Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
370 to 400 and so on to and the lowest and um in the research that we've done there are very few private private programs much less school programs that have those part part Day part week programs so we're quite a good value in that area as well questions go ahead Mrs uh listen I just want to say how fantastic it is to visit the preschools I've been able to visit Cooley probably more than Sossaman but it is just fabulous to see those little kids and they're just our earliest Learners and you guys just do such a great job and I just want to give you props publicly because I don't think we always get to and I just think you guys are fantastic your team the whole staff is just great I got to see the puppet show I think last year uh and they those kids were so excited for the field trip of the puppet show to come into their school and I just I really just enjoy you guys and I'm gonna miss you when I'm no longer sitting in the seat you can always come to the puppet show thank you Mrs Gleason and Mrs Utley um Sossaman and and Cooley both get the best best reviews everywhere out there social media neighborhood chat you name it I've never seen anything negative about our preschools they are just really the top notch in this area and and I know that they um bless many and I love the fact that we do offer so many different options because so many other preschools don't do that so um thank you for that and we appreciate you both so very much and had he never be nervous up here we just love and adore you so I but I don't think we have any do you have a question go ahead I was just going to say how many nice things do we have to say to make sure Patty doesn't leave ever he kind of gave me a date so I'm like I don't want to even think about that I mean having the only thing that I can say is that having to I dropped my daughter was in 2013 um at Cooley and then dropping her off at Junior High which felt like a minute later was just the saddest thing at quality and that's the only thing but the program's amazing and and it's very affordable for for parents compared to other programs out there especially what you get with it too yes for the for the certified teachers and on the and just everything that we offer these prices are well within the range of today and um I don't think there'll be any issues with that so we appreciate you thank you thank you all right thank you very push and Clicker okay next up we have our Community Education presentation good evening president Kayla and members of the board thank you for your continuous support in all your leadership for our district I am Kimberly Ohanian the Community Education assistant director this presentation is to inform the board and the community members on a short update on our programming and our proposed rate increase to offset raising expenses first I'd like to provide you with a highlight of our current program I so enjoyed sharing Community Education Program with you all at the August governing board meeting and I'd like to give you a short update on what we've been up to since then over fall break we held Elementary camp at Coronado and preschool Camp over at Coulee each room had a theme with student decorated doors so there you'll see a picture of our Traditions room which was a student favoring we celebrated Dia de los muertes and had a British Tea Party the top Center left photo is from our thanks in giving room where on this day we made 270 blessing bags so we partnered with Matthew Matthews Crossings and donated these bags with snacks and hygiene products from students and families in need on the right side is from our Pre-K sites during one of our dress-up days in a sun sun a fun science project overall 300 students per day participated in Fall camp and we were able to generate 95 000 in Revenue we are looking forward to our Winter Camp which will be hosted at SanTan Elementary in Coulee preschool as we are planning an all-day fun adventure at Fat Cats heading to the movies to see Polar Express and elf in what's a winter without having a fake snowball fight registration is open and we anticipate filling up filling up so to our community register today additionally our Higley Youth Sports League continues to grow in participation for a quarter two we had 520 students which enrolled in sports out of the 10 teams we were able to offer site-based basketball team at six of our schools with actually two of those schools having two teams we added in Lacrosse as a new sport and we have 30 kids participating in that you will see more communication for quarter three which will start the week of January 9th so be on the lookout for after Thanksgiving for more information we invite those interested to register now or to reach out to us for some more coaching opportunities so thank you for your support shifting gears we'd like to take this opportunity to share some ideas with regarding kids club fees this recent year we have noticed increases in everyday products we use to keep our program thriving from Gas Pipe prices paper products cleaning supplies professional development courses and even snack prices are rising with the current job market we need to be competitive and we're able to offer our employees kids club is offering unique experiences to our students and we want to maintain that high quality and consistency we are experiencing an ongoing demand for our program and we need to ensure sustainability Community Education has a goal to build a contingency fund as we are not part of the state's formula and the district's operating budget increasing fees will support in this effort in maintaining a self-sufficient Department we are RX nearings in ongoing demand for our program and we want to ensure we stay on that demand our current rates include a 50 registration fee for the school year and a 25 registration fee for the summer this does not change in our proposal our suggestion would to be at a 25 registration fee to the other intercession camps that we do offer this will help offset those additional costs our current morning person per our current morning portion of our program is a nine dollar flat fee in a 1350 for the afternoon and this includes half days The Proposal rate is for 11.50 for the morning 16.50 for the afternoon and a 20 rate for those early release days the daily rate for camp this year is 40 per day this which changed to 45 and for a 50 for those special event days on average we have about one or two of those special events that happen during camp and this would be either an on-site field trip or an off-site field trip this slide this illustrates our proposed rates in comparison to our neighboring districts well our rates may seem slightly higher in some categories I do know that other districts are proposing increases this year due to the current market conditions but unlike other districts we do not add unreasonable additional fees to our families as you can see them noted on the bottom so I want to thank you president Kaylor and members of the board and taking this proposal into consideration if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them thank you very much did the board have any questions Mrs Wilson I actually sent my question before and I thank you guys for getting I asked how much the other places around us were charging because I think that's more important sometimes than what the districts around us charge and I was happy to see our rates were well within what some of the outside before and after school care gives so thank you for sending that thank you for doing that research for me because I found that very helpful you're very welcome yes you guys sent us a very detailed report so appreciate your time and energy on that um yeah again the great programs I know there's some families out there that are so excited that the sports are back in our um in our after school Community Ed programs they're excited for quarter three and we said we're going to get it out there we are working on it um but we appreciate you very much and thank you for this great presentation thank you very much President Taylor and members of the board well done all right next up we have some uh policy reviews so president Candler members of the board the policy advisory team as you've been reading and as we've been sharing with you have been very very busy and we've been dividing and conquering and working through teams to bring some updates for you because it's not just sometimes the policy but it's also the regulation the exhibits and the supporting resources that we roll out so that we can ensure things are implemented once we adopt the policy so this evening Mr lochenheiser and Mrs Lindsay are going to share with you some of the work that we've done here in our recommendations and um connecting with it because it references the regulation what we are what we are proposing for this policy good evening president Kayla members of the board today we're bringing forward policy JRR student surveys this is a new survey as we did not have a student survey policy in the past so this is a new survey in response to ARS 15-117 which outlined different specific categories that we have to have a approval from before we are allowed to survey and so when you take a look at this policy a teacher or other School employee may not administer any survey regarding ARS 15-117a without updating written authorization from the superintendent or designee so our goal when you look at the policy is kind of short and it references the regulation so as Dr Foley brought up earlier normally we do not do it however we feel it's very important tonight that we present the policy and I'll talk about that quickly then Mrs Lindsey will show you the regulation that goes behind it and looking at it we do have a process created that upon approval of this we will roll out to our principals and then our teachers so that they will understand what the process is to go through to get a survey approved we worked very closely with our attorneys who's been working with our peer districts and we've compared a lot of different resources together to come up with our policy which is very very similar to our peer districts so once again this is in response to Arizona revised Statute 15-117 a and I think unfortunately those numbers will become part of our everyday talk when we use the word survey from now on so I'm going to turn it over to Mrs Lindsay who will discuss the regulation good evening president Keeler and members of the board the regulation of policy JRR student surveys speaks to the specifics of ARS 15-117 highlights of the regulation and statute include no survey soliciting personal information about a pupil regarding any of the 14 listed categories that are listed for you on the regulation shall be conducted without being approved by the superintendent or their designee furthermore a teacher or staff School staff member may not authorize a survey regarding ARS 15-117 without written authorization from this superintendent or their designee the regulation also requires specific steps for parent consent prior to administration of a 15-117 survey including providing specific information and details about the survey the regulation includes a parent complaint procedure and an opt-out provision which requires students receiving receiving an alternate educational activity if they are not participating in the survey as was mentioned we have consulted with legal and drafted an internal process and a set of forms for operationalizing this regulation to ensure that we are in compliance any surveys that align with topics in the categories require District leadership approval and in that case we'd also get legal opinion before pursuing following adoption of this policy District leadership will provide training to site Administration on the internal process which would then be rolled out to school staff we're happy to answer any questions any questions from the board I think we all study this very um deeply over the weekend and we're able to um understand it all so I appreciate your further unpackaging it all I don't think the attorneys thought we'd be here talking about surveys but we are so thank you for bringing this to us and again we don't normally have a policy that is an action or that is an information item and then brought to action but because of the time of this being rolled out we did want to bring it back quickly so it's going to be an action item here in a few minutes but first we are going to talk about another policy Mr Walker sorry I looked over at you and that I didn't say anything thank you president Kaylor members of the board I'm here tonight to present about the amendments to policy Ki which is visitors to the schools uh it's a policy that we already have in place but there's an amendment that's based on HB 2025 that amends ARS 15-341 section 46 talking about local governance of schools that the governing board shall adopt a policy that requires accessibility to visitors for parents or prospective parents of students in our school district it also requires that to be done in a governing board session along with the availability of the policy on a home page of the school site additionally it also includes language that's amended to include the lifting of the Mask requirements as a requirement to tour a visit a school so it's Ki that's already in place with those those changes to it to be in compliance with the new legislative updates any questions or concerns for Mr Walker tonight any clarification needed okay very good thank you Mr Walker thank you and no more policies are coming too this is a constant ongoing committee so Okay so I move 7.1 I move that the governing board approves and waves the second reading of policy and approves policy JRR second all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero and again I move that the governing board this is 7.2 I move that the governing board waived the second reading of the policy and then approve policy Ki as presented second all those in favor aye aye Moshe carries 5-0 future agenda items anything else the board would like to see for the future anything we have some other things coming up our Middle School lease and our course guide and we're also going to have our [Music] um it was our suicide risk assessment that was going to be tonight we did move that for two weeks from tonight will be our work study so that is also coming to us in just a couple weeks all right with that I move that we adjourn to Executive session adjourn to Executive session with governing board's attorney pursuant to ARS 38-431.03 A3 second all those in favor uh I motion carries and we will adjourn our regular meeting in our executive session so thanks and good night
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
then we've got some special guests and be conscious of time we'll call the meeting to order uh Heather can you help us with the role and just a reminder to folks please let us know where you are at which which means municipality all right Jennifer Cornell here in Ann Arbor all right Alan Haber oh he was here are we missing him now he is yeah he's not been he's not come on screen at least I'm sorry yeah um he was here earlier so I'll just keep my eye out for him to pop back in uh Sarah Hammerschmidt not here Jeffrey Henney here in Ann Arbor and then Camilla is the next person on the list and if you don't know she moved out of state so she's no longer part of the commission so we'll be looking for oh there's Sarah um somebody to fill that position eventually yeah and I think she's technically resigned so I think she could be pulled off the rule yeah correct yeah she's sending a letter of resignation all right um Rita Mitchell here in Ann Arbor all right Alice Ralph you're in Ann Arbor Frank Wilhelm uh here in Ann Arbor Adam Zemke here in Ann Arbor councilmember Briggs here in Ann Arbor and council member dish here in Ann Arbor all right and did we pick up Sarah because we did yes sir I'm here in Ann Arbor okay and I didn't hear my name but oh I'm so sorry Stephen all right excellent um with that then thank you heather we'll go to uh approval of the agenda uh Heather sent out a link to the legislar um uh calendar earlier so if there are any questions or amendments to the agenda please speak up otherwise if we could get a motion to approve that would be wonderful all right one second all right uh moved by Jen second by Alice thank you uh all in favor say aye he posed all right excellent um approval of the minutes from the October 6th meeting also linked in that agenda um give folks just a minute if there's any questions [Music] that would be the approval of the Amendments all right thank you Stephen uh could we have a second second second by Frank uh all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed excellent motion carries uh we are into public comment there we have any members of the public we do have members of the public here um nobody with a raised hand there we go Robert black um let me see there you go you should be able to talk now can you hear me Heather I sure can okay thank you Mr Robert black again hello everybody nice to see you I'm just happy to be watching these wonderful meetings you've been making great progress I just have a couple comments for your deliberation this evening uh from your March 6th meeting was very successful I thought there were some wonderful collaborations and very respectful Communications among the group a couple of takeaways that were important were um to reiterate something that Caitlyn Olmsted Phillips had presented also that you get clear about the mission and vision for this project so that you can begin to reach out in a kind of a marketing and branding process both with the logo and involvement of the community so that you can build a kind of a coalition of support in a greater Circle surround this thing um to that end I would encourage you to continue to work with um council member dish and council member Briggs to uh communicate your reports to city council so that they can be apprised of what's going on as regularly as possible even to invite them into helping shaping the mission and vision of this thing as a city-wide process also I'd encourage you to think about the key players as you work towards the drafting of the RFP um and as I mentioned many many times alignment is critical here and also the foundational document that you create that will be used as a design document or studies document needs to be as kind of specific as possible I know um Alice knows much more about this too to describe it as what we call architectural programming but to the extent that you can involve the key players in the creation of the RFP the Downtown Development Authority have Jeff Watson involved at the table because they're a key player to have the parks department which you already have Mr borgsdorf there involved as a representative from Liberty Plaza including first Martin Corporation which is a critical player in this process since they own not only the the spark building but the noble house and the carriage house behind it which will be critical aspects to any design development of the of the properties and then certainly to the EXT extent you can involve and coordinate the efforts of the groundwork that's been done with the initiating committee's green team that would be helpful and other people like Jessica black and others who've been working on things with the parks uh with Liberty Plaza would also be part of the groundwork to the RFP and then lastly I just want to do a great shout out to the green team this year you will be receiving a report I think Mr Crockett is probably around that the green team has really represented the spirit of this whole project there's a sense of volunteerism um excited um involvement of people from a diverse spectrum of the city that has created some very interesting things in terms of Education even drawing in the Wild Ones Dr Gracie Bob Gracie that I've known for a long time add some some cloud and some cachet to this thing that would be really compelling to the to the larger members of the city as you move forward so I wish you good luck in your deliberations tonight and please keep expanding Circle here and thanks for your good work and your commitment to this project thank you thanks Robert Heather do we have any other members of the public who'd like to speak you are muted actually as well thank you sorry uh nobody with a hand up currently okay excellent thank you very much so we'll close out uh the first public comment uh and turn it over to Josh and um his team from the parks department so uh Josh really appreciate you being here as well as Jessica um so uh whomever would like to start let us know and we can open it up to share too yeah I will stay say to say the introduction and then I turn it over to Jessica she's done the legwork with this but for those who I have met I'm Josh landefeld I'm the relatively new parks manager um since May um happy to be here happy to present what we've done with Liberty Plaza um look forward to to sharing that information and continuing to work um together as we move forward um with the space and share the ideas that we have so with that I will turn it over to Jessica hi everyone um Heather just briefly do you have the presentation I sent over I did not see a presentation come through today okay so but if you want to send it oh shoot actually I'm having a lot of technical difficulties with my computer okay but I can give you permission to share if that works that would probably be just fine um okay let me quickly pull it up had to call Josh earlier because I actually haven't had to present on Zoom yep for whatever reason and so I was like oh my goodness what do I have to do oh A Whole New World and unfortunately I got soccer duty tonight so I am sitting in Livonia and I couldn't help that way so fortunately technology works really well and um we can make this work for it so yeah interrupt for a moment and just add to Josh's introduction of himself I don't I assume everybody knows him but if not it's not like he just bumped off the turnip truck in Ann Arbor whatever you said several months ago um he's a he's a local guy uh Ann Arbor Public Schools product um and is you know dedicated to the community uh in a way that I thought his introduction did not uh reveal so uh I thought I would just share a few of those little tidbits I'm not going to tell stories on you from you know here on River Rat days or anything Josh but I I appreciate that I tend to be a little humble but yes I grew up in Ann Arbor went away to Michigan State for for lots of good reasons came back about seven years ago to the city of Ann Arbor um parks and it was fortunate enough to get to the manager position when Colin Smith retired so I'm excited about the opportunity and and excited to to have an impact on the community and look forward to it so yeah we had a lot of great candidates uh for that role when when Colin did retire and uh we were super excited to be able to get Josh for the position so well she's a Spartan I mean like I think that's wonderful I'm a Spartan too by the way go green go white green green and Parks you know let's not take this too far yeah you open it up Steve you did open it up okay so I do have my um the presentation up and you just want me to share my screen correct yeah if you don't mind doing that I'm sorry I'm not even on my work computer because I was having issues uh getting into it no problem appreciate that you can do that um I'm also going to start recording this this meeting is being aired by CTN so it's being recorded anyway but I like to do a backup so I'm gonna do the zoom backup now and start that recording in progress all right there we go okay does it is the showing where so everyone can see it yeah okay very good all right well good evening everyone um as Jeff said my name is Jessica black um I am a supervisor with the city of Ann Arbor I'm a lifelong resident I'm actually a Pioneer graduate not a river rat I went to Eastern Michigan and um started my career at the city 20 years ago as a temporary employee um I'm actually in my office at Cobblestone farm right now so this is where I started um I went to the farmers market in 2004 and I was the market manager uh from July of 04 until October about seven at which point the position I'm in now was created um and I've been here ever since what I am responsible for all events in Parks all rentals and Parks Cobblestone farm and the customer service office for Parks so uh it makes sense that I'm involved in the Liberty Plaza activation and um I'll just share more about how where we are and how we got there briefly so uh let me get my mouse right here I just realized I'm not in the right spot okay so the timeline um back in February Josh and I had some discussions some brainstorming some um what would you do if you were given money you know talks about how to activate Liberty Plaza what um issues did I see there what did I think we could do what have I been doing in years past um and just sort of what what could take place uh then in May and June around that time the arpa funding was confirmed so we now we have some money let's get a job let's post it let's hire somebody let's get going um but unfortunately that didn't happen as we had planned so we didn't have a position and we didn't have a a candidate and um and in July my my busy season-ish was slowing down so we could I could sort of open my eyes and think like maybe I do want to be responsible for Liberty Plaza maybe I do want to take this project on and maybe my staff and I can kind of figure it out and do something fun so I told Josh like let's do it I think we can do it it um I might be you know saying something different in a month but why not let's try so it was added to my responsibilities and um basically I feel like I have worn tread in Packard Road and division to Liberty Plaza from Cobblestone I'm going back and forth back and forth um looking at it differently as I said I have lived here my entire life so I am familiar with Liberty Plaza um either would Scurry past it or stop and enjoy um depending on what was going on so we've been I've been doing a lot uh in a different way than I did before so I'm sorry I'm having a small issue with my mouse now oh here we go okay so immediately I um referenced a uh report a site survey survey report done by the police department in 2001 um where they looked at the space and said you know 16 Pages later these are the things that you should be addressing right you need to open up the sight lines you need to make it brighter and lighter how could we do that immediately without kind of you know taking a lot of time to make physical improvements what were the quick simple things that we could do so we trimmed up some trees um we removed one that was sort of in the middle as well as unhealthy the tables and the stools that were around the space often lent themselves to um bad behavior um not what we wanted to see taking place in that location so we removed those um and then the historical marker so the site plan survey or the site survey of the police department did talked about how people take ownership of a space when it's maintained when it's organized when it's um you know things are in order they aren't broken there's not graffiti so so looking at that historical marker as lovely as it was and as important as it was was shattered and it was becoming full of stickers and just not safe frankly if somebody bumped it it was probably gonna shatter even more so we removed that um we also did some really industrial power washing down there so after a couple of just simple power washes by our staff I went I wonder if we can really get this space clean uh the picture I'm showing is pre-power washing we also added uh temporary lighting so we had some lighting in stock here that we had used for an event at Cobblestone so why don't we just throw these up there everybody's doing it in their backyard the cafe lights it looks fun creates a festive area and then we really focused on the trash picking really getting down there making sure things were staying clean sending my staff sending the park operation staff and then also relying on the first Martin staff that assists with keeping that space clean so those were sort of immediate things that I did and it and it changed it so this picture um was you can see we've removed that tree we removed the the um signage or the sign you can see the lights are up in here there's some open space in the front along Liberty so it really just opened up the space made it more inviting you know you weren't sort of peering in trying to see what's going on you were really like oh hey I could go sit down and take a minute and send a text message or make a phone call um I'm really happy with the just the really basic stuff we've done and we have some big future things that we want to do um we have worked to get some decorative lighting