001thank you agents I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for Mr alfano thank you majority open public to the right of the public who have advanced notice seven to attend a meeting with public bodies in which any business affecting their interests discussed or active upon in accordance with the provision of this act of course I called foreign publish I have a date time and place they're opposed to me walks of the clerk library of direct Department the officers and the offices are store number three four five six in the high school and notice before 14 reporting the record 16 2022 this is an official meeting the only thing I'd like to take the
002attendance if I may Brew here Mr capan here Mrs Freda here Mr Garcia Mr Russo here sorry no problem here thank you Mr final uh just a couple of quick items before um I look at the consent agenda I do want to make mention that uh to the board that October 4th we had a staff in service we had all of our pre-k through 12 teachers and administrators involved in varying activities and I just want to thank our administrators and our teachers and supervisors for helping out that day October 17th we celebrated Spirit Week across the district I also want to make mention that in November at our November 17th meeting which by the way is going to be a Thursday night November 17th we are going to invite all of our students who had
003a perfect score on last year's New Jersey learning assessment which is a great achievement I believe there are somewhere between 10 and 12 I don't have the number in front of me between 10 and 12 students are from elementary all the way through high school who had a perfect score either in ela in math and I believe there may have been one student who had it in both so we will honor those students and their parents at our November 17th meeting I also want to quickly mention and congratulate our fall sport coaches and athletes for that their participation this season and just make mention that this week is a very busy week I know we had girls soccer today at two o'clock at Somerville we have boys soccer versus Nutley on the 27th at 2
004o'clock we have a football home game versus Teaneck uh is that another 26th tomorrow tomorrow 27. football on this sheet it's the 27th at seven o'clock am I right yes okay and volleyball at Wayne Valley 10 a.m on the 29th and cross country uh they're competing at Garrett Mountain Garrett Mountain uh the 29th at 11 30. this is posted to our website so I did want to just take time to congratulate uh and the board on behalf of the board all of our coaches and student athletes who took part in our fall season uh when I I want to look at the consent agenda at this time um I just want to mention that as I do each month we have a number of Staff members who are attending attending professional development opportunities uh both
005virtually and outside of the district district so we are approving uh compensation for travel and registration fees on page three of the agenda we are approving some staff members who are going to work in our early Rises program this is a program that's funded by our Esser and art money which is federal funds and this is to address learning loss uh that students may have experienced during the two years of covid so we are offering early rise a program in schools three four five and uh six in the middle school and we're just appointing those staff members who will be working in that program uh page four of the agenda we have um a number of give me a second lunch AIDS who we are appointing to work in our lunch program in various schools
006throughout the district jumping over to page five um we are approving or revising a contract for Rosa Miranda who's currently a teacher at school number five uh she was going to end her employment with us in December but Rose is going to be taking over for a maternity leave that's coming about at school five so Rosa will be with us for the remainder of the school year a little further down we are approving a maternity leave for Brenda Moon teacher at school number five uh beginning January 23rd and Brenda again will be returning this September 2023 we wish our luck I do want to point out the retirement of yasilda Suarez High School science teacher I met with her the other day and I know Mr Pinto has had conversations with her she'll be retiring
007uh effective January 31st so just a note to the board we have posted that position and we are actively looking for her replacement uh okay Page Six uh just one transfer I want to point out which is within school three uh just transferring uh Scott Morin special ed teacher from the resource room to the lld class uh until January when we have uh a new staff member taking over that position Scotty will remain in school three in the resource room at that time uh page seven we are approving the school nursing plan for this year for the 2020-23 school year which is a formality and is mandated by the Department of Education I'm pointing out that we had a bullying incident that was investigated uh and we are confirming the outcome of that case and
008as you know as per state guidelines we can't divulge any specific information about any bullying incidents November 15th we're approving a staff in service for grades pre-k through eight the high school will have a regular day on the 15th and the rest of the district will be involved in teacher meetings once students are let out at around 12 45. we're also approving a half day November 23rd as we do each year that's the day before the Thanksgiving recess we're also approving tonight uh recommended by the superintendent of schools to accept the following scores for the 21-22 school year this is what part of our presentation will be tonight we discuss Dynamic learning maps and New Jersey student learning assessments we're officially approving that we're also approving on page eight on the policies uh resolution recommended
