001foreign this okay i know it dress uh much but now i feel like i'm yeah good evening dover community community may the board please have a motion to open regular session so moved second thank you miss viveros for the motion thank you miss netting for the second roll call we don't do raw call for that actually thank you so moved this meeting is hereby called to order at six thirty four p.m in compliance with the notice requirements of the law public notice was posted in the office of the board of education and communicated to the municipal court and the daily record on may 17 2022 the board invites all to join in the flag it salute one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and now roll call please mr salas present
002miss mendez here mr miller here ms nutting here miss phillips here mr robles president mr ruiz present mrs riveros present dr sainor we have a quorum the board of education regular session is conducted in english with a spanish english interpreter available for any member of the public who wishes to make a public comment in spanish the board of education invites the district interpreter ms rosa munoz to the microphone to please introduce herself in spanish and explain the role of the interpreter for the board of education regular session in spanish good do i mean spanish only the board invites the designated board member to please present our mission statement i think we have two candidates who have not yet had the opportunity to share the mission statement would either of you if you remember who you
003are miss ruiz i'm not one of them but i'll be happy to read it just to get this moving along thank you miss mendez working together as a community our mission is to welcome all and provide opportunities for our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and who choose to make an impact in the spirit of shared leadership the board of education invites miss diana grasales to deliver the board statement in celebration of pride month good evening everyone buenas noches the month of june is a reminder that validation acknowledgement and support truly thoroughly saves lives and truly unites people as a parent of a trans child pride month truly brings pride to my home and as a public servant it lands a platform to highlight and honor the resilience
004of the 1969 stonewall uprising in manhattan where we experienced a tipping point for the gay liberation movement in the united states thank you miss grasales in the spirit of shared leadership the board of education invites mr benjamin robles to deliver the board statement on domestic terrorism the domestic terrorist attack against the robb elementary school in uvalde texas and to lead us in a moment of silence i do invite all to stand for the moment of silence statement first dear dover school community just a month ago we experienced yet another school shooting tragedy this time in uvalde texas to sum the fact that it happened 1900 miles away from this very building may seem like it's too far away to be concerned but the reality is again it felt like it was next door there are
005no words that could truly convey how heavy our hearts are and how we know how we know that even our thoughts and prayers cannot fulfill the needs and replace the sorrow to of the families and school community devastated by those lost in this less senseless event and yes we must pray we must be concerned and we must act to do all that is in our power to promote the safety and well-being of our school community students and staff need to feel safe when they come to our schools and we must ensure education in dover includes caring for the emotional well-being of all who are entrusted into this district i'm just going to read it in spanish as well estimated foreign muchas gracias thank you thank you mr robles in the spirit of shared leadership the
006board of education invites mr scott miller to share the board statement in honor of former dover board of education member and pianist mr hank shapiro as many in the community know mr shapiro recently passed away and he has been featured all over the world on the internet with his music i had the privilege of hearing him a couple of times and his story throughout his life was amazing and i think a lot of you might have seen you know a lot of that was posted around and he's someone that will really miss because he's been dedicated to the community and to the arts and he was an inspiration to many so you know we give him many blessings where he is now and hopefully his family can soon be at peace thank you mr miller
007in the spirit of shared leadership the board of education invites ms daniela mendez to share the board statement commemorating juneteenth thank you mr reese something is off with this microphone tonight um juneteenth recognizes one of our country's earliest liberation movements juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved people in galveston texas finally learned that they were free from the institution of slavery some factions in america in 2022 are introducing legislation to ban anti-racist education lessons that would help our future generations understand the significance of juneteenth june juneteenth is not just for folks of color to understand we must all recognize juneteenth and acknowledge the way america was built and the foundational contributions of the enslaved many of the stereotypes about black people are rooted in slavery we see that manifest with the
008disproportionate killing of black people by police officers we see the health care system failing to care for black bodies juneteenth is an opportunity for us all to engage protest march and perhaps most importantly it is an opportunity for our country to heal and spread joy thank you miss mendez the board invites the superintendent to direct tonight's presentations please thank you to begin tonight by acknowledging a special group of people who are with us and who have served the dover community loyally over many years as i think we can all attest there has always been a teacher in our lives that has changed our trajectory and it's easy for most people to name a teacher who has influenced them in a positive way and set their life in motion one of the great privileges that we
009have each year is honoring those who have spent a career in teaching and influencing lives and tonight we have the opportunity to acknowledge this group of individuals who are leaving dover after many years of loyal service after touching the lives of families and children i'd like to read the whole list of our retirees this year and then uh acknowledge with the token of our appreciation for the individuals who are able to be with us tonight in in just a moment lisa berg loretta frye martha galino zareda hernandez dorian jermaine and elia puno and lou taxiarco we can give them a round of applause [Applause] miss ruiz would you come up with me and hand out the tokens oh [Applause] we can take a picture [Applause] um do you want the mic emilia pune [Applause] and
010lisa berg [Applause] so we're gonna just take a minute for a photograph and then one more round of applause for our group in front of the table it's probably easy in front of the table yes thank you [Applause] so i guess about three years ago now we started a program a very uh challenging program to help our most needy students who are struggling with reading and those students who required a different method of learning to read so that they could open the pathway to their own learning have really been assisted by this group of teachers who has who have completed and i have to emphasize just how challenging this coursework is the multi-sensory reading program from philly dickinson university and i i'm smiling as i see the t-shirts uh and how how close this group
011has become in their dedication to this to this cause um we are so excited that our initial cohort here in in dover has completed the orton gillingham program that we have these dyslexia specialists among us to reach out and to help our students again to open the world of reading to open the world of words to them and so we'd like to acknowledge them these are not their official certificates from fairly dickinson who would not allow us to give them out because they are coming to you directly from the university i do before we give them out i just have to describe the program a little bit because we have to do justice to the work that these teachers have done this is not a master's program like any other this is a program where
012these clinicians worked individually with students over a year's worth of time and then another year's worth of time going to lecture working under the direct guidance of a instructor from fairly dickinson and implementing what is a tremendously difficult program to learn and to administer and to prepare for the hours that went into that while they were doing their own teaching really can't be overstated so i really would like to um on behalf of the whole district and the administration and the board to say how proud we are of you um that you were up to this challenge that you got through it and uh and we're so excited about what the next piece is to come as you go out and work with our students with these skills so our first individual that we'd like
013to honor is lori bullock [Applause] kylie eisensmith [Applause] congratulations valerie hemingway [Applause] elizabeth [Applause] mercedes longmore [Applause] come on karen phelps madeline santiago [Applause] tricia zarinko [Applause] you know you're fine you guys can take a picture i didn't know [Applause] i'll introduce our next presentation as you all know this time last year the district made a firm commitment to building a support network for our families that would consist of a community liaison at each school building and an overall district liaison that would oversee the department with your approval we built that budget to support this endeavor we advertised for those positions this time last year and we got to work the team got to work right ladies and they have not stopped their work if you would have asked me last year what this would
014look like for our families what kind of supports would we be bringing into dover that would be needed for our families i would have pictured where we are right now and i'm going to get choked up i was talking to madeline today this is like a dream coming true it's it's unfortunate that some of our families need these supports but it is so fortunate that the dover school district is able to provide the supports that are needed for our families so i'm going to turn it over to madeline to come up is going to walk us all through the year of the community liaisons [Applause] you a taste because if i gave you the whole meal we'll be here for hours so i know that you guys are just excited as i am to be
015able to present this department it's been a wonderful journey and so i'm going to just highlight some events here so like christina said this is a brand new department that was instituted last fall so each of our schools has a liaison that's represented here and i have them here for you tonight to meet i have first rosita carrasquillo she's the liaison for dover high school i have the liaison for academy street anay hernandez i have the liaison for north dover brunilda pantoja and i have the liaison for east over dover middle school taisha fullerton this is my dynamic duel these women go out and just do what they need to do for our families they are just so empathetic such hard workers and such a caring individual i am so grateful to have them as
016part of this team i can go on for hours but i'm just going to move on because they're just i'm so proud of this team and what we're doing we foster a sense of community within the school we try to build a relationship with organizations outside of the school we provide support and resources to our parents we're about parent engagement and involvement we want to incorporate parents school staff and the community to work together to support our families because we know that if we do that that's going to improve the well-being of the child our mission statement to provide support and resources to our families through outreach and networking with organizations throughout new jersey and to continue to build a strong relationship by bridging the gap between schools home and community so let's start off
017we started out back to school we gave out hundreds of backpacks filled with school supplies we were each back to school night it was such a great event to be able to introduce ourselves to families boy where they and all they were surprised they were like this is great we have someone that we can connect to to each of our schools so we started out with a bang we then went and had navigating hope and hope one at the dover board of education building these are service units that provide assistance in snap medicaid general system tanf utility housing assistance mental health services and much more they were at our belmont office so we had families come each month and put and get the resources that they needed we also had hispanic affairs come to our
018mobile unit this service unit helps families with utility assistance help with their gas so that was a great service to have we started with having an event at eastover school we wanted to provide our families with different organizations and resources so we had held we held an event at east dover and as you can see we had 75 to 100 people in attendance that night we were able to provide homework assistance for our children that came in we gave out free dinner and even um had a dance performance by paso el paso that was amazing and it was a great and successful event on top of that we were able to have a given tree in our school district we were able to provide gifts and toys to families in need and that that in
019itself was just amazing it really was such a fulfilling moment to be able to provide gifts to our families and they were overjoyed to see the amount of gifts that they received we had creature comfort dog therapy i wish you can see the children's faces when they when the dog visited the school they were elated they were so happy to be able to have a dog come and visit their school another great event was cooking matters at home this was a virtual free online cooking cooking at home event they got their items for free all the ingredients and all they needed to do was log in and cook with their families that's the way we were able to bring in families and do a fun activity with their children they loved it so much that
020we had parents email and here's just some of what they had said i had an incredible time it's something that i hardly ever do many of us adolescents focus more on social media and we don't experiment on new things thank you this was a high schooler thank you again for all your help yesterday i appreciate you what a wonderful time we had cooking we look forward to more events in the future here's a mom here are my son's picks of the food we made together thank you we really enjoyed the time we spent and the nutritious ingredients we got to create such a delicious pasta and i should have a picture the picture is not there oh there it is so those are some of the meals that we did and so it was a
021wonderful wonderful evening one of the amazing things that we were able to have is a donation of 200 coats from nordstrom boy was that such an amazing thing that we were able to do we provided coats to those families that needed something of warmth over the winter months so this was a great thing that we did for our department they came picked up the coats and families were just so grateful we had such an abundance that we were able to donate to casa and jbws and here's a picture of us donating to that organization one of the organizations called mom helping's mom is an organization that helps mother in need of basic supplies so they graciously donated bags filled with diapers toiletries formulas um toys clothing for our our moms who are currently young moms
022up in the high school so we really appreciated what they were able to do for the high school students nick's hope is a clothing mobile unit this organization is such a wonderful organization they were so just generous with our district that they provided an online shopping event where families can shop for free and get 30 items they were ecstatic with the amount of people that actually participated these items are washed clean gently used they packed up all the items that they had the parents purchased put them in bags and delivered them to our belmont office and the families came and picked them up it was such a successful event that we had them come on site so we had our belmont office downs uh one of our um conference rooms built like a shop so
023where families can come over 35 families came out on a saturday beautiful day and they were able to shop for free and it was just an amazing event it was huge success getting to know dover event is one of the things that we hosted we wanted to have families come out and meet different organizations that's um that perhaps they're not aware of right in our community so a lot of families came out to this and it was just again a great event and then here are some pictures of the different organizations that participated table of hope that is something that we had com they came to our belmont office three times and let me tell you over 300 families were served i'm telling you it's been an amazing amazing thing to have them come to
024our belmont office and be able to provide food for the needy here are some pictures of the event also we had the empowering women's summit we invited females from ages 15 and up to just get information on money management financial wellness how to budget and we had chase host this event and we had a good group of women come out and get a lot of information that night that was it was very successful lastly we had the over middle school artist residency an artist came and did this beautiful mural where we're going to end up having families come and just enjoy the work that the um seventh graders did for that school we were also participating in the cultural connections festival we met many families that day and were able to um we were able
025to share what about what our department is all about so that's it thank you so much [Applause] i just want to say an extra thank you to madeline and the team you guys are amazing you have a full reserve of energy and i was over at academy today and we're already planning for next year so thank you for the work that you do thank you another significant initiative that our district has been involved in over the last few years in an ever increasing way is the delivery of clinical services to students from the rutgers behavioral care unit and mental health clinicians work full-time in our schools 12 months a year we have had as i mentioned we began this program fairly modestly and then have built that program progressively each year we wanted to share
026with the board tonight some information regarding the program itself and some of the results uh and some of the data that shows the need the continued need for this program so at this time i turn that over to you susie miller [Applause] okay how's that yep good okay perfect uh good evening everyone thank you so much for being here today i'm i'm so honored to be with you all today and talk to you a little bit about some of the services we've provided through the rutgers school-based program so the partnership that we started with the dover school started last year where we started out with services in the elementary and middle school and this year we were able to expand into the high school and really support with the tiger wrap program which was already
027here so let me tell you a little bit about ubhc so ubhc or university behavioral healthcare is the largest community mental health provider within the state actually within the country we have expertise in children's mental health and we have a continuum of services so we have all the different levels of care from our outpatient offices to our inpatient unit so that really allows us the ability to be able to meet the kids needs wherever they're at make connections within our own school-based or within our own organization and that we were able to connect the families with the services that they need so schools across the state are really recognizing the need to provide mental health services within their schools especially within the past several years we've really all just been experiencing this national trauma worldwide
028trauma that we've all experienced so now more than ever it's so important that we're able to provide these services to students in a very accessible way more than 20 percent of children are diagnosed with a mental health disorder so being able to provide this support in an accessible way like we said within the schools in an affordable way with families has just been a tremendous resource that we've been able to offer and because it's convenient it's an ideal location it doesn't create an additional burden for families they don't have to go out and seek this additional resource it's available to them within the schools in fact the um you know they're calling what we're experiencing right now a national mental health crisis for children the amount of resources that are needing are needed are just
029not reaching the level of availability within the state so the fact that we're able to provide the support to students in their own school buildings where families don't have to search it's free of charge to the families it's just been a tremendous resource so our philosophy is that emotional wellness equals academic success so if we're able to meet the emotional needs of our st of our students they're going to be able to perform successfully within schools which in turn impacts their futures so the vision really is that academic success is linked to social emotional and physical well-being and we've been so fortunate to work with the community liaisons and really partner with them on being able to provide all of these resources to the students and their families so we're able to provide services to
030those that wouldn't have access otherwise for a variety of reasons it could be financial it could be time constraints it could be not finding the resources available within the community and we're able to provide those services in a safe comfortable environment that reduces the stigma i think one thing that the past two years has really been able to provide our country is this not only awareness but comfort level with seeking out mental health services which i'm so grateful for but being able to provide it in the safe location within the schools even more so really helped to break down that stigma that mental health services are something that's needed and it's okay to need it and having that services available has just been a really great resource so our keys to success with our school-based
