001open public's meeting act of the state of new jersey has been satisfied by the inclusion of the date time and place of the meeting in the notice of regular meetings adopted by this board on january 4 2021. such schedule notice of means is posted at the municipal building the mount olive library the board of education offices and the six schools was submitted to the daily record for publication on january 8 2021 and was filed with the clerk of mouth township on january 5th 2021. roll calling mrs cohen here dr gales here mr kamna here mrs we met mrs minette mr robinson mr stevens here mr lochie here mr zire here and dr giordano here dr gales would you move the approval of minutes i'd like to make a motion to approve the december 14th and
002january 4th minutes action items 2.1 and 2.2 second question or comments from the board seeing none royal colin mrs cohen yes dr gales yes mr kamna yes mr stevens yes mr schilachi yes mr zaire yes dr giordano yes actually mr zaire um chris should be this is my fault you should abstain from 2.1 one right you weren't on the board then and then yes to 2.0 okay so i abstain from uh 2.1 and i approve 2.2 no that's the same for me anthony correct yes yes rhonda yes here abstain from 2.1 approved to 2.2 okay thank you thank you lynn uh communication petitions from the superintendent none at this time from the board of ed seeing none student liaison report the floor is yours ladies okay so we went back to school and resumed all
003in-person activities since january 18th we had the new jersey's driver drivers exam completed on january 12th um nhs adopt a family fundraiser and leo's clubs coat drive were both major successes and leo's coat drive collected many coats and donated them all to jersey cares and nhs collected around 1300 of gift cards to a variety of stores restaurants and services for mount olive service department and the psats that were scheduled tomorrow were canceled due to bad weather and mhs mock trial had their first competition and mrs jennifer hamilton the mock trial advisor said the mock trial team had a very successful inaugural season competing in two mock trials representing both the plaintiffs and defense in a civil rights suit we received wonderful feedback about how well the students did and we're already looking forward to recruiting
004students for next year's trial which will be a criminal trial and lastly more and mate robotics both just started their seasons okay and i just wanted to add because um savannah mclaughlin who's one of our sophomores was elected as the secretary for the new jersey association of student councils so basically what she's going to do is she's going to help coordinate leadership training conferences which are major events held by the njasc and she's also going to be involved in regional and national meetings and mohs is a long-standing member of the njisc because it's been an honor school for 34 years in a model school for the njisc and she continues to represent our school at the state level which is really cool and um the annual the annual charity associated with the njsc is the
005manual cancer foundation super is that everything ladies super questions or comments from the board seeing them thank you very much ladies superintendents report dr zwicky thank you dr president shane if you could allow me to present um it is my honor this evening to have members of our equity task force here with us this evening who are going to present um the work we have done on uh completing our goals and the next steps that we are going to take um i'm going to yield the floor to them and i will present our site here um and allow them to unmute and take over and we're going to begin with one of our students who will um summarize some of the work that we have done all right thank you dr zawiki for the opportunity
006my name is suheb jawad i am the i'm a senior at the high school and also a part of the equity task force so the equity task force committee something that we which was formally made this past school year in fact this very school year right well not really some say it has its roots way back in 2019 when just in a small room with maybe two or three people administrators just talking about how there's need to be more equity and more diversity in our schools and our teachers and so that was something that was talked about but then maybe just put on the back burner but to be honest the springboard for this big whole thing was definitely the events of this past summer and so ammo in color which was a organization that
007was created to give students and alumni the opportunity to express their opinions and have hard but honest conversations surrounding equity and race came in and really supported the students in having those conversations and so that those things that they would want to talk about would be addressed by the administration as well that of course culminated in the formal creation of this task force which was made this this very school year in september what you are about to see from us is the work that the committees members have been doing very tirelessly and so now they're going to show you the all the subcommittees are going to show you the goals and deliverables that they have worked very hard upon so sit back relax enjoy the show first up we have a representative from our academic
008achievement subcommittee hi everyone my name is leah margoziak i am the instructional supervisor for ela 6-12 and i have the honor of working as part of the subcommittee for academic achievement when we started looking at our meeting as a subcommittee we started looking at some of the data of what which of our groups of students were um taking the more rigorous classes and then we started to find where we were succeeding as a district and then areas in which we needed to set goals to try to improve and make sure that all means all um and we're going to continue with that so we discovered that we kind of through our conversation that everything centered around three main goals so our first goal is to ensure an equitable academic recommendation process through our discussions we
009um focused in on making sure that not only having the most rigorous classes available which i think mount olives township does a great job of with the ap courses but making sure that all of our students want to take those courses and are given the opportunity to do so so in order to kind of achieve this goal um we have a couple of strategies that we're planning on focusing on including utilizing the personal success plans which were rolled out this year looking at the individual goals of our students and finding which of these rigorous courses would help support that we're going to focus on the individual experiences so all of our students have their own story they come from their own backgrounds and all of that makes them unique so we're going to use that
010to kind of push them to take some of these more rigorous courses but on the flip side we also want to focus on our faculty and staff and we want to make sure that we're engaging our educators in these open conversations about equities and inequities in the recommendation process and we're going to work to make sure that that recommendation process um is more objective rather than subjective and then we also want to make sure that our teachers in their plc's are having these tough conversations or we're talking about some of our subjectivity when it comes to this and once we recognize this we can kind of move on and make sure that we're recommending all of our students the second thing we want to focus on and obviously this has become i think a bigger
011issue this year but we're going to try to reduce absenteeism to increase academic achievement so we would like to reach out to our guidance department and we're going to institute um guidance counselor scheduling meetings for all students to make sure that they are talking with these students finding these individual goals and looking for areas in which we can kind of promote success for these students we want to obviously continue to provide supports to meet these expectations we would like to institute some mentoring both with student to student peer mentoring and then also for teacher or staff to student and then we're going to look to utilize our personalized learning plans to create and track attendance goals for our students finally we want to make sure that our high expectations that we have in the middle