009by the superintendent to approve an open lunch for the qualifying High School seniors part of the attached authorization waiver effective November 21st 2022 and I'm sorry for the beginning November 21st 2022 so we are going to engage or try a trial program for the second walking period for high school seniors who qualify and some of those details are outlined and I know Mr Pinto will be talking more about that to his students at the high school or I already have no I have not okay for the board to make a public okay so we just did um I Mr Pinto Mr Pinto will point out the specifics of that beginning program in terms of uh who qualifies and what you need to qualify so um again it's a trial program it's something that the board
010and I have talked about with Mr pinto and the vice principals at the high school for a while of course safety is our main concern above everything um so we think we've built that into the guidelines uh and we also um there are some uh qualifications or procedures that students have to follow and Mr Pinto will we view that with everyone at a given time uh other policies of procedures are just formalities fire drills and so on and so forth uh we're also revising the Moa agreement that we do each year between uh the Board of Ed and the local Cliffside Park and Fairview police departments a copy of that is on file in my office buildings and grounds and Mr Pinto anything on finance yes I'm sorry a couple of quick items uh We've
011pretty much gone through our 2120 audit has some very minor findings [Music] understood our Surplus which piggybacks on me we just had with our Ford finance committee and our facilities Committee in regard to the potential capital projects we may be engaging in spring and summer of 2023 the high school office Reno at six in the high school basically project at the high school I've got free attraction over the last few weeks the metal will probably be the 31st High School we started to engage the 23-24 budget it starts July 1st 2023 looks like that you can remember to give them an [Music] finance committee and we are also engaging the early process of our 22-23 on it things set enrollment program Dr TRS which is a transportation program nrpll and ESL that's pretty much okay
012before I ask for a motion to accept the agenda any questions from the board on the consent agenda any questions from the public on the consent agenda motion to accept yeah yes I'm a consent agenda and no to the open lunch with no any open lunch before the path right after that I'm Mrs Fredo yes on the consent agenda and go to the open lunch ISM to confirm Mr Fredo yes on the agenda no to the open line thank you for that uh Mr nadrup t uh yes Dr pantaliano yes Mr Shelley yes yes how many do we have do we have five on the open lunch we do okay okay at this time what I'd like to do is uh introduce Mr Albin as I mentioned Mr Albin is our gifted and talented coordinator
013for the district uh also works with data Mr Albin is here tonight also our principals are with us tonight and Mrs Calabrese director of curriculum so Mr Alban I'll be brief is it okay if I sit yeah sorry Luke could you maybe maybe one set of Lights you can close it might be easier to say which one I don't know you got to just play around with it okay that's probably good the first one the first one that's good yeah so the steam board members I uh my name is Angelo Albin I am a title one and give to The Talented teacher in Cliffside Park I also dabble in numbers here and there um in the interest of brevity this presentation has about 70 slides most of them are actually the the breakdown of the
014numbers of our njsla Administration results each one of those slides is my children so skipping through them is painful to me but again in the interest of gravity I want to keep everyone here all night the the presentation is broken down into three sections there's a district analysis which is an overall analysis of numbers uh there is a school analysis which will have a breakdown of each school's by grade level and subject and the last one is the narrative session which I'm going to go ahead and Skip ahead to I do have to mention the participation numbers uh the state of New Jersey requires us to have better than 90 participation rates in all state assessments which we actually very easily hit participation in English language arts was about 94.5 of course the it's a
015little it's like 4.5 but um and these are this is the breakdown compared to the state by grade level I will talk about the actual results uh briefly in at the end the mathematics participation rates overall was 94 which once again it's very very good please notice that some of the numbers are very small here in Geometry we only had six students take the geometry examination because it was only ninth graders that were taking it really six night graders so those numbers will not be reported I have them if you'd like to see them but I cannot put them on the presentation because of FERPA concerns yes and finally the these are the breakdowns for mathematics percentages in total and science science participation is also very very high uh 11th grades are a little below
01690 but overall for this District we have almost 93 percent okay and uh these are the science course which we will talk about uh there's probably our overall our worst sadly or Worse performance but it was Statewide it's not just us now you will see you have seen these before if you've been on the board for quite some time these are the color breakdowns of each one the first section is all uh it's by grade level so you're going to see mathematics English mathematics English mathematics and for fifth grade you're going to see English mathematics and science as well uh sixth grade the Science assessment was only given to the fifth grade the eighth grade and the 11th okay so again in the interest of brevity I'm going to skip to most of these and
