##VIDEO ID:ZgVkKzKnfCA## after to do it we do not okay then let's go right into your so we have our students back with us uh for this year so welcome Juliana and Sophie thank you um it's nice to see familiar faces and they actually have a lot to report about what's been going on in the school um I guess our because we had a such an early board meeting our last board meeting was after school started so we've already been in full swing for a while um our Sports Seasons are underway which they'll speak a little bit about our back to school night we still have a few weeks for that because we wait till all the k8s are done with their back to school nights um but I cannot emphasize enough just what a positive start to the school year it has been it's the the building has so much energy in it between the staff and the students um it's been a really really enjoyable beginning of the year and our next three board meetings you're in luck because you have presentations uh for members of our team at everyone uh but I think the way we're chunking them uh makes them a little little bit easier to to digest and tonight's presentation where we talk about our data you will see that connect to the Strategic plan presentation we do in October where the Departments will talk about some of the goals they've developed related to this data um so I'm excited about that tonight thank you okay great yes uh welcome back uh started the school year from what I was told was seamless and smooth and that's always good to hear um we did have our ret treat last week and uh the board had the opportunity to tour the school and to tour all the infrastructure and the uh construction projects that were done uh within the next few weeks or within the month we're going to post all the work that's been done so that the public can see where the money is being spent uh certainly one of the highlights is the new track and uh we did have a game I guess last Friday night and uh that worked that well so with the new lights from a year ago and the new track I did think the P I told you I thought the lights going out okay so with that and uh who knows we may even move to get a Jumbotron if that's possible then but we're we're looking at all sorts of options for get up a walk out for construction anyway so we're certainly very excited uh bunch of classrooms we done the pottery photography uh new nurses station which is amazing and I think I mentioned that it's probably too good because now it's attracting people more so than it was before um uh locker rooms were updated um athletic training uh so again there were a lot of projects that were done and again special thanks Administration and Chris uh for overseeing all the projects and I think there's a few things that are still a little outstanding but they'll be done within the next few weeks so I am sure uh uh students and faculty will certainly appreciate all the upgrades that were done and again it's been our the board's commitment to uh you know not only fund the day-to-day operations but certainly the infrastructure and to make sure that we can be at oh and the robotics also that was done uh so that we can be at the Forefront and give everyone the opportunity to succeed and be the best that they can be um so again certainly looking forward to another great school year say that probably every year and I think every year the goal is to be better every year so that's where we're at um Mr sty thank you Mr President just an update on the board for transportation remember last year we had many problems actually the year before there was shortages um was a lot of it was very difficult for the past three or four years actually outside the cost which has gone up quite quite a bit we had a a pretty successful start not only here but in our elementary schools um do want to thank um Brenda feser in my office she filled in when we didn't have a transportation coordinator she does she does a lot in my office when people aren't in she does it so she did a great job and then my new transportation coordinator Kelly Sheen who started on August 18th hit the ground running literally um and has done an outstanding job in getting vers into the two schools she is shared between our school and wat young which is a great shared service and it's worked that well for both schools so far um I know they're happy from what talking to them I can tell you that it's it's you know it's been very helpful to both me and Brenda because we're not doing that but which we appreciate but um it's it it's been a very good start as opposed to the last couple years which has been very difficult um I think the drivers are being paid more now for sure um so that's kind of at least alleviated some of that driver shortage issues that we had in the past um so it's it's just been you know knock on wood Transportation can turn on a dime but it's been it's been a good start certainly that's a stress reliever because I know for the past couple years that was uh first and foremost in our mind uh tonight I want to welcome back as Dr J had mentioned our student Representatives is this now your senior year Junior so if all goes well we'll have you for another year after this uh so yes so we have H Sophie lamb who's this is now your second year doing this and Juliana Santos also your second year so I turn it over to you guys and thanks for being here and making the commitment thank you this month's student achievements are are as followed we are proud to announce that five watch Young Hill students have been named semii semi-finalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship competition they are Colin bellfield Rio Patel Melody Chen Selena xan and Megan Lee this year's five watchong Hills National Merit semi-finalists means that 38 watchong Hill students have qualified as National Merit semi-finalists during the most recent 5 years including six in the class of 2024 nine in in the class of 2023 7 in the class of 2022 11 in the class of 2021 and now five in the class of 2025 senior Leo Chen has been involved in a remote internship on protein aggregation he has been learning how to use code and a molecular Dynamic simulation program to simulate protein aggregation he will continue this Research into the fall as he plans to conduct an individual research project using these tools simultaneously he has been practicing French horn and piano all summer as he's excited to continue with the New Jersey youth Symphony in the fall additionally he's recording a supplement for French horn while also preparing for the New Jersey music Teachers Association young musicians and piano competition in November congratulations to Melody Chen a senior who took an EMT class at Union County College and then passed the NR EMT exam she is now officially an EMT with the Warren Township rescue School squad for school events 9th grade orientation was conducted on Wednesday August 28th between 7:30 and 10:30 a.m. the students reported directly to the pack where they