001okay I'd like to call this meeting to order the mission of the Freehold Township School District is to honor and support every learner every day on the journey to become curious and engaged members of a diverse Global community a notice listing the time date and place of this meeting was posted on the public bulletin board of all Freehold Township Schools on the entrance door to the administrative offices to the Board of Education on the district website at the office of the Freehold Township Clerk published in the Asbury Park Press on January 6 2023 and sent to the news transcript on January 4th 2023 I'd like to invite you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which it stands
002one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign [Music] Mrs Lambert here we have a quorum okay I'd like a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from June 27 2023. okay [Laughter] a four I was like oh wait I had that Quorum panic I lost the Illinois it's just yeah at four valleys almost the majority of people in this room vote for it so you're good there's nothing in code that says about minutes okay Communications uh the only communication we have this evening is enrollment uh May of 23 we had 3485 students June of 23 we had 3483 uh compared to June of 22 where we had 3501. that's it for this evening um good evening I'd like to thank everybody who came out to join us tonight and I will
003have very or little president remarks because we have uh two we have a presentation this evening by Ms Montgomery who is going to present our map presentation from the spring but most importantly I'd like to move on to the administrators section of the report because we have students in our audience tonight that we're going to recognize for various essay contests and geography bees and that's the good stuff so I will turn it over to Dr brettauer thank you [Music] foreign so I apologize that we had um so many student recognitions a few a few of you I don't think made it to the June agenda so we wanted to take time even though it's summer there's a lot of vacations and some of our teachers are stuck in floods in with the weather so I
004apologize that it's just me and Miss Lambert and the rest of the board here I'll keep congratulate you so I I would like to ask Mr Smith to come up he is um principal of the barcalo school and really the Middle School administrator here tonight um and we're first going to recognize the students from the geography day at the Buffalo store do we want to um say anything about um sure um it was a geography that was conducted through all agree levels and then it was down to the finals where we have our three finalists so being third place so oh you can't hear me oh sorry we'd like to welcome Ethan Cohen to come get a certificate congratulations Ethan we've ever seen those questions which does Mom want to take a picture let's take
005a picture all right thank you Ethan and then I believe the first place who took it all Lucas salsman Lucas yes where I met earlier there's only one question so the competition of buckle is really really close between all three of them I think was there was a one question but Lucas uh persevered right was it one question you missed I think it was like the first one and then he got the rest of them right so it was really a great couple what grade are you in Lucas going into eighth so we have another geography Bay coming up no pressure no I just I I like geography and I you know right yeah so hard so hard like I don't know how you got them all right well as well it's already one question
006that stood out not that I can remember I get it it's July 20th I think if our second place winner he'll be recognized in August he said that he he went down on a technicality something about the renaming of something renaming of a country of the country right so yeah I knew the new name yeah so it was very challenging thank you for being here with your family thank you thank you and for the Eisenhower School speaking on behalf of Miss Gambino uh Mr G and Mr Krupp who is underwater right now we would like to acknowledge several students tonight so Carl are you here Carl come on up let's start with you [Applause] oh you look so handsome Shake Your Hands love this that's higher so Carl you were the lodge champion at the
007local level level at the Monmouth County American Legion safety essay contest do you remember what that essay was about what safe what safety means to me okay and can you tell us a little bit about what safety means to you um just having like somewhere where you don't have to like be afraid or you can walk around freely and you don't have to like be scared that like some Like You Don't Have To Fear like that something's gonna happen to you excellent very good so congratulations we're very proud of you for representing Eisenhower and our district love it next is see see ya am I saying it correctly see ya come on up see ya another about to put you on the spot congratulations Lambert's hand here so you had the Elks Lodge essay contest
008and you also were the local Lodge Champion do you remember what your essay was about um yeah it was about my American dream and that was um to increase the woman's payroll because women and men have like a difference in their pay like still and women get like much less than men these days even though they're doing the same job maybe even better and this is fascinating because I talked to my daughter about it all the time because I think when we are out on maternity leave we never catch up I think that's what in essence is happening right something like that thank you very much and congratulations thanks for being here and David come on up David geography the champion we have two champions in the house we should have an Eisenhower Barcelo geography
009geography bee off I think that would be great so David do you have a question that stuck out with you remember the last question which was uh in which African country is Mount Kilimanjaro located very good Tanzania all right we have a winner congratulations David on behalf of Miss Gambino Mr Krupp thank you for being here tonight a big round of applause for all of our recipients we're so proud of our kiddos our Middle School kiddos it is cool to know stuff even in the middle school it is cool to know stuff so I'm really very excited as a middle school person to get the one to have the microphone tonight so without further Ado we are going to turn it over to miss Montgomery and there'll be a couple of minutes when she's walking
010over to the computer which means students you can dismiss yourself if you like to go get ice cream and while miss Montgomery is walking to a presentation that you're like not going to want to listen to all right on test scores so good night thank you for coming go get some ice cream bring it back I apologize when my back's going to be to you all watch your head Bob just watch your head yeah we had we had lunch we had lunch we have our meeting during the week last week [Music] all right Bob doesn't eat himself nothing nothing my friend Bob all right good evening and thank you I'm apologizing in advance to have my back to you I'll try to work around and um but if you have questions as I'm going feel
