all right good evening everyone uh we called our meeting to order at our Clos session so now we can begin the public portion of our meeting first we will um I'm going to ask uh our Deputy superintendent of schools Dr Lee McDonald to come up and pre present or introduce our presenter for the special public hearing and presentation on harassment in intimidation and bullying thank you Miss mackon uh I'd like to introduce our new director of counseling Miss Jessica Smedley uh Jessica has been with us a few short months uh during that time she has brought her nearly 15 years of experience as a director of counseling multiple districts in the area certainly a fresh uh perspective um great addition to our administrative team supporting our school counselors supporting our school administrators our anti-bullying specialist um when we've been collaborating much along with Dr G with regards to uh things that we do here in wwp and she's been able to provide some really uh insightful perspectives with regards to uh harassment intimidation and bullying so without further Ado U Miss medley thank you thank you everyone okay so on yes can you hear me okay okay um so we going present tonight uh we have a semiannual report that we give for um all of our incidents in harassment intimidation and bullying it's called reporting period 1 and this takes us from July 2023 through December of 2023 um so just want to start and we'll go over um definition of harassment intimidation and bullying that'll be a review for everyone this law has been around now for 13 years and um had some amendments that you heard about last year and so we've been sort of growing into that changes talk a little bit about the trends that we see this year and also um just share all the proactive things and all the things that we'll be doing throughout the year to prevent incidents of harassment intimidation and bullying oops okay so our definition of harassment intimidation and bullying um this is the state definition it comes right from code it's also in our board policy so any gesture written verbal or physical act or electronic communication whether that be a single incident or a series of incidents um it needs to be reasonably perceived as being motivated by either an actual or perceived characteristic we'll go over what some of those characteristics are later in the presentation um that it takes place on school property at any school sponsored function or on a school bus or off school grounds or online that includes online um and that it substantially disrupts or interferes with the orderly operation of the school or the rights of other students and then last year during Dr G's presentation um you heard about the amendments to to the bill there were several that were enacted um and one thing that has changed for us for this year um well the the state updated their own form um affectionately known as the form 338 or the 33 form it's um that is required that all school districts use the same reporting form um there are two different versions one for parents caregivers um anyone who's not uh students um bystandard anyone who is not considered uh Lea or School District staff and then a separate form for staff so the initial roll out of that state form last year actually had an error on it um and so we made that the state corrected that for this July um they had it originally they had it so that staff could report anonymously however the the law was passed that no staff member can report anonymously so minor change but they they gave us a new form so that looks a little bit different than it did last year on our website and um have have everything under the anti-bullying section of our website and then the board uh amended policy 5512 in August of 2023 to allow for the use of preliminary determination so that's our significant change um for this year so what is preliminary determination this is right from the policy um so uh prior to invest initiating investigation regarding a reported incident or complaint the principal or design and consultation with the anti-bullying specialist shall make a preliminary determination as to whether a reported incident or complaint assuming all facts are presented are true is a report within the scope of njsa 18a 3714 so what does that actually mean that we can um that there are sometimes prior to the having the prel preliminary determination available to us any time there was any mention of anything um that used the words bullying harassment and intimidation which um we know is is difficult at certain developmental ages that there are times when there student conflict um and yet we were a little bit Bound by that so the preliminary determination has allowed us to um take a look at something if if a a 5-year-old says I was getting bullied what does that actually mean what can we talk to um it's allowed us to have um productive conversations also to talk with caregivers we've noticed um and and it has been the case that occasionally parents just want to talk to us about something that's going on with their child or children in school um but don't necessarily want to report it as a an act a potential Act of harassment intimidation and bullying we know as staff members we obligated to investigate anything that we believe is a potential Act of Hib and we are all mandated reporters so but it just allows for a little bit of space to have a conversation and talk collaboratively so um this and this always goes on between the principal the assistant principal and the anti-bullying specialist so when a report comes when any report or any form 338 comes in we can take a look and see like what is what's being reported what questions do we have talk through it and in most cases we've had this year um we have still continue to do the invest the hip investigation but we have had a few um and I'll go through those