Uh the first time he was here in the greenhouse. Thank you all, and I hope you guys really enjoy this. Use it and learn. That's what my grandfather would have wanted. Thank you. For our guests, we do have light refreshments set up in our community room, so you can make your way that way. And teachers, you all have your locations. You know what you're doing. So, have fun, and we should be wrapping it up by 10:00. Okay? Oh, 10:30. Just make sure to please just check your emails, you have your phones, teachers, so you know what the assignments are for this morning. And I'd also like to give a special thank you to Jenna. Uh, Miss Jenna, let's give her a round of applause. always that I like to mention you. take the background where you always do stuff with, you know, with such humility.
So, yeah. No, I did go to the Copper Educat- Copper State Educational Alliance. Saw me in on tech- technology in the workforce or something like that. I'm so sorry. I'm the worst at the names of things, but it was There Mr. Mann was on a panel, Sophia was on a panel, and then I had to go. >> [laughter] >> But, it was very informative and there were other board members there, and other community leaders, so it was a good break in my day. I look forward to the end of the school year. I feel like the longer I've been on the board now, the faster these years are flying by and we are working on getting signatures so that you don't get some random person on this board, but so that is something I've been doing over the last month. And then I will say for some reason my youngest, who's in preschool, has the last 3 days of the school year off of school and my husband somehow some bosses decided that they had to like have some big meeting the last 3 days of the school year, so I can't go to any promotions or anything like that, but I hope everyone has a great time.
Thank you. I don't have a speech yet, but I will Nice to meet everybody. All right. Well, welcome to the scene. Uh next, we have our board student ambassadors, Grace Nelson and Kaya Ober, and before they give their report, uh would you join me at the podium? Sorry, guys. Grace isn't here. She's actually Her top two colleges are at Harvard and Yale. She does She's going to be mad that I'm saying that to you guys. So, she's currently at Harvard. Um last-minute trip. Okay. Good luck, Grace. All right. Well, I'm going to say a few words here. So, if you want to maybe stand right over there. You can leave my computer. Nope, you're all good. So, on behalf of the BPS 101 Board of Education and the entire BPS 101 community, I would like to thank our student ambassadors, Miss Grace Nelson, who's out doing amazing things, and Miss Kaya Ober, who's going to do amazing things here tonight for your invaluable service to the district.
Don, you set me up. Okay. If there's no other board updates, we're going to get right into the administrative updates. And number six, Alpha Superintendent, number one, good news. Yes. Uh this evening we have uh Ms. Keely Childers and Mr. Donzel Franklin. They have asked to um have a few minutes with you to uh share some exciting things, and I think you've got a presentation for the board this evening. Yes. Okay, come on up. You can come up with There's two of my all-time great heavy hitters of University Park, the one-two punch. All right, good evening, everyone. Good evening. Um I stand here uh before you as the president of the University Park Youth Athletic Association. Uh we just want to offer our heartfelt thank you for allowing us to utilize the facilities for basketball this winter. Um ensuring that the kids had something to do productive during some of the most critical hours of the day is something that's extremely important to us.
With that, um, we're happy that we can do that and that we can provide a great educational opportunity to students who want to choose to be here, but at the same time we have to make sure that we are allocating our resources appropriately and that we can still be Bar Reeve. We can still have the class sizes, we can still offer small class sizes and the opportunities to our students that we want to. And so, we sit and look every year at kind of where our grade levels are at and then we set caps based on resources for that. And so, my recommendation to the board tonight is a little varied just because of some of the different grade levels that we do have. I would recommend that grades kindergarten through third grade and then 10th grade through 12th grade would be capped at 88.
So these these trips are so important. Um, you know, when we see the White House for the first time, the kids you saw in the pictures, the kids were all gathered up and they remember me talking to him about, you know, John Adams, he he being the first president there or Dolly Madison racing out carrying George Washington's picture as they were getting ready to burn the White House. um going to Ford's Theater where Lincoln had had been assassinated and walking around and we see the apartment where Lincoln had passed the day after and then going to the very back of Port seeing where you know was able to escape and then walking as he said Arlington Cemetery um knowing that it was built on Roberty Lee's property the general and the commander of the Confederate armies and seeing knowing that it was placed there on purpose so that Lee would see out his front window the dead northern soldiers that he sent back.