011free to jump in and interrupt we're going to spend some time this evening talking about several things one is a review of the accomplishments of our district goals we're going to talk about some of the curriculum work that the district has accomplished over the course of this year we're going to look at our spring map data we're going to take a sneak peek at what's happening in the curriculum office this summer in preparation for next year and then look at the survey results from the parent and family engagement survey that went out in the late spring so I'm going to start with our review of our district goals as you may remember at the elementary school level we do two goals in the district one quantitative one qualitative the quantitative goal at both the elementary
012and middle school focused on students in grades three through five and then again in six through eight looking at the language Dart strand around reading informational text key ideas and details we identified students in these grade level bands whose writ score on the map fell below what one or more grade levels below where they're where they should have been in terms of grade level proficiency and we worked with those students and targeted intervention and targeted small group instruction to move their progress up by at least one writ band so not one rip point but a band they had to go up several points in that area at the elementary school level we had 466 students identified in this group across all five elementary schools which equates to about 41 of our elementary population so that
013was our elementary goal uh similar goal at the middle school again looking at informational text key ideas and details and literary texts so at the at the middle school we used those two strands whether we were it was reading fiction or reading non-fiction but that same idea of looking for key IDs ideas and details in the text um again we identified students who were in The Fall tested below grade level and we were looked to move them up one writ band at the middle school level we identified 746 students to participate in this goal which represents about 61 percent of our total Middle School population some of the things that we did to address this goal was obviously some pretty intensive map data analysis one of the things that Matt does for us in addition
014to just assessing kids is giving us instructional targets for kids so once we identify where kids are at Within These strands map tells us what kids are ready to learn next so that we can design small group instruction for kids so we spent a lot of time working in the map platform identifying what kids need instructionally we provided targeted focused small group instruction around these New Jersey standards for students we provided a tremendous amount of professional development for staff in terms of test data analysis using test data to design instruction supporting teachers in accessing materials to help them with this instruction we spent time focusing on the ELA companion standards this goal did not live in the language arts classroom our science teachers our social studies teachers even our Math teachers worked with students on
015helping them achieve this goal through these Ela companion standards we spent a lot of time working with teachers around small group targeted instructions supporting the resources and the tools that teachers had to do this kind of small group instruction in their general education classrooms and then obviously lots of ongoing discussions with our administrators about how they could provide leadership and support in their buildings to help teachers and students achieve this goal need like a mic drop me on this this slide um we achieved this goal with great success at the elementary school 86 percent of the students that we targeted met the goal and at the middle school level 88 of the students that were targeted and at the goal so this is really yes go ahead clap very exciting this is very exciting work
016for a lot of reasons not the least of which is um our kids made great progress this is also really exciting work because our teachers worked their tails off to get their students to get to this place um and Mrs Johnston can attest to This was um this was a true team effort across the board right while this was a goal around language arts or science in our social studies and our Math teachers were talking about how to support kids reading non-fiction text in their content areas um this really was a true example of it takes a village and and our kids made great growth as a result um this is just a quick visual around why we use math and and how important map is to help us in making these decisions and measuring
017student progress the uh lighter blue bar at the top elementary middle and all is the winter map scores for students in this Strand and the darker blue bar is the spring map score so you can see how much progress and growth happened for kids between winter and spring right and so when we think about why why we need to keep focused on what our goal is throughout the entirety of the year and not like not lose momentum mid-year but also how much progress happens between that winter and that spring assessment right like our our kids were even lower in the fall why they that's why they were identified for this goal but the the market progress that happened over the course of the year was really extraordinary the other goal that we had as a
018district was our qualitative goal this one is linked directly to our strategic plan and it talked about establishing and maintaining meaning for relationships with families community and schools as important contributors to Student Success success this was part of our um post covid um Community engagement portion of our strategic plan so schools and the district made a concerted effort to create opportunities for increasing parent engagement throughout the district so these are just some of the examples of ways that we did increase parent engagement in the schools throughout the course of the year including school and District newsletters our Board of Education Community roundtables Mrs venditoli we will I will be as this slide presentation goes on there will be an opportunity for a fall one that we can talk about middle schools brought back their career
019days and hosted two tremendously successful career days for their students and tons of great feedback from teachers from families from the presenters and most importantly from kids about what those days were um family challenges if you have anyone any students or friends or Neighbors in the elementary schools you have heard about the monthly math challenges the monthly reading challenges the activities that families engage in with their students that engage in learning curriculum connections at home and those were super um super popular and super well received by families um the one district one book initiative that we did at all of our elementary schools was tremendously successful so much so that um I didn't really anticipate preparing and planning for it for next year and resoundingly the elementary principals were like we're doing it again right
