These statements are also not representative of the board or its individual members and solely represent my own personal opinion." There was a case where a member endorsed some board candidates and advocated against a candidate and the disclaimer only indicated that the opinions were his own and did not include people views were not representative of the board. Creating an appearance that the entire board endorsed certain candidates. And when our ASBA attorney was giving ethics presentation at new board member orientation, she was very cautious of be careful if you use we. If you're a board member, you post something and you say we because the we can be the board. And also, be a little bit cynical like nothing's ever really private. When you're posting something, you may think you're posting only to a certain group of people, but anything can be screenshotted now and shared far and wide.
tonight. Um I was in attendance as the committee chair. Ms. McDevitt and Ms. Walsh were present from the board of education and Ms. Pearson and um Ms. Polstra were present as administration. We talked about NJSLA testing which will start um last week for the science No. Science was this week. >> Oh. This week. Science is this week um and the regular third through eighth will start May 11th and we were just kind of discussing what the new test looks like and how that's going to roll out. There is some changes made by the state. A new company um is doing the test and it has an adaptive nature. So just trying to kind of understand what that's going to look like and I it sounds like we have a lot of good plans in place and um hopefully everything goes really smoothly. Um we discussed the change to the specials that was presented in the budget um presentation.
>> Yeah. So I mean I think that any any bench that I mean I think we have to get some more details about what the process has has that's happened here. But I think that this policy doesn't exist right now. So anything if anything that was agreed upon before needs to move forward. >> If it was agreed upon I would agree. >> I I don't >> I don't know the details of it. Okay. I can't tell you who requested what. I don't keep I'm not involved. >> Who should who should we talk to to find out what happened, you know, >> if you wish, I will ask the lion in response to the benches who who requested it, how it was approved and all that stuff. >> That would be helpful. >> I'll be happy to do that and send it to you. >> That would be great.
A a of stuff is out of our control. Um but to the extent I can I can say um because I do have visibility in what the school department's done financially, that they have really taken this seriously. And again, it's not just looking for additional money. It's actually part of a of a broader restructuring. Yes. I'll say that. Yeah. Yeah. Um so 6:15 is when we will start checking people in. Okay. So just some logistics. Um town meeting starts at 7:00, but check-in will start at 6:15 as we're anticipating a large attendance at this meeting. Um we have established an overflow room. It's in the cafeteria, right? Um so the main meeting happens in the auditorium. If that doesn't hold or if if we run out of room there, the cafeteria would be available for people to to be there and and we'll have the meeting streamed through there.
>> Yeah, it looked like it could have been close. >> how the goalie kind of just paused. But hey, whatever. Here we go, this is Mayhew with it now. Mayhew looking for her hundredth goal of the season and does. >> [screaming] >> Goes end to end. >> [laughter] >> Gets a hundred. The sideline is going crazy. They got some balloons. And this is a big record right here. Yeah, what a moment for her. She was just she got that first goal early. First goal of the game for Ursuline and was just had so many chances on getting that second one and seemed like she couldn't buy one, but right there she just came out with >> [cheering] >> just she came out with it. And got a great goal. They're going to save that ball. That's the hundredth goal right there. I love a good historical moment.
Transportation is often an issue for field trips. Um, and it's been covered for the students and they've been able to we've been able to offer this to all of the students. Every AED student has had an opportunity to go on at least one of these trips for free, which is awesome for our community. So, thank you. >> Thank you very much. I don't think I have to touch that actually. I think this is the last slide. Um, I'm the quasi closer. So um we have obviously done a number of structural changes to the programming at uh themies of Danbury High School and so while we are asking students okay while we are asking students to behave differently in a model you know we really need to do the same thing for teachers and so we're really encouraging them to continue utilizing a career connected lens as Melissa said not just in the CTE classes but in all of the classes and from the work that we've seen teachers submitting Um we we've been collecting some of the tasks that they're devising so that way we can give them feedback on those.
So, just always be cautious about how your role as a board member intersects with what you're posting on social media. There was an interesting article about this back in January when I was doing a lot of these and I mentioned this article to most of the districts I was doing ethics presentations for, but it was in Spotlight News back in January. But it was an interesting article that had to do with the School Ethics Act and freedom of speech. So, you want the link, I can send it to you, but I'd recommend looking it up. It's interesting. Here are just some social media cases. Again, the bottom one is when a board member uh used "we" to discuss board matters, and the posts were beyond the scope of her duties and had the potential to compromise the board, they found. And it had to do with school board elections, again.
