e e e welcome please sure miss Pino here miss Christal here miss hollat here Mr pry will be absent Mr Sable here miss Calderon here Mr Sher is absent Mr Stone here miss wtz here okay notice of the February 12th 2024 meeting of the Board of Education was emailed to the clerks of the Burrows of essexfells North caldw and rosand and to the township of Fairfield and to the editor of the progress on January 5th 2024 and the Star Ledger on the same day so I just want to let everyone know this past Wednesday we had a board retreat which I think we have to rename it like a board professional development because it's not a retreat um but it was great night we had our um ethics training and our um Hib training with our board attorney Mr Stephen Fogerty uh we also did um every year the board evaluates the superintendent so our New Jersey school board's representative came and gave us a um an overview of the CSA evaluation process so um I think it was very productive night and we had a good time and uh learned a lot um I also want to congratulate um Deborah Calderone our board um one of our board members our board vice president she um just recently achieved her certified board leader which is the highest certification a board member can achieve um in doing so she needs to um uh acquire 60 credits uh 10 County at least 10 County meetings um three annual New Jersey school boards workshops and five full day Statewide professional development and then she has to pass an exam so it's the highest it's the highest but you've achieved yours I'm one credit away so uh I just want to congratulate her it's um she's a dedicated yeah right yeah let's do it yes certified board leader so yep so congratulations um and that's all I have so we have um a really great uh schedule of presentations for tonight so um I I just have a few announcements and then I'm going to turn it over to our student board rep and then we'll turn it over to our administrators um and this is a great evening because we're kicking off our department presentations this month um with our uh math and business department along with our uh independent study um also um Kimberly Westervelt Dr Westervelt and Mrs hul are here tonight there are uh co-coordinators for culture and climate they're going to give uh the board a midyear report on our progress towards District goals specifically with Goal number two which is improve School culture and climate um Mr gup is here uh tonight to talk about our goal uh number one and he'll give you an update on our use of data um to improve student outcomes um an update on the midyear progress for that and then our principles will uh give their reports also Dr Westervelt will give you an overview on um what we're doing on our professional development day next week couple other announcements um 6:30 tonight our announcement went out that the West S6 Regional Schools will be closed tomorrow due to the impending storm um I'm a hero right now amongst the students um winter recess is coming up on Friday of this week we have a single session day um and then we're closed on Monday for President's Day Tuesday the students are also off and the staff are in um for professional development um coincidentally Mr carette is here and I can give a shout out to uh him and Mr Gupta on um West S6 High School recently earning the college board's AP Computer Science female diversity award uh West Essex was one of 834 high schools across the country to earn the award for achieving High female representation in AP Computer Science principles courses according to the College Board research female students who take the course in high school are more than five times as likely to major in computer science in college which can lead to Greater opportunities in the technology field so I know we're very proud of this award um congratulations to our students faculty Administration and staff uh for for their dedication and commitment to academic Excellence um Mr caretta is here tonight he's one of our AP Computer Science principles kudos to him um and um just a great a great honor for our school to get that award and then as I mentioned tonight we begin our uh departmental presentations and first up oh that's right joson you're up first student board rep since our last meeting midterms uh took place and happy to say that it went as smoothly as possible despite all the delayed openings and closings in December J January shortly after our climate in culture culture came up with the idea of elect Affair in order to make students more aware of the opportunities at West Essex through the different electives this took place at the end of January beginning of February and representatives representatives of different elective courses shared their thoughts and feelings of the course to underclassmen and juniors I thought that this was much better than the dreaded program of studies that is about 50 pages long and does not really give it detail and insight of the how much course load and what the teachers are really like in the classes and whether it was collabor collaboration based or not and since then we're looking for possibly in the future with more heads up because this was shung along very quickly with the help of guidance and the faculty but hopefully we can include Rising eighth graders next fingers crossed um for our no place for hate program our cman culture team is currently working on our uh third activity this activity is focusing on working to collaborate with others to make a more nurturing School environment our second second activity focused on uh discovering our identities and sharing with our classmates so now we're putting this all together and hopefully making a more nurturing School envir in other clim culture news we're planning a night for knowledge which we're planning for early March and this is an after school event with students professionals and teachers where there's going to be different workshops to spread different information on a wide range of topics including Mental Health Service opportunities and more and our climate and culture team is very excited about this event and there's been a lot lot of involvement which I find so amazing and I really see like a lot of passionate and interested students in this uh club and I found it really inspiring so thank you good evening are you guys is everybody during this evening see it's always nice uh to do a presentation um in front of the board of that it's always the the timing is complicated because the student after me and the students after me typically are always so much more interesting so there's like this pressure on me to do a good job and now that we have a student that presented right before me I feel like it's twice now as difficult because I have to follow a very good act and now I have to you know have one come after me but in any event uh so it's nice to see everybody this evening thank you so much for coming and attending the um math and business presentation uh for 2023 and 20124 my name is Greg ashof and I'm proud to be the supervisor of uh one of the most tight-knit departments in the in the school uh certainly uh you can uh go ahead and first introduce our high school team who many of you know fortunately we've had a lot of consistency um through the past uh number of years and so this year as I usually do our annual Halloween picture as the picture to to share for the high school team so each of us was uh a representative Expo marker uh for the holiday and then of course we also have our Middle School team