From there, they brought their ideas to computer science, where they were able to use Scratch to create an animated project. In this case, the student focused on a fishing and lunchtime scene, even designing a meat sprite so the characters could share a meal of fish and meat. This project highlights how students can take what they learn in literacy and extend it through technology while practicing creativity, planning, and problem-solving. In third grade, we used our Ozobots to bring our ELA curriculum, known as CKLA, to life. Now, we are going to let you get a closer look at our small but mighty robots. After reading What's in Our Universe, students didn't just summarize the text, they engineered it using Ozobots. Students programmed their robots to act as planets to model orbital paths and rotations. For this project, students were asked to arrange two or more planets in based on their distance from the sun.
And we have tuition sped that is over. Hold on. Yes. Private that's 1 point um 4 million those together. Yeah. So um these places that we are sending the students to um tuition has uh increased services for them. um it's getting a little out of whack. So hopefully in the next couple of years that um we'll be uh well the state can streamline it and say this is the minimum you can charge and you shouldn't go over. But with all the different types of um children and services they need, we have to sometimes outsource it somewhere else. Then we have supplies in the supply line. Supplies also includes um utilities. So we have um our electric that is over and that's really due to DHS West um delivery charges for 12 months. And then we have renegotiated propane and fuel. Um we're sharing uh the vendor with the city and um they were able to renegotiate a little bit less than what we are spending now.
is the president of Jersey School Boards and that's why I think it was a great honor for her to present the award to Amber in addition to all the work that went into that event. And I think every high school in Bergen County was represented. So it was quite quite an event. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing so. Um I guess at this time I'll turn it over to Mr. Alfano. I don't know if he has anything he would like to mention. May 12th we have a lawyer coming in. We will do a pre-audit for our 2015-2016 school year. We always bring the auditor whether they're in early to be proactive in order to minimize any potential findings when they come in for the audit. We're looking at the end of the year. Believe it or not, we're talking about 40 days left of school.
And you know, you always do stuff everything with such humility. You always take the background and you watch everybody celebrating, but helped us putting in everything. Thank you for your time, for your passion, for your company. All right. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.
And I know that it is quite the push in these last few weeks. You know, I never did elementary ed, but in high school there were just so many days in that last month especially getting kids to graduate was quite the nightmare. Just even the little the little things that go on behind the scenes on a daily basis in these last few weeks are are a feat in of themselves. So, you've got the steam, you can make it, and then hopefully people have some personal time, have some things they've planned for themselves, and have some things going on. So, you're almost there. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Ms. Gibson-McLean. Ms. Ayers? Good evening. I did go to San Antonio and I think my favorite one was actually given by Pendergast School District. It was their student um They're they call it the Superintendent Student Council.
You have been enthusiastic advocates for your peers, and your monthly updates and insights have helped the board and the district better serve the needs of your fellow students. BPS 101 is in a better place today as a district because of your invaluable contributions. We hope being a student ambassador has been a positive and enriching experience for you and your loved ones, and we thank you for all your hard and dedicated work. We are sad to see Kaya and Grace leaving as student ambassadors and students of BPS 101, but we are excited to see what you will achieve as you move on to the next exciting chapter of your lives. As a token of our appreciation for your invaluable contributions, the Board of Education would like to present Ms. Olberg and Ms. Nelson when she has the opportunity to receive these plaques in recognition of your dedicated service to the district.
Uh so, we just want to thank you uh so much for the partnership. Um we've also been allowed to have access to facilities for spring training for football, which is something that I've never seen happen in the 30-plus years that I've been a part of this program. So, a milestone in my mind, um, that the kids from University Park are able to access and, uh, have practice on the turf field and and these things that I watched their their eyes, uh, light up when they're able to access these things. So, we just want to say thank you and we brought a a plaque today that we're going to present to the board. And uh, the plaque reads, "The University Park Youth Athletic Association Lions Basketball Team would like to thank you for your valuable contribution towards the success of our program." So, I'll pass the mic over to UPYAA's lead consultant, Ms.
