##VIDEO ID:MczApyhmCLM## e e e e e e e e e good evening and welcome to the West Orange Board of Education public board meeting on Monday November 11th 2024 I would like to thank all of you here in person and those watching from home for joining us tonight I'd like to welcome my fellow board members as well as Mr Moore Miss Flowers and our student leaon uh Miss Flowers would you please take the roll call good evening everyone roll call please Dr Bryant here Mr ifer Mr Stevenson here vice president Vera here president Rock here thank you notice of meeting the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business in their interests are discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of the ACT a written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board on August 27th 2024 that said notice was sent by regular mail to the West Orange Township Clerk and the editors of the West Orange Chronicle and by email to The Star Ledger that said notice was posted in the lobby of the administration building of the Board of Education and posted on the district website please be advised ized that this meeting is being recorded and may be broadcasted on local TV and the district's website at a future date please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance United States of America to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Miss Flowers in consideration of the closed and public meeting of October 28th 2024 do I have a motion to accept the minutes so moved thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you vice president Vera uh any comments hearing no comments Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes vice president Vera yes president Rock yes thank you all right next good evening to our student liaison Nina Davis and Abby Roth steam would you please share your student liaison Report with us at this time good evening last week West Orange High School had their semi-final football game against Piscataway where we won in a clean sweep of 35 to zero meaning that our football team will be advancing to State sectionals championship against East Orange High School this Friday Additionally the student council oh yeah clap sorry additionally this week the student council will be assembling our Thanksgiving candy grams where the funds will be proceeded to our local food pantry during the week before Thanksgiving break students will be able to purchase bags of candy during our lunch block where they can write a note to to people who are they most thankful to and have them deliver during periods um sorry another thing our girls volleyball team and girls soccer team both made it to the second rounds of States Unfortunately they did lose during the second round but we were very proud of them and as well our boys soccer team made to their quarterfinals they lost two but we were proud of everybody every player and coach for what they have done we also have our upcoming fall play which will be on the 15th and 16th which is Friday and Saturday this week um our our actors at our school have worked very hard to put on clue which is a hilarious murder mystery play based on the Beloved boort game you can get your tickets online and we hope to see you all there thank you thank you for that all right now Mr Moore it is time for your report would you please share your superintendent report for us thank you good evening everyone tonight I'm proud to recognize two staff members who deserve the spotlight first Miss Jenny Garcia resic who was one of the F very first Hispanic teachers hired here in in our district Jenny worked on our elementary level and tonight after serving our students for over 32 years we recognize her trailblazing qualities and congratulate Miss res Miss Garcia resic on her retirement I am sure she will be missed by many but especially by the by staff and families at St Cloud where she has been teaching for most of her career tonight we present a certificate of appreciation for her dedication and her love to our students and Families e next I wish to acknowledge a wonderful achievement for a colleague and a friend who serves our district as a school psychologist ol ladies and gentlemen Mr Dr Lee Cohen who was recently recognized by the njp with the school psychologist of the Year award the New Jersey Association of Psy school psychologist bestows the award to a practicing school psychologist in a public or private school setting for the delivery of services in an exemplary Manner and for and to those who have earned the re respect of students parents teachers School staff administrators and community members West Orange is privileged to have Dr Cohen amongst us every day for the past 23 plus years so tonight we recognize this accomplishment with pride ladies and gentlemen Dr Lee Cohen e e president Rock tonight we also have the privilege of meeting our diversity Equity access and inclusion committee administrators who take their role very seriously and enjoy the hard work of this Mission ladies and gentlemen I'd like to introduce to you our Dei or diversity Equity access and inclusion committee wow the acronym for the West Orange way wow members will you please come to the front have some good shot oh my gosh e e e let thank you all right good evening um superintendent Moore assistant superintendent Miss D mendz and the Board of Education members uh my name is Dr orange Jones and I'm here to talk about the West orang way and introduce team wow so I'm just going to speak to the the name of the group team wow um as we know we see across the country the diminishment of Dei initiatives so while superintendent Moore has introduced us as such that is our goal and our mission however we wanted to move away from the terminology so that you know there's funds involved and as things change and evolve we don't know that Dei is going to be language that will be accepted so we decided as a group what what should we do and we decided that we wanted to be the Exemplar for other districts in the area across the country across the world and develop the West Orange way how do we handle diversity Equity access inclusion and this work is passionate for us and we think superintendent Mo for choosing us to take on this Mission and without further Ado I'm going to let us continue with the presentation thank you very much good evening school board members superintendent Moore uh miss Mr Mendes and Miss Flowers uh I hope everyone's having a wonderful evening my name is Joel Casio and I'm one of the lucky wow uh committee members uh I am the principal at Hazel and as you can see from um the presentation other uh committee members are Miss Olivia batanes she is the assistant principal at Roosevelt Middle School we have Miss kimya Jackson She's the principal at Redwood Elementary School Dr Carrie orange who you just heard from She's the assistant principal of Edison Middle School we have Mr Plata Felix Plata is a supervisor for World language in ESL in K through2 we also have a volunteer member Mr Oscar Guerrero he is the um West Orange High School principal and then the consultant specialist that we're going to be using to support our mission this year uh for all of the elementary middle schools and high school within the district will be um Dr Tanya Breeland and Dr Erica leak uh from TSO as well as Mr Christopher Finn from Freedom Inc and Miss April Stevens from landing on purpose and Miss April Stevens from landing on purpose will also have a targeted role working with the three Title One schools in the district so to speak a little further uh regarding our our our overall District goal uh for this year uh the committee also includes Representatives or ambassadors from each of the each of the school schools in the district uh for the most part elementary schools have one to two uh Representatives or ambassadors uh and as well as the middle schools and the high school has four ambassadors and our overall District goal is to advance the district's efforts in Dei that's diversity Equity access and inclusion by using and and working with uh these building based committees which include the principles and and assistant principles at each building uh to to advance uh again Advance the DI initiatives um to support the cultural responsive practices that the professional development um the the Consultants will be working with as well as our committees when we meet as a whole will be working working through how we can best support our students to achieve overall um every student and that's our goal and regarding our West Orange way regardless of what's happening around the world around the country um this is how the West Orange way is this is what we believe in what we value uh and we value all of our students regardless of where they come from of their perspectives so it's the that's really was part of the a major part of the driving force of it being the West Orange way or the wow committee good evening so I'm just going to dig in a little bit um for further explanation to the concept of the West Orange way so um obviously all of us being uh Educators first and foremost we thought of this concept first of all embracing the rich diversity that really uh makes up West Orange we thought about uh all of the voices the perspectives um and the Really the need to create an all-inclusive framework or pathway that truly represented our town and the wow committee or the West Orange way is committed to developing this framework which we've already done we've begin developing the framework as early as March of this year um and as Educators we thought about it simply on the basis of a rubric basic standards when it comes down to focus in on creating uh an environment of belonging where anyone can walk into any school or any West Orange Public School building and have the same feeling the same sentiment feel that they belong regardless of who they are then we have achieved our mission so in order to guide us through that path we will spend the next 18 months deliberately working on a framework for all things DEA out how do we conduct challenging but necess necessary conversations with each other that's one of the wow rubrics we've been intensely working on since this summer how do we approach really making sure that all of the wonderful work that precedes our committee and I do want to share that um my career the first 20 years of my career was spent in teac public schools but I was attracted to this District because of the work that people like Miss sendes uh Miss Jackson uh Dr orange Jones my director principal Mr hush have done prior to this committee carrying that torch so we will use the work that's already been embedded that's attracted many of us to this district and continue to carry that torch and build those standards into our framework the goal is to make sure that our we create a pathway for every school a way that we can measure and really align what we're doing with what really represents the diversity of West Orange where we can say we're truly being Equitable we are truly being inclusive and we are truly conscious of the concept of inclusivity through our practices good evening I'm kimya Jackson the principal of Redwood as already stated so we've created a mission for a while and that's to create a distinguished system of communication collaboration that leverages recognizes and celebrates our diversity for the betterment of all of our our students and staff so we decided to recruit ambassadors teacher ambassadors why did we do that so they could turn key all the information that we're learning and that we're gathering over time they can turn key directly back to their colleagues in a more intentional manner in a more intimate manner we also recruited recruited Consultants because we know that where we are experts in different areas when we have Consultants to support our initiatives they can give us an expertise that we may not have at this point right like we're all administrators we're all doing our daily our daily assignments so we have the Consultants to come back to come out and support us so the way they'll support us TSO has already worked with our administrators last year and they're working with us this year by offering different Pro uh professional development experiences on how to deal with microaggressions how to notice microaggressions because in past surveys we found out that that is something that um that is a challenge for not only our staff but students and our community we also have freedom Inc who's going to work with our faculty outside of the title one