012of school district um extends to all of our students in order to do that we want to begin to or continue to train and give our teachers um and our staff excuse me opportunities to um promote this with our students so we want to promote action research opportunities for strat for staff and the reason for this is we would like to strengthen the cultural competence of each adult in the school we need to continue to provide the supports both for teachers and for students so students can meet those high expectations this is another area where we would like to utilize mentoring and then we cannot begin to have these conversations if we don't really explore the issues of privilege power and difference and continue to utilize those plc meetings to have open dialogue for tough
013conversations so really in our meetings in this subcommittee these were the three goals in which we focused on thank you thanks so much and next up we have um our disciplinary policy subcommittee good evening everybody i'm matt robinson i'm the director of elementary education from maryland township school district and i had the privilege of chairing our disciplinary policy subcommittee so when we took a look at our disciplinary policies we began by evaluating the civil rights data collection the most recent one and then we designed actions to address inequities in disciplinary action so we took a look at in-school suspensions out-of-school suspensions and referrals to law enforcement and we broke those down by race ethnicity and idea status and in doing so we came up with some goals and strategies to try to reduce inequities moving
014forward so our first goal was to solicit input on disciplinary action best practices via committee oversight and input and what that's going to allow us to do is to get stakeholder input and our stakeholders going to be representative of the school communities in which they work and they're going to be able to provide input interdisciplinary actions and it'll allow transparency and access to the actions as they occur in real time so that way administrators can get feedback and you know evaluate that data as it happens our second goal is to ensure uniformity and disciplinary referral entries into the district student information system so in our research we found that there was a lack you know between our schools within with a consistent practice in entering disciplinary data um and we need good data in order
015to track it so by creating a system by which we enter that data and make sure that we enter everything everything from something like an official warning all the way to school removal um you know we don't want the tendency to have a kid that goes into the the office that that gets in trouble and gets a slap on the wrist um it doesn't get written up or logged because they're a good kid um you know while while other entries get long we want to make sure we have all of that data so that it's actionable um and that'll be a positive first step is getting the most accurate data possible and our third goal was to utilize behavioral rti and restorative practices to assist at-risk students and reduce disciplinary action so taking a proactive
016approach to discipline and progressive response to problem behaviors so we want to identify students first who are at risk for social emotional behaviors via universal screening and be using the saber screener for that and you may have heard of that members of the board and we're also going to have three tiers of intervention universal selected and targeted and we for each of those levels we have a menu of evidence-based supports that we can use uh to assist kids um you know as they face disciplinary issues we also want to ensure that all staff are fully trained in this model we're going to support teachers in best practices in classroom management and we're going to also we also have to provide new students students who are new to the district with mentoring so that they can
017become better acclimated to mount olive so overall a whole system of wraparound supports for our students to reduce overall disciplinary actions and the other prong of the approach is to evaluate the actions that are happening as they're happening so that um we can move forward thank you very much thank you and next up we have uh the inclusive curriculum subcommittee good evening everyone my name is thomas rescue and i'm the social studies department chair and i was on the inclusive curriculum committee so i'm just giving you a brief overview of what we discussed the inclusive crippling committee met over the course of the last few months to discuss our current curriculum as it relates to equity and diversity a comprehensive curriculum audit will take place over the next 12 weeks to review our curriculum and
018to ensure that all core contact areas include resources and materials that will address diversity we will be utilizing the analytic tools rubicon atlas and conduct a standards alignment equity and diversity audit it will also it's also our committee's goal to increase our elective course offerings for a deeper study of diversity on topics and issues that have shaped our local national and global societies and that's basically what we decided to do in a nutshell to really increase what we offer at the high school at all the schools and to make sure that diversity is included in all of our curriculum and i think we have some other members from that subcommittee on the call too if they want to uh make any comments about the subcommittee this committee definitely has uh as you can see a
019lot of strategies there i don't know if any other members from the subcommittee want to make any comments real quick i can i was on the committee as a parent jeanne o'neil um i'm just a parent and i'm president of the cpeg special parents advisory committee we really did they really did look at every aspect of the kids mental health physical health well-being and you know emotional well-being and that was really important for me to hear that they were you know taking all those things into consideration and including them in curriculum thanks janie and next up we have the relationship building committee how you doing i'm suraj yad a high school teacher special education um and our newly um put in place american african american studies course as well um i have the pleb the
020privilege of being on the relationship building committee and we were able to take a look at the dare tool and analyze that um because we really recognize that relationship building is one of the key aspects to um student success of their comfort with students the staffing student comfort level was very important and getting to know them beyond just who they are in the classroom is very important so uh we decided to take a look um at how our relationships are already built and some things that we've decided we want to do as far as goal one was revise and re-administer the school climate and the culture survey um just to make sure use it as an instrument uh to make sure student equity and positive relationships with the staff and teachers are being built um
021we were able to take a look at the previous uh survey and we revised it and uh distributed to all the staff and students that's the plan for february 2020. uh we also plan to make one that is more um level to elementary students so when they take the take it as well on their own they can read it it's not adult level reading it's something that they can understand make modifications that way uh goal two we wanted to make sure that um real quick that for that first one um it's parents in february 2021 right not 2020 yes that should be 2021 yeah okay i thought that's where you met yes it was distributed in 2020 and we're there we're doing it again okay okay so uh goal two was to uh collaborate with