020um so yeah I'm gonna figure out how that's gonna happen uh yeah because because it was tremendously successful and again when we get to the slides around the community survey there was lots of positive feedback from the from the parent Community about how successful the one district one book initiative was in homes as well um this District Parent engagement survey was also something that was linked directly to the Strategic plan it was a targeted goal in our strategic plan and one that we put out um we had several school-based curriculum nights ranging from things connected to the one district one book The the wild robot but also things like Family Fitness nights right these all of these opportunities to fit for families to come to schools and be engaged in activities and learning with their
021students and then um through some some parent workshops so we are looking to do all of this and more moving into next year so these are small on the screen and I apologize for that I can provide printed copies for all of the board members or even put this on the website if that would be helpful but this is just a a small scattering of some of the accomplishments of the curriculum Department over the course of this year you'll notice some common threads across content areas including District common assessments standards-based standards based and standards aligned assessments at the middle school levels Bridges assessments that are standards aligned at the elementary school levels our science and social studies teachers will be doing that work moving into next year so you can see that it's trickling from
022language arts and math into our other content areas we worked on the implementation of a tool called Intervention manager which is linked to our link it platform and it is integral in our rollout of our new intervention model moving into next year we also spent time this year working on the revision of our identification criteria for our gifted and talented students one of our goals in our strategic plan next year will be a review of our program model for gifted and talented students and maybe making recommendations for changes around that as well go ahead I see it on your face go ask this year yes so that is not the purpose of intervention manager purpose of Internet intervention manager is a platform to build and track students who receive interventions they were we already had
023a process for identified so the the tool itself is not doing the identification our student data is doing is doing the identification so moving into this coming school year we're using this tool now that all of our data lives in Lincoln and that we have intervention manager working one of our slide coming up there um one of the things that we have done is use our district local data to identify entrance and exit criteria for students for intervention because right now there is no standard way to be identified in indeed intervention so we used we did a full-scale analysis of our local data and I can't let me just hold that thought I want to get to the slide because there's a visual on that slide that will be helpful okay thank you let's bring
024that um so just some reasons as a reminder map is different than njsla njsla is an achievement test it's given once a year by the state it measures how students um are are it measures how students compare to the state standards related to achievement nwea map measures how students grow compared to themselves across the standards so again I mentioned earlier that we use map to not just monitor student growth but identify instructional needs the platform is tremendously helpful and I in in giving teachers um sort of a road map to what kids need instructionally and it also has a tremendous amount of resources in terms of helping teachers to plan for instruction and then of course we use all of that to provide staff development to our teachers in um you know in in team
025meetings and articulation meetings things like that um these are the Norms I will reference and come back to I just put a slide in here in case you have questions we can come back and forth um I'm going to go through Eli and for Math and one of the things that I did differently in this year's presentation that I thought would be helpful for you is on the graphs I identified where our students are the bar represents where our students are and there's a colored line across the top of each bar that represents the national rules you can see from students in our district are performing as compared to the National Department okay so which button is red button Red Dot got it okay so so you can say this is for example kindergarten in
026the spring the Art District Caverns were the 156 and the national norms so same thing here and send me parade in the spring our students average rates from 90 Nationals so one of the things that you might notice on this graph is that across the board other than in the fall of first grade but I'm not worried about so much about fall that's I am spring because again we're looking at growth our students are consistently outperforming the national Norm okay um one of the things you'll notice as we move forward in the three through five and the six through eight that we have comparative data give back to uh uh K two students last year so I don't have comparative data this is our first year doing that okay so this is three through five
027Ela again um looking at the colored bar as compare or the colored line as compared to the bar our students again are outperforming in all three grades three four and five compared to the National Norm and you can see that that's consistent across years right so our our performance in grades uh third grade and fourth grade and fifth grade is pretty consistent from year to year and we are consistently around that National Norm across all three grades this is six through eight they squish it onto one slide so we have Eisenhower's data on the top graph and barcalo's data on the bottom graph and you can see with one very small exception our district middle schools also consistently perform above the national Norm thank you is the National Mall instead place the national Norm is
028considered a 58 miles all right so we're going to do the same thing looking at Max this is K to two again we don't have year to year comparative data because we didn't do map with our youngsters last year but again as a whole we are looking at students who are performing our our students are outperforming the National Norm in all of the primary grades K to two similarly we see um you know Common a common theme is that across years from one year to the next one similarly you know not any Market increases are decreasing and again exceeding that National Norm number and then finally six through eight again barcalo at the top Eisenhower at the bottom one thing to note about math that I always like to point out is the um the
029difference between eighth grade math and algebra right we because we offer a high school level course all of those kids on the far right hand side who get pulled out of 8th grade math and take algebra um we don't have norms for that because that's a high school level course but our norms for eighth grade are are slightly below the national level but that is because we typically funnel most of our higher performing math students into the algebra course and still we're not very far right like so here at Barcelo our eighth grade average was a 229 the national Norm is a 230. same thing for Eisenhower so we are just slightly ever so slightly below the national Norm all right preview of some plans moving into next year um Carrie this is where I'll
