Monroe Township Board of Education 10.16.24 Regular Meeting

001good evening everybody this is the monthly monor Township Board of Education meeting for Wednesday October 16th 2024 can everybody please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with li and justice for all Miss alen can we have a roll call please yes Miss Alvarez here miss Bora here miss depan here miss Fabiano here Dr PE here Mr Piro here miss Ratner here here miss Sharma here Mr Tano here Mr ziker yes we have Quorum um in accordance with the provisions of the New Jersey open public meetings law the Monro Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published an electronic notice provided by having the date time in place thereof

002posted October 11th 2024 and September 20th 2024 at all schools on the district website home News Tribune cranberry press and filed with the clerk of municipality thank you our next item is our close session resolution whereas the senator Byron M Bear open public meetings Act njsa 10 col 4 4-6 provides that the monor 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 in section 12b of the act and whereas that the board hereby declares that its discussion of the following subjects will be made public at a time when the Public's interest in disclosure is greater than any privacy or governmental Interest being protected from disclosure now therefore be it resolved by the monor Township

003Board of Education that the board shall go into executive session to discuss the following item items additional items may be determined as needed M um pending or anticipated litigation in matters covered by the attorney client privilege Hib investigation involving students other uh receive attorney client advice regarding possible litigation be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosed to the public when reasons for discussing and acting upon it in Clos session no longer exist action may be taken on any of the items stated above I have a motion motion second we will be in close session for approximately 1 hour and should return 7:15 and if I may just so um the public is aware the board will not be taking formal action in executive session to the extent that the board is going to

004take formal action it will be done out here in the public thank you great I'd like to call the meeting back to order we the board has returned from closed session and there is no action to be taken the next item on our agenda is the approval of minutes can I get a motion to approve make a motion the public Board of Education meeting minutes from September 25th 2024 motion second motion by Mr Pio second by Miss Bora um all those in favor I any extensions refusals Miss Miss Ratner abstain um the next one is the close session meeting minutes from September 25th 2024 is there a motion motion second motion by Miss Alvarez second by Miss depay um all those in favor I any abstentions or recusals abstain Miss Ratner abstains the next item

005on our agenda is our student board members report welcome back it has been a vibrant and busy fall at Mid Lake school on October 7th students dressed to impress for picture day at the lake during their week of respect students and staff came together for a variety of activities centered around the theme of respect and empathy the school was especially colorful as both students and staff showed off their creativity and energy with superhero inspired outfits in September and early October mil Lake student council organized a collection for Pediatric cancer awareness month thanks to the generosity of milake families and staff donations of squishmallows gift cards dress balls and poppets were gathered these items will be included in goodie bags by Jonathan buul a former milake student in Childhood cancer survivor turned Advocate the goodie bags

006will be given to Children spending Halloween in the hospital through the childlife program at Bristol Meers squib Children's Hospital on the Hem oncology floor milake student council was honored to to in assist Jonathan and his family in this heartwarming cause looking ahead mil Lake will continue their service efforts with a think pink event on October 18th in support of breast cancer awareness M Lake's Therapy Dog Kia has been a hit with the students receiving plenty of Love during her visits she will return twice a month for reading sessions and snuggles with the little Lakers as Halloween approaches mil lake is excited for the festivities the milake w/ Woodland PTO will host their annual trunker treat on October 26 and the Woodland school parking lot for more details please be sure to visit the M Lake

007PTO Facebook page next up is Woodland Elementary School Woodland principal Dr cheda counselor Mrs newcome and this seal uh committee kicked off a character goal assembly focusing on honesty um the principal instructed would lend students on school expectations Mrs newcome and Mr Dale received student essays and teacher input for their selection of 2024 to 2025 character crew and student council Representatives Woodland School also celebrated respect week with spirit days during the week of October 7th the Woodland mil Lake PTO was hosting a pumpkin patch for the students on the baseball field on Thursday October 16th the school conducted their bus evacuation jurs and reviewed bus safety this month as well Code Zero stem Club begins Thursday October 16th and now we're moving on to Barkley Brook Elementary school during the week of October 7th to

008the 11th Barkley Brook participated in a week of respect as well the activities of this week focused on promoting kindness and inclusivity while celebrating uniqueness and diversity students and staff participated in a week full of themed spirit days along with daily activities to empower and encourage students to embrace differences and stand up for others Barkley Brook held its semiannual bus evacuation drills in October during the fall bus evacuation drill student boarded the bus with their class to learn about what to do in case an emergency the drivers show the students all of the emergency exits and students practice evacuating the bus through the rear bus door Barkley Brook would love to thank the Monro Township transportation department bus drivers and bus aids for facilitating this important drill with their students on October 9th Barkley Brook

009celebrated fire safety month with a fire fighter visit and assembly during the assembly the students watched a fire safety video which focused on ways to prevent fires afterwards the firefighters discussed fire safety in the home and the importance of Fire safety plans for the home one firefighter dressed up in his gear while another firefighter discussed the different components in their functions the assembly concluded with a trip to see the firet truck Barkley Brook thanks the monr tan of Fire Department District 3 for sponsoring this fun and engaging assembly moving on to Brookside Elementary School Brookside held their week of respect during the week of October 7th they celebrated the week of respect by having five enjoyable themed days to promote kindness and inclusivity the students visit vised the PTA book fair in the media center

010on October 9th and 10th the fire safety and prevention assembly for fourth and fifth grades occurred and the fire safety house for third grade took place on October 8th Halloween celebrations will take place on October 31st and now we're moving on to Oak Tree oak tree welcomed October by celebrating the week of respect as well each day was a different themed day like hats off to respect and respect rocks where students dressed up like rock stars the week ended with their very first Falcon Fest pep rally where the entire School joined together to celebrate demonstrating the Falcon Way a new positive behavior schoolwide initiative it was filled with school cheers and songs and much more the bus evacuation drills for oak tree took place on October 15th and their First Assembly of the year will

011take place on October 21st 24th when Omega Man visits their school the pta's Trunk or Treat event will take place on October 25th oak tree teachers will host a team pump trunk at which non- food items will be given out school pictures are October 29th and the Halloween parades will take place on the 31st next up is Applegarth elementary school on October 10th students at Applegarth participated in a Spooktacular Halloween stem andal event sponsored by theal team with pumpkins being provided through through the PTA students painted positive affirmations on pumpkins listened to stories and constructed bone Bridges to name a few of the activities the PTA has sponsored numerous snack snails sales during the month of October two dine to donate activities have also been held the PTA had a general membership meeting on October

0128th and conducted a clothing drive and spirit wear sale thank you to Apple guard's hardworking PTA student council representative elections are going to be held this month currently candidates are hanging their posters around the building to show their qualifications Code Zero began during the zero period at Apple guard Club code is beginning shortly after school as well the principal's book club for Ground Zero will be held on Tuesday October 22nd from 4: to 5:00 p.m. the PTA sponsor Trunk or Treat is happening on Friday October 25th food trucks trunk or-treating and dancing with the DJ are some of the fun things in store for appleg Gart students appleg Gart school is also holding its annual election on Wednesday October 30th students will be conducting a scavenger hunt about the electoral process and the branches of

013government they will sign a registry as voters and will enter a voting booth to cast their vote about what the daily motivational phrase will be at the end of appleg guard's morning announcements each classroom will have a certain number of electoral votes based upon the number of students and election results will be tracked throughout the day on a schoolwide visual sounds like a very fun activity lastly this is a reminder that this week is parent teacher conference week for all elementary schools schools will be having meetings throughout the the week and some might have night sessions for conferences now let's move on to the middle school on octo on September 30th staff from Robinsville School District visited mtms to observe the mtms Avid classes they met with the students and the Robinsville staff was able

014to discuss the AVID program with the mtms students and staff mtms is seen as a model AVID program and this is not the first time that another school district has visited us Monro Township middle school will be hosting the Monroe history night on October 17th at 600 P p.m. in the middle School pack this will be a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the local history surrounding our town of Monroe the town historian will share stories and artifacts to bring the past to life on October 21st 24th the sixth grade production of joust a mighty medial musical will be held we invite the entire Community to come out and support these talented students on o on October 25th mtms will hold its annual sixth grade Halloween dance we anticipate the majority of our sixth grade

015class to attend and look forward to the great night information on seventh and eighth grade dances will go out closer to the events and lastly we're at MTS the high school so the high school's freshman sophomores and juniors recently took the PSAT on Monday October 14th which is also when senior Sunrise took place outside on the field from the previous year's Juniors now seniors 30 have been recognized in the National Merit Scholarship program as commended students three add three additional seniors from mundro Township out of only 16,000 across the United States have also been selected as semifinalists in N National Merit Scholarship process and will continue on in the selection process these recognitions were given as a result of each of these 33 students Stellar scores on the PSAT the previous year the high school

016congratulates all commended students and semifinalists and wishes a best best of luck to all that are wrapping up their fall Sports thank you all for listening and have a great evening thank you very much I love listening to the your reports are so comprehensive and it's for most of us up here obviously we only hear about the things going on in each of our own Children's School um so it's just it's always great to hear what's happening so thank you guys very much the next item on our agenda is um a presentation of student and staff recognition sure good evening everyone thank you so much for there it is good evening everyone there you go that's a little bit better um this is the first of this school year where we get to recognize your

017children our students all of our children and we are very excited for this evening what we try and do is we try and make it if not thematic but appropriate during the time of year so rather than wait till the end of the year where we recognize everybody's child which is very exciting but it's also very overwhelming we want to make sure that no one gets missed and everyone has an equal opportunity to hear their child's name heard it's a very big deal when you hear your child's name announced for something that they have accomplished it's very exciting and I'm I'm speaking as a mother so that being said um Mr moraldo has a running uh we have it's almost like a just to let you know how we do things it's almost like a

018running Google sheet but then it becomes a viable opportunity for us to recognize your children and we try and separate it when it's appropriate during very different Sports Seasons different events different activities you know music was so exceptional that all we do is give out Awards after Awards after Awards and we're very excited about that so this is the very first start of the acknowledgements and this will go all the way till June and we're very excited to have you here so I just wanted to say welcome and and thank you for giving um giving your children to us marala thank you Dr Chanley and Happy Boss's Day so uh as Dr Chanley mentioned uh we this is a tradition that our school has been following uh for the last couple years now and we

019are happy now that we have set a standard to where we can recognize students intermittently throughout the year to recognize them for a variety of different things historically we've we've uh distinguished these types of recognitions uh for athletics and Performing Arts but now we are happy to start looking at some of the other incredible things that our students and staff are doing the first month here in uh the 24 25 school year we wanted to take a moment to recognize the service of our students and staff that took place towards the end of the school year and over the summer and why that's significant is because while some kids are sleeping in uh staring at screens on the beach or doing whatever we had uh dozens of students come in in search of uh service

020opportunities in many cases uh for uh required service hours but in some other cases just do good and what's nice about the opportunities during the summer is that we can connect our high school students and sometimes even middle school students with our youngest Learners in a meaningful way uh that allows them to flex some of their uh curricular strength but also demonstrate some strong leadership skills so uh the first uh the first recognition will be related to the Fine Arts and on behalf of uh principal Garcia uh I would like to recognize our national Arts honor Society so miss Garcia reached out to myself and Mr Snider at the end of last school year and said she was looking for an opportunity to bring some culture and some uh excitement and some Fine Arts into

