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2023-10-19 Somerset County, NJ YouTube / Board Meeting transcript source: youtube Board Meeting 10-18-23 · passage 1

all right you are live all right you are live good evening everybody and welcome to our meeting for September happy to see all of our students and Educators back in the auditorium looking forward to recognizing our students and educat the uh but for now let's start with some regular Ro administrative stuff and the Pledge of Allegiance is the first thing up after we do the reading of the open public meeting statement which says that the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advance notice of and to attend the public bodies at which time any business affecting their interests is discussed and AC upon in accordance with provisions of this act in Board of Education policy 0162 the Board of Education of the buau of Bound Brook has caused notice of this meeting to be host in the board office and at Bound Brook High School and mailed orax to The Courier News Bound Brook B clerk bound BR Board of Education and any person who has requested individual Mr Mr here here Mr here M here Mr minus here m h Mr bulmer here and Mr janoi here Bo president you have a quum present this evening thank you very much uh I will actually just skip right over the president's comments so that we can get to my favorite part of the meeting of superintendent Dr Freeman thank you Mr President uh it's good to see everybody Welcome to our October board meeting uh tonight is the first night that we be recognizing our employees of the month and our students of the month but before we do that I just want to give a shout out to all of our administrators and teachers this year we're in our 29th day we're at the point now where all the changes are Place uh things are running well and it wouldn't be possible without the uh strong effort from our Administration and our teachers so I want to give them a shout out for that if you can give them a round of [Applause] [Music] applause teachers for we're celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month and the teachers are really pushing in celebrating the uh accomplishments of our uh Latino American community members and what they done done for our community to really push that issue to teach our kids to celebrate the culture and how important our diversity is how how strong diversity makes us so I want to commend him for that as well so without further Ado as president said we're going to move on to our students of the month I would ask Dr s to come for us to introduce the Lamont students of the month good evening congratulations to Leonardo balanos Leonardo Leonardo has two older siblings um his favorite subject is learning the alphabet and playing on the playground he loves playing soccer basketball he loves to run play with his big brother and watch TV um his career plans is I want to be a famous soccer player um his teacher misso wanted me to read this um I chose Leonardo for this student of the month because of his positive and upbeat personality leadership skills and caring personality from the moment Leo walks into the school until the moment we leave for the day Leo's the happiest student in the room Leo is always a supportive and caring friend his classmates comes in every day at school ready to ask many questions and participates during instruction he enjoys building blocks and playing with table toys with his friends no matter what time of the day it is you can always find Leo with a big smile in his face and ready to learn congratulations Leo [Applause] no oh how [Music] nice bud okay good [Applause] round for the kindergarten Lamont Lamont Annex School congratulations to Hanna cabara annna has a two-year-old little sister named Goldie her favorite subject is literacy lab because she likes to pick up pick out books to read from the school's library she enjoys going to endur play places um when she grows up she wants to be a nurse to help people like her grandma hanay was selected for student of the month because she's an active participant in class and always a helpful friend to her classmates congratulations hannay [Applause] beauti [Applause] and next up forette we [Music] [Applause] have good evening our first student of the month is uh Seline Cordo queres she has a twin sister Sophia Rose her favorite school subject is math her favorite hobbies are cretive and doing crafts and she wants to be an artist when she grows up [Applause] congratulations Round of [Applause] Applause our next student of the month is Victor Medina gdy he has a younger brother his favorite school subject is math art and physical education he loves drawing and playing soccer and he wants to be an artist as well when he GR [Applause] one last round of applause and next up for small School Miss [Applause] Carbone our third grade student of the month is theago Torres Rodriguez H excuse me theago Torres Ramirez he is in third grade in Miss es Vito's class um he has one older sister his favorite subject is math he loves to play video games and he wants to be a soccer player or a basketball player when he gets older congratulations [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Thiago guys are nailing it [Applause] today Small's fourth grade student of the menth is Caitlyn Velasco Dominguez Caitlyn has one older brother Allan and and another older brother Benny and they're both at the middle school Caitlyn's favorite subject in school is math and writing her favorite hobbies are drawing hanging out with friends and making bracelets when she gets older she says I want to sell houses and be a realator congratulations [Applause] Kaitlyn you back up a little there you [Applause] go the SMY Elementary School fifth grade student of the month is cor Kama conteras she is in fifth grade in Miss Riley's class and she has one younger brother her favorite subjects are math in ela and for favorite hobbies she says I love to read when coriyama gets older she would like to be a lawyer congratulations Cor [Applause] up [Applause] SMY Elementary School sixth grade student of the month is I I just saw him Dylan as monosa Rodriguez Dylan has one little brother he says I like history or phizz he loves to play soccer as his favorite hobby and when he grows up he wants to be a soccer player congratulations [Applause] [Music] thank you Mr next up we have Mr s Ser from Community Middle School hello everybody of course I'm got two and I'm out of order our first student of the month from Community Middle School is Hugo [Applause] Morales hug Hugo's sis sibling is Alana and his favorite subjects are film PE science Ela and social studies so that means everything but math everything but math a favorite hobbies are soccer Xbox hanging out with friends and board games with family and when Hugo grows up would like to play professional soccer but it says if that doesn't work out Computer Engineering congratulations [Applause] you [Applause] congratulations last but not least for our high school oh our eighth grade student of the month is Alisa Gurley come on down come on down Lisa was nominated by her teacher Mr ratl oh yeah you gotta come on come get you so Alisa siblings are Anthony Amir Elijah Isaiah Assan and Autumn favorite subject Ela never seen you bash this is a book favorite subjects are cheer and sports and wants to be a teacher or a lawyer when you grow [Applause] up last but not least Mr Smith all right good evening all right the Crusader citizen of the month award is in recognition of students demonstrating positive Crusader citizenship traits such as responsibility respect kindness Integrity cooperation tolerance and perseverance our first recipient is Andrea trilo [Applause] menar okay Andrea has 13 siblings seven women and five men her favorite subject is English favorite hobbies are um listening to music sleeping eating and dancing and career plans when she graduates from high school she would like to study um criminal justice and hopes of becoming a [Applause] policeman [Applause] our next recipient is beus Aruda uh beatric has one sibling a brother her favorite subject is history favorite hobbies are ice skating being with friends and eating and future