001completely thank you Miss manaus will you please introduce yourself when I noticed that photos [Music] a little louder we're having trouble here thank you welcome the initials to everyone here and watching the live stream at home to the October 19th Dover Board of Education meeting for those who wish to provide public comment remotely if you perform those posted on the dishes website at 6 30 pm and that would all comment and those were little comments will be addressed in the second public comments section this meeting which is hereby called order at 6 30 pm has been compliance with the notice requirements of the law the public notice was posted in the office of the Board of Education and communicated to the municipal court and the daily record on October 5th could we please rise to
002the black school I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America thank you Mr sauce here Mr Miller here Mr President thank you very much missions yes working together as a community our mission is to Welcome All and provide opportunities for all our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and choose to make an impact thank you um it is my pleasure to let Dr McLaughlin introduce our next presenter I think our board's favorite part of being on the board of education is getting to see the amazing things that our students are doing so Dr McLaughlin yes I'm going to ask at this time for Mr solier our director of guidance at Dover High School and throughout our district to come forward so we can have
003some special recognition of student foreign I want to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to appear and honor some of our highest achieving and most deserving students this is a wonderfully fulfilling part of my uh part of my job that I truly truly enjoy I want to first talk about the the national marriage scholarship program the national scholarship Corporation was founded in the early 1950s for the sole purpose of administering the National Merit Scholarship program this was due in large part it was a a response to what was a prevailing feeling at the time that the United States was falling behind in terms of education and scientific Innovations during the Cold War and so to promote academic achievement and to incentivize students to to continue their educations the corporation began awarding National Merit Scholarships
004in 1956. they developed their own tests which they use for 15 to 16 years until the College Board launched their preliminary sat in 1971 the two agencies merged their tests identifying enough Confluence of their their content in their format and since 1971 the PSAT has been the general and primary screening instrument for the National American consideration when 11th graders take a PSAT in October of their junior year those results are reviewed and students are assigned a selection index based on their score to achieve even commended student status one must score in the 96th percentile of all test participants in that Administration but that in context approximately 1.5 million students take that test each year in 11th grade so to achieve commended student status you've got to do better at about 1.34 1.35 million of those
005in 1983 College Board which by this time could be considered an unofficial partner of national America established the national Hispanic recognition program as a means of honoring High performing students within the Hispanic community of approximately 250 000 Latino students to take a PSAT in a given year only 7 000 or less than three percent will earn this prestigious recognition and most recently in 2019 College Board expanded this program reshaping it into an umbrella of recognition Awards in addition to the National Hispanic recognition program awards were established to honor African-American students as well as students from indigenous backgrounds to earn recognition in any of these programs a student must have a cumulative GPA a 3.5 or higher score in the top 10 percent of all PSAT participants in that group or earn a three or higher
006on at least two advanced placement exams by the end of their junior year so National Merit and the awards recognition programs have a great deal of history behind them and an awful lot of rigor and demand in earning uh in earning any of these awards that I'm going to um think about right now we are going to uh I'm going to introduce seven students the first two are not able to be here I'm going to say a quick word about them anyway we we had in the fall 2021 Administration One National Merit commended student and that was William Carney will couldn't be here because of a prior commitment but I can assure you that he is widely regarded in our building as a gentleman and a scholar he is a varsity athlete playing baseball and
007cross country he has devoted a lot of his extra time or his free time to the the Boy Scouts and recently became an eagle scout so this is a well-deserved award for uh for will we had five students that achieved National Hispanic recognition award status and our first the first one is Emmanuel Garcia Torres who called me to let me know that he was not going to be able to be here he explained he has a an ailing family member and so our thoughts are certainly with the Garcia Torres family this evening Emmanuel has been a four-year member of our band and he feels motivated to pursue education in the area of culinary arts and food science among his college lists he's considering applying to The Culinary Institute of America and Johnson and Wales in
008New Providence Rhode Island all right now when I when I call your name if we come up and join me at the podium and listen to me say some nice things about you see your past gonna take some nice pictures okay Joshua petroche Josh is an active member of our interact club and he's also very involved in community service through table of hope we an organization that provides free meals to families in need five nights a week to develop a passion for the stem subjects and plans to pursue mechanical engineering congratulations [Applause] Joshua is also a dedicated member of our ingredient club and this year serves as its president he's a high performing student but also maintains balance among academics and extracurriculars playing tenor saxophone in the band he's setting his sights high as he
009should in hopes of pursuing a career in medicine Joshua intends to apply among other schools to Johns Hopkins Hofstra University and Harvard Joshua congratulations Sandra Ramirez Cassandra intends to pursue a degree in computer science and among her top choice schools are Carnegie Mellon MIT and yeah but she additionally nurtures her passion to the Performing Arts not only as a vital member of our drama club but also performing in our plays and musicals and and also as a multi-instrumentalist in the band and well as a member a member of course as a soprano in the course further she takes part in our dance club and plans to minor in musical theater to continue nurturing that that passion Cassandra congratulations [Applause] Garcia we umara maintains a thoroughly active th life not only is an athlete playing various
010positions on a softball team but as a trusted valued employee at the head start school where she helps facilitate their Aftercare program this past summer she took part in the police youth boot camp which furthered her interest in the field of Criminal Justice she is considering schools that include College of New Jersey University of New Haven and Desales in Allentown Pennsylvania congratulations to you [Applause] we had one student earned the national African-American recognition award and I would like to welcome Nikolai some wildlife thank you for the lives of three sport athlete and has been inducted into our National Honor Society he's also a member of the indirect club and of the DHS student council what he loves to study about and work on are cars and their uh and the modern systems that are involved
011with uh with auto manufacturing to that end he plans to pursue mechanical engineering nuclei plans to apply to among other schools Stevens Institute Stanford MIT and Princeton University Nicolai congratulations including seven students that I was just able to have the pleasure of presenting to the board I want to say that you you inspire us and impress us and we are incredibly I'm incredibly proud of your significant achievements and to the families whether you are here tonight in person we're not I I want to say that I know the confidence that I speak for I can speak for my colleagues in administration and our superintendent assistant superintendent and board members that we share sincerely in the Elation and pride that you must be feeling right now for your remarkable children thank you all who are here
012tonight if you could come forward and stand in front of the table here facing towards the auditorium so we can come out and congratulate you and also take your picture thank you it's a new tripod a new tripod it's a new tripod [Applause] at this point I'm going to turn it over again to Dr McLaughlin to introduce of the 15th annual art show award recipients for the Novartis diversity and quality and inclusion project thank you we have with us tonight miss Marisha Cole who we'd asked I think we lost our microphone up here at the uh stand but the Chicago will lead that so if you could uh Mr Cohn uh if you could come up to the stand or some special Awards being presented tonight uh by the novias diversity equity and inclusion from
013their 15th annual art show and the Dover recipients from that contest you hear me okay I'm having trouble hearing her is it possible to make that louder is it on Miss chuckle could you try again hello Foundation can you hear me better I'm looking for Janet's Janet gator matanti has worked with nobody's Pharmaceuticals for the past years in making sure that everything is executed with success she has helped getting all the students to participate in our contest this year we celebrated 15 years of doing this we include all Lawrence County Children and I always root to see if Dover students win and this year we have four winners and I am here with uh Janet Gaynor matoti and I want to really congratulate you for having Janet on your side so thank you so much
014she's going to read the names and I'll pass out the presents or the prizes hello everybody um good evening my name is very nice to see you all I'm so so proud of all of our artists and our art teachers so I'm gonna get right ahead and um start with the awards okay the first place award for the high school grouping goes to Ashley Garcia [Applause] Ashley is being awarded a computer thank you [Applause] second place award in the Dover in the high school grouping goes to Kellen Calle I apologize Helen paye is the fourth place award so come on [Applause] and Kellen received an Amazon fire [Applause] okay the second place award for the high school grouping goes to Natalie Garcia arequipa Natalie will be receiving a Nintendo switch [Applause] our elementary group who
015won first place and she will also be receiving a computer and her name is [Applause] thank you [Applause] would you mind coming forward here with our recipients we can do the same picture and congratulations and could we have another round of applause for our appointments [Applause] foreign thank you we'll survive wonderful [Applause] I'd like to thank Ms Gainer matanti and Miss Chacon again for your support and making sure our Dover students participate we obviously have so many talented students but thank you Mitch Chacon you come every year and make sure that we know when it's happening and I all appreciate thank you and thank you to miss at this point we are going to take a five-minute intermission there is a lineup of beautiful art created by our students so for the people in the
016audience um please take this five minutes to enjoy um the artwork on the side and it is 705 so we will start again at 7 10. thank you all right foreign okay at this point we are back and I would like to uh turn the meeting over to Dr McLaughlin for our final presentation tonight tonight we have a presentation uh it deals with our NJ SLA scores uh We've also encompasses uh graduation uh numbers uh so there's a combination of people who will be presenting tonight uh Patrick pandalco will be our lead presenter with the uh Dana Sono Rory Carl uh Miss serigliano and myself so will adjourn to the side and begin on presentation well thank you very much for having us tonight to present the NJ SLA scores for the spring of 2022.
017now this is an exam that was taken this past spring it is the first type of first type of this exam and these results since 2019 and as you know since 2019 a lot of things have changed as a result of the scores aren't what they normally are but that's not just with us and throughout the state and nationally so just to put that a little bit into perspective a couple of quotes here from different sources test scores in elementary school math and reading public levels I've seen for decades according to the first nationally representative report preparing student achievement from just before the pandemic for the performance two years later I was taken aback by the school and then back to the decline that commissioner of the national Center for Education statistics and then from
018our request Secretary of Education Miguel bordona dispatcher by everyone that would not let off in our efforts to accelerate student learning support their mental health needs and invest in our Educators who are serving students in classrooms every day so definitely some type of mindset perspective of the effects from 2019 to produced in 2022 on our whole system not just District wise Statewide but also nationally so in this first chart um this compares the state passing rate which means matter exceeded the expectations to dover's past break better exceeding expectations uh English language arts English Airline charts and math those are all of the test scores from every single grade level uh the students in algebra for eighth and 9th grade every single grade level I think it was like it's great three to nine algebra is
019from our eighth and ninth grade students geometry the students of the high school and in science the fifth grade the eighth grade the 11th grade take that particular test with AJ SLA you can see we're actually pretty close to the state average in language arts however most of our scores are around 10 percentage points of low State averages this is the state averages against the each individual school's average as you can see that I want to point out that the Elder one student state grade 57.7 is well above the state average uh 28 fifth grade is science and he still reads above the state average it does look like in a slide that Dover High Schools above the state average however again with that State score that is all the grade levels combined 42.9 percent
020in a later slide you're going to see that uh at 45.3 is just a little bit below what the state average is but again looking at all these there's a common theme here looking at all these statistics were then 50 of the students throughout the state right not getting expectations and in some uh areas that you can work exceed within that and again here's the like grade level the difference between the state and uh our our students at each grade level three through six here at the elementary schools again mostly more than 10 points below the state average with the exception of sixth grade but then again I want to point out that if you look at the fifth grade math sixth grade math three out of every uh two out of every three students
021are throughout the state are not meeting expectations and in science three out of every four students are not media expectations at Dover middle school again except for the results are very good results from our algebra one students at 57.7 past number eight twenty two point nine percent about the state average again mostly 10 points around 10 points below the state average but again looking at the actual tests themselves the struggles of many many students throughout the state ment 8th grade science 85 percent of students about that took that that's about the same for the non-meaning expectations yeah I know for high school as I mentioned before that the actual main creative language artist those students took their role in a little bit High internalized State average geometry of the nine points below and algebra one
022it was significant and that definitely has to be the area so part of the reporting process is that we have to report by subgroup so even though you see some statistics that are look like they're a lot above what the general population is those subgroups are are pretty small they're not really that representative of the entire population as a whole the one subgroup that is actually about 16 ell English language Learners those students are about 16 of the students that uh took the exam and that's even given that about uh 80 students from the bilingual population were exempt from the language arts exam so that's definitely again the uh ell students definitely an area of growth that we hope for for the district so looking at the the tests and keeping it in perspective that
023we know it's only one source of data we know that we already said the scores have significantly plummeted nationally students were dealing with the pandemic in general Dover was sit even harder with the pandemic um and then when we thought the pandemic and the closures were done with uh then we have to close again in January of 2022 which is only a few months for the test so we had our momentum going you know taken back again because we know that the remote learning isn't as uh as as effective as that in-person uh contact however that we do know this that all of our internal data and I I read is the platform that we use and I'm sure you're familiar with it um demonstrates that our students are making progress they are going where
024they are supposed to be and one key piece of evidence that the state always provided not always but within the last I think eight years or so provided us was an msgp the mindset has oh was especially in the last decade or so for all of education has always been growth all right it changed from just the passing rate and that's what we're doing this year it's almost like going back in time because those that's the only data we have we have the data where we're comparing passing rate right now to the state and we that used to be one set of data and a long time ago when we had Safe Harbor and those issues everything dependent on the percentage of students that passed so as a teacher as a student you know you're
025that as a teacher you did a good job that the student showed growth as a as a student you know you're learning but sometimes you didn't pass that state assessment and that was something that that was the focus and what the focus wasn't on growth so the state came up with this msgp this the synth growth percentile and what that is is a statistical measurement that shows growth of students compared to the academic peers it starts in third normally under normal conditions it would start in third grade students would receive a Baseline and they would be put into a group from students from around the state called their academic peers and as they progressed ear to ear they would be put in order of how they progress how positive or negative and they will be
026put in order for a median percentile number that student would receive a median percentile like in fourth grade then in fifth grade they'd actually put uh they grouped third and fourth grade scores together for academic peer group and they would they'd also got one in fifth grade and would continue on that each year these students would receive that score and those scores would be put on the teachers rosters and then the teacher would receive a score a median growth percentile the school would receive a score and the district would receive a score historically Dover has always done extremely well with that particular the data a bell curve typical growth is between the 35th and 36th percentile North Dover not North over Dover in general was normally the High part of normal growth or actually in
027the high growth category and if you could look back at 2019 our msgp as a district was a 64 and a 55 so we did pretty well and my guess is when they're bringing this piece of data back for uh next year so my guess is that this is a really important piece of data the growth mindset that most likely I think Dover will do and our students will do very very well on uh going forward so uh at this time we talked about our internal data and growth so I'm going to turn uh the mic over to Mr Carl supervisor of mathematics to talk about that thank you Mr pandolfo good evening everybody my name is Roy Carl I'm the supervisor of mathematics uh before we get into iready I just want to kind
028of highlight what Mr pandalfa was saying with some of the challenges we face with an assessment like NJ SLA NJ SLA is a snapshot in time and it doesn't take into account a student who might just be having a bad day but those are the results we have to go off of the Second Challenge is they take the assessment in the spring we don't see the results until the summer those students have now moved to the next grade level they're with a new teacher yes we can look for Trends but we get information back that says well this student's not proficient but why it's hard to answer that question without hours and hours of digging in we had a game changer last year we set a goal as a district to become more data driven
029in our instruction and I truly believe we hit that out of the park and I'd like to share with you some results from iready this is looking at last year from where I started students started at the beginning of the year to where they finished at the end so last year at the elementary school when we started the year we only had 17 students one percent of our elementary students were who were performing above grade level that number jumped to 234 or 19 percent in one year we had 459 students or 37 percent who were performing on grade level we only started with 77 students that is a 31 increase in Reading we started the year with 63 students only five percent of our students who were performing above grade level that number jumped to
030226 or 18 a 13 increase and for students performing on grade level in Reading we started the year with 188 students 15 and at the end of the year we had 435 students who are now performing on grade level in Reading thank you at the middle school 22 students starting the year middle or above grade level in mathematics we ended with 87 a 14 increase students performing on grade level at the middle school we had 80 students to start the year 16 that number jumped to 178 students or 36 percent of our middle school students a 20 increase and in Reading 54 percent of I mean sorry 54 students 13 were performing above grade level that number jumped to 97. that is a 10 increase and students performing on grade level 30 128 students at
031the beginning of the year which then jumped to 202 students or 48 and 18 increase and at our high school now just to explain i-Ready it was our pilot year last year but we are moving forward with that as a district so last year we made the decision to only test students in Algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2. so just to highlight not all students at the high school were tested but we did see some increases we started with one percent of our students performing above grade level of mathematics that number jumped to seven percent and students on grade level we started at 21 157 students we increased that to 31 that's a 10 increase in one year and then again looking at reading we had a four percent increase with students who were performing
