001I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all meeting is called to order at 7:34 p.m. roll call please Mr here Mrs Mar here Mrs ricardi here Mr Smith here Mr pdar here Mrs grone here uh Mrs Mara would you uh open a meeting to the public or input a comment I will move uh to open the meeting to the public for input and comments on agenda items only seconded seconded by Mr grolik all in favor I no one putting comments uh Mr Smith would you adopt motion a please oh I'm sorry want me to close it I apologize I move to close the meeting to the public for input and comments I
002second seconded by Mrs ricardi all in favor I almost there [Applause] Mrs ricardi would you uh adopt motion yes I move to adopt all items on the above consent agenda I second second and by Mr Smith roll call Mr groy hi Mrs Mara hi Mrs ricardi hi Mr Smith hi Mr pdar I thank you we'll move on to committee reports Mrs Mara chair for facilities buildings and grounds sure thank you one second my apologies um so as we continue to thaw out this week very happily there will be more updates to come as to the tennis court projects um specifically you'll note on the agenda though there were some rejected bids on certain upgrades for HVAC projects at the high school and they are going back out for rebid um so we can keep those
003projects moving and uh in line with our timelines as best as possible and that is all I have to report this month great thank you Mrs Mara thank you uh as chair for budget and negotiations the only thing to report is that Mr Smith and I uh and Dr Nissen off met with the uh uh teachers union regarding the uh uh contract negotiations we made some great progress still working towards finalizing some things but um we are moving forward board and I hope to report better things on the uh next meeting and that's it for Budget negotiations and Mr ricardi chair for curriculum instruction and student achievement thank you I'd like to start by saying welcome well to the curriculum committee and thank you to Mrs opman for your time and due diligence in presenting
004all the updates since our last meeting in conjunction with the assisting of the onboarding of Mr grolik uh there was a lot to cover and with that said I will get down to it uh there was an update to the Essa accountability goals um that were shared at the last meeting and they're now using the 2022 and 2023 years as the Baseline and Emerson is looking very successful um in our outcomes with this report our Otis training continues we review two of the Baseline examples of how Otis can be used to track learning progress uh on a on a grade level whether the students are preparing developing proficient or excelling the reports were reviewed and showed high level scope of an entire class progress per teacher uh the second grade we we review the second
005grade report today and uh it gave a really great Quantified progress analysis of specific lessons such as writing skills punctuation and cap locks I think that this is going to be a really great program for our teachers and uh ultimately for our students in the long run U speaking of Otis Emerson's own Christ she was named Otis's star Spotlight educator of the month on their website she's one of our fourth grade teachers she has fully embraced Otis to enhance her classroom practices she has started implementing it into her day-to-day as quickly as she could and she has over 1,800 assessments entered into the program to dat she is helping the trail pleasing of this initiative and it's wonderful to see it utilized um in the way that it is intended to be uh we discussed
006teacher data meetings and new academic coordinators also a great initiative the goal is to improve student learning by regularly reviewing data at the classroom and grade levels and adjusting teacher practices accordingly it's a cohort of teachers who are working to Deep dive into current student work data to help plan ahead for classroom and targeted instruction initiatives moving forward this not only provides a big picture view and constant Evolution to better ourselves per grade level but it will also help make uh for smoother vertical articulations between the grade levels in curriculum and planning we are starting to look a little bit into a Mastery assessment idea for a math curriculum um which would be it how do I say this um it it pro it's something that we're looking into it provides understanding of certain lessons
007that students are learning before they move on to the next lesson itself so it's something that other um other towns have participated in and it's absolutely been ground groundbreaking and the benefits of it so that when the students are learning math that they're not moving forward before they are ready to actually move forward we are looking to upgrade and expand on our stem program in our middle and our High School Mrs oerman is reviewing the local stem programs from other districts to help Elevate our district offerings to our students I think it's fantastic there are some really wonderful programs out there that include cour cour Pathways with transcript endorsements and knowing that this is something that's on our radar is wonderful and we'll hopefully broaden the scope of what it is that we can offer