career plans she hopes to become a teacher teacher so congratulations [Applause] teachers wow [Applause] great all right our next re recipient Vlad Rudy uh Vlad has one sister Victoria Rudy his favorite subject is personal Wellness his hobbies are playing sports running in particular and hanging out with friends uh in the future vad hopes to secure a position in a STEM related [Applause] field let's have one last round of [Applause] applause all right last but certainly not least our last recipient Jackson [Applause] Jackson has six siblings and out of them he is the oldest he loves social studies modern world history in particular he loves to play a lot of basketball in his free time play video games with friends and listen to music in the future he hopes to play basketball in college and hopefully one day play in the [Applause] NBA big smile there we go thank you all right with everybody with all the students of the month come up with parent so we can get a group photo we doing it on stage [Music] conat come right along the front row come on down you can get right in front of them you're fine worry about it sco a little bit lot of us here now I'm like exposed again there you go some look at Sydney [Music] good love the dress really got dress I love feel better I don't want thank you okay next up we're going to recognize our educator and support staff of the month we will start with Miss CER our district Employee of the Month would you please come [Applause] forward some well prepared descriptive words of who she is and what she does for our kids and Community I'll try to talk as fast as I can um Corey hater is a dedicated employee of the Bound Brook School District for over three years she's consistently demonstrated exceptional commitment and a positive attitude she arrives at work each day with a warm smile and a willingness to help earning her the admiration of all of her colleagues describe Corey as sweet kind caring and an outstanding team player her sorry her teaching approach is marked by Innovation and creativity as she designs engaging lessons for her students notably Corey stepped up recently to cover teach for a teacher whose start date was initially scheduled for October she embrac the class as her own and goes the extra mile to ensure all students Thrive her genuine concern for the students extends to advocating for their academic social and emotional needs making her a true champion for their success Corey is a collaborative team player who consistently Works alongside her fellow teachers she's not only kind and attentive but also a great listener offering her colleagues a safe and supportive space for discussions and risk-taking when it comes to communication planning and teaching with her exceptional dedication and contributions to the Bound Brook School District Corey hater is a deserving candidate for Employee of the Month the district is indeed fortunate to have her and Lafayette Elementary School is even lucky to luckier to benefit from her outstanding presence congratulations to Corey for her well-deserved [Applause] recognition thank [Applause] you next up we have our Sports staff with Once miss Kiss Dr s will come up and say a few words miss Kiss would you please come [Applause] forward so congratulations to miss Kiss this month's Jem's recipient miss Kiss is a teacher assistant lont school and she's constantly goes above and beyond for her students in the community her dedication and willingness to help when Ever Needed are greatly appreciated by all during this summer miss Kiss volunteered her time to assist with open house and decorated our school showing her commitment to creating the warming welcoming environment she also contributed by creating buting boards and assisting for various office tasks throughout the school year miss Kiss plays a crucial role in morning arrivals this misso bus Duty much more she's constantly engaging with the students ensuring that they stay on track and have a fun learning experience her helpful attit to extend to the current office where she frequently offers her assistance to staff members Miss kid has great energies truly passionate about about early childhood education we are incredibly fortunate to have her as a valuable member of our team and her dedication enthusiasm make a positive impact on our school Community thank you Miss kiss for your outstanding [Applause] contribution congratulations thank you I just want to recognize some of our other teachers who volunteer their time to come out to support their colleagues Mr tone if you would please stand Miss [Music] Helman [Applause] Lopez so congratulations again to all of our students of the month and educators of the month uh at this point we're going to transition over to our committee report so for those of you who are really here for the awards take it personally if you decide to quietly exit out the doors to your I apologize you're right we're not doing the committee reports yet because we have Mr Ross us presentation [Applause] yes you good there okay so I am here Mr Ross I'm the supervisor of Career Technical education work-based learning I'm going to be telling you about our data our data is not widgets it's human beings and so there's something behind this that it means a lot so that's why we have up here you'll see committed inclusive intentional it's our three words that we came up during our summer team administrative work it's the good work that we're doing that translates into the numbers that you're going to see and it also is why I have academic Excellence empowering student emotional well-being we want education to empower students to have resources in their life to be better and stronger so this data means something to us um even though I default to English I have a growth mindset and I sat down with the supervisor of math and I learned a lot about percentages to understand this in more detail for you so let's take a look here's the goal for the presentation there's a big overarching goal which is to make data actionable information right so with this data we are doing things for you this administrative team here is doing stuff for you and I know the teachers are doing stuff for you for the students so what does it look like first There's a summary of The District data there's a full detail of all this data 60 pages of it with the subgroups broken out by Race by gender by social economic demographics we're disaggregating that data on our own and we're using that to Target those subgroups but what I wanted to do here was focus on some specific growth some positive developments that we are using to help every student not just those who are proficient or succeeding so what I'm doing is I specifically looked at njsla showing you the proficiency results and Trends from 3 through n for njs LA and then with the NJ GPA graduation ready results and Trends pilot year it was a pilot year last year for 2021 with the test and this year was something that counted for the students in 20223 so we want to look at those Trends then the last two slides are really going to just show us the intentional next steps that we are already taking everything that you're seeing is already starting as Dr Freeman said we're 29 days in these things have been on our plate since we saw these numbers um really back in June when we were starting to first get them first develop them then we did talk about them over the summer and then we have implemented specific actions like I ready like ISL um like our irns interventions and reflecting on those pieces so as I go through the slides I will show you the data and I'll show you also what we're doing with it so first an overview with New Jersey student learning assessments that's our three through nine piece so we're looking at seven grades for ELA grades four seven eight and nine all show growth in students who met proficiency and we're above proficient so we're either proficient or highly above proficient so that's an important element with math grades four five six seven and nine that's if I'm counting right five out of the Seven Grade of that grade band who showed growth from 21 to 22 from 2122 to 22 23 that's an important element for us because we want to say why that's happening