numbers of um that we have done the preliminary determination so we have had 14 total preliminary determinations um that we've done this in reporting period one primarily at the elementary school level and I think that again when you look and you read these reports um it's typically that it's um an incident that happens on the school bus or in the hallway and it's something that sounds that was either um an accident or really an opportunity to talk about is there is this conflict is this um students who are still learning how to be good friends and um learning the skills for for living and so um unsurprising that we would see that the elementary level usually also sometimes it's who's doing the reporting how does the form come in so um so that's I think been a really productive piece for us to have meaningful conversations and also enough space to do education for particularly our younger students around what is what is bullying what does this law mean this is a difficult law for professionals who have worked in the field for a long time to sort of ascertain What's Happening Here we do an investigation we're thir so you can imagine the younger the student is the um the more difficult is for them to really wrap their head around what is what is Hib bullying and what does pure conflict look like what does it look like on in different environments okay so total hi investigations in this reporting period one um we've had 83 total investigations of that 50 were founded or confirmed to be um acts of harassment intimidation or bullying and 33 were found to be unfounded so um just about a 6040 split and I do want to say too that in having these un um just because we see founded or unfounded doesn't necessarily mean we still have code of conduct issues that um come out of both founded and unfounded so it can be that it's an unfound this doesn't represent we there was no um action on the unfounded it was just not founded to meet the criteria of those three prongs um and requirements for it to be considered an active hi but we still we have options for restorative conversations um again if there's code of conduct violations that's being done differently and that's reported out through the um the SS the safety and data system so um just want to keep that in mind where there's also a lot of times for remediation measures we have opportunity for peer mediation for restorative conversations for parent teacher conferences engagement with school counselors and Student Assistance counselors so these are just total investigations okay then we have total investigations by grade band um I think this is an interesting it's interesting to take a look at this and this is um because we I think in my experience and I from what I remember I was here for um Dr McDonald and Dr G's presentation over the summer to for reporting period too because it was the night that I got approved by by by the board and so um and I think it's typical in my experience that we we tend to see the highest number of Hib investigations in the Middle grades and that is really I think develop that is a Statewide statistic I would say it's probably a nationwide statistic um because they are because of the developmental age all the things that are happening in Middle School uh their vocabulary and their um gets a little bit more sophisticated and so they're they're saying more than perhaps they were in Elementary and this year at least in reporting period one we are seeing the highest number of 45.8% in our in grades prek through five um and I think when we get to who's reporting and where is it happening there there's a little bit um interesting Trend to see there but um we're at six 16.9 so almost 177% in grades 9 through 12 37.3% in the Middle grades and then 45.8 in grades K through 5 so then we always take a look at um and this is something that we look at as the anti-bullying team which comprises all the Specialists the administrators and myself of where are things happening um again we have um a chart here and you'll see that there's mostly places that have unstructured time that's what we um so we're always looking to address like how do we um sort of work with students again proactively on building relationships Making Connections we know that when students have it's a lot harder to be mean to someone or you're less likely to be mean to someone when you have a relationship with them when we create that culture of climate and caring um so we again the bulk of these are um more unstructured time the internet um cell phone is up slightly for over last year um that could some of that I think could be looked at as the few incidents that we had in the summertime when school is not in session if you get a report it's more likely to have happened we're not in school so um that can be a difference for reporting period one versus two um unsurprising on the lunchroom in the playground but we also see an uptick in the number of classroom um incidents and so and I would say that is directly tied in terms of a trend to making sure that our teachers know how to recognize this we're having more teachers classroom teachers um report when they see something which is great that tells me that we're seeing that um our training is working that the staff understand that that they are to report any suspected incident and let in other words you don't necess they don't necessarily need to do anything other than give the report so then get these other people involved get the anti-bullying specialist involved and make sure that the administration knows so we can be handling that teachers handle so much in the classroom with classroom climate and culture and I think um it's important that when they need support from the rest of us that that that's available to them okay then we have um for these for the founded incidents of Hib what were the distinguishing