001the board and the board in the school district operate 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 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 6 2021 and distributed to the schools and
002others on the standard distribution list the board reserves the right to enter into executive session during all meetings of the board of education board policy 2230 recording devices requires and that we inform those attendants virtual zoom meaning 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 the princeton public
003schools as more specifically designated in njsa 18a 38.1 in the event this statute is amended the law shall take precedence over this by-law sending district votes pertaining to personnel actions referred to high school central administration and district-wide staff only of votes otherwise are considered abstentions i'll call the roll if you will left baron you muted beth okay uh mr bolton thank you for calling the role i'm present debbie brownfield here dan dart here betsy bagley here ryan mcdonald president michelle tuck ponder present peter katz here after kendall here susan cantor here gene durbin present we have a quorum thank you the first item of business is the adoption of minutes of march 16 2021 could i have a motion please brian second gene is there any discussion if not could we call a role please
004beth barron yes w brownfield yes and art yes that's bag leo yes brian mcdonald yes michelle tuck ponder yes peter katz yes uh did you skip that last uh you skipped susan i think was i not wait uh maybe was this the one that wasn't that i'm just i'm just trying to think out loud i think you were not so this is march 16th yeah i think you were not there that's right i was not there i was i was covet ill you're right i yeah abstain all right great daphne candle yes susan cantor yes gene durbin yes motion passes motion passes 9 and nine in favor one abstained um the next item is our student board members report uh maya khan and yash roy would you like to present to us all right uh
005hi everyone so we're just going to be going over the board report again this time it is attached in the agenda and all of the board members have had time to take a look at it so we're just going to we went through the numbers um just give them very quickly um one more time so we had 748 students respond to the survey uh 22 percent of which are freshmen 24 sophomores 29 juniors and 25 seniors i don't think those percentages add up but that is the percentages that google forms gave us um so the surveyed 49.7 percent we're taking three or uh three or more ap or excel classes um and then 74 percent of the students were in the remote cohort c keep in mind that this survey was taken in february um
006so i believe that number has changed and is continuing to change as mr warren can i just interrupt josh did you want matt to share the presentation uh he can if he wants to yeah you can yeah do you want me um should i share it yeah you can pull up the pdf oh okay go ahead keep going i'll have to go and find it no problem all right um yeah so uh as i was saying about 75 percent are where cohort c of which 55 percent of freshmen are cohered to 66 percent sophomores 71 percent juniors and 80 of all seniors oversee that number has changed i believe since this um survey was taken um the really important numbers that we believe come from the survey the first one is that 86 percent of
007students felt overly stressed of which 76 percent were 76 of freshmen said they were overly stressed 76 of sophomores 77 percent of juniors and 90 of seniors 650 students reported that stress was due to academics or school 275 for family 59 for financial reasons about cobia 19 and just overall health 116 for athletics 329 students about extracurriculars of clubs academic teams 437 with time management a 265 just about politics um and everything that's going on in the world and 249 students were friends this category people could choose multiple things that's why there are so many different numbers here um then on academics 66 percent of students felt that their course load is too much this year uh 53 of freshmen say that 44 say it's just right for sophomores 58 say their workload's too much
008and 33 say just right uh junior is 57 say too much 29 just right and seniors or 73 say too much 27 say just right um i imagine these numbers have changed as well for seniors uh that number has probably gone up for underclassmen as well i would guess that it has also gone up um and then another important question that we found concerning uh which is a number that we said before as well said only 51 percent of students felt that there was an adult at phs that they could comfortably talk about for their mental health or other issues and 48.8 said no and the grade distributions on the chart so it was 47 yes 51 now for the freshman 47 yes 43 no the sophomore is 51 yes for 54 yes for junior
009is 43 no and then seniors is 51 yes 47 now um so uh and then mai can do the screen time part and then we'll talk about our implications so um finally on to screen times when asked on average how many hours daily do you spend on a device overall 35.6 percent of students responded that they spend 9 to 12 hours four percent um spend six to nine hours nineteen point four percent spend twelve to fifteen hours nine point five spend uh nine point five percent spend more than fifteen hours four point six spend three to six hours and only about point five percent spend zero to three hours um when separated by grade um freshmen the majority of freshmen spent within the range of six to twelve hours and they have the least amount
010of screen time sophomores spent slightly more time on screens with around 35 percent responding that they spent 9 to 12 hours juniors responded that the majority spent within the range of 6 to 12 hours but a higher percentage than previous grades spent 12 plus hours seniors have the highest screen time um they spent um i think it was uh three oh sorry uh 33.7 spent nine to 12 hours and 21.1 percent spent six to nine hours uh and then twenty six point eight percent twelve spent twelve to fifteen hours um thirteen point one percent spent more than fifteen hours and three point one percent spent um three to six hours and zero percent spent zero to three hours uh which is a significant difference from other grades um and as you said previously this uh
011has probably changed um since we did take this report uh when we further broke this down into how much of this time was spent doing school work outside of class time zooms overall students responded that 51.4 spent three to six hours 22.3 percent spent zero to three hours 90.1 spent six to nine hours six point two percent spent nine to twelve hours and one point one percent spent more than 12 hours again um we have similar percentages to before just minus um like the four hours spent on zoom normally uh so fifty point six percent of freshmen spent three to six hours which um is a significant difference from uh when class time is uh included um sophomores responded that 51.1 percent spent three to six hours is so that it's within similar range uh
012juniors responded that 44.4 spent three to six hours as well um i mean uh which is a little less than before but also is expected as juniors do have a little bit more course load um seniors funded that 48.9 spent three to six hours and twenty three point three percent spend zero to three hours um but still they do have a higher screen time with um class time or without class time included uh and these are definitely different from when we first took this uh survey before um two other questions were asked one specifically about class time of one hour start and one hours and eight to 20 start times both of these questions have essentially been mooted out since we have been starting at 8 20 um for the past couple of weeks which
013i believe that around like it was like a 50 50 like half and half of people who thought that 8 20 start times um versus 9 20 start time should be uh uh changed and we can start on the implications of the survey uh the student body survey has a couple of really important numbers to keep in mind first stress levels while stress is a regular part of life especially in high school 85.2 percent of students feeling overly stressed points to the difficulties facing this year throughout the open-ended parts of the survey students across the board stressed that they were dealing with a large motivation gap with were struggling with the workload and it was incredibly difficult to learn this year a lot of these numbers and beliefs can be directly attributed to the pandemic
014however there are a couple of changes that can be pulled from these numbers first flexibility as the school year is quickly coming to an end yash and i both believe that as a district we need to stress a more flexible academic environment teachers are already working hard to accommodate their students and many of the students in this report told us so one of the many questions on our server is what has been working well for you in classes and many students responded with specific anecdotes of teachers having more flexible deadlines and providing more time for students to do work this has also been accommodated through the fridays that have now been changed to more of like an office hours instead of uh doing more class work so students have more time to do their work
015another important thing students dressed was more interactive work students specifically liked games and interactive teaching with apps and websites like kahoot jamboard and pear deck moreover many students stress that they're really enjoyed um group projects as well as open discussions with their peers this year has been pretty tough so as the year closes out maya and i uh josh and i believe that there should be a larger conversation to the way to decrease this feeling of being overwhelmed some measures have already been implemented with the new schedule yash and i have helped advocate for more office hours as well as a relaxed friday where students can catch up on the work as a large group of students in the survey stress how much they miss reading day fridays and this has been addressed and students
016have been very given very positive feedback to this change another important facet of decreasing stress is making homework more static than the work than the way work is assigned right away this means ensuring that homework isn't assigned at abnormal times like the middle of the night or early mornings as well as standardizing due dates uh i know this was also addressed um with the new schedule changes of uh the 8 20 start times on fridays now moving forward instituting more no homework weekends could also go a long way finally another question we asked students was what is working classes for you right now and many students spoke about an excessive workload in classes that become difficult to follow as they were lecture based instead of interactive for example students wrote about classes where work compared