Um we also talked about some um programs that could possibly be replacing programs that we have currently and just the diligence of kind of really examining everything from an academic standpoint and a financial standpoint and everything else. We discussed some of the end of year events that take place at the school. Um yeah, that's about it. Productive meeting. Great. Uh human resources. Oh, this is hot. Oh, I didn't even You came You snuck that in. Sorry. I'm struggling a little bit tonight. The allergies are bad. I know. They're terrible. So the HR committee met yesterday and attendance were Mrs. Polstra, Mrs. Pearson, Mrs. Walsh, Mr. Becker, myself, and Mrs. McDevitt joined virtually. The meeting lasted about 45 minutes. Uh we discussed hiring for the 20 2026-2027 school year as well as for temporary leaves. Um a lot a lot of other stuff that we discussed was also already presented in Mrs.
I think I think our concern with the with the arboritum which is you know it it was brought to my attention and I also you know I have to say I I approved it being removed um as long as it was stored at DPW didn't want to like throw it away. >> Why would [clears throat] you remove it if this policy wasn't in place? >> Because as far as we could tell nobody had granted permission for it to be there. Oh, >> you know, I as much as I can appreciate um kind of the the um the notion of it, I think just having, you know, benches kind of show up around different places, especially on town property, can become problematic. Would you not agree? >> I completely agree. But I think we should find out what really happened. >> I I would agree with that.
And they can still participate. So um Yeah, a lot of thought, a lot of trying to make this as as manageable as easy as possible for voters. Awesome. Well, um Adam, did anybody online have No? Okay. Well, thank you all for um for attending and and watching if you're watching at home. Um Again, uh town meeting is May 6th, um 7:00 p.m. at Ashland High School. Uh 10 articles on the warrant. You can find the warrant online, as well as all the budget documentation. There's also, if you go to the website, um you'll see, towards the bottom, you'll see like news events or breaking news. You'll see a page dedicated to the override and information associated with it. It's got a calculator. It also has a lot of information on it, in addition, like so the budget. Um also, there's uh some of these efficiency briefs on there, so ways where we have saved money, some of the things that we have done to to cut costs, um as well as just an analysis of our finances that's been done by our independent auditors.
As you were saying though, she got the first one and wasn't like um where she was gunning for the the next one though. She's good team player. Not letting the others get theirs first. Oh. Or or or just a thought. Oh, yeah. Oh, but I was saying other things too and I was also saying that like, you know, the green jerseys are kind of like mermaids, you know, cuz they got the green tails. So, yeah, that's that's what I was saying. Oh. All mermaids have green tails, eh? I'm pretty sure. All right. >> [laughter] >> All right, here we go. Working it out. And good save from Moral. I haven't seen a mermaid, so I cannot confirm or deny that. >> ask Sienna here. Mermaids have green tails. I say blue. Oh, what a goal from Lubov. Did you say blue? I'd say yeah, turquoise.
We definitely see a quality increase and more confidence I would say in embedding the career connection lens into those um tasks and u projectbased units um which will be u continuing the focus. Uh we continue to offer flex and afterchool tutoring and credit restoration opportunities after school. Um we're looking now quite critically at um the most effective ways long term to support students with that and so we're taking a look at our credit recovery now with our um school leadership team. But the after-school tutoring in twilight have been quite successful and saved the district a lot of money because then the students don't have to come back for a whole semester or year to retake that class. Um and really challenged and I think that the work that we began um you know first divi devising the portrait of the graduate attributes and hindsight even though it was during a pandemic that was the easy part.
Um the first one was a board member I believe was talking about books in their classroom. And what they posted was found to be a violation of the School Ethics Act. Both had recommendations of a reprimand. Yeah. So, like Yeah, liking's What from my understanding, liking is fine. What Just simply liking a post or sharing a post would typically not be a violation. It's your statement, you writing something. Now, maybe you can share something and write a whole comment about it. But typically just liking a post or sharing a post wouldn't be a violation. That's my understanding. Again, check with your board attorney. But that's my understanding from our trainings. This is just important information to keep in mind. Texting, if you text If you're sitting up there and you're texting, and you might be texting your spouse saying, "Hey, did you let the dog out?" or "Are the kids okay?" "Who won the basketball game, whatever.
