flag United States of America M Mr Mr St here miss here notice of the cancellation of the May 9th 2020 2024 meeting and the May 20 2024 meetings with the rescheduled date of May 13th 2024 was emailed to the clerks of the burs of Essex FS North calwell and rosand into the township of Fairfield on April 11th 20124 and the editor of the progress on the same day good evening everyone um tonight on the agenda we will be appointing our new Middle School um assistant principal Mr Jeff Martin um he's here with us tonight with his wife um I just want to give him a warm welcome say we're um happy to have you here excited you're a school district I know you're already a coach here but you have fulltime as a an assistant principal we're looking forward to it um I know Daman is GNA give a little bio but just want to say congratulations welcome [Applause] aboard my my report will be brief tonight as well so um just to kind of follow up off of uh Mrs wtz I am pleased to be recomending Mr Jeffrey Martin to the position of uh Middle School assistant principal the start date is onor around August 1st um Mr uh Martin has served as a sixth grade math and science teacher in the Nutley public schools for the past nine years he's also been um coaching uh tennis in the West esic School District since 2020 and he's also been an assistant football coach in the nutly public school from 2015 to 2022 uh Mr Martin has been working with Middle School AG children for his entire career in addition to coaching high school athletes um we are excited to welcome uh Mr Martin to our team and welcome him to the West etic School District [Applause] everybody can alled Andes following the end of a a lot of seniors will qualify for senior service which is very exciting so this will be the last full week of school for a lot of us also exting news that in the they have Construction in the so a lot of thein cles have been transported toide makeshift settings but it's really exciting to see um changes in the teers are excited as many are sum constru just as a reminder there's up toads toting team will my own experience it has been amazing students and sta is a place where we can take our into from this alone has younger high school students and incoming student students to take a look at our different academics that we offer and finally it just has and excent thank you studies good evening everyone I am Lauren summer I eighth grade science teacher here at the middle school but I am also a Lead Teacher for the science department it is a privilege tonight to be able to introduce to you Alex Chen who will be doing his independent study on radon gas emissions I had the privilege of having Alex actually as a student few years ago as well as an active member of the student council to which I was his adviser Alex is a wonderful student dedicated hardworking um he was always a role model model and a mentor to his peers he was also very active in wanting to involve the community and the overall School culture and and Community here so I am honored to introduce to you [Applause] Alex hello thank you miss summer for a very warm welcome uh good evening Board of Education members Administration and teachers uh my name is Alex and today I would like to give a brief overview of my independent study on radon gas emissions um do you guys if I use it okay thank you okay so what exactly is radon gas it is a radioactive gas that has no color smell with taste it is released as a byproduct of the natural decay of uranium which is found in small amounts in the ground often radon gas enters a home and resides in the basement with lower floors if a person exposed to high levels of radon they are add higher risk of developing lung cancer the US Environmental Protection Agency recommends that the radon level stays below four PC the initial goal of this study is to use observational data to determine if the temperature and humidity of the environment affects the level of radon gas the setup over the past couple of months four volunteers offer their basements to be the homes of these lovely measurement devices the radon Gap uh the radon eye which is in the bottom right corner of the middle image detects radon level while the GOI home measures the temperature and humidity by putting these datas into Des modes which is a free online graphing utility this seems to be like a sweet spot around 68 degrees fenhe and 55% humidity with the highest radon level occurs however I realized that my experiment was flawed from the very beginning the experiment could not determine a cause and effect relationship there may be a association between all these variables but further experiments will be needed and in spite of this though have learned many valuable lessons first frequent radon tests are important the state usually does Radon tests every decade however if if your home is in a Zone with low radon levels this may not be the case for your specific house high levels of radon can also affect the mock ability of the property it will decrease it second air circulation can help decrease the level in one volunteer's home the average radon level was very low however they went away for a week and they sealed off their basement and the level Rose tremendously lastly I would like to recognize the kindness and support of my peers and teachers this this independent study was only possible with their help the volunteers were friends whom I reach out to the academic guidance in areas such as experimental design and data analysis came from my current teachers thank you very much and have a nice [Applause] evening great job thank you thank you for presenting that to us it's always so amazing how intelligent these students are makes us feel a little principal reports okay good evening everyone a lot to present from the middle school tonight so this past week was special here at West Essex Middle School school we were honoring teacher and staff Appreciation Week um recognizing the incredible Educators and staff members who work tily throughout our building teachers and staff as you know play a vital role in shaping our school Community they Inspire us support us and encourage us to reach for our dreams every day from our classroom teachers to our custodians office staff nurse counselors everyone in between each person contributes uniquely to our school environment a special thank you to Mrs summer and Mrs Bramhall for coordinating a wonderful week of activities to our PTO New Jersey spine and joint for well- needed chair masses and lunch to Nothing Bunt Cakes and to the scari family as well so we had a great week last year our seventh and eighth grade reading classes who are currently our eighth and ninth grade classes raised money to help fund the water for South Sudan project this project raises money to bring a sustainable water source to a community in need of Clean Water the project also educates the community on how to maintain the water source and keep hygienic practices we rais enough for each grade level to sponsor their own Community project I'm excit excited to share with you the final results of everyone's effort last year the well has