022the high school tap tapestry program and replicate the program for the middle school and elementary school starting in march 2021 this year um the goal the idea of strategy there is to have the middle school and k-5 uh students create a sister program of the mohs tapestry program and the mohs students will work with the elementary middle school students in order to share their experiences and act as mentors for the program going forward another thing that we believe that was a great goal was to provide staff with training on how to support students by building positive and healthy relationships what some of the strategies that we wanted to do were to provide our staff with three 45-minute trainings in september january and may on how to support the students by building positive and healthy relationships
023as well as provide implicit bias training to all the staff by october 1st of 2021 year this year this year coming up excellent thank you so much and last but certainly not least we have the diversifying and training staff subcommittee hi everyone my name is danielle kay i am an english teacher at the high school um and also a member of the diversity diversifying and training staff committee structures that we have in place to support our current teachers so if you look at our goals and strategies everything we have really speaks to that so our first goal is to identify recruit and retain a diverse staff in mount olive township right now across the board our staff is largely homogenous um so we looked at some data that was available through apple track just looking
024at the types of people that are applying to the jobs um and so we want to look at just reviewing our hiring practices through a lens of diversity equity inclusivity and accessibility we want to attract highly qualified teachers but at the same time it's really important and our students deserve a staff that reflects the diversity that we see in our student body um and right now that's just an area that we really need to work on so um to that we want to look at some board policy and regulations related to hiring we want to look uh work with the union to look at contract language we want to look at um putting together a training manual for staff offering both in-person and online professional development opportunities along with other required trainings on diversity equity
025and inclusion which will move from all staff so anyone who is a staff member at mount olive township would be um involved in these trainings the next thing and the thing that we're working on i think the soonest um is enhancing the recruitment of underrepresented groups within our teacher and administrator banks um so to that end i know there's a lot of work going on behind the screens right now and you might hear more about this a little later i think um with career fairs and putting out some pr materials and just letting people know a little bit about mount olive township um one of the things we were wondering are going to continue researching this because we don't really have the answer yet is why isn't mount olive um already more diverse why aren't
026we attracting a more diverse applicant pool so we really want to work on getting career fairs going that are speaking specifically to diverse groups and so to that end we're working with different colleges and career fairs and then finally we want to strengthen and develop systems that support our training and we're going to start with our mentoring program we want to expand that to be longer than one year for first year teachers that first year is really just trying to figure out what the heck is going on so we want them to have a mentor program that's more robust and allows for them to have those conversations and feel supported and not just like well we had you for one year now you're on your own um and then also we want to extend that
027out to putting together some affinity groups for our current staff where they could get together and talk about different issues that relate to their demographics um as well as doing a better job of just gathering demographic information on current employees um which again is something that's going on behind this needs right now so that's a quick overview of what we've been doing thank you thank you so much and then we're going to have a nice summary from suhab to uh to bring us on hold foreign olive community we must be responsible for not only ensuring equitable practices but to teach and appreciate diversity with our peers and staff alike as a school system we are the critical voices who mold and influence students from preschool to 12th grade the reform that we institute must create
028standards to which we as a community should adhere to to ensure that each and every one of us is represented and seen in the past few weeks and months and as you've seen on this on all the subcommittees that i've shown you today we've created achievable goals and deliverables to ensure that our recruiting process and training methods are focused on diversity and equity we've honed in on academic achievement measures to give every single student a chance and a healthy support system we've instituted uniformity in disciplinary actions we have an rti while addressing at-risk students we plan on revamping our curriculum so that there are opportunities for students to study through differing lenses we also are creating a culture where relationships are key between staff students and administration alike going forward we're going to be instituting
029bi-monthly meetings that will be around two hours long to allocate time for each subcommittee to get feedback on the work they have been pursuing this is in addition to our monthly meetings that allow our members to come together and review our group goals the mount olive equity task force is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment within our school district and greater amount of community we have a lot of work to be done but our mission is to establish real change as a task force thank you for your support and thank you for your time thank you so much and um on our site you can see the list of all of our members um who participated um the real you know stars of the show were our students so i want to thank
030them and everyone who participated um the board members uh who participated um and thank you guys for all this work and you know in this work we're never going to get to a point where we can say that's it we're not going to attend to this anymore um the idea is that we have a dashboard where there are deliverables each year and this is this is work that we just continuously do um in perpetuity so i thank everyone for their for their input and feedback and i look forward to reporting out and working with everyone going forward is that everything dr zwicky um i believe you know dr gales had indicated he wanted to say something yeah i'm not asking i'm asking you is that is that done for you yes that is that is
031with you look at your comments from the board yeah so now absolutely uh thank you so now yeah uh as as uh one of the board members who participated in a couple of groups i have to say that the discussion and dialogue was a very energetic and we have a tremendous group of staff and students and parents who are tremendously engaged and invested in this process and that's refreshing to see i'm i'm happy to let our community know that this just isn't a a school project this is a community endeavor where the entire community is going to be involved in this uh changing of the hearts and minds and that second order change to bring about not only just racial diversity but uh gender diversity and religious diversity so so we're going to be working
032very hard as an entire community and i also would like to to thank everyone and i'm looking forward to seeing how the strategic plan turns into actual actions that are going to bring about the kind of inclusion and equity that we have been planning for so good job everyone thanks for including me i had a great time and looking forward to the journey ahead any other comments from board members yes anthony yes mr shilachi first of all i'd like to thank everybody that was a tremendous undertaking you've done i i could see that a lot of work has been put into it and i applaud you i have a couple concerns uh over the years we have built such a tremendous curriculum in mount olive we have added so many classes so many so many