Polstra's presentation about the changes in specials for the middle schoolers next year. Um most excitingly being that band and choir will be offered as specials two times per week. Um the end the adding the three sections back for the sixth grade based on their math placements as well as the projected enrollment for next year and the importance of registering sooner rather than later so we can plan for the numbers. Okay. Thank you very much. Um Mr. Waltman, we didn't have a No, we had one scheduled for yesterday but there were no updates from Strauss Esme and no other agenda might have so we canceled the meeting yet ready an hour Wonderful. Thank you. Uh um Fuzzy now, community relations? I do not have a report tonight, but we'll have one next month. Sounds good. Uh More administrator reports? Yeah, just just a couple of items.
I would apprec I would agree with that. So in in letter of this discussion then I would and seeing that we don't have a complete board yet and there's three of us I mean we have a quorum that we could vote if we wanted to but would you entertain holding off and taking a vote tonight until we get the answers to the questions that were raised tonight? Well, this is for going forward, right? >> So, I think we'll figure out what happened with the benches like at the arboritum. >> Um, >> and and we have thought of other places where we could put that >> put those benches as well. >> Yeah, there was a list of locations and the number of benches that were available at those at those sites. I believe there was like six of them. Well, there's different part of the policy, right?
So, um anyway, thank you for coming, and um if you have any other questions, I'm I'm happy to answer them either here or outside of here. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
Like aqua blue. In what movie do they not have green tail? Um Little Mermaid maybe? They have different ones. Are you kidding me? >> sisters have different colored tails. Oh my gosh, well, I stand corrected. I know, it's funny. I don't think I think I saw it when I was like 2 years old. So, the score is now 14 to 8 with 8 minutes and 20 seconds left in the game. Mhm, here's Barrett Sachs with it. She had passed it off to Schneider. To Hartnett. Hartnett to Williams. Williams right up to Olsen and what a goal. Schneider to Williams to Olsen. Yep, that was Nora. What a goal. That is Nora's first goal of the game. And she's been great. And so, anybody's game in theory. But the Raiders have a great lead right now. Seven. Seven goals. Yeah. They sure do. All right, working the ball around.
you know, getting a group of people to agree on what we thought for kids, you know, was was pretty easy compared to now how do we develop programming and structures and facilities and relationships in a way that we just haven't conceived of. And I think that um you know Dan shared some of the the good data that we got at the end of the year last year. You know, I think a lot of folks in the community were concerned so now we're going to be like a little abbott tech and we're not. We increased our dual enrollment opportunities. We made the advanced placement honor role through the college board because of how many students and how well they did. So um we are in the middle of a multi-year professional development plan and um we met with our planning team today. They were quite impressed with the work that they have seen and um we hope to continue not to disappoint.
Somebody could be thinking that you're texting them down there and Oprah requests your texts. So, it's something again to be very, very mindful of when you have your phone out if you have your phone out at your board meeting. I totally understand this. I had little kids in my little board, so I always had my phone out just in case my daughter needed me or something, but you know, now people can file a Oprah request for your texts if they see you actually on your phone texting. So, be careful about that. And again, an ethics complaint will need to show a nexus between the action or information sharing and your role as a board member. We always tell you you're your child's advocate first and foremost. So, if you have an issue with your child, you absolutely can still advocate for your child the same way as any other parent can.
Um you know, I just really want to send a big thank you to the PTO for all the events that they organized during Eco Week. It was every day it was something, you know, just fantastic from the tree tree planting to composting day to ending the week with walk to school day. I had like no duties out there on Friday morning. It was like it was um yeah, so I just really appreciate and our staff who all stepped up and and participated in that week. Uh we also uh celebrated Bring Your Child to Work Day here. Um a lot of our staff members brought their own children, um which was great. Um you know, Mrs. Panetti did a great job of organizing certain things during the day for that. Uh we also had the Booster Club fundraiser um over the past couple of weeks. I student faculty basketball came back and we had a great turnout and it was a really fun night.