017to last year has skyrocketed as more asynchronous work is being assigned to compensate for less synchronous time and just to cut in here uh mr warren since the survey has taken place wrote a note to staff which has largely is largely being followed now the institution of the new friday schedule of this ideostatic workload that students are no longer receiving assignments that are coming out on friday and being due on saturday or sunday so a lot of the stuff here has already been dealt with and is being addressed right now and that idea of flexibility i think is the biggest thing which everyone can pull from here is just this year is very weird for students so just the idea of more flexible deadlines and more understanding which teachers are already being uh will go
018a long way for students and then so the next part of our survey ties directly into the idea of consistency and communication which is something that we've been i think students have been pointing out for a long time um and something that the school is doing better about in the last month is just making sure that things are sent out um with a decent amount of notice given that the pandemic we understand that things need to change very quickly but still giving decent notice to people of decent understanding so that people can understand what's going on and so they can move forward i think one of the best examples are the iterations of schedules and everything the more time we have to process something the better it will go and but this schedule has worked
019decently well even though there was short notice but just like going forward i think that's pretty important especially now we're getting to ap exams which a lot of students at phs take like as you saw at the top about half of students take three or more aps i think if you do one or more it's about 70 75 percent of students so just making sure that that information as soon as it gets to is explained to students will go a long way um so the final uh important two important things was the idea of screen time and human interaction so a lot of the screen time issues is just more on zoom hopefully as more people are vaccinated more people switch back to a and b so the screen time decreases and the workload as
020we enter the last quarter especially for upperclassmen starts to decrease a little bit as ap exams take place and fourth quarter for seniors so this number will again go down and for human interaction the guidance department is already setting up office hours with their uh with their counselors and just there's already more interaction with clubs and sports so hopefully this will also improve so i think one of the things that you all can pull from this report is that there were issues and a lot of them have been addressed by our school and the administration and by the board through their actions um and just going forward i think the biggest things are the idea of flexibility and consistency and communicating and transparency i think if those things continue through the end of the year
021everything will work pretty well so yeah that is our we are ready for any questions thank you yash amaya that's a lot of information and we appreciate you sharing that with us um do i have uh questions from the board debbie yes so i had this from last time when we did the stanford survey one of the things we saw was that students didn't have someone to go to and you guys just said 48.8 is a total i don't have it broken out and i know with the stanford survey we did a lot or we talked a lot with guidance and guidance was going to the middle school to meet with the eighth graders coming up and homeroom was doing more and the um i'm sorry pe teachers were doing more and i know you
022know we're not seeing each other but out of everything you put up this is the one that really really bothers me and i know rob um barry when you met with all the students that was one of these um bullet points you shared too and i'm very concerned like um this really makes me nervous because of a lot that's in the news and this and that and so you know i'm asking you barry also like you know how is guidance getting out there more and what and now the kids are coming in but you know i'm this is just horrible that's half of our population doesn't have anyone to go to and i'm just very worried about that in terms of everything happening so thank you again for all your information um that was the
023one that just really got me michelle michelle michelle her she's she indicated that her uh her internet was unstable oh you're muted michelle muted yeah sorry guys that my internet's going in and out my quick question first of all oh man should we come back does anyone else want to go yeah i'll try to put it in the chat sorry about that daphna um so yakshamaya thank you very much for um taking the time to to get this information and present it to us um i have a question about screen time and work so um and homework right outside of zooms and are you saying that all the homework is uh on the device because it sounds like so like one um answer you had it was three to six some students are spending three
024to six hours out of zoom meetings on digital devices so so are you saying there's no homework that doesn't involve um screens anymore i'm talking just from my personal experience um no unless i have an english book that i need to read my other classes and i think for across the board most people are having to do their work off of a device which compared to years before since my freshman year that's also been increasing the amount of time on screen so it's not the most out of the world thing but it is um most of the work is online just because of the nature of the pandemic um yeah i think a lot of teachers do give the option for you to hand write but it still almost always involves some sort of device
025where like you're reading an article off your computer or you have like a pdf of your actual english book um since i go to in-person school um for a cohort a lot of my teachers do give me like copies of books or textbooks so i can actually like read it um or like not on my screen and i know students who aren't in cohort a or b or um and they're in cohort c can actually go to school and get copies of books so they don't have to read it on their screen but for the most part it is almost always involving some sort of device i know a couple students who have taken um their extra time to really uh kind of like not use their screens and like write it down but they
026say it takes a lot of extra effort but they believe it's worth it um yeah i'm just wondering about books like we're on the agenda tonight we're buying new ap science books so i just i just wonder is it the classes you're taking um or is it that this i know yoshi said this was your experience but is this do you think this is reflective of of the majority of students at princeton high school i think so i think this year specifically it is pretty representative that a lot most of the work is on like even uh math textbooks are online this year science textbooks are online um like my ap euro and i know a lot of history classes are the same thing the textbooks online you have to read it online so that's
027just the way it's going i'm just going to read michelle's question um it says she's asking yash and maya do you have any information on the demographics of the students who responded to the survey for example did you get input from special education students or students of color we did not we only got as specific as grade and number of eps taken wow peter thank you guys for putting this together i i appreciate it and it's kind of i i really appreciate the way that you guys have been really student representatives on our board and i think that's an important feature and so i appreciate that and your advocacy the screen time did pop up i mean for me that it seems like i didn't do the exact math but more than a quarter of
028the students are spending between 12 and 15 hours a day on a screen that is i mean i don't want to get too you know kind of philosophical but that's untenable i mean that's just that's a crazy amount of time to do anything let alone be on a screen um in in one day let alone 180 days of the year so i think that's something that we need to address and i understand that much of this is kind of pandemic driven so i'm not sure how much we you know take into the future but it definitely is a trend we need to kind of at least think about um my question for you and is were you able to you know i thought it was also interesting um kind of to piggyback a little bit
029on michelle's question about the demographics that it seems like about half the people were taking three ap classes or more that seems to be kind of a i don't say a skewed sample but it certainly is a specific sample and i'm just wondering um if you broke it down and looked at the folks who are not taking that many ap classes because i would obviously think kids who are taking that many ap classes are going to be stressed are going to be online more are going to be doing more work that just seems intuitive to me maybe it's not right but um have you have you looked at the numbers and broken it down um with regard to the those other kids yeah so uh we did look at it between zero and three uh
030and then three to five so the screen time was lower i don't know the number is completely off the top of my head uh but it was slightly lower but there isn't a very large change between the two groups and i also think that from what i remember the stanford survey uh stanford survey i think it's about 40 or 41 of students take two or three or more excel classes excel or ap classes so phs does have that culture of taking a lot of aps and stress so i'm sorry what about the stress level i mean that number is one that obviously you know also pops off the page but i'm wondering is that also skewed to how many ap or how many accelerated classes you're taking it was skewed again but it's not a
031very it's uh i think it was seven or eight percentage points it wasn't a very large skew um so i think that stresses across the board um people are are overly stressed so thank you guys very much brian yeah i i i guess um well i'll defer if there are other questions for uh maya and josh mine was related to their report but it's for uh barry and bob i think that's fine brian okay um so i'm just curious um as our uh leaders um how how you process this information and what sort of filters to you through through our counselors through our our guidance professionals and i also know that we survey parents and have done that a couple of times this year and i'm curious how aligned the results are on topics like
032the amount of homework and stress levels or whether there are some gaps there i think the i think the uh the results and the survey are are somewhat accurate i think we do have a number of students who are who are stressed and who are doing a tremendous amount of zoom work in this pandemic i think that was very clear in the three meetings that i had with students and with the acting high school principal you know as far as addressing counselors i know dr donovan and her staff have been reaching out to students to make sure that students are comfortable reaching out to an adult especially if they if they have needs in addition to looking at the schedule i think there were a number of student suggestions that were put in place for
