001hi everyone reese how are you good how's it going luis i see uh okay so you've been having good attendance to school luis yeah we've been we've been pretty good you know i'm imagining the numbers will drop now because you know people are going to start their vacations and several emails about what if i'm not there on the last day of school well when you end the you know if you end past father's day typically that week is problematic from uh from uh parents and vacations and shore and mountains and whatever else oh yes there's we're still pretty full though so it's uh definitely helps a day go by faster [Music] section how are you louie i'm doing well how are you daphne good thanks are there gonna be uh cicadas falling out of the
002trees during your uh moving on ceremony next week we're gonna be on the blacktop so uh i think we just have to dodge them i got nailed twice in the face today and both times it left marks so uh not good oh what kind of marks like like like somebody flipped you kind of because they were flying right into my cheek and the other one right into my forehead yeah yeah there was a there was a lady at community park the other day uh uh i visited schools voting voting day and she was walking into the voting booth and i said ma'am you have four bugs on your back and she she kind of freaked out the good thing her husband was with her he was he was but he had she had four large
003cicadas and she didn't feel them i don't know how she didn't feel them land on her on her back you know etiquette you have to say to people may i remove your bug i had to crawl or go into a a parent's car um drop off i should say she she's in the car and you know we opened the doors for everybody and she screams and i'm out of her car and i said did you get cicada and she's like yes i'm like okay and um looking around i looked under her seats i turned the flashlight on on my phone i'm like don't see it she didn't see it she gets back in the car and within 15 seconds screams again jumps out of the car again she leaves her little baby in the back
004seat like uh where is it she pointed it out on the uh the windshield um and i grabbed it and let it go and uh she was pretty traumatized who did we have today denim denim brought a couple in with her didn't she yeah deneen did yes yeah yeah i think um it looks like we're mostly i think we're almost all here should i get started here are you ready i believe sure okay um welcome to this public meeting of the princeton board of education the board is an elected unpaid group of 10 citizens who set policy and make decision decisions on educational financial and personnel matters for the princeton public schools on behalf of all residents we are always pleased when members of the community attend our meetings the board and the school district
005operate under applicable new jersey laws and under regulations of the new jersey state board of education each meeting includes an opportunity for those attending to comment on items on the published agenda or other matters of interest to them the board reserves the right to limit the time allotted to public participation law limits discussion of individual personnel and confidential matters we desire that our meetings provide useful opportunities for communication between the board and the community so thank you for attending as required under the open public meeting act njsa 1046 at sequentia adequate notice was given for calling this meeting it was authorized by the board of education and forwarded to the municipal clerk princeton packet and the times on january sixth 6 2021 it was distributed to the schools and others on the standard distribution list
006the board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all meetings of the board of education board policy 2230 recording devices requires that we inform those attending this virtual zoom meeting that the proceedings are being recorded this meeting is not being live streamed public members who wish to make comment at the appropriate time as noted in the agenda or added by the presiding officer shall quote unquote raise their hand virtually at the bottom of the zoom screen once called upon the member of the public will be requested to unmute themselves by clicking the mute button at the bottom of the zoom screen the representative of the sending district is authorized to vote on such matters that affects sending district students or affect the governance of princeton public schools as more specifically designated in njsa
00718 38 8.1 in the event this statute is amended the law shall take precedence over this bylaw sending district votes pertaining to personnel actions refer to high school central administrative and district wide staff only votes otherwise are considered abstentions take a roll call beth parent present sorry debbie brownfield here and art air betsy bagwell here ryan mcdonald president peter katz here daphne kendall here susan cantor here gene durbin present thank you uh the first item on our agenda is item d1 adoption of minutes from the may 25th 2021 meeting could i have a motion please brian second gene are there any discussion if not could we call a rule to approve mr boulder yes w brownfield yes dan dart yes etsy baguio yes brian mcdonald yes peter cats yes staff and the kendall yes susan
008cantor yes gene durbin yes motion passes that brings us to our next item which is our student board members report yash and maya you want to take it away uh so on the agenda we saw that there are two different parts for us so maya and i have final speeches that we'll say during the part with the resolution for both of us right now we just want to introduce ned and eric ned and chris they have been elected as the new student liaisons to this board quite excited i'm quite excited personally because they're both really good friends of mine and i've seen them grow a lot this year and i know they're going to do great things next year as for the report um nothing much to report five more days of school left maya
009and i will obviously be graduating school is um it feels really good to be back in person a lot more people are coming back in person now um it's really nice after 15 months to have full hallways and being able to interact with people and so with that i'll hand it over to ned and chris unless maya has something to add yeah i'm just gonna also extend my congratulations to ned and chris um you guys are gonna be two wonderful student board liaisons and yeah take it away all right thank you yash and maya um hi everyone my name is chris chen and i'd like to thank the board and dr glasso for having us here tonight as well as all of our peers at phs for trusting us with the responsibilities of being student
010body liaisons i want to take this time to introduce myself and ned as well as some of the issues that are important to us as students and that we believe should be shared goals with the board so both ned and i are heavily involved in the phs and greater princeton community through extracurriculars such as speech and debate or varsity sports for me and also model un and community service clubs for ned we've seen firsthand many of the problems that we know the board cares a lot about such as large racial equity gaps and under funding of crucial student organizations the two of us strongly believe that the district is positioned at a unique time of change with our new superintendent dr kelly and our new new phs principal mr shmeel and the trust and influence
011that you've given us over this past year we want to ride this momentum into creating an environment that prioritizes students and teachers well-being and needs before i pass things on to ned to talk about specific goals i want to express both my own and the entire ph of student bodies immense gratitude to our teachers their endless dedication and perseverance over this last year has been honestly astounding we've talked a lot about student mental health over the past year but i can't even begin to imagine what teachers go through when they're the ones running the actual virtual classroom hearing stories of phs teachers rushing home against traffic to make it to office office hours at students or spending countless nights redesigning their curriculum and practice plans to engage with students and players has only further demonstrated
012their extraordinary strength and commitment of which we will always be grateful for as the incoming student liaisons chris and i would foremost like to give voices to the students of the district this past year we as students have been incredibly grateful to the receptives receptiveness of you the board and the superintendent we think it was a real growth opportunity for all of the district and the students feel more represented than ever thanks in large part to yahshua of course there's always room to grow as a district and chris and i believe that an important first step is establishing a more permanent student committee to periodically meet with and advise the superintendent we would also like to help you in whatever way that we can to ensure that we're able to get back to school next
013year with as much normalcy as possible while our teachers and staff have been deep beyond supportive covid was tough on all students and a return to school is imperative for students of all grade levels as elected representatives we must also discuss the inequity we see on a daily basis vhs and the princeton public schools are prestigious and rigorous but certain groups of students tend to get lost in the shuffle in the high school there's a stark achievement gap with many esl or poc students do not have the same opportunities to thrive that some of us have this is a complex issue and not an easy one to solve but it's something that we must address and chris and i are hopeful that with the energetic and experienced leadership of dr kelly and mr schmiel we
014can do something about equality in our schools and i'm and as i'm sure is no surprise students are stressed and stress is not something that's originated with coped hs has a culture of success and excellence but that culture can be taken too far sometimes students have shared with us that they're burnt out and are struggling and many see high school as a means to college rather than an opportunity to immerse themselves in learning and their passions we agree that some degree of stress is inevitable in high school but we all have a responsibility to promote the health and well-being within the pps community and we look forward to providing a firsthand perspective on the issue thank you so much for allowing us to be here chris and i look forward to working with all of
015you over the next year thank you both that was very helpful and you know i i just want to say i know that my colleagues we would always appreciate if you guys want to give us your comments in writing as well so that we can um kind of read it over on our own time as well it's on the recorded meeting which is very helpful but we appreciate having your voice in these meetings going forward and uh it's going to be a good year together so thank you we're going to be a little more formal in a moment but we'll come to that on the agenda so welcome um that brings me to the the next point our agenda which is simply the president's report and i'm mindful of a very packed agenda tonight i
016just want to congratulate everyone as we come to the end of a very very challenging and difficult year we've we've gone through it all together and we're grateful for again for our um our teachers our students our parents our educators are our administrators our community our health officials all the people that we've been trying to give shout outs to all year long i think that um i think that the one substantive thing i want to say in this part i think daphne is going to take for us we have something we want to announce that's a very good news you're on mute daphna yep thank you thank you beth yeah um so um on behalf of myself myself and michelle tuck ponder i'm happy you know to announce that on the agenda tonight for board
017approval is a three-year contract with our administrators union pa and uh we're just thrilled uh we're very grateful for um mr ramirez's leadership uh i knew uh louis as a principal at little brook and now to see him as president of the union um and he's doing so well is is really great uh so thank you louie and to your team uh keisha priscilla and demean uh for very uh amicable and um and and fair uh contract negotiations and so um i don't know are we going to vote on that now um beth are we going to vote on that later i think it might be in the consent agenda is that maybe yes let's just leave it there and we can um well so and i should have pointed this out earlier but usually
018we vote on it and then mr ramirez can say something um on behalf of the union otherwise just because it's a very long meeting tonight do that um can we just vote on it right now does the board agree to amend the agenda in that way brian did you have a question yeah i'm just going to move that we amend the agenda to do that thank you for that moving second uh gene all in favor of moving that up okay let's do that louie i know you have early morning tomorrow so you're welcome to stay i hope you do but yeah thank you daphne yep i'll call the role then beth barron yes betsy bagwheel yes yes bronfeld yes dan dart yes gene durbin yes susan cantor yes daphne kendall yes brian mcdonald yes peter
019katz yes yes we passes thank you and that is to confirm that we have just passed um the the final contract with the paa through the term of daphna what's the year ending oh it's through uh june 30th 2024. and that's our administrative uh uh uh bargaining unit so thank you very much it's all the administrators and supervisors and it really is a reflection of our gratitude to all your whole union union and your members for the professionalism and dedication you've shown you know every year but especially this year so i don't know if you want to throw in some hearts absolutely thank you so much daphne i just want to begin by thanking um both negotiations teams you know mrs tuck ponder mrs kendall dr galasso mr volpe mr bolden for the uh the
020board side and uh on the pa side we had um mrs priscilla russell mrs dineen gruchas and miss keisha smith's carrington as well as myself um i i really am so thankful speaking on behalf of paa tonight that we reach this agreement and you know it is a definitely a fair agreement and one that we worked very hard to to come to and i just want to thank both sides for the long hours they put in and everyone's effort so we're very pleased and we're looking forward to closing out the school year now and getting things rolling for next year and i just want to say thank you to everybody on this board and also to everybody watching tonight for your support we really appreciate it especially during this most difficult year so thank you
021so much everyone thank you principal ramirez okay so we'll move on with a bit of gratitude um daphna did you have a piece you wanted to say for the parents i did i did so um we used this time uh in our board meetings this past year to thank everyone who has helped us uh run the schools and so tonight um we want to extend our gratitude to all the parents and guardians of for of our students in the district we thank you for your patience and understanding and ability to pivot quickly with us as a circumstance is required and to the parents of younger children and students with special needs we know especially this has been a trying year and we thank you for your partnership we are all part of the princeton public
022schools community and during this past year we have shown that by working together we can work through the obstacles that we encounter again thank you very much for your partnership and we wish you all a safe and healthy summer thank you betsy did you have something you'd like to say i do tonight we also offer gratitude to a much loved member of the staff at valley road miss patty gainer patty will be completing 11 school years with the princeton public schools when she retires later this month in the role of the business administrator and board secretary's executive secretary she has spent 26 total years working for school districts the districts of robbinsville west windsor plainsboro and princeton and therefore has a great background knowledge of school district operations as our ba said one of the
023many things she was able to do that was impressive and rare was to be the backup to payroll and was able to run payroll as needed as board members patty is one of the first calls we receive from the school district when we're elected and she's often tasked with things like confirming our attendance following up on state required training and important reminders as needed above all she is kind and conscientious and she will be missed so patty we are grateful very grateful for your service to the princeton public schools thank you betsy that's for patty thank you betsy so this brings me to the um third part of my my statement tonight and that is we have some important business to do to show gratitude to someone who has really brought us through this last
024year and we are we are so grateful um matt did you have some things you wanted to summarize or that came from the public we we would like to give credit to our our interim superintendent barry galasso this is his last public meeting uh and so as as that is we would like to show our gratitude to to you barry um so we're going to say some nice things about you i hope you get get ready get ready matt did you want to start that did you have some things you wanted to say about the public or myself uh elizabeth were you collecting those yes she was uh yeah i can i can send them to you aha well we have some we have some comments that we that came in from a number of
025partners and community partners including the mayor and the i think the head of public health and barry we might just share those with you directly so you can see their kind words and maybe we'll just move on and give you give you some gratitude from the board and i think we have a proclamation tonight that we would like to read and i think debbie you were going to start that so this is the proclamation to honor the service of dr barry j glasgow whereas dr barry j galaska will on june 30th 2021 complete his term as interim superintendent of princeton public schools having served the immense benefit of district students and the school community for one year during the global pandemic of 2020-2021 and dan you're muted dan you're on mute dan you're on mute
026dan i i got it okay sorry about that whereas dr glasso brought with him 37 years of experience as a school superintendent having conscientiously prepared for a career of service in public education through dedicated professional training beginning as a teacher and working his way up through administration and whereas dr galasso displayed exceptional leadership skill and ability in not only keeping our schools open and safe for students and staff during what was likely the single most challenging year in our history but also ensuring stability in district operations and forging strong partnerships with students staff parents public health and other local officials community leaders and superintendents across mercer county and whereas it is the sincere desire of the princeton public schools board of education to honor and commend dr galasso for his leadership and boundless energy in
027service to the district and to our community now therefore be it resolved that the members of the princeton public schools board of education hereby commend dr galasso with deep gratitude for his outstanding service and wish him well in his second retirement and be it further resolved that a copy of this proclamation suitably endorsed be transmitted to him endorsed by the order of the princeton public schools board of education as duly expressed on the 15th day of june well thank you all thank you very much i appreciate it thank you do i have a message from the i'll start with the you want me to go now beth sure from mayor mark frieda dr glasso barry is do a huge thanks thank you from the entire community for all that he's accomplished in his time at
