We're on the journey with the rest of the district to learn more about the shifts in literacy instruction and we need to um deepen our implementation of the seven components of literacy and that is going to involve learning about these shifts as well. We um although we have shown se seen growth in certain subgroups, we also um see see that we still have gaps in our student populations and we see these gaps both in academic um areas as well as in sense of belonging which was one of our goals. So we know that that requires intentional support and we need to pay attention to th to what we're doing for those subgroups in our building. Um, we talked a little bit about those high yield instructional strategies. We want to continue that momentum that we have putting those across all content areas and we want to foster a growth mindset in our students.
[Applause] [Music] I [Applause] [Music] you just want to take a moment to give a huge thank you to our six incredible seniors. [Music] Ryan, is that you back there? [Applause] Our six incredible seniors, Kayla, Eileen, Estan, Bianca, Prius, Pac, Nan, Megan, and Ameilia Wilson. You all brought so much energy, dedication, and teamwork to the flag of our season. From those early 6 a.m. practices to every single game where you consistently showed up and made good marks, you all showed what true leadership looks like. Thank you for your hard work, your sportsmanship, and for making this season one we'll never forget. [Music] Our senior MVP has been named an all-star numerous times from making the all North Central Jersey team to being chosen to play in the first official north side of black people. She's a family member of our team as this guy is so pretty attorney.
So that kind of goes along with that self-efficacy and having them believe that they can do these things that it's not all what the teacher can do with me and for me. Um, so we're working on what strategies we can use to help them develop a growth mindset and encourage them to be more independent in applying their strategies. So in the end, looking at our academic goals, we acknowledge that we have areas of our growth and as a building, we are committed to remain focused on making decisions that um I can't read what the slide says. making decisions that are student that lead to student centered improvement. I also think that's one of the things that we're proud of over at Storm is that we're willing to have those difficult conversations and really try to look at solutions to try to move forward and move our students forward.
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] Next up, baseball. [Applause] Okay, I'm going to try not to cry like you did. First, I want to congratulate all the seniors here and I wish you guys the best of luck in everything you do. Of course, we got to thank all the seniors for everything you've done for your program, for what you have done for Clinton High School. Uh, you made us all proud. So, just again, I want to thank all the seniors here. I want to go back. I want to extend a special thanks to all my senior uh baseball players and managers. First, my senior managers uh Ava Ortiz, Gabby Sax, and Elon Medina. Our senior baseball players, Andrew Gibney, Randy, Brandon, Andy Garcia, Nate Pandola, Matt Romero, Jonathan Cologne, and Seth Roselli. Now, for our senior MVP, this player is uh was a three-year varsity player. Uh last year, he was all league on mention.
We wish we didn't have to have them though. But we're willing to but we we would. So then going to our final goal, what we're proud of is just building our community. Uh, I think that our classroom buddies were really good is that's where we actually took our younger grade levels to partner them up with our older grade levels for fun events either to read to each other or do some type of activity and event. Um, we have a strong PTO partnership. So, our school activities and our community events, whole school assemblies, our family literacy night, our family game nights, our monster bash, all of that really brought our family togethers which is absolutely fantastic. We had high numbers of students participating in extracurricular activities throughout the course of the school year, which is great to get that involvement. Um, the final one that I have up there, which I'm we as a building are probably most proud of, is our bilingual community building event in partnership with the BHS Ed Pathways program.
This year, he was on the second team. uh he made up county honorable mention three years in a row. He is our two-year captain. Uh he's going to be truly missed. And our senior MVP is Andrew Gibney. Go Nick. Go [Applause] Nick boys. Um, I'd like to start by thanking our managers, uh, Valerie Figueroa and Jennifer Santo. Come on, let's hear it. And now to our four seniors. Unfortunately, only one of them is here. Uh, but I'll say all of their names. I have we have a top, John Paul restra, Johan Rodriguez, and Louis Rivera who's the only one that made it today. And now for our senior MVP, who unfortunately couldn't make it today, John Paul Ro. Thank you. [Music] Next up is softball. Coach [Music] Mooney. Hello everyone. I'd like to start by thanking all of our administration here. Thank you for your support for our student athletes.
I had a parent from our bilingual program come up and approach me and say, "Hey, I feel connected to the school. I want to get other people connected, but I don't know other people inside the bilingual community." So with her advice, we set up an event. We had about 85% of our families and students come to that and the high school students were the entertainment. They probably had more fun than the kiddos playing games in the gym. Um but was absolutely fantastic. That's something that we definitely want to enhance. And after that community building event, we had more parent volunteers in our bilingual program. um volunteering for art in the classroom and just coming on to field trips or just being more present in the building with two additional adults personally finding me to talk about student academic growth. So really proud about that. Other notable student successes and their self-rating overall four out of five social competencies increased from fall to the spring.