uh I believe they did a Halloween costume as well so I didn't I didn't happen to snap a pick of them for this particular year but I'm sure theirs was very good also actually I do recall it it was a calculator they were dressed as cows with a with a like a calcul it was a c it was actually it was clever than the Sharpie I actually was pretty impressed with that yes so sad I didn't get that hopefully next year in any event um in any event uh we also uh have an opportunity this evening obviously the Board of Ed is already aware of this but Mr David SMI who's a business teacher that was with us for a number of years um as well as a middle school computer science teacher left in November he had been with with us for seven years uh and he uh is pursuing alternative an alternative career opportunity so we wish him a lot of luck obviously he was a very loved staff member and hopefully in his uh his second career I'm sure he will remember us fondly and possibly and hopefully miss us but uh we wish him a very bright bright future there um as a result of course we do have a couple of new faces that I'm happy to introduce um in the middle school we have Miss Christina priori she is a seventh grade math teacher and we also have Miss Sabrina skabo who is a math and special ucation teacher working in both the seventh and eth with both seventh and eighth grade students and we're really lucky to have them at the high school because we had Mr Somaya depart we have Mia fetta uh very recently joining us in fact it might be as as soon as this evening in terms of the uh the Board of Ed approvals so uh we're very very lucky she's actually already worked in the district as an aid so she's got already a lot of West essic Spirit uh I don't know what her wardrobe is yet but I'm sure that she's starting to accumulate uh the inevitable West essic sweatshirts and sweatpants so uh she'll be um a really welcome addition to the business department and I wish her a lot of luck as she uh starts out her career with us here at West Essex um as far as our district and Department goals I wanted to talk tonight about our two District goals using data to improve student outcomes and improving School culture and climate as well as our department goal which has been consistent uh since last year which is increasing accountability and rigor and also improving our curriculum in regards to our first uh goal so for using data to improve student outcomes as many of you are aware we use the link assessment at both the high school and the middle school linkit is a standardized testing tool that the district uses to basically take a the temperature of where the students are and we can use that to predict the success on the njsla and NJ GPA which are the two State tests that the students take prior to graduation at the school we use form zero which is a actually an in-house form that we created which basically focuses on precursor knowledge that helps our teachers set the sgos which are the um uh like measures of progress the teachers are are required to submit to the principles of the buildings so we use that as as our Baseline to understand where our students are when they start out in each course and then after that um they also take Form B which is a linkit design course that is aligned with the njsla and then again in the spring they'll take form C right before the njsla which will help us get an idea of where students are to hopefully provide some predictive measures and also allow teachers to do a little bit of remediation right up into the the test date we try to do it about two weeks prior to the test so that way we have a little bit of time to react to it uh in terms of our state test analysis our performance the state and average and future plans Mr gup obviously goes into more detail on this when he does the full data presentation so I won't be labored too many of the numbers uh we'll start with the NJ GPA just as a as a point of order we uh maintained our position as as fairly high up in Essex County I don't know if I'm allowed to say the the precise position but I'm I'm I think we'd all be pretty pleased in terms of the percent of students who passed the NJ GPA uh and then our njs slay results were a little bit I think lower than I would like to have seen but certainly nothing thing that um was was too out of the ordinary in terms of concern but to that end we do have a couple of programs that I put in place this year that I'm excited to tell you about so that we can hopefully see some improvement going forward the NJ GPA just as a quick reminder is a grade 11 test that students take in ela and Mathematics uh and the students need that to graduate so every Junior uh that takes West essics whether you in let's say BC calculus or Algebra 2 you're still going to be taking uh the NJ GPA it's it's a uniform uh test B mostly around algebra one the njsla is given in grades seven to n and that's a course-based test so whe whatever course you're taking in ninth grade that's the test that you take up to Algebra 2 we do have some ninth graders who actually have accelerated beyond that which is awesome uh they actually don't get tested but the others do get tested uh in the courses that they're taking and then our seventh and eighth graders uh will typically take math seven and math eight and that's uh this um this not the state rankings but I guess the the state results that that you guys see that Mr goer presents that's based on those uh those two types of testing the njsla and the NJ GPA just as a point of order so um in terms of linkit results form B so talking about um this year uh one program that I want to mention is math 7 this year we're doing something known as uh the Mastery Program and so what some assessments and some programs uh in math tend to do and and and we've been guilty of this and many other programs have done do this as well is you you know a student might typically take an assessment uh the teacher would give them the feedback on that assessment and it might be for instance like hey you did great you definitely know what you're doing or you didn't do so well you probably need a little bit of remediation and then it's really kind of incumbent upon the student to then show up and get those additional resources or maybe the teacher will set aside some time during class to to help her mediate but generally speaking it's sort of I like to refer to it as like a a knowledge autopsy where basically we you know you've shown up and then we we've opened you up to figure it out and then we've kind of moved on so the Mastery Program in seventh grade which we're only using in seventh at the moment because it is quite a big departure in terms of grading philosophy is a focus on students being able to retake assessments after they've taken them initially for a small subset of Assessments that Focus really on the core competencies because I don't want the assessment to be a hey you didn't really know what you were doing see in a few weeks for the test and oh that didn't work out either the idea is more hey you didn't really know what you're doing you can come back and actually still get complete credit for this as long as you go home do some practice work and then retake it uh during some uh you know some options that we offer times I mean uh with that program implemented we've seen an overall increase of 6% um on link it Form B I I don't know what that will translate to precisely um but considering that the other um courses that haven't offered this Mastery um incentive