001everyone there has been adequate notice of this meeting provided by the board of education march 18 2021 notice that the co-star is setting forth the date time and place for this meeting similar notice has been posted in the town hall of reality school website and the borough club has been notified can you please call the role here [Music] is [Music] can i have a question that the board accept the minutes of the september 22nd 21 regular public meeting minutes yes kurt and the second dennis oh sorry can you call the world a presentation tonight [Music] [Applause] [Music] have a crowd here um so this is one of the best presentations we've ever seen in a long time um i want to begin by uh you know thanking jed for all the work that she has
002put into this uh tireless hours but i want to remind everyone who just hired her in july and so i have to remind her almost daily you just started we've just begun this journey together and there's a long way to go but what you have done in a short time we are quite impressed and yes in our district you know you know we are you know one of the finest high performing districts in the state we're proud of that the reason we're proud of that is because we've had a great board you know leading the educational program for all these years um i should point out this doesn't happen in many places but i think the number's about 35 years you've only had three superintendents in 35 years that's really unheard of and so here
003you have to look at that as the steady shift moving along like when you have that it's really a great thing most importantly you have phenomenal teachers and this board has always recognized the great work that our teachers have done in the classroom the training they can have provided for them because many boards do not support the cultural belonging and we do i'd like to remind you again your support of professional development matters to every child in this building and so you've been strong supporters of having our teachers get the training that they need hang for because this board supported learning more about being a coach at the school but it's only been a short while this is the first year ever that we have a full-time math and reading interventionist or coach full-time we've
004never ever had that and i would say when you can get on board and prepare your programs that pushed it but cameron's fault in the budget we had to find this because she knew and others on our freedom really knew how important it was so with that said a full-time math and reading person and a curriculum supervisor for teachers we're at a good spot we're at a very very good spot and so in the short amount of time jen and her team and there is a team of us uh mr stacy and myself jen our interventionist that's lisa neither maria prendergast and some of our child study team members everybody had a handbrake guiding us through the creation of a wonderful internationality program so there's a lot of questions that we like to ask we
005talk to a lot of other professionals that have that program and then um and we have a program we have a wonderful name it's called reach you know we sat for a long time i think jen at one time came to a meeting there were ten choices you know like let's narrow it down we want a great name we want a great name we love our neighbors and even with the reach program we also have different programs tonight a win program what i mean and which started it and i have to say you know we're a small school so to find personnel to do things uh on certain periods it was very hard to do but this summer when we worked on our schedule we worked hard to find those missing pieces so that we
006could do a win program and we're going to explain that tonight so and just in general trying to win uh it's one period and children get their needs met what i mean and so children who need basic skills children who need enrichment children who need certain skills will get that during their win period and the children that have a grade level when they go to win they're mixed in other kids from their grade level so they get to interact that social piece with other kids from other grade levels so a lot has been done jenny gets all the credit uh because you know she she's lost on this uh she comes every morning with more questions um what do you think of this what do you think of that and so we're gonna just talk
007about and this is on our website about what we have you know come up with to support children so that they can reach all the potential possible jen and jenna's not going to read this powerpoint so hi everyone thank you for taking the time to listen today i couldn't be more excited about our new reach program here for y'all it stands for realizing excellence through academic challenge and like chris said if you're bouncing all these different you know names and i just feel like this was the best one for our students all the information in this live show is on the website so you can feel free to go and read through it at your leisure i'm just going to highlight a few points from slideshows just to give you an overview of the program
008so new jersey recently had passed the strengthening gifted and talented education act so we are following the state requirements for this program we had already been following them at a basic level but with this program we created a more rigorous gifted and talented pull-out program which i'm really proud of this program includes an ongoing identification process with multiple measures which we will ultimately conduct every spring we're aligning the national association of gifted children programming standards to our lessons in reach we're providing modifications and accommodations for our special ed students and we're also including interdisciplinary connections along with the rigorous curriculum for those students which are all part of the strengthening gifted and talented education act so what is the research study overall it says that gifted and talented learners are typically two to five percent
009of our population and kda clustering with impasse differentiation is an effective model of a gnt program which like i said before we have been using from the beginning through all of our k-a classrooms every day so the next piece i want to go into is our identification process it does vary depending on the grade levels and typically it will be conducted every spring so it was a little bit different the blueprints which again are on the website are a little bit different for this year because we collected some of the data in the spring and some was collected this fall so for students in grades k through two the measures that we use for our blueprint for identification or the i ready map because they don't take the ela in because we have other measures
010that we use teacher recommendation report card grades and then the code gap which we administered for the first time this year um we finished it for eighth grade last year but this year we're administering it four grades eight through eight times two minutes our kindergarten reach program will not start until january we need to collect some more data before we can decide who we can identify for that program so we will administer the progress to the kinder partners in december and then we will administer the i ready to those students in early january with the start date and hopefully sometime and then again there is a minimum score on the bookworm for students to be able to qualify for the program and for the kh2 students it is a 9 out of a total of
01115. for grades three to eight the measures that we're using are the kodak i ready eli and math teacher recommendation report borrow rates and come this spring you will most likely add an nj sla onto that guru as well so since we are in the developmental stages of both the reach program and our win program you know things will be added on and changed as we as we go through the year or this year there is a total score of 19 points with it uh with a minimum of 13 to be able to qualify for the program so just a little overview about the cocad for anyone who's not aware of it it is not an iq test it is a cognitive abilities test it is one of the measures that we use on the
012uber it's used widely across the state of new jersey and the nation for g t identification there are different criteria that are created once you administer the token what we chose to use was the age percentile rank and the cogai indicates that students that score above 95 are considered very good this percentage equates on a rubric to a score however this was not the only indicator we used we also broke it down into other percentages lower than 95 we did that every criteria so not one area a student will be eliminated if they didn't score for example in this 95 percent are higher which a lot of districts did but we chose to give the children a chance to earn points in different areas as you can see if you pull up the rupert on