schools so they'll be working with the high school and like I said those schools that are not title one we also have Landing purpose who will intentionally work with our Title One schools to um to address the different systems that are acknowledged through free and reduced lunch um our ESL population and more so team wow has already started the work and we're going to continue like Miss ban said over the next the next 18 months and we're looking forward to giving you out or telling you more about what we've done thank you Bo please come back to the days oh yeah you will so stay here okay you caught me I work off a script sorry thank you team wow we appreciate it thank you for that introduction we look forward to your work in addition to the to this evening's presentation miss evany dandz our assistant superintendent of curriculum will provide a presentation of the 2024 New Jersey state assessment report Mr Mendes for good evening good evening how are you um my name is evany dandes I am the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and this evening um I on behalf of our team uh our administrative team uh consisting of our directors supervisors principal assistant principles and all of our teachers um will be presenting our state assessment results first thank you uh to our board um who uh continuously uh supports our work um specifically as we think about our interventions and strategies um and how we would apply those to improve our work uh through our budgeting um and um to Michelle Martino our director of assessment accountability and intervention uh who has uh been extremely instrumental in helping me put these data together um so that we can represent it to the board and the public in a concise way uh this New Jersey student learning assessments are Statewide assessments that assess students progress toward um the learning standards in ela Math and Science we as a district are required to report out um on various um groups our district and state comparison our three-year performance our demographic um subgroups aggregated and disaggregated um so that we can see how we're performing across these content areas over time as a part of this presentation we'll also look at the dynamic learning maps and that is an assessment that is administered to our students with disabilities who are unable to sit for the NJ SLA proper um so who takes the njla who took it in May of 2024 it was administered over a 2 to three day period for each content area in ela and math grades 3-9 Algebra 1 Algebra 2 and geometry um I thought it was important to note our demographic in the district just for context so that when we're looking at these data we understand who's represented our general education population 75% our special education population is 25% of the data and our multilingual Learners represent 7% so when we're looking at proficiency rates just keep that in mind that is a distinction that should be noted that it represents 75% General Ed 25% special ed and 7% um multilingual Learners ALS also to keep in mind is when we're looking at our proficiency rates um in math in particular um students who have been in a US school for less than one year are required to take math so in those math numbers you will see our multilingual Learners represented um that is uh significant in some instances because um our first year students who are taking math that are multilingual Learners is 22% so that is a significant number um for ELA they not required to take um the assessment in their first year in a US school they are required to take it in their second year these are the performance levels um level one would be did not meet expectations yet and level five is exceeded expectations when we think about proficiency we're looking at levels four and five combined who met and who exceeded uh throughout tonight's presentation we will focus both on the proficiency rate and the percentage of students in the approaching category and that approaching category is very important to us because we are looking at growth and what our data is beginning to show us is that students who are in the approaching category 28% of them over two years are moving into met exceeded that's a very um a strong percentage of growth so um again a distinction that we want to keep in mind as we're looking through our data we will begin with math in grades 3 through 5 math measures numbers and operations in base 10 and fractions operations and algebraic thinking measurement in data and geometry so here is the district State comparison again these are data that we are required to present um by the state for context we have 1,425 students who tested in grades 3 through 5 76% were General Ed 24.3 were special ed and 7.3 were multilingual learners for the past three years consistently the district is outperforming the state in grades 3 through five math and the Gap is widening in 2022 we were exceeding the state by 9% but now in 2024 we're exceeding the state by 13.4% so not only are we increasing in proficiency but we are also widening the gap between us and the state when we think about our grade level performance 63.1% of our students are meeting or exceeding Proficiency in grade three exceeding the state by 15.6% in grade four 53.6% and in grade 5 56.3% exceeding the state by 16% I'm going to draw your attention to that approaching category again when looking at our data over three years we see a consistent movement of at least 28% of our students moving out of approaching into meet or exceeding over two years so here we have between 23 and 24.7% of our students in this category through our academic support programs through our intervention programs through our tier one two three multi-tiered systems of support we are able to identify our students who are at the cusp of proficiency and work to move our students toward um greater gains what we did notice this year in our data is that if you look at the did not yet meet category 76% % of those students are students with IEPs and so then that is informing our work with our students with disabilities and how we're addressing um our students in those programs our individual individualized education plans are very specific to the modifications needed in order for the students to be able to demonstrate proficiency on these assessments and then on the other side of that we have additional six students who reive perfect scores in grades 3 through five when we look at our three-year njsla performance comparison in grades 3 through 5 this is the grade level performance it is not a cohort we see significant increases here in grades three at 17.9% and grade 5 at 23.7% we see a modest gain in grade four in all instances we see growth here's our data performance by ethnicity and race in our district just as a whole whole again for context we have 177% of our student body that is white 30% of our student part body is black our African American 39% is Hispanic or Latino 4% is Asian and 10% is in two or more races I'm going to just um explain how these data are changing um approximately 10% of our students in West Orange and grades 3 through 5 identify as two or more races since this category has been added then those students are removed from the single ethnicity category that was not so in Prior years so that's important to know so in the two or more races you may find students who are um African-American who are Asian who are white but not Hispanic if they are in the Hispanic category they're only in the Hispanic category they're removed from the other ethnicities or races um this was not the case before Hispanic was always considered an ethnicity it is now for data purposes being considered a race um this slide um highlights the performance of our students in grades 3 through five on the njsla math assessment specifically for students with disabilities and those who are economically disadvantaged and multilingual Learners um when planning instruction and intervention strategies we are prioritizing the needs of our students by subgroup uh we're looking at our uh students with disabilities with their individualized educational plans with their programming and also for our economically disadvantaged in our Title One schools and in our academic support programs it is important to note that 48% of our students in academic support are also in the economically disadvantaged category so when we're thinking about how are our programs directly supporting our students we know we asked the board to commit with us to add academic support teachers last year at the middle school levels and so then here we can see how it's directly impacting our growth when we think about our economically disadvantage AG students in particular we see um very strong growth grade 3 30% from 2002 to 2024 and grade five 36.1% growth from 2022 to 2024 um and then we see a modest growth of 12.5 um per in grade four grade four is the um grade in the elementary schools where we're paying particular attention to it is not currently showing um the growth that the other two grade are um however we understand what the work is here um and how we're going to address it we do highlight the performance of the economically disadvantaged here uh students here again because it is directly reflected in our Title One approaches and our multi-tiered systems of support and in our academic support and intervention uh when we're looking at our data we're able to identify specifically what the strengths and areas of focus are in math um through I ready through different benchmark assessments units assessments Etc um and here is a list I won't go through it all it will be available however on our um website um but this really just lays out what are the strengths um students in grades three to five are really showing strong fluency and addition subtraction multiplication as well as proficiency and fraction operations and geometry um they're able to effectively solve Ward problems and apply area perimeter and volume formulas when we're thinking about the areas of Focus um it's really around multi-step word problems comparing and modeling fractions and enhancing geometry and measurement skills so these are the areas in which we will focus when we're thinking about curriculum instruction assessment our Focus continues on math content proficiency um key strategies that we're including are around academic vocabulary practicing fluency and problem solving using actionable data to guide our instruction we are in year two implementation of I ready um which is going extremely well um we are working through uh productive struggle in our classrooms our students are solving problems they're working on their tasks and they're demonstrating their commitment to mathematical discourse when we're thinking about professional development we're focusing on enhancing math instruction through targeted support for our teachers and for our principles and for our coach um the key areas include preparing that I ready classroom for math using diagnostic data to inform our instruction and promote strong mathematical conversations um our principles are engaging in professional development alongside our curriculum team um they're doing instructional um walks they're unpacking the I ready data they're doing Dives with their um teachers during grade level meetings and so then we are collectively um uniting around our data to make sure that um we understand what our students need and how to approach that as a unit and as a team when we think about U math 3:5 here's where we believe we seeing our great um gains we have multi-tiered systems of support we have individualized education plans we have our supports for multilingual Learners and we have extensive instructional coaching where um uh coaches are pushing into the classrooms with our school Leaders with our teachers to model instructional strategies and support in the classrooms directly in the classrooms versus just the one-off workshops um so those classroom visits identify instructural needs they support teacher development and the implementation of ir classroom math that was math 3 through 5 I'm now going to shift over to math 6 through 8 and as we move into our 6 to8 performance data it's important to acknowledge that our results in this area are currently below expectations um our state and National Data show that this is also recognized challenge across the state and the nation um however we as West Orange we said the West Orange way right we acknowledge and we hold accountability and responsibility for our growth and our commitment