032above grade level comparing beginning of the year to the end and we had 157 students who started the year on grade level in reading that number increased to 183. so although that that is great sometimes it's nice to see it visually the one thing I want to highlight and this is a testament to our incredible teaching staff on average our students made a hundred and fifty percent growth in one year that means our average student jumped one and a half grade levels in one school year and that is the power that this program has provided because unlike getting data once teachers are getting data almost every single day and we're using that data to make meet the individual student needs in the classroom so we look district-wide now you'll notice at the top a little
033discrepancy in the number because we're only looking at the students who are tested at the beginning of the year and then test it again at the end so if a student came into the district in November they're still included teachers are still getting that data but we're just not going to look at them for growth from beginning of the year to end so what we're looking at on the top is how we ended and below that is where we started and I want you to notice the red the red with the black stripe are students who were performing three or more grade levels below we started with 709 students district-wide at the beginning of the year that number decreased to 540 but I also want you to notice that they didn't just jump to the
034dark red because that number also decreased and that's where the 150 percent growth jumping a grade level and a half in one year we now have those students who are only about one grade level below and that's the power of the program because providing teachers with real-time data to make real-time decisions we're seeing real-time growth so looking at a couple of the other areas I just want to highlight the green with the black stripe we only had 48 students starting in the year who were mid or above grade level we ended with 369 students in one year and this is just mathematics let's take a look at Reading so in reading you'll notice the same trend looking at the bottom is where we started and the top is where we finished in just one school
035year and I really want to highlight students who are performing on grade level and above starting off the year we only had 171 students who were mid or above grade level in Reading by the end of the year in one school year that increased to 400 students and students who are early on grade level from 302 to 419 but notice how we didn't just jump from dark red with a black stripe to the red we moved a lot of students almost a gray level and a half and again a testament to our incredible teachers who are diving into this data it is not an easy task but they are up for the task they are diving in Daily and we're seeing that growth and that is the power that this has provided the district so
036where do we go this year so for math we have a brand new K-8 mathematics program it is called Ready classroom mathematics and it ties directly to i-Ready so when the students took the assessment at the beginning of this year it provided teachers with data but data that aligns to our new math program so we're moving that data we're becoming more data driven in our instruction professional development is being provided throughout the school year to not only support teachers in the new math program but ways in which they can continue to use that data to drive instruction to support students as an individual in that classroom and support the needs that they each have we added a basic skills math teacher at Dover middle school because a lot of the growth at the elementary level
037came from the collaboration between basic skills teacher and the classroom teacher using that data to drive and support students we brought in a new extra math program for fact fluency something students can use both in the classroom and at home to work on basic math facts and finally we have a brand new math curriculum for grades k through eight that is aligned with our new program and the power that that data has provided I'd now like to turn it over to Miss Dana Sarno who will cover science and language arts thank you I don't know how to follow that I'm Dana Sarno I'm the supervisor of English before I dive into the science since we're talking about reading and test scores I'm going to start with the language arts so much like Mr Carl had
038said we're seeing a tremendous amount of growth but that i-Ready data is just one of the Avenues that you know we're using for that so at our elementary school we're continuing our writing Workshop implementation this really allows teachers to address individual needs with students it allows them to work in small groups and we are in our second year of that program and teachers are still continuing to receive ongoing professional development and training for this as well so that we can continue to fine-tune the strategies to continue to work with these small groups of students we also started this year our reading workshop pilot for grades two through five we're also piloting at grade six as well and with those we have a handful of teachers at each school that is really looking at this reading
039workshop and how that structure is in the classroom and one of the benefits of doing a workshop style classroom no matter what you're using for the curriculum to follow along is that you're getting that opportunity to really do that one-on-one work individually with students and do that work with them at the level in which they need it so that you can take them and you can fill in those gaps so that structure is just beginning with those pilot teachers as well um we started that also in the Middle School we're introducing readers workshop at the middle school level for seventh and eighth and it will look similar model uh students are able it's a little more advanced at the middle school level students engage in book club they engage in self-selected reading and and they
040do a lot of synthesis and Analysis within book clubs and small group work but again it also gives the teachers that time within that Workshop structure to really work with those smaller groups of students who have specific needs and specific skill deficits that need to be addressed both our readers Workshop program at the middle school and at the elementary school again ongoing professional development and those teachers are are working with with me they're working with the elementary supervisor they're working with the consultant that comes in and they're really getting those supports um we also at the high school this year brought in a new writing program it's called No reading for those of you that are not familiar with no red ink it is a great program to help build students stamina for writing it
041creates an online platform where students can not only enhance their writing they can share with their peers they can work on specific editing they can work on specific skills that are targeted towards them these can be things that teachers also get from their review of the data through the iready Diagnostic and if we're looking at different gaps that we're noticing for students they can Target that instruction as well and then the last thing that we did was last year we added we started out with our reading Specialists and this year we were able to add an Orton Gillingham specialist for k-6 and the Orton Gillingham specialist is really able to begin to work with those students that are at the lowest that need that extra support which frees our reading specialist up to work a
042little more with those students um at a higher tier so when Mr Carl showed you that slide and you see where those students who are three grade levels below well those are the students that might get a little more time and have some more specialized instruction on the lower levels on the primary grades with Rog specialist and then our reading specialist takes maybe our tier two students that are in the middle so it really frees up some options for us with those extra hands and those extra positions to really Target specific skill areas for students in those small groups um and then I'll just talk quickly about science science new curriculum is being written in conjunction with the new stem Scopes program teachers are also receiving ongoing training in stem Scopes to support them in
043the classroom there's also English sheltered instruction training for teachers to meet the needs of all the Ells in their classroom which is content specific to science or or social studies they're also provided with professional development to support this throughout the year and then they have ongoing benchmarks Assessments in science which really allows the teacher to sit back and assess and say okay this is what we've done so far this is where we need to go these are the skills that need addressing and at this point I'm going to pass it back over to Mr pandalfo so um to give a more a well-rounded approach coming from the district level right now so each each school has their own inrs team the IRS team is made up of a group of varied uh teachers different types
044of teachers and support staff that have a particular expertise and their job is to support teachers for struggling students the referral process for that has been pretty cumbersome to be honest it's it's a very uh lengthy um very lengthy amount of paperwork it's a very thick packet um it is it takes a while to process it that the team it has to be copied so it's really I'm not going to say it's inefficient but uh it's not really the most efficacious way to really address students that are struggling instead what the district is going to is on the front line platform they actually have an RTI section response to intervention which is part of the IRS process and with that particular platform the actual you know application for the student is going to be online
045any type of paperwork can be scanned up so everybody who is involved with this particular student that needs help every so the entire case can be viewed they can see what interventions the student already has had and what possible interventions uh students might be eligible for it will be given this past summer administrative couple administrative teams went around and make and tightened up our tiers of intervention for both academic interventions and social uh emotional interventions that are also embedded in to this process so it really is one way that we're really going to be able to support our students in a a more efficient fashion in addition to that uh positions were created such as an inclusion coach in the bilingual ESL coaches uh you know again looking at her data this is definitely an
046area of that we need Support over the past couple years summer school program has expanded then longer before and the last three bullets therapeutic social worker the increase in records clinicians and increasing guidance staff again if you go back to what secretary Cardona said about supporting the mental health needs so we are making sure that the our students are being supported not just academically but socially and emotionally and these particular workers are embedded in the the RTI process in our formulating ideas throughout the school to make sure they were identifying students that need this extra support and that we we make sure that the idea is that yes academics are very very important but without that school climate and without that emotional mental support it's really hard for a student to achieve we're making sure
047they have the proper environment to achieve and that's kind of like the the goal that the district to make sure that we are supporting all the needs of our students so they're completely well-rounded so at this time this is the conclusion of the njsla reporting part of the presentation so if anybody has any questions I'm sure we'd be happy to answer them thank you Mr pandolfo Mr Carl and Ms Sarno for your presentation are there board members with questions Mr Miller and then Ms Ruiz then Mr Robles I was wondering if there's a correlation between the growth that you've seen with i-Ready and the individuals who have taken the test in the spring to see if the i-Ready growth is true to the student and how they achieved on the state test yes so we
048actually had that opportunity with start strong that the students just took you know really just a few weeks ago and we looked at the data that's showing kind of where they are currently as a student and we're looking at where they ended the last school year and we're seeing a direct correlation and that's really what I've been looking for to kind of make sure the the program and the results are valid and we're seeing that exact same growth matching already to what we're seeing with start strong and I guess the other question is with the state test do does our curriculum align for the students to have the knowledge they need to do well in those tests or does the state pull a fast one and give us something else that we're not prepared for
049no and that was a big part of our curriculum writing uh over the summer was to ensure that not only our programming but our instructional strategies and that our assessments you know we're up to that standard you know up to the rigor of what a student would expect to see and not to say we want to you know put all of our focus on to a state assessment but we did make sure that that alignment was happening and that was a big uh you know part of all the curriculum that was written this summer um and to that point um like Rory was saying we even for language arts we wrote a lot of curriculum over the summer for writing that would align to this we're doing the reading pilot and then this summer coming
050up we're going to re-write as well to ensure that you know all of this aligns uh more effectively as it should so um so you would assume that the the percentage that we're seeing maybe 10 percent lower than the state average might be attributed to not having all the curriculum in place for the students that took the test this past spring and if that's not the case what do you think attributes the fact that our we were below the state average so I I don't feel that the curriculum needing revision directly aligns I think there's so many factors in place you know everybody's in the similar positions we were out of school for so long this was the first time they're taking a test they had just been tested in the fall would start strong
051I feel that this is the first step into making sure that we keep going in that direction and the i-Ready data is is verifying that for us and we're very confident kind of going forward that we should see a trend and a change with that percentage going down as we go forward regardless of our our curriculum revisions because our curriculum is aligned to the standards and it's aligned to what was doing I just think the approach is one of the things that we're working on I know specifically in language arts it's the approach of how we're approaching the curriculum to make it more engaging and make it more meaningful and making it more targeted towards specific skills and needs of students instead of addressing a whole group thank you Miss Ruiz thank you Dr saner
052and thank you all I I have some comments and questions but the first thing I want to say is that that i-Ready progress is very impressive and our Educators deserve the Applause because it's it is very good to see so thank you very much for being willing to dive so deep into the data to to learn something new and to apply it and and that's where my question comes in is that um you know you can have all the data you want but if you do don't do the right thing with it you don't get these wonderful results and I'd like to understand some of the successful interventions a little bit better so if you could give me maybe an example that I who I'm not an educator might be able to wrap my mind
053or you know how do you get these high percentages of of increase in this incredible you know three grade levels increase you know just using data what did you do with it yeah so one of the challenges you know if you think about a fourth grade student who may be performing on a second grade level that becomes a significant challenge for that fourth grade teacher because not only do I have to teach the fourth grade content but I have to somehow fit in two grade levels worth of work so one of the ways is from the diagnostic every student is launched into a learning path that specifically targets their individual needs within the classroom that is also something that students can work on at home so that's one of the ways and the data that's
054coming from that provides the teacher they get alerts and says okay this student is struggling on a concept and it gives them the specific resources that will Target that specific skill so whether that's done one-on-one or in a small group setting then when we're looking at the whole class from the diagnostic data and now with our new program iready classroom mathematics they can actually look at unit one here are my five lessons and here are my students and how they're grouped based on their prerequisite skills so here are my fourth graders my first group needs review in some second and third grade skills and here are the resources and that's the power of the program because teachers in the classroom there's just not enough time in the day so if we can immediately link the
055resource but it is the teaching that the teachers are doing and again that is where all of the credit needs to go because yes data can tell us a story but it is what we are doing with that data and last year was just our pilot year and to have an average growth of a grade level and a half for our students I mean just makes me want to fist bump every single one of those teachers it's incredible yeah and and that um slide 16 and I it shows that 16 in in on for me I don't know if it was 16 but it's the strategies for success in 2022 2023 I think that would look great on our website I think um some of these numbers would help people understand exactly what's different it
056seems like the educational um systems are are so drastically different than even you know when I was in high school um and certainly then when my parents were in high school and it's uh that just really helped me understand a little bit better so I'd love to see more of that thank you Mr Robles first of all thank you for all the information I'm a analytics and data guy by job so this is like candy I could eat in all day but try to pinpoint some questions I have and apologies in advance because it's a lot of questions but um thinking about the NJ SLA testing and the i-Ready progress there is no testing or is there testing and I ready or is it just uh they complete certain tasks it's not necessarily tests perhaps
057or is it yeah so we have three diagnostic windows so the students start the beginning of the year diagnostic where we get the first kind of initial phase of data we have a mid-year that will happen in January and then we have a final Diagnostic in June and that's with the comparison we were looking at from last year from September to June but between those times we have the learning path that's providing daily data and then students are actually taking what's called a growth check once per month and that's giving us uh it's a shorter version so that the students are experiencing you know these long extended periods of testing but it gives us a quick snapshot on the growth we've had just in that month so we you know can continue to make that
058progress so thinking about the web process I would assume that the NJ SLA being that it's a one-time testing kind of environment it's much different for the students than it is through the Desiree program is there anything that you guys can help through the i-Ready process that helps them get ready for the ngsla or yeah and that's the one nice thing about the diagnostic because they are doing that at the beginning of the year and mid-year they'll have those two experiences and they are very similar um you know iready does nice jobs of giving students like a brain break and things that you know they might not experience in the NJ SLA but it's a computer-based assessment you know which is a struggle for math because math is something we should be doing on paper
059but it provides the teacher the opportunity to give those you know testing experiences that a student might need like hey you still have you know some scrap paper you can do your work on there so it does mimic in a way you know that experience they'll have with NJ SLA okay um is there any data around the number of students that are first-time testers for the NGO SLA in our district that one I'm not sure of so if they came from like a prior district and they're here for the first in Dover for the first time correct that is the first time they're taking to enjoy versus taking it all the years at the district I believe that the grades three four and five might have been the first time they were ever taken because
060it has been canceled for the last few years so they it would have been probably closed and then he cut out the new students coming in it'd probably be close to the majority or at least probably around 50 percent I mean that's just an estimate I can't but yeah it's probably about that foreign [Music] students never had uh never had taken that exam before right so you take those students plus any new students from the grades that went above then you're you're and any student that that came in um uh new from uh you know possibly you know different country we definitely had I would say definitely at least 50 that were this is the first time they ever took that exam but the those grade levels true I mean to be fair would all
061that also would be around the entire State as well right my next question is around the percentages for increases in diabetic between high school middle school and Elementary it seems like the percentages start dropping and the higher levels is there any problem reason you guys can think about that where they're in the 30s between the 10 and 30s and the elementary to then like four percent to ten percent of their High School yeah so wanna oh so one of the challenges is that learning path we talked about ends in eighth grade so at the high school level we lose a little bit of that support but that became you know our Focus for this year it's really looking at the high school and finding ways that that data can help us tell a story of
062ways that we can you know better enhance our programming but we also find that you know by high school we have students that may be you know three or more grade levels below so that growth becomes more challenging because now it's High School level standards where if I'm a sixth grade teacher and I have a student who might be on fourth grade level we're still in that base 10 system but you have a student who might be on a sixth grade level and now they're in algebra one the connections there become a little bit more challenging because there's so much prerequisite knowledge that they need to have so we're really looking at our programming and other options we can bring in that are similar to a learning path but right now iready doesn't have that