quotes we want to engage in some public art down there there's some simple Park signage that we want to update that can help with enforcement um we met today with a landscaping company to look at the beds so making sure that we're putting again using that site survey to put in plants and Greenery that is um positive and it's in in what it looks like but also it creates a positive environment um we're going to replace or repair that historical marker we need a storage shed so um lots of schlepping things back and forth to Liberty Plaza um Rita Mitchell may remember from the public power of it I think you were part of lots of back and forth um and then considering doing a public Wi-Fi so some of the events have asked us like do you have Wi-Fi and we don't right so it's not available down there and while people can make do it would be a great amenity to add um event wise so you know we kind of Hit the physical things this is what I've done for events um in 2019 because I've been doing this for a while uh I like to talk about the unique events we have and then the number of days because Sonic lunch for example is one unique event but it takes place like six to eight times a year so when you see the numbers above um think of that use Sonic lunch as a reference because people pretty much know what that is so in 2019 you see what we were doing then 2021 hit we didn't really change much it was as fewer days it was used but here in 2022 we've got 18 unique events so more events taking place um the 89 days I uh I didn't run the report through the end of the year so there's still like Vineyard Church that's there every Friday that's not counted in the total days um I noticed that earlier when I was reviewing it um we've had some unique events as well so give 365 hosted a couple of events down there um there's been uh excuse me for a minute The Vineyard Church as I mentioned so they've been very loyal to that location um servicing the population that was using the park most frequently um and so we have a meeting coming up I think in a couple of weeks or so to just talk about what we can offer them to assist their event their weekly events I guess so for the individual events um support that we provided my office and myself provided was a signage so it was easy for us to quickly design stuff um Kimberly mortson our Graphics designer is fantastic it's our communication liaison so we're able to instantly say like hey we can do your signs for you we can bag meters for you um and we have some event related items that we can provide tables and chairs or we can assist you with renting those items so those are like real simple event support that we could provide instantly promotion wise the city in our various God deliveries social media and next door we can reach about 70 000 people right so just a simple couple lines with a graphic put it on next door put it in the gov delivery that goes out in a social media Instagram Twitter Facebook you're reaching a lot of people right away which was exciting um there was the article in the Ann Arbor Observer that triggered some um interaction from the public and from and some interest in events as well as uh the Liberty Plaza website so we quickly created that and have been trying to keep that up to date posting about how to have an event what are we doing down there um and so I've included that on the slides as well so some challenges so uh you know starting in the middle of the summer in August July that's not your best time to sort of get going for events but it's what it was um staff uh so we were really busy here at Cobblestone and with Park events in the spring and and then in July it's we could take a we could take a breath but we didn't I didn't hire more staff I just didn't have the need for them until we got busy with Liberty Plaza and then it became a thing where you know I'm devoting 10 to 15 hours and then the other folks in my staff are devoting five to six hours a week on Liberty Plaza stuff so it became a thing where we started tracking it more closely you know how much time are we really spending and those numbers they impact you you you know you find out like I forgot to reply to this email or oh I'm still worried about the getting the tables down there so looking in the future that's definitely a challenge for us is making sure we have enough staff that can support what we want to do there um short timeline and then the organizers not being really clear on what they need or what they might need so that was always a lot of back and forth what do you think you need oh I don't know well maybe you want this maybe we want it so that took up a lot of time for us um and then no storage so I mentioned earlier looking to see about a storage shed some kind of storage capacity because what I found is while we can provide the items we need some place to put them safely uh we need to not be able we you know taking 40 chairs and eight tables back and forth is really labor intensive if we could store them there for a season pick drop them off and pick them up be a lot easier for everybody uh so now I'll just talk about some of the events we had and how we supported them um Josh and I talked right uh in July and he was like activation let's get it going figure out what these events need and um and a system as as appropriate so shape matter movement showcase um it's an annual free event it's taken place since 18 and they use the arpa funding to enhance the events so to provide additional lighting to provide a sound system a sound technician to instead of getting the chairs and and from the rental company and carrying and driving them themselves to save money they were able to just have them delivered um and an example of the signage on the far left side we use that format for nearly all the events so the center is where we added this specific event but we kept our logo at the top Liberty Plaza and then the information on how to rent below a fun one that came in which may never come back but it was a it was a unique idea so uh chocolate sandals has a tour bus a school bus they converted has a sewing machine inside they reached out and they said hey we want to be in Ann Arbor let's go to the market I'm like no no the farmer's American is a mess don't you don't want to go to the market so what about Liberty Plaza and I didn't really know what I was saying at the time because this was you know early September um I didn't know if it was gonna fit lots of measuring face timing with the company out of Portland and then the bus showed up and it backed in and it lived there for four days and they had a great event um support we provided was security so we had an overnight security guard and then parking so really like low impact event for us but had a kind of unique unique feel probably didn't won't see it again but it still was a fun time and it was Labor Day weekend and the first football game if I remember correctly so it's just kind of crazy downtown anyways uh so the U of mcew the Center for Women of for the education of women plus that their offices are actually in that uh first Martin building they Overlook Liberty Plaza so when they got the email about um you know want to have an event in Liberty Plaza they thought sure why not let's do our dinner uh the support we provided was organizing the rental items so the tents you see in those pictures we were able to put um actually three 20 by 20 tents throughout the plaza so that they could host different portions dinner the food and then some activities uh we've had uh three to four if I remember correctly public protests or Pub or political events that's a tongue twister um August 13th we had the sunrise movement of Ann Arbor these uh were a group of really dedicated excited folks to having their first event I'm not sure what they wanted to do um they were very inspiring for me it was probably the best way for me to start Liberty Plaza to just sort of be intrigued by these these folks that felt like we could do it or maybe we can't but we're gonna try and that's sort of where I was like I think I can do it I don't know if I can do it but I'll try and do it uh so they had and they had a great event um lots of uh they sent really a really heartfelt thank you card to me afterwards and it um it was really it was really nice uh the Public Power in the plaza that Center picture so sort of piggybacking on um sunrise in terms of like what they needed for tables and chairs and Tents and that sort of items and then the women's March um that was kind of a quick turnaround event again so but but it actually had a huge crowd at it and really positive experience for our community and then the one that I think um personally I've I've liked the best if I'm gonna you know be biased here is low silent disco so um uh back in April we had one random rental and they were like yeah we think we might do a sound disco we don't really know but it's gonna be like a fundraiser okay fine here's your permit you're all set well then when we launched the arpa funding for Liberty Plaza the company reached out to me it's a local resident family um yeah where did he say I think he went to Pioneer um but he you know he had started this new business So Silent disco is you wear headphones there's three different playlists going and you can flip the headphone to listen to the different music songs playing it's all radio transmitters so they don't need any electricity there's no need for Wi-Fi um they come with two tubs of of headphones and they just hand them out uh no issues at all no you know noise pollution no real impact on the con on the Neighbors on the businesses no it's issues with you know somebody walking off with the headphones and not bringing them back but what we did see were really great experiences so in the lower picture there's like a family of six ages like three years old up to nine hanging out in that lower level dancing listening to the music um the center picture shows you can sort of see the like green lights or the blue lights on people they're listening to different music you would walk by and you couldn't hear any of the music right but you could hear people humming and they were dancing um they averaged like 65 to 70 people on each of the Thursday nights they had um just a really successful two-hour event on Thursday nights where the you know walk people walking by came to it or if they saw it and go delivery they came to it um I was I went twice I went to the first one in the last one and it was just it was a ton of fun and if you're a people Watcher it was totally fun to sit around and watch people just dancing and having a good time um and so things that I still have coming up right so we're gonna do a holiday gift Market at Liberty Plaza um the Kindle Fest as we all know it at Cary Town wasn't going to take place and then they have recently the Kerry time District Association decided to have that event but in a different way so if you've ever been to Kindle Fest you remember it was jam-packed in the market lots of people lots of stuff Crazy Event in that small in the market space this year they're going to spread it out so just do food and some music in the market and then allow um the drinks to be on Fourth Ave but I will have the crafts so at Liberty Plaza we've partnered with the Sunday Artisan market and the Ann Arbor farmer's market to provide space for 30 vendors to sell at midnight madness so that Friday December 2nd and we're gonna see how it goes um my experience running the farmer's market organizing events and then a Sunday Artisan market manager is assisting so we're we're all very excited um we're hoping there's not a snowstorm we're looking for balmy early December weather whether or not we get it you know who knows um but so that's sort of the the big event that we have coming up internally here with the city or with Parks but other events that are getting ready to take place this month and into November and December include the hustle for housing um the Turkey Trot that's it both of those are annual events as well as the Hanukkah menorah lighting um the Chabad house has that one and it's uh this year it's in December and then again just kind of going back to Friday night um The Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor has really committed themselves to that space and provided a great resource to our community they are rain sleet snow shine they're down there hanging out providing resources and um we're really thankful to have them committed to that location and I think yeah so in you know that's kind of close I want to just kind of acknowledge those the other outside of me that have helped me uh over the last couple of months to really change what's going on at Liberty Plaza think about it differently Engage The Space differently um the municipal parking staff Judy and Kelly they've been fantastic um oftentimes I was super late minute getting last minute getting you know meter bag requests in and they were always willing to accommodate me all of park operations so Scott Spooner and Kevin Ernst and Jason Nelis and all of their maintenance staff lights will get taken down um you know quickly can you trim this can you take care of that can you power wash that they always were willing to accommodate those silly requests I would have oftentimes at the last minute everyone in my office so all of my staff that when I wasn't doing things that I you know might have been doing prior to this position or this role they picked up the slack right so everyone that works in my office here at Cobblestone were really supportive with me and then thanks to Jack um Josh had to listen to me say like no way I'm not doing that I have no interest in that nope no thank you thanks but no and then you know listen to me come around and say you know what I think I can do it I think we can figure this out I think it's a good idea um he can he he listens to the good and bad I share I guess is the best way to put them so that's all I have thank you very much Jessica I'm sure there there might be some folks with questions here um Adam Adam can I jump in before the questions just because I wanna I Wanna Give Jessica the credit that she really deserves and and while I had belief in her from day one um the the work the effort that was done to make this happen could have only happened because of her experience with Event Rentals her event her understanding of the community of the park systems the relationships that she's built um it we we went through a tried to hire somebody that was going to be a challenge it was going to be a unicorn to find somebody that could do this job and in reality we had that unicorn in our in our on our staff already and I I was disappointed when she first said no but I understood 100 why um but I'm glad she came around and and it is it is exciting to see her excitement about it and this was going to be a challenge this uh activating the space after two years of a pandemic that hadn't been utilized and people were not coming down was going to take steps it was going to take somebody to be passionate about it and Jessica and her team and everyone embraced it but it was because of her leadership um with this that really made that difference so thank you excellent well thank you very much thank you both uh Jen you are up go ahead so amazing really well done is is you're is this sustainable is this something that will do you plan to build on it is it something that even if you don't plan to grow from here that it will continue at its current Pace like what is give us like a forward lift please and again amazing job you're really good yeah um I would say um without some additional staff it's not sustainable uh that you know what we did up to this point was sort of just running at Full Speed Ahead um a lot of you know wait a minute did we remember this did we remember that but I will say that we were able to create some really clear like you know internal policies and internal checklists for like do we have these things in place so um I think if we can hire a few more people um and really the the Staffing doesn't have to be directly related to Liberty Plaza but also you know maybe doing the events at the farmers market that I have that I host right so when people run the market that comes through my office um supporting OSI and some of their events that they do um I think that's where we'll go uh but I do think that the public interest will always be there and so um we we threw a bunch of stuff together and it's working right now so now is the time that hopefully we can flush through it and then see you know where is the longevity because I mean I think Liberty Plaza is a great space I wouldn't have said that in you know may maybe or April frankly but I I've it's changed I've it's grown a spot in my heart place in my heart yeah and I and I will also add just a simple fact that in the pack did a study of downtown parks in 20 2012 that that spoke to this the way that this gets this works is through activation and it's through through resources and and the thing is is it's not just dollars I mean we can throw dollars and get something get Jessica's times paid for but there's only so many hours in a day that Jessica and her staff can work and so it's not just the dollars which are helpful but it's a it's a dedicated dollars to help us move things forward with with people and bodies to make that work so I I think you did an excellent job of identifying the the challenges and the needs in order to continue the success that you've had but it did beg the question of whether or not it was sustainable long term without you having that type of focus on it so I appreciate you clarifying thank you all right we've got a few folks uh they're hands up uh I think uh Alan was first and then I'm not sure if it was Erica or Frank um but uh go ahead Alan you're up okay as I was up and then I dropped out and I'm back well so wonderful report very good work yeah Liberty Plaza lives and breathes yeah I had a couple of reflections and the removal of the tables Disturbed me because it was around the tables that the people who were the regular users of the park play their games and chess and cards and so on and have their sandwiches and I thought that was a setback in terms of the sociability of the their place yeah particularly when uh Jeff Watson from vda and I had a kind of getting together conversation that began to open a lot of questions and we said well yeah we'll meet again at the table and then all of a sudden the table is gone I felt that that was uh that we need that kind of facility uh sociability and the Casual use of the uh of the place um I think also to uh see somehow in the governance that the you know casual users are actually something of a community and in conjunction with the uh shelter could well be a valuable part of the maintenance and development of the place yeah I've I've been particularly attentive to the sensory garden that the blind Community with help from the uh Lions Club maintained and I hope that that can be seen as a uh a gem for further development but very good that the activity uh commences and I think a lot of volunteers can help the maintenance over time yeah Alan thank you for that I mean we we understand that there's a there are people utilizing that that have been utilized in the space and whether it's through the the ministry work whether it's through Vineyards whether it's there we understand that there's a use there and we're trying to balance that and that's always the thing that we look to do in park is we realize that there are there are multiple groups that look to utilize our spaces and we try to find that balance between every group to make it as accessible as possible and one of the things we have talked about again you know on on future wish list is how do we find more portable or more spaces that can be for tables and chairs that can provide that social aspect during the day and then also be removed during during events to make a more more inviting space so it is a challenge that we run into and it is always our goal not to just move everyone out of there that has been there but kind of balance between making it more attractive for for special events while keeping while keeping an opportunity for casual use as well there's ongoing discussion with uh DDA that as this surf public land has repurposed to uh Park and Commons the storage space in the alley should be available at least in Sharing for uh chairs and tables and so on for Activation of the Library Lane lot and the Liberty Plaza and I noted the concern for where do we put shares if we got a bunch of chairs between events so continue that discussion with Jeff Watson because that's the storage space really should be accessible for the activation of all of this public area for the people's good all right thank you uh thank you Alan thanks Josh um well Eric Ben and Frank I just wanted to say thank you for all your work on this um it's great to see um just coming together it's um you know that's a lot of hard work on on your end on the park staff end so um and I think it was a good convergence of a lot of folks having conversations around the same time and recognizing some different issues that we're growing in the area and I appreciate um Mr dehoney who responded pretty quickly to discussions around activation the activation subcommittee here and and jumped in and said he was interested in in taking a harder look at Liberty Plaza and convening that working group to to begin thinking about Liberty Plaza from a variety of different areas but then also advocating for that funding um from Council to be able to to move this forward so I'm curious in terms of the sustainability aspect of this um and I hear you kind of throw in some ideas around about how some of this event programming from different different departments and and stuff like that could be maybe melded together um is that something that is is being I know this is using arpa funding is there a feeling that there may be an opportunity through the use of um you know putting together different pots of money that we may be able to to fund a position or a part-time position doing this in the next budget cycle or are these conversations still kind of developing um I think that they're I think that there is a desire you know in the initial meetings about Liberty Plaza obviously has been uh Mr dehoney spoke spoke often about this is a community this is something that there needs to be a various at various components too to make this work um you know from our point of view we have 160 plus Parks uh in the city of Ann Arbor Jessica has dedicated I mean we have a hundred thousand dollars dedicated for staff and resources to One Park um obviously the math that goes along with that is not going to be one that's very sustainable um so the idea of how do how do we look at Urban Parks how do we look at downtown Parks as a as not just Liberty Plaza not just the library a lot not just Farmers Market but how do we look at that and determine how we make those spaces work moving forward um I will and from from my point of view as the manager again we have roughly 13 facilities we've got 30 some odd staff that all could use an additional full-time person so as we look at the budget for this upcoming fiscal year it is it is trying to find out where that additional support support is most valuable to the department and the community understanding that Liberty Plaza Urban Parks is a Focus right now um so it's just finding that balance um to say I would love to come together and figure out the different pots of money to to be a part of this because I think it is a very good thing and I think the work that Jessica does that that could be done more at the Farmers Market at West Park with supporting relationships with the Library Lane those are the things that we're looking for um to say that I would like this to be dedicated to this just this position um it won't be where we start with but I think it's where we can we can support with it so great thanks one thank you uh Frank and then Rita uh I just want to Echo the the thank yous uh to Josh and and Jessica and their their entire team uh I'm thinking back to where my mind was in March April May and this was this was just still a very much a dream and a hope that this was before the arpa Fundy I think became available Etc and to think that uh I think your your biggest contribution is you've demonstrated the viability of this space for a much broader Community agenda not to not to put aside in any way uh you know the the established use by a part of our community that often doesn't have any anywhere else to go uh I I think that's still important and viable and something that needs to be supported but uh I'm just thrilled that uh that through your efforts you've demonstrated the liability for a broader Community agenda for um for a Liberty Plaza I I've said probably more times than I I can even remember that the uh the future of the entire center of the city effort including the Library Lane Etc really does hinge on Liberty Plaza that has to be successful for the entire project to be successful so I'm thrilled with that and uh Jessica if you want to talk about the very early days of cobblestone Farm um I I was chair of the historic district commission and somehow Cobblestone Farm landed in our lap temporarily back in the 70s and um so be happy to talk about about the early days when you know uh security was a big issue out there and uh anyhow it's obviously in good hands today so thank you thank you thanks Frank uh Rita um I want to say thank you as well and and I can say from direct experience that with one of the events as Jessica mentioned on the anniversary Public Power event uh had excellent support from Jessica and Connor and and I believe unseen people to me um to help us get things organized and it was very well done and was a pleasure um question I have because of that experience I know that some funding was used to actually support the event and so that's actually different from the way I think a lot of of um events go on in in some of the public places meaning that usually there's a fee for the group that is putting on the event as opposed to us getting support for some of the services and things that we used so do you see this turning around so that there actually could be revenue from use of this space that would support the Staffing or materials or Furniture things like that um I I'll jump in and Jessica can add to it uh yes I mean obviously this is we we are fortunate to have this our money to be able to pull people in you know Liberty Plaza has historically for a number of years not required a fee for the permit um so different things like electricity or number of people that those fees were still there but um so we've we've known that we've needed to activate it and we've reduced that fee but just because the 35 dollars or the the the the space fee is there that doesn't make people want to come so the this got us people in they can see exciting they can see how it can be utilized they can work with Jessica they can understand what is needed and then hopefully they'll want to come back because again just because it's free doesn't mean that's why they came they came this time and hopefully they'll come back in the future so that's going to be the expectation um you know at this point we have a hundred thousand dollars of our fund that we're going to utilize till the end um and hopefully you're just if you have another event you're the one that is at 900 and you know 99 000 500 and you get the last 500 of the event not at a hundred thousand so um that's where we're kind of at thank you excellent well I just wanted to say thank you Echo the uh the uh thanks that everybody have has given here and I know I just put a plug-in Rita and Frank uh let a lot of the comparable communities work uh for this group and have some really great ideas uh as well as uh Jeff Crockett and his uh Army of volunteer gardeners and so I always appreciate their their work and so if you're ever looking for bodies to help uh do some of those activities I'm sure there would be some very willing volunteers um and Alan I'll give the floor back to you real quick again one last time and then we will bid Jessica and Josh farewell and thank them for their evening thank you I wanted to add Jessica under the list of events of 2022 Martin Luther King Day on July on January 15th we had a program in uh in Liberty Plaza what is your dream with a video when people came up one after another after another expression their dream a very good program will likely do it again this next Martin Luther King Day well it's a busy spot so make sure you reach out to me excellent thank you so much Jessica for your excellent presentation and all of your hard work over the last uh year and uh Josh thank you again for all of your team and everything you guys are doing we know that uh uh that uh you have a lot going on and a lot of facilities to manage