assembled as the class of 2028 for the first time following the assembly the peer leaders gave tips to help students understand their schedules and find their way around the building students then had the chance to meet their teachers by following an abbreviated a period schedule and those who did not have a chance to pick up their Chromebooks did so upper classmen who are new to the district were also invited to attend continuing on with our school events we are thrilled to announce the successful completion of our two-week band camp under the guidance of our new director of bands Mr Allan Deus throughout August our dedicated marching band students have been working tirelessly on their upcoming halftime show titled the forest awaits this captivating performance will take you on a musical Journey evoking the spirit of forest Ventures you can catch this enchanting show at any home football game this season or at various marching band competitions throughout the season join us in celebrating their hard work and look forward to an inspiring and entertaining performance be the change and peer leaders had an excellent morning during n9th grade orientation conducting ice breakers to introduce our four sending District students to each other and helping them feel comfortable in high school finally students in Greg Krueger's human behavior course are being being introduced to the internship program in which they will be helping Elementary School students with reading and math at Woodland School and L Hill schools and then finally for our athletic update the Warriors are now in full action the new and very much improved track is open and our teams are enjoying toes your Stadium again homecoming is this Friday September 20th when the warrior football team takes on the lyen Tigers at 700 p.m. the homecoming king and queen will be announced at halftime game tickets are available online and should be purchased prior to arriving at the gate and that is all for our student announcements thank you great thank you I know there's always some issues with respect to starting school before Labor day but as been highlighted we have a lot of activity in the early part of August there's probably a few hundred students who are back uh between uh Sports football and some other sports as well as the band that you alluded to um so welcome back everybody uh next up we have the district assessment report to show how well our district is doing Dr jitt would you like to introduce be honored to thank you Mr bernberg um you know what if you can just advance to the next slide uh Andy and it should be our strategic plan goals thank you since I'm only going to speak very briefly you all hear me talk enough um I'll be turning over to our leadership team so this is uh uh part one of a three-part series of presentations we are going to be uh conducting over the next uh several board meetings at our next meeting we are actually going to give an overview of our NJ Sky survey results as we now have been giving that for three years so we have some um good year-over-year data to take a look at with regard to trends that we're seeing and what's nice about this njsla AP sat Report with regard to the uh n act with regard to the njsla data we can actually start having some comparisons to Prior years because they haven't changed the the test entirely as they have every single year there were some changes with what grade level it was administered to uh and our uh members of our leadership team will speak to that but it is this is one of the many indicators of progress we use to just gauge our progress and um areas in need of attention with regard to our strategic plan uh and so this is an ongoing process of looking at student data and we utilize it in a um Myriad of ways um looking at our instructional practice looking at specific student needs as well as looking at areas of growth uh and areas of success for the district as a whole so without further Ado I will turn it over to Mr laera who will kick off the presentation um good evening um I'm going to start our presentation as uh Dr jid said this is kind of a continuation of a from starting in July when uh Mr delesio and Mr Quia here were presenting and then we have the remaining two that we're going to present on sky and also the Strategic plan um I'm going to begin with um something that our student Representatives already spoke about was our National Merit award winners that we just uh received so like was said earlier we have five semi-finalists we normally will receive information in late stages of February or early March if any of them move on to finalist recognition but as you see in years past we've had a lot of success from our semi-finalist to finalist so fingers crossed is that we can continue so we can continue in that way um what's interesting about the National Merit um is it's based upon the PSAT score that we issued last year and it's key to understand that last year was the first time that we did the digital administration of the PSAT um and as Mr delesio can attest it was a little rocky in the administration from the College Board site but through the dedication of Mr delesio and a lot of countless uh professionals here our students were able to perform as you can see very well on there and it matches how our enrollment is going so it's really on Pace with how we've achieved in previous years um the next slide obviously is talking about our a um SAT scores so as you can see we've stayed higher than 1200 over the last three years but what's interesting is you see the state um average be going down over the last set of years now some of this data might aggregate differently as it comes forward when we get higher group numbers but this is the information that we have regarding the state performance right now and as we spoke about this in years past is a lot of colleges and universities a set of years ago went to test optional um so that impacted how many people were taking the SAT scores and the SAT scores however what we've seen or what we're hearing from universities a lot of them are becoming back to tests so I think this is something for us to keep eyes on going forward because I think we're going to have more concrete data of SATs in subsequent years however also understand that last spring was the first digital uh sat that was administered now most of our seniors were past that point but we will see the impact on the next year scores of how the digital Administration went and how kids are scoring um and it's something to keep track of um you know in subsequent years to see how the scores are going to change when the population is increasing of those that are taking sat so we've included this one and it might be hard to see on the screen but I think you guys were shared with this this is the last three years but it only goes up to 2223 because this year this lags in one year because it takes us a year to get information from the other schools but it's an aggregate of the