033different programs uh when i when my concern is that if we're going to continue to add these programs or or or to our curriculum if there are one or two or three however it's going to be what will be coming out of the curriculum because there's only so many classes in the day and these kids are are having a hard time choosing what to take so that's one of my concerns if you can answer that one first sure i'm happy to do so so a couple things one um the idea being that particularly when it comes to inclusive curriculum that we're being inclusive in our core subject areas that that the solution is not always just adding extra electives um and that and that speaks to the amazon holocaust mandate we're also looking at you
034know what texts we're using um what resources we're using and being more inclusive in that manner not necessarily just adding to the to the course catalog the other thing is looking at being creative with one what are the current graduation requirements and where you know right now there are certain required courses that are kind of standard courses that have been around for 40 50 years and how can they actually instead of doing a year-long course in social studies maybe you can replace that with two elective courses something along those lines um so you know the idea is not to throw the baby out with the bath water but to get more creative with it but i can't you know state enough that it's not just adding on electives that kids take in senior year when
035we talk about inclusive curriculum it's about being inclusive you know racially religiously gender wise and also of you know cognitive differences as well you know starting in pre-k in kindergarten all the way through 12th grade that's not just senior electives also with the idea that we are in remote learning most of the time now we don't know how long it will be it seems to me that it's very difficult to challenge to uh start uh changing the culture uh you know adding to programs and things like that how are we going to start to infuse that with all this remote learning so a lot of these things that we have been doing for example we were one of the districts first districts in the lgbtq pilot you know that started last year and so this
036year we're starting to internal and institutionalize that when it comes to some of the larger shifts that's why the the work of the committee is that it's not going away and we're going to continue to look at this audit so that it's where we can start making implementation now happen or in a reality through plcs we do so and that's the beauty of our curriculum mapping model it is a living curriculum where we can add new resources along the way and it's not that we just update the curriculum once every six or seven or eight years so that's that's the short-term answer the longer-term answer is that we're using the tools in rubicon atlas on an annual basis to audit our curriculum where we can make these changes over the summer each year so we
037have a fresh curriculum starting every september thank you any question or comments for the board i just have one more quick question sure um so are they doing anything with i know that these classes have been added as um extra kind of kind of elective classes i guess they were taking are they doing anything in the general education curriculum to enhance or extend the learning like i know been many different grade levels and us history is done grade level middle school again in the high school is there any way to kind of extend or kind of insert some of this program into the general education curriculum and and that's exactly our primary strategy so you know one of the things that we did in our first round of curriculum mapping that took place about two
038years ago we ensured that we were you know compliant with the amistad commission as well as the holocaust commission but this goes beyond that right so that that is the bare minimum and to go beyond that so that's exactly the work we're talking about doing that it is implemented and extended in in the current core curriculum if you will and that we're not just adding on electives so we have seen that with our teachers and fusing resources from the guild alirement institute um the guild alignment institute which is dedicated to students interacting with primary source documents and not and not using you know what might be biased textbooks or other sources um through using you know programs like the brown university choices program the dbq project so these are all examples of things that we're
039tapping into and also you know dating back to about a year ago that we were implementing this year also looking at our text you know uh our executive director personalized learning lisa schlier did an you know amazing job really working with um you know what what is the diversity of our texts this summer um we actually went through a process with the naacp of morris county of going through this process where they're looking at schools and actually giving them a score based upon this and they were extremely impressed with that i think another example of what we're doing is we have our african-american history pilot which is a professional development program for our teachers which is focused on bringing all those resources into the core curriculum so that kids do not have to wait to
040be exposed to some of these topics until their senior year um so the idea is that this is happening at all the grade levels and so we're going to be attending to it and attending to it um but you know having the baseline of rubicon atlas allows us to do this because once again we have a living curriculum where our plcs can make updates in real time and last quick question i know there was talk about extending the mentor program uh my only concern is who's going to foot the cost of the mentor extension i know first-year teachers normally the teacher is the one that pays the mentor is it something that the district would pay completely uh work with the teacher or be the responsibility of the teacher so the idea being that that
041would fall under our professional development efforts every year we use title two funds we also um budget you know as per the feedback we received during the cusack process so that would all come out of our our current pb allocation okay thank you no promises are any other questions or comments from the board seeing them thank you dr zawiki personal committee report ms cohen sure the personnel committee met uh tonight actually uh prior to this meeting uh on the me at the meeting were um anthony giordano john kemna dr zwicky and kim marcus i forgot anybody anybody no i wasn't almost going what's that i wasn't on that meeting we're not on okay anthony was not on so it was kim jon rob and me um we talked about a variety we had a few
042confidential items that we were unable to talk and i am unable to talk about that are going to be in a closed session we talked about our the usual leaves resignations and retirements we talked about some reorganization of secretarial positions we've been looking at trying to increase the efficiency in the secretarial pool so we're going to be looking at that and doing some organizations as a result we talked about the employee assistance program which will we talk to our insurance broker about adding a program which will be accessible to employees for any problems they may have any issues at home and on the job those types of things we talked about some part-time aides moving to um full-time uh starting in february and that was based on an analysis that was done last year from