008to our student body uh we're also looking at special education program for the next school year for students coming from volano into the Junior Senior High School as a support that our out of District placement students uh returning to District may possibly need uh for our professional development our teachers were given a snow day on January 20th which I'm sure that there weren't any complaints or many complaints um but in such they will be making up the time that they miss from that day in future dates and in future hours that they will you know need to make up uh we have oh we have did we had math professional development days at the end of January including njsla prep for testing uh we had representation at the state level show texo and we will
009be attending njcc which is right here in Montclair so it's nice and local and provides the opportunity for other teachers to be attending since it is so close to home texo provided insight into Ai and where it's headed um and heading to NJ ECC again is more local so hopefully we can get more more people there we have also recently partnered with Montclair State to expand our computer science professional learning it's a great networking group and does offer other um knowledge opportunities for us to expand on including like what other grants are out there what other districts are doing and hopefully this will be fruitful for us we've hired math and a math and English teacher AI lead in the Junior Senior High School to assist with the following goals uh one is determining a
010shared AIU scale to inform plans and policies two is to Pilot and evaluate available AI tools for classroom teachers and three is to develop advisory lessons around appropriate use for students and inform professional development needs for the staff uh they will be meeting two times a month to get started and then finally e uh emberson Junior Senior High School uh is putting in a con Migo trial which focuses on Sat PR courses for grades 10 and 11 which is going to be a great offering since sats are being taken again so and that concludes my report great thank you Mrs ricardi with that we'll move on to individual board member reports Mr growley thanks uh good evening everybody hope everybody's doing well um fairly brief report um we passed that Benchmark of the 100th day
011of school which is pretty exciting so congrats to students and staff and families uh over that hump and I know that day is always a big deal at Memorial uh something I look back on fondly um I'm sure uh there's tons of great displays out down that hallway right now um pretty pumped uh to hear volano clubs are coming back again this week um which was just a great opportunity um to offer students um diverse types of experiences that are co-curricular extracurricular and so really psyched about that um pumped about what's going on in theater I'm super stoked for the Peter Pan production um I really encourage everyone in the community to go out and see the amazing work the students and staff do they put in so much time and effort and I know
012my family's personally look really looking forward to it as well as the susal musical at Milano as well so um yeah um I'd like to give a shout out to Emerson parents for stem uh yesterday along with the high school they hosted the First Tech Challenge League Championship uh it's a robotics competition um and uh it's called the Robo Robo Wrangle it's the same weekend uh every year uh here in Emerson it's a big deal that we do get the host it and it's such a wonderful Showcase of uh students and faculty collaborating and literally building programming robots um it's so impressive and um I think uh Emerson parents for stem is a great example of how Community being involved in our kids education really can elevate it um without them uh certainly that club
013would not be where it is and uh spoiler alert um I'm super thrilled uh to watch yesterday the robo cavos our Junior Senior High School robotics team in fact won that competition yesterday which is uh it was amazing to watch it's a big deal and um we need to all wish them luck they're headed to the state Championship so pretty wild stuff and lots to be proud of so um thank you to the uh parents and uh staff who contributed to that um congrats to our winter sports uh athletes coaches uh teams uh and we're all fired up to see uh spring Sports underway and looking forward to going out and cheering our cavos thank you Miss oerman uh for leading my first experience in the academic committee uh uh to No Surprise uh but
014she really uh made made sure I was very well prepared for my first meeting and and spent a great deal of time doing so and so uh sincerely appreciate it and certainly look forward to working with her and Dr nof and our chair Mr party uh over the next year um that concludes my report great thank you Mr brck Mrs uh Mrs ma thank you I have a brief report and I don't want to be redundant for the comments I feel like we do that almost every month all of our uh um accolades to our community and our students students um again I am uh very excited for Mrs ricardi to be chairing the curriculum committee think she's going to do a fantastic job you had a first great report so kudos to you um
015at the end of January at shortly after our last meeting I had attended the Bergen County Schoolboard association meeting where we did have a um guest speaker he is the assistant commissioner div division of field support and services for the Department of Education um where there was a lot of discussion uh very contemporaneous at the time heavy emphasis on certain funding um measures and immigration's access to school um as well so that was a an in-depth conversation right from the Department of Education um looking forward to one of my favorite events of the year um at the beginning of March which is the Bergen County School Board Association unsung hero awards ceremony being hosted at the uh Bergen Community College this year it is one of my favorite because it's um incredibly moving to see