028princeton he has demonstrated vision and the ability to get things done he has taken on challenges directly and openly he has led by example and worked tirelessly for the benefit of our students to say he will be missed is an understatement but i say it anyway a sincere thank you to barry a person i respect and admire very nice uh from jeff grosser hopefully not too late but the princeton health department wants to thank dr galasso for his leadership of the princeton public school district through the course of of the pandemic conversations between dr glaso and i at all hours of weekdays and weekends were common throughout his time at as superintendent princeton school district was fortunate to have a veteran leader at the helm when dealing with so much uncertainty in the early months
029of the response can echo that uh parent xiaobing li i'd like to thank you for your dedicated service at the princeton school district you led the district uh navigating a year of unprecedented changes and ensured a smooth transition of both the learning environment and leadership team there were unexpected circumstances throughout the year but you turn them into opportunities to learn and grow we thank you for your care of the students and your willingness to listen to the families especially your initiative to establish an effective dialogue channel with the asian american community with your leadership the school district is poised to embrace the post-pandemic era we really we really appreciate all you have done in such a short time and wish you a joyful new chapter of your life this is from a student honly i'm
030a student at phs and i'd like to wish dr glosso thank you first time at pps here is a note i wrote dear dr glossa thank you for leading princeton public schools through such a tumultuous unpredictable year as superintendent you always were willing to listen to students voices and let us speak about what we felt needed to be changed you showed to me that you cared about our struggles as students and the changes in our math class will always prove that i will always remember your two pages of notes thank you for everything big exclamation point on that um those were the four that elizabeth was uh thankful to forward to me great and does anyone else want to say anything before we can i just jump in and be a good segue since i'm
031already talking i really uh you know so dr glosso is the sixth superintendent i've worked for um in different school districts and i you know i can't say enough uh first of all how brave he was to take on this job uh you know during a pandemic and how much i've learned personally from him and gonna miss him as a as a boss but hopefully i've gained a friend and uh thank you very much uh for all you've done thank you matt appreciate it if i could just say one or two things beth too i promise to keep it very quickly i echo everything that matt said um barry is a pleasure working from you and i can't tell you how many days you know i've said this i learned something new from you every
032day uh the wealth of experience that you brought has only enriched me and added value to my future administrative career and one thing that i really want to point out about dr galasso is we know how highly the princeton public schools value equity dr galasso has been doing equity work in public education since well before it was termed equity work he brought that knowledge here to the princeton public schools and when it came to an initiative that we wanted to do in that area he said go do it get the job done um he was a supporter a helper and a facilitator uh never got in the way and never let ego come anywhere near any decision that he made for kids barry is a pleasure working for you and um still see you for
033a few days thank you mike all right barry we're going to be giving you accolades and thanks for a couple weeks yet but this was our chance to do it on the record so thank you so much um i think uh now we have just a quick thing we want to say to our departing uh student members who's going first there is that daphne is that you were upset brian brian is going first okay it is my honor and privilege to um read a tribute to departing student board member maya khan whereas maya khan is leaving the board of education due to graduation and whereas maya khan has fulfilled a year of service be it therefore resolved that the board of education recognized the contributions that maya khan has made to the district and its
034students thank her for her time and effort and wish her much success in her future endeavors thank you so much um and i will say something about josh his tribute to departing student board member josh roy whereas josh roy is leaving the board of education due to graduation and whereas josh roy has fulfilled a year of service be it therefore resolved that the board of education recognized the contributions that josh roy has made to the district and its students thank him for his time and effort and wish him much success in his future endeavors and in addition so i will be dropping this by both of your homes there's one for each of you as well as a barnes noble gift card um as an expression of the board's gratitude for your service so thank
035you very much we wish you all the best and uh we you know stay in touch thank you uh if you don't mind maya and i prepared a short little thing if uh uh we each have a separate thing so i will start so just wanted to start off by thing off the board for working so diligently instead fastly through what was one of the most chaotic and turbulent periods in our community and nation's history navigating such a dangerous pandemic while continuing to carry out your mandates of administrating and improving princeton public schools is no small feat this board has gone above and beyond carried out its duties and we appreciate all the hard work and countless hours you've put in throughout this year serving as liaison this year has been truly an eye-opening and
036rewarding experience being able to see local government so closely and personally has been one of the most interesting and educational parts of my four years of phs i'll carry the lessons and wisdoms i've learned from this board for a very long time i'd also just like to take a very short moment to thank dr glasser for all his work this year since that tribute just happened from the first meeting we had in october until now i really appreciated how willing you are to be flexible and listen to students and respect our opinions and i will really appreciate that uh forever and thank you for everything and so i just want to before i go off i wanted to talk about something a little bit more personal so while representing my peers has been a true
037honor and i'm incredibly optimistic about the work this board the larger district will continue to do in the coming years i'd also like to speak briefly about some of the personal trials and tribulations i faced this position a bit worried about phs and the students who are there every day sorry to say that a group of administrators and deans of phs are best described as a profile of mediocrity which flies on the face of the excellence this word exemplifies an entre demand of its administrators and deans of phs instead of listening to students like maya and i and respecting dissenting opinions throughout this year a specific group of administrators and deans chose to take the harder route and foster a culture of fear and intimidation they tried their hardest to break spirits of anyone that
038spoke out involved at the notion of listening to students personally my parents and i were summoned multiple times by administrators where i was labeled as angry and aggressive and loud for simply speaking out and doing my job and that stereotype is really old and tiring for people that look for me that look like me and at many points this year i've been taken aback by that though that attitude and the disdain exhibited by some administrators and deans and so this was at times it was suffocating and debilitating this culture of fear and intimidation we persisted and i'm proud of the work that we've done and how flexible all of you were and all the good work that you did and i'd just like to thank you all again as well as all the teachers and
039mentors throughout this entire process who really stood by us and supported us and i wish a lot of luck to chris and ned and all the students have placed their confidence and trust in mine so that's my bit and then my it has been such a pleasure to be contributing member to the princeton school district and a representative for my peers at phs i can't thank our student body enough for giving me a nauseous opportunity although this year may have been the mo more difficult than most we persevered and suppressed all the obstacles to end off with another successful year through this experience i've learned so much from the board the administration and our staff members i also am so happy that i had such a great co-leader as josh um i've learned so much
040from him i look forward to seeing all the amazing things our new student board liaisons ned and chris will accomplish as well as our student body i'm already really excited to come back and visit phs every year to see what is in store for the future of phs i also would like to thank dr glasso for all of his work in a year where communication interaction with one another as we know it was very much minimized dr glaso was able to reach out to us youngsters and connect students to our administration like never before our students are extremely lucky to have had you as our superintendent and your work with us will have a long lasting impact for the future of all of phs students thank you very much thank you thank you thank you
041joshua thank you maya um i think that brings us to the superintendent's report okay thank you uh before matt as you uh uh load the long-term planning executive summary i just would like to make a couple of comments uh first of all i would just like to thank the students of of the princeton school district uh you are amazing i tell the board this all the time that the biggest asset the princeton school district has is its students you're just fantastic no matter if we agreed or disagreed you've always done it in a professional manner and i do appreciate that and i thank you for uh making me a better superintendent so thank you uh second of all i'd like to tell all of our uh students who are moving on in the elementary schools
042you're about to be engaged in a new middle school schedule that's going to be exciting and uh and and maximizes um your engagement with faculty and staff and i think that's very positive and as we move from the moving on ceremony which will uh celebrate on friday the students there are about to enter the best four years of their life being students at phs so uh i can't wait for you to experience that uh wonderful time and to yash and maya i know you will be a success wherever you land uh in your next venture in in life uh uh you're very both very thoughtful and uh excellent representatives of the student body so and i thank you for providing me with uh suggestions and guidance and helping me organize the student engagement group so
043thank you very much and tonette and chris congratulations uh i know you a little bit from the student groups and you're going to be a tremendous asset and an advocate for all of the uh the students at in princeton school district next year and uh i know you'll you'll help support superintendent kelly and principal schmiel and make it a great year for uh for the seniors and and high school students at phs next year as far as the pto is concerned you have a tremendous pto and students and and the board is lucky to have uh people that are that engaged and they're wonderful volunteers uh so i just congratulate all the ptos and the ptoc uh for their leadership their support of me uh they've been phenomenal faculty and staff i can't say enough
044about you uh uh i think we did i think we did some good work for students in princeton and it's due to your efforts so i do appreciate that uh the community resources in princeton are phenomenal and for all the parents who've reached out to me sometimes disagreeing with me but always doing it uh with the uh the hallmark of your emails where i hope this email finds you well and then uh they went on to maybe agree or disagree with what i was doing but always in that vein and i appreciate that that tells me the quality of of the of the uh the princeton community and to the other resources our health officials and to the princeton our school doctor dr hamrick i just want to say thank you for guiding us safely
045through this my central office administrative staff seven days a week uh you humored me and answered my phone calls and and and did the work uh i can't i appreciate all of you uh very much and i can't thank you enough for for making uh this school year a success and finally to the board of education um i got to know them in in may and june a little bit and began working with you in june um and no matter what i asked or no matter what i proposed uh you always made the right decision based on your love of kids so i think that speaks well uh for this board of education uh you're committed to kids you're committed to providing the best for them and uh so i just wanted to say thank
046you to all of you it has been my pleasure to serve as your interim superintendent okay so matt if you would uh put up the long-term planning executive summary we'll begin because we have a large agenda but i wanted to take that moment just to say thank you to all for the last year or so the board has been engaged with a company called eminem it's now been sold and it's now slr and i want to take this opportunity to thank our board liaison susan cantor and i also want to thank our administrative staff which comprised of a working group that have been meeting for the last 18 months and tonight the purpose of just introducing this to the community is to give a an overview of what you will be engaging with with the
047board of education in the new administration as we move forward over the next year year and a half so matt if you go to that second one the second slide for me please there we go thank you so i'm going to talk about the top three priorities if okay great that's i think that's fine matt so the the first priority is that as you know during this year of transition and the pandemic the princeton public schools there were a number of maintenance needs that have been identified so our high priority major maintenance needs and capital improvements are going to be identified over the next few months now why is that important and what are they well their roofs and their facades and their fixtures and certain items that need to be uh taken care of
048with regard to providing for the health and safety of our students over the next year and a half so basically the board will be having a conversation about what are these major maintenance needs and capital improvements the good thing about that is princeton is a with its scs and the state aid that's typically given to a school district like uh like princeton uh is very nominal with the ability to identify high priority major maintenance needs there is an opportunity for the board to put together a package and then submit to the department of education and for approval of up to 30 or 34 cents on the dollar so for a community like princeton this is a real uh win-win situation better better conditions for for students to learn and getting the maximum uh reimbursement from
049the department of education in the state of new jersey so what did the analysis tell us well the analysis tells us that phs in the next few years is going to probably have an enrollment somewhere between 18 and 1900 students and so the board will have to prioritize that and be have a full engagement over the next six months or so with the community and talk about the necessary needs at the high school in order to accommodate the 18 to 1900 students that will be there the good news is that our pooms middle school is the analysis there is that with the schedule change our functional capacity is now over 900 students so it more than meets the needs of the current enrollment projections by the consultant base the the other good news is the
050fact that we will be able to uh watch for one year as the new schedule is implemented and the board can then make a decision with the community about recommendations with regard to core facilities whether they need to be improved or whether or not the current core facilities are acceptable and can and can accommodate the current student population the third piece to this was taking a look at the four elementary schools now we talked about the high priority maintenance needs and that is very evident there are some new roofs and new facades that are absolutely necessary but from from a an enrollment standpoint the good news is that the enrollment seems to be uh flat for about the next three four or five years so it gives time for the board of education even with
051the new housing that's being proposed by the municipal government gives the board an opportunity to talk philosophically about the type of program that it wants to offer gives the new administration an opportunity to review the different types of instructional models that are out there and it also provides a proper opportunity for this full engagement by the community so tonight was basically just to say this is the work that we've been engaged in in the last 18 months it is very detailed uh but the purpose of tonight was just to tell you broadly what we're anticipating doing uh but this specific engagement by the board will take place over the next months and probably over the next 15 months in order to have the community come to some agreement with regard to facility needs in the
052princeton school district the other good news is that bond referendum that you currently have is going to be retiring in the next year or so so therefore there is an opportunity to upgrade facilities without impacting taxpayers and let me just put up a slide with regard to the middle school i don't know how many of our residents have actually well you haven't had a chance to visit the middle school because of of the pandemic but when you do some of the good work the board has authorized and i just wanted to show one photo of many this is a new instructional uh space at the middle school it's beautiful and the students are going to enjoy it for years to come there's also a new nursing suite there and i could uh go on and
053on with all the good work that uh you have approved as a community and the board has authorized uh but i think the princeton schools are moving forward in the sense of providing the best possible educational spaces for an amazing student body your achievement levels are are significant and i think the enhancement of facilities over the next few years which are absolutely necessary in some cases and then uh philosophically when you agree on where uh what decision you're going to make will only enhance the learning opportunities for all of your youngsters and be able to fulfill the anticipated needs so i'm going to stop here because i just wanted to give a brief overview i know the public has been waiting uh since the board engaged the consultant and i think after hours of work
054uh the board uh is now able to uh provide uh and have the data necessary to have meaningful conversations with uh with the community at large so i will stop there beth i don't know if you uh we just continue with the next agenda item i think so does anyone want to say anything in between i think i think you can keep going barry thank you for that um high level summary that road map for the public on the planning and obviously there's a lot of work to come and it will come to the public and we'll be uh transparent about it but we wanted to just give a very high level uh roadmap roadmap at this at this time and and we are grateful to you for taking leadership in that product process with
