001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] i'd like to call this meeting of the yeshim township board of education to order pursuant to the open public meetings act adequate public notice has been given by the secretary of the eastern township board of education in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the board of education office emailing written notice of the berlin county times and the courier post filing written notice with municipal clerk of echem township and i have a royal call please mrs cappello here this is everhart mr fizzakaro here miss fleming here mr catherine here mrs noll here mr lancelata sure mr meegan here mrs ryan here we have a quorum thank you at this point i need a motion to go into executive session whereas an njsa 104-12 allows for
002a public body to go into closed session during a public meeting and whereas the board of education the board of education of eastern township has deemed it necessary to go into closed session to discuss certain matters which are exempted from the public and whereas the regular meeting of the board of education reconvened following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 p.m now therefore be it resolved the board of education will go into closed session for the following reasons as outlined in njsa 10 4-12 that's items 2.2 through 2.4 uh do i have a motion motion by miss fleming do i have a second second by miss ryan any questions or comments let's go to a roll call please mrs capello yes mrs everhart mr fizzakara yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs
003knoll yes mr roy yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you approximately 7 p.m we will be back from executive session [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do foreign [Music] foreign [Music] hmm [Music] so [Music] do [Music] um [Music] my [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] mm-hmm so [Music] so do [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] i like to reconvene this meeting of the eastern township board of education if we could all please rise for the pledge of allegiance god indivisible with liberty as yourself for all now i'll be reading our mission statement the mission of the eastern township school district is to promote excellence in an environment that engages students in meaningful learning experiences in partnership
004with students dedicated staff families and community the district provides a strong educational foundation that will empower our students to achieve their unique potential embrace self-directed lifelong learning develop the skills necessary for appropriate risk taking and responsible decision making respect themselves and others problem solve individually and collaboratively become contributing members of our diverse global society at this point in time we'll be moving into presentations for the annual school self-assessment uh dr smith i give the floor to you or do i give it to miss pagulick oh there's my bullet guy the floor is yours kind of cycle that they do every year so at the end of the school year they met for their final meeting of their school safety team slash climate slash wellness slash green we do a lot of different things with that
005committee um so they met either at the end of may or early june and they looked at the rubric so even though state hadn't released the actual rubric yet we looked at and while everything was kind of fresh in our minds and we were ending the year we graded ourselves on what the rubric has been in the past and there were no changes to that the last three years um so that held true so basically they had their meetings in may and june and then we were waiting because last year the information came available in august the year before it became available in june the year before it became available in may so we were ready to input once those uh they open up the system where we would enter our grades that actually didn't
006happen until september 29th this year so uh september 29th they released the system and probably that night the principals got a super fun exciting email from me asking them to pull out their rubric from may and june and enter those scores into the system so our principals did that in the first beginning part of october and that brings us to tonight where i get to give just a summary presentation of all the different scores and really what those mean in terms of the rubric that the state has us use and any implications or things that we're looking at in terms of as school safety teams or climate and ways that we can continue to enhance and improve our our programs our approaches our investigations things like that as it relates to anti-bullying technically um the
007because the system opens so late the state's not requiring districts to have that information submitted in the system and certified by january 31st but again we do things when they come out and we do them quickly so we will actually be entering that after we have our presentation tonight and then certainly the board needs to approve that and then i'll go in and certify the data and that will be submitted once the scores are submitted from the self-assessment the state then has their time or their time period where they will actually go in and they'll look at the grades and they'll certify those and a sign where you see to be determined they assign us a score or grade based on what we self-assess once we get that release and actually the release of the