031model are decide it's designed to meet the local need it's community and school collaboration so we wouldn't be able to be successful if we worked on an island and that's not how we run our program so we work super collaboratively like we mentioned with the community liaisons with the school counselors with the child study team with administrators it really is a true partnership with the school we're able to provide the services during before after school and also we provide a ton of summer programming as well there's diversity of programming i'm going to talk a lot about the different programming that was done this year but a lot of things which are more preventative focused and then more intensive individual based we provide flexibility in terms of the diversity of services and we again provide that
032access to the continuum of care so one thing that we're able to do is we're able to screen students who are experiencing suicidal or homicidal ideations on-site in the schools which has just been such a tremendous support because it saves them from having to go to places like the emergency room which can be a really scary place especially for our little ones so the fact that we're able to do that on site in a safe location and then link them with the level of care that they need has been a tremendous support and then we're also outcome driven and i'll talk a little bit about the different types of outcomes that we use so as i mentioned this year one addition that we had to the school-based program is that we started really working with
033the tiger wrap program and the tiger wrap program is a collaboration between the dcf dcf grant and also school funding so we've been able to really expand on the monies that were provided through the grant and offer even more services our team is composed of counselors social workers and case manager so we're able to provide the variety of different levels of care for the students within the building there's a clinician in each of the schools at least one time per week and i know the districts is also working on expanding that even more and our goal is to provide services to the most at risk students so the goal is to be able to provide that level of support to the kids that need it most and also do preventative work so we're targeting the
034whole district but then also specifically working with those most at-risk kids so our goals are to enhance opportunities for student learning coping and resilience by providing free and confidential mental health services and psychoeducation in a non-threatening environment particularly to those with limited access to services we also work with families across different cultural groups ethnicities in a way that really supports their values um our whole team is comprised of individuals who speak spanish which has been a tremendous support for our families being able to talk in their native life native language so our tiger wrap team i'm the program manager of the program so i oversee the whole program we have an on-site program coordinator rosemary flores who provides direct supervision to our clinicians and also provide services within the high school and then we have
035a team of three clinicians with throughout the other four schools so we have one full-time clinician at the high school one clinician that splits between the two uh elementary schools east and north and um i'm sorry north academy street and then one clinician between east dover and the middle school and then we also have a youth development coordinator who's really been predominantly involved in all of the programming that we've been able to provide so our staff are able to consult with the school staff to really tailor the the services being provided to the needs of the school that's one thing i love about working for rutgers i'm in 13 different districts throughout the state and not one of my programs looks the same and that's one thing that we really strive to do is walk
036into a district really identify what are the needs of this district what are the needs of your students and your families and how can we meet those needs we're able to refer the students and the families to community resources so making sure that we connect them with the level of supports that they need helping them navigate and find access through a very complicated mental health system we're able to monitor medication protocols and collaborate with psychiatrists on medication management for our students we're able to conduct assessments on site to determine the appropriate levels of care and we're able to provide training opportunities for the staff for the students and for the families i don't know why it flipped that we're able to provide a clinical perspective when assisting schools counselors with a student in crisis so
037even if it's a student that we're not directly doing the crisis assessment we can consult and collaborate with the school counselor we can recognize psychiatric disorders some severe mental illnesses and we're able to help diagnose and help connect the families with the level of care that they need we're able to determine if a student poses a threat to themselves or to others and make sure that they get the level of care that they need we're able to create a treatment plan that develops skills for a healthy level of functioning and we're able to consult with school staff to really tailor the school schedule to meet the child's changing needs so we've really worked collaboratively with school counselors on helping them adapt the school academic components to really fit the mental health needs of that child
038so some of the services provided are crisis intervention individual and family therapy consultation with the school staff as well as with community providers case management and referral services classroom presentations on a variety of different topics psycho-educational groups that we provided within the school to a specific group of kids programming focused on prevention continuing education workshops for the school staff some specifically for school counselors and child study team and then some for the whole student the whole faculty for a variety of different topics such as trauma-informed care we've provided parent trainings student programming all right so now let's get into some of the demographics so this past year this is from july of 2021 through june of 2022. we had 222 students that were referred to our program for specific services so this doesn't even include
039the number of students that participated in the district-wide preventative programming so we can see the breakdown by male female and transgender you can see the student percentage of students by race and then you can see the percentage of students by grade so as i had mentioned we do have the majority of our staff in the high school and also as the kids get older their needs tend to increase so you do see that there's a larger population of students that are referred in the high school but we really as you can see had referrals throughout all of the grade levels from k to 12. so this gives you a really quick snapshot of presenting symptoms at admission so what i mean by that is these are the symptoms that the kids have when they're referred
040to us this might be identified by the school staff it might be identified directly from the parent it might be identified by our staff when they're doing that initial assessment so the top graph shows you the presenting symptoms that admission by gender and you can see that the um the first tab the orange tab is total the middle one the yellow tab is males and the darker tab is females the bottom one then gives you the presenting symptoms by grade so the total is the first one again and then you have high school middle school and elementary school so you can see that we have a significant need of really supporting our kids with anxiety which considering what we've just been through wasn't a surprise we weren't surprised to see such a significant need and
041anxiety we had a good number of students who identified as needing support with depression and then you can see we had everything including individuals who had self-injury behaviors homicidal ideations suicidal thoughts that also needed support so this just gives you a quick snapshot of some of the supports that were needed some of the supports that were provided but it really was individual based on each student and what they needed also just to add that each particular kid can have more than one presenting symptoms so for example depression and anxiety tend to be very comorbid they tend to appear together so one particular child could have multiple different presenting symptoms this gives you the environmental stressors again by gender and then by grade level so we looked at things like family concerns academic stressors truancy abuse
042neglect trauma language barriers other environmental stressors acculturation so we looked at a variety of different environmental stressors and again you could see at the top the breakdown by male and female and then on the bottom by grade level so we could see we had a significant number of kids who are identifying as needing the support of having family concerns we had a decent number who had some academic difficulties that they needed some support with some transition issues trauma which again isn't surprising that we saw that increase in trauma this year so clinical services some additional service information so you could see we had 150 referrals at the high school again that's where we had the majority of our staff but also like we said as kids age they tend to need additional supports 33 referrals
043at dover middle school 17 at eastover 11 at north dover and 11 at academy street you can see the number of referrals by month so we started in july and july is when we were really starting especially the tiger app program in the high school so as we sort of built up that case load we had 37 referrals in august that's also when we did our summer enrichment program and then it's been consistently new referrals coming in throughout the rest of the year oh and this actually cut off i am so sorry about that but we do have referrals all the way through june so we had a total of 222 referrals throughout the school year so i mentioned that one of the things that we do is those crisis assessments so just to give
044you an idea in the elementary schools we did five total risk assessments at dover middle school we did seven and at the high school we did 11 total risk assessments two of those led to a direct admission what that means is that two of those students needed that higher level of care where they needed to be admitted into the inpatient unit and to stay there in addition to the direct risk assessments that we did we also did 19 crisis de-escalations so what that means is those kids were not necessarily reaching the level of having suicidal or homicidal ideations that needed to be screened but they were still very escalated and elevated and needed that support to be able to de-escalate we also supported the district with the loss after high school teacher and elementary school
045paraprofessional and then in terms of our programming we started out by doing a week-long summer enrichment program last august we did the freshman and sophomore orientation and we actually got to do that twice in this past year because we shifted the way that we did it so last august we did freshman orientation we also included the sophomores last year because at that point a lot of our sophomores had never entered the building this year we shifted the way we did orientation and we actually did it in june where we had our eighth graders come up to the high school and get to really experience the high school while the students were there it was a very cool event we did parent orientation we did peer mentoring training so every year we identify a group of
046leaders within the student body who really identify as being peer mentors and they get to participate in a variety of training throughout the year and then get to participate in a variety of activities so they get to really advance those leadership skills and then give back to their community it's a really cool thing that they do and then we did some school-wide initiatives so we did a week of respect random acts of kindness initiative gratitude mondays with the gratitude table of really helping students think about what is it that they're grateful for school violence awareness week with chop the walk events and a pledge signing a red ribbon week for drug and alcohol using drug and alcohol trivia we did a community service project where they made valentine's cards for the senior citizens virtual pet
047therapy we started the virtual pet therapy before we were able to bring the dogs into the building so that was really cool kids got to come on the screen and bring their own pets onto the screen it was really actually a very cool event therapy dog visits teen dating violence awareness month with healthy relationships workshop with the tiger wrap senior girls group then they did lunch lounge at the tigers den and this was done pretty regularly throughout the year gsa genders and sexualities alliance a senior class luncheon the peer mentor end of year celebration tiger wrap drop-in hours so outside of the kids that were on our caseload that were seen individually weekly or more often if needed we also had these drop-in hours where kids could stop by any kid without necessarily being referred
048ahead of time so that was just an open resource because sometimes kids might not have felt comfortable talking to a school staff prior to seeking out the support so this just opened the door for them if they needed that additional resource we brought taekwondo to the school we had a conflict resolution freshman class event we did a digital citizenship assembly we made vision boards with college and career classes and then prevention is key came and did a six session presentation on the seven habits of highly effective teens and then i mentioned the freshman orientation that we did just in june so this is some pictures of some of the students participating in the events that we've held throughout the year so some of the faculty presentations that were provided for the school staff we did
049things like a suicide screening training that was offered four times so all the school counselors and all the child study team members were trained on the columbia suicide severity rating scale which is really the gold standard for um being able to assess for suicidality within within any person but specifically we train them to be able to utilize it with the youth we did how to under overcome which is understanding trauma and supporting students with social and emotional needs and this was offered to all faculty k-12 at the start of the school year we did trauma-informed practices with a six-part training series that was provided to the high school staff we did the tiger wrap hallway mural project grand opening um faculty meetings were attended throughout this different schools to be able to introduce our staff
050to the school faculty we participated in inrs meetings we provided participation and input in iep meetings we participated in counselor meetings so that way again it was so important to us that we'd be part of the team that were not seen as being in isolation so that was a great way to make sure that communication continued and then we provided in the we participated in the dover middle school lgbtq initiative so the way that we provide our clinical data we use [Music] i'm sorry that was supposed to be changed so we actually now do not use the bask assessment and the reason for that is because it's a very lengthy assessment it's 150 questions and our kids really struggled with that so we just actually shifted to using the pediatric symptom checklist which is a
05135 question assessment and it looks at a variety of different things so some of the school related outcomes that we also look at are looking at decreases in disciplinary referrals increases in school performance increasing in school attendance and improved social emotional functioning so just to show you a couple examples this is the data that we're able to gather using that pediatric symptom checklist so it looks at four different scales there's an overall scale which summarizes all of the data and then there's an attention subscale which really looks at things like attention and focus there's an internalizing subscale so that's things like depression and anxiety type symptoms and then externalizing which would be more of those behavior anger management type symptoms so what you're seeing here is the pediatric symptom checklist data for two particular students
052who have been been de-identified so you can see what we do is we provide the assessment at three different times throughout the year so we're able to see the kids progress throughout the year so this is typically done in september when we first get started then it's done again mid-year which is usually about january february and then again at the end of the year so we can see for the top student they went from having an overall score of 24 to an overall score of 17. and we can see that their attention subscale went from a seven to a five their internalizing went from a five to a three and externalizing stayed the same on that one and then if you look at the second one there we can see that their overall went from
053a 31 to a 19 their attention went from a seven to a four their internalizing went from a 9 to a 2. so one thing i want to point out here too is sometimes we do see that the numbers might bump back up a little bit right so we can see there for the attention it went from a 7 to a 9 to a 4. so this is really good data for us too because the truth is that when it comes to treatment it's not always this perfectly steady line where everything just goes down sometimes triggers are going to happen sometimes things are going to happen and this really helps us to be able to highlight that and then being able to provide that data that feedback to the families to the students and really
054encourage them hey it's really important that we continue providing these supports you continue to need this level of support let's talk about how we can really support you or let's think about maybe we need to shift the approach that we're using maybe we need to shift the level of care maybe we need to provide additional supports maybe we bump from once a week to twice a week so this gives us really great data we actually share this data with the families themselves so that they're able to see their progress in addition to the pediatric symptom checklist we also do treatment planning so every student that is open with us gets a treatment plan we're working on individualized treatment goals and then we're able to review those treatment plans every three months to make sure that
055we're being accountable to the students and they're being accountable to the treatment so if we openly discuss mental health from primary school all the way through high school we can ensure our children know how to reach out and seek help before more tragedies occur and i'll just end with this quote here it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men so that's what i have for you today um it's been such a pleasure working with this district all the staff have been so welcoming um and and really collaborate with us so well we have such a wonderful team we're looking forward to our continued collaboration thank you so much do any board members have questions for dr milar mr miller yeah i just um i just wanted to because i could see
056the partnership between uh this program and yours and um i'm sure there's referrals back and forth between the two groups absolutely are you able to capture any additional data to see how some of the programs that they're promoting are helping the students that you may be referred to absolutely that's a great idea and that's something that we could definitely work collaboratively with madeline to be able to pull that data for the district absolutely that's a great question thank you dr susie um mallor i'm sorry if i mispronounced your name i know that i do speak today for the full board when i say how grateful we are for the services that you provide and miss madeline aragon ms rosita carrasquillo hernandez ms brunilda pantoja miss taisha fullerton i echo i think it was mr igliano
057who said you're a dream come true or a wish come true quite literally when i was 14 when i was 17 as a student i wished for all of you when i was a single parent with my child in the district i wished for all of you you truly are a wish come true and i i have the magnet on my refrigerator and if you have more work uh it's because i keep sending anyone who calls me i'm like oh just call the community liaison um i am constantly referring families to you and constantly receiving praise and gratitude about the work that you do about the humanity the kindness the care the love that you share it's it's so deeply appreciated thank you so so much [Applause] have a good evening thank you for joining
058us the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of listening to members of the public express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression each statement will be held to a time of about three minutes at this time we invite comment comments limited to items on this agenda entertained for approximately 30 minutes as a whole the public comment portion of the agenda offers opportunities for the public to share thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments immediately however all comments will be considered and will be investigated and will be addressed as appropriate we invite you to be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not
059permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees any public comment that is directed at a particular individual or group of individuals could subject the speaker to legal liability for defamation the board invites you to step to the podium and state your name to begin your public comment please raise your hand if you require that the microphone be brought to you due to a disability para presentation good evening everyone i hope you can hear me very good very good i'm sorry that everyone left already because i had some congratulations and thank yous for the staff and i also wanted to say thank you for those presentations they were fantastic i'm so glad to see that tiger wrap lives on i i don't know that many members of the community know that it does
060so i hope that both of these presentations will be put online so that the community can see what's being done because i don't believe that they know for half of what's going on um this evening i came here to talk about for this public portion two items on the agenda in the finance and facilities section page 43 items 30 and 31. excuse me i'm sorry susan shower susan shower mr slam is new miss shower i'm sorry to be fair everyone should stay there i'm sorry thank you thank you though for that protocols protocols um so items 30 and 31 on page 43 i think it still remains page 43 after the hand deliver okay so that's in reference to resolutions for construction both at the high school cafeteria and for east dover classroom conversion so
061my first question uh is tonight the vote to submit it to the county or has it already been submitted to the county and been approved because i know at the may meeting you approve the board approved by vote the cost for the architect so i'm assuming you needed the architect to submit the plans to the county so is tonight's vote going to be what you use to move on because it did say the resolution took effect immediately so i'm assuming yes it does and we're also meeting here so i'm assuming that the construction is very quickly going to start there at the high school that's number one my question number two um the architect's cost for the high school cafeteria and also the teacher's lunchroom totaled 101 500 with the teachers lunchroom by itself architects