013our website what does the co gap measure it measures the cognitive development of a student in the area of learned reasoning and problem solving skills and three main categories verbal reasoning mathematical reasoning and problem solving with patterns and relationships for the k-2 students who are not able to read yet it's picture analogy so there's no meaning involved and objectives are very similar to our new great districts some of our goals are that students will be able to develop skills reach their potential and also have the opportunity to collaborate with their peers develop differentiated materials for our viability students while we're fostering highway higher weather thinking critical thinking and problem solving skills some additional goals and objectives for grades four to eight the students will engage in medical mission and be able to communicate their thoughts
014and ideas appropriately design and construct meaningful research demonstrate the ability to pursue areas of interest through in-depth investigation and also develop an understanding of themselves and their own unique interests and abilities throughout the program district wide enrichment that occurs to us have been provided to our students for many years these are some of the programs that we offer kfi and in the middle school to many of our students and we have more all right so our reach program had a glance i have to say i'll reach teachers kelly cardone we first sat down together in september when they came back to school and they have done an outstanding job working with me creating the curriculum for this program i can't say enough about both of them and what they have put together so far it
015really is amazing to me and they are just thrilled to be teaching this program this week was when we launched it so i went into this cardone's room a few times already and just watching the students and they were doing an introductory activity where they had me create masterpieces that play and then comment on each other's and be able to think about what it was that they were creating and you'd see their own unique talents and abilities as they were making these projects and they were they were so excited this partner was so excited and it was just it was really nice to be able to walk in there and see everything that was happening our kindergarten through third grade preaching program will be taught by gene roman and that will be conducted during our
016main period which mrs carlson basically just has broken number four so during when those students will meet in small groups and this woman will take the students who were identified for the gifted and talented reach program with her and she has created already different units for each different things so just to give you an idea for the first trimester kindergarten even though it will not be the reach program she will still be doing an enrichment with the students who are exceeding expectations in that grade level she will be doing fairy tales and fables first grade dinosaurs second grade in nature and third grade under the state kali cardamom and fourth and fifth grade will be her themes will be stem and fine art sixth grade space seventh grade music and groupies and eighth grade will
017be business but as i said before it will be cross-curricular so they will be including all the different subject areas into the program students may be offered an opportunity to attend an out-of-district program hosted by the short consortium for gifted and talented it has been around for a while however it hasn't been because of the pandemic so i'm going to meeting next friday so i will find out a lot more about the program at that point i don't think all students will be able to attend because some of our grade levels have a higher number of students that have been identified and you just depend on how many students they will be asking us to send for each event so again i will have more information on that actually some of the programs are limited
018their school is hosting we limit the size we dictate how many kids can come to the building and that's even free so again we put a lot of time and effort into the rubric to really make it fair for all the students however if a parent would like to appeal [Music] then once new data arises for example new idea scores report card grades teacher recommendation then i can reevaluate and put those new measures into the uber to see if they would then qualify for the program so most likely it would be for a student who was close to the criteria and then possibly with new additional data it might push them up to that one twice exceptional is a student who receives special education services and qualifies for a hampton intelligence program all students have
019been provided an opportunity to gain acceptance into our reach program we provided accommodations and modifications that were implemented during the screening and the evaluation process when we're getting our full gap access and these are some different websites that anyone is welcome to go on to learn more about youtube and talented programs including our teachers i will also be attending the national association of gifted children conference i was going to go to denver again i didn't want to ask two times in the last few years so i decided to do it virtually i said i need to know oh i really did welcome but i will be attending that conference and what's really nice about it is i would have access to all the sessions through the spring so it gives me plenty of time where
020i can attend the sessions that i feel are you know most necessary for what i mean right now and then as i go along and i can even have this part and they'll enjoy me in watching sessions that would find them and help them in their instruction as well so i'm really excited about that so thank you for approving that and anyone who has any other questions parents board members teachers you can contact me at extension 184 you can email me invoice me beyond more than welcome to reach out to you and answer any of your questions so thank you so much for taking the time to hear about our reach program and like i said we're all very excited about the teachers students and parents as well we had all the students that were
021identified all the parents said in their letters and wanted to be a part of the program so 100 so i think that really shows that they were very interested in having this program as well and i have to say jen uh did this exact presentation to our teachers when we did our in-service on top of the open service update and uh the teachers were really impressed with what jen has done but with the other teachers i've done so i'm glad to mention gene mullen and kelly have the version so far and because gene loman is a special ed teacher worked with special needs children but he created in the schedule some periods during the day where she do win where she can do lli that's another part of her schedule and say for kelly partner
022which is an eighth grade teacher teaches eighth grade science she does eighth grade lab and we created pieces in her schedule where she could pull out kids in important breakthrough aprons so it took a lot of work you know i'm asking them to do this there's a lot of more work for putting on them but they did this without the they've really done a tremendous job in such a short amount of time because i said that it doesn't matter if the boy doesn't care we're going to work on him when we can start this program this is not a race and so it also breaks but i think it's incredible that the program is starting now and that just shows you the kind of stuff so for example third grade teachers we looked at a
023skill they all decided they're going to work for about five weeks on fluency so then we move the students according to their lead as a whole grade level so it is so exciting to go in and see that each teacher has a different group of students and it actually prepares them for you know later on in the school year because they're moving from one classroom to another and they're getting to have another teacher do the lesson they're seeing other friends that they might not have seen before and if they're really enjoying it we've only had one or two sessions so far but we needed plc's ahead of time to decide what is the skill that we're going to be working on what are our lessons you know how we're going to make it fun for
024them and we did the kindergarten and we just did you know we did an sdl activity just so his teachers could get to know the students because they don't have those students every day and the students can get to know each other and they were just they were just adorable and had had so much fun so that's an example of last year we wouldn't do that because of children learning in cohorts now fixing our kids and still following all the rules we are really uh moving in the right direction i i was i keep saying everything that's happening in our building you know we put up i was bored and put up with a lot of stuff but when you're in our building every single day and you see what's happening you're like we've come