008previous year's grades didn't come till june of last year but once we get that we have 10 days to actually release those grades and as soon as we do that we release them and put them on the school websites the district websites and then we have at the next board meeting we talk about those and again historically those scores they have certified what the self-assessment has proven true and they haven't changed our scores from year to year so that was the longest part i swear all right so core elements these are the different things that we are rating ourselves on and what the team is rating themselves on so school safety team has an administrator counselor who's the anti-bullying specialist other teachers represented staff that work together a parent representative and they're looking at these
009different core elements so first element is related to programs approaches and other initiatives that are going on at the school level or it could be something the district level that the school's then carrying forward the second is related to trainings on hip policy and making sure that your policy is up to date the third area is your staff instruction and training programs so are you training your staff are you training volunteers things like that the fourth area is curriculum instruction that's connect connected to hip and the prevention of bullying the fifth area is they do have the proper people assigned in terms of hib personnel so that would be i'm the district anti-bullying coordinator all the counselors are the anti-bullying specialists principal safety team and so on six is looking at and writing the incident
010reporting procedures that you have in place seven is the investigation procedures and then that last one is related to reporting and again that's once those grades come up are you actually releasing those and reporting those out so each of those different eight areas have has a range of either two to five indicators for each one so that when you're looking and scoring yourselves you're giving yourself either a zero a one a two or three for each of those areas and then what happens in terms of assigning school district grade each school gets a grade the district grade then is calculated by averaging the total of all your schools so the ones that i wanted to point out the most is number two which is meet and three which is exceeds so happy to report that
011all of our schools are either meeting or exceeding the requirements good like oops technical difficulty okay so this is a summary score so it's a snapshot of all the schools if we just take one and carry it across you'll see the different elements that i explained element one through eight the total score column is over here and then each of the schools so when we look at that we look at the total score it's a possible 78 points all of our schools are within that 73 to range and then we look at different areas and places when we're kind of going through the data in terms of you know what's the difference between a meat and it exceeds because again we are meeting in every single area and in most areas we're exceeding so we
012come up with recommendations each year oh and i think it actually skipped one in terms of we review at the district level and kind of analyze the data we talk to anti-bullying specialist principals then we develop and share recommendations and then and i just did that with our school counselors we had a meeting on monday was our first anti-bullying specialist and coordinator meeting then we talked to principals and then you will then turn key them or they will turn key them at the school level to their school safety teams so really some of the focus areas that we talked with and remembering that last year was a pandemic right and everything that we were doing um and that this year is still a pandemic and so that idea of ways to incorporate and make sure
013that we're doing everything that we can um again to promote kindness we have a kindness theme this year but we talked about um you know annual recommendations by the team so that they can look at like i said we go beyond just classroom climate and school climate we look at wellness and sustainability initiatives as well and then actually annually assessing those so those are two areas where we probably had the most variables in terms of score differences that the safety teams will look at and then we have talked about doing a spring survey in the past but again last year with a pandemic we decided not to do that so we will wait and see what continues to happen this school year and then that might be something we do this spring instead and that
014is my presentation thank you does the board have any questions for mrs mcgoolick on our presentation mr laszlotta uh just a quick question uh miss mcgullick um do you know how our school district fares uh against or compared to other surrounding school districts as far as total scores go and also hivs are hibs reported um you know within the within the district is there any record of that um once they're actually released so with this will be the first one's actually submitting so i don't have any data in terms of this we look at previous year data um certainly that's something that there was a decrease overall remember sorry march that's remote absolutely thank you very much mr glock miss magulo can i follow up on that question you said based upon the pandemic last
015year because we were in those cohorts we saw a we saw a dip right in inhib reporting um but i i don't know if i heard the rest of that correctly are we seeing because everyone's coming back in together are we seeing like a flush of it suddenly happening again or or is it pretty much dialed down [Music] yeah yeah now on on the flip side of that in terms of coming back this year one of the one of the barometers or the assessments is was wellness and are we seeing a a trend of more students who are in need of of like in terms of wellness and i don't see dependability but uh are feeling more overwhelmed than we would have seen previously or something along those lines are we seeing more influx of