021the mil Lake Elementary School so naturally we connected her with the national Arts Honor Society which is uh is the final stop for our uh Fine Arts students at the high school but it is a service-based organization like all of our honor societies so it was the perfect match uh and Mr varelis who was the adviser of the national Arts Honor Society at the high school he's also one of our summer instructors recruited his uh members to get together and not only did they come in and work on some projects throughout the community you may notice that we have a freshly painted Board of Education sign uh they helped work as student teachers in our summer Art Studio but they spent the bulk of their time this summer working on the mil Lake Summer Tree

022project and if any of you have been inside mil Lake since the opening of school this year you will see you can't miss it uh the tree that they have built and not only is it something that can continue to evolve as a school-based project but they're able to theme that tree uh as the seasons uh move on throughout the year so uh Mr verles can be here tonight uh and many of our students even though they can't be here tonight because they have other obligations whether they be Athletics or academic uh all the certificates will be sent to them and this uh broadcast will be posted on our website and is currently streaming live so if the students are not here we would like to recognize them nonetheless so I mentioned Mr varelis uh

023the adviser uh he would like me uh to recognize his student teachers and volunteers starting with and apologies in advance for any mispronounced last names aani garala Puja Shula shika patnik Ava Marie D benedetto Sean Desmond hamini marcala tanishi Panda and Shia Bakery thank you to all of the members of the national Arts Honor Society moving on uh through the mil Lake Manor over to Woodland School uh we had a high school student uh donate some time and this was a long project uh I would like to thank Christian backoff who in pursuit of his Eagle Scout service project did an incredible job with his associates and family members and relatives to restore and really improve upon uh the Woodland Elementary School's Outdoor Learning Center environmental Learning Center SL school garden so thank you Christian

024uh now moving back into some uh summer uh volunteerism uh last summer uh in 2023 uh thanks to the motivation of students this was a student and parent uh organized uh project we created the first Lego League which is as rigorous as it gets for elementary and middle school computer science and Rob robotics learning uh it's very difficult for a public school to launch such a program given the complexity of the curricular expectations but also the time requirements um the collaboration that is required outside of school and it's very difficult to pull something like this off with the staff over the summertime so naturally we go to the best resource in town which are our students and uh these students volunteered and when I say that they were student teachers that is not an overstatement

025in the least bit uh these students were teaching the highest level of python and block coding to students as young as third grade through 8th grade uh our teachers that run this program just last night finished their python training which is on par with some of the lessons that our student teachers were actually teaching over the summer so it is an incredible challenge to stay current with the complexity of computer science and Robotics but thankfully our students are some of the best resources we have in the district and they come in and are able to fill the gaps when our teachers uh cannot so I would like to recognize uh the students that were the student teachers and this this year our second year of the first Lego League beginning with CA Desai uh she's

026back up for another one avani garala Anish Moser who was one of the founding fathers of uh or founding Brothers of this uh organization tanishi penda and nitish sunu and uh these student teachers will hopefully be back with us next summer okay moving on and if Mr Nixon would like to come up and join me at the mic um so uh Mr Nixon is one of our technology teachers here at the monor Township High School and a couple years ago when he joined us coming out of the pandemic he and I made a commitment to revitalize the civil engineering and architecture thread uh drafting uh at the monor Township High School it was a program that was desperate need of a revamp and was not receiving uh the enrollment that we would have liked uh

027particularly in that fast and rapidly growing area of engineering so Mr Nixon came in and did exactly what we asked him to do and created a lot of excitement for the program they're uh filled to the brim with enrollment and uh we decided the next best thing now in order to make the program truly at the level is we needed to start teaching these kids at a younger age and what better place to do that at MTSD summer so Mr Nixon uh at the end of the school year put together uh some learning modules and once again uh thanks to the help of some of his top students in his uh co-curricular clubs and his curricular programs we were able to launch the brand new cat's rad program at MTSD summer and uh once again

028his student teachers were phenomenal not only showing content area expertise but demonstrating leadership for the uh young boys and girls that enrolled in this program so um I don't know if Mr Nixon if you want to say a couple quick words about your students um well I three [Applause] third graders to graders of the young kids were actually able Le and ironically I had a a remote control Tes of cyber truck and they actually had to design it and to drive it so it was just like a nice connection so we had a lot of fun this summer and I so we will uh call them up by name uh for the Three Amigos tun adoni Vidant haani [Applause] and gok Krishna Swami and uh the final student Mr Nixon uh we would be remiss

029not to recognize uh another individual and uh in addition to the service to the 3D design club uh when we talk about program growth and really focusing on what's next you know the work of these of these high school students uh they won't be around uh in the distri District to see the benefits of it so when you have uh upper classmen that are so willing to give back to the future graduating classes it really really actualizes the work that we're doing and this past year uh this next young man Neville cassad uh through advocacy and passion was able to work with community members and secure an asset for our program a brand new 3D printer um and that kind of passion is going to allow us to do more for future classes in our

030uh course sequence so thank you you to Neville for uh everything that you've done to support our program and thank you once again Mr Nixon for your leadership okay moving on uh Mrs costantino this summer uh who is our theater director at the Middle School uh decided to run two Productions this year and I said to her if that's what we're going to do we have to allow more students in because theater is one of the few classes that we offer over the summer that has a hard cap for uh reasons of making sure the production works so she came to me she says I can do it but I need to be able to have two uh assistant stage man managers and producers and so she recruited two of her former students that are

031actively involved in many of the things we do throughout the year and uh what's significant about this the first run they were stage managers we rebooted the program later in the summer and these two students actually served as the directors of the actual play while Mrs costantino just kind of stood back and supervised and the work that they did was fantastic so we recognized them tonight uh I wouldn't be surprised if they were across the street rehearsing Naomi gersan and Trinity [Applause] Keith MTSD Summer band camp uh is a grade three through eight Summer band camp it was the first ever uh summer program that we had here in the district and has been the staple of what we can do here over the summer it allows our students to stay engaged with their instruments

032which as any musician or uh music instructor knows is critical to the Improvement of their craft and we always have great participation and again thanks to the student volunteers uh student teachers that come in and work with our Young Learners everything from how to put your instrument together many of the students that attend our Summer band camp this is their first time with an instrument so again an opportunity not just to practice their craft and to become more familiar with their content and to share that knowledge but also to demonstrate the leadership skills that uh Define our Monro students so I would like to make an attempt to recognize our students Aiden Baraka sorry about the typo there Nia malami Evan n Aman Patel Dylan polishuk Jaden n Sonet sexa nahal sen Khloe serati and

033sui Oak again thank you uh to all of our student teachers from Summer Camp two more next I would like to call up the fastest growing celebrity in the monor Township School District Miss Heidi Cantor uh at as mentioned the culinary arts program is our most heavily demanded uh elective in both the middle school and the high school uh so much so that we decided that we wanted to try to create opportunities for our students to get into the culinary arts not just the culinary arts but also the life skills that come alongside of Art FCS programs uh cooking with Cantor which is lovingly named after the instructor Mrs Cantor has quickly emerged into a yearr round program that is serving as really the identity of many of our initiatives and we're working on a

034very special project this holiday season but we'll keep it quiet for now and um one of the things that we have done with this program which I think is unique to any uh culinary enrichment program that I'm aware of is that cooking with caner is the only summer culinary program that that honors and accommodates all dietary restrictions preferences and uh desires and why that's significant is because we know in the diverse minor Township Learning Community it can be very difficult to offer a learning experience that can uh be responsive and reflective to what our students are living with day-to-day and one of the beautiful things that Miss caner has done along with the long list of student teachers that we're about to uh announce is that we make sure that everybody that signs up for

035our program feels like they're in their own kitchen at home and that is something that uh we are very proud of and that's no surprise why this program has exploded in the way that it does so uh Miss Kor is going to say very few brief words and then I will announce her students names I just want to say that these students are the heart and soul of our department they really are our program would not exist if it wasn't for these students here and as I look at their faces it's like you don't understand what we go through through so I think our program is the hard working program and if it wasn't for them it wouldn't happen um you know as I look at these students had na she was in Europe at

036the time and she would um do like what was it Microsoft teams with us so my students would actually the campers would talk to her in Europe you were in um Macedonia correct all right and she would tell them everything about Macedonia all right my girls that I see here and my boys I would have students that would be quiet during the entire school year they come to this program and I see a whole different person all right and it's not only these students that are helping and really I'm not going to say they slaved during the summer but it was hot in our room we had no air conditioning so that's when I could tell you that they need to fix the air conditioning in our school during the summer but they were there

037working I would say their tushies off um assisting in everything that we did plus they got to eat which was nice too um and to work with the campers and there was one camper in particular she was there on scholarship and we love when she came because we would just put her in our own kitchen and she was able to cook on her own so and everybody knows who she is so we were just okay you have your own kitchen like if we see you burning something going to come and help but all in all these girls are the heart of the program the program would not be what it is if it wasn't for the students [Applause] thank you Miss canor so now we will recognize the students Gia Patel Kisha Patel Jaden Patel

038emilyn Marino Cruz Sophia kogan Aiden bur sor sorry Aiden Baraka Janelle U apia Emily April Daniela Vasquez feda Daisy Velasquez Hayden woo liid daa juluru Nia kaduk Brittney Cana Amy rastogi and Naja [Applause] shabara thank you to all the students who came in over the summer to help us with cooking with Cantor presented by Mrs Kumar's Indian cuisine and finally uh to follow up on the incredible presentation uh that was made last week by Apple to recognize the work of our school as a whole we mentioned uh uh five teachers that were instrumental in uh helping earn that uh that designation and distinction at the high school but in addition to our school being identified as an apple distinguished school we also have had five teachers earn the recognition individually as Apple distinguished Educators and

039this is the culmination of a lot of work training but most importantly application and utilization of the Technologies uh that Define our school district so once again we just want to uh recognize and say these teachers names starting with a very familiar name who's always being recognized for things Miss Sharon DeMarco so come on up Miss DeMarco uh Mr Thomas lion another teacher who's always here but usually working Miss Lissa Miller waving the back Paulina Pereira and Paul Spinelli we don't say thank you to our teachers enough a lot of times we wait till teacher appreciation week but obviously uh we wish we could do it ongoing so thank you to the high school staff for the value that you bring to the district and that wraps up the September student and staff I'm sorry

040the October student and staff recognition uh we'll be back later in the season for recognition of fall Athletics I believe in the winter I'm sorry in December and some Performing Art thank you very [Applause] much okay thank you very much congratulations to all of our recipients tonight and thank you for your volunteer work and the next item on our agenda is our committee reports are there any committees that are wishing to give a report tonight Mr deine thank you um the Monroe Township citizens advisory committee met on Tuesday October 8th in the high school media center those in attendance were myself Dr Chanley Dr Layman Mr moraldo Miss Fabiano Miss Alvarez and Miss Ratner also in attendance were 16 very enthusiastic Monroe Township community members who were chosen to become part of the committee the

041meeting was started and everyone in attendance introduced themselves and gave a little information about their backgrounds Dr Layman spoke about the Strategic plan a copy of the plan which Administration and Mr moral though nicely summarized was handed out also the Strategic plan was dis um after the Strategic plan was discussed we had a Q&A session from the new committee members a task was given to them to go out take the Strategic plan that they were given that evening and to speak to 20 or more friends and family and explain to them what we have on our um plates for the next five years uh we will go over the budget philosophy at the next meeting which is on Tuesday November 12th and that's my report thank you thank you does anybody have any questions for