has have have kind of shown similar results I'm really happy to see something that I would consider to be a somewhat significant increase so my my hope is obviously that I'm able to report back next year uh that the seventh grade scores did see nice growth growth and that the Mastery Program obviously there's many variables involved but that the Mastery Program hopefully was involved in some of that Improvement algebra one we'll talk a little bit about um our change in curriculum in a in a couple of moments but I am happy to report that our formb actually showed a m like a very significant increase of 13% this year and that would be basically from one year to the next so it's not that the students themselves went up 13% but that this the predicted uh success of the students last year to this year is that increase of 13% so again there are many variables that could implement or I I should say could uh impact these results but they are pretty favorable so I'm pleased to kind of report that that's something that basically I you know look at and try to use to help guide my decisions and the things that I you know try to with the department and what the teachers do of course is their teaching as well because they do analyze the data um just as an idea so this is um uh some of the data that we use through the seventh grade Mastery Program I know the screen's a little small but basically uh what happens here is uh it's Whited out obviously for uh anonymity but the students names are would be in that Colum there we can see how long the students worked on the problem you can see whether or not they got the uh the skill correct and then you can see the name of the skill precisely what that allows us to do is it allows our teachers to go in on a regular basis bring up any students name that they're interested in or a particular topic that they know they're going to be covering and they'll they can see okay there's like you know 20 checks and and five X's so now I know that either I'm GNA have to remediate for these five students or 20 students really knew what they were doing so I can you know work that into my lesson and possibly move them forward did you have question question please so all of our seventh grade students are participating in the Mastery Program so this is a focus just on the seventh grade yes and so this and this program is called Delta math this isn't something that's like unique or created this is just a program that we're using uh and I really like how it how it isolates the data and because we're using it really robustly and vigorously I think it helps our our teachers to differentiate and see kind of where students are which I know is another one of our goals um which I I think has been very valuable thank you for that question um and yes so that's kind of sums up the data piece as far as improving School culture and climate um we uh I'm I'm happy that I attend frequent Interstate uh supervisor meetings to kind of get the pulse of what's going on in other school districts but most uh impressively we um uh hosted I believe for the fifth year in a row or fourth year in a row the 2324 Northern New Jersey supervisor uh initial meeting attended by over 40 districts I I think I said this last year and I'll again because I really mean it because I went here too so I guess there's that extra point of Pride but I really like it when the other supervisors come and like see where I work so I think that's pretty like I'm like they're because I I go to their schools and they're nice it's a great place to be but like you can't beat our campus so it's really cool when they get to drive up the thing and they're like oh wow he gets birth it's pretty neat um yeah so uh that's that's always fun um we are happy to report that we had a our fifth year of the West essic turkey classic for those of you who don't know that's a um volleyball tournament hosted by our sport management class in conjunction with Syracuse University I am not proud to admit that my team did not make it uh to the finals I believe we were in the semi-finals uh and another teacher team unfortunately did make it to the finals but was defeated by I believe it was um the the young lady varsity team I think it could have been the gentleman I'm not sure but in any event it was a great uh great final really fun night so that was uh really enjoyable our social media site is on its second year that's through our digital marketing social media course with u Mr cardinell uh Mr Mai already talked about the AP Computer Science female diversity award so I won't Del labor that uh and in terms of some of our extracurriculars our math counts uh uh competition happened just last week uh West essics did compete and uh Max tppa uh was the best in the school uh during the math League uh last spring uh Daniel bronstein placed first in Essex County in Algebra 2 which is incredibly impressive and uh this year for FPL and deca which are two business um organizations and competition I we have 56 students who are going to be attending the state competition that is uh an increase of I believe somewhere in the teens last year so a very very significant uh Improvement and we have 20 students attending the DECA state competition which is an increase over the single digits I believe we had three last year so the amount of students who have qualified to compete at the state level is really really impressive some students will possibly qualify for the national level uh because that is a major trip that typically happens at the end of the school year um depending on the number of students the school may or may not be involved in in the organization of that but that's you know a really great opportunity pardon me for our students um and then last but not least Janette mag's personal finance class uh W won a NextGen personal finance competition um and she uh received a visit from the NextGen personal finance spokeswoman uh yanelli espinal uh she gave uh a presentation to the class and and spoke with the students it was really informative uh and I I had I sat in the back for it for a little while and it was it was cool to have the kids because she does a lot of the videos so she was kind of like a like a little bit of a faux celebrity for the students so they got to actually talk to her with who like who published all those YouTube videos that they had been watching throughout the course of the year so that was pretty neat uh that's the picture of our Math League students there um and uh and then in terms of what we're up to um in uh for our accountability and rigor so for our teacher professional development one of the focuses that we're um kind of keying into uh in addition to differentiation of course is is like a building classroom to that end we are offering some professional development during the wellness day which I'm sure um Dr Wester will be talking about more detail but basically it's an opportunity for teachers to to learn how to implement something that's very invogue right now in math education called building thinking classrooms not to get too technical but the gist is basically to increase student accountability and create opportunities for students to have more conversations about the knowledge rather than the teacher presenting the knowledge so it's a it's an exciting way to learn and we've got some teachers whove really embraced it at this point and hopefully it continues to grow uh we do have vertical articulation between the sending districts as well as within our own District which is