016that this year uh [Music] yes i think that's i mean obviously hibb is always extraordinarily important but i think that mental health and emotional health coming back i mean school sometimes is an effect on stamina you know you you build a particular stamina how throughout a year of of your your stamina hits an expectation level and it's almost like working out at the gym i mean if you do the same weights all the time you get used to it when you push yourself harder your muscles get pushed harder i think education pushes you mentally and emotionally sometimes and there's a stamina level that i think that the students might got accustomed to and and i'm i'm just throwing this out there i mean this is i'm i'm sort of kind of asking that is there
017a like a stamina level i guess they'd gotten accustomed to and it's thrown them off the edge a little bit in terms of their their emotional wellness like this has been a lot more for them than because of last year's shortness or however it was designed is are we seeing that that's what i'm asking [Music] two weeks or three weeks to develop they take longer because again you're getting kids in some instances it absolutely has impacted so sack about the again of it's okay to go slow in terms of developing those routines and structures because that's really where you're going to be able to get them to expect your thought in terms of like having that trust that emotional well-being yeah because how can you learn if you don't establish the trust 100 percent thank
018you i appreciate that mr mcghuley any other questions all right let's uh let's move on thank you again all right at this point in time we're going to open the public comment for agenda items only if this meeting will now this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person again this is just for agenda items if uh anything is not agenda item like we have another section later hi name and address please is the microphone [Laughter] [Music] hi good evening i'm tracy brown i teach at marlton middle school
019and i am the second vp for the ysham township education association we as you see on the agenda it's the adjusted bus driver salary guide we were glad to work with the district administration to help with the bus driver shortage the sidebar agreement will hopefully help to recruit new drivers and retain existing drivers and i just wanted to acknowledge that in front of the board of ed the open lines of communication this year has really allowed us to work together and problem solve and work through some situations together so that's a positive thing i thought you should hear that's a wonderful thing to hear thank you miss brown appreciate that any anybody else all right we'll uh close that portion of meaning all right we're going to move into items as well real quick thank
020you for saying that it was nice to hear the positiveness we don't hear enough of that so thank you i appreciate you taking the time to come up and say that thank you mr megan at this point we'll move to item six approval of the minutes i need a motion to approve items six one through six three do i have a motion by ms ryan do i have a second second by miss fleming any questions or comments pertaining to approval of the minutes all right seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs cappello abstain this is ever hard abstain mr frieza cairo yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes this is noah yes mr lanzalada yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you at this point we'll move to item
021seven superintendents report and administrative items and your motion to approve items seven one through seven eight do i have a motion commissioned by this capella to have a second second by mr lanzalata before we go into questions and comments i will give the floor to the superintendent's report and dr smith thank you mr secure before i start my comments i just want to say thank you to mrs mcgulac for the great presentation she gave and also to miss brown for her comments and mr megan for recognizing that because uh it feels positivity's a positive thing and that's a tautology but i just said it today and tomorrow and in fact this whole week is a great illustration of this year so far it is school comma with masks school with halloween parades today and tomorrow
022back with gusto after a one-year hiatus school with visits all month from our eve sham fire department which has done educational programs for every grade every school this month and i want to say thank you to our eevsham fire department and fire inspector doug borgstrom for that awesome support and coordination it is school with red ribbon week activities all this week that promote a drug free and healthy lifestyle and why it's important to stand together against drugs and these are events that have happened every school year might have been virtual last year but are back now the way that they've been in the past including common elements for everyone week like special theme days where kids get to wear colors to school different kinds of fun activities red for the color of red ribbon week
023or wearing the same color by grade to emphasize teamwork against drugs food drives poster contests ribbon decorating and inviting families to partner with us and discuss that message of being drug free at home and with friends and extended family a special shout out to the yves sham alliance for their help and support of our district for red ribbon week and to the curriculum department for their work and coordinating those activities district-wide there are two sidebars on the agenda tonight i'd like to thank both etea and etaa for their support and collaboration with these sidebars from etea this evening we have vice president tracy brown and from eta aic vice president gary hoffman here as well as i put my glasses on miss romanelli and in the back mr mangan our jagger principal i think his
