Monroe Township Board of Education 10.15.25 Regular Meeting

001Good evening. It's Wednesday, October 15th. This is Monroe Township's uh board meeting. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. The United States of America for which it stands. Miss Allen. Yes. Miss Alvarez >> here. Mrs. Ziz >> here. >> Miss Bora >> here. >> Mr. Depay >> here. >> Dr. Peek >> here. >> Mr. Piro >> here. >> Miss Ratner >> here. >> Miss Chararma >> here. >> Mr. Tufuano >> here. Mr. Zikner, >> we have a quorum. In accordance with the provisions of the New Jersey Open Public Meetings Law, the Monterey Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published an electronic notice provided by having the t the date, time, and place thereof posted October 25th, 2024 and October 8th, 2025 at all schools on the district website, Home

002News Tribune, Cranberry Press, and filed with the clerk of municipality. M >> Thank you, Miss Allen. Miss Mr. Weiss would like to make an announcement. >> Thank you, Miss Mrs. Depay. Uh, good evening, board members. This evening, we're going to be going into executive session to discuss personnel and litigation matters related to Dr. Chanley. Um, as a result of the multiple conflicts that we have with regard u I'm sorry, conflicts between six board members and Dr. Chanley, it's necessary to invoke the doctrine of necessity to allow for that conversation to occur. So, what I'm going to do right now is read a resolution like I did at the last meeting uh to invoke the doctrine of necessity. Um so, if you'll just bear with me once I'm finished reading the motion, um I'd like to

003know if there's a a first and a second uh to approve it. So, here goes. Whereas, Dr. Sher Chanley serves in the capacity of superintendent for the 2025 2026 school year. And whereas the board must consider certain personnel and litigation related matters concerning Dr. Chanley's employment. And whereas upon review of the various conflicts of interest of the current board members, it has been determined that six of the board members have conflicts of interest pursuant to the New Jersey School Ethics Act. And whereas pursuant to policy 0163, when a quorum of the board has conflicted interests, the doctrine of necessity may be invoked in order to allow conflicted board members to participate in vote only when the board of education has fewer non-conlicted board members than are required pursuant to the statute to take action. And

004whereas when invoking the doctrine of necessity, the board shall state publicly that it is invoking the doctrine of necessity with the reasons for doing so in the specific nature of the conflicts of interest. And whereas the board policy further provides that it shall read the resolution invoking the doctrine of necessity at a regularly scheduled public meeting such as this one, post the notice of the resolution for 30 days, and provide the school ethics commission with a copy of the resolution. And whereas the school ethics act NJSA18A12-21 was enacted by the New Jersey state legislature to ensure and preserve public confidence in schoolboard members and school administrators and to provide specific ethical standards to guide their conduct. And whereas the school ethics commission has provided guidance regarding the invocation of the doctrine of necessity when a

005quorum of the board is not available because members of the board have conflicts of interest on a matter required discussed and voted on. Whereas the board intends to have discussions concerning Dr. Chanley, whereas members of the board have conflicts of in interest that would prevent their participation in and vote on matters related to Dr. Chanley are as follows. Carmen Alvarez, Gail Depay, Peter Piro, Usha Chararma, and Charles Zikner are involved in litigation with Dr. Chanley. Kate Ratner's husband, David, is a teacher employed by the board. Whereas, as a result of the foregoing, the board does not have a quorum to discuss, consider, and vote on matters related to the superintendent's employment and related litigation, and the board's council and the board have determined that it is necessary to invoke the doctrine of necessity. Now, therefore,

006be it resolved that the above paragraphs are hereby incorporated by reference, and be it further resolved that the doctrine of necessity is hereby invoked with respect to the board's deliberation of and any public votes related to Dr. Chanley's employment and litigation and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution having been read at a public meeting of the board on October 16th, 2025 be posted I'm sorry 15th uh be posted in accordance with the board's standard procedures for not less than 30 days and that the board secretary, Miss Allen, reflect the same in the minutes of the meeting and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be provided to the school ethics commission. Is there a first and a second? >> There a second. Mr. Zikner questions. Okay. >> Well,

007any questions or discussions about what Mr. Weiss just presented? >> Can I ask a question just for my understanding? So, from whatever I understand of the doctrine is usually invoked for voting, but we going to be doingussions. Is that okay to do? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. and we may actually do some voting with respect in particular to a bill >> related to the litigation. >> But there's a lot of other discussions based on the litigations or whatever the situation is currently. >> Yeah. And so the reason why we're invoking it, the umbrella that we're putting this under is related to Dr. Chanley's employment and litigation related to Dr. >> And it's okay to discuss as you know with the conflicted members because we've invoked the doctrine. >> Correct. And just to be clear

008so that there's no question for the public, when we go into closed session, the board will not be taking any action. And by action, I mean the board will not be taking any votes in executive session. If the board is going to vote on anything rel related to executive session and Dr. Chanley in particular, it will all be done out here after executive session. So, I just want the public and the board members to understand that we are not taking any formal action in the executive session room. Um, so I hope that answered your question. >> It does. >> Any other questions? >> Do I do roll? >> Roll call. Miss Allen? >> Yes. Miss Alvarez? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Sees? >> Yes. >> Excuse me. Miss Bora? >> Yes. >> Dr. Peek? >> Yes.

009>> Mr. Piro? >> Yes. >> Miss Ratner? >> I'm going to recuse. >> Miss Chararma? >> Yes. Mr. Tufano, >> no. >> Mr. Zikner, >> yes. >> Mr. Payne, >> yes. >> We Okay, motion passes. >> Close session resolution. Whereas the Senator Byron MB buyer open Public Meetings Act, NJSA 10 col4-6. The act provides that the Monunroe Township Board of Education may hold an executive session from which the public is excluded to discuss matters that are confidential or are one of the nine subject matters listed section 12B of the act. And whereas that the board hereby declares that its discussion of the following subject or subjects will be made public at a time when the public's interest is disclosure in disclosure is greater than any privacy or governmental interest being protected from disclosure. Now therefore

010be it resolved by the Monroe Township Board of Education that the board shall go into executive session to discuss the following items. Additional items may be determined and announced as needed. Number one, pending or anticipated litigation and matters covered by the attorney client privilege. Number two, matters involving employees in terms of their employment and contract. And number three, HIB investigation involving student or students. Be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosed to the public when reasons for discussing and acting upon it in close session no longer exist. Action may be taken on any of the items stated above. Is there any discussion or regarding that >> motion? Second. >> All those in favor? >> Opposed? Abstain. We'll be going into close session now until 7:15. Thank you. Okay, we're back. Welcome everyone that's

011here now. Um before we go into business, I'm going to What was the word you said? Because of a one of Huh? I'm going to be mindful of someone's time who's in the audience. Um, Miss Pat Suge, I'd like you to come up now and please give your report because I know she had was coming here at a time that she was trying to fit into her her evening. So, I'm going to have her speak. >> Thank you. Um, good evening everyone. My name is Patricia Swalj and I live at 586A Madison Drive in Clearbrook and I'm here today representing the Monroe Education Foundation and to give an update on um the efforts of the foundation to inspire lifelong learning. Some in the audience may not realize that the Monroe Education Foundation was actually formed

012in 1995. Is that am I too close to the mic? Um, we are a nonprofit 5013C. Unfortunately, because of COVID and illness, the Monroe Education Foundation was not functioning and we revived it in uh May of 2024. It was through the generosity of our community and local businesses that the foundation is able to provide funds for innovative curriculum, creative programs, and professional development, shaping brighter futures for the students of the Monroe Township School District. The all volunteer Monroe Education Foundation board has accomplished the following over the past year. The Education Foundation has funded SAT prep courses. In December of 2024, we handed out grants to eight teachers for their school projects. We hosted a fundraiser comedy night at the Hyatt in Princeton. Five scholarships for graduating seniors were provided for character. uh and a world-class

013m musician, the renowned Jerry Walden, who is Harry Kik Jr. saxoponist. He was hired to conduct a series of master classes for our middle and high school jazz bands. The Monroe Education Foundation put together business study students with local business owners. Some of these business owners were alumni of the Monroe Township High School. Um the students were able to receive some really good insight on business community. Monroe Education Foundation ran a book fair at the Barnes and Noble in Freehold and we had a day at Romeo's Restaurant in Jamesburg for which we received a percentage of their receipts. Representatives and volunteers of the Monroe Education Foundation board attended all of the back- to-school nights and we will be in attendance at the Monroe Township October Fest, letting the public know about our education foundation that

014we have been in Monroe since 1995 and the and our mission. This past October the 5th, the Monroe Education Foundation with the help of our volunteers held a tricky tray raffle at the high school. This event was very successful and attended by about 220 people and it will enable the Monroe Education Foundation to continue its mission providing innovative curriculum and programs for students and teachers. On behalf of the Monroe of the board of the Monroe Education Foundation, I would like to thank the board of education, district administration, including Dr. Adam Layman, Zach Moralda, and Jerry TG, school administrators, the Monroe Township Education Association, teachers, staff, and local businesses for their support in the efforts of the Monroe Education Foundation. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. I have to say I I attended on October

0155th and I had about eight people at my table. Unfortunately, I did not win a thing. So, I'll be going next year to see if I can recoup. Um, but the donation is well worth it. Thank you very much, >> Mr. Just for the tricky tray. Would it be possible to share because I know it was very successful. Um, oh, not like I mean it was a fantastic fundraiser. I just meant if we I don't know if you have the total amount. I know that it was a significant amount that was raised. So, I just thought it would be nice to share the amount raised at the event. >> Well, we've really been trying through a lot of little fundraisers to really keep our coffers up so we can continue with a lot of programming

016and grants that we're providing to the teachers. Um, we will be given the final um, uh, amount of money that we raised, but I have to say that the tricky tray raffle was the most amount of money. Um, it took us many, many months of putting it together. Um, but we did raise a significant amount of money. So, we are very pleased and happy about that. Um, we have a couple of other uh fundraisers that we hope will be just as lucrative so we can really continue our fellow communities around us. East Brunswick, South Brunswick, they all have education foundations. So, we're really trying to get the Monroe Education Foundation out there. And what we do, we're we provide um the programming for the schools, the the teachers uh that are is not covered by

017the board of education budget or and can't be really. >> Mr. Payne, may I ask? >> Yes, please. >> I want to start by thanking you and the entire team. Um it's almost like a rebirth in the last three years. the work that I have seen when my kids were little MEF was doing great work and then I know COVID and there was some leadership challenges but we really are benefiting from all your hard work. My question is um do besides the eight schools in Monroe does MEF support any other education initiatives in Monroe or is it just the Monroe Township School District that benefits from your funding? We really concentrate on the Monroe Township school schools. Um we also have that uh grant program every year where we take applications for different grants. We're

018assisted in that by some of the um Dr. Layman um looks those over and one of the teachers also helps us in those selections. But but our mission is really um focusing on uh Monroe. >> Thank you. And the reason I asked that is because I want the community members to know that when they support you, they are indirectly supporting the schools do more and more. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Qu. Okay. We're going to continue on with the agenda. Approval of the minutes. Public board of education meeting September 17th, 2025. >> Motion. Motion. >> Second. >> Roll call, please. Miss Allen, would you rather I did both at the same time? There's only two. No. Okay, go ahead. Just trying to help out. >> Okay. Um,

019Miss Alvarez, >> yes. >> Miss Aziz, >> yes. >> Dr. Peek, >> yes. >> Mr. Po, >> yes. Miss Ratner, >> yes. >> Miss Chararma, >> yes. >> Mr. Tufano, >> yes. >> Mr. Zikner, >> yes. >> Miss Deayne, >> yes. >> The motion passes. >> And also approval of the minutes of the closed session meeting September 17th, 2025. Miss Allen. >> Yes. Miss >> I'm sorry. >> Motion. Second. I'll >> second. Thank you. Any discussion on this that you received? Okay. >> Miss Alvarez, >> yes. >> Miss Aziz, >> yes. >> Miss Bora, >> yes. >> Dr. Peek, >> Mr. Piro, >> yes. >> Miss Ratner, >> uh, yes, but recused uh, due to conflicts on the portion where conflict exists. >> Miss Chararma, >> yes. >> Mr. Tufano, >> yes. >> Mr. Zikner,

020>> yes. >> Mr. Payne, >> yes. >> Motion passes. This evening, our two wonderful students are here with us tonight. So, we're going to uh give them our undivided attention while they read their reports. Hi, good evening everyone. We're going to be starting off with Brookside Elementary School. Brookside held their week of respect during the week of October 6. They celebrated the week of respect by having five enjoyable theme days to promote kindness and inclusivity. A fire safety and prevention assembly was held for grades four and five and occurred on October 8th and for the fire safety department for fifth third grade took place on October 9th. Parent teacher conferences will be held on October 15th and October 16th and the evening conferences will be on October 16th. Brookside will be having their fall pep