042Miss deay comment Miss Fabi it it was an amazing meeting um U you know I'm glad that it's hit off the ground and good luck to you we've got a great group of parents there um parents and community members very well represented uh good luck thank you Miss bratner just to follow up on what Miss Boris said I was so impressed with the diversity of the expertise that we have on there we have people there's a there's a lot of Educators but there's also a lot of people who were Educators that are now in other fields as well like they were an educator now they're in a financial field um and they're very excited Enthusiast about sharing their expertise which we are excited about as well so I'm excited that this is off the ground

043and running that was definitely one of the things that I noticed to was the level of excitement in the room everybody was genuinely excited and really wanted to be there so it was just a great a great meeting it was a great night and as missb said I'm excited that we finally have this off the ground and you know to see where it goes so um are there any other committees wishing to give a report Mr P the building grounds Transportation Security committee met on October 9th at 7:30 at the high school media center uh Mr T presented us with some um items that uh we're going through right now one is the annual structureal report for our bleachers uh the committee reviewed the engineering analysis of the stadium of the High School Middle School

044uh gymnasium bleachers as noted report the stadium bleachers with proper maintenance should be viable for another 10 years uh minor vandalism repairs not in the report um have been attended to by Mr T's maintenance team uh the committee requested the report to be posted on the district website if anybody want to read it and we're also looking at the installation of Riser boards across the bottom so things could fall through the bleachers uh next was the annual integrative Pest Management program review uh Administration presented the review a copy of the current integrated Pest Management plan prior to the meeting the plan was reviewed by the school principls and no recommendations for revisions were requested uh the committee supported proceeding with the plan as currently maintained for the upcoming school year uh the Applegarth HV AC

045upgrade project was rebid for the rod Grant um Administration was advised that the project has been rebid with a scheduled bid opening of October 31st uh the original bids were ejected per advice from our legal council and the new bids will be presented at a November excuse me uh Board of Education meeting for Action our our esip project update Administration advised that they will be working closely with Honeywell and also with Tri-State energy on the level two audits as well as finalizing a bid package for potential solar projects we anticipate delivering an energy service plan to the committee for review in November as well as finalizing an investment grade energy audit uh Mr tus said we did a discussion on our board goals Administration shared thoughts on District long infrastructure needs to be considered for

046future budgets under our board goals uh that was it for building of grounds uh we met our new Transportation director uh Miss Donna martyr was introduced to the committee and welcome by all committee members uh she was assured by uh Administration and the board that we will support the transportation department uh any which way we need to uh meet the needs of our students uh she was very excited for her new Endeavor as our director of transportation and we all look forward for a a nice peaceful happy school year and working with her um that was it for the committee thank you does anybody have any questions for Mr Pio okay any other committees that would like to give a report Miss Alvarez the policy committee met on Tuesday October 8th 2024 present at the

047meeting were Dr Chanley Dr Layman Mrs Fabiano Dr peek Mr zeichner and Mrs Ratner the meeting began with another discussion of the use of facilities policy additional language was added to include current shared services agreements this is on tonight's agenda for a first read policy 9210 parent organizations and policy 9700 special interest groups were reviewed to understand the difference between the two groups a question arose during the discussion related to the term recognized parent organization the committee agreed to obtain clarification as to the process involved in becoming a recognized parent organization Additionally the policy has not been updated since June of 20 203 therefore the committee will review this policy again in consultation with the board attorney to determine if any updates are warranted at this time finally the committee discussed its board goal for

048the current school year these will be made available to the public in the near future this concludes my report does anybody have any questions from Miss Alvarez Miss Ratner just really quick because I know um 7510 is on for a first read and we can still bring it back for a second read because I know we need clarification um so is that basically we'll do we if we if we approve it as a first read and then we get the additional information from the meeting with the township and things like that then we would modify we can still modify it before it comes back for the second read that that's correct yes all right any other Miss Bora no questions I was going to okay do you want to do your report reports I should

049say yes I'll do the shorter one first uh the finance uh and shared services committee met on October 9th uh the board members in attendance besides myself were Mr Puro Mr zeer Dr peek and Mrs Fabiano administrators and attendance were Dr Chanley Dr Layman and Miss Laura Allen uh the attorney invoice for the month of August for porio was reviewed then the committee reviewed the bill list which at the time of the meeting was only $578,000 Miss Allen informed the committee that since not enough time had passed from the board meeting the Peril had not yet been processed we would see a majority of the bills in the addendum close to the public board meeting next on the agenda was a software proposal for Genesis module of uh for HR this was the second round

050of deliberation at committee level Miss Allen informed the committee that the move that to move payroll also from CSI to Genesis would cost $50,000 for the setup fees and then 10,000 yearly thereafter Dr Chanley said as it stands today the business office is not in favor of moving payroll to Genesis it is her recommendation to just move ahead with HR on Genesis and then once the transition is complete based on the impact on P with two separate systems they will re-evaluate the need to consider Genesis for payroll as well the committee agreed with Dr Chan's recommendation and is up on the agenda tonight the committee spent some time discussing board goals we all agreed that the Board needs to make most of the partnership with hanal Energy savings Improvement plan and using the savings to

051fund as many of our Capital project needs as possible and in an effort to be fiscally responsible to our taxpayers while maintaining an excellent quality of Education we should continue our focus on Alternate uh alternate Revenue driving initiative that concludes the finance committee reports any questions no question any questions for Miss Bor okay can I go on sure uh the curriculum Co curricular Athletics and pupil Personnel committee uh met on October 8 um the first item on the agenda was an update on the mths final exams after concerns were raised by the curriculum committee last year over the student performance Dr Higgins presented to the committee a comparison of performance between 2023 and 2024 final exams between these two years our graduation requirement credits change the process of getting into higher rigor classes was tightened

052and last but not the least the weightage of final exams and overall performance was reduced as a result of the changes made the efforts and the efforts put by the high school Administration less students are failing courses for the year due to final exams overall failures decreased in most content areas performance and final exams actually helped more students pass a class that they were initially failing the high school administration will continue to look at individual student teacher um student teacher and subject performance and the committee will revisit this analysis again next year um the committee chair brought up the issue of inconsistent adoption of the process of regular tests being returned to students after grading to use as an improvement and learning Tool uh this is supposed to be done for all tests and all

053subjects subjects besides the final exam but not all teachers are following the this process next on the agenda was an extensive and extremely impressive um presentation by Mr Felman uh the district IT director on a technology plan for the next 5 years uh the 71 slice presentation included every little detail about the state of technology in MTSD Mr Felman shared how many devices were on the district's network with a school-wise device type and refresh timeline split for all of these devices he gave us an overview of the land and internet capabilities and how he felt our and 6 6,000 megabytes per second pipeline is sufficient and should not need to be changed till 2025 when we renew our plan with Comcast details of a newly installed Voiceover IP soft um solution for phones was also

054shared he then detailed the technology infrastructure and software requirements for various curriculums in the school district and where we currently are with those an extensive Li list of the core web applications used for instructions as well as evaluation and administration were shared in this plan a detailed Disaster Recovery plan was put in place in February of last year by Mr Felman felman's Steam and the committee asked that it be updated every year henceforth the shared goal of the technology team and the committee is to get the student to device ratio to 1 is to one but that would be totally dependent on the district's Financial ability to support this Vision the entire committee applauded this presentation and we hope to see discussions on various smaller aspects of this plan brought up to this Committee in

055the coming year next do Dr Roselle presented the curriculum documents for seventh grade Italian and French which were updated to cover the full school year of instruction from earlier years when only two marking periods were used the committee was then presented with an excellent comparative SWAT analysis and recap of the summer enrichment programs in our school district by Mr morala this comparison was between season 3 and season 4 of these programs and clearly showed how significantly we have improved over the years several opportunities in last year like employment opportunities and private sponsorship have become the strength of the program this year Mr morala shared in detail areas of weakness in the current program and the threats and the plans to mitigate them he also shared the plans for the various paid enrichment opportunities that would

056be offered during the school year as an Afterschool activity open for all students without selection criteria please visit our website for more details last but not the least the committee spent time uh discussing the board goals um in an effort to tie in this year's goal to our strategic plan and curriculum the curriculum committee felt strongly that one of the most pressing goals is to work on the portrait of a graduate to develop the district's Collective vision for Student Success this portrait will describe the skills and comp competencies that the community agrees its young people need to thrive in learning work and life in general our goal as a district would then be to teach to the portrait and not to the test the committee additionally agreed that the board will strive to promote AI

057literacy while ensuring ethical use of of AI the board's goal would be to use AI to enhance personalized learning with educational experiences tailored to individual student needs uh that concludes the critic report any questions any questions for Miss B I do just want to reiterate that that technology presentation as you stated in your report was incredible um and I think on behalf of the board and I'm sure any Community member that watches that presentation um thank you again to Mr Felman for putting that together it was very informative and extremely comprehensive I and um very very much appreciated so miss rner you had a question that it's basically what I was going to say um but just to to piggyback on that what I would also love um and you know sort of go into

058my report I guess is when we have our new website um or even while the old one is there to share the technology plan if that's something that can be shared with the community um because it it was really informative to see that it if it's not up now it'll be up by the end of the week we were revising making some final edits and tweaks spelling checks and things like that but it's a it's a document that is you know welcome and encouraged by the public to engage in because I think it really provides an overview but also perspective to the scope of not just the device side of things but the network the network security side of things any device has an IP address it's it's overwhelming and impressive yeah and it's not

059just where we are right now but where we are looking to go so um yes anybody that has a chance like I said to either watch the meeting or once the document is available online I fully encourage you to watch and or read it um any other questions any other reports Miss Ratner okay the um legislative advocacy and Community here we go engagement committee met on SE this say September 18th but that was wrong it was October a week ago n9th thanks um Board of Education members president myself Miss deine Dr Pac and Miss Fabiano the district administrators in attendance were Dr Chanley Dr lemman and Mr morala the committee began the meeting by discussing updates to the district website now that the start of the school year has passed the district technology team has

060been working on migrating over teacher websites where needed which is the final step before the new website is launched this has been something that we've been discussing as the board for um a while so I'm very excited to see um the launch of the new website and see every all the work come to fruition thank you to the administration and staff members for their work on that the next item on the agenda was a recap of the letter that we'll be sending to our legislators along with a discussion of recent legislative updates we reviewed the new Oprah legislation that was passed and briefly discussed other bills featured on the njsba legislative committee's update any board member um who's interested in seeing the list of bills that um New Jersey school boards is following um can

061find it under the legislative advocacy Community engagement committee content um as far as the letter goes um that was finalized and I just shared a copy of that tonight with all the board members if you have any um constructive criticism or feedback please feel free to share it with me um so that then we can send that out to our legislators um and then tweak it a bit possibly to um move into our letter writing campaign or possibly share with other state legislators that have stakeholders that might benefit as well um even if it's not specific to Monroe um after this we discussed our board goals that the committee should would like to focus on we reviewed the Strategic plan in order to determine what items we wanted to focus on um there were two

062main goals that our committee decided that we wanted to focus on the first goal is to advocate for additional funding for our school district some tasks to help achieve this goal that were discussed include updating our letter writing campaign collaborating with other districts dealing with similar funding issues organizing community members to testify at the state level to help secure additional funding and continuing to stay informed about pending legislation um to accomplish this goal we look forward to working with the members of the citizens advisory committee to help get the word out the second goal is to enhance communication throughout the community some tasks to help achieve this goal include identifying areas where we can improve communication creating a network with our active adult communities as well as other HOAs in order to keep them updated

