>> Thank you, Commissioner Suarez. Vice President um Santiago, would you do the honor reading the Open Public Meetings Act statement? My pleasure, President Basford. The New Jersey Open Public Meetings Law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interests is discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this act, the Clifton Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date, time, and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office, Clifton Public Library, administration building, senior citizens nutrition center, on cable TV in the local press on the district's website, and mailed to presidents of parent teacher associ organizations. This meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy 0168. >> Thank you, Vice President Santiago. Uh, could I have the student representative, Jenna Alnator, to please give us her report?
Um, someone gets turned into like half a donkey at one point. all these crazy things happen and it's caused by this mysterious kind of like fairies. Um, but by the end of it, they're all convinced it was just a dream and they all go back to sleep. Um, so you're going to hear that represented by different themes in the music. It starts off very calm and peaceful. That's the forest. You hear the mischievous kind of fairy theme. You hear a big exciting love theme. And then by the end, it all just kind of settles down and they're convinced it was all just a crazy dream. Um, so we hope you enjoy overturn. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. [music] Heat. >> [music] [applause] >> All right, you might recognize um our next piece tonight. It was originally from a ballet uh written by Tchaikovski, but it was later used um in the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty.
So, I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order, and we will do a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance led by Mr. Brainard. If you would all please rise.
So, you meet more teachers and admin outside of just the classes you already have, and it builds a whole ton of new skills that you wouldn't get otherwise. Next year, I'm planning to attend the University of Alabama to study sports media, and my hopes are to be a sports reporter in the future, hopefully for like football or basketball with a sports network.
Any discussion? All those in favor? 70. Next, we'll move down to community non-aggenda items. We have JCMS presentations. I hear >> so exciting. >> So, we brought you a full out show this evening. >> We have our orchestra uh students, band student, and then undo to perform to you. >> Great. >> So, We'll get started with orchestra. >> I think what we'll do again because this the board meeting is live streamed so anybody in the room we are we are streaming out it's recorded. Um I think what we typically do is we vacate our seats so that the camera you all can face the camera so that's okay. Keep going. Keep going. in the back corner there. >> Let me say who we got here. >> Yeah. >> All right. I'm Chris. I'm the orchestra director for both the high school and middle school. We have been working towards our biggest show of the year.
But the structure that we used for the last strategic plan has been very successful. We've been able to move through with smart goals and action steps and achieve a lot of things in a short period of time. So we would like to keep that same structure and system to start a new strategic plan looking forward to the next four years of time which it sounds shocking to say out loud would be 2030. So, we've been working under the um tagline of blue as in Panthers blueprint 2030 um for a new strategic plan that would last us the next four years. So, since we had a lot of success with the last format of how we did the strategic plan with smart goals, um embedding it into school improvement plans, things of that nature, we would like to just copy that same system, but relook at all of our data and come up with our new plan.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Please be seated.
Throughout this process, we have worked hard to stay focused on facts, transparency, district decision-making, and how those decisions impact employees and students. To characterize educators and staff in this way is both unfair and deeply disappointing. There were no attacks against spouses, children, or families by ABUTA members or leadership, including myself. We have consistently focused on decisions, financial transparency, and how those decisions impact staff and students. CTA was not running a test. You heard Steve speak earlier about the actual negotiation process. Perhaps before making care statements that mischaracterize our union and our members, you should sit in on negotiations and see what actually happens. You would see that negotiations are not what you are portraying them to be. They involve collaboration, difficult conversations, problem-solving, and people working hard to find solutions. Our members are speaking up because they care deeply about this district, its staff, and its students.
We wanted to make sure that we were talking to the people who were on the ground. We wanted to talk to the teachers. We want to talk to the parents, the administrators about what it is that we needed in our buildings. So we did uh we went through a a reflective process to get feedback on what our our successes were, what our challenges were, what were our needs, and what was our vision. Once we had that information and we put all that information together, it allowed us to sort of build the priorities of what our budgets what our budget was going to be, right? So our successes are school culture, community culture, student engagement, teacher collaboration, challenges, behavior, student attendance, student performance, instructional The needs staffing and support, a defined multi-tered system of support for our students, additional mental health services, and better systems district.
Good evening. Last month was filled with events which included first the senior class hosting a movie night for the seniors where we watched High School Musical 3 senior year. The event was very successful and we were able to utilize the newly renovated amphitheater which was incredibly beautiful to be at at night. And next, we want to thank everyone for coming out to the student council's first culture night. We were incredibly pleased with the turnout and thank everyone who contributed and performed. And I would also like to thank the board members who came out on Saturday night to come support the event. President Bassford, Commissioner Ragsdale, Commissioner Paris, Commissioner Barnes, and also Mrs. Kusalev Kusalevich. On behalf of the entire student council, we would like to sincerely thank you for your time and support, and we are very happy you were able to come see the beautiful event.
Um, so it is uh the movie uses a lot of music from the ballet as part of like the soundtrack. Um, this is like very peak like romantic era music. Um, a lot of dramatic dynamic changes, different articulations. Um, and just a really beautiful mushy melody that's going to kind of get stuck in your head. Um, and just another fun fact, um, today is Shakovsky's birthday. So, happy birthday, Chaikovski. Um, and we hope you enjoy the walts from Sleeping Beauty. >> [music] [music] >> Are you [music] glory? >> [music] >> How are you? >> [music] [applause] >> All right, our next piece slows things down a lot. Um, it is a slower lyrical piece. Um, it was written by the composer and dedicated to, um, a music educator who had passed away before it was written. Her name was Miss Dor Stro. Um, and the title is explained in the program notes.
