So, we really appreciate those sentiments from them and we also appreciate them for sure. And then one last more uh just u just some appreciation to our guidance counselors at the high school, the guidance director Lauren Sandor and all those guidance uh counselors who kind of arrange our grad walks which is a kind of a a nice new tradition that we've started maybe in the last five six years where the seniors get to go to their elementary school that they attended in gowns. And also a thank you to the admins and the elementary teachers and all the kids who just make that a big big event and a parade and do the human tunnels for them. So I think it's just a really kind of a neat tradition that kind of connects the high school back to the elementary school. I think everybody enjoys it.
We have a long way to go. >> that. But we're not going to spend $50,000 or more doing pre-characterization and then have to be in an appeal to DEP. I mean, it's just too much money to spend up front at risk and our investors aren't going to agree to that. We feel very comfortable where we are that we've done enough characterization. We have superior professionals on the team. We recognize that there may be other things in the ground that we're going to find and we have to, you know, handle those in a accordance with regulations and protocols. But we're not going to do a full characterization now. We never have and we're not going to do it on this site. Would it not make good business sense to at least do a preliminary survey within the buildings? Not not a full characterization. >> And there may be some additional geotechnical work that have nothing to do with the environmental or things that we're talking about, but have to do with load-bearing capacity and things of that nature.
Um, we know where we are, so we know where our spending is. So, um I you know I'd welcome whatever whatever opportunity we need to um convince folks that that you know we are we are where we say we are then sure let's do it. I don't want to pay for it >> 100%. >> I really don't want to do the work although I know I'm going to have to do the work including write the RFP because it will this is not something that can be done without >> proposals. So, we're going to have to write an RFP with very specific measures, goals, and and statements in it as to if if we undertake this at all. It's it needs to be we, you know, a a good strong specific RFP. Um, so anyway, I think those are things that I think we need to iron out um if we're going to consider it at all.
The assistant could have the certification in special ed. Tons of people out there have certifications special ed, never use it. They're you know general ed administrators or principals or assistant principals. But I think having that also kind of quiets those people out there, teachers and the public, and families who've depended on Darcy for years and years to take their little ones, right? Who came out through birth to three or whatever. They would want some I would want someone in that building who has that background or at least has that certification and can grow. And this person would actually be under those two, right? Yeah. I mean you're going to have a principal, assistant principal, and then this lead. But you also have reading specialists. Do you have a RAM there? Yeah. Right? You have other people there. Coordinated supports. And I I couldn't agree with you more about how it's mission critical for me to sustain the exemplary uh practices and history that we have there.
But this this is a nice resource for for supplementing. And as I said, it has that practice embedded and it has end of chapter review um like any textbook. It does have a a quite a few um makes use of the fat simulations that we use quite a bit already. We put it in the library at the public library across the street. We put it in the library at the high school. We send an email to families letting them know that the physics textbook is up for a two a two two week review. You could even include the link. Now they don't even have to go anywhere to go see it. We just include the link in the email and we'd give them two weeks. We have a a form there that they can give us some feedback on and then we bring it to the board.
And I'm right. Oh, and also And also 12.6. All right, so Ms. Perillo would like to change her vote um to abstain on two This 12.6. 12.6 and 12. 12.2 number three. Okay, is there a motion on the floor to allow Ms. Perillo to change her vote? So He has a question first. Just so you know, there is a motion on the floor for number 14.1. Madam President I um I need to go back and abstain for 12.2 uh three. I'm sorry, Angel. These mics something >> Hold on, one one moment. So, first on the floor was a motion by Ms. Perillo. There was a motion to change her vote to abstain on two. Mr. Gaber made the motion. Mr. Sant seconded. If we could do a roll call vote to allow Ms. Perillo to change her vote. I. I. Roll call. Roll call. Who made the second?
That stuff would happen for the individual students. So that typically doesn't go go out to families. >> Um our family was not es especially concerned. We knew this this was a situation that the student's family life was very troubled. But there are other families in this situation who felt like there was no information given. they felt very um unsafe and I don't know if there's a way to without violating FERA to kind of um I don't know what's the word um kind of mention the threat assessment um in a way that is vague enough to protect the students safety but also let them know that something step by step is happening and they just they were very frustrated with the situation very scared >> I think if uh this is my best guess and I maybe should reflect or Mr. Man go ahead and step in.