055on behalf of the administration and and really kind of bringing it to us in a way that's coherent and gives us data to now do the work going forward with with the with our next superintendent and the administration and our our staff so thank you okay uh whom's renaming of last month uh principal burr uh made a wonderful presentation to the board of education um highlighting uh the process the educational process and i want to commend the principal bearer i also want to recommend members of the the teaching faculty who have been engaged in this activity for the last 10 10 months i also want to engage the plumes renaming committee who have also participated in this process for the last 10 10 months and also our board liaisons who were debbie bronfeld and betsy
056baglio so tonight uh last month the board asked us to go back and uh provide some data uh to the board matt if you would put up the the slides that would be uh that would be appreciative of that there we go so so basically the board had asked the uh principal if he would go back and provide uh some data points as he reported last month the public polling and the student voting indicated a non-specific generic name of as a recommendation but the board asked the principal to go back and do some specific uh polling of staff and students and the next two uh slides or detail the results of those voting and beth i'll then turn it over to the board for conversation thank you barry and i just want to mention that
057for the public that these slides are attached to our meeting agenda so everyone can look at them as well and spend more time can i make one more point the board was very specific when they asked me to put together a renaming committee and then i test principal burr with the activities and the committee again affirmed that no matter what occurred 10 months ago we were not going to predetermine we were going to let the process evolve and whatever evolved and resulted would be brought to the board of education for recommendation so i wanted to be clear that that was the direction and that was what we followed and that was the uh the process that we used we let it evolve from the students and the community rather than predetermine anything thank you dr
058glasso um and i'll just summarize from the board perspective we had a discussion we had we received a recommendation last at our last meeting last month from um from principal burr and in that recommendation obviously there was the generic name there was also a number of other elements to it which we have reflected in the resolution tonight we have a resolution that has a blank name for now because we're going to talk about it briefly here and then it also has in there that we also are resolving that the as requested that the people whose names were in consideration are honored by using them in public spaces in the school including hallways and public spaces so there may be some naming that will happen in the future there and that there will be an exhibition
059of history in the learning commons to show the history of the schools in princeton including including desegregation and some of the history of the witherspoon street school for colored children because there was some wonderful work done in this past year to try to inform the students and the community about that history we want that to continue to be a part of the learning in the school there was also asked that there be a marker on school grounds highlighting the previous names of the the john witherspoon name and the name change process also asks for funds for remediating the wall in front of the school to create a more welcoming environment with the new name and also that we would update the website to show the steps taken in the renaming so i think right now
060before the board is really the question of the five neutral names and we had asked last month that principal burr go back and use ranked choice voting to ask the students and the staff their preference among these names and i think now we have seen the results so does anyone want to have some we have some discussion at the board level on that could we put the results on the screen please back on the screen thank you so does anyone want to summarize that for for what we're seeing or want to speak to it remember do we need to make a motion first or no um i think we're gonna we can talk about it generally then we should do a motion and a vote on the on the okay the motion for the board
061on the agenda which does then approve the name i think is the board if the board is comfortable we can discuss generally the name idea and then move forward to a resolution when we're ready so i would offer to share my comments um one is overall the printed community school under the ranked voting choice came out number one although it was very close to princeton middle school and at the high school level i would be tempted to give the students more weight than the staff but at the middle school or even in elementary school but it's a middle school here i would certainly give more waiting to the staff than than the students so from my perspective i favor princeton community middle school for those reasons okay um may i make a motion uh to
062discuss the matter sure um can i have a second to that i'm sorry i'm having trouble seeing because my screen has been captured um i thought we just said we didn't have to motion well we think we do we can be formal we can agree to discuss debbie you want to make a motion to discuss sure sure i didn't know you okay and then all in favor of discussing we could show hands okay thank you i'm having trouble seeing because i don't have a full screen so i'm trying to scroll around um does anyone else want to speak about the the results of the data that's come to us um i will uh if i may uh if you could scroll down to the um student results because we're on the staff results right now
063i appreciated being part of the process here you know i wasn't a member of the board when the process began but i was certainly an interested member of the community i actually do think um student input is the most critical uh piece um that's why i'm here for our students and they clearly voted overwhelmingly for princeton middle school and uh therefore i support the student's choice thank you gene would anyone else like to speak uh betsy um i also i agree it is it is um you know overwhelmingly numerically the students certainly chose princeton middle school and for the staff and and you know it was within 20 points so it was very close there i would i support princeton middle school i also feel this is a time of synergy and connection for princeton
064middle school in princeton high school their contiguous schools we've talked a lot about sort of having some connections six to twelve and i think having this as our name that that leads right into princeton high school would be a great thing i'll also note there are some questions on the chat it might be important to just just to go back if someone can just give a quick history that the first time that these polls were um done that it was that the name that won was the idea of a non-specific name so that is why there are no named um people on this list it was a non-specific name that had been the top vote getter anyone want to add to that or is that okay i think that's accurate anyone else want to speak
065on this i mean i said i like um princeton middle school i think um you know that's the most common sense name my concern was always how the kids felt about it and the kids um you know overwhelmingly overwhelmingly chose it um and then it's interesting that their second place uh their second choice was walnut lane middle school so i just i think given the history princeton middle school is probably you know the right choice and i'm i'm very proud of all the kids at the middle school for their engagement and work on this throughout you know most of the school year and um they really took it you know very seriously and and so we all owe them uh some gratitude so thank you all right are there any other board comments on this
066i'm sorry i'm having trouble seeing people if anyone was raising their hand otherwise um then would anyone like to make a motion for us to vote uh i i i know that i i support also the princeton middle school i i again i i was grateful for the process that occurred this past year where we went from educating and from the students kind of doing the research in class in the high school in the middle school coming up with these suggestions it ended up going out to the community we took polls in the community among the students it all came back to say that in the end everyone the favored thing was to do was to keep the name neutral and then to reflect the honored people in the inside the building i thought was
067a wonderful compromise to show that we we do value and we have we have people that embody the values of our of our uh schools so i really am pleased by the process and as dr glosso said it really evolved and none of us really knew exactly where it was going to go but it you know the work that was done was really wonderful and i'm confident that this process and the way that it's been recommended to us we'll continue and so students in the future we're not simply putting a name on the building and then moving on we're we're kind of thinking about why did we do this and what does it mean for us going forward and future generations of students can learn from that and also hopefully continue to think about what
068they if they want to do these hallways and they have this history in the building they continue to be engaged with it so i i'm really excited about that for them um daphna hi um yeah i sent you a message but i'm not sure that you can see it do we want to add a public comment here just so we have some community uh if anyone from the community wants to weigh in before we make a final determination um we can we've had two two meetings worth of or several meetings worth of public comment on this already i think it's up to the board um are you making a motion to actually i'll make a yes i'll make a motion betsy okay all of us in favor of adding a public comment session right now
069five six i think that motion is carried so matt could we do a uh extra public comment right now on this issue before we vote absolutely dawn counts and again can i just say before we start public comment we keep our comments to three minutes we ask you state your name and address we ask that if someone says something similar we have a lot on our agenda tonight so we try to respect everyone's time and if someone said the same thing you want to say if you can just share that view that would be helpful um and we try to respect the time thank you i i'm sorry because i'm the time keeper i know it's a three minute limit per comment what's our total uh time for comment let's just let people talk and
070see where it goes we generally try to keep it to 15. but we'll let's just let's just go okay thank you hi uh good evening my name is dawn collins uh i'm in los angeles california i'm the daughter of shirley satterfield i'm a graduate of the middle school class of 1983. i just had a question for the board as to what happened to the results of the vote that was put to the residence of princeton when shirley satterfield won the vote for the middle school to be named after a person oh whatever came of that result our public comment really isn't a q a we're not supposed to go back and forth i think that dr glosso might want to comment at the end when everyone has spoken there maybe things he might want to
071clarify okay well then i'll just make a comment thank you sorry for that uh i guess my comment is that um you know the board should understand uh that the decision not to um accept the vote from this from the residents i'm not sure how it got to being just a neutral name um you know you should understand how that feels to the black citizens of princeton whose input and whose civic engagement and whose will seems to be so easily dismissed and set aside by a board that seems to lack diversity and inflicts the same exact harm and trauma that the renaming sought to cure um so it's disappointing again i'm in los angeles not princeton but um to set aside a vote of the residence is um sort of to undermine the process and
072uh is somewhat offensive uh and uh you know the dismissal of the vote is sort of a local manifestation of what we're seeing on on sort of a national scale right setting aside the results of a free and fair vote of the citizens of princeton and sort of usurping that and instituting a neutral name instead so my comment is that it's unfortunate and disappointing dr glossa did you want to speak to that just to correct that before we move on um myself here um i don't have the polling the poll it was not a vote by the community it was a poll by the community that that principal bear conducted and to my knowledge the uh the leading vote getter for the poll from the community was a non-specific name and i believe if i
073remember the statistics correctly was 30 some percent uh that was the the number and if mr burr is online i would ask him to confirm uh that result if he if he is online with us tonight no he's not okay thank you dr glasso justin is there from the middle school but i don't want to put him on the spot well i'd rather have mr bird comment if he were here no i i don't see mr burr okay thank you thank you uh miss collins andreas hi can you hear me yes we can hi uh yeah i just wanted to comment on this naming um i'm uh on mount lucas road i went to former jw i went to cp and phs as did my older brothers and sister so we've been in uh princeton
074like four decades um so the fact that you announced this naming with these five names you know the the voting didn't give the other options i mean i don't i don't know why the other pulling and everything wasn't discussed until somebody asked you but i mean we should be able to see that because as far as i i know like shirley sadfield had a campaign going on in princeton so i have no doubt that she got the most votes and you know considering that the that it was jw named after a slave owner for so many years i mean you should feel the importance and the need to rename it for somebody so significant in this community who's black and i just i mean a picture in the hall is not the same at all
075um so i wish you would listen to the community you know these are the people that live here that send their kids to these schools who pay the taxes who pay all these things i mean you should just absolutely be taking this into consideration if not like i just i'm very confused to why um you know you came at this slideshow about these different generic names i mean that's not it's we're you know this town is better than that so i just i was hoping that you guys would have made that right choice um so yeah i just want to encourage members of the public to go back to our meeting last month we had a very detailed presentation by principal burr from the middle school who reviewed the process that has gone on for
076the past year and all of the different people that have been involved and the different data that has been collected and the opinions that were considered we we truly tried to make this as transparent as possible because we wanted to make sure that we ended up in the right place for the community so please go back and look at our meeting last month you can watch the presentation about this data and the recommendation to the board we chose at that time not to make a decision we wanted additional data from the students and the and the staff and so that's what was talked about this evening but this is the end of a year of work that has involved all sorts of people so i just want to make sure that that is understood that
077people can go and watch that and and see and learn more there if i can just add and maybe betsy can confirm the votes were from the child the students and the town and they were combined it wasn't one of the other and then from that i was pretty sure it popped up to be an a non-person and then from there i the board last month asked mr bur to go back and take the non-people names and have a re-vote that's that's correct correct it was actually i don't even think they were combined it was two separate polls that showed a non-specific name was the top percentage for the community and for the school but again if people can go back and watch last month's meeting it's it's on record it's it's it's available to
078the public and i think there's a very informative presentation that they can watch and i think that would explain a bit more how we got to where we are today so let's take let's keep going with the public comment because we do have a lot of things to get through tonight so thank you everyone and i would just like to say if it's along the same lines i am going to cut you off and we're going to move on so well let's just hear what people have to say gene and and then we'll keep going thank you and when are okay can you hear me uh please don't cut me off if this is a democratic process i would like to express my opinion as a member of this community for over 40 years and
079i've had many children go to the school's district and i i'm also on the diversity council as a member of prince and family institute i would like to say that i do not feel as a member of the public that we were informed clearly as to why in the meeting that jessica deutsch uh submitted the hearing uh notes about last year that there was an option to nominate a just human there was an option and then why would the students who were beautifully involved in making these videos why was their process then not accepted because what are we teaching our children about the democratic process they worked so hard on those videos i watched all of them and um and then and by the way i cannot find the bylaws i have been i have
080been in leadership positions in two non-profits and bylaws should be visible on the website front and center and they can be changed we know there are procedures for that so um i don't know why we didn't go with a just human and why the option and i know you have all kinds of procedures why the option for that was sort of not um in your la and last month's meeting also quite frankly i'm sorry to say this and you may not like by saying this it does feel a little bit like princeton is whitewashing history like the rest of our country does and i'm really very very disappointed especially since all the progress under dr galasso and under steve cochrane over the last several years and all that that's gone on in our country i'm
081profoundly and grievously disappointed thank you for your comment i just want to say that our bylaws are available they're part of our um our policies which if you go under the board section of the website um there are there's a whole policy section and you can see all of them right there i believe it's the 2000 series is the bylaws matt am i correct uh nine thousand of them nine thousand cities yeah so there's there's a number there is everything's there you can you can see them is there more another comment thank you ms winona lukata hello can you hear me yes we can good evening and i and i apologize for my tardiness i had another meeting in which i was just able to get off one zone call in order to jump on
082this one uh and so i do not know all that has been said previously uh to to to my comments but i'll be very brief i've only been in prince and i came to princeton in 2010 i am the pastor of the witherspoon street presbyterian church and i live on walnut lane um the the the street where the middle school is and i along with students um walked up and down my street um all up and down uh walnut lane and went door to door and talked with people and asked them if they knew about the change asked them what they thought about uh the options talk with them about how shirley satterfield and um there were there were some uh who were unaware of her but i would say in terms of my uh