and then we also want to be able to look at how do we help those students who aren't yet there next with the MJ GPA New Jersey graduate proficiency assessment the percentage increased from 2122 22 23 in ela by 200 21% that's amazing and that's partly due to sat tutoring that we were providing it was partly due to um tutoring for NJ GPA that was provided Mr Smith myself the supervisor of math we're working on that and that really helped students get invested in their education and also something where we were making sure everybody was focused so that was key math had a 10% increase Maybe not as strong but still we're looking at a postco development and we're looking at how we understand the world a new so despite these increases we know there's room for growth so that's why when I get to the data review I broke it up into 1819 preco and then I broke it up into 2122 and 22 23 so what we can see is where we were pre-o and what do we look like for two year the past two years postco and that will help to give you context for this data right to say okay what was the world like before we had everything shut down and where are we post that all right so what are we going to use it for we're going to strategically sorry support those that did not I guess we could say did not or partially or are approaching we are certainly going to be paying attention to those students and you will see what we have in place for it um we will also inform use this data to increase academic rigor social m intelligence and build curricular relevance that's something that I take very personally because I want the students to know that their math matters that their English matters that their World Language matters it helps you develop yourself it helps you have resources when you're at home because most of the time you sit at home what are you doing look at your phone well here maybe you want to read this book maybe you want to get interested in that so we are making sure that this data leads to something important in their life so here we go NJ s laa here's our numbers Ela and math 3-9 so I don't know they have you have a copy you see able to see that yeah folks see that up in the air so here's where things really start to look important I went with 20189 which is preco and then there's two years P where we can compare what students are doing if we look at oops sorry go back if we look at the third grade group they were struggling why because they didn't have the benefit of uh Dr s's program and the support of being in class K1 and two that's your Co group so your people who are third grade here were missing out on that direct instruction with teacher so we can see that compared to where they were in 2122 and where they were in 20189 so these are some of the things that we we have to look at how do we go about supporting that group who missed out on Direct instruction and that's something we're thinking about we look at the next grade band level and you can see we increased here in fourth grade from last year to this year but if you look at the group here which is number 33 in 201819 they would now be seventh graders so on this they are right here so to give you comparison this cohort right here 33 scored 30 see what I'm saying so for me yep so here's so I guess I should break it down for us so there's three ways that we can look at this data either this tells us how the curriculum's going how the teaching is going and how the cohort is going so when we look at one year to the next and we see that we're moving up it shows us that our curriculum and our teaching is moving in a positive direction and then what I also wanted to map for you was we have this grade in 201819 right here would have been fourth grade if we move up the count the years right so in 20 1920 they would have been in 1819 they were in fifth grade sixth grade seventh grade so this group here moves here four five six seven right does that make sense so here's what I'm trying to show you is this group of students right here this and I didn't break it out this way int intentionally but I just wanted to show you a sample of it is that these kids right here are these kids right here so there is not showing a big learning loss right so they go four five six seven so you're in fourth grade 2018 19 you're in fifth grade grade in 20 in 1920 you're in sixth grade in 2021 and you're in seventh grade in 2122 so here they were taking this test the learning loss is not there they have a strong you know retention of growth that's important for us so that's what we're looking at so with this data we can see that preo and postco we're remaining strong and in some places we even growing Beyond preo times can I interrupt you absolutely question comment so the idea of reviewing this from a cohort perspective mind mind intuitively and I really appreciate the remarks that you're making because for me I look at seventh grade y right seventh grade Red Bar will be 2122 y right but that's now our eighth grade yellow bar that class up almost 20 percentage points yeah right from one year to the next yes amazing right so the key for me with this because I was looking at only two years one because the NJ GPA doesn't exist beyond that so I broke it down for the njsa for only two years normally I'd give you a fiveyear data picture um but what I wanted also to show is that we do talk a lot about coid learning loss what does it mean what does it look like so here is a the blue band is where we were prior to co and then here we are for the past two years and like you were saying which was this um group here in 21 22 if you can see with my pointer they're at 46 and then they're at 41 and9 so they're dropping a little but they're staying consistent right the 30% here are the 49% here that shows growth right so this data is telling us that our programs are working it's telling us that we are you know in some areas needing to focus on well what happened during Co and how can we return to this new system return to getting them back on track so for English as you can see we really maintained sorry a strong level base because here we dropped a little we went up Dro somewhat of the drop up up and up so the fact that we're consistently growing is something positive for us to review so same thing with the math the math is very very impressive why 28% compared to 14 19% compared to 9 16 to 15 22 to6 this group here is a is a point where is there's no good or bad data there's just information right so now it's a matter of we take this information and we go okay what's going on with this group where did it come from right where were they in the year prior they were at 16 so they did drop what happened what do we need to do how do we address so none of this data is either good or bad it's just do we need to work on our curriculum do we need to work with our teachers do we need to work with tutoring um and what is it that we need to do to address these issues but what I really need to stress with this data is the growth that's still there and that's an important element for us next is the G NJ GPA so this grade 11 assessment is new it's difficult and it's a bit of a challenge but it's two years in so here's our comparison this to me was impressive so even though math only went up statistically in percentage wise um 10% right out of 100 I just learned from the math supervisor the percentages are all out of 100 right so thank you math people so this is what I'm saying when I sat down to do this data for you I made I made sure that I went to our content specialist she informed me that look will when you're doing percentages it's always out of 100% so that is 10% growth from the 27 to 30 it's 221 per about for or more for the E English that's insane and I think that's due directly to our putting in new programs like tutoring um like are looking at increasing the books that we have available for our curriculum and developing a better connection between the grades so I think that's clearly being seen so what are our intentional next steps want to wind it up for you because I did just read this whole big book on doubt and after reading it I have no doubt that we're doing good things come on now I have no doubt try here so right after reading this