030get to your question and we'll talk about it some more um so first one of the Committees that we had that worked through this spring was Arcata 2 resource reading resource selection committee um as you may remember I had shared that we reviewed several different uh reading programs to take a look at potentially changing the resource that we use to teach primary reading at the K-2 level the committee reviewed all of these programs on the left hand side one two three four five six seven different programs eight Concepts as separate from collaborative classrooms so eight different programs looking at um and coupled with mediocre to not good reviews of many of the programs along with the fact that the state is due to adopt and has not yet adopted new standards for reading K-12 that
031we will have the 2324 school year to review and align our curriculum with for implementation in September of 2024 we decided it was not the right time to be adopting new curriculum materials so we are going to take this year to do some really targeted work around our existing curriculum materials we um are building new pacing guides for all of our Kata 2 using the existing materials that we have our kindergarten the only thing that we'll be updating in kindergarten is we're buying the new reading units of study that'll support reading comprehension um staff development around the use of those units they were initially rolled out during covid additionally there is a whole phenomena awareness component to the program that the staff have never received training around um and we're going to build a pacing
032guide that looks similar to a traditional teachers manual for a reading program right like you would open it up and you would say here's our unit of study it includes reading comprehension skills phonic skills that are linked to it decodable readers handwriting so kids are learning how to write the letters that they're learning how to sound they're learning the correspondence of letter letter and sound correspondence all of those things will be connected we're creating we're creating a teacher's manual for the kind of program that we know kids need for reading um because we didn't find anything out there that was as good as as what we can do okay okay um no choking during my presentations but if you do I can save you um so are our what we are proposing moving into this
033year is we're going to adopt the new teachers College reading units of study for reading comprehension for kindergarten only so that we have an opportunity to Pilot we're building pacing these pacing guides for K one and two and we will take this year to measure student progress and data around the implementation of this model with the understanding that moving into the into this coming year we have new standards that are being released we will review the new standards and probably in the springtime of next year definitely in the springtime of next year I'll be making recommendations about what we'll be doing sort of larger scale moving forward that being said we also plan to build one of our district goals around kindergarten through second grade reading we know based on the earlier slides in this
034presentation when you identify a goal and and the whole village participates in the in the success of that goal our kids and our teachers achieve great things so you will see a district goal in the fall when we present our goals that will be around kindergarten through second grade early reading uh another thing that we worked on um over the course of the spring is the revision of the elementary school standards-based report cards K to five um Diane and I were chatting this afternoon trying to remember the last time that those report cards were touched and we dated back to somewhere around 2016. that sound about right yes um well wait till you say Mr Williams has samples he can pass around so you can take a look at um the team did um a
035really extraordinary job identifying uh standards that are much more tightly aligned to the standards and to how we teach um we are moving to trimesters at the elementary school so students will receive report cards three times over the course of the elementary school but every kid will get a report card every marking period so kindergarten through fifth grade three marking periods a fall a winter and a spring report card um one of the things that we heard a great deal from both teachers and families was that the report cards were not meaningful to parents because they didn't understand them so we also built or I built um with support from the committee a parent guide a companion parent guide so here's my this is our community Roundtable yeah this is our community Roundtable um so
036there will be a published parent guide that goes along with these um with these new standard-based report cards that gives parents information about how to read them how to understand the standards what do the standards mean um as well as access to standards based assessments that students will be taking so they can understand where these scores come from like how do you so it's that they don't feel like their students are arbitrarily being given grades but those grades are linked to how their kids are performing against the standards um we the executive function rubrics that were already built into the report cards will be easier for parents to access right now that you have parents have to access them through a grade book in Genesis and there's like several fiery Hoops that parents have to
037jump through in order to find out how their kids are doing socially and behaviorally all of that will be built into the report card template they have to go to one place and see everything um they students will receive grades for related arts as well we worked with the related arts teams throughout the course of the year they identified standards in each of their content areas so they'll be getting grades in each of the related arts areas and there will be a section for narrative comments as well on these report cards and it can um the other thing is related to elementary school report cards um and this was feedback that came directly from the teachers one of the community one of the concerns or the confusions that parents have is that because parents aren't
038necessarily um as versed in the standards as teachers are when when you say to parents um this is how your child is performing against the standards parents don't know what that means so we're going to open the link at Parent Portal link it has a parent portal so parents can see how their students perform on standards-based assessments the data will live and Link it is there a question yep correct it there is there is no averaging there is no averaging and one of the things that these report cards reflect because that's not what standards-based report that's not what standard-based measures are the other thing that is new about these grades or grading scale on the report card is that it speaks to um standard expectations at the end of a school year one of the