017go into the school analysis section uh it's similar charts you're going to see scores uh by school so this is school three their third and fourth grade are the only grades that took the assessment at that school English language arts percentages [Music] um and and just again to remind you that level one is not meeting expectations level two is a is a getting close partially meeting the yellow is almost it's approaching they're very very close green is meeting expectations and the light blue is the is exceeding those are the those are the kits where you the Perfect Score kids they they reside in that light blue section so we'll skip through these again these are broken down by the state requires a demographic analysis I will just briefly talk through these numbers I didn't put
018the charts I just put the I just excuse me I didn't put the numbers down and just put charts it's a little easier to to understand this way economically disadvantaged students in the ELA performed very close to the general population which was actually is actually very nice and actually in the sixth grade our economically disadvantaged subgroup performed better than than the general pop which was quite admirable obviously the percentages of general population includes you can have this Advantage so they're the non-econ are a little higher than what appears here that's Ela mathematics again not too far off from the general populace in in Algebra 2 there was there's no score reported because the end the end score the N value is less than 10 we cannot report scores for less than 10. science performance for
019economic disadvantaged subgroup in 11th grade was slightly better than the district actually in fifth and eighth grade unfortunately it was not the racial subgroups our African-American subgroup is not reported at all because in each grade level we had less than 10. so they don't appear here if you'd like to see those numbers we do have them uh same thing with the Asian population and fifth sixth eighth and ninth grades we didn't have enough Asian students to warrant a report but you can see that uh how the white Asian Hispanic and District overall and compared to the state or foreign that's the ELA mathematics and science which is the same thing the racial subgroup excuse me like what the wrong way uh you're going to see the same thing here at the black subwoofers that appear
020Ela IEP subgroups our IEP students were a little harder hit than other subgroups it's actually the second most affected subgroup so you're going to see that their Ela Math and Science performance lags considerably behind general population and our hardest hit group is actually our ell subgroups for reasons that I will discuss briefly third grade in fifth grade there were there weren't this is not that it didn't appear it's literally zero there was no well there's a zero there was enough to report that it just none of them achieved proficiency sadly same thing with science now these are this is the narrative where I'll spend a brief amount of time I just wanted to let you know that last year's njsla administrations were the first in our in this post-pandemic world it has been reported in
021many national Publications by the way these are all clickable articles if you'd like to read them in detail on the PDF that will be up on the website you can uh learning loss has been immense unprecedented we've never gone through a situation like this Nationwide mathematics and reading scores have progressed drastically erasing nearly two decades of growth in some cases the devastating aftermath several years of interrupted learning we as educators are facing a sisyphean task in having to bring our students back to previous levels of knowledge all the while teaching New Concepts and ideas but I feel like the staff at Cliffside Park is up to the task and these scores are really just the first step in finding out how much intervention and how much effort we're going to have to put in to
022bring all our students up to acceptable levels The Narrative for testing or notable achievements really most of our Elementary grades actually beat New Jersey state proficiency quite handily we can only compare ourselves to the state this year because there were no administrations for the last for 20 uh 2020 and 21. therefore we have no comparative scores I can't form any any Trends there's there's really nothing to show in that respect so we can only compare to the state our Ela numbers in particular are very very high especially in Sixth and eighth grades the sixth graders beat the state by nearly 18 percentage points when which is immense even for a regular year and the 8th graders also performed admirably with an investing of the uh of the state math wasn't too far behind either third
023grade outperformed the state by seven percent seventh grade by fifth percent and eighth grade by 11 so our Middle School that really made really well um fifth grade is a point of concern it was the only Elementary grade that did not outperform the state now we in discussions have attributed this to the fact that fifth grade was the grade level that was hit the hardest they didn't have the advantage of taking the test in the third grade they didn't take it in the fourth and the difficulty ramps up by grade level so they've never been exposed to to this sort of test this grade level has also affected the most we feel because of the the interruptions in third and fourth grade which are pivotal years especially in math multiplication division those are those are