uh which is very valuable and um our curriculum in terms of that that is the last uh additional piece oh actually I'm G to skip ahe for a second G come back that's the additional piece that I want to talk about uh is our curriculum in Algebra 1 I think I mentioned last year during this presentation that uh we were looking at uh several candidates for a new math curriculum that's going to be cohesive from math 7 all the way up to Algebra 2 we did select Big Ideas in conjunction with our sending districts and we've already started algebra one so that earlier percentage increase that I had shared with you guys that came from well I don't want to say it came from but it could be associated with the fact that we have implemented a totally uh new Algebra 1 curriculum uh through Big Ideas the goal will be to continue to uh roll it out for those 9th grade St well not ninth grade algebra one students into geometry and so next year uh my hope is to adopt the big idea's geometry program uh we actually already have big Ideas Algebra 2 so we won't need to adopt that one uh and then uh next year hopefully grade seven will also adopt the uh the Big Ideas program and so uh it's a cohesive wave for the students rather than just changing the entire program overnight on everybody I thought it would be a little wiser to kind of do it in a sort of a flow situation um last but not least uh I'm happy to announce that our math National Honor Society uh is working with our math lab which we now offer every day of the week the math National Honors uh the math National Honor Society students um uh through their adviser miss a Luso uh volunteer to help out in math Labs so on crowded days uh um they are deputized to assist students and they can use that as their service hours which is great that's on top of already our National Honor Society tutoring which is a separate organization from the math lab so it's we have a really like a lot of you know great options for students to work with one another um when they're having some trouble I have a couple pictures of student work here uh that came from our math 7 students you can see with the with the scale factor um that they're able to you know take take images of Art and then even and I I I probably could manage this I'm not a very good artist because the students like you don't have to be a good artist to understand how the the scale factor process works because you focus on the points and Rec connect to them I wouldn't have been able to color in the lines but they obviously were better than I was um and then last but not least I am happy to talk about uh two students uh one for Math and one for business uh who have um worked with u who have gone through our school uh so um Heather Downey was a student who graduated in 2016 she majored in mathematics and dance at mberg college she is currently a high school math teacher at one of our competitors unfortunately uh James cwell high school uh but uh I was um happy to have had the opportunity to speak with her she said that she always wanted to be a teacher coming through West essics but she didn't know what subject and it was actually the math department teachers that she had um including Mr caretta who I feel like every time you're here Mr caretta it's always a student that had you that always wants to talk about but yes she did she did have me but that's neither here nor there uh and um and so she said the dedication shown by her instructors is what motivated her to pursue math uh in the business field I'm happy to talk about Mr Dominic tromino who graduated in 2019 he received a business management degree from Ruckers University and he currently works as an executive recruiter at leap Brands uh which is basically um a recruiter that helps um executive fill executive positions uh for private Equity firms and a variety of other things that uh I didn't know the verbiage for but I'm sure is very important and uh and he shared that West essics created a strong Community for him between both friends and teachers he also shared that business teachers uh especially supported him and stressed how important personality and connections are to success in the business world so it was great to connect with uh two really um wonderful wests alumni and I'm glad that I can report uh you know some success and some results of of what we're able to provide as as Educators I believe that wraps up um what I would wanted to tell you guys did anybody have any questions or anything before I turn it over all right very good um so I'll introduce Mr K who I believe will be uh introducing you to our his independence I stent tonight and I guess I'll go to that one slide there more stuff there you go perfect okay well welcome um welcome thank you for having us tonight um I appreciate it appreciate the board letting us um display our presentation especially our administrators thank you very much just a quick note about the female diversity award award um there's about 800 I think it was and that is male female relations um male female um ratio uh that being said we're think of a school like Mount St Dominic that's female only um if they have one student take the class they're automatically in so um I really want to see those numbers for for the Dual dual partnership um that being said um I do need to also recognize Mr rachek for that and our guidance Department both um middle school and high school because they make our classes known and invite invite the um students in so that's very um helpful so thank you um at this time I'd like to introduce um Anna who uh did app design in Python thank you members of the board and administration my name is Anna wils and I did my independent study project this year on app design using python so I took AP coun an apcsa as a freshman and sophomore and I was kind of frustrated because there's not many more computer science bus in the school so I ended up um doing a summer program at Stevens where I was exposed to two different languages that we don't teach in our school or at least when I was taking classes they didn't teach o camel and Python and so I actually decided I really wanted to focus on python because of my experience at Stevens and python is a very well-known programing Lang language and I found it's intuitive to read and there's relatively simple syntax so it's one of the starter languages but I didn't really know it so I felt I wanted to take a course where I could expose myself to a language that's pretty important going into college so gener I started the course I took two separate um online courses and then I went into taking I'm designed like a slight prototype of a game it's based on the Google snake game it's a pretty a relatively popular online game and I want to continue to work on that and possibly work on a few other um similar prototypes later on in the course so generally these are some of the things I learned in the course um generally about python but to the wide scope of computer science and I think they were the course delved a little deeper into some of the um applications that I learned in comsi principles and comps so it was really interesting to I guess learn little more than what I was previously exposed to so this is a snapshot of some of the code I wrote and this is just like a picture of what my game looks like when it's running so here's a video and so this is just a video of my game running um the user can control the little snake with the uh up the arrow keys and the keyboard and you're trying to pick up the little uh circles