been built and because of the generosity of the staff and students and Community their Community will be healthier and stronger you may not be able to see but that actual Banner that holding says West essic Middle School on it um so a special thank you to Mrs Ayala Mrs Serio and our entire reading department so this aligns with the curriculum and the text that they read pretty amazing our spring pep rally thank you to student council for coordinating our spring prep pep rally and we're grateful obviously for the high school marching band because what would a pep rally be without a marching band we had a wonderful afternoon great weather and it was a great way to end a week of State Testing congratulations to our middle school music department and their successful performances on Friday at our Dorney Park Festival despite the wet and cold weather our students performed exceptionally well demonstrating great heart they were truly exceptional and showed professionalism on and off the stage the awards are listed on your screen and a special thanks to Mrs Rizzo Miss Shroyer and Mr shm for conducting all of these ensembles so for band you can see there Third Place Superior rating L Sherman and our trumpets doing exceptionally well first place in Orchestra and an outstanding soloist and AI aramar for cello and look at all of this for choir uh Demi Rivera Samantha Ducey um and overall Coral award they came in with like 15 trophies I have no idea where I'm going to put them we put Melissa I'll be putting in for a new cas new trophy casee also please join me in congratulating three of our eighth grade students arav bahi Gabriella Shakura and Samantha Ducey who represented the middle school last weekend at the New Jersey elementary and Junior High School All State Choir Festival arav represented Us in the Junior High mixed All State Choir and Gabriella and Samantha were part of the first ever Junior High treble All State Choir they performed for a soldout crowd of almost 700 viewers congratulations to furcon osc for competing in the Essex County Special Olympics Furon is in eighth grader here at the middle school with guidance from his coach Mr Lambo Furon earned first place in the 50 meter run and second place in the long jump Caesar's up next but before I have a couple other announcements um our eighth grade City cruise is this Wednesday please pray that the rain passes through we're super excited so keep your fingers crossed for us I send out correspondents on moveup day which is right around the corner so that's Friday June 7th um you know that's a West eser Tradition that allows students to kind of experience next year's schedule so our Rising seventh graders come into the building for the first time and kind of walk their schedule so it's a it's a busy day and a long day for us but it's a great opportunity for the students to kind of get to experience the middle school and finally Jeff Martin welcome to the team he went through a rigorous uh process um and I'm very confident that you'll be for our students and for our staff so welcome all right Caesar tell you so as we wrap the year up of course it does uh we have award season we get to celebrate lots of different Awards and uh Mr Machi and I on May 1 were able to go to the Essex County academic Awards and that's when all of the valid torians and salutatorians in Essex County are honored at a dinner at NAS at the park and so we were able to honor Anna wils our superintendent and salutatorian Alex Chen who was just here uh we have a nice picture and uh funny so funny story little story about Alex Shen too so it's it's a really nice dinner and they announce all the kids' names and the kids come up and they say uh like the school they're going to and then what they plan on studying so like we get to hear them all because W's West Essex is at the at the very end so we and they go to Mighty Mighty impressive places and study some impressive things but finally Alice gets up and he says I'm going to go to MIT I'll be attending MIT and studying aerospace engineering the only one of of the kind that's um studying aerospace engineering and all I can think of was if this kid ever produces like a real working Millennium Falcon I hope you I hope you rememb the little people and I want I want the first R and I probably just aged myself at that reference yeah I don't want so that's us at the dinner in addition to that we also n is at the park the SEC scholar athlete award was also recently and the recipients uh for those are Tyler Gan and AA misio also in athletics Anthony manello our retiring athletic director was named athletic director of the Year this year 2024 director of the year so congratulations uh to him and we will be honoring him at his retirement dinner which uh many people will speak and he ask me and I'll probably be sorry by the end of it but we'll see how that goes uh JN alluded to our testing that that of course also happens uh at the end of the year all our testing a little bit more detail on AP so we have 417 unique students they're taking 944 AP exams across 27 subjects uh this is the second week so half of them are already over and we do wish any remaining testing students best of luck also special thanks to Dr Westell and Lisa hall because even just coordinating all those tests is a Herculean task so uh thanks to them and good luck to the students that have worked so hard and the teachers that have worked so hard to prepare all the students um then immediately after uh AP testing we jumped right into njsla testing uh correspondents went out about that today because we're actually flip-flopping schedule on Sundays just to balance out the instructional time on those days um and then we have some concerts coming up we have the uh the district choir concert on May 22nd District jazz concert on the 29th and then May 30 is some more Awards we have senior Awards graduation not long after that for me thank you okay thanks for your reporting we'll move on to our um agenda items um before that are there any comments or questions or anything from the board members all right and there's no committee reports anyone reports we'll move on to public comments um on agenda items anyone have any public comments on agenda items we will move on to finance R you want to take Finance for us please uh the following Finance motions are made at recommendation of the superintendent schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through 12 voted upon in one motion and I any questions or comments M Mr M yes Mr sh yes Mr Sone yes yes Stephanie do you want to take buildings and grounds pleas any questions or comments yes Mr St yes M yes Mr sh yes Miss yes Jonathan do you want to take personel please any questions or comments M chrisal yes Mr sa yes m yes Mr St yes M Yesa would you like to take a [Applause] curriculum special any questions or comments Miss Miss C Mr yes M Mr sh yes Mr s yes M yes take miscellane any questions or comments yes M chis Mr yes M Mr sh yes Mr s yes M yes okay we'll open up the floor for public comments on non-agenda items do we have any comments on non-agenda items de do you want to out rep