and we really appreciate all your work and we know your budget's strapped so um appreciate you thank you both thank you very much thanks everyone have a nice evening okay uh with that we're going to move on to uh the next agenda item which is approval of the 2023 meeting schedule so I know Heather may have some comments here this is a piece that we have to do um Heather did you want to kick off just by starting some things off and I have some some um suggestions too so yeah so the city clerk is requesting us to the city clerk's office I should say is requesting for us to set our schedule for the next year so we can get our notices out there well in time um so this is really um for us to determine if we want to carry on with the same schedule that we've been doing so it's the first Thursday of the month or if there's some other Arrangement that we want to do so I'd like to make a suggestion on this um and I think it kind of ties in nicely with the condensing working groups piece um and so um you know one of the things that um just on a schedule standpoint Thursday first Thursday um if we do monthly or if we you know alter works well for me I don't know if that works well for others um in terms of that time slot we can talk about that but I would like to to suggest that maybe we think about we can amend this schedule right Heather correct I mean the same way that we do it now so if we need to drop a meeting definitely if we want to pick one up we can also do a special meeting we just need to get the notification out in advance and if we do want to adjust you know for finding that we want to just generally adjust our schedule I think we can do that it just we just need to get the notifications out in time okay I'd like to suggest uh that that um we explore uh reducing our meeting schedule at some point but I'd like to give us a little opportunity to let our condensed working groups do some work and see how that goes I guess my suggestion on this is if we can maintain what we've got right now but revisit it maybe in a couple of months and see how uh how we feel about reducing our um Thursday first Thursday of the month meeting um if we're making more progress on the condensed working schedule how are folks how do folks feel about something like that so we keep things as they are but then agree that we're going to revisit in uh in a couple of months or so uh Alice you got your hand up you are muted Alice you're muted well I didn't mean to have my hand up sorry also I wasn't I was muted so um I just came from earlier this afternoon um um a meeting similar where we consider the similar question about how often we would meet um which is partly mandated by ordinance but um uh we have had varying levels of business and so sometimes uh well I'll make it short we decided that we would keep our monthly schedule and because it was easier to cancel a meeting than to reschedule a meeting than to create a new meeting when it's not already been slotted so that might be something to consider where if we don't have significant business or progress and we need more time to prepare for the next meeting that might be an option unless it's not allowed by our local ordinance I think it is uh uh Heather Kirkman if I'm wrong we are able to cancel at any given time right as long as we have proper notice right that's correct so if we if we establish this regular if we keep the established interval then we can give ourselves some space if we need to yeah yes absolutely I I my thought on this is I think that's that definitely works I I uh I would like to give folks enough time to plan you know so especially if they're attendees who would like to attend or something like that and certainly council members if we can uh agree that we're if we see a pattern where we're where we need some more time than we we plan on um you know reducing it you know to every other month or something like that at some point um but I do think it's totally fair to let it play out um how are folks feeling about that type of scenario where we we keep the status quo for now and then you know we if we start to see that we need more time we can cancel and and move to a more standard Rita you put your hand up and then Frank too uh yeah I really was trying to look for the thumbs up I was gonna say I think it's good okay excellent okay so okay a couple thumbs up any thumbs down okay all right uh Heather does that answer your questions it's official it does yeah yeah I'll let them know that we'll carry on with the same schedule until further notice okay excellent so why don't we put a pin in this and we'll come back and uh and uh no no later than January and see how we're going so um with that we're gonna move on to the next uh item on our agenda this is the condensing the working groups so in our last meeting we had um report outs from those working groups and recommendations around their plans and in fact one of them agreed to self-dissolve at that point or recommended theyself they dissolved and I think we had a really good discussion then around what the future sort of looked like um in terms of our work plan and uh coinciding with that um you know progress around fundraising for the RFP um and the long-term planning and in our past um efforts to activate the space and and certainly seeing some of the space being activated by the parks department and seeming to be a stronger interest in in that type of activation so um I had indicated at the time that I thought that really our work group um structure probably needed to be morphed a little bit and so I spoke with some of you offline around what that could look like a little bit more um and you know we don't have to keep these names that are in the agenda but these seemed like the right work streams going forward um and uh so the first one being the future space design so this is the vision Visionary piece that includes things like the RFP fundraising for that planning process engaging in the planning process Etc uh and then uh uh the current activation of the space uh including things like near-term use activation streamlining of application maybe working with the parts department um more so uh around some of their efforts seems like the natural other work stream and uh and that our previous working group where we had four that shrunk to three seemed to morph more into this combined effort and um so we put that on the agenda tonight for discussion and also I'd like to suggest that maybe um we talk about um leadership in in those areas and that sort of thing so uh Alice you've got your hand up honey go ahead and then certainly others can comment as well yeah I think this is a pretty good follow-up to what we were just talking about meetings it means that we have a little more time for some things um and like I'll say the RFP uh may not have much going for the next month or two and so we wouldn't want to spend time on that but there may be other things related to fundraising or other parts of that one work stream that could could be facilitated by having a meeting and having more discussion or bringing in people for a certain period of time who are not on the on our you know we're allowed to bring in Consultants with these work streams um meaning block Partners or or uh people who have experience that are not on our commission that kind of thing um so I think that especially with that one in these next months there may not be much activity on the RFP but there may be things that are on looking forward to say funding streams or management structures and that kind of thing that is for the long term that might affect be affected or affect the RFP on the other hand the near-term event activation will probably be done by a lot of outside people but we want to be able to figure out what those events need just as Jessica black was saying that there's a lot of figuring out what they they is needed there certainly the storage issue was the one that we have to figure out too and that will fit right in with supporting the parks with Liberty Plaza as well as develop finding out how we can develop that for for bigger events or other events that I don't know we might have coincidence parallel events so I just wanted to mention that that this structure sounds good to to be able to be more flexible to bring people in for a certain purpose and bring and have them help us figure things out or or to bring those ideas into our meetings when we need to figure out how to implement them that's what I have to say for now excellent thank you for that I agree with all those sentiments are there other thoughts or comments um around this idea Steven you unimuted yourself do you want to go yeah no I think it's a great idea I think it simplifies the the approach are we talking about now uh inactivation or are we talking about the future and and funding and sort of the I can see maybe possibilities where the two groups would overlap to some degree and that's why the larger committee is is there um from my perspective as the as the pack lies on it would make sense I think for me or whoever is the pack lies on in the future uh to be in the now activation committee as opposed to in the the future committee it seems more pack relevant um so that was that was my thought too but I'm in favor of the concept excellent thank you and uh Jen and then I don't know if Frank you put your hand up and took it down but you're welcome to go after her I was just gonna say two thousand percent thus I feel like this is a really broad group of smart people and let's combine our horses and figure out how we can actually Advance things versus continuing to have the same conversations so two thumbs up excellent excellent thank you uh Franklin Allen yeah I I just like to Echo the words of support and I I think this also this structure also lends itself to Bringing additional voices in beyond the the membership of the council as we as we build out these groups and chart the course for these two work streams excellent thank you uh Alan you are muted Ellen by the way yeah so well Echo the same Echo though uh reaction or distinction between these two lines Vision so uh yeah holiday in the south it is in my perspective because I'm involved in program and activation and assets around their terms that I think that they're helping reshape and put input into whatever the process that shapes the RFP and the funding for is very coherent tasks and I see that is doing their accessories and interested in excellent thanks Alan uh Erica thanks yeah and I I concur with all that it makes sense to go into these two sort of um different um subcommittee um pizzas I think obviously we need to be careful not to to hit above Quorum on on either subcommittee otherwise that that becomes an issue um and then I I'm sorry I had to step away from the computer as we were amending the or as the agenda was even approved so I probably should have amended it but so I'm gonna do you think that I think it might be relevant for me to talk about some short-term activation stuff right here right now since it kind of Might inform the committee structure of some of the thinking about that yeah I think it's fine feel free okay so um so just so all are aware of the the discussion that we had a year plus ago around um the the commission um unanimously recommending um activating the Library Lane Service lot with food trucks that um that resolution is you know got pulled back from Council on the summer of last year due to con some concerns um from downtown rest restaurant owners and Street Association has kind of folks were recovering from covid um but it seemed appropriate to to get that back on the agenda after having had some time here so I just wanted all to be aware that that was going to be a resolution that could be submitted to council um for next Thursday night's agenda it's bumped act Council meetings next Thursday not Monday um so that'll be going in front of council um so and basically it's it's very similar to what we had talked about last year essentially um you know asking the the city administrator and um uh Team to to begin looking at um you know what what would be the cost the operational model the the sustainability the feasibility of of of being able to you know have a and reoccurring use through food trucks or other mobile vendors like pop-up Artisans and stuff like that and having staff really dig into that issue and come back um with a report on that and the time frame is by April 1st of next year so that she'll be in in front of budget season um and in front of planning season as well so in terms of the short-term activation piece of things um in some ways a lot of these conversations you know some of these conversations at least for are going to be explored um and activate from a staff perspective both from the light surface of the Library Lane um parking lot and then obviously we just heard from Parks about Liberty Plaza so there's going to be some extra Manpower on this for the next six months or so yeah assuming it gets approved on Thursday night which counselors are council member dish and council member Grant right now excellent that is that is really wonderful news and obviously very relevant so kudos to council member Briggs and council member dish for their hard work on this we really appreciate it and certainly relevant to this uh topic and um so um I think there are a couple things that it seems like there's no opposition to this idea around uh the structure I do think it sounds like especially given what councilmember Briggs uh just indicated um one of the things we should probably uh come up with is one uh appointing uh a leader for each of the uh each of the two work streams um and then uh Empower that leader to bring together folks and maybe create a charge um and so I'd like to see what folks think about that and if they have any ideas around um around names so uh Frank um I'd like to uh have us consider uh Rita Mitchell to uh hit up the uh the short-term activation group if she's so inclined so I guess I'll second that Rita are you willing to accept that responsibility you are muted yes okay uh yes I'm particularly glad to hear you said something about support but yeah excellent all right any uh any other names or are we feeling good about Rita uh for the activation yeah I just want to add about the support this appointment of one person doesn't mean that that one person makes does all the work thank you so so we will need to make sure that we have another person who can uh help whoever takes the first stab at this leadership I I feel like having a leader for each of them and recognizing that leader from this group is probably the most important thing tonight and then they can coordinate others to get engaged certainly we've heard a lot from folks who wanted to bring in more voices that's very good work um work with any of the coordination efforts at the parks department especially on this one uh this area and uh and then um you know create that charge and and be a productive working group and then be able to come back to this group and Report out so um all right so Rita you are it for short-term activation any uh any uh ones for the uh the longer term planning if not I'm happy to do it um how you got to be chair of this yeah so that was well that's another story okay so I'm happy to take that one on as well um and um and so uh as long as everybody's okay with that then um we will uh we'll uh take this next step the working groups previous three working groups be effectively dissolved uh Rita and myself be um appointed as the leaders of the two I guess they're technically still called working groups um for the the uh requirements we have and we will be conscious around um Quorum but we also want to be inclusive of incorporating more voices into this process um that's one been one of our constraints here and so this this will allow us to do that and I think the goal will be that if we uh if we're able to successfully we'll report back and that leader will be the coordinator of that reporting back uh into this group so a couple hands up um Alan uh and then Sarah well I I particularly in the uh request for proposal fundraising yeah line uh I'm interested in how you see this actually working as I in particular put forward a number of proposals that I thought should be included into the scope and the request for proposals and I also put forward in the fundraising a view toward you know bottom up and all around fundraising as well as air Focus solicitation and so how do these uh uh ideas that do not uh you know crashed up the first stair on the first wave and get themselves heard Alan I think that will be a question I have to answer and putting forth the charge um but uh I don't have an answer for you tonight but I can tell you that we will we certainly are going to take into account the work that was put into that RFI and I know you did spend a lot of time uh on the scope that was included in that RFI and we're gonna uh take that into account but I will be conscious of it in putting the charge and I'll I'll give you a call give me a call all right thanks Sarah thanks sorry I've been quiet tonight I'm having all kinds of computer problems over the past two weeks um but I never remember what Quorum is ever are you envisioning like is everybody going to be on like one or the other committee like is that do we have enough numbers does that make sense or uh it's that's really I think we want to uh empower the the uh both the committee members and also the chair to work on that so I mean just as one example and I don't want to um you know I think on the longer term planning we're going to want to pull in some other members block partners and Community leaders people have the best interest in space users of the space into that discussion um and then I'm sure that Rita will want to do that as well um uh so I would say uh stay tuned but I think we want to leave ourselves flexible so one thing I hope we don't run into uh but I suppose if we could and we'll deal with it if we hit this problem is if we have people who want it we have too many commission members who want to be a part of one but I'm hoping that we will be able to we'll be able to avoid that so okay so are you are you like as the like chairs are you just going to tap like are you tapping people or do you want people to like say okay I think certainly the chairs will tap people but then if there's an interest by an individual they certainly should reach out to the chair okay I mean I guess I'll just sort of echo like what Stephen said like as the Planning Commission liaison if you wanted me to do anything it probably would make the most sense to be on the longer term whatever that one was called but let you decide we'll talk all right I'll give you a call too sure okay sounds good okay thanks all right Erica I was just gonna answer this specific question around Quorum So currently there's um there are 12 seats on the commission 11 are filled right now so um Quorum would be six so we we really can't all be serving on a committee um otherwise we would hit you know that Quorum issue at least on one of those subcommittees if there was a meeting so I think it really by by Nature needs to be a smaller group of folks that are kind of working on these things thank you clarification um so I just wanted to add that it doesn't mean that we can't communicate an idea but we don't have to be in the management of all those ideas you know all the time so um it's it I think it will help us all to focus if we have a leader and a backup for that leader and then we can we don't have to be present to contribute an idea and so and and we do need to have these new ideas or other ideas coming in from the people who will be affected um or in participating such as a company being chosen for the RFP or Parks activities with Liberty Plaza or any of these things can be filtered through one of the two groups or both if that seems necessary so this gives us flexibility more voices and more different voices when we need them you know off and on absolutely yeah and just just uh reiterate though we can't we wouldn't be able to communicate with more than a quorum of people outside of a commission meeting because that's violation of open meetings act and so yes you know we can't we can't have like a side conversation with with the whole commission about no but not anything but certainly individually I think I think was what you were pointing out which is right you know we can submit an idea or a thought to the subcommittee and I think that's a great way for us to be able to as long as it's just kind of go into that chair yep and and also the beauty of this is that you know we will come back together here and uh you know have uh you know be at Quorum and be able to have uh discussion and provide feedback and uh and all of that so it should create a good feedback loop so um well this is excellent this takes us through this uh item on the agenda the next item on the agenda is next agenda items so um there's nothing there why don't we uh unless there's anything that really Pops in somebody's head I think the items certainly are a follow-back on uh the from each of the chairs of these new work groups uh and uh a report out of what the charge is plus anything else in the near term uh that they want to accomplish there could be other items too but I certainly think that's one of them Erica and I don't know that this would work necessarily for the next meeting but um I appreciated the Parks Commission our Park staff coming in and presenting today I thought that was really yeah pretty timely and very helpful um there was some discussion around block Partners I think it might be helpful to have see if the library might be willing to come in um and provide a presentation about some of their long-term visioning work that they have done um and obviously they're they're just about to elect a new board and I don't know that December is the right time frame for them but maybe it is um for a you know a 20-minute presentation just from there especially from the new library director to talk a little bit about about what's going on there I think that's a great idea uh and Heather why don't you and I talk about reaching out to Eli and I think that's a real good idea any other items for the agenda future agendas we can always email Heather and and ask for items to be added to so um with that um and then in that case we'll move on a public comment s yeah I I I call attention to the attachment from kittycon and the minutes from that were attached in the last meeting that give all the uh not all but a great deal of the physical particulars of the uh parking structure Construction in terms of alternative uses and so on that we had asked so what really are the particulars of this place so that the attachment that Kitty uh and sent from the contractor uh would be well worth just to look at so we know physically what this structure is uh made of that we're dealing this the surface of which we are Greening Alan I think I'm going to take that one and put it right in the long-term planning committee all right it seems like a very appropriate place but to your point we'll bring it back as part yeah it has blazing Pros absolutely uh and then council member dish and then we'll go yeah I just want to take your credit where credit is due and say that Erica did uh council member Briggs did all of the work on the resolution I am very happy to support it and very much hope we are able to bring some life and light and food and snacks and music to the space but uh please just thank Erica thank you Erica takes a team to get us to council Frank uh just a question when will the I mean when will the resolution be publicly available the draft resolution tomorrow okay thank you another evening members of the public I do Robert black all right you should be able to talk okay Heather can you hear me thank you um again I just uh I'm impressed by you guys and the progress and the speed of your resolutions of things and it's very very heartening the coordination of the reducing the number of working groups and focusing them is really good um I just had a couple quick comments um thinking about the challenge that you have to integrate the governance of these diverse sites including the people that are potential Partners to this project it's very tricky and I think that you as the Council of the commons are the Hub of this thing even though you don't have decision making um um you know power in a sense that's left to other groups city council Parks the library itself first Martin Corporation Etc but um that you do have the possibility to be the hub for these so-called spokes on the wheel and again I just articulate the possibility for you to create an overarching mission and vision to this to define the core principles that you're shooting towards to set a schedule and a calendar towards critical path Milestones um like Ann Arbor 200 um the library is working on that they have had some pieces out for a while now and so could you coordinate them and find Common Ground there to the bicentennial especially and put a pin in that future piece right there so that you could begin to start to work in one voice and then also to um to reach out to other parts of the the group and um work toward this integration I love the idea that um Alice was talking about also Erica to um to get other voices to come in to to talk with you to dialogue with you in a sense more than just parks and then also to have Parks understand that it's a it's a permeable sieve between them it's not just an insular boundary of the parks department as its own governance but that perhaps input would come in like the suggestion to have the volunteers of the green team begin to work if it's appropriate or liability Etc to have them kind of work towards the stewardship and governance of this so it's more of a bottom-up as Alan has been talking about and then um let me see what was the last thing the activation ideas that you use them as learning opportunities to harvest everything you can from each one and fold it into your larger mission and vision and if you think about there's already a logo for Liberty Plaza and it says Liberty Plaza and if you look at the byline it says the place to be so there's a message in there that's calling out like a marketing scheme from Liberty Plaza but could you invite them or work with them to create a larger vision for the center of the city a logo or something to create a public discussion about this um the time of the holidays is a really good time to begin to do this integration and draw people there for example the phase nutrition of the library surface lot where the northwest corner that was suggested before is a smaller piece where you begin to active that as Alice's word was in parallel and I love that idea you could learn a lot from these parallel activations different governance but different activities as Jessica showed so well that people are coming toward this place now you can draw them to you so it's very exciting when she showed the picture of the lights around Liberty Plaza an image of a possibility of this thing and last thing I'll say um my son Ari and Jessica black were born almost within months of each other and there was a Christmas about 40 years ago where the two of them are jumping on a bed at a big Christmas party I was going to talk to her about that at some point but I love the interconnections here and how she has grown to be this very strong leader so good work tonight and good work in your future discussions thank you thanks Robert some really good ideas you had there too appreciate that there any other members of the follow-up wishing to speak uh no I don't see anybody excellent uh in that case could we have a motion to adjourn this evening I move all right and a second all right seconded by councilmember dish all right well all in favor say aye hi hi excellent I would like to say that before we wrap up this was the shortest meeting we've had yet yeah this is a record well congratulations crew you are and look how much we got them awful lot always seek to break a record when it comes to uh so have a wonderful evening everyone and thanks for everything thanks everyone good to see you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