021rally on October 17th. The exciting schoolwide event pro supports an environment of togetherness and school spirit. Fourth and fifth grade students at Brookside will be taking the NJSLA field test on October 27th and 28th. Now moving on to Barkley Brook Elementary School. Barkley Brookke participated in the week of respect from October 6th to October 10th promoting kindness involvement and the celebration of diversity through the spirit days and daily activities. The school conducted its semiannual bus evacuation drills allowing students to participate emergency procedures and learn transportation department. On October 7th, Barkley Brook recognized fire safety month with a firefighter visit and assembly hosted by the Monro Township Fire Department District 3. Students viewed a fire safety video, discussed prevention strategies, and ended the event with a tour of the fire. >> And now we'll be moving

022on to Mil Lake Elementary School. Mil Lake began the fall season with kindergarten spirit pirate day in late September. A day full of imag imagination and teamwork as students engaged in fun learning experiences. On October 8th, the school hosted picture day with the support of the PTO volunteers ensuring every student looked their best. Students practiced safety procedures during bus evacuation drills, showing responsibility and calm cooperation. During spirit week, Mil Lake celebrated the week of respect by embracing uniqueness and diversity through themed days such as Hats Off to Kindness, Pajama Day, and Dress Like a Superhero Day. The PTO hosted the annual pumpkin patch on October 10th where students selected their own pumpkins and created special fall memories. Parent teacher conferences were held this week and on October 23rd, the school will host Milake Game Night,

023a family oriented evening of games and community connection. The month will close with an SEAL assembly focused on self-management, encouraging students to build social and emotional skills. Mil Lake will end October with its traditional Halloween parades themed fairy tales, dreams do come true, featuring two student parades through the school grounds. >> Now, moving on to Woodland School, the school counselor Jamie Nukem, >> Could you speak into the mic? >> I'm sorry. The school counselor Jamie Nukem uh coordinated respect spirit week promoting a positive inclusive and safe school environment. Administration security c uh staff and bus drivers led bus evacuation drills to ensure students participate proper safety procedures. Club code STEM after school and zero period programs begin successfully and are progressing well. The unified/pal team organized a fundraiser for National Blindness Awareness Month, encouraging students

024to donate $1 and wear blue. Proceeds benefited the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The Woodland Mill Lake PTO hosted a pumpkin patch event in the school courtyard, allowing students to enjoy choosing their own pumpkins. Fall parent teacher conferences took place on October 15th, which is today, and will take place tomorrow, the 16th, fostering connections between families and staff. In recognition of fire prevention month, Monro Township Fire District 1 will conduct a fire safety assembly on October 17th, teaching students about fire prevention and home safety. >> And now we'll move on to Applegarth Elementary School. Applegard celebrated the week of respect from October 6th to 10th, emphasizing respect through theme dressup days and classroom activities, including poster projects. Bus evacuation drills were held at Elk Tree Elementary School on October 9th, reinforcing safe practices and preparedness. On

025October 10th, students attended an engaging water cycle assembly presented by the Grand Foons. Extracurricular activist, and band began their sessions this month. Parent teacher conferences were conducted from October 15th, which is today, through the 17th, including evening conferences on October 16th. The principal's book club begins on October 23rd, featuring a discussion of Mrs. Krispy and the Rats of Nymph. The PTA will host an annual trunk or treat event on Friday, October 24th, offering families a fun and safe Halloween experience. From October 27th to the 30th, the school will conduct NJSLA field testing for both fourth and fifth grades. Oak tree celebrated the week of respect from October 6th to October 10th with theme days such as everyone counts day where students wore sports jerseys and respect rocks where they dressed as rock stars. Parent teacher

026conferences take place today and will continue to take place tomorrow as well. The school is holding its first Falcon way prep rally on October 17th bringing students and staff together to celebrate teamwork and school spirit. October also recognized as fire safety month during which the local fire department visited to conduct educational presentations. First Grid is hosting its annual firsties fall festival combining fun and learning. The PTA organized the annual trunk or treat event on October 24th, transforming the parking lot into a festive Halloween celebration. And the month concluded with Halloween parties and classroom parties on October 31st, Halloween And now we'll be moving on to our middle school. On September 17th, 16 students participated in a field trip as part of the high school history happened here program led by eighth grade social studies teacher

027Christine Visaki. Students conducted independent research on Reno Township's local history connecting it to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The trip included an advanced screening of Ken Burns's documentary, The American Revolution, and a visit to Newark Museum of Arts related exhibits. The sixth grade Halloween dance is scheduled for October 24th, providing an opportunity for students to socialize. The school announced its September students of the month. Ryan Welman of six sixth grade, Julia Cullen of 7th grade, and Ellia Elelliana of 8th grade. These students will be recognized at a breakfast in December. Through the efforts of physical education teacher Misty Drake, Monro Township Middle School hosted a Mama Mayor breast cancer fundraiser sale from October 6th to October 10th. The school is also recognized by the American Heart Association for leading the nation in the

028American Heart Challenge, also also coordinated by Miss Drake. >> Now moving on to the Monro Township High School. Underclassmen of Monro Township High School had NJSLA field testing on September 27th and September 29th in the high school. On October 14th was the class of 2026's senior sunrise. Despite the rainy weather, they still continued in the high school gym and students enjoyed. Thank you very much for your updated and detailed reports that you present every week. We really appreciate it. Next, we have committee reports. Anybody want to go first? Miss Gaz, Miss Bora, I have two committees. I'm going to start with the finance committee. Uh the committee met on October 8th. Uh we reviewed the bill list for August which at the time of the committee meeting was $5,24,000. An addendum was expected. Today we're

029looking at an addendum of over $11 million. Um the committee then reviewed the attorney fees for the month of July which was a total of $11,000 171. Um and the Oprah fees in this bill amounted to 44% of the attorney invoice totaling to 4,970. Uh Miss Allan reverted on the committees asked last month to ask a few vendors in the Oprah management space for a proposal. She shared that three companies contacted just FOYA um of the three companies contacted just FOYA and next request rewarded with a demo and price code for what would be needed by our school district. She detailed all the features of both tools. Um and I would request uh comm community members to see the meeting to see all hear the features in detail but the key differentiators were cost with

030just foyer coming out cheaper and uh the fact that next request was unable to pull requests from Oprah machine. Just foyer would have um one public portal for the community members to submit their requests and would also pull in requests from Oprah machine. uh they would configure a custom setup for us and give live training dedicated customer success managers through the term of our contract and we would have a cloud-based system with unlimited users and it would help automate intake redaction task assignments reminders invoice racking and much more with all the human o oversightes at all points with over 15,000 spent in the last two months on OPRA or attorney fees the committee strongly feels that a cost of 825 $50 annually. We would see long-term process and financial benefits. It should be duly noted

031that no system can help us avoid attorney intervention when needed, but it would help us significantly reduce the dependence and improve our OPRA fulfillment timelines. Committee recommends that we try this tool for this school year and it is on the agenda for approval tonight. Um, I'm not going to speak to the board goals because we have a separate discussion. Yes, Miss Ratner. >> Yes, please. Um, so I did not get a chance to review the meetings like I normally do. Um, so I definitely will do that to learn more about the features, but I know you kind of highlighted that it's not a substitute for an attorney looking them over. >> Have we heard from other districts that have utilized this software? >> So, Cher Just FOYA is used. One of the first people to

032recommend this was the Cherry Hill board president >> and they did let us know that while it has really streamlined their process, they still do need to go to the attorney and we were told by Mr. Rice, by Dr. Layman, also by Miss Allen that we're not looking to avoid using the attorney completely, but we are looking to reduce our dependence. So these are tools that are being used by more and more districts and there is general level of redaction and they also learn from the previous OPRA request. So >> it's AI based so they do learn from previous requests. So >> an oversight is definitely less time consuming than actually having to do everything. So okay even from our human resource perspective right the time that our opra secretary is putting into this >>

033there are still human errors there is still the timeline of completion I think everything seen it's it's definitely worth trying for >> and then just my other question and I don't want to get too specific because it could potentially touch personnel but like we do have that designated person who handles you know at first it was like that was the sole purpose of that position and then it was expanded upon. But by starting this for the year is, you know, assuming like the goal of this is to sort of reduce that person's workload regarding OPER requests, is that going to be potentially a cost savings or will other responsibilities sort of be added to to make up for that? If I can speak to my experience watching this process because the Oprah secretary was also

034handling registrations. There were times of the years when the registration work was so much that we were our dependence on attorney was increasing and right there will be the cost savings because there will be time but once we start to use it and we see how much time saving there is I am sure that's a future conversation on reassignment of task or uh the human oversight will be needed definitely for the first at least six months and That would be the role of um the current Oprah secretary is what my understanding is. Yes. >> Um yes. Years ago um Oprah was 100% um uh handled by the former business administrator who submitted uh who handled them and then gave them to the attorney for review. It was all handled like that. And then an OPAR

035secretary was hired and this opra secretary reported to Dr. Shanley. Um and now we're getting this new software. Um, and I was wondering in in most other districts, I believe the business administrator handles, you know, the the OPRA requests and uh 100%. So, do you know if other districts that use this software also have an OPAR secretary? >> I don't, but that would be a future conversation once we get on the software. >> It could be a future conversation. I think we've gone in phases. >> Yeah. >> And we're getting to a new we might get to a new normal. Yes, >> but at this point I don't know what Cherry Hill is using in terms of an Oprah secretary. I'm not sure. >> I do think Justin and I think Mr. Weiss might have

036spoken on it last month. Our district tends to have a significantly higher number of OPER requests. Like if you look on Oprah machine, I think like this is municipalities, all agencies of the state. We're like number seven or eight in the number of OPER requests throughout the state on that website. And then we have ones that are not done through the website. Um, so I obviously we always want to try to save as much as we can. Um, but I think that might be a part of it. I believe that Mr. White spoke on it last month. Am I imagining? >> Uh, no, I definitely indicated that um, you know, of all the boards that I handle, your board has probably the highest um number of OPER requests. And on the NJSBA forum that we

037were having the discussion, there were board members that seem to indicate the same that well you're Monroe, so Monroe operates on a whole other level. Um I I feel like as a committee and as a recommendation that we're making, this is the path forward for us. We have been seeing significantly high bills and we cannot continue that that down that path. We have to find a way find a solution and the cost right now is I it is nominal enough for us to take that for the year take it on for a year and then redetermine next year around this time no next year in June >> hopefully Miss Allen can help us revisit this and see the value that this tool brought in and how or whether or not we should be continuing in

038July >> and can I interject I know Miss Allen you can correct me but it was also stated that they would come in and train our personnel who are doing it right now and that was part of the cost and if you listen to the meeting Miss Allen gave a very detailed report of this company and what they can do for us and it was really tremendous help for this district and we thought I know the >> I think it was the uh pre finance meeting that we talked about it the most >> pre-inance and then again in finance >> finance that it was really helpful for us right now with situations that we have here. So, >> and you would notice on the agenda that um I mentioned 8,250. That's the yearly fees. >>

039But, um we are it's prorated because we're going to start now. So, it's going to be 5,000 something up until June. >> Okay. Anybody else have any questions concerning this? Anybody else want to make their committee report? Um you're going to finish your other one. >> Can I finish curriculum? Yes. Um the curriculum committee met on October 7th. We received an update uh from Dr. Sarski and Mernoski and Mr. Barandica on a new initiative for mental health for our athletes. As a part of this initiative, they will give access to an app called athlete talk to all winter winter athletes which will enable the school counselors to become proactive in their approach to tackling mental health and substance abuse within athletes that may be going through difficult times due to injuries or simply demanding nature

040of the high school sports. This initiative and app roll out is a is grandfunded and comes at a small trial cost. The committee wholeheartedly back this initiative and would that would only strengthen the MTHs athletics. Next, Mr. Moralda presented an update on the summer programming for high school. This summer, we offered honors geometry and geometry enrichment classes to students that wish to advance a level in maths without doubling up during the school year. This was the first time we offered this 120 hour 5week class. Two staff members ran these 5 hours a day classes filled to capacity and the outcome was excellent with a majority of students being able to advance. We charge much less than our neighboring towns for this pilot 1750 per student and had better outcome than students taking these enrichment classes

041outside. It was a resounding success. The revenue from this enrichment program fed the operations of the re remediation program which went virtual this year. As a result of this change, we had 70 stu six students take remediation as compared to the just seven last year. We offered remediation services for 17 courses, which was a huge improvement over previous years. The content was moderated real time by our staff and the students could come in person for help once a week for the virtual course material. The committee was then given an excellent report on the progress of NTSS, multi-ter system of support services and the progress we have made as a district in this in the past three years. After a detailed explanation on the collaborative datadriven approach on intervention and the various grandfunded tools being used

042daily, the committee heard the success stories across the district, highlighting the heightened data culture amongst educators, allowing for fact-based dialogues with supervisors and parents. The board has seen firsthand in the recent years the financial impact of these methods in timely intervention resulting in reduced classification and reduction in our out of district placements. The MTSD staff has been one of the most successful districts in its adoption of the statemandated title funded program. Three curriculum documents were presented for discussion. Biology, grade 1 math, and honors finance, which could soon become a dual credit course. the comm I'm going to leave out the um board goals, but I do want to take a second to and steal Dr. Layman's thunder because you've got a lot of thunder today. Um I want to share that um the project lead