characteristics um in the lead here were race ethnicity and appearance um with appearance being the highest number at taking a look at our reports um that is by and large um size so like fat shaming um although there are several other things in their um you know name name calling type things um but again found to be pervasive enough and it can also be appearance and even race and ethnicity any of these we just remember it's real or perceived so sometimes it's not it's not necessarily known but they could be um perceiving that there's a difference and it's based in that so um again these are Trends and statistics that we look at as the anti-bullying team to look at what do we need to do how can we build more work into our culture and climate team so that uh we can have safe and supportive environments for for all of our students so we are down in our total number of Investigations from last year's first reporting period to this years uh we had a total of 120 incidents last year in reporting period one versus our 83 uh this year so um I think that that speaks to we know that we saw a dramatic increase Statewide the number of Hib incidents come up steeply as we came back from the pandemic um as we had when we had our hybrid years or almost almost all schools had hybrid type environments they dipped down and then it shot back up again as we came back to um those first couple years coming back to school and really just reorienting students to being around each other um going sort of going back remember many of our Learners at the ear early grades didn't have didn't start school until they were in uh first or second grade so they lost some of those found some of that foundational time to learn again like building climate and culture that's obviously very hard to do and even being around other kids like learning how to play we went from we had two and a halfish years of not sharing not playing together not um and so we have to teach those it took us time to get everyone caught up and get our get ourselves all back in the groove of what it means to be Community together um the like I said the preliminary determination has I has really resulted the feedback from our administrators our staff our anti-bullying Specialists is that it really has created sort of shifted from being afraid of missing anything and just being hyp sensitive to as soon as someone says there's any of those words we jumping on it um to really like taking at least a breath Maybe maybe not even a step back but a breath to to talk to each other to um be able to talk through what's going on here let's gather more information and even have a cohesive way of looking at it who should who you know in terms of like the administration and the anti-bullying Specialists what who do you want to talk to in this how are we going to investigate it because preliminary determination never means that we're not going to deal with the the issue at hand that's being reported it really just means that we take a more a kind of a more comprehensive look at it is this something that should be handled through code of conduct is this a conversation that could be that a school counselor could help lead a pure mediation could we have do we need to talk to the teacher about what's happening the classroom teacher about what's happening in the classroom what what's already the climate and culture in your classroom what does it look like in the school to be able to proactively address um address not only this concern but take a look at do we have problems anywhere else that that have haven't been reported that is sort of trending so I think that's really opened up um a lot of good conversation and I also think that focusing on the training all of our staff gets trained annually um the anti-bullying Specialists and I have been meeting since November um it's one thing that I thought was really helpful uh really for calibration purposes and making this change to even have the preliminary determination was a pretty big shift in mindset um after so many years of having that we weren't doing that and so I think it's helpful we meet on a monthly basis with the um Dr McDonald's and I have met with the assistant principles about it and then I've also met with the anti-bullying Specialists on a monthly basis to we go over everyone's um data so taking a look at what are we seeing school to school it's easy to get or it can be easy to get sort of siloed in your one school that you work in so um we also talk about uh how to conduct investigations we've um come up up with interview protocols to try to again calibrate what are you doing what kinds of questions do you ask what um how do we record this all of those things and that's also included leveraging our software um and I also think the availability of having again we use a third party software hipster to um to help us maintain all this it helps us it has good reporting features so we're able to look at at those Trends much easier because it's on the tool we're using the tools that are at our fingertips and I said this race and ethnicity and appearance were the two most prevalent ones we are going actually our the focus of our next um anti-bullying specialist meeting we'll be looking at at this data and digging in at the more at the school level so um taking switching back really to now that we have this data collected and it's presented to all of you the next step will be the um School antibullying specialist will run a culture and climate team meeting at the each School level or each School building to see um with various stakeholders to look at the data of the school in more depth so obviously we switch through the proactive and we have a lot of proactive approaches to bullying prevention you know we want to and that focuses I think so much on culture and climate at the district level we have our strategic goals um