Thank Thank Mr. Brainard. Um Ms. Wilson, if you'd please do roll call. Mr. Chad Thompson. Here. Dr. Blake Robinson. Here. Ms. Jill Humphreys. Here. Mr. Jesse Brainard. Here. Ms. Shannon Bury will be coming in a little later. Mr. President, all board members are present. You have a quorum. Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Uh, our agenda item number two is request to speak to the governing board. I'll ask uh, Dr. Robinson to please read the admonition. Request to speak to the governing board pursuant to ARS 38-431.02.H. The governing board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on any issue within the jurisdiction of the public body. After an open call to the public, individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the governing board, may ask staff to review a matter, or may ask that a matter be put on a future agenda.
uh the countywide performance that we do this Saturday. Uh so I've got with me here today the eighth grade part of my eighth grade group. I've got about 22 kids in this but I brought my section leaders here with me today to do pieces that we are playing for that festival. So we do I should introduce them to this is Brennan Brown. We've got on first violin uh Camila Quadd. We've got Karen Miranda on bass. Melissa Gosman on cello. Izzy Quantero on viola. and Kle. >> There you go. Hold on. All right. Good. All right. Do this. All right. Here we go. Hold on. This one's kind of rowdy. All right. Here we go. Heat. Heat. I don't know. Happy birthday. group see the first group we've had that started in sixth grade again bringing orchestra back to >> this was our first crescendo so yeah um I will say that the the level we're at now like this piece um in past years this would definitely be a high school level piece and and they're there now in eighth grade we've been working on this since grade um so yeah that crescendo program is really helping out big time with that.
So tonight is a little unique because a lot of times when we bring back data, we're talking about progress monitoring and goals and where we're at. So we're talking about what successes we've had and what next steps are there to come. Tonight we're going to talk about data and you have the full data packet in front of you. We completed the comprehensive needs analysis. All of this data. It's 100 pages almost of data in your packet just about James County schools. And in this packet, this data, we use source data from outside of our own data to get as many different um lenses to look at our corporation as possible. So you'll see a lot of data. One of our favorite sources is Indiana Youth Institute. They have countywide data for every school corporation in state available. So that's a lot of the data clips.
>> Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I just want to start off this meeting with a little bit of reflection. I know that we're going through a lot right now and prices are always going up for everything and we live in a world of extremes where people are doing amazing things and we're going to the moon and we're doing things that you would not have thought possible like 10 years ago, like 100 years ago. So, I want you guys to reflect a little bit and have hope and be brave and make good choices and always know that you can do it. So, let's take a moment to reflect on the positivity and the chance for an um like a good beginning and always having hope. >> Thank you. Thank you, Leah. We will now have our close session report by clerk of the board, Miss Anry Rand Tjo.
They should not be twisted into something it is This should not be twisted into something it is not. When certificated staff stood up here and spoke to the board, they spoke with their heart and soul. I personally had no idea who was showing up to speak and what they were speaking to. These comments are disrespected disrespectful to the very employees who continue showing up every day for students while advocating for fairness and accountability. And while these comments are being made, our classified staff colleagues are facing devastating cuts. I've spoken with certificated employees who have dedicated 10, 20, and even 20-plus years in the Apple Valley Unified School District and are now being told their hours are being reduced by an hour every day. Their work year is being reduced by multiple days. Some are being cut from eight-hour positions down to three and a half hours a day.
Vision, student success, increase support systems for our students, increase support systems for the staff, and then shared leadership throughout the district. The goals that we came up with were no reductions of staff to maintain all current staffing levels districtwide. I'm happy to report that we will be able to do that. That is that is not simply a goal. It is something that is built into the budget that the board. Goal two, we wanted to create or add to our interventions. Right? When we're talking about multi multi-tered systems of support, we want to add to the number of people who are available to provide support to our students academically. This budget does that. This budget makes a financial commitment to add academic interventionists throughout the district at all levels. Another another uh budget goal building this was behavioral sports and sports. I'm proud to say that this budget does that.
This past week, we also had our annual CHS talent show, and our freshman student council worked incredibly hard to organize such a large event. We saw numerous amazing performances, and it was one of the student council's biggest fundraising events this year. We would also like to thank Commissioner Ciano for coming and supporting our students and teachers. And we hope everyone comes out next year because it is our favorite event and highly anticipated. This past week and next week, CHS is hosting advanced placement exams in the media center and students have reported so far all testing has been running smoothly. And this is also a reminder that the media center is closed during the school day and after due to testing. Some upcoming events this month are tonight the CHS choir is having their annual spring concert. Our band will be having their concert on Wednesday, May 13th.
Um the folks who knew her described, you know, when you're uh with her, it was like you're in the company of an angel. So it was kind of like a play on words there. Um it kind of represents uh two parts of kind of like what you would experience with grief. Like the beginning is very um somber and slow, kind of like the really sad part. Um and then the second half it brightens up a little bit. It's a little more of um reflecting on like the good times, the happy memories. Um, so it's a program piece kind of in that way. Um, we hope you enjoy um, In the Company of Angels. Heat. Heat. children. Amen. >> [music] [music] [applause] >> All right, we have one more piece for you, but at this point before we get to our our last piece, um we need to take a moment to acknowledge um our amazing seniors who are on stage.
However, members of the governing board shall only discuss or take legal action on the issues raised during an open call to the public if the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action. During an open call, the governing board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or anyone connected to the district as it may impact due process rights. Please contact the office of talent management if you have specific concerns about any individual employee. Thank you, Dr. Robinson. We've got a number of speakers. The first up is Steve Hillman. If you're here, if you'd please come up to the podium. Mr. Hillman, you'll have as long with all the other all the the rest of those that are speaking tonight, we'll have 3 minutes. There's a clock up here on this uh, board. And we'll cut you off at 3 minutes and you're welcome to start when you're ready.