025a long way in a year or six months we've really come a long way and it and it's really associated with teachers jen for allowing us uh this opportunity to make something like this happen it wouldn't happen without before my view of saying yes to the things that we asked whether it was budget season or curriculum lies you're a board that you know looks at what's important and understands what we're trying to do thank you very much are there any questions we have a few questions or maybe you want to sit down and we can all turn around oh sure [Music] my first question was um in terms of how we came up with is that something that's been validated how did we come up with with that system and the point system and that
026they are ready scores and how is that something that other centers are using how do we come up with that so i researched many many districts and there's every district uses different criteria so those were definitely criteria that were on many school districts so again we looked and decided based on the difference that we looked at and percentiles that were recommended on the i ready you know what is considered exceptional and as we go through it matched up to the percentages that you put on so there was a lot of research that was involved looking at other districts and looking at each criteria in regards to i ready like i said in the market that they recommended each percentage and then it was created from there so each school district really uses different measures but
027these were the ones that we currently use and so it was easier to because you have the information right actually before i ask you a question i'm sorry i should have said thank you congratulations on getting this program started i think it's it's very important it's it's it's been a long time coming for for us to have this here it's a very important thing to identify and and foster these kids um a few other things um i saw it from the appeal process where maybe you would re-evaluate how often are kids gonna be diabetes maybe once a year yes every spring so ideally this would always be done in the spring however i was not right and this spring we were not in a position so and again i think i think this is great
028and this is a great starting point but one of one of the things that the dog and i had talked about the last meeting was that and i'm sure you you know this being that you you're the head of the program because that gift that children aren't necessarily kids that are just getting good grades and everything and never get the kids to be identified they've not been hit into rubrics um i just i know that that's hard that's not something we can start right away but i just want to make sure that that's something that we're looking at in an ongoing way and that we don't um you have to start somewhere um but but i think we need to make sure that we continue to evolve and identify you know there could be kids
029that are that are gifted in music that are not doing great and all these other tests and we need to make sure that we identify them it's just as sorry you're absolutely right i know kurt has talked about this in curriculum and the reminder is good and keep it on the page forward because i think the meeting that i was in with you jen is that that was the goal that this always will evolve and that's like every year it's gonna change and hopefully grow even more but i think as a board we need to keep that in mind the top priority so we can keep moving forward okay okay right but you said we had to start somewhere we got to start somewhere so here's where we started we drew a line and as
030we move forward we have a little girl two little girls in our school that play at carnegie hall so i know about gifted musicians for sure so and we have a lot of kids in this in our school it's it's we are aware and it's it's a challenge because you know there can be kids that are actually gifted even into something like math they don't do well it's very challenging to identify with you yeah so i you know i followed the effort um what else was that was there was there a time a time constraint where we had to start this by a certain point or pausing together now because we met the policy didn't proceed right we met the regulation of what we were doing already so this was just about yeah yeah and
031then you know and sometimes when we talk about it this summer it was like you can't start this stuff and then it was like what if it's october i would say to colin jen i don't care where it starts because when we started we wanted to the right we will backpedal when we when we open this up and we make our decisions we want to be great and know that as we move forward we're going to grow as we move forward so there was a little bit about it last month um that was probably going to start in october but but even when i said it i was like and if it doesn't happen i would come to this meeting and say there's so much to do we're not ready to start right so i'm
032glad jen's here tonight to say you know we've worked hard to get done thank you and then take to your point that you know [Music] identify that in a shorter amount of time and get them exposed to what they need to be exposed to and karen applied to this add-on just just as our reach program and our win program are in the developmental stages my vision is you know a lot broader so you know i'm hoping for our program to be able to carry over and we can do the good program also in math and we can use our math interventionist as well i'm hoping it will carry over into you know higher grades but again you know we have to start small and then evaluate how it's going and then we can extend it
033and same thing with the with the arts and other areas where students may be gifted so i definitely have that vision it's just we're starting here and then we'll just keep growing it as we go and the teachers have really um been so accepting of the win program but it's just beginning so i wanted to just start small so that way we can see how it's going make any modification and then we can extend it and really you know create some vision that i have i'm glad i'm saying that because i did a fourth grade plc for a small building everybody's talking and fourth grade says to me in the middle of a meeting and why can't we halfway you know and so and and then juggles you're saying that we walk with right they
034won't win so it's you know it's you know i only have a certain amount of personnel and so so so i said to jen okay like down the road maybe we could fit in a lot of five winning or went down the road let's get this going and maybe we can do it for fourth graders so and maybe it's like we're going to work on that but why can't we have it as a great thing for teachers to be asking for generally subsidized problems questions yeah um but first i also want to thank uh and thank thank you mr carlson kurt and karen um for taking this seriously it's kind of amazing we had a parent mayor of june i'm sure come to the meeting and raise this as a concern and it was really
035annoying excellent took it seriously right and i think one of the things that you said really stands out there's new legislation we work with clients and that wasn't enough this is a commitment to excellence this is providing a service above and beyond the letter of the law and that should be committed so thank you the page on the website is currently down um i don't know if that was configured but in the last day or two it went down the actual reach program the criteria the presentation it's going to be an arrow right there right now so just that's my miner i'm [Music] about there would be a social emotional component and i think it ties into this voice exception so who's responsible for that evaluation is that the teachers or is it businesses overall
036involved yeah there was that there was a piece yeah so um so that's in this program will be some observation to see yes um the evaluation is the kogat the iraqi we're not currently available in genesis is there a plan to have that data available through the gradebook [Laughter] um you mentioned bringing in the njsla do we know that would that be the false start strong that the is there intention for there to be spring and json the only last question i had was i understand that we have to work within the agenda of the teachers that are providing this this service um currently i think the way it falls is that well it's like in fourth grade that's a particular elective is missed so two questions on that is there a way for those