033the last three months three and a half months of school um that hopefully will reduce some of the screen time and some of the uh some of the uh the stress levels i think the students made a good point about when assignments were being uh posted uh which added stress to them at some point and also the amount of uh and and also uh teachers adhering to the homework uh weekend policies and uh also taking a look at the amount of uh tests that are due on certain days and and the amount of work that's uh being requested during the week so i i think all these things in the pandemic have been exacerbated but i also believe that going forward uh they become really uh points for us to take a look at when
034we set a plan for next year even with in-person instruction students should not be spending five six seven eight hours a day on homework that's not healthy that stress level cannot continue and you know high school's supposed to be a time for enjoyment in addition to uh preparing yourself for the next phase of whatever that career path is um so i think buying you know this has to be this is this is these are data points uh that i think moving forward for the remainder of the year and also as you as the new administration starts to plan for future years i think you need to take a hard look at a number of things uh so that students can enjoy their high school career and also achieve their individual goals of of doing whatever
035they want to do from a career standpoint so i think this is an important survey i think it's a data point and i think it's something that the administration teachers and the high school administration specifically will take into account when they build their schedules and look at class loads and advise students on taking uh the appropriate courses which are going to necessitate uh the additional time um that a youngster you know that a student would have to be involved in in doing academic work you know there has to be a balance besides the academic load almost all the students are involved in clubs and activities some are involved in athletics uh so there's there's additional uh time and preparation uh josh and i were speaking before the board came on and the debate team were
036state champions and we were just talking about you know that and that that's a whole nother workload uh for students who participate in these kinds of activities and there are hundreds of students that participate in all kinds of activities whether they be debate or or music so the balance that high school life and making it a healthy academic and a stress-free life uh is something that i think the uh school administration has to take very seriously thank you thank you dr glossa dan oh the question i just uh mister before uh mr katz i just did the math really quickly for the stress stress question specifically so for kids taking aps from zero one or two aps the stress level was eighty-two percent overall it was eighty-five percent so three percent yes thank you dan
037well the question was uh you know what standards should we have uh you know for things like homework and stress levels and what information can we get in in real time so when they exceed our standard we can make adjustments quickly you know we could send out you know a note to teachers you know we monitor this situation and we feel that our stress is too high with the environment we're in and you know please be conscious as you give up homework but more real-time data and feedback so we can adjust along the way instead of looking back at data that could be you know dated by the time we receive it you know what standards should we have uh gene uh thanks uh yash and maya for the great report and i really appreciated
038having it in writing to look at it for a while i wondered if you had any suggestions on whether or how we should change the culture in the high school regarding ap classes and the you know the need to take many of them as opposed to a select few i know in the past there's like a question about like should we uh completely remove or like have a cap on the amount of aps and students were saying oh yeah that's that would be a great option and then when actually asked on like the stanford success survey i believe overwhelmingly students said no to that so i think it is something we could consider putting a cap on but like students thought it would be a great idea but when it actually comes down to it
039i don't think students do want to put a cap on the amount of aps they take i think students really enjoy taking a lot of aps um and it's like a hard culture to get rid of uh and i it might be like just like the high competitive competitive environment that we have at our school i think like if we could maybe ask like do another survey regarding the culture of like ap classes and high pressure courses um and see whether students have changed their minds on putting a cap on the amount of aps you can take i know it is something that um a lot of high schools do do and are uh changing uh so it it's a it's a great question that we can see barry haven't you reconvened the ap committee
040i we i have not i don't know if bob has has if that's going on at the high school or not but i have not it can be reconvened the ap committee okay sorry interesting if you look at the data it um it would kind of it's counterintuitive it's only a three percent difference which is insignificant um as far as a stress level anyway i mean that there are other issues but just from self-reporting of students that doesn't seem to be it it's also maybe self-selecting but it's um that's just an interesting data point because i would have thought the exact opposite also another thing miss durbin i know miss baxter before she left was talking about or this was an idea that was also discussed that once you take a certain number of ap
041classes you're also required to have a free period um so that like and decrease stress um make life easier so for example last year my junior year i did have a free period and i also took seven ap exams which is kind of showing the way that our culture is not the best in the world um but the free period was very helpful for me with stress overall so i think that that is also a discussion that can be done here and i think so much of this is just driven by college um college is that kind of like big bad monster that's lurking after four years especially an environment like princeton where overwhelmingly the idea is that you need to get into a good college and go to college so i think just by
042the virtue of us being a stone stove from the university which is an ivy league school um just the expectation of being an affluent place like princeton that contributes a lot to that i know in the next couple of years as like test option continues and all these things continue that stress is going to exist or get exacerbated because admissions are getting even more competitive um like this year was insanely competitive next year we'll probably continue that trend so the stress is here to stay unless there's some very radical change taken well thank you for this conversation and dr glosso you are meeting with the students now regularly right you have a committee we have uh we have a monthly meeting that we've met three times and we're now waiting for a reschedule probably right
043after this right after the spring break for a uh an april meeting i know josh was going to meet with the student council and they were going to decide on the number of students who would be meeting with the central administration and the high school administration going forward okay great all right so i think we're ready to move on thank you again students for your for your um you know great input into the meeting it's really important and we're so we're very glad to hear from you um that brings me to my report and i'm going to change the tone just a little bit and just take a pause and for something quite serious um we the pps board of ed joined the princeton community in mourning the victims of the shootings in atlanta and
044acknowledged with the deepest concern the nationwide rise in violence discrimination and xenophobia directed against the asian-american and pacific islander or aapi community the most recent examples of racism and injustice directed at the aapi community diminish the diversity of our community and serve as a painful reminder that we must announce all discrimination and stereotyping against asian americans we all share the obligation to stand up against racism wherever and whenever we find it the mission of the princeton public schools to support the building of lives of joy and purpose and citizens of a global society strive to ensure that students of all backgrounds cultures and identities are welcome safe respected and nurtured in our schools and community we will continue to support aapi students and staff and continue the work confronts racism in our district and beyond
045um we're now going to take a moment uh for some gratitude debbie braunfell would you like to take over yes yes yes yes so for our board gratitude moment we would like to acknowledge mickey team of nurses we have vera maynard at cp liz um jp holly javik at little brook sarah goon chan at riverside kathleen um cassandra ortiz margarita cruz lisa smith and janelle stuckey we also want to thank our school doctor dr robert helmrich our partners at the princeton health department jeff grosser and kathy corwin our local board of health dr meredith kodak avalos and george differiondo for developing and implementing the health protocols that have made it possible for our staff and students to safely return to in-person learning and to keep them there and today i had a first-hand view of
046our wonderful nurses at work i with many staff administrators and several board members received our first covet vaccine under our nurses care so we all want to thank you very much and appreciate that you were there thank you thank you debbie and one more quick thing and for my statement i would like to directly address a petition that has been circulating in town that implies the board of education does not understand the urgency of returning our students to normal in-person learning in september this is simply not the case the full reopening of schools in the fall is the top concern of the board after spring break with the help of tents plexiglass and very creative scheduling we anticipate welcoming between eighty five and ninety six percent of our elementary students back into our buildings four
047days a week as well as all six graders who choose to be in person up to seventy five percent of our middle school students and up to seven hundred students at phs including approximately three hundred seniors who may want to return for the last two months of senior year many families have decided to continue their students in remote learning which remains a robust option this year as for the fall we will do everything in our control to bring back all pps students potential potential obstacles include the status of the pandemic and whether staff and students feel comfortable in person and of course mandates from the state of new jersey including the governor the state legislature and the department of education as a as a public governing body the board of education is required to follow