024integral basic basic skills that the kids need to have and be missed out on a lot of that unfortunately the results in science across all grade levels have actually been the most eye-opening and we will discuss that in a separate slide any questions on this okay um I just wanted to put a bring bring you guys up a little bit I just wanted to show you that we are district is putting in a lot of effort particularly to stem the stem Fields you're what you see here you can read in detail if you'd like there's a photo of a maker space that took place at schools grades five and six and we have them at all the schools to make her space day Rutgers science bus came in and had a there was a field
025trip for seventh grade students where they did they learned about stem professions Mr Oren at school six in the middle school he's he's starting guitar classes for students which Falls within the steam the steam realm we had a Steven technology come in and have a day of stem also with our with our students in the middle school girls code is a really popular program this one in particular is from school three which missed Yvette Institute and it's these have all been success stories it's it's not all doom and gloom I just want you to to realize that it's we're we're getting um the plan that we have in place for elementary administrators have placed a lot of emphasis on data analysis this year that's me um we are trying to to utilize it to intervene
026sooner if needed or to when possible push a little bit harder if we see the kids are are reaching the levels that we want them to we hope that this approach will help us to accelerate learning particularly in ela Math and Science we're also in the process of developing in-house data tracking systems that will allow teachers administrators to to see all the information in one location so that we can better find patterns and and ways to help our students also I excel as you know has been implemented district-wide as a as a practice and diagnostic tool it has it has replaced benchmark assessments it provides quarterly benchmarks every six weeks we do benchmark assessments and I excel and it also allows us constant progress monitoring instead of just taking up a qba every marking period
027we're doing every six weeks we're able to see exactly where the kids are and also specific standards that require more help or or less school-wide for ELA has been adopted now from K to 8th grade schoolwide is a digital curriculum that contains more than 100 units of multiple subjects where students can utilize a workshop model rather than rather than single texts we are encouraging Educators to participate in plcs and professional development opportunities we have also employed the services of Dr Tracy severins as I'm sure you know to assist in this request strategic planning the lli program fantas and panel on the Live program has been implemented in K in grades k-6 to help accelerate Ela it's a very intensive Ela program that is designed to bring kids to level in approximately 18 weeks and it
028has shown last year was the first year it has shown phenomenal phenomenal results conquer math continues to be a major part of teacher professional development we have teachers from every grade level attending conferences year one year two and financial literacy as well we also have adopted a coaching model where Ela and math coaches will go to the classroom when needed for modeling lessons and whatnot there's also a plan in the works to create a teacher and student panel the idea is to get a better feel of student attitudes towards testing one of the things that I noticed in looking and breaking down scores in detail was the fact that there were some very very capable students straight A students that performed terribly on the test literally didn't answer questions zeros across the board and and
029so it just tells us that student apathy has something to do with lower scores and it's something that we'd love to to dig into that's one of the things that Doctrine Severance is going to help us with is trying to dig into why why the attitude towards testing from some of our students hopefully I think it might be partially because of the fact that they know that the test doesn't necessarily affect them but it it doesn't give us valuable data if they would think it's interesting so uh middle school school-wide has also been implemented at the middle school like I said for sixth seventh and eighth we are hoping that this curriculum facilities cross-curricular work a little a little more um Foster a lot of independent reading in our students which which is something that
030uh that will help them throughout their lives um Erica Denman who's an Ela specialist and focuses on Middle School literacy has been contracted to assist our teachers I know that she's also helping the elementary but helping our teachers supervisors create an effective plan of action for students one of the aims of the ELA department is to find better ways to prepare students for the resource simulation tasks within the njsla assessment those are the ones that have to do with modeling a scientific task every student every student that takes the engine is like has to do that task some kids do narrative some kids do literary but everybody does the research simulation so it's important to get them all used to that type of questions they're going to see and we're also using worldly wise to