and social justice standards uh we have ancl strategic goal that the that work is ongoing certainly our school counseling department which I would you know part of me wishes that I could stand up here for another 45 minutes tell you about all the good work that our school counselors do but that could be its own presentation sometime in the future uh we have mental health resources for our students so I would say um I would say actually probably every single resolution whether founded or unfounded there's always at least an offer um but we really try to engage students with their school counselor and or their Student Assistance counselor um after after an incident happens and just for processing purposes for learning purposes again like this either it happened it was either founded or unfounded but whether you're the the um the offender or the victim and sometimes even Witnesses need some wraparound about what happened what are we doing so we certainly use our staff to do that and I would say the two things you can't really see on the slide here but I bolded the two areas that I think are really important which is our culture and climate teams so again those are multidisciplinary teams we do include students on those teams um to be able to give us feedback we use student surveys that the culture and climate teams um take a look at to see what are the trends what are students saying like what are PE what are the students perceptions of what's going on and that helps us build proactive programming we also uh do a lot of professional development and training for staff and we have to keep this on everyone's radar it's important that as um you know school year goes on there's lots of even coming back to school there's lots of things things we have to refresh and do and we always make sure to do that um it's the focus of a of faculty meetings it's talked about in team meetings grade level meetings um and then certainly some more specialized training ongoing collaborative work with our teams with the anti-bullying Specialists and administrators just to uh to make sure that we're having consistency and Clarity in our practices and finally we make sure we always train our students like again it starts with see something say something um how to make a report what to happen being um talking about being a good upstander right we talk about uh coming forward if if someone you I think we've trained our students to know that well we see that certainly on the on the mental health and counseling side of things we rely on students to to help their friends we teach them how to reach out if you see someone as being hurt or or if you are how to stand up for yourself and come and report to someone who's safe so that we can help you when when to reach out for help and then finally on here too which we're always very thankful for is there are various Partnerships with our ptsas to run uh to run assembly programs bring in speakers um and have proactive programming for students again focused on protective factors we know that students who have a higher number of protective factors are much less likely to suffer from any kind of mental health challenges and also um recover from chenging situations better when they have that support and have um that they know how to get to their the help that they need in school okay and I'm just going to end with um our our district Mission about this so wwp is committed to providing all students with a safe learning environment that is free from harassment intimidation and bullying so and we do that we adhere to the anti-bullying Bill of Rights or the law uh we talked about training um the proactive measures are certainly I think can't be understated that it's um that is what our focus is because we know that we want we are committed to having a safe and healthy learning environment for all students and that we want to really create a positive School community so with that I can um take questions if anyone has oh P thank you so much for that presentation um could you talk a little bit about um once a incident is founded um and concluded uh what happens in terms of the student's record or who sees the founded incident sure so one of the amendments to the law the 2022 amendments um changed so prior to those amendments the record was completely separate so um now with the law change it is a part of a student's record but it's not necessarily viewable to anyone so um to be completely honest I unless Dr aderhold you know differently or Dr McDonald's the state hasn't quite G has not has has stopped short of giving us guidance on exactly what to do with those records so we are they are kept in a database um I can tell you on the side of uh things like college admissions and what we do there no one's asking about them um but I feel like we have to lean into into that no that's okay yeah this is a common doc thank you uh this is a common question that that does come up because uh with the January 2022 Amendment uh it did note that the um results have to be kept in the students permanent folder but it does not go into detail as to what goes in uh and so we've kind of been waiting for some guidance from the state that has not been for forcoming at all so we are kind of proceeding um as everyone is kind of proceeding as best they can uh what that did do was there used to be uh districts could work with parents say for example A student got an HIV in first grade um if there were no other issues in elementary school that that could have been purged that that is gone that discretion is gone that much is clear but in terms of what exact documentation is viewed by other people there's really there's no guidance and also to be clear we we do have this conversation with parents I apologize the West Windsor Plainsboro School District does not forward discipline records to postsecondary institutions