book on doubt I have no doubt we're doing good things so what are we doing so the administrative team with this data that you saw because this conversation that we just had um right here is one that I've already had with English and math and other and curriculum supervisors the administrative team pre2 is working with teachers to um Norm focused lesson plans so we've been revamping objectives with teach in the classroom student centered activities in the classroom in order to better meet students individual needs we also have been hitting with you know I don't know more than a three point point whatever 3.0 batting average whatever that is the highest batting average ever probably this ISL teachers are utilizing ISL and I ready to work on preent skills to get grade level subject matter and they're utilizing this data to really set up small group construction they set up tutoring in the High School to have people working during study hall onl and all grade levels it's allowing them to have the students work at their own pace to figure out where they can grow and what skills they need so this ISL initiative has been something that been working on a lot and it's from this data next is the administrative team is looking at disaggregating the data to better align instructions with standards so we talk about if the students aren't proficient what standards are they not proficient in how do we help them those conversations are window that was weird Okay so that was um you know the gong show I'm getting pulled off so I want to be quick um anybody remember the gong show all right so um we're encouraging staff to adopt problem based learning model and encourage start invention so we are asking them to do problem based learning rather than um recall questions rather than fill in the blank questions where with problem based we're giving them something to work through in the classroom this is a through 12 next is we're monitoring students progress using benchmarks we've established in-house benchmarks we use ISL as benchmarks we do fall winter spring and we target instruction based on that so we're not only using the njsla or the NJ GPA bless you we are also working with ISL data as well and the last thing is I want to focus on for you to make sure you know that this data means something all of these jarn here jiren something that ends with an ing what we're doing is we're expanding we're implementing we're recalibrating we're targeting we're updating we're increasing we're applying and we're providing right we're expanding small group of instruction this has been an initiative since Dr Freeman came here uh talking about how do we get people to work together to meet the needs students who were otherwise not approaching so those people who weren't those students who weren't proficient were working on how can you be more successful implementing New Jersey high impact tutoring program that we have applied for it's really focused for three through four but we're looking to model it and extend it K through 12 so that there's extra help for our students tutoring tutoring tutoring is a way that we transcend the co issue we we want to work on recalibrating our irns program so that we identify students earlier who need supports who need 504s who strategically need IEPs so really supports is the key model there so that we don't necessarily need a 504 or an IEP and we want to catch students as early as possible we want to Target our PD and we've been doing that we've been having great PD sessions where we work on highly effective instructional strategies and we've been really working with teachers to think about their teaching in the classroom and to not do what I'm doing right now which is taught at you updating g&t curriculum which has gone uh over the past year I've been hearing about this and it's really been an exciting thing where the stem the g&t uh depart programs are expanding we're getting new teachers for it we're making sure that it is something that is prominent throughout the curriculum then we are increasing personally for me this is where is one of my proverbial babies so to speak increasing our dual credit courses we recently shift from rvcc alone to work with Stockton University a four-year University so we now have 17 courses from Stockton University and that's important that's going to help us manage this data help how do we help these kids succeed on these assessments and then we are also applying for a DCC grant for $100,000 why so that we can make sure we pay for all students to take these courses here also the program works to set up a grant where we potentially have 18 teachers getting master's degrees in content area to make them more dynamic in the classroom and that it was through the gr and then finally there's an initiative that's ongoing right now providing eight to 10 teachers grade um all grade levels ESL certificates via fairly differ in University very important here so that we can address all of our students so here's the nuts and bolts looking at where we were preco to where we are postco we are making strides the numbers for me do look good but the numbers also for me tell us that we need to make sure that we have these conversations and we figure out the strategies to help the kids who are struggling at all levels so we want to help everybody the lower the middle the high level student in every way and that's pretty much the data as it stands for this year questions concerns major malfunctions any questions or comments I guess I will first um first of all Mr R is beautiful thank you I do a lot of presentations that' done thank you so K so quick question for you um this slide is different than the one that we received a few days ago okay so the data that you were looking at from the NJ so so that is what I mentioned earlier so absolutely so the full data the link data reports that you're getting shows all the subgroups so for the purpose of this moment I mean if we want to break down subgroups we can look at ethnicities we can look at special head we are sitting that and I just want to assure you that that's what I just did here was look at okay Co versus where we are now so is that the total number that you're mentioning here for grade three grade four those numbers are yeah because your total numbers are different than the ones that I got from those reports for proficiencies which proficiencies are you looking at so um scores of four and five together yeah so what I'm looking at only is scores of four and five put together so yeah it may not be the apparent number there because they're separated sometimes depends on how so the way the link people had presented the data is there a reason why one two and three are not included there's a reason why um yes because what I'm trying to show is the way that we're making students College ready the way that we're making students proficient and how we're managing that and then the other part for me is with knowing where we are with the proficiencies we want to look at the strategies we use for them so that we take it to all students because on average based on the percentages that were provided in the reports um 60% of the students are in levels one two and three so what you're showing here on this graph only represents 40% of your grade yes yes I mean so at this point yes there are some of the students those students are being taken care of based on us knowing best practices for them and that's why we get to here is ultimately we look at the scores and we go these are the students who are making it what standards are they achieving how are they're achieving it then we need to make sure that we do that for all the students who are there so the piece for me is also in looking at data because data is only numbers not information we need to pay attention to how we are growing and so I can break this down and disaggregate how we are growing even for other groups it's smaller so the key for me is if this proficiency is getting bigger the other side that you were mentioning the ones the twos of the threes or getting ones two threes get smaller so that isn't made apparent so I could work on doing that in a better way next time for sure where showing that because we went up that