048federal state and local law regulations and guidance community members can help us return to full-time school in september by reaching out to state legislators into the governor's office to express their concerns and to urge state officials to provide new jersey public school administrators as soon as possible with clear and specific guidance please see the pps website and this meeting agenda for specific questions that would be helpful to have answered for us to plan effectively for the fall we appreciate the princeton community's strong and active support for public education and for our students who very much need to return to normal in-person learning thank you and with that i'm going to turn it over to superintendent galasso okay thank you thank you very much uh in keeping with the in in support of the board statement
049regarding discrimination against the asian american and asian american community and pacific island islander community a meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow between the board of education leadership administrators in the district and parents who are a member of the asian american community the wednesday evening meeting will be a listening session we want to hear the community's concerns and recommendations on the topics of communications curriculum and student life this will be the first step in establishing what i hope will be an online ongoing dialogue between the asian american parents and students and our administrators and faculty i would like to commit our resources as a district to help our students and families feel safe physically and emotionally and that we continue to move forward in our mission to diminish discrimination and racial stereotyping in our schools with
050that i would also like to provide the community with a vaccine update i am really pleased to um to report tonight that uh with a thousand vaccinations last saturday a thousand vaccinations scheduled for this saturday uh 150 uh done in cooperation with our partners in cranberry today the um penn medicine at princeton who have been a phenomenal partner in the last two weeks providing over two or three hundred vaccines for mercer county uh teachers and staff in addition to that the um princeton health department and i wanna also wanna thank some of the parents who sent us links that we were able to forward to our teachers and staff prior to us being able to organize a formal vaccination program we have another a vaccination program next tuesday in lawrence and we believe after that
051that all staff in mercer county and all of our teachers who've wanted to be vaccinated are either completely vaccinated or in process of being receiving their you know receive their first shot and then we'll receive their second shot but i want to thank all of our partners i want to thank the community for your advocacy um we now have our teachers and hopefully after spring break when we're returning our students to school and for in-person instruction uh we're doing it with uh of the faculty that's protected against the virus and i want to thank again all of our community partners i want to a special thank you to debbie millar who's the coordinator for the penn medicine at princeton she has been a phenomenal partner i also want to uh express my thanks to the
052mercer county education association whose lobbying efforts and support and organization uh have made this all possible so it's a it's a good news uh our teachers are vaccinated our staff are vaccinated our kids are returning to school and we're pleased that the last two and a half months will be a return to as close as normal as we possibly can make i also want to thank our unions for joining together and providing assistance to the community and in food security uh so we really say thank you i know there was an article in the newspaper today talking about their efforts and but i wanted to acknowledge them tonight so thanks to the three unions of the princeton educational community uh for uh providing that food security for our youngsters is really needed so once again
053thank you on behalf of the entire community i just wanted to echo uh pres the school board president's comments with regard to school opening plans uh if you if you're riding around our schools you'll notice the tents are being erected at the middle school the high school in our elementary schools um on april 19th as beth had indicated we expect between 85 and 96 of our elementary students to be back four days a week the middle school we welcomed all of our sixth graders i visited the middle school yesterday to look at the social distancing and also the plexiglass and the ppe e mitigation standards that we put in place the administration at the middle school is to be complimented for the work that they're doing the senior high school acting principal warren and his
054staff have been doing a phenomenal job bringing cohorts in a and b together and forming a new cohort d and as you had indicated in your comments we're now reaching out to the seniors to see how many of them would like to return to princeton high school for the last two and a half months to make that senior year just a little bit special with some in-person instruction and a chance to to do some of the social emotional and participate in some of the senior year activities which hopefully will be memorable for a long time to come so i just wanted to share that and indicate and reaffirm that the primary goal for september is to open in person i've asked dr ginsberg to put together three teams of people at the elementary middle and
055the high school level and their task is by june 1 to provide me three different plans full in-person option and then the plan for b and c depending upon the variance of the of the virus any governmental changes any any reversal of a governor's position with regard to um he said the other day unequivocally there would be no remote option if there happens to be a change because of the virus surge or some sort of variant that they're not anticipating today we need to have plans a b and c but i we're going to reiterate our first option is full in-person instruction in september we're getting our facilities ready our business administrator is working hard uh all the referendum work uh is being um is being pushed as quickly as the board of education can
056possibly do it we do have some facilities challenges but they're being met we're ready to bond i'm sorry we're ready to bid and award contracts for roofing and for other hvac improvements uh over the summer so that our schools are ready in september for in-person instruction uh with that we always it's been tradition since i've been here we've always tried to highlight one of our school programs and tonight is no different i would like to introduce our supervisor of science professional development testing and assessment merger baja she works with all of our science teachers katie 12 and she loves loves to share the amazing things that they're doing in the classroom myrtle is a teacher and a chemist by training and she's passionate about science but she's also passionate about equity and tonight she's going
057to share a video from the middle school that will show how science teachers at pooms work with sixth and eighth grade students to create the jedi projects which stands for justice equity diversity and inclusion so with that merger please thank you dr glasser for the kind words and for an opportunity to share with the board and the community our students work so one of our most critical practices both as a district and as a department is to explore equity and implement equitable practices in our classrooms we have spent several years exploring our implicit biases and trying to understand the systemic racism that plagues our country as educators we recognize our responsibility to not only teach the content and processes of science but to also recognize that a curriculum has not addressed diversity and inclusion as
058readily as it should keeping this in mind we have embarked on our curricular reform efforts one such effort is part of the app or the alternative professional project of our middle school science teachers who designed and implemented a research project called the jedi of science the school year traditionally our curriculum has not intentionally addressed equity issues this project is our first step in facilitating a shift towards more equitable practice our goal is to provide the mirrors and windows for students to see themselves in the science profession and empathize with those who struggled and overcame barriers to ultimately experience success within their field here is a video with clippings of student work which demonstrates the interdisciplinary approach we adopted when designing the project i hope you will enjoy the video as much as our students did
059working on the project the princeton unified middle school science department is pleased to share the jedi project with you sixth and eighth grade science classes at princeton unified are making the connection this year to jedis integrating the exploration of justice equity diversity and inclusion into our curriculum the jedi research project encourages students to explore and celebrate bypoc excellence in stem fields while learning about possible stem career paths students select a jedi to research and then share their lives research and discoveries through a presentation on the social learning platform flipgrid a grading rubric is used to provide detailed feedback to students here are some examples of the clever and original work that our students have produced we have an important announcement for all of you around watching delta science news i'm wayland del hoyt reporting live
060today we will be having an interview with helen rodriguez trias we'll begin in just a second hello everybody we're so glad you could join us tonight let's move on to our first topic rodriguez trios was born july 7th 1929 new york city united states died december 27 2001 santa cruz california contributions of my dad contributions to science and society one guy founded the greenbelt movement in 1977 in kenya nine trees were being planted for every 100 trees that were being chopped down all the trees that were being cut down caused a major plot problems in kenya such as soil runoffs water pollution making it hard to obtain firewood and animals being deprived of food and water images of her contributions to society my jedi of environmental science project is on george washington carver george washington
061carver was born into slavery in diamond grove missouri in the early or mid-1860s and died on january 5th 1943 at the tuscany institute in alabama george washington carver was born into slavery and he and his mother were kidnapped in the civil war his owners moses carver and susan carver weren't able to find his mother but found him and raised him then he went to the university of reachment on a football where he received a bachelor's degree in chemistry and then they wanted to use if they were science degree materials science engineering from university of virginia [Music] she finished high school just two years [Music] then she attended howard university [Music] who are the smartest of all rising up to the challenges of our world and without them [Music] that man had a bomb how did