so you know that that is a very common fear that parents have not just in this District but in other districts across the state that if there isn't founded HIV against a student say in El elentary school it will somehow hold or impact that child's ability to go to college or get into college when that time comes we we do not forward those those records right thank you do we have any other questions from the board Liz thank you for the presentation as well um can you just speak a bit about the peer mediation process and in terms of like if it's voluntary if there's any confidentiality around it is there like a statement signed at the end like sure absolutely can talk to that so um pure mediation is always voluntary and in it's really even the offer of a pure mediation is really at the discretion of the anti-bullying specialist who is a counselor um and the school administration so we would first talk about it like is this an appropriate situation to try to mediate and a lot of times when something is just conflict it can be um when we have some like whether the actual incident is founded to be Hib or not I would say most of the time it would it would only really be the unfounded ones where you end up that at the end of the day something mean happened or someone felt hurt was hurt didn't meet the legal definition but also like we want to prevent it from happening again so I would say it's most typical one of the things that we have to take a look at is that impact that it's significantly impacts the student or group of students or the educational environment um particular with younger students what we see that is one of the more difficult things to figure out in in deciding is this founded or unfounded because if we had a problem on the if there was an incident on the bus and then by lunchtime everyone sitting together and they're we know they're going back on on the bus and and you're talking to a five or six-year-old like are you still F like kind of getting to like do how do you want to do this going forward you're going to be on the same bus together so can we talk about and that may look like a mediation or it may just look like restorative conversations separately so I would say it's very Case by case but um anytime we're going to engage in that it would absolutely be voluntary thanks any other questionsa thank you um I know you mentioned the ABS often works with the culture and climate teams to do proactive measures could you share like what's some of those measures could be or what the programming looks like sure so our culture and climate teams um it's a little bit different in each school because each school has its own kind of climate um but they work typically there's teachers involved there are there's students there's a parent representative on that um administrators and so that could look like coming up with again proactive measures it could be do we want to bring in try to work with the PTSA to bring in or even budget for for assembly programs do we want to do some kind of um something close to like positive behavior support so um having uh like Stu I would include something like a student of the month something where you're catching um students or you're asking students to identify other students doing the right thing again like so proactive measures really planning at the school level like individually does that look like maybe a team well this sounds like this is a double onand but a team team building event so um is how do we get students again like to build relationships make connections with one another do we um our culture and climate teams often look at at what clubs are available getting clubs of students together interacting with them what are they seeing the surveys certainly taking a look at what do what do students want to see what would do you starting with do you feel safe at school all the way up through what would you like to see happen and so I think there can be a lot that comes out of that really dependent on the school thanks uh Dana um thank you for for this uh report it was very thorough and appreciate it um so um I had a question about the two areas where you were see where you have the most um which is race and ethnicity and appearance are you seeing like you mentioned something about like uh fat shaming are you seeing like increases in certain in certain um you know like that in like fat shaming or something else in within those you're seeing certain increases that you didn't see before I know you I know you haven't been here that long but looking comparatively back to last year's um first period report that Dr gou gave were right were right in the same place and I would say even when you compare the um kind of across the state that tends to the trends tend to follow what's happening in our society right so you're seeing like certain things happening more I guess now than they might have had a year ago based on outside I think factors it's impossible for us to be shielded from the same things that are happening outside so um just like we've seen other major sociopolitical events happen over the past several years I think there is it go it's sort of in toe with that thank you L thank you for the presentation um I remember last year's presentation I was surprised with the K5 number in terms of the total number of Investigations because as you mentioned earlier usually it's sort of the middle school age group um I guess this year compared compared to last do you think the um um prelim preliminary determination help bring that number down for K5 or is it still sort of the same in terms of percentage from last year to this year the number of uh total incidents reporting I think it brought it down slightly so we had we had eight of the 14 preliminary investigations were at the K5 so um it is a slight decrease but we we're down pretty significantly