016how these um our school districts throughout Bergen County um lift up every single one of the students in the most marginalized Pockets that they will find the ones that are not perhaps going to be the star athletes or the stars in all the school musicals but they Define the the fabric of our community in so many other ways and are just Stellar examples of um just how well our schools are succeeding um in making sure that every single child is um is given opportunity um to shine and it's it's a beautifully moving ceremony I believe that um it is open to the public too so it's on Tuesday March 4th uh and again it's at Bergen Community College I do hope that everybody enjoyed their short little midwinter break I'm sure that kids were great
017for two and a half days coming off of that that must have been fun so kudos to our teachers um continued appreciation to our finance committee and to the central office on their work for negotiations and their efforts on the budget and um that concludes my report at this time great thank you Mrs Mara Mrs ricardi thank you um also I will not be redundant um so I do want to say a preemptive thank you to our PTA as they are ramping up for the ladies night out that's coming up hopefully that would I know it's going to be a great time it'll be a fun time for all and it's also their largest uh fundraiser of the year so thank you to everybody who participates and has donated uh I I lied I am
018being redundant the 100th day of school was fantastic uh I couldn't seeing my four-year-old dressed up as a little old man is a is a great thrill of mine so so thank you for offering such opportunities for him um and Memorial is also starting their clubs again uh which is going to be fantastic for all those who C take so uh I also had the opportunity of going to the uh to the competition here yesterday for the robotics team and we watched the rooc cavos um in their competitions and they did make their way to the state championships which is so fantastic my kids just adore it they love it we came last year we came again this year thank you to Marcy for letting me know that this was happening um and has really
019just sparked an interest and my little guys and it's neat to see that uh festering now fostering we'll call it now uh so that we can continue to Foster it so maybe one day they will be down there competing and I too am looking forward to going to the high school musical of Peter Pan should be a a great one to attend thank you great thank you Mr ricardi Mr Smith sure so so one thing Mr pazar left out I think was the first time during a negotiation mean we had a field trip we came over and we watched Kayla ellex score her thousand point we we stopped the meeting Midway and said we got to go make a beine to watch that which is pretty neat um to see student athlete do that is
020is exceptional um I had the pleasure of coaching Caleb for years um great player loves the sport so that was neat so congratulations to her also our bowling team has uh really taking off and hopefully I'm not stealing your stuff but uh again these are folks that um children students that I've I've coached in the passing other sports and and know them the good thing about that team from what I was looking at and correct me is a lot of them were sophomores in freshman so there's a lot of Runway here for future wins and League titles and all league and all that good stuff and um I've over the last couple weeks attended a couple wrestling matches both the Young Folks and the tanelli tournament and districts up through our Varsity doing fairly well
021down in their districts we have a couple going on to the regional tournament which is not an easy feat my son wrestled for years I know how frustrating hard it can be and also when I look at the the younger group it's great to see how many are the program is really striving theyve really grown a lot um there's there's girl wrestlers females wrestlers more than ever which is great competing doing well and at that age they compete against whoever's their weight boy or girl so um it's pretty pretty neat to see and Emerson's got a long history of having a great wrestling program and it looks like they're going to continue that so um that's really it for me great thank you Mr Smith um beauty of providing the for president report after everybody
022goes is that you guys have done all this the heavy lifting so so thank you for that but I will be a little bit repetitive uh a thank you to Mrs ricardi for chairing the academic uh committee now um great report and look forward to the in-depth reporting as always as Miss Mara has provided in the past and and uh looks like you'll be continuing with that as well so thank you uh I want to thank Dr nissanoff and Mr mamora uh for their work on on two different areas one is the budget which is as we all know very easy to do so U but but uh I just but thank you very much I know it it's hard work and I appreciate as you guys work through that and also for your support