031address vocabulary concerns for students in mathematics Mac committee has reviewed curriculum and we have already infused the computer and Sciences sign thinking standards into the Mathematics Curriculum so this will be a state requirement starting next year for all school districts in New Jersey but these standards hopefully will help us better integrate math into science and engineering careers Middle School teachers continue with professional development conquer math the Savas 2.0 curriculum continues to be used in the middle school as well and this year it has actually been updated they have added some new digital tools and some new assessment assessment tools for practice I excel has also become an integral part of practice Middle School there is a they also are adding constant new functionality including a test prep section that is focused just on the standards
032that are required for njsla which is phenomenal that's literally in the last couple of weeks is something that they just added and also extra help is being offered daily and students are highly encouraged to attention any questions on middle schools okay a little bit on high school interventions um we are trying to strengthen writing instruction and student capacity for analysis in informational texts in particular which at the high school level is probably most of the reading material they have Ela departments have identified specific standards such as citing evidence and multiple meaning of words to focus on in writing quizzes and tests the IXL diagnostic once again is being used to identify Target and re-teach areas of needs of improvement also IXL is now available in the district for science and social studies so it's it's
033covering almost every curriculum that we have we have um silent sorry greater emphasis has been by the supervisor to ensure PDP goals such as student engagement and many lessons are a part of daily instructions so that these practices are actually being followed silent reading with intention to address theme characterization point of view authors craft and build breaker we want to increase writing in journals and free writing to promote creativity confidence and organization constant dialogue and implementation of high quality literature that engages students something that we want to also focus on and Mr Pinto spoke at length about diversity and the diversity inventory at the high school we want the students to feel like the reading material that they have and the things that they're engaged in are things that matter to them things that they
034understand things that speak to them and they're they're very very different Lifestyles and racist right um in mathematics we're hoping to increase proficiency rates specifically in algebra 1. we have identified that as a building goal for for this year and going forward by pinpointing specific standards that are low on the nginsta does provide very detailed breakdowns which we are looking into much more detainedly this year again the IXL diagnostic is being used at the high school extensively in addition to engine SLA which applies to Elementary we also have NJ GPA practice there's a PSAT practice there's SAT practice all that functionality has recently been added which is it's great it's a it's a One-Stop shop for a lot of things professional development and Concord math a lot of teachers at the high school have have
035been going particularly for algebra one we also have we're trying to create a culture of collaboration among subject Area Teachers because these tests are really affecting every subject we're trying to increase our focus in demonstrating standards for example how to properly understand the type of questions that they're asking based on the subclaims yeah I don't know if you know how the test works but mathematics questions are organizing to subclaim A and B which is Major in supporting content reasoning there's an entire section on reasoning which is the type of question that says uh oh Susie did this is she correct and you have to justify what you've said and then there's questions that are real world questions for Dr pantoliano owns the store she sells knitting needles and she does this they're generally multiple choice
036and multiple parts so understanding how to answer these questions properly is very important um we are trying to increase our academic language and subject-based vocabulary and providing additional accommodations for L's including ell Specialists that have identified Ells as a focus for this year any questions on High School we're almost there almost the science uh the 2022 Angeles La Science assessment scores were much lower than we anticipated it was actually the one assessment where none of our grade levels have performed the state of New Jersey with 8th grade coming the closest that just two percentage points below however this is not really a Triumph because proficiency for science in the city of New Jersey is terrible it's across the state 80 percent of students 80 percent are below proficient concerns um I just might be because
037we focus on Ela and math so much maybe so but we have made a concerted effort to improve our Science Education the elementary and middle schools have adopted a research-based science curriculum developed by Berkeley University called Foss I'm sure you're familiar with it full option science system it's designed to teach students using research methods in addition to direct instruction and at the high school intercurricular activities between science and other disciplines have been a focus of our teachers the STEM Academy is a is an important and growing aspect as well of our Science Education through this program we are introducing more students to careers in science and technology any questions on science okay and this is the the narrative explaining Wida which I won't touch on too much this explains how Wida Works how the how