overall too so I think it it's sort of like not quite an Apples to Apples comparison because our overall number dropped by about about 40 great yes and then just one more thing cuz I I am a part of a a couple of parent like WhatsApp groups and you know sometimes your parents will come in and say uh you know my kid got bullied on the bus or this I just wondered if you could share some like maybe advice or if there's um maybe from the parent perspective how they can go about um you know reporting to the school or just kind of instead of just keeping it on you know like in a text group how they can go um ahead and just kind of bring their concerns forward and in terms of like parent education about the Hib is there anything um that you can talk about that sure well um one of the things that I would like to see our abss do as we expand out and one of is to educate our families maybe work with the ptsas um to do presentations for parents I'm happy to do those as well um so I guess advertisement if any if any ptsas would like that we certainly um I think that it's important to again continuously talk about it because just like the kids will come in and say one word and like it's the b word you know and everyone gets a little that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of people and this law is really specific and so I I think one of the things that I wish I could debunk for everyone and have everyone get this is really understand that we always want to know your concerns um anytime you have a concern with your child if you're concerned about someone else's child please get in touch with us um you know how they do that certainly the form is available it's it's um I always say like same thing with Mental Health Resources when people you tell people to go to websites needs to be within a couple clicks so it is the form is available to make a report um within a couple clicks so they just go to the the anti-bullying section it's an alphabetical order it's right in the top bar of our our website and the form I we actually changed I changed it with our um communications director this morning that we decided instead of call calling it the name of the form make it a little bit more user friendly and it literally now says click here to report a potential incident of him so hopefully that that's one way but I also don't want to I mean certainly we have these rules we follow the law that use the state form but I don't want a form or a process um a legal process to get in the way of a parent calling the school you they please call you can email there's counselors in every building um you can start with you don't need to know know who the anti-bullying specialist is you don't you can start with your child's counselor you can always start with the teacher a lot of parents have that well established relationship with the teacher so I would say to the same thing to parents that we try to say to our kids don't sit in silence with this um let us know and we want we want to work with you we want to engage with people and certainly I'm my information is available on there too if if no if no if nothing else um I can get you to the right person but also happy to talk through things or and even hypothetical so I would yes if you could be our our um you know a champion for just call the principal or call the call Jessica or call the school counselor you absolutely thanks do we have any other questions well thank you for all the questions and thank you Miss medley for a really clear and comprehensive presentation you're welcome thank you so much now uh that takes us to the special opportunity for public comment on harassment intimidation and bullying the board invites thoughts and reactions on the harassment intimidation and bullying report from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167 all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 15 minutes seeing none um I will close this public comment portion and we can uh move on to the approval of the report um so can I have a motion to approve and accept the July 1st 2023 to December 31st 2023 District semiannual report of harassment intimidation and bullying as required by the New Jersey State Department of Education under the anti-bullying Bill of Rights Act um L and Liz um any comments or questions okay we'll start with Miss bonsel yes Miss tenera yes Miss yes Miss crug yes Miss malga yes Miss shett yes M Zen yes Miss McAn yes that now adjourns our special public hearing on harassment intimidation and bullying we can now move on to our regular agenda and uh I just wanted to pause here and ask Mr Toscano if there's anything you wanted to add to the uh closing executive session agenda thank you madam president oops just not that tall uh in addition to the items that were noted on the agenda that was pre-printed prior to the meeting uh there was two additional items that the board discussed uh for exception number seven uh the board discussed a possible ethics complaint uh and the board also discussed uh the EIP program all right thank you Mr Tuscano um Dr aderhold do you have any comments or you good all right that takes us to the first opportunity for public comments the board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items and items of concern from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167 all statement shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 60 minutes he seeing none I will close this public comment period and we can move on to our committee reports so um I'll ask uh Dana for the administration and Facilities committee okay is this is this on yeah okay um the ANF committee met on Tuesday January 16th first uh Dr McDonald provided an overview of the administration facilities committee the committee's role and responsibilities and high relighted frequent agenda items including the review of