063at the high school level so we're exploring that this year so you're sort of creating it on your own without dry rubbing that learning path yes yeah we're looking at a program right now that's going to provide a similar approach for our high school students and they're going to be piloting that this year great [Music] um that sorry one more questions um you mentioned School climate is one of the factors that can influence the students accomplishments and these testing or even in library you don't have to have an answer from this now but is there any sort of like big ticket items related to climate in a school that you think would impact and could be big ones that we were able to improve in these areas as a district might not be that we're
064negatively after influencing them now but just areas to keep in mind that these are factors that can influence a school climate for a student and you're talking in specifics to the i-Ready and the and testing one of the things that you know you know and then as you get into the older grades too I'm not gonna lot that can become an issue because you know at the younger grades the CL you know they're they're more willing whereas the high school you know sometimes oh you have to go back go back and redo when they rush through it and um so one of the things that we started at the middle school for language arts is a few of the teachers have begun to do almost like an intrinsic motivation to kind of to build up
065that climate and to get the students excited and okay let's see like you know who can get the most percentage growth and almost make it like a race and they were tracking it on the the board and trying different things like that like I said especially for the older grades because sometimes it is a little more challenging to get that intrinsic motivation when you're working with 13 and 14 and 15 year olds to sit and do a learning path so the school climate is not a deterrent it's just that yes we have to be creative in ways to really bring that motivation and get those kids to want to try their best on that um every time that we do a diagnostic or they do a learning path um the MSG mgsp uh you mentioned
066the scores were a positive score considering when do the new scores come out yeah that that is part of when they actually send it nor in the last why not Friday night I think we started in 2014 either 12 or 14 in that area part of the besides just the the comparison to the state those scores were actually returned to uh to to the districts uh with those with uh the other bulk of the scores so as part of the reporting process because the uh again that there was a change from just looking at passing scores to actually showing the growth so that growth will come out when we get the test scores end of next August and my last question um regarding the subgroups scores was that the the ones that we see on
067the slide there for all grade levels combined I know obviously algebra is not like a score that you would have for elementary but yeah that yes that's correct geometry either but science math and Ela yeah science it was uh the uh fifth eighth and 11th grade for language arts it was uh all the ones that took the language arts test and the rest of it was it was all of everybody combined yes and so if I understand that slide correctly so we're saying that those subgroups scored within our district those percentages for those areas or am I missing yes yes but like I said though it's it's a little misleading we're and so it's so if it's above 10 then it has to be reported yep so it's a higher percentage because you know just
068the the the group is is smaller it's just like baseball if you have you're seven times sixteen wow you can really hit but then over a course a long time that's not really uh gotcha an alley thank you thank you so much for those answers Miss Mendez uh thank you um first of all I can't wait till we have our new digital screen so that we can all have a better view of the presentations um I want to mention that um I take issue with snapshot testing I find it to be problematic right those once a year tests I think that they negatively impact students of color but I do find that there is a value in assessments and programs that measure growth so that we can meet the needs of the students that are
069in front of us right so I'm so happy to hear what is being done with iready um it's it's amazing to learn of the growth that's happening um and then I say it's just a comment I say all that to say I am so proud and thankful of the teachers for the commitment to our students growth and to our district for taking the steps to meet the needs of the students as a whole and not just academically so thank you all Mr Miller uh yeah I I'm really excited about iready because we've looked at that a lot so I know that that's really a true measure of students growth I don't necessarily believe that all students take tests well I was one of those students I'd rather apply knowledge to projects and I can actually
070make it work so I also know that when you take these tests sometimes you have to understand the strategy of how to take the test does the state provide a practice test that students get a little experience with it before they actually take the real test yet they they do have uh released items online that they can do that they uh students can take we do have an infrastructure trial where previous released uh items are uh given so there there is a there is a way to uh practice it um and it's be honest with you it's better than it used to be because they used to give us sample items back in the NJ ASK and it was nothing not even the not even close to the rigor that was actually on the test
071is that something we can do as District as a whole with all the grade levels to have that practice use that data and then compare it you know to see if they with that practice that they actually do better so I can speak to that a little bit for language arts and it will be interesting I'm curious to see the data we get at the end that this year when we take the test in the spring because our new curriculum that we're implementing in the structure of the the workshop curriculum is just that they it aligns with the tasks of the test without necessarily teaching to the test you know those it's embedded within their writing okay research simulation tasks they're just constantly looking at two different sources and analyzing and synthesizing they're constantly using
072text dependent and looking at two different passages and comparing and contrasting and analyzing so again I'll be curious to see the data at the end of this year after they've you know started these new programs because I think the new programs align specifically to those needs to again not teaching to the test but teaching those specific skills of how they're going to then parallel them and apply them on the test and like Mr Robles I'm also an analytics person so I can't wait to see all these correlations and our students achieving yeah thank you so much for acknowledging the teachers I don't think any teacher sat at home during covid thinking they were you know that it was better from their living room than it was from their classroom and I think teachers also are
073realizing without even the data although the data is certainly necessary and important to have that there are big large strides that need to be made from those that year plus that we delivered virtual or you know hybrid instruction um and Mr Carl I I challenge you to fist bump every teacher because I think that is a fabulous idea okay um two questions and they're kind of the same um does the i-Ready program allow us to track students longer than a year so you mentioned a fourth grade teacher who sees that I have a student at the second grade level in math or reading and they try to get them back on track are we able to identify students who are over well I mean we're only a year plus into it but over this longer
074time period um are needing more help and are we then providing them with um more interventions yes so part of the program the program keeps historical data so teachers can go in and I have a student in my classroom and here's how they tested this year I can look at last year all three Diagnostics I can see how they did on their learning path and then that will continue to increase every year that we continue the program so in all reality we could have a sixth grade student and that teacher could look all the way back to kindergarten and really pinpoint maybe certain grade levels where that prerequisite skill was not mastered and that's just another powerful tool to bring into that classroom okay okay are we then using that longitudinal data to identify areas
075of reading or language arts or math where our kids are more of our students are struggling you know I I can't think of any off the top of my head I'm science teacher but right are there areas where we're saying wow something's happening they're not getting this concept in second grade we need to deliver this differently yes and I could just kind of talk to it kind of holistically one of the trends that we notice specifically in language arts is the vocab and the vocabulary acquisition and one of the things that we're noticing is because previous programs or previous things were done students don't have enough knowledge and how to apply vocabulary in the moment while they're doing it and how to decode and how to analyze and that's one of the things that we're
076trying to infuse more of and spiral into the work that the teachers are doing is using that vocabulary and helping students identify that vocabulary in context because what's happening is these vocabulary lists well now when they go to take a test that vocabulary list is not doing them any service in these tests and that data was very evident across the board from you know first grade all the way on up that they need that more vocabulary that context that you know how to apply it in context so that's one of the thing big pushes that we've been talking about with our teachers especially when we do our trainings is ways and different strategies that we can start doing that we're doing that now with the readers pilot program and we'll continue to do that when
077we move that to everybody but hopefully we're hoping to see again I'm curious to see the data then as we start doing that and hopefully that will start to that Gap will start to lessen as well so again I know it's not grade specific but that's one overall example that we've come across okay no that's perfect um I don't know if you so my question is have you used the iready data or could you if you have not to determine um the summer slide right how much our students are regressing if they are not attending summer school or the summer enrichment program how much they're sliding over the summer and then is are there ways we could address this several board members have advocated for summer reading or are there other interventions or things that
078we could do to to reduce the size of the summer slide yeah so that's one of the things that we're looking at right now sorry because we can even look at students who attended our summer school program where iready was a piece of that a piece of what was happening and those who did not I mean we're looking at the June assessment data and now our September October assessment data and looking at those specific Trends to you know determine you know what's happening over the summer and how can we better support the students thank you are there any other questions from board members Ms Phillips so my question has to do with the the slide that talks about the strategies for 22-23 presumably that's not an all-inclusive list of everything right because there's really not
079a lot that um speaks to the high school and if you have a scenario like you mentioned where you have a freshman who is at a sixth grade level just looking at that list by itself there really is not a lot that would address that that scenario so I just wanted to make sure that there were other things forward the high school students who you know just given the timelines that you're talking about was you know seventh grade coming to high school and you know missed all that time in school and whatnot yeah so I'll just start with math and then I'll pass it over so for math that data played a big role over the summer so with our math program with algebra one we also have a math foundations for algebra one which
080provides the students with that extra math course with a teacher who can support really looking at the data and saying okay what are the specific skills whether it's from 8th grade or seventh grade that will significantly you know increase your ability to work at that algebra level so we have that for algebra one we have a foundations class for geometry and for algebra two but now we have the data to support the students who would significantly benefit from being in those programs and those are the students who are in those classes this year and language arts on the opposite side of the spectrum of math is a little different because it's the same skills every year you're just expanding on them and growing and then when you get up to the high school same thing
081so one of the approaches that we're we're doing different in the High School this year is you know High School curriculum is really focused on thematic and genre and what they're reading in the text that they're reading and we did a big push this year we ordered you know a lot of new new current more engaging material for the students and we're pretty confident that that will um be a nice stepping stone for us to really dive into these skills with the students by really giving them material that is more appealing to them we're putting a lot of choice in a lot of options for students we're beginning book clubs at the high school level and it really just that engagement and using something that they enjoy as the the tool that they're going to
082use to analyze those skills instead of just the book you know the teachers giving them to read for you know for this unit no here's some Choice here's some options we're including a lot more discussions and Socratic seminars into our curriculum so that teachers so students can begin to do that analysis and like I said we're we're excited about the no writing program bringing that in and really helping to develop students writing and just again being another tool because the iready diagnostic is looking at Reading we need something you know that they it doesn't assess writing the no red ink is a great Baseline to really start working on students writing skills because those go hand in hand at the high school so we're hopeful by adjusting our curriculum and what we're giving students access
083to we can really dive into those skills a little more at the high school thank you Mr pandolfo Mr Carl and Miss Sarno thank you very much thank you okay so the last part of the presentation today deals with the class of 2022 our graduated seniors from June and what our graduation data look like uh where those students are headed and and what those outcomes are I do want to give a little preface to some of the data that I'll be sharing today is that this is not the confirmed data from the state at this point we're trying to give it in the beginning of the year because obviously the board has a curiosity about the class that just graduated but last year for example the state did not confirm the adjusted data cohort graduation
084data until December so you'll see when I provide the data about uh graduation rate that the rate that I shared with you at this time last year is different than the one you heard and that's because of that adjusted time the confirmation of data there's all also a a question in regard to State data so we'll get that state data when the confirmation and what's happening in this time period And I guess the explanation of why the state does it that way is there's an appeals process so districts are allowed to appeal their graduation data that gets reviewed those appeals get reviewed by the state and then there's a confirmed graduation data set that's given perhaps a recommendation is that we realign the time of presenting our graduation data to after that cohort data is
085confirmed but we wanted to keep it in keeping with what we did last year so the board has an idea of where we might be but uh last year actually was quite a fluctuation before we get into that we do want to say where did the class of 20 2022 head and uh 47 of our grad graduates went on to a four-year college experience 30 percent planned to go to a two-year college experience now this is all based on student reported plans so these are not confirmed placements a student might have intended to go to a two-year College went to a four-year college or maybe decided not to go to college and had previously expressed that they did but uh all together in terms of a college situation uh 77 percent of our students plan
086to go on to college other post-secondary experiences and we'll hear about some of those types of placements in a little bit five percent uh four percent went to the military and 14 percent went right to employment so we have a very diverse outcome group one of the things that we plan in terms of our curriculum and and the vision for the high school is meaning all these different needs so the student for example who is headed towards the workplace we want that student to leave us with skills that will apply to a competitive wage high demand occupation so that those students are competitive right away in the workplace gaining credentials wherever possible that places them in a better position for employment and then of course the students who are heading on to formal education After
087High School are prepared to do so as well in terms of the graduation rate what we've done has gone back uh taking that look back to 2017 to our most recent graduate rate of 84 percent so uh back in 2017 our rate was 87.9 percent uh in 85.8 percent in 2019 90.2 percent in 2020 90.9 percent and then uh we see after a period of of some increase some decline uh 2021 to 87 percent and in 2022 84 percent is the one I wanted to point out to you I know last year when I was at the microphone I did indicate that we shouldn't put a lot of stock in that very high 94 number that I shared at the time because a lot of graduation requirements were waived and we were seeing that as
088an inflated rate but in fact the confirmed rate of graduation uh for last year even with those conditions was 87 percent so I do want to talk just a little bit about graduation rate and formula for graduation rate and this applies to any school district I think it certainly applies to ours we a number of years ago the state of New Jersey had to give up its own graduation rate formula and all states were required to follow a federal formula and what it is is a four-year cohort formula meaning that students enter and with their cohort of students who they begin with meaning those students they start with within four years they must graduate so a student who for example might be with us for five years and graduate is considered in these statistics as
089a Dropout so that's an important piece to recognize because we have a lot of students who we work with in terms of credit recovery or in pacing uh or just dealing with whatever issues they may have to deal with take longer to graduate if they take longer than four years to graduate then that counts against the formula if a student begins here in the district and because of their Advanced age we have a lot of students who begin at an advanced age in the district students who register here as first-time students in the state of New Jersey who may begin at age 16 17 18. those students only have until age 20 to complete their graduation requirements uh less than four years and if they don't again that counts against the graduation formula I'm not
090saying that in any way as a uh as an excuse because we want our graduation rate to be high but it's a reality and I think we have to put that in in context of of many of our students experiences so I think one of the important pieces and one of the things that we uh discuss as a board and administration uh what are the ways that we can help our students towards graduation because we know how important a high school diploma is uh whether students moving into the workplace military or to a post-secondary college setting one of the ways that we are currently exploring in which the district previously has not really tapped into is option two is where students can gain credit high school credit for experiences that are not in the traditional
091classroom um I'll use an extreme example but let's say we had a student who was a figure skater and that students spent hours each week figure skating you could provide an independent study through option two for the skills and the learning that was occurring in that figure skating situation or let's say you had someone who was involved in in technology in an applied way outside of school again that can be a way to earn credit so for some of our students who have difficulty maintaining this six hour day here in school because of work demands or for other obligations they may be able to earn credits through option two that would apply towards graduation and it option two can apply not just to electives it can also apply to Major subject areas you have to
092obviously structure that you have to Mentor the student you have to have a program and you have to verify what's being done but we have not made use of option two in the district and it's an important that we are dedicated to exploring use of more online courses for credit recovery now Credit Recovery is when a student has not passed a particular subject especially a major subject that they require for graduation so how can they acquire credit we know that they can go through Credit Recovery through summer school and we have dedicated ourselves to continuing with summer school a lot of school districts have discontinued summer school we know it's an expensive proposition it's hard to staff however it's critically important uh at all levels but particularly at the high school level for a student
093who may need those courses to graduate on time but you can also provide Credit Recovery during this time of the school year and you can do that through online options as I mentioned here I do have to say that some of the online options are difficult for students because if they've experienced difficulty with a a teacher in a classroom it's it can be even harder to learn that skill online there were combinations though of assistance that you can provide students with a structured online program where they're not totally on their own that's what we're looking at so that we can lead these students through gaining Credit in courses that they were not originally able to do so in flexible scheduling to accommodate students as an alternative to dropping out due to economic necessity and basically
094what this means is that we have students who need to work they need to work they support their families they are in the workplace and it is in many many cases unfair to ask a student to make a choice between helping to support their family and to getting a high school diploma and so we are examining ways that we can adapt our schedule so that we're not rigidly within the period one to nine formula for every student after hours programming perhaps weekend programming are all options that we're examining you can do that and it doesn't always have to be a one-to-one hour type of situation there are ways to compress those courses so that students can can achieve credit uh in a what I would call a non-traditional schedule establishing a school-to-work program so certainly