last three uh school years of other Regional high schools and their SATs we're at the bottom and you can see to the how far we are to the right that we're constantly um outperforming or achieving um to the maximum or to the you know to the betterment of many of our other Regional Schools here's we see ACT scores and what's really interesting to me is we don't see the decline in the state scores as we did in the SAT so this is stuff that is very interesting um when I look at the data for us to uh further analyze what that means in subsequent years as we get more and more kids taking these um standardized tests but what we do see is that our senior class year in and year out performs very well on standardized test and put themselves in very nice positions to go to whatever Next Step they're choosing to go in their academic or professional careers and at that point I'm gonna turn the microphone over to miss Veen to talk about our advanced placement activity right good evening it's great to see all of you in person I'm used to seeing you on video um thank you again for inviting us tonight um you all pretty much are familiar with what uh an AP test is um so what we're uh interested in talking about is um how our students did uh so the first thing that that's not the right okay so the first thing that you should not notice is that we are once again an honor rooll school the next thing is when you um view this chart you'll see we have excellent students and the our students want to increase their capacity the second detail is that Although our enrollment has gone down has decreased our number of test takers has increased along with our test scores espec especially look at the last three years um because that's the recovery of covid and we're particularly uh proud um of that uh upward growth the other takeaway for board members who may be new um is that our superintendent challenged our teachers and our administrators when she first came to the district to focus more on individual score reports and to then look at our curricular alignment Dr J believed that we could achieve uh 4.0 as a district average and the next obvious question is so you're starting to teach to the test no that's insulting of course we don't teach to the test but we practice with our students and we're asking more open-ended questions and we also have had a big focus on writing and I think our Juniors could attest to that um even in the first two weeks full week weeks uh and as you can see um this year we achieved uh the goal and then the last one that always comes up is um the distinction that our students have achieved uh our students have achieved AP scholar AP honor and AP distinction and what are those those are calculated based on the number of tests students take that are above a three or above a four student and then an obvious question students often um can use this Distinction on their common app when their seniors they're asked to please list in addition to National Honor Society what other um Awards you have received over your four years uh and if students are not using the Common App or they're not planning on going to college this is also a very nice bullet point for a resume um and our students definitely do this and those of you who have been here before know that there used to be three other exemplary categories um but they've been discontinued because the College Board is quote unquote doing their part to reduce the burden on students so to say try to take 10 AP scores try to do this try to do that it's focused more on the learning now and that's what we're so proud of that um our teachers and our students have done a tremendous job but Dr uh jwi gets the credit because it was looking at individual tests and then we saw things like we didn't really focus on poetry 19th century literature you know and giving kids practice in the way the questions are being asked so thank you two things I just want to add one I do not get credit for that I just asked some questions and our I one of the reasons I share the AP slides at our opening convocation with our staff is because it's not just the AP teachers that are responsible for those results it's all of the teachers who had all of our students leading up to those culminating AP experiences that contributed to that so that is really a schoolwide success and the staff look at me like I was nuts when I said I wanted to increase participation and increase our scores and that's exactly what they did and that's why the College Board honoral that marielen mentioned we've made that for a number of years um that is not just for increasing performance to make that you have to increase participation and performance and that's why I find that recognition particularly meaningful because it's not about uh you know trying to restrict your AP courses and make it super selective and try and manipulate the scores but it's actually about increasing access and you know helping those students achieve highly so and our teachers have done a tremendous job of running with that um and really you know looking at the data to improve their instruction and our supervisor is working closely with them so they've really done a tremendous job as you can see from from the performance there and it's remarkable when you look at the numbers even despite our um enrollment decreasing how many more students we have that are challenging themselves uh with those courses so um you know I think that's it's great for our stud students just because It prepares them the AP experience regardless of you know anything else involved the the test just sitting just the AP class experience and sitting for the test um the all the research and data shows how much better that makes them prepared for their post-secondary learning so kudos to our teachers for that thanks Mike before I start okay before I start tonight I want to give uh Dan berelli a little shout out for this presentation uh may have noticed this is a little bit more aesthetically pleasing this presentation than years in the past so Dan and I were working on um kind of upgrading our presentations this summer and uh we're using a different software program called canva and Dan has a much better eye than I do when it comes to pictures and and fonts um so he helped a lot with this uh presentation in terms of the aesthetically present all the numbers he couldn't do but uh all the nice stuff but I told him I'd give him a shout out um so I'm going to start with the the state assessments so a couple months ago Mr quy and I were here to talk about the njpa which is the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment that's the 11th grade test that students take these are a separate set of Assessments but they're still based on New Jersey state standards and math science and English they're called the njs laas and we've talked about these from many years but as Dr J mentioned before we're actually able to really make some nice comparisons this year because we