what we're live good evening everybody and welcome to our bound Brooks Board of Education meeting for tonight uh I'll get started with some procedural stuff uh read our own public meetings act and then I'm going to turn the floor over to Dr Freeman and hopefully recognize some of our fantastic students of the month as well as our educators real looking forward to that so the boring stuff sorry uh the New Jersey open public meetings mom was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which time any business affecting their interests is discussed and active on in accordance with the provisions with this act and our own board of education policy zero one six two the Board of Education of the borough of Bound Brook has caused notice of this meeting to be posted in the board office and at Bound Brook High School and mail the facts of The Courier News Board of Education and any person who has requested individual notifications please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which stands a nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice please here it's awesome here Miss Casino yeah Miss Lima Mrs here Mr zupco Januzzi here Mr President you have a quorum present this evening great Dr Freeman over to you good evening everyone and everyone in our audience and online welcome you to our November board meeting tonight is a very special night uh tonight we begin the tradition of recognizing our staff outstanding staff members and students so at this time I am going to turn the mic over excuse me outstanding students good evening congratulations class Oliver has two older sisters Sam is in second grade and Madeline is in sixth grade Oliver enjoys answering all those people's questions during morning meeting he also loves to work in the table toys area with his friends when Oliver grows up he likes to be a police officer congratulations Oliver [Applause] [Music] Leah has an older brother Katie who's in second grade her favorite school subject is centers and her favorite hobby is swimming Malia grows up she wants to feed the animals congratulations [Applause] thank you [Applause] next up for I believe is Lafayette School Mr Smith sister foreign hello everyone so if I call the names of students you can come on up get your certificate and then we're going to make our way right up around the stage for a picture okay so for Lafayette School uh we are going to start with our first student that we're going to recognize Peyton Evans not here yet so Payton it comes from the teaching team of Patel and Reese and has uh two sisters as well so Payton's favorite subject is having fun my favorite subject as well and going on Epic to do arts and crafts Peyton likes science too because you get to answer questions and that is what science is all about finding the answer to questions and when Peyton grows up even at this very young age he wants to become a doctor and help people get them medicine or hair stylist because Payton works on Nana's hair so for all of the paintings working on Nana's hair listen to what Nana says they always know everything so Payton are you here yet Peyton not quite yet so we're going to recognize paint with a little round of applause and next up is Dolce dimitrio Espinoza nominated by the team of Cella Zella and chianta so dolce's favorite subject is Mac which is awesome because I'm a former math teacher and especially adding numbers and favorite coffee hobby is playing soccer and when adult teeth grow up wants to become a cheerleader are you in the house here adult side where are there [Applause] [Music] second we're going to get is to die forgot to take a picture all right we're good [Applause] next up from Smalley school is Ashley Picone Ashley has been nominated by Mrs dashenka and miss bilafer um so I believe art and math are Ashley's favorite subjects in school and definitely like animals feeds squirrels all right that is pretty cool because I like to bring peanuts and feed squirrels as well and enjoys playing with our puppy let's have a round of applause for Ashley [Applause] okay we'll ask you [Music] okay all right we're good [Applause] community next up from Smalley school is mariely Reyes Mejia marielli has been nominated by Miss Christian and let's see here we have PE and our physical education and art which I happen it does sound a lot of fun and favorite hobbies is drawing and Mary Ellie are you here where's where are you at wants to be a doctor when she grows up well done thank you foreign school is geliani Gonzalez de Santas so giuliani's favorite subject is math because it's interesting I love all our Mac leaves that are out there today very nice and favorite hobbies are saying blogging and drawing admittedly I don't know as much about vlogging but singing blogging and drawing and career plans for wants to graduate with a teaching degree and become a fourth grade teacher I love it make sure you come back [Applause] not here today tomorrow all right and lastly from Smalley school we have Hugo Morales nominated by Mr Coney so Hugo's favorite subjects are social studies and physical education and enjoys playing soccer hanging out with friends spending time with his sister and watching television and Hugo wants to be a professional soccer player when he grows up and a computer engineer and wants to go to Rutgers which I love that's where I went to school Hugo come on up [Applause] foreign [Applause] next up we are changing buildings to the Community Middle School and the first student that we will be recognizing from the Community Middle School will be Allison Mora Allison's been nominated by her math teacher Mrs Giovanna Romero Allison is an outstanding student and according to Mrs lamara favorite subject is math but I happen to know Miss America very well and I think she thinks everyone's favorite subject is mad okay however what I do know is Allison you're extremely well-rounded student enjoy soccer swimming and reading fiction and when Allison grows up wants to become a lawyer so Allison you are well on your way to fulfilling your dreams and all of us at Community Middle School are proud of you and thankful for being for letting us be part of your growing up and part of that process [Applause] thank you all right we're good [Applause] the next student we will be recognizing from the Community Middle School is Andrea obando Herrera Andrea has also been nominated by her math teacher but favorite subjects are both Mac and Eli and enjoys the challenge of all the work associated with each subject the truth is Andrea is an outstanding student and excels in all subjects she's a pleasure to have in class and has a determination and a drive to succeed and not surprisingly Andrea aspires one day to become a doctor the teachers and Staffing community school thank you for your efforts and are here to help you achieve your goals Andrea foreign [Applause] okay next up for my High School Mr Smith hi good evening everyone okay our first recipient of the Crusader citizen of the month is urban Gonzalez Irvin has three siblings who all went through the Bound Brook schools his favorite subject is English and his favorite hobbies are playing soccer and eating [Laughter] I can't say that I disagree um in terms of his future career plans um he's undecided on how he is going to proceed in his future whether or not he wants to go to college or enter the workforce so Irving I don't believe it's here foreign [Music] okay our next recipient is uh Leah Mendoza uh Leah is a southbound Brook resident who has one sibling um Leia's favorite subject is social studies which is a woman after my own heart as I was a former social studies teacher um Leah likes to learn about um about other states in past U.S history least favorite hobbies are baking softball bike riding and shopping Leah hopes to go to college and become a pediatrician so congratulations Leah [Applause] okay um I know Zara Contreras is unable to attend this evening but uh zarek has one sibling um his favorite subject is algebra 2 and hobbies are reading exercising and hanging out with friends uh Zara hopes to study interior design in the future foreign [Applause] not least Elijah Lewis Elijah has four siblings um favorite subjects are English and auto mechanics uh Elijah enjoys playing soccer and going out with friends and family and career plans are continued uh continue your studies and to be an auto mechanic engineer so Alaska from here [Applause] tonight okay I don't like the Phillies later okay okay at this time the parents parents and students of the month would you come up to the stage to take a picture [Music] foreign [Laughter] I did not go to theater schools yeah it's probably gonna have to be from an angle yeah some how wide are we do we need to be uh you're pretty good you guys can keep coming up how about we do parents and parents okay he's down a little more parents squeeze in um here foreign okay I think we've definitely got a great one in there somewhere thank God thank you so much and congratulations thank you okay after the first one right okay moving on with the agenda we have Mr Santa's serma who is going to announce our employee of the month and our district support staff okay hello again the Bound Brook School District would like to recognize this month's educator of the month from Lafayette School Mrs Katie sandor this is sandor is in her second year as a first grade teacher in the Bound Brook School District during her short time here she's had a positive impact on her students by ensuring they receive support tailored to their specific needs all while guaranteeing they are met with age-appropriate expectations Mrs sandor has also taken on the role of turnkeying professional development to staff doing faculty meetings in order to further support our efforts in increasing student achievement in writing and critical thinking Mrs sandor is dedicated to the teaching profession and to making sure her students are academically socially and emotionally successful she is always willing to help her colleagues and share her resources and ideas in the words of principal Eric Erica Clark we are lucky to have Mrs sandor at Lafayette school thank you and please come on up [Applause] foreign [Applause] Brook School District would like to recognize this month's support staff member of the month from the Community Middle School Mrs Zahara badar Miss Vidar is a classroom paraprofessional at the Community Middle School and is an integral part of the success of the lld program at CMS in addition to the many duties inherent to this position Miss Bedard takes the initiative to get to know her students on an individual basis and is able to work with each one in accordance with their individual learning needs Ms bedar understands the social and emotional factors that impact each student her patients understanding and persistence are key to helping students achieve individual success on a daily basis her genuine acknowledgment and praise of students efforts give them a positive sense of self and help them believe that whatever they do is possible on a personal note I have had the great Fortune of working with Miss Vidar both as a building principal but also side by side as a math teacher at Smalley through the years I can say without any hesitation that Miss Vidar is one of the kindest individuals ever to Grace the Bound Brook School District no amount of words could ever fully Express the impact Ms bedar has had on both her students and colleagues on behalf of the students and staff from CMS I would like to thank Mrs badar for her contributions and for making the Middle School a better place each day [Applause] congratulations to our District employees of the month um [Music] all right hello hello everybody um so I'm going to give a presentation on the new uh the NJ SLA testing that took place uh last spring um for the board you have my presentation on the agenda I also gave you a handout which is where I took the the data from to make the presentation these are the performance uh summaries that I got from from the state okay so first the scale level one for ELA and math means I did not need expectations level two partially met expectations three approach expectations and then um we want our students in four and five four is met expectations and then five has exceeded expectations Okay so these are all of our scores district-wide in English language arts so the first row is third grade level one the state percentage is 20 percent um did not need expectations and are district is 30.8 did not meet expectations especially as you go across level one two and three um we did not our numbers for not meeting expectations uh are compared against the states then in level four and five level four met expectations for third grade we had 21.8 percent in the district meet expectations in grade three compared to 36 for the state level five the state had six percent exceed expectations we had to break okay so these are the numbers um all the all the way through uh grades three through nine which is uh who took these tests last spring okay now math is um a little different when you get to the high school because in math at the high school it's not great the test is not grade based it is subject-based foreign -based but once you get to the high school uh it's subject based and uh for algebra one Algebra 2 and geometry now we do have a small number of students that take algebra one in the Middle School and their their scores are reflected here so again level one did not meet expectations we're above the state average a 13.3 level two we're at 18.3 this is for the third grade and and the district is at 20 just under 26 but partially met expectations level three approaching expectations 23 percent the district is at 26 so we're close there on approaching expectations and then level four and fives we had 23 and then 5.2 so we had 28.2 third graders in math meet or exceed expectations and these are the numbers all the way through district-wide okay moving on so we also had science Testing as part of the njsla although only three grades test for science grades five eight and eleven same performance level scale so for this I'll highlight grade 11 at the high school level one 46.2 percent of the state did not need expectations district-wide that was at number 64.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Scented Markers I think so well you know maybe it was a great family this was a stamp pads either sent it names thanks again foreign [Music] there are no modifications and next we have recognition of visitors and comments from the audience uh this is where you have the opportunity to share information with us on anything that's not already on the agenda um Miss Kelly so I'm Kelly Bruner I'm the principal here at helsberg elementary for those of you that I don't know tonight we have our student ambassadors who have done tours of the building can make that resolution first okay okay so I have done um our student ambassador program there are fifth graders um Mrs rund is Darcy run is a fifth grade teacher and Megan Connelly is another fifth grade teacher and um they helped started it they helped to start this group and so the kids are going to tell you all about it I'm not going to say anymore I'm gonna let them take it away so I don't know who's going first this evening Miss Violet King elements not only Public Schools on master show them their example by being kind by being friendly and by showing um am I taking on extra responsibility like making bulletin boards or videos to promote our kindness campaign and by showing visitors around African members we show in the classroom but there's responsibility respect and leadership in order to continue as Ambassador we have to be responsible me too the three times the most experience because this is right we take our lunch to Mrs Harmon who had a work at lunch sometimes it even spills in terms he has accomplished so much already since we anniversary supposed to see the ambassadors at home today we are trying to work so hard to work in compass growth so before we have started the kind of stupid this has a pretty neighborhood which is called BBN account and recording videos explaining what it means to be kept and sharing them with other children we also help our secretary by delivering questions every day we have both of new students and given to us to the community we have so many more plans for this year some of these include starting a reading club helping students academically collecting pop tabs for charity and collecting canned goods for families I want to help helmsburg Elementary but also the community we would like to face up the Outdoor Learning space to make it usable for all classes these are just a few of our twins but this year my name is Piper Spears and I'm a fifth grade student in Mexico we enjoy a lot of things about being an ambassador to start we love showing other students just how fun holmesburg is as a part of this we think it's important to help other students learn and find ways for them to enjoy learning we also feel that being ambassadors gives us a chance to be role models for the school and we love reinforcing kindness in the school and community one student also said that they enjoy opportunities to work with younger students and another student said that they loved delivering bus notes because they get to see all of the students in the school and see how happy they are in their classrooms overall we love helping people and making homesberg in an even better place some ideas that we had as a group are to help Riley Children's Hospital by collecting bottle caps and pop Taps and by raising as much money as possible a few students here have been personally helped by Riley and we would like to do whatever we can to help them we also want to help other students enjoy learning enjoy learning and encourage others to become more active in their school and Community we also want to make the environment and community we also want to make the environment and Community a cleaner place by teaching others about recycling another idea is to have a dream box and make dreams come true if students want new equipment you can hopefully work to replace golden birken equipment with new better equipment it would also be exciting to repaint the walls with bright and beautiful colors Mr Rose Brown my name is Ron Brown and I think that being a student ambassador could help us in the future because it helps us develop leadership skills it also reminds us to always be kind and help anyone who needs it now aim in the future being a team leader in the Athletics or the speech team can show leadership and help others who need guidance we believe that one day being the student ambassador will also help us as we prepare for college and that helps us build important skills that we will need in your jobs it gives us leadership skills helps us think on our feet helps us with social skills and it gives us experience with lots of people have any questions for our ambassadors I'd just like to say you guys are amazing investors they did a great job I know they took you on a tour and [Music] that's right so the board has Ambassador pins that are Eagle pens for each of you tonight um so I think Mr Spooner is going to call you by name and Miss Babin is going to be able to hand you your pin and then we would like to take a picture of each of you with the school board and then after our picture you all are free to go unless you would like to stay for the rest of them but in between I'm going to stand in the middle of the table with your your particular students so if you want to take a picture with your kid getting me okay okay all right Miss Violet King foreign [Laughter] [Music] thank you this is Jalen Reeves yeah I've been here getting an awesome group here Miss Piper Spears foreign don't say my name [Music] is still in here one two three they're all gonna be looking at a different way awesome yay [Music] wow back to our usual grounds [Music] number five discussions minutes from October 20th 2022 do you have a motion to accept the notes as presented absolutely a second in discussion Carol yes yeah X is an action unit items and the recommendation to approves the 2023 through the 2025 school calendars into uh are the recommendation to approve the 23-25 school calendar I so moved you have a second okay any discussion yeah um I appreciate the patience in us getting the calendars um approved and out to the public um we have decided to go to a two-year calendar um that will be um published on the website tomorrow if it's approved tonight the biggest change to our calendars for the next two years is that we are moving from trimesters to semesters um across the district so um Elementary Middle School and High School will all operate on semesters within those semesters you will see that we have nine week period grading periods that will be reported out and then the process to get to that decision uh we sent out two surveys to all of our staff across the district um both surveys came out with semesters on top we were able to get data of how many Elementary how many middle school and how many high school teachers took the survey we also had an opportunity for staff to be able to provide comments of why they were choosing um whichever Preferred Choice that they had and through those comments and the data was semesters we made the decision to to move that way in the end I truly believe that this is going to help our advanced placement courses our dual credit courses and it will align our elective courses so they are back to back and kids don't have to take um their electives won't be split up so where they if they have entrepreneurship the first trimester right now there are kids that don't have it again until third trimester they have that Gap in the middle so moving to semesters eliminates that as well any questions I have enough questions I guess I just have a comment I appreciate the time that was taken to get everybody's input to make sure that all of the staff have the opportunity to weigh in what were the pros and the cons and obviously you know there's a lot to consider there so I'm really glad to have those comments and make sure we're taking in the voices of the books ways and then also in the way you know that they're they're going to be aligning their curriculum about those things so I just appreciate the time that we're into it and I'm glad that we can come up with something never going to make everybody happy and Afraid problem yeah thank you for that um it is not an easy decision to weigh obviously we've had some changes in the past but we gave two surveys because the first survey was like uh just sent it out and you choose trimesters or semesters after looking at the options and the second survey came from feedback from staff they wanted to be able to tell how many Elementary were voting one way how many Middle School how many high school and then they wanted to be able to provide the reason why they were choosing that so I was thankful for it both surveys it was pretty close it wasn't a Landslide by any means so question sure still announce your name oh sorry Janine um Sprint parent just question same week it fall week at Spring two at Christmas that's awesome yeah and the breaks line up um the start of the school year lines up like it did this year um there were no other major changes to the calendar in any way okay I was gonna say what parents care about mostly when is when are the bricks that is absolutely what are the dates this year and then graduation and snow day so it's a really kind of the big determinants of the calendar and those look pretty similar to what we're used to and it should be posted on the website by the end of the day tomorrow we will also it's the same e-learning day policy that we will have moving forward at love state legislator changes that so and I just like the magnets that you guys put out this past summer I don't know if you did that before but that's in heaven I agree because I was always pulling mine out we're printing it five million times a year and I also do I know Emily has done the um you know the two-year calendar and I think that is really important for people for planning purposes um so that you can you know determine are you available on this date in 2024 any other comments welcome here yes maybe yes Vicky yes Stephanie yes Steve yes motion carries thank you thanks I have the recommendation to approve the compensation of Brown County Middle School head football coaches Michael Tyran and Justice Guerrero the assistant coach stipends in addition to their head coach stipends do you have a motion to accept the recommendation to approve the compensation for the Middle School head for head football coaches as presented National move any discussion yeah I I um appreciate this this coming to the board tonight uh these two coaches we were not able to fill the assistant coach positions and they have taken on um the additional work of the assistant coaches um that isn't any money extra money that was not appropriated for um and I think it goes a long way to send to our coaches that go out of the way for our kids every single day so I would appreciate that and this is for the season that just ended correct and with that the discussion welcome Carol yes Amy yes Vicky yes Stephanie yes yes I have beginning with the separation of Brown County High School intense pair professional Charles Baker effective October 28 2022 through the appointment of helmsburg elementary school teacher Cynthia Bachmann master's degree level B 46 750 to 13 years of experience full time with Benefits effective November 21st 2022 this is a replacement for Anna Harris do you have a motion to accept the consent agenda items as presented beginning with the separation of the high school intense care professional Charles Baker effective October 28th and ending with helmsford teacher Cynthia Bachman um starting on November 21st um I have a question what simply have been teaching secondly okay and I want to welcome Cynthia back I'm really excited to have her back in Brown County Schools any other discussion okay roll call um Carol yes yes definitely yes yes superintendent's report my favorite part I typed it out I got a page and a half not going on so bear with me um first I want to congratulate Chase Austin Hadley bradov who competed last Saturday at the state past question finals um they both are our seniors and have finished out their career Chase finished 40th and Hadley finished seventh 70th across the entire State um and just want them to know that their coaches and teachers and families and friends that were also proud of them and their commitment to Brown County across the country um something to celebrate uh today Mr Killinger and the spirit of Staff proudly sent out a message that they broke all of their records for the walkathon they raised 13 135.44 the rewards on the price which also means apparently Mr White will be shaving his eyebrows yes Mr Killinger in the spirit of Staff um and I'm most certain everybody here in the board um thank everybody to all the families at sprinting up for your hard work supporting schools and students couldn't have done it without you uh we have a great weekend lined up um tonight's opening night for Brown County High School play almost Maine um Mr Ling and his entire team of materials have been working incredibly hard for the show um we have several shows this weekend and hope that you can make one of them um tonight I think the first one starts at seven tomorrow there's another show at 7 p.m Saturday there are two shows one at two and one at seven um Just for information ticket prices you can pay ten dollars for reserve seating or seven dollars for an adult general admission for five dollars for student general admission um Brown County Middle School this Saturday is holding their annual pancake breakfast um everyone is invited to this awesome event it is from 8 A.M to 10 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
