to not include the small cohort of data would not be accurate for our internal purposes therefore at least for this school year I will not be adding these reports that said some members of the public are very interested in in District enrollment so I will share total District enrollment to date as of today and total grade level enrollment breakdowns orally here goes total in District enrollment count 3,24 pre kindergarten 72 students kindergarten 228 first grade 223 second grade 235 third grade 249 fourth grade 234 fifth grade 280 sixth grade 238 7th grade 258 8th grade 261 nth grade 219 10th grade also 219 11th grade 255 and 12th grade 233 I will be uh providing the enrollment figures orally in future um superintendent reports as the year as this school year progresses I would like to remind everyone that tomorrow October 16th is a staff Professional Day and as such school will not be in session for students I would also like to thank our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction and the entire cni team for all of their hard work in preparing such an extensive professional development day for our staff changing gears just a bit last month you may recall during public comment the condition of the grass on the varsity field was a topic of discussion you may also recall that in the Thursday SE setember 26th edition of the co-star I provided some additional information as well as an apology at this time I would like to ask Mr SMI to provide some specific details regarding the opening field conditions as well as remedial measures that have since been implemented implemented Mr Smite yes thank you just as a recap and as was communicated the newspaper from yourself the irrigation system for the varsity field as well as two other Fields shut off for an event that was occurring on campus although the system was turned back on the pump that serves these fields was not turned back on and the fields went for about a week and a half without irrigation that was addressed by providing additional irrigation however it was also determined that the varsity Stadium Field had chinch bugs that was treated in the middle of September for the chinch bugs it was additionally seated split seated at that time after the first two Varsity games vendor came back out to The Stadium Field the field was dethatched it was core AED and it was slit seated and it'll continue to be course continues to be irrigated continually be monitored uh for the rest of the season whatever other steps can be taken to make improvements will be done thank you Mr SMI as I stated in the previously mentioned co-star article I extend my heartfelt apology to the wall athletic community and I will reiterate that we do need to do better so um thank you to our operations uh Team for um working on uh securing um our contracted services and um working on a remedial plan um at this time I'd like to return the microphone back to you Miss Stites thank you Dr handerhan moving into the Board of Education um update Mr SMI would you be able to give us a quick overview of Oprah yes so to dat for this uh fiscal year which is starts July 1 the district has received 38 op requests we have provided responses to all 38 37 of them are complete considered closed we have one that is partially complete it's a request for records over multiple years we've provided partial documents and we are continuing to produce records in response to that one request so to date we have provided just under 7,000 pages of government records it's at 6,944 thank you Mr Smite I appreciate it at this time Mr Buffa I believe have something for the board report yes thank you madam president I just wanted to add that um I was able to uh attend the Powderpuff game last night and um very exciting perfect night for football um everybody involved uh all the athletes on the field to the cheerleaders on the sidelines and the student coaches uh it was really really a great night um and it's great to see the Community come together for an event like that because I've I've been to other districts that have held similar events and the turnout isn't nearly uh what it was at the um Wall Township High School uh Powderpuff game so great job to everybody involved uh it was really a good night agreed thank you I also attended Powderpuff um and it was awesome to see um Marne our athletic director out interviewing the kids doing live broadcasts with the kids on the sidelines um and it was always nice to see our so many teachers out class our class advisors our principles um so it was a super night if you have never been to a powderpuff don't miss it next year at this time I'd like to ask Mr Nasser to please give us a referendum update thank you madam president um I would like to start by saying thank you for the wonderful presentations um everything is possible seeing what's going on there is absolutely amazing and thank you Miss mccan for the the data it is not the most exciting concept but um yeah from being on the board through the pandemic and trying to conceptualize what we were going to have to deal with the next few years to to get our students back to where they were was was tough and you don't really know until you start having data and you can start trending it and for the first time I I think I saw what we were looking for and I'm like oh wow it worked is there still work to do absolutely there's always work to do but I think um that type of data in that granular fashion is good because it'll help us Target at least on the fnf you know where we can where we can help out the best where the resources need to go so for thank you for that um second you know we're the fnf committee so we have to thank our custodians and maintenance not because we want to but because they're the best um they do so much work they're here all the time they open the buildings they close the buildings um and there's such a great team here um I I can't say enough good things about him so thank you for from my heart um for everything you all do um so our fnf committee meeting met at the high school we did a walk through um for those that have were aware of our referendum process originally before we designed the scope of the referendum we would meet each month at a different school to look at the different conditions of the building and try to prioritize what we needed to include in the the projects and what things may be left best for other types of capital projects um similar to the data that we're starting to see come out now we're starting to see results of that and being able to walk through the high school was um absolutely amazing to see uh we saw the bathrooms we saw the some of what was planned in the auditorium and the the front ENT it it really is going to be amazing I didn't know what to expect and I walked away just blown away with um some of the work that went on this summer uh the quality of work it I I I have to say it was I was really impressed um so to continue that we have a couple of projects that are on the agenda for approval uh the first is for interior alterations and continuing with the scope of the referendum project and we have a large HVAC project that was a series of smaller projects we were able to combine to try to get some more volume discounts in a larger overall project um the details are online you know none of this was a surprise it's all broken down um I will say this was voted on by our community it was overwhelmingly passed we thank them for that and it really is going to make a huge difference in the overall environment in this District on top of that um I want to say thank you to Mr Van Sickle our facilities manager he's on his way out um got got