063and creating events to hear the con concerns of community members such as bagels with the board um and that concludes my report any questions for Miss Ratner Miss B the only question I have is uh do we have a date for the website release I know we had put it on hold the school year start so the target is is uh right before end of November right before Thanksgiving break um timing yeah we put a pause on during opening school and then we got into that unexpected teacher website transfer piece um and now we're in the process of high resolution photos and things like that okay that's great that's a good time and it'll be kind of slow I have one more comment if I may um I just wanted to commend you on this

064letter and I wanted to request if you could read it out publicly uh that would go on public records and I feel like it the content is great and uh it would um you know build some enthusiasm amongst the public to maybe help share this letter thank you sure um so dear legislator I left it blank because we're sending to multiple people on behalf of the mon Township Board of Education we thank you for coming to speak with us in July it was a positive and Cooperative discussion and we look forward to speaking again soon we wanted to provide additional information about a few key topics discussed that night full day kind kindergarten as discussed Monroe is one of only seven districts left in New Jersey without full day kindergarten this is due to challenges

065such as a lack of funding and overcrowding in our buildings despite Monro taxpayers passing referendums to build a new high school and the new elementary school at a time when many districts are getting State funding for full day preschool starting at age three we ask our legislators to Advocate and secure funding for a full day kindergarten program in Monroe our administrative team calculated the cost of enacting a full day kindergarten program based on current enrollment numbers and the estimated cost would be approximately $6.5 million which would include Staffing infrastructure modifications curriculum and instructional materials the second subject is s52 s254 A- slash my gosh a 2784 versus S 2837 a484 both of these bills address how school districts can ask voters to go above the 2% cap the difference is that as 2837 a484 which

066was signed into law on September 4th of 2024 requires school districts to hold a special election in January March September or December an election held in any month besides November cost the school district about $100,000 in election cost s 2784 provides the ability for a district to place an additional spending question on the the November ballot when an election is already being held we ask that our legislators support the advancement of s248 2784 in addition to S 2837 a484 the next subject was preschool Grant restrictions as mentioned many similar school districts are receiving millions of dollars in state aid to provide a full- day preschool program on an annual basis because Monro Township is unable to offer a full dayc kindergarten program we are ineligible to apply for these grants we would ask our legislators

067to advocate for allowing districts without a full day kindergarten program to be allowed to apply for these grants as well in order to help fund both kindergarten and preschool programs examples of 2024 2025 preschool state school aid this is in addition to their standard school state aid South Brunswick $5.5 million North Brunswick $7 million Robinsville $2.8 million Piscataway $8.3 million Princeton $3 million I tried to find ones that were similar to our demographics um impact fees in 1975 the New Jersey state legislature passed act pl1 1975 c291 which required Builders to pay for the effects a development would have on a municipality but fees were limited to roads sewers and Water Supplies in 2022 a bill was proposed by Senator Turner that addressed this concern s 2168 we ask that our legislators work to modify

068this act by passing legislation so that the burden on local school districts is included impact fees as well we hope that you will find this information helpful while advocating for the taxpayers and children of Monro Township if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us and then I included um Miss Fabiano Dr Chanley and myself on the bottom thank you Miss Ratner for putting this together and I think we said this when we had the meeting and probably after the meeting but again saying again this was something that I know when the you myself and Miss Bora ran for the board uh three years ago now um that we had wanted to get our to get the ears of our legislators and so now not only did we have were we able

069to get them to come to us um but now we are able to continue this discussion and follow up with this letter um and it's fully comprehensive and really includes our musthaves musts I would say um so thank you I appreciate your work on this miss you had a question I no I just wanted to add that um I'm on the community at the lace committee and Miss Ratner uh tasked me to look up some information for her and for us so right now I'm working on finding out I did middle sex County I think there were four or five districts that lost money and the percentages and I'm working on Mercer and Mammoth I'm trying to do I did work on it and I had to watch uh I had babysit because my grandchildren

070go to howl and they were off on Monday for Columbus Day so I do have all the information I told her I just need to put it down someplace that didn't have time to type it up and it's very interesting Mammoth County a lot of their schools lost quite a bit of money so I think Senator gopal is from Mammoth that's why you've heard Senator that put a little spark under Miss Senator gal to um speak out for not only his district but he's been speaking I guess across the state about the issues with the state funding so but I was shocked to see we were not middle sex wasn't that bad Mercer wasn't that bad but when I saw Mammoth I said whoa no wonder that gentleman got so involved they lost quite millions

071and millions some of their districts lost so I'll have all that information ready we can hand it out and so just to you know update a bit what the the project is which I appreciate Mr P um you know offering her assistance with that would be to find other school districts which you know we're starting with our counties and then surrounding counties but then hopefully Statewide who have lost funding or never had funding to begin with um with the goal of having enough support Statewide to pass the school funding taskforce um which we've been discussing here for years but while we have different needs than a lot of these districts it's about finding districts that would be motivated to get this off the ground and then the next step would be advocating to make sure

072when there's a new formula that it's done correctly it takes into account the things that we've had challenges with if if I can just add to what G said it it is it has been tragic for the school districts that have lost the funding but if you look at it from the Monroe lens Monroe never had that money ever and we've all we always deserved that money at least for the last decade so our our battle is so much different than those and so we really will have to be selective in in finding the allies um that that have the same situation zero Equalization Aid zero dollars versus districts that lost used to have $40 million and now are at 30 or 25 $15 million out of your budget is a huge hit I agree

073but we never even had those 15 million we were we were at zero so our conversation is just so much more pitiful than theirs and I and I think if I can add um Miss Ratner I did sum up Equalization Aid on the districts and in Middle sex County and none of them if I remember none of them got it so we're um I sent you the the report in midd and was it middle six County I don't think any of them got Equalization a no they all did I did the research in April there was something they didn't get I'll share with you Gil I'll email it what so there there's us and one other District that I forget which one it is it might be cranber but I don't want to I don't

074want to speak without being sure that don't receive any Equalization Aid the rest of the districts in New Jersey do um all receive some sort of Equalization whether it's gone up or down over the years that I I'm not 100% sure there was something I checked in and I don't have my report right now I can pull up the email that you had sent but we'll also discuss it at next month's yeah we will and I'll have more information at that meeting too but it was interesting to see how bad these districts are being treated um but all of our neighboring middle sex uh District have a lot of Equalization Aid even this year even though with the reduction they have at least $25 million more than us in Equalization so had to be another

075we don't even get that much in overall Aid I so just to just the chair the districts that you had written didn't receive Equalization need for this year were Monroe cranberry matachin and mle sex borrow so it's those four four I knew there was a few yeah I se yeah um the rest of them receive something whether it's a little or a lot but thank you Miss Ratner for that yeah any other comments I think that was all of our committees yes okay great then the next item on our agenda is our public forum for agenda items only any member of the public wishing to speak you have four minutes to do so please state your name and municipality for the record good evening folks Richard G 45 um is this hold on I don't

076know if your mic I don't know if your mic is on we can but they can't somebody's coming now can we stop the clock just restart it thank you now it's on thank you Richard Gibbons 415 Schoolhouse Road I hope what I have to say tonight is not an issue uh my grandson started school in first grade in Barkley Brook this September and I was told when I called the school that the school librarian has the uh authority to pick the books that go into the library which is fine with me however in watching news I've seen that there are some School District in the state that somehow have allowed like graphic pornographic books that get into the school libraries now what I've seen some of these books I probably wouldn't be able to show

077you here at a board of ed meeting and my request is very simply that you would check this out check the school libraries and see if there's any books like that and have them removed and I'd like to get back to you next month if I could and see if you find anything so that's all I have to say thank you for your time God bless each and every one of you and have a good evening thank you thank you very much um do Dr janley did you or so um there is some conversation I know there's another gentleman happens to not be here this evening who does come forward to discuss the uh freedoms to read act if I'm if I'm saying that correctly and we we started to have conversations um might was

078it in one of the committee talked about it in late in the legislative action in legislative action so at this time we we feel confident although I definitely respect that gentleman so there will be no question that Dr um Layman myself um Dr Roselle we will have the conversation absolutely um and and confirm that all of our materials are appropr age appropriate um I I feel confident but I think he asked a legitimate question and I we want to be able to give him a factual statement when he we that will not be a problem there any other members of the public wishing to speak hi Michelle armini 09 at than Street I just want to thank everyone on the board who and all the Committees um it's it was a wonderful reports it you're

079doing a lot of great work and that letter is so good and detailed that it's it's definitely what we need so I want to thank you um and I know how hard you work so I I mean really I'm just astonished uh one one little thing that seems sort of like minutia that I'm almost embarrassed to bring up but because I live in the area and I I pass the high school all the time we're talking about savings and um you know uh electric and stuff these lights are on till 10:00 somebody has really got to take control of you know and I have no problem problem with keeping the lights on when people are there and and playing sports or on the fields but I don't think we need the lights to be on

080as long as they are there's no one there we should have had this under control for years we've been talking about it so isn't don't we have a program that someone regulates the lights that go on and off it has to be Revisited because it's not working so I I I appreciate your comments because I I do agree that you know I made the comment that we looking at pennies and nickels and dimes not just the big money so all I will say is I will confirm it Mr tag I do know firsthand I can only speak when I know firsthand I do know firsthand that the air conditioning and the heating system is on a system and that is absolutely correct because I know when we dealt with them they're not even in this

081state but as far as the actual um control and timing of the lights I don't want to say something that's erroneous so give me the opportunity to have the conversation with Mr T and look into it exactly how it works is it standard do we know I know that Mr barandika is here he's always he's always here um and he's our um director of Athletics and co-curricular so perhaps I could have a conversation with him as well looking at the schedule having the conversation know Mr sby also talks with the rec department so I have to just get everybody that's involved but I think it's a very legitimate question or statement I appreciate it certainly know that safety is an issue and we should have lights for safety but not to the extent that we

082have them and and not at The Late Late of like 10 o'clock it's been 10 o'clock when I've passed it and I've said there's absolutely no need it's a waste of money and we really should have been cognizant like I said for years even when I was on the board so shame on me for not having done it sooner but we've talked about it over the years and it really needs to be addressed because it's a lot of money and I see I see this area but I'm sure it's all over uh with all of our buildings so it it no problem it it really needs uh and like you said it hey it might be pennies but it might or in within a year maybe dollar you know little bit helps all right thank

083you very much and thank you for a great job that you're doing and and president Fabiana I I still think you got a home run going on thank you thank you Miss AR it's very pleasant it's been very pleasant to listen to everyone and the way everyone is speaking it's decent and uh congenial and thanks for that thank you very much are there any other members of the public wishing to speak seeing none then we will close this public with forum and move on to the assistant superintendence report Dr lemman sure uh Mr moral you want to come up so uh it's going to be a Different Twist on my report for this month um we have some housekeeping items to take care of uh specifically we're going to do a little information on our

084HIV uh report we're going to do a little student test uh data and we're also going to hit on some of our alternative assessments as well as AP uh scores can I run a click all right great we're just testing out the technology which is in the technology report we already talked about it's one of the items in there exactly all right so uh we'll start with the Hib update so uh we're going to wrap up last school year and again it seems a little delayed but we do have cases that linger for approval throughout the summer so uh this is really the first opportunity we have an an opportunity to kind of highlight some of the statistics from last year um so we had 25 investigations of HIV harassment intimidation and bullying 20 were