excuse me I guess that's why I hired me okay Tony whenever you're ready Miss Harrigan here Mr motelli here Mr paragini here miss Rosenberg here Mr White Mr chairman uniform thank you the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with Liberty so uh thank you everybody turn over to the Showcase is there anyone here that has perfect with our next showcase hey the only reason to handle it so if it's dessert you want to give us uh hi welcome to Darcy's school um we're excited to have you here tonight we're going to share a little bit about the circle security parenting and how it also has been um it has grown here in Cheshire public school to to also move on to not just parenting but we've been doing circle of security for the classroom and how classroom teachers are using it within their classroom to support the children this came about what seven years ago eight years ago with Barbara Stern when she first when she was here she brought it to Cheshire and then with the support of Charlie slatter who we did recognize at one of the board meetings last year he has been supporting us and he works for DCF and we've been getting they've been supporting us with training our staff and our facilitators through Grant through DCF so that's how it's all came and we have some of our original people who have first trained we're first facilitators and have been doing this for the past eight years and continuing even through covet where they were working right right through there we discussed where we learned how to do some virtual oh yeah and we actually were able to read to read a lot of families who is here and she's um from birth to three and she um has retired but we still have her here in Cheshire and she has been such a point person for this program and has really helped to make it continue to grow and then we have Gina morthra who is a kindergarten teacher here at Darcy we have Stacy Lopez who is a kindergarten teacher at Highland School and Circle security and then Laura atro who is a speech and language Authority I'm going to turn it over to these wonderful people and they're going to share building those relationships with children and really focus this really focuses on that social emotional learning piece and how we've done this with children and with families and now we've moved to classroom teachers so good evening everyone and welcome thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to showcase circle of security parenting Cheshire Public Schools we are really proud of our program and we um feel that it has a lot of positive attachments with our children our teachers our staff and our parents Don andotti who we she was I just wanted to introduce you but I think we're good at that um so we want to talk a little bit about what is circle security it's a program designed to help caregivers in supporting the secure base for children and to enhance the development and attachment which correlates strongly with increasing social emotional learning and a few years back when we decided Cheshire to take on social emotional learning for our children we knew it was a really important issue many of our children were struggling and this became an Avenue for us to introduce a program that we could help parents we can help staff and we could also help the children of Cheshire Public Schools so um it's it's a way of that parents can look at a different way in a different lens and helping their children helping them with their struggles and being able to be there for them during these times technical security is the program itself is an eight chapter DVD program in which we do in person or as Mrs dessert said we could do it remotely which we did all through covid and it was really helpful for many of the parents and their children during a time that was really difficult for them appearance meet with the facilitators which were all facilitators specifically at Darcy and Highland and it's a simple graphic that you're going to learn about tonight where the children go out on the top of the circle and parents are there to watch them explore and they come back on the bottom of the circle when they need to have some guidance or reassurance to then go around the circle again here at Cheshire we have Incorporated the foundations of surplus security with parents teachers staff we've had in-services for our special ed Department the teachers the paraprofessionals who are working with are our involved children and we've seen a big difference in the way they interact with the children and handle difficult situations when they arrive so how can we as professionals translate Decades of attachment Theory into actual practice we are going to start with the graphic of surplus security and I'm going to give this over to Stacy and you all have this one graduate foreign [Music] over and over and over again so it's so nice to be able to present this to you it's Social Security starts with your base our hands our hands are on the circle as caregivers we are bigger we are stronger we are foreign yeah naturally children go out to explore and during that time they may need us during that exploration to watch over them maybe to help them maybe just the Delight in their exploration and then naturally children come back to us for reassurance for Comfort to get their loving cut filled let me give you just a simple example children you may see a child go out explore some toys the child comes back to you you say wow they come back again they go out to explore again they come back to you maybe for some comfort just to let you know that they're there if you're there watching them and then the circle continues and each time the circle continues the relationship is strengthened and the security growth what's amazing about the circle is that we work with parents three times a year for eight weeks and we meet with families that have children that are seven months old it's at 17 years old in our particular group this discussion in the fall and we're talking about that children go out in the circle applies for teenagers too it actually applies to any relationship that you're in that we have to secure base again and another simple example would be someone that's learning about college some of that is trying different approaches to learn about college somebody who is visiting different colleges comes back in and they say okay talks about this I'm a little scared and as a caregiver we have the hands on the circle that we support them we're there for them even in their discomfort we have a story that I'd like to share because I would like to talk more about my hands and I asked permission from one of our participants in our group to share her story because she has a 12 year old girl and she was coming to the circle and was one of our participants and with it was about me before and each time we meet with our families we always have the same impression does anyone have any circles so she opened up with this circle story that really shows the importance of the hands her daughter came in the room and started just to yell it and mom thought well I have a couple choices of what I can do I could do what my mom would have done and yelled back and then offered consequences of groundings or take me away something that was really precious like a pulse foreign [Music] because that's what was modeled for me I wanted to use the circle approach and I really wanted to apply these strategies so she said to her daughter first it's okay to be angry it's not okay to you she made the boundary clear there was a boundary that was crossed across and she let her not let her daughter know the boundaries but then he said two you look so you look like you're going through something really hard right now the TV is off my book is closed I'm here [Music] mom's words actually had a physical reaction with her daughter and her daughter saw and her daughter said I can't sleep I haven't stopped because they keep thinking something that um when I do my homework all I think about something bad is going to happen when I'm at school I think sleeping bags right to happen so mom kept her hands on the circle the whole time and when mom kept her hands on the circle he was able to go from thinking up my daughter is just frustrating right now two oh my gosh my daughter needs me to comfort her my daughter needs me to protect her and Mom then I was able to get help for her daughter for the family but mom kept her hands on the circle the whole time children never leave the circle they're always on the circle if Mom went mean his hands are off mom when we our hands are off again the circle that has a rupture and the security is interrupted so families phenomenal phenomenal families meet with us each week they're phenomenal because they're learning about parenting and they come and they share stories just like this every week and we're privy to those stories those amazing stories about building that security about strengthening the relationship even up into those strict teenage years our job as facilitators is to hold these families and as we hold these families with these new ideas they come back each week and then again tell us more Circle stories was wonderful about our district is that as facilitators we hold families so then families can then hold their children but were also held as facilitators because we meet once a month to talk about Concepts maybe things that we're feeling triggered by we come back in for support by our team of facilitators were also supported by our district our district is here supporting us letting us share about the circle security they hold us they support us within our district is able to support teachers and families and children and now that we're working with kindergarten teachers and offering them this professional development we're able to hold them as they are able to take care of the children so what's happened what has happened is we have this culture now I want you to think about that first Circle that I showed you that very simple beautiful circle of a child going out and then a child coming back in and I want the next slide will show you actually what it looks like as a classroom teacher this is our world this is why sometimes on Friday nights we're a little tired because we have children that come to us that are very familiar with us they're all they go out to explore they come in look at this Mrs Lopez check this out we have other students that are uncomfortable with that exploration it scares them because they've learned that it scares their caregiver so they come to us and keep coming back there are some students that really struggle with coming in for comfort in Rio's terms because it's has scared or made their characters feel uncomfortable all students come in with their own emotional backpack and in kindergarten we may not even know what's in that rack but our job as a teacher is to be a Healer to show them this path of security of what it could look like I can give you an example from my classroom before Circle security when a child came to me and was scared to leave their family for the first time in kindergarten I would I had a fish strategically placed across the realm and I would say come with me let's go feed the fish the fish wasn't hungry and nor was the child wanting to feed a fish and the result was a very unhealthy fish and then also a child whose need was not met and then when I started the circle security I became really honest about what was happening to let the child know that I could be with them and their families and I would say often to this day still say to a child you're scared about leaving someone that you love and it's okay to be scared to leave someone that you love when I leave people that I love I miss them too and that's normal to feel that way and instead of feeding the fish I'm able to be with them in that feeling letting them know you're safe we can explore I'm here you know I just wanted to share something I was um I always share this story in Social Security when we do classroom is you know the biggest thing that comes back is how are we gonna everybody has to circle the 17 22 circles how are we going to do this and I always see a example of Maura she was standing at the door holding the door open and this one child was so upset so she had the child close to her and she was really supporting him I know I know and she's holding the door and as every kid came in she said I know I saw you you threw the ball yeah yeah yeah she held every emotional cup that welcome back do I at the same time as she's rubbing this kid's back so I would say do it I don't even do it so CeCe touched upon a lot of the key Concepts Stampy West is probably the biggest being with us have to be physically sitting with the BS simple as I'm going to lunch but I'll be thinking and that's huge for kids that when you're you know if I have to take a break that's a big deal and that you know trigger kids to kind of viral with some undesirable behaviors I even think about Mr Lombardi our school he had to be out for a meeting one day and I checked the kids hubby and he left a Post-It for his guy that he used to see every day and he said I'll be thinking about you I'll see you tomorrow and that was just enough for this child to be able to make it through that that day which I really appreciate so CeCe also touched upon this always be bigger stronger wiser and kind bigger and stronger without kind mean why is there in kind without the strong we often see parents being nervous about the SE are too harsh not being strong enough so we're trying to help them find a balance whenever possible follow the child's need and with that we go back to the graphic of the exploration on the top and the welcoming in on the bottom whenever necessary we know that kids really benefit from boundaries and knowing that the adult is going to take care of them and that they don't have to have another huge piece of reflection we've used that with our parents with our teachers and people have to be vulnerable to be in this process you don't have to talk about your weaknesses sometimes that's tough when you're you're working with people in the district that you know these are my colleagues these are parents in the district um but people have been really receptive to being open and honest and sharing their stories with us and we always just stress it's good enough parenting and good enough teaching I don't know Mr Sullen wants to hear that there's no perfect parent so we want to reinforce that it's never too late you know there's people that talk about this in relationships and with their parents in their 70s and they you know preparing things that happen years ago so it's never too late a huge piece for us as Educators too is time in versus time out I think of this with my own children it's very easy to say go to your room like while I tried to calm down really the circle is recording that time in peace of being with the children helping them regulate their emotions because often we're asking kids to regularly and organize their feelings and they don't have the capacity to do that so if we're sending them off to go be by themselves they're not going to really build those capacities excuse themselves and it's the same thing with daycare centers right if they have a Cozy Corner okay go you know you seem like they're having a hard time go to the Cozy Corner and it's a start but there has to be someone there to help facilitate that regulation so we're telling the child to go okay from us it's we're telling children that we're not comfortable with the way they're feeling we're not comfortable with those kinds of big emotions as we go through the circle they're going to learn those kinds of things and what is your child's Behavior telling you about them and their so looking at behavior on the circle again so if there's a clingy student or your child is just kind of nagging you what is it that they need right now is it the need for exploration or coming in and we often with the reflection piece is what triggers prevent you from meeting the needs or being those hands so we've Stacy talked about what our parents were like what they were comfortable with it it trickles down to us whether we really wanted it better not of how of how we parent and what we are comfortable with and how we respond to our children's and there's a term called Shark music you refer to that as that feeling of uncomfortable kind of anxiety that comes up when it feels like the same situations maybe it's the bedtime routine for families a hard time and it's really a safe thing that's happening but you feel this comfortable nagging sense of stretch when it's coming so we're helping families and teachers recognize when that shark music comes that they have a choice on how to respond I always responded you go that way or I could pause and say I use it with this discomfort on child's needs this is a huge concept that really resonated with a lot of our staff changing you know having this empathetic shift to go from connection seeking versus attention seeking I think we sometimes get in the habit of saying oh they're just doing this for attention you know they really want my attention they're driving me nuts but I think for me I know when I change my mindset to they're trying to connect with me it made me meet the child with such a different lens kindness and compassion and there was definitely a need behind that so we like the idea of the kids who need the most love will ask it for the most unloving ways right you see it the most negative and often those kids are the kids that don't their schema or their mental model of what attachment is isn't a great one so they've realized that every time I go to explore maybe there's not the hands there to conquer me back in or when I go for comfort that has always made my caregiver uncomfortable so I so they act kind of distant they're hard to connect with and beneath every Behavior there is a Feeling and beneath each feeling is a need and when we meet that need rather than focus on the behavior we begin to deal with the cause picture this idea how it's being on fire you know you know smoke alarms going off you take the fire extinguisher and you go to the smoke alarm spray that on the floor what happens to the fire right still you haven't makeup just trying to bring families back and to go back to that simple graphic of the exploration and the welcome again and I just really helps me think about kids a more positive way so if this child is when you go to the connection piece once you've built that connection and that child goes through the circle many many many many times it doesn't happen on the first time built the relationship and once you've built the relationship you can easily feel that emotional company but it takes time in a really tough difficult kids are the ones that we know the best and give us probably the most shark music but when we put the time in I would say put the time in the front end and it will pay off okay kind of that way um so I want to talk a little bit about what does a circle of security help with um research and it builds resilience children and increase the edits so it only takes one person to create a positive instrument with your child just think about that so if you're that one person that can make that can help that child that's enough for that child to make it in many situations um the research also shows caregiving and help it it makes us feel more empathetic to the child than what they're being and it gives them the ability for the caregivers to show that they understand the child and they understand what they're going through and it reduces the caregiver's stress so once a caregiver really learns about the circle and they really understand it and they use children they they have reported to us that they feel less stressed about interacting and being there for their children one thing that our team has been so willing to help us with is is research and data because this this is a very nebulous you know if you know emotions are hard to say yes okay we see Improvement in Behavior but in parents stress how do you how do you really look at that so we've taken a lot of time in putting together a pre and post survey that really gets at what you know what is the what is the quality of your immediate relation how you feel you see a circle citing because we've used the group and we're finding that parents and and professionals because we're doing this with classroom people we're really getting to pinpoint exact data as opposed to oh everybody feels better everybody gets a lot better plugin foreign the parenting section we work with parents and three times a year that we offer this program after we present the parents it's basically sold out we have waiting lists to get into the circle security parenting um and it's basically a new word of mouth that's what's exciting is that awesome teachers often come to the parental security training as a parent and then they say oh my gosh I meet this is this is my classroom I need to bring this to my classroom I came I got the golden ticket as a flyer that was sent from Darcy school I had heard about the circle of security from a half hour PD over at Aces and I was sitting on the edge of my chair thinking oh my gosh this is only a half day baby I need to know more I need to know more I'd left wanting more and a a flyer from my daughter's preschool from Thursday school I was put on a wait list because it's so popular but it's definitely worth the wait and I was holding up the ticket and I said to my husband we're doing this we have this is this is the golden ticket and as I was sitting there before teaching me Circle I thought I need to know more about this as a classroom teacher because this applies to all the children that I'm working with every single day so the writers of the circle of security saw that connection and wrote the classroom circular security so we have been able to have a professional development starting in August with kindergarten teachers we all sat in a circle together with kindergarten teachers learned about the circle they saw videos about the circle and they also learned that as the caregiver they are bigger stronger and committed knowing that no matter what happens from a child that we're going to be able to be there we can do this and we're going to be able to do it together we'll meet again next week and when we meet with the classroom teachers next week we'll learn about being with being with a child in their emotions and not trying to attempt to get the child to feel better or to leave that emotion but just to be with even if you're sad I could be with you even if you're really angry I can be with you I'm okay with sitting in this emotion with you because we're going to be able to figure this out together as a team we'll also learn about the tension versus connection and then the winter will meet again and we'll learn about sharp music to know what triggers us as classroom teachers and then we'll also learn about rupture and repair we'll learn what happens when as a classroom teacher maybe we take our hands off the circle until we can fix it with the child because they can't be fixed with Greek hair and then we celebrate before and after stories we take a look at videos of parents before the circle and parents interactions with their children after the circle and then we will be able to report those classroom teachers too I just wanted to share some of the feedback that we have received parents for teachers so this was a parent an eye-opening experience and I knew there had to be a better way to parents thank goodness they found the circle of security I don't feel lost gave me some teacher feedback building connection with my students makes me more aware of what each child needs emotionally and academically um care that I worked with for eight weeks and she was she was incredible so open and so vulnerable and just it really showed me I can without a doubt confidently say that Circle of security parenting has changed my attitude perspective interaction with my son quite frankly in a stressful situation with a child I was supported by a trained circle of security facilitator with the support I was able to restore my relationship with this was a big piece of being with and hanging in there when you know sometimes you really want to leave for me the Breakthrough moment was as I was going through my parenting course practicing skills I was learning I was working one of my kindergartners who was struggling and when I was being with him I watched his whole body exhale because I know as a teacher and parents the circle of security parenting Community has been a really important source of support in my work with children one of the most impactful pieces to both my classroom teaching the mindset that it it's okay to feel whatever you are feeling validating their feelings and showing that I'm here to help with all of those feelings help my students and children begin to take ownership of their emotions even more they then begin to identify their needs in both moments of challenge yeah what is the general age range because I'm thinking here's Darcy with young kids but you're talking about teens as well what's the age range either for you or general public school s in the program that may have many children and some of them are college age some of them are younger some of them are infants and the program we try and just get the foundation of the program and then we open during share stories about struggles are and it really applies to all ages do Circle security at work with our colleagues it's just a way of thinking and and the way that we have come to understand how to how to put while working and all right and Highland School has Circle security there too that they are a lot of their care so we send out information to all the elementary schools gotcha so it's basically Darcy in elementary school assistant Target group for the program but it does go beyond it because different schools so it's not specifically just which makes it a little bit better because um sometimes as you know they might be a little nervous if I'm a teacher there might you know that that might have their child they don't want to share such personal information but you know this presentation that this is about all relationships relationships and relationships so Cheshire has always been treasure public schools has always been so active in the community that this grant that we initially started with was for the greater water very important Union Foundation and if you look at your little paper here um started in 2015 with with four more than I do two of the four facilitators and we served we were able to provide 14 families with over time building in the community and building outside of just Darcy's school going into the homeschool system going into Community more and I have done Social Security just really trying to get the word out there to get this to be more of a state of mind state of kindness a state of reflection and observation and really what happened to us is no one is the pandemic and then people were really isolated and what are their lifelong and learn how to do it on the computer and how to do small groups we follow their rules you know you don't have any people in a group and you know it's very strict the circle of Security International is very strict with their rules and they have a strong sense of fidelity that they want us to upkeep and we went like I said for four facilitators now we're 23 there's another page but I can talk about that but we're up to 23 we went from 14 participants every year now we have a 130 to 150 participants that's family teachers professionals people in the community the YMCA now we're working with first church daycare we did start Naugatuck it's really just growing and growing one of our biggest you know achievements I think is um Morris daughter was a nursing practitioner student at Yale yeah and she and her mom talked about it so much she told her professor and they asked us to come yeah and um do a presentation on Circle security if you're graduating group of pediatric nursing practitioners and we talk about social security this is a tool in there too though they go they only have families come in and parents saying oh I'm struggling with this I'm struggling with that and I think your daughter will say that she's in a pediatric practice now which and and Southern Connecticut State University Gina had a little lead over there so we got in there and now there's the um the curriculum class and their seniors at the seminar they're graduating and we do we do a little gig and we talk about social security and try to get them interested again they're going to go into the workforce we want them to know about new teachers being able to use circular Circle as a tool but also to tell um so my point is with growth with the help of the Cheshire Public Schools about him is a facilitator as well every principal in the school as long as I've been here that's a long time they've all been very circular security I was always a home visitor for birth control the last eight years I feel like it was success Academy and you know it's so hard sometimes when when people are struggling but if you know you'd just be there with them it just had to be there again it's about the relationship so I would like to offer any of you here that would like to take the experience with us we'll do a separate move for you whatever you would like because I do think the best way for you to talk about it with people and this is so important for our future that we all use this same kind of language and we all are sensitive we all stop and take a pause we don't react so I just appeal to all of you to to think about it and we'd love to have you join us and are there any questions I know I see the power of this not just the students but the adults and uh you know back in my mind I think this is something that you know part of the education at their meetings because often times so it's also show up right they have an issue a situation and you know be mindful that there's nothing difficult and try to practice some of these things foreign Tuesday night at 7 o'clock I think that's been really one of the biggest benefits that don't have to hit daycare anymore child care anymore they don't have to come out of their home where they can put their kids to bed and we do Circle and there's one group that does it at what eight o'clock at night from eight to nine because that's what works for some families so our facilitators are like Bonnie I'll do it for me you know that was the other thing I wanted to mention 23 facilitators that we have are probably just dedicated kind of I I'm so lucky to be to be with this and the circle of Security International offers more training so we've all been trained in the classroom the four of us sitting here so now we can go and help teachers learn this project Amora and Gina and I recently took a training on when you've been a facilitator for a while you know you don't want to become robotic you really want to still make sure you are being the support of dance and we took kind of a refresher for you know facilitators have been doing for a while so they author us a lot so that keeps that keeps the sustainability it keeps the Fidelity and it keeps builds more capacity and those are the things in order to keep a really good any program going and it needs it needs more family it needs to be our administrators I agree ment thank you guys [Applause] foreign I'm sorry thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