043the way initiative which we have really well integrated into our curriculum um does their yearly awards and this year two of our staff members Mrs. Wita Garish Shanker was recognized as one of the 15 national outstanding teachers in engineering. I think this is her second year winning it. And and I am even more thrilled to share that Mr. Morala is one of the nine outstanding administrators in the country for the PLTW program. So this puts Monroe on the map big time. Congratulations to the entire staff involved in the PLTW project and to your team, Miss Dr. Layman. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Poor. Anybody have any qu Oh, Mr. Ratner, >> opposite sides, at least three. Um, I just had a quick question regarding the enrichment um from the summer. Um, because I was

044I'm thrilled that it was a success. Do you know were the classes full for like a capacity for enrollment um or was there was there a waiting list or anything like that? >> They were at they were at capacity and everyone who wanted to take the course was able to take the course. >> Okay. Um, and then I know that you guys sort of talked about expansion for next summer. Was this summer only open to Monroe students? Um, or was it open to other people? I guess because we were at capacity, but there everyone was able to. So, I wasn't sure if we were able to. >> This specific program was Monroe specific. >> Okay. >> Uh, as we look into the future, that is certainly something we can open our eyes to as we

045grow the program just like we did with the elementary enrichment. >> All right. Thanks. >> Any other questions? Anyone else have a report? Miss Ratnerf. Okay, I'm going to do the uh legislative advocacy advocacy committee first in community engagement. Um the committee met on October 7th. Board of Education members present were myself, Mrs. Ziz, Mrs. Deain, Dr. Pac, and Miss Chararma. The district administrators in attendance were Dr. Layman and Mr. Morala. Our first agenda item was an update from the September New Jersey School Board legislative committee meeting. Uh I won't go too much into the details here. However, um we were able to share the updates from that meeting on the agenda on the public side. So if people are interested in seeing those updates, they can see all of them from that meeting in

046September. Uh there was definitely a lot on there. After this, we discussed the creation of an annual district advocacy calendar. Um, this was something that I felt would help us sort of guide our our district as a board and you know, working in collaboration with the administration as well as our community in our efforts in advocating uh for our schools. Um, so we reviewed that and what I would like to do if Mr. Payne, you're okay with it, is send that out to the rest of the board just to see if there's any other recommendations and then we can make that sort of an unofficial official document. Um after this we reviewed our district website. There was a discussion regarding um the calendar feature. Suggestions made included adding the marking period dates to the calendar

047so that parents are aware. Um it was suggested that this would go on the specific school websites because we have different marking period dates based on our our grade levels. Um as well as making sure that the calendar is streamlined just so parents know where to go for each of the calendars. Um because just as a a quick, you know, five-second tutorial, if you want the high school calendar right now on your phone because you can download that and then you're getting the updates directly, but you have to go to the high school website and then click on add calendar. And then if you want the middle school calendar, you have to go to the middle school website and click on add the middle school calendar. So that's for each of the different schools. There

048is also on the district homepage a district calendar um which is sort of housing more of the districtwide events whether it's schools being open or closed or major events that are sort of you know multiple grade and school levels. Um then we had a brief update regarding topics from our county schoolboard association meeting. Um, and then we ended the meeting uh with a discussion regarding how to achieve the New Jersey school board uh school board certification. Um, as well as a discussion on what our board goal should be. Thank you. Any questions for Miss Ratner? Mr. Piro, you had your hand up. I'm going to come back to you. >> Uh, is she done? >> I have another Canadian. >> Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. You can finish. >> All right. This one's short. Um,

049citizens advisory committee also met on October 7th. Um, board members were myself, Miss Alvarez, Mrs. Ziz, and Miss Deine. Um, and the district administrators were Dr. Leman and Mr. Moralda. We also had many of our community members that are on our citizens advisory committee present for the meeting, which was really nice. Um, our focus for the most of the meeting was an extensive discussion regarding our advocacy letter. Um and so we discussed sort of what the intent of the letter should be. Uh whether we wanted to focus heavily on the funding formula still um focus more more on just full day kindergarten or if we wanted to include any other legislative matters such as you know the um November spending question or things like that. Um there were you know a lot of suggestions made

050like one was that we need to incorporate specific costs for full day kindergarten because that's something that our legislators have asked for before. um while understanding you know from the administrative side that it's challenging to give those costs because we don't really know what we need until we get to those points. Um, so that was something that was discussed and um, we test our committee members just with sending back a response um, with any suggestions that they have and our goal is to have this finalized at our next meeting. So that way we are able to start sending them out while the legislators are in lame duck section before we get to January and it's a whole new group of people. >> Thank you, Miss Ratner. Any questions for Miss Ratner? Yes, >> just just

051a comment, Mr. Paint. Um to the point about not stopping the conversation for funding, I feel like we can never stop that conversation. Um fully kindergarten with the mandate will become a reality sooner than later. It's coming latest, you know, in the next three years. It's going to be here. Our funding we've been fighting for 15 years and I don't know how long we'll fight. Dodger schools are in the process of losing it. We never got it. So I think we we cannot stop that conversation. And so that should definitely be part of our letter. Thank you. >> Defin definitely. Mr. Pra, >> uh the building grounds and transportation committee met on October 8, 2025. President was myself, uh president the pain, Miss Bora, Miss Ratner, Dr. Layman, Mr. Tague, Miss Martyr, and Mr. Moralda.

052Uh first we'll talk about the Apple Ry grant projects, the root projects, electric services, HVAC uh update. Uh the committee reviewed a change order for the additional structural reinforcement of the 1983 gym roof. Administration noted that the funds are available for this work in the project allowance and the the committee agreed to endorse processing the change order u at this meeting. The good news was reported to us that we finally received delivery of the electronic switch we gear we've been waiting for, which puts this project back on track for a potential reoccupancy of staff and students. Um we're hoping following the um teachers convention in November. Uh we're hoping by then we may be able to get the uh this work completed and get the kids back into school. Um the progress will be uh

053tracked closely and any updates will be provided in the coming weeks and the HVAC work is progressing on the project. They were able to do a little more than expected because the the way it works is once we reoccupy the school any contracts there will come there will come second shift after the students leave the school. Um since we had a delay in the switch gear the HVAC guys have been there every day working to try to get this completed. Um the ESOP project update. Uh commit committee members reviewed a weekly update report provided by Honeywell which highlights completion status of the LED lighting upgrade projects as well as conf confirming delivery of the boilers for the middle school and Barkley Brook school replacement. Uh construction of the boiler replaced at the middle school is

054underway and the work at Barkley Brook will follow in the coming weeks. solar construction under EIP is still going through the regulatory approval from the state and with the uh power company. We also uh Mr. Tay gave us our annual comprehensive maintenance plan which is required by the state with uh projects that uh we have to show the state that we need for each each school that may need an upgrade to something at that school. Uh full day kindergarten design study. So, the committee reviewed a proposal from architect on record DI Group Architecture uh administration confirmed that the 500,000 funding provided by the state for full day kindergarten program can be used for us to help finance this work for this study. Uh we will recommend this to the full board tonight to proceed with

055this approval. Uh transportation, uh Miss Martyr advised us that she's still going over some bus routes. Some people still have inquiried about their bus routes, but most of them she's already gotten back to the people. We do have we had a a little bit of an influx with drivers that were out. So, unfortunately, she said we had to go back to doing some double runs, but we're hoping that doesn't last long. And the uh bus app. So, they are also working on the bus app to get the pilot program done. So, hopefully that'll start in the near future. They're going to pick out what school or buses to use and then once we get the study done, we'll take it from there. They'll give us a report on how it works. >> Thank you, Mr.

056Piro. Any questions for Mr. Po? >> Mr. Layman might want to add some stuff. >> Dr. Layman, you want >> Can I add a little bit more? So, the switch gears arrived and the power is now totally cut at Applegarth. That was the that is the lynch pin. That is the the key piece that we've been waiting on. So, um, we recently sent out a message to the Applegarth parents that, uh, previously you could call the Applegarth number and it would forward you to the Apple App Applegarth office in the middle school. Now that the power is out and it's literally offline except for we run uh, they're running a generator to maintain the fire systems. Um all calls go directly to the middle school and uh we're in the process of trying to basically

057in a cloud-based because our phone is voice over internet uh have those calls back to being rerouted to from Applegarth to uh the middle school. Right now um the calls if you call Applegarth it goes to central office and we've been transferring people to the middle school. So that's the only kind of change uh that we didn't actually expect. Uh it was just a technology piece but we're going to try and work through that so we can get things back in line. But we did send notification on that. And other than that, like we said, powering off and the electrical piece is the uh the key piece we've been waiting on. Everything else uh as M Mr. Jake says, his punch list items, whether it's, you know, fixing uh fine-tuning the drainage or that structural

058uh piece that was addressed. Those are things that uh would not have prevented us from occupying the building. Uh those are things that as normal things that we go through and we do the roof or whatever um we have to address and go through. Um so the change order that uh we we just are we're going to approve the funding for now is is uh punch list type items. So we are on track for uh students last day at the middle school October 31st. Then we are gone for uh the November teachers convention break. Come back. The goal is to have everyone back at Abgarth and we're going to monitor it day by day. You know, weather systems that just blew in the past couple days, if that distracts or pulls JCPL off of their

059priority, you know, their priorities of restoring power somewhere else, you know, we can't control those variables, but uh the contractors been on site and working, you know, diligently to meet the deadline for us to get back in uh right after break. >> Sounds good, Miss Ratner. >> Uh yep, thank you for that update. Um, I just wanted to ask about the the trailers at the middle school because I know we had to sort of approve the use of them. Um, and I think we're paying like a monthly amount for um, is that the plans to play through October and then sort or like are they allowing us to sort of wait and see what happens or do we have to like in the event that we need to go further pay for an extra month?

060We'll we'll pay for November and then we'll go from there because we if if we don't pay for November, then they can come get the trails on November 1st and we will be transitioning materials and staff and clearing those trailers out. So, okay. >> Um November will be, you know, something that we'll pay for. >> Okay. And then the only things in those trailers now are the students from Applegarth, right? So then we're able to remove them as we had initially planned. Yep. All right. >> Yep. That that's the only use for them now. And then you know anything that's not connected to the walls belongs to the district. So desks and chairs and things like that would be either moved back to Albagarth or reallocated in different locations. >> Any other questions? Before we

061go to the next section, I just want to thank all the committee chairs and all the committees that met last week took a little time out of their meetings to come and help produce the board goals that are here tonight. and uh we had a lot of uh input and um I think um right now we're going to discuss the board and district goals. Dr. Layman, >> so we're putting up the board goals on the back and the board has uh copies of them. So in terms of goal number one uh the feedback from the committees uh and Mr. campaign to support the development and implementation of the district's portrait of a graduate initiative, ensuring that it reflects a shared community vision for student success and guides district policies, programs, and partnerships toward cultiv cultivating

062a well-rounded future ready learners. I think that reflects the board's role in supporting a district initiative, right? Whether it's financially or approving programs or things like that. Do you want to stop at each goal and see if anybody has any questions or you want to finish the whole thing? Dr. Layman, >> I think we go question by question. >> Okay. Does anyone have any input on this first goal? >> I just want to share some insight to community members as to why and why we are putting so much stress on this. It came through a workshop um a year ago and I that session was attended by myself, Mrs. Kirby and Dr. Chanley and the presenter the whole idea and apparently it's a very popular idea but the whole idea is um when they start

063in preschool and when they end in high school they're all working towards that same portrait. So the district unites in that image of what is a Monroe student like and it just gave such a sense of belonging, community, goals, everything for them to move up because several times elementaryaries and middle schools and high schools would have different mascots and we've gone through that in Monroe as well that we've had different mascots. We now have the Falcon everywhere. But I think it was about moving beyond the falcon to actually defining what is that Monrose and that's what is this goal. What is that portrait of a thriving Monroe student and then we align as and Dr. Layman and Dr. Mr. Moralda put it beautifully once we have that vision then we align everything that we do

064all of our work to that vision and and we teach the student to that portrait and not to a test. So we we're not try striving to accomplish a you know score in a test but we are striving to accomplish that portrait for every student and it's holistic. It's that whole student concept. So that was the idea here. Thank you. >> Anyone else? Yes, Miss Rander. >> Um I just wanted to ask um if I from last year I think we had also put how we would accomplish the goals on that. I think this one sort of kind of speaks for itself, but I didn't know if that's something we wanted to include or um you know just sort of internalize on our own how for each of the goals we are going to accomplish