062cost being 25 000 i know that the cafeteria would fall under one budget line item of perhaps cafeteria account does the teachers room fall under the same budget line item because i know that with the cafeteria fund you can only use that excess of money that we have on hand for certain things so if it didn't i'd like to know the answer to that and then secondly in reference to the same thing what's the total cost of the project there's no cost on the resolution on the agenda i have no idea how much this is going to cost doesn't say that at all and i don't know how much money we have left in the cafeteria fund account for that um the second part of that is the uh east over renovation from if i'm
063reading correctly a classroom to two office spaces and a consultation room and i'm asking a question that's probably i hope on the minds of every single board member how during this time of we are overcrowded we have no classroom space students have no seats we're busting at the seams how are we sacrificing a classroom for office space and a consultation room excuse me michelle your time's up so please try to finish up okay so and again also for that project there is no project budget listed on the resolution so that's it thank you very much thank you miss shower my name is oswaldo orama 361 east mcfarland street i am miss shower you're the one who's speaking now right i find it kind of rude for mr john crook esquire whoever you are there's so
064little people here very little people speaking and yet you rush her she spoke passionately about an issue you didn't answer no one here from the board answered her but you were equipped to point out that her time is up mr arama hi mr arama hi mr arama i'm sorry to interrupt are you interrupting me i am facilitating the meeting and it's my job to interrupt you so i'm just going to um remind you of what i read the public comment portion is limited to three minutes there is an additional public comment of another three minutes at the end so miss shower like everyone here will have the opportunity to add additional comments and i would remind you to direct your comments at the board we are here to listen mr crew is here as a
065professional professional is that what i'm doing providing a service and so it's his job to interrupt anyone that goes over through what i'm doing though so that so it's his job to interrupt i just want to clarify that so uh mr crew please don't count what i'm saying is don't don't get offended by my comments i speak passionately like this don't you mr romney i know you very well i'm just as passionate but just please feel free can you add back those minutes you took away from me no no time has taken away pause just so you know go ahead as soon as ms ruiz spoke i put the timer on pause okay so i have not restarted it yet i will restart it in a few seconds whenever you're yeah ready to go i'm
066ready what i'm saying is i i'm just listening to this she spoke passing about issues of concern and other than to shut her try to shut her up like you did nobody answered her concerns the if there are any answers they'll be at the end mister what's at the end yeah well at the end of this public comment the administration will have a chance to respond to any of the questions you're going to address every issue she brought forward maybe if we have the questions right away they will be addressed today if they're not addressed today she may rejoice in the shower they receive just so you know i find that very disrespectful to the taxpayers of dover very disrespectful because there's not a lot of people here it's not like there's crowds of people
067waiting to speak so we should relax a little bit that that you know that three minute time frame when there's nobody here you know we should use common sense for that thank you for that suggestion mr arama i'm going to go ahead and start the clock again so you can continue with your substantive i got here a little bit late so i don't you know because i work and i ran over here trust me trying to get here on time there's a couple of concerns i have i don't know if this is the right moment maybe it's later i want to speak about the mask issue um what is this the mask issue i'm going to ask you to leave for the end because the masks are not on the agenda right now you can
068speak to any issue on the agenda okay what's going on with the tiger name that they want to paint over you're going to hear that in just a moment i believe oh so i'm not there yet yeah we're not there yet okay and where do i when do i when can i address certain issues with the school itself in reference to drugs at the regular uh public comment at the end this one is just on the agenda and you can always email the principal the superintendent um you can always call the same as public hearings because people don't pay attention to that i agree with what's going on in our town of dover and what is going on in our schools and i and i really want to see your answer to when she says
069that the schools are bursting at the seams because i hear that from students and i would like to see what the solution to that problem is going to be are we are we checking to make sure that every student that's in dover actually resides in dover because i hear there's a lot of students that don't belong in dover because they're from either rockaway wharton as far as denville and they're being taxied bust up here and they're in our school system what are we doing to get rid of the students that don't belong here and mr rama that's also not on the agenda so all these can wait for the second part but if you have anything on on the agenda items you're welcome to share anything on the agenda i'll wait patiently for the general
070agenda i appreciate your patience mr obama good evening my name is deborah acevedo i reside at 71 penn avenue here in dover i have two things that i would like to bring to your attention both in the agenda okay so good evening um first and foremost i want to say how fortunate our students are to have the best teachers and support staff in their schools yet the number of resignations during the 20 2021 2022 school year is shocking to me um i think i counted 32 resignations in the school year what are some things that the district is doing to support our teachers in order to retain them so that was the first thing and now i have to bring up the dover tiger mural at the dover high school in 1987 mr k and
071mr troja both dover high school teachers at the time inspired my fellow classmate patty mesack along with other students to paint the mural of the dover tiger it may sound like a cliche to you but the mural brought the school community together the mural has been preserved and protected for 35 years it is symbolic of resilience history tradition and most importantly dover tiger pride as a member of the community of dover and a dover high school alumni i urge you to do everything in your power to preserve our beloved tiger buenas noches antes que nada de circulos estudiantes de tenerlos [Music] thank you miss acevedo i'm richard dixon and i live at 19 greenwood avenue in dover and i taught in dover for 33 years i taught in paterson for three years for 36 years
072as a fine art on visual arts teacher and i'm gonna come back in part two and have something to add to this woman from penn avenues uh thing but i'm i also noticed and i didn't know what's happening but miss shower brought it up i'm seeing that uh the the board is approving the disposal of the eastover elementary art room kiln and i'm wondering if that also uh coordinates with the room that's being split because i'm thinking they're saying east over elementary is it a former kindergarten room i taught at all five schools over 36 years i taught approximately 10 000 students 1 000 in patterson and 9 000 here since i taught in every school and was transferred constantly and taught every level from kindergarten to 12th grade so i would need to know
073is there an art room available because basically i retired four years ago and there was no support for art you had art but there was very little support for it i taught middle school for 10 years in what is now like an elementary art room but it was considered dover middle school at the time for those 10 years and the cycles of seventh and eighth grade students i made sure that my curriculum had a ceramic project each seventh grader came out with a ceramic project and each eighth grader came out with this rad project when i was transferred to the high school after 30 years in 2012 10 years ago i was told that i was teaching ceramics virtually none of the students because now i hadn't been at the middle school for eight years
074they had very little opportunity to ceramics so they dover expected high school students to do ceramics with no former randolph all these other districts rockaway you're starting it in kindergarten you're having a manipulative experience that these students needed so it was very very faked i tried my best i think i got pretty good results but i would need to know where the art supply is going to be stored in the elementary portion because i worked there too from 1992 to 1994 and the principle of time gave me a little corner of one of the elementary rooms that was shared for speech basic skills and i forget what the other thing was but that we would need to know what's happening with the program i'm passionate about because i moved to town 28 years ago to
075be part of the community and art was my thing and i think a lot of kids really rose to the occasion with that as a skill so thank you mr dixon hi um i don't know if i'm really allowed to speak my name is marianne weber although i don't live in dover i live about two tenths of a mile up the road from delaware ms weber you are most welcome you are still part of our school community welcome thank you i did teach in dover both at in east and at north uh for 31 years i retired in 2019 and seeing my co-workers come up just pleased me so to hear all the wonderful things and how tiger rap is still going strong and everything and um i um i i i'm just uh so
076concerned and i'm very um anxious to hear what's going on with the the tiger because i'm going to cry because um every year we always had if when i first began we had our general first teachers first day meeting in the cafeteria at the high school and listening to the the superintendent and the teachers and the principals talk but that tiger would be looking at us and that would say we're gonna have a good year that's our pride and then um after um when we no longer started in the cafeteria we would go to the library you go to other classrooms i would always make a room i would make a tour around the building and stop in the cafeteria to look at that tiger and say he's my he's my mascot i'm gonna have
077a super year with my little kindergarteners and my second graders because if i know my kids have that spirit i know my kids are there and um um so i i just was hoping that there's a really really good reason why that tiger has to be taken down because he lives in all of us i'm not a dover resident but he still lives and me my husband said to me marianne you don't work for dover anymore why are you talking about it i said rick because after 31 years and i still talk to my peers it's it's still in my heart i can't let it go that's it thank you miss weber thank you for keeping us in your heart you are in ours as well thank you would any other member of the public
078like to share a public comment on the agenda items only seeing no hands i think we can move on to the approval of the minutes uh unless any particular item is uh i think some of the items will be addressed later through the discussion on those on those pieces is there anything else miss reece diana over here thank you i just want to make sure that you are saying that the questions brought up by our comment by our public is going to be addressed in our agenda is that what you some of them so some of the questions on finance and facilities may be addressed at that time during discussion some of them may be addressed in a superintendent report and anything that is not addressed is noted and will be addressed at some point
079thank you for that clarification thank you approval of minutes may the board please have a motion to approve the minutes listed on tonight's agenda so moved second miss nutting moved ms grasala second correct thank you roll call please oh excuse me discussion any discussion roll call please mr salas yes miss mendez yes mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips epstein mr robles yes mr ruiz yes miss riveros yes motion carries thank you mr slam communications the full board or a majority of the board received three emails regarding the dover tiger mural in the dover high school cafeteria dover public schools educator mr kurzwicki known as mr k created the dover tiger mural with dover high school students 35 years ago it's my honor to share the request made by jason kerswicki mr k sun
080quote please keep mr k's memory in your hearts and do what you can to keep his legacy alive by sharing stories of how he impacted your life while also doing your best to help and impact young lives as well may the board please have confirmation from all board members as to whether this was the only communication received is there anything that maybe i was not included on that that the majority or the full board did receive mr ruiz we did receive something from a parent from victory gardens about a situation that happened on the bus thank you miss mendes um and and that suffices because students um information is confidential other than that anyone else miss viveros uh mr acosta sent us all an email thank you was that was about masks and something else
081uh thanking mr marion and mr bueno oh yes see i focused on something else instead of the great praise that's right thank you mr acosta uh shared great praise for our educators um thank you miss viveros for that anything else that i'm missing miss rusev you acknowledge um mr k's granddaughter as well i only heard about the sun that was one of the other three yes i just highlighted that particular quote but yes mr k's granddaughter was the third okay thank you for that shared leadership uh folks moving on to the administrative reports the board invites the superintendent to share the superintendent's report thank you mr ruiz i'm happy to share that both the eighth grade promotion ceremony and the high school graduation commencement were wonderful events we're tremendously proud of our students and we
082join in the joy and the pride of our students families upon the occasions of these significant milestones we were fortunate to have pleasant weather on june the 20th and we're able to conduct the eighth grade promotion on hamilton field less desirable weather moved the high school ceremony indoors but i would like to emphasize that the district remains committed to outside ceremonies whenever weather permits to assist in this likelihood consideration will be given to an earlier daytime start for the high school ceremony in 2023 doing so will permit delays if necessary to times of the day when the weather will accommodate the outdoor celebration i would like to thank all who were involved in making both ceremonies such a success the efforts of our grounds and maintenance team our security personnel our teacher volunteers and our
083administrators who devoted months of planning to these events i'd also like to thank the fire department the police department the sheriff's department and germania park for their partnership in these events and a final special thanks are extended to mayor blackman and to mayor morris for attending our ceremonies at our last board of education meeting a question was posed regarding the status of world language instruction for elementary students in dover for the upcoming year and for the upcoming year the following courses will run on a trimester basis at each of the elementary schools in the k-6 level elementary spanish coding and g t as you can see from this plan each elementary student will receive a trimester of world language spanish one time a week for 2022 2023 recruitment of world language teachers have become increasingly
084challenging for all our schools our district spent an entire year last year seeking qualified candidates for two world language positions as an additional effort in this regard i will be recommending that our district participate in the h-1b visa program the h-1b class visa is a viable option for primary secondary or college teachers with the required knowledge and training h-1b visa offers foreign professionals the ability to work temporarily in the united states as long as they hold specialty occupations degree and certification requirements remain the same and our prospective teacher would be paid in alignment with our agreed-upon salary guides the visa allows for three years of employment and potentially renewal for an additional three years as is our custom i would like to provide an end of the year report on our district goals as we
085close the 2021-2022 school year the first district goal was to increase the array and effectiveness of services and programs that promote academic development throughout our district schools within the 2021-2022 academic year the following measurable actions were addressed a dual language immersion program implemented in all the districts kindergarten classes in 2021 22 the district provided dual language instruction to its kindergarten students in each of our district's elementary schools professional development was provided in a sustained and integrated manner throughout the year to support teachers in providing the program a call was made to each parent of kindergarten students to see if they desire to remain in the program and overwhelmingly and universally each parent said that they did this program will be continuing in its first grade year and a version of the dual language program will
086also be coming in behind it in kindergarten so that the district continues to work in this progressive program dover high school students participated in the district's first cte program in graphic design and earned concurrent credit through the county college of morris this program was successfully implemented at dover high school 15 students enrolled for the first two semester courses in the four course sequence the cost of the dual credit with the county college of morris was born by the district a new court cohort has been advertised for next year and it is anticipated that 20 additional students will be enrolled the ctu the cte art show was visited by many and provided impressive evidence of the students culminating work this year continuing with this goal implementation of a district-wide math and reading diagnostic assessment to promote
087data-driven instructional decision-making to meet the needs of all learners in the classroom was implemented i-ready was implemented being our formative assessment at the beginning of the school year for all learners i ready creates for the first time in our district a functional formative based assessment system that measures baseline growth and progress and end of the year achievement in a manner that is truly personalized to the learner the board has been given mid-year information from i ready and we are anxious to share the report our year-ending report showing the progress of many of our students according to this assessment device continuing with goal one a model for basic skills eligibility was to be developed and expanded so that basic skills instruction would occur across all elementary schools and the district's middle school basic skills instruction was
088significantly expanded in 2021-22 seeing each elementary school and our middle school with staffing for both math and literacy support as the board is aware basic skills as a method of intervention was only in its second year in dover this past year each of our elementary schools had a basic skills teacher who has been dedicated to assisting students who experience challenges with math intervention for reading has been assigned to our reading specialists one also newly hired this year originally reading specialists were intended as a level three intervention but given the number of students identified through our i-ready formative assessment the student caseloads required a modification to that approach the positive news is that we were able to reach students who required assistance earlier and more effectively and the other part of that positive news is that
089we now have a formative assessment in iready that is assisting to identify students with below grade level achievement and monitor those students progress as they participate in basic skills the newly proposed budget and adopted budget includes five basic skills in additional positions to further expand our interventions in this area knowing that early intervention is the key to truly assisting students toward grade level achievement among these teachers are newly certified and recognized here tonight orton gillingham multi-century teachers who will provide high-level interventions to students experiencing these most significant degrees of reading difficulty and continuing with this goal in partnership with deloitte and big brothers and big sisters the district launched a workplace mentorship program for high school students in november of 2021 16 dover high school students were matched with deloitte employee mentors as part of
090our partnership with deloitte and big brothers big sisters this program is off to a great start and the contract was approved most recently at the may 10th meeting to continue this collaboration in the upcoming school year as part of this program a baseline youth outcomes survey is provided to students at the beginning of the program the survey is a self-assessment that asks questions regarding the student's view of their own social emotional competence academics and their view on risky behaviors the yos assessment was again administered as the stude as the school year ended and the students also completed a strength of relationship survey at their three-month mark to help gauge their relationship with their new mentor which they took again at the end of the school year as case managers the big brothers big sisters staff
091utilize the survey tool to gain insight on how they can best support growth in the new mentoring relationship in addition to the survey both the student and the mentor men monthly with the big brothers big sisters staff to coach and guide this relationship towards success and additionally through structured program activities the mentors helped map out the students potential futures each program day is designed and facilitated by a big brother's big sister case manager in collaboration with the partnering company deloitte sessions included college prep stem and career exploration and our students have shared how helpful it was to participate in a mock interview and have support from their mentor when discussing college interests continuing with this goal expanded related service offerings were to concur through the employment of an occupational therapist and a behavior certified behavior