to our students we acknowledge that our data in math 6 to8 is our area of focus and we're going to use that as an opportunity for growth and Improvement um we are working actively with our principles and math Improvement teams to develop targeted action plans we'll talk about those this evening um for how we're going to strengthen our curriculum alignment our Fidelity of implementation and focused interventions for the students who need additional support so when we begin um to look at our math 68 data you will see our levels of proficiency in grades six seven and8 in the light blue uh We've added um the different cour work that students are engaging in in grades seven and eight the state normally categorizes math 6 seven and8 as that um content area that subject area for the middle school grade span but in West Orange we offer um Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 at the middle school as well so if we look at our performance in grade 6 41.3 of our students are meeting or exceeding State Standards surpassing the state performance by 5.1% in grades seven and eight our students are either enrolled in math s or8 or they're enrolled in Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 in grade 8 so for grade 7 30.6% of our students are meeting or exceeding the state standards in math 7 and of that math 7 cohort 25% are students who are um in our special education programs or 504 and 70 of the students took the algebra 1 assessment in place of math achieving a proficiency rate of 98.6% in grade 8 21.7% of our students are meeting or exceeding the state standards in math 8 and of that cohort um approximately 33% are um are students with disabilities and in five four accommodations and 142 students took Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 assessments instead of the grade a math test for those taking Algebra 1 and grade 8 72.1% are proficient in Algebra 1 and for those taking Algebra 2 in 8th grade 51.7% are proficient um looking at that approaching um cusp the students who are the cusp of proficiency we have 22.7 to 37.4% of our students and again our data shows that at least 28% of those students will also move into me or exceeding over the next two years when we're thinking about Algebra 1 the state um considers all students who are tested in Algebra 1 7th 8th and um for our our high school students grades 9 through 11 so that 35% Proficiency in Algebra 1 includes all of those and so then here is the disaggregation by grade 534 students participated in the algebra 1 assessment um when we're looking at our performance over three years grade six has Improvement in grade level proficiency by 26.3% um grade seven has Improvement by 53.8% and grade 8 by 97.3% so um these numbers are large um they seem um um big because we're starting at a lower level right if we had 11% um Proficiency in math 8 and now we're at 21.7% that's why that number um seems large so it was important to us to look at our math pure cohort because looking at the grade level increase year by year really doesn't show the same students so here we're looking at the exact same students over three years these are the students who sat with us for three consecutive years a minimum of three consecutive years took the test um and are demonstrating um growth over-year so when we look at our third through fifth grade cohort we see students as compared to self in third grade were at 54.9% proficiency back in 2022 and now that they're in fifth grade they're at 61.1% proficiency so here we can see the growth in the cohort fourth to sixth grade has a decline of 12.5% and here is the biggest transition that we have in our district this is from fifth to sixth grade students entering a new school for Middle School a convergence of all of our elementary schools into one new school for the first time and a reduction in our math program minutes we move from 80 minutes in math to 55 in the Middle School so as we're thinking about our interventions and we're thinking about the differences that may be contributing to our performance in math these are some of our considerations from fifth to seventh grade we see two transitions we see a transition from fifth into sixth grade and from six into seventh grade from 6 to 8th grade we have a 5.8% increase and from 7 point um 7th to 9th grade uh a decline of the 99.9% I want to point out the difference between 9th grade performance and 11th grade graduation ready results so here in 9th grade we have 24.5% proficiency back in 2022 when schools were um now reopening and uh we were beginning to take these State assessments again for the first time and then we look at who is identified as graduation ready in grade 11 and so these two numbers they just don't drive right they're two different tests they're two different scale scores um how is it that we have 24.5% proficient in ninth grade and by the time they get to 11th grade they're at 61.5% proficient so while we can't compare those two assessments directly because they're not the same because the scale scores are different over time what we'll be able to do is use a conversion framework that would say if this data holds for the next three years we can look at it and we can start to translate these data an approximate 24% in math in 9th grade might equal a 60% in 11th grade and we can start to make distinctions between the differences in those two assessments again these are our strengths and areas of focus in grades 6 to8 and Algebra 1 these will be posted and then we move to our action plans and so then we've been meeting with our principles from Edison Liberty Roosevelt and the high school um we've um really started to sit down and think about what are the specific action steps that we will Implement as a unified campaign this year around our middle school math and we're looking at our instructional framework um specifically math 6 to8 what is our core instruction and assessment it's at I ready we've adopted a program we adopted it during um covid while we were closing and so we did a reset on our professional development last year and this year we're moving full swing into The implementation of I ready and one of the first things we're looking for is Fidelity of implementation uh we're working with our Consultants who are coming into model they've unpacked our data with us they've taken look at uh taken a look at our instructional groupings um they've um sat with our principles to talk about how they can push into the classrooms and observe what they should be looking for and the try discuss connect um framework um we have as a team identified when we observe teacher and the instruction what we're looking for specifically um these comprehension checks end of unit assessments our groupings and our use of data um so that we are all looking for the same thing as it relates to Fidelity of implementation Fidelity of implementation means that if the I ready research says You must implement it for this number of minutes in this way using this framework then you should get these results so then we need to make sure that that's exactly how it's being implemented into in the classrooms so that we can expect the same results and we're receiving professional development not only our teachers but our administrators um where we have lesson modeling that will take place um these are the things that are happening in the area of of cni and instruction in the area of um school-based strategies for improvement um principles will lead math Improvement teams where they will um clarify expectations for Fidelity of implementation um they will look at data analysis initiatives and they will create intervention cohorts uh we are putting instructional supports in 68 in our advisory connections we're and our advisory classes we're making sure that math intervention is a priority we're looking at the number of hours that students are on my path in order to have that individualized math instruction um via the technology available and on tonight's agenda you will see that we have placed our math after school support that will be offered to our students in grades 6 through 8 and Algebra 1 in the high school three times a week December through May um and we're also looking at a math incentive program um additional supports at our high school are that we are having math lab during lunch math after school support again three times a week December through May and math Honor Society tutoring for homeschool connection again we have the my path we're expecting students to sit with my path for 30 to 50 minutes per week um and the principles and the schools will be working with our parents for parent engagement on how they can help their students at home how they can help monitor the progress and the growth um and how we can partner together to ensure that our students are finding greater success this next area are Explorations for future implementation it's what we're exploring we're thinking about if we had additional time for math instruction in grade six through n what might that look like if we were able to double do pre-algebra integration across math 6 what would that look like and if we were able to double do Algebra integration across math 7 to8 what would that look like so our teams are exploring these as a a place of inquiry we're going to see what is feasible um and then we will um make a presentation to our superintendent and to our board when we're ready for algeb 1 two in Geometry um here is our proficiency Algebra 1 35% Algebra 2 33.3% and geometry 72% again we have about 25 to 36.9% of our students who are close to meeting proficiency and approaching but here we have a different data set our our data um for approaching says that 70% of the students who are in approaching will move to met or exceeding over the next two years that's what our data is showing as far as our growth we can expect that type of movement from approaching into met or exceeding okay and then we're looking at our Algebra 2 and geometry over 3 years Algebra 1 over three years has increased by 4.5% Algebra 2 by 39.9% and geometry has declined 7.2% in the top blue box you'll see who's taking the assessments so Algebra 1 we have students in grade 7 through 11 taking that assessment in Algebra 2 it's students in grades 8 through 10 and geometry grades 9 through 10 this is our performance by ethnicity and race again this will be posted on our district website this is our performance by demographic with special attention to our economically disadvantaged students who are showing significant gains that point directly to our academic support and intervention programs um our strength and areas of focus in algebra one two and geometry are noted on this slide and then math Improvement strategies for the high school um we're thinking about how we're looking at Delta math for assigning targeted practice for monitoring progress regularly and for giving students and staff instructional feedback throughout the work and Benchmark process we're developing common Assessments in math at the high school so that we can measure um student progress mid and end year um and we have professional development that is very specific to calibrating our observation process um action steps also include those math Improvement teams that we talked about our data analysis meetings um and our observations we're going to move to English language arts English language arts measures literary analysis additional passage sets narrative writing tasks and research simulation tasks I won't repeat as I did with math um I kind of set all of the framework for math but here in ela we see our Prof percent proficiency again over the past 3 years the district has consistently outperformed the state um in 2002 by 9% and now in 2024 by 14% we see our proficiency rates at 59.1 65.1 and 65.5% and our students who are in the approaching category our data over two years does show that the students in approaching are moving at about a 60% proficiency into met seeding this is our three-year comparison again in all areas for grade level performance we're seeing growth in grades three and five at 14.8 and 14.3% respectively and when we look at our district State comparison for ELA 69 again we're seeing um our proficiency at 66.3% in grade 6 53.5 in grade 7 59 .6 in grade 8 and 60.3 in grade n when we look at a three-year comparison we see strong growth in grades six seven and nine um with a uh challenge in grade seven we see a decline of 7.7% we do see a very strong growth in grade six and I want to point this out because it's