083just memory uh polling probably about 60 percent of the people that we talked with actually knew shirley satterfield which was surprising to me as much as i knew about her and how highly she has spoken of uh it was surprising me that they knew about her and that they supported the idea of of having uh the middle school named after her uh i'll also say this um and i certainly could say a lot but i think i've heard that there's been a lot of previous discussion about uh the numbers and the statistics and um and and questions and disputes about what what the final results may it may or not have been i won't go there in terms of dealing with this uh quantitatively um i i would say that uh there are there are
084some wise and moral decisions that could have been made prior to doing any sort of process of of voting in consideration of what we as a community were trying to do in removing the name of john witherspoon based on what it reflects uh that it seems quite logical and and quite um morally consistent to say that what we would want to do is to replace that name with a name that actually points us and leads us in a different direction instead of division that it brings us into unity instead of exploitation of one community by another someone who represents bringing together all of our histories and certainly i would say shirley satterfield is that and so i would call upon uh the board uh and and the administration to to consider that uh what it
085will do to all of those individuals who may have voted or who may have thought that shirley satterfield should have this named after her and that what precedent do we want to begin to establish in in in our in our town um again i can speak as someone who is a part of this community who is a part of a faith-based community that is i'm sorry reverend that's time i'm so sorry but we get the gist of what you're saying thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you hi miss cohan hi jennifer cohan 46 henry avenue i spoke at the last meeting and um informed everyone that it was a sham last meeting the presentation that was provided to taxpayers to families to students i had reached out to jason and the board
086and the superintendent informing them informing you all of the origin story which is a conversation between a white jewish mother and a black mother which was how this the spark happened to create this movement and there was um no response from you until i followed up you know days later i had a great meeting with jason on june 7th i'm sorry yes june 7th and it's so weird that he's not here tonight because tonight's like a big deal and i just want to say as a communications person a pr strategist if this were related to my people jewish people i'm just so aware of how jewish people have been treated with so much reverence and sort of accommodation in this district and how ignored black residents are historically and to the present and you only
087have to go back rewind to the two comments that happened at the beginning of public commentary and i'm just so disappointed so i really hope that my conversation with jason to create a boilerplate that stamps the spark of this movement and provides historical accuracy which is incumbent upon all of us for our children's education and honors the movement which really was led by jeffrey allen in a multi-racial coalition will be included in all teaching materials but again i just have to say i just as a communications professional i i don't know what you're doing this is a white majority board you are giving it a generic name you are not listening to black princeton residents it's really really bad and i just encourage you all to like look at what you're doing and that includes
088offering to cut people off i mean gene you were the president of the pcdo you're saying you're ready to cut people off this is just not what excellence is whatever excellence means so that's it and i just want to thank you for your time and i'll be following up thank you thank you okay that's it for now beth thank you um we do have a big agenda tonight and we haven't even gotten to our a special education report which is really uh we've been waiting to hear for a long time so i know i appreciate that um these are all really important issues as i mentioned before we have been talking about the renaming now for a year um and we did give it an extensive discussion again last last at our last meeting so
089is there is there anyone on the board who wants to make another comment or continue our discussion or are we ready to move for emotion barry did you want to say something no it's fine i know principal barr is joining us so if there was any additional uh comment uh he was uh he has joined us online uh so but if there's no other comment then no principal burr thank you for coming back coming on to our call tonight i think uh you must have come in at the at the request of someone and we appreciate your time because you certainly gave us a great presentation last month um which was really informative um and we appreciate that you then went back and did the poll that we asked you to do to give us
090more data because we weren't ready to choose between the five numbers the names you had given us last month we felt we wanted to hear from the students and the staff one more time so thank you for doing that it's helped very helpful to us does anyone else have any more questions or want to say anything about this i just want to comment that you know the focus of this was the students and betsy and i were so adamant about that we wanted student voice student voice it was their school i mean and mr burn his team even went to the fifth graders who were coming in and so there seems to be a you know confusion and maybe mr burr you can talk a little more about the voting the voting and how we
091got to where we are because that was our big thing it was it was a student run group betsy and i really were there to listen and be really big cheerleaders i mean because we were excited for our students i don't mean to put you on the spot at all no it's quite all right uh no thank you for inviting me in this evening uh i i certainly want to acknowledge that you know along the way um you know at the beginning of the process even going back to november you know and even in the winter my students voted on names of specific individuals who were meaningful uh to the community and some who actually were ties uh you know people who had ties to other places uh as well not necessarily to the to
092the princeton community directly certainly uh we then in april we put it out to a community vote um you know and and there were almost 2500 people who voted within our community our our exact community um the results of all three polls as i had was that the non-person specific choice was the leading vote getter among the students our students were visited this year for example by author andrew aiden who wrote the book march which was a celebration a graphic novel of representative john lewis and they were really inspired by it and our kids actually voted very high for john lewis uh in the building um because mr aidan brought just great meaning to representative lewis's life um through the book and then through an author visit that we had but among a community and
093i did catch the tail end uh in the community vote of almost 2 500 people um shirley satterfield was the leading person specific um vote getter at about 19.3 percent of the vote but the but the non-person specific name was still the highest choice among community voters um and you know taking that into account um you know i the thing that i had kind of resonated on after and let's go all the way back to november to the high school projects and that conversation with the community there were people who spoke strongly for different individuals throughout and then there was this voice that was kind of asking for maybe we don't pick a specific person um i have my own you know feelings on the subject but to end in the may presentation with you've
094had three polls all come out with the non-person specific person as the leader says something and it doesn't mean that um these other considerations of people aren't important um and i think one of the things that i felt really strongly about is that there should be a way and this is maybe where the discussion about hallways or other possibilities of how we could recognize people in our schools really started to be even more meaningful that if we weren't going to choose a person-specific name that it would bring great meaning to those individuals who were honored by being you know thought of and you know when i hear the reverend speak and i'm listening to him speak and i understand why he's speaking with the admiration and respect for ms satterfield because any of us who
095have met or understand um so it's true that in the community poll of the of the persons that were um the specific people who were considered ms satterfield in the community poll earned the highest number um but in each of those three polls it was it was the non-person specific choice and that's why the recommendation to the board on may 25th said how can we take some of ms satterfield's living history and bring it to life in schools how can we redesign the front of the building to really make it a place that we're proud of you know there's been different different ideas brought out about how we can honor the fact that the school was previously known as john witherspoon and and that should be recognized and marked somehow uh as well so i'm
096happy to continue but i i really feel that the results of those polls spoke strongly uh at the end of the day thank you jason for coming on thank you jason it really helps helps um so we have a motion before the board it's in the uh it's in the agenda it is as i paraphrased earlier uh the resolution to re do the renaming of pums and then it has the four other requests that are in there including the inner spaces and the marking of the outside and and the history and the um the welcoming sign so can i have i think it would be appropriate at this point if if no one else has any comments specifically on this discussion maybe we can have a motion um from a board member to um put
097a specific name into that resolution then we can vote on it uh debbie i um make a motion to put princeton middle school as the new name thank you could i have a second to that anyone want a second that uh betsy um is there any discussion at this point before we vote any further um if not then matt could you call a role and this would be for a resolution to rename the princeton unified middle school to princeton middle school and in addition to resolve that the person whose names were in consideration for the renaming be honored by using their names in other spaces in the middle school building possibly including hallways and public spaces it further resolved an exhibition in the middle school learning commons be created showing the history and timeline of
098education in princeton including the witherspoon street school for colored children this could include photographs and also potentially honor mrs shirley setterfield and miss betsy stockton among others it's further resolved that the marker be created on the school grounds highlighting the previous name of john witherspoon in the name change and further resolve the district authorized funds for remediation to the wall in front of the middle school and hardscaping and other landscaping necessary to display the new name and further resolve that the district update the website and show the steps taken in the renaming and provide updated photos including a photo of the new name in september 2021. thank you uh beth behrend yes debbie bronfeld yes dan dart no betsy baglio yes ryan mcdonald yes uh peter katz would abstain on this correct afternoon candle yes
099susan cantor yes gene durbin yes our emotion passes thank you dr galasso sure uh as most of the public is aware of the board authorized a special education review by pcg consulting company uh about 15 or 16 months ago the results of that study are now complete and tonight we're i'm pleased to introduce matt um excuse me karopkin uh from pcg to make a presentation uh matt has been kind enough to present to the central administration uh he's also presented to the sac committee but tonight is his opportunity to present to the full board and then also we will announce after this next steps uh for community engagement activities so matt without any further review and i want to thank you for uh attending the meeting tonight and presenting matt thank you very much dr
100glasso members of the board thank you very much for having me this evening and giving me the opportunity to present on the special education program review a long time coming some items on our agenda and i'll try to give you the most expedited version knowing how thick your agenda is this evening i'd like to go through introduce pcg who we are talk about the process by which we went about in doing our review the guiding questions and then really get into the strengths opportunities and recommendations within the report so my name is matthew korobkin i have worked for pcg now for over four years uh in the princeton office or on alexander uh my background is as an educator i started in special education work for two state education agencies i'm now pcg also on
101this project was dr jennifer meller who has experience in both special education operations as well as a consultant dr jerry petrov who played a critical role in the classroom visits and really making sure that our classroom visits were as productive as possible given the remote nature of our work and matthew scott who served as a support to the work a little bit about us about pcg we were founded in 1986 and our mission is to provide solutions that matter to the public sector we have now close to 3 000 staff all over the united states in nine offices in canada in the uk as well as poland and our work is really dedicated to health human services and education and i'm in the education practice area the work we do as it relates to program
102reviews is both near and far both locally in new jersey as well as nationally in some of the largest school districts in the united states as well as small districts like yours it was a real pleasure to do a review in my own backyard the process itself our work is collaborative by design we intentionally engaged as many stakeholders as possible to accomplish this work to ultimately meet the needs of the district that were outlined in the rfp it's a competitive bidding process and pcg was awarded this work we answer essential questions and we created essential questions based upon the specs put forth by the district within its rfp we'll talk about that and the approach is multi-dimensional it emphasizes the participation of the stakeholders as well as qualitative and quantitative data the district provided us
103a ton of it based on a request from us and it's grounded in best practice research the work itself was five phases in total guiding questions throughout and what i'd like to do now is is to go into them i'm not going to go into the sub questions but i just want to share the buckets and how they correspond with the rfp specifications the first question how does the district's continuum of special education services and general education experiences support a free and appropriate education next how are funds budgeted and what are the major cost drivers next how does pps measure effectiveness using qualitative and quantitative data about students from families and from educators to make long-term systematic improvements and the next to what extent is pps effective and implementation of co-teaching models and efforts to
104meet the needs of students in the least restrictive environment and again these all correspond with the rfp specifications when i say triangulation what that boils down to is data quality we want to make sure that the findings and recommendations are vetted highly vetted based on data that came from multiple sources so we looked at outcomes student outcomes specifically students with disabilities ieps organizational and program analysis we looked at the structure of the organization you'll notice a lot of the recommendations are actually structural in nature and actually go beyond special education nevertheless have a very important role in supporting special education and research and practice literature our data collection methods were primarily in three areas we conducted interviews focus groups and classroom walkthroughs that's in the first column after the data collection categories the next we
105did a student file review case study where we gathered members of child study teams and staff who went through ieps not for the sake of compliance but to talk about the processes by which decisions are made in princeton that ultimately lead to a child with an iep their goals their educational setting and the services they receive and we also engaged in a data policy and practice review based on the documents provided by princeton public schools so now what i'd like to do is really get into the meat of of this it's very hard to give a presentation on a document that is as thick as the document that we submitted to the district for the folks who have not yet read it on the board i would encourage you to read it because this is
106really a thumbnail sketch of of things that are much deeper in nature i'll talk about pre-referral referral eligibility and child find i'll start with strengths the district has attempted to further study the root causes for its prior disproportionality finding the district was found disproportionate by the new jersey department of education as a compliance matter and the district subsequently had to embark upon further work in setting aside resources to do that work and the district did it district created inrs intervention and referral services for the high school where previously it was not as robust and lacking uh and icr in-class resources that's a term of art as it relates to special education icr courses and those are typically co-taught courses offered in all grades at the middle school now opportunities need for a consistent district-wide multi-tiered
107system of support and in the document you'll see it's a triangle of sorts in terms of how it's defined it's a three-tiered intervention structure based upon solid learning at the bottom but interventions that are ratcheted up based upon student need the district has the the start of an mtss which is which is noteworthy but it really needs to be consistent and and it needs to be sticky it needs to last in order to be useful and i will say this mtss multi-tiered systems of support that is not special education that is a general education initiative that has a significant impact on on special ed it's a gen initiative a significant impact on special ed as it relates to supporting data informed special ed referrals the need for a consistently aligned multi-tiered system of support an
108intervention referral system and accelerated intervention sys ais accelerated intervention services to support struggling learners princeton has these these silos of sorts as it relates to supporting struggling learners which again is great but they're not necessarily in sync and again they're not special education initiatives but they have a significant impact as it relates to referrals and what we want to do in special education is we always want to make sure that the students who are in and receiving special education services actually need them and do indeed have a disability you do not want students to be over identified students can receive ais and have individualized student acceleration plan which is confusing if you have an iep or don't have an iep there's no district-wide positive behavior support icr is offered in courses required to graduate the