085founded five were unfounded um in terms of who's filing cases seven of those cases were filed by staff eight of them were filed by parents the remaining balance were uh filed by students we look at suspense suspensions and expulsions that's another area that we uh highlight so in terms of harassment intim intimidation and bullying specific consequences those really uh focus on counseling mediation and support mechanisms our discipline is Code of Conduct related so each situation has a behavior related to code of conduct as well as a Hib lens so all of our discipline is focused on the um code of conduct side of things so there are often suspensions uh not expulsions but expension suspensions or detentions uh related to uh behavior that may occur in the arena of an Hib case but that is

086a whether it's harassment intim intimidation or bullying founded or unfounded those consequences are applied separately because it's a code of conduct issue regardless of the findings of the case um so that's why you see that there's no specific suspensions related to that uh in the the chart there we just have a breakdown of where the cases uh were investigated you can see it's uh primarily Middle School and High School uh and that's not not to be surprising there's a lot of Education that takes place in the K12 Arena uh 345 we start to transition into some of the more uh Hib related behaviors uh and then you can see it kind of Fades into the into the high school and middle school what are the nature of some of the protected categories and distinguishing characteristics

087ICS um you can see it's actually relatively evenly distributed uh we don't have you know 10 investigations focus in one area um I think we have a comprehensive uh preventative uh instructional program whether it's anal piece Hib specific piece we just went through the week of respect in all our schools um so we do a lot of education and support on the front end and I think that helps us on the back end in terms of supporting student behaviors um so that is just a a brief kind of overview of our cases again I don't see I I would consider this a relatively typical it's about two cases a month um two two and a half cases a month that's pretty pretty standard um again we don't have any grades at are particular Hotpot we

088don't have any schools at are particular Hotpot and again I think that's a testament to the the broad General supportive instructional environment that we uh we go through with our uh our staff and administrative team and also the instruction that we give our our students in in working through this um any questions Hib specific before we move on great thank you so the next piece is uh are njsla scores so my preference to this is uh the way we present data is a lot of numbers in big charts so I will do a few highlights of particular data as we go through um because it doesn't make a lot of sense to read each column and and and kind of you know bore everybody with the with the repeating reading of numbers and things um

089what I can tell you from an overall perspective and the first two slides are kind of the Baseline for the rest of the slides that go through they kind of break those first two slides apart into sub subcategories and things is um the results are what we expected to be honest with you we saw and I'll highlight uh because I want to connect us back to last year's presentation we have a unique group of students that's moving through and it actually highlights in test scores um and I've haven't seen it before I've been doing this for been in education for 20 years I haven't seen this kind of discrepancy or I won't say discrepancy but this kind of like uh separate unique uh data point as it moves through um so it it's Unique but

090moral story is we're going to see some fluctuations you see a percent in a half up 2% up percent and half down 2% down most of the grade categories we're going to talk about a percent represents four students so we're looking at in the district if we're going up and down a percent in a grade level it's four students so that could be four students that came in with a fever one day and excuse us from getting the same or just slightly improving from last year's test scores to you know down a half a percent or whatever so we're we're we're a district that is a very good District right we're a great District we want to be outstanding so there are no real really hot spots that we could say if we fix this

091one particular flaming fire we will go 20 points increase in a specific area right so we have very good test scores across the board we have areas that we are consistently working on um and you see that in subtle changes of data but there are so many variables with this one particular report um there's one particular assessment you know it's baseball season who had the night baseball game or night softball game before you come in to take the test like there's a lot of things who you know so you're hungry and you're cranky and you're not in your best test taking piece so that's the that's the issues we see with this uh nsla specific data and it's all reled connected to you know accountability with the federal government in the state our operational data

092that we use on a day-to-day basis is the map data is the uh data that we get from our interventionists and in the classroom data and it's real time this data is 6 months old anybody that we're focusing on on we're already focusing on and we're a month into helping them and supporting them growing from where we are so um that's just kind of my general overview my general uh kind of Baseline so here's an example a lot of numbers on this chart this is Ela we have three years worth of data uh they're all broken across by grade levels and they're broken into uh the three or the five different meeting exceeding not meeting partially meeting and approaching expectations uh one area I wanted to highlight um is if you look at eighth grade

093and you go all the way across to level four and level five the difference so in eth grade we're down 12.2% but in nth grade we're up 13.8% last year we had the conversation when those students were in 8th grade the seventh grade number went down an equivalent number and the eighth grade number went up so we have a grade level that is has a particular strength in language arts and we've followed them through a couple years and it's unbelievable like this is and it's you can see it oftentimes it's subtle I made the connection last year some years in athletics you have a really strong group of soccer players come through right and you dominate and you win the state championship and you kind of go back to your competitive season Once those students

094graduate this is a group a cohort of students that has a particular strength in language arts and they they've moved through our grade levels and you that's why you see an a really high increase in one year and and then when they left we go back to about where we should be um and you can see that so if you go across 8th grade in 2022 21.4% of our students were exceeding expecte expectations that cohort took the test it was 37.8 this year we're back down to 21.4 back to the the normal the the our normal kind of operating range um so they kind of move through the grade level um so just just a point of highlight a point of emphasis again you'll see we're up 1.3% in some areas down 1.6% you're looking

095at four to six students swinging the pendulum in that report um I'll just go through a few slides and we can hit questions at the end okay yep I just want a clarification the grades is that this year's or last year's grades this is the grades in which they took the test okay so this would be the students last year they're currently in the next year's grade yep so we have a similar breakdown in math something notable in this sheet we are breaking it out because we have students in middle school that take algebra geometry uh we break them out for middle school and high school the state does not they will combine numbers and you'll see that as they break out further in some of the other slides where the state We compare our

096numbers to State numbers and the State numbers the same for the middle school and the high school because again they're not disaggregating that data um so if we were to merge them we would see more consistency with our own uh School data but again we see some natural fluctuations um we see one you know one grade levels up uh 0 five 5.6% in terms of who's uh what our change was from level four and level five we see a few grade levels uh that decreased a little bit we see a little hiccup in in geometry and we have some ideas as to why that happened um and we're you know kind of looking at it but again it's a cohort that's moving through so right we would consider these 2% 1% fluctuations pretty pretty normal

097with you know grade levels coming through and you have different demographics of students uh the next couple slides are just breaking down how many students took the tests over the past few years so in third grade across you have 22 23 24 uh the column on the right is a difference between 23 and 24 uh this does not represent enrollment we have students that take a variety of assessments some of them some students refuse to take this assessment um but it just gives you an idea when you look at test scores and numbers uh about how many students are taking the assessment for us notable though overall we are uh down about 83 students in grades 1 through nine or uh 3 through nine taking our assessments and this is a breakdown for uh mathematics

098again we're breaking this out you can see there are students in the middle school that's with the parentheses Ms that are taking uh Algebra 1 geometry yep so those that's a demographic of student that performs differently than uh the standard cohort of eighth grade students as they move into the high school so once you get into e8th grade the uh math scores uh kind of diverge a little bit uh the next set of slides I like I mentioned is an expanded version of those first two slides we're taking the past three years test scores and we're comparing them to state to the state um and just something notable as we move through and again I'm not going to go item by item here um but what we're seeing and I've talked about mtss before uh

099in committees but also uh we've talked about it at the board meeting we've approved resources for it students that are in our mtss program and our MTS process under in undergoing that process are embedded in these scores and we can see subtle movements as those students are going many of them are operating in like a level two a level three so we're seeing movement from level two to level three um which again when we're looking at growth for students students aren't typically going to go from a level one performance to a level four performance in one year it's going to take years for them to catch back up or they may their Optimal Performance level may be a level two a level three um so we have all those kind of factors that we're looking

100at when we uh when we disaggregate this data and we look at student by student and as every one of these columns every one of these pieces of data points we engage in students that fall in these categories not these big overarching numbers and themes so here we go we're just moving through this is level three and level four again across the board um yeah I mean we're definitely we're we're moving in the right direction I think you can see our down here all grades our level three from last year is down a little bit which is good and what we're seeing is we're seeing movement from students in level three to level four and students from level four to level five because you can see our level five is up 14.3 to 16.2 if

101we go back to the previous slide some of those level four students have moved up and our level threes are now on level four and again this is aggregated this is big big picture data when we drill into this in the summer we're looking at individual students through linkit we're looking at individual students through map we're going to go through the same set of slides for uh mathematics so this is just a general piece kind of explaining when we're in grade eight we have grade eight students taking grade eight math we have grade eight students taking algebra we have grade eight students taking geometry so we do not have the complete profile of students that we did in seventh grade or even sixth grade as they move up because they really start to disaggregate uh

102and something notable when we get into high school the high school numbers are reflective of only uh the ninth and 10th grade students the 11th and 12th grade students are not included it's something the store the state doesn't report and again you'll see the similar Trends you know we're we're outperforming the state as we would expect um and in general looking at Trends moving across uh and this this is where you'll see I mentioned the middle school and high school the state does not disaggregate those students in algebra and geometry so you can see uh 177% is the state average for students in uh percentage for students in level one but it's in middle school and high school again because they don't disaggregate we have no students in the middle school at level one and

10312.7% at at the high school so um it's that's reflective of the demographic of student engaging in algebra at the middle school versus algebra at the high school and that and those Trends kind of move uh all the way through the another thing we are required to do is break it down when appropriate we have one middle school so we don't break it down by middle schools because there's only one same thing with the high school but we do disaggregate by school um and again what we're looking at here is each school has uh a demographic or a profile of students and we know that we have three different schol schols um I would say two of them have similar profiles and one of them has a different profile um when the state used to

104create uh peer groups and they used to put out a school report card that had a list of 30 schools that were very similar to you uh oak tree and Applegarth were never considered peer schools to Brookside and M Lake they have a different demographic and whatever the calculation whatever the state looks at to create and identify mathematically other schools that are peer schools those two schools are different they're have they were always sorted into a different peer group um so we would never see Brookside as a peer school for Applegarth when we look at you know our 30 common schools and things um so it's just you know we have we know we have different starting points at different schools and uh you know we look for growth uh we're looking for students to

105move from whether it's in njsla from a level three to a level four maintain level four level four to level five um but again when we're doing our map assessments which is three times a year that's measure academic progress um we see the students we're focusing on moving moving through and making progress uh here's our Ela breakdown for grade four grade five again like I said in the beginning we see and we we don't see anything any smoking guns we see what we expect um we see the fruits of we're in year two really it's like year one and a half uh of our mtss process so we see some of those students we focused on last year moving forward this year with our mtss process which is multi-tier System of support um those students

106will have a full year of their prescribed interventions with goal setting monitoring moving in and out of goals moving in and out of the process um we expect to see those students move even more and and some of them may move within a level some of them may move from level to level uh when it comes to njsla scores and again here's grade three language arts or math grade four math grade five math um and this this is already Mr morala already up on the web or will be this this will be up on the web by tomorrow again this is the kind of data we we are required to present in in terms of you know uh subgroups and things so we wouldn't expect you to dissect and uh you know really engage in

107this I'm available for questions if if needed um what I'll say is the next few slides are Ela and math breakdowns by race uh gender and then uh program so in terms of subgroups the one area of focus we have and we had uh Dr Roselle in the curriculum committee a few months ago present our three-year multilanguage learner plan uh that is a demographic or subgroup that we have our our uh tremendous amount of focus on um it's an area that we're looking at in terms of high school graduation it's an area that we're looking on in terms of uh support from kindergarten all the way in prek all the way through 12th grade so when we look at an area that we're going to focus on and we will continue to focus on um