092analyst both positions listed in this portion of the goal were filled for the 2021-2022 school year employment of district staff versus the supply of such services through contractors provides a true upgrade in the programs we provide to our students with ieps we look forward to building upon this philosophy as we seek increasingly effective ways to serve students with disabilities that completes my report on goal one goal two was to expand and fuse and reinforce programs that promote social emotional growth and provide support for students in each of our district schools within the 2021-22 academic year the following measurable actions were addressed a progressive elementary level training that occurred with responsive classroom responsive classroom training for the first cohort of 30 elementary teachers occurred in 2021-2022 training dates were established and on january 19th january 25th
093february 1st and february 8th training took place in responsive classroom the selective group of 30 attended all four of those training dates and subsequent years will continue training 30 teachers per year until all our staff are trained in this program the second part of this goal goal number two was that rutgers behavioral health care would be expanded k-12 and a clinical intervention referral model will be established in each district school as we heard here tonight rutgers clinical services were expanded in 2021-22 to include full-time services for our elementary students and the adoption of tiger wrap by rutgers rutgers has presented to the board of education tonight on its services to our students which i believe clearly underscores the need for this program and the reasons for our continuing commitment to this level of service the
0942022-2023 school budget further invests in the rutgers behavioral program by adding two more full-time 12-month clinicians continuing with goal number two dover's middle school was to extend its efforts in trauma-informed practices through parent and staff workshops and processes designed to identify student needs dover middle school built upon the work initiated in the previous school year regarding trauma-informed practices and at the dac meeting of may 11th the middle school skip reported on the unseen children activity which occurred during faculty meeting time this activity in which all staff participated identified students who were falling through the cracks or who were quote unseen dover middle school staff this school year have been trained in three different professional developments regarding social emotional learning the first activity staff was introduced on how to descale students in an angered state the
095team was also introduced to the pro social matrix model to assist with redirecting students and providing physiological flexibility the second training already referenced addressed the power of being seen the skip committee together with the administration gathered photos of students with three criteria personal face academics to pick from the staff had to identify the students uh that they had built rapport with based on that critique that criteria the goal of that activity was to help close the gap with those with whom the staff had not yet built the report as the board is also aware dover middle school engaged in lgtbq plus training for staff students and parents in partnership with edge new jersey continuing with this goal a dover high school youth equity task force was to be established and facilitated through the nyu metro
096center for research and equity and the transformation of schools through the district partnership with nyu professional learning on culturally responsive education was conducted with our secondary staff and parent sessions on the topic of race were hosted members of our student body met with nyu in strategic learning sessions that were scheduled with the nyu staff the dover student equity organization tigers together initiating growth for equity respect and solidarity was established where key areas within our schools were discussed such as climate and culture student opportunities board policies all under the guidance and direction of nyu staff the district will be reviewing the work that occurred and making decisions on the next step along this theme and the best matter in which to proceed that completes my report for goal number two goal number three adopt support and
097mobilize practices and policies that further dover as a community school district within the 2021-2022 academic year the following measurable actions were addressed the pledge at the district and board of education levels to the mission and values and principles of dover as a community school district community liaisons were deployed at the district and school levels to meet the needs of families and positively impact upon the social emotional development of students and in regard to these areas the district administration and the board of education has formally declared its commitment to dover as a community school district a large step in the process of enactment has been the development of the community liaison positions at the district level and for each school numerous group activities have occurred through the efforts of the liaisons and perhaps more importantly the
098work they perform with individual families at the school level has become a critically important part of our support and our intervention work in last friday's table of hope event at belmont avenue 125 families accessed this food distribution event continuing with this goal the district was to provide workshops and informational coaching to parents and guardians in identified areas to equip them with technical skills and increased awareness of school related areas that would serve to increase active partnership and engagement the get to know dover event which was referenced tonight stands out as a seminal activity this year made up of district staff and community service providers the get to know dover event provided a wealth of information in connection with our community's families in regard to this area the district's recent award of the snap gap grant
099funds have supported the efforts of an outreach team to assist eligible families receive these critical needed resources snap gap team events have resulted in 51 families filing applications and uploading documents i do want to mention that our goal was 40 families and reaching 51 families was really an extraordinarily proud moment that completes my report on our district goals i'd like to segue to the next topic as the board of education is aware we are presently holding meetings in the dover middle school cafeteria to accommodate the complete renovation of the dover high school cafeteria and its teacher rooms as news of the renovations were shared there has been significant feedback in regard to the possible removal of the tiger mural in the dover high school cafeteria a strong message was received by our district that the
100mural must be preserved although still powerful the mural is currently showing some signs of its age which certainly uh will become more pronounced against the backdrop of a newly renovated cafeteria in order to address that the district will be seeking an artist such as the individual again who we saw tonight in one of our slideshows who facilitated the recent middle school mural to refresh our tiger with current student participation and then also provide an alternate site at the high school such as the entranceway wall which is currently blank for a new mural project designed by dover's current students in doing so we can preserve a valuable symbol of our district and at the same time allow our students to make their own contribution to a very visible area of the high school this outcome preserves
101a dove with taika a dover tiger history it shows the community that when they speak up their voices are heard that they and we have the power to change outcomes and ensures our current students have the opportunity to make their mark on our school on a final and very important note i would like to share an update on the referendum our website has been expanded significantly with information concerning the proposed referendum the raf the rationale behind the referendum the urgent need for space in our district information regarding that urgent need for space financial information regarding the referendum and voting information is all included many from our public have submitted questions regarding this aspect of the project and these questions have been used to create an extensive frequently asked questions section which can also be found
102on the referendum portion of the website recently and i know will be referenced in a report uh by the board that i believe miss phillips will be presenting there was a dover board of education community forum and a number of topics came up some of which i can address tonight and certainly those that for the administration that are not addressed tonight we will continue to address over the coming months so that the public who participated in this forum have the opportunity to hear responses to their questions and concerns one item and there were several aspects to it addressed the idea of how many students attended school what were the total number of students on a monthly basis how many students entered how many students withdrew so this is information that's given to the board every
103month and certainly will be a a very straightforward thing to provide in my reports to the public and going forward we will certainly do that so that the public is aware of our current demographics and number of enrolled students another question came up and it also came up tonight in public comment regarding residency and what we are doing in regard to verifying residency so we have invested quite a bit in our student registration program and our welcome center that is housed at belmont school we do ensure that every entering student has the legally required documentation showing that they are residing in dover additionally we employ a residency investigator uh to look at specific situations when there is doubt as to whether or not a student is living in the district uh as a added portion
104the district intends to employ a new contractor who provides digital reassurance of student residency using databases that are available to that company so that they can identify questionable addresses that again can be looked into by our residency investigator we we believe it's important to our taxpayer community to assure them that the services that we are providing are to members of the community and we will continue to make every effort to do so there were questions that were raised at the forum in regard to security and our district is uh dedicated to security certainly uh certainly we know and we'll hear more tonight we have already had a strong message tonight about the need for a secure and safe place for all of our students in the times that we live the district has over the
105past year as our board knows invested significantly in increased security staff the employment of class iii school resource officers we are presently in the midst of a interior camera system and a enhancement of our exterior camera system as well as door monitors uh all of these providing technological advances uh and and as we know from the budget presentation uh a planned vestibule which is an additional safety measure for our high school those are some examples not all of which we do with security that i can share tonight because some of that information is confidential and certainly not something that we want to broadcast to anyone who might have ill intent but certainly our new under the leadership of our new security director mr weston uh the district remains committed each and every day to an
106enhanced security to provide a safe learning environment for our students there was a question that was raised at the forum in regard to special education and would there be any new programs for special ed students i'm happy to share that over the last two years we have increased our special ed options within the district providing a full day full day special ed preschool program for students who fit the criteria for that level of service additionally we initiated a primary autistic classroom and an intermediate autistic program we have increased our lld option at the high school adding a second class there and we have additional plans as space permits which is always a big consideration in our district to provide further options so that students can get the services they need right here in their home
107district there were questions regarding dual language i believe they were addressed in my uh in my report uh i will just emphasize that the district remains committed uh to dual language instruction and the program yes will be continuing uh that materials in english and spanish are one of our big commitments and one that i think we've made great strides in and an area that we continue to examine to make sure that all students have those resources in both english and in spanish to help them learn in the best way possible there was a question on how the district addresses students and their mental health i think tonight's presentation by rutgers was a significant message in that regard but is not limited to that program only we have spent over the last uh two years budgeted
108new budget monies to ensuring that counseling is expanded each of our schools has a strong counseling presence next year we're increasing our counseling staff at the high school with the knowledge that that level of support for our students social and emotional well-being is as important as any academic program that we provide there was a question that was raised at the forum about the public library and did the district share any information about the library reopening with the students as a member of the public library board i'll answer that and and indicate that unfortunately due to numerous delays in the project we have held off on announcing the beginning of services at the at the public library unfortunately as you may know the library was due to have its grand reopening this month and that had
109to be delayed until mid july we're hopeful that the library will be up and running and that the public will get to see the great things that are happening at the public library and we will certainly make our students aware of that and invite our librarians to back to school night to encourage students to uh take out a library card to know the resources that are available for them at the public library and enjoy the partnership that our district shares with that great entity in our community and then finally there was a question in regard to coven and how the district would update its plans to address covet concerns for the 2022-2023 school year certainly the district has a number of times modified and adopted changes to its plan for covet based on the situations
110that exist at the moment we continue uh to be aware of both progress and setbacks in regard to covet uh we are watching closely now to see if the morris county levels uh come down from a high level we're kind of an island among some of the counties around us but we are we are hopeful that we may be able to once again dispense with masks but we always have the possibility of bringing them back if needed we have continued to have our testing program recently we transferred from the icat testers to the department of health testers who come in twice a week to each of our schools and school facilities to test staff and students and we continue that through our summer programs so we will we will continue uh to to watch to
111modify and to share information about changing covet protocols and i again i will mention i know that these were only some of the questions that were raised for the administration in the community forum we'll continue to come back to these i'll continue to come back to them in my reports as we as we move through the next months of board meetings and that concludes the superintendent's report for this evening thank you dr mclaughlin the board invites the assistant superintendent to deliver her report good evening i would like to start my report with an acknowledgement to our dedicated educational staff who finished the year strong alongside their students you all deserve this well-earned summer break please enjoy it sleep in don't hit that snooze button take advantage of it i would also like to acknowledge all
112of our support staff who work tirelessly around the district in a variety of departments to ensure that our buildings and school grounds are clean and well maintained that our buses are working properly and safely to transport students and that our administration is prepared and organized for their day ahead thank you for the work that you do to support our students and staff and lastly i would like to extend a thank you to our administrative team which includes our directors principals vice principals and supervisors for the long hours that they have put in to ensure that their buildings and departments are well run for their collaborative and collaborative efforts on a number of district initiatives thank you for the work that you do to support our students and teachers i would like to bring to the
113board's attention a number of items on the agenda for approval tonight in the curriculum section as we move through first the personnel section i'd like to highlight the staff members who will be working collaboratively with their content area supervisors to write curriculum this is a monumental task for this summer as there are a lot of curriculums to write we appreciate those that shared an interest from the teaching staff to participate in the writing in addition i'd like to highlight in the curriculum section where we have several robotics grants on for approval this is always exciting and also several professional development contracts for the 22-23 school year lastly i would like to mention a new partnership that our science and 21st century skills supervisor miss heinemann and i are working on with the hal met aerospace
114corporation hal met located very closely to dover in rockaway township is a global leader in the field of engineered metal products the corporation consists of two facilities at the dover location one that focuses on creating alloy metals and another that creates the castings necessary for engine parts fasteners and structures for aerospace and defense every airplane that you see that's flying over dover in and out of newark airport is flying with parts and materials made right here at that facility miss heinemann and i recently met with an alloy engineering manager the human resources director and a senior engineer to discuss our opportunities with the corporation hal met has a foundation that allows schools to take advantage of additional resources to help support stem programs professional development and learning for teachers and other student opportunities such as
115student internships and career exploration days in addition there is potential for job placement for our students who are graduating and are looking to enter the workforce or are looking to explore a manufacturing career we are also excited to be developing other partnerships through this relationship with hal met such as the such as with the avenue in motion we have already been in communication with avenues in motion and hope to participate in the 2223 solar car sprints and the hydrogen car challenge these are both exciting opportunities for our middle school and high school students where they can see the theory and information they learn in the classroom come to life outside i look forward to sharing more information about these new partnerships at future meetings our next steps are to schedule a tour of the halmet
116facility to ensure that we are taking full advantage of all that they have to offer us and that concludes my report thank you thank you mr igliano the board invites our business administrator to share his report good evening everybody i just want to provide some facilities updates uh the dover high school science room um it's a project that you know i've been referring to from as uh for month to month we're finally near completion uh walkthrough was completed by district administration uh just this last week to ensure all my items meet contract requirements uh several items were noted and the district architect is working with the contractor to address those items dover high school cafeteria work has begun once asbestos remediation is complete the next phase of the project which includes lighting flooring wall and
117technology upgrades will continue and then academy street school trailer uh we have received a change order uh related for uh to be the need for additional site work uh we're reviewing the change order with the district architect and the director of buildings and grounds an update will be provided once we come to an agreement on that change order uh the anticipated completion will be sometime in mid august pending that change order moving on to finance i just have a couple of reminders for everybody so the first reminder these are both really the food service first reminder is that the sso program that's a program that allows all students who have had free meals the last couple of years will be ending as of june 30th which is this thursday so assuming that we don't have
118some updated information from the state between now and september uh i just have a couple reminders related to that so if a family has not submitted their free and reduced lunch application for the current year you still have a couple of days to do that the importance of that is that beginning of the new year if that family were to qualify they would have a 30-day grace period at the beginning of the school year where they would still receive those free meals so what that does is it gives the family some time to complete the 2223 application for free and reduced lunch speaking of that application right now we anticipate uh that will be available sometime in july that's that that's going to be released july 1st but then the district has to complete the
119application and create it and there's some approvals related to that so right now i think sometime in july and i'll provide an update at our next meeting uh still speaking about meal service so as many of you know the district does participate in a summer meal program for dover residents and that is for anyone who is 18 years or younger and it's open to anyone in the community uh so essentially there is breakfast and lunch that is provided for free for anyone 18 and under to be consumed at each site i have a list of sites here that i will read and then there's additional information that is available on the district website so some of the sites that include breakfast and lunch will be dover high school dover middle school and east dober elementary