062he know well it's all thanks to betty harris yes an african-american scientist born in louisiana in 1940s she was the seventh of 12 siblings with a mother who encouraged all of them greatly to attend school as the mother was a teacher as well what does this have anything to do with the bomb betty harris got a phd in chemistry at the university of new mexico she became an expert in explosives and developed a test to spot exactly this type of explosive the th samuel p massey is a historical icon he showed us that we don't need to be white we don't need to have skin that's bright we don't need other people's sights and opinions so that we might succeed in our lives his story told us not to let anything stand in our way
063don't let your dreams float away grab a hold of them seize your day today the 10 most important two-letter words in the english language if it is to be it is up to me samuel p massey jr thank you and i'll just say end with this you know the the last line in that video if it is to be it is up to me says it all thanks mergilet thank you very much thank the students and the teachers uh on behalf of the board of education uh really outstanding um you know we talked a little bit about the uh the student survey and screen time this is actually you know collaboration engagement um and student involvement and and really all the standards are being taught with this engagement project so the teachers are to be
064commended along with yourself so thank you very much thank you that concludes my report thank you yeah that was wonderful thank you dr glasso thank you mr bajaj that was amazing um dr glosso i think we have this cool calendar next is that part of your report uh well yes i'm just going to be recommending that the uh you know we've had the school calendar uh vetted for the last few months and we're just recommending that the school calendar be approved by the board of education thank you that's an action item do i have a motion for that um but betsy second debbie any discussion debbie yep i just want to bring up again that i would love to work with people to get voting out of our schools and that way we also won't
065be going you know later and later into june um our governor is making sure that we can vote in person in june this june might be hard but i just we find it ridiculous for have to have to school off so i'm hoping the council will come and want to work with us thank you thank you any other comments betsy just to note for parents watching september 8th is the first day of school for students and this calendar is attached to our board agenda but i assume it will also be published to our website once it's approved by the board correct okay brian yeah one uh question is it still our hope and intent that in succeeding years we will do everything in our power to begin the school year sooner i know that's something
066a lot of people have talked about and i think a lot of parents would welcome that yeah i think it's a stated goal i think for next year that the reason we did not move in that direction if you look at labor day the lateness of labor day the jewish holiday uh the foul is labor day and in addition to that you have a number of hvac and renovate referendum projects are going to be completed during the summer time so it probably is in the best interest of the school district to open uh with this particular calendar for next year and then look at future years after your referendum work has been complete um so to be sure the schools are ready for for opening okay i realized i misstated it's actually september 9th this
067is the first day of school i'm sorry about that trying to do a public service announcement here and got it wrong okay thanks betsy if uh there's no further comment uh mr bolton could you call the roll please yes beth baron yes debbie bronson yes dan dart yes yes brian mcdonald yes y'all talk ponder yes your cats yes staff mckendall yes using cancer yes durbin yes ocean past motion past unanimous thank you um that brings us to our first public comment of the evening uh we ask that the uh if you would like to speak you raise your hand in the in the in your screen and mr bolden will will call on you if you could state your name and your address and please keep your min your comments to three minutes uh that
068would be helpful and we will be keeping time thank you oliver juan wine hi yeah so um i'm a student at phs um and i just wanted to talk a little bit about the asian hate crimes so what we see at like atlanta is kind of a reflection of just the fact that there's been a lot of asian hate and just an asian neglect throughout all of our times and so i remember the first time like i've been having asian hate since i was very little i think one of the things that really struck me really hard was when i was in seventh grade and i was sitting in homeroom and i had someone in my class blatantly ask like as a tau whether or not i ate a dog and so it was like
069the most really demeaning and the fact is whether or not i ate a dog isn't really like up for grabs because just because i eat a dog doesn't mean that i'm less human that's incredibly ethnocentric and i've had these racist spots go on and on since a lot of my times here at the school district and i remember when i was in eighth grade i had a kid this was last year during the coronavirus someone shoved an umbrella in front of my face and then just said dude it's to keep the corona away from you and these things keep on going and this is how like the hate that's been sown all around us and this builds up into people coming into spas and literally shooting six asian victims and also i'd like to lastly
070address the board's email about anti-asian hate um it was incredibly vague and i think it's kind of emblematic of the fact that this board is not really doing a good job at communicating with the asian parents and a lot of the asian members of just the school in general and it's also a greater concern that asian people have been more and more angry that we've kind of been neglected a lot and i think one of the ways we can see that is like in our schedule where even though we make up like a large percentage of the school's population we still don't have chinese new year as a school holiday off at all and it's kind of infuriating that like even with our size we're still not getting a holiday on so i think i'm
071just gonna challenge the board to just do better and also for our school to actually address you know the eat the asian racism that goes on in our school every day and even if it's like small things that aren't really violent it's kind of emblematic about how we've ignored asian hate and kind of left it out so thank you thank you oliver i just can i just say something about i just wanted to say you know apologize to oliver that he experienced um that kind of um racism and um in new york city i think it was yesterday um there was video of someone beating up a 65 year old i think uh asian american and there are bystanders there who just stood and took pictures and i just think it's a reminder that we
072all like you said beth in your statement that we all have a responsibility to speak out against this kind of behavior thank you dr rogart thanks can you guys hear me yes great um first i would like to thank dr galasso for his tireless efforts in preparing for a return to full in-person school as soon as possible i do want to point out some inaccuracies in the statement read by beth first when referring to four days of in-school education for elementary school children the public should know that these are actually half days not full days in other words less than 50 percent of normal in-person school for for our elementary school children why not five half days a week honestly i have no idea second current new jersey law and guidance from the governor consistent
073with cdc guidelines does in fact allow for full in-person school not just in september but also now so the guidance is there in fact there are more than 140 schools in new jersey currently providing full in-person school according to the governor third i and i assume most other parents who value their children's education and well-being i'm offended by the statement that full in-person school in the fall depends on quote staff comfort this is not consistent with state guidelines not consistent with cdc recommendations and in fact in my opinion is unethical given the preponderance of evidence supported by the cdc reported in a great article today on cnbc that distance learning is likely more harmful toward children than the risks of in-person education thank you for your time and again thank you to dr colossa for
074his tireless efforts thank you renee obregon hi yes um can you hear me yes we can very thank you so much on 38 walker drive um got two kids in the middle school one heading into high school i'd like to say that i'm very pleased with some of the moves that the board of education and administration have done to open schools however there seems to be a disconnect between the actions and the language and the language is what bothers me because it leaves me nervous about next year so today there was comment about state mandates and there are no mandates um you know about not preventing kids coming to school if you read the road back plan there's no mention of mandates it all it doesn't make recommendations it provides guidance it allows for modifications
075if you can't meet that guidance we relied on the cdec for the six foot rule now that they've reduced it to three feet we can't sit there and ignore the cdc guidance so i just want to make sure that you know we use our the language that the board of ed uses very carefully because again it's sending very different messages to versus the actions and the actions i think are promising but if you start using language that feels like you're leaving um wiggle room to go back it's going to put a lot of pressure on parents certainly myself to really push against the board and trying to make sure that you know come september that there is no wiggle room because the most important thing is getting these kids back into school for a full
076five day a week class no exception um thank you very much for your time again thank you for the efforts that you're making but please make sure that the language matches the actions because right now they're not thank you anna chalker can you hear me yes we can sorry uh good evening everyone and thank you for your time again and what i'd like to talk about is is kind of some facts that we're we're looking at because again we want to always think about our public system and our public schools against other public schools that are in our surrounding areas because that's really who we should be basing all of our discussions on not private school public schools and um basically last friday our children went into school on a friday in person for the