039things we heard a great deal um of parent feedback about is I don't understand how my kid can be progressing at one point in the year and then not progressing at another point in the year around a standard so we redesigned the whole grading scale so that the expectation is that students are achieving an end-of-year grade level standard right so it so it is seen more as a role model which is good yes where are here that would say that you've met you repeat it nobody yes you would know it by the grading scale at the top so it says you meet an end of year standard or you exceed an end of your standard so those letters in the grading scale at the top will be reflected in each of the boxes oh yes
040there are they are letters that rep but not like ABCD they are letters that represent um it's exceeding exceeding standards meeting standards progressing towards standards report card based on standards yes yeah but though so there's a the grading scale will be at the top so parents understand what those letters represent not the same letters it's not the same letters but the same concept um okay Carrie this goes back to our uh your question before about intervention right so currently our intervention pyramid is is flipped upside down as this picture looks right we are intervention is intended to be um targeting students moving up the pyramid as they need greater intensity of support right but what's happening right now is that we have a whole lot of kids getting tears for intervention that any Applause for
041servicing so so many kids can have that tier three level they're not getting the frequency and the duration and the consistency that they need of a tier three intervention because our caseload is way too high and we're not appropriately identifying kids so our goal moving into next year and using LinkedIn intervention manager as the Clearinghouse for this is to flip that pyramid back around we've got several committees working this summer again I've shared working on entrance and exit criteria for each tier of that pyramid um as well as what we're calling a program profile guide so we will be giving to teachers and to interventionists a tool so that they can look at the profile of a student they can look at students data they can say this student is struggling with reading fluid and
042we will have a resource guide for them if this student is struggling with this here is a series of resources that we have in District that you can use to support that right now there isn't any consistency about how kids are being placed with particular intervention programs across the district and and this will streamline that process we've also drafted a standard operating procedure manual that will be given to everybody around our processes for intervention um back to your question oh okay yes so yes yes that exactly like RTI so what's going to happen at the tier one level is our instructional coaches at the elementary schools and at the middle schools will be working with the administrators to do what we're calling data sweeps three times a year Following fall map data the uh instructional
043coaches along with some selected data team members will analyze their school's data and make recommendations around tier one interventions these are interventions that 80 or 90 of our kids need right so that we look at Mac data from barcalo and we say everyone in sixth grade but for a handful of kids who can get some enrichment project need to review this standard the coach will write lesson plans for what that what that needs to look like what that needs to look like and give it to the classroom teachers to teach in their room that's a tier one intervention right tier two will be um okay tier two will be um also in the classroom delivered by the classroom teachers but these are kids who are struggling at a little bit higher level right these are
044kids who um based on that fall map data um are not making progress around around a particular standard but even at a lower level than the tier one than the tier one kids those kids are going to get pulled into targeted small group instruction also by the classroom teacher this process will be the interventionists will manage the tier two and the tier three interventionists will do that same data analysis process we'll review data look at this entrance and exit criteria that we've identified and build an intervention plan for individual kids then they'll hand over that intervention plan to the classroom teacher along with less here's what Terry needs to focus on numbers and operations around this particular standard here is six Gates worth of lots of plants and progress moms are coming to check back
045in with you originally doing eating that goal and that and that shot and we'll do and we're implementing we're going to actually pilot two different tools for Progress monitoring through the fall semester um to do that and then tier three the only kids that are interventionists are going to be working on working with directly are those tier three kids those kids are going to get intervention five out of six days in the six day cycle because that's what intervention needs to look like for those kids right um close that Gap close that Gap right correct yeah and our intervention Cycles are going to run somewhere around eight years okay thank you thank you um and then this is the great news that we get to end with so our parent engagement survey results um this
046uh we received so the the survey went out in two different Communications one in the um spring newsletter or the summer newsletter and one in a school messenger blast we were asking um parents and family members to share with us their perceptions of both the district the school their students attend we asked for feedback or suggestions regarding parent engagement topics that they might be willing to share or um you know bring information to the district around and then we specifically surveyed parents do you have an area of expertise that you can bring to us as a as a district that can help help us do better for your kids we had 313 families reply to the survey which I thought was a great turnout um it closed on the 30th of June after we again
047sent those several Communications so the first question asked parents about their perception of the district um and and we looked at this from you know positive which included very positive and positive or negative which included very negative and negative 92.7 nearly 93 percent of our community feels positively about our school district that's really powerful right I know that's that's a that's a cheer that's absolutely a cheer that that that's really exciting right and especially on the heels of of covid and feeling like um families were feeling disconnected and we were worried about kids struggling this is all really really good news we asked parents then to narrow down their perception now think about not just the district as a whole but where your child attends school parents were invited to complete this if they had