didn't have these tests are in covid and prior to covid you may have heard of Park and all these different tests that were going on so there's been some consistency so uh we're going to point that out tonight so uh these tests are like I said in mathematics Ela and science um mathematics testing is grade specific and subject specific so there for ninth grade students students who are taking Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 so that is a little bit of difference than in past years Ela English language arts is grade n specific and the science test is grade 11 specific so uh 10th graders get off easy in the spring with these um first thing I want to show you is uh the NLS njsla Algebra 1 results these results are exemplary this year I'm very proud of them and um on the bottom right I have some of those take-home points and and I'll go through those this is a algebra one test given in May of the n9th grade year the state data does not disaggregate high school students from middle middle school students there are middle school students who take algebra one um we're of course the the yellow the gray is the state and we did extremely well this year I want to I want to really tell you how proud I am of the students who took this test last year uh the take-home points where we can make some comparisons from the year before is that and I'm getting old so I have to get a little closer Mike you feel free to borrow one of these just push the yeah push the button there all right so this year we had um there's five categories of where students can score from level one to level uh level five with level five being the highest uh we had a 20% increase in level four from the previous year we were able to push students up from the level two and level three into level four which is really not easy to do on any standardized test that was a huge increase uh we had a 135% decrease in level two from the previous year so level two students partially meet expectations we saw a decrease there and a nine excuse me 8.7% decrease in level one for the previous year students did extremely well um I was I wasn't surprised because I observe a lot of these classes and I saw the dedication of them as well as the teachers and um I I will say that you know when I see 10th graders now who took this test uh I've mentioned I'm very proud of them and I'm happy they took it seriously and um like I said the the results are great this year the next test is the geometry state test again this the state data includes high school and middle middle school students depending on the sequence uh of math at districts middle schools can have a lot of geometry students or not so many uh that all depends our take-home points here are similar there's five levels we had a 37.8% increase in level four from the previous year um a 21.8% decrease in level two from the previous year 1% of our test takers were level one and they didn't make the test easier this test was not changed so we saw major strides here with students um in the geometry levels too Algebra 2 is a little bit different I just want to give you an understanding of that um there's not a lot of algebra 29th graders at the high school so there's about 30 or so um so they have taken geometry at the middle school level and have come up here um these students probably will take multivariable calculus uh when they move on to their senior year so the expectation is they would do very well and they did um to 21 Point 21.2% increase in level five uh 7% decrease in level four no level ones or twos I've looked at every one of these scores students did extremely well and again we're very proud on how they did there so these three tests haven't changed over the past few years um and um you know we've seen these these these huge increases I contribute that to more consistency in the curriculum um probably have some questions on that later but I want to get on and let U Mr aquavia come up and explain the ELA Mike's other role by the way uh in addition to overseeing math and business is our as our testing coordinator so all of these tests that presented on Mike is facilitating that um throughout the year and that is a a tremendous amount of work and I appreciate that he always eagerly does it and does an impeccable job um but it's between PSAT which is now given during school NJ GPA NGS njsla um and AP and then the two weeks of AP testing and then the science the njsla science so in in the midst of his day job he's also uh director of of assessment um I mean he has it down to a science now but it's it's a lot so I I tremendously appreciate how smoothly um you make it go even when the College Board um screws things up with the technology but you know we can only control so much hi everyone uh I'm happy to talk with you about Ela grade nine right now and that's the way we want a bar graph to look so level one and two level three these are lower levels of performance levels four and five are higher levels of performance and so you see in the yellow that's where those bars are extended and that's really what we want to uh we want to amplify and take a look at so we're really pleased to see a 10.2% decrease in the number of students scoring below proficiency that is levels one two and three we are also pleased to see a 14.7% increase in the number of students exceeding expectations at level five and this is not a gain that simply mirrors uh the state's results right so the state posted a gain um at level five our gain is about double what they've posted overall we have increased from 70.3 % at levels 4 and five last year to 80.5% at levels four and five this year uh again this is not a gain that simply mirrors the state the state was up 6% we're up 10.2% now back in July we were really proud to present the NJ GPA results as Mike mentioned that's the grade 11 test uh you may remember that over over 90% of our students last year's Juniors that is demonstrated Proficiency in ela on that assessment the 80.5% of Prof level of proficiency in the n9th grade test when compared to the 90.4 proficiency on the 11th grade test may seem like a concern right that's that's a significant difference but it's not and it's important to know that it's because the ninth grade test is it has a higher bar the cut score for the 11th grade assessment is 725 90.4% of our Juniors last year met or exceeded that cut score the cut score for the ninth graders is 750 so 80.5% of our nth graders met or exceeded the cut score now if the bar were set in the same place this is interesting for both the NJ GPA for 11th graders and the NJ SLA for 9th graders we would see very similar levels of performance in the two in fact with a 725 cut score for the nth grade exam 94% of nth graders would have scored proficient right so that's an important thing to keep in mind when we're looking at these scores we see gains that we're really happy about and we also have to note that it's a different it's a different bar that's set for the two