077first time in 372 days and i think that's an amazing achievement and i thank the superintendents and the board of ed for letting that happen but it's also a very large number of days for a friday that children have not been in person school in the middle and the high school i understand that the elementary have been going back five days only half days so i think again the the language thing is is important because when you make a statement that we are going back in person we want to go back in person full-time and education it's got to be until three o'clock or 3 10 or however when the bell goes it's got to be everybody offered and we need to get these children away from the screen time you've seen with your report
078tonight i mean it's just staggering the amount of time high schoolers are spending um on a screen doing work and homework that they're expected to do so and and i i don't i'm not surprised that there isn't um a huge discrepancy between children doing ap classes and children not doing ap classes i think um we need to really look at that and i think that should be something that is on at the top priority um for the superintendents i and the board of ed to look at um and i would just like to see that we're working towards getting everybody back in front of a teacher being taught by a teacher without any electronic devices thank you thank you john mccann hey how's everyone doing uh john mccann i'm co-president of prea and i just
079want to thank the board students parents fellow teachers staff and everyone who's in this partnership of the princeton public schools for helping to continue the learning of our students at a high level during these trying times as a parent i understand the struggle the families have endured during the pandemic i want to thank the parents out there and the sacrifices they've made to help with their students education and to keep everyone safe so happy for the community support for teachers that we've been given um everyone has faced many challenges during this pandemic and we continually meet them together my mother-in-law passed away this december at age of 65 from covid uh unexpectedly and there's so many countless people uh who have been affected by this pandemic in spite of all though we've maintained school and
080students learning we have come a long way um last june our former district administrative strait of leadership decided to retire in the midst of a global pandemic and i really want to thank dr glasso and the board for their leadership during these trying times dr glasso how to navigate a really difficult evolving and complex situation this summer there were three unresolved labor contracts and they all became resolved the buildings are old construction projects were taking place throughout the district and many buildings had poor ventilation the amount of work to get the ventilation systems working dealing with the space constraints establishing safety protocols ordering ppe also ordering new technology and computers for our staff and students as well as training them on this new technology while implementing a new learning management system was a huge lift
081it was an immense challenge that all district employees rose to meet and exceed at the same time we've been balancing the needs of not only in-person learners but remote learners and in person learning began all the way back in october which is a huge feat considering all these factors during the pandemic other districts in new jersey were not able to open some of them for in person until january even even late as february as teachers we look forward to the expansion of in-person learning welcoming back new students the start of spring sports as well as continuing the robust learning for students who choose to learn from home to all the stakeholders we welcome a continued partnership and moving towards what we all hope to be a more traditional school year starting in september so thank
082you everyone out there thank you john joseph ass axe hi this is actually megan axe's wife um i just want to echo my agreement with some of the previous comments that were made in support of further in-person reopening um i think that four half days in person are just not enough especially for our youngest students um it's it's not clear why no fridays um no no in-person fridays are happening um and just again that the evidence suggests that transmission rates are low in school are only going to get better as the teachers are vaccinated which we heard earlier is happening in large numbers and just generally student health i believe and i think as we've seen in the evidence is best served by students being in person full-time thank you thank you uh there are
083no other comments at this time okay if there's no other comments there's one oh yeah there is one yes dr rose can you hear me yes okay hi um i wanted to go last to make sure other people spoke but um first of all i do want to thank everybody for moving forward i'm so glad the kids are in school more um it's really terrific um a couple of things i want to say is i you know i'm concerned that the tents are terrific but they don't work in the winter when the weather is poor um so i just want to think about well what's going to happen in late october and november um when it's cold or when there's a lot of thunderstorms or what what's the plan for then um so i think
084we need to be thinking about that i'm really concerned that the middle school is still mostly zoom when the kids are in person the middle school i i'm so frustrated with the middle school the kids are really on hours and hours and zoom when they're at home and they have hours and hours of zoom when they're at school um and it's really bad for their attention it's bad for their development it's just i personally i think it's terrible so i just have concerns about that um and i want to reiterate what some of the other speakers said the board continues to say that recommendations from the governor's office are laws honestly beth they're not laws their recommendations you really have to read the document and when you look at the document there is some leeway
085based on what each school is able to do and i think the board needs to really look at that and stop telling the public that they are laws their recommendations some of them don't have any leeway but many of them do and the board has chosen not to have like leeway within these recommendations um so i think that's really important as we move forward that we really flesh out what do we have to do and what do we have some leeway with to do what's best for kids all right thank you thank you dr rose can i justin matthews uh hello justin matthew sixth grade social studies at the middle school um i i just want i wasn't planning on speaking um but i just wanted everyone on the panel to know on monday i
086welcomed 18 students back into my room first period first block and one student remained online i spoke privately with that student and i said do you want to be on the big screen the way that we have always had the zoom students in my room being a shy student she said no my other students who i didn't require to be on zoom found out that there was one student who would be on zoom by herself and this one of the students said there is no way she's being by herself let's all log on i was so proud of my kids that that moment um i'm trying really hard to get my kids off of zoom but as long as we have kids at home i don't know how we can leave them there without the
087rest of the students um so my students made me proud this week um and we've welcomed back more sixth graders than we've ever have uh and i'm ready i'm ready for next year i'm ready to bring them all back um but my kids made me proud this week and i just want to make sure everybody knows that thank you thanks justin there are no other comments at this time okay and we'll move on we are in um i one of the agenda harassment intimidation and bullying it's a consent item so we'll go through that one and that takes us to the board committee reports um and there we start with equity and i believe that debbie is going to give that report yes thank you very much uh the equity committee met on monday march
0888th mr burr gave an update on the poom's renaming project mr burr shared with the committee that the website to view the student's nomination was live and he explained the voting process and the plan to present names to the board for discussion the committee presented the themes that emerged from the february equity jam board activity they were grouped based on three categories instructional structural and cultural beliefs the meeting again broke into small groups with the overall focus continuing to define equity for the princeton public schools the focus was on culture at princeton public schools and we discuss possible barriers that must be acknowledged and i'm sorry must be acknowledged based on the district so we can move forward at the elementary level the middle school and the high school level ideas from the breakout room
089were shared with the whole group our next meeting is monday april 12 which is right after break at 7 pm all are welcome and it's been a great discussion so we would really love to have you join us thank you thank you debbie any questions next that makes uh we're going to operations and that will be susan and brian um i'll be very brief our last meeting was march 10th and i'll throw it over to brian but in terms of the facilities we've received an update on the referendum we um discussed uh the possible pool um bid that we're going to take to make sure that our hvac for the pool is operating in the long term efficiently we've discussed rfps that matt will be sending out for the board to see in future meetings
090and possibly approve for this summer's work for some small to medium-sized projects that we're going to try to potentially do this summer and then i'll throw it over since more of our meeting was for the budget okay brian yes we did have a robust conversation about the budget and um the results of all that were presented by matt um at the buzz budget um presentation when we adopted a tentative budget for the year with a 1.025 percent increase in the overall tax levy and matt and the committee will be working before we have to adopt the final budget to see if it's possible to do better one of the challenges which is also a discussion topic are opportunities that might exist for us to do more to control the growth of health care expenses which
091have been a challenge for every district throughout the the state to manage and that's something that matt is um spending a lot of time thinking about um and i think that those are the highlights okay thank you brian is there any questions if not we go to personnel and that's michelle tuck ponder you're muted michelle sorry i'm having technical difficulties tonight i'm on my phone um so our last meeting of the personnel committee was on march the 3rd and i will confess to being new at this and i as you may have guessed many of the topics we talk about at personnel are confidential so i'm going to share with you um what i think is not confidential and um hopefully i'll be right um some of the issues that we talked about during that