108that would be a hot spot for us um it's a growing demographic uh 2019 when I was looking at some older data we were probably 50 50 or 60 multilanguage Learners um as you'll see in a couple minutes we're pushing 200 right now it's not a it's not a large number relative to our student population but it's rapid growth through even through the covid environment um that has a high value in terms of our uh accountability factors and things but it's also um it's a new kind of environment for us we have a sheltered instruction program where teachers are trained to support our multi multi- language Learners um but that's an area that we we will continue to focus and they're embedded in our uh state test scores as well when appropriate so and that

109completes our well just to wrap it up these are some of the things if you talk about uh what are we doing to support students in our day-to-day operations to have our continued growth to look at hotspots or areas of focus I spoke about ntss which is that multi-tier system of support um that's all grades that's K through 12 um the high school and the middle school are evolving their uh process they are uh implementing and creating because again at at the elementary level you have one teacher 25 students 20 students all day long you have different schedules you have different classes so it looks differently so there their programs are growing in the types of interventions but uh we we have a manual we have a process that uh that mtss support process is

110in place other interventions we have we have basic skills that's in class we have reading Specialists we have uh our map and lap programs at the Middle School uh those are all interventions that were are prescribed uh and I guess implemented for a specific period of time for with specific IND uh individualized goals for students and based on follow-up meeting and data we will adjust goals or uh move students in and out of this mtss process we do receive title funds for some of our schools those title funds and uh the board would probably recognize some of the things that we we have done over the summer because we we approve staff for it uh summer math boost we've done some like Woodland in mil Lake have some summer math boost programs where they bring

111students in uh a couple weeks before school starts and kind of do like a math boot camp kind of piece that gets some a head start for the school year um and then how do we monitor this as a whole as a district District but all the way down to the teacher level uh we use map uh growth as well as uh some of their reading assessments and that's kind of like a benchmark type data set that we get uh two to three times a year depending on the student uh parents get access to those reports those reports have graphs and charts and explanations uh uh to the assessments so you know we have a we have a strong understanding of where the students are who needs the assistance um and then supporting the teachers

112in differentiating inst structuring and and getting that student growth area where we want it to be um so that's it for njsla another test that we give that we report out on is the Dy uh Dynamic learning map dlm testing that is given to students with our most significant in intellectual disabilities in ela Math and Science um that is determined uh through uh the child study team whether it's an appropriate assessment the njsla is for the student to take if not um um this is one of the assessments they do take this is how many students took it uh that's inclusive of in and outof District students so that's not just our students attending our special programs here in the district but it's also out of District um so just give you a scope it's

113a it's a uh individualized assessment based on every student's Uh current Place current progress and uh just measuring their learning appropriate in ways that they can communicate ways that they can demonstrate their learning um it takes place over a several months uh beginning late winter we start to get prepared for it um and it takes place early spring late winter uh another piece I spoke to this earlier this is our weda access 2.0 this is the assessment use for our multilanguage Learners um just highlights here when students take this and this is really a monitor of where students are in learning uh in acclimating to our uh learning environment it's not like we're looking for every level one to be a level two in a certain period of time this just helps us Monitor and

114and track students as they move through and as they learn the language and they learn the academic academic language as well as the uh social language of uh you know coming to a new country or coming to a new environment um 4.5 is the magic number for a student to exit the ESL program what that means is they would no longer receive Services during the school day we do monitor students that exit the program for two years uh we're required to do so because if they begin to struggle we will we required to bring them back into the program and again provides uh ESL supports to them or U multilanguage uh learner supports to them so um I mentioned before we have 187 students that were assessed that's significantly up from uh 2019 this year

115we had 39 students exit again we're going to monitor them um it's highlighted there twice we had 39 students are in the 4.5 or higher so and that's it for my part of the presentation I'm gonna have Mr amalda speak to AP scores do you have any questions real quick on some of this um and I can certainly meet individually with anyone who has like a really specific question because I don't have the the breakdown sub uh subgroup data to kind of nail into why is this percentage this percentage or whatever I want going to ask that I promise just a general question so language arts and maths are njsla we do do a standardized test for science do we get such a report for that yep yep I actually I'll share the science piece

116too y I'll bring that in at the next meeting if we and what grades are those exams uh five 8 and 11 just three times three times okay thank you yep Miss rner uh just a couple of questions nothing too specific I think um so I also you know just wanted to commend Administration and staff I we had covid learning loss that like we're seeing the improvement from like we're seeing it the percentage and it looks like it's Statewide too but specifically districtwide it's it's really nice to see that um as far as the math assessments go um I know you mentioned the algebra one students um will take generally that assessment as opposed to njsla um is that also for the students that or in eighth grade that are in Geometry do yes so

117that top level of students um is in and that's every year so from grade 8 2023 to grade 8 2024 we have students that will do that every year so it shouldn't be that different grade-wise but in terms of like a seventh grade to eighth grade what those grade levels do that's where we would see like the change well you you could have students in seventh grade taking algebra one assessment eighth grade taking geometry you know eighth grade takes geometry 8th grade takes algebra uh yeah algebra so it's that's why it gets very complicated to look you know you got to go geometry geometry algebra algebra and again we break it out by middle school high school the state doesn't do that so a lot of our numbers will just be one number which is

118ninth and eighth grade or 9th eth and seventh grade so that's why it's those numbers get a little wonky and that's why we try and kind of put that disclaimer in the front end okay yeah CU like all of the sixth grade would take njsla generally speaking most of them but then seventh grades where you start to lose some and then eighth grade you would lose more yes now the other piece is when you look at State numbers there are districts that require eighth graders to take algebra one so again an eighth grade number on in the state number isn't Apples to Apples because not every District some districts don't have eighth grade math everybody takes Al so um it's again once you start getting into those individualized courses which is really sixth grade and

119above right things get much more muddled are there districts that have students take the algebra 1 assess as well as the njsla for that grade level cuz like if you compare eth grade to eighth grade district to District take one njsla assessment okay yep um and then just the only other question I had in terms of when looking at the subgroups just because we've discussed like the changes and regulations to free and reduce lunch that now allows more students is there any modifications in terms of looking at those numbers because there might be more students now that are eligible as opposed to years P or it justed so I don't I haven't looked yet um you know with the freeing to reduce numbers from this year's enrollment right because we put it out uh even

120more accessible this year in terms of requiring of check off form and and acknowledgement form so um again we're looking at a percent equaling four students right so one way or the other four to five students depends on what grade level you how many students are in the grade um you know I would say it's not going to rock the boat tremendously but you know if we get 50 or 60 new free and reduced lunch students that weren't necessarily in that profile then you may be looking at it at a the enrollment equaling a change um but I wouldn't I don't think we were missing that many people to begin with in terms of signing up for free in roduced lunch all right thank you yep Mr moral I think you're up good evening once

121again everybody I will be brief uh in our review of the monip high school's advanced placement data from the past school year uh every year we receive the outcomes from our AP Administration which takes advanced placement excuse me uh Administration advanced placement exam which takes place in the month of May uh throughout that uh part of the school year and then we receive our uh data and results usually around the after the 4th of July holiday so uh while we Champion ourselves as a district of being a whole child District we are also very very uh proud and dedicated to making sure that that uh students that are pursuing a more rigorous education are given the opportunity to do so and as you can see uh our high school offers a an advanced placement course

122and access to the advanced placement exam virtually in every content area that is available uh the AP program is governed locally at the high school by uh Dr Catelli and her subordinate Miss Casey buffalino and they do a fantastic job of staying um ahead of the curve and and in tuned with what the College Board is doing um whenever there's a new course design happening or a course or an exam that is revised um we are alerted from a curriculum standpoint and our teachers make adjustments accordingly and it seems like this is happening more regularly but our high school has done a fantastic job we reported out last year that um we had some goals uh for our AP program and uh at the conclusion of this presentation I will be happy to report that

123we believe that we achiev those goals so as Dr Layman mentioned uh the data can be hard to read on the screen this will be available on the web but so I'll talk about the big picture and really the highlights from this year's most recent report uh about 1700 exams were completed by Monro Township High School students uh in through our school so obviously that's a very high number when you consider that our uh student enrollment lives right around 2,000 uh so that is a tremendous uh reflection of what our students are capable of and what they desire to do uh a passing grade on the advanced placement exam is a score of three or higher and of those 17 13 students or exams excuse me that were completed 84% of those exams received the

124passing grade which is a tremendous return um on uh I'm not going to say investment but you know what I mean uh so our students are not just taking you know there was a sentiment back in the day that oh kids just want to take the class because they want to get the the weighted GPA blah blah blah but you can see that a monor Township High School student when they go in and take the exam they take it very seriously uh so much so that you can see uh that 60% went didn't just pass but earned a score of a four or five with five being the highest which again is a tremendous return on an ATT Testament to the work ethic of our students and obviously the work of our instructors uh so

125a couple highlights from the first slide you know dealing with our electives uh we offer AP opportunities in Define performing arts and obviously in business education the business education courses you can see the total exams in advanced placement microeconomics and macroeconomics uh 158 and 193 respectively that is an incredible amount of students taking um an advanced placement business exam and you can see we score very very well when you consider the volume of students taking the exam versus the amount of students that are earning the credit that is uh that means our students are doing a very nice job in those two exams and those are two separate exams moving on into the humanities uh and World Language once again um I mean some incredible returns here when you see uh in the Ela composition

126um it's getting late but I can't read off the screen but I'm pretty sure that says 96% and 100% respectively qualified in that content area so outstanding and then our AP Capstone courses which are part of ourm uh offers our students opportunities to get into other types of Collegiate disciplines that weren't traditionally available when we were in high school but uh we do very well in those content areas as well and for those programs being so new to see our performance so high is very uncommon and then of course World Language AP exam um our students that elect to take uh those exams do quite well as well and also many of our students should be worth mentioning pursue the Seal of biliteracy which we'll talk again about at the end of the school year

127this is uh math is obviously one of the highlights of our district when it comes to AP performance um one of the most highly uh examined AP exams uh at the postsecondary level you can see the monor students are very competitive uh when you consider the amount of exams taken and the amount of students that qualify out of the high school computer science this is an area that we talked about uh last year a lot particularly as it uh referred to access I know that was a point of concern for the community historically the amount how students could get access to this course we were happy to report that last year due to some structural changes uh we were able to accommodate every student that wanted advanced placement computer science last year and not only

128did we accommodate them you can see that uh 71% of our students qualified uh and doing very well competitively to our peers at the state and National level and that is again a program that is constantly in flux and our teachers work uh year round to stay current with that content and then of course rounding out the humanities our social studies uh performance also um very voluminous and very good uh you know the amount of exams you could a push um which is one of our more popular exams 172 exams taken and look at this qualifying rate and passing rate so congratulations to the a push instructors finally The Sciences uh we you know probably arguably the most difficult courses offered at the high school um and you can see this is big game hunting

129when it comes to cor selection and uh many of our students will step up to the challenge and they do quite well particularly in the physics area um uh outstanding work and uh these are areas that we want to make sure that our students if they want to take the challenge they have uh they have the opportunity so last year uh we reported out that the monor Township High School received a bronze rating um on the AP honor rooll uh this year we were pleased to report that we were upgraded to a silver rating uh now that is obviously we're very proud of that we'd like to be gold but I would like to just break down why we're silver and what it's going to take for gold and and it is my opinion that