showing across all content areas how in grade six we're showing growth over the past two years um and so I think this is important to think about all of the things that have happened as we have um considered grade six performance as we've considered um the new um interventions the academic support that has been um pushed into grade six um this is Ela pure cohort performance from third to 5ifth this cohort has increased by 30.2% as compared to self in grades 4 to 6 13.1% in grades 5 to 7 there was a decrease of 0.9 in grades 6 to 8 29.9% and in grade 7 to9 13.5% again this cohort performance is extremely important to us as we're looking as at students who have been with us for three consecutive years and tested with us because that is a more clear indication of the impact um of the programs on our students so that we'll know what's working and what needs to be strengthened and then we see our ninth grade performance um in 2022 at 50.7 and those same students by the time they reach grade 11 are at 93.5% proficiency that is a significant gain these are our data by performance uh by ethnicity and race by demographic our areas of strength and areas of focus in reading and writing for ELA grades 3 through five we have our areas of strength and focus for grades 6 through n again these will be posted and specifically for English language arts and K through five I'm pausing here to really just talk about the increasing levels of support that we've added to our curriculum here we're really looking at how can we make sure that we are supporting all of our students through our Ela curriculum to include all of our subgroups and so then we've integrated increasing levels of support so that we can inform teachers in the classrooms um how they can support TI uh tier one students those who are pulling them out for multi-tiered systems of support tiers 2 and three and for our special education classrooms for how they can support our students um with light moderate or substantial support we've done the same for our multilingual Learners we've created um differentiated um um resources that are embedded directly into every single unit um in order to uh provide direct support to our staff for second language acquisition um and we have pushed in an assessment crosswalk so that we can think about um how we're looking at the difference between I ready performance and our Ela program and how those align for our multi-tier systems of support we've talked about this for academic intervention for IEP students and for instructional coaching and then for curriculum and instruction these are the areas in which we are focusing um our uh curriculum instruction is really thinking about that new curric ulum that we have at our Middle School our professional learning communities we have new standards that were implemented this year so our curriculum was revised to align to those standards we have our reading and writing informational text for ELA and social studies um and we are exploring how we're going to reconsider benchmarking for ELA in the elementary grade span um moving from FNP to Rigby we continue with our literacy Academy in year 2 where our teachers are providing professional development to our teachers um in all things literacy and then we move on to science science is administered in 58 and 11 um and so here we see our Proficiency 41.2 in grade 5 27.7 in grade 8 and 26.5 in grade 11 um you'll see our uh proficiency where it exceeds the state um and where the state is performing in in these on these science Assessments in these three grades um as compared to our grade level performance over three years we see that we are increasing in our performance grade five we increased by 43.1% grade 8 we increased by 78.7% and in grade 11 um we have a decline of ne4 per. here's our data by demographic and ethnicity when when we're thinking about our um strengths and areas of focus in science um there was uh something that um really was interesting in a shift um open Sayed uh was uh the focus or the impetus that the state gave science as far as writing curriculum um they have reassessed that because it is revealed gaps um between open Sayed and the science standards and so then now we are going to rewrite our science curriculum to align to those new findings from the state we will align that to our desired performance expectations and we will conduct an audit this year uh and review our instructional materials and supplemental resources in science here are interventions and strategies that will take place um including a greater focus on the science and engineering practices at the core of an instructional time science skill sets and techniques focus on data with their discipline um and new and enhanced online platform for K 5 National Geographic program our last one is our Dynamic learning maps in gr grades 3 through 8 and 11 um again these assessments are administered to the students with the most cognitive disabilities for whom General State assessments are not appropriate um and so then here we see the data for these students um it is administered in all of the same grades as the state assessments but there are so few students in these categories that we could only report out for grades 47 and 8 that concludes the state assessment presentation thank you thank you uh assistant superintendent dandz and uh president Rock I open it up to you to ask the board for any question thank you superintendent Moore I trust some my colleagues have questions they would like to ask amend us or comments they'd like to make yes you want me to go first thank you Mr M thank you for the presentation uh um appreciate you and your team putting together the data for the board and for our community um you reference throughout the slides a comparison between the district and the state and in some categories the district's performance exceeds that of the state however does the district District or does your department set school performance goals and if so what informs those goals for the district yes um so yes we said um performance goals the state's um performance is not a part of that goal setting um for this presentation we're required to compare our District's findings with that of the state so we're meeting that requirement when we're thinking about assessment goals and goals for our um content areas we're looking at multiple types of data so then we're thinking about math in particular we're looking at our I data we're looking at how students are performing over time on that data in particular we're looking at our end of unit assessments we're looking at our uh benchmark assessments and then we're setting goals around those um this year in particular our goals are being set around our I ready data um because that data is the most consistent piece of data that we have we're able to Benchmark our students in the fall in the winter and in the spring so that gives us a Continuum of time in which we can assess that data shows us the diagnostic from the beginning it shows us the data in the winter after we've applied specific interventions and then where we meet out as it relates to um our state assessment proficiency I also allows us to project out to compare to how we're going to perform on a state assessment and so far are um that alignment is is is coming in tightly and so then we're using that data to um make those goals uh we do have that as a part of our district goals and so then I can share that at a separate time um for ELA we're also using IR data because we use I data to test all of our students in ela as we mentioned in the presentation um we have designed an assessment crosswalk that clearly tells us what already looks like in our Ela inter reading program so we are able to use that data as well we've moved away from using FMP data um so again we have a more constant um way of setting those goals we've also set goals specifically for ELA around our I ready data and I must apologize I'm probably going to bounce around a little bit because your comments may take me to a different question but uh in your comments not presented in the slides but in your comments you you alluded to the fact that there are uh the transitions that our children uh encounter when they move from fifth to sixth grade and then again from sixth to seventh grade has some impact um but it appears based on the slides and the data that that impact has a is greater seen in math in ela yes uh there's growth in ela but uh a lack of growth or should say some level of statistical decline on the math so have you looked at those School Transitions and take into account prior the impact of those transitions uh and how is that used to look at your multi-tier levels of support when you know that the students are going to encounter those transitions absolutely um so yes looking at those data um is critical and those two content areas are very different and so then when we think about the impact that a 55 minute um class might have on math in the Middle School versus the 80 in elementary and the increase in standards in grade six Math and our IR ready program that says it is most profitable and effective at a block um and we're unable to do that then it directly impacts math where it may not imp impact Ela as well as much is the block shortened for ELA as well or is it so is but I think the what is being assessed is different and the research would suggest that that difference is impacting the math and it's not imp in the ELA right so that framework needs to be considered differently for Math and I think um here in our district we're good at that right we're we're not going to apply one strategy for all of it it's going to look very different in math as it does um from what it should look like in ela so with respect to the math at grades six through eight I ready has been in place since the fall of 2019 correct we adopted I ready when we closed for um uh the school closures right for covid so we adopted it in that year um and so then it never really took ground it never really took hold um because when we were coming back we were working on really just transitioning back to in school um instruction what we did do was a very strong reset last year um with i as our professional development looking at what Fidelity of implementation looks like looking at our resources what our expectations are of the instruction in the classroom and so then this year we're pushing in um to really monitor for Fidelity of implementation So the plan the action plan 628 algebra one action plan is it very different from the original plan when the IR math was implemented at 6 through 8 meaning meaning you have an action plan but how different is it than the original plan of implementation from 2019 I think the action plan for implementation was one of implementation that was stunted right we were not able to execute it and so now with a reset in our action plan we're recognizing and acknowledging the areas in which we needed to reset the move from approached expectations to uh proficiency is that based on the pure cohort data or is it based on just the year-over-year statistical progression of pure cohort data so what we did was in either so in math or Ela um we have some some data that indicates you said 28% of I may have that number wrong no it's correct 28% in math 70% in ela 70% in ela and so my question Dr Brian was does that reflect the pure cohort data those movements from approach to proficient yes absolutely and so then we can't make that projection off of grade level proficiency we would have to look at the um cohort data what we have now is three years of cohort data right before we didn't have that because again the schools closed we didn't administer the assessment in 2019 we didn't administer it in 2020 so now we have 2022 data 2023 data 2024 data now we have a cohort so what we're able to do is over those three years we're able to say how many students started out in approaching in 2022 and where did they land in 2024 or how many students started out and did not yet meet in 2022 and where did they land in 2024 and looking over the three years for each of the cohorts 3rd through 5ifth 4th through 6th 5ifth through 7th 7th through 8th we can't have 10th grade data right we don't have 10th grade data but in looking over those cohorts for middle school math in particular um there is a 28% consistency in that if over two years students continue to grow the way that they have been over the past three that we see about 28% of those students in approaching will meet or exceed um Prof efficiency