038these charts operate how the English proficiency test results are presented what I did want to talk about was that the ell population was the most effective by interrupted learning across all tested rates and every subject the subgroup performed the lowest of all it's a sad fact that our L population was disproportionately infected with issues ranging from adequate access to technology despite the fact that we had a one-to-one Chromebook program a lot of these kids don't have internet access at home it's like a it's like giving a it's like giving a Ferrari to uh to a person with no arms and legs it's very sad um [Music] I would say I mean we can't necessarily firm or deny that they do but we have to take their word for it if they don't have Wi-Fi again
039so this has caused a very large gap to build and regression with ell students was immense so if you look at the discrepancies between the the last few years you'll notice that the the numbers and levels one and three have actually increased however they the results are a little bit skewed because the population numbers for elves are low per grade level so the banded results show a larger downturn than if we just did it by grade level because then the results wouldn't be reported that's why we've been so um that skews a little bit also we are not allowed to account former L's in our numbers and kids that exit the program are a success we have a lot of kids that have been former elves that are gift talented that are that are that
040get perfect scores in the NJ SLA uh but we can't count those towards our L population um in addition to that it's uh they uh they're expected to take the examination in the first year in math and science so despite the fact that these kids have very low language ability they're still required to take their math and sciences because they're excused from Ela but they're not excused so if you see the charts you'll notice that in ela they are not there but in math and science so there's also been a large influx of students over the last two years at the lowest and highest levels in high school at K through one um so the program does work well as indicated by past successes but much like everywhere else the coming back from the pandemic
041area regression is going to be a long road that is all I have any questions any questions from the board I'd like to make some comments sure [Music] congratulate this [Music] dissertation a couple of years ago I was less than optimistic with the test scores and so forth and seeing that even though there was a pandemic between the last time they gave all these tests and now how much the students have excelled and exceeded the state averages I mean that really is due to the hard work of the students and the staff and when we're up here on the board and we are approving agenda items they just seem like isolated agenda items like when we're approving uh tutoring for the morning after school programs conquer math seeing people going out we're approving all of
042them in isolation on different agendas but I have to commend you on this presentation because the presentation did a phenomenal job in taking all of the things that we see in isolation and putting it together as a strategy but what I really I have to congratulate Mr Roman Gino because he came to us last year and he asked us to take a leap of faith and do a little restructuring with the Middle School making a dedicated Middle School having Middle School principal and I think that one of the greatest things that he's done he's done many wonderful things is to Institute a director of curriculum and instruction because I've always believed that when you have somebody who pays attention to only this great things happen and I think that this is evident that great things
043are happening so congratulations and very optimistic and I'm proud of everyone I don't know if any of our principals or Mrs Calabrese anybody wants to comment I know administratively we talked a lot about this and Mr Alban great job in putting everything together so this will be posted to our website uh probably tomorrow or Friday so if you want to look at some of the scores specifically for your school or for your uh Charles school you'll have the opportunity to do that um before I move on to the next part of the program um any questions from the public about uh any items no your name is um right now we brought all the 25 kids it's actually it's a funny story because yesterday I was talking to um calories of the refrigerator New Jersey
044representative he's told me that every 25 kids to meeting today that he would come by about pushing his name would come today but I started I made it work and obviously when you made the announcement that we've been going after school lunch and we saw me and the student body want to thank you for passing that because I'm I'm glad you did come to the meeting and I like to see students participate in things that directly affect them so feel free to come to any of our meetings I know your first line would be to go to Mr Pinto or your Vice principals and if they can't answer your questions you can come to us I know at the end of last year we had a meeting actually at the beginning of this year about
045you know the cafeteria and maybe better food choices and things like this so I really think it's important for students to have a voice in their education doesn't mean you're always going to get what you want but to have a voice at least lets us know what's important to you and then we as the Board of Education the superintendent we have to do what we think is best so just to take a step back Mr Pinto is going to explain to you the guidelines of the program it may not be everything that you want initially but it's a start I think the last time students in Cliffside Park were allowed to go out for lunch Maybe 1975. so um so it's it's a start and uh I hope that everybody takes the program seriously and