the Board of Education policies and regulations agreements and contracts updates regarding any referenda School Safety and Security Human Resources Athletics and the district's strategic plan we next reviewed two policies and one regulation for a second reading and approval at tonight's board meeting these are um policy 5116 which is education of homeless children and youths and its accompanying regulation R 5116 and policy 2270 which is religion in the schools there are no policies or regulations to be reviewed for a first reading tonight the committee discussed proposed 2025 2026 academic calendars additional stakeholder feedback will be reviewed before approval is considered by the Board of Education the committee then discussed the district's class 3 officer program and shared service agreement referendum topics were next up on the committee's agenda as follows um phase two renovations to the new main entrance main office and the nurses suite are completed at the woff school school staff have moved in and are utilizing these new spaces painting floor and ceiling installation is underway in the Town Center school media center demolition work for the media centers at moris Hawk and Village School continue um we next discuss Athletics including the district's engagement with Community stakeholders regarding Youth Sports an upcoming parent University on the benefits of Youth Sports will be held on Tuesday February 13th um Spring High School sports registration open January 17th and will close on February 26th um Middle School spring Sports registration is open February 1st and closes March 88th the district continues to update outdated language and current job descriptions the committee reviewed descriptions for human resources manager instructional assistant for Special Services mental health clinician and a non-certified school nurse the committee recommends the revised job descriptions for approval at tonight's meeting the committee approved the um 2024 2025f committee meeting dates um is January 16th which already happened February 8th March 12th April 16th May 21st June 4th July 23rd August 13th September 10th October 15th November 12th December 3rd and January 21 2025 our next meeting as I just said will be February 8th thank you thanks Dana do we have any questions okay so uh ly for the curriculum committee please thank you grayan uh the curriculum committee met on January 16th uh we began with Dr Richard St uh he reviewed the goals ngss alignment and curriculum um being proposed for marine biology a summer course um hopefully for this summer being made available to students as an elective course for two and a half credits uh next Dr G uh shared with the committee the vision for the February 2024 professional development day aimed at providing staff with engaging and relevant sessions aligned with the district strategic goals uh during the discussion she highlighted the variety of sessions being facilitated by external presenters such as Dr George Scott Dr Michael sest uh District administration and teacher leaders on the agenda for voting uh tonight first uh the curcum committee recommends approval of the Community Education Spring Summer 2024 Youth and adult programs which is listed in tonight's agenda a pretty extensive list um next the committee recommends approval of um professional development Consultants first center for Counseling Services LLC to provide two 1hour trauma informed practices professional development workshops uh to District staff on February 16th at a cost not to exceed $1,200 uh the second uh consultant Institute for multi-sensory education to present Orton Gillingham Academy 30-hour classroom educator training to district teachers uh this summer at a cost not to exceed $32,400 which would be paid through uh Esser with the Esser funds and third consultant Center for responsive schools to provide a 4-day core uh course training this summer uh to to district teachers at a cost not to exceed uh $24,900 uh next the curriculum committee approves uh the following for 2024 summer courses first uh District financial literacy course uh at a cost of $350 per student and upon successful completion students will receive two and a half credits the next course introduction to discret math uh at a cost of $500 per student and upon successful completion students will receive two and a half credits for this summer course uh next introduction to data science uh again it costs about $500 per student and upon completion uh students will receive 2 and a half credits followed by discret math part two uh for this summer at $500 per student and upon successful completion students will receive two and a half credits and the last one is a district marine biology course at a cost of $500 per student and again two and a half credits for students who successfully complete the course um next the curriculum committee recommends approval of uh uh 2024 financial literacy course to approve Apex learning to provide an online platform to host the financial literacy summer course at a cost not to exceed $125 per student uh next with fil trips on the agenda for High School North uh junior Statesman of America Winter conference in DC from feu February 16th through the 18th the cost of the trip is approximately $415 per student and then the curriculum committee recommends excuse me here approval for tuition agreement enter into agreement with uh edmentum for one high school student to attend ad options Academy standard virtually from January 22nd through January 30th of this year at a cost not to exceed $400 and last but not least the curriculum committee uh recommends approval for our committee dates which are listed in tonight's agenda um and the committee will next meet on Fe February 13th um yep that's it thank you thanks ly are there any questions okay so we can move on to sha for the