065them. >> You want to speak to Dr. Leman about the community input of aspect of it. >> Yeah, I think that was a general question about all the goals that you're speaking towards as opposed to I mean there's definitely a process and that we would go through specifically to portrait of a graduate. Um, but in terms of the how-to relative to goals, I mean, that that's something that you guys could engage in within the committees, you know, and in collaboration with us because we will be bringing things related to a lot of these. Um, and some of these are things that you bring to the table as well. So, I think it's, you know, that's a collaborative piece within the committee level. So, goal number two, uh, strengthen advocacy efforts through active collaboration with parent

066organizations, civic groups, and local stakeholders to enhance outreach and mobilize community support for legislation that benefits the district and its students. >> Anybody have any questions on that discussion? Good. We'll move on. >> Uh, goal number three, uh, this is related to the policy audit that we received over the summer. review and update district policies as needed following the results of the Monro Township School District policy wellness check. Um, and as we found so far, a lot of it is aligning the two different companies with the different views, but we certainly have policies that we can go back uh minimally once we get through the the kind of cross-checking uh that we we should revisit. Some of them are from you know 15 years ago that they probably don't have a significant update otherwise we

067would have gone through them already and our policy company policy attorneys kind of send those updates to us regularly but um it's worth another touch worth another look uh and I think this is a goal for that committee. >> So I did have a question on this and maybe it's also to the policy chair. So we our agenda is pretty much driven by what's coming to us most of the times except when we have conversations and we bring this policy out. this goal seems to because of the wellness check back seems to have really increased the scope of that work. How and committee times are so limited. So are you going to have the administration start to go through it and then leave things up to the committee or what's how are we this is

068just trying to say this is a really big goal, right? >> So uh the administration Oh, I'm sorry. >> Go for it. You go for it. >> Okay. has created a schedule month by month of which policies we're going to be reviewing and going over and Dr. Layman and Rashima, Missy have been working very hard to cross-check the uh wellness check. So, we do have a schedule and then if we get any Strauss estimate updates along the way, those will be added to the agenda as needed. >> Thank you. That's great. >> So, we're kind of taking them in chunks. So this first month we cross-checked policies that were identified as missing from school boards but we found with the exception of one uh that is from 1992 that we have just from 1992 they're

069just a cross you know we have them through strauss they're just embedded in other policies whereas school boards has it as a standalone or something else called something else. Uh the next piece we're going to take a look at is regulations. uh and then we'll begin looking at some of the older policies uh for update and the older policy piece is going to take us a significant amount of time that that may trickle into another year especially not knowing what some of our policy updates from stress s may or alerts are going to come through sometimes that is an entire meeting in itself >> and there's no harm in you know continuing this goal in the in the future years >> okay anybody have any questions okay Dr. And then goal number four, uh, support

070the fiscal planning and capital improvements necessary to implement and sustain a high-quality full day kindergarten program across the Monro Township School District. >> And that's the fiscal capital support for full day kindergarten. >> Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone have any questions, comments about the board goals? I think they're good, right to the point. And um I'd like to thank you again for all your commentary and additions to our board goals. Dr. Layman, are you going to do that's a during your report? Okay. Um next is our public forum on agenda items only. If you'd like to speak on anything that's on our agenda, please come up and state your name and your address. And you have four minutes to speak. Anyone? >> Good evening. Bob Valentine, 68 Union Valley Road. Uh, just a couple quick

071comments. I have to go back and watch the finance lawyer initiative sound like a really good initiative. Um, I don't know if you can do this. I know is a very sensitive area, but one of the things I would be interested to see at some point if you can do it is just even even just the dollar the total dollars that the district has had to spend both on external resources and internal resources on these open public records requests. You know, I would like to see like going back three years. I think you've talked about it quite a bit. You've cited as a burden both financially and and burden on your staff. Um, I think the community be well served to understand if they could see actual dollars and understand what the real impact of

072this is. I think it would be very it might be potentially very enlightening and really help people understand why this is such a concern of the board. Um, second comment is this appropriate to talk about your board goals here or you want me to do that later? I have one. >> I could do that right now, sir. >> Okay. I just like to suggest one more goal for your consideration but or however you want to address it. I would like to see you to take a hard look at workforce and talent management. Um being at these meets for the last four to six months, I'm very concerned about how leadership at both the schools and here in the district is being evaluated. Uh specifically are all the constituencies these people are serving. Is their feedback

073getting into this process is an inclusive process and fully reflecting the full range of all the people they're serving and is it being done in a way that you know is really appropriate and capturing everything. You know, I don't obviously I don't know anything near what you all know, but just as from little I do know coming these meetings. It just I have a lot of questions about what's going on over the last four to six months. And I think talent management and talent evaluation is something that really needs to be taken a look at. Thank you. >> Thank you for your comments. Anyone else? >> Seeing none, we'll continue on with our board agenda. >> So that's my report. Yes. Yep. Dr. Layman, that's you. >> So, the majority of my report, the vast

074majority is just going to be our annual and I'll provide a summary of our various student data uh touch points. Everything from a little bit of HIV, some AP assessments as well as our NJSLA uh data. So, this is a requirement of us to share annually. So, a lot of the stuff you're going to see is just a lot of numbers and charts. Um it's also going to be embedded in our school report card which gets released uh later actually in next calendar years when they release the school report cards. Um but you'll have the same you'll have access to all this as well and we'll upload this presentation. The majority of this I will highlight some uh key talking points. Um but the theme of this builds on our curriculum committee discussion on MTSS

075uh which is multi-ter system of supports. The multi-ter system of supports is the individual individualized uh support and engagement of our students in the classroom. Uh individualized instruction, individualized interventions, individualized enrichment. Um that's the heart and soul of this. So um where we look at numbers and we see I would classify 99% of the data we're looking at as annual fluctuations based on this year's third grade versus last year's third grade. this year's seventh grade versus last year's seventh grade. Um, we each know every student body comes with different strengths, whether it's athletics, academics, social interests, um, you know, we go through things as a community. Um, so those are all variables that play into this. And any fluctuations we see and and it's positive and negative, um, I attribute to just the natural overwhelming

076fluctuations. The data we look at today um is from last spring. We are close to six months away from it and going back to MTSS. We've done a minimum of two of our district uh they're not benchmark but they're progress monitoring assessments. So we we look at you know who are these students in these uh percentages. We can put names to the percentages and we already have and we're two touch points, two assessments deep into supporting them or challenging them, you know, pushing them on an enrichment side, helping strengthen their weaknesses. We are six months into uh addressing the needs from this data and again both positive and negative. We see swings towards advanced proficient, we see swings towards proficient, partially proficient. Um and again any of those we we've already and we are in

077the process of touching those students in terms of their supporting their academics. So um to kick off the slideshow I'm going to try and control it from here. Let's see if it works. All right. Negative. All right. So you guys can flip the slides for me. We're going to go to the first uh HIV slide. So um this is a summary of our HIV uh cases last year. So we had 16 founded, 16 unfounded. Um we report uh generally who not generally but exactly who reports them. So we had seven staff members uh report uh the cases. We had 12 parents and the balance would be uh anonymous reporting and or student reported. Could be self-reported, could be a colleague or a friend. Um on the side here in the chart we have the breakdown

078of where the investigations occurred and those are both for the founded and unfounded. And as you can see and as you most likely expect um and annually we have the most investigations typically at the high school. Um and if we go to the next slide we talk about distinguishing characteristics. Um, we've noticed that a lot of I won't say the majority, but many of our HIV investigations are centered around social media related uh triggers, whether it's happening outside of school on social media or it's something that was uh seen brought to us by another student or parent. So, there is a connection. Um, in terms of the number of investigations of our distinguishing characteristics, many of our investigations have multiple disting distinguishing characteristics embedded in there. It could be uh gender and uh a disability

079in one investigation. So, these numbers aren't going to add up to your total investigations. Uh, it's just a combination of all these findings. Um, we see appearance, which is a very broad and general uh category as having the most uh investigations associated with it. Again, that's not a surprise. Um, race, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation are our other two uh most common or highest uh investigations. So, >> yep. Uh I because I think this is the last slide for HIV. So um I just wanted to ask uh two questions. The first is do we have the data from like year by year knowing that like our enrollment changes as well just how many we had in prior years is that >> so our HIV cases are all on our school report card >> so you

080know it's it's posted it's public data so any of our uh founded cases are on the uh school report card. >> Okay. And then >> so it's a historical record going back probably 15 years of it whenever HIV kicked in. >> Okay. Um my other question was just regarding if people want to report HIVs. I know it's on the website. >> Um from my recollection I think with the anti-bullying law like it's supposed to be right on that that homepage. Um I don't know if perhaps it got moved with our transition to a new website. Um I was able to find it but I also think that we just have to go in there to update it because then once I I found it through like the links um it still has >> it's embedded

081under our HIV page. It's also can be found uh through through this Yep. district information. >> Okay. >> And then we uh we can take a report >> anyway. Call an administrator, call a teacher, come into the building. Um we immediately take the report. We engage whoever's reporting into, you know, coming up with a summary or a statement of what their concerns are or what happened and then we take it from there. >> Right. I just the out the information I think is outdated from when because it has you listed as the >> it's something we're in the process of updating. Yep. >> Right. I know it was the massive transition to the new website. So, >> Yep. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I have a question. The is there data for the HIP suspensions

082and expulsions? So that so that is there because what we do is we uh we report out on what kind of potential outcomes come out of HIVs and even the unfunded ones are usually typically the code of conduct piece. So um we say those are examples of what happens. Um our suspensions and things are reported basically through our board agendas and things. Yep. Our our next section is student assessment data. So, this is where I'm going to refer to a massive pile of uh charts and percentages. Again, um I'm going to make some general comments about what this data represents and and generally on how to read it. So, if you look across a row, you're looking at last year's third grade versus this year's third grade. Two years ago's third grade versus last year's

083versus this year's. If you want to look at the same students, you would go down at a diagonal. So you would look at uh last year's third grade, this year's fourth grade. So when you when you go across, you're talking about different students taking the same a similar test, not necessarily the same test, but a similar test. When you go diagonally, you're looking at the same students taking different tests, right? So as you can imagine, there's conversations about, you know, you might may take an algebra test this year and a geometry test next year, yet we compare two different subjects and your performance on that. or last year's students versus this year's students. So, um what we look for here are a couple things. We look for consistent performance in general and we also look

084for any abnormally any abnormalities any significant differences um whether it's uh embedded in uh a grade or across a a specific uh cohort of students moving through. Uh, one year I pointed out we had a bubble of students that was performing extremely well in language arts and we could follow them sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Um, and it was something that we kind of tracked through. It was not we didn't change anything curricularly. We just saw them move through year after year and perform very very high on the NJSLA. When we see something and we and again there's nothing that is a glaring red flag for us in our uh look at the data right now. What we would do is we would say who are these students? What kind of questions are they struggling

085on? And we would look at our curriculum and say, is the document is the instruction sequenced in the right way? Are we hitting the topic that they may be struggling with too late in the school year or too early in the school year? And and how does that impact, you know, where they're how they're scoring on the assessment? So, you know, if if we look down here, generally what you see is if it's down a little bit in say level five, it's up a little bit in level four. And again, that's last year students versus this year's students. And it just demonstrates that you have students that are on the border between proficient and advanced proficient or partially proficient and proficient. So, we typically see a little wiggle year by year. Um, and we see

086that in the positive and we see that in the opposite direction. Um, so these are language arts results and this is a three-year snapshot 2023 through 2025. The next slide is a similar slide that shows a three-year snapshot and it is uh for mathematics notable and this is something I speak to each year. The middle school is when our math kind of diverts and we have multiple uh classes that are offered. So we have everything from algebra 1 geometry as well as math grade 8. So when we look at and if you want to look at a total student body you'd have to look at grade 8 and then algebra 1 middle school geometry middle school. Those three tests combined represent your middle school students. When you start to disagregate the students that's when you

087see um they're basically sorted by their uh content that they're taking. We see that more traditionally in the high school as they start to pick their classes and they funnel through the the math sequences. The next slide, we report out on how many students test and you can see this reflects uh what we call a stabilization of our enrollment. Right? We're looking at over the past few years, we see a decline. And what that is is our in elementary enrollment has stabilized and as they move through, they're getting into the middle school and eventually we're within about a year or two of those uh smaller graduating classes moving into the high school. So for this year, we're down 100. This is tests given. So this isn't exactly enrollment, but you can this mirrors enrollment. So,

088we're down 119 uh students in terms of taking their ELA assessment and we're down 124 students in terms of taking math assessments. >> Question here, is there a state mandate on what percentage of our students should be taking and where do we fall on that? So that is that's why they collect student how many students test uh and they they take tests relative to enrollment. Uh and 95% is what they shoot for in terms of and then they they give us a rating and that's on our school report card. It's not reported out on this year's data. They still they haven't calculated any achievement or growth uh data. That'll all come out with our school report card. Um >> excuse me Dr. Layman. I just want to know could parents opt out their children from

089taking No, they can't. Nope. >> Okay. >> Nope. Uh, and even back in the day when people were opting out, right, >> it was it was actually a test refusal is what it was. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Dr. Leman, I just um looking at the the percentages. I I just I wanted to and I'm sure there's more of this as we go, but just, you know, commend our our staff and our administration. Just looking at like the exceeding percentages like on uh language arts, it looks like the growth from the percentages that we have in third grade to again like there's little exceptions here and there, but the growth of the students that are exceeding percentages when we get to the higher grades, >> it seems to gradually increase yearbyear as they move

090throughout the school system, which you know is definitely a testament to the work that I think, you know, our teachers and our administration are doing for students. Oh, >> and I'm going to highlight that right as I get towards the end of this in terms of our areas of focus right now. Um, and just a little preview, the MTSS piece as we grew through that in the past two or three years, the origins of that focuses on our tier 2 and tier three. Those would be our pull-in, push out supports with reading specialists and basic skills. That's really what people think of when they think of multi-ter system of support. Um our focus this year is on including supporting that program the tier two and tier three but is uh tier one instruction and that's

09185% of the class. That's everyone else that's not tier one and tier two. So that's every other student in the classroom. So we are focusing on instruction in the classroom for everyone else. Tier two and tier three is sitting there as well. But that's where our focus is. Um and then we also have and I'll just do that slide right now. The other uh focus we have now is with the tier two and tier three processes and decision trees that we have in place. Um we now have the ability to focus on some of our advanced proficient learners that we're looking for growth in. What it's very easy to do is when a student is advanced profic advanced proficient or even proficient is to say they're good to go. They're all set. They get it.