095one way is that one way that many students have earned credit and certainly I know when I began teaching at a high school level this was a very very popular option that you know we are trying to bring back uh which is uh those workplace skills that have True Value uh and who that students learn from that with uh supplemental services from the school district a mentor someone to oversee a structured learning experience that uh that those students could earn credit by actually going to the workplace and establishing a teacher Mentor program so having a mentor who works with a student to guide them uh much like you know many students have and a college level where they have a College advisor who says you know here's the path that you should be going here's
096the the classes you should be taking now our counselors do that but with the students who need that more intensive type of counseling whose circumstances may be more extreme more challenging having a mentor who works with a small group of students and who who consistently checks in with those students to help them uh ensure success uh in in the courses that they're in and then finally increasing academic parental engagement uh so looking at ways that we can partner with our parents again in in ways that fit um fit each family and their circumstances so how can we we know that when parents are involved in the learning process that greater successes occur uh that for for many of our parents uh as we've talked about many times here in terms of the importance of Engagement
097uh that might mean uh non-traditional times again time comes up a lot you know in terms of scheduling when did things happen when do we try to engage parents how do we try to engage parents and who engages parents all those things are elements of the parental engagement piece and that's certainly not just for younger students it's critically important for our high school age students as well I like when we present together because I get to talk about the fun stuff so scholarships and grants we know that once a student graduates high school their opportunity for a free public education often stops which means they might be looking at a bill for attending a two-year or four-year University some of us are still paying off those loans so a slide that acknowledges the hard work
098of our guidance Department in helping our students secure funding for their next steps is is definitely something we wanted to talk about tonight over seventy two thousand dollars were awarded last year to the class of 2022 so that is definitely something to celebrate and to speak about this slide as well um some of these universities and colleges I heard Mr sonier talk about when he was uh speaking about our students prior I'd like to just recognize some of the specific universities that are here on this list that are very um Niche that that have a certain program specific to them so for example Johnson and Wales University that was mentioned tonight and they have that strong focus on culinary and Hospitality programming we also have New Jersey Institute of Technology and we have the universal
099Technical Institute in Bloomfield those are both local here to New Jersey Johnson and Wales is in Providence so just a highlight of some of the bigger names of colleges and universities that our students went to from the class of 2022. also looking at the AP results so two things I'd like to highlight here we had six students take the AP seminar and research and I don't know how familiar the board is with that but I'll explain a little bit of it to you that is a year-long dive that students take into the research project so that takes them through beginning to end where they are talking about a particular area that they'd like to test they're creating hypotheses they're writing that research down they're Gathering and conducting talking about variables and looking at quantitative data
100and they're bringing that all together into a presentation that they then make towards the end of the year it's a very similar experience to a Master thesis for those of us that have done that or even higher to a dissertation which would take that into a much bigger level that is a really substantial course for our students to take and we had six of them take that I also wanted to highlight the 29 seals of bi-literacy we had one sealed by literacy last year that was for Spanish by literacy but also for Mandarin and that student did that in an independent study which again is is very remarkable Mandarin is one of the difficult languages to learn in the world so kudos to that student and their work towards earning that seal of bi-literacy and
101I think that concludes our presentation any questions thank you both questions Ms Ruiz and then Mr Robles thank you Dr singer um I just want to go back to what Dr McLaughlin called the reality of the Dover School District welcoming students that may be arriving to our district at age 16 17 18 and not have those four years to graduate um and having worked um and you know not on the board obviously or representing the board but in my personal capacity as an immigrant rights Advocate I know that here in Dover here in New Jersey and in the entire country um since 2014 there was a marked increase in what um in the Immigrant rights world or Immigrant Law is called immigration law is called special immigrant juvenile so these are young people who arrive
102into the country either with just one parent or guardian or no parent or guardian and there is or was a practice in many school districts hopefully not Dover um of of denying registration to those students or pushing those students out presumably for that reason right we let you in at 17 you're gonna negatively impact our graduation numbers um knowing that Dover welcomes and and by law must welcome these students and cannot push out these students what interventions is our are our community Liaisons our registration office and this option too what what specifically are we doing to ensure those students have the ability to graduate if if they wish or to assist them in accessing a GD if they wish and not just those students or there are many other students who are not no arrivals
103I certainly was one of those students who drop out because of of property because of the need to work and maybe six months later or a year later or a few years later decide I want a GED and how do I do it can do we have a system that should a student present themselves seeking a GD that we can guide them on how to access that it's not an easy process um and so I want to know the answer to that and also when did option two begin and and what exactly qualifies for option two so again thinking back on my personal experience I was a waitress bartender hostess at a local restaurant what if any of that would have allowed me to plug into option two um to save me from dropping out
104okay so the the first part of your question dealing with the advanced age student who comes to the high school with no previous high school credits or minimal high school credits uh right right now one of the things and we recently um had a a meeting with some of our important stakeholders uh in terms of the high school about a process of conferencing with students being absolutely mindful that the conversation has to be objective one and not one that in any way uh even appears to dissuade the student from enrolling in school so it is important because not all the students and the parents who who sometimes are with them understand that the student won't be able to graduate so one step is is to conference with the student and parent and say here's where
105you stand here's what must be accomplished here's what can be done in the time that you are here with the options that we presently have in hand now it's important to mention that summer school right now the summer school programs we give are for Recovery credit not for original credit because original credit uh is is um it has more hours basically there's there's more demands on that it doesn't mean that we can't provide original credit summer programs but that that would be a new development and certainly something that we consider there's a lot of considerations on the table one of the things again that we're looking at is could we provide an alternate hours program and who who could access that program presently we don't have that it would also have to be um not
106only developed conceptually but also developed within our next year's budget because you know that that would be a standalone almost Standalone uh or certainly program but maybe you could even uh term it a school so Mars Hills has an adult high school that you know that is it's its own school we we're open to the idea of an adult school adult high schools by the way that are truly adult and go beyond 20 are no longer and have not been for a number of years funded by the state of New Jersey previously they used to you used to be able to apply for that so that would be that would be a significant decision if we were to come to the board that the board would have to make and looking at you know what
107ages we would uh we would accomplish or do we stay within our present time frame which basically says that upon attaining age 20 a student is no longer able to to access education in Dover so a lot of that is is dialogue and creation and originality uh I want to come to option two option two is not new at all um I and I I can't recall exactly when it began but I can recall uh somewhere in the area of 2009 uh being in a district where we worked on our option two program it was in existence at the time it wasn't a a new thing so it's been with us it's been with us at least a decade and probably more and I could look it up and see see when it's been in
108place but uh we uh we I just spent in place in Dover this is it's not in place in Dover it hasn't been in place in Dover so okay that's what I meant yeah okay uh did I answer all your questions Carol would I leave something out just what would a part-time job that an average high school student would have in our community allow them access to option two I think it would probably depend on what kind of job it is you know it has to be something that has a learning experience attached to it lots of jobs can you know you have to you know give thought to to what that would be you'd need to objectify that in terms of how you would quantify what learning was taking place and how it um
109how it connected to the standards uh that the state of New Jersey has um and uh then you would have to have in place an assigned individual who would oversee the program as a staff member a certified teacher who would oversee the program meaning that the student would have regular check-in times and would have some type of uh not testing but like evidence assessment of what they're gaining from that workplace experience uh so I I don't want to say what would or wouldn't qualify uh I think that we would we would look to see what we can make qualify we're not looking to exclude we're looking to include so um that that would be work you know that we would obviously have to apply ourselves to the other question and I and I have one
110more after that is um the GD how can um how can students that maybe did drop out if they came back and called their favorite teacher or a community liaison do we have the tools and resources say oh yeah this is how you sum up this is where you go this is you know where you get funding to pay for the test or where you send the check yeah so that definitely happens I know in our conference that we recently held uh that talked about our guidance practices that certainly um is in place where there's guidance given to students who seek a GED but you mentioned and I want to amplify that GED passing a GED is not an easy task especially if you are have been missing some of your core education experiences one
111of the things that we've been working with CCM on is they do have a a two semester I think it's two semester maybe maybe I'm understanding it uh there is a 18 credit 18 credit program that will lead you to a high school diploma that you have with CCM at the college level and gain a high school diploma the difficulty is that it is all taught in English and for a lot of our students who need this program that doesn't work so I know particularly that Christina has had a lot of dialogue with CCM around the needs of our students and adapting their program because they are dedicated to serving our community uh so that program would need to be adapted to meet a lot of our students needs and I apologize for my ignorance
112I'm envisioning teachers who have off in the summer and maybe a couple weeks of vacation during that summer but otherwise maybe interested in a part-time job so why is it difficult to staff summer school in the summer teachers are tired I mean I'm just going to be frank they spent you know eight months of a school year teaching to a screen basically building the plane as they flew it for that year um I don't think I'd be signing up to teach so you know and that's why the curriculum you know we we pushed as hard as we could to get curriculum writers but I I'm I am if people want off they can have off right sure so um honestly I think people are just tired is it is it a position that a substitute
113teacher could fill somebody who isn't teaching all year round or or do they not fill the requirement uh well I mean at the secondary level you have to have the right certification so I we couldn't put a substitute in to teach algebra one but you have to have an algebra once or a math cert to teach that okay um and then the the alternate hours program doesn't currently exist is that the same thing as the adult high school or are those two different programs it could be the same thing and it could be two different things okay uh I think what we were talking about is scheduling flexibility for students who might need to work during the day but might be available for a compressed evening program uh or a weekend program uh we I
114you know that I want to emphasize uh because I know we've had dialogue about this that this would not be a place where students would be sent as a segregated placement this would be a placement that met someone's needs and students would continue to have access to the high school program based on their ability to do so thank you Mr Robles thank you once again for showing metrics and numbers I'm just loving it today just curious about these AP numbers the is there any numbers on previous years or is this something that I don't know if you mentioned when you were sharing that you didn't track previous sorry yeah we didn't could do a comparison but I certainly can report out on that in November that we just focused on 2022. okay I'll be interested
115in seeing that um the other question I had Dr McLaughlin you mentioned the timing of showing the numbers versus the state timing what is the difference you didn't actually say now versus one would it be if you align more to when those uh well uh last year at the confirmed I looked back to see when the state told us our confirmed graduation data and it was in December so if they continue um I have to just say candidly everything with the state right now is a little iffy but if they were to continue with that you know schedule uh then January might be a good time I might seem like a long time for the board to look back on the previous year's graduation data but if you're looking for something that's been authenticated it
116really would be the right time to do it so I just wanted to include that comment tonight okay I think we only started reporting publicly on graduation data last year if I'm correct so I know it's still a new new type of thing okay a couple more questions what is the average class size of our graduation cohort this year's or before the 20 whatever number oh the cohort so the cohort again we can come back with those numbers because those are for your cohorts so we could report on each four-year cohort that exists presently at the high school those would differ and again that's information we could come back to the board with and what about technically right now do you know how many seniors we would have enrolled right now that it's seniors doesn't
117tell you the cohort though I know I know you mentioned that but if we just talked about the seniors this year how many do we have do you know yeah just curious to find out for you okay great well she's looking that up um I'm gonna shamelessly throw under the bus the already team and the the student representative here we're actually I was looking at the numbers online for the state average the state average is around 90 for New Jersey we're not that far off if we talk about 87 88 percent so I'm just wondering what through our Ira program what are we require to get to that 90 just to say that we wanted to increase to a certain Target level that would sort of reach that I think 90 when you look at
118the numbers sounds like a better number in the 80s and I obviously would be an increase from where we're at but just thinking about the student body what would encourage them to feel like we accomplished this to get to a higher graduation percentage obviously assume I can talk to the student body and see what they might uh be encouraged by but also like in our tools that we have what could be done to increase that graduation rate through the programs and the tools that we have for those high schools well I think asking students what they need is always a good idea and I know that Mr Nunes has started a principal's Council uh made up of students to advise him on things like that certainly I can ask if that's one of his present
119topics but but increasing graduation data is a rate to get it to 90 percent really encompasses almost all the things we've been talking about uh it one of the the big Keys is not looking at Juniors and seniors who are in trouble of graduating you have to begin at freshman year because by the time you get to someone who's significantly behind credits in Junior and Senior year you know all the motivation in the world isn't going to get them to graduation so we have to work within the time frame that we have in four years goes by quickly and some students even students who have been with us some students struggle with the transition to high school content so uh again that that key piece and I think the mentoring program in particular I'm going
120to I'm going to pull out by the way all those points uh that are there about what we're doing uh came from our high school administration so those are all things they are working at they're not things the two of us uh you know came up with and handed to them I think it'd be one last thing I'll mention I think it'd be worthwhile and I don't know how you would incorporate this but just getting feedback from students who did graduate as to what motivated them as they went through the school system to look back upon and reflect okay things that were doing well and the student body says we're doing well versus teachers in administration I think the student voice is very very important to sort of value that and see what things we
121can continue doing what things we need to improve upon from the student voice perspective yeah just to add something that we're doing uh this year and and I can actually have Mr Carl and Miss Sarno speak to this a little bit but we've partnered with CCM to bring back that college readiness now um so what that's doing is bringing groups of students to CCM to start to walk around start to talk to their faculty start to see what their programs are start to build that vision of hey I could see myself here this could be where I start that four or two year experience and take that program and those classes to get that degree to land that job some of our students don't have that Vision yet they're they're not seeing themselves in that
122role or in that next phase so we've got to work to help provide that for them and that that college readiness now there's actually the field trip is tomorrow um which I know Dana and Rory are attending and our partner over at CCM is Dr Gales and um he has actually brought New Life to that program we were approached two years ago to run with that uh covid kind of shift shifted those plans they had a turnover of staff and now it's back and they specifically came to us and said we we want you here so we are doing quite a lot of work it extends from Seniors all the way down to freshmen because really you want to build your freshman class to start to see that vision and start to work towards okay
123if I want to get into computer science I need to start looking at robotics courses and taking this math and you know filling like backward design feeling how how the courses should go to get there so that's one of the areas that I know Mr Nunes Mr Carl and Miss Sarno have definitely been working on so just thought I'd bring that to your attention great yeah thank you very much okay if there are no more questions thank you very much Dr McLaughlin and Ms sergliano 256 seniors 12th graders 256-12 groups at this time we are we'll open up for our first public comment the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression
124of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of three minutes public comments limited to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer please understand the public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees
125please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or in individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation are there any members of the public that would like to make a comment seeing no one I will close the first public comment session section and move on to approval of the minutes could I have a motion I have a motion from Ms nutting second and a second from MS viveros are there any comments seeing no comments Mr slam could we have a roll call vote please Miss Mendez yes Mr Miller yes Miss nutting yes Miss Phillips yes Mr Robles yes Mr Ruiz yes yes Mr veros yes Dr stanmore yes motion carries thank you um moving on to Communications the whole board received
126three communications in the last month the first was on September 23rd for Mr Julian Gomez he invited the board to attend the idea we are here program and requested that we post information about that program on the district website which was done I responded to that on the 25th um the whole board received an email from Dr Timothy Pernell in response to Dr McLaughlin's request advocating for not cutting funding for Our school-based Youth Services Program and we receive receipts questions for our storage problems and I responded to that one as well today I didn't get most of those emails Okay so I just as an FYI um I you I would I'm kind of stuck I I didn't mean to trick you but no I I didn't get an email from Sue shower today I
127don't see the email from Mr Gomez the second one I might have gotten but I know for a fact that I will didn't get anything from Sue I will forward those to you immediately after the email that clearly does not solve the prop the underlying problem however um no I understand I just yes we need to find a solution to that problem um I believe you you have two e is that is that correct you have a Kim Phillips or a k Phillips one before and then now it's Kimberly but it was supposed to be like mirrored so that even if it went to the the prior one it would still forward to me okay um but I don't know if that's for whatever reason maybe back end is not happening um but I just