046abides by the guidelines so that people that follow you will benefit from it and maybe someday we'll be able to expand the program okay so thank you I just have one thing just stand up next time bringing 50 and I have those people here every time you come you gotta double the number fair enough oh yeah we could have had the party here could you started a party here then left um I was actually like going around asking people like crazy to come in the world they were actually willing to leave okay thank you so much for everything okay if I could put my two cents in you are the leaders as Mr ermangino said this hasn't been done since the 70s so you know implementing this for the first time there are some guidelines
047that Mr Pinto will absolutely explain to you but you are representing our community and we have put our faith in you and actually all the students that come after you have put their faith in you so you know let's do a wonderful job with it make us want to expand the program in particular as far as Clinton's concerned I apologize if you guys have a certain agreement beforehand but I want you to know behind the scenes he has actually put some pressure to try and get this done today so uh he is absolutely been fighting for us sure thank you okay anyone else okay so I just want to move on to the next part of our program which is stop smiling jacket which is a presentation I'd like to make on behalf of the
048Board of Education and I did notice that episode 4 was named the Blue Ribbon School Mrs russos has been wearing blue and when she calls me she used to say hi Mike how you doing this is Jackie and now she says Mike this is the principal of the blue open school she she's never going to let us forget it so I just want to say that if I can get this open I just want to just go back a little bit I think maybe Mrs Roost has called me in June uh am I right in January okay January and just said that she was notified by the federal government that uh the Blue Ribbon School commission that they identified school for the possible school that they would have liked they would like to apply for
049this great recognition and she asked me what do I think and I said great go for it and I know she worked very hard with her staff to put really a very uh comprehensive application together which included data about school for test scores uh demographic makeup information about staff students a number of things and uh you know of of all the schools in New Jersey only nine schools this school year are were picked as Blue Ribbon Schools how many in the nation 297 schools so it really is a great honor and when I talk about it when I first mentioned it to the Board of Education I said you know it's a great honor for the district because it is a great honor for school four but I know um Mrs russos would be the
050first to say that she couldn't have done it without the entire staff and what I mean by that is teachers supervises sodiums secretaries I don't know who else I left out but everybody that's in the school really is the school community and makes a school what it is give the kids the school the character that it is and you notice that you go around the different schools different schools have different characters which is made up by the staff and the principals so everybody really should take a bow for this all of the school for you and the board just wants to Simply uh present to us plaque that says the Cliffside Park Board of Education congratulates princess principal ruseus and the entire school for staff and faculty on being recognized as a 2022 Blue Ribbon
051school so it's it's a great honor foreign November second third research will be going to Washington I didn't want to go with it but Jackie will be down there uh with Mrs Calabrese uh this is Scotia as well yes and uh they'll be presenting they'll be um representing Cliffside Park and they will be presented with uh plaque and uh recognition for all your Great accomplishments so again we have uh a cake coffee and tea uh so just spend some time uh talking tonight and again congratulations for your support and on the board of education my mentors Donna Danna throughout the year since I'm a teacher at school five my administrative colleagues for their support phone calls for the many phone calls most of all the faculty and staff at school four you believed in me
052we were a team and I appreciate that so much and my family for your support I'm sorry I really appreciate you I couldn't have done it without all of them so thank you sorry so again uh thank you everyone for coming to our meeting tonight Mr alfano uh motion to close sure sure I'm sorry my graduate mother and the reason why there was school for graduate I love that school from the moment I set my foot into the door and I have to thank Mrs Fontaine who's in the audience for this she got me through kindergarten I was a hard person against the kindergarten but she got me through and I have to say from the reading program to the math program to every loving caring person in the school whether we were doing making
053gingerbread houses in kindergarten or painting the hallways when they were in sixth grade it was just such a wonderful loving nurturing place to be and I've said this many times about the the teaching staff and the whole staff there but it was just such a wonderful experience and I will always be grateful for having been a part of it and having had my daughter been a part of it and I want to really thank you because it's such a well-deserved honor and it's so wonderful that you actually got recognized for it because you created such a nurturing loving environment and such an academic if you had some very high achieving students come out of that school so thank you thank you very much [Applause] motion to adjourn motion to adjourn okay Mr Shelley may you
054have a second if I may please this is a brew there you go we're good coffee cake have coffee cake students