in two years when we look at that data for ELA we're seeing a strong correlation right a strong movement in approaching so the students are picking up they're moving quicker at 70% um and then when we get to the high school that movement is around 59% so that is looking at pure cohort data across bands what percentage of students are moving what we did also notice was that I think it was about 76% of the students and the did not yet I'm looking at Michelle because she has that data in her head um 76% of our students in the did not yet meet category are students with disabilities with an IEP of which about 58% will be exempt by the time they get to 11th grade so that's an interesting Dynamic for us because the state um says that they will not be required to pass these assessments and then they are in these other data what does that tell us that tells us that we still have to take care of all of our students right it doesn't matter if the state is exempting them or not we have to make provision and we have to work with all of our students we have to design um very strong programs for them we have to design IEP goals that really align with grade level expectations we have to put in the interventions the um differentiation and we have to meet the needs of all of our students um it is though reflected in our 11th grade data and that was the comparison that was made that there are exemptions there and they're no longer in that data and my last question before before I yield to my colleagues and I may have a additional questions that may be sparked by their comments how are parents across math and Ela at all great levels uh been engaged with respect to supporting the academic success of their child so and you know those kids who are in and specifically those kids who are in the approach or in the did not meet are are parents advised of their kids I mean obviously they get those reports when they come out in the fall from what the summit of assessment was in the spring but what does the district do specifically to those for those families in terms of Engagement for those kids that did not meet partially met or approached so uh what we have available to us through I ready let's start there um we're able to um lean into the parent portal um that exists where parents can see their students progress not only in their I ready assignments but on my path so my path is an individualized um platform where the students are tested it is um um the the questions that are asked of the students are they have to get them uh correct a certain percentage of the time and then they'll be moved on to another domain in which they can demonstrate Mastery parents are able to engage with the students there they're able to see the student growth in each of those domains and how they're progressing and they're able to see see the strengths and the weaknesses of the students by domain in addition to that in the portal they're able to access all of the text they're able to access videos of how the teachers are teaching the instruction so they are able to say I know for uh we hear this all the time right I didn't learn the math that way so then the parents have the access to well this is how the math is being taught this is the unit that the um student is in and these are the strategies that are being used so the parents have access to that we all parents have access right yeah but I'm saying is there a point of differenti a for those students who did not meet or partially met or approached where not at October when the when the parents get those reports but on some level dayto day or when do we do anything different for those students in the engagement of parents because if a kid is meeting or exceeding they still have access to the to the same my path portal parents can access that information that information path portal however is showing is for the student who is not meeting that that's what's being assigned they're being assigned these specific strategies cluster areas domains for um independent practice for continued practice because the student has need of strengthening in those areas so that's one of the things that my path will show if a student is meeting or exceeding then it's going to be accelerating the student into stretch growth goals right um but if the student needs a additional support in those areas that's what the parent is able to see and engage with in addition to that there are the I ready reports that do go home that talk about um what are the areas that um are needed to be worked on and during our parent conferences our teachers are reaching out to our parents and we have our math nights that are being held across the district right where we sit with parents to go over um what the I data looks like where there are certain workshops or um um tutorials for parents to say this is how you can help your child um with homework so we do have those um math nights available as well gotcha I guess I guess my concern is there may not be complete alignment between the IR diagnostic data and the nlsa summative data right in terms of my my path may not be hitting upon those areas of growth for individual students they may not completely line up I would I would say that they should line up because they're both aligned to the state standards and they're both measuring the state standards I think what I already would say um um on how my path is used if a student spends between 30 to 49 minutes per week on my path if um they are demonstrating G gains in those domains if they are meeting their typical or stretch growth goals which is available to the parent in the portal and in the reports then the student in two years should demonstrate proficiency on the njsla so I think it directly relates and it's directly correlated to the standards and it directly projects out what a student should um produce on an njsla that's the way it's designed thank you thank you Mr Stevenson Dr Bryan do you have some questions yeah um thank you for the beautiful visuals and for all the disaggregation that you and the team have done um it's clear that you took a lot of time on this report um I'll be generous and say that the math results are sobering and they leave me with quite a few questions about the path forward um we you talked a lot about the inputs and we clearly have seen the outputs right here um but one thing we haven't talked about is sort of what's happening in the four walls of the classroom we talked a lot about the professional learning that principles and teachers are getting we talked a lot about sort of the new curricul and sort of all the things we're throwing at the problem we have not at all heard or began to understand how the teaching inside the classroom is matching up to the curricula that have been placed before them is matching up to the assessments that students are getting during class time and I think that that's what I need to color in the picture a little bit more for me um so I'd love to sort of sit and have some some conversation or perhaps under understand what you're seeing in observations like in a very clear and granular way um speaking of grain size there's a lot of different tricks in disaggregation that happen throughout these slides the ins size is shift over and over and over I see an ins size of 70 I see one of 60 I see one of 152 and that is confusing to I'll say myself as a person who sort of plays in data and I have really big questions about why we do that and what that's meant to either cover for or make space for um so what I'd like to see and love to see you deliver to the board is like do we have some really sort of big highlevel data about what all students are doing and then if you could break that out for me by school particularly because you named this convergence that happens at Edison and I want to kind of see like what happens when we put all the kids together is it the transition is there some mindset work that we actually need to be thinking through um particularly around mathematics and math ability so that's the second one um when I look through what appears to be sort of action plans and things we plan to do many of the words and phrases are things that should probably show up on the job description of most of the folks charged to do this job I also think many of those things show up in your average ascd magazine or teaching and learning magazine if we're not going to do anything different than what's already been done how can we expect different results so I think in that space in terms of action plans I'd like to see some things set to timelines how often are we progress monitoring who's utilizing the intervention services what does the dosage look like and you actually name sort of double dosing somewhere in here but if we're giving somebody the same dose of the same thing they've been getting that didn't work are we doing anything it's a big question for me the final thing I'll share is that 30% proficiency is fine to say out loud what worries me is the 70 kids on the other side of that equation right and I don't think anybody should be comfortable saying that 70% of children are not proficient that is incredibly problematic and I would like to see who those 70% are and what we plan to do to support them not within two years nearly immediately what should we expect to see I'm done thank you Dr Brent did you want to respond to any of that or um I might be able to respond to a few things um so I've I've heard some asks and so then we can produce those for you um in terms of our uh n size the N size was consistent across the presentations until we get to pull outs so when we think about who's being pulled out for um Algebra 1 for math 7 we have to pull that out and so then um no trick there that is specifically that when the state gives that state percent efficiency for math 7 it's only for students in math 7 because our students don't only take math 7 then we have to add and give context to those who are in Algebra 1 and8 so then you'll see that for Algebra 1 we had to disaggregate the 70 because they're not sitting in that math 7 number and in grade eight we had to provide context for the algebra 1 student or the algebra 2 student who's taking that course in math 8 because then the data would not be accurate and so then there's where we we we had to disaggregate that um with regard to um observations and what we're looking for in our classrooms we can certainly prepare um what we are looking for in the classrooms and I think the work and the mindset and what's happening between the four walls is Fidelity of implementation that's where the work is going to sit with us in um majority as a starting place as a starting place as a baseline for measurement when we're thinking about mindset then absolutely we can think about all of that mindset work where um is our culture that our students can or is our culture where our students can't and how are we bridging gaps between um those two um spaces of thinking um and then in regards to action plans of course action plans come very specific with smart goals with timelines with responsibilities with tasks with progress monitoring and we have that on a state assessment presentation like today we give an overview and so then what you just see is a brief summary but um absolutely and so then a part of our district goals um once those are published um then you will see our specific um measurable data points what we're looking for as a goal and how we plan to achieve that and what that looks like progress monitored over time so Evony let me just be a little more specific and and crystal clear here so we as Educators love to use that word Fidelity right like if we just use it with Fidelity right but we never say what that sounds like looks like and feels like inside of a classroom right does that mean that you're jumping from unit one and uni five do we actually know do we know what's happening do we have a good monitoring system for that so that's number one number two when I look at sort of what you have marked as strengths and folky many of them are the exact same on the exact same chart so that's where perhaps our Fidelity is to get super specific about what we're driving toward in terms of focus and leveraging the strength specifically because when I go across both sides of these you got a lot of matches okay you follow up Mr Stevenson yeah let me just uh actually quickly follow up on on Dr Bryan's points not specifically but really kind of uh globally I I want to look at that it's no longer up on the board that's slide 17 the