037students to continue to make up that elective if they're interested in the topic um and then like is there a thought that maybe that won't always be the case that could be a non-elected period that's utilized so that students aren't missing special education it's not like i've had a full-time person delivering this for two part times delivering this it's it's part of their schedule and they only have certain theories that they've come in so we try our best to have it happen during electives because this program is so rich and so um trying to stay away from the course of reading language management this small to even tougher there's a lot of restrictions i just want to reiterate what sean and dave said thank you very much we are all extremely impressed and proud that
038we're able to implement this so soon currently now i'm looking forward to seeing where it goes thank you very much so thank you and i told you that you could be very items only at this time tonight uh great correspondent mrs cherry done this evening on to committee reports finance um ted is not here tonight uh representative samantha swan dennis uh yes um there were a number of issues that they discussed but what i think is interesting is as everybody knows there's a very difficult shortage of buses and plus drivers manuscript has leased their own bus and they do have a bus driver so they will be using their lease plus for every school activity particularly for student athletics um and there was you know some buzz about seven districts maybe getting together something like
039that but the course of the uh schedules might be very difficult to share a possibility across changing we've experienced the same thing but this time we're lucky i think that pushback parents here and brielle are driving their kids but i definitely think this is something that you can keep on our radar radar because i don't think one thing i said so frank about that is with this class where it does work is because i said you're using that plus every day so when you're using it for your middle school and mascot um just brioling and sprinkling math starts to spring like a plane the way the schedule is done the boys are walking the girls our way so you bring them up the boys stay home they bring the girls to spring lake and then
040the boys at spring lake gala with us and come back to manchester okay so we might that's it because that's how we do it so that's how we'll work in the center so when we're playing one another and the boys and girls girls are there that bus brings with players here our could get on the bus and we will do that for an ascending district but it will work yeah don't worry um anybody else have any questions great uh curriculum programs uh there was no meeting other than the items on the clinic's agenda and uh the wholesome presentation there's some normal meetings great thank you joe buildings and ground oh sorry i got a question on uh um i'm just asking why it already happened all the credit um he ran the program alone the
041only time he could do it uh he couldn't get any other firemen he took his son out of school and he says this is the only day i could do it so it's here we got the police help us and so that was the only thing we could do but i was not going to say no to kindergarteners not ideal sean but yeah and even coming back here he and his son ran the program for kids here as an assistant i usually have three or four firing everybody is busy so i had to say yes to see when you know you get that quality especially there's a walking trip yeah it's a great program i'm usually here but right and it's like that's what steve said there's so much going on i'm like this is
042the only way you could do it i mean he takes a personal basis he pulled his son out we got them again but it was because you know we sometimes take for granted and we love the program the kids help the program and you know and i said well just my first assembly we did it and everybody loved it i i mean i think we all think it's a great program but as a point of order are we allowed to approve something that's already happened yeah yeah we are okay valid point usually we don't want to but yeah thank you uh jack building the ground we'll be meeting before the november meeting as a committee so i have to have more information report on that great thank you dave personnel tonight joe negotiation uh yes
043um we had we met last week and um this evening we have two policies that are on on for a second reading and then i have on four other policies for our first reading um a couple of these are culvert related and the first one is the road forward cope at 19 health and safety and um this policy replaces the one that we did last year which is the road back restart and recovery plan for education policy this plan provides a range of recommendations rather than mandatory standards these recommendations are meant to assess school districts and implementing protocols to reduce risks to students and staff from covet 19 while allowing for full-time learning and the second one is 1648.13 and that one is school employee vaccination requirements and as we know um on august 23rd
044governor murphy signed executive order 253 uh requiring all public school districts or employees to be fully vaccinated or submit to coca-19 testing at a minimum of one or two times per week this executive order will become effective october 18th so that was this week um and now so i met with um there i had a lot of questions about this policy and um we're also required to have an appendix for this policy which will list our procedures and protocols so i met with our school nurse and she was able to give me a lot of information um and i'll just i just jot it down so one is that brielle will be working their local laboratories um they will offer a pcr saliva test weekly and um and also um brielle has partnered with the
045new jersey department of health and this program asks that brielle offered this testing to um parents who are interested in having their child tested weekly and this is a voluntary program now as of last week and and there's been there's a change to the report that all of you have um when i spoke with um the nurse last week um rover laboratories were behind schedule and thought that they would not be able to start testing this week and then i received a phone call um i spoke with um mr xavier and so he gave me an update this afternoon so i will be updating the appendix that's attached to this um policy so what has happened and you know with a lot of these copied 19 related policies and regulations um they're fluid there are
046constant changes so um i will probably be updating and revising policies um as the year goes so uh it turns out that rover laboratories on is able to come to brazil this week and so the scheduled time is friday and on the teachers the staff members will be tested during their um cracker lunch um classes of course will be covered and on as far as length of results are concerned that's something that um we should get results back within 24 hours and um our school nurse is responsible for that and her and uh mr satan together will be working on this um and they're also the contact tracers so um i will update that and then um and i'll make sure everyone gets the updated appendix um i think that because we're already on a
047second reading for this policy i think that if everyone agrees we could approve it tonight and then i just have to update on the appendix for that and another thing that we discussed with vaccinations on with this policy is whether or not us as board members um are also are also required to do the testing um when they um explain who covered employees are they also include volunteers and we are volunteers so but there was a question about that we weren't sure about the language um i reached out to our report attorney and our board attorney stated that um that she does not believe that we fall under that category on because volunteers are covered if they are regularly in the building um she will get back to me though she said that she will
048let me know for sure whether or not the board members are considered volunteers and as soon as i hear from her then i'll update everyone on that the other policy is a 1648 safety plan for health care settings and school buildings um this is a policy that was aimed is aimed at health care professionals hospital workers people working in laboratories it's a it's a very detailed specific um policy but then um school districts have been informed that on the emergency temporary standards which is what it's called will apply to health care settings in schools as well and the districts are required to develop protocols and the superintendent is required to appoint a kobit-19 safety coordinator so you do have to combine by this policy is mandated the other policy i have is emergency virtual or