exams and that's fine we understand that I'm glad you understand that Jim something yeah something to Gras I don't yeah there's no explanation that can justify why those two things are different the way the State Board came up with the cut scores they just pulled them out of midair they did not like the 750 before so they lowered it to 725 so they could get those proficiency numbers to be more in alignment the the fact that they didn't change them all equally is unconscionable I mean it makes no statistician no one that deals with data or research for a living would look at this and find it find that approach to be acceptable um and I appreciate the way that you've broken it out for us because now we're comparing Apples to Apples you know versus the way they're they're trying to present it is it's not really Apples to Apples because the way they treated that so um but this is very informative thank you so we presented Ela gains back in July on the NJ GPA and we present Ela gains tonight on the njsla we continue to use this assessment to help us determine Department areas of focus like literary reading and vocabulary study and where firmly on track in ela to continue strong performance Gina Hinman will speak with you next about the science results hello everyone that's algebra too far there we go we're good okay the state test for science is a culmination of three years of science standards based on three domains Earth and space science life science and physical science and the three practices investigating sens making and critiquing before we review the scores I do want to provide some context uh since this since this test is not a graduation requirement it can impact how seriously students approach it especially given its timing soon after AP testing and right before the Memorial Day weekend it's it's great timing for us um the state also had promised us um that a new practice test with a digital image library in the spring was going to was going to be released in the spring and uh it still hasn't been released so we didn't have that to kind of work with with our students this year so therefore we did not have the most updated resources to work with uh we are waiting for more released items that better align with the latest version of the assessment our science department is committed to equipping students for Success on assessments yet unlike njsla for Math and Ela uh we do not receive detailed evidence statements that are linked to specific standards uh this limits our ability to analyze the data effectively and Target specific areas that are needed for improvement so we're kind of hit two ways one with timing and uh it not being a graduation requirement but also not having that information to do a deep dive of where we can get better uh as we look at the njsla scores for science you can see that students performed well compared to the average State scores the state reported only 88.7% of students were Advanced proficient compared with our students which were 18.6% uh I would like to add that this is also a 6.2% increase from last Year's uh students in that same category we did see a decrease we do see a decrease in the percentage of students in that near proficient and proficient categories from last year which suggests that more students have advanced to the proficient and advanced proficient categories reflecting a higher level of Mastery and understanding of the material in our ongoing efforts we will continue to focus on creating engaging uh inquiry based student- centered lessons these lessons will feature assessments that are aligned with the three key practices investigating sensemaking and critiquing uh as well as trying to mirror more of the types of questions that students are now seeing on a test because on the test they have clustered questions which um were also waiting for the state to kind of give us some feedback on because it doesn't look like they can get partial credit on some of those cluster questions which also uh affects the how their score is represented and that's our science scores for njsla 11 and I will bring Mr delesio back up Gina thank you for presenting this test in context and the data in context uh it's an interesting test that we are required to give um so thank you for you know shedding some light on it and looking at the data that is very difficult to glean information from that's all I'll say it is difficult when you see the caliber of students that we have and where they are in you know across the board with AP classes and stuff and then I know that the scores would be higher thank you thanks so the next four slides I apologize they're a little busy but um we have to show you that all the data so they tend not to fit nicely um as charts so the presentation is in the board folder so you can take you know look at this afterward um don't feel like you need to study it right now just FYI so what uh the state requires us to do is talk about the subgroups in each one of the tests for the njsla the drive folder sorry Carol not the hard copy sorry uh so the U the state does require us to report on subgroups in each of the njla test that we had just explained so let me just give you an idea what a subgroup is you could see that on the on the left side I'm going to so you can see all our subgroups um all students Hispanic Latino um uh American Indian or uh Alaskan native and so forth and so on or even including all way down to students with disabilities IEP only so you'll see a lot of less than 10 up there it's not a math uh trick or anything it's just that there's less than 10 10 test takers that are in that particular level and they cannot be reported uh due to privacy so we can only report when we have more than 10 test takers and the number that you've been been reported up there is the percentage of students in that particular subgroup at the level they've achieved so every year this is a this changes depending on students who are um what subgroup students are in taking um when they take their they're taking a test so it's really hard to make comparisons and look for each year and also some of the subgroups are really really small right so if you have small subgroups a couple students here or there can really influence the percentage that you see we talked about that in July at the njpa presentation so this is our algebra one subgroup so there's a lot of less than tens there because there either is no data or there's less than 10 students there this is our geometry so there's even more less than tens here uh there's less students who took the geometry test in the algebra one students so you would expect that in the subgroups you'd have a lot of less than 10 test takers there also I've highlighted the ones that we can report to you and then the um like I said there's about 30 students so there's a lot of less than tens there so um and again those are the subgroups we see for Algebra 2 um every year you know this uh this chart again it's like a moving Target