This year included sessions on digital use, strengthening IEP partnerships, augmentative and alternative communication or AAC, and assisted listening devices. These ongoing conversations are critical to strengthening our partnership with families and schools. So, at this time, I will turn it over to Ms. Heidi Rudy to share more about our continuing services and help. Thank you, Romy. As Dr. De Cristofaro just shared, our special education review led us to take a closer look at our continuum of services for special education. This continuum reflects our commitment to meet the unique needs of all of our students. Student services are individualized through their IEP, which is based on their strengths, and needs, and goals. Our service model is guided by a few core principles. Individualized support, a flexible continuum, and evidence-based instructional strategies. We work to educate students alongside their peers to the greatest extent appropriate, while also supporting independence and progress towards academic and functional goals.
Um so these are the themes that I saw as as we go through it. So most saw the term of engagement is just continuing the work from this year, which is the way we are framing it, right? Was that this year was great. We're building on the work that we did this year. We've seen a lot of positive results both quantitatively and qualitatively in the work that we've had. There was in the plan discuss of some specific possible potential action items for next year. So you can see those things that showed up uh favorably in those responses, investigating digital hall passes, uh first period attendance, focusing on that, uh continuing working on our belonging like what you heard tonight both in the relationship mapping and our activities and athletics, and then trusting our internal experts over outside consultants in the work we do. And we do recognize that we have a great experienced staff here that we can lean on.
Um Mr. Glick, if you don't mind, I'll start with you, and we'll just go down the line. Uh I didn't have any meetings other than the subcommittee that we'll be talking [clears throat] about for uh the Richards and Southside projects as we move forward. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Boyd. The foundation awarded several scholarships to BCS uh seniors last week, so that was a wonderful experience to get to be part of that, and um just a special thanks to so many individuals and families in our communities that step up every single year to fund these annual scholarships. Um they they truly have a tremendous impact. The foundation also conducted interviews last week for the vacant executive director position, and we hope to be making a decision at our board meeting later this week. Very good. I'm a member of the business advisory committee.
We're going to have phones We're going to have a place to store them in the office. Kids go to their seventh hour. If you're there at normal day, you dropped your phone off in your seventh hour, at the last minute of seventh hour your teacher says, "All right, grab your phone." You grab your phone. One of the significant concerns of our teachers they don't want to they don't want to have to fight with a kid to take a phone. If they're going to take a phone if Monica asks Abby to give her her phone and Abby says, "No." We put that in the policy. Monica would go back to her desk, call us, email us, say, "Hey, Abby refused me to give me her phone." We bring Abby down. We skip all the way to out of school suspension. It's not We're serious. We're taking this seriously.
So just thanks to everyone that organizes that participates in that as well. >> Thank you Mr. Bemy 6.06 Chief Human Resource Officer. >> Thank you Mr. President and board members. Just echoing what Mark shared about the teacher of the year, play of the year. That process is incredibly enjoyable and it's uh just so fulfilling to hear people when we interview them just sort of gush over how much they love working in our schoolorporations. It's pretty amazing what our folks do each and every day. I want to go ahead and thank um Renee Rich in my department, all of our directors, all of our principles um and all of our teachers and support staff uh for starting to engage for the first time ever in electronic evaluations. We're working with some new software and frontline um where we're we're starting to have some employees. the evaluation system is not changing, but the medium that we're going to start to roll out to interact with uh that we're trying for the first time ever.
At that time, when we're doing that work, may there be an opportunity to do some additional environmental testing? Yes. Um but that wouldn't be a full characterization, but there may be some additional selective testing done. I'm assuming there are floor drains in the building, correct? Yeah. John, do you know that or I I have not seen any floor drains. There currently. Um I haven't been in every square foot of the building, but I I have not seen floor drains. I guess that's why we wanted to do a site walk there, because if you can't find floor drains, maybe we can, and they seem to be logical places to test underneath the building. That's how usually these PCE and TCE were disposed of in the old days was in floor drains. Particularly in an area there where there's no down back to dump it. It's been contact I mean it's been discussed.
Kathleen. >> Yeah, I guess that's where my frustration is is that I keep on thinking about we are an entity. We are a public education um you know local education agency and I mean you can drill down on the data data dashboard on the state's website to the student to the demographic to the population to the how many people uh how many students you know uh graduated didn't graduate I mean there's so much data that's there and it just feels so wasteful to hire someone to compile that publicly available data and repackage it in a way that's super expensive and is going to tell us exactly what we already know. Not that we're saying it, it's like it's publicly available on the dashboard of the uh Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. uh like I said down to the student um suspensions all of that data is there right down to the groups of students disabilities uh English learners I mean everything is there so it just feels so wasteful to suggest and it just brings me back to feeling as though this is being requested by a certain group of people who just don't really believe in whatever whatever whatever whatever I don't want to rehash my feelings on that Um, and that's all I wanted to add.