130the categories that matter most are where we are already rated gold and that would be in the amount of students that are earning college credit respective to the students taking the exam and obviously College optimization so our our our area of improvement obviously we want to continue to maintain an endless progression of performance but where where the College Board thinks we need to improve to get us to that uh perfect gold rating across the board all three areas would be the percent of students that want to take an exam so we still are uh have some room to do with exam access and not necessarily maybe access but uh making sure our students realize that uh they have access to these exams and maybe connecting students with an AP course that better meets their needs

131so uh the college board says we can improve in the area of connecting students with AP courses and getting more students taking AP courses so we will work on that as a team uh but more importantly we are very pleased with the performance we were very pleased that last year there were not students feeling like they missed out or that they were left out of an experience and um I think it's say that Dr Higgins and the minor Township High School has been off to a great start this school year between the Apple distinct designation and this uh significantly uh improved AP performance so congratulations to Dr Higgins mon High School faculty and the students and uh that concludes the uh AP report from last school year uh this presentation will be available on the

132website tomorrow so any questions Miss Ratner um Mr zner go ahead thank um just a quick question regarding the um math advanced placement the AP um we uh 84% uh had a qualifying score 60% had a score of four or five so 20 24% we're approaching expectations would I be right in saying that are you you're looking at the total aggregate of of maap in its entirety no I'm looking well I'm looking at the argate in terms of just the advanced placement so if I understand you're correct uh correct so um for an example because I could I could see how the chart may be difficult to lead uh read excuse me so if we're using Cal AB I'm looking at this I'm looking at here I see okay so if I understand your your

133question correctly this this is looking at all of the exams given at the Monro Township High School right so out the out of the 1713 84% of those exams were three or higher of the 1713 60% of those exams were four or five or higher so what we did is we delineated the passing grade of a three from what is considered to be the exceptional grades of a four four and five just so you can see that not only are we passing but we're passing with style okay thank you yes sir Miss rner yep um so a question regarding um I guess the AP exams when we consider the dual enrollment classes um because if I remember when we're looking at that last slide about what we need in order to achieve gold status um

134it's additional students who are taking the exams but my understanding CU I I think we had discussed this earlier last year is the AP classes you have to follow very set criteria as opposed to dual enrollment which you know is a college level course being taught at the high school but then those students aren't necessarily taking an AP exam um I guess is that something that we're looking at when trying to achieve the goal of moving from silver to gold to I guess I don't want to say solve it because we want to offer both but realizing those students may have taken a exams if we didn't offer the dual enrollment so that's an excellent question and what it does is it brings us to a discussion of what you know maybe it brings us

135back to the discussion of a portrait of a graduate now we could map a I could sit with a freshman or or Dr Catelli or any of the administration could sit with a freshman and map out a road map to get you as many AP courses as you can and drive up that College culture number however um we do offer other exceptionally rigorous opportunities at the high school that have no affiliation with the AP program excuse me um an example of that might be the entrex course that uh runs periodically at the high school which is in uh in partnership with Delaware that is not an AP course um but it does earn college credit on the other side of it we have AP Computer Science principles um which runs through our uh teched Department

136and um that is part of a a sequence course through Project Lead the Way so whereas a student in that course could take the AP exam but simultaneously earn dual credit from that network of Partners so the two opportunities are not necessarily mutually exclusive um the district has the opportunity and and so when you when we run an AP course it's still a mono Township High School course we write curriculum we map our curriculum to the guidelin set forth by the college board but we make it Monro version of the course so for example our microeconomics course follows the guidelines of the college board however when our curriculum designers write it we design it with the Monro student in mind but we use the AP syi and and Foundation as our starting point uh a

137student pursuing uh an AP an naap course that happens to be in dual credit articulation with a post-secondary institution could in fact earn both um but there are some instances where there is a dual credit course that does not offer an AP exam my guess is based on some of the work we've been doing is that those types of courses will continue to emerge as we form these Partnerships um but back to the original question what the student and really the high school and the district would have to ask itself is what do we want to do do we want to drive up the col College culture number to the point where we get the gold status or do we want to continue designing programs that meet the needs of the monal Learners it's like

138teaching to the test or teaching to the kid it's really so we don't put a ton well I don't want to speak for everyone when I look at this those last two categories are very important um the first one's very important too but I don't know if we want to build the foundation of our programs of studies by simply trying to Crowbar kids into AP courses right just just to follow up with that are there courses where the I guess students could opt in to take the AP exam even if it was not um an AP course or that you have to be enrolled in the AP course specifically in order to take Miss Bor is nodding her head at me so so there is a uh process and a prerequisite for a student to

139sit for an AP exam so if they're not in a course an AP course actively and they want to take the AP exam for that course uh they would then meet with the counselor and eventually if they appeal they go to the administration but there's a very clear guideline of H having the adequate background to sit for the exam uh and it could be summer course or it could be a bunch of different things and it's all outlined on the high school web page um but what that does is it allows us to give access to the students that are currently enrolled in the course because we have you know confined restraints and uh space restraints to have anybody sit for an exam um but it also maintains the Integrity of the exam right so

140wouldn't want somebody taking an AP Physics Exam if they just finished bio right and they have no AP no physics background at all so um that's really what this kind of comes down to um but something along the lines of the Delaware like dual enrollment course where they might be covering at a similar level I I I kind want to speak to that when I don't know it whatever whatever AP exam we offer there if someone had if a student has the adequate prere meets the prerequisites and we have the space right we they can sit for the exam and that again they go through a process um to do that now we are not required to do that it's something that we offer because we want to encourage our students as many as possible

141to take an exam but we also want to have a standard for students who sit for the exam in a prerequisite and a baseline um College boards does not require us to be an open site for AP exams Miss Bora I just have a comment um Dr lame and Mr morala you know how anxiously i' been waiting for this report um in in my opinion performance and not just my opinion according to college board when it comes to Performance we are gold standard it's just about and we're almost there with um how many children are taking it and right we can't force our students to take it but we are providing the opportunity with the opp with changing uh graduation credits that allows our students to take more subjects that they're you know going to

142pursue in the future we'll probably in the coming few years more students take higher rigor courses and areas that they want to pursue a career in so I'm very hopeful maybe this year maybe next year we'll be U gold standard by their even with the College culture I was just curious you probably already know what percentage of our graduating class is enrolled this year right would would we already know if we meetting meeting their Benchmark for this year with um graduating class the percentage of students in the graduating class who took an AP so that that needs to be 65% that's really high yeah I mean that's the next it shows you there we have to hit 651 this uh last year we were at 51 last year so if do we know how close

143we are to 65 we can certainly I can certainly reach out to the high school I don't know it offand and and it's only that they take it right it doesn't require them to pass or you know meet the two or three as long as 65% of the graduating classes taken one in the last four year in four years of high school so we would have who took one so far but then they will they'll include the senior class who would take it this year as well so we wouldn't necessarily know who well they're they're signing up to take the exam now but right right by October 18th yeah so be fingers crossed you never know it could be this year could be next year or the year after but I think we're so close

144so congratulations this is improvement over last year we're moving closer to the Student Success that we're all you know wanting to achieve in the district so this is great thank you very much great report Mr zner yeah I I also want to compliment um the administration I think you've done a really great job I mean the report is great it's showing that we're moving forward I especially like those um those programs with the AP courses for the kids I love programs like that where kids who are really bright can self select get into the programs and they're performing so exceptionally well um on that I mean it shows a lot for the school I will say this also that there's always room for improvement we all agree with that we can always look and and

145keep moving those students and pushing them and to a point where you know we as Educators know how much stress you know when when it becomes too much we should know at that point and back off but still um you know these students can do a lot more expectation but they're getting there they really are and and and again wonderful job really [Applause] congratulations any other questions or comments okay and again to Echo Mr zner thank you for that um another comprehensive report um and well done with our congratulations to our students and our staff it's really a job well done thank you uh Dr janley you're next so good evening everyone and um normally I take long and Dr Layman does not so we switch roles this this evening so I will um I

146will be fairly uh expedient but I did want to start off um by acknowledging that this past Monday we did have Columbus Day and Indigenous people's day I think it's important to notate um our history and um although we were in school for an early dismissal day there were a voluminous amount of activities that go on in various different schools um our um student board members doing such an exceptional job they steal my thunder all the time I am dressed in hot pink from head to toe with um all of our our acknowledgement for um October being breast cancer awareness we do a fabulous job here on the district in all of the schools we have a very large uh fundraiser called the mama May that's been going on here for many many years we're

147very proud of the fundraises that we do and it's very important to acknowledge you know um cancer of any kind is something that has probably affected everyone in One Way or Another whether it be family member a closest friend and we're always excited when they Triumph but too many times they do not so I think it is very important to acknowledge this particular month um we also started off this month um with me wishing everybody for the upcoming holiday was the Jewish holiday of um rashash Shana and then it ends with yam kapor so we say Lanova we bring in the new year and it's very important because I like balance that we will end this month with Dali which allows us to bring in the light so we're bringing in the New Year and

148then we end by bringing in the light so I want to all those that celebrate the Dali uh celebration and holiday well wishes uh we will be closed for that holiday and that is on November 1st um and that will then start our um week that we happen to be lucky enough this year we're looking at the calendar may not happen next year but we're doing our very best to see how the calendar Falls so I did want to say that because you won't see us again to the latter part of November so I did want to acknowledge those those um those holidays and the meanings to whomever May celebrate and regardless of what you celebrate we all celebrate newness celebration commencement and we all celebrate light I I can't imagine anybody that wouldn't I

149had the pleasure um for for many of you know I'm I'm a big gallivanter I go to all the schools all the time and I was very very excited to be able to participate in various different things the high school is started off um one of their great Ser in service days on this past Monday with um the winning culture and called CAP capturing student Hearts it's an opportunity for the staff I I did go and I did part participate we had a speaker come in and the staff members really had an opportunity to hear from an outsider who was an educator the understanding of how it has to always be culture culture is a big thing for all of us we believe that um when we we use letters like seal but it means

150you know social emotional learning it you can't get kids to learn on an academic level if they don't feel safe loved happy healthy wanted um good socialization so that was something that you know we always say it starts at the top well it starts with the teachers starts with the staff so that was an incredible opportunity uh prior to that a couple weeks ago I got to go to a pep rally once again in the high school and I'm always giving out kudos to the middle school because it's something that I know because I lived it but now I have an opportunity to give out kudos to the high school as well they did an incredible pep rally I've been going for years even when I was at the middle school and the pep rally

151was just you could feel the excitement of the children and we're so excited also because we have such an incredible unified program that when you look at the pep rally which happens before a homecoming game we see the participation of all children and that's so very important in this district and so very important to us uh lastly we can um they stole my thunder but I did also go to the Avid Signing Day where the children basically take the pledge of moving forward with their um expectations of moving Mr zeer said something like this you know we're good but we want to be great we're going to move forward and how good we're doing and the AVID program advancement by individual determination is is an incredible program and a lot of the um a lot

152of the structure a lot of the best practic are utilized in all classes regardless of whether or not you happen to be an a a child so we did have Robinsville Comm as as was shared by the um students it's not the first time that we've had other students V other districts rather visit us so I was able to participate so it was just an incredible incredible week incredible weeks I should say an incredible month so on that note we'll get down to business and I always start off with our retirements this year or rather this month rather getting myself getting ahead of myself this page thank you I know who they are there we go so I'm going to go backwards from least to most so we have three people that are leaving us