it always changes depending on the subgroups this is the ELA subgroup so this is going to have a little bit less less than tens if I could say that the right way because this is a grade specific test for everybody so there's about 400 kids in this data group so you're going to have a little bit more um subgroups to report from here then our junior class I think our junior class is bigger last year than our freshman class for sure right Mr laera so you have a lot of subgroups that you can can look at here and uh I just want to piggyback on what uh Gina said you know the 11th grade test um it's a tough test it's a tough day at the office for everybody that day um it's given before uh the memorial day break a lot of Juniors have AP testing two weeks before so there's some test fatigue there and Sophie are really excited yeah so um it's a tough one um it's a tough one there's a lot of coaxing there's a lot of handholding through it and there's a lot of please do this for Mr delesio so um so that's I just want to point that out that is a real fact um but again you have more um more subgroups to look at here and as Dr Jud said you have it in the board packet so and that's our presentation for this evening thank you okay you you'll be shocked to know that I have some questions oh you do oh please go ahead of course I do um actually a couple comments um and and maybe a few questions first of all uh I want to thank you for the present ation and and for the updating both of design and also some of the way that you're presenting the numbers much more readable and you're really able you're helping us by guiding us to look at the right numbers so that we understand the context of stuff so I certainly appreciate that uh one of the things that I wanted to point out that I thought was really um interesting regarding the AP uh students and the number of AP test takers um I actually like to look at things as a percent as opposed to a number um so when we look at the the the 2012 students 23% of our students actually took the AP tests that year the five um the 484 students that that took them that year that was 23% of our student population uh this year um the 530 students actually represent 31% of our population so that's nearly a 50% increase in the percentage of students in our school that are actually taking the AP test while at the same time also increasing the score uh and so I think the you know to what Dr J was saying I think it's really worth pointing out the fact that we've encouraged more students to take it as opposed to before it was kind of gated with a lot of prerequisites you couldn't take it unless you had these other courses now we're encouraging more students to take it more students to stretch themselves and in doing so we have more students that are taking it and more students that are selling at this and I've been here at this board table watching this process occur over the past 10 years and it is very gratifying to see those kind of results come out as a result of this so that's that's really just a tip of the hat to the entire Administration and faculty because a lot of people were skeptical when we went this direction going oh my God our our scores are going to go down our average scores are going to go down and that's not what happened so and even recently I think two to three years ago we stood before you your microphone even two to three years ago we stood before you and talked and spoke about access and making sure that we were encouraging that if students had interest or exploring students I know we've had teachers reach out to possible students that could succeed in classes to advertise and to further like promote our AP curriculum to our students and this is a clear indication of those efforts we've made curriculum changes to make sure that more students have access to these classes and even talking about percentages and I'd love that we have English supervisor here talking about percentages I thought that was fantastic from last year to this year we went up 15% in AP students I think 15% in AP exams now we can't always do that no but when you have those increases it is a chance to celebrate what the students are doing and the efforts that our our staff is doing to make sure that these classes are available to everybody that comes into our district to not only take but to succeed with a 4.05 overall average so yeah and and and to that point it again it just validates the you know the original decision because there was a lot of you know kind of linking arms and jumping off the cliff to see if this was actually going to pan out the way that it did and actually not only has it panned out the way it did but I think it succeeded any of our expectations as far as what kind of impact it would have on our students being able to take this reiterate what Dr J said it's not a sophomore or a junior or a senior thing it starts you know with our sendings distress it starts in our ninth grade curriculum it is really a culmination of a lot of these courses that is a testament to the student students dedication and also our faculty dedication to get them to this finished and then my other question slash comment um and maybe Mr deliss you could do it or um or certainly our science supervisor the whole idea when they re-engineered all these tests was the idea that you would be able to take a look at the individual questions that you would be able to then disaggregate the data and be able to look at the students and be able to provide intervention for those students uh and you know and this is what the state was talking about you know four or five years ago and so we're still administering a science test that doesn't allow us to do that that is mandated for us to do by the state is that correct yes uh yes um it's it is a good tool to monitor um how far the how much knowledge the students are getting in science but when you have an 11th grade test that's covering three years of science you don't know how many students have moved in and out of District you know that they come from another state another country um so our students overall are doing well we just don't have the information to kind of look at specific questions like math and Ela have and we've been asking for them and I will say that we I was part of a meeting last week where a state representative was supposed to kind of answer these questions for us and uh did not show so we were we were in a zoom call for half an hour and we waited and there was phone calls and text messages um so we're hoping that at our next meeting I can have better answers for you um after we hold that meeting um but it is it is frustrating um but at the same time our students we have to I I have to do a better job of kind of having students realize like their name is on that assessment and how proud they could be by showing us how much they learn by not closing the laptop after 10 minutes um because some students do do that knowing that it doesn't count um so there's