all right so move on to item one uh item 1.01 it's called the work um today is a special board meeting of November 3rd 2022 at 6 30 PM members of the board in attendance president Andres Quintet yeah the YouTube was taking a while to pick it vice president I I mean president remember Linda Chavez member ernestobe gerano here members of administration superintendent Dr Bauer here all right uh Quorum have been established we'll go ahead and move forward with the Atlantic acknowledgment Board of Trustees and the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District is here by acknowledge that the district schools and Facilities sit on the traditional lands of the Maloney people and the Board of Trustees further acknowledges with respect and reverence the quality people tribe the San Francisco Bay area for their stewardship or these lands Pledge of Allegiance ready ready and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty resistance all right uh moonach item 2.01 approved School sponsor field trip list uh to approve there's a motion by board member found is there a second second by board member is there any public comment on this item hello board president uh at this time we have no requests for public comment all right Xenon then I'll go ahead and call you as I see you on this further comments one comment all right go for it have fun all right all right is there no further comments and I'll go ahead and call for the vote of the sea board member from aye board member hello hi myself for tonight the motion passes unanimously with board members uh Chavez and board member in absence all right moving on to item 3.01 I'll go ahead and call this meeting adjourned at 6 34 pm
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay it is 5 00 p.m and um today is November 2nd right yep and it's um November 3rd yeah agenda here so we'll open this meeting uh today and uh with that um we'll do a roll call vote I mean a roll call attendance Dennis Bender Christopher Nunez here Maria opara yes Wilson so and Rick I'm here Dennis if you could lead us in the pledge I sure will okay thank you ready begins one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you yeah all right moving right along item four do we have any public comments Kylie for closed session only okay so we got no cards for public comment discussion so with that uh we'll move on to the items in closed session so first item up will be pupil Personnel explosion cases exp number five 2223 exp number 7 22 23 revoke exp number 24 item two conference litigation government code section 549-56.9 subsection a current litigation seven cases civds 1906 1907172 -201-1183-2022956-202-3366b211303-2208019-2207-300 government code section 5-4 954.5 subsection C and five four nine five six D subsection d I mean excuse me 0.9 subsection D number two and E one anticipated litigation four cases 2021 2105 2021 2208 2021 22 13 20 22 2303 government code section five four nine five four point five subsection D anticipated litigation one case Geiger ditchy LLC item three Public Employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave title certificated and classified employees item four Public Employee appointment resignation retirement reduction title certificated classified employees five Conference of Labor negotiator agency negotiator Dustin Conrad B employee organization Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association item six conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator Justin Conrad the employee organization California School Employees Association item seven Conference of real property negotiator government code 549-56.8 negotiating parties Matthew Schulenburg Apple Valley Unified School District with that we'll call for a motion to go into closed session so 50 4 pm we have a motion vendor a second Wilson so all in favor all right any opposed during then that'll be the order so we'll be back at 7 00 pm thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign there's something I would do it good evening school board members District leaders and parents I'm suleika Jimenez I'm the president of Rancho Verde Elementary student council and I'm Rebecca Morton vice president of Rancho Verde Elementary's student council we have we are have here to tell you about the wonderful things that we are doing at Rancho Verde this year a school theme is Harry Potter if you come visit our office you will see golden snitches floating around magic writing quills and other reminders of the Beloved book the students of Rancho Verde are respectful responsible and safe but we are also fun-loving hard-working and talented we love to have events like Grandparents Day where our grandparents or special friends come to join in a continental breakfast with us they're adorable grandchildren the family is not only eat together but they also play games and the students have a chance to show off our beautiful School other other fun family activities we have already hosted are back to school and math night during the day students got to play many fun and challenging math-based activities that were Harry Potter themed in the evening students returned to the school with their parents to person to participate in the activity together today was our steam Fair where students displayed their learning activities around the areas of science technology engineering arts and math we will be inviting students and families to join us for the recognition ceremony on evening later this month and we have language arts night whereas you may have guessed we play games and do activities that are language art based also just last week we had a blast at our fall festival and in the next few months we will have winter performance band concerts and school plays an exciting change this year is a change from Aces to our extending learning opportunities program through elop students have been able to join clubs like clay Club painting clip homework clip steam steam clip Harry Potter Club our school's theme leadership club and spelling movie we're just getting started we also have a fabulous field trip already in Place several grades go to ABCI where students participate in science activities with the gillettes our fourth grade goes to the Mitsubishi cement factory and we and the most exciting our sixth graders will be returned route okay returning to the science camp up in Big Bear that addition to this field trip the retroverted fourth graders also got to receive a visit from the board member Mariah okopara she spent some time talking about how board members serve their Community how they are voted in and answering student questions as you can see there are a lot of activities and learning happy neither School this year thanks for letting us brag about the amazing things that happened at Rancho Verde Elementary School thank you good job young ladies very good up next High Desert premieres excuse me good we look forward to seeing you again Angelique Daniel [Applause] thank you [Music] all right good evening president Raleigh board members and cabinet I'm honored to stand before you all once again to inform you of the accomplishments and upcoming events of high desert Premier Academy there are several awareness acts celebrated in November though the two that often get the most attention include Native American Heritage and National homeless youth Awareness Month America has not always kept its promise of equal dignity and respect for Native Americans at the turn of the century an effort was made to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions the first Americans made to establish and develop the United States today we have an entire month dedicated to this person in recognition of the Native American heritage month we honor the original inhabitants of this area which include the Serrano chimeueva and vanium tribes we thank you for being the first stewards of these treasured lands and acknowledge the profound impact Native Americans continue to have in shaping our nation and bringing us closer to being a more perfect union an estimated 4.2 million young people experience homelessness of some kind in a given year housing instability can have a detrimental and long-term effects on youth including limited access to education poor physical and mental health and a higher risk of becoming a victim of violence or human trafficking homelessness has also disproportionately impacts already at-risk populations including lgbtq plus Youth and youth of color High Desert Premier Academy is doing its best to identify and help these populations succeed this month we opened our Wellness Center on our campus listen to provide students the opportunity to socialize amongst themselves and counselors with many activities like giant Connect 4 Jenga and dominoes Mr Smith's trashy dominoes the center provides resources for career exploration and illness to students while also providing a personal connections with our school counselors our academic counselor is currently working with seniors individually to help them fill out their FAFSA and our goal is to have a 100 application completion rate this month we also started two incentive programs to motivate students to do well in class teachers will be giving out all books to students and Owl cars that can be exchanged for a variety of items in our new Owl store hdpa students have been given the opportunity to experience learning and alternative settings this month our biology students were able to visit the San Diego Safari Park and they had a blast they were able to see and learn about animals in their natural living habitats this month our English 1 and English 2 students will have the opportunity to watch literature come to life in a Broadway musical these students will go to the Los Angeles Pantages Theater and watch the Broadway show To Kill a Mockingbird not only will they be able to see literature come to life but they will be able to experience a Broadway theatrical show another learning experience for some of our students will be in our very own Apple Valley Town Hall 10 of our students will be attending the mayor's youth Leadership Summit and to learn about leadership at the government level this month is full of new experiences for our community thank you all for your time and support and I can't wait to see all of you at our next meeting good night and have a nice Thanksgiving as always you've gotten a lot better you know I think she started out pretty good you started out good but you've really improved all right Granite Hills Ashley Guzman [Applause] good evening board members superintendent Nelson and attendees my name is Ashley Guzman and Garnet Hills governing council president and student representative I'm meeting with you today on this cold Thursday evening to update and inform you all about our life on campus sadly I will be alone as usually I have my vice president but she was unable to attend um to start off I will ironically be discussing how we ended the quarter students experience great success in their classes reducing failing grades by 35 over the same period as last year we hope to continue these successes as we reach the end of the semester fall Sports have also come to an end just recently with football having a 6-4 record and going into the first round of playoffs tomorrow cross-country boys one league title and the girls got second so they both head into CIF next weekend volleyball made it to their first round of the playoffs and lastly girls tennis won league and finished with a 14-1 record as well as having their first playoff match today um two of our players Samantha Grantham and Victoria Vega even got doubles team of the Desert Sky League to keep things on a positive note we are starting our winter sports which creates a busy transition yet we are excited to see what they have to offer we've recently had some Halloween fun on campus students from our scada Academy put their Robotics and electronic skills to 3D print a skeleton and engineered components to turn it into an animatronic scare reactor complete with a moving head eyes and jaw ASB has also put on two Halloween related events October 28th we held a Fright Fest where many of our clubs on campus set up booths with activities and some handed out candy during both lunches our band even got gave two performances one being thriller so dance gave a coordinated performance to that as well Monday the 31st we held a staff costume contest in the morning and a student Contour costume contest during both lunches which was a lot of fun moving on to next week Avid will be hosting their annual college fair on the 10th and our career center will be hosting their annual career fair the following week with over 20 different career Pathways represented this will be a great opportunity for our students to network and learn of various options for their future as the holidays quickly approach Granite Hills High School is getting in the spirit of the season from donating food items for the Harvest of giving to our adult transition program volunteering at the abusd food pantry to hosting our first annual holiday career classic cougar pride is showing the commitment to serving our community our holiday career classic will be December 3rd and will be a community event with shopping music food a classic car show toy drive and pictures with Santa we hope everyone can stop by for a good time with that being said please keep safe keep warm and I'll see you all next month thank you so much for your time and lastly always remember maroon and gray lead the way [Applause] thank you Ashley Apple Valley High is Cheyenne at Valentine's [Applause] but cold outside members of the board and attendees my name is Cheyenne Valentine and I'm the ASB line president for avhs to start off I would like to discuss some of the events that have taken place since the last time we've met in the last month avhs ASB has worked with some of the other clubs around campus like Key Club and Sun Devils for Christ we brought something new to campus this year called talktober throughout the month we had donation boxes around campus and we we received plenty of brand new socks not used socks this time that we are now able to donate to local homeless shelters and families in need this was a good fundraising event for ASB class as well because we had the opportunity to sell fun socks to any students or parents in our community we also put on one of the biggest events of the Year our annual homecoming dance throughout the month we worked hard to make sure that as many people felt as included and involved as possible we have the biggest homecoming year selling over 960 tickets total overall the hard work paid off and we hope to keep the school spirit just as high throughout the rest of the school year this November we have so many exciting things planned for our community our varsity football and tennis teams are on their way to CIF this year or this week sorry this is such an amazing accomplishment we're so excited to see the increase in community support this year speaking of community we want to give back to it by com sorry uh we want to give back to the community this month by doing a hygiene Drive some of the ASB representatives are also having a field trip with the May with the mayor's youth leadership where they will learn about government at the local level our senior class also had their assembly today where students with a GPA of 3.5 or above received an academic letter I would also like to give a huge shout out to our CTE construction program for making some our key letters that we can use for so many different events right now we're in the process of planning our annual talent show where some of our student Sun Devils are able to show off their special talents to their peers and community we're continuing to plan every 15 minutes as well and with both of these events we hope to get lots of community support from our students families and businesses as a school year is already a court of the way then we're excited to see how eager the students and Community are to get involved in so many events we saw so much to look forward to in the yes in the rest of the year and we're grateful for your continued support thank you for your time and I look forward to the continued growth of the school spirit on and off campus for the rest of the year thank you Cheyenne good job all right moving right along item three California School Employees Association CSEA do we have a speaker tonight no Buddha Karen good evening board members superintendent Nelson assistant superintendents and audience members I hope everyone had a great day and is doing well and staying warm I can't believe we are headed into parent conference week and the holiday season already a Buddha has been very busy this past month with several community events our community outreach committee had a blood drive on September 24th thank you Sandia for hosting it a Buddhist blood drive was very successful with many donations being made we also participated in the town of Apple Valley Trunk or Treat it was so much fun seeing all the students and their parents dressed up for Halloween abuta was able to hand out over 1500 books five thousand pieces of candy 2500 coin purses pins and 500 tote bags everyone expressed their appreciation to the to a Buddha in avusd for all they do for our students we were even told that we needed to move our line a little faster because choosing books was taking a little longer than anticipated I'd like to thank our community outreach committee Kristen Wallace our committee chair Karen post Randy Evans Jessica Kuiper Amanda Wright the exec board and rep council members who participated as well as Amanda Buchanan and Gary RC for their help in making this event very successful we all know that elections are coming up on November 8th a Buddha would like to wish everyone the best of luck we appreciate all that our current board members do for our students and would like to say thank you we would also like to thank Wilson so Chris Nunez Amanda Buchanan and Gary RC for the respect and dignity they demonstrated at the family assistant program candidate forum it was nice to hear all the positive comments about avusd and the great things that are occurring within our district a Buddha would be proud to have any one of you representing our district on the school board again we wish you all the luck have a great evening and in solidarity Karen [Applause] thank you Karen okay item four closed session reports Dennis you will read out any action taken during closed session please in closed session the Board of Trustees took action in support of the following recommendation from the superintendent conference with labor negotiator on a motion by Wilson so a second by Chris Hernandez the approved the memorandum of understanding with the California School Employees number 828 dated October 27 2022 regarding the amended job description for Safety and Security job family it was a build on 5-0 in favor Conference of litigation on a motion of by Wilson so seconded by Chris Nunes the board voted unanimously to approve the claim of ditchy Geiger LLC that's it thank you yeah thank you Dennis uh before we move on I know it's a school night so you know a few ladies you want to leave Domino's we won't hold you hostage okay out of respect like you guys didn't want to watch the World Series go watch the World Series there you go let Mr Bender know the score it's two to one Houston's winning see you next month all right I'm just going to request that in the future before we let the students go that we should have an opportunity to thank them for coming because just talking and going is really hard they want to know how we feel about them so that's a good idea to do that next time how about if we add that to the um yes the script so that it's in there and you have the opportunity to do that I just I knew we were getting into the meat of things and before Pat presents they don't really need to be sitting through a presentation yes thank you okay adoption of the agenda the board May approve the agenda as is or add or pull items from the consent agenda for discussion or action so with that we're going to entertain a motion to adopt the agenda moved by Maria second by Wilson all in favor aye any opposed hearing then that'll be the order discussion items so what we have a discussion item e presentation on assessment data Patrick's loss or assess assistant superintendent Educational Services that you're up [Music] okay thank you I'm nervous and humbled by this presentation for a couple of reasons um I've I've been in this same position to present data that I refer to as the cabinet was referring to this as Baseline data once before in my career and that was in 2009.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we're close in level two partially met expectations okay um I'm sorry level three is proficient now so there's one less level here for science so the state is 20.5 we're 10.1 and then finally at the state in grade 11 is 8.4 in science that are Advanced proficient and the district is 1.4 okay now we're going to look at each test on District subgroups again with the state and the district members but we also broke it down by gender by ethnicity and academic disadvantage and then academic programs at the high school at the high school at the uh at the district okay so the State numbers foreign we want to be above 36.2 met expectations this is third grade ELA we want to be above the 6.2 state level that have exceeded expectations and we're not and we're not quite there and then you can see how that's broken down for each subgroup do this for every test so this is grade three same grade but now the math test you see the State numbers across the top how we compare below expectations to the state and then level four Med expectations and then exceeded expectations so the state had over 44 percent need or exceed expectations grade free math Bound Brook had over 28 percent exceed expectations and then you see how it's broken down per subgroup okay grade four pla all the way all the way through grade four math thank you the state level grade four math 30 over 39 meter exceed expectations Bound Brook had just under 15 of our students leader exceed expectations in grade four math we did meet the state levels in some in in some subgroups though grade five Ela the state had just under 50 meter exceed expectations in grade five Ela Bambrook had just under 28 percent of it of our students meet or exceed expectations [Music] so I know that that was charges broken down the state versus the district and then the district to Define our categories which are made out of a lot is there a similar comparative number that we could utilize from the state level eat your own comparison uh the state does not provide a subgroup you actually have all of the state information there yeah but I but I'll take a look for that tomorrow I think that's a really good point because I think if we're going to break it down into subgroups the a fair thing to do is to compare that to how the State recruitment yeah I do I don't recall that the state does that but I'll I'll take a look in fact I have my computer I could take a look right after my presentation sure yeah my guess is going to be that it's going to be comparative the subgroups are going to be comparative you know as you break it down let the state for each subgroup okay I want to I want to if I may I want to jump ahead to Community School where we where we are entering closer to the state uh the State numbers uh for for Matt and for exceeded the states over uh 52 percent met or exceeded and the district's over on there I believe that's 30 percent for grade 7 Ela grade seven math okay this is where our grade eight numbers uh get even stronger you see the state met uh 30 almost 36 percent uh Community School 34 and you see that we have more than one subgroup that exceeds in level four the state percentage and then the same from level five we're we're close to the state number and again we have more than one suddenly well that that comes close to level five for grade eight Ela a map where we're close as well okay grade nine Ela up at the high school okay once again um we're down a little over 10 percent level four Med expectations level five exceeded expectations okay now subject specific yeah high school we do have some students from from community that take algebra one so they take this yield this uh njsla test um even though they're in grade eight so sorry so this is how the numbers compare in algebra one up to algae with two Algebra 2 the state does not provide numbers um for grades 11 and 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
you'll see Mr Steele Mr Davis making scrunches pancakes um they've got toppings I'm sure Galore um um this is the main fundraiser for the Middle School cost of seven dollars per person or you can pay 25 for a family of four or more um kiddos three and under are free uh next Friday is Veterans Day um and we will be honoring all of our veterans with our annual program and the largest banks gymnasium the serum ceremony will begin at 9 30 a.m this year uh we'll live stream the program on our YouTube channel as well if anybody has any questions about the program um they can contact the high school front office or anyone at central office the community is invited to this event um and we hope to see as many as possible there this is the first year I believe since pre-pandemic that's been going to be as as normal as it used to be and what time is it at let's start the program starts applying there yes yeah and then finally Tuesday is election day um November 8th we have um if anybody needs to review any of the information regarding the Brown County Schools referendum um we want to make sure that you understand all of the facts um the question that's on the ballot and how confusing it is um and the impact of the referendum for the school district um the monies from the referendum will be dedicated to recruit and retain the best of the best teachers and staff for our students that means we will be able to offer competitive wages and benefits it will ensure that we get to continue Innovative programming keep our small class sizes we'll get to expand our CTE our Career and Technical Ed courses um it will be to support the CRC and also our Early Childhood Center that's right there in Nashville um I just want to encourage everyone to utilize our tax calculator that is right on our website um it will be able to tell people what their true investment is again the language on the ballot is misleading and it's mandated by the state legislator we have links that can talk you through that question and help you find the tax calculator as well um it's important to know that the referendum is not passed Brown County Schools is forced to absorb 1.2 million dollars back into our budget as our current referendum will expire in 2023.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