much that means that there's so many people who are not in that lower category anymore you're absolutely right the thing is the thing that you mentioned four FES the fives to me are actually going down either just staying the same right so yeah I mean so for me I don't see how the for May but overall they're do great but then when you break it down to lower that subset to just level files only yep it seems pretty stag the groups of Fes are in a stagnant place and something that we need to address absolutely so again like I said before data is not good or bad yeah so again so for me for the sake of time I focused on a specific area and that was looking at how we were doing over time so your point is well made um so for me when I look at the four we definitely are are growing there when we look at five that's exceptional and that's where we want to be but our big issue has always been making sure everybody's Beyond too proficient and that's been our question why is science why is science there because I was not I mean able to pull up everything quickly because I was bringing this fair enough it does take a while yeah I wasn't able to P so I could pull that in to you and if you want me to give you that I can certainly that out the other part about science as most people who are teachers who know they all say it's going to count and it never does so here's the problem with that data if we want to really get into it is it's a little bit bogus because the students know that it doesn't count per se for graduation Readiness and it's been a big thing that's I've been in this game for 26 years now they've been saying it's going to count since I started in 2005 here in New Jersey and guess what science doesn't count so you're right um I didn't have the time to get to that one this Mr Ross I just wanted to say being an educator I am very impressed I am very very thankful and I'm humbled by the work you've done in compressing all of this data I think the board is appreciative where we're at and where we're going and I think that if you look at this globally you're giving us really good outlook from a Layman's point of view you're giving us a really good outlook of that you know the the growth is being made and I think you said it really good we're not dealing with widgets we're not dealing we're dealing with children yeah and you know the fact of the matter is is that to see with everything else we have going on this growth thanks to you thanks to your administrative team thanks to everyone thanks to our teachers I I I I have to say is that it it I'm humbled by what I'm seeing I thank you from the bottom of my heart because this is phenomenal thank you no I thank you and thank you for your questions I mean seriously I mean I didn't cover everything here and if I did I you can as you can tell I could keep going really quick I had one comment and then um something to clarify um first I think I can't believe it's been a year already but last year we sat here and I know we had a big conversation when we saw this president presentation that people were talking about we need growth now we need 100% And I know the teachers up here sat here and said if we get 3% right if we get 5% that's amazing right and you're showing us 221 per on I mean granted that's one test but that's I mean that's amazing that's a major test for when I saw that bar when you sent it to me I thought it was a mistake I was like that can't be true there's no way that's amazing so first of all this incremental growth it's going to take years but this is an amazing first step let's start there now the one that's concerning when you look at it is the eighth grade math right but my question to you is so everybody understands the eighth graders are that take math are broken up into math 8 and algebra okay so let's talk about why that number looks the way yeah so that's key I'll let Robin I'll default to her wisdom on that yeah so the eth grade is deceiving because um we have students who take algebra and those kids were tested with the ninth graders they take the ninth grade test so um you know it looks like the performance is lower but our top performing students actually didn't take the eth grade test they took the nth grade test so we're losing you lose your top we're losing 28 to 35 kids actually yes so that's a good point and Jill did tell me to make that point so sorry Jill I'm on YouTube I didn't make that point she did point that out to me specific specifically that yes and thank you for bringing up is that those 30 kids do make a dent because they are not take they not yes so you know I mean maybe if the state was Savvy they'd say look take both I don't know let's torture kids that's what we need is kids taking more tests yeah there we go no let's torture children so for me as a non educator to make sure I understand um and guys to be honest here um so if your is algebra you take the grade n because it's a nth gr but then if you're not taking Al you're doing the regular you it's called eighth grade curriculum math yeah that's yeah so that's a great point so thank you for highlighting that and I was supposed to say that get my back um so thank you for the questions I mean thank you for the hard questions thank you for the you know the support and again I'm finished thank you everybody out here for one more anybody else yeah just want to Echo the comments of the board we've all been party to the conversation about all the good instructional work that's going on um in the district so my question was about the next steps when we look at the subgroup DAT seems our students with disabilities and our multilingual kids are really struggling and not maybe realizing as much growth as we hope for U can you speak to how these steps um will be um sort of enacted with those groups of kids in mind what that might look like for multi I think with a lot of our subgroups we're seeing that so when you break down you know by Race by gender and social economic again is a big indicator as well as as a struggle and certainly that's where we need to provide extra supports for our students and simple things like um executive functionings and figuring out what's a school workspace look like in your home we're having those conversations do you have a desk at home do you work anywhere on your your work besides your bed um and that simple conversation is part of all of this stuff that we're doing certainly the ISL which is really a guided learning practice that helps a student to go at their own pace so it's adaptive it's so fancy for those non-educators it's adap testing so whatever you do it you along your path so ISL is a very strong support for our kids who are struggling or who are not meeting grade level who are needing to get to proficiency so that's what's that's doing I think also us looking at the subgroups like you were saying we are very aware of okay next yes so um you know one of the things that we wanted to do to address the multilingual Learners and our teachers ability to service them properly was um starting with this es certification program the more Educators who are trained on how to work with students um at our language Learners the stronger they'll be in their academic classes and um you know this stretched all across the grade span um another thing was um recalibrating our inrs process and also looking at um identifying students earlier who are struggling and then coming up with um Improvement plans for them on how to get them closer to where they need to be um with the tutoring that we can Target the students more specifically based on their individual needs um the small group instruction we really um working on focusing on um strengthening the tier one um interventions within the classroom in addition to um increasing the tier 2 interventions in the classroom um in addition to outside of the classroom and um oh and then even um we have some students who um might be actually gifted or Advanced students who are um multilingual Learners and specialed students students and we're trying to do a better job of identifying those students so we can provide them with the stem activities and the enrichment activities which will hopefully help to um you know increase their um their