there's a balance that we kind of have to work with but right now yeah we do not have as much information as as the other two tested areas so um if you could write on a note who that person was was supposed to be on that call uh I plan on following up with the Department of Education tomorrow about this because this is unacceptable this is completely unacceptable that after all this time and after we've been asking for this uh in order for to to provide you all with the tools that you need to assist our students that they're still requiring us to provide tests that don't provide the information that we need to help our students you know it just brings up the point why are we doing this I'll just add to that Bob the fact that they expect us to take the time out of our instruction to administer the test and we're not seeing the value in it it's frustrating because it takes a lot of time yeah just to Echo that what Mike does behind the scenes sometimes is taken for granted all that he does to prepare for this and it is frustrating to see that Mike goes 15 rounds by the end of May and for us to culminate with his exam um um leaves a little bad taste in the mouth however you know we'll try to think positively and hopefully that information is forthcoming we always try to examine if there's better ways to administer our test with the calendar unfortunately we we're hamstrung by a lot of different things so we're constantly talking about uh ideas to administer in a better way but missing the data is like you said it's just missing the mark of the the purpose of the test great thank you and then my last question actually is for Mike uh or Mr delesio uh on the slides where you were showing the data percentages break down by the subgroups um and I understand the the idea behind the less than 10 because of uh privacy requirements uh does that apply when there's zero um yes so some of those because as I was looking at that some of those less than tens actually were zeros yes but you can't we have to report on each doesn't mean that we have somebody in each subgroup yeah that's correct so so this so so even when the when the value is zero the state says you still have to show that as a less than 10 the only exception to that might be if we H we actually have nobody in that subgroup but I think we do have people in each of those subgroups up there like at least maybe one student um we probably have people in each subgroup but not at each level no and so the is the reason for that being if we say z0000 Z and then less than 10 in one of them you'd obviously L know so that's why they they say you absolutely can't report it if it's less than 10 unless ACR we have some Donuts across the board but we less than 10 understood thank you okay well thank you very much and I certainly will Echo most of the comments that Bob made uh historically I'm a little critical of uh some of our scores but tonight uh there a lot of positive numbers so it's certainly happy to hear so I'm not going to criticize that's like the best compliment they can get from our board president but I'm sure we're going to have another when's our next assessment I'll be ready for that Juliana and Sophie I apologize but as you know you could leave at any time after you give your report well they know they've been here a year and they know that they're always offered and they can leave even if I don't say it just duck out but so if I don't say the future it's here I also want to mention one other thing Julian I think it was you who talked about tickets online so I want to thank Carol BEC uh Carol brought to our attention that certain senior citizens have issues uh with regard to the online and getting tickets so we have changed our policy that senior citizens not seniors but senior citizens can now attend uh the sporting events for free is that correct so we welcome all senior citizens so just show up and uh we likely won't ask for ID but if we do that's a great compliment okay thank you uh first opportunity for public comment the first public comment period will be limited to agenda items for this meeting only the second public comment period will be open to any topic all comment are limited to 5 minutes uh and again I know most of you were not here during the summer and you probably forgotten what our local rule is which is please sign in if you plan to have a comment with your name and where you're from and then obviously when you come to the podium reiterate your name and where you're from so with that do we have any public comments okay seeing no public comments I'm going to close the first opportunity for public comments and again there will be a second opportunity for public comments and at that point you can have a comment on uh any item okay do we have any items for board discussion this evening no okay I discussion of the addenda items and we have one addendum items is that correct d8 there's some Personnel addendum items but yes but we discussed those for the most okay uh Mr President I'd like to move items A1 through A3 comments or questions roll call please Mr maio Mr gallic leave that Miss Lee Mr me yes Mr Morrison yes M Miss Potter yes M pra yes johur yes M Berber yes motion carry Mr President I'd like to move items A4 through A8 second comments questions roll call please Mr Maia Miss Lee manek Yes Morrison yes see Miss pra yes trur yes Mr Berber yes carry uh Mr President like to move item B1 second comments roll call please Mr maio Lee Mr me yes Morrison yes Potter yes rasa yes shour yes and Mr bber yes Carri uh Mr President I'd like to move items C1 through C15 second comments roll call please Mr maio Lee Yes Mar yes Morrison yes spotter yes proa yes chour yes and Mr bber yes carry Mr President I'd like to move items D1 through d8 comments roll call please Mr maio M Lee M yes Morrison yes Potter Yesa yes trur yes and Mr bber yes motions Carri okay now we have the second opportunity for public comment again the same rules apply with respect to the signing uh and then coming up to the podum podium but again this is an opportunity to comment on anything which and it does not have to be related to agenda items with that said Do we have any public comments okay I will now close the second opportunity for public comments do we have any other business that anyone like to discuss Janine um I just want to C congratulate uh coach soyer on making the Giants uh top 100 of all time players congratulations they treated him to a lousy game too poor Rich yeah that was great I mean they had them they had them out in the field they had I saw some pictures that they posted about it so you know congratulations to him excellent uh Mr President sir a couple items um actually one is uh one's a suggestion um you know for the administration to consider um given the amount of construction that has gone on in the property and you know particularly over the past two years uh and the Improvement of the facilities and the new facilities you know we hear about