when I was first principal at Apple Valley high school and we were in the process of reconfiguring and refocusing our efforts and took a look at our data in comparison to local districts and decided to really make a concerted effort and you know kind of from that moment um things really took off and it really was a Baseline and this feels like that and it feels as difficult as that day and I've been struggling with this for the last couple of weeks but it's the right thing to do and it's important that we realize where we are and so we're going to go through this together carefully I'm also humbled by all the things the students said that positive things are involved in the work they're doing and the the evidence of what we are working towards showing fruit shows up here at this podium so to speak after them is appropriate the context is in nationally and at the state level and of course locally we have to deal with the history 2019 was a three-quarter year and testing was canceled right at the moment when we felt like we had students prepared there were three weeks from testing they we really had a clear sense of the test trajectory we had a clear sense of the target students were ready and we didn't let them test we were closed we were conducting School remotely for most of that year State Testing was made optional that year we did test but we tested using a different format we used a local measure last year we were back in person State tests did resume last spring but we had an incredibly High absenteeism rate staff and students and just interruptions constantly last year foreign students were becoming reacquainted with classroom instruction what we also know is that the dashboard is coming back in December of this year so that dashboard that's public facing that kind of says what our school district how its measures in several different key areas and will only show status for this current year when it shows up again it will no longer show status and change like it had like I said it's a baseline year again this is the old dashboard if you remember dials engages it really tried to look like a dashboard and with that dial moving toward the blue is the positive direction there's actually our 2019 dashboard where we felt like wow we were about to really push things over into the next level in English language arts and Mathematics we knew chronic absenteeism was a difficulty and suspension rate was on the decline the new dashboard will look like this for one year it will be cell phone signal strength bars it's the best I can label it so what the state has come up with for status they're only one color it's all purple but it will be a simply very low to very high and reported as such in those areas listed on the left academic performance is going to be measured by the smarter balance excuse me assessment chronic absenteeism remember is students who Miss 10 percent or more of the school year at any given point at the end of the year that would be 18 days or more College and Career Readiness as you can as you see there will not be reported on 2022 it will start in 2023 English learner progress graduation rate and suspension rate that's all we'll get nationally you've been hearing about this like I have the national assessment of educational progress kind of the nation's report card has shown Nationwide a decline in fourth and eighth grade scores um you can see here we saw a decline of about three points nationally in those grade levels in language arts fourth and eighth moved us back down to comparable levels you know kind of where we were in some cases as long as 30 years ago where there hadn't been a lot of change in language arts mathematics we also saw a decline more of a decline but we did not erase as many years worth of gains in mathematics nationally again fourth and eighth grade only let me give you some context for our absenteeism rate this was our rate for the four years the last four years that we reported 2022 data as I mentioned before is not yet out it will be out in December but for 2021 which is the year we were remote this was our absenteeism rate 33.1 percent of our students fully one-third of our students missed at least 10 percent of the instruction now remember we were remote so that means they either didn't log in we couldn't we couldn't verify their um participation or if they were on independent study of some other method when we did return we didn't receive work back from them we do not anticipate last year's absenteeism rate to be much better than this you see also Statewide it did not raise as high we were rigorously honest in our reporting of attendance that's all I can say I'll say nothing about the other bars I'll only speak to ours California wide across the state you can see several years of Smarter Balance scores for third through eighth and 11th grade students on the left language arts on the right mathematics and you can see a couple of things I'll note here notice there's no score for 2020 that's the year we were ready to test and then did not so we received no scores there's an asterisk for 2021 because some of the state did use Smarter Balance we did not we had again a remote learning year and so we did not feel comfortable giving that assessment while students were home the assessment we did give although useful was not incredibly reliable because again the sum of the data was not we couldn't tie it directly back to a student there was incredible variability you see also that there is a decline in the number of students who exceeded standard particularly in math that darker green bar at the top math had a significant decline which is also a resulting increase in that orange at the bottom standard not met as you can imagine this color scheme was throwing me off so I switched it up for local data um yeah Green can't be yeah anyway and so for Apple Valley for our test scores over time again there are two missing years because of 2020 not testing 21 we used I ready and so you see a decrease in the number of students who exceeded standard about about five percent fewer and a large increase in those who did not meet standard this is again this is um the data from this is from 2021.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um so that's why you see the zeros under District the majority of our students in Algebra 2 are in grades 11 and and summary 12. geometry okay again the science numbers grade five up to create and then finally grade 11.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
if the community votes no to supporting the schools that means that we are forced to significantly reduce our programming and services across academics the Arts and our Athletics we could potentially free salary and wages for our staff which means cutting jobs across the entire District again there's a link on our website a whole page dedicated to the referendum that has all of the facts if anybody has any questions at all behind cell phone number is there it's listed you can call the office any one of the building principles of the schools or stop in at central office so that's all I have tonight thank you for sending out the Grant Square and we will send another one on Monday who's The Speaker for the veterans program Chris Snell is our featured speaker this year and he is the Brown County veterans um officer at the veteran affairs anything else so that you have a motion to adjourning I'll do some paper say hi hi
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and 2022 sorry the 22 spring comparing that same data across the area and the state you can see we're very similar to Hesperia our neighboring District I did not include Victor Union or Victor Elementary they are not comparable because we don't have K-12 data that would make a good comparison we'd have to pull out grade level by grade level I included snowline in Fontana just because we wanted to have some other local targets at our K-12 districts and also the state and the state data is better the pandemic impact hit Apple Valley heart mathematics similar we had a about a five point decrease in the number of students who are exceeding standard and uh a decrease in those meeting standard again third through eighth and 11th grade and a large increase in those not meeting standard this data is taught hard to look at regionally similar data similar to Hesperia and just not quite at the same level as Fontana and snowline and again the state did did better looking at our current second third fourth and fifth just kind of a snapshot on data we have as of the very first couple weeks of school in August about 850 students per grade level we are seeing this improve already with students back to a normal attendance pattern participating with their same teachers who are not having to send home on quarantine or isolation we're already seeing growth and Improvement and so we are focused in on that next step and showing this Baseline data and the Gap we're going to create now again this isn't the same exact measure this is another composite measure of reading lpac I mentioned English learner performance indicator will be measured on the dashboard and so this is a a look at our English language proficiency assessment data for our students similar comparisons we've added Lucerne Valley here we see for Apple Valley Unified we've got well developed on the very top moderately and so on and so it's very comparable to the comparison this may be very low we don't know but we want to see change over time remember that the students who are redesignated and are no longer consider English Learners they're not in this data so the very best of the students as far as the movement come out by Design by Design graduation rate as you know is a little bit different story we don't have again the class of 22 22 data is not yet official and approved but you can see over time that the grad rate although declining slightly we still remain better than the state and County just barely the county finally nudged us out for their class of 2021 but a preliminary look at the class of 22 shows about at 90.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the science okay any questions on NJ SLA so moving on to NJ GPA sorry for all these testing acronyms NJ GPA is New Jersey graduation uh proficiency assessment brand new last year it's the pilot year that's why the state said it doesn't count so all of our class of 23 students current seniors have the assessment that they need the assessment is waived for them because it was a pilot year last year they took it in March our second NJ GPA will be this March for our junior class and again our seniors away from the graduation assessment requirement which is great for the high school because that means we don't have to rhyme with portfolio classes so a lot of our seniors are either in electives or they're not in portfolio which is nice for them notable achievements the high school added two advanced placement courses AP biology and AP Government which brings the total to 11 AP courses at the high school we also added another AP level class although it's not an AP it's the Raritan Valley English 2 to go along with what we already have English one it's a dual enrollment course we have a lot of seniors in that course also for the students that um are not traditional in terms of going to college want to go into a career we've had Advanced manufacturing that's the second year we audit we added auto mechanics and mud makeup which is cosmetology so we have students who are taking classes dual enrollment classes and have a solid direct path to careers and then finally the best news of all our SAT score uh average went up 13 points with the class of 22 over the year before okay these are just some of the intervention strategies that that the district is undertaking as we try to improve our test scores each grade level analyzes link it assessments to identify standards not being addressed prior to the state assessments we have Extended Learning Academy in grades one through eight with instruction focused only on Ela and math we have ASI which is academic support instructors in grades K-8 in ela and grades four through eight in math we have subjects specific supervisors in the area of ela math K-5 revoke and special ed we have organized team planning four days per week for teachers and grades K-12 we have building-based skip committees this year's the fourth year of avid at the high school advancement via individual determination which works with kids specifically on skills that they need for a post-trent for post-secondary transition specifically for college we have the high school youth college readiness program through Middle Earth and finally we have the BTE bridge to Employment Program at the high school thank you that's it any questions from the members first of all thank you for the presentation I know that's a data defense set of slides you know I do know continue to embrace and use data in driving the educational experience here in Bound Brook I think this is one of the data points that we can use to keep it in context but you know thank you very much to do that so questions approximately how many of the academic support teachers are available do we have I would probably be I would be you guys not the answer to that I know we have four ASI at the middle school two of which are still open positions one down at the annex looks like we have some openings at community we have four spots but only two are filled right now so we have two openings we're still looking for for two more SATs um do we have any data that shows us that are taking the SATs and the average score of the SATs um so we have all of our students take the SAT on on Sat school day they're all invited to come in this year if my memory is correct we had about 110 out of our 140 seniors take take it this year so that that's a pretty good percentage um and those scores are actually going to be up this uh this week or next week or early next week so maybe as an action member for our next meeting could you either in committee uh next week or at the next board meeting just provide that information to the member the SAT scores I have uh I have a chart five year Trend in terms of the ap's territory number of students gets scored for your for your higher on the uh great and just making sure I would call correctly three or higher is the criteria to actually receive credit for College correct yes I think it depends on the company it depends on the college course some take threes those are the scores you want the three and above and our numbers in those areas are going up there's three reasons did not accept and you'll see in the trend you'll see a dip during the code of years shortly and you know with our we we're offering more AP classes we have more sections we have more students taking them so you know we have more kids getting that college experience than those AP courses other questions from them because I've got a bunch of questions um so um on the intervention strategy specifically are multiple of Youth purely caring they they're not necessarily new from this year okay yeah do we track or measure progress or impact of any of those strategies as it relates to changes in our performance and if not is that something we could do um I'm going to guess that that's something Mrs Fisher does and have she probably has that information knowing her okay so I'm probably just going to refer that one to education um and then my last comment really is a comedy it's not a question except for in terms of an availability of data so most of the matrixes that you showed had the state average at the top um and uh the challenge that I would have for our board members and you know our general Community is I'm just deciding whether or not that's um you know average I think is is good and compared to where we are right now we would represent Improvement and Improvement support um but quite frankly I don't think that's where I would want to aim right I want to eat for the top box the top of one percent the top five percent um and honestly not stop until we get there so um again that's my personal feel he's not sure how everybody else feels but in terms of what we compare ourselves to when we Benchmark because our Benchmark ourselves too I want to Aspire so agreed um I would just say that um Improvement is is slow and incremental and I I aspire to growth um no matter how small I want to see year over year a change in a positive direction we're not going to jump kids from a two to a five it's just not no having done this now for a lot of years it's not going to happen I want to move my twos to threes and so on uh it is going to take years and years of changing the culture and changing effort the way we do things to get to where you want to be again your goal is a long-term 10-year out goal and I agree with it that that's what our goal should be long term but I see that as I mean I see when when we we get data back and we said we moved you know five percent of our students from um what's the the two called from three to three to four um we celebrate that you know that's a that's a big deal for us so it's small and but again your goal is admirable and I think I think it's the right way to the right place to be shooting but I would caution again saying next year we didn't get there what are we doing wrong we're probably hopefully moving towards it it's just gonna take a while yes and I know by the way I also know I'd say Dr Freeman's there in daggers I know he doesn't like it he he doesn't want to hear slow progress I I I'll have a nice report about us spending some time together Dr Freeman wants everything done a little bit more aggressive time scale than I do so well to support your point the evidence says that if we're able to identify the kids that need the help and getting get them the strata the strategies that we have are sound we could get if we could identify and get the kids the help that they need then we're going to shrink that level one you know the level ones are going to shrink and the numbers are going to flow upwards yeah and it's again someone who's done this a lot of years that probably is the most alarming number to me it's the ones right I mean not everybody has kids all over but I find when I look at most districts in the ones that seem to be a lot smaller from these numbers so we really are starting you know at the beginning we're right at the beginning now we have a long way to go 18th yes one thing I think we as a board should think about is doing a deeper dive into what different tiers of instruction look like at each level so what exactly are the supports at tier two and tier three what do those look like for those students in tier one and what does this data show us about the viability of our curriculum for the needs of the kids that we have in our classroom and how effectively are we targeting those interventions you know I think it if we look at some of these results where we've got nine or ten percent of kids where we would like them to be and 80 90 percent of kids where we don't I'm not sure that's a situation we can intervene our way how to think to me that suggests we need to do a deeper look at tier one and the curriculum we're using just by commentary yeah well and again I think it comes all the way full circle again because from a board perspective we're looking at what is our strategy overall where are we allocating the resources how are we spending our money trying to maximize you know the impact that we're having about the district and while it's aspirational to have as many AP courses as possible I think in that case we're talking about moving kids who are threes and fours and fours and fives as opposed to moving ones and twos to twos and threes so it might not be one of these situations where we just homogeneously spread all the resources but to since the point we have to do a better job of targeting but again without the information without the data without studying and understanding it it's hard to make informed decisions so I think it starts with the data so again thank you Doctor all right I also know unfortunately because of coven we are missing a large chunk of data right there in the middle to prepare all of this too which which hurts us tremendously because we can't see that any group we don't know where they were or unfortunately and remember they also know that they that there's been what I know when no one likes the phrase but a learning loss that um that we also have to account for so there's a lot of challenges particularly now that may not have even been three years ago unfortunately the results you saw were after two years of not taking this test I mean just the fact that they haven't taken a state standardized test in two years that's worth points right there just just a familiarity with the test itself forget the content for a minute text is worth something all right so any other questions or comments for Dr mobile tonight at least on this topic all right then I will say thank you for your presentation Dr Freeman back to you okay okay yeah I think the only thing that I would call everyone's attention to is that item 2.5 has to do with our current board vacancies which there are two we did receive a letter of interest uh over the course of the last few weeks it's been included in the public content of the agenda so anybody that hasn't already checked it out please feel free to do that um unfortunately the Kennedy couldn't be here with us tonight to discuss um her joining the board but I think in you know my own personal opinion her resume really speaks for itself but she would like to be a great addition to the body so we will be entertaining that later in the meeting as well as comments during uh public Global session all right yeah so and I apologize you know in in the course of wanting to get to our Awards and recognition we skipped over president's comments for this month and actually they will be vice president's comments from this month uh because Mike actually attended the NJ SBA convention uh with Dr Freeman Mr gorsky Mrs Fisher and our administrative team so uh Mike's gonna recap for us his experience and his findings and hopefully share some of the information um so I got down there um it was Monday to Wednesday uh I did not get to Atlantic City until I have to work on Monday but uh once I got there um I quickly learned kind of what it is and how it works I I really didn't know what I was going to and what to expect um Mr Hershey did a great job of briefing me ahead of time but until you're there you can't really know honestly I attended five different workshops while I was there um a lot of them had to do with um how to conduct a board meeting or how to deal um effectively with uh comments from the public things like that I also and I think the most important one that I attended was on um how to recruit and find your next board member and also once they're here how to properly kind of onboard them so those are things that I definitely want to share and committee at governance um and and we'll report that out to you some of it um was not applicable our community or our board specifically uh most of it was quite honestly I did find out because you meet with so many people from other boards I found out how unique some of our challenges are especially in finding new board members being a small community especially um and our turnover rate and how that affects it and how that compares to others so there's a lot of interesting things there beyond all of that quite honestly uh this is for the boardroom in the public honestly I would encourage all of you to attend because if you're able to eventually I know it's hard to get things online to take days off of work um I was you know those of you who have been in a classroom know that leaving for two days is challenging when you return it basically when you leave two or two you lose at least one more when you come back so I didn't want to do that but it was it was invaluable because you also get an incredible insight into the people that you're working with um I I mean to use the phrase like I hung out with Dr Freeman and Mrs Fisher Mr of course Mr DeMarco Nick was there for a while but uh he left the day before reading but just to kind of get to know them on our personal level and Beyond the person we did a lot of you know um bonding that way but also we talked a lot between sessions about what we had just learned and how we can apply it to our district and the goals that we have for our district and that's what I I mentioned Dr Freeman before because if you don't know this already and I'm sure everybody who has met him knows this he is like on fire like he's ready to go and um he walked out of one session and he was so energized he said I want to I want to present next year I'm ready I want to present what we do and I was like oh my goodness you've been here a month like what are you doing he's like I'm ready to go um but you learned so much about these people and what drives them and what they want out of our district honestly that was maybe the most valuable part of the conference was just defending two nights with you know the administrative team and it was it was wonderful I would encourage all of you to go honestly it was great so and and you know at the end of the night beyond all that and the dinners and all those things you get free time to kind of again be more personal and social with those people and to see them as people as opposed to employees of the district which is great so it was really wonderful honestly I would I would say if you can find the days off and you can make it happen get ready look up the dates for next year and put it on your calculator for sure awesome any questions anybody who's there when I had anything [Music] excellent thank you um we are up to committee meeting reports um I'm not sure if there are actually any committee meeting reports uh yeah it's the Somerset County Educational Services very good so the only reminder that I will give to our chair people is that based on our new schedule we should be developing our agendas for next week so if you haven't already connected with your administrative liaison and reach out to your members in terms of topics that they would like to discuss please make sure you do that uh let's get that ball rolling before we hit the weekend so that the administrative team has as much time to prepare before Monday night's Marathon as possible all right and with that we are open to the public for agenda items only can you check and see if you have any comments online of course open our agenda uh [Music] seeing none thank you sir all right and seeing no questions from the room so we are up to item 5.1 approval of minutes from 10 12 2022 resolve the development report of Education approves the minutes for that meeting regular and executive session motion thank you Mr Dawson a second second Mr Powell thank you any discussion please spell yes Mr Dawson yes this casino yes Miss Lima yes yes Mr Januzzi yes support president motion passes thank you we are up to item number 6.1 resolved that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in Personnel resolutions Under The District High School this is 6.2 through 6.13 evolution thank you [Music] second thank you Mr Dawson any discussion all right hearing none can be able to roll call please Mr Powell yes Mr Dawson yes this casino yes Miss Lima yes yes Mr Januzzi yes ocean pencils thank you item 7.1 resolve that the superintendent recommends for approval of resolutions as outlined in Personnel resolutions under middle and elementary schools 7.2 37.23 remember motion foreign Yes except for abstaining 7 23.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we we're we're estimating about a 92 percent grad rate so we'll be back um at the top of the area top of and beating the county and District again so we're working hard to get you know these students past that graduation Mark and and that includes Readiness for University our a through G completion rate during this same time period while students have been having such struggles in their testing have continued to show the ability to to complete those courses and that 44.4 percent is you know from 20 to 21 is a market increase and we're narrowing in the Gap to the rest of the county and State college going rate is always a couple of years old so look at that most recent data we have is 2020.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so another thank you and Mr Januzzi yes motion passes thank you item 8.1 resolved at the Bound Brook Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under district and high school this is 8.2 and 8.3 I have a motion motion thank you Mr Midas thank you thank you Mr bow any discussion all right hearing nothing to do a roll call please Mr battles yes Mr Dawson yes this casino yes Miss Lima yes Mr minhas yes Mr Januzzi yes motion passes item 9.1 resolved at the Bound Brook Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under middle and elementary schools is a 9.2 through 9.5 I have a motion motion thank you Mr Bowles II second thank you Mr manhass any discussion [Music] Dr Resh you're going to have a full calendar coming up foreign yes Mr Dawson yes Miss Casino yes Miss Lima same house yes Mr Januzzi yes motion passes thank you item number 10.1 resolved at the Battle of Board of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in policy resolutions under district and high school this is 10.2 through 10.4 motion thank you Mr Bell second thank you Mr minerals any discussion I just want to raise everybody's attention to 10.2 we made a late adjustment there because there were two policies that didn't make it through the governance committee during our last committee meeting that they had been included in the agenda so just note that those are crossed out on this final version and unless there are any questions on that can we have a roll call Mr Bowden yes Mr Dawson yes yes Miss Lima yes Mr Minos yes and Mr Januzzi yes thank you item 11.1 resolved at the boundary report of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in Special Services resolutions this is 11.2 through 11.4 I have a motion motion thank you Mr Dawson a second second thank you Mr foul discussion thank you all right hearing none can we do a roll call please Mr Bell yes Mr Dawson yes this casino yes just Lima yes yes thank you uh we are up to item 12.1 resolved that the boundary report of Education approves the resolutions as Allied in financial resolutions this is 12.2 they're 12.20 have a motion motion thank you Mr Bowles second thank you Mrs Museum discussion thank you for the donations thank you hearing no other questions can we have more confidence Mr battle yes it's awesome yes yes and Christopher present yes motion passes thanks so we are up to section 13 other matters to come before the board which we did not have any for this evening which leads us to new business think we would like to entertain a motion yes I'm going to read the resolution firm to fill our board vacancy to bear in mind that this is Mr gorsuch's attorney here we go where I think there's a vacancy in the membership of the Bound Brook Board of Education [Music] number 0.43 the board has the authority to appoint an interested Advocate to fill the board of agency and whereas the board has received a letter of interest and resume the board vacancy anywhere as the board is determined but the applicant is qualified and would be a good addition to the Board of Education now therefore being resolved as follows but now the report of Education hereby appoints Mr Reese Sue Hi to Philip a board of agency and to serve a term as a board member until January 2024.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