confidence and get them more engaged academically yeah I second that piece because for me that comes from personal space was a dyslexic adht kid who was in AP classes in high school but Po in C pluses was still went to to a state school and then you know got got into I leads um it's possible so I think it's really important that we're identifying students for what it is is this a learning issue is this a language issue is this a behavioral issue and really identifying them so it's it's it's not only personal but it's important for student there one other thing uh in the change we made to our program one of the things we found is that children were having difficulty learning the academic we were teaching English but we weren't using they weren't sound or strong in their native language so by changing our bilingual program to where they focus on the native language and then each year they start to increase the percentage of English that the class are taught in that's one of the major Keys now that's going to take two or three years for it to happen but we find it when we get to the point where we have children who are strong in their native language after fourth grade fifth grade will start to see the jump in their ability to handle the academic language and therefore do better on the assessment that's a major piece that we put in you approved uh a lot of training we have ongoing training and coaching for our B teachers it was a big adjustment for the this year uh it was something totally new it's a big adjustment for parents but now that we've gotten into the program for 29 days people are starting to see the purpose behind it the kids are happier they're more confident and are starting to do better academic already that will continue and that will without a doubt increase our ability for of our students to do up these assessments I just want to close with one observation I'm the second M said which is I think when we received this presentation last year we were hopeful that there will be progress to show for year to year and I think we've seen that but personally as the board member I'm really excited for seeing the levels of integration coordination with some of the new ideas that we have uh in year two of our new Administration now between the new assessments not just relying on the Statewide assessments but we have the IR um and the EXL and how quickly that's translated into feedback to students feedback to teachers feedback to parents and are continuing education of D and how it's all ring through so I don't you know cautiously optimistic but I think this is just the start of what we're expecting to see in years to come and for me it's really exciting so thank you guys well than you for the presentation thank [Applause] you we are up to item number three student board m um I just want to start off by talking about our certain sports teams our football teams currently one win and six losses with their last game against Manville on Friday the boy soccer team have their last game on Saturday with a current record of five wins 10 losses at one time the girls tennis team finished their season last Friday with a record of three wins 14 losses and one tie the girl soccer team currently have a record of wins six losses at one tie with three more games to go that being blown on Friday cross country team are ending their season next week with their next competition being tomorrow at Pleasant Valley Park the girls volleyball team have a record of six wins and 10 losses in two more games to go the next will be home tomorrow 22 and for our winter teams both basketball and wrestling teams have been hosting events to prepare for their upcoming Seasons which include triy outs and events that help out the younger team at the middle school in other other news uh there's going to be a college fair at the school on October 23rd and a career fair on November 15th um and on October 26th uh our students will be taking the P or the a or the act of all these students and off for tutoring for these tests for this month well every month until I believe January I'll be interviewing one of the principles from each of the schools in the district uh for this month I had the honor of talking with missas got the principal of lafette despite how early into the year the interview was she was excited and positive about the upcoming school year she was an assistant principal in the New York Brad for 13 years where she managed 600 students and 100 staff members by the main principal of that school who her who taught her all that she knows and how to be fair and just she came to bber because she thought that bber challenged her that the Bron didn't in her short time here she has seen her staff exceed their responsibilities and expectations while also being inclusive and keeping a positive attitude even when the situation wasn't the best her current plans for the upcoming school year include building a trust and relationship with staff and parents primarily through social media using her expertise to develop and push her staff and curriculum further lastly she's keen on having students Express their learning goals that is key to their future success excellent thank you for all the upates uh at this point we can start on the review of our committee meetings like to start uh sure we had a great Education meeting a couple weeks ago uh we focused on uh two new diagnostic programs and assessments the district using one is called I ready one is called I excel so I ready primarily en rolled out K to six please correct me if I'm incorrect I excel um really at all levels and what's neat about these programs is they many of them are adaptive meaning that as students answer questions correctly they become more difficult um and as students are struggling they receive questions that are at their level so what's exciting is the data that the teachers and the students get afterwards um so if you imagine yourself as a classroom teacher with 20 to 25 children before you your task is to design lesson to meet all those kids where they are and what these programs do is it gives very targeted data about how to group students into small groups and provide them with really tailored instruction we spent a lot of our time in our committee meeting talking about goal setting and the value of students being able to know and articulate um the specific goals they're working on to become better mathematicians better readers better writers and how the teachers can use those goals to provide the kids with really targeted feedback based upon how they're doing work on the assessments um there's also great parent components where parents can be made aware of these reports um I Exel is a great program that allows for skills to be practiced um the general culture of the district seems to have responded well to these programs um the reports that we get indicate that teachers are finding them useful um sometimes it's great to take assessments but it can be overwhelming to get all the data and know what to do with it but the initial feedback is that the data is user friendly and useful and able to help the teacher figure out a way to meet the needs of all of their students in class so there's a lot of excitement about the potential of small group instruction having kids own their goals and being able to give teachers uh resources that allow them to better Target the needs of individual um students and we're also excited that these programs have components in English and Spanish so they are useful for assessing our large multilingual population as well what we're finding out is it really a reading issue or a math issue as opposed to is this test a reflection of the child's language skills so we had a productive meeting and we're excited about things to come excellent thank you Mr Dawson any questions from the members regarding education I will just make one comment and I share this with Mrs G she's leaving the meeting um it's actually point of great pride for me that there is basically standing room only in our education committee meetings because of all the excellent work that you guys are doing and the content that you're sharing and how just energizing and important all of it is so thank you very much