043a financial perspective it makes sense we talked about some leave floating leave replacements and there's a list of folks that will be a part of that um a job uh description update in uh in the maintenance department uh some staffing updates uh dr zwicky gave us an update on our current staffing based on who is in due to covid and then we are going to be having a recruiting plan presentation and we have moved that to february 8th which so that will be for the entire board again we will look to do that hopefully on february 8th at our next meeting i think that was it anything i missed uh john rob kim perfect okay question or comments from the board cena thank you miss cohen and miss conan is that is that close session
044for this meeting or next meeting next meeting rob correct correct yes okay super thank you uh dr giodano i do have one question yes dr jay go ahead i know it's it's early in the year uh can we start putting up the personnel agenda this year it or at least the an outline of what's going to be discussed in person now i know we talked about it last year we did it last year dr gales i've been sick all this week so i have not had a chance to talk to miss cohen about it but yes we won't continue the same thing we've done last year i just didn't have a chance to tell her about it i'm just getting on my feet now but yes thank you not a problem creating the technology no
045other committee's mets um board subcommittee liaison reports did anyone meet it again anthony what was that uh board subcommittee liaison reports anybody uh no parent teacher association reports yeah i've got one all right mr schlocchi planners pta met on wednesday the 13th uh as you know it's been a very very difficult year with pandemic and remote and everything but they keep forging ahead doing ever whatever they can just to keep supporting the kids they you know they had fundraisers that they tried to do the best they could with uh but you know everything is being remote but they had a holiday boutique they brought in a couple hundred dollars they had a fifth grade fundraiser they brought another couple hundred dollars um they will try they will try to have a spring uh book fair
046and they're gonna try to have it outside in the tent um they're looking to have a an 80s fundraiser um they're still trying to plan for mother and son and father and daughter dances they had discussions on the clothing drive variety show tricky tray uh they uh they're buying a nine-foot christmas tree as a as a school gift they will be giving out a thousand dollar scholarship at the end of the year um and they're making a collage of the students in activities for the yearbook um so as you can see they've been active as they possibly can they're um you know it's an amazing thing you you like we meet virtual also and you can see that they just want to get into school and do things and what have you but i give
047them a lot of credit they're they're all staying involved and doing whatever they can to support the children that's it thank you mr slotch you question your comments from the board any other uh pta um parent teacher association reports i have one nope dr gales you go first i'll defer to you go right ahead yeah i appreciate that uh so the mount off high school parents club met on tuesday january 19th uh these student councils uh had spoke the key club spoken leo's club spoke many of the uh things that they had brought up were brought up here in this meeting so i'm not going to cover them again it was nice to see i think the leo club said they had collected a hundred gently used coats to assist students uh to what they
048need really cares uh student council had to stress the concern about spirit week participation uh i know during this time this would be a great time for uh kids to be a little bit more spirit try to get everybody's um you know back into the group of thing a little bit more normalcy the same as doctor uh excuse me as mr chilochie was saying the fundraising for the parent club was a little difficult during this time uh the biggest fundraiser they had so far is joining it's the biggest source of revenue it's only 15 and i encourage all parents to join senior signs however will be on sale soon on that information will be sent out shortly uh mr moore's report discussed the uh the in-person learning coming back and then the possibility of mid-february
049but we all know things can change quickly and easily based on developments uh but fingers crossed uh they will be forgoing quarterlies uh just with the academic equity during the current learning model um individual assessments will be an alternative they will also use linkedin testing to kind of won't be impact grading but will help to assist in placement getting an understanding of where their students are uh dr excuse me mr feltman vice principal student services spoke uh during the meeting he gave a great presentation and discussed scheduling via real time uh i definitely would advise parents to kind of join these meetings there's a lot of great information that is provided um scheduling will be delayed from normally it's late december to early january uh not exact time right yet yet but um should be
050after this semester uh it's actually kind of a good thing that it's delayed just because of uh teachers are getting a better chance to evaluate their students ability during this time um the two students will be taught in society's class about scheduling requests um there are new changes to the names when the scheduling does come out just to be advised to all our parents out there that you will see the legacy names of the classes in parentheses um the there were additions made to the schedule scheduling they were talked about here which i have to tell you um for all of our task force members a lot of accolades on the call many people including myself were very happy to see these classes being added uh one of them was an additional math class that
051wasn't discussed tonight but it's advanced topics and calculus which will aid uh which added to address that students that kind of gone through accelerated math programs from middle school to the high school there was kind of a lapse at the end of their scheduling but this will address that uh one that i loved was the additional unified classes um we're adding two classes in those classes marauders with and without cognitive and physical differences we'll mentor each other an inclusive and collaborative environment in the areas of physical education robotics there are four new history classes that mr rescue was speaking about uh the history of the holocaust the gender studies the african-american studies and the native american studies very excited to see those in practice um again these changes a lot of people getting accolades on
052the google me discussing how great that was to see these one of the things there will not be an eighth grade presentation um i excuse me there will be an eighth grade presentation in february would be different from the eighth grade orientation of the past with scheduling teacher recommendations we'll take priority of student requests i need every parent to understand that um so it's good for your students to reach out to their teachers and get their opinions coordinated with them on what they're recommend but they feel that they'll be able to do with scheduling uh changes can be made later but it's going to be via counselor meeting after enrollment uh their next meeting will be held on march 23rd i suggest people um join first of all join the club also attend these meetings
053there's a great amount of information being provided to high school parents um and it's only fifteen dollars to join it's well worth it i mean if you really think about all the fundraisers you give your child right now for a dollar here for some donuts or buy this for some flowers you're spending way over fifteen dollars and i feel it's a it's a great cause so that is it for the parent meeting for the high school chris you can call me doctor if you want we just have to find what i'm a doctor of i call everybody doctor yeah there's only one person my friend okay i can't uh i can't get over calling him doctor but i'll get over it thank you mr zaire that was a plethora of information very lengthy for your