120uh north dover elementary i think i have a microphone now victory gardens uh waterworks park and then we added a new site just recently which is the essex regional educational services commission that's actually in hackettstown and it's for a migrant education program they were actually referred to us by the department of agriculture as we are the nearest program that participates uh in this site and and sponsors other sites uh now the following sites uh only provide lunch that would be st john's church wharton public schools and then wharton public library again this information along with times for each meal because they do differ per site is available on our website i just want to provide that reminder that it has begun so feel free to stop by and visit us and then also a special
121thank you to the marin community foundation for a donation to the windy gruber artist fund of 2 500 and then also to richard j mcnealy for a donation of 500 to the scholarship fund and that concludes my report for tonight thank you mr slam um based on those reports uh the board would just provide uh some clarification the website for that additional information on the referendum is dover hyphen nj.org you will see a board of education tab click on that and you can scroll down to referendum information there will be more information that's what's there right now and there's there's plenty there um i i have a clarification for from dr mclaughlin that was the note uh that that dr mclaughlin passed he wanted to add a clarification please dr mclaughlin do so it's because
122i know that this is an important issue to many in our community some of whom here tonight and some who are not i in case i wasn't absolutely clear we are not moving the dover tiger mural uh what we're asking is that our students uh work with a local resident to refresh it refresh it not change it but to refresh it uh so that in a new uh new high school remodeled cafeteria it doesn't stand out as looking at a as looking at different type of age but it would not change the character of the the mural at all it would also allow our present students to really be a part of that that tradition that so many have spoke so strongly about tonight so i just want to be very clear so that there
123wasn't any misunderstanding if i didn't express that well in in my report thank you dr mclaughlin and mr slam if i can invite a clarification from you if you have this information just thinking about the residency questions and your report about the free and reduced lunch and the presentations i'm curious as to whether the community liaisons will assist with those free and reduced meal applications for 2023 so that as many people as possible can benefit from that and i'm curious about the eligibility of 18 and under i'm thinking of those of us that may have dropped out of high school at 16 or 17 or 18. so even if we are not currently registered in the school as long as we are members of the school community we can still take advantage of that free
124and reduced lunch program or must we be registered students 18 and under so it will be anyone 18 and under they don't they do not need to be a registered student okay and then the um do you know the answer to that community liaison question uh that's not something we have explored uh yet but we could look into it there are certain considerations related to free release lunch applications where we want to make sure that we're maintaining privacy and that you know like the path of the application is controlled so there aren't necessarily more eyes on that application than need to be uh just because it is sensitive information that people may not want you know shared they may not want to be identified that right to privacy mr slam thank you for that does
125any board member have a clarifying question on any of the reports you've heard ms grasalis i do thank you ms ruiz um mr slam you mentioned that the information for the summer meals can be found in our website um could you that give us a little bit more direction where in the website sometimes it's so big it's hard to navigate it is on the district website correct uh yes it's on the district website if you go to the home page you should see i think it's the third link down under news and announcements you can click on that and it'll show a listing of the sites and also two pdfs one in english and one in spanish thank you mr slam i also um if i may i apologize i wanted to see if we
126could um or if it would be addressed later in regards to the amounts for the items that we are approving for the cafeteria at the high school and i believe we have shared those amounts in the past if i'm not mistaken but both for the renovations at that high school and at here at east dover so i do have the amounts we just received them today so that would be a separate approval these approvals are essentially just to submit it to the county so that wouldn't necessarily mean that we've approved moving forward with that vendor yet so we're still reviewing that essentially okay thank you okay i think um we can move on to the next section of our agenda and will the youth equity task force allow us to borrow that together initiating growth
127for equity and solidarity i love that for tigers great mr miller you're invited to share uh the morris county education services commission report thank you um they held their reorganization meeting this uh past june the beginning of june and um i was elected to be on their board as a modi member so their their year starts in in june it's not the same as ours so they are looking for new programs and new ways to share costs with school districts and so the superintendent will be reaching out to mars county superintendents to see if there are any ideas that they may have on some cost-sharing models wonderful the board is very grateful to mr miller for ensuring our school community has a voice and a vote on the morris county education services commission congratulations on
128your election thank you i do not have a legislative report for the board um no legislative action was taken since the last session ms nutting the board invites you to share the morris county njsba report new jersey school board's association report yes i recently attended the meeting on june 16th where it was an award ceremony that they honored students for the 20th garden state film festival recipient they also did the 2022 mars county school board association student awards for unsung heroes they also did a mars county sheriff's citizenship award they did ask our districts to have more participants because i think there was about 20 schools within morris county that actually participated but we do have opportunities to highlight our students also and opportunities of these rewards awards i should say um also i would
129like to congratulate jackie for joining some of our other fellow boy members as being a new board member you did receive that ownership on that evening which is very very uh nice um also scott you are joining a couple of other board members as now we have a total of four certified board members so congratulations to you too thank you and that concludes my report thank you miss netting and thank you for all for putting in that work to become certified board members it is a lot of work may miss viveros be invited to share the ad hoc mine hill nothing to report at this time no news is good news i hope thank you may the board have uh as we move on to the administrative approvals a motion to approve the administrative items
130in section nine so moved thank you miss nutting thank you miss viveros for that second discussion i i do have a question if i may yes mr miller um i i figured i could bring it up now under the new jersey state interscholastic athletic association with the football season coming this fall the question i had was a few years ago our football program went into a program that helps rebuilding programs so that we were playing other groups of schools that were in the same situation as us and we weren't playing in a regular league as we normally had with local area schools so i'm just wondering um at the time i remember it was like a three-year program that you were supposed to graduate out of and wondering you know where we are with that
131and what's the criteria before we could go to an increased competition rate so currently under the uh alignment that has been created in the state we participate in the super football conference iv division the way that you move out of the ivy division is by having more wins so it's not separated by an amount of years the idea behind it is to have equity a play between like uh equipped teams and so there are new teams in the ivy division this year that were not in it last year dover will remain in the ivy division okay thank you miss grasales yes ms ruiz thank you i wanted to comment on item num h of our agenda i have observed that our school community together is moving towards a culture of increased openness and awareness to
132the need of for equity and greater understanding of our specific needs i want to com commend all levels of our school community from peaceful meaningful walkouts by our students to increased survey completions and active participation and collaborations such as the anti-racism and equity projects along with changes in our hiring and on and off boarding practices as well as efforts for staff retention i am grateful to the district leadership to every educator and team member of the district that contributes to these great struts mr ruiz if i may yes ms mendes please um i also would like to comment on item h the cj pride shares services agreement item three of that agreement states each participating board shall have a representative serve on a cj pride committee i'm curious to know who is our representative on
133that committee so thank you and thank you for sending me that question in advance because i was able to do a little research with cj pride they used the term board of education uh in a very general sense they do they actually don't have board of education members actively participate in the group that they said it's really made up of uh administrators um so i think when they're talking about board of education they're referring to districts which sometimes people do and sometimes gets a little confusing so uh they indicated to me that at this time that among all the cj pride districts they they didn't say that that board of education member couldn't participate but that they don't have any current uh representation from board of ed sitting members thank you so much um i
134have a second part um question to item h um item four of that same shared services agreement states the participating boards shall host a joint recruitment fair have we participated in a fair um if so can we have an update and if not when will we be participating so they do have a fair each year we have not yet participated we became members very late in the school year last year so we weren't able to mobilize for that fair but we fully intend to be a part of every fair they have going forward thank you so much dr mclaughlin given ms mendez's question i have a follow-up if we do not have a representative from the board because of that broad definition do we have a representative from our district yes thank you roll call
135please miss mendez sorry miss gracalis yes apologize miss mendes yes mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes miss riveros yes motion carries thank you mr slam miss nutting would you please uh move the personnel section yes it's a long one and i would like to you know congratulate those that have dedicated their years of service to the board of ed the dover public schools i should say in our students um i would like to make a motion upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the board to approve the following personnel resolutions a1 through 47. thank you miss nutting may the board have a second second thank you mr miller any discussion um not subject to executive session on these items i just have a quick clarification on
136items 32 and 33. thank you mr slam please so for item 32 under robotics assistant dhs 500 new club and cba that should be uh hill comma craig that's under number 32 which is the 2021 school year and then under number 33 also for robotics dhs five hundred dollars new club and cba that should be uh damatos comma isabel thank you mr slam i have another clarification thank you mr uh cyrillano please 31 curriculum writing so that's 34 an hour for 20 hours i don't want it to be misread as just 34. thank you mr iglano with those clarifications mr miller you have a question or a comment i have a question on number 16 for the substitute teachers i know it's a it's a large list but i'm not sure is it enough do
137we have enough substitute teachers going into the next year because i'm not sure you know what the frequency of usage is of uh bringing them in well we never have enough uh but we are we have made tremendous progress i thank the the board for its support in terms of the uh temporary uh increase that we put in place this year and are continuing next year it's made a huge difference uh very interesting that some of the subs i think who may have been motivated by the higher rate have come to really appreciate the other aspects that dover offers outside of its hourly rate and uh have been some of our greatest ambassadors so uh we what i can say is that uh our fill rate um has been at its highest this year especially
138at the close of the year which you know often is a challenging time to fill vacancies uh we ranged anywhere from 80 to 97 of phil which uh is really really good uh not every day but but um certainly we're we're committed to continuing to replenish the ranks one of the things about substitute teachers is it tends to be a little bit of a transient position so you may hire ten and and three or four may you know uh get permanent jobs uh in you know in in permanent employment uh so you always have to you have always have to monitor that and we are um really dedicated to making sure that we continue to add uh substitute teachers to to our list okay thank you miss ruth yes make a comment i just wanted
139to note to my fellow board members not sure if you noticed that some of the names are repeated twice or three times as i am seeing that uh substitutes are applying and being accepted to permanent positions or they're covering for summer session or later summer and coming back again for the fall so it's it's great i guess what um dr mclaughlin was talking about right and really learning about who we are and over um and and having them come back is really great to see that in on paper so thank you mysteries if i may please ms mendes um item 23. so after having our year in review presentation by the commuter liaison team today um i just want to echo that i'm so grateful for all the work that they're doing and i'm just
140i'm so excited to hear what the community liaisons will be tasked with doing this summer so it's it's a continuation of the work uh literally um so we're planning different events there's also different conferences that they attend for professional development for continued networking with connecting dover for example so it's read on the agenda as not to exceed a total of 50 hours to give some flexibility for miss aragon to schedule those events and have a liaison available as she's looking to to keep them moving so as i said in the presentation they were planning today for next year so those those hours will definitely be used and will be very useful to that department awesome thank you so much i have um another item um items 34 35 36 and 37 each of these personnel
141related items have light items that say tbd i'm curious to know when will this be determined and if we are able to at minimum since we're being asked to approve this get an anticipated salary for the positions that are tbd so the um tbds and i guess they really don't have to be on an aboard resolution but it's there to show you what we're still trying to fill uh we're actively engaged in recruiting for these positions uh certainly our hope is that uh well before the seasons begin we will have people in place uh you'll notice that many of the positions you know mirror each other in terms of uh what step they are so if if we hire someone on step six that will follow the guide it depends on the amount of experience
142uh and for that a coach has because in our um in our uh negotiated agreement with the dea uh there is a salary scale for coaches depending on the experience they have in the sport uh so if it's a first-time uh football assistant coach they'd be paid at at the first step if they have other experience that may be applicable in dover or in another school district uh they'd be paid at the higher step so i i can't predict without knowing who those people are where they'll be but it certainly won't exceed the six step um and most likely if if these are new coaches to us they'll probably be below the sixth step thank you so much please mr robe let's go ahead thank you um i just want to make a couple of
143comments um number one just wanted to recognize again uh the people who are retiring who we recognized today and those who weren't able to make it today how meaningful it is to be able to celebrate people with such tenure and experience here at our schools and also on a more personal note just to congratulate and give thanks to those who have impacted in particular the case of mr marion with the school of academy street it's really uh on a personal note to me because he's been the principal for my daughter for the last many years it feels like forever but it's only been six years um seven years with kindergarten and um you know leaders like that don't come often and i just want to recognize him and thank him for his time and just
144to see the community who's come out today who have shared that they've been here for many years that's also very meaningful to see them come out and share their thoughts with us and as a long-time resident of dover and it means a lot to see people who have been vested so long to still be connected here and share their thoughts and i wish nothing but the best to everybody who might be retiring and and doing other things and miss marion specifically but thank you for the service and and it really means a lot to me personally beautifully said mr robles thank you for that roll call please mr grasalis yes ms mendez yes mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes i abstain from item number 23. mr ruiz yes miss
145riveros yes motion carries as we move on to negotiations miss netting do you have a report to share with the board as seen in one of our other approvals that we just had the dssa cyber agreement for vacation for entitlement was approved we also had a meeting on may 12th and we had one on june 8th and we will be having another meeting on june 30th so we are moving along thank you miss netting and miss mendez would you please share with the board the report for the curriculum and co-curricular committee absolutely thank you the curriculum committee met on june 7th at 4 30 p.m at the meeting mr rory and ms genzinger walked us through ap calculus bc ap us history ap seminar which is a 10th grade elective that is part of the
146ap capstone program introduction to psychology which is an elective for juniors and seniors and u.s history one honors which is the first half of ap us history we had a discussion about sat prep that included the prep for success program revisiting the avid program and potentially adding a false session for sat prep which will provide two opportunities for sat prep we received an update about the gnt program that included a trimester enrichment program and a changed qualifier to the program with that i move that the board approved items 1 through 17. second second thank you miss viveros discussion yes miss nutting sorry miss grasales i saw this netting first um there are approvals for the certified staff graduate courses um i just want to i didn't have the opportunity to say it before but those
147teachers that took that class for orton thank you and please make sure the rest of them actually hear this thank you so much from the bottom of my heart i joined the board of ed and ran to help my children and other children that have dyslexia and i thank you so much for taking on that class because i know it's not easy um and definitely the students will benefit from it thank you thank you miss grasales thank you i did not present this question um with enough time so if you don't have an answer i totally understand i was wondering in regards to item number eight how will the termination of the contract with shepard private high school impact our students that's a contract for an individual special education student so at times there might
148be changes that occur that a placement maybe not not be supporting the student as best that it can and so the team would come together and look for a placement that would be a better fit for that student so what you're seeing there is a termination of that for one particular child thank you mr miller please yes i had a question i submitted but i wasn't really sure where to ask it but i figured i could do it here um as the dual language immersion uh continues throughout the grades over the years at some point how does the esl program change as we look forward so esl continues even in a dual dual program you you continue to need an esl component that doesn't replace it and we have students uh who have a level
149of of need depending on where their assessment is that uh would dictate uh different levels of esl instruction okay so we you'll continue to see actually an expansion of our esl staff and it's it continues to be a strong part of the program yeah because i guess the reason why i was thinking that if a student doesn't know spanish and knows english coming into the program the dual language and they're learning spanish but that's going to only be at a certain level as they're instructed going through the grades like if they started in kindergarten there's not like a separate spanish as a second language is what i'm saying they're learning it in the class and i was trying to understand the opposite you know but you're saying that there may be special circumstances um esl
150when you have a dual language immersion program you must continue to provide esl even in the dual language program for the eligible students so esl is for eligible students dual language instruction doesn't have to be it certainly meets the needs of kids who have who who are identified for ell but it can also meet the needs of students who are who are not identified for ell a student who is identified for ell services must continue to get esl okay instruction as part of even a dual language program okay all right i didn't email this question before because i didn't think of it until uh ms mendez gave the curriculum report i heard s-a-t and that's music to my ears can i if you have that information right now may i hear a little more about
151what the curriculum committee is working on with regard to that i don't have that information it actually was i broke down the participation in the program that we ran this year the number of students the number of students that attended per session the average daily attendance rate um it was a snapshot of i don't have that with me right right now and i didn't check the curriculum um folder for that i was i would i didn't know it existed so i didn't check for it is it on that folder as part of the notes or anything no it's not okay thank you roll call please miss grasalas yes miss mendez yes mr miller yes miss nutting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes mr veros yes motion carries thank you miss phillips