for the hard work and for the board members who aren't on that committee not taking anything away from anybody else but if you have the time and the interest I would encourage you to attend if you're not a m let's just make sure that we don't break any fors because they're just outstanding outstanding um with that govern Mr okay so we had a lot of policy updates as you can see in tonight's agenda um most of them are State mandated so you can read through those a lot of it's just language changes there were a few things that we had questions about um one of which I had to reach out to Gwen about is that they are um recommending that we change change our requirement to 90 days after being elected to receive your initial training as a board member um we had some concerns that there was going to be enough training available to board members to make that happen but Gwen assured me through email that um there is a self-paced online course that is available at all times so if you don't make it to one of the training sessions you can always do it online this year they're also having um new member orientations in January and February so they'll have two live sessions available Within those 90 days for those who are elected traditionally at the or I should say or um become board members in January so if you're elected in November you're you're covered with two live plus some online options um the other stuff was really really language related where where we decided um for instance one where we decided to give Dr Freeman a little bit of Fe say um we talked about the sick Le last meeting and the new rules about that and they recommend where they ask there are options I should say where a district can choose if we want to ask employees for seven days notice when they are able to give that notice if they're going to be using using that those additional types of what we'll call sick leave but but leave because it's not really traditional sick Le and we decided it was best to use the phrase may require they you can say will not require may require or will require so we stuck with may require to get Dr his the discretion so that he can apply it fairly in all situations that's just one example but it was a lot of language like that but the most important thing that happened uh at our meeting was we talked about our strategic plan and how to move forward we saw presentations from uh they were sent to us they weren't live with us we were sent presentations from njsba and um thought exchange right thought exchange um both were good but we thought that njsba was just way more thorough especially in the planning phase not to mention it's quite a bit of savings financially so with those two things uh we thought it was best to recommend that we stick with njsba um with the board's you know approval tonight we also noticed that their timeline starts in September which means we are already behind so we will have to accelerate the timeline just a bit at the beginning to catch up on that but that's something we're willing to do uh to to Implement a good strategic plan and the last thing we very briefly discussed in the last five minutes of the meeting um Mr zuo will be very happy about this we are definitely looking to bring back Ed Council one more time we're going to try it again um we talked just a little bit about what that might look like Dr Freeman is really going to look into what he thinks it should look like but I know that that was also discussed in negotiations one thing that we do want to start with is is to make sure that are holding advisory Council meetings at the building level first and make sure that's going on in the district um I think maybe yeah Mr Ji has a little bit more information on this sure and just add I think in general we want to support our building Lal administrators and Empower them to address issues that are happening on the ground in real time if at all possible but we also wanted to enable this mechanism for uh you know our teachers to say if there are districtwide issues that are causing grief or observations that you have that would allow us to make it a better place to work right um then we want the opportunity to entertain those as a board you know as quickly as we possible certainly don't want to wait you know the next 35 years before we go back to negotia on the contract so um I'm very excited I think the climate is right for us to reintroduce it and um I think we'll be able to make a lot ofs and that was my whole report great any questions from Mr B okay hearing UN Human Resources way back in September and so admin is continuing to monitor our open positions and ship way then District re attended Kean University Care Affair earlier in September with the whole said it would bring in more potential Subs while their students wer completing their education exit surveys for staff that have um resigned or left during the 2223 school year been compiled there were common thingses like job satisfaction stress um work rated support commun hire and higher wages um some of the things that were brought um came out in the exit surveys for things that had been noticed such as staff not feeling supported and had been addressed and then we are um they're reviewing job descriptions for supervisor special ad curriculum and inclusion to better align the job descriptions with districts with districts ince finally on this past Monday negotiation committee met and I flaked out on it sorry missed it um but happy to say that we have a tenative handshake agreement um and hopefully present meting thank you very much for the update U one quick comment that I would make in terms of the job descriptions just for everybody's this those are on on our agenda tonight to vote on so just as you consider kind of the thought process that we led to this point had been created they've reviewed and endorsed by the HR committee and now they off um any comments or questions on the H Mr Russ I think you got all the questions you got question you go operations Mr Z this was really a pleasure weu to very impressed the Expansion Project committee expressed very encouraging we looked at all the Aesthetics and the condition we asked about cost ining CH as well as comple everything answered very thoroughly Adra so I I I just think that that's fantastic to help our student population we also have some busing news that I'm going to hand over Mr that can thank you Mr Z um as many of you know B Brook is a walking district for transportation the two areas that we focus on servicing our special education rounds and co-curricular and athletic rounds and we have reached pretty much full capacity on all of those runs so Mr Januzzi and the Board of Education formed an committee which is an ad hoc committee I'll steal a little bit of Miss Gaz Thunder and in that um last two meetings um Mr steel was present and he talked about some of the challenges that we're facing with athletic runs and co-curricular runs with regard to Transportation limitations and the inability to have vehicles and drivers stamp um those extra runs so This Is Not Unusual a lot of school districts are struggling with this we also spoke separately from the committee with Mr DeMarco our special education um director and he pointed out that some of ours are are overcrowded under servant and students and and we have the need for expansion so with those um we discussed with Dr Freeman um the need for some budget resources to be transferred immediately for two large unbudgeted purchases because there is a shortage on right now on buses there's a one to twoyear wait where you get a purchase order in to have your bus manufactured and delivered so we thought we would get ahead of that and we've been reaching out to several bus manufacturing companies and we were fortunate that we were um able to secure a brand new 24 passenger bus and also a brand new 54 passenger bus both of these are 2024 models the price on the 54 passenger bus is a little over 138,000 and the 24 passenger bus is 116,000 um so we have a resolution on the agenda tonight for the board to authorize the purchase for those two buses which were unbudgeted with the use of surplus that Dr Freeman and I have identified other budget accounts and