128wanted you to know because you're saying you know full and I didn't get those and you should um Dr McLaughlin can we do a little Tech research on what's going on with Miss Phillips email accounts it was K Phillips that was used for that communication so I'll have to check with technology why one isn't feeding the other perfect thank you very much and miss Phillips will you um maybe when Mr rigliano when you make sure that's happening we could send a test email to make sure that it's working you've done that okay I guess we need to test again okay thank you very much thank you um okay moving on to um Ms Calderon Alvarez who is a trooper for hanging on so long um for the student representative to the board report by saying
129good evening everyone Miss we cannot miss Calderon operas we cannot hear you yeah so okay okay I'm going to start off by saying good evening everyone um the topic that I'm going to be focusing on today are sports since they are very important at Dover High school during the fall season sports like volleyball cross country football cheerleading and soccer are offered for students to participate in more specifically I want to focus on the boys soccer team it has come to my attention that the boys on the DHS soccer team would like to increase their budget one of the team members shared that both the boys and girls in the soccer program receive a total of 3 500 as a total as their total budget the problem is that the boys have three teams Varsity junior
130varsity and the freshman team while the girls only have two varsity and junior varsity by having an extra team the boys are have approximately 20 more players in the girls the leaving around 1170 per team which can be compared to the girls 1 750 per team increasing the budget for the DHS soccer boys soccer team will allow them to order new and better uniforms there was a problem regarding the uniforms this year since they were oversized for most of the players and did not include shorts or socks a solution to this problem was to use last year's jerseys but the majority were missing due to the fact that the volleyball team had to occupy them the head coach then ordered new ones but they but they did not have the team logo or the numbers
131in the front when they arrived this was all a mess and by increasing the team's budget a lot of this could have been prevented I believe this is some this is nothing new since assigning a Jersey to every player becomes a problem at the beginning of the season another petition from the soccer team is to have more games at night they believe that more people would be able to attend therefore giving more motivation for the team other soccer teams such as Putin High School's team hold night games such as the one where Dover High School was a visitor on Monday October 10th games at around six or seven could also be beneficial for increasing the athletic team's budget if games are held at night more people would have the opportunity to attend an idea to
132help raise the budget would be for students to pay entrance fees it would be sufficient for every student to pay one or two dollars to enter the gates and watch our team play this would help raise a lot of money for the athletic department therefore increasing the budget for the teams food snacks and drinks could also be sold during the games in order to raise more money all of these funds would go directly to the sports teams um now Switching gears as we all know last week Hispanic Heritage Month came to an end the celebration of Hispanic culture began on Thursday September 15th and ended on Saturday October 15 2020. Dover High School held various activities throughout the month honoring and recognizing those with Hispanic roots I reached out to various of the students and
133the overall opinions regarding this celebration were positive everyone was content with the food served during lunch and the music and games that were played as well as the dances that took place during the lunches the students also enjoyed the presentation of the dance club organized for us it was overall a great a great success it was something new and different that was enjoyed by everyone another activity that occurred at the high school this past weekend was the homecoming dance it was the first dance that was held since the pandemic began this was the second homecoming dance for the seniors class of 2023 and the first for the classes of 2024 through 2026. it was also a very successful event where students enjoyed themselves with their friends most of the feedback that I that I got
134that I received was positive many were excited with the decorations and the theme when I asked when I asked students what could have made their experience better or more unique they said that providing more seats would have been better and would have made everyone more comfortable there were also a couple of complaints regarding the DJ and how there could have been more of a variety of music but overall it was a very unique and special event I hope that we can work towards accomplishing the needs of the athletic teams by increasing the budgets and hopefully holding game nights and I hope that more events are held to help us enjoy your experience at Dover High school thank you for listening thank you so much Miss catarone Alvarez and I I have to say that I
135appreciate that you not only came with issues that your classmates are experiencing but you came with possible solutions so I appreciate that and thank you for your honesty are there any comments from anyone else on the board Ms Mendes uh thank you Dr saner um Miss Calderon Alvarez I'm wondering if you can um share with me share with us uh some of the lunches that were served during Hispanic Heritage Month like what were some of the favorites well some were like there were stations up on the top where there were like empanadas served they were empanadas and they were like little um fun Bono I think they're called their bread and then I don't know what the other was but it was like a little piece and it had like cheese and everything was really
136good awesome thank you um and then I guess my question is based off of the um the things that were brought to light by Miss Calderon Alvarez um what can we do to address the budget right or who makes a decision on whether or not the games what times the games are played so one thing I I do want to indicate and I certainly understand why it might be perceived to be a budget issue but the athletic budget has been funded in full as requested so um with our new athletic director who we anticipate uh appointing tonight certainly that will be uh work that we will do to ensure that each team has what they need certainly um the budget is there and very frankly at the end of some school years there's been significant
137balances left in the athletic budget so um that I think that speaks more to the management of the budget um than it does to the funding of the budget and in regard to the scheduling of games uh again that that will be something that is uh organized by the athletic director uh and and the athletic director's office so certainly I think having students having an opportunity to have night games I know I've been on the other end of that asking for it as well uh with with different teams over the years that I've been involved with so that each program gets that nighttime game experience so that's certainly something that the administration would support and would work with the athletic director to schedule thank you Dr saner yes Ms Ruiz trying to bite my tongue
138but I really want to say that the student rep came to slay it's not hard it's not easy to just jump out and advocate for what everybody wants and be that voice so I'm really impressed and look forward to to more of it thank you and Echo it in terms of the night games in terms of the uniforms I know that in my individual capacity I've shared concerns that I've heard from community members requesting the same so it's good to hear it from our student rep and I would um either remind or question if I'm mistaken that students can certainly submit their petitions to the new athletic director to ensure that the new athletic director is well aware of the students wishes all right thank you um I am not asking you to leave I'm
139not encouraging you but I do know it is a school night and no one will look sideways at you if you need to go and do homework but we appreciate you very very much I'm going to move on to the board president's Report with some updates of some things that have been going on I wanted to update the board on the response from the school schools Development Authority the SDA as you'll recall Dr McLaughlin and I met with two members of the SDA and Senator buco's office on September 15th we've had two separate responses from the SDA one I believe just yesterday that I have not forwarded to you they contain some grant opportunities for things like upgrades to our HVAC systems and updates that make our buildings more energy efficient while some of these
140grant opportunities may prove useful for the maintenance and upgrading of our facilities Unfortunately they are not able to provide us with additional funding towards our planned expansion as always I am open to suggestions for for finding other funding opportunities and I'm happy to facilitate any meetings or requests that could help us secure more funding I wanted to update the board on the progress of the referendum Communications committee the RCC as you know this group of board members and other community members was established this summer in order to tailor our Communications plan for the referendum to the needs of our community and to work in collaboration with lower Bishop Communications members of the RCC have been meeting since the summer and have helped to to staff our referendum tables at the various back to school nights
141have helped to craft a dover-specific plan for sharing information and answering questions about the referendum with our community the parents of our current student of of current students who are serving on this board will know that parents and guardians of children in the district have already received messages through our weekly updates from principals with reminders to check our website for the most up-to-date information on the referendum there have been similar informational posts on Facebook through the district account and we are finalizing the planning for the upcoming forums in these forums members of our community will have the opportunity to meet with Dr McLaughlin members of the Board of Education and members of the referendum referendum Communications committee to hear details about the plan and ask questions in person as always members of the community are
142invited to explore the extensive information available on our critical need for space as well as the financial impact on our referendum information page at our website www.dover.nj.org if you have questions please use the submit questions tab all questions are answered and frequently asked questions are posted on the FAQ page last item moving on to our collaboration with our fellow Dover elected officials on the board of aldermen beginning in September 2021 our board approved Outreach efforts to the Dover mayor Board of aldermen and their Economic Development Committee to initiate conversations that might lead to the best outcome for our school community and for Dover taxpayers with regard to Redevelopment currently our community has at least three apartment complexes pending all with proposed payment in lieu of tax proposals or Pilot plans this has provided the opportunity
143for our board um through the board president and representatives from our finance and Facilities committee to meet with mayor Blackman and former Town Administrator Bennett at our first meeting in July 25th we proposed that the Dover Town Administration seek recognition as a New Jersey Redevelopment Authority municipality I look I look forward to hearing from the town Administration whether Dover can become an njra municipality and if so this could provide our school district with an Avenue to access other state funds for school construction from the SDA so kind of attacking it from both ways I look forward to also repeating our request that the town Administration set aside a lump sum from the new payment in lieu of taxes for the school district I propose that our board schedule a follow-up meeting between our superintendent the
144town's acting Town Administrator Betty Lou de Croce de crows thank you mayor Blackman myself and a member of the facilities and finance committee as soon as possible uh preferably before the year's end uh Voice vote would suffice on this or questions um about anything or the proposal to try again to meet with the board of aldermen okay could we have a Voice vote in favor of uh me reaching out to the board of aldermen all in favor aye all opposed motion carries thank you very much uh moving on to administrative reports Dr McLaughlin thank you good evening each year at this time we report on data concerning student safety uh the following information reflects all incidents reported through the New Jersey Department of Ed student safety data system and this is complete for the 21
14522 school year so I will be reading this in into the record uh and and the board has this information which I have provided Dover High School had a total of 67 data incidents 29 were categorized as violence three as vandalism 31 under substances four under weapons zero HIV confirmed 51 other incidents that led to removal and nine alleged hivs Academy Street Elementary School had no incidents however they did have two other incidents that led to removal when we say lead to removal meaning suspensions East over had three total incidents two of violence and one of an HIV nature additionally there was one other incident that led to removal and they had one HIV that was alleged Dover Middle School had 21 total incidents 11 for violence four for vandalism three for substances three for
146HIV that were confirmed they had 12 other incidents that led to removal and one Hib that was alleged northover Elementary had 11 incidents three for violence zero for vandalism zero for substances two for weapons six confirmed hivs five other incidents that led to removal and that completes the report as a total district there were 102 incidents 45 for violence seven for vandalism 34 for substances six for weapons 10 for hivs that were confirmed 71 other incidents that led to removal and 11 for hivs that were alleged I will report again on the student safety data system at mid-year so that we have a mid-year review of the current school year and then in the following October I will provide a summary of the year so uh each year the board does get this report twice
147added September meeting the Board of Education approved the district goals developed by our school leadership team for the 2022 2023 school year keeping our goals at the Forefront of our work is critically important and in keeping with that Focus we will provide updates through our board meetings on activities that support those goals goal three as stated is to increase engagement to form closer ties and to provide supports to the family of Dover students to the families of Dover students within this goal is the transition to the use of required student informs in a digital format I'd like to point out the major work of our I.T Department to adapting the Myriad of opening day forms into a digital format and I'd like to also acknowledge the work of our Administration and guidance counselors in supporting
148parents in the transition this school year to the use of those forms in a digital nature it is a it's a big shift when that occurs it's a big shift in terms of the work that goes into preparing it but probably even a greater shift into the transition of completing those forms in a different way forums for the 2023-2024 school year will be released in this July for the upcoming year um after the student rollover for that New Year occurs and we anticipate that additional Advance time for the completion of those important documents will also Aid families uh in this transition this continued transition to a digital format also contained in this goal is the objective to provide parent support at a variety of events for parents specific to providing email access and Proficiency in
149the use of the parent portal I'd like to highlight the upcoming Parent Portal assistance night that is scheduled at Dover middle school on November 1st on that evening staff will be present to work alongside our parents to register for the parent portal and become familiar with its functionality dinner and child care will be provided so we hope to reduce any barriers for our parents who may wish to attend and we look forward to High attendance that evening back to school nights occurred in our schools from September 18th through October the 3rd I'd like to thank our teachers for their preparation for those evening events that are so important to our families back to school nights are but one example of the many ways that our teachers reach out to form that critical partnership with families
150that is so important to a student's Learning Journey in the informal visits to our schools that Mr ergliano and I made on back to school nights we were so impressed with the enthusiasm and the excitement that our teachers had as they awaited our parents arrival the organization of the evenings and the preparation of the schools for those nights also spoke to the hard work of our office support staff and our custodians the district recognizes and appreciates the work of all our staff in previous meetings I have shared some of the initiatives that the school district is presently employing to hire staff in what may be an unprecedented School Staffing shortage throughout our country I am pleased to share that we received word on September 29th that Dover has been approved for The Limited Certificate of
151Eligibility and Certificate of Eligibility with Advanced standing five-year pilot program uh just a little bit about that program what it does is it allows uh there are many prongs that have to be completed for someone to acquire certification and it allows flexibility if one of those problems may not be in place so that you can advance ahead with uh obtaining either a Certificate of Eligibility or a Certificate of Eligibility with Advanced standing and uh not to to get into too great detail but the difference between the two is a Certificate of Eligibility with Advanced standing is someone who goes through a traditional student teacher program a Certificate of Eligibility is is provided when someone uh proceeds through a certificate program that may not have the student teaching built into it in addition to hiring efforts
152it is equally if not more important to emphasize our dedication to retaining the talented and dedicated professionals employed by our district and in keeping with that Focus over the past two school years our district has employed an off-boarding procedure for staff who resign or retire using surveys and interviews to examine the positives and the negatives of each employee's experience Anonymous data from these processes have been shared with our Board of Education in its executive sessions where Personnel items are discussed it is our focused intent that this information informs our ongoing work in support of our staff to allow Dover to remain a workplace of choice particularly at a time when so many options are available for our employees as was mentioned in our student representative report Hispanic Hispanic heritage recognition month concluded on October 15th
153I've shared a report with the board that lists activities at each of our district schools at the department level classroom level and school level activities occurred throughout the district Hispanic heritage was incorporated into classroom instruction it was celebrated through artwork and Performing Arts and it was embedded into student messaging from the depictions tweeted by Mr Nunes of a packed Auditorium celebrating student dance dance performances at Dover High School to the language arts study at DMS of our Latin American cultural expressions the Hispanic Heritage Month assembly at Eastover and biographical studies at Academy Street and family heritage projects at North Dover our students were engaged in both significant and in meaningful explanation exploration of Hispanic heritage I'd like to conclude my report with an enrollment update which we've committed to providing at each board meeting we
154have a total of 3625 total students in the Dover School District as of October 19 2022. today this includes this does include 17 students with future start dates meaning that these students are in the registration process but are not fully complete 3240 students of that total are within our five schools so not all of the 3625 students are in the five schools I want to emphasize this as we continue to talk about the referendum and the need for space because the need for space within our five schools this is the number that drives it this total of 3240 students includes 13 students with future start dates so again I just want to emphasize uh that we have some students who are in process our Pre-K students who are not within our five schools so this
155this total comes outside of our five schools is 308 students so presently we stand at 308 students in our three and four year old programs uh that total includes four students with future start dates and then we remain at 77 students who attend out of district schools with specialized placements with students with IEPs and that concludes my report thank you Dr McLaughlin are there questions from the board Mr Robles thank you Dr McLaughlin um apologies I didn't submit this in advance but um I know you mentioned there the focus on dedication to retaining our talented staff um I'm wondering what plans we have with the survey results and how that might play into that uh Mr ergliano and I met with the Panorama survey committee uh just this week we have a group of uh
156about 20 individuals who are on that committee from throughout the district we began unpacking the teacher survey there's um I know you love data you'd really love this then uh because there's a tremendous amount of data that is in each of the surveys and as you may remember we provided a survey to our teachers we provided a survey that was entitled staff which basically refers to individuals who are not in in traditional classrooms but are still a part of our Dover staff and and may there were different questions that were suited to them we gave a survey to our students and we gave a survey to our parents so we have begun with the teacher service and we do have to take each one of these a survey at a time within that we've broken
157up into subcommittees who are examining categories of the survey and also free responses there were free response questions um that typically hovered I I'm just going to say in the 200 plus area so uh each of those free response questions will be examined and will be incorporated we will be coming back together again in one month's time the subcommittees who are meeting in between all will be reporting out on their takeaways from the category that they examined and also considerations that could include action items from those areas we're going the plan and the committee generously agreed to meet every month we will be meeting every month we will move through the data uh as quickly as we can but thoroughly because we don't want to Glide over any of the information that has been uh