152would you please share for the board the community community relations report okay the community relations committee held a community forum on thursday june 2nd in person and via zoom feedback received was positive and the community asked that the board hold these types of forms more often detailed notes from the forum have been shared with administration and are also available for the full board to review as was mentioned a number of topics raised during the forum have been addressed this evening so tonight's report will provide a brief overview of some of the additional topics brought up at the forum the committee will continue to circle back with the administration to ensure all remaining topics are addressed over the next few meetings so in no specific order additional topics included a request for an update on the
153status of any social and life skills programs on the topic of landscaping and facilities a number of concerns raised about trees and shrubbery shrubbery being removed and not replaced as well as the general condition of hamilton field and the property surrounding east dover additionally a question as to whether there are plans in the event the referendum passes and the tennis courts are removed will the tennis courts be replaced or will arrangements be made for students to use other tennis court facilities a question on whether the district has applied for or plans to apply for the safe routes to school grant comments with respect to limited food options in the cafeteria and a concern that students with later lunch periods have less options than students with earlier lunch periods because food items tend to run out
154on the topic of the climate study people were asking were the results reported and where those results can be found on the topic of the referendum a separate question was why the vote was being held in december as opposed to in november along with the general election finally on the topic of board of education meetings the public asked that the board consider meeting twice a month as the current meeting schedule of once a month makes meetings feel rushed and gives the impression that the board may not be sharing as much information as possible with the community a second request was that if a question is asked at a meeting and the answer is not given on the spot that the question be revisited at the next meeting so the community can hear the response but
155i note that that did occur earlier today on a question that was asked at the last meeting so hopefully and presumably that will continue in addition to the community forum members of the board had the pleasure of attending a number of events during the last weeks of school i know that miss ruiz attended the national junior honor society induction ceremony and dr cena attended the national honors national honor society induction ceremony dr zainer expressed how great it was to see those events happening again in person a number of members attended the dover high school band and chorus concert the dover high school art show and the dance recital which was very well attended dr saner also attended the morris county academic achievement dinner on june 1st which honors the valedictorian and salutatorian of each high
156school in the county so shout out to elizabeth hoyt and jose gonzalez flores as they represented dover at that event and of course the middle school and high school graduation ceremonies which are always my personal favorite and that is my report thank you miss phillips um miss phillips on the question about committees i sent you a very late email today which of course right this minute i oh maybe i can find it i think i just found it did you have a chance to see that i saw it but i did not have a chance to read it okay i will just go ahead and share that that's fine thank you thank you to the community relations committee for organizing and and being present the community forums were a goal from a previous year that
157were for this year um to that was developed in pre last year for this year uh so thank you for making sure the board met that goal um part of the goal was to ensure that our community knew what the board of education did how the community committee system worked how they could join the board of ed there's an election every year so i hope that that some of that was relayed but if not we can share here the new jersey school board association has a website that has a lot of information also a facebook page with a lot of information that explains the committee system the majority of new jersey school boards function the way the dover school board functions with a committee system there is no legal requirement for the committees to be
158in public because there is a minority of the board present and no decisions are made there is also no legal bar for the public to be present at committee meetings with the exception of negotiations and the exception of any meeting where one of the nine confidential topics are being discussed so if a curriculum if a curriculum meeting were discussing a personnel issue then that particular curriculum meeting could not be could not welcome the public to represent to respect that employee's uh privacy rights if if that was an issue so um i say all that to say that the committee meetings reports are intended to be a summary but a thorough summary of what is discussed so that these meetings while maybe feeling rushed for some lasts from 5 45 for board members until well after
159nine o'clock pretty much every single time we meet and so the board is certainly welcome to explore if and when to invite the public to the policy committee meeting i know i've certainly sat at policy committee meetings till 10 pm so i don't know how much fun that would be for those of us that are not policy nerds but certainly there's there's no bar to that so i i leave that for the board to discuss and to motion should the board wish to motion we can add that to a future agenda if that's what the board wishes to do um and and the board also has the right to decide no we we don't want to do what the majority does we you know we don't like the system we want to move to a
160system of the whole or a combined system so that that's just that was essentially what my email to you was miss phillips so thank you for being a good listener miss viveros i have two items i'd like to recognize in regards to communication i mean community relations please go ahead on may 20th and june 24th i was able to witness our community liaisons in action in partnership with the table of hope there was a community free food giveaway at the board of education building i cannot say enough good things about the members of the table of hope our liaisons and the other community members that donated their time we really do not always stop and think about how necessary these programs are until we actually witness one i am truly humbled by the dedication and
161time that our liaisons put into helping our children and families watching them run around and make sure everyone was taken care of from when they arrived to when they left and even them coordinating how they would get food to the ones who could not make it was really an amazing thing to see and i am so thankful to have such a wonderful team helping our community on may 26 north dover elementary second grade and art teacher miss jeannie fakina hosted a memorial day program for local heroes and their families i did not personally attend but my mother did and she raved about the detail that was put into this program within the program our local heroes and their families were recognized and it also taught the students what memorial day actually represented they had beautiful
162decorations poems and songs i apologize for the delay but because our meeting was so early in may and so late in june this stuff is all a little delayed thank you thank you for that mr miller please and i don't know if anyone mentioned the scholarship ceremony um for our seniors which was wonderful a lot of scholarships are given out and i it seems like the number scholarships keep going up and a number of us were there i was fortunate to present one of the scholarships and and the students are going to wonderful schools and it seems like they're going to have a great future ahead so and just appreciate all those that donated towards those scholarships and let's keep going mr robles please yeah i just want to share from the perspective of the
163community relations committee that uh while the forum was a goal that was that was established i think it was regardless what had it been a goal or not it was a good thing to take place and those of us who participated really well uh overjoyed with the engagement of the community through the forum and i'm glad we were able to do that and it didn't feel to me like it was a let's meet this goal let's do it just because we have to uh but more like let's have this opportunity to communicate with the community and i'm glad we were able to do that so thank you to the community who connected the majority were online but it was well received and i'm glad we were able to do that together thank you mr robles
164i i i mean part of me was checking off the list we've got to do this but part of me the greater part of me is grateful to to those of you that organized it and attended did anyone have a chance because i only saw it online the dance recital please highlight our amazing dancers i have to say i think that that might be one of the the most magnificent events i've seen since in my time in the district the students at all different levels performed flawlessly they really many of them who have only had dancing here at the high school as their instruction and um and it was packed it was packed i i don't think you know for plays or concerts anything so far i've seen the auditorium so filled and both both
165adults and fellow students who came to support their classmates it really was really was a tremendous event could i add to that that the students were also featured at the cultural festival downtown and so the dancers were there in the street it looked like a broadway performance and then the band was there to play it was really nice to see uh the students engaged in the public again which it's been so long since we've been able to do that that festival was a lot of fun thank you mr miller for lifting that up uh miss nutting thank you um unfortunately i didn't get to see the dance the whole time because we were at a meeting um but when i did get there for the tail end of the show it was amazing also i
166did stay for after where we now have our national honor society for dance which is a new thing for dover which we have applied for um it was very moving to see that quite a few students did receive it and also we had an induction of a sophomore at our high school which i thought was very good that uh academically and all around is doing very well and it was nice to feature that thank you miss netting i don't know what you all heard but i heard don't schedule meetings the same night as dance recital if i may please mr i will support that i was not there i sent the entire phillips family there to view and record from many different angles and it was excellent and i also do want to mention um
167field days which i know they had this year um i know at north dover and i think east dover i don't know that they've had them before i know my kids never participated in field day so my daughter volunteered as a high school volunteer with field day and she had a really good time and from the students that i spoke to they thought it was great so i'm happy to see that that's something that we're able to do now thank you for all those good community relations let's move on to policy please mr robles yes the most exciting right at the end it's exciting to me um we had our policy meeting on june 7th and we reviewed the following policies as the first reading p1648.15 it's a new policy a new standard the older
168policy p1648.14 no longer in effect p2416.01 uh postnatal accommodations for students we do have a designated location lactation station in each building uh so we meet that uh p5512 uh harassment intimidation and bullying this is in accordance with the updates to the new to the law provided in pl2021c338 which was signed in january 2022 and one of those requirements is for the superintendent to report to the board annually anytime a preliminary determination was made that an incident or complaint was outside of the scope of hiv amongst other things p7410 maintenance and repair includes the requirement for a school district to employ a certified educational facilities manager among other things and we already have that moving on to p0174 and all those legal services p5460 high school graduation and p6113 e-rate which are all second readings
169and then policies 1648.14 abolishment as mentioned before that one is no longer in effect and last but not least we have the approval of the job description for bilingual esl coach this provides support to teachers on how to serve students with bilingual and esl needs and there's two coaches that that's being targeted for the district and it's a good progression of the services that we are currently providing to our students and teachers but obviously not the end goal as we uh we know we need a lot of services for bilingual and esl so and with that i move that we approve items one through four second thank you mr robles thank you miss mendez for the second discussion ms ruth yes please mr salas i know that we were talking in um executive and decided
170that it is a um public comment section or topic when it comes to the hiv and um amending it and adding a and seeing if the policy committee would be willing to take this on um and adding a aspect for presentations and ms mendes i know that was your idea so you know if you want to continue as a reminder of seeing if we can um if the board you know is willing to do this and obviously the policy um take on uh okay thank you for putting me on this yeah you're welcome um ms mendez do you move that the board tasked the policy committee with amending the hiv policy yes to do what i haven't thought this through um yeah so what we were talking about was having the policy address um informing
171the entire student body right the students at every school at the beginning of the school year about our hiv policies and and procedures um through some sort of an orientation program as a preventative rather than a reaction like twice a year correct um hold on mr miller hold on miss grasales i just want to make sure that miss mendes who has the floor is able to complete the motion um if she's making a motion then we get a second then we can discuss it and we may need to hear from an administration and possibly our attorney whether this is even necessary so i i what i'm hearing you say is that you move that the board tasks the policy committee with amending the hib policy to include an orientation at the beginning of the year
172that would ensure the entire school community is aware of the policy and the resources yes may i have a second for that motion second second from miss grasales um discussion or uh before actually discussion mr cruz do you have a any opinion to share on that well i i i think it would have been okay if if the whole board was in agreement to just refer the matter to the policy committee i don't know that there was a need for a formal motion to do it but you know you have a formal motion to do it now so so but i do think i would be clear it's not for the the policy committee not to adopt or amend it's for the policy committee to consider the issue and then it would bring it back
173to the board exactly for adoption or amendment ah so that was just miss grasales and miss ruiz initiating ms mendez to robert's rules of order okay so should i amend the emotion no i don't think so i think it's if everyone understands that what's happening is you're referring the issue of having a and possibly twice a year a uh orientation or presentation for the the school community and i think in particular the student community is that was part of it but for the school community that's you're just referring that matter to the policy committee to consider and report back to the board so if everyone's cool with that if you'd like to con you know have a vote on that i think that would be a problem just a voice vote of eye on that
174[Music] any opposed thank you good teamwork uh i just um i don't want to skip you mr miller i think you wanted to add something does that settle it or do you would you i think it's just let the committee come back to come up with a mechanism to promote uh education assembly however many times they want in the year or whatever would be effective so it's not anything specific just come back with a recommendation okay um did we did we get a roll call and approve the policies no we just i'm sorry we we jumped to a brand new motion with another motion on the floor a motion that we did not need so welcome to the roberts rules of order dan show here um back to mr roblox's motion um for policies any
175discussion on that other than the one we just had okay okay roll call please miss gracalis yes miss mendes yes mr miller yes miss netting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ruiz yes mr riveros yes motion carries thank you mr slam ms grasales would you please move the finance and facilities section and share your report the finance and facilities committee met on june 6 with discussion points surrounding updates on meeting with victory guardians to address tax issues exploration of additional sites for summer meal program updating and exploring final details for referendum communications committee updating talking points for board members to have available with factual referendum information human resources update on open enrollment benefits funding changes to preschool transportation from the state district currently looking into alternatives to fill this gap special education funding
176from the state is allowing continued support of services for students who are 21 years or older reviewing several bids which are up for approval in today's agenda additional topics were discussed pertaining the expansion of space science labs updates and on the academy street trailer board leadership in coordination with the finance and facilities committee sent several available dates and times to meet with the town representatives with regard to collaborating on the referendum and until date unfortunately there has not been any response from any town representative to meet in an effort to ensure effective communication with our school community ms grasalis i'm sorry to interrupt you but i think i'm seeing that we're having a difficult time understanding you i don't know if it's the mask the microphone thank you can you just i don't mean to
177make you repeat it but i want to make sure we all understand your report okay muffling all right so do you want me to start all over or where did you guys here yes board leadership in coordination with the finance and facilities committee sent several sorry mrs for more interruption i think we have some assistance for you so too close how about now better oh definitely then thank you board leadership in coordination with finance and facilities committee sent several available dates and times to meet with the town representatives with regard to collaborating on the referendum and until date unfortunately there has not been any response from the town representatives can you hear me okay now i'm paranoid in an effort to ensure effective communication with our school community members of the finance and facilities committee
178met with board and district leadership on june 14th to plan the information sorry to plan the formation of the referendum communication committee which will be compromised comprised of several community members that are well versed in our dover community and have been nominated by other board members to assist in the in disseminating of information about the referendum between july and november prior to the december vote i move that the board of proof items one through i think 32 which includes the hand carry second thank you miss grasales thank you ms biveros discussion mr reeves if i may please miss mendez um so first excuse me i want to apologize my first um set of questions i didn't submit um beforehand so if there isn't an answer or you can't answer that's perfectly okay um on item
17931 is the current classroom that is before us for conversion approval currently being utilized um and is the need for office space at east over greater than classroom space okay uh and i know this came up in public comment too so the uh conversion of the classroom uh in the front front office space of east dover is for some critically needed small instruction and office space so there'll actually be three small rooms that will be created from this one large classroom that classroom was until belmont avenue was acquired used by our child study team so it has been used in an incremental way for the past year for instruction i certainly don't want to diminish in any way our need for instructional space however we currently have two nurses in a closet-sized room here at
180dover middle school it's in a healthcare environment it's not it's not appropriate it also doesn't allow the two nurses to really work through their caseload in a way that divides up students because again in this very very small space you have a number of students congregating where you can't separate them for a student to go on a cod or be separated from another student who might be having symptoms so this room although that room itself won't be a nurse's room it will allow the nurse to occupy the office that's currently used by guidance which was from what i understand originally a nurse's room that's why it has a bathroom in it um and the guidance uh council would then be able to be in this this other space um the small group space would be
181for things like speech and language instruction or basic skills instructions so there is instruction occurring there as we put in support services for kids we do need spaces for them we for example we've had this for at academy street school where the guidance counselor has to take over the principal's office when they meet with a student because they share an office with three other people and they can't meet with the student on confidential issues so we do have we have the need for instructional space absolutely that's why we're going for a referendum we have the need for a small group space for things like speech and language and basic skills instruction which we are adding uh to our program because they're much needed but they also need their own places for that to happen and
182we also need places for support services that demand confidentiality and demand the proper type of environment for that to occur so right now dover middle school and east dover who share this building um do project that they will be able to have enough rooms there's there's no rooms to spare there's no empty rooms um i will look into the concern about art before i respond and make sure that i give a thorough statement on how art art operates in each of our buildings but uh the the kiln i know this is going beyond your question but i figured why not capture some of the other questions that came up the kiln has not been functioning for a long time it's just really been sitting in a stored space that doesn't necessarily mean that we wouldn't