049remote construction school districts are permitted to implement a commissioner-approved program of virtual or remote construction in the event the school district is required to close the school for more than three consecutive days and uh brielle's virtual remote plan has been developed and it should be posted on the school website the next policy is sexual harassment of students this policy has been revised to include a detailed procedure on how to respond to allegations of sexual harassment and then the last policy that we discussed was uh 2464 gifted and talented students and um so um dave was asking about when all of this came about so it turns out that um the governor last year signed um into law the strengthening gifted and talented education act and that's when everyone took a closer look at the gifted
050talent talented programs that they had and they began to examine and improve on their programs including us um and also and i have to say that you know what shawn said um having a parent come in to our meetings and um express a concern about the talented gifted program so that always prompts us to take a look at what we have and make improvements so i always encourage the welcome parents to any concerns that they have to see us about that so on with this um when i took a look at the policy the policy was compliant but not the regulation the regulation was taken it was really dating so um so last week i met with on miss love and on you know to review the gibson and talented program with this information i
051was able to update the policy and regulation uh the revised policy will outline the requirements as mandated by the state the revisions include requirements regarding the accessibility and development of the gifted and talented education program and it also includes submission of annual report so the new jersey department of education a compliant procedure for individuals who believe the districts have violated and misled went over all of that um and so um so during my committee meeting during the policy committee meeting i presented the regulations to the committee um and um and so they made uh recommendations so i went back and i added the their recommendations to the policy to the regulations now um i did want to say that to note that this is the first year that we're implementing this program the reach program
052and as the process begins i anticipate that we may need to update um the policy in order for it to align with any any changes deemed necessary on and one of them dave brought it up about our students who are truly gifted musicians and artists and writers and we can't forget about that population and so one of the things that um miss love and i talked about was um developing a checklist um that is geared towards our artistic um students and um so we're hoping that that will be done sometime in the spring as soon as that's done um then again back to the drawing board and i have to update the regulations so that that is included and i think that's a parent actually reached out to me about um what is the what
053is the policy in terms of whether they're going to volunteer for things in school or via a class parent if they're not vaccinated would they be covered under getting the just getting the exam the um so that's the question that i've had for the attorney and so um her response and job is down her actual response um so she stated that she doesn't she doesn't believe this requirement applies to board members um because they are not regularly in the building during the school day uh volunteers are covered if they are regularly in the building so the question is well what's regulation yeah that's pretty interesting so that's how how you know what working with kids right we're not working until often right and and i also i looked at i looked at the um the
054legislator and that was the ethan um so i did i sent her on an email and so i'm just waiting for her her response on that my other question um going back to the same thing in 1648 2013 this last bullet point here about the department of health offering to voluntarily touched children weekly can you expand on that a little bit what's what's the genesis for that they're saying asymptomatic children you're just testing them quickly apparently the parents once wants to do it so they give a reason why they they're offering that i don't i don't quite understand why you're doing that so what has happened is that on when this on when the governor's on this order right now um the districts one of the things that they offered that the state offered to
055the districts was um funding so they they gave districts a choice you can have um you can receive a grant the funding like and and that's what we're that's what we opted for and that's like over over laboratories they're coming into the building um or you could have the staff members just do it on your own well one of the things um if you accept the grant funding then you have to offer it to parents if they want to have their children tested so that's how that came in gotcha do we anticipate any demand for that from parents has there been superintendents but we don't think that's good yeah when we heard that that was like applause and superintendents were like this this was a gigantic old red flag for me i don't i don't
056understand why including so them something else yeah dave i've only had two parents reach out to me to say tell me about getting my kid vaccinated and so when i answered both of them they're like yeah thank you once they heard weekly they're like what i don't i don't think anyone was gonna say yeah anywhere i should there's gonna be some people that say yes i'm on it yes but pull up a lot of class together [Music] that's a different story though that's yeah that's what i'm saying testing asymptomatic children on a weekly basis but it sounds like they wrote it into the grant so it is what it is [Music] if we're requiring parent volunteers can be subject to that i feel like it should be consistent with that being power as well i
057personally just don't like to set a standard for something that we're not willing to model ourselves we should be setting a rule that [Music] now that rover is available is that the only method for teachers who are not vaccinated to test out or are they able to test the home test or the teacher wants to go to their own [Music] so that in our policy that i do think that matters just because they couldn't get a home test with the policy ties to rover directly it says that either or it's either an antigen or a pcr test or that can be challenged or is it actual process of submitting the test results to the school the way that um the way that the policy is written it allows for the staff member to take with
058that whatever test it doesn't allow them to do that now um but part of this policy we have to add an appendix and so as a board we can write in there um if we just want it to be the the pcr of saliva test we can't do that um the the state has given districts the flexibility to do this maybe we just want the pcrs to line the task and that's what i have to update that's the information that i got when i spoke with mr xavier um this afternoon and he gave me the update so that's one of the things that i have to um i don't know if this is directly related to this but in the safety plan before the healthcare settings it talks about yes two different questions okay up
059about the um in our housing meeting that there's a medical record being kept by school yes in terms of who may have has a positive et brought up cetera about is that being held by the school maybe typical clients medical system this is p e o s h but i just want to make sure that we're addressing that because it is sensitive personal medical information and this is this is codifying that we're collecting it so i just want to make sure that we're doing something that's typical clients so i i spoke with our school nurse about them because she's the one that's gathering that information and holding that information um she said that she doesn't i thought she kept it on the computer for some kind of spreadsheet she doesn't it's it's done manually um
060in a file and it's under locking and um she's the only one and i would assume administration of course will have access to that if needed but she's the only one um that has access to that file and she also stated that because of hitler she felt more comfortable doing it that way than having something like that um the last question was on the remote instruction in case of a school closure you mentioned the road clockwork plan i asked a question in the august meeting about what happened to the student this astro quarantine or sense moment and i just want to clarify our current road forward plan says that there's a short-term promoted protocol and that currently says that within 24 hours the first day is 20 is the same day and that subsequent periods