024first official board meeting it's great to have you mr mohawkin first the the bus driver sidebar so um this is to increase the hourly wages of our drivers multi-fold purpose we appreciate our drivers greatly they are essential staff in helping school be possible getting students to and from safely and this is being done to stay competitive in a in a very an increasingly competitive market both on the level of recruitment and retention of drivers and for anyone listening please help us spread the word we need and welcome all drivers and all people interested in becoming bus drivers to join our transportation team it will not cost you a penny to join us as a driver we'll provide the training cover the cost of the license and the fingerprinting you can email me directly we greatly
025appreciate anyone's interest in becoming a bus driver it's a great way to serve the other sidebar is on the director of special services position and the sidebar is to make that position be non-represented like our other two director positions director of curriculum and director of personnel currently that director of special services position is in etaa so this change would enable that director to join the other directors as part of superintendent's cabinet and among other benefits um will help in that way cabinet better reflect our district as a whole also district planning decision making budgeting and more will improve through contributions from that role of the director from that voice and perspective on the cabinet and then lastly um i have gotten a few emails from parents on the topic of vaccinations for ages 5 to
02611. so i would like to say i'm excited that we are in communication with our state health department about as we try to host vaccination clinics in each of our elementary schools at the earliest possible opportunity and that would be for families with kids aged ages five and up which is really exciting and as soon as i have more info i'll be sharing that out but we are definitely looking into that at the earliest chance that we get at all of our schools to make it as comfortable as possible an experience for our kids and our families that's it thank you mr pizzagaro thank you dr smith any questions or comments to item 7 miss ryan i just wanted to say how great it is that we're getting volunteering back in with our children and
027so kudos to mrs schuller for organizing two fantastic fundraisers coming up one for um operation yellow ribbon and the other for wiley food pantry so those are going to be going on and i think it's great to see the kids getting back into the idea of volunteering thank you ms ryan any other questions or comments okay oh i have a question uh real quick the um when we do these these uh vaccination sites uh are they gonna be designed just for five to eleven or will this also be for older students and possibly their parents great question so it'll be for anyone ages five and up so it could be our middle schoolers it could be high schoolers family members any anybody basically we we hosted one um at uh mustangtown mms this summer and
028uh went very well and um you know that that whole experience just showed the value of being able to um not just from a standpoint of proximity having the vaccinations only be close but just you know it's in that trusted environment of a school building and kind of reduces people's anxiety so i i i agree with that thank you i appreciate that all right uh with that being said let's uh go to a roll call please this is capello yes this is everhart mr fizzakero yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noel yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries thank you now let's move to item eight curriculum and instruction and a motion to prove items eight one through eight ten do i have a motion motion by mr
029cantham seconded by miss noel any questions or comments pertaining to curriculum and instruction seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs cappello yes this is everhart mr fizzicaro yes yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noel yes mr lanzalada yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you moving to item number nine finance and operations and a motion to prove nine one through nine nineteen do i have a motion motion by ms capela do i have a second seconded by mr lanzalata any questions or comments pertaining to finance and operations seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs cappello yes this is ever hart yes mr fraser caro yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs knoll yes mr lanzalata yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes
030motion carries thank you now moving to item 10 personnel you need a motion to prove items 10 1 through 10 10 do i have a motion motion by miss ryan do i have a second seconded by miss fleming any questions or comments pertaining to personnel okay so go for a roll call please mrs capello yes this is everhart mr fizzagaro yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes mission carries thank you move into item number 11 this is policy i need a motion to prove items 11 1 through 11 3. do i have a motion motion by miss ryan the seconded by ms cappello any questions or comments pertaining to policy i said one that's miss ryan i just wanted to um let
031everyone know that most of these policies are mandated and the one that isn't if you notice is the education of the homeless children it's just revised and that something was added so but it was highly recommended that we adopt that so just wanted to point that out thank you ms ryan i appreciate that any questions or comments to policy right let's go to a world called police mrs cappello yes this is everhart yes ms cara yes miss fleming yes mr catherine yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes motion carries thank you all right at this point we're moving to committee reports uh is there any committee chairs who wish to report all right uh mr lanzalata from the mrc first to congratulate the newly elected president of the