183again look at acquiring a kiln but that kiln has not been functioning in east dover for recent memory uh so so that's that's the reasoning behind what's occurring here thank you um i'm just curious as i i know that at times um we have students and trailers right so i'm just wondering if why can't we put those offices in the trailers and keep the classrooms as classrooms and you do if you can respond if not you don't have to i can move on to my second question i can we project well currently we're being told that the two additional trailers that we've ordered one for eastover and one for north dover um will take approximately 10 months to arrive and as you know we're still we've waited a whole year for the academy street trailer
184so even though that they are meant to be intermediate methods of creating space um they're not they're not arriving uh any time soon so we're trying to work with the space that we have thank you so much dr mclaughlin um and my second question under finance and facilities is for item 14 when i looked at the dual use of educational space application it was blank um so i'm wondering what we were being asked to approved uh so uh it does have very similar text it's as exactly the same exact text that's used for the form uh but it should state uh essentially that it's for the saint clements it's we're saying clements which is space we are renting uh there's a gymnasium there and we're applying for dual use so we can use that gymnasium
185partially for office space which will include six movable acoustic dividers and then also partially for indoor play because the purpose of that build will be for preschoolers and part of the requirements for that program is that there are areas for play and recess thank you um and i'm going to assume that the office space is going to be for preschool administration yeah master teachers and an administrator thank you so much any other questions on finance and facilities roll call please sir i was taking notes let's go all the way back up to the top of the beach while you scroll i have to say that i have a ceramic piece from the dixon classroom in my home it holds my palo santo and my sage it is in the holiest of places in my home
186ms grasalis yes miss mendes no on item 31 yes to everything else mr miller yes miss netting yes miss phillips yes mr robles yes mr ease yes ms riveros yes motion carries we're moving on to the informational section of the agenda that includes upcoming board meetings and use of facilities approvals and you can read those on the agenda and any board members have any questions on those informational pieces more of a misrace more of a common again it's lovely to see our town recreation program be on our field that's great old business i did not see any items of old business does any board member have old business i do miss reece i'm wondering if perhaps administration i know that we have been speaking about this and i don't know of the updates on student
187representation at the board meeting um and acknowledgement of crossing guards i did see that thank you the uh board the high school administration i'm sorry facilitated an election in keeping with both our prior board intent here in dover but also with the new legislation that mandates the student representative uh students videotaped their speeches kids were given access and voted and we will be announcing the student representative at our next meeting dr sayner and i plan to meet with the student representative to provide the student representative with an orientation to their role on the board i'm crossing guards sorry yes we are looking at crossing guards um and trying to align that with um a safety theme month uh so that's where we'll look to put that in thank you appreciate that and if i can
188just give a shout out to mr phil the crossing guard at um eastover and middle dover middle school he is fantastic and keeps us all safe [Music] it's death defying work these days so thank you to all our crossing guards no further old business moving on to new business we have on the agenda a statement of our position regarding gun violence and call for legislation and the location and arrangements for board of education july retreat this board has presented and passed a resolution in the past regarding gun sense legislation oranges of course are dover tiger color but also the color for recognizing gun violence and mourning those we have lost and demanding a response to that um is a board member interested in researching that and and finding out what what resolutions policies or statements
189the board um would like to make on this issue mr ruiz that was actually my item so if it's okay i'll well you're a non-voting member of the board so go ahead uh i i did want to ask the board to consider this evening passing a resolution for some very specific action on both the state and and maybe less on a state and more on a national level uh for common sense gun restrictions uh and i think more and more as we look at this issue it's important to be specific about what what we ask for to protect our kids safety it's so important to emphasize that all aspects of safety have to be taken into consideration i think our presentation tonight and a lot of the dialogue we've had has expressed our investment in
190mental health and supporting our kids we've talked a little bit tonight about what we've done to protect our kids with new technology and with personnel and with sros in our schools i but i believe that that's not enough i think we have to address issues that we see and that are becoming very clear especially of very young armed shooters with military-grade weapons who are able to purchase them legally and we can have cameras and we can have resistant glass and we can have locks on our classroom doors but if someone's coming with an ak-47 there's not much that's going to stop them in that regard and our sros are outgunned when it comes to that kind of a situation so i think this has to be looked at comprehensively and i really believe um i
191personally have asked school boards to take a position on this uh in their their recent um in their most recent web gathering on school safety but they said it was not part of the agenda um what we heard was we're things that we're doing we're doing the things that that they've talked about and those are important things but that's not enough um and i really believe that there's so much commonality among especially among those of us who serve children that we have to raise our voice and we have to be specific and we have to say that if a young man or young woman can't buy a beer under 21 they shouldn't be able to buy an automatic military style weapon and that they're great that there's been some progress some recent legislation on background
192checks but those have to be done in a without loopholes that we have to look at the individuals that we're selling guns to i i don't know if this would be part of our position if the board considered passing a resolution in this regard but i think the um i think the uh the congressman malinowski brought up a very interesting component in his um recent meeting that this is not the time that it's not the public comments uh that insurance might be it's not the public comment time sir completely so excuse me mr dr mclaughlin mr rama this is a political body everything we talked about tonight is politics yes yes i'm gonna say one last thing and ask you to maybe write down we can give you some paper so you can share that
193during the public comment we are it is a long time it's a lot of work you're welcome to run for the board we are elected officials just like mr malinowski we have to work with them this is absolutely political so i'm going to ask you to hold your comment till the end so that dr mclaughlin can finish i'm going to ask you one last time thank you so much i appreciate that sorry mr mclaughlin please continue dr mclaughlin i would like uh the board to consider passing a resolution that would be sent to new jersey school boards to the new jersey administrators association to the njea to the nea to the national school boards association and to really any other entity that has a lobbying presence to begin to asked for this type of specific
194action um again we we expend a lot of our energy a lot of our budgeted monies and a lot of our care to everything that we can control but there are things that we can't control and students lives are at stake students are dying throughout the country there are mass shootings and i think that it is within our responsibility as educators and as governing bodies of of educators to make our voice heard so that is my request obviously that would be up to the board to consider whether or not they wanted to adopt such a resolution just a second miss mendez um i would just invite the board if you have not already to review the may 25th 2022 resource shared with the full board the every town resource it's school safety colon every town
195resource that's the subject of the email there may be some resources there to inform what if any resolution um we would uh pass or propose for the njea n e a n a s b a which are the new jersey educators association the nea is the national educators association the nj sba's the new jersey school boards association did i miss an organization oh right and the national school boards association and any other organization that might advocate for increased school safety for our students i just didn't want to miss that miss mendez please you have the floor i just wanted to say to dr mclaughlin that i fully support that ask um i just wasn't sure if you if we're being asked to present that motion today or if we were at a later date it's
196on the agenda right now so we can discuss it right now and um given the time and and the fact that the public has been waiting so long um i would invite us to do some research and some thinking and come prepared for the next session to vote on it um but but it's being presented today um does that does that answer your question yeah yeah okay right right we need thank you mr crew um explained we'll need specific language right we don't have a resolution before us so even if we wanted to vote tonight there's nothing to vote on tonight but what we are discussing tonight is do we even want to put in the effort to do that right so if so if it's just dr mclaughlin and ms mendez that are in
197favor of this exploration kind of done deal but if the majority of the board is in in favor then we can all do our research and come back at the next meeting does anyone have a question or comment otherwise i will call for a voice vote i or nay um and then we can unless you have specific language tonight you don't right we can move that to the next um we can prepare for that for the july meeting okay all in favor aye aye all opposed okay so um mr slam nut that i need to tell you how to do your job you are so good with us thank you i just want to make sure that on the next agenda um we are expecting if not an actual resolution to vote on um a
198a report from our superintendent with some options for resolutions thank you mr crew mr slam dr mclaughlin the next item under new business is location and arrangements for board of education july retreat uh mr slammer dr mclaughlin do you have some update on that just just location we had talked about um the belmont building i believe that's certainly available um i think this this room had been an option uh but since the retreat tends to be a little bit more of a um smaller group discussion type of format i uh i think that that's why that was proposed so those would definitely be options and at least you know that we can put forward and we do have a date already is that correct may i invite a board member who has the date read
199readily available to share it july 19th 19th thank you ms biberos so on july 19th i move that the board meet at belmont avenue for our board retreat second second miss netting thank you any discussion all right did you just say what's up sorry miss time what time did you say the time i did not okay would you like to amend the motion with the time i don't know would it be the normal time that we would normally have our regular meeting well our executive session is at 5 45. so normally at six and our regular is at 6 30 so we all agreed to 5 30. i believe miss vivetto's good job thank you for keeping us accountable to previous commitments you're right because i remember complaining about the time okay so we have
200previously agreed at 5 the motion is amended to say the board of education will meet at the belmont avenue building on july 19th at 5 30 p.m for the board retreat which is when we um discuss and agree on board goals and a second for that second amended from miss phillips um and moved by by ruiz amended by miss phillips all in favor aye aye okay see you then and next on our agenda is finally the public comment so feel free to read uh the rules essentially summarize so we can get to it is three minutes um with some wiggle room and hopefully 30 minutes um with some wiggle room but but not much because i have not even gone to the bathroom yet so i will at least need a bathroom break um uh
201being respectful and on any agenda item or on the board um process what you witnessed tonight your opinions you may or may not get a response tonight but hopefully we'll get a response via email conversations with board members afterwards or our website or a future report we also have remote comments thank you dr mclaughlin for that reminder and miss grasales has graciously volunteered to assist with the remote comments our practice has been my correct uh in person remote in person remote i don't have access to the form right now can someone who owns it gives me access please i don't think i saw the form did we have any remote comments submitted mr slam do you know uh i'm looking over to our i t director there's three and so we're working on the accident
202okay so let's start with the in person folks and move to remote after since we're figuring that out any member of the public please come up mr arama finally thank you for being patient your intentions if your intention the board's intention is to discourage people from coming to this meetings mission accomplished because it's going to be 10 o'clock at night and all we've heard is you guys debating and talking amongst yourself nobody in the public is allowed to comment while you guys are talking i believe what you guys did today can be done in executive session and you don't have to keep us all here for hours because we didn't volunteer to be a board member you guys did so it's okay if you guys got all the time in the world to be here
203five six hours good for you but you should be a little bit more considerate of the taxpayers of dover like me i got up at six o'clock this morning to go to work i got home at seven and i ran over here and i was late 30 minutes i think you guys started at seven so i couldn't really read the agenda but i think that the board has to find a way to communicate their message in a shorter time right now the clock is ticking for me three minutes maybe you guys should put a time clock for you guys each board member gets 20 minutes trust me we'd be out of here already by that 20 minutes for you guys three minutes for us that's just an uh constructive criticism for all of you that
204never seen me before i talk this way i'm not mad i'm not angry i am passionate you know who knows me scott miller knows me because scott has been serving the title dover i would say at a minimum 25 years because i met him when he was an alderman in dover and this guy has been serving dover for the longest let's give him a round of applause come on he's good he's good and he dubs dover everybody else i don't know you i'm meeting you guys for the first time i've heard some names before per person i don't know you but i just want to say a couple things i hope i can take a little more than three minutes after going hours listening to you guys first of all if you guys are planning
205on saving the tiger bravo because that's why i'm here i went i was born in this town 1965 do the math that tiger has been in my memory since i was in kindergarten mr duffy was the principal at academy school mr bolandi was my english teacher mo i think it was english and math scott you might know um i've been here a long time and my kids are in the high school my two daughters went to my oldest daughter's 35 my youngest daughter is 28 and i'm in the process of adopting a 16 year old who's an honors honorable student at dover high school very proud of her i love dover i've had businesses in dover i've invested in dover i live in dover and i want to see dover schools succeed i approach all
206the teachers and all you guys believe it or not even though i'm alright because you kept me here and i'm hungry when i'm hungry i get a little upset but i really do um appreciate what all you guys do this is a a job that not too many people have the courage to do not too many people have the time to do and some people might have the time but they don't want to dedicate the time so to me you guys are all heroes to our kids because i know you all mean well i know you all mean well and i'm proud of that you know um when i heard about the the thing with the tiger kind of upset me because over high school to me um what i remember doing was wrestling back
207in the days in the 70s there was wrestling and my dad used to take me from academy school to dover high school to wrestle and i always saw that tiger there and it was like wow one day i one day and i remember the high school football state champs in the 80s sean labrady i think that was the only year in the 80s 86 i think it was right dover had state champion in football 1985 there you go well you know i'm a proud dover rican for those of you guys who don't know me i was former president of casa puerto rico for many years in 1994 1994 95 i'm the man responsible for the name change it was once called aguada social club i gave it to the puerto rican community that's where casa
208puerto rico belongs some of you don't know me might think oh this guy's crazy look what he talked this is how i am everybody knows me that's how i am i'm not really that bad you might think i am but i'm not i just talked this way um i wanted to talk a little bit about security in the schools i've been a gun owner for all my life my guns have never killed anybody unless they're defective you never know but they've never killed anybody i believe we have a we have a gun problem but it's because we got prosecutors who are failing to put criminals in jail new jersey america as a whole has a crime problem it's got a criminal problem did you guys hear what came out of the news this guy is
209a career shoplifter 100 times rested in new york city for burglary he's back out on the streets we have a criminal problem we don't have a gun problem we have a criminal problem and we got these prosecutors who who want to who want to baby these criminals who belong in prison right so until we we get to the root of the cause it's not the guns it's a criminals criminals belong in prison okay and that will fix it when it comes to school safety i think that we should invest the same amount of money that our federal judiciary system invests how many judges do they care a year walking into the courtroom zero why because you can't go into a courtroom without going through metal detectors mr rama i just have to interrupt you because
210it's well over three minutes and i deeply appreciate and i appreciate you sharing that dover history of casa puerto rico you and i have spoken um i just want to ask you to wrap it up so that the next speaker can have their chance thank you i want to see a board member here to propose a way to find money to pull metal detectors in the schools that's one way just so you know there's kids in the schools carrying knives okay pocket knives you guys don't know it because a lot of people are afraid to come forward because of retaliation there's drugs in the schools i hear teachers know about it and they give a blind eye to it we gotta address it we gotta talk to our kids about drugs we gotta talk to
211our kids about alcohol abuse we got to talk to these kids about all this and let me tell you when we start talking about people that don't live in dover that are coming here and i know i heard today that you guys have people in the proper places investigating this well it's been going on even though you've had people there so somebody's not doing their job right so we got to look at people who have who are not doing their jobs right in order to to protect taxpayer money because if you live in denville you live in warren you live in iraq but you don't belong over schools thank you mr iran school system there was something else i wanted to say but i waited so long you you got my number text me you
212can email us all our emails are on the board of education website and you can email the superintendent the principal anytime you wish this is not the only way you can be here what i say doesn't go in here and out here remember our k if kids are priority number one right so let's protect our kids let's figure a way to put metal detectors in the school system let's figure a way to talk to our kids about drugs we got to talk to them about drugs i know people are glorifying cannabis because now it's legal but no we got to tell them we got to discourage them from that because marijuana is a gateway drug to cocaine and unless you want your kids on cocaine stop them from doing marijuana thank you mr obama there's
213a lot more i wanted to say but oh i bet you listen we're gonna have to get a drink after this because i'm hungry too so tired waiting here that i forgot what the hell i came here for all i see on my eyes all i'm looking at is a big mac i'll meet you at the mcdonald's i do have to keep talking excuse me i do have some um um electronic what are they um the messages online messages i can't even think now i'm getting hangry too there you go oh okay i do have one um let's just make sure that the the folks who are present because those we can read um does anyone else from the public remember we waited past ceiling for you guys and i don't appreciate being cut off
214that's why when the lady was speaking she was talking some big points she does always talk big points yes she's got she's a former board president she knows her stuff and she's very smart but she was talking and nobody dressed mr rama i think she may have another comment so let's let her if she does take the mic you see how it is right three minutes on the time you guys can go on forever thank you mr arama i have a feeling we got you to come back mr dixon please thank you i would first like to thank the board and dr mclaughlin for making it clear that they want to save the tiger mural uh i was mr k mr krizwiki's uh colleague for 16 of the years he began as a dover art