054first report very important uh i'll trim it down but right now more information is better any other any questions or comments from board members cnn dr g that you have the floor thank you so the uh cms sca met january 12th and uh they had a new member rajesh kumar who is new to mount olive and has a first grader at cms so he was warmly welcomed by the group they talked about many of the fundraising activities and just as mr shilaji said many of the associations are struggling because of covet but in january the end of this week they're looking to have a dance-a-thon hopefully they've worked out how to do that logistically they're looking at a book fair in february along with the valentine's day fundraiser the candy grams seem to have gone
055over very well in past years in march they're looking to do a virtual talent show april the virtual science fair to coincide with earth day and possibly in march another chocolate sale and yesterday they had their gold fundraiser their gold event in hackettstown and anyone who participated 10 of the sales went towards the the 5th grade graduation they're looking to have a scholastic book fair starting february 22 going through march 7th and then again possibly in may and they also want to do traps again and transform it into a virtual fifth grade marketplace i did share with them some of the work that the equity task force is doing and how it's going to be a community-wide event and if they had any uh recommendations or suggestions for the task force uh they could share
056those but also to look out for the upcoming parent survey and one of the parents brought up that she loved the book club that the superintendent is doing uh reading the the book why race and culture matters in schools and their next meeting is february 9th and i just happened to sit in i don't know if mr stevens sat in on the the middle school but if not i sat in on that and can report on that if he didn't i did not okay so i i i started on the the middle school pto on the 20th and again there were some some membership concerns and they were asking individuals if they were interested in becoming members you can go to the district website the parent section and click on the mom's pto you can
057pay online or send a check to the office that's clearly marked mom's pto the the membership is ten dollars and fifty cents uh unfortunately due to low fundraising they will not do the teacher grants this year but they will do the teacher appreciation as well as an eighth grade dance they talked about their elections because they have a couple of parents who are transitioning from the middle school to the high school so they want to change their bylaws and bring on new uh recruits to train them now so that they'll be ready to take over as officers uh next fall mr kramer gave his report he stated that there was a good start to the cohorts coming back he explained some of the logistics and how the school day progresses uh there was some discussion
058and questions about real time about picture day which started on the 21st and um we again talked about the equity task force and they listed some of the other uh spring activities the fundraising activities including the spring spirit wear the 8th grade yard signs look out for those in march balloons in june for the 8th grade graduates the spring fling which will be in may or june it'll be outdoors and they're anticipating doing one for each grade and an eighth grade masquerade ball and that concludes that report thank you very much thank you dr gail any questions or comments from the board all right seeing them moving right along uh anyone else no okay uh board president's report i um just want to report out to the board that um now that doctors wiki has
059the district uh you know back in session with live students in cohort a and b i had a discussion with him um uh as we were going over um not over break after break after the reorg meeting um now that that heavy lifting is over i i asked him for the request of of some board members and conversations with them to have his superintendents report out to the board friday evening the latest um and he concurred with that so we're looking forward to that i know since we went to lockdown covet he's been dealing with a lot of a lot of things and we've had discussions about how to get that information or what time to get the information out to the board so we can expect to start getting those starting this week on
060fridays by the evening i'm at some point so i just want to make the board aware of that public comments on action items members of the community may comment on any action item prior to board discussion please state your name and address for the record all comments must be respectively presented abusive and or obscene comments will not be tolerated please stand up or just state your name and address for the record on any action items from 6.1 all the way down to 9.2 action items only seeing nonlin closing to public comment uh as well as we don't have any uh um questions um and the email uh early in the afternoon do we learn from on action items not on action items thank you um proof of monthly expenditures and reports miss weemat if you'd
061be so kind to move oh i don't want the camera uh i make a motion for approval of the monthly expenditures six one and six two second well i think that's six point eight miss me matt uh well i can't see anything more than that okay so six one to six six one to six eight it's one two six eight nine thank you question or comments from the board seeing on roll calling this is we met yes mr stevens yes mr trulacci yes mr zaire yes this is cohen yes dr gales dr gales you're muted you're muted antoine yeah thank you yes sorry mr kemna yes and dr giordano yes personal action i'm miss cohen like to make a motion to approve personnel action item 7.1 through 7.22 second second question or comments from the
062board i have a comment uh on 7.2 i had the privilege of being taught by both mrs jones and and mrs mclaughlin uh it's very sad to see them retiring um the 7.2 made my wife cry as she was her her soccer coach so i wish them luck and uh happiness and their next step our next adventure in life i'd like to echo that too uh mrs jones was my my daughter's uh basketball coach so uh to be with us both of them 34 and 35 years that says a lot for them and mount olive anyone else singer and rock holland mrs cohen yes dr gales muted mutant one dr gales you're muted all right abstain from 7.10 yes to everything else mr camner yes mr matt yes mr stevens yes mr strelachie yes mr
063zaire yes dr giordano yes mr kamena finance and operation action items sure the recommendation is superintendent move finance and operation action items 8.1 through 8.6 second question your comments from the board uh just just a quick one about mpg thank you about the uh the rfp for telecom services 8.2 yeah it's 8.2 yes yes can we get a little bit information about what that's about is there an issue or concern sure we had discussed this in business i'll let gail get into the the details on it because she's working on it hi everybody um so it currently what we're paying for our wan wan services is actually less than what they are offering at escnj which is actually a co-op so in order to um go back and get those same type of rates we
064have to just go back out for like a bid so this is just to allow the um e-rate company to go out put it out and and bring it back in there's no we're not going to lose any service it'll be another 36-month agreement and we're probably going to pay the same as what we're paying now we just have to go out because the price is lower than what's in the co-op it's kind of weird thank you you're welcome anyone else yes hand raised oh yes mr matt thank you yeah just a little bit more uh clarification on 8.6 with the cms specs sure so anthony giacaro our um our architect uh last year we went out to bid for this and then we we didn't go forward with it because we deferred the uh