a new gig closer to home God bless him he was uh on the road a lot um and I want to welcome Mr Canda who's on the agenda for approval tonight um I wish him he's coming into a a fun environment to work in and I'm sure he's going to work out fine um last but not least I I do want to address one uh rumor floating around uh the district has not sold any property um I will say uh the process to for school district to sell a parcel of property is not quick and not done behind the scenes it's very public process from an appraisal to approval from the state application to the state it could take two or three years so if uh you're hearing that the smok and mirrors board of education is selling off our prop we don't we're not able to do that that's not the way things work so I do want to address that clear that up hopefully it puts some people's minds at ease that thank you madam president president that is all thank you Mr Nasser do any other members of the board have anything to contribute to the board report at this time okay seeing that I'm going to remind folks that committee um minutes are posted online members of the Board of Education not only meet at least once a month for our business meetings but we also meet in smaller groups in committee um and that's at least once a month as well so you can view the minutes if you'd like to take a look at them they are published online do any of my committee chairs have anything to report out on in addition none okay seeing none I'm going to be opening the floor at this time for the second public comment again if you would like to contribute your thoughts we have got the microphone at the top uh the top of the stairs there and also down here on the floor so please come forward and share Betsy cross I live in Wall Township um I think it would have been helpful you had that presentation as handouts it was so hard to read you had to take pictures of it it's ridiculous I say this same thing every single year um but I'm sure it's just on By Design so I appreciate Miss maccam but you couldn't read it sitting here um shout out to miss panasuk and I think uh the 11th grade and 12th grade uh second algebra uh Algebra 2 teacher I mean they were like off the charts um for what you could read um let's see I saw in the June minutes that we had a lawsuit with the HVAC company and it seems to be the same um I don't know if it's the same company as who we just did this $18 million Venture with So Adam maybe if you could answer that or Mr SMI but I saw that there was a lawsuit with the hbar company so that gets me nervous um what else looking at numbers what you have here that uh also we we weren't allowed to ask questions of Miss mccan it's ridiculous you have people here they want to ask questions you can't ask them so that falls on miss dtes being the president's terrible um again you need to have lawsuits on your agendas and you keep withholding them Mr uh Lester richen suggest I file a complaint um against the board which I will now do um executive session June 11th litigation HVAC contract 22 K1 29b Mr Smite advised that Mr Merino and then everything is redacted um strangely July 16th executive minutes it looked like Mr SMI was just advising everybody about the warnet claim so that is just really disturbing it paid out in November and it's on here litigation Mr SMI reported to the board on the status of the insurance claim related to the compl fed in 2015 I believe that's Miss warning it had paid out in November and board members are just finding about it on July 16 6 months later and then August 20th is when I had the conversation with Dr handerhan on the criminal activity for the trailers um I went over the 18 million on the HVAC I think that should be looked at by your auditor the all all the all what the work you paid for before and the current work uh that should be looked at something remember um you were sued or a lawsuit for the first round for the HVAC Mr SMI remembers that well um we have only spent 4 million3 on buildings actual expenditures and buildings it's like 430,000 a year for over 10 years that's why the buildings are a mess so walking around now I think you walked around to the high school but I mean thank you the money we pay in our taxes versus what we get is no comparison thank you Mrs cross your time is out Tom rau3 do we have anyone else for public comment at this time do we have anyone else for public [Music] comment if we have anyone else for public comment please come to the podium either at the top of the stairs or here Kathleen Duran Wall Township I would like to um add my displeasure to Betsy's comment um that the board has been so less than forthcoming and actually secretive about disclosing settlements you are a public entity your settlements are not secret they are not super secret and they are not even confidential you're allowed to do the ordinary redactions but the fact of the settlement the amount and the date um are not allowed to be withheld so the failure to produce them in response to her requests um can only uh make you look worse and worse as time goes on and um frankly more ridiculous because there are better fields to choose choose to die on because this is a no-brainer the settlements are not super secret with a school board um the second thing is I had time uh to check your maintenance plan um budget items that uh were handed out and there are 21 entity 21 entries all separate and they're all identical so your budget which if you wanted to just be the ordinary citizen just looking to see how are we spending this million or that million or this half a million or this 100,000 you just look at it and it's the same entry for each school for each school year 23 24 25 and 26 it's just repeated over and over again so if I want to see what you're spending money on it says the same three things basically we're just going to take care of the building and you spent several pages to do that and it just says it over and over and over again there is actually no detail that is informational or contains any information that would be of use to anyone who's looking uh for information on what is actually being done and the reason this is of concern is just so people in the audience who may not have done it the the the budgets increased from 30% to 50% to actually double so you're allocating a tremendous amount of money you've doubled the budget in some for some schools and have absolutely no disclosure of why you're doing so you have no disclosure why one school went up 30% another school went up 50% another school simply doubled so what's being done when is it being done or why it's being done is all completely a mystery to all of us we're just going to close our eyes hold our breath and hope for the best that somebody has the the school's interest at heart and does the right amount of work under the terms of a comprehensive maintenance plan budget it's ridiculous and it doesn't hold the board or the school accountable for what's being done thank you Mr Ram do we have anyone else for a public comment anyone all right seeing none we're going to close the floor for public comment at this time may I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll make that Mr malof may have a second Mr wandra Mr Smite roll call Mr anio yes M barier yes Mr buffer yes Mr Giovani yes malath yes with one exstension uh number 16 Roman numeral one a number four noted Mr Nasser yes Miss shimko yes wandr yes M yes thank you at this time may I please have a motion to adjourn Miss djani may have a second second Mr Buffa all in favor any opposed all right that's going to conclude our meeting this evening thank you for coming out for