158provided uh the uh also during the work of the committee uh we decided on a March 17th uh re-survey so as we continue to annually provide the survey we it will be administered again on March 17th which is the professional development day that aids in the completion of the survey by giving staff time within the day to actually complete the survey uh we're examining ways that we can bolster our parent uh participation because that that was our lowest uh participation rate uh uh or or number of respondents uh so we're examining that as a committee am I leaving anything out significance okay so uh we I think we we had a good two-hour discussion and um we will continue to have those discussions moving forward uh that those were on the committee are provided with
159release times the uh this doesn't impede uh anymore on their day than it has to thank you for that um just a follow-up just because I from my prior experience understanding Employee Engagement surveys and these type of surveys you usually have to plan way ahead like for you just mentioned March the next round also thinking of when you would release the results when you get the results back is there any plans to release to the parents are they have they received the results or what's the plan with that for them to know what their Sable responses were I think again I think that's that's it's a good topic we can certainly bring back to our committee to a consensus on the best way to do that we're certainly not holding any any results close to
160the to the vest the idea is to to share out results um the you know I think identifying what would be the most pertinent results to parents perhaps the student responses and the parent responses I think a lot of the staff responses are are unique and I'm just reacting to your question on the spot so this might not be the final answer I don't know how applicable the or meaningful the parent the staff responses would be to parents uh but that I think is a decision the committee can make together thank you it is really nice I know a lot of us have been talking for quite a while about the climate survey and while it is not perfect um and it's really good to hear that that has been done and that there's collaboration
161between the staff and the administration in moving forward analyzing that and coming up with I love action plans wonderful and I'm sure we all look forward to hearing um the results of those subcommittee meetings and future whole committee meetings if there are no other questions Mr rigliano would you please give your report sure good evening I'd like to begin my report again this month with a highlight of the curriculum work done by our curriculum writers and content supervisors this month you are being asked to approve 37 curriculum which totaled approximately 740 hours of work completed by the writers and the supervisors to describe this task through a total number of hours does not highlight the actual work done during those hours so I'd like to briefly discuss what happens as we're writing our curriculum to
162begin supervisors meet with the writers to introduce the atlas platform and its functionality there are self-paced webinars that are available for new users of the program dialogue occurs regarding our philosophy in curriculum writing which follows the backward design model originally created by Grant Wiggins and J mctai typically curriculum designers use a forward-thinking approach to curriculum Design This is where a teacher would develop their learning activities first proceed to outline their assessments and finally attempt to connect those assessments to a set of learning standards that's not how we do it in Dover by embracing the backward design model We Begin by writing the curriculum with the end goal in mind and we ask ourselves up front what Teaching Standards will I be covering in this unit what are the skills and what is the knowledge that
163my students will have after completing the work in this unit of study learning standards are given the first priority when we write curriculum after identifying the necessary standards and learning goals for the unit we move to designing the assessments that would answer the questions how will I know if the student has learned the content and the standards that I chose for the unit by linking the standards with the assessments we can ensure that learning is being checked through a student demonstration of mastery in terms of our local process I've asked to be notified once the first unit is complete so that I can then review it and provide feedback this would save time for all parties involved because then additional units could be created moving forward with the feedback in mind instead of having a
164complete curriculum written and then review of all of that happening and feedback being given at that time that could be a little cumbersome after all the units are written supervisors review it again have more discussion with the writer about changes or enhancements that need to be made once that work is complete I then review the curriculum again for any further tweaks or adjustments needed and then move that curriculum to the curriculum committee of the board which obviously some of you are members of where again additional discussion review and reflection can occur at that time changes can still be made before your final approval of any curriculum would be on the agenda so thank you curriculum committee it was a big month for us we had a lot of work to do I appreciate your support
165in that and we will have more curriculum on the next month's agenda but not not quite as much as we had the past two months transitioning away from curriculum to a more celebration topic this month marks National principles month being a principal or a vice principal is a very rewarding and challenging job every day in the principles of office problems are discussed and solved challenges are met and accepted and relationships are built and strengthened our principal teams go above and beyond to ensure student and staff safety pers preserve the academic Integrity in the building and serve as a facilitator between students staff and parents a principal's job does not end at 4 pm and begins much much earlier than the bell ringing for the start of school during evenings on the weekends and holidays our
166principals and vice principals work together with staff to create schools that are warm and welcoming for instruction often times a principal can turn oftentimes a principal can turn into a counselor for a frustrated teacher or a coach for a child that needs a little extra encouragement research shows that after a classroom teacher a school building principal and vice principal are the next biggest contributor to that child's success they set the mood the tone the culture for their school building to celebrate National principles month and our principles we are inviting our principal teams to a luncheon next week in the Belmont building this is just one small gesture to say that we recognize your hard work your dedication and your consistent effort in being leaders in all of our school buildings so thank you and that
167concludes my report thank you Mr Wrigley on our other questions for the assistant superintendent thank you thank you Mr Agliano for acknowledging the hard work that our principals do and how many different layers of our school Community they can impact thank you um Mr slam could we have your report please good evening I'll start with a facilities update so the HVAC installation at Eastover Elementary School we received 13 unit ventilators they arrived from the factory with cooling issues their vendor will replace the coils over winter break and then due to the cold temperatures of the time we'll have to wait until spring to recharge those units to see if that solves the issue this is covered under warranty because it arrived right from the factory with issues which is unfortunate because we have been waiting
168for these units for quite some time due to logistical issues uh module module classroom at Academy Street uh the module has been placed uh and the utility hookup should occur by the end of the month uh for the cafeteria I will have keeps for the I lost it there we go uh we'll have cables for the video wall uh should be run later this week and early next week uh Civil Right server rack delivery is still expected in November uh and the video wall panel should be received within the next two weeks uh you know oh well unless there's another delay so um we also have an update on the turf field recarpeting um so this is scheduled to begin November 6th it should take approximately two to three weeks for installation if you recall
169that was initially supposed to happen prior to the season however there were some delays and then we chose to delay that until after the season just so it wouldn't interfere with any of the district's Athletics uh we have a meeting tomorrow uh project kickoff for the high school security vestibule uh so I should have more updates on that next month uh and then for the high school science classroom renovation I had previously mentioned that we are looking at uh casters to adjust the heights of the tables so those have been installed the heights uh are even with the lab the lab as well replacement flooring is still expected to ship by the end of next month and then Academy Street HVAC the rooftop unit was delivered and set in place however as I mentioned previously
170we're waiting on the delivery of an electrical breaker which is required to complete installation that's still expected by the end of November and that is another item that was with back order so I'll move into Finance uh and I will provide my uh monthly uh reminder that free and reduced lunch applications uh are available and can still be completed uh the application along with the information on how to complete the application Electronics has been provided as part of the Genesis welcome documents the application uh is an information I complete is also available on paper form in each school's building Administrative Office each school buildings Administrative Office completion of the free reduced lunch application is extremely important as the SSO program is no longer in place and meals are no longer free for every student additionally
171the 30-day grace period for any student who received a determination of free or reduced in the past years has now ended there is assistance available at the administrative office at 21 Belmont Ave and then also there's uh assistance available through the community Liaisons via appointment there's a Google form where parents can request an appointment for assistance uh and just a reminder that the quickest way to get a determination is if you fill that application out online and that's because it's an instant determination whereas if you do submit a paper form which you absolutely still can do that uh that that needs to be make its way to us and then we then need to manually enter that into the system for the determination uh whereas if you're doing online you are entering that application directly
172into the system which means the determination happens as soon as you get submit just a couple of other um you know pieces of information related to this uh so a trend we're seeing this year is a significant increase in charges being made which is resulting in negative balances uh I think you know this is related to we've had a few years now of the SSO program uh where you know you know fortunately we were able to have free meals just the first year without that so again very important to complete those pre-reduced lunch applications so we will be reaching out uh shortly to notify parents of any negative balances but like I said um even if you don't think you will qualify you're not sure your qualify you should absolutely fill out that application because
173looking at the data right now out of the 2267 students who did have that application filled out only 12 percent did not qualify so that's you know pretty significant so even if you're not sure you may still qualify and it is good info data that gets provided to the state which helps the district as well and then another important note is that even if you don't qualify we say free and reduced lunch so even if you don't qualify under the criteria of free and you qualify for reduced in New Jersey that's a little bit different where you'll still get free meals if you only qualify for reduced as in other state other states it'll just be a reduced price here a few years ago the state legislature changed that so everyone will get a free
174meal so another important note uh just I'll go over just a couple of numbers like I said 12 so far I have been denied but everyone else has been determined uh we have 2267 students that have uh had an application submitted uh which means we still have around 1258 students who have not had an application submitted so again awesome this is the last time I'll say it tonight I'll say it next month too uh if you if you have the iPhone application please do so uh you may not think you qualify you may end up qualifying and then just a couple more uh bits of information for me uh the district was notified of a modification to contract 23 bfp pay uh with the Department of Children and Families essentially those are the funds that
175we utilize uh to fund the Tiger app program or part of the tiger rap program at the high school the result of the modification is an increase of funds of 10 151 and I'm currently working with Rutgers to determine how these additional funds will be spent once I have that information I'll submit that to DCF so they can approve uh and then on October 12th uh the district spawn Council Municipal advisor auditor uh and myself attended a virtual hearing with the local Finance board I think at the conclusion of that meeting the district received approval to exceed its borrowing limit by approximately 13 million dollars this approval in addition to the approval received by the New Jersey Department of Education was necessary in order to move forward with the referendum and that's everything I have
176for tonight thank you Mr Slim are there any questions Mr Robles um thank you for the updates on the science classroom right that's the one that got the tables fixed yep and the only thing we're waiting on there is for the replacement flooring um I don't know if you recall but essentially there was an issue with the original pouring and then they had to scramble to get pulling to replace it when they opened the boxes it was the wrong flooring so in the meantime we have flooring that does not match installed just because we needed flooring but we have the matching flooring on its way it's just it takes a while to get here once it's here then we'll schedule installation I know where we were last month doing the tour here I think in
177the media center we went in and something was wrong with the system in there the was it the HVAC or something but it was colder than usual is that still not working or has that been fixed uh we we have a number of we've had a number of air conditioning issues throughout the district some of them were software related some of them were were not those are all um dependent on train which is our provider to to resolve we're working to do that um we're probably going to move from Air Conditioning issues to heating issues uh at this point but since since many of our systems are interconnected especially here at the high school where we do not have boilers it's an interconnected system so we will continue to work through that as quickly as
178we can um but a lot of that is beyond our local control and we have to work with train they're a large provider they have lots of levels of service that you have to sometimes go through but I know that Mr O'Brien is diligent and stays on them and does get them to respond sometimes it does take a bit of work as we start transitioning obviously from summer fall into colder do we go through a cycle where we sort of test everything to make sure that that transition of Heat versus AC is working and which systems are not to sort of not wait till everybody's freezing cold in the middle of winter I can definitely tell you they were testing the boilers at the administration building well before well before we needed it um so
179there there were days there where it definitely was being tested I don't have Mr O'Brien here to ask him when that occurred in the other buildings but I'm sure if that was their practice they were doing that elsewhere as well okay we'll move on thank you Mr slam we'll move on to uh the Morris County Ed Services Commission Mr Miller he held the meeting last Wednesday but it was business as usual there's nothing really new to report okay thank you Ms Ruiz legislative report thank you Dr saner um sorry I have yes um today's legislative report is going to bring us back a little bit this is not um a legislation that is currently passed it's a bill on January 11 2022 assemblyman John demaio assemblyman Christopher De Phillips and assemblywoman Nancy Munoz all Republicans
180sponsored and introduced Bill a971 requiring municipalities to share certain payments in lieu of property taxes known as pilot programs or Pilot agreements with school districts and informs County school districts in the Department of Community Affairs the DSA of certain information related to property tax exemption and abatements while this particular bill is presented by uh Republicans this bill or iteration of this bill has been presented for years um by both Democrats and Republicans um right now the bill has been referred to the assembly Community Development and Affairs committee and that includes committee chair um shavanda Sumter Vice chair Anthony varelu and assembly Representatives Reginald Atkins Michelle matsikudis and Eric simonsen according to the njsba you can check on their website the overview of pilot programs states that payment payments in lieu of taxes or Pilot programs
181to the developer a break on property taxes and whoop that pilot program the municipality essentially receives about 95 percent of the revenues from the Redevelopment project and the county may receive about five percent of those revenues leaving the school districts with zero percent of the revenues the school district does still receive taxes collected on the land but not from anything on the property Improvement so none of the revenue given that the Dover School Community does include at least five approved long-term payment in lieu of taxes Redevelopment projects already and one at least one pending and no history of the Dover School District ever receiving any funds from any pilot program I recommend that the Berber Board of Education contact the members of the assembly committee uh of Community Development and affairs to support this bill
182so it can get out of committee and that it also contact our representative Senator Buco assemblyman Bergen assemblywoman Dunn and Governor Murphy to advocate for the uh this bill we can also contact the New Jersey school boards Association and request that they use their full weight behind this bill and maybe even the NJEA and as that they use their full weight to support this bill ship aboard affirm this proposal uh I certainly volunteer to draft an advocacy letter although Mr Miller and mrsalis and Dr saner have have certainly shown their skill at ADV advocacy as well so I'm sure there's plenty of us willing to work on such a letter the text of the bill can be found online on legiscan.com and again it's a971 but essentially that's that's all it says that um that
183it would require municipalities to share those payments with school districts thank you Ms Ruiz is there anyone uh want to make a motion that we do uh contact Ms Ruiz listed njsba NJEA our local uh Representatives the governor I think I missed one the members of the committee where the bill is right now assembly Community Development and Affairs committee and the sponsors of the bill which would be um demaio de Phillips and Munoz okay is there anyone who would like to make a motion sorry this I would like to make that motion that Carol contacts them on our behalf okay um motion made by Ms viveros second second by Ms um Mendez and just to clarify the motion is for the board to send a letter I'm not the board president so the letter would
184need to be signed by the board president understood and but we're going to ask Ms Ruiz to draft it because we're gonna we're gonna use her up before the end of the year win her term ends so 100 for the Board of Education um thank you um and thank you to the board uh one of the big changes that I've seen in the last few years is our advocacy um thank you to the board members who advocated um for continuation of Our school-based Youth Services Program I know several of you um did Advocate and cc'd me if others did without the CC thank you um as well that this is important work that we do that I don't always see maybe we don't see the results for but I do think that every voice matters
185so thank you for your advocacy Ms nutting would you please do the Morris County School Board Association report yes oh I'm sorry Ms nutting I'm cutting you off we have a motion in a second thank you Dr McLaughlin um do you have a question uh Mr Robles just curious I don't know if Mr Reese would know the answer but does under Bill say anything about the town being able to redistribute those funds the 95 that they keep and apply any of those to the schools if it's their decision to do so that's exactly what the bill is saying that they they would now be required to take part of that 95 and give to the school district right now we're not required but they could if even if they're not required they couldn't make that
186decision themselves they could to my knowledge no municipality has made such a decision great thank you thank you okay so we have a motion and a second um can we do a Voice vote on this please all in favor of uh the Dover Board of Education sending a letter to the listed entities in support of uh pilot monies being shared with schools all in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries thank you now miss nutting I apologize but we're ready okay Mount uh Morris County School Board um meeting was on September 28th at Montville um it was a lot of information um it was a good night to have a nice group of people to associate with and they talked about the differences of what boards are going through and just knowing that you're
187not alone we're all going through the same thing um so it was a nice time to kind of get out and everybody to share what they're going through at that time our next meeting is November 3rd and it will be here at Dover High School which is a very uh nice thing they also are going to have their other meeting in January 25th they said they were going to keep that one virtual um the information on what they're going to be talking about has not been announced yet um March 29th is to be announced of where their location is going to be and also on May 4th they also did state that the workshop in Atlantic City is October 24th to the 26th which I do know that we do have a couple of our