092meeting were about spring break and quarantine following spring break we had an update on the phs principal search and we also had conversations about staff adjustments and filling um certain roles and our next meeting is going to be this thursday april 1st and it's not open to the public so thank you michelle report okay um next is policy gene uh thanks beth the policy committee met on march 19th uh we discussed policies for review on first and second read they're further down in the agenda tonight board governance and advocacy issues um for board governance we're working as a board on committee charges to help us focus and frame our work um policy issues we referred an anti-racism anti-bias policy to the equity committee for recommendations and direction conduct and discipline policy will be referred by
093dr golosa or has been already to his administration staff and students for review and recommendations for our next meeting include exploring advocacy opportunities to support full reopening exploring opportunities continuing to support teachers and all staff being vaccinated advocating for additional state and federal funding and continuing with the regular policy review cycle to make sure that we're that we have the best policies that fit with our mission um and our next meeting is uh april 16th at 7 30 a.m thank you one question what was the one you sent to equity oh so it's just a question for equity on how we move forward on an anti-racism anti-bias policy i think we have an anti-bias policy an anti-racism policy okay are there model policies you'd like for us to look at i'd love to find some
094yeah but that would be great but we i didn't want to assume it's it's for equity to decide i know i'm a member of equity too right but um okay we didn't know about this yeah maybe you can follow up with that offline perfect one sure thanks great i just have a question about um how a policy uh who who decides the policy is getting updated because as you know we had a policy that was uh totally incorrect and um came from njsba so are they telling us that we need to update these policies and then not giving us um you know the correct wording or is this something that we're deciding to do matt do you want to speak to that one can you uh ask that again i'm sorry it was one of
095the board members was asking me a question it was maybe barry can speak to it yeah i i yeah i think i think what uh the doctrine is referring to when the board switched from uh one service policy service to njsba and they you they did a rollover um now from what i can tell because i wasn't here when you did it but from what i can tell they probably missed about 15 or 20 policies in the rollover so now they've gone through the policy book they did an audit for you and they changed the pronouns and then they did an audit and they said oh wait a minute these policies didn't didn't roll over from the previous policy service so some of the policies that the committee is dealing with currently are policies that
096they are recommending because they're either mandated or statutorily required and therefore we they should be included in your policy manual so that's how that's being handled at the moment daphna once that is complete then the policy committee will go on a regular schedule typically school districts look at the 100 series and then they move to the 200 series and periodically you get recommendations from your policy service because either a uh either the policies change the laws change or there's some reference that's changed and they're advising you of that and then you have the option of adjusting your policy or not adjusting your points but we had a policy that was on was going to be on that yeah got a policy that they sent to matt and they sent the wrong edition so when he
097edited it and when we reviewed it something didn't sound right and eventually it was ngsba sent matt the wrong version right because i emailed you because that's near and dear to my heart they sent me the whole version of the policy so i mean that's your policy service that you know unfortunately they made a mistake so can i further on that because i had sent a bunch of comments too and then i wrote to the policy committee and said what happened so maybe because we had you would ask barry for us to send you comments if things are not on if we could be told because ladies ladies we answered that by email it's pulled from the agenda you were aware of that we had email correspondence about it so it's not on it's not
098on the agenda i understand that but i spent the mistake following up with what daphne said like it was directed it was very odd well i mean i'm not saying that i'm corrected right my concern is with the nj sba right because we can't we don't have the bandwidth to go through uh and be aware of all the laws yeah that's a good concern definitely i think that we're now on notice that that can happen and i think i think the board has had concerns since you made the switch um but you now have them as a policy service and uh i think now you know we're just going to have to work through some of the issues that that are presented by using them and this is one that we're going to have to
099be constantly aware of to make sure that we get the most updated policy for review when they send it to us so it was a good it was a good catch and the switch was started way back when before most of us oh but yeah we used to have strauss esme and then for whatever reason somehow there was a decision to switch it and and so during my last three years on the board we've been transitioning to the njsba and now we finally have finished and now we're like well we we have some concerns so we have to keep watching that and decide what we're going to do takes a long time to switch back and forth yeah i just think it's also important to in my experience the value like njsba rights for every
100school district right new jersey and our values might be different so i just think it's important um just to be aware of that thank you is there any more discussion about policy if not we'll go to student achievement daphna and you're up okay so thank you the student achievement committee met virtually on friday march 26th the first item of discussion was a result of parent surveys that were sent out to elementary middle and high school families dr ginsberg reported that most parents felt that in-person learning was more effective than remote learning parents across all grade levels cited positive support from teachers in regard to student needs finally the survey responses indicate that students in the middle and high school are still not getting enough sleep more than a few parents reported their middle schoolers are
101getting four hours of sleep so that was concerning the next item for discussion was just presented here tonight we talked about the justice equity diversity inclusion program nicknamed the jedi program um uh the purpose of this program as was said is to help have students explore bipoc excellence in stem learn about stem career paths and contributions made in the field of science and technology and we also watched the video of the outstanding student work the next item we discussed was a new biology ap book which is on the gender for board approval tonight uh the ap the college board requires that we um replace these books every 10 years marijuana baja and her staff concluded that the campbell ap biology textbook was the most inclusive of all the books they reviewed and they shared many
102pages with the committee and it looked definitely inspired us to learn science finally we discussed summer programming and we should have more information to share with the public in the near future the next sac meeting is on april 23rd at 9 30 and the public is welcome to attend thank you is there any questions uh if not uh negotiations i'm assuming there's nothing for the public tonight on that uh only that we have we have two contracts that are expiring uh june 30th and we're working diligently to you know ensure that they're renewed great thank you so that will take us on to k1 policies up for first read and those are all a consent yes debbie um so i have a comment on three five four two the part about and this has been
103an issue for a bunch of years the part about um if the students who are on free reduce and they don't choose all the items they get charged a la carte and we've had problems at the end of the school year where students are free and reduced had balances and i do remember there was a child who was afraid to tell his mother because she knew he couldn't pay and um i'm just wondering about the wording about what the training and kind of where we go from here because my what i would rather them do is take all four things and then have a share box or put it in the trash it doesn't really matter because the law makes free and reduced takes a certain amount and if you don't you get charged all
104a card and that is the worst part about it so i struggle with this one um and i struggled the last time we've seen it too and so i don't know where to go with this because i hate the fact that you know if we have free and reduced and they end up with um charges debbie where in the policy are you are you looking at three five four two point one yep under breakfast under lunch it's the last paragraph it's just three five four two just yeah three five four two i said it was part of the statute um the food service i know it says if students do not choose enough food items to compromise a um reimbursable meal a la carte prices will be charged and this this happens and students who
105are unfree and reduced have um a balance they have to pay so since i've been here so that is an issue and yes we and our staff work with the students to let them know to take the whole amount we have talked about sharing obviously it's not the best time while we're not eating in school but we've also generally uh not if they're free and reduced we write off the balance um the most we have to have the language that way that's the language it's it's part of the whole uh school lunch program they want children did you want to add some dr golasa you're muted you're immunitary i think you have to be very careful with the language i think your practice can be different than the language the practice is one of the
106uh humanitarian the policy i think is uh required under the child nutrition laws and for us to get the appropriate reimbursements am i not correct matt that is that is correct and basically that's what we do and we work with the kids to let them know they don't have to eat everything but there is from time to time um and you know as we were just kind of talking about when you pointed out you had some good comments on the policies then i realized that the statute was outdated they they hadn't updated it uh but there were some interesting points there about the uh you know um about the policy that he pointed out so i did take some of the language from strauss esme but yeah we are controlled by the statute um but
107sometimes some of the issues were you know a student so the what i was trying to say is when the statute was updated in 2018 they even made it more important not to stigmatize those students that are on free introduced launch so you know if a student comes up with the the slice of pizza that's you know a la carte so that's a constant issue you know we don't take away the pizza they they put the charge through but we try to educate children you know without stigmatizing them so it's a it's a constant battle we're doing a decent job here um i think overall and you know last year since i've been here we've written off um balances if the families are free and reduced it certainly would not be feasible to try to