048kids in different schools right if they had a student at an elementary and another student at the middle they could fill this out for their respective kids um again really really strong positive responses collectively just shy of 95 of families feel positively about the school that their student attends really exciting the other question that um I thought was really interesting was this knowledge of curriculum we wanted to know from parents do you feel like you are knowledgeable about what your child is learning in school every day this really tells us whether or not parents genuinely feel connected to the learning that's happening in the classroom again just shy of 90 87 percent of families felt positively or very positively that their students that they are knowledgeable about what their kids are learning each day in
049school they're coming home and they're connecting with their kids about school and that's wonderful and then I just um highlighted for you some of the feedback that we received on the survey um I um you know just pulled a selection of both positive and negative because I because I think it's important that you know that we know what families are sharing with us in terms of in terms of feedback the thing that really struck me about all of the open-ended feedback that parents gave many of these things up here that you know were intended to be critical feedback for us are things that were already on our radar things that we're already working on right like transportation is needed for after school sports we know we're working on it right like so these were things
050that we're working on already and things that are on our on our you know sort of to-do list for next year making the website more accessible and easier Ali Williams thank you for our amazing new website right more opportunities to engage parents at the middle school we know like like um you know the career days brought parents back in and we're looking to capitalize on that moving forward so um even the critical feedback is good because I feel like it reinforced for us these are things we know these that like the community we and the community are all on the same page about the things that we're doing in terms of next steps in terms of community engagement family engagement in the schools so that was exciting so I'm going to pause for questions go
051ahead Miss Montgomery uh that's very impressive thank you question has the learning loss from covid closed um that's very interesting that you should ask I just shared with the curriculum committee last week a new article that was just published in edweek about a week or two ago um it was it highlighted the research that nwea which is the company that publishes the map assessment did they surveyed upwards of six million kids across the country um and and determined that the Gap is not closed in fact yet um and and what their data tells us is that um the early beginning stages of covid that you know that spring of 2020 was really what hit us most hard and it um because kids were out of school for approximately four months that four months is where
052kids are falling behind so there they are the data is telling us that kids you know that it will take an additional four to four and a half months in that range for both math and language arts for kids to catch up and that includes us it includes everybody that's nationally okay yeah I mean again I think that our data is really positive we are we you know our kids are performing consistently we are not seeing you know any Market drops in our in our students it's impressive as a whole and we are you know we are hanging tight with the national Norms so I think those are those are all good things what I like to see you know would I love to be able to stand up and show you a much higher
053more of course but um but we're moving in that direction in a slowing in the right direction absolutely secondly when was the alphabet and or numerical system of grading changed was it recent was it 10 years ago I think it dates almost back to 2016. so we use traditional numerical grading at the middle schools and that's not going away we will that will that will stay um it it makes sense in terms of our kids transitioning to high school and you know that so that that is isn't going anywhere but there's a tremendous base of research around using standards-based reporting to um you know to talk about student progress at the early childhood and Elementary level okay I have extra copies I can share reports I have extra copies you don't have to hoard the
054report card templates um the the only other thing that I'm just going to share with the board because you're like by the end of the Fall you're going to be tired of seeing me um per department of education requirements are um our access scores were released this past month um access is the assessment that we give for our English language Learners in the district I have to report those scores out within 60 days of release so our second meeting in August I will be sharing those scores with you at some point in the next month or so I anticipate the Department of Education will release our dlm and our njsla scores dlm is the um the assessment that our students with significant disabilities taken in jsla is the the standards-based assessment um those were both
055given in the springtime those scores again should be released in August which means I will be reporting them out to you at some point by the end of October Mr Williams is going to share it in his committee report foreign but most importantly thank you for the work that you've done um we are aware the board members are aware I don't know how much the public is aware of how much pressure this board put on you specifically in particular which I'm sure then the domino effect went down to those that report to you and all the way down to the teachers in the classroom um for uh work and and and progress that we wanted yesterday and we and you kept saying you need to be patient you need to be patient but you did
056work at a lightning speed that I'm sure was no you're still working but we appreciate the effort and I I'm not sure that everyone understands what that took to get that done but I want you to know we do understand and we do appreciate it 100 percent who may not even know how much pressure the board put on top they're just gonna they're just we're like what yeah so we appreciate the work all the way down right down to the students who put the work in themselves as well because it wasn't easy on them it was a lot it was a lot for some of them to undertake and you know and and stay in the grind every day to you know keep working toward it so again thank you so much um so I
057guess this point if you go to public participation um this is the first opportunity for public participation if anyone wishes to address the board on any item that is on the agenda this evening please step to the podium state your name and write your name and address on the sign in sheet statements should be limited to three minutes in length and should not be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature if anyone would like to address the board on an agenda item and now is the opportunity to do so and okay okay no takers so we'll go to Personnel committee meeting Miss O'Sullivan okay today we had a committee meeting and people in attendance for Dr breathower Crystal guardrullo and myself we discussed and reviewed the agenda and we also discussed and reviewed summer Staffing updates