092But what we are tr because we have the datadriven culture which we talked about in NTSS, we are very closely looking at those students and making sure they're growing just like a student on tier is in a tier two or tier three intervention. So we can provide interventions just like we do in tier two and tier three for those learners as well. Um because we want to make sure everyone is growing relative to themsel and relative to peers that perform similarly to them. So, it's very easy to overlook a high achieving student because they're high achieving and they're good to go and here you can work on this assignment while I help everyone else over here. Our attention is both on our learners that need support and now we can turn our attention to really

093push and uh support those students as well. And they and they all fit under that MTSS. That's 85% 15% and then uh 5%. >> So just go ahead. >> I was going to say really quick um when we're looking at these percentages this is the achievement and not is it or is achievement and growth? >> No, this is achievement. Okay. They have not done anything conferences today and I was concerned literally about sort of what you're saying with the growth component and so that's sort of what I feel like you're >> we monitor growth. We monitor growth multiple times a year and we also do it in shorter intervals on our tier two and tier three students in MTSS. >> The state will look at growth annually and they'll do that um >> usually it's

094in the springtime. Okay. Takes them that long to look at growth from this previous spring's test. Right? So that's why we have these other processes in place because by the time they tell us that information, it's grossly outdated. Right? So, we need things in place to be able to address the students that if they're going to say they're making uh growth that's less than their peers, we're already been working with them for six to eight months. So, >> okay, I just want to echo Miss Ratner's thought and extend that to Matt's as well um and tie it to our conversation in the curriculum committee where the results are evident. The same group of students that were not meeting expectation, that percentage of students not meeting expectation over the next few grades has gone down both

095in language arts and in mathematics overwhelmingly grade through 8 uh third through 8th and I know it then in mathematics it becomes complicated in the later stages with all the different levels of mathematics. So I can't see it so quickly on the data here, but it seems to be a pattern of where our percentage is reducing in students not meeting expectations and our percentage is going up in students meeting the expectations level four and five. So it it's tying up beautifully. Thank you. >> I apologize. I I meant I saw it when I looked at ELA, but it is on both. So kudos to both math and and >> No, I appreciate that. >> Yep. And you are 100% accurate in in the sense of it is uh an intense data focused culture that has

096developed over the past couple years. And our teachers have done a wonderful job uh embracing the tools they have, learning how to really use the data. And the hardest part is taking the information and knowing what to do with it, knowing what tool to pull out, what curricular resource to to grab when a student is performing X or Y, right? And uh that's the learning curve that we've been going through and we continue to go through. Um so in terms of the next series of slides, um this is our district data relative to the state. And what you would see and what you would expect from Monroe Township is we uh highly outperform the state uh in just about every category. and that you would expect that from the the performance data we've seen before

097and historically uh as well as what we expect in the future. So that next series of slides is is just that >> and so I want to add here again that our percentages are low for the lower levels as compared to the state as it should be and our percentages are higher than the state average for levels of meeting and exceeding expectations. >> Dr. Leman, for the ninth grade, do we ever look at the eighth grade results from Jamesburg knowing that they're not within like our jurisdiction, but seeing the growth that's happening from the eighth grade to 9th grade tests? >> So, we when uh the Jamesburg students transition to us, we get all of their performance data um and we use that to just like we have use a Monroe students data to drive

098instruction. >> Yep. And one thing we're working on is um I'll bring to uh Dr. Volani is uh joint agreement to share uh the linkit data. So we can if both boards take action and linkit has a you know a form that we would both approve uh then we can merge our data and instead of exchanging spreadsheets it would naturally when your students transition over to Monroe and they become our students then uh everything is naturally in our system together. So, I think it's a it's a nice piece that we'll get we'll get moving and flowing. It's an important piece over the summer. Um, the next series of slides is a breakdown by grade and it subcategorizes it by school. And again, what we see here is what we've seen for many, many years in

099terms of uh, you know, Brookside, Milt Lake, Brookside, Woodland uh, having very similar data. And then you have oak tree and apple that have a a different demographic of student and they have a different uh performance uh data and that's again something we've seen consistently. Uh back when they had peer scoop peer schools identified Brookside and Woodland were always a peer school and Apple was never considered a peer. Uh and that just has to do with the criteria in which they develop peer schools and it's uh everything from demographic data to SCES data. the state would would not even include one of our own district schools as another pure school, which is interesting. Um because they used to do peer school comparisons. They used to pick 30 schools like your schools so you could see

100uh see the performance data. >> When they're categorized as title one schools, does that have anything to do with this or is that purely based on socioeconomic data? That's an SCES piece. But what we do is um any of the title one schools, they have supports in place uh academic supports to uh leverage and jumpstart any of our uh title students. So um you see those results and again that's embedded in in our MTSS piece. Um we use those title funds to support some of that. So a lot of the the interventions we do are grant funded. Um, but you'll see we have a breakdown for ELA for grades three, four, and five, as well as math for grades three, four, and five. And there's really uh, you know, a lot of positive growth in

101in areas and what I would consider standard, you know, fluctuations in other areas. And then the last group of slides is uh, our subgroups. And there's a race subgroup for both ELA and math. There's a gender subgroup for ELA and math as well as uh they call they call it just the subgroup slides and they kind of disagregate them by elementary, middle, and high school. >> Could you elaborate on the subgroups? Uh what what makes the subgroups? So the subgroups, so the first one by race, uh they break out the in this case they take grades three through five in a subgroup. They categorize them together by race and then they go across and uh report out the percentages in terms of everything from not meeting all the way up to uh advanced exceeding or

102advanced proficient and they do that down into middle school and high school. In terms of gender, they break it out by male and female and then all students, which the all students number is something we've already seen in passing. uh in some of the previous slides. And then the final slide breaks it out into ELLL, free and reduced lunch, 504 students, special ed, and gened. So breaks them out into our demographics, our subgroups. And as we go through, we uh we look for growth and we look for achievement embedded in our subgroups. And that's something again that's reported out on our school report card. Um, the state has growth goals and things uh related to student achievement, but the subgroups again, we go back to MTSS. We talk about our English language learners. We've heard

103all of the supports that we put in place with Dr. Roselle and our ELLL three-year plan. When we talk about students, whether it's a 504, uh, free and reduced lunch, we're talking about title programs. So we have embedded in our MTSS process any students on this uh continuum that fall through the decision tree and are triggered some sort of tier two or tier three intervention which could be a reading specialist push in pull out basic skills push in pull out frequency could be two three five times a week depending on um their individualized goals um they're already being addressed and there's a process in place if a student that didn't get caught in our uh our district screener. There's a process for those students to filter up through a teacher recommendation piece and we go

104over that in our curriculum committee meeting. >> I know there's already a lot of data but there is no state and district comparison for these subgroups because the subgroups could vary correct >> for districts. Okay. And then this last slide here is something I've been talking about as a thread throughout, but MTSS is really the backbone in the heart. And again, if you haven't seen the curriculum committee meeting, it was probably a 45 minute to an hour discussion on that uh on that program as it evolves. And we were going to continue to revisit that as it grows. Um it's a living breathing project that we go through. As our students needs vary, our MTSS MTSS system will vary. Um it's at all grade levels. We have it all the way up through uh into

105the high school, specifically in grades nine and 10 this year. Um some of the interventions, you've heard me talk about them. It's in-class basic skills, pull out reading specialist. Uh we have the math assistance and language assistance programs, that's what they call them at the at the uh middle school. We have pushin uh support at the high school level. We use title funds to support a lot of this. Um our annual title fund aotment. Um the the summer math boost is an example of some of the title funds that uh we use at the elementary level. And one of the tools we use and we talked about this besides link it as our data management house. Um map growth map is the tool we use uh as a frequent check-in with our students. It's a

106progress monitoring tool that we have. It's also our universal screener that is the first screener for us to identify a student that may need support. If I can just ask and I I don't want to elaborate on this too much right now, but I did, you know, hear that there was some pretty substance substantial cuts to um special education staff personnel on like a a federal level. Is that anything that's going to affect our funding and our intervention strategies? I know we can't predict the future, but anything for this year? So the majority of the vast majority of what we engage with here is that from a state level um including our state funding we get minimal federal funding. So in terms of support and staffing a lot of the things we see from the

107federal government is an oversight piece. Uh our civil date civil rights data reporting is done by surveyed by the federal government. So we report out on a bunch of information. Um it seems to be much more frequently than it used to be uh coming out of COVID. We used to do it every couple years and then it was every year for a couple years. So, um I don't know what the impacts of that would be. I can't project with it. I haven't seen the specific roles or uh that have been impacted, but that's something that uh we will certainly monitor guidance from the state because my guess is they would they would get some direct impact potentially in terms of who they're reporting to or what services or or support they have. Um but we

108you know something we definitely keep an eye on. you know, we we keep an eye on everything at the state level and we do monitor what happens at the federal level as well. Um, our next uh data piece here is the called the D the dynamic learning map. The DM is what it's most commonly called. Um, that is a an assessment. It's an alternate assessment. So, students that don't take NJSLA because they have an indivi individualized education plan. Um, some students go through and take a engage in a DM process. Um, so this year our reporting is that we have 45 students take it in the ELA, 45 students take it in math and 18 students in science. And we know science is uh a different grade level. So it's five, eight, and 11. So

109that's why there's less students that take it because it's relative to the student enrollment. Um, so that's our reporting for our DM. The next slide is uh the access testing. So this is ELLL uh ESL related. So annually our students in our ESL program take this assessment. Um the ESL program is a continuum. So when students enter they're assessed and they are uh at a certain level and as they progress through um the goal is to eventually uh test out or move through and have minimal supports, ESL supports. So a 4.5 is the exit score. We have 188 students that took the access. 30 students earned the score and 30 students were exited from uh the ESL program. Now, when we exit a student for the first time with uh the ESL program, we monitor

110them for an additional two years. Um if we see any regression, we pull them back in and uh ramp up the supports again. But what happens is some students progress faster through this, some students progress slower through it. It's totally a function of um are they fluent in English to begin with when they join us? are they totally fluent and they just uh need some basic supports to kind of get the hang of things. It's like I said, it's a continuum and it's something we work through uh and they take this annually. There's four parts to it. Speaking, listening, reading, and writing. And then the last section here is our uh AP tests. Um so annually we have students and we provide them the opportunity to take advanced placement tests in a variety of courses.