And we have about four sections per grade level, so that would put us a max approximately 22 students in a grade level. Those are some of our smaller grade levels across the district. Some of our larger grade levels are back-to-back with each other and so again, kind of stretching those resources and making sure we have the staffing to cover those, I would make the recommendation that grades four, five, and six be capped at 80 students. Grades 7 and 8 be capped at 88. They're already well over the 88 number. Um, so they won't I don't foresee them coming down um, to that number. So, those would basically be closed grades for us. And then grade 9 capping it at 70. That does sound smaller than the rest. It is a smaller grade for us. However, once they go through high school, we are going to have larger grades coming behind them.
And so, you know, these kids get to experience that along with the tomb of the unknown soldier and the symbolized, you know, symbolism and the highest honor, the 21 gun salute, which every soldier in the tomb, they the tomb guard, they walk 21 steps and then they face east and they face 21 seconds and then they repeat. Now, you know, as far as what we're talking about with the state standards, they are changing and getting more civics in. So we were lucky enough to go not only walk through the US capital the last time we were there but also we go through the national archives where we see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and you can you cannot understand the impact it has on our students. So again I want to thank you for allowing us to go and we deeply appreciate it.
Third grade students began by selecting two or three planet cards from a bag, then worked to place those planets in the correct sequence from closest to farthest from the sun. As they worked, some students encountered challenges, such as not having enough rings for each planet. And this was a tough one with our um very exact students. They wanted eight rings and I could only fit four on the mat. So, this is where they demonstrated strong problem-solving skills by adapting their approach, including placing multiple planets on a single Ozobot when needed. Students initially collaborated in pairs and later combined into larger groups to extend the challenge. Their goal was to successfully model at least four planets orbiting the sun, encouraging teamwork, critical thinking, and a deep of planetary order. Next, and this one's super exciting for me. I was reminded that we This was our fifth year doing this Thanksgiving parade, and we started with one first grade classroom in the hallway in the first grade hallway, and now we have gone much, much further.
Um and hopefully, you know, we can get it to go down all the time, but we're keeping a watchful eye on that and gasoline. Um the enrollment impact and equipment. We have budgeted for magnet school in here and Mike has eliminated it from the 27 budget because we have some grants that cover magnet school um expenses. So we've taken it out of here out of the general fund for next year. and the dues fees and staff development. This is where the instructional improvements lie. And these are also again the one-time uh expenditures that we've uh purchased for next school year. So if we go to the next set of report, these are just comparing one month activity to another. So you're able to see how much we're spending each month in J in July and August because not everybody is in uh is working. Um and we're getting the invoices in slowly for the new fiscal year.
We have a surplus and facility projects that we may potentially engage this summer. And I believe the last resolution one major large capital project we're going to be doing this year. I call it the masonry project. Essentially it's the area site work in Mr. Genucci's high school. We are approving the resolution tonight to award Medina Restoration at a bid of approximately $1.3 million. We chose it tonight and we will engage in the beginning regarding the pre-construction meeting when they can start early demo. Kick start it so we're done well before the energy of the staff and students come back in August. We are starting school August That's correct. That's correct. So hopefully we'll have a very dry summer. Because most of the work is outside, so So fingers crossed, but that's pretty much it.
And and they were the they were the ones giving it and talking about their leadership roles and and how they they serve um and how they get elected and that there are two that sit as students on the board. And I I really hope we get to that someday cuz I would love to have student voice with us. So, I really like that one. And then of course they went to the one that Sophia was on that panel as well. And a couple other ones. And um I do understand about teaching in elementary school the last few weeks of school because it's just absolutely nuts because you're trying to get testing done and the school year is almost over and it's sometimes hard keeping them retained for a better word. And and and to keep up the momentum of learning so we don't have any lost time.
Congratulations. >> Thank you. Do you want to say a few words about the experience before you get here before you Yes. I didn't know I was getting a plaque. That's so awesome. I just really want to say thank you, guys. Like, every month I just look forward to coming here, and I make a lot of jokes, and you guys all laugh. I don't know if it's at me or with me, but it's just such a highlight of my month, and I've been doing this for what, 2 years now? It's been a long time. I feel like I've grown with you guys. I've gotten better at just kind of speaking, which is great cuz I'm a theater kid. Um yeah, and I just want to say thank you, and I love you, guys, and I'm going to miss you. Yeah, and that's all. I love my plaque.