108you know and as you can see in the elementary schools at least when i was there we were serving lunch uh we actually did what what debbie was talking about if children didn't eat stuff like it didn't use a milk container it was put up on the stage in a big bin so other kids could take an extra milk obviously if it wasn't open if they didn't eat an apple or something that was placed there uh so the things that were able to be done we did share with um or you know kids could get seconds so it was actually the the lunch workers the the cashiers who were the ones who we trained to encourage the kids to put everything on their plates so they wouldn't be charged more for less than than other
109would otherwise would happen i just i just want to highlight it because it's it's something that you know it goes back to what barry said that's the more humane way to deal with it can i just make a suggestion that maybe this could be brought up in operations but the this policy the food service policy which just to debbie's point which is 3542 um and it says no money shall be transferred from prince of public schools to any other counter fund except it's authorized by the board and i wonder if some you know the board could consider consider this in some meeting whether or not we can um pay those charges so in in a case where a student doesn't doesn't take takes an a la carte meal as opposed to the full meal and
110then gets a charge is can we look into the board covering those charges i was like that's what we've been doing in practice and as long as we have fun balance available and as long as the amount of those charges is not uh excessive you know it's a constant balance between you know so that essentially is is what happens now so one of the other statutory things that you can't take with the money out of food service for other funds too is also what they're going at everything has to stay in everything spent in the cafeteria has to be for the providing of food and food health and wellness related to the student population i know at the high school they've asked parents at that when their children are graduating if they want to make
111a donation of their balance to help other students and that has been happening for the last couple of years and then that money is being used to satisfy these these debts as well at the middle school matt you could follow up with the comment that we have in the chat from mr matthews um offline looks like there's something there to be sorted out um that takes us to the uh policies for second reading which are confusing okay okay okay um so i just have a a comment about um the use of school facilities policy 1330 and and it's kind of a broad overview around the use of school facilities and and as many of you know um i've i've been involved with girl scouts my entire life i used to lead a troop in the
112um john witherspoon neighborhood and one of the things that really used to make me very create a great challenge was kids who went to community park school we could not have girl scout meetings in that school and and the history and culture of girl scouting boy scouting and a lot of organizations that have saved a lot of kids lives um they've been attached to the school and so the difficulty of being able first of all to even know how to request to use the schools before i was in the school board and then um being subjected to you know a lot of requirements was really onerous for community-based organizations which may be national but are really serviced by volunteers um to have facilities to help the kids who attend our schools so i just want
113to you know i'm kind of looking through this and i run a a youth development program and it meets in schools all over the country and i just want to be sure as as as important as it is to protect the district and to not um encumber us with costs and to make sure that we're protected from liability and all those kinds of things in our effort to do that we have to make really sure that um we don't make it so onerous that we discourage those organizations from serving our kids in town and i will also say about voting because i know one of my colleagues will disagree with this vociferously but there's no from where i from from where i sit one of the most important things we can do is to show
114our kids um the right to vote and consistently demonstrate that to our kids and in a country and at a time when there are so many efforts to prevent people from voting i think the last thing that i want to be any part of whatsoever is to participate in any activity that's going to inhibit or make voting more difficult for the people in the town where i live so i just wanted to make sure i i said that when we're talking about the use of facilities can i just comment michelle you know i would never do that you know it's more so we can go to school and you know we keep the kids so separate from the voting these days i mean it's even worse they can't do gym class if it's a rotten
115day yeah i know that's not your intent but the outcome is voter intimidation or prohibiting people from voting we got to figure it out no of course not i would never i would never and we haven't even gotten that far no i haven't been able to talk to anyone yet i'm going to bring us back to the policies and there was a specific question about a policy michelle just raised and i think that matt in that policy there is a definitely it addresses non-profit organizations and you have the ability to definitely make have discretion to uh way fees and that type of thing for non-profits right correct right so michelle there is an ability in there the question is if you feel that there's a communication issue maybe we should talk offline about that with
116matt well there is because if you're a girl scout leader and you have to come in with a 501c3 letter and a certificate of insurance and all those kinds of things again we can look at the practicality of how that gets implemented but i want to say from personal experience it is really difficult to to do that kind of volunteer activity in our schools and it's not there's not clear direction on how it gets done so hopefully this policy will help clarify some of that thank you one one other quick question so the policies up for first reading i know some of these were just redone with the um policy manual so how did these five come to the forefront are there changes i know we started to talk about it but for example the
117community complaints is that a new policy that came through njsba no they were policies that during the transfer that never made it okay they never made it so now there was a list i think there were like 16 or 17 on the list got it sorry okay yeah yeah and i know you asked that earlier thank you betsy for asking it beforehand as well so thank you we didn't get that back to you um okay uh i think we're on the second reading policies any there you want to talk about all right then we're going to go through personnel and i'm going to go quickly and you can stop me if you want to say something l1 appointments these are all consent items transfers reassignments retirement i wanted to say something yeah um just about
118um miss bursta uh my children didn't take japanese but i've only heard um great things about what an exceptional teacher uh she's been for our kids so just wanted to wish her well in her retirement thank you i also wanted to note that the last in-person event i attended at phs was the asian fest last year and i was so moved to see the japanese language students doing a dance and there must have been 60 of them all at once and it was just incredible to uh to see so uh obviously there was some really wonderful things going on in those in those classes so we will we will certainly miss miss her um resignations personnel items leaves of absence curriculum and instruction student services epes substitute teachers the question on ep e-p-e-s matt is
119that coming out separately you know the athletic eps the next one oh sorry and then athletic eps is an action item can i have a motion please by daphne a second uh susan uh could we have a roll call for that one but i have a comment you know i don't know if brian still does um i just wanted to say it's really fabulous to see some sports for the middle school and i really appreciate the coaches that are doing it and everything i know that's been something we've been trying to that we've been talking about so i'm happy about that so i just wanted to ask a question since this didn't come to personnel mike um are most of these um how many how how many coaches did you have to get from out
120of the district to staff the programs i don't have those numbers handy i'd have to look i can report a personnel committee on thursday if you'd like thank you okay you want to call the role map absolutely beth barron yes eddie brownfield yes and art yes yes brian mcdonald epstein michelle talk ponder yes peter cats yes daphne candle yes losing cancer yes dean durbin yes motion passes that brings us to the settlement agreement with presa another consent item a sidebar on spring athletics middle school seventh period coverage a suspension of staff member and then we're an m1 njdoe preschool expansion aid textbook approval n1 professional consulting services and two professional consulting services and three invo health care and for educational placement and then o1 financial reports o2 renewal of transportation contract 03 renewal of athletic
121transportation 04 emergent purchases 05 exceptions of donation and here i just want to note we're receiving with gratitude a donation of a a brain specimen i thought that was interesting so thank you for that 06 fire and evacuation drills was seven registration and travel agenda and then that takes us to our second public comment on any topic again if you would like to speak please raise your hand in the chat in the zoom we ask you to keep to three minutes and state your name and address there are no comments if there's no comments we are on to the consent vote and matt do you want to um call the role oh no excuse me can i have a motion for that gene second um brian any discussion if not you could call the role
122please beth baran yes call me debbie yes sorry yes betsy bagwell yes brian mcdonald yes michelle talk ponder yes your cats yes dab the candle yes susan cantor yes dean durbin yes consent to gender passes thank you um i think that brings us to the closing comments i would like to ask dr galasa do we have a meeting on april 13th is that our next meeting we have i believe right tentative meeting on april 13th okay we haven't yet finalized that one yeah otherwise our next monthly will be april 27th and if there is no other matters to discuss um could i have a motion to adjourn uh daphna second susan thank you all in favor show of hands thank you motion pass unanimously we are adjourned thank you very much everyone good night good
123night everybody