023uh for Mr Smith and I as we uh work with the uh contract negotiations and there's a mountain of data that you provide us and help us understand it and give us insight and uh we very much appreciate that so thank you for that uh Dr nissanoff I want to thank you for your 5:00 a.m. wakeups over the last couple of weeks to let us know if we have school or not so I know that's difficult thank you for that um Mrs Mara mentioned the Bergen County unsung heroes event unfortunately for me I won't be able to attend that uh this year it's something that I actually look forward to it's a great event um as you said uh so um it'll be good that you you're going to represent Emerson there and uh let
024us know how that goes and and look forward to see who will be getting that award uh congratulations to Kayla it was a was a nice little break from from the teachers negotiations where we all went into the gym and and got to witness her accomplish that great milestone uh and it was nice to see uh not just our own kids cheering for her but to watch the other team clap and applaud and recognize that and it's just nice to see that so uh congrats to Kayla um congratulations to Robo cavos fantastic uh accomplishments there so looking forward to hear how they do in the next round and the high school play coming up please get out there and support the kids for that and um my next uh County and state school board meetings
025will be coming up I don't have the dates but I will provide updates as they relate to Emerson so that's my report uh we'll now pass it on to miss point for the student representative report um so there's a lot going on at the high school uh just recently we had kindness week where the student council um wrote cards to teachers and staff and hand delivered them to just bring a little bit of joy to their day to show how appreciative we are um we also had Carnation sales where students can purchase a carnation to be delivered to a peer or a teacher staff so that's another thing that was brightening people's day it was really great to see and again not to be too repetitive but um we're really excited to see the success
026in the extracurriculars and the winter sports with the robo cavos and the bowling teams League Championship um wrestling some people moving on to Regions um boys and girls basketball both have their first round of their state tournament on Wednesday the girls are home at 4:30 um so we're very excited to have the community here um supporting and the boys are away at New Milford at 7 um within the classroom um the junior class has been provided with SAT prep time it is uh one hour a week that's allotted to use an online resource Con Academy which is great it personalizes the experience it takes your PSAT score and the areas that you need the most Improvement so that you can get that time to improve on those skills before the April sat which is really
027exciting and then um the high school students are really excited for Across America where student council will be visiting Memorial to give a lesson and share some of our favorite childhood books um to share the love of learning and reading and the National Honor Society students will be visiting volano to do a similar lesson and again share the reading and we're really excited for that this it's a consensus among all the high school students that visiting Memorial volano is always a great experience to see the kids and to see the teachers it's always a good always a fun time and again not to be too repetitive but the Peter we are very excited for Peter Pan um opening night of March 7th we cannot wait to see all the hard work show on the stage
028great great job thank you moving on to uh Dr Nissen off superintendent sure and I I'm not going to be repetitive I'm going to do my best not to but before I do you know often times we we've talked in previous meetings about all the things that Kylie does all the sport she plays the Committees and all the things there one thing that I I would probably left off the list many people may not know this but um every Friday Kylie DJs for the high school and she compiles lists of playlists from faculty members throughout the year and every Friday you may notice this if you've ever been in our school on a Friday in between classes and the three or so minutes but passing our songs are being uh played it's just great and
029it's all the faculty members correct and I'm I'm pretty sure that coming up in a week or so is going to be like one of the most anticipated playlists ever right everyone everyone's talking about it everyone who who's would that be all the teachers students it's exciting yeah how about next week who who who whose playlist are is everyone really talking about I think it's going to be uh DJ Dr nisol thank you thank you thank you thank I'm sure everyone's going to be really excited about that um but thank you thank you for a great great report Kylie um basketball you know I I don't know how many how many points you have coming into going into your senior year H I don't know a couple hundred couple hundred okay good good good I
030bet if we looked at your uh rebounds you're probably breaking some records there though almost good good keep up keep up the great work klie thank you that's great um last embarrassing question yeah you have a book picked out for Ross America because I gotta I gotta come up with something too and I want to make sure I like I like the piggy and Gerald's books those are always my favorite awesome awesome great okay so not going to talk about read about America check check check check check um States uh clubs you mentioned clubs of volano I should also mention that we have over a hundred students participating at clubs at Memorial are getting ready to start up so we're pretty excited about that um can never say enough about the play you have to