058okay um looking at number three for resignations I would like to move resignations as stated I'd like to move new employment as stated number five change of assignments as stated number six change of assignments and salary adjustments for 2023 2024 as stated number seven calories for 2023 2024 for lunchroom assistance as stated number eight leave of absence as stated number nine evaluation tool for 2023-2024 school year as stated number 10 student teacher practicum observation placements as stated number 11 bilingual evaluations 2023 2024 as stated number 12 additional compensation Wilson instruction as stated number 13 additional compensation transfer of assignment slash room as stated number 14 additional compensation safety trainer and recertification as stated 15 unpaid days as stated 16 District honoraria as stated 17 esy staff as stated 18 PBS summer committees as stated 19
059summer IEP meetings as stated number 20 curriculum committee as stated certified substitutes as stated 22 non-certified substitutes as stated and that is it does anybody have any questions can I have a second okay Sprint on it yes yes Mr Gargiulo yes Mr Sullivan yes Mrs Anatoli yeah Mr Williams yes The Slammer yes motion carries okay um do you want to welcome yes yes I apologize that's okay I just want to take a minute to welcome Lauren polsonatalie who is uh joining our technology department as a secretary as you know uh I'm stealing Laurel O'Brien in my office and Bob stole Tracy Ambrose so it was a little game card game we have going on um and I also do want to give a public shout out to Ali Williams who worked very closely with Joe
060and Andrew um to get our website up and running with the new format so it can be read and she is an unofficial member of the technology department and Joe just welcomed his first baby boy all these things are positive things questions and you know what Ally you remind me of the show years and years ago in Remembering Living Color yeah I got nine jobs I got 10 jobs she does it all she does do it 10 jobs so thank you um okay with that we'll move on to curriculum and it is Mr Williams yeah good evening everybody curriculum met on the 20th of July at noon the attendees were myself Mary casolini and assistant superintendent Rebecca Montgomery uh so a lot of my notes were already presented by Miss Montgomery but I will touch
061on a couple of the highlights that we discussed in committee uh first foremost wanted to comment on the the uh parental or the parent engagement survey uh I was impressed by results but not surprised and that was committee-wide when we got we saw those for the first time and we were also impressed but not not surprised by the number of responses we got to the survey uh we talked about the uh new uh tier system for support of our students that require intervention and that that will be rolled out to the staff come the fall Miss Montgomery will be presenting the njsle testing results no later than November so we'll see her again I'm like the bad Penny and then with the access scores being presented at the August 29th meeting so we will see
062her again again uh we talked about the map science assessments they will be administered to our fifth and eighth grade students in the fall and spring and we did discuss uh we were given our copies as I shared with the uh attending members uh board members tonight the updated K-5 report cards and when we first kind of discussed this in the first kind of you know looking for how we can improve this uh one of the one of the things I came right out with was the new comment section and I think uh also based off on the said some of the feedback we got from the survey results uh communication with the teachers and the parents I think that comment is really going to enhance that comment section is really going to enhance that
063that and take care of you know one of the things that we heard back on on the feet on the uh the survey so again I get thoroughly impressed with the new report cards as a committee we were I should keep saying I was but we were uh and again thank Miss Montgomery for a wonderful presentation tonight and also all the hard work that she's done with this thank you lastly we are I would like to recognize Katie Holmes and Laura sicilion who presented on the topic putting the heart in high frequency words instruction for K through second grade at the Paramus summer uh literacy Institute we've I can't read my own writing I'm horrible I'm sorry uh and also um Bonnie hunch Han and chill how windshield I said it wrong before too uh
064I apologize if she's watching uh and Meg Campion will actually in the future be presenting at the New Jersey science convention and we'll be discussing scientists as readers building and using a library in the science lab uh and also as a committee we talked about having these presenters come in in a future meeting to present to show us this presentation you know obviously if they want to scale it back whatever the case might be but in some form essentially showing us these you know presenting to us a shorter scale of these presentations because I think we should highlight these these wonderful Educators as well uh so from the agenda we'd like to move number three course reimbursement as listed number four recent course reimbursement as listed number five home instruction as listed number six twenty
065twenty three twenty four virtual or remote instruction plan as listed number seven affiliation agreement with Kane University as listed number eight affiliation agreement with Rowan University as listed and that's all I have for tonight [Music] oh sorry I shot it before um okay moving on to finance facilities and transportation is mandatory thank you Mrs Lambert uh the finance facilities and transportation committee did meet this evening in attendance for Mr DaVita Mrs Williams uh Mrs Lambert and myself um the items we discussed for the year on financials while we have somebody to place into reserves this was the lowest amount since we became self-insured for health care uh we've discussed sale of buses we have too many spare buses and are looking to sell some of them in the upcoming months we discussed the facility use
066policy making some minor language changes to the policy and a recommendation to increase the rate since they have not been updated in several years the we discussed Miss Williams work on the website um in the new calendar where we'll uh the new calendar will allow the board and the public to see upcoming events for each School we got a construction update uh Bob lets know about the ongoing construction projects and the motion for the Professional Services contract to review the issues with the chillers at West Freehold and we discussed the giraffe uh in the room the route 537 and stillwells Corner Road expansion that's been going on and being discussed for years um County will be asking us to give them an easement on some land for the expansion of both roads so Bob will