188members going they said on Tuesday and Wednesday there will be a free lunch at those uh meetings and the first 1 400 people will get their free lunch um so show up um also they were talking about how Morris County I guess there is a uh New Jersey school board um thing of trying to get all the board of education at Morris County and it looks like we were very close to have a representative from almost everybody in this District so or I should say County so it was a good thing to hear so that's my report thank you Miss nutting are there questions for Miss nutting okay moving on MS viveros members of the Mine Hill Board have asked for a meeting with our ad hoc committee we have presented dates and are waiting
189to hear back from them we hope this meeting will lead to a final resolution that's it thank you very much uh let's move on to item 11 administrative approval can I get a motion please so moved second okay I have a motion from Ms nutting a second from Mr Miller and that is for items a through G I believe okay um Mr slam when you're ready could I have a roll cover Dr Steiner I'm sorry thank you are there any questions Miss Mendes it's really late so I get it um uh under item d uh District 2021 2022 HIV self-assessment um grades and took a look at those grades and I just have a few questions um that I'd like some clarification on so um for core element number eight category B we scored a
190two so I'm wondering what prevented us from sporting a three and um did we post the scores uh the previous reporting period on the website yes so thank you the it's important to note that a rating of two meets the requirement a rating of three means we exceeded the requirement so to exceed the requirement means that the meaning of the grades and its relationship to the school assessment should all be explained on the website and that's what would gain the three so the um the the PowerPoint from last year that Mr Marion presented was posted however the PowerPoint didn't address that level of information uh so certainly our intent is to get a three this year and exceed requirements that's that's uh that's the explanation of that score perfect thank you um record element number
191three category C with the exception of Academy Street we scored a one so I'm wondering what barriers must we overcome to provide time for um training right so Mr pandolfo who is here tonight is part of his uh position also oversees HIV he has shared with me that this year our abs's our anti-pulling Specialists are engaged in a 16 hour um training that is co uh sponsored by the NJEA and njpsa our abs's will work one hour per week through this 16 hour course uh which will provide them with a good a solid and robust uh level of training um the um that will will advance our score in that area and then my um final question is core element number five category B with the exception of Academy Street we scored a one so
192I'm wondering what barriers again must be overcome to make sure that the anti-bullying Specialists um is uh afforded the time to meet with the anti-bullying coordinator yes so um our anti-bullying coordinator was located at Academy Street last year which probably helped some of the scores come up uh we are interested in that happening throughout the district um the uh this year as a group um and I know that Mr uh pandolfo is meeting um uh twice a month with all of the abs's uh so they have a one in person and a one virtual meeting every month they are focusing on core element five and their theme is on remedial measures and core values um so uh that's probably more than our abs's have ever met regularly with an anti-bullying coordinator and I do want
193to I just compliment Mr pandolfo because none of this was uh pushed on him this these are elements that he examined and came forward with and um I think I think we'll see um although I think we've been very proud of our HIV efforts I think this is going to move us in an even better Direction absolutely I agree thank you Ms viveros Dr McLaughlin can you please advise the public again what the acronym Hib stands for harassment intimidation and bullying thank you all right if there are no more questions now can we have a roll call vote Mr Slim Miss Mendez yes Mr Miller yes Miss nutting yes Miss Phillips yes Mr robes yes Mr Ruiz yes Mr Harris yes Dr sandor yes motion carries thank you moving on Personnel Miz nutting okay I
194would like to make a motion upon the recommendations of the superintendent and the board approved the following Personnel resolutions a one through eleven um a couple of those are the hand carries which changes to a one two three four five seven and the additions of 10 and 11. I have a motion from Ms nutting second second from Ms viveros are there any questions about Personnel Dr singer um I didn't submit this question in advance um but I just noticed it on the hand carry I'm just excuse my ignorance but I'm just super curious to know what exactly does a um title one parent facilitator do can you just point me to the resolution we're talking about it's on the hand carrying on the Personnel item five oh so uh each building has a uh each
195school I'm sorry has a title one plan our our district is a um we're a title one District uh there's there's two designations in terms of title one you could be a targeted assistance program which means that you just work with a subgroup of kids within a school or you can be a school-wide program so all of our schools are school-wide programs when you have a school-wide program each principal then has to create their own school um plan for that for that for that school and that has to include parent engagement activities it has to include uh monies for any students who might be deemed homeless within the school it also provides targeted programs that promote social engagement and academic growth so it's totally up to each School how they design their program North Dover
196has obviously designated someone who is going to facilitate those programs which is there within their purview to do you won't see a title one facilitator listed for all the schools but the principal of that school in designing their Title One program appointed a facilitator uh so the facilitator I'm only guessing right now because I I don't have their school plan in front of me uh maybe someone who puts those events together like the if they're going to have a uh a parent night a parent engagement night uh if they're going to uh run clubs that are funded through Title One the facilitator might be the person making sure the clubs get the word out to kids enroll them run I'm only speculating right now uh but that's that's what I uh understand that a facilitator
197would be doing there thank you we have a motion and a second Mr slam could we have a roll call vote Miss Mendez yes Mr Miller yes Miss nutting yes Miss Phillips yes Mr Robles yes Miss Ruiz yes Mr Harris yes Dr saner yes motion carries thank you Miss nutting uh you again negotiations okay so we are having a meeting with the daa and it's going to be a meet and greet and start our uh negotiations on that okay that should be next week thank you Miss nutting and thank you to the negotiations members who it seems like have been in constant negotiations um that's a lot of work and a lot of late nights and thank you for your dedication Ms Mendez will you please take curriculum and co-curricular thank you good evening again
198um so the curriculum committee met on October 4th in the Belmont building mrigliano miss genzinger miss heisterman miss heinemann and miss gayna matante gave us an overview of the curricula on the agenda this evening um all curricula meet and exceed the required standards and um as a final note we discussed the board's role in reviewing curriculum and I want to thank Mr igliano for um clarifying the curriculum creation process which is not an easy task so thank you um but I think it is important to note um that as a committee and a board we are not the experts um it is up to us to ensure the standards are met and to have a level of understanding but not to dictate and control every detail of the curricula so with that I moved that
199the board approved items one through ten and the hand carry items 11 and 12. second okay I have a motion and a second from Ms viveros again are there questions about curriculum Dr Cena yes uh I just wanted to make a comment that um upon looking at some of the professional development I was super excited to see um PD related to dismantling racial bias for our students so that's super awesome okay um I don't think I have ever seen such a long list of professional developments so thank you to the administration for prioritizing professional development for our staff and for all of the staff for showing the niche the initiative um to grow in your position whatever it is um and my second comment it's always great to see uh Dover alumni returning to our
200district as student teachers so that's it's what we hope to see as we move forward if there are no other questions Mr slam could we have a roll call vote please Miss Mendez yes Mr Miller yes Miss nutting yes Miss Phillips yes Mr robuzz yes Mr Ruiz yes Miss riveros yes Dr Senor yes motion carries thank you Miss Phillips community relations okay so the community relations committee has collaborated to come up with some ideas for Community engagement these are some very high level ideas which the committee would be happy to flesh out if the board would like for us to do so first would be Community conversations in addition to the community forums we have already committed to hold other forms of community conversations can include meet and greets with board members scheduled at various
201sites around the district offering the community the opportunity to speak with us in a more person more personal informal setting Board office hours focus groups and listening circles collaborate with ptas or other community organizations so that board members might participate in family events some examples might include a board of education summer reading nights help at the library where a board member reads a children's book while other board members chat with adults about any concerns or ideas they may have or a family fun night a craft night or a game night where board members volunteer and other members are present to engage with parents investigate the possibility of outdoor Community projects on school grounds where we invite the community and Board of Education members to come together to volunteer engage the community and ask them engage
202the community and ask them for suggestions on effective ways the district can communicate with the community collect feedback feedback on how the community with a big focus on parents is receiving and engaging with the various communication mediums used by the schools and the Board of Education create events or activities where students showcase their talents at either Community locations in collaboration with the town or at the schools a School showcase where you would invite the community for tours and or to see some of the school facilities in use or on display and alumni come back where you would invite Dover alumni to share their education and professional experiences with students parents and the community recognizing those who have reached their goals and or are giving back to the community or other organizations and their Endeavors highlight
203family Generations that have graduated from Dover Schools and then lastly would be focus on board of education and town collaboration and possibly work with the town to create an event or events centered around advancing Community engagement with the schools in a scenario where the town helps sponsor and information is made readily available about the work of the Board of Education and the district so those are the preliminary ideas in addition to that some community events so miss viveros Mr Robles and myself were able to attend the unveiling of the mural at the middle school I know that we've all seen pictures but honestly the pictures do not do the mural Justice in person it is beautiful that is a huge shout out to everyone who participated in that phenomenal endeavor this week there have been
204a lot of senior nights Monday night was girls soccer yesterday was girls volleyball and boys soccer Friday night is senior night for football cheerleading and the marching band The Town Trunk or Treat is a Saturday starting at 1pm and last weekend was the 300th anniversary celebration in town which I did not attend but I think Mr Miller was there so I don't know if you have anything that you want to add and that is the end of my comment what what oh the homecoming game was last Friday and they won and it was so great and it came down to the last play and I couldn't have been more excited okay and that's the end of my report I'll just add that the um the theme that the town had was um Founders Day and
205kind of celebrating some of the the individuals that help start the town uh the one event that they had was a horse-drawn carriage which they brought a number of people around but the interesting thing is that it also centered on bringing them to the Historical Society Museum and a lot of people came in who have never been in there before to explore the history of Dover so it was uh really a nice beautiful day for that awesome thank you both for sharing Mr Robles I just add to the mural the elementary now got another Grant as well so they're going to be able to do a mural as well so that's another great thing wonderful we clearly have some amazing artists in the district um okay moving on uh Mr Robles will you please take
206policy sure so um we met on October 4th and we reviewed the following policies uh first reading 55 17 School District issues student identification School District issues student identification cards to meet new statues that require a board event that issues student identification cards for 7th through 12th grade to print on the back of the idea telephone number for New Jersey Suicide Prevention hook line and the contact information for crisis text line and we are targeting to implement that for all grades not just 7 through 12th and it will also be useful for field trips and likely to be implemented after school pictures are taken high school already has that in their IDs 7411 murals on school property there's a new policy about murals on school property and it's a very short policy but the regulation
207contains a little bit more the details which is also up for approval today um I look 74 41 electronic surveillance and school buildings and on school grounds basically security cameras to monitor school property assisting administrators and detecting and deterring unacceptable Behavior or activities or otherwise enforcing District rules and only to be placed in public or common areas and notice will be given to parents Guardians and students and staff zero one five five point zero one public participation of the Board of Education and policy committee meetings this to allow the public to join the policy committee meetings and learn what the what policies are being reviewed and create an opportunity for the public to generate questions not during the meeting of the committee but for the Board of Ed general meeting based on whatever they might
208hear or witness during the policy committee meeting as we will be approving those policies during such meeting as this and then 4216 support staff dressed and grooming not mandated but recommended to adopt dress code policies to assist school districts in establishing expectations for the dress of teaching and support staff members and then we have two regulations attached to the policies just right above it's just guidelines about the murals and criteria for approval installation and maintenance and regulation oh 7441 regulation that addresses the specifics of the implementation of the policy above and then we have second readings of the policies that are listed on the agenda and abolishment of regulation 2432 and with that I make a motion that we approve items one through four second okay I have a motion from Mr Robles I have
209a second from Ms Mendes Ms faveras you have a question yes I presented this question beforehand in regards to the first reading policy zero one five five point zero one public participation for the Board of Education policy committee can somebody speculate a little more on this as I don't understand why we're opening up the policy committee meeting to the public if there will not be an opportunity for the public to speak ask questions or state concerns um would either one of you like to take that item tremendous I think he's ready rock paper scissors um so I understand your concern but I think the the purpose of Us opening up the policy committee was is right we are policy making board so I think that it is an opportunity for folks that are interested um
210to come and see uh the things that we're talking about during the meeting and then formulate their questions and come back to us at the general meeting to then present their questions um yeah I mean I don't think there's any further explanation than that Dr sander I think it's also to see the behind the scenes right what happens when uh people at home are watching right now I I don't know why but people are at home are watching right now and they see this right but they don't see the work that we do behind the scenes and I believe Ms Mendes kind of proposed policy as one that um is you know it's the as you said it's the main job of our board and it's a way to see uh part of what goes
211on behind the scenes Miss Ruiz do you have something to add thank you Dr saner the open public meetings act requires we're not doing our community a favor we are by law required to make decisions in view of the public um and the open public meetings act requires again not a favor not a courtesy we must by law provide the public an opportunity to address the board during these meetings um the board president has the obligation the duty the the heavier burden to speak for the full board the Committees have no such Authority and no such legal requirements the Committees cannot speak for the board so in a committee let's say that Mr Robles Ms Mendes and I were in a committee we could not answer questions because we cannot speak for the board only
212the president sitting at this table can speak for the board in committee we cannot make decisions um so it is just behind the scenes um Association provides training on committees that's how this proposal came to our board based on that training um some some members of the New Jersey School Board Association encourage boards to open up their policy committee one to allow the board to see the I'm sorry to allow the public to see a little bit behind the scenes but also it is a like a fertile ground anyone who is going to spend their Tuesday evening watching a policy committee is probably somebody that would be a great fit to serve on a board so so there are several functions if those in attendance have questions they can pose them here in in this
213um at this regular session they can still email their questions right when I if I were a member of the community and I attended the policy committee um Nothing Stops me from saying hey I was at the policy committee and you presented this policy about murals I I have a question about what was discussed and email it to the board president um or email it to the superintendent or email it to the principal or the teacher depending on the chain of command so the public still has a right to question it's more that the committee doesn't have the authority to answer thank you Professor Ruiz sorry I don't mean to no no but I just want to make it clear that we're not hiding anything yes we can't answer as a committee thank you are
214there any other questions or comments okay I have a motion by Mr Robles a second I Believe by Ms Mendes if I'm remembering and could we please have a roll call vote Miss Mendez yes Mr Miller yes Miss nutting yes Miss Phillips yes Mr Robles yes Miss Ruiz yes Mr Harris yes Dr seaner yes motion carries Mr Miller could you please handle finance and Facilities sure we met on September 27th and luckily everything that's in our report was covered by the board president the superintendent and our business administrator so just in general we talked about special funding that could come our way the anti-hunger bill the audit free and reduced lunch we had a referendum updates for the website FAQs I know that Dr McLaughlin did have the opportunity to present attend connecting Dover so
215I don't know if that was presented and also there was a voter registration event with the League of Women Voters they're coming back okay that's good and we all the facility updates were given by Mr slam so with that well just one second before you make your motion there's one correction one item needs to be corrected number 17 on the hand carry the uh the name of the individual is Selena Spencer c-e-l-e-n-a everybody got that okay Mr Miller when you're ready so I like to make a motion that we approve items one through 13 and 14 through 17 with the correction and the hand carry thank you second okay we have a motion from Mr Miller a second from Ms viveros are there any questions or comments Mr Miller yeah so just wanted to mention
216the generosity of the donors for the scholarship fund um the Douglas electrical engineering is a very generous donation that goes to a student that wants to go into the field of engineering and then the class of the 70s which I am not part of it was very thank you for that clarification yes I just had to make sure I said that I'll make sure they were very generous and also uh what you have on item number 13 is the actual wording for the bond proposal question that will be for the referendum on December 13th um item 10 um I was super excited when I seen that on the agenda so I'm just wondering um is this a standard practice to cancel um negative balances or is this something special that we're doing so this is
217something special so I work we have our new auditor on board now something that we have been discussing but I want to wait until the new auditor was on board to make sure we did it appropriately so essentially after you've made a certain number of attempts you can show that you've attempted to collect uh basically student listen since student launch debt at a certain point it's considered um for a lack of a better term bad debt or uncollectible and at that point in this instance because it's related to that that's before the pandemic I reached out to the auditor and asked if there was a way for us to essentially clear that uh and then in the senses we were able to do that because we were able to show we had reached out previously
218and made uh you know an actual attempt to collect the funds and some of the folks um who are having these balances cleared out are they current students uh yeah some of them would be it and have we um reached out to them to uh get them signed up for free and reduce lunch uh we haven't done um specific Outreach to individuals in that way um it's one of those things I mentioned before it's a balance because you don't want to make anyone feel like they're being targeted or make them feel um in any negative way related to you know free and reduced lunch uh but it's something that you know we can discuss and see if there's a way to do that um see what the correct way to do that but but not