032mrc scott tarzi who took over walt miller we want to thank walt miller for his time and we look forward to working with scott and the rest of the newly elected and re-elected mrc board members also for mrc the marlton u10 girls travel team is a girls soccer team is putting together a blessing bags for the homeless the last collection dates are this weekend both saturday and sunday from 10 to two at memorial soccer fields and to please donate all toiletries like you know toiletries and chopsticks and toothpastes and all that kind of good stuff so thank you very much any other reports chopstick oh chapstick chapsticks i apologize did i say hi chopsticks you said chopsticks i didn't understand toiletries chapstick i mean it is a highly efficient way to eat i will give
033it that it does take dexterity um i actually have two things to say i just wanted to say to the pto presidents keep up the great work i heard all the halloween parades were fabulous this year and this week so kudos to everyone for trying to get some normalcy back for our students i i appreciate it i'm sure everyone else is appreciated i know it's not easy and then i just wanted to ask dr smith if you could just give us a little update on how the dinner went from um eastern education foundation i'd love to that's a great question thank you that's ryan yes the fall dinner for our eve education foundation um recently took place place at indian springs country club it was a great event uh great turnout and it's just it
034you know what it actually um brought back memories to me of the golf classic in june also run by the eastern med foundation because i had that same sense of just like um gratitude and a little bit like a mixture of awe and appreciation for the fact that so many people from our town are willing to do so much for people they have never met but but nowhere out there needing that help you know and um so to see like you see basically like this cross-section of so many different walks of life from our town there were business people just parents grandparents clergy educators all from coming from different places but with one common goal which is helping the kids of our town and uh so you know that there was a fundraiser both through
035the ticket sales and there was also items auctioned off and um 100 of the proceeds come back to our district in the form of direct support for programs so um you know that's a huge motivator for people who want to donate to eef is that you know that the money is going directly to support specific programs you can see it on their website and um so sometimes that feels really good to know exactly what's what you know what's being helped um and uh yeah so we really appreciate very much the work that they do thank you again for that question go ahead mr i also wanted to thank you for attending but i also wanted to thank you for your donations back to the district um we approved it in item 9.5 but i didn't
036get a chance to say thank you so i appreciate that thank you ms ryan i'll just say on that on that note just um that it's that's a very specific um like it's due to the very specific circumstances that i think pertain to very few superintendents so i don't i think of it just as something unique to my situation here because i live in town i've taught in town and i've taught many of and worked with many of the the families and current staff in our district and as we go through this multi-year journey of essentially cutting millions of dollars from a budget that isn't just supporting kids in our district but literally is like the fabric of our larger community it feels um it just felt like the right thing to do and but
037i wouldn't say i wouldn't in any way want to extend that beyond me to any other district or superintendent thank you dr smith that's right okay i just want to double check i just want to double check uh anybody else all right now we're going to move on to item 13 old business i have nothing do you have anything great we're going to move to item 14 new business i have nothing you have anything great all right we're going to go into open public comment number 15. this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personnel items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since you do not discuss these matters in public please
038leave your comments to three minutes per person anybody wish to speak seeing none i will close the floor all right at this point we're at board member announcements any board members have any misfunding sorry thank you mr visacaro i just wanted to make sure to uh remind everybody its early voting has already started it will end this sunday uh certainly please go make sure you exercise your right to vote as it is vital and crucial and as tuesday comes along the polls will be open so thank you everybody and have a good day thank you miss fleming anybody else other announcements oh mr cantham i'm sorry no worries man um i just wanted to um acknowledge a week and a half ago we had the evening township first cultural expo it was a great event
039i wanted to thank the council mayor diana for helping set that up we had a lot of performers there and every performer with the exception of two is either a current student or a former student of our district and additionally the stage was set up with a bunch of banners that our elementary schools created so that was really cool so thank you mr canton any others all right we're going to close announcements out we have no need to reconvene into uh executive session so i will ask for a motion to adjourn motion motion by miss everhart seconded by miss ryan all in favor hi happy halloween everyone [Music] you