finance committee um the finance committee met on January 16th the committee reviewed agenda items for tonight's meeting including reviewing the financial reports for the month and administration certified that there are funds to complete the year Administration has submitted a Grant application to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture in the amount of $81,900 Grovers Mill Road and a Cooperative purchase for a new hot water heater at Millstone River additional motions for approval include the disposal of obsolete equipment additional Transportation routes and staff professional development travel uh staff provided updates on construction projects um which Dana already reviewed but I will add that under non referendum capital projects bids have been advertised for the wof gym floor moisture remediation project and the Community Middle School radio enhancement project at 72 Grovers Mill Road fixtures classroom furnishings and Equipment have been ordered the committee share that the district will have 117 solar renewable energy credits to sell on February 14th staff also provided updates on cafeteria op operations breakfast and lunch counts are starting to approach prepandemic numbers this comparison is important because the high schools have gone back to a unit lunch which affects the numbers lunches served in December 2019 were 4,929 and in December 2023 the number was 37,6 47 with one more serving Day breakfast numbers in December 2019 were 719 males served in grades 6 through 12 the number of breakfast served in December 2023 was 2,45 served in grades K through 12 the number of free meals are 12% the number of reduced meals are up 30% breakfast served in the elementary schools during the month that sever increased by 104 per day of all the breakfast served K through 5 76% went to students that qualified for free or reduced meals we're still receiving delivery and installation of equipment from two previous New Jersey Department of Agriculture Grants New milk coolers are arriving as well additional lunchroom tables we have spent 342k of the 412k of the supply chain assistance funds the committee received an updated budget calendar and Administration has been meeting to discuss the 2425 budget the committee reviewed that uh there are quotes for transportation of regular and special education students and the committee also reviewed potential committee meeting dates for 2024 the committee is scheduled to meet next on Tuesday February 13th thanks Rea uh any questions okay so that takes us to uh the voting portion of our meeting can I have a motion for administration items one through six plus the pink addendum uh Liz and Robin any questions or comments okay okay we'll start with Miss we'll start with m shener yes Miss toe yes M crew yes Miss Mal yes Miss yes M yes Miss bonsel yes M yes and now on to curriculum curriculum and instruction can I have a motion for curriculum and instruction items numbers 1 through five Pua and L any questions or comments start with Miss H yes appr yes Miss Mala yes Miss Shetty yes Miss doic yes Miss bonsel yes Miss Chenier yes Miss MCU yes moving on to finance can I get a motion for finance items numbers 1 through 18 with note that there was um the bullets were misnumbered so we do have two number fours plus we have the blue and orange agenda um scha and Louisa any questions or comments okay we'll start with Miss crw yes yes yes but I abstained from C1 A and B yes thanks Miss doic yes but I also abstain from uh c one andb all right uh Miss bonsel yes Miss chenera yes Miss ho yes Miss M yes moving on can I have a motion for personnel items numbers 1 through 4 plus the green and yellow agenda uh Dana and Puja any questions or comments okay we start with Miss malga yes shed yes yes yes Miss Jer yes Miss ho yes Miss KW yes yes and before we move on I do want to acknowledge um a few retirees that we approved on the agenda um to for um I want to extend congratulations to Karen Bame uh special education teacher at CMS um Brenda um fren feler from who is a reading recovery teacher um and from milstone River we have Lauren Gallagher as a special education teacher and from Maurice Hawk we have Sunita fani um after several years um in the industry and in the district we thank you for your service to wwp and um warm congratulations on an exciting retirement ahead and now we can move on to the approval of the Board of Education minutes can I have a motion to approve the minutes for December and the beginning of January um Robin and scha although those in favor say I I uh any abstentions um I abstain for the January 2nd do we have any board liaison reports Dana good evening again um I just wanted to let my fellow board members know is um I'm the liaison to the New Jersey school boards Association and also the Mercer County um njsba vice president I'm excited to share that our next Mercer County Schoolboard association meeting will be next Thursday February 1st at 6:30 p.m. and it's virtual the topic is um School Finance what board members should know about current School finance and our very own Dr Russo will be one of the business administrators on the panel with several other Mercer County Business administrators and I hope that you can all join me at this meeting thanks thanks Dana for sharing um do we have any other liaison reports all right cool uh any new business that takes us to the second opportunity for public comments the board invites comments from members of our community who are present each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167 all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer this public comment period shall be limited to 15 minutes seeing none I will close this public comment period and move to adjournment so can I have a motion to adjourn uh Louisa and Robin all those in favor say I hi hi hi thank you good night