061that they're asked to stay remote is supposed to provide synchronous construction and that some periods such as electrics may have asynchronous instruction but the answer mr carlson that you gave me in august was that you're not providing the secrets so do we just need to update that that document or are we operating using this instruction so they're able to watch there are when did that go into place i think it went i think we talked after our own meeting and i brought it to your attention and you're like you're right you've just had the live stream but we needed to give the teacher 24 hours thank you great um just that for the virtual um for the virtual and remote instruction there is an appendix for that and um it was worked on by some
062of the staff members so that that will be attached great any other questions from the valley mr becker press administrative report this evening as you'll see the attachment in your folder that we do have for this module and um i also want to say that mr bob mcdolly who was an excellent reporter but i want to give savior and carefully the credit for um their hard work and getting over because friday afternoon i think it was around 3 15. i got a phone call and a text from the county superintendent and no superintendent wants to get a call at 3 15 on a friday from the county superintendent uh you know i called him and said how can i help you he says i'm doing a survey and i want to know what's going on
063right now and i told him uh colin uh has secured as of now on friday that overlapped will be coming to our building and he said no way there is not one school in monmouth county that got more relaxed not one nobody sets me on front i said well doctor it could change colin has another meeting on tuesday and the dolly said great everything is still a little changes and then you meet me teachers on thursdays the rules change on friday so colin has his meeting on tuesday comes in my office he says you're not going to believe it we are the only school that will be tested by broker this friday not only kidding me and really uh colin and karen really stayed on top of it because this was something that we thought
064we should have when we were told you know we're going to tell teachers and some districts just told you you're on your own go get it on your own and so i don't know before the test lab as i said the column but broker will be here on friday at 12 30. uh over 90 percent of our staff has been vaccinated but for the staff members that are not they'll come here in this vidalia center and um i just want to give them the credit that it's happening here even been here um the test book collins said he heard that maybe they're also doing middletown we've heard that as a rumor i wouldn't find out until friday but maybe the middle ten because they're so large according to dr richard's i think 300 unvaccinated they're
065much larger than our father so i also want to say our back to school nights we have for many years done two this year we decided to do three and you know for us having to be here three nights oh well the parents and the teachers most importantly the parents and teachers really loved how we did the three nights uh felt very comfortable in the building going into the classrooms our teachers did a phenomenal job you know many districts are still doing virtual back-to-school nights it shows you that we're doing things here right and parents were great and follow the rules but our back-to-school nights went wonderful i told you last meeting our sports were just getting underway is it hard to leave spring sports seem to come and go so quickly in november there
066is a possibility that i could have our girls soccer or boys soccer or girls field talking and our cross-country team all here winning championships that is a possibility right now it's a possibility having half that is a probability that i'm going to have many kids here with their parents so you can as a board recognize our sports team they've had an excellent season you know parents are happy to see it with that said i think it was last tuesday october 12th uh we brought over 40 children to olympic night and i know we win every year but this year every child in there was over 40 that went to olympic tonight received the men uh yes the answer is we won i'm glad they don't keep score our children would have made me proud our
067coaches would have made you proud our children were amazing that olympic life so it's nice to have that charcoal back in our school [Music] our parent-teacher conferences it's going out to parents um we are doing parent-teacher conferences virtually but the parent wants to opt to come in there is that provision that we will allow parents to come in if they feel the need to come in for conferences uh but virtual gives parents if they're you know somewhere else especially since we're doing it starting next thursday the 28th and then we're following november first and second against both parents beyond login to get to talk to the teacher and so um i think those conferences will go down but if the parent needs to have stability we will have that provision for them i also want
068to say our in-service i think i mentioned it before colin and jen put a lot of work into our in-service we did um equity inclusion i ready did curriculum work the two teachers were here for a full day we got a lot done at the end of the day you don't see this often but teachers were thanking us for what a wonderful day uh that day was we gave you time to work on curriculum time to meet the teams and so it was a day you know well spent in this building we got a lot done we still have a lot more to do because of the work that didn't get completed then we are now doing hydraulic faculty meetings and plc so there's a lot to do but we've got a lot a lot
069of work done in that seven hours um yes we will have uh and we're working on that now sorry to mention that next friday will be our halloween parade uh we're gonna do you know our typical halloween parade they've got the east side around the building out in our backyard and come back in the building um not having any parents in the building but they can supply packaged snacks for children and some parents want to send in games for them to play in the classroom and you said yes that's important my second question one of the most important of the night exactly following us i was just wondering if you heard anything or whispers or anything in the superintendent about the governor's plans about the masses of what you know what what it it drives
070me a little crazy that we don't really have any guidance on to what numbers he's looking at to tell us that the kids can stop marrying advances forward 75 percent vaccination state that transmission rate is below 0.8 which means it's receding the numbers are dropping you know i are you getting i know you don't have a direct line to the governor obviously here he just had a press release the other day for an hour and [Music] i was surprised that it wasn't involved and it's silly i know olympic month and confidence but since my children have bay head and saint peters be one team called manhattan st peterson because you know what happens is you know our kids are crazy fast okay uh but like st happiness as good athletes but well you travel you
071trample it so i said if you have to join like our team is so good then because there's only six lanes then we could bring in you know bring in hopefully you know you bring someone else so that the kids have competition because some races it's competitive but some are not so yes we win it every year you know and even every year we win by a lot won they were wondering if they're going to say we won every race maybe except for four out of all the races and and it's broken into age groups they're in fourth grade fifth and sixth graders group and seventh and eighth and both groups are phenomenally best by destiny conference comes with i think five coaches and nine volunteers five two coaches i can show you the program
072like some of the schools they list all these people in our arsenal do whoever looks at the ceiling and um the most amazing images on the ceiling can you our friends would come out here did you tell us a little bit about that no i told the coaster they came in they're wonderful okay okay and i did say that one board meeting that right i said make sure you go out and look up you look up but the pto um our new art teacher met with us and colin at the end of the school year same thing and they wanted to we said yes parents i think for a time they spent 25 i think yes when we met in the committee and all these meetings that we had you know it was like let's