And I appreciate, you know, your thoughts on how we could support ensuring that that takes place. With this specific bullet, I changed the wording to be work with building leadership to support the coordination of the Smart Start grant and related state meetings. And I took out the intent to Marlene's point, we get 3 years in with the same person and they've got this like the back of their hand. Then they could go. Right? But this Yeah, you're going by yourself. We'll see you later. Yeah, yeah, I And I think some of that >> You know, even the NAEYC accreditation. Sure. Yeah, and and It's not easy, you know. Diane's done the NAEYC accreditation before. It So, I I do know that. >> Yeah, and I I, you know, I guess Marlene and I could hit Powerball tomorrow and I'd love to Good luck telling you we'd still be here, but like Tim and I are [clears throat] in a NAEYC, too.
Who is that? Is that current physics students or next year's physics students? No, it will be the library. This is the location of where it will be on public display. Oh, I thought you were saying you sent links to people. Sorry. We we will to the parents. Parents of who? Current physics students or next year's physics students? Well, everyone in the district. Everyone in the district. Can you >> Letting them know Yeah. everybody Okay, okay, okay. We'll we'll get that from Carol. She has a a link that where she posts if it's a fourth [clears throat] grade book, if it's a sixth grade book. Okay. Yeah. Cuz anybody can chime in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes, some of our students are using the physics textbook published in 2012 and certainly they were Yeah, so we do want the input from from the entire district.
Mr. Forcarino. I need to change my vote for number 12.2. The motion was >> I. Yeah, I need to change my vote as well. All right, so we'll do another motion after that. Let's go through the roll call for this. That's That's it. Yes, sir. Okay, Mr. Folcarino. Um I I'm sorry. I'm I'm hearing a lot of things from this board. I'm not sure what we're voting on this time. Can you please clarify? >> now we're we're voting to allow Mrs. Petrie to reopen the vote and change her and vote as she needs to. Are we reopening the vote or just changing her votes? The president's votes, I'm sorry. We could just re- There's a couple of us who have to change our votes. I'm just trying to clarify the motion. That's all. Can I Can I uh reintroduce a motion just to reopen the voting for this particular resolution?
My wondering is it sounds like there was like a gap in communication and so uh Emily Wazalik is our um like director of communications and whatnot. And so she often helps us like draft our emails or like get all the information out. So, what we could do is we could um and I'm happy to do it, but we can shoot her an email and ask if there is kind of like some template work she could make to give a very broad because you're basically asking maybe we should have told you what I just said is what I'm gathering. Okay. So then um we can always ask her to include that in like the template in whatever way she thinks is most appropriate because I definitely am not I'm not the PR person here probably for a reason. But I can definitely send her that email.
Ultimately, it is up to the student's IEP team who determines the combination of services that best supports the student's needs. In District 62, we offer services that are delivered across a variety of learning environments. We prioritize inclusion through push-in and co-taught services, that is support in the general education environment. And when additional support is needed, students may receive resource or for pull-out services in a special education setting. Moving into next year, we will offer two specialized programs that are designed to support uh provide intensive, highly structured support for students whose needs cannot be fully met in the general education, resource, or instructional settings. One specialized program is called BEST, and that stands for behavioral and emotional supported teaching. The BEST program provides therapeutic and educational support in special education settings for students whose social, emotional, or behavioral needs significantly impact their school functioning. As for our other specialized program, we have a very important update on the next slide.
Uh professional development well received especially when it's teacher driven, differentiated, and department based. Uh just a reminder for uh the board that uh one So in a month with 4 weeks, right? One of those is dedicated to personalized professional learning. That's the teacher self-directed professional learning. So already a quarter of our professional development plan is staff directed. Then another rotation in that monthly rotation is a staff wide where teachers come through during their resource period in that 78 minute period about 40 minutes is where we're directing the PD and the other half of that is for staff to actualize that or to to use that time for that topic. So in a in a four week rotation about one and a half parts of that of that four are truly teacher to driven and like self actualized. But we do hear that like in the things that we are more delivering and putting together that more differentiated and department based.