065the projects because of the pandemic um so we had discussed this in finance and at the last board meeting to authorize uh anthony through the bid process we went through the whole bid process we thought everything was done and then it was discovered by joe roselli that there was some uh missing required documentation for the bid process which undermined the process so we just have to go back out and do it again uh to make sure that everything is up to snuff and i thank joe for catching that for us okay this was discussed with finance committee you said correct this finance committee of this year no in the last month and the cms project is something that we put in the budget last year and then we revisited it and we actually talked about
066it at the last meeting and anthony gianforca did a presentation at the december meeting to the finance committee so when it when it comes to bidding you know it's usually you make those decisions you know sometimes two and three months out from them thank you anyone else sitting there on roll calling mr kemna yes mrs we met yes mr stevens yes mr strelachie yes mr zire yes mrs cohen yes dr gails yes doctor giordano yes mr schilachi the administrative action items please sure i'd like to move on recommendation superintendent mr action knives is there more than one than two what because you're not going to jump to mr mr okay 919. second question or comments from the board seeing on roll calling mr strollachi yes mr zaire yes mrs cohen yes dr gales yes mr
067kemna yes mrs we met yes mr stevens yes doctor giordano yes old business from the board miss wee-man i apologize uh do we have any i know now that rhonda's here any kind of update on the ed foundation um we met when do we meet uh dr zwicky we met twice uh since december yes and we've had um a changing of the guard so um ryan schechter is now taking over as president of the education foundation and we are kind of kicking in a variety of various items um kind of a little bit too soon to talk about it um i don't know if you agree uh dr sweetie but i think it's maybe next meeting sure i think i i can say we've received a couple of donations um and uh the whole uh
068process of setting up the bank account is is happening right now those will be donated um i'm sorry they'll be deposited and then um you know the other items that the you know the fundraising things like that the committee has been working on i think we'll have something substantive to report out at the next meeting thank you uh mr giudiano is there something maybe we can add when we do the subcommittee reports this could be included yeah i i don't have an issue with that mr matt i i don't you know it's it's it's we don't have a liaison to that i guess it could be miss cohen um if if she fills up to stuff i don't have an issue with that for sure um no the board really has no oversight that foundation
069committee but it's good to know about yeah i think between uh myself dr zwicky we can we can take care of that no issue with that anyone else with all business new business any board members with new business um i don't know if it's new or old um i'm requesting especially got me a little concerned with the parent that was at our last meeting can we get a number by school of the um the number of teachers who are currently um out by grades by school i mean it seems that you know there seems to be a big concern with the questions that that parent is asking about how many teachers are currently not in i don't want names i just was looking for numbers per school yeah by grade yeah sure i actually we
070reported that to the personnel committee this evening um and i have been at times updating the the board on that i can tell you right now in total um we have 106 teachers who are quarantined 100 staff at this point so doctor can you just break that down sure no problem i can share the spreadsheet right now it'll be great and dr gio diana just said yes just a quick follow-up question uh can that include administrators as well oh sure good point so you we we should make it all staffed dr z make it easier i think all staff all personnel it is it's it's broken down by all all like break it down like administrator teacher teachers aid things like that thank you you're welcome new business you want to do business okay public
071comments 2.1 students parents employees and community members may comment on any item of interest pertaining to the malev school district please state your name and address for the record all comments must be respectfully presented abusive and comments will not be tolerated so anybody please stand up or raise your hand and ask away on anything going on the school district seeing none lynn i believe we had one a parent sent an email in uh with some concerns about uh our sel and i believe on the call if that parent would just like to come up and and and address the board with their concerns hi i'm amy rubin i live at 53 alcrest i have two elementary school students who attend sanchor elementary and um recently there was a change to the schedule which eliminated the
07245 minutes of social and emotional learning time and although some of that time was allocated for additional academic learning time it seems to be replaced with more computer-based online learning and so i guess my my concern that i am seeing is that it's really um there seems to be an excess of computer time at this point and a lack of social and emotional and more um personal connection time and so i was just kind of curious as to you know why this decision was made and maybe kind of understanding a little bit more about how this is going to be kind of remedied moving forward because i do see the benefits of this and i do see the need for this not just for my own students who just as a side note are you
073know completely virtual so they're they don't have the opportunity to partake in these social and emotional learning activities um outside of their school interaction and as a parent i feel like i can easily supplement with the emotional learning component and other academic you know components but where i really struggle is supplementing that social aspect because of the fact that i don't necessarily have the ability to be able to provide that social interaction um under the guidelines and and you know the limitations that i have as a parent so that was really what my concern was okay dr z um and mrs rubin and i had a an extensive conversation about this um prior to the return to school in january we had two um it was actually 10 minutes in the morning for the sel
074check-in and then there was another 15 minutes in the afternoon with students coming back in the break um we needed to do a couple things one do some of the benchmarking and some of our tools like lexia and achieve 3 000 um and to get students who were virtual who were returning to in person to give them some of that extra support i did discuss with mrs rubin um that we are switching to a schedule on february 16th so right now students are still getting 50 minutes of scl a week students are getting 50 minutes of seo a week we are switching to a schedule on in mid-february in which students besides the 10-minute check-in per day are going to get an additional 45-minute sel um uh class each day um one of the five
075sel sections is going to be administered by the guidance counselor and then four of the other five are going to be from stanford harmony are going to be prescriptive and unified across the district um one of the reasons why we did this is what we were seeing is that the sel stuff that that you know that was going on was inconsistent um and so we want to bring some consistency to that so these three weeks right now are an adjustment to bring that consistency and actually deepen the amount of sel time that we have and extend that but at the same time get the benchmarking we need right now as we start up the new phase of the manual success academy and i have reviewed all this with mrs rubin our commitment to sel is
076a hundred percent full fold um we just applied for the learning loss grant for the state of new jersey and unlike most other districts you know we already have our rti program focusing on ela and rti um our grant focuses entirely on on sel in um and having a supplemental sel intervention program similar to what we do in the mount olive success academy we implemented the personalized success plans which is an sel activity which is based off the research of the harvard ed redesign group we're the only district in the state of new jersey to be doing that so this is in no way a departure from from sel as we had discussed but rather it's about a three four week reset to bring greater um greater you know uniformity of our application of this