I'd like to give a congratulations to all of my other fellow coaches here. Congrats on your season and even bigger congratulations to all the senior athletes. Congrats on everything you've accomplished and good luck on your future endeavors. I would like to give a very special shout out to our softball seniors. We have Eileen Estabbon going to Stony Brook. We have Jasmine Mills going to Cornell. [Applause] We have Haley Casterly attending Penn State and Izzy Franco continuing her softball career at Bloomfield [Applause] College. Congrats ladies. You will all be very missed. Our MVP this year is one of our captains. She's a four-year starter and definitely someone who will be missed. Izzy Franco. [Music] Next up is boys on the track. [Music] speech. All right. Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen, as we're getting closer and closer to the end of the evening and more importantly for the seniors that we're honoring, we're getting closer and closer to the end of your time at Clifton High School.
Spring was our main focus on perseverance and we had a positive 8% growth on that. And students see that their self-management and supportive relationships are up at 85 and 88%. Um, I know that Grace McWain also said this too, but our students with IEPs, there's they had the same percent of sense of belonging as their peers, which is huge for me. Um, and then our third grade cohort, all their social competencies increased. And some reflections over there again, the students saw one aspect in their emotional regulation and teachers saw slightly different and their emotional regulation as well as self-management. So, we want to investigate that a little bit more. Um, the other thing that we want to really hone in on is how much respect do students give you? That seemed to be their lowest one in the fall, lowest one in the winter, and that continued over into the spring.
You You're all athletes. You're all good students, good citizens of Clifton High. When you graduate, you're not just a Mustang now. You will be a Mustang forever. When I look around the room, the number of other coaches that are alumni of Clifton High School, the number of administrators and teachers and people that come back and stay part of the community, you have no idea how many of you will be back. You'll be a Mustang forever. The boys track team had a great record. They finished second in the league and they had some great come through meets where their back was against the wall and they did a great job in winning dual meets. They were fourth in the county, eighth in the state sectional, and somebody who contributed more than 100%. Our outstanding senior boy, Nathaniel Phillip. [Applause] [Music] What? Girls outdoor [Music] traffic. Our [Music] uh outdoor season is still going on.
So, we definitely want to reflect upon that. As well as with our current fourth grade, they had the lowest scores for social competency and sense of belonging. And some of our subgroup populations had a decrease from the fall to the spring. But with that, and although I do talk to students, don't think they're giving me the honest answers because of my position. So, we got to find out a way to do that. However, in Panorama, they have the opportunity to do open-ended comments. So, I took 187 of them and put them into chat GBT and I found those six common themes. So, I'm actually getting honest student voice and their perspective. That's their reality. So, I think we as a school need to take that perspective and help guide our decision- making moving forward. So, but thank you. Open for questions. Yeah. Uh, I might have missed it, but I'm just curious.
We have a meet tomorrow and a meet on Saturday and more than likely a meet next Wednesday. So, we're still going. Um, but before I even get to that, I just want to thank our uh our assistant coaches. Some of them are here. Coach Carzan Cash, Coach Ryan DS, Coach Terrence Brown, um, and Coach Weber who isn't here, Coach Dubac as well. I'm very fortunate to have amazing assistant coaches that uh, carry help carry the team to its uh, success this year. Um the girls record was three and two. Um in the league they they came in third and they came in six in counting championships. Um consisted of our seniors of Mia Devita and Crystal Delone. Um our MVP for spring season, her brother won an indoor and for outdoor it's Crystal Delone. [Applause] I wish you would have done more years of track cuz we definitely needed some throws.
I know that you piloted the Boys and Girls Club program. That is correct. And I'm just wondering if you have any comments on how that went. I know we're going to take it over to JB Nelson next year, I believe. So, I'm just kind of curious how that went. It was a journey. Um, the reason why it was a journey, I find a lot of value and success in that partnership. Uh, we reached out to multiple families. um some of the families were just hesitant. So we had a core group of students that started the year but then we had internal boys and girl club rotation. So we didn't have consistent staff for almost about half the year. Then when we actually had the consistent staff we saw the students wanting to come. We saw them having more of that social emotional that partnership the actual mentoring portion which is really great.