153to fly the coupe on to bigger and better and enjoy their their time as they've worked very hard in different capacities for our children we have Miss Sandra Cory who's a teacher of grade one believe she's at mil Lake 28 years in education we wish her well on her next Endeavor we wish her health and happiness and we always wish everybody peace next we have a driver we always say all different facets right takes a village so our driver Regina Martin Martika rather drive her for 29 years I can't even imagine 29 years driving our children back in front back and to and from rather school it's a big deal and lastly and I was able to celebrate her on our opening ceremony Dr Michelle Celli has spent in this District alone not to mention

154she came from another District 40 years in myship school district giving back to our children so I I wish them all Health prosperity and really wonderful time with family members and friends on their next Endeavor and their lives so now down to business okay under Personnel for a 10 member vote it is recommended the board approve the attached Personnel items a through o motion second motion by Miss Alvarez second by Miss Bora Miss alen can we have a roll call yes Miss Alvarez yes Miss borak yes Mr depay yes Dr pek yes Mr Piro yes M Ratner yes Miss Sharma yes Mr Tano yes Mr zner yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes under Personnel for a nine member vote it's recommended the board approve the attached Personnel items p through AQ motion second oh I'm

155sorry I forgot to ask if there were any questions on the agenda item before we took a roll call Vote with I'll save all my questions for later okay are there any question wait motion by Mr tufano second by Miss Bora um are there any questions on Personnel nine member vote no okay now can we have a roll call please yes Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Miss depan yes Mr pero yes Miss Ratner yes Miss Sharma yes Mr Tano yes Mr Zer yes M Fabiano yes motion passes okay under a 10 member vote for board action it is recommended the board approve the attached board action items a through o motion second okay motion by Mr Tano second by Miss Ratner are there any questions Miss Bora um I I did ask this earlier

156but I I just realized that I didn't get complete Clarity item F uh the jamf software I know you responded Dr Layman saying it's a curriculum uh software but what is it used for it it manages devices throughout the district it's a it allows for remote remote updates and okay managing and thank you any M rner um yep just a quick question about the calendar um revision um which I I understand um we changed it due to the budget changes um because we are not having a meeting in April um I know this past year we had discussed the timeline for employee renewal um will that I guess the ones that were supposed to be done in April will be done in May or in March okay so I'm going to speak and I've already

157spoken to make sure that it's that works for her schedule so I will sit with um Miss Christie our director of human resources and there will be people that will be approved in March and then there'll be people that will be approved in May the May meeting being moved and we do appreciate I know I had that in my confidential and we did an exhaustive conversation over and over again to really look at making sure we met the requirements of statutes but at the same time it would be silly to have a meeting a committee meeting a meeting it doesn't make any sense so statute wise we are allowed to not have the meeting so yes everything will will follow code and statute and where appropriate I will confirm with her that we have all

158of our ducks in a row evaluations and so forth and then we have things in March and then we would have things in May okay thank you you're very welcome other questions okay can we have a roll call please yes Miss alz yes Miss Bora yes Miss depay yes Dr peek yes Mr Piro yes M Ratner yes ruse on letter A for Mr Snider okay Miss Sharma yes Mr Tano yes Mr zner yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes okay for board action under n member vote it is recommended the board approve the attached board action items p through U motion second motion by Miss Bora and second by Miss Ratner okay are there any questions okay a roll call please Miss Alvarez yes Miss Bora yes Mr depay yes Mr Piro yes Miss Ratner yes

159Miss Sharma yes Mr Tano yes Mr zner yes M Fabiano yes motion passes that now concludes superintendent report and I wish everyone um health and happiness in the upcoming holiday next item on our agenda is our business administrator's report okay um it is recommended that board action items a through H be approved by consent roll call under a 10 member vote motion second motion by Mr Pio second sorry Mr tufano second by Miss who second it I second oh miss Bora okay are there any questions just a quick acknowledgement um thanking the pal Learning Center for becoming a district sponsor for the robotics program that's all it's not a question sorry we have a roll call please yes um Miss Alvarez yes recues on items related to The Learning Through The Learning Tree letter B

160okay Miss Bora yes m yes Dr pek yes Mr pero yes M Ratner um yes reuse on letter a and then reuse on the bill list addendum for C 02467 and C 02381 okay um Miss Sharma yes Mr Tano yes Mr ziker yes M Fabiano yes recuse on letter A1 motion passes um it is recommended the board action item I I be approved by consent roll call under a nine member vote motion second motion by Mr Tano second by Mr zner okay are there any questions I'll thank Miss Bowski for the donation of the pianos I think it was Dr Who said it's my responsibility at the last meeting give me have a roll call please yes Miss Alvarez yes Miss B yes Mr depan yes Mr Piro yes M Ratner yes Miss Sharma yes

161Mr Tano yes Mr ziker yes Miss Fabiano yes motion passes that concludes my report okay thank you the next item is our board president's report um I just have a brief uh statement here so I would like to once again congratulate our students and staff who received Awards this evening for their volunteer service over the past few months your dedication to your fellow community members deserve to be acknowledge and appreciated the board continues to collaborate with the community and administration it was a wonderful experience last week at our First Citizens advisory committee meeting I and I'm sure we all are looking forward to the positive discussions and contributions that will come out of this committee I'd like to just take a moment to thank the board and administration for their commitment to working together your

162efforts are not unnoticed and I for one appreciate the time you were all volunteering for the betterment of our district I would like to wish those that are attending the njsba conference next week a meaningful and enjoyable Workshop I wish that I could attend um however I have to work I have parent teacher conferences next week so I'm looking forward to hearing all about what you've learned um Dr Chanley covered all of the holidays so I do hope everybody has a h happy Halloween safe Halloween enjoy trick-or-treating don't eat too much candy um and wishing those who celebrate a very happy devali uh mlight always triumph over darkness that concludes my report the next item is our other board business are there any board members reaching she can go first if she wants Gail oh

163yes um on October 7th I attended the middle sex County School boards Association County meeting was held at the Grand Marquee in Albridge uh Sharon Miller who's the president from South planfield called the meeting to order we had greetings from Shanta Jackson vice president for legislation resolutions for mjba um Lee wuhong from East Brunswick uh he always reports on the board of directors updates he attends that for Middle sex County there was an update on the njsba workshop 20204 by Samantha Mias she was on uh screen explaining all the wonderful things that are going to be happening down at school boards Association we have um a new senior field service rep uh actually she called herself a recycled SC uh she had been a senior she had been a rep for Monroe she said years

164ago uh Maryann fredman uh lovely lady uh she I I have a lot of paperwork that she put out there I gave some out already um and then also we had a um presentation by Dr Herb paloi who was the who is the supervisor of educational technology for East Brunswick Public School District and it was on AI empowering Educators it was very interesting I do have I mean I can't repeat all the stuff that he said on AI because I'm just getting into it myself um um it's just wonderful that's coming down the pike but I do have a website that he gave if anybody's interested in going on it to get the presentation it's w EB n.org SL AI Center or you could call him there he said he's welcome any calls from anybody

165from any district and he he was a great presenter so um people are just looking forward to meeting each other down at the school boards convention and uh our next meeting is December 12th we will be having we don't know where it is at the moment but we're having a superintendent speak a um a board member from his district and I think a ba I'm not sure which one on uh what school board members can and know about the process of putting a budget together um that seemed to be a question that we all had been asking over the past few years I know I was I felt like I was left out um of some of the discussions and didn't wasn't able to vote properly so we have somebody coming to discuss with us

166what we can and should ask and know about putting a budget together so that'll be December 12th uh you know the place is uh to be determined and um and that's it thank you very much thanks Gil yes East BRS does have a full website devoted to AI it's kind of where we've all been directed to look and learn yeah he spoke about it how what grade levels and what things he did and how he did it he was very the camaraderie with him with the people was very nice he went around but his presentation was fantastic so if you need to go on his website and or call him he's willing to answer any questions and uh and that was it was a great meeting so thank you Miss Bora thank you for sharing

167that mray I would certainly check that out because that's become one of our goals too now yeah um I just had a few quick um comments one I did want to acknowledge the piles Learning Center for the robotics donation and Miss bosowski for the piano donation we appreciate anything and any anything and everything that our community members uh can donate uh time money equipment uh we appreciate it all um I wanted to take a quick second to cuz I'm always the one mentioning this and this time is almost kind of a positive update uh for years our High School uh enrollment numbers have gone up uh you know they've inched up slowly and steadily this is the first year that I'm seeing in the last Almost a decade um it's only down by 30 but

168our enrollment numbers are down in the High School this year and I just wanted to make a public note of it um I am excited for the workshop next week um I'm signed up for all the AI sessions for sure as everything else um and I wanted to also wish all the community members celebrating Diwali a Happy Diwali happy prosperous New Year to those um who are celebrating Diwali as well thank you everyone Miss Ratner yep um I will piggyback on that um and I will say one of the things that I really love about our community is the diversity and learning of all the different holidays that everyone celebrates um Miss B I know we we've discussed this um tonight's actually it's not a a major holiday the first night of seot though um

169which is a a really fun holiday for you know those who who observe Judaism um it's all about eating meals together and communicating and um while you know it's certainly not a wholly religious holiday I it's one of my favorites because of what it represents um but I you know for those who celebrate Dali and um you know anything else that you know maybe we aren't aware of because there's a lot of different religions out there you know it's certainly exciting to learn about all of those things um I am excited to attend some of our district events that are coming up um unfortunately I cannot attend Workshop this year this is my first year being on the board that I'm unable to attend um but um I do wish everyone a great time um

170I'm excited to go to the um I know Dr Chanley spoke about Mama May um The Haunted High School um which is next Wednesday I believe um I think I think it's on the 23rd um excited to go with that my kids absolutely adore the event to hour the high school kids do a fantastic job of putting out different um you know games for them to play and collecting candy um and I think this year it's there's a combination with the unified program I was going to say that so just to let you know um I I spoke with Mr araro and um himself and Miss ran and and M Rell happen to also be here we talked about really bringing the inclusion together I went last year as well and they did a great

171job with unified day but we just felt like you know it should really be all together so reached out to me we had a meeting about it last weekend it's going to be all together this year so I won't be able to be there cuz I will be in Atlantic City but I am excited to see how it goes I'll update next month on it um I'm also I'm excited to go to the Monro history night tomorrow um and then I'll also be attending the sixth grade play with my girl scout tro um as our meeting for that week um I definitely would say for you know my fellow board members whenever you can um I happen to go to a fair amount of events because of the age of my children but whatever you

172can go to support it's great to support our students and staff um sort of learn what we're doing and why we're doing it um also just to sort of understand some of the challenges we're talking about like at the bgt S meeting last week we discussed the Gap in the bleachers and sure enough the next day I went to the football game and I saw someone's phone fall through and I saw something else fall through and I said oh I see what we're talking about so it's definitely um you know very worthwhile to go out there and you know really just reminds us why we do what we do um and I believe that is everything thank you anybody else have any comments okay then we're going to move on to our public forum um

173any member of the public that is wishing to speak you have four minutes to do so please come up and state your name and municipality for the record are there no members of the public wishing to speak okay seeing none can we just write down the date yes I can go up there and no we're done so the next item on our agenda is nothing the next scheduled Board of Education meeting is November 20th 2024 um 6 uh 6:15 for the board 7:15 for the public here um can I have a motion to adjourn motion second motion by m Alvarez second by m Ratner have a good night everybody thank you all those in favor okay my