which are like the food to make now the snake will um the game ends if it crashes into the walls or if it crashes into itself I think that will be shown as each time it picks up one of the uh little circles it the score goes up and actually every time the score goes up by five the level increases and they'll speed up so it was a little complicated to code all of the stuff there you can see it ended and you can start it again so part of my issue was I had a lot of problems where I would update the screen too frequently and it started to flash like a lot so I ended up realizing I was updating the display too much and was able to edit my code to stop it from flashing as you saw above um I had a lot of issues selecting the proper boundaries so it tended to just go a little bit too far before dying so I ended up moving it over and there was a lot of math with getting the boundaries exactly perfect and getting the coordinates perfect with theen and I also thought it was pretty complicated creating a moving appearance of the snake because it has to look realistic and it was a little challenging but I enjoyed getting it to work um for the future of the course I'd like to make a little bit more complicated levels I want to add like I guess barriers or something so that it if it crashes into barriers as it increases each time um I also want to try and do another project and there's another course I want to take in addition of python professional one after I took the other two it's the next one the progression So yeah thank [Applause] you you going to tell her she can leave she wants to are you beud all right good evening everyone um this is going to be like a commercial break you have a lot of awesome presentations and this is going to be um no pictures no games five bullets and some words but then catch your breath and then we'll move on to some exciting things that we're do with culture climate but this is just an update and I just want to bring you guys up to speed I'll go into more detail towards the end of the year but this is one of our goals that we take very very seriously um which is using data to improve student outcomes and I know I've said this before and I'm going to continue to emphasize it when we talk about student data the first thing we all think of are those first two uh points there which are standardized tests and it's all about collecting data and student tests and test test tests and assessments and that is important but that is not nearly the whole picture that we look at so these are just some of the things we've been looking at this year standardized test results uh Mr ashof pointed out the first three there iel is another program that we've used more recently to help us differentiate I'll talk a little bit more about that in one of the next ones and in case you're not aware it is mandatory for all teachers to give pre-assessments and postassessments in their classes um to measure student growth from one point to the next and again that could be through link it that could be over another Benchmark assessment that could be a teacher created assessment but the main point is there is we're not just interested in in achievement but growth however the students came into the class making sure they grow by the time they get through the class um some of these others here like classroom walkthroughs observations looking at lesson plans that's monitoring the implementation of differentiated instruction you might remember we started topic of differenti instruction actually over the summer Dr dun leby held a book chat on this topic and we brought in a presenter Debbie silver to speak to both the high school and middle school and she really focused on The Middle school we have CPA honors and AP at the high school middle school we have heterogeneous grouping so it was really about how to take a class and make sure you're challenging students at whatever level they are at um so we take a look at all those things and see how the teachers are doing uh give them more PD more support if they need it and see where we need to grow in that area um also data our surveys and feedback which we get all the time from our U uh our skip committees our our our panels at the high SCH school and you'll see on there that in in in some cases we use the data for our second goal which is improving School culture and climate it's about giving voice to the teachers and the students and finding out um where we need to improve and where we can provide support and then the last we look at things as student grades conduct attendance all other types of Student Records teacher recommendations to identify students who need of intervention where we can provide extra support whether that's lunchtime support um summertime support support or enrichment um we don't want to forget about the students who are ready to be challenged they're either gifted talented looking to take that next step or case of Anna where she completed her two computer science courses and we have the opportunity for her to take an independent study so those opportunities all of that is looking at data so I'll dive into that again at the end of the year kind of sum up where we got in all these but I just want to give you an idea these are the things we're looking at so just an an update and now to more fun slides with nice pictures I'll bring bring up uh both of you oh Miss Lisa H we'll start us off Middle School first hi there um in October uh Dr Westervelt and I uh presented information to the um faculty and the staff about our um District's initiative to improve School climate and culture um and then we rolled it out to our students in both buildings so on November 6th we um had the no place for hate the Middle School committee um a few of the students volunteered to present the information to this to the um schoolwide community and they explained to them that throughout the school year there would be lessons in the classroom and um the type of activities that they would be doing would encourage students to push past kindness and actually stand up for one another in negative situations oh wait how do I go back okay so this is our uh no place for hate kickoff assembly that took place in November 6th um those were our middle school students that um spoke to um the schoolwide community and they did a great job our first lesson took place in mid November uh in our English classes the students discussed and um signed a pledge that promoted respect speaking out against negativity and seeking understanding of each other so they got to show their interests on those um the signed pledges they picked icons that kind of like represented them um and then we hung them out they're right outside um this this door over here and it helps the students walk by they see a name and then they kind of see like oh you're interested in that some of them went crazy had like 10 icons some's like do you like to ski I like to ski um cooking things like that so basically what our goal was was for our students to recognize that we might have different interests and backgrounds but we have one goal and that's to create a school environment that's no place that has no place for hate um we had our second activity uh that took place in January in the social studies classes students spoke about the harmful impacts of gossip and rumors by um examining celebrity scenarios in the committee when we were discussing how to present the information how to teach the lesson the students were um you know talking about different kind