111Now we offer AP tests for the tests for the courses that we offer AP classes in. Um so we have everything in business and fine and performing arts. We have a caps an AP capstone process. We have science tests or language tests. Um so notable for this year is we administered 1,94 exams. That's an increase from last year of 192 exams. Uh we have 86% of our students taking the exams that earn a qualifying score. That's a three, four, or a five. That's up 2% from the previous year. 63% of the students earned a score of a four or a five, uh, which is an increase of 2%. And then the next few slides, uh, something to highlight, some of the courses have a very small number of students that take the assessments. So we

112have any class that has less than 10 students and or any uh level that has less than 10 students in the in their square uh as a less than 10 because we don't want students to be individually identified in terms of where they fell on the continuum here. But again you can see there's a wide range. Um historically some of the AP tests are harder than others. We there are some courses that you know students going in know they these courses have a you know difficult reputation. Um but notably, you know, our micro our macroeconomics class, uh we had 92% of our students with a qualifying uh qualifying score of three, four, and five. Um 2D art and design, 100% of students uh had a qualifying exam. Again, less than 10 students there, but uh

113that's extremely notable. English lit and comp, 100% of our students qualified. 100% got four or five. um AP research and AP seminar. Those are extremely rigorous courses. Uh it's a sequence. When you take the research, you then commit to taking the seminar course. Um actually the seminar, then you take the research. But the uh 96% research, 100% from the seminar had qualifying exam uh qualifying scores, which is tremendous. Um our world language numbers are small, so they're less than tens, but uh we we get very good performance in terms of qualifying exams. uh calculus BC 55 students took it 100% had a qualifying so three four or five that's uh a testament to you know the rigor rigorous flow of our uh math programs similarly calculus AB 105 students took it 98% got a qualifying

114exam 95% got a four or five um so calc BC are our most rigorous uh calculus courses are essentially collegiate level uh calculus courses And then we go through even uh US history uh 98% of our students had a qualifying uh score. That's uh tremendous tremendous. >> I just want to ask a quick question. The world language component um on the the list of the subjects it has Italian and Spanish. Um but then the um with this page, thank you. Um has French and Italian. >> Yep. French language, Italian language. >> Okay. Okay. Yep. >> So, is this I guess cuz French wasn't on that initial one and I I didn't see Spanish as one of the windows. I just wasn't sure if that's also a >> Yeah, I'll double check. I'll double check the

115the AP piece. Yep. >> Okay. And then we do also offer AP French as well because Okay. Yeah, this is I mean it's fantastic. >> We did a we did a the teachers and the students did a tremendous job um you know through our AP course sequence. Um, again, chemistry, 100% students had a qualifying score. 60% got a four or a five. Again, it's less than 10 students, but uh, still impressive. And, uh, the last couple slides here highlight again typical fluctuations. And, the same applies here as we have students, new students come through, right? We see a fluctuation of interest. Why some courses may have more tests taken, less tests taken. It's all relative to our student body. Um but we saw a small increase from 86 to 88% in terms of uh students

116with qualifying score of a three or higher. Um one student one thing I didn't report is we had an additional 130 students taking exams. So not only did we have 192 extra exams we had a we were able to engage an extra 130 students. So um we're expanding access and even with expanded access more students taking it we're continuing to perform at a high level. And then the last slide is something that um we don't have the information for this year yet, but we put as a placeholder. Um the past few years we've been recognized on the AP honor role and we are awaiting uh and what what AP reported out is expect the information in January 2026. Last year we were a silver school which means um our college culture, college credit and college

117optimization u all either met silver or gold or uh platinum criteria or higher and this is a reflection and this information specific to the graduating class. So this is um the graduating class data. >> Any questions? >> Mrs. E's >> question. So a qual a qualifying score is three four or five >> correct. Does that mean that the student get gets um college credit for three or they only get college credit for four or five? >> So college credit is defined by the university. It's not defined by college board or even us. Um so the college board defines a qualifying score as a three, four and five. Um I would say the safe side of a college favoring giving credit is a four or a five which is oftentimes why that's we disagregate that separately.

118Um, some colleges might view a three, a four or a five. It depends on the course of the university, but a four or five uh is more likely, >> but we use the term qualifying because that's what college board uh disagregates the data with. >> I have another question. So, some of these um uh you know percentage of fours and five are quite high. Yep. >> Some of them are pretty low like you know Italian language and culture is 17% you know >> um and then the computer science is 29 35%. Um, and some of them are like, you know, over over 80%. So, when when something's a little lower, uh, does the district take another look at the curriculum and think about ways to change it to increase the, you know, the pass rate

119or h how is the curriculum for these AP courses evaluated? >> Yep. So, we take a look at uh curriculum documents on a cycle, but if there's, like I said, even out of the NGSLA data for like the elementary, middle, or high traditional high school uh courses. If we see something out of whack, we will definitely take a look at um you know, is there a sequencing issue? Is there a timing issue? So, the content's all there, but maybe we need to teach it earlier or later, right? Maybe we teach it a little later. Um so, that's something it's a constant uh kind of reflection we do. Um and then the other piece is and you know we can certainly bring this as a topic to curriculum but there are some courses uh like the

120computer science course is an extreme notoriously extremely difficult uh test. So um we actually celebrate fours and fives even they're a lower percentage than a different exam. Um >> the fact that we're having students perform at that level is you know to be celebrated. So I think it depends on the course, depends on the the rigor of the exam, but anything college board related, our curriculum document is aligned with uh the college board uh guidelines andor sequences and suggested topics that they provide uh for basically uniformity throughout the the country. If a if a student's taking AP compsai, these are the expectations from college board. We write our curriculum to align with those expectations and so does everybody else. So that way everybody can take the same exam. >> Yeah. One thing that occurred to

121me is that um you know some of these AP courses have been offered here for decades. Like when I attended Monro High School in the '9s, you know, we had AP calculus, but we didn't have all these other AP classes. They were just not offered. And so I thought maybe part of the discrepancy is that if it's if it's a class that's been offered for decades, then you know the district probably has a lot more experience teaching that AP class. whereas if it's an AP class that you know is a newer class, maybe they just don't have uh you know that that level of experience with it. That that was one uh thought, but uh I get Yeah, I think you're right. I think the AP uh the computer science class is is known to

122be difficult. >> Yeah, and that one always comes to the top of my head because we talk about it as a traditionally extremely challenging exam. Um and not that any of these are easy, not to even qualify that, but there are notoriously more difficult exams than others. And uh we celebrate even the small percentages specifically in those classes. Sure. So >> Dr. Leman, if I can just um follow up on what Mrs. Z had said and I think you sort of touched on it, but is there any flexibility on the curriculum itself for the AP classes or is it more just like when topics are being handled? >> We we write the document >> for Monroe. We use uh their guidance as guidance, right? right? They have suggested resources. They have a a sequence, a

123timeline. In some of the courses, they're more specific than others. Um they may give very specific test text to engage with. Um sometimes they give specific languages that we have to you know computer science languages that we should be engaging the students in. Um that provides uniformity when they do assessments and things like that. So >> okay, >> there is flexibility for us to write it in Monroe with Monroe's needs and Monroe's resources. Um, but there is a framework that provides consistency. So no matter where you are, you're taking the same test and you should be getting the same background so you have the same opportunity as everybody else in the country. >> And then I just had um I guess one other question sort of about the the numbers because I think honestly as

124much as the increase in exams going in increasing is exciting to me, it's the fact that we have an extra 130 students even trying to take AP exams. Um, do we have a breakdown of I guess what grade levels the exams are taking place? Like is it I'm sure it's more seniors than freshmen, but like are we sort of monitoring like when they're freshman, sophomore, sen juniors, like how many exams? Because I'm sure like of the extra the 2,00 exams, you know, a lot of those students might only be taking one exam and some might be taking four or five. So >> students take exams in the year they take the course, >> right? or in some cases uh there's a self-study and they would take it in the year that they would take the

125course even though they may have self-studied for it. >> So the in terms of course sequencing if it's an 11th and 12th grade class uh and we do and we they enroll they're actually uh in the process of signing up for AP exams for the spring right now. Um so we do have the breakdown of how many juniors seniors and that's actually reported out because that's used for that uh the last slide of the the honor role right because they look at just the senior class uh to develop that slide. >> Any other questions for Dr. Layman? >> I do. Yes. So the last slide if I remember correctly the the college culture that we got a silver rating for that did tie into the number of seniors taking the classes. And >> I'll read

126you the exact criteria. It says uh percentage of students in the graduating class who took an AP exam at any point in high school. >> So if that percentage shifted this year, we could be looking at a >> Right. Because the other two were gold. >> Okay. Yep. The other two gold. Um one last question that I had. um in the background, are we observing um when there's one AP class being taught by multiple teachers and one class has a better outcome than the others, are we then doing knowledge transfer um between the teachers to allow for parity because teach the kids don't get to choose what teacher they will get for that class. that if the outcome of one cla one teacher is consistently better than the others, >> then there is this. >>

127Yeah. And that's something the the district supervisors uh maintain a very close eye on in terms of uh who's teaching and then if there's multiple teachers, you know, ensuring they get comparable experiences so that they have an equal opportunity in terms of the outcome in the spring. >> Yep. >> Thank you, Dr. Layman. I would ask that if you want to get more information about our curriculum system, listen to the curriculum meeting this past last week as it was an hour and a half filled with information from all the directors and and everybody. I think the four ladies over here, Miss Roulla was over here, we had some gentlemen over there. It was like an A team, A+ team, I thought. um they were fantastic. So please take a little time out. You'll be more

128informed by listening to our curriculum uh meeting from last week. I was well informed. So thank you. >> Mr. Payne, can I make an ask to the MTSS presentation that we saw during the curriculum meeting is that going to be or could that be put up on our uh website in the board information area? because um there's a lot there's a lot that you're talking about that a visual helps a lot with uh when the community is looking at and I also want to add the genesis um has if if you were looking at your child's performance the map score all the way from elementary grades to high school you can see your own child's progress so it kind of ties into the whole MTSS and all the different testing and the linkit data that

129they're using you can see your own child's progress all the way up from element elementary to high school if your child has reached that age. So it's that data exists for parents to look anytime they want to. Thank you. >> Dr. Will this also be on the website the presentation? Okay. >> Yep. 100%. This presentation will be up on the website for public view. And again, this all this information uh gets shared in our school report card as well with a bunch of extra information as well. >> Thank you again, Dr. Layman. >> Yep. So, I'm going to go through with my uh >> now your acting superintendent report. >> Yeah. Well, I'm going to go through with my recommendations here. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Yep. So, personnel 10 member, it's recommended that the

130board approve the attached personnel items A through W. >> Motion second. >> There second. >> Second. >> Is there any discussion? >> I have a question. I don't know if this is the appropriate time. It's about the enrollment. >> Right. Is that okay to ask now? >> It's under superintendent report. >> Yep. >> Okay. I noticed we have the enrollment numbers for our in district schools in September, but we don't have for our out of district schools in September. Do you know if we'll be getting that next month? Yep. >> Okay, that's it. >> I just had a quick question. The um there's a I see that there's a girls wrestling um chaperon on here, which I think is fantastic that we have girls that are wrestling. I just wanted to know is that chaperone

131just like with them because I I did see it was a a a male staff member. So are there not >> it's just a supervisory piece that we're required to have uh we have we do something similar with gymnastics. Okay. >> Um we don't have a team but we have a couple students that participate. So we're required to send a staff member um to be on site when the students are participating in the uh either gymnastics and this year we're going to do it for uh girls wrestling. Okay. Yep. >> Thank you. U Mr. P, I just had a comment too on the enrollment. Um >> just wanted to highlight to the public that this year the enrollment numbers are 341 students less than last year uh in September. We've been talking in vague numbers

132that we are expecting lower enrollment this year. We are now looking at that number and it's u uniform districtwide. All schools have seen a reduction in enrollment. Okay. Anything else for discussion? Can we take a roll call? >> Yes. Miss Alvarez? >> Yes. >> Mrs. Ziz? >> Yes. >> Miss Bora? >> Yes. >> Dr. Peek? >> Yes. >> Mr. Piro? >> Yes. >> Miss Ratner? >> Yes. >> Miss Chararma? >> Yes. >> Mr. Tufano? >> Yes. >> Mr. Zikner? >> Yes. >> Mr. Deayne? >> Yes. Motion passes. >> The personnel nine member vote. >> It's recommended. It's recommended that the board approve personnel items X through BA. >> Motion second. >> Any discussion? >> Just a comment. >> I am I just wanted to give my regards to Mrs. McCug the first retirement on the

133uh resignation retirement on the agenda. She holds a special uh place in my heart and um she will be missed dearly. Any other discussion on this? Roll call. Miss Allen. >> Miss Alvarez. >> Yes. >> Miss Aziz. >> Yes. >> Miss Bora. >> Yes. Sorry. >> Mr. Piro. >> Yes. >> Um, Miss Ratner. >> Um, yes. I just need to recuse on AJ for Miss Francis and AW number one for Miss Guerrero. >> Okay. Miss Chararma. >> Yes. >> Mr. Tufano. >> Yes. >> Mr. Zikner. >> Yes. >> Miss. Depay. Yes. Motion passes. >> Board action 10 member vote. It's recommended that the board approve the attached board items A through N. >> A through N. >> Motion. >> Is there a second? Mr. Tavano, did you second? >> Is there any discussion? >> You

134made the motion. >> I have a question. >> Will you I think Miss Bor Oh, well is going AC. Yeah. >> No, you had made the motion. I Mr. Tfano did too. So, one of you, you know, doesn't matter. >> I second it. >> Okay. He seconded it. >> All right. I had a question um for Dr. Layman. Um item N the self assessment on the um HIV report. Yep. Is this consistent with previous years? Are we seeing any? >> It's actually uh increase in a few of the schools. Um they go through a self- assessment rubric. They do it at the end of the school year, then they revisit it in September, early October. Um and we traditionally approve it this month. And uh Dr. Sansky led the HIV specialist through the process and