disaggregation by grade of Algebra 1 um so grade seven actually is slides 16 and 17 in grade seven 70% 70 students participated in Algebra 1 in place of of grade level grade seven math and of those 70 students 98.6 are proficient correct yes in grade eight can't read this slide 142 participate in algebra one or two sorry or two or two so 96 in Algebra 1 of that 142 and 72.1% of them are proficient 86 so for 8th grade there were 86 students who took the algebra 1 assessment in 8th grade and they have a proficiency rate of 72.1% but if we move to West Orange High School yes and I think I may have erroneously misinterpreted this slide 14.8% are proficient at West Orange High School but I did not realized until I saw this slide that that takes into account grades 9 through 11 yes sir not those students who would be at grade level math in grade nine correct so but it is not disaggregated by grade in grades nine through 11 no it is not Algebra 1 the expectation is for the students to take it by grade nine but we have students who are entering the district um who are not taking it in grade n we have all of our mls in there and so then when we come into those types of numbers we're not disaggregating so ideally although we would like to get students and we should get students algebra before 9th grade um I'd be curious to know what percentage of nth graders where algebra one is grade level math what percentage of those ninth graders are proficient because this 14.8% takes into account just not the Freshman but the sophomores and the Juniors as well yes and and in addition to that then what percentage of 10th and 11th graders are also still taking algebra one right which means they're not taking Algebra 2 or not taking geometry correct correct um again that number will most likely be our students who are entering school um in high school are multilingual Learners um and students that's completely fine I we can we can we can distill that but I think it's important to know understood what that is um and then two other quick questions and this really goes as we as we continue to progress the district and there are a lot of things about areas of growth areas of focus professional development what is the district's capacity to imp ment the professional development uh for teachers and administrators is outlined in your PowerPoint so I mean h how well are we doing it are the things we need to improve upon what are the resources needed I mean that's that's a that's a big question but uh if we have these prescriptive things that are laid out how are we monitoring it how do we know where the gaps are in professional development uh one thing that stood out to me is in our math proficiency I think it was grade three to five the areas of growth really took into account this convergence of language arts with math so the two-stage math problems were problems simple computation seemed to be uh area of proficiency but uh when you incorporate the need to be able to comprehend on a level that allows you to answer a math question that is uh layered within a word problem there's a challenge right and so I'm concerned that we're not concerned but I'm just curious as to what are our levels of professional development that allow us to achieve not a Fidelity of of of implementation but to create accountability so that we can adjust to support student growth and achievement overall uh and then my last question and this is kind of a our last two questions we talked a lot last year about the when we implemented the ELA curriculum and what the assessments would be and you mentioned uh then a potential move away from fontas and panel you mentioned tonight that um we're looking at implementation of R uh versus F we're field testing now field testing it what what is the operational difference between rig and ftis and panel I think they're both a very similar assessment they're looking at the students um when it comes to um sitting individually with a student one-on-one um to look at their um patterns and their fluency um and measuring um the students um Proficiency in those areas is directly versus on a pen and paper test right so I can't hear fluency on um a pen and paper test um they're both measuring those areas I think what we're looking for in the rig is if there is an efficiency of time um are we looking for a more constant benchmarking um that would allow us to um make comparisons between how the student is growing in comparison to self um that's more efficient you mentioned science and new changes to the science the current science curriculum is the National Geographic curriculum correct it is um I think what we're hearing our understanding with the curriculum for science was that the state at one point directed our alignment to open Sayed um and so then that's still what's posted on on their website right but as we're looking at those performance benchmarks and how they align to the standards um and to the um ngss there is a disparity there and so then there is a revision Vision taking place um in that science curriculum to align to those performance expectations as set forth by uh the standards and not So Much by opsed and so then our new uh supervisor of science is really working on those areas and I'm sorry president rock this is the last question not withstanding the impact of the pandemic in the implementation of ir math in grades 6 through eight we have also now implemented I math uh in K through five and uh inter reading as the ELA curriculum in K through five uh two major changes within the last three years have you seen similar issues with implementation similar issues with monitoring uh is the curriculum being implemented as prescribed meeting the board's expectations I'm just curious how that's going yeah totally different and absolutely yes to Fidelity absolutely yes to a uniform application of I ready implementation um I don't know that we can compare the two um one happened and schools closed and then we were really focused on getting back in person and I understand that we're far removed from that at this point um that was however our truth that's what happened and so then we were unable to really get I ready off the ground at the middle school um that's not the case with I in grades K through 5 in IR ready K through five we've had u a really Stellar implementation our teachers are wrapping themselves around the program of course it comes with its challenges but we see um when we're walking into those classrooms everybody using those texts everybody using the resources everybody really wrapping themselves around those Tri disuss it techniques and Frameworks um our staff our math supervisor U Miss Berg our instructional coach um who's pushing in our principles who are pushing in and everyone else who really um seeks to observe in collaboration with our Consultants who we push in with regularly to do classroom visits to observe to say is this working is this a model classroom we have teachers visiting those classrooms to see what good instruction looks like we have lesson modeling taking place we have coaches that push in on Cycles to do professional development with our teachers with our lesson models and with our principles and so then there's a full implementation of I ready that's visible um and I would suggest that our um research generally shows when you implement a program the first two years you're going to take dips and we're not seeing dips in year one and now we're in year two of implementation so that's a strong statement to Fidelity and I understand we have to Define fidelity and so I'm defining it I think you've heard me you know Define it a little more in just this response um but at the end of the day we have to see that if we're saying that we've adopted um um um this program and we've implemented new curriculum then we need to see those resources being used instructionally we need to see the data being used during small group instruction we need to see that the teachers are allowing the students to productively struggle and that we're not you know handholding and codling the students right that we're allowing them to think independently that they're engaging in the mathematical discourse so this is what I'm defining as Fidelity of implementation that we're administering the IR ready to all of our students and the diagnostic not to half right that we're administering that winter assessment that we're administering those end of unit assessments and that we're doing that together because if everybody's implementing similarly then we have that as a baseline to measure Effectiveness so yes to I ready um to um inter reading this is our first year um very different very uh new approach our teachers are acclimating they're getting used to it but they're diving in they're we are not walking into classrooms and seeing an absence of the instructional materials we're not seeing an absence of the curriculum being implemented and so then we can expect that with that implementation we're going to get that same strength um um in results it will take time I understand two years is a long time but that's you know uh we can say within two years we can expect at least X percentage amount of growth from one year to the next right so if we're projecting 10 to 15% growth each year and then by the end of second year to see a movement toward proficiency then that's a reasonable expectation it won't be reasonable for us to say if we're at 30% proficiency that next year we're at 80 um but I can with confidence say if we're at 30% this year and we're moving with 10 to 15% each year that we will be moving toward proficiency at greater strength um and our data is showing us that that our students are moving from the lower bands of proficiency through um the performance levels at at 28% in math and at 70% in ela on that approaching so i s that you understand the basis of that question and that my colleagues understand it and that superintendent Moore understands it U we are at least two years removed from the pandemic in terms of its material impact in terms of being in the classroom right and we implemented I ready math in the fall of 2022 fall of 2022 for 35 for for for K5 for K yes right and at this yes this is our second year of implementation second year this is our second year and although I ready math at 6 through 8 was initially implemented at 2019 stall due to the pandemic for a period of 2019 through 2022 the implementations notwithstanding the impacts of the pandemic mirror one another correct I think there is a um I I think there is something to be said for um an implementation in a year where we've closed um uh our inability as a district to shift from the connected math mind to the I ready mind and having a gap of time in which we were not able to get that off the ground right I'm not I'm not referencing the the the the Clos period I'm referencing the period in the fall of 23 today so we are in the rebound we are in the reset we are in the reset last year we reset all all of our professional development and here we are with um pushing into um the implementation but the effective implementation of both I math K through five and 6 through eight they run parallel notwithstanding the impact of the pic understanding they should run parallel yeah correct but you've not seen some of the challenges as you indicate in K5 that you've seen in 6A correct we see greater challenges in six so I if if it pleases the president and there's no objection for the majority of the board if the superintendent is okay okay I I think there needs to be some analysis as to what the challenges are in 68 uh and that should be enumerated to the board so that the superintendent and your team can effectively address that and I think that falls in line with uh the data that we've seen I think it falls in line with Dr Bryan's questions and although we do not have the Benefit of Mr ifer uh here tonight I think he would likely uh indicate the same so I think that's an important analysis Mr Min that needs to be done yes agreed thank you thank you Mr Stevenson thank you president do you have a follow just a point of clarification you mentioned of course I understand lag in curriculum implementation and in any form of implementation you've got a lag until you get results you got leading indicators lagging indicators of course can you just clarify for me were you saying when you sort of defined Fidelity were you saying that the math in grade seven had has been implemented with Fidelity and the 30% is a result of that no oh okay not at all