of scenarios and they're like don't do that that happened last week and so and so is going to be upset or you know so they were very you know um cognizant of what was going on in the school and said hey why don't we use celebrity gossip um that kind of mimics what's going in the school but so that the the students in the classes didn't feel targeted or felt like we were you know doing a lesson about them sort so they're like very uh intuitive the students um we have our next no place for hate um activity coming up and that is going to be in the math classes thank you so much Greg ashof for letting us come in they're uh the lessons are going to take place on the 7th and 8th the topic will cover teens in their social media lives the West sesex Middle School committee will be meeting this week on the 15th to actually create the lesson um and that's a topic that they had said like that we're going to be discussing next and what's great about it is that these students actually create the lesson we make PowerPoints together we provide them to the staff so everybody's learning the same things in um in each class uh after that lesson we we will have one more lesson to go and that will be in the science department and then we will be a gold star School uh that's going to take place in April and then in may we will receive our no place for hate Banner okay I'm going to pass it off to Dr all right hi good evening everyone good evening um much of what I'm about to share has already been discussed but I have really cool VIs ual for you guys to go along with these events joclyn thank you so much for sharing um what we're doing at the high school so we did these kickoff assemblies in November um the photo on the right you can see Jocelyn there because only two of my students from the committee had the courage to stand up in front of all four of the grades and talk to them about the program so kudos to Joselyn and Emily box who also stood up that was really up in then we in November we also did our pledge signing at the high school took place in the English classes and all the students signed their name to a Converse sneaker and they're hung on the banner that says we race towards no place for hate it was um a phrase that was designed from our committee the students came up with it and voted on it and that was our Our Winning banner and I think it's a really cool visual to see all the different students they were able to color them and design them how they saw fit our second activity took place in early January and we focused on the humans of West essic and it was a lesson in Social Studies classes that tied to the social studies curriculum where the students discussed um their identities and who they are and and how they explore who they want to be how they want to represent themselves and a really cute anecdote from this is a student shared she said I thought I was the only Lithuanian student in the school she goes and the kid behind me was drawing a Lithuanian flag on his poster she's like who knew there's two lithan in the school I'm like I bet you there might be more too so it was really cool to hear the students connect like that they didn't realize there are others like them and so the idea is to display throughout the school like we are all different types of students but we're all here we all belong We Are All Humans of West essics our third activity is going to be from bystanding to supporting this is going to happen in our PE and health classes in early March we wanted to come up with an activity that really now focuses on like what do we do many of the students in our committee said you know we hear certain things we tend to be bystanders because we don't know how to handle the situation so this is really going to be an activity where the students are learning a set of skills to how do you move from being a bystander to someone who's supporting in a safe way um also as Joselyn shared with you guys earlier we are really excited for our night of knowledge on March 6 our culture and climate committee came up and said we want to do some type of community event where we can bring everyone together we are a place of education so what better way to provide workshops for everyone and so we're inviting students in grades 6 through 12 we think it's a great opportunity to bring in the sending districts early on to meet us and during this evening um we have eight Workshop choices there's going to be a booster club fair so you can hear from the different activities and sports teams and get to learn about that and then we're going to be offering desserts throughout and I'm already excited for many of the desserts that are being donated so please feel free to stop by that that evening something else we focused on is our see something say something um program that we have here earlier in the year all of the students viewed our this mandatory video in their PE and health classes and it's linked on our school website but something that my culture and climate committee shared with us is that they didn't really understand it's not really know they don't they don't really know much about it so we heard that so we're g to link this program into the third activity for no place for hate and from bystanding to supporting we're going to Loop it back make them more aware about it and make sure that we're doing a better job communicating that to the students and I'm also excited to share with you the Key Club is hosting this we compliment you initiative and it's really cool how we they're trying to spread positivity and kindness there is a Google form and there are you can scan it anywhere in the building wherever you turn you're going to see a pink piece of paper that says scan me um and the idea is that you Anon anonymously send a positive message to another student a staff member anyone in the building um and so our goal is to receive 2,000 messages and we are guaranteeing that every student in the building will receive a message on February 29th that is the day that all of the compliments will be distributed and so we are really looking forward to that moment when every single student in the building receives some sort of positive message and they don't know where it's coming from they just are receiving the kindness and I think that's really cool so compliments to our Key Club for coming up with that and for making it happen our elective courses Fair here's some really cool pictures um far exceeded our expectations in um the students in our culture and climate Club said we need to have an elective Fair like we need to hear but they were so honest like but we don't want to hear from the teachers we want to hear from other students I was like all right I hear you so I said to the supervisors all right I need two students per elective course you guys are getting a table and a banner and that's it make it happen within two weeks they made it happen they really showed up and it was so awesome to watch the students share their excitement about the courses to have other students listening to them and come up to the table and they said this the feedback from the students was well we just wanted to know is it a lot of work or not a lot of work that really what we want to know and that's what the kids shared with us so so we felt overall it was a success um again like jine shared that we do hope to expand it next year with more time and planning that we'll be able to invite the eighth graders down to the building so that they can also experience the elective fair and