031come see this play um thank you Marcy for all stem's work with uh the robo Cabos the only thing I'm going to just ask I don't know if you said it and I didn't hear it how many teams participated in this competition there were 20 there yesterday 20 teams so this wasn't like a competition with three or four different schools there were 20 teams all throughout Bergen County uh some of the schools cies were there uh some of the private schools were there many of the private schools were there beckon uh sure so it was it was great to see em uh to to see Emerson perform so well and come out on top so we're really we're really proud of them um that's all I have on my report because I promised wouldn't be
032repetitive of everything that was said great thank you Dr nof Mr mamora business administrators report thank you so um very busy month of uh February for the central office a lot of frying pans in the fire right now juggling between uh negotiations budget and as we saw Mrs Mar reported tonight we had some uh facility and operations uh items that we're working on right now so last we had a bid opening for two HVAC projects that we're going to be uh rejecting at tonight's meeting but we're going out to bid again so that bid is going to be on um March 12th and then also going out to bid on March 18th is our um turfield project um so we have two major uh facility projects that are going out to bid in March in
033addition to that uh the tenative budget for the 25 26 school year is going to be um on the March agenda as well uh tomorrow the governor is going to be giving his budget address and on Thursday we'll be getting the state aid Figures release so we can really dial in on the budget and work together with finance committee to um have a tenative budget awarded in uh March um so that concludes my report great thank you Mr mour uh we now uh uh Mr SC could you open a meeting to the public for input and comments sure I move to open the meeting to the public for input and comments second second by Mrs Mara all in favor I I uh if you could stand and uh as always state your name and address
034um Marcy 57 Washington ADV I just wanted to thank everybody for the Wrangle it was incredible we had um the chorus sang the national anthem we had NHS students directing kids where to go how to get there when when it was time to be up we had parents everywhere helping we had board members and superintendents and principles in the stands it was just an incredible experience the wind was bonus hi Mark szel uh 186 Drive um I just want to say thank you Dr n for your letter that you sent out last week about the families here in Emerson and the inclusive environment uh I'm a parent of a child with an IEP and so being able to one of the things that appealed us to come to Emerson was the fact that uh students
035of all backgrounds were allowed to be participated and integrated into a school district it's one of the reasons why we moved here lived here so I appreciate that um I'm also the treasurer for a local flute Pantry um who is during this time have seen a rise and increase of people and families as well so I know especially for those families that are living with food in security having a place where they can feel welcome and included and that it's um where kids can just be students um is really important and valued and I really feel that here at Emerson so I just wanted to say thank you for that thank hi everyone Ashley rice um to piggyback on the letter what can I just ask what was the purpose of the letter I just
036wrot the email of the letter you sent out I don't know if you're going to answer maybe you're not answer but I just didn't know what the intent was what did you want to get across to the to the community and did the whole board preview the letter and approved the letter before it went out to the community and then third the IEP comments 504s IEPs aren't they covered ihp but has nothing to do with de that's protected in its own class Dei came about I like 2022 so my son anyone who has a 504 any medical condition they were never threatened their funding was never taken away I I think that letter was a little misleading I just wanted to say that oh and one more thing I don't like the use of the
037word medically fragile my son's Not Fragile okay if no other comments uh Mr Smith would you mind closing the meeting to the public I motion to close the meeting for the to the public for input and compliments I second seconded by Mrs ricardi all in favor I and U Mrs ricardi could you adop motion B please yes I I move to close the meeting the public and adjourn at hold on 8:06 p.m. to discuss an executive session Personnel matters in the conference room of the Board of Education offices no action will be taken at this time the board will return to open session upon completion of discussion and may or may not take action at that time the next meeting of the board of education is scheduled for March 24th 2025 at 7:30 p.m. in
038the high school media center second second it by Mrs Mara all in favor hi hi thank you very very much everyone have a good night care