073do the nice primary colors and blah blah cult manufacturer they had had pastels and they were very disappointments and pastels and pastels was the answer the pictograph when you come in the main office you just look up i mean these tiles well that we said to parents do whatever you want okay there's no here's your paint i'm gonna use five colors here's your paint do whatever you want and every single child and the hunch are so proud of what our sailings look like so really you know if you've had because of the coordinated tv there's been now you're across any in every building um and i have to say i've got multiple comments from colleagues that have come to brielle but they're coordinated to see how amazing this building is and how beautiful it is
074and that's a credit to this board um to you press spokes and graphs they come into your teachers for making it and the ptl like everybody has a hand in keeping this building amazing but multiple colleagues have said oh my goodness that school is beautiful so courtyard ceiling the classroom stuff thanks for saying that the teachers are invited into our school if they've been here for the community um they do say it directly to us when i come into your school building i love it uh and and you just mentioned all the right people it's a coordinated effort that because of the beautiful building uh in my report i forgot to mention i kind of said jessica luca there's our new part-time tech person she's only here a short amount of time she's done an
075amazing job but one of the first things she said the first day that i gave her the tour she says i want you to know that i've been in a lot of schools lots of schools and i've never seen a school as beautiful as yours i said well come on she goes i'm serious i've been in a lot of schools and i don't see schools i think we take it for granted take advantage of it because a lot of us know like if we're just parents and walk in that's what we expect but in terms of lauren so thank you um okay let's move on we're getting like action items all right uh for human programs i'd like to put forth yes finance uh steve can you finance for me please sure emotions and blue
076light empty one three three yes yes great um buildings and grounds joe do i have a second second any questions can you please call the role yes i'd like to make a motion that the board approves the following policies and regulations on the first reading and for d2 notion that the board of education approves the following policy on a second preview any questions can you please call the call yes 1648.13 [Music] e14 do i have any questions can you please call the role yes great thank you everyone uh visitors business visitors are permitted to comment on agenda and non-agenda items at this time i'm sorry can you say that again how to check that um [Music] discussion i don't have anything for discussions but you know what i do yeah i'd like to i want
077to discuss something about um curriculum i want to talk about um the um african-american history curriculum and brielle and so i wrote some things i jotted some things down i'll read it because um i didn't talk about this for a long time and so i just really want to get to the point and um share with all of you my concerns now um i've spoken to i've met this curriculum i'm part of the curriculum committee and um and i've met with chris to discuss this and um but i do still have some concerns um so now currently our district is not compliant with policy 2260. it's the affirmative action program for school and classroom practices this is a mandated policy the policy states that african-american history as well as the history of other cultures is
078infused into the curriculum and taught as part of the history of the united states in 2002 the amistad bill became law and it requires new jersey schools to incorporate african-american history into their social studies curriculum this legislation also created the amistad commission it's a 23 member body charge with insurance that african-american history contributions and experiences are adequately taught in the state's classroom it's interesting because in 2002 i remember that um it came into law because there were deficiencies in the curriculum there were a lot of concerns with them and also the impact that it was on years and years of it not being taught properly or being included on the impact that it was having on african-american student students of course so they have this build then it was a couple of years ago and
079it was supposed to be implemented a couple of years ago um they found that it really wasn't being taught it still wasn't being incorporated into the school system so that's why they created young stock commission so the yamasa commission um well i'll explain some of them as well so the legislature on this is what they found they found that on since the days of slavery public school curriculum have consistently omitted or misrepresented the history of african americans to correct this on these omissions all public schools in the state of new jersey should include instruction that infuses into all forces on the united states the century's contributions and accomplishments by african americans and the building and development of africa the amistad commission is responsible for designing and promoting the implementation of education and awareness programs in
080new jersey concerns with slavery in america and the contributions of african americans we're developing curriculum guidelines for the teaching of this information the amistad commission is an ideal agency to recommend curricular materials to school districts so the goal is to infuse the history of africans and african-americans into the social studies curriculum in order to provide an accurate complete and inclusive history to ensure that new jersey teachers are equipped to effectively teach the revised social studies standards to create and coordinate workshops seminars uh institutes memorials and events which raise public awareness about the importance of the history of african americans to the growth and development of american society and global context the goal is to develop students academic strengths and cultural sensibilities about the inclusive nature of history and acknowledge the contributions of africans and african
081americans in us history diverse studies help to promote a healthy bridge between differences that exist amongst our students now my next section i put hopefully because um i met with whenever i see a problem a concern i think about well how can we solve this and um one of the ways that as an educator one of the ways that the first thing i think about was we'll think about is well we need to educate our kids and so um i met with um miss love i met with her last week and we talked about incorporating embedding using african-american studies and um she's been doing a really good job she's been working really hard um as we can see with the gifted talented program but she's also taken the time to work on providing resources for
082our teachers to start embedding african-american studies into the curriculum so um during the um in service um last week she did present to the teachers and when she was telling me this i i you know i was really pleased with that that i see that she's on putting forth effort towards this um now i express that we need to be intentional uh we need to be consistent one of the things that i found and i've been in education for over 20 years i've worked in places where there's a lack of diversity bless you but i also worked in many places where there's a lot of diversity and um every place is different one of the things i see is sometimes it's not consistent and i think that some districts will start out great with these
083programs and teaching them and then it sort of slows down his eyes down um i believe that um we're starting we're in a good place with what i saw that ms love has developed but i think that it needs to be monitored to ensure that it's being followed um it's not a choice as a mandate and also teachers need on they need pd professional development on this we improve a lot of development professional development on as a board and on i'm yet to see any professional development that has to do with on learning how to teach african-american studies um there's a lot more that comes with that it's not like teaching them it's not like teaching reading on there there needs to be training and and a sensitivity towards them um and so one of
084the things that um prompted me or has really been pushing me and i'll and i'll read this the protest and the wake of george floyd's kill sparked the national conversation on racial injustice but there's always been there's there's discrimination there's racial injustice there's racism but sometimes when things are good things you find we sort of just become complacent and when this occurred i think that seeing someone being killed in public um it sparked a lot of things and it was um it was a wake-up call for many people for me it was a wake-up call that we need to do better and there's a lot more work to be done i believe that if we teach our kids different people um different cultures if we start to teach them that um about contributions and not