109high school present levels of academic and functional performance those statements within the iep there were times when they needed more work clearly your staff are very knowledgeable and have a great deal of expertise nevertheless we did find areas that could use additional work and then of course disproportionality the recommendations themselves and these shouldn't be a surprise develop a district-wide standard operating procedure around inrs define from central office downward and this is something you'll be hearing again and again defined from central office on downward who has direct oversight and is accountable for inrs acknowledging this is not a special ed initiative that's got significant ramifications and continue inrs referral data collection for internal review so you're studying trends as it relates to supporting struggling learners before they've been identified the multi-tiered system of support again with
110standard operating procedures without standard operating procedures it'll be very difficult for the district to adhere with a consistent manner in doing this to support struggling learners and again clearly identify from central office downward who owns it who has control over mtss and really from an accountability standpoint making sure that it's being done and done with fidelity disproportionality and i put a graphic that is also in the report to discuss this one it's an important one conduct quarterly internal assessment of districts risk ratio and there there's a definition of what that is in the report it is a very complicated formula used to identify students at risk of being over identified for special education services based upon our analysis the district still has risk areas the district was cited by the new jersey department of education
111for hispanic students it is imperative that the districts study this beyond hispanic students there are other students at risk you know hispanic students classified as sld but black african american students are classified as ohi that's other health impairment that's one of the classification categories defined through through the state and and subsequently in line with the feds sld and and and speech so these are areas that the district should further study as it relates to disproportionality um matt what is a sld and um we're just getting some comments please to um just uh define the acronym yeah sld is a specific learning disability thank you next positive behavior supports we recommend the district infuse this as part of its multi-tiered system of support english learners with a suspected disability knowing full well that princeton's el population
112continues to increase engage child study teams of professional development to increase understanding of the impact of second language acquisition on achievement and methods to understand the impact when determining the presence of a disability the last thing we want to be doing or schools want to be doing is classifying students as having a disability when in fact they don't have one it's a language issue and so this is something that we we recommend the district further unpack placement and continuum of services continue expansion of in-class resource support district-wide so this is specifically co-taught instruction a general ed teacher and a special education teacher working together to support students in a educational environment and and we recommend the district expand icr when appropriate when it's determined appropriate by iep teams into non-required courses at the high school
113to expand supports for students with ieps and again that is that is something that's deemed when appropriate by the iep team itself accelerated intervention services ais again a something that is outside the realm of special education but has an impact on it i would argue that this needs to be enveloped into the district's multi-tiered system of support there needs to be clear delineation in terms of what it means as it reliable relates to mtss tier two tier three and again clearly defined from central office on down who has direct oversight over it and is accountable for it because it is not a special ed initiative but it has significant ramifications as it relates to supporting struggling learners may later be classified and last but not least in this section high quality ieps and i'll start
114by saying we observed and and met with staff in in a number of instances where we saw extraordinarily well-written ieps uh nevertheless there were opportunities and instances where we saw areas for improvement uh we believe the district should engage in case managers in intensive ongoing training on iep writing with specific focus on goal writing smart goals that means specific measurable attainable uh relatable and time-bound goals that that also include quantitative progress reporting which we saw evidence of but we think there's room for more engage in monitoring student accommodations at the elementary schools and middle schools similarly to how it's being done at the high school which we saw as a promising practice and engaged case managers in accommodation monitoring uh at the high school right now it's a supervisor role um we would say that
115the uh case manager should also be party to it teaching learning and special education support the district again has expanded its icr programming um opportunities middle and high school leadership in terms of supporting a culture and climate of shared responsibility on co-teaching this is an area that could be improved a middle and high school need job embedded professional development on co-teaching to really support robust co-teaching so that if you're an observer walking into the classroom you can't tell the difference between the gen ed teacher and the special ed team they are working together as a pair special education and general education teachers need to be held accountable when they do not support ieps in a timely manner there's so much happening as it relates to the creation of ieps and gen ed teachers and special
116ed teachers are contributing to the goal writing and contributing to the present levels when they don't do it in a timely manner they need to be held accountable for it and the district needs to create a clear delineation and i would argue this is where the last item i mentioned this is where where there needs to be more and you're going to hear this in the recommendations a clear delineation of the hierarchy of responsibilities such that when a teacher does not comply with an iep request in a timely manner they're held accountable by the building administrator as well as the special education director so the achievement of students with disabilities further study nj sla drop and grade three mathematics what we did was we looked at compliance data that was lag data the district has
117acknowledged that it's really it's made progress since then so i do want to preface that particular goal that we were looking at lag data that the state uses for compliance co-teaching we believe the middle and high school levels there needs to be ongoing job-embedded professional development to support robust co-teaching for both teachers our instructional partners provide professional development to principals and assistant principals of middle and high school on how they as instructional leaders can enhance the culture and climate of shared responsibility and support effective co-teaching to know it to appreciate it and to be able to subsequently impart it upon the teaching staff throughout and at co-planning time i know it's a very difficult one but co-planning time in the day for gen ed teachers and special ed teachers to actually plan so they can
118effectively co-teach if they are indeed co-teaching the use of para educators also known as paraprofessionals or teacher aides the district is is has really done a great job at uh determining best practices around data collection when it it becomes uh determined by the the team that it may be needed but there's an area of need in terms of collecting data when it comes to fading because at the end of the day we want students to be as self-sufficient as possible and a fade may mean for one child a reduction in time for other child it may mean the whole time nevertheless there needs to be more data collected on that front access to advanced placement and extracurricular activities ensure that if a qualified student with a disability requires related aids and services to participate in
119a regular ed class or program as determined by iep teams and school supports related aids and services in an accelerated class or program i'll stress that again it's a determination by the iep team but should they determine and the subsequent delivery thereafter is important and professional development expand job embedded ongoing coaching and pd for all teachers and administrators on special ed matters that include but are not limited to the culture and climate of shared responsibility co-teaching and iep writing and expand the job-embedded ongoing coaching and professional development on intervention and referral services and mtss providing specific focus on administration from central ed a central office on downward social emotional support for students with disabilities so the district's behaviors plays an active role in the functional behavior assessments uh for for students with disabilities uh the
120district does not have a formalized tiered behavior support structure for students with disabilities the reality is the district doesn't have a a consistent multi-tiered system of support by not having that it's very hard to then have a tiered system of support for behavioral needs for all students including students with disabilities so when you have such a structure in place it benefits all students next organization leadership uh the strengths incoming leadership so you've got a superintendent and a permanent assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction they've got an important responsibility ahead to direct and recalibrate general education initiatives that have a significant impact on special education referrals uh the opportunities here there is a lack of clarity on the ownership of mtss inrs and pbis at central office there's no formal special education standard operating practice manual the
121district adheres through interviews and focus groups uh it shared that it adheres to uh the new jersey regulations nevertheless it's important to have things memorialized when staff changes when things happen so that folks have a resource to go to and a lack of clear delineation of hierarchy of responsibilities causing oversight challenges and ensuring that gen ed and specialized teachers engage in this iep process in a timely manner so the recommendations addressing the key challenges that impact special ed but are outside of the purview of special ed urgently addressed at the superintendent assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and principal levels the culture uh and structural barriers to owning overseeing and being held accountable for programs that have a direct impact on special ed such as mtss inrs ais professional development around all those things co-teaching differentiating
122instruction and thus having a clear delineation of the hierarchy of the responsibilities of these roles so it's clear who owns them so that when when the jobs being done well there can be praise and when there needs to be improvement there's someone to say that there needs to be improvement and can address it accordingly accountability for teachers who are not compliant with requests from iep teams address teacher non-compliance in a timely manner and and that is at the building leadership level or direct supervisor level they need to be held accountable and this was something we gathered through interviews focus groups in particular and special ed operating procedures develop written standard operating procedures for the special education department parent engagement the district has an engaged parent community we heard from the parents through focus groups as
123well as surveys we also heard from staff through surveys all of which is included in the report with examples sprinkled throughout and the whole thing in the appendix parents share similar views around culture expectations instruction um with regards to the culture and climate piece of of of shared responsibility um pps parents views around building culture expectations instruction were validated by our observations and this is a real opportunity uh to to leverage parents who are very eager and very um they were very very cooperative i have to say in terms of of your parent community mobilizing during covit and making sure the feedback sessions occurred the district supported it but the parent community through the pta supported it you as a community are very lucky to have that take full advantage of it budget and finance
124uh according to district provided data pps has kept special education costs stable uh the opportunity thoroughly reviewed the special ed budget to assure that the public is seeing accurate data on the new jersey user-friendly budgets specifically related to special education expenditures so in terms of the report you'll see there is a cost comparison between special education items listed in the new jersey user-friendly budget there are peer districts that were selected based upon factors such as ses district size uh and other related elements ensure that all special ed line items are accurately reported in that user-friendly budget so that clear comparisons can be made state and federal regulations and the compliance with them so the district in terms of of its compliance is you know again this is lag data um and it's unfortunate but that's
125how how this works when it comes to uh when it comes to compliance federal compliance and reporting the district is not meeting indicator 3 but it's by a very small amount and the proficiency rate in high school math and that's lag data should be looked at but at the same time the district has informed me that the district's made progress since so we don't have any additional recommendations with regards to compliance um so now at this point in time dr galasso would you like a pcg to entertain questions from the board or would uh would uh the district like to share what it's doing since well uh i think first we'd like to give the opportunity board members if they have any questions for you matt while you're here and then if mickey or bob
126uh ginsberg would like to make a comment uh then more than half more than welcome to do so so i think first beth if uh you wouldn't mind maybe any board member who would ask like to ask matt a clarifying question or question uh this would be the appropriate time okay board members you want to raise your hands uh daphna hi um so matt thank you very much for the presentation as very informative if not very technical um so can i just ask you uh just in layman's terms you know what are the key takeaways of this report i think the key takeaway um that there are certainly areas within the special education program that the district can work on but i think what makes and what made this report unique were the number of
127general education initiatives that play such a critical role as it relates to referral as well as the ongoing educational programming of students with disabilities from co-teaching to differentiation to culture and climate general education initiatives that because of the lack of clear delineation as to who owns it it isn't happening as well as it could and i think that shoring up those issues will put you in a an even better place as it relates to your special education programming especially you know given the fact that the district has had a disproportionality issue a lot of that boils down to pre-referral um so that would be that would be my first i think the biggest takeaway thank you debbie so matt thank you this is the second time i've seen it it's got a lot in it
128um there's a lot of issues with accountability based on this report and i'm not sure if you're the one to answer but i'm just really curious what you know the district is going to do to kind of figure out our accountability and move on and i don't know if that falls into matter it's just out there for it does not fall to me but what i can say and this is something that i i share with all of our clients that once we deliver a report like this to a district it's incumbent upon the district in particular the staff of the district to action plan i know the district has already started that i actually it was part of this contract that we we do we engaged in an action planning session um so addressing
129those matters is part of action planning okay and the other thing is um when we had read it we had all sent in a lot of questions and i don't remember barry if it was you or bob who said that we would get those answered and i'm not sure if that's sort of part of the action plan but i just wanted to follow up on that uh so to dad i think what you're going to hear from bob and mickey is part of the action plan we spent three hours with matt and then bob and nikki have spent uh probably another day day and a half putting together four action plans when you take a look at the special education report as comprehensive as the one matt provided to the district you're not going to
130be able to [Music] prioritize every single objective in that report so what matt and bob did with the other central administrative staff is to in their opinion take four major uh goals of uh improvement goals with deliverables and they have developed them so i'm gonna let them deal with the specifics of the plan but that i think that addresses your question it does it does and then again just for the bigger picture if finances are needed budget for some of these big things you know please i don't know if it's through sac or operations but i don't i want to make sure that we're not not doing them i hope they came out right because of money and so to make sure that you know we hear about what you need right well i think
131from a from a from a staffing standpoint and from a financial standpoint which is what position to put in and and to implement the recommendations that are necessary so i think i think one of the positive things about the princeton school district is that it can respond to the recommendations of a report because it does have the resources to support the initiatives good thank you gene i see you have your hand up thanks and thank you matt for the report i wondered if you could uh expand a little bit upon accelerated intervention services where you've seen it work well what is a strong recommendation is it something that should go across all grade levels personally i know we've found it helpful in in my own family but i wondered um you know uh if you
132could just talk a little bit more about that and what you saw in our district as well as in other districts where you've uh reported i think i think what what's important and and what i made reference to the report is that interventions that support struggling learners are are critical um but the idea is that they really ought to be conducted in a manner that that's structured to support students where they are so my my take is that your accelerated intervention services be enveloped into a multi-tiered system of support so tier one is is is high quality instruction for all students tier two is a certain level of intervention or interventions plural scientifically based interventions to really support children where they are and then tier three which is the smallest part of the triangle of
133above a very small number of your students may need additional interventions at the end of the day that may be what they need uh interventions to support their their improvement their progress but there may be other children who who need more than that and that then leads to potentially a special education referral and a data informed one that so i i'm not suggesting that ais uh be be thrown out if anything it should be part and parcel with your mtss and other districts have such and have done such um and and i i think the results show positively barry did you want to comment briefly i see in the chat there's some questions how are we going to be working with the public in this process moving forward is this going to be public this