all right thank you m is there anything you like to I a question um you know as um teacher former teacher at counselor I really con my great concern is the parents participation you know according to what I see is you know action to follow what we are going to do in order to increase the parents participation because I know that you know my pack we don't have any problem or maybe we can have some problem trying to H you know engage the students with for those uh 30 to 50 minutes to use my path in order to practice and develop the skills but what happened with the parents that is how we can monitor that participation because you know parents engagement is very important in the you know education system absolutely and um you know that's my concern how we get to those parents the multilingual parents who don't speak the language how we involve them into that into that participation yeah I think um yes uh we can look at and continue to look at ways to increase our parent um participation and engagement um I spoke a little bit about some of the things that we're already doing as it relates to our multilingual parents in particular um Mr Plata who's our supervisor of ESL um and World languages he um certainly has many initiatives where we see um after school programs tutorials where parents are engaged alongside the students um and so then I think that's one of the additional strategies that we're using right where the parents are coming into the schools especially in our Title One schools where we have higher percentages of our multilingual um learning Learners um and they're learning alongside their children we have homework help for the students with the parent right um for how they can help um we are sending out our reports in multi- um languages right any report that goes out it's in both languages and there are um spaces in the portal where the parents can access all of these materials in native language so the parents can access I ready books and um the videos um in native language yeah I saw the presentation you did for the I uh what is excellent I really agree with that but you know we I would like to see more participation so we need really to you know involve the parents but I'm saying in this uh you know it's how can we do that we can develop a plan in order to bring the parents I know Mr Plata is very active and you know last meeting I want to win this situation right this the blue women school but I so this the participation parents participation was full I was mentioned that to Mr Stevenson about you know how the parking lot was full and I can see the parents are engaged okay but when I went around uh Washington school I don't see many that's what we have to bring together to the parents to Washington School uh Hazel Avenue school because I know there is a lot of Spanish speaking students there so so we need to develop some plan in order to bring the parents teach them how they can use it because you know I know it's my P okay fine but I you know we need to see how they can go into that l in there and use it so you know it's something like it maybe we need to work on on sure we'll continue to work on that um I I do want to just shout out to Washington they probably have the highest parent participation um when we go there um it's very there can be at any given point 60 80 parents when Washington has a parent night event for math or whatever it is parents come out in full force um yes we can increase that yes we can continue to work with them and offer additional programs um and their participation is good right it's tight um hazel of our schools um they showed the most growth this year um it was astounding to show how much growth was demonstrated on their on their results and um they they also have programs with our parents and we will continue to increase those and we will continue to work those so yes yes and yes I just wanted to make sure we know that no no I understand you know remember I'm brand new member not brand new but I it's going to be a year but you know right now that's why we go to with Dr RKA we visit the schools we talk to the principal that's the way we can you know get more information about it okay and you know we have to give the time so they can be you know knowledgeable about the use of my pth and I waiting for absolutely yes yes absolutely are you talking about specifically the multil language multi language Learners you talking about all kids or the multilangual the all the students all of the students I'm not only the multilingual is all of the student yes yes agreed M R thank you I'm thank you anything else Miss no else okay uh so my colleagues I think uh asked many questions um so I I don't want to belabor the point and extend this very lengthy presentation too much longer uh so I'll just offer three brief um comments observations I guess on the way out um one since we talked about a lot of negatives I'll start with positive a bright spot right the ELA scores do in a lot of ways look good um I mean there's always room for improvement but generally we're exceeding the state across the board we're seeing improvements across the board and our cohorts are improving and to me one of the most important or one of it's most important or interesting points is that if 50% of the students are effective in 8th grade ninth grade rather but that translates into a 90 plus percent effect or 90 plus% performance at High School on their graduation ready but I think there's some kind of at the state level issue with the calibration of the test agreed and so it can be shocking sometimes to see 50s and 60s and think oh we have a lot of problems here not to say we don't have problems that we can address and improve on but if we're getting 90 plus percent of kids to the finish line and they're graduating graduation ready that we're on the right track and we're doing good work there um the flip side though is that you can't say the same about math so I Echo the the concerns my colleagues have about that section right the the scores along the way are concerning and the end result right the 60% that are actually graduation ready at high school is problematic so we're not you know there may still be some kind of issue with the calibration of the test there but we're still not getting to where we need to be um so we do need to to make some improvements on that I think in hearing all the comments and questions tonight it's clear that this board uh is keenly interested in this um and so we look forward to the updates and uh kind of the analysis of how we're going to get there uh because I think all of us Mr ifre who's not here included expect to see some improvements over the next year and and and the next few years um and close with a a final observation something you said to to one of Mr Stevenson's questions kind of made me think about this we talking about I ready and you said if the you know the the theory is if we do X and B if the student I think it was in this case they do this and they do that and they do this right there's a clear hypothesis that this gets us to a passing grade right and we've articulated that these are the steps along the way so you know we have a lot of different hypotheses in here you know things like we changed the curriculum in math we've implemented already we've changed the curriculum in language arts so we have a lot of ideas about how these things are going to improve and we've articulated those some a little more fuzzy some a little more concretely so at the end right one of two things happens the students affect you know the student scores well or they don't and we got to figure out what issue was either the hypothesis was wrong right we did X thinking that would fix it or it didn't and we have to evaluate all of our assumptions along the way or something you know didn't work to the Fidelity point you know maybe we said we were going to do X but we really did Y and so then we have to figure out yo what is that breakdown is it the hypothesis that's wrong or is it the implementation that's wrong or is it some mix of them is it different for this kid versus that kid and how are we going to fix you know you can't build a r on a day and fix everything but we we can improve things along the way and so by the end of this year I think we should be able to articulate that some of these things didn't work out the way we expected them to but this is how we're going to specifically change this piece next year to make it better and if we build on that over the next few years you know we can see improvements year-over-year and and get to where we all want to be so thank you that wasn't much of a question if you want to respond you can but otherwise that that was that was the extent of my comments on it but thank you for the the presentation thank you for the report thank you thank you to the board members uh before I conclude my report one I would like to make a comment to the board I want to thank you for uh being so committed to helping us improve this is my second year as a superintendent I'm learning a lot but what I am learning is your commitment as board members to the Improvement of our school system for all of us that live here and I appreciate it we but I also want to thank Mr Mendes for standing strong and listening taking notes and I know that she's working hard to figure out and to find ways to improve us but I want to thank her for presenting tonight and uh answering questions for us I know it's not easy and it's a challenge I know coming into uh this job I knew that math would be a challenge um but I appreciate you uh answering questions taking on the challenge I know you're working on it um yeah I do think the feedback we need to not only take notes but we need to uh take a digest it and come up with our own answers and get back to our board members as you know we have committies on this board in which we can report out to which we should and continue our collaboration as our board members represent our citizens so we appreciate that I want to take a little time to acknowledge the Middle School Prin principles that sat in the room tonight in support not only taking accountability but standing strong to make improvements I thank the three Middle School principles they're here tonight lonel hush Xavier Fitzgerald Steve Melendez they're here tonight along with their assistant principles who were here earlier Dr Carrie orange Olivia bantis and I appreciate them being here in a tough conversation but to hear the feedback which tells this community they not only take accountability but they're committed to making it better and they did not have to be here but they came and I appreciate that because we are committed and this is just an example of the work in which we want to do plan to do and will do as um I'm lucky enough to be the superintendent here and this team that I have I'm telling you is committed to your kids TR trust me this is my second year and in my second year I've seen the work they've done I I also want to thank Michelle for coming today and I want to thank her as she is our assessment on accountability um director and she has done a fine job of giving us the data crunching the data and working with us so thank you to all of you for standing tonight and addressing this headon dealing with it I appreciate it and I know that we have a bet we we're going to have a good future we're going to move towards some improvement and we'll report back to this board and and this community as we're all committed to doing better so thank you guys for that I appreciate it um Brian I'm happy to announce that there has been no incidents of HIV reported this month so um that would conclude my report for tonight thank you for that Mr Moore look back at my script and see where we are in this agenda forgotten lost our place um so uh do we have any committee reports from the board or repard comments uh no specific report uh president Rock but I would uh just say to our community members at large to our parents that this board of education does and I'm saying this from a policy standpoint so I'm taking this privilege as the as the policy chair uh to say that under New Jersey Law uh the board meets regularly meets monthly and I invite all community members uh to participate to come to the board meetings to engage with the board to ask questions of just not our school performance but obviously our our culture our Administration uh and just how as we talked about earlier the West Orange way as that takes shape and develops uh so you know it's important that