that was embargoed until yesterday so I was thankful the board meeting happened to be today and so our our college going rate took a major dip during the pandemic that's not a surprise anyone at the college level will tell you that enrollment at the college that year was low all colleges although the state didn't dip as much we certainly saw it here again lots of children chose to stay home that year and so that was reported back one now that they've um answered those surveys for us our training and focus is we are still working on that mission right we do have very strong structured literacy programs when you look in that reading data and breakdown where students are most successful it's at the level of phonics phonemic awareness and and decoding which is the foundation to the rest that they're going to do we you have given us the authority to carefully rebuild students who are ready to be learners in schools that are safe civil and productive and build the strong foundation for them their future success all students and so also with the lcap we've built multi-tiered systems of support there's more reading interventionists more counselors therapists and other Professionals in school than ever before and so I'll just highlight what's coming next right now the youth truth survey is open and people are filling that out it's wonderful to see those numbers coming in we anticipate that that qualitative data coming in through those surveys will help us to build the lcap and report back to you at what those outcomes are in December as I mentioned the dashboard will open and that's going to be just what you saw with some updated data about chronic absenteeism and suspension rate now remember the 20 2021 suspension rate zero because we did not suspend students at home while they were on Zoom we had a couple requests from parents but we did not do it but last year we did have student discipline again so we'll have that dashboard public but you will have good awareness of that and as soon as it becomes available we'll send it to you and make sure you have that link in January we will do with all of that data and this data a state of the district presentation which will also include all of the positive student programs and things that are helping that's grad rate stay so positive helping that a through G continue to grow and then March through May we'll do state assessments again and the lcap and that's just around the corner and we anticipating a really strong growth in this next round of testing so I'll pause there for questions questions for Pat Uh Pat the is not much a question but more of a comment in that this year with many parents they're looking at my own four children that depend on how much parents for my support to them as well I post my three girls to study hard all four kids kind of UC system my three daughters all got their doctorate degree so it's it's a support from parents how much you're going to support the kids thank you thank you I have a question for uh Pat and a comment um it is it is clear that we have exceptional teachers uh in the district and uh they are very well aware of what is expected of the students but the question that I have for you is if you did mention that there's a assessment that the state had and the district chose not to participate was that a choice that the state had given us that we could make a decision not to participate for that test it was during the pandemic thank you for asking that I was supposed to be more clear yes the state did give all districts the opportunity to choose either to participate in the smarter balance assessment or select a local assessment from a list we selected from that list because we had already had it um contract with and familiarity with iready and so we used that assessment instead mostly to be quite honest because it was so much less stress for students and we knew the data we were going to get back from a test taken at home would not be incredibly useful thank you for asking that it was a choice thank you Chris go ahead Pat on one of on one of the screens for the college going rate does that include is that just our students who have graduated who are going on to school or does does this number include in our articulated students a bridge students yeah good question the way this is reported is it's any student um that enrolls in and participates in any college in or out of state that participates in this system so all California colleges are included however from what I can understand it does try to tie it to grad rates So currently dual enrollment Junior will not show here but one more question on on absenteeism as you're well aware I did the homeless and uh SARP for the district um the are your teachers are the teachers well aware of that guideline in terms of the number of absent absences a student will be allowed to get to get a passing grade good question I can't say to here's how I handled that as a high school administrator is that we had a if a student has more than 15 unexcused absences we actually tracked that and sent a note to teachers saying if you plan to give a grade that is not a failing grade we have to know why correct and so that was the practice at that time I can't say I've seen that letter since I've come here but I can check into that and verify thank you very much what this report shows that we really messed up our kids during the pandemic all the stuff we did is Criminal they're going to write books about it in three years and we have a long way to go I know Pat just real quick you might have covered it for the 2022 absentee are we doing better for this the school year then in in the past yeah good question for 22.23 the current school year we've already had a look in at month one which is not a calendar month but an attendance month of certain number of days it looks much better it looks much more like attendance reports used to look within a percent or two so yes they're back they're back and we're sending attendance letters and we're doing the SAR process which was just so hard to do when we were sending them home last year right right so yes attendance is looking so much better but what's going to come out on the dashboard for 22 21 22 will look very similar to 2021 it's going to be a large number of chronically absent students and staff I mean and for what it was worth I mean I had a third grader at home during the pandemic and I ready is the system that they use to do most of their math and English homework and practice work so I mean it only made sense that the self-guided students were using that continued process for their actual assessments rather than following the state assessment I mean that's what we thought too less stress more familiarity yeah great great presentation thank you yes thank you foreign [Applause] we have any public comments thank you wow that's up first we're doing good superintendent comment today I know that the data was a difficult presentation we all feel responsible for the information that's presented and we look forward to positive outcomes just from kids being in school with the people that are sitting out in this audience right so I appreciate that we don't shy away from things like that we get up and we share the information and we don't wait until we're required to so and the the next thing I want to point out is how impressed I always am with the students but the student reports this time um reminds me of how often our kids are paying attention to our core values of dignity Community authenticity and service it was repeated over and over again um and just I'll use the Angelique from High Desert Premiere talking about um Native American heritage month and the fact that she gave us a little bit of a lesson while she did that um shows just the pride in what she is doing as a student speaker and understanding providing dignity to a group that we should be understanding of and so I it was over and over again the service they're doing the socks collection the food collection and this this is what these kids do in their off time and I just really am humbled by the work they do um Halloween on this property is a big deal um Tom started years ago a thing called a Halloween graze and during the pandemic it went away but it was back in full swing this year um I have to tell you that I'm amazed at what people do in their departments they decorate the night before they have food the day of and it's gone the next day like you have no evidence maybe a little bit but um I I was sad that we we always let the kids go we don't want them to be here too late but the Rancho Verde kids would have loved to go to HR this year and seen the Harry Potter themed um office but we had it all we had it all we also did the great ShakeOut here on District property across the district as well emergency preparation is probably one of the most important things that we do it was coordinated even though we didn't do it on the great ShakeOut day that was National Statewide and we did do it on last week and it was coordinated with the town and with um the fire department the fire district the new Chief was here he came in and worked with us a little bit reminding us that if there is a major disaster Like An Earthquake we will be fully responsible for the majority of what we deal with um there will probably not be a lot of services that come our way and so I feel very fortunate that we have RNs in our in our midst that we can send out if we have to for medical services and the schools always throw us a little bit of a loop because even though we have a script of what they their incidents are out of risk management we don't all know them they always add things that we have to be prepared and figure out how to solve um we did I did attend the steam fair today at Rancho Verde I came back with some amazing pictures of what our what our kids are doing but especially the TK and kindergartners who did some Recycling and used some boxes to create Vehicles they'll be showing up on our website fairly soon and in our newsletters especially on social media Zoe has all of that getting ready to go um in the same thread two schools in our district received a 9 200 Grant under the stem estate stem um application and so Sycamore Rocks and Vanguard will both be adding um ninety two hundred dollars worth of stem type items for their students to use in their stem rooms parent conferences begin next week on November 7th some minimum days across the district in elementary those go four days with Friday being an observation of Veterans Day so we want to thank our veterans in advance of that day the mayor's youth Leadership Summit was mentioned it is next week all of our high school students participate they send teams to that in coordination with the Lewis Center and they get a wonderful day of experiencing what it's like to be part of local government they actually become the local government for a day and then last night I got to attend mock trial over the courthouse um if you ever want to know that we are going to be in good hands in the future in our legal system just go watch a mock trial um these kids spend hours and hours preparing and it's not just a one and done they continue to compete and they have to understand how the courtroom functions it's a great system across San Bernardino County and if you ever have the opportunity make the time to go see it offices will be closed the week of November 21st for the Thanksgiving break this seems like a marathon right now because we take October break we come back and then it's like we're on break again and we're on break again it feels like we're on more breaks than we are here and I'd like to congratulate both Granite Hills High School and Apple Valley High School in their CIF runs tomorrow night both out of town um Granite Hills will be in La Quinta and Apple Valley will be traveling I believe there in Torrance at one of the colleges but they're playing Englewood [Music] um I have attended a lot of our athletic events in all of the home games for either granite or Apple Valley high school and I want to take the time with the board because we've talked about this to recognize our students our parents our coaches our athletic directors and the administrators for their continued example of sportsmanship we got to see that very um in our face a few weeks ago and I realized that um it doesn't really matter what anybody else does the Apple Valley Unified students in in athletic events they know the expectation and they trust their coaches and they do what they're asked to do and sportsmanship is just a wonderful thing that that we should have pride in so very good thank you thank you board member comments we'll start with Wilson you have anything well I'll have a brief comment uh I thank Karen for seeing me when I came back and I just shared with her the even the rotary cup will begin to fundraising again hopefully coming new year we have uh scholarship uh books funds for the students but key thing is also the mini grants to our teachers that's what we hope to do and I'm very positive but but there's a room about me moving to uh in the ass it's not true you know I wear my baby daughter's jacket but I'm not moving there so anyway thank you very much for your positive comment that's all I have thank you Wilson Maria well um I'm going to start because I just you know each time the students come and speak my heart is all about what what the students do so I just wanted to take the time um to thank the students even though they are gone their principals are here to let them know that we did notice their poise these students were really poised even the elementary students who had to speak I I just love it when they when they they hit that word they don't know and they go and it is just is so original and I love that so much I just wanted them to know that we did notice or I noticed their Poise I noticed the pride they have when they come here to speak they wear their school colors proudly or they where their ears be labeled very proudly and I just I just want them to know that that we appreciate what they what they do it's not easy to um to speak to adults especially when the adults are not talking back they don't know if they're making the impact or not and thank you to the young lady from High Desert Premiere because she gave us a lesson and sometimes we talk about the things we do and not the things we also do to for others and to be able to recognize somebody is such a beautiful thing to see for me as a foreigner I've always wondered if people will know me if they're really If people really do see me and so when these children talk about Native Americans they are telling me yes we do see them and it is important for us to celebrate them even though they're not here well known to abut for your community outreach um I have always gone to those community outreach events but this time I was out of town and I thought ah my Halloween shirt that I paid good money for I did not get to get did not get used this year so it still talked to well use it next year um donations and I need to thank those who gave donations to our food pantry I'm always amazed at how much people put in towards our food pantry and and and the people who are benefiting from these donations um I thank you so much and and on top of that there was a special donation that I was so proud to see but the school district even actually posted the copy of the money and I thought thank you so much for whoever I was that gave us at 200. uh that was I really appreciate that um thank you to the anonymous donor to Vanguard school that they blotted out their name but that was a huge donation and I really want you to know that we do notice um those things when I read the board packet I read those things and I go wow somebody actually thought about us and gave us something that would benefit the children um and then to thank the members of this team the board members and the cabinet for being able to work together even when we disagree we're able to work together make our disagreements known but we keep moving on and we treat each other with dignity and respect big thank you to still to a classified Personnel because those people get up every day and they do the work to hold us up to make us look good and we'd hardly see them to say thank you so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank even those people that we don't see the people who cook our meals for our children the people who pick them up every day and take them home the people who clean the classrooms and make sure that the rooms are clean sometimes we don't remember to thank them and I wanted to take this time to say thank you to all of you thank you Maria Christopher gosh there's a lot but I'll cut it short I guess uh first off um I had a great time on Monday night uh for Halloween out at Sycamore Rocks those kids can put away some candy uh 1600 on a couple of trips to Walmart but it was a great turnout so thank you to all the families who came out and celebrate into all the school sites who celebrate with parades and having family and friends uh come and see that that's super important that we have that I'm looking forward to a morning at Phoenix Academy tomorrow and welcoming um everyone to campus um you know very quickly on on the school data report you know it's disappointing but it's not a surprise these are all things unfortunately that we knew were going to be results of what we were seeing through the pandemic um what Apple Valley Unified School District has done has made sure that they've come back and focused on engagement in that intervention finding out where the gaps are and how we can get our students into the interventions that they need to make sure they Bridge those gaps you know my student needed reading intervention in second grade thank goodness that was before the pandemic otherwise I have no idea what his experience at home would have been like so I'm incredibly grateful for that and I encourage any parent who's being contacted by their by their uh students teacher particularly this week as we get into student teacher conferences um if if you are suggested that your student needs intervention for reading or math or anything else that is not a negative thing that is very much a positive thing that is extra help that is the calvary on the way so please make sure that you take that to heart that you realize that that is an investment for your child and for you to make in their success particularly those in Reading under the age under um third grade it is incredibly important that they get that help as soon as possible and in the in the meantime we're going to make sure that we continue to engage our students make sure that they are wanting and ready to be at school and have their needs met so they can really focus on getting down to the Brass tax of some rigorous academic achievements and then last thing I'll say is of course we are coming up on some important days that remind us you know that the the best attitude is for gratitude so I do want to say of course thank you to all of our staff and students and parents and Community but in particularly to our former students staff members parents and community members who have served this nation in Armed Forces happy Veterans Day to all of you and thank you very much thank you Chris Dennis I'd like to commend all the staff and teachers you took these kids and you put back on the grind because really this this is a hard thing to do we had no continuity here for a while nobody did and um we got through this first quarter and things are going good it's the first time we've ever had granite and Apple Valley going to the CIF together this is really really good dude I just like to commend all you teachers you've done a great job thank you Dennis I'll just briefly hear I I agree with you Maria on the students who get up and speak and I think what we'll do is kind of add in the agenda for the next meeting we'll officially dismiss them and then allow the board to comment because like you said they're getting better and better and you know we go through this minutia of these board meetings and you know it's good to see it's kind of something to look forward to so we'll have it on the uh yeah just on the agenda all right so I got a lot to go through here to read so we're going to move on to item I which is discussion items so before we discuss anything or vote on it I'm going to read off each item so first up is pursuant to state law this oral statement of the revised salary at section 2 of the employment contract for attorney Nelson superintendent is as follows effective July 1st 2022 the superintendent's annual salary shall be 189.24 effective January 1st 2023 superintendent's annual salary shall increase to 20 correction 253 501 point 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
before and do I understand correctly that you would like to move a motion is that the proper protocol I don't make a motion yes yes and I still moved thank you can I have a second second thank you Mr Dawson any questions comments or discussion I'm sorry I just missed because I had to step back what was the yeah that's okay to a point to appoint this miss high as our new board member for one term she would be taking over Mr Fazio's time so she would be until January 2024. thank you Mr any other questions I think it's great and I think her credentials look amazing so I'm excited yes a normal personal note she happens to be my neighbor she lives directly behind me and she's a wonderful human being beyond the credential she is just the nicest person you will ever meet so she'll she'll fit in very well with us for sure yeah so that means the only two people ever actually interviewed for the report is myself a rich thank you okay hearing you know other questions or comments can be able to roll call please yes sir Mr Bell yes Mr Dawson yes Miss Casino yes Miss Lima I've seen Mr minhas yes and Mr Januzzi yes Ocean passes please send her a message right now congratulations uh so at this point we are open to the public for discussion uh Tom can you give us a check of Canton no comments online awesome all right hello everyone serma principal the Middle School uh I just want to point out a couple staff members who are leaving us um there's more than two but two that I've worked with over the past um first Miss langoski uh I can tell you several years ago pre-covered uh it was a significant effort to try to help transition the sixth graders to middle school and we had many articulation meetings and uh miss langoski being a very big part of that always looking out for her kids and then in our covid year that was the year we remember back we were doing our project at Smalley so our tight building actually took on the entire sixth grade and we fit in and uh it it took quite a bit of uh care from all of our teachers to make that happen miss langoski being a big part of it um so just want to publicly recognize all of her efforts for the Bound Brook School District over the years and say thank you um as well as Mr Edwards principal Edwards is on we'll be moving on uh having worked closely with him as an administrator for the past several years uh good person and and worked extremely hard to to make uh smallly all that it can be grew in size from two grade levels that year he only got two right and then now to four grade levels so uh a big thank you to principal Edwards I know I'm speaking on behalf of the administrators in the building and the board members as well thank you thank you I appreciate it thank you hello Lauren Paxton president of the Bound Brook Education Association on behalf of the association I just want to thank you for passing the one-year agreement I also would like to thank you for uh providing us with a more cordial negotiations uh team in meetings and we actually look forward to the next round of negotiations thank you appreciate it thank you all right so at this time we are up to item 16.1 which is to move into the executive session so resolve at the boundary Board of Education enter executive session is allowed by njsa 10.4-11 under uh items one and three I have a motion motion thank you Mr Dawson a second second thank you Mr Bob all in favor um you're unmuted 17.1 as soon as my computer connects the resolutions has outlined the approval of HIV cases under middle and elementary schools is 17.2 17.3 matter of motion motion thank you Mr Bowers second second thank you Mr Dawson Mr Matt yes Mr Dawson yes this casino yes Miss Lima house yes yes possible at this point I will entertain your motion to adjourn motion sorry yeah I just wanted to um so next week is is um has been designated as school psychology Awareness Week um in the state of New Jersey and so I just wanted to acknowledge and thank the school psychologist in the district um as well as in the state of New Jersey uh for the as a school psychologist myself for the um the work that we do um and just know that uh you are all appreciated um for that [Music] now I think we actually had a motion to adjourn already motion again thank you second Mr Dawson all in favor aye thank you very much
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
effective July 1st 2023 the superintendent's annual salary shall increase to 255.80 03.44 superintendent shall be entitled to receive any longevity pay for which she qualifies per the adopted certificated management guidelines as stipulated in section 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
is there any discussion or questions or anything before we go for a I entertain a motion I make a motion we approve okay motion Bender a second second Maria all in favor aye aye any opposed hearing them that will be the order pursuant to state law this oral statement of the revised salary at section 2 of the employment contract for Matthew schulenberg assistant superintendent of administrative Services is as follows effective July 1 2022 the assistant superintendent annual salary shall be 193 585.68 effective January 1st 2023 the assistant superintendent's annual salary shall be increased to to 200 897.56 effective July 1st 2023 the assistant superintendent annual salary shall be increased to 203 199.88 assistant superintendent administrative Services shall be entitled to receive any longevity pay for which he qualifies per adopted certificated management guidelines as stipulated in section three any questions or comments do I have a motion to approve so move moved by so second by is there a second I'll Raleigh I'll second the motion all in favor any opposed hearing them that will be the order persistent correction pursuant to state law the oral statement of the receive revised correction revised salary at section two of the employment contract for Patrick slosser assistant superintendent of Educational Services is as follows effective July 1 2022 the assistant superintendent's annual salary shall be 585.68 effective January 1 2023 the assistant superintendent's annual salary shall be increased to 200 897.56 effective July 1 2023 the assistant superintendent's annual salary shall be increased to 203 199.88 assistant superintendent administrative Services shall be entitled to receive any longevity pay for which he qualifies for adopted certificated management guidelines as stipulated in section 3.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above