135uh everything is very consistent even a little higher in terms of uh a higher self assessment right a better score. >> Okay. And does this then go to the DOE and get their approval or >> Yes. It's basically we send it to them um and then basically in the springtime we get it back the same thing we sent back that says you're good to go. >> That's what we see on our district as a record where it's come back. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Um, Miss Al. I'm sorry. I thought I said >> Miss Albert, >> yes. >> Miss Aiz, >> yes. >> Miss Bora, >> yes. >> Dr. Peek, >> yes. >> Mr. Piro, >> yes. >> Miss Ratner, >> um, yes. I just need to recuse on the PD for Mr. Snider. >> Miss

136Chararma, >> yes. >> Mr. Tufano, >> yes. >> Mr. Zikner, >> yes. >> Mr. Depay, >> yes. >> Motion passes. So under board action nine-member vote, it's recommended that the board approve the attached board action items O through U. O through U. >> Motion >> second. Is there any discussion? >> Roll call. Miss Allen. >> Miss Alvarez. >> Yes. >> Miss Aziz. >> Yes. >> Miss Bora. >> Yes. >> Mr. Pero. >> Yes. >> Miss Ratner. >> Yes. Uh Ricky's on letter P for Mr. Ratner. And then just Ricky's on letter S. Uh, Miss Chararma, >> yes. >> Mr. Tufano, >> yes. >> Mr. Zikner, >> yes. >> Miss Deayne, yes. Motion passes. >> So, just real briefly, I attended the I was able to attend the uh Monro Township High School band home show

137this weekend, this past weekend. Outstanding job. Um, if we were scored, I'm thinking we would have won. But as the host school, you don't get scored. You don't get you don't get to participate in your own competition. So, congratulations to the other winners. Um, but our band definitely did an amazing job. We are traveling to South Brunswick this weekend, I believe, and we will be able to compete and hopefully come back with Oh, East Brunswick. Uh, you know, definitely one of the trophies. So, great job, >> Alan. >> Okay. Um, it is recommended that board action items A through K be approved by consent. Roll call on motion. 10 member vote. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> I just have um two. First, I just wanted to acknowledge our sponsor Monroe Orthodontics um for their

138partnership with us. And then I did just want to ask about letter J um which is um a donation of $50 from Donor's Choose. I think it's wonderful any donations we can get, but I know we've had that discussion several times. Are we allowing that now? And if so, can we make that, I guess, a discussion so that if other teachers would like to take advantage of this, they can do so. So, if you're asking me, the origin of this um is most likely on the unique side of things. So, um, if we're looking at, and this is a bigger discussion, but if we're looking at opening this up, it's Pandora's box, and we're going to we're going to be probably having hundreds of these approvals to, you know, go through this process. I think

139we've talked about potentially exploring that avenue. Um, but we definitely have more formal ways to donate and support the schools. And uh this is definitely from my perspective, it's convenient and it's easy, but it's right on the line for me in terms of uh us being able to monitor and really keep a a good track of what's coming into the district, what is uh everything from technology to e cash deposits and things like that. So, it's definitely a big discussion. Um you know, I would recommend approving this, >> right? Um, but I would not broadcast to say this is uh, you know, the wild west. >> No, no, that wasn't my intent. It was more like if we can set up perhaps in maybe for in finance that would be a good place to look

140um to see like if we would like to maybe explore expanding this but while still making sure we're not opening up like you said print's box just to sort of make sure like the avenues if someone else is able to take advantage of this like it's approval of donations or something like that just because it is a great way to fund the classrooms but I like I know we've had this discussion where we don't really know what potentially is being funded so >> and Mr. Dupin if I could add to that. So I also had that question. Um I want to >> preute that by saying that any donation is welcome. We do need the donation but I do want to it's this item says that this fund is going to be used for such

141essential classroom items at Oakree Ele elementary. So I I think we should like as per your advice, we approve this tonight, but we do want to bring this up in the next finance committee meeting because any essential supplies have to be part of our operating budget. We get donations. We can decide how there needs to be equity. So we can't have one side of the town parents choosing to support one school through donut shoes and then it's an essential supply. So that you know that it's just it's like you said opening up Pandora's box. So if we want to start something like this, we just have to be equitable. So maybe we find a way to look into this as a board and for future donations, we ask them to donate directly to the district,

142not use a tool. If we can till we've had that discussion through committees and you know passed a resolution as a board we should refrain from allowing uh use of any tool that is that has been up for conversations in the past like I I don't want to stop donations. I think we can encourage parents to directly. We've had people directly donate money. So just directly write a check to the school district, but um we definitely want to look at this procedurally before we do any further. Thank you. >> Yes. Okay. >> I have a quick question. >> Yes. >> Usually I don't have elementary things on the 10 member vote. So is this >> Oh, >> good question. >> It's okay. Do you want us to move it to like make a motion to

143move it or >> Yeah. She could just >> Okay. Um uh Miss Alvarez. >> Yes. To all abstain on all the checks for me and Wesler. Did I say that right? >> Oh yeah. >> Hold on. You had it here before. Okay, Miss Vessel and Worbble. >> Um, Miss Aziz. >> Yes to all except for one check uh on the bill list which is item B. Uh, the check number is 10908. I would like to recuse on that particular check and uh yes to everything else. Um 109. >> Um Miss Bora. >> Yes to all. >> Okay. Dr. Peek. >> Yes. Except abstain on J. >> Okay. Uh Mr. Piro. >> Yes. But I need to recuse on checks numbers 10448 and 10516. Um, Miss M Miss Rner. Um, yes to all. I need to

144recuse on the bill list for uh C and C 09945. They're not I think only one of them is on there. the other one on the other I'm sorry >> it's then there's the addendum um so I have uh C10 C10590 uh C10448 uh C10437 and then C10 137 >> okay before the 1 037 you said what >> um 10437. I believe it was for an administrator. I can check for if you want. >> So um I think I got that wrong. >> Okay, Miss Chararma. Uh yes to all but I'm going to abstain for check number 10448 and check number 10516. >> 10448 and 10516. >> Correct. Yes. >> Mr. Tufano. >> Yes to all. >> Mr. Zikner. Yes, >> Miss Deayne. >> Yes to all, but I'm going to abstain on check number

14510448 and 10516. And on your bill list where re um my member of my family, I think worked a half a day uh in this bill listing. Excuse me. Wherever it is located on here, she told me she did work in the district. So, I'm going to recuse on her. >> Okay. I don't want to. So for um methyl and worbble we had we had one abstension there. One One, two. So, we had five recusals, I believe. Just want to double check. No, >> we had five yeses and five nos. So, it did not pass or I'm sorry. So, it did not >> pass. >> Correct. For the for the masville 516 and one Okay. 10516. Three, four. Okay. So 10516. There were four abstensions. So that one passed the 10 590. That P. Yeah,

146that pass. One 590. Um 10448 past kind of Yeah, I think it may be better to make a chart because it's all over the place because there's three checks. >> But um I think if we just look at those three checks >> by the numbers >> the numbers. So 10448 one at a time. >> Yeah. You know what? Let's do that. 10448. >> Okay. >> So you want to roll call on each of >> Yes. Okay. So, Miss Alvarez. >> So, this is >> for this is for 10448 for David Rubin. >> Okay. Uh, yes. >> Yes. Okay. Miss Aziz, >> this is for David. >> Um, yes. Yes. Okay. Miss Bora. >> Yes. >> Okay. Dr. Peek. >> Yes. Um, Mr. Puro, >> I have to recuse. >> Miss Ratner, >> I need to

147recuse due to conflict. >> Miss Chararma, >> abstain. >> Um, uh, Mr. Tufano. >> Yes. Mr. Zikner, >> yes. >> And, uh, Ms. Deep Payne. >> Yes. So that passes 10448 passes. There were three abstensions and and recusions. That's good. So on um Miss Alvarez. >> Yeah. Oh, sorry. I abstain on both of those. >> 10516 and yeah, both >> and 10590. >> Okay. Um, Miss Aziz. >> Um, I on the bill list I I vote yes to all except for check 908. >> Okay. So, you're Yes. Okay. >> Ms. Bora. >> Yes. >> Dr. Peek. >> Yes. >> Mr. Piro, >> I have to recuse on that 10516. >> Just the 10516 >> because it's the same firm. Excuse me. >> It's the same firm. So she 10590 >> both of them. Okay. >>

148Oh, I see. It's the same attorney representing both of those. >> Okay. Miss Ratner, I must recuse due to conflict on both of those as well. >> Okay. Miss Chararma, >> I'd abstain one >> on both. Yes. >> Both of. Okay. >> Mr. Tufano. >> Yes. >> Mr. Zikner. >> Yes. Miss Dain. >> Yes. >> To both. Okay. Yes. One, two, three. So for five, 10516, we have four abstensions. So that passed. >> 1 2 3 4 5. And the same thing for 1059. Now it passed. There were only four recusals and abensions. >> So they all passed. >> Thank you. That was >> Thank you, Miss Alvarez. To keep track of >> that was a lot. Yes. >> Thank you. Okay. So, um, under, um, a nine member vote, it is recommended that board

149action items L through M be approved by consent. Roll call. >> Motion. >> Second. Is there any discussion? Roll call. >> Okay. Um, Miss Alvarez, >> yes. >> Miss Aziz, >> yes. >> Miss Bora, >> yes. >> Mr. Piro, >> yes. >> Miss Ratner, >> yes. >> Miss Chararma, >> yes. >> Mr. Tufano, >> yes. >> Mr. Zikner, >> yes. >> Mr. Depay, >> yes. This motion passes. >> Thank you, Miss Alvarez, for all that you did there. Uh, board president's report. I I too, Dr. Layman, attended the um band competition on uh Saturday night. I was babysitting. My grandchildren had off Monday in Howell for Columbus Day and my daughter was away. And I had a wonderful mother granddaughter evening when I took her and to the band festival. She's never been. And Mr.

150Schneider came up to her and talked to her. Miss Ratner came up and talked to her. People in the in the audience behind me that knew me. Actually, she knew somebody. Now she's five in the fifth grade. Her dad's friend go here in the eighth and ninth graders. And the lady sitting behind us heard it and she said, "Oh, my son played baseball with them." So my granddaughter had the most wonderful time. Dr. Layman, you're exactly right. Monroe uh band was phenomenal. I could sit there all night and listen to them and watch them perform on a on the field and during a game. I mean, they were exquisite. Uh East Brunswick was very good. I wasn't there for the smaller bands because we had to take all the grandchildren out to eat, but I

151was there for the bigger bands and each one of them was better than the next. But I Who won? East Brunswick, do you remember? >> Um, >> yeah, they were really good, too. >> Bridgewater maybe >> maybe Bridgewater. I can't. They were all very good. So, that was a wonderful grandmother granddaughter evening for me. And one more thing, Monday, October 20th is uh Diwali and I want to wish everyone who celebrates Diwali uh to have a wonderful celebration of your holiday. Okay. Now we'll go to the public forum. >> Other board business. I'm sorry. I missed that. I'm so excited about being with my granddaughter by herself. She has a little brother who's six years old and she doesn't get away from him that often. So yes, Miss Laura, did you want to say something?

152>> In the other board business. >> Okay. Other board business, please. >> I just remembered that we have a motion on the table from the previous board meeting. So here I am again putting it back up. Um, I would like to make a motion or I don't know how to say it again. If it was tabled, just bring it back up to reinstate Dr. Chanley immediately. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Is there any discussion? >> Roll call. Miss Allen? >> Yes. Miss Alvarez? >> No. >> Miss Aziz? >> No. >> Miss Bora? >> Yes. >> Dr. Peek? >> Yes. >> Mr. Piro? >> No. Miss Ratner, we're accused of conflict. >> Miss Chararma, >> no. >> Mr. Tufano, >> yes. >> Mr. Zikner, >> no. >> Miss Deain, >> no. >> Motion does

153not pass. >> And Miss Dupin, if I may also wish everybody a very happy, prosperous Diwali. Um, also to our board member, Miss Sharma, and all of our student demographic and parents out there that are celebrating this um, festival. May it bring a lot of joy and light in your lives. Thank you. >> I just want to say something, one minute. Our student representative has been here all evening and I appreciate you staying and listening to the meeting and giving up your time to be here with us tonight. So besides your presentation, thanks for hanging around. Uh I'm sure you're learning a lot sitting here with us this evening. >> Well, if you'd like to say something right now, we have a you're part of us. Is there something you'd like to say? >> I

154just want everyone to have a very good Dvali. I celebrate it myself. It's a big event, especially for those who >> Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Miss Rner. Okay. Um, so really quick, I most people touched on it, but the um, MEF tricky tray, I also attended it was fantastic, especially for their first time. They did a great job. Um, I was told they raised a very significant amount of money in that event. So, thank you to everyone who came out to support. I did win something, but >> I know you did. >> No, not the grand prize. So, you know, that's next year's goal. Um I also um was attended the green fair as well as the um the booster club car show. Um and I wanted to say that both of

155those were fantastic events. Um really cool cars. There was a was like a hundred-year-old car car. I don't I don't I don't know enough about cars to say much more than that, but it was very cool. Um and then the green fair. It was really nice seeing our community members um both young and old there are sharing some things that they're passionate about um regarding that. Um I went to the Dewali festival um held by the township. Um I saw Miss Darma there. Um it was fantastic. I brought my third grader who, you know, I think one thing that's really great about our community um and I know like I've spoken Miss Bor and I have spoken at length about our religions and I've learned a lot about traditions and I know like we've done