this will better serve the athletic Co curricular needs of our district as well as the special education Transportation needs and will also enable us to even solicit some joint chur and that's where um we would reach out to the transportation directors of other school districts and see if we can share rout in any way where we could share the cost so I couldn't have said it better myself thank you sir that's all for operations any [Music] questions simp question do we know the the basement has been waterpro at question was was the Bas waterproof at and they said we field trip the walls were correct again I'm G to have to send it over to my buddy Mr G Mr gski can you Enlighten us on that uh I wish I could Mr zco but I'm gonna have to phone a friend also and ask our architect because this project was designed the previous administration but I'll get you an answer we are also changing architecture Architects are being changed Reserve com congratulate the any other comments or questions for Roger on operations yes ma'am one is a 24 passenger bus that's the $116,000 price T passenger bus is 138 so one question um to continue deal with the buses um so understand purchase was done that the buses will arrive the next one to two years no we're fortunate uh these vehicles are now in the factory getting their air conditioning systems installed and they should be ready for delivery about a month's time 2024 yes 2024 model is brand new solar power solar power no are a traditional diesel have air conditions they do have one one Improvement of that is our our depreciation schedule for our transportation Vehicles is aging so this will Infuse some U needed lifeblood into the earlier end of that so that we don't have all of the buses maturing at the same time even though the state has extended the life cycle for buses to up to 20 years now um many times after uh 10 to 15 years they curi what are the AG of 2015 and another one is a 2008 Vans are up there too so the plan L board we have currently four vehicles 254 passenger vans 224 um buses and what we're going to do is we one of the current 24 passenger vans has a a defective engine and transmission it's working but it's not reliable and it's left us uh reasonable so what we're going to do is we're going to trade in that vehicle and then we're going to use the new 54 passenger van right into the two and from school schedule so that's going to get a little and we're going to take the oldest up the 54 passenger vehicles and we're going to use that as a spare and a dedicated vehicle for athletics and Co regular runs field trips and things like that which I'm sure the principles here great deal for the has there been any thought of the older aging Vans um I remember a while back um I forgot how back but um some of the parents were were questioning whether or not we could use some of the Transportation yeah we took care of that we took care that shortly after um we provide transportation the question was transportation from uh too no problem let me just add that uh it was almost an impossible task to find uh a bus that we could buy we went out to the uh Comm who was saw the US the Press were too high we were only able to do it because of Mike's connection with the uh with the distributor so his network is what allowed us to do that being by not saying it but I thought Mike and I'll just make one comment and it kind of ties into the update on curricular I think if I've learned anything from Dr Freeman and his approach to you know um the changes he's making with the administrator that we shouldn't be afraid to be nle and react quickly the situation works so I think the idea that we were able to get feedback uh through our Athletics and co-curricular ad hoc committee that said Transportation was the number one pain for uh the majority of our coaches and that we could translate that into freeing up additional resources and then having our bus to take action to make that a reality in in the span of weeks you know maybe you know months uh I think it's something we all need to start to realize is an opportunity is an option what we should be aspiring so there are some things that will take a long time right and there are some that we should be able to keep show the time we shouldn't be afraid of trying to do it and so rolling into Athletics and co-curricular I think our meeting our last meeting is probably wup meeting but we really just reaffirmed our three highest priorities Transportation being among them facilities and making some additional facilities hopefully available uh in the future as we look at our long range plan for both facilities and a strategic plan for the district uh and then investing in uh General uh physical education strengthening condition and opening up a new s position uh so those are really the three outcomes that I expect from from that committee uh as more or less a final report and we will transition starting to operationalize some of those things um we talked a little bit about some research that Mr St would do in terms of other life positions in other districts that we could potentially model starting to understand what those S of grades might look like and really on that obviously you CED about Transportation um and the then identification of um and investment in facilities is a much bigger conversation we can we'll get into that in future budget planning and future strategy any quick comments on Athletics in unfortunately su's not with us tonight so we are going to skip the SCC report uh and before I close any other comments or questions regarding the committee's deep breath fantastic reports for all the committee chairs the work that you guys are doing is fantastic um just the the volume of activity you guys are through the content again to so thank you thank you for all of your extra effort at this point we are open to the public for agenda items only so Tom while you check online I will just read the notes that we have here so in Accords with District policy 0167 governing public par ipation board meetings members of the public will sign in at the podium or online provide their name address and uh public participation is limited to three to five minutes in duration and no participant may speak more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard with that being said anybody from the room do you want to talk about something on the agenda or just it was something that was said during come down test by the way that's the on file good evening um kyman I am the vice president of bbea I just want to say thank you um for working collaborative collaboratively and cooperatively with us to settle our contract and we look forward to presenting it to our members thanks for coming K thank you for all your hard work have a good night thanks for staying you have no agenda items questions online thank you very much here item number 6.1 approval from approval of minutes from 8223 be resolve that b Board of Education superintendent approves the meetings approves the minutes of the following meetings regular executive session from August 21st 2020 have a motion motion thank you Mr B second second thank you Mr any discussion1 feel there Mr Ji that that change will be reflected thank you any other comments questions suggested EVS is we're not voting on 6.2 there no correct since there were no attachment attachment in the agenda we will not be voting on 6.2 we just push that next all right hearing n can we do aoll call please Mr B yes Mr dawon yes M Gazo yes Mr Z yes M yes Mr Min yes motion pass to item 7.1 resolve that the superintendent recommends for approval resolutions as outline District personel resolutions this 7.2 through 7.53 May I have a motion motion thank you Mr second second thank you m any discussion I just have one quick question and I say it's probably think everybody to find it um um 7.32 this is Middle School extracurricular positions there are two positions noted as advisors um can we just confirm that those are seven and gr advis split advisory the first two the fs are split is that is you're talking about can I say the names is that okay yeah yes it's for pish and Bennett yes they split it that's why the the 0.

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