them but we we never as you know you never really get a full appreciation of it until you actually go and see it um and I don't I don't think that the community fully understands the gravity of the improvements that have been made and the type of new instructional opportunities that we are creating for our students so I don't know if there is a way to you know once everything's done you know particularly and I know once once we're done with the steam lab in particular um to maybe you know schedule a a uh a presentation for the media or schedule a presentation for our our local community leaders our our sending District leaders to come in and see some of these things so they can understand the opportunities that we are presenting and so that they are you know hopefully encouraging their students to take advantage of it because I think it's I think the community would be uh really impressed if they actually could see it and then for the broader Community maybe doing what we did if you remember when we did the referendum on the the heating right and we actually did a video showing everyone what the referendum was going to be used for mean here we can show this is what we did you know this is what you approved this is what we did with those funds and this is how it will contribute to the educational environment for you students I just I think we've got to find new ways to communicate with the public and whether it's you know video or open houses or whatever uh but I think this is I think this is something to celebrate and I want more than just the 10 of us at this board table to celebrate the great work that's been done here thank you Bob I U couldn't agree with you more I mean again as I mentioned I mentioned on numerous occasions we spend a great deal several million dollars a year on infrastructure and I highlighted what we did this past summer but we also had a slew of projects the prior Summer and the summer before and again we're going to have um projects obviously this summer as well and uh we certainly know about it the students know about the teachers and the staff know about it but it is important that the community is aware because they're the ones footing the bill so to speak and well more than so to speak and uh this way they can see what's going on because again we've had those referendums and all they see is you know a vote to do something but it's important not only that they see it but we also highlight the educational value to the students and the benefit to the staff because it's great to build something new but we're really putting it to use the the students are excelling with the new opportunities and the the new work environment let's say and uh it's important to highlight that and uh maybe if we do have an open house of sort we have some of the students in this some of the rooms so they can highlight some of the advantages that they now have versus other schools that don't have the luxury of some of the items that we can provide to the students thank you we've started talking about that and what I I want to ask any board members that have any specific ideas please let me know we've been talking about you know specifically for the Design Lab having some kind of open house um when that is done for a couple of reasons one to showcase the space Also to invite you people from perhaps some corporations that may be interested in getting involved with our robotics team and um you know having sponsorships um so that's one piece of it but also you know what Bob had said and Katherine had mentioned this too similar to what you had said is we've really upgraded so many spaces of doing some kind of uh you know overall open house or tours we were even talking this morning administratively um when we have some of our curriculum nights and uh eighth grade parents nights and those types of things of things won't probably won't be ready for back to school night um but once the the rooms are all ready to go doing you know trying to combine with those nights tours at the beginning or you know kind of hitting everything we can but if anyone has any specific ideas please uh you know we're we're all ears because I I agree it's we should showcase it and we should let the community know what they supported through the referendum um and how impactful it's going to be so thank you for that but please reach out if any of you have any specific ideas and the only only other comment I have is just uh I know that Dr J put this in your folders um I think at the last meeting but just to reiterate that the county school boards association meeting the Somerset County School boards Association meeting uh will be the first one of the year will be coming up in uh early October uh the topic is on artificial intelligence uh and it will be held at the uh Somerset County votek uh where the U uh culinary students actually prepare the dinner for uh the board members that are there you have the option to either attend in person or remotely so we did talk about people wanting to be aware of you know professional development opportunities well this one's you know right in your backyard or right on your own screen um signed up for it because I wanted to attend it remotely and then realized it's back to school night so if they do give out any information because I'm yeah uh but I'm really interested in in what they might share on AI so if they if there's anything you know please share it I included the the handout in your folders last week but I'll throw it again in The Fray in the in the oh well that would explain why you do you guys get the emails from school boards with the okay but I'll make sure I'll forward that again to everyone that's easy enough yeah I know you get a lot and they said and sometimes you have to scroll down to find some of the offerings so I Janine I can send that one to you thank you well now now that I gave School boards my personal email I'm getting everything so I was just going to offer a suggestion for back to school night um but I don't know about the Staffing and hours if just parents on like a study hall or off period maybe just have the Health office open and people could walk through and the athletic trainers just to walk through so maybe just like come look at the new because they're G faes are done done and beautiful they're going to feel like they're in like marst toown Memorial emergency room so I'll say I shared pictures of Ceramics and athletic training cuz they were two places my girls were quite a bit when they were here and they were blown away by how awesome the space looks um and jealous wanting to know if they can come back and take classes and yeah but uh they were really impressed especially with the athletic trainers office on the space that we've given them um and the ability to really work with that and they spent a lot of time there so the that training facility looks like it's a small College training facility it's nice thank you everyone for coming appreciate your time