the work that the board does the community is aware of it and so I'm just inviting the community to continue to participate to participate to become engaged uh because from a policy standpoint this board meets regularly uh is here every month at least to to tackle these issues this is a large community uh and I just hope that parents take the work that the district does and the commitment and responsibility the board has undertaking uh with the seriousness that that we do and not to say that people don't but again it's important to to confront engage these conversations about how we progress student achievement and make sure that our students have an overall educational experience that benefits them just not for the time that they are within our schools but uh becomes a lifelong um success for them that we were able to contribute to thank you Mr Stevenson right there's nothing else from my colleagu I'll move on to my board president's report uh first quick update from Betty matalina our littlest Learners at the Betty m Ena Early Learning Center were recently treated to a pumpkin patch right on their school grounds their playground was transformed into a pumpkin patch where students could experience picking their very own pumpkin there were many pumpkin related activities offered to the preschoolers including decorating their pumpkin and then taking it home to share their experience with their families so it sounds like exciting time for our littlest Learners um also I thought our student liaison would have mentioned this but congratulations to our marching band who are would you like so um I'm sure no offense was intended uh but yes congratulations to our our marching band the marching Mountaineers which won the state championship recently I had the opportunity to see them perform at the football game the night or two nights I guess it was before they went to the championship and and they are an amazing band uh so if you had the opportunity maybe at this Friday's football game uh you should come out and watch them U also want to take a moment to note that the tennis courts behind the high school since our last meeting they have been reopened it's a long time coming uh but we've been working with the town to get them fixed up they are beautiful we opened them up and had the the ceremonial First Serve by the captain of our girls tennis team um and so it's exciting to have those courts finished and ready to go um and thank you to the town for their work and thank you to Mr Moore for for your work and Mr Stephan cell for all of his work in coordinating that and then finally just a point a personal privilege uh thank you to the community for your support last week on Election Day I'm proud of the work that we have accomp lished here in the last few years Mr Stevens and I and then M and Dr Bryant more recently after they joined the board I'm glad that we are back together as a team all of us were reelected uh and I look forward to what we can all accomplish in the next few years I think uh big things are coming for West orang right I would say so all right I don't know what they are but big things to be continued uh and with that that will conclude my report next up we will have questions from the public on a agenda items only any Community member who would like to make comments or ask questions please come to the podium at this time please state your name and home address for the record then begin your comments please limit your comments to three minutes do we have any members the public here in the audience tonight who wish to make a public comment Adam Kramer 20 Moran Road um as a citizen who wants the Next Generation to be educated and able to function well in society these numbers these test results are extremely dis concerning they show that education is not happening as it should these kids need to know math the careers will be in stem if you don't know math you're going to get ripped off rest left and right going through life whether it a supermarket car dealer financial advisor buying the first home math is critical and it doesn't matter whether you're Hispanic wealthy African-American you need to know math and everybody knowing math will do a lot to equalize society and it's extremely disappointing and as a taxpayer who pays one of the highest School tax in the nation here in West Orange I really am questioning the effectiveness of that money how it's being allocated and used with is it really doing what it's supposed to do my perspective is the system has to change in terms of accountability from what I see if the numbers don't change nobody's job's on the line it's unlikely people will even see a letter of reprimand in a personnel file verely if some wonderful educator figures out how to advance things are they going to get a promotion are they going to get a nice bonus um also accountability down to students and parents maybe students and parents have to be told you're not meeting standards you have to remain in a Grade a while till you meet those standards um I think that's a lot of why we see um what we're see um I'd like to see a bonus pool for my tax dollars go to the Educators and administrators who really figure out how how to solve that mess um as a taxpayer I'd pay more to see that uh and I don't like paying taxes um I don't think you really have a process problem or curriculum problem although I do think you need to reconsider how much time you give in math in sixth grade um I work in Glenridge Glen Ridge the which is doing much better on the state test they have 90minut blocks of math in sixth grade um just for comparison I think you have a lot of work to do um and uh I think what happens here may be more critical to our society than what happened at the Town state or even national election um it's the Next Generation it's disconcerting and even though I lost the election I have faith that you'll somehow figure it out but I really don't like what I'm seeing now nor should anybody in West Orange thank you thank you seeing no one else we will move on to our resolutions may I have a motion to approve Personnel items A1 through A4 so move thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second thank you Dr Bryan I want to congratulate the following retiree L quagliato our director of Visual and Performing Arts for the district for his 23 years of amazing service thank you Lou for your service to the West Orange students and our school Community best wishes to you on behalf of the Board of Education and welcome to the club where every day is Saturday it is arita other discussion Mr Stevenson you look like you want to say something no no we've gone through all the agenda items there's not a second I'm just I'm lost in the agenda no this is the first agenda item on Personnel okay gotcha so there are more to come gotcha gotcha okay uh all right Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes vice president Vera yes president Rock yes thank you all right next may I have a motion to approve the curriculum and instruction items B1 through B5 motion thank you Dr bran is there a second second thank you Mr Stevenson is there any discussion seeing none Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes vice president Vera yes president Rock yes thank you all right next may I have a motion to approve the finance items c special services item a 1- two and business office items B one through six Mo thank you Dr Brian is there a second second okay thank you vice president here uh any discussion no I'd like to acknowledge a donation we reive from the Dr Jeremiah stamler revocable trust in the amount of $1,000 Dr stamler was a cardiovascular researcher who was at the Forefront of studies that identified risk factors for heart disease and ways to prevent it uh and you might wonder why he donated money to West Orange Public Schools uh considering he worked in Chicago but there's always local connection apparently he grew up in West Orange many many years ago because he was 102 when he passed away uh but he remembered I guess what he learned here and wanted to give back to our community so thank you very much to the estate of Jeremiah St um Miss flowers please take the roll call Dr Bryan yes Mr Stevenson yes vice president Vera yes president Rock yes thank you and finally may I have a motion to approve reports item D1 so moved thank you Mr Stevenson is there a second second good thank you vice president Vera any discussion hearing none Miss blowers please take the roll call Dr Bryant yes Mr Stevenson yes vice president ver yes president Rock yes thank you all right thank you to my board colleagues for that next up we have petitions and hearings of citizens for any agenda or non-agenda item that you wish to discuss you will have three minutes to speak please approach the podium at this time state your name and address for the record so so I just want to make a quick comment seeing that there no uh citizens who are speaking in the non-agenda items um you know I just want to actually suffix what you said Mr Mr rock with respect to the importance of Elections and elections mattering so some board of education elected by the citizens of West Orange at some prior time uh approved a reduction in the math and La block from 80 minutes to 55 minutes some board of education previously elected by the citizens of West Orange uh eliminated a k through six and then a seven8 and then a high school transition and put in place a K through five a middle six and then a transition from 6th to 7th and eth um some board of education previously elected by the citizens of West Orange uh put in place curriculum materials uh which are no longer in place because uh this board of education has currently constructed not withstanding the additions of uh Miss Vera and Dr Bryant changed the ELA and math curriculums at the elementary school level um and so I say all that to say that uh to Mr Kramer's Point Boards of education and local communities do matter and I think the questions raised tonight with respect to the student assessment data uh indicates that uh this board is doing what Boards of Education should do which is ask good questions about uh student performance data ask good questions about the overall administration of the district ask good questions that uh in the place of parents that we've been elected to represent that we ask these questions and so uh not addressing anyone specifically but addressing the larger Community I speak for myself and and I think my colleagues would join me in saying it's questions that this board of education will continue to raise and ask ask for the benefit of our students and their families so I just think it's important that we all are aware of that uh there there's been no abdication of that I think uh Mr Rock alluded to it earlier uh we have really worked very aggressively in the last three years to examine and put in place things that we believe will benefit students and families and I don't expect that uh to change because I think that as a board we have a consensus of purpose uh even if there is disagreement internally Among Us sometimes to get things done for people so uh thank you for your support as a community thank you president Rock for your leadership Mr Moore thank you for your leadership and your commitment to our community because I think one of the greatest decisions the board made was appointing you as superintendent uh given the lack of uh tenure in your predecessors uh so it's my hope it's my prayer that there is a long tenure for you as superintendent uh that your leadership will yield continuity of leadership uh within your cabinet within central office and that begins to uh trickle down don't want to use that term but but gets down at the level of this pyramid where in the classroom your vision your hope hope your aspiration is reflected dayto day in the work that uh our teachers our administrators do in conjunction with our families so thank you Mr thank you Mr Stevenson any other comments from the board no all right uh then may I have a motion to adjourn please motion second sorry a second all right uh all in favor hi hi all right thank you very much our next board meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. on December 16th 2024 this meeting will be held in the West Orange High School library media center we will not be going back into executive session after the close of this meeting there will be no further business discussed and no additional action taken thank you all for joining us tonight our meeting is now ad Jered