156back and forth. Um it's great to learn about all of these other traditions that each of us celebrates and sort of celebrate our differences, learn about each other's cultures. Um and I know that we do that with our students in the schools. Um and I think that the more we continue to do that as a community, the better. Um, I was also at the marching band home show. Um, I'm a little bit biased given that my daughter's in the marching band, but I also, you know, would agree with what everyone said. Although my daughter is in a battle with the witch in the marching band show at the end and then gets stabbed in the show. You have to see it. So, that's sort of my suggestion in order to understand what I'm saying. Um,

157but I would, you know, it's performed at the football games as well as at, you know, marching band competitions. um definitely try to come out and support our students. I will say having gone to a couple of our football games, um there's great attendance there. One thing that I've been trying to help out with, and I know I don't know if Mr. Vendico is still here, I think I saw him earlier, the snack bar. Um it tends to be a smaller group of volunteers trying to service hundreds and hundreds of people. Um so if you're part of that group that's there that night, definitely try to come out. If you're someone who just wants to help out, obviously, you know, reach out. Um because obviously the more people that are helping, the faster those lines

158will go. Some of those kids are really hungry and want their food. So definitely, you know, try to be there. Um the other thing I just wanted to mention really quick, I know that there were a few of us going to the New Jersey school board's workshop next week. Um and I think that's always a fantastic way for us to learn about a lot of the things that we can bring back to our district. you know, I know the bus app and the um portrait of a graduate, things like that. Like there's a number of things that we've gotten from that workshop that we've been able to then bring back um esports, right? So, um, my suggestion for those board members who are going, myself included, maybe just we can try to ensure that we

159are covering our grounds with the different sessions so that if there's something that we see that might be interesting for our district to make sure we have somebody going to to those. Um, and I want to just wish everybody a happy Diwali. Um, as well as for the kids, enjoy Halloween because that's coming up too. Don't eat too much candy. Um and uh thank you all. Anything else from board members? Okay, now we're going to go to the public forum. Anyone from the public who wishes to come up and speak, please do so. State your name, your address, and you have four minutes to address the board. >> Good afternoon, board members and esteemed representatives. My name is Christian Back Off. I'm a resident of Monroe Township. Um and I live at two Dartmouth Avenue

160uh in New Jersey in Monroe. Um to preface I'd like to applaud the board uh for their great work uh their diligent work um on this day um about you know the situations and the um you know academic um proficiency uh that you guys are addressing uh specifically on you know um procuring the information, procuring the data and providing that comprehensive transparency to not only the public but um also being able to uh elucidate and explain it uh clearly to everybody so they understand. Um, but I've come to you today uh to address a serious and pertinent issue uh regarding the sanitation of our schools uh and bathrooms specifically. Um to preface for a little over a year, many students in the high school have been reporting and noticing a lack of soap. Um specifically

161that of uh in the men's room. Uh I've I've confirmed with several teachers regarding the matter. uh all which stated that is that there is a direct they will direct my concern to the administration um via the proper channels and proper means through emails uh which is apparently the protocol. Um the teachers regularly uh see me at the bathroom the people that are the faculty that are supposed to be instructed as the people that are um reviewing and acting as the people that scan and scan out the facilitators. um they regularly inform me that they've contacted administration that they are informed me of the impending situation this that the other thing that's fine. The Monroe Township School District uh instills the mission of excellence in their expectations. Uh the question would remain shouldn't maintaining bathrooms

162um and bathroom facilities uh count as you know maintaining that excellence. Uh and in my opinion in my view that would be an emphatic yes. >> Days later the issue still persisted. Um, I proceeded to talk to the teacher that I addressed the issue on and in turn the teacher proceeded to say once more uh that she'll email the administration regarding the issue. I continue to inquire further and ask teachers further on the issue though noticing nothing really transpired from it. Um, we allocate 8.35% of our fiscal budget of $159 million uh towards utilities and facilities. Um, you know, we have that money, we have those appropriations and, um, you know, pursuant to the provisions of title 8, um, paragraph 26, section uh, section 6 subsection 4 clause B sub clause 4, it prescribes, soap

163dispenser shall be, quote, uh, soap suspens dispenser shall be provided in each bathroom and shall be supplied with an adequate supply of soap. The soap dispenser shall be made of all metal or all plastic materials. glass shall not be permitted in soap dispensers," unquote. So my point of contention here is that um you know I feel that it's fundamentally imperative that we begin to um you know somewhat address this concern of bringing back um soap and sanitation in our facilities uh specifically that in the school bathrooms. Now ultimately yeah again it's a priority should be a priority in our high school uh not only for a practice of health but also to make a more conducive uh environment to learning um you know and practice uh prefacing for the workplace as well um because workplaces

164obviously uh stress the vital component of health safety and uh sanitation. And I feel like if we um you know begin to replicate that and bolster that uh within the school um that it will not only help uh us as students um become more conducive but also the faculty and staff that have also had qualms with this um lack of soap and lack of general sanitation supplies. Um thank you very much. I do apologize for the you know sporadic change of uh you know events. It wasn't really gerine to the meeting itself on academic performance, but it is uh a pertinent issue that needs to be addressed. Thank you very much. >> Everybody get this guy soap. >> Thank you. >> There's no soap. >> Thank you. Thank you for coming. >> You don't have

165to apologize. We we are here to listen to everything that the community and you are part of the community has to say and give us. So I don't know if that's BGT, Mr. Tags with buildings and facilities or >> so Christian. Thank you for coming. >> Can I ask you a question? Are there dispensers in the bathroom or are the dispensers gone? >> He's >> cuz I have a feeling the dispensers aren't there and that's why there's no soap. >> So, yes, there are dispensers in the bathrooms, but they're pretty much inoperable. And uh some some of the other dispensers are actually broken. Uh they're actually molding. Um and when you actually click on the Yeah. Well, I have a lot of people that can attest to this and, you know, we have some other

166related, you know, evidence, but the fact of the matter is, um, they're inoperable. Uh, they're very moldy. Um, and when we use them, you know, they pretty much, you know, nothing really comes out besides, well, it's very discolored, let's just say. >> Okay. So, noted. Thank you very much for expressing that. >> Thank you very much for your open and willingness to uh openness and willingness to >> I think that's something that that we can address for you and for the rest of the students. especially with the cold and flu season coming up and I think it's a necessity that we take care of that. Thank you very much for your comments. >> Even subsequent to COVID, you know, it's uh still, you know, we got to combat uh >> you know, sanity. >> Christian,

167thank you for coming. The uh >> I know for a fact the building principal is watching the meeting tonight. So whether whether the message got to him before this or this is the first he's hearing of it, he knows of it now and certainly can engage in addressing the situation and looking into it. >> Thank you very much, folks. >> Thank you, Christian. Anytime, Christian. anytime you have a concern. Anyone else from the public wishing to speak tonight? Yes, I'm Vanessa Forest and I live in Monroe Township. Um first I would like to um convey my sincere condolences to Rajn Sha and her family. I pray that uh Rajny and her family find peace. Um I know that the pain never goes away. I was around 30 when my mother passed and my dad passed

168just over 10 years ago. But I believe my parents are always with me. So I live in a way that I will never do or say anything that I think will disappoint my parents or embarrass my children or grandchildren. I learned from my parents that making someone else look bad never makes you look better. These are lessons that I have tried to live by and be an example of. Anyone who knows me knows that to be true. Most current residents of this area were not around in the 70s. The account I gave was true. And anyone living in the Berg at that time knows that my statements were true. I spoke at the at the podium about my experience as a child having to deal with racism. But that was not to gain any sympathy.

169I spoke because I understood the experience and fear the children were feeling that was caused by the statements made by the prior representative of the Jamesburg Board of Education. My parents also taught me not to give away my power by allowing someone else's words or actions affect how I treat others. I've been known to say just because someone is an a-hole to you does not mean you need to be an a-hole back. That being said, there have been some horrible things said about someone I have known almost my entire life. Rebecca has used her own money, yes, her own money, to support my campaign because she believes in me. No one should be attacked be attacking her and using the loss of her grandson to cause her and her family pain. They already feel unbearable

170pain. The revictimization of of this family by a prior board member and a current board member is unconscionable. You know who you are. Rebecca knows I am honest and truly care about always doing what is right for the children, all children. I am happy that the Monro town board of ed is showing that it can function in a responsible civilized manner and not be influenced by any bad apples. I want to commend Dr. layman and all who are doing the work to advance the implementation of full day kindergarten. Finally, steps are being taken to move forward. It seems like this is a solid plan in place. I wanted to do the work as a member of the board of ed and return to the days when the residents of Monroe were confident the decisions were

171were made for the right reasons and policies applied to everyone. Teachers and staff do deserve to receive salary increases. Salaries offered during the hiring process and any salary increases for teachers and staff should be provided according to set standard. There needs to be transparency and consistency when creating the annual budget. It is not fiscally responsible to provide the superintendent with a raise and a contract extension shortly after forcing the teachers and staff to accept a reduction to their benefits while at the same time asking the taxpayers to increase their school taxes above the cap. I realize tough decisions need to be made, but I'm not sure that any of that made any sense. Thank you. >> Thank you for your comments. Anyone else wishing to be heard this evening? Yes, sir. >> Dominic Torito. Uh,

172my children go to school here. I live in Brooklyn, New York. I want to know, uh, we're talking about Deiwali. We're talking about all these cultural things. Why did these children go to school on Columbus Day? Whose decision was it? Because quite frankly, it's unamerican. And as an Italian American, it's it's it's a discrimination. I know that you'll all just sit here in silence because that's what you do whenever there's a public comment because no one ever has any answers. Um, but quite frankly, it's unamerican that banks are closed. Everything is closed. I work at a college. We were closed. Everything is closed on Columbus Day. What happened? What happened here? Should we get rid of Dewali? Should Should they go to school then? No, of course not. How about Rajaashana? No. What do we

173get rid of next? Thanksgiving. What is it? Does anyone have an answer? I >> I wasn't here on the board when they got rid of Columbus Day. I was on another board when they took Columbus Day away. And my husband's Italian. And the town I lived in was very, very Italian. And I got teen phone calls yelling and screaming at me because we took it away in the town. Sometimes days have to be taken away in order to put other things into the school calendar. I don't know why Dr. Layman it was taken away here and when. Um I I understand >> this is this is the first year that my children are going to the school district. >> Oh, okay. >> Um so it's the first iP had it off. Yeah, everybody had it

174off. >> No, my grandson in East Brunswick did not. >> Most schools have it off every year since 1972. >> Well, and my daughter knew. >> So, I don't know if Italians, Italian-Americans are now, you know, white or American enough that we get like faded off. I don't know how that goes, but it's unbelievable. You should all be ashamed. Christopher Columbus discovered America and then Italian-Americans did more for this country that we all enjoy because if it wasn't for Italian-Americans in World War II, this meeting would be conducted in German because we were the largest minority group represented in the American forces. >> We have our uh student rep that would like to make a comment to you, sir. >> Yeah. So that day we for high schoolers had PSAT which is a big event

175because college board has to get the scores back by a certain time and that took place for freshmen for the first time. So I feel like that's a pretty big deal when you relate that to like having and that's like >> so the whole state had to do that on Columbus Day. >> No, but we have >> but just Monroe. >> Yeah, we had it scheduled for that time. So I think that's like an important thing to get >> right. But I mean that's not your fault as a student. That's whoever planned it decided that Columbus Day was not important enough >> to observe. >> So the calendar development is a yearly process. We look at every day every year. >> I'm surprised that the teachers union actually went for this. I I I mean

176they they love their days off. So >> So we we involve everyone from the administrative association, teachers association. They take a look at the calendar before we present it to the board of education. Um, but we start with a fresh look every year. Um, and some years we add specific holidays, some years depending on when we start, we have to be a little uh tighter on things some things we recognize. Um, so to to give you an exact like start date when Columbus Day was uh given off, I don't have that off the top of my head. We could probably look back a few years solid. >> It's been a few years for sure. Um, >> and there are years sometimes when we're off. So I I remember being principal at Woodland and having someone

177very similar with a >> not you but it is all of your fault or your predecessors or something that >> but again it's something we look at every year. So your feedback is heard but the feedback from the community in general. >> I understood that I was going to stand here and just get stared at blankly because every time I've been up here to talk to this day is that's how it goes. >> Sir, your four minutes are up also. >> That's how it goes. Exactly. That's that's the rules. >> Thank you for your comments. Anyone else wishing to speak tonight before the board? Okay. The next scheduled board meeting is October 15th here in the media center at the high school. >> No, November. November, right? November. >> Oh my gosh. November 19th. Today's

178October 15th, isn't it? >> Thank you. I've been babysitting. Motion to adjurnn. No second. >> All those in favor? I I >> Nobody wants to