see everything that we have to offer and kind of bring the courses to life for them this is also a reminder we are in year three with the co uh St Elizabeth University School culture and climate initiative and so that means at the end of year three we administer the climate survey again it's kind of like a post survey so in the early spring that climate survey will be going out to the students the staff and the families and we're really looking forward to the results I mean they were pretty positive to begin with but I'm almost certain it's going to grow um so we'll look forward to that in the spring and be reporting those results to you guys Staff Development Day on February 20th um also has to tie into culture and climate because we really are making sure that we're taking care of our staff so that they can best serve our students this year we've increased the professional development options we have 40 different options that the staff members can choose from and ranges from AI in the classroom building thinking classrooms ESL support strategies and resources health and wellness from the student perspective we actually have some students who volunteered to come in and run a session where they're going to talk to the staff about what it's like being a student and everything from their perspective and the homework load things like that building resilience the memory Master Class nutrition coaching so there's really awesome topics coming out I'm excited to announce that 24 facilitators in this PD are from West essics Regional School District the staff members stepped up and and said they wanted to lead these sessions which is always awesome because research does show that you learn best from your colleagues we also have 10 facilit facilitators from local businesses who are donating their services to us um so we thank Dreaming Tree yoga Liz coaches styro Fitness chakra Wellness New Jersey Tai Chi embody Fitness home watch caregivers and Fred bero the architect of the Mind shout out to my Wellness committee this cannot happen without these three women they are amazing Amanda fernicola Daniela cabelli and tonyan cavalo they really make the magic happen oh wait hold on um on our professional development day we also have a health fair during lunch 14 local businesses come and it's an opportunity for our staff to further their health and wellness beyond the day as we all know one day is not enough for us to be well um so we're building Partnerships with this community and the they offer services that can go beyond this one day and we are also extremely thankful to the donations from the pomptonian Food Service for the coffee in the morning to get us going and for the WEA Organization for providing lunch to the staff so we're looking forward to this day on February 20th any questions culture and climate High School fun stuff the good stuff this is the good stuff surve ago yes yeah year three so there was the beginning year one and now year three we wrap up with uh St Elizabeth University Y and so we see do we grow I remember when that was ask ANM that something that's being added this year it can be so we are a couple of us are meeting with St Elizabeth University reps and we are discussing what is going to be on the survey they mean they really they dictate most of the questions but we do have input so that is something we can share with with them all right and with that Dr D ly good evening everyone Monday board meeting after the Super Bowl I gotta wake myself up a little bit I want to start by officially that's all right he gave us a snow day tomorrow so you know it's all good uh I would like to officially welcome Mr Gupta to the light side he is I pulled him from the Dark Side of the board office and he has uh joined me at the middle school um while Mrs tambur is on a leave he has already expressed how much he enjoys working with the students um he's running through those Halls he's busy and he's learning and he's a pleasure to work with so I want to thank him um for helping me and helping to kind of run the building and keep things smooth so welcome Ryan uh the we Weare our Weare initiative is excited to announce um they are spreading positivity around Valentine's Day are these students are our we lead students and their conversation they wanted to do kind of like you know where you sell Valentine's and things like that but they were really concerned about their peers being left out if someone didn't it was you know one wasn't purchased for someone so their Committee of students decided to purchase something for everyone in the building so they're giving out like Ring Pops um and they're putting like really nice messages on them so I was I was with the students earlier today while they were doing them and their stuffing bags they're going to give them out to block six so that our teachers aren't frustrated with the Sugar Rush so we're GNA send them home to the parents um with sugar so we're excited I just want to thank the we lead students as well as the advisers Mrs Davis Mrs Machi Mrs manella Mrs salari and of course Mrs tambury this was really kind of her baby this this weekare initiative um change yes I want to thank Dr Westervelt and Mrs Holz for their work on the no place for hate campaign that campaign is quite an undertaking it takes a lot of time and a great deal of passion to bring a project like that off the ground um so I appreciate their support and their efforts here at the middle school I did want to share with you one additional kind of area in terms of the the culture and climate initiative and this pertains to our classroom 124 which is just right out this hallway to the left um with generous funding by the PTO this classroom has been completely renovated and converted into a counseling Corner the pictures on the screen really do not do the room justice as beautiful as those pictures are the room was thoughtfully designed to be a calming area for students where they can catch their breath regroup themselves our guidance counselors child study team and Care Plus counselors will primarily use the room for individual and group counseling but we also have students coming in during the lunch block who are trying to make new friends they're eating in there you can kind of see there's like a carpeted area which is more for relaxing but then we also have tables where the students can eat um so it's just it's a really great space um we're hoping in about another month we're probably going to have some sort of sign out process to allow all the students to try and enjoy it it's a small room so you can't have like large groups at a time but we do want to expose as many of the students as possible to the space um and we're even letting the staff have their team meetings in there on aay um so I just want to thank um a bunch of people Mrs Michelle lombardoi our counselor for serving as the guidance liaison for this project and a special recognition to our PTO president Christina Demian and the PTO treasurer Trisha himan for bringing our vision kind of to fruition they they donated everything in the room um so we're really super appreciative of that um and as the building principal I'm certainly committed to this District initiative and appreciate the opportunity to unite with Kimberly and Lisa the entire administrative team and the Middle School staff um and my colleagues for such an important initiative so if you when you leave tonight if you just want to pop in it's beautiful it's a beautiful space um this is just kind of a second