134report yes um i put something in the chat but i'll let me reiterate the the report will be put on the website tomorrow so it'll be public and parents can access the report utilizing our website elizabeth will will post it tomorrow morning at some point next steps are going to be mickey and bob are putting together four major objectives as i referenced after that the uh we were going to put up a website where parents could ask questions about the specifics of the report and the administration would answer an faq when the new administration comes on board they will then determine how to engage parents in in in meetings if they determined to be necessary uh but we want parents to submit their questions we want administrators to answer and answer the questions in the
135next with an faq and then when the new administration takes um office uh giving them time to get settled they will be able to engage the public in conversation if they choose to do that thank you betsy thanks matt i actually just sort of have a comment that's maybe a little more general so for a long time in student achievement we've talked about how special education is a really important part of the work that we do in the student achievement committee so i would just say as we work on these four goals that i know mickey and bob have put together which is great that we develop some kind of um structure to report out on those goals perhaps in student achievement if not to the full board so i i just asked moving forward
136that that we'll hear about our our success implementation on a regular basis matt i just i want to thank you for this report as well and i have to say that i appreciate the way that it's been laid out i feel like we have a road map and we have a lot of data that's going to inform what we do with our new superintendent and how we set goals and how we prioritize and i do appreciate the way that you have emphasized that special education is not about kids over here it's about all of our kids and how we address their various and distinct needs and there's some very particular programs that really affect i mean it's it's about all of the kids it's not just about one one area and this is not a
137special niche issue this really relates to how we are serving all of the children in our schools and so i'm grateful for the road map and i'm grateful for the fact that you have all these acronyms in there and then you define them in the report and people are going to be able to read that and i think everyone is going to be more educated on the complexity and all of the things that we are doing to try to sell help our kids and some of it is not as successful as we hope it is and you've shown us ways that we can reorganize it and i appreciate that i'm wondering when you work with other districts um obviously next steps for us are action items and then we're going to work on some of
138these in our goals do you come back sometimes do you do like a follow-up in say two to three years or one to two years is there a time frame that might be we might be thinking about to say let's let's think about what we're going to try to do let's measure it and then when do we when do we hold ourselves accountable again externally how do you do that it depends um we do that it's not within the scope of the work that the district embarked upon in terms of the review but we can support the district in a variety of ways from the actual action planning to subsequent check-ins thereafter on the action plan to following up in terms of the report and looking at the items after an established set of time
139thereafter a lot of it depends on the district and i know that you have a new leader coming in and that likely too will play a role in terms of of your new leader's disposition on on the report the recommendations but to answer your question yes we do support districts after we've delivered and after we've done our initial action plan i appreciate that because we also are entering into a phase where we're going to be doing strategic planning as well right we're at the end of our five year and all of this is going to feed into that next steps and then i guess i'm always liking to think about so when do we come back and measure and how are we going to make a roadmap to get all this this kind of done
140you're in your backyard we're eager to help um anyone you want to speak with i haven't spoken daphne i see you've got a comment want to go i don't see any other hand so daphna go ahead oh dan wants to go ahead go ahead dan go ahead dan thank you i was just asked what is the right time frame for coming back and i'm very happy to hear that mickey and bob be working on you know these action plans is a year enough time uh to go by to come back and actually see measurable progress in some of these areas it depends a lot on the action plan and so when the district creates its action plan it's recommended that the action plan include the recommendation that it's embarking upon the goals it's going to
141take to get there the people responsible with regards to those goals and the timelines thereafter some of the timelines may be one year some of the timelines may be two or three years um districts that do call us in after uh you know the first second third or fourth quarter that have occurred after the review they're often it's like a checkup we're looking at where the district has made progress in the course of the year knowing that some recommendations may not yet be fully actualized if they haven't been how are they going and where are their challenges um there are other districts who who might wait longer and there's some that have ongoing coaching where they it's the engagement doesn't necessarily end um where it's it's continued thereafter and we are part of the action
142planning process so it really can vary in terms of what it looks like i hope that gave you some of a variety of of how it can look thank you you're welcome um that's it i had i still had a question okay definitely can i go yeah so just to your point you said you know we have all this information and now we can work from it i don't know that that this information is easily digestible by either um you know the our our staff our administrators our board the community and so i'm just wondering is there going to be an executive summary that explains exactly a road map but in you know and i mean don't no disrespect i've been involved i've lived the special edward for 10 years it was very hard for
143me to get through the report now that could be for other reasons but um you know i i i feel that this is this will be a barrier to changes because it is so hard um to comprehend so i'm just wondering if we're going to go ahead with um you know an executive summary or if there's going to be some other way to help people digest it in terms of the scope of the work um that the district embarked upon it was the strategic plan and the slide deck okay but we could pay extra if we just the board decides that we want an executive summary is that correct uh correct it would be outside of the spell before yes okay thank you i mean i think it's very important because i think if people
144don't understand you know what what our issues are and what what what needs to be done then i don't know how we get there if it's because the report is very technical so anyway that's just my concern before we end beth is bob or mickey do you want to make any comments yes do you want to start making i sure will um thank you for all your questions and i want to thank matt um it's been a year and a half it was supposed to be less than that so um he was very patient with us as we went through this year dealing with everything we had to deal with um about the pandemic so that interfered with our um you know just being able to get back to him right away but he was
145very patient he worked with our staff i think he was a great partner with all everyone he met with and i also i'm going to take an opportunity to thank barry because barry understands special education and he has been a partner this year um even to the point if i you know beginning of the year i don't even know if he remembers and we were talking about timelines to re-enter and he he was changing a timeline and i gasped and he switched gears just based on that oh my gosh we can't you know keep our kids out that long so i appreciate his sensitivity understanding the needs of our students and it was always a highlight for this entire year so i appreciate that because we really do need a strong partnership at the board
146i always thank the board for support and at the central office administrative level and of course down through the the buildings and all of our staff so there is a lot of information there are a lot of areas that we will be looking at but we are really focusing on the four main takeaways um because these are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference difference the quickest so i'm going to talk about two special ed goals and then bob ginsberg will talk about two goals related to general education so um one of the recommendations from the report was to look at our co-teaching model we have exemplars across the district teachers who work together and co-teaching pairs who are doing phenomenal work so what our goal is to do training for all
147of our co-teaching pairs but then create a training that will be continued every year we've done work with co-teachers but we've done you know more building based co-teacher pairs not across the entire district in the long time so the first goal is to pull teams together we will have teachers working with supervisors administrators um creating the training they will then train all of our co-teaching pairs and then the goal is also once co-teaching pairs are determined for the following school year they'll be trained in the spring prior to the summer because in my past experience when the co-teachers get together they're identified before they go away for the summer they tend to work together over the summer or they go into the summer having a clear sense of what their values are what their um
148maybe what roles they'll take and how they'll work together so that is the first goal the goal would be to have a hundred percent of our co-teaching pairs train excuse me train by the spring of 2022 so we're going into the 21-22 school year so in the fall the groups would get together they would create the training and all of the peers would be trained in the spring and then also the new pairs that spring before school gets out the next goal excuse me is um on training all of our staff everybody in the district on special education and iep responsibilities um this is another area that i have to appreciate barry's help this year in focusing everyone's on everyone on the responsibility for all of our special needs students on their ieps on their
149504 plans that there is responsibility across the board this report brings that to light we need to do some more intense training and we have to look at roles and responsibilities so here would be training that we will do with of course child study teams and that's work that i do all the time but also other groups our administrative group our school counselors all of our teachers all of our related service providers all of our instructional assistants um the goal would be now this this we have a lot of staff to train so initially i will be working with child study teams administrators and um school counselors and then starting to pull in teachers so we have to look at how we can do that at the elementary level maybe grade levels at the middle
150school high school level could be departments or houses at the middle school so the goal would be by um by 2023 100 of our staff is trained plus new staff will go through training in the fall of their first year so we're looking at taking it beyond and making sure it's sustainable also with um and bob will talk about this also when he talks about the general education goals we talked a lot about the role of supervision in looking at co-teaching pairs so we would be looking at things like having a special ed teacher a special ed supervisor and a gen ed supervisor go in to observe repair we've done this over the years but we will purposely once this training is happening have those observations conducted same thing with special education looking at lesson
151plans watching um lessons to make sure that all the accommodations looking at the iep before you go in to observe a pair i'm sorry observe a teacher to make sure all the accommodations are being addressed so that is the iep and the 504 plan so as i said you know the goal will be to develop the training start pulling in groups of staff and getting that 100 of our staff trained it may not be able to be 100 completed just because of the numbers of staff until the 22-23 school year but that is the goal um bob i'm going to turn it over to you for the first general education goal okay i do want to say a few things betsy asked a question and i think lindsey cruz asked it in the chat as
152well about how you're going to know this is going on and monitoring it you heard mickey talk about giving dates in the plans that we've developed we have a bunch of specific dates when specific events will occur so there's a way that we can monitor it and we can certainly use that to report to the board to report to the public report to the student achievement committee so that's built into the four four objectives that we've talked about um as the other issue that came up in in what matt was talking about is accountability and that's one of the things that we agreed um in many cases we're not sure um who's accountable for what who's responsible for what so we've built that into the goals that we've developed as well specific people and we've
153also ensured that basically um everybody has a role in what we're doing so one of the goals that we have one of the general education goals is actually to develop a multi-tiered system of support mtss if you see the abbreviation around um which is tier one which is sort of universal things that the teachers do for everybody tier 2 would be for kids who need a little bit more help and tier 3 which our district really has not done a good job of is really working with individual youngsters as part of general education not sending them to special ed a lot of people part of the culture has been that tier three becomes special ed referral and that's not what it should be so we've put in place uh we're going to be developing a
154whole articulate a whole multi-tier system of um uh interventions we'll have it we'll be convening committee of administrative supervisors teachers and all that and mickey and i were very um deliberate in putting down who's going to be on for instance the committees that's going to develop the multi-tiered system we're only having one special ed supervisor on the committee and everybody else is going to be general ed because we want to make the the statement that this is a general ed intervention is not a special ed intervention and the supervisor of special ed's going to be there to keep reminding people this is not special ed get back it's a general ed program and so that's one of the things that we're going to be doing we'll be defining what kinds of uh interventions are tier
155one tier two three we'll develop a menu for those of those kinds of interventions and ensure training for teachers in them we'll identify roles of various people so we can hold folks accountable for implementing those and we'll have a specific calendar by when we expect all this to be in place um we'll be providing training for uh all of our people and that includes administrators child study team members instructional assistants school counselors supervisors supplemental service providers all folks so everybody knows what is tier one what is tier two what is tier three and what is general education what's special education we really want to make sure that genetic general education teachers take responsibility for the fact that just because a child is having difficulty doesn't mean it's somebody else's responsibility and most teachers take on
156that responsibilities there may be some who don't we want to make sure that everybody accepts that as their responsibility um and then again we have a calendar by which we'll implement that we hope to start implementing some of them using our achievement coaches it'll probably take us the full year to develop the whole system but as we develop uh preliminary ideas in the system we'll be using our achievement coaches our ais instructors and our curriculum team leaders in the elementary schools to start trying out the ideas and start modeling for folks what a tier one is what tier two is what tier three is and then we'll be doing training the following summer and into the fall of the following year so that everybody will be trained at the elementary school we'll be doing the
157training by grade levels in fall of 22 at the middle school it'll either be by grade levels or houses or a combination and at the high school will be by department by departments the second goal um general education goal um and i'll read it because this important word in there is to implement with fidelity standard operating procedures for intervention and referral services right now we have six schools and we have six different systems of inrs intervention referral services where once we've collected data um they they take a look and at what and make other recommendations typically general ed recommendations in terms of how they can help kids who are struggling having difficulty and so forth whether it's academic social emotional behavioral whatever we don't do a good job in many respects collecting data we are
158looking to define what kind of data we have to collect we're looking right now um and for at the possibility of contracting with a data warehouse a firm that does data warehousing so that we will have lots of benchmark data for on every single child and it'll be longitudinal so it'll follow us all the way through um so we'll know what data we need to collect and we'll be having we'll be using that and the inrs committee will be uh working sort of um in in partnership with the uh mtss system so that they'll be saying well you've tried to hear one but you haven't tried some of these tier two possibilities to your three possibilities nobody will go from the inrs committee to a referral unless people can produce that they've had a show
159that they've collected data and they've tried tier two interventions tier three interventions and one of the things that mickey and i have talked about for example would be if um there's somebody who people want to suggest for example need certain kinds of help with uh to be referred to special ed or going to need an aid or something we're going to ask a supervisor to take a look at the what what's been going on and go in and see if those uh do an observation to see if those particular interventions that we said we were doing are actually taking place in the classroom for that child so and again there'll be dates by which we will deliver each one of those steps so that you'll be able to help monitor most of the dates as
160mickey indicated for right now are the first year second year we haven't gone beyond that because we've only met with matt a week ago and we've uh only put together the the uh the skeleton right now of the of the plan but we hope to maybe by the end of the week we can even share the goals with with everybody in written form they are in written form now but we're still playing around with them right so um somebody asked about funding um so i've been working and bob has been working with valerie rich at designating some funding that the district will be getting for some of this work with teachers additionally we were accepted into a program through the bog center which is related to person-centered approach to plan to transition um [Music] when
161it first came out i had all my child study team members trained and the supervisors everyone was trained because it really was about helping kids advocate for themselves um a strength-based approach now the box center through the pcas work has has kind of spread out more than just working on student transition for special education students and they're working with districts on general education initiatives so they'll be splitting their time and their work with us working with our inrs committee members and also working on special education to continue the work we've been doing and that's free there's no cost for that so um we're trying to lay the foundation for this work right now to make sure that it is sustainable i i just want to add one thing because barry mentioned in the chat that