219make anyone feel negative about that I only ask because I think during your report earlier you mentioned that some of the folks who um already have negative balances that I could have swore I heard you say that you were going to reach out to them to uh make sure that they were signed up uh so we're going to reach out to them to let them know that there is that negative balances exists and we'll provide detail to them on what meet up those negative balances uh in an attempt to collect funds the hope is that when they see there's a negative balance uh and then hopefully someone is watching the meeting and sees my pleas to please uh my pleas to uh fill out a application uh they'll say let's give the application a try
220and hopefully they they will qualify but there's really no way for us to know uh if an individual qualifier or not even looking at those numbers either way I just think that this is super awesome um I I love this and I don't think that any student should have to incur any sort of negative balance for just trying to get a meal you know through no Faults of their own so thank you um Mr Slim I have two questions uh fund60 the Food Service balance is still over a million I thought we were addressing this issue with these lovely um cafeteria Renovations have those just not been accounted for yet uh so the funds haven't been dispersed yet uh since the project is not fully complete uh we wait until the Project's complete before we
221make any payments uh even after that there will be some funds uh available um we'll see how this year goes uh like I anticipate I think I mentioned it probably a few meetings ago that with the end of the SSO program uh there most likely will be a decrease in participation in in the school meal program so we have a decrease yourself the same expenses but you have less revenues coming in uh so I'm not sure how that balance is going to hold if it does hold there are other things that we could address that we've started discussing uh things like replacing lunch tables and then things along those lines okay thank you and my second question I don't remember when we were told but we were told about a problem with overpaying some staff
222when the DEA contract was settled and then retroactive salaries were distributed um I didn't see any indication of this repayment on either the 915 or the 9 30 September 15 September 30 payroll register has that process begun and how would I as a board member see that on the payroll so that process has begun you wouldn't see it on the check register because that's a register of the actual checks being cut I misspoke it was the pay I should will I see it on the payroll well that's the so that's the payroll check register so you won't see it on the payroll check register because the deductions that's essentially showing the check that each person will receive but it wouldn't show the deductions for the overpayment but that that is in place we did reach
223out via email with multiple explanations uh forced staff that required you know that additional questions we provided all the information we did break down some calculations to show where the numbers came from where there was and so far I think that's provided you know a lot of clarity in people numbers now but you know we're still available for questions if anyone still has them okay and you said I would be able to see that via the deductions or I would not oh you would not because so it's the basically that payroll just shows the actual checks it's not going to show the deduction I just wanted to make sure I could hear I heard you correctly if there are no other questions we have a motion and a second Mr slam could I have a
224roll call vote please Miss Mendes yes Mr Miller yes Miss nutting yes Miss Phillips yes Mr Robles yes Mr Reese yes Mr veros yes Dr Senor yes motion carries thank you um informational items uh our upcoming Board of Education meetings will be November 15th December 20th and January 3rd all of those at Dover High school and then there are some informational items in regards to use of facilities um it's nice to see our build our our Fields being used for soccer basketball's next I hope he already submitted it already submitted so next month we will be looking at those okay um moving on to Old business there's nothing listed but I would ask uh if Mr Miller or Ms Ruiz would give an update on the gun violence resolution okay so on October 11th uh
225Miss Ruiz and myself presented a testimony mainly Miss Ruiz who did an awesome job which is what we needed we need the attorney to do it because it was like we were in a courtroom and um and it was in regard to our gun violence safety resolution and trying to convince the NJ SBA resolution subcommittee to allow it to move forward so I'm just going to read the notes that we have here so um the njbsa resolution subcommittee began with the attorney's opening statement explaining the existing General broad relief statement regarding school health and safety the attorney's name Mr Burns stated that our resolution was both too specific and repetitive because the njsba could choose to advocate for a 21 year old age limit for the purchase of firearms pursuant to the existing language Mr
226Burns recommended that the resolution subcommittee reject the resolution and motion was made to reject the resolution then seconded and then the chair opened the meeting for questions and discussions on behalf of our board Ms Ruiz argued that while General broad belief statements were appropriate for most issues that impact uh the the diverse School communities throughout the state a specific belief statement calling to raise the age limit for the purchase of firearms best responded to the current crisis of mass shootings especially when half of the mass shooters were youth that were current or former students of the school communities they terrorized Miss Ruiz also argued that the resolution should be permitted to move forward to the delegate assembly with the support of the resolution subcommittee so that delegates could enjoy it in a healthy debate and
227amendment process several members of the subcommittee suggested that perhaps a gun violence safety Summit or a gun violence safety session during the NS NJ SBA Workshop might achieve the goal of creating discussion and debate over this topic better than a resolution one some subcommittee members suggested leaving the issue for the legislation legislators to decide not board members Mr Ruiz explained that a summit and leaving the issue to legislators would be insufficient given the mass shootings throughout the country from Columbine in the 90s to today and urged a no vote to the motion two subcommittee members voted no with the over Mount overming majority voting yes the Board of Education the Dover Board of Education delegate to the njsba delegate assembly can present the resolution from the floor at the njsba delegate assembly in November but
228it will be presented without the support of the resolution committee the njsba attorneys John Burns and Mr Craig may be available for additional assistance after our testimony I received a call from the njsba attorney Mr Carl tanksley indicating that he thought dover's testimony was well thought out and presented our case well he offered the services of the njsba advocacy resources to help us recraft our current resolution to a form that could be presented to the May delegate assembly I stated that the Dover Board of Education may wish to bring the resolution in its current form to the November delegate assembly he said that it is our right to do so but if we did and it did not pass we would not be able to present this resolution again for a year so he recommended
229that we work to present it again in November he mentioned that he doesn't want our board to be discouraged and that they are here to help us with this very worthy and important topic can I ask a question so actually I have two questions so is his proposal that we that we rework the resolution for November or from May for May for May and I know that there was some discussion at the last meeting that the uh kind of the formatting was wrong but it sounds like the discussion focused on the idea that we that the njsba subcommittee doesn't want a more specific resolution is that statement correct that's what they were saying because what they were also saying was that they listed some other um beliefs that were listed when I was doing the
230research I could find the gun violence one because it said God and violence so you knew that was something that was targeted but there were some other ones that they had some other things buried in there that they say they could use that to do the same thing so then my thought process is then if they had that already then why didn't they do it so I'm not really sure how we could change the current resolution to enable them to push forward but it's pretty obvious that even if we bring it to the floor it's not going to pass so it may be worth the try working with them to see what it is that they would help us do to see if there's some way to promote it for May I would actually disagree
231I would think let's bring it to the floor because um I don't think we have anything to lose it doesn't sound like they were going to support it anyway so if it gets postponed for a year I mean if we can have a conversation we have what a little around a month before the ngsba delegate assembly if we could reach out in that month's time and see what the advocacy group recommends but if they're going to recommend that we go broad then well Dr saner Mr Miller if I may so the resolution cannot be changed between now and November the resolution is what it is during this subcommittee one of the subcommittee members brought up that the last time anything on guns was brought up I don't think she used the word circus but she
232used such as contentious contentious much prettier word she said the meeting was contentious um it was clear to me by her statement that at the very least that particular board member was not eager to have another contentious meeting I've been to the meetings where they were contentious over things that I'm like really that's what we're angry about so it is not difficult to get a bunch of board members in a room in a contentious way it is quite easy um that being said I I have it it took 20 years to pass legislation just to allow people to have driver's licenses in New Jersey um who weren't U.S citizens it took 15 years just to allow non-citizen students access to Equitable tuitions at local colleges I was part of those movements I do not expect
233that it's going to take us one month let alone a year to get this done I don't expect that their vote in favor of it in May I don't expect that they'll vote in favor of it in November and I think we all uh understand that the resolution one of the tools of the resolution is that if you can already right because this is what they said we can already advocate for this based on what we already have then why aren't you doing it so us bringing this to the floor in November will at the very least get them to either say no we're not doing it or okay fine we'll do it um one they proposed that instead of this resolution we put Dover Board of Education go to workshop and host a summit
234on mental health and you know yeah so whether we presented in May or whether we presented in November I think we'll have a similar outcome I would push for November because it's hot right we're on it we're eager um we have you we have Mr Miller Miss grasalis and Dr saner who have been sharpening their advocacy skills um I think some of us have already put it on our calendars for for November I know that we have at least some members of other boards that would support and speak in favor and and there was a there is a bill pending right there may not be I think May next year is another legislative session right to the end in June either way there may not be another bill pending there is one pending right now
235and one of their uh complaints about the specificity um and this is a the legal you know you can craft a law where it's either the floor or the ceiling so they are saying that in our resolution when we say move the age to 21 they're saying it ties their hands to only 21. what if the legislature wants to move it to 25 well our resolution is a floor it's not a ceiling if they want to move it to 25 great you can still support that our resolution doesn't stop you from supporting that but our resolution would force let's say that the legislature compromised to 20 years old our resolution would force the njsba to push for 21. which is what we want anyway right why are we going to stop at 20. push for
236when you Advocate you have to push for a hundred percent and you're lucky to get 10 percent so I I just don't see any reason to wait and and if and if it doesn't pass this board will have learned how to do this and next may you present a different resolution if we can't present the same one next May um you can certainly craft something on gun violence that isn't an age limit thank you Missouri's other thoughts Mr Miller um what I was hearing when they were talking it sounded like even if we had the most perfect resolution and it was passed they still couldn't affect legislation anyway so I don't think that they really have the pull that they make it seem like they do because they don't but I'm still willing to try
237to I want to see them help us write this in such a way that it could be presented so that's why I I'd rather try for May I know it's certain to go down in November in its current form because that's all they're going to focus on is just that form and not the ideals that it represents so that's why I'd like to take the opportunity to work with them to recraft it so we don't have to wait a year if we wanted something similar to be presented that's just my thought other board members um I hear you my only thing is as a spectator on that meeting they focused on that detail of 21 and they're not going to go for it so if they sit down with us to recraft it in some
238way they're going to eliminate that that's my understanding they're going to eliminate that and we want that so um I am going to be very candid and I and say that I they don't have the courage um to uh to approve it um and I think that we should still move forward with the bill in its current the resolution in its current form so is there a compromise where Mr is the no the njsb a delegate assembly is the 17th of November am I remembering that correctly uh I believe so and it's in person okay which it wasn't before so in order to vote you have to be in person and I will be there okay so it's the 17th our next board meeting is the 15th of November so what if Mr Miller gets
239a month to see if he can at least get enough information to see which way it's going to go right are they are they going to let us are they is it really about the form or is it about the 21 and at that point at the November 15th meeting Mr Miller can explain what he's done what he's learned and we can make our decision from there and vote on it because we would still have time then to send Mr Miller to Trenton with our desire to either present it in at on in November or are we will decide to work on it through May I love that idea and I have I'm going to see Mr tanksley at the convention I already invited myself to go talk to him excellent okay so do we
240have a motion on the floor do we need a motion no so we're Mr Miller you have your task um if you could keep uh you know I think Ms Ruiz and Ms grisalis as they uh you know have helped you along the way in the loop I think that would be great okay moving on to new business um um Ms Ruiz this one is yours a proposal to advocate for the pilot Bill we already did that so yeah we're good with new business we discussed that earlier okay um my computer batteries at five percent my personal battery is maybe at six percent uh moving on to public comment the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters
241to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of three minutes public comments not restricted to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6 30. remote comments will be read by a member of the Board of Education the Board of Education will alternate between in-person and online comments please understand the public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thought with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are considered and will be investigated and
242addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed at a particular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation are there any comments online oh yes okay um miseries could I'm Sorry Miss Phillips could you read the first one sure so the first what so there's three okay well there's four comments but two are from the same person okay if you could just read the first comment okay um the first comment is from
243Susan shower 346 West Clinton Street in Dover in reference to the cafeteria report I can see the beautiful result of the renovation of the cafeteria and would like to know what the total cost for the project was now that completed and what is the balance remaining in the school district's cafeteria fund okay thank you um is there any member of the public who is present at the meeting that would have like that would like to approach the podium and make a comment okay Miss Phillips we'll go back to okay next comment is from Dolores Diaz nine Birch Lane Mine Hill how many students are in each grade today when are the public presentations regarding the referendum when will the Pre-K students all be back in District buildings the next comment is from Gisela with no
244last name 12 Harvard Street Dover do we risk losing State funding for the for a new school if the referendum is not passed and then the last comment is also from Susan shower 346 West Clinton Street good evening I sent this letter to all Board of Education members and since it was not read I'm sharing for the public to hear this morning I reviewed your recent advertisement for the quickly approaching School referendum vote to say I'm disappointed would be an understatement these photos show myself and taxpay taxpayers a lack of many things lack of simple organizational skill lack of thought process to prioritizing use of space lack of care about safety all of the space wasted on items that can be stored in sheds empty plastic boxes cases of water taking up space and should
245be stored in a shed or off site every school building has understage chair storage for two times the student population for events if folding chairs are used for classes maintenance should be putting them away not propping them near doorways media centers are in fact educational spaces and should be used as such whenever possible sheds should be purchased cargo containers anything to get what is now stacked in rooms and hauls out this is absolutely unacceptable and only shows the chaotic atmosphere in our school district and the lack of caring effort and organization needed bringing a new program to the district also includes planning for the space required hiring new staff that need workspace requires planning planning seems to come after the fact and the proof is in the chaotic clutter cluttered photos you posted P.S the
246board president responded to my email that I should follow the chain of command first as a 15-year board member I am aware of the chain of command and second I was commenting on the referendum flyer posted on the district Facebook page the board of education is asking for the 61 million dollars not the school principal Susan Schauer Dover taxpayer and that is the last comment thank you Ms Phillips for taking on that responsibility um are there any questions from anyone in the public seeing no one approaching I'm going to close the public comment session are there comments from board members or Dr McLaughlin or any other administrator I have information about grade level enrollment as of today this won't be typically the information that I provide in the attendance update but since it was asked
247and since it's pertinent I believe to the referendum I'd like to provide it and this is again current as of today uh 217 students in kindergarten 216 students in first grade 223 students in second grade 220 students two students in third grade 220 students in fourth grade 226 students in fifth grade 200 and 13 students in sixth grade 255 students in seventh grade 269 students in eighth grade 303 students in ninth grade 342 students in 10th Grade 265 I'm sorry students in 11th grade and 256 students in 12th grade so we they uh there had been a request for grade level numbers I think that's important that does match up with the total numbers that I gave before I do want to indicate that Pre-K students are not scheduled to come back into the school
248buildings that is not part of the referendum uh actually part of the philosophy of the State Department of Education through its preschool expansion funds is that we use Community Partners since they see Community Partners as a good fit for pre-k But ultimately too as we anticipate our Pre-K Universe approaching uh fast uh being or matching our registration number of 400 uh that would probably include building a whole new building just for pre-k right now we're very happy with the satellites and our Community Partners so that is not a part of the plan um and then the final question I want to respond to do we risk losing State funding for a new school if the referendum isn't passed yes the eight million dollars that the state has committed is based on the referendum passing we
249don't get that eight million dollars without the referendum and it's one of the points that have we have made in our question and answer and our information points on the website is that that eight million dollar belongs to the Dover Community they paid their taxes to acquire it we get that eight million dollars if we follow through on the referendum but that eight million dollars goes away without it thank you Dr McLaughlin Dr Snyder yes Mr slam um I don't expect you to know the answer off the top of your head but do you perhaps um know the total cost of the project for the cafeteria it would take me a second to pull up but okay well you look that up my my second um question is I'm quite frankly um exhausted with getting
250this question over and over and over and not having an answer for the public um Everywhere I Go social media in person I get this question um do we have any idea of an actual date for um presentations regarding the referendum for the community I thank you and let me pull up my calendar unless you know it off the top of your head yes November 17th I don't have a look before you ask we do not have a location but the First Community Forum you heard it here first will be November 17th with details to follow in terms of time and location thank you so much I appreciate it you are welcome so the cafeteria renovation was 514 962 dollars out of fund sixty so that will directly go against the Surplus that we have
251in fund 60 uh which we actually received an audit recommendation because we have over three month three months average oh sorry a three months average operating expenses you're only allowed three months average operating expenses in your balance anything over that is an auto recommendation which the district received from this prior year thank you so much Mr slam seeing no other hands I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved I have a motion from Miss nutting second second from Ms viveros all in favor aye all opposed motion carries have a wonderful evening everyone please stay and help clean up the tablecloth it's really late but I was gonna say we should do the group picture but