picture you can see the PTO girls in there um kind of from a distance our Bound for greatness assembly with energy to this unmatched D West is returning on February 21st for his second year West Essex Middle School Mr West is a former professional athlete and television personality who shares his story growing up in New Jersey his Bound for greatness tour encourages students to leave a lasting Legacy for their family in school he will present to the class of 2029 which is our seventh graders he will discuss character education topics such as leadership respect accountability discipline peer pressure and making good choices and I would like to recognize the Fairfield and North cwell Municipal alliances for their Don ations uh to bring this culture and climate assembly to West essic and finally I would like to congratulate Mrs lefur and the Middle School girls basketball team for their 11- one season for the second straight year in a row the girls won their County tournament in a close game over brookln by a score of 44 to 41 and the homes and the Chiefs have nothing on us because we're two for two a and at this time I will turn it over to the high school thank you [Applause] hello good evening friends I gotta come up and see you in action you hear good things I I got I really want to observe it like firsthand so Joselyn and Dr West already mentioned a whole bunch of great things that uh have been happening at the high school especially with regards to the climate and culture committee and some of the uh some of the events and programs that have come out of the climate and culture committee um and our progress on no place for hate uh the elective Fair which did greatly exceed everyone's expectations was was fantastic um choir even had a uh a um a karaoke table and I'm very glad that you don't have the video of me singing Rihanna not because it wasn't good singing Because the singing wasn't bad it was just like but I have thick brown hair and that video did not have a guy with like thick brown hair so thank you for those updates so because they were so uh they G gave you such uh thorough updates I only have a few items to report but they are significant items so perhaps the the biggest uh news that we deliver at this time of the year is our valorian andorian and perhaps not so coin coincident our valorian was just here presenting for computer science so our valorian Anna wills and our salutatorian Alex Chen both both students do their families West essics uh and and our entire Community uh they they they make us proud and they they they they do what they do with with a lot of Integrity work very very hard um Anna did not while she was up here she did not disclose how busy she was actually she just came from from track so two minutes before not track uh fencing so two minutes before she was here she was completely in in her fencing GE very very impressive I will also mention because I know most board members know that I have an affinity for musicians and both the valorian and sorian have have gotten these fantastic honors while pursuing music and has done four years in Orchestra and Alex done four years in band so that that always impresses me and that they love music so much that they they pursue it for all four years even at at the expense of perhaps not adding uh the extra grade waiting of another AP class so congratulations to Anna and Alex Jen one more very very impressive and I look forward to sharing the stage with you for graduation additionally congratulations to all our students who were recently awarded the Seal of biliteracy this year 75 seal of biliteracy Assessments were administered to 72 Juniors and seniors in eight different languages that's French Italian Japanese polish Portuguese Russian Spanish and Polish 40 students passed the assessment and receives the Seal of B biliteracy special accolades go to Claudia slka who demonstrated Proficiency in both Spanish and Polish and very special accolades to is Isabella Lima who demonstrated uh Proficiency in three other languages other than English that's Portuguese French and Spanish so congratulations to all those students and especially those two who passed more than two and our culinary program congratulations to the 180 plus students for obtaining their Serve Safe food handler certification this is done through our culinary arts classes their success is a testament to the dedication of both students and Educators under the guidance of Chef delapaz and Chef eer students at West Essex High School have demonstrated exceptional commitment to mastering essential food safety principles the the Serve Safe food handler certification is a prestigious credential recognized Nationwide emphasizing the importance of proper food handling sanitation and safety practices and that's about it for me any questions all right have a great evening and a great snow [Music] day all right well thank you again for all those presentations they were um very informative and you guys put so much work Into Climate culture and um you know all the good things that are going on here at West Essex I just wish there were more people here to hear it aside from just us but they're watching at home they're watching we're hoping they're watching at home um but yes um thanks again for those presentations does anybody have uh any board members have any comments questions or anything no and there's been no committee reports right okay okay um so at this time we'll move on to um public comments we'll open up the floor to public comments if anyone has any public comments nope okay then we'll move on um okay we'll move on let's see um Ray will you take Finance please sure okay so before I read the finance motions there's one Finance carry-on motion so it's going to be number six and I'll read it uh to approve submittal of requests to the Essex County super super intendent for a waiver from the New Jersey state educational Medicaid initiative other known as semi for the 2024 2025 school year so that so with that so then the following Finance motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything plac on this agenda items one through six will be voted upon in one motion and I so move are there any questions or comments okay m Pino yes Miss Cristal yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sable Miss Calderone yes Mr Stone yes Miss wtz yes um Bethany we take buildings in grounds please I second any questions okay Miss Fuso yes Miss chrisal yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sav Miss Calderone yes Mr Sone yes Miss wtz yes de C say curriculum please culs super schols agenda second questions Miss Pino yes Miss chrisal yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sable Miss Calderone yes Mr Sone yes Miss wtz yes Debbie will you take Personnel please sure uh following personal motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through 15 will be voted upon in one motion and I so move second are any questions Miss Pino yes Miss Christal yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sable Miss calron yes Mr Sone yes Miss wtz yes beanie the following of the super of schools agenda second any questions Miss Pino yes Miss Christal yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sable Miss Calderone yes Mr Samone yes Miss wwit yes okay um okay we can open up the floor for uh public comments on non-agenda items anyone have any comments no okay Deb do you want to read us out is there a second second all in favor excellent thank you everyone for coming enjoy your day