077and you're going to see that students are getting going to be getting 55 minutes per day of sel time starting on february 16. any other questions miss ruben uh no not really i i think that there's um you know a little bit of a discrepancy in terms of like what was currently on their schedule compared to what is on their schedule now um however i i completely understand that you know this is a little bit of a reset and kind of a tweaking of the scheduling i'm glad to see that there will be a curriculum in place to kind of support the teachers as well as that will be coming from some guidance as well and i'm happy to see that it's going to be something that is continually prioritized because i think that it
078was a drastic change from what they were kind of used to and they sort of you know hit the ground running from the moment they logged in until the moment they logged off at the end of the day and for anybody who has an elementary school student that's a lot of time in front of the computer so i was kind of saddened to see you know that it was replaced with the blended learning which was really just more online programs with very little interaction with others so you know some teachers have done a really great job with it which is wonderful but we were definitely feeling the lack of it here in my household and i feel like if we were i'm sure other people were as well but thank you miss reuben uh closing
079that was all we uh received via emails from miss rubin board and administrative comments members of the board may comment on any item of interest pertaining to the middle school district miss weemat yeah the only comment i had was i participated in a lego competition a few weeks ago with mr chico first time they did um we did a virtual using real time uh not real time uh ring central i'm sorry i got real time on the brain there uh he did a phenomenal job mr chica we were actually the pilot for the rest of the country no one else has done this before so it was kind of neat to do and we did it all virtually we each did about six uh six teams very impressive students i have to say even though
080you know not all from our district but students in general are always impressive to me but you know they were one came up with an exercise chair another one came up with a leg device that actually uh they uh put out to cvs and cvs was working with it so that was again very impressive and also a shout out to mr moore who did the opening for us which was uh uh you know a good job as he always does but mr uh chica was very thankful to the immanuel school district and the boe for their support thank you miss we matt uh mr zaire i think you're on mute mr zoe oh okay uh so last meeting i was remiss and congratulating mrs mrs cohen and dr gales on their uh election to the
081board and to thank the voters who voted me in as well uh the only thing i'd also like to do is thank all the teachers and administrators that have been working diligently to provide some kind of normalcy to our schools i know it's a difficult job um everybody's been doing a great great at it and doing their part uh so you are appreciated uh so thank you again that's all i got super thank you um trying to think who's that uh sorry if i get that one doctor g she's so good i'm cognizant i'm just we're kind of discombobulated here being on camera uh thank you very much the only thing that i have is and i don't know if this is i miss my spot in new business but if i did lin you
082can put this under new business i'm throwing out for the board's consideration a retreat with school boards a virtual retreat so that we can just reconnect and for our new and returning members to get some insight from school boards about what functions and the role of a board member and that's it for me thank you thank you dr g uh mr stevens uh i want a second mr zaire's statement and you know thank the teachers the administration the staff you know this is a time that i've said multiple times and over and over this is something that we've never been through and to our district we've done an amazing job and we keep on going above and beyond every time and you know thank you and stay safe super uh mr kemna yes sir um
083just one thing here the equity task force uh impressive impressive impressive the number of people that are contributing to that uh the task force that they've done the the the ground work that they put together in the foundation um and it's it's not just done it's gonna be it's gonna continue and it's gonna evolve and it's gonna be ever changing as it goes in there but it's amazing the people that have stepped up and volunteered all their time so thank you thank you mr shilachi just echo what everybody else said just say i'm just so proud of our community and our mount olive school district thank you uh miss cohen uh yeah congratulations to the retirees and good luck um it is amazing to see the longevity uh really does say something for the district
084about the district um that these people have been here for so long and served us so well um and also good to see uh some sense of normalcy to use that word but it um having the kids some of the kids back in and cohorts and let's hope that we continue that path and we get even more and more towards uh some kind of normal as we head towards spring so um and i just wrote real quick i'd like to echo congratulations to mrs mclaughlin and miss jones um to work 32 years in any job is a feat amongst itself so congratulations to both of them um i would like to also thank dr zwicky the administrators the teachers uh and the students and their parents um there is no playbook there is no past
085precedence for what we're going through and i think our district and our community has handled it as best as we can um it hasn't been perfect and we are figuring things out as we go um and i believe we are we are doing um a stellar job in the county um and not just in our county but in in the two surrounding counties sussex and warren county as well um i would just like to um make a plea to our community members our parents um if your child has one symptom a stuffy nose snivels you know i understand we all have to work and people need to go to work and i and i get that but with these new guidelines um you know we're asking as a district i do it in my district
086please please please keep your child home um you know send your child in uh with one symptom could cause multiple students to have the quarantine staff members have to quarantine um and that could cause uh unfortunately to a a school uh not being able to maintain and stay open uh depending on who has to quarantine um as well as um we're one of the few districts if not one of the fewer the only districts i know that offers testing on thursdays um i would ask parents as well as staff um if you are getting tested if you feel you you're exposed to coping and you're getting tested um you know maybe stay home until you get those results uh god forbid if you go to school friday and then you find out friday night or
087friday during the day or saturday that you have covered 19 that kicks in a whole entire quarantine process um it is it is recommended and highly recommended that if two unrelated cases in the building are confirmed covered that building should shut down for two weeks so again these are things we all have to you know we're all doing this together as a community and we talk about community and what malloc stands for not just the district but the community these are things we have to constantly uh keep in the back of our mind as we move forward so that's all i'd ask for the community to remember with that being said uh we do not need confidential session and a motion to adjourn the meeting make that motion second all those in favor we are
088adjourned thank you everyone stay safe good night everybody can i