Thank you. Congrats. All right, round the spring. Last but not least, Coach Jano. [Applause] Save the best for last, guys. Uh, first off, I'd like to congratulate all the seniors from all sports on all of their accomplishments. It's been an honor to coach many of you in a variety of sports. Um, you will be missed and best of luck in the future. Boys tennis ended 6 and 10. We really improved throughout the season. I'd like to recognize the seniors that helped us along the way. Uh, Victor Vanto, now Danny Corniel, fan favorite Rishi [Applause] Gandhi. All right, James, Daniel Alante, Kevin Rubas, honorable mention, Law County, David. Honorable mention law liberty division home run honorable mention law county division and captain Mark Tarani and lastly uh the senior four-year player has improved so much over his time here really played outstanding tennis the second half of the season.
And then they actually started to partner up with our VHS mentoring program and we got to support a lot more kids. So okay I do find value in it. I think that there was hesitancy. Anything that's new takes a while. Absolutely. I had a I guess a question about the increase in extracurricular activities. Um so I'm a big believer in that more extracurricular activities is going to help with uh not only academics but also sense of belonging. Um did you find that you removed any obstacles to help kids participate more? Um any anything you can share there that helped to improve the the participation? I think it was just our overt communication actually. Um we switched up a lot from just after school to morning. I think three or four of our events moved to the morning instead of the afternoon. People that worked with their work schedules.
Uh really hard to rattle him out there. Um he truly resembles something that we as coaches always preach to our players and that's mental toughness. Um second team all county, second team all division MVP Abdullah. [Applause] All right. Thank you, coaches. Now, we're moving on to the athlete of the year. We have a male and a female athlete of the year, but uh of course it's ladies first. uh as you heard some of the accolades that of of a lot of our seniors here was incredibly difficult to pick uh the female and male athlete of the year. So what happens is coaches nominate athletes at the end of the se at the end of uh the school year in May uh committee comes together looks at everybody's resume and you know we kind of take it from there and uh every year it's a tough decision.
Um I also see we just have go-getter kids. I mean when we just had our fifth grade promotion I think uh we had 67 kids. We had about 58 that were participating in some after school activity and it's just a lot of their own ownership of everything. Uh but the overcommunication I think was probably the largest one having teachers make that personal connection to them and being like hey we need you to kind of do this. We find interest in this and it really did help out. I love seeing the um efforts made to include the bilingual families. And this wasn't mentioned, but my fifth graders at the fifth grade breakfast when we first walked in and Cindy was there um handing out translation devices for the families of the EL students, which I thought was awesome. My older son, I don't remember them doing that three, four years ago.
This year was was definitely no different. Um, a lot of lot of really great athletes in this group. So, give yourselves all around a round of [Applause] applause. Our female athlete of the year was a two-year varsity starter in two different sports. Four-year starter in basketball. So, she's a two four-year starter in basketball, two-year starter in softball, and a two-year starter in girls flag football. Uh really tremendous young lady. Uh really really great. Always always smiling, always happy. A true pleasure to be around. Na the [Applause] [Music] grown All [Applause] [Music] right. Our male athlete of the year is a four-year starter. Um, sir, I mean, a county champ, a region champ, a district champ. Uh, competes at the highest level. When he's asked to go out and compete, He's consistently put against the other team's best competition. They're their their toughest. Uh he's wrestled in three different weight classes just this season.
Now that came from our Bpack and just looking at how to increase accessibility of communication. Uh we purchased that I think at the end of last year. We've been using it a lot over in our BPAC one. And then for any of our inschool activities and events, any building has the ability to go rent that. Uh but it just helps them. They get to come on in. They don't have to sit clustered together. They don't have to have that pause and waiting for the translation to happen. They're just again building our community. So what is it exactly that you're using? So it's this little device. Okay. So, have you ever gone to like any of like the art shows and you just sit there and you walk around, you could hear everything? Yeah. So, Cindy was there one over there at the fifth grade promotion.
And as 125 wins, Joe Glette. [Applause] All right. Again, just want to thank you all for being uh just a fantastic audience. You're always you the way I see you guys and girls in the building, always so polite. You're always helping others. You're true leaders on and off the field and just uh as an athletic director, that's great to see. There's such a limited amount of issues that are negative with this group. Uh for four years, you've been a pleasure to watch compete. Best part of my day is watching you compete. It really is. I enjoy watching your coaches coaches your coaches coach because we do have the greatest head coaches and assistant coaches around. Let's give them another round of applause. [Applause] [Music] So, as you move on, whether you're going to college, whether you're going to the workforce, whether you're going to the trades, whether you're going to the military, we just hope that you take the lessons that you learned here at Clifton High School, not only in the classroom, but on the but on the field.