162will this is going to be part of our reentry plan so let me explain we have a re-entry plan that we've been working on um and the the draft right we sort of the subtitle of it is to uh return recover renew and reimagine and some of the things we're reimagining are the very things that we're talking about tonight so those items will be in the the return plan for september so that will be part of that plan as well uh we'll work these uh objectives and these recommendations into that plan going forward as well so i just wanted to make sure you knew that as well thank you mickey and bob du um so i'm gonna go through board member questions now does that make sense um betsy i just wanna say thank you
163both so much for already developing these these goals and i would just say you know think big and come to us as barry said we're a board that cares about kids you know that we pay for that and i just want to say i can't imagine any more important work of this district than meeting the needs of our kids so if we can accelerate some of this if there's any additional funding you need for summer more summer initiatives i'm just speaking as one board member but i i encourage you to bring that to us thanks thank you gene thanks i wanted to say thank you as well and i'm a fan of ais because i think it's kind of the perfect example of differentiated learning and to the extent the board can uh direct resources
164to that effort uh any of these efforts uh we're behind you 100 thank you do you have now thank you mickey and bob thank you i appreciate um you know you're coming up with uh being so proactive with the record with progress on the recommendations so i guess just to you know to what betsy and jean said um is there a way so i understand that these things take time but you know how i am every year as a kid you know is a kid's life and so is there a way that we could bring consultants in or something to speed up um the training or anything else um because you know like betsy said there's nothing more important than the kids i think part of what we learned from from matt's report and what
165we've observed sometimes when someone says something you look around you say gee that's true part of it is as much a culture change as it is a process change we have to change the culture in terms of how people look at things that they realize that these are gen ed responsibilities they're not special ed responsibilities once a kid shows that he or she has difficulty doesn't mean we say okay it's a special ed kid so part of that is a cultural change bringing somebody in from the outside to tell people that it's not going to work we all know what i'm saying no i'm saying i'm not trying to be critical i'm just telling the process uh in each one of the the goals that we have we are using our people to sit down
166and amongst themselves um put together that they have the expertise they just never had someone said it earlier there's not been the accountability who's gonna hold them accountable for it and there's not been anything that says we expect this to be done by this time and i think that's part of what matt helped us with in terms of putting together um an action plan so that we have accountability we have fidelity we have processes that will be written out so follow them and we have the people who are going to have to implement it helping to build them so that's part of the world right and that's great all i'm saying is if the training for co-teaching best practices can't be done until next summer why couldn't we bring some like let's not let perfect
167be the enemy of good why couldn't we bring in some consultants to discuss best practices for co-teaching i mean we you know the kids can't wait anymore so i'm just asking to please think you know how the board can support you know these efforts to really speed it along thank you okay debbie and again i mean these are very exciting you know and of course we do want them all yesterday should there be maybe an ad hoc committee made up of you know pps people um to kind of be the old not the oversight but but something to be able to have these groups report into key timelines i don't know just throwing that out wouldn't that be the sac committee that committee sounds like it's well but the sac committee we don't really have
168any power like that we really just you always present and we're like okay like i i mean i guess that's where i'm coming from we don't have power to say you guys are two weeks behind or why is this not moving there um and i'm not saying present to this ad hoc i'm saying this ad hoc has some power some authority i think barry has a comment barry wants to spend your mute barry i i just think i just think the board has to take this special education plan um have trust in the administrative staff you currently have your new leadership coming on board um also the fact that you're going to have plenty of esser and american recovery act funds to do whatever you need to do in july and august to expedite and
169move this initiative forward uh but this is one data point there are also other data points collecting uh the doi initiative uh and uh mobility rates and all these data points we're going to help inform the new administration along with this report on a roadmap so i think that the the administration ought to be tasked with resolving the problem and reporting back to the board on a periodic basis on its progress or lack of progress and uh the resources that the board uh so uh graciously offered are the ability to do that this year is absolutely uh terrific because of the additional 1.2 million dollars that we will be receiving in in american recovery act funds so resources are not an issue it's now a question of allowing the professionals that you employ to put
170together a plan that allows teachers and administrators to work together with an accountability we've talked about restructuring and i think that's all part of this accountability that we've been talking about for almost 10 months so uh from that standpoint i think there's enough oversight i think the question now is can they put together a plan and can they be successful and what resources do they need to assist them and the money and the opportunity is there thank you barry thank you mickey and thank you bob for for for presenting this and pulling it together so quickly and and for you know laying it out for us and i'm sure this is going to evolve as we bring and welcome our new superintendent who's got her own experience in this area and will have her own
171preferences with respect respect to data and metrics and timing and and when as she gets to know your team i'm sure you'll she'll bring some new fresh ideas and ways to support you um and we'll look forward to hearing about how you plan to report back to us whether it's through sac whether it's directly and the time frame for that in the in the year ahead but um there's obviously a lot of work there and we're looking forward to supporting you guys in in in correcting and improving how we're serving all the kids so thank you um you're just gonna comment on the re-entry plan beth okay barry keep going on your report uh pps re-entry plan uh i just want to thank uh bob for spearheading it along with all the administrative staff who
172took on segments we had three teams of people working elementary middle and high school on a reopening plan now we have an a b and c plan it's the second iteration it is constantly changing almost like our reopening plan from last year but i want to make sure that we're very clear our option a is a full re-entry and full return to normalcy in september so i wanted to be clear with that uh tonight i'm asking the board to uh approve it because we need to have elements of what the plan delineates for our e-wig application to access the american recovery act funds and that is due on june 24th so we're under a real tight timeline fortunately we started this planning process back in april having no idea that we would need to have
173this ready for june 24th because we received very little guidance and a week and a half ago we were informed that we needed to do this on june 24th i will also say thank you to the to the general public we sent out a a a small survey and we see almost a thousand responses as of yesterday i think and uh now that is another data point because it asked two specific questions and it was a narrative so when that data is now being coalesced it will be another data point for the new administration talking about what worked what didn't work what needs to be improved et cetera et cetera so again all this data is excellent uh and it's timely because it will uh provide that framework for for for the for a good
174reopening so i'm just going to comment and just say that the board has had the first iteration on june 4th the second iteration on june 11th uh these plans that bob talked about and mickey talked about tonight will also be part of that plan so as i say as we move forward i would imagine there'll be five or six different iterations in the development over before september bob yeah i just want to mention that within the next stage you will actually be posting the plan uh also on the website uh and p folks should know that it's constantly changing including uh we had actually 975 responses um to the survey in both english and spanish and as we take the comments from those surveys and work them into the plan so people should not expect
175the plan to and if as you look at the plan on the website if you have ideas from that just forward them to us because we'll be changing the plan we hope that we will have the final plan obviously we'll just be tweaking it through the summer certainly by august 15th everything hopefully is finalized for that plan so that that's will be the plan but you may see something july 3rd that you don't like but it may be changed by july 18th or something but please give us your feedback uh it's going to take us a while to go through 975 responses but we're going to try to include everything that that will be helpful to us in the plan thanks bob uh that's all beth for my report tonight oh barry the next uh
176point we are to the public forum again but before we start could you repeat one more time you're going to put this special education report up on the website you're going to create a website for parents to give specific feedback on the website yeah uh we're going to give them a link so that they can ask specific questions and then we will answer the questions that they have in an faq when the new administration comes on board then the new administration will determine how they are going to engage the public uh in in a different manner and that may be community forums it could be a whole host of things but it would be inappropriate for me to comment on what would be what would be the best way to do that that's the new
177administration to do that but the link will be up soon we'll be up with the report the link will be up in the next couple days it could either be tomorrow or at the latest the next day as soon i want people to realize they can give us their comments in writing and it will get incorporated as part of this data that we're getting from this report so it's actually really helpful if whatever you're going to say tonight you also write down and put up in there so that we have it um so that the new superintendent will have it as well it's all data for her to help kind of figure out how to get this um moving as as effectively as possible so i think we're going to go into our next public
178comment um matt again we hope that people obviously at 10 o'clock we want to hear from all of you and again if it's too late you write it down and submit it to this this site if it's going to be about the special education report that would be really helpful to us to have so again we ask that you keep it to three minutes you say your name and your address and again it's for we we want to hear from our residents and our our parents um and if someone said something previously please don't repeat it and um we will let you know when time's up uh and gently but but we just want to respect everyone's ability to say something so thank you beverly hi thank you so much i i got so excited
179that i thought i muted myself and put my hand down but i just want to say uh i realized that it could have been a lot worse and things here have been better at princeton than in many places in the country but please don't underestimate how much those of us with extremely disabled children have suffered and i'm not really sure anymore that you guys princeton public schools can handle us because uh you haven't done a very good job during this pandemic and you've really alienated us and we don't feel like you understand this anymore wait stop let go sorry i'm being attacked um what i really want to say is please stop changing the schedule on this stop changing the schedule if you say we have summer school from eight to two or eight thirty
180to two please you know if it's if it snows give us an extra day but don't call it remote remote doesn't work for us and uh [Music] wow huh just move okay i have to put my kid to bed it's really late for both of us but this has been like hell on earth for us and all we really need is to know what's going to happen next if you can't if you can't do it if you can't help us please let us go somewhere else please don't keep us in a system that doesn't care for us because we're really suffering and that's all i want to say thank you beverly thanks bev debt excuse me dead stuttering here deb demiglia hi um uh my name's ebb demaglio like you said um there was a
181certain level that i didn't hear mentioned um in the discussion particularly addressing the obviously amazing intricate assessment that they did um and i'm very impressed and i really appreciate you guys even looking into getting the program and the disability and the special needs program assessed it does mean a lot especially to a parent of a child that does have extreme needs um i know it's a very very small percentage of the princeton school district and um i think for me as a mom of a of an only child of being a very single working mom i'm a very also a small niche within this community um i'm a prince a public high school graduate of 1989 so i'm very proud to be from princeton and i do appreciate all of your hard work and i
182can't imagine being in the positions you're in or different stresses that i deal with every day so do know i respect your efforts um but speaking to accountability disproportionality access to extracurricular activities and equity there was a level that wasn't mentioned that i found as a as a unique special needs student as my son is in the autism program specifically and i can only speak to that to be fair there's there was no level four meaning a child that needs it needs help all the time that needs help and assistance and aid to go into homeroom or to be in the lunchroom or to um participate in gym or always has to have an aide to walk around school with we're in a very small niche and that was one group that wasn't discussed and
183that a level wasn't even given to the need that my son has and i'd i'd like just for somebody to please speak to that and i know it's a small niche but my son and those kids is one of the wonderful things about princeton and that's come out over the pandemic is making sure everybody is is respected appreciated for all they are and perhaps although they're not their strengths and their weaknesses and i want my son who is in the small niche to be also be remembered the disabled people the special needs not only the children but the families our lives are very different and i i i'm not saying it's worse i'm not saying it's better it's just different and i want my son to be in his needs to be acknowledged that there
184to be some biggest part communication transparency between us parents and in administration who do we go to when we have a question who do we go to for accountability how how can i give feedback about what my son's teacher is doing and he's meeting my son's needs because it is such a small niche but i i i can say that i do appreciate that steps are moving forward but can someone speak to i will call level four where does my kid fit into this where does my child luca demeglio fit into this plan of accountability a transparency of communication i like to know that because i feel even left out thank you deb that's the child thank you no problem thank you no problem lindsay cruz hi guys um just a couple things um i
185want to speak for the special education parent advisory group first and just first thank the board for your willingness to fund this review and your willingness to engage on it and your willingness to push through on it during a global pandemic and i think it um it speaks volumes that you were willing to support that um and i think the whole community as you can hear from some of our parents just also appreciate the transparency of sharing the link publicly so that we can dig into the report in more detail so that hopefully every parent can see their kids and their experience reflected and the openness of the faq as well is just a huge uh you know a huge reflection of your willingness to take feedback and be transparent and also want to thank
186the consulting team i can't speak for everyone but i think that they i think we experience as parents multiple opportunities to give feedback in multiple ways and i think what we heard tonight was really reflective of what we heard in those forums and also what we've experienced as parents and suspect the report will provide even more more color so just wanted to say thank you for this first step um i think we look forward to fully reading the report and being able to provide more specific feedback on the goals and data i'm also grateful for matt's recognition of the parent community and involvement and and for both the board and mickey's team and many folks creating space for that so we're looking forward to partnering with the new superintendent and dr galassa we thank you
187for your work and for all the stakeholders to address the recommendations um our our ask of the board is in you know sometimes things can get lost in transitions and in a lot of onboarding so we just ask that with the same support that you invested this review and supported the review that we continue to keep it at the forefront as a really big data input in terms of thinking about priorities for the next uh the next path and then quickly if i have time just uh one thing with my cpeg hat off and just as a professional who does this kind of work in my day job is i did hear a lot in the goals about training which i think is an excellent first step and mickey i think you spoke to this
188as well but the the thing that i would just um the thing that i would just reinforce is training is only the first step if there is no follow-up follow-through or any culture of belief in that training then it's actually just a waste of the board and the public's money so would just encourage us to think about how we're creating the culture of inclusion overall within our schools across the district and how um how we make sure we just don't stop at the investment in training and we follow it all the way through to make sure it's actually happening and that folks are supported as they start to practice this thanks gene thank you i see no other comments at this time okay thank you very much for those comments um and again i really
189encourage people to uh check the website look at the report spend time with it and then you know give feedback as well because it's really an important piece there was one comment ali sorry yes it's it's me i hope everyone can hear me and i'm sorry i did not raise my hand until just now and um good evening my name is ally cassasson i'm a parent of rising eighth and sixth graders here in princeton and um i'm so grateful for what our district is doing for our students with special needs and and i'm pivoting the conversation a little bit away from that but it's still in sort of a student achievement um sort of frame of mind if you will in that there are many parents like myself who are very concerned about the middle