085only about that one part of the history books that teaches about slavery i went to school in the 70s it's still the same you learn about slavery and i'll tell you many african-american children [Music] they uh they would rather be absent that day than be in the classroom especially when they're the only ones being taught about slavery as if that's the only thing that um african-americans have contributed to this world to this design um so okay so it was a wake-up call for me um that more work has to be done um we witnessed a protest right here in our small town of brielle which was organized by three brielle graduates one being my own daughter and um and i remember when she came to me and said she wanted to do this and my
086husband and i first sat down and we spoke with her why why do you want to do this and she said she wanted to bring about awareness that even in brielle race racism exists now many people um and brielle may not feel that it does as a matter of fact she received um a lot of messages from people who did not approve of her having this protest and they felt that everything was fine why are you bringing this up everything is fine well i think everything is fine if you've never been um the victim of any kind of discrimination and i have to say that the the racism the discrimination it's not on where someone's burning across in my front lawn god forbid right um it's and when i look at it when it happens
087because it's happened to my own children it's happened to my husband who grew up in this town went to school here in manaswan um and the stories are similar it still continues to happen and when i uh hear these stories i don't think children are racist i think that they don't there's a lack of understanding there's a lack of understanding that this person is different than me but in a way we're very much alike and this is like it's so important for us to teach to incorporate different cultures into our curriculum we won't be eliminating anything we won't be eliminating other uh important history but we have to start incorporating embedding into our curriculum that there are other people in this world than just white people um which is when you study history our history
088looks that's what you study um i mean my own experience as a as a person of color that's all that's all i learned i really didn't learn about other cultures or anything like that um when i was in school um and it needs to change that was a long time ago when i went to school in the 70s and and it needs to and things change um according to the academy american academ academy sorry the pediatrics um they found that um okay according to the american academy of pediatrics is committed to addressing the factors that affect child and adolescent health with the focus on issues that may leave some children more vulnerable than others racism is a social determinant of health that has a profound impact on the health status of children adolescents emerging adults
089and their families although progress has been made toward racial equality and equity that evidence to support the continued negative impact of racism on health and well-being through implicit and explicit biases of social instruction and so on um the whole point on i did research because i wanted to see what was the impact that this is having on our children i've seen it for years um in the different places where i've taught i've seen it for years and i've witnessed it in my own children the impact that it has um i mean like i said i could go on and on with this my whole point tonight is that it was something that i have a concern about um when i did research i found i was at the policies and the legislature and i saw
090that we weren't compliant i do have to say this that when this happened last year and just everything that you floyd and just all the racial tension i contacted chris um i spoke with her about it and she immediately said you know we'll have a meeting you know i spoke with parents or purpose we were all in curriculum and um they were very understanding and very willing to and they agree we do need to do this so i'm thankful that i i'm i don't stand alone here um that i know that everyone in greece that we need to do this um and as a matter of fact when i spoke with chris about it she contacted me maybe like a couple weeks later and said we ordered books we're going to have our library our
091classroom libraries will now be will now have books and that was a good first step and after meeting like i said i met with um miss love and i was impressed with what she put together um but we do but i want to see the effort to really make sure that we're pushing this not just because we have to be compliant although we do but because of the importance of it um even though we're in a district where there's very little diversity it doesn't matter sometimes in these types of districts that's where we need it the most um and i just want to say that um you said you know we don't stand by you we need to do this but i have to say we need to do it better you know we need
092to do better than what we're already doing and you know we have to do a better job that's just what it is and i know we will on our side on this board we will do a better job um but i agree that um you're right about the questionable development that's where it's going to start because it has to start with our teachers before it to get to our children so we need to do a better job thank you i think we all know that race relations and race are one of the uncomfortable conversations that people can have um everybody is not to offend everybody wants to do and say the right thing but we've got to know what the right thing is first be careful about how we stay informed this could not have
093been an easy thing to do thank you i think that as you observe karen said this board wants to do the right thing it wants to be compliant that's our responsibility but even though our town may not have a significant population who identify identifies color but we live in a world where lots of folks are of color and whatever minority or minorities that deserve the respect and the understanding of the folks and i know kurt you always have it on every curriculum meeting forward and we will always continue to do that it's it's again a topic that we have to do better so um thank you for dally i really appreciate your statement tonight um is there any other discussions for the board um very important it's great to hear that the teams are doing
094fantastic uh there's across across country and a little turnout so that uh opened it up to the fifth graders correct okay so you're gonna have the outstanding team from here because of that uh tomorrow is the last cross-country meet i believe the season the championships i delivered next week so but tomorrow is kind of the last school for school um just a couple of rep did a fantastic job with the football under the lights last week you know karen's part wreck they had to kind of change from saturday to thursday because of weather and they did a great job putting it together and it seemed like everybody had a fantastic time uh for some puppet coming events uh the fire company will be decorating the park for the dragon rides screen acres uh it will
095be on the 29th and the 30th ticket sales are tonight and will be also next thursday the 28th the rides go from roughly uh 6 pm to 9 pm on both nights uh two fundraisers i'm aware of is the e3 reselling pies for thanksgiving and the boy scouts were selling their wreaths and plants so both of them i think are ending probably the first week of november and for all the sending districts del mar has the wrestling team that invites all the sending districts to participate in which they start their program november 8th so for the boys and girls ascending districts you know just as uh you know a lot of people think this wrestling is a voice a female and that was only about three years ago i think the first year that wrestling
096for females had their own vision so ground steps one month one is one state champ and you know fella did a great job she's uh still wrestling in college and she is going to try to help try out the olympics so she's not giving up thank i think they might be doing that for the major invention we didn't get any such interest for the enrichment pcl we sent all that information out of the genesis the wrestling right just great reminder thank you all right payment of the bills dr laval will you do the honors please president i will uh motion that the board authorizes the statement of the following october 21 bill's list and then the secretary's authorized draw points of the treasury in the total amount of one million point eighteen thousand two hundred
097ninety five dollars yes great uh we do not have an executive session planned for this evening so can i have a motion to adjourn yes have a second okay all in favor all right thank you everyone have a good night