215teacher when i was nine months old so and we overlapped for 16 years [Music] and he was excellent with the students and i know that the former students that were here that were there when the mural was painted are passionate i do want to educate because now is the time to do it that uh i am not a supporter of murals i don't believe in them there's a time and a place for them and i think that they're a horrible idea for most schools i have a master's degree in visual arts and 36 years experience most murals were poorly done and they didn't live up to expectations uh i will also say to dr mclaughlin and no disrespect but johanna my friend who worked as an ell teacher for 20 years in dover she retired
21615 years ago she and her family escaped from hungary over the border into switzerland and came to america in after the 1956 hungarian revolution and she taught in dover she was a wonderful ell teacher she told me because i always wanted everything in mint condition and she said if you lived in europe or i'm assuming in other areas of the world your items did not stay in mint condition because your families put them on wagons they carried them we see this with people leaving countries and moving elsewhere they're taking things on their back the 35 year old mural is in better condition than i am from 1987. so the fact that it's not exactly perfect is not the main thing because artwork is not just used for decorative purposes it has to have a historical
217component obviously it has an emotional component from my colleague i taught with marianne webber she was very emotional up here and she didn't attend dover schools i didn't attend dover schools we just loved the community and we loved our students and it represents something it's an intellectual historical and emotional piece when i was transferred 10 years ago the summer of 2012 i didn't ask for a transfer i was moved one of the courses they wanted me to teach they concocted this idea from the board of ed i think from the assistant superintendent i was going to teach mural painting it was a half year course the first year i was told to get cardboard i went to appliance stores and got refrigerator boxes because they wanted the kids to practice so i had these huge
218pieces of cardboard we would i i'm i'm a passionate person i was challenged i was going to make a go of that high school job after 30 years i moved to teenagers it was a little bit i was tired and it was a little bit late but i took on the challenge so we we would do preparatory sketches we would research i had three classes that would be 75 students doing these murals the first year three murals were chosen because that's what the administrators told me they had to see all of the sketches this is a half year course mind you that took what five months they allowed three different groups of kids so out of 75 students or so about 10 had the opportunities to make these very small murals they're all painted over
219by the way and that was only 10 years ago or nine years ago year number two none were picked and i played a little inside joke with myself where the big cardboard things i had them do their final version on cardboard that would be submitted to the board and i hung them for the art show the district art show and with a little identification card saying that these were going to be perused by administration and board of ed to see which ones were going to be deemed appropriate and chosen for permanent paint on the walls of dover high school and i never heard from any administrator it was my joke saying i'm proud of my students hey mister are they going to pick our soccer mural mr we're doing something in honor of chile can
220we no no response from anyone who was an administrator it was particularly disrespectful to me and horrible for the students mr dixon i know i know you know i know that the teenagers you taught even though you didn't want to be moved loved being educated by you i i do have to ask you to allow the next person to speak um we have gone over three minutes and you've had about the same amount of murals have all been painted over yes the main concern is that mural is historical it's very well painted it should not be painted by student artists at all it should have a professional artist come in they need to get a person's portfolio pick the person who had the style that was the closest to patty i guess is that the
221name i didn't teach her they need to have a professional come in i see all of the items for sports payment payment payment payment payments mr dickson these are great suggestions the money should be paid for a professional artist thank you mr dixon would anyone else like to step to the microphone thank you mr coniglia all right good evening good evening john coniglio 24 taylor town road modville and i'm also the president of the dover education association that represents our teachers security guards and paraprofessionals so first i would just like to address that there was a comment made earlier that teachers turn a blind eye to drugs in the schools and we meet monthly as as a as an association and i talk to my uh reps every day especially our reps at the high
222school every day and i can assure you with 100 confidence that our teaching staff is not turning a blind eye to anything like that i can assure you of that with 100 confidence the second thing that i want to discuss um earlier during the meeting we um brought up the trimesters um for gdt coding in world languages and i know right now obviously we have four market periods so i'm just wondering if you can discuss a little bit about how that's going to work with the trimesters next year um the next thing and i know i've talked about this before and i know dr stainer had said that there's something coming but again with the visuals for the presentations the bar graphs were impossible to see from where we were sitting so even as a
223teacher when i show something to my students that's small like that it automatically shuts them off and unfortunately that's what happened tonight for me anyway i don't know about everybody else but when you present something and you can't even see the words on the bottom of the bar graph it's it's impossible to follow along because you can't see what they're talking about so i just i urge us to kind of come to that solution quickly as you know as quickly as we can all right and my last thing that i want to discuss earlier in the night and dr mclaughlin you mentioned this a little while ago as well about the traverty the tragedy in texas and how it's impacted all of us as board members as staff members as a community as students as
224parents everybody in the dover community right now over the past few months the board has approved the hiring of many new administrative assistants administrative secretaries that we never had before in the past and as important as those jobs are to our district's success i would like to think that our number one thought would be the equity and the safety for all of our staff members and our students and to have that safety and equity be consistent across all of our dover schools because violence does not discriminate by age and we need to ensure that all of our schools are protected in the same fashion for everybody's safety going forward thank you mr coniglio and to all the members of of the union and our staff for uh helping to prevent um and intervene with any
225drug use or god forbid abuse and and to reduce the harm and and i can attest that i have received emails from you on that issue so i know that you're very mindful thank you anyone else thank you miss acevedo dave acevedo 71 penn avenue in dover i just want to thank um the superintendent for hearing the community advocating for the preservation of the mural at dover high school i also wanted to bring up the fact that um with the world language program i'm wondering how this trimester thing is going to be working how many teachers will be doing that because as you know i was the world language teacher for until november and to be quite honest with you and now that i'm here i'm saying it that job was unsustainable for one person
226just i was seeing over seven to 800 students every week and i'm wondering what is different what is different about this program with what we had in place this past year thank you miss acevedo susan shower 346 west clinton street in dover um what i had planned on saying at this portion has changed about three different times now but i will recap to thank ms mendez for being the board member that voted no on item number 31 with lack of information perhaps also i still did not hear maybe i missed it being tired but i did not hear what a budgeted amount for those two projects were i did not hear that so right now firmly the board members have voted to approve that to pass the process on to the county but it seems
227like your guys are ready to do work and you've only received proposals uh now you said today i guess you don't have to answer me but you said today so um it just seems like it's all already in action the board if nothing else during this last couple of days of the tiger mural if the board has not seen the relevance of knowing and witnessing and asking the questions of what every project entails it's your responsibility the board president on your behalf of the full board signs every single check that is paid out in this district so if you're paying a contractor don't you want to know what work he's going to do when this very room during the last referendum when this very room was switched from a auditorium to a cafeteria the full
228board and any mr dixon will remember any board member any public members that were at that meeting were taken in a minibus we put we did a recess at a board meeting and we came here on a tour and we were in the bowels of this building looking how in the world is this going to get turned into a cafeteria we knew everything every question was answered if you google right now schools that have passed a referendum this year january those schools as one of their goals had their goals have been set since 2019 to pass a referendum 2022. this board has not had one public forum for referendum and you're five months out you're five months out of your vote does the full board have every piece of information cohesively so that you all
229know the same things you all have the same facts and figures so that when the taxpayers of dover stop you in shoprite and ask you hey how many classrooms are you planning on building how many students do you have those answers because we did to pass the last referendum that built this room that built the edition that built the addition onto the high school we passed it because every board member had the ability to reach out to the public and give every piece of information that they needed i don't see that you have that yet and you're five months out of the vote the last time the board did a referendum we placed it as a board goal two years before the referendum two years we developed committees a year and a half before the
230referendum vote that none of that has been done yet so that's number one number two you're doing your board retreat and i hope that when you you do your retreat this year you'll do board goals that reflect what you're doing it seems with a lot of what you're doing the cart is before the horse you're you're establishing programs you're hiring people and they have no place to work they have no rooms to do their job but you're establishing and you're spending money and you're putting all the people in place but you have no place to expand to do the jobs so until the referendum is passed you're you're in a pickle so i hope there's a good plan b and i hope that becomes one of your goals at your retreat because that's what your
231goals are not a list of unattainable social and emotional items because a lot of that you're not going to know you're not going to know if you've done well with that but you will know your result of a board goal every single year if you have attained it if you have attained it i know that the superintendent talked tonight about his board of education goals the board of education has not really set its own goals since 2017 they really have not the one goal that you developed last year i think or perhaps it was in the year before it's so vague you don't even know for yourselves if you can attain it so that's it thank you and good night everyone thank you michael good night would anyone else like to share i think we're
232ready for the remote comments miss gracalis thank you we have a remote comment from heather carney she says good evening i want to ask the board to consider approving paid assistant coaches for baseball softball and soccer although there are assistant coaches listed on the agenda they are actually the coaches for the jv team and the middle school teams unfortunately volunteers are occasionally approved and don't show up and this affects the whole team our coaches work hard trying to coach the kids in the field and prepare the ones on the bench it is very difficult for them to effectively do all of that at once while making sure everything on the field is happening the way it is supposed to the coach cannot watch everyone at the same time if a coach becomes unavailable the team
233cannot function it would be beneficial for our students who play sports to have a paid assistant coach as well as because some kids have to practice different skills than the rest of the team at practice the two coaches would improve the team most of the districts have three coaches for varsity and the three coaches for jv teams also i want to say that some of our teams especially at the middle school are in dire need of new uniforms although these may not seem important in the scheme of things these sports for some kids is their whole life it is very embarrassing to hear on the sidelines other teams talking about the numbers on our universe falling off or not matching because they are from different years with all the money this district wastes on frivolous
234things i felt this had to be mentioned if the district cannot afford to increase the spending for administration every year surely we can afford a stipend for an assistant coach for sports at both the middle school and high school levels to support our hard-working coaches continue uh to the next comment are you asking yep next time yes thank you it's also by from heather carney why are masks required in school when coveted cases are the lowest they have ever been practically zero question mark no other school in the whole county requires mosques dover has some of the lowest covet rates in the county it is ridiculous can someone please explain to the public what your criteria is for making this decision and why it changed from may to june when the virtually no cases in
235the district next coming from zozia chris wiki this is in support of the um mural please try to repeat that first name oh so i got it yeah z-o-s-i-a yes i don't know if i'm pronouncing it correctly please strongly consider finding a way to preserve the tiger mural in the cafeteria of dover high school this mural was painted by my grandfather daniel chris whiskey and his students mr kate thought art at the high school for 40 years the mural has been seen as a symbol of the dover high school community for decades since my grandfather's passing in april of 2021 it should now not only remain a symbol of the school's community but a symbol of my grandfather's legacy as an artist and especially as a teacher to the students he cared for so much
236if there is no way to keep the mural as is we would like to propose a fund be created in my grandfather's honor where we could sell high quality prints of the beloved mural all proceeds could be used to support artistic dover high school art students this could be used as a college scholarship or to pay for students to travel to art competitions museum and galleries there's one last comment from christian noel i don't think many teachers would disagree that the nyu program on a whole was a debacle debacle debacle thank you sadly i worried that yeah debacle sadly i worry that many teachers who were reluctant to participate to begin with are now entirely turned off to such an initiative it is shame because of diversity it is a shame because that a diversity
237equity and inclusion program would certainly be worthwhile and beneficial to the district why haven't teachers received apologies from nyu personnel or district administration for the disrespectful presentation that the nyu yet students were allowed to make while i agree with many of the demands unquote the students were making the presentation was not appropriate for an audience of teachers who have no control over much of what they were asking for it is also not fair for students who as far as i can tell were earned in their efforts that they were put in positions that would cause such a predictable and justifiable backlash who is going to be held accountable for this will there be renewed attempts at diversity equity and inclusion training for teachers will nyu continue to work with the district on this they have
238lost most if not all legitimacy with many teachers i feel that a program in which teacher leaders receive training and conduct the initiative in-house would be much more effective please do not end the fourth marking period with 10 school days to go anymore why can't the fourth marking period end when school ends it is extremely frustrating to try to keep students who refuse to do anything engaged when there is zero accountability i do not understand how these can legitimately count as school days it is disrespectful that teachers are put in this position and it is a waste of time for students please do away with the automatic floor of 50. an opportunity for one marking period with a floor of 50 could still be offered but on a case-by-case basis with legitimate costs only for
239the future please do not spring any more potentially controversial training sessions or presentations on the teachers without informing us of their purpose and nature first what will be done with the results of the district-wide staff survey were they connected with the nyu program please consider allowing teachers to evaluate administrators and no more remote comments that concludes our public comment portion may the board have a motion to adjourn miss ruiz um is may i say something um if if your motion is to adjourn it's not okay so um well public comment is for the public oh motion soldier in public comment we're joining the meeting i'm so sorry i'm so tired that's okay so i i make that motion okay so no so i was my motion my invitation was not to close public comment public
240comment is closed my invitation was to adjourn the meeting um you're looking to respond to something from public comment well i was just wondering if our administration is going to respond to any of the public comments um they certainly can via email reports etc as we as we've stated before um but there is no requirement for the response to to happen right now and i'm inviting us to adjourn so unless you have a specific question that you would like to direct to the administration which is your right as a board member my invitation is to adjourn i hear you do you have a question no question okay do i have a motion to adjourn so moved do we have a second do we have another motion if we don't adjourn then we need a another
241you need to ask questions to the administration or make another motion is there anything that can be answered i think that's what we really want to focus on so mr miller your question is dr mclaughlin do you have any response exactly yeah i can respond to a few things that were mentioned tonight um not to everything but i'm happy to come back at our next board meeting war in between with personal communications to individuals in regard to how trimesters will work at this time the gifted and talented program and the other programs i mentioned uh it's that the trimester would be isolated to those programs it was not meant to infer that we were moving as a district uh from quarters to trimesters so i might have uh not communicated that clearly and we certainly
242can provide some additional information about that that particular uh program and how it's implemented um because uh in so doing one of the things that was mentioned tonight in a separate public comment is to reduce the amount of travel and the amount of responsibility at any one given time that someone like a world language teacher would have an elementary world language teacher working within three elementary buildings on a trimester basis would allow that teacher to have a reduced load if and i'm not saying that it would remain with one teacher but certainly even with the t1 teacher would be a different way of managing that that program the other item that was raised was the screen and i know that that's been a topic of concern about how big our screen image is one of
243the things that's happening in the dover high school cafeteria which is where we anticipate continuing to have our board meetings is a a digital um what they would call a digital wall but it would be behind where typically we sit here and that would obviously provide a much better digital display and also be projected in a different way so i think that that will alleviate the concern that we've heard about the public seeing some of our presentations you probably see them better on the live stream than than you do live but i think that that will be resolved um in regard to um coaches um i think obviously those are things that we do on a budget basis as well as security which was also mentioned um you know we look at priorities and we
244try to balance those so we certainly will hear the concerns that people have and bring them back as we formulate our new budget uh in the coming school year in terms of why masks we did have a significant upgrade in this last blast of covet where our numbers did go up dramatically in the district and at the same time counties all around us went into a high level our determination to finish the school year in person and to have as many kids as we could have here was what informed the mass mandate we're continuing to stay with that until our county numbers go below high most of the counties around us have reduced below high for whatever reason through last week morris county continued to have high numbers i can't answer for why districts are
245doing what they're doing but we are following cdc advice in regard to masking and we do believe especially with the heavy numbers of students we have participating in our summer programs that right now it's the best course of action until the cali numbers come down and those are some of the quick questions that i can answer right on the spot certainly we'll take a look at all of the minutes and some of the numbers of concerns that were brought up and can bring some of those answers back at future meetings thank you dr mclaughlin thank you mr miller for clarifying my apologies miss mendes for misunderstanding you i i'm focused on robert's rules of order so there is no required response to public comment at the moment so i was intending to adjourn the meeting
246and have these responses at the next meeting um but but thank you both for getting the responses today as i imagine that makes our public happier than me wanting to adjourn now may we have a motion to adjourn or any other questions or comments before that motion is made motion to adjourn second thank you miss grasales thank you mr miller voice thank you all i will help clean up but i am running to the ladies room first