190school math options in eighth grade next year and i've sent out a couple of emails to the board about this topic but i'm still very concerned about the 75 poms seventh graders who are currently taking algebra one accelerated this year as of right now they will only have two paths for math next year if the plan remains the same option one would be to repeat the second half of algebra and option two would be to take algebra in eighth grade at phs most students finish algebra in eighth grade take geometry in ninth and then algebra 2 in 10th grade and i'm just very concerned because our kids have been through so much their mental health is very taxed i can't fathom what being pushed too far ahead into a course taken by most 10th graders
191or pulled back and repeating half of algebra unnecessarily would do to my daughter's confidence and i fear that either of those two options could also affect her outlook on the subject of math as a whole i want my daughter and her peers to love math i want them to be motivated and challenged but feel like they're capable um there were three available options last year and i would like to appeal to the board to encourage the offering of geometry or some other math option to these kids for this upcoming year and beyond and um i would also appreciate knowing how their placement would be determined and if parents many of whom have been alongside their children might have any input into this decision really appreciate all of your efforts for this year and your attention
192to this matter there was a survey sent out to families 97 percent of respondents thought that geometry should be an option and 83 percent of families would opt for their child to take geometry over algebra ii in eighth grade um i again thank you again for your efforts and i've raised my concerns before and i just sincerely hope that this is the proper channel to continue the dialogue and then hopefully have an impact for next year thank you thank you okay matt is this really yes no okay all right um in that case we're going to keep going with our business meeting we've got a lot more to go and i'm going to talk fast and we're going to move fast but people interrupt me if i'm if i'm missing anything um but next on
193our agenda is item i which is harassment intimidation and bullying which was discussed in closed session uh session and is consent um board committee reports i'm hoping the board maybe by a show of hands are you willing to perhaps submit them in writing to each other and to put them out rather than yeah go through them all tonight does that make sense yeah is there anything urgent that someone wants to report beth i think j1 um you skipped over it's a biannual hiv the i one no it on mine it says j one do others see that as well yep you did i one and then you skip j one oh i see well i actually must up i'll need to update because i have i one and two um they're both hib one is
194the report and one was the um item for tonight so i just referring to both of those so sorry it wasn't a different it was put in the wrong category i didn't have the wrong lettering i'm concerned if i update right now i'm going to lose something um but so is jay not committed reports anymore jay used committee reports well no yes committee board yeah it's the biannual harassment intimidation bullying report and then the second item is board committee highlights i'm just refreshing for a second hang on one second i'm going to pull it up i mean it doesn't it won't take much to go over it's simply uh we're required to uh twice a year report out on on hibs uh there was a uh because of remote learning there was only two um
195in that first reporting period which is september 14th this year so we started way through december 31st um and we classify those in categories uh we we started doing this uh we're required to do it every every twice a year i'm not sure if there's any other comments really there was only two reported in the first grade which was significantly less than the prior reporting period we compare it by year i'm not sure what else we really need to discuss i just was confusing people i hadn't refreshed my screen and i was still had the wrong lettering but i'm good now i have the current so i i think the important thing is is that the report the this report was sent to the department on january and the board now is just affirming it
196so that uh when the review for cusack comes about this is documented on a board agenda okay and then a board committee highlights we will circulate those to each other but in writing and also then attach them to the minutes for the meeting so the public can see the summaries does that make sense that's what we've done in the past okay then item k is personnel and again we're going to go quickly because i think these are consent items and the board has previously either asked questions or had these things explained and they will be then covered in the consent at the end so k1 is summer hiring k2 resignations k-3 appointments k-4 re-appointments k-5 teaching certification stipends six cj pride seven personnel items eight personnel items nine reappointments it was asked to be an
197action item it is an action item so on item eight central administration um could we have a motion please uh brian a second this is uh susan thank you any discussion if not could we have a roll call please beth baron yes w bronfeld yes dan dart yes etsy bagley yes ryan mcdonald yes peter katz yes stephanie kendall yes susan cantor yes gene durbin yes motion passes thank you unanimous and we just want to say we do appreciate so much our central office administrators and the time that they have put in during this very very difficult year 24 7 available to superintendent glosso at all hours all days of the week so thank you then item nine was paa reappointments 10 is job descriptions 11 ratification a paa contract that's what we talked about earlier
198exciting um 12 6 period compensation 13 students so we we did the pia contract so we should check it out oh we did it yeah so it's not even consistent anymore i can't do it live but i like yeah i would mess it up if i go in there okay student services thank you daphna 14 leaves of absence 15 substitute teachers 16 curriculum and instruction 17 reappointment of an unaffiliated 18 transfer reassignments 19 sidebar with paa brings us to al l one learning ally two curriculum management system three west interactive services for learning a to z five annual field trip approval i just have a question about that one beth um and i'm sorry i didn't see this earlier so in our very well thought out return to school it's indicated that field trips will
199not be sort of back to usual in the next school year and that they're encouraging local travel right for the semester there's also a few items on this we've gone through this list many times that i think need to be updated so i'm not sure does it does it make sense to vote on it pending there would need to be another level of approval or do we hold off on this we just uh we we indicated that depending on circumstances we might not approve um trips for uh other than virtual trips or local trips for the first few months only because when kids go let's say they go to the aquarium um they might end up being interacting with kids from other districts and some of them who may not um you know we're trying
200to protect the kids which is why we said we would first take a look at what conditions are so we still want to approve the trips and if if if we don't know what the circumstances will be in in september october november december if things are really really clear we can start having trips in in november or something like that we just want to be cautious about things that we don't have control over great so just just so everyone knows there's sort of another level of approval right we we as a board annually publish this large list but then for a school trip to be approved it has to go through either principal correct or the international trips obviously come back to the board and none of those are on on this approval yeah in
201order for us a field trip to be approved the these are the parameters the principal would then the principal then would send the central office his or her recommendation with regard to what field trips the youngsters are going to be engaged in they would be typically listed and then they are board approved okay all right and i know annually we do this trip which sort of so we don't always see every single day trip but i i i think as long as there's an understanding that you know this fall might look a little bit different that's fine thanks thank you betsy um annual memberships uh adoption of k-12 district textbooks adoption of pre-k 12 curriculum summer programs summer school edges here yeah that's an action and i wanted to make a comment on this edges
202here yep it says action okay can i have a motion to consider this one sure debbie and second uh gene uh any discussion yes so i'm gonna vote no on this because i absolutely do not do not like educare and i am now talking like dan where we now know we can do remote and um and barry also said this too so we can do remote we should be writing our own um classwork for this we should not be using this it's really really hard the kids have to pay a lot and like barry said if we write our own we can then sell it to other people make a little money but um you know this this program in this organization i brought it up last year and i'm really really asking the administration
203to find something else we could totally have our um staff right something i think the business is one of the ones everybody takes but so the i'm not sure if you're specifically looking at the ones for just for this summer or for something beyond that debbie because for the summer we were planning to run all our own courses and it turned out we only had one or two kids register for some of the courses those are the ones that we put on for edgarsia just for the summer are you referring to some other time as well no i don't even want us to use edges here i want us to write our own material because now we know we can do remote right i think their material is is not worthy and the cost and
204i just i don't think the students are getting anything from it that's all i i think i think that that in the future that may be a possibility but i think that for this summer uh bob if correct me if i'm wrong a number of these kids need this need need the coursework in order for credit recovery am i correct that's correct oh i know that oh i'm i i'm the only one who will vote no because i don't know i'm just saying i i i i i understand your point and it's well taken well i think the the recommendation is i want you kids when you and they need credit recovery so our plan our plan was to actually have teachers teaching them live and we had in some cases some classes we have
205going because they have 14 and 15 kids so our people using them but there were a few kids there was one kid in one class two kids in another class and it didn't pay to hire a teacher for one kid to for that when uh you know it would be cost prohibitive for us to have one child in a class with the teacher that we had to pay for the summer several thousand dollars thank you but maybe we can work on writing our own for the future because i think we heard that thank you debbie thank you for your input uh does anyone else want gene you want to talk to i just had a question thanks about edgeseer and how long we've been under contract with them i think it's a yearly thing i
206think it i think it's an annual thing and i don't know because i've only been in this job one year so it's typical i'll find out for you yeah typically uh annual all right are we ready to uh vote on that one matt beth barron yes debbie brownfield no dan dart yes betsy bagwell yes bryan mcdonald yes peter katz yes daphne kendall yeah susan cantor yes gene durbin yes ocean passes that takes us to m1 students real quick i'm sorry beth uh summer programs 2021 was also marked action i don't know if that was asked or if that was an error possibly online or if someone asked for that to be also an action item i don't believe that was an action item but i didn't think so but it might have got marked uh
207inadvertently and otherwise we'll consider that a consent item okay everyone okay with that all right excellent still it comes wait if you do consent then my no is not there no no this isn't there it was voted on pulled out yeah you've been lasered out that that's fine you got that okay m1 the professional consulting m2 student special ed independent educational evaluations and three settlement agreement m4 grant exception application n one financial reports two shared service three formal bids four formal bids of refuse removal five transfer of current reserve to surplus six n-a-s-i-a-a membership seven pest management eight omni group nine school breakfast i just say one thing about this breakfast and lunch um if you'll you'll notice the price is zero for the for the year ahead that's something the federal government has decided
208i just want to say to all the parents on this call um this is something we want everyone to know about school lunch is free no matter your ability to pay um and we encourage people to to get school lunch school breakfast too yes thank you mom school breakfast as well um great thank you 10 travel reimbursement 11 authorization to pay bills 12 fire evacuation 13 travel registration that brings us to the consent vote can i have a motion please brian second betsy i want to call the roll matt yeah i'm just catching up okay yes debbie bronfo yes dandar yes betsy baglio yes brian mcdonald yes your cats yes yes susan cantor yes gene durbin yes consent agenda passes thank you unanimous um that brings us to our last public comment on any topic
209if anyone has anything they'd like to say again same same rules name and address three minutes please don't repeat [Music] hi julie you're muted julie hi good evening can you hear me yes okay great um i don't want to repeat i just want to say thank you again from the cpag and pto for this program review we're thrilled to hear that everyone is very interested in the check-ins and also having as quick a time frame as possible so thank you to pcg mickey bob and the board for um for the review um we'll look forward to working with the new administration in the coming months to uh put some more detail around it and uh we have heard from some families that they thought that their themes were not necessarily covered in the four goals
210but um i'm assuming there will be more discussion coming once everyone has a chance to see the report thank you thank you thank you julie elizabeth herman elizabeth hi elizabeth harmon i live in western way i have a kid who's going into sixth grade and a kid who's going into kindergarten um i don't know if this is the right time to see this but um i just really hope that the school district will require all kids who are eligible to be vaccinated to be vaccinated by september and then once they become eligible will require all eligible kids who become eligible during the school year to be vaccinated in a pretty timely manner i'm thinking about my own kids but i also want to say that this is a matter of doing well by our community
211this is a concrete way that the school district can make sure that a lot of people who live here in princeton can be will be vaccinated and that keeps other people safe that keeps the vulnerable safe um and it's it's a matter of um you know civic responsibility and you guys can play a big role in making sure that that happens thanks thank you elizabeth there are no there are no other comments at this time okay thank you that takes us to item q closing discussion and we have one item a new business first draft and i think that um debbie and betsy just wanted to explain what that was thank you very much so we've talked about this briefly in in prior meetings but we have on the agenda a draft called a commitment
212to anti-racism equity and inclusion this is uh first this was the work of the equity committee in close partnership with barry with bob stephanie tidwell our administrative liaison as well as our incoming superintendent dr carol kelly we then sent this to the full board we received feedback from the full board we met again in may to revise this and this is um a new draft it includes some definite include some definitions as well and we want to thank our fellow board members for collaborating with us on this our goal is to have a second reading at our july meeting which is july 27th so we we welcome members of the board members of the community feel free to reach out to us via email um debbie and i would be very happy to to hear
213from you and board members we will we will work really hard to get um your feedback into the new draft as we have into this draft so thanks very much for your input thank you betsy i mean if there's discussion right discussion brian i see brian i i just wanted to thank um betsy debbie and the committee for their um hard work on this i i know it's gone through many iterations but i think the i'm current version is really excellent and if it can be improved upon great but i'm grateful for all the work that's gone into this thanks i just i want to say that i think it's really uh you know fitting that we're doing it tonight when we're also getting the report on special education because obviously this is about all
214of our kids and every shape form ability color everything so thank you for that work and and i'm i'm excited we're finally coming to a place where we can write it down it's it's been a lot of work for you i know thank you dan now i would just add really the same sentiment thank you to the equity community i really appreciate the rewrite in some of the definitions so that we're all on the same page we all understand what these words mean and what they don't mean and so i think it's a great step forward and really appreciate your hard work on this it's not an easy task thank you um if there's nothing further i do have not on that i have a comment i would just like to say sure okay um
215so transparency is very important to this board so i would like to ask why certain board members automatically move to table emotion when i bring up something new during new business my examples from last month when i moved to discuss discuss a return to what the calendar originally stated that primary day june 8 stays a remote school day and the many safety reasons why it is very frustrating when people go right to move to table emotion thank you okay anybody have anything else uh if not i think i think i appreciate all the work tonight my my goodness we had a lot of topics we covered a lot of ground um administrators thank you for all your work and preparing for all of this and and then condensing some really complicated stuff down into a
216few slides and trying to condense the special education stuff down into something we can digest and understand um so thank you everyone for your participation and your patience and for the public for to being willing to sit through for so long and still coming to bring us issues and you know let's keep working together going forward and you know barry thank you for a great for a great year this is your last last hurrah with us and we didn't want to end too early so you would think it was easy we want to give you a typical meeting last one um and and just just uh thanks a lot and congratulations to everyone getting through this year and here we are and we're looking forward to kind of starting the next year in july as
217a team moving forward again so let's you know thank you and and can i have a motion for us all to go home uh jean and second daphna all in favor okay meeting adjourned thank you very much thank you thank you everyone thank you okay