067let us know when we get anything formally presented for that and we went over agenda items there was a flash meeting any questions so then I'm going to move all the agenda items um number three bills and uh number three building planes we have all of those in the amount of three million 436 264.66 payroll three million 165 918 and two cents for a grand total of six thousand six million 600 and 2183.68 odd number four travel and related expenses as listed number five transfers as listed number six ratify transfers as listed number seven the settlement agreement as listed number eight the commission for the blind contracts as listed number nine the wellness policy assessment tool as listed number ten approval of the competitive contract proposal for computer adaptive standards-based assessment 24-06 as listed number
06811 the out of District contracts is listed number 12 the contract with Apple Computers as listed number 13 the maintenance Reserve account as listed number 14 amended esser2 Grant as listed number 15 the amended ARP Grant as listed number 16 Professional Services contract for the Westfield Chiller and heat pump Source piping system assessment and report of findings as listed any questions all in favor sad obviously oh sorry summer is difficult there's a lot of us in and out on various weeks I have one thing for new business old is okay uh last Thursday I got to attend the Summer band camp concert over at Barcelo very awesome and why do you uh thank Dr breathhauser as uh the the director did I'll thank her myself they did an awesome job and he was very complimentary
069of the work that they did together to bring this Camp to fruition it was an awesome concert the kids did a great job thank you for attending if it's not on my account like he told me and then it's it slipped my mind so I feel very remiss uh Mr Crawford worked closely with Bob DaVita to make this happen and it does no cost to the district it's a minor fee for parents and we are able to service a lot of kids over the summer in two three week sessions so we hope to be able to continue and thank you to all the volunteers who donate their time yeah um there are tons of high school college teachers come back come back it's all volunteers he's actually um started to integrate them because a lot
070of them were music Majors he explained so the first piece that they did was actually a piece written by one of the former students that the the children put on and she conducted it and then he on another song he brought up another former student who's conducted the orchestra called conductive band it was it was really fantastic and again you don't have a lot of time to put this together no yeah it was like I said it was a quick quick turnaround mornings which is hard in the summer to get you know I can tell you my daughter was in the band full disclosure and uh yeah it was sometimes it was a little hey you gotta get up and go so but I think the kid the the students certainly get credit everyone gets
071Credit First it was a fantastic event thank you good to know yeah um just one last reminder if you're I know who is not going to stay at the conference if you're going but if you are staying I need to know what hotel you'd like us to book and then from the email I sent out last month because otherwise you'll all be staying in the parking lot at the convention center in somebody's car okay pretty much yeah um also I mentioned at a previous meeting that policy may you know maybe moving Neil and I spoke about this couple of months ago um I only heard back from one board member who was concerned about shifting things in the middle of the year so if anybody else and and we haven't discussed that yet but if
072anybody else has any concerns about that let me know but I do want to remind you this is not the middle of the year for this District it may be our middle of the year but this District started a new year on July 1. so things happen here July 1 so it's a it's a little bit of a mindset shift I get that it seems like it's in the middle of the year for us it is our middle of the year but it's not this is their new beginning of their year and it makes sense to do things now so if that if timing was your only concern hopefully that puts that to rest but if there are others reach out to me and just let me know and again we'll get back um on
073the retreat bandwagon very shortly can I make a plug sure just wanted to say to everyone out there watching and everyone here that we have open postings for part-time teacher assistants they are salaried positions they are a percentage of a full-time it's five and a half hours a day it's a it's a perfect gig for someone who's trying to manage a family and a job we're also hiring for lunch assistants and we are now paying 15.50 an hour we have positions vacant around the district so and if you're interested in subbing we just found out today while there was um legislation that allowed people who have 30 credits who are progressing towards 60 credits to sub you now if you have 30 credits and you're not enrolled in any other classes you may get your
074substitute certificate your instructional substitute certificate that was hot off the presses today so if you have 30 credits and you're interested in being a substitute our rates are the same as last year please reach out um our application is on the website that's easily defined right now you can also contact HR we'd love to onboard you before we begin School okay with that we will move on to our second opportunity for public participation this is an opportunity to address the board on any item that affects our school district um if you would like to address the board please write your name and address on the sign-in sheet state your name for the record comments should be limited to three minutes in length and shouldn't be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature everyone this is on
075there yeah that's it okay my name is Zane Alcott last time I was here was about a month ago and I brought up my concerns about parents not being informed by the school when it comes to certain topics that involve the children and I hate to break it to you but my concerns have just got like a little bit worse I guess it's because in the past month I've been around town talking to a lot of parents and there's two things that uh always came up that was in common one is that they didn't even know that this was going on and two is that they agree with me that they want to know what's going on between their child and school so um excuse me so the one thing that uh I have a
076hypothetical situation a question I guess for a hypothetical situation but I don't think it's that bad of a hypothetical situation at all one thing we were talking about is what would happen if something bad happened to the kid or the kid did something bad and then how would they know if the school knew anything about it and then if the school finds out or if they if the school does let people know that they knew about something that the parent didn't know about some situation what would be um what would be let me think I guess what would be the consequences like how would you take care of that situation if all right sorry it's just getting distracted when you guys are talking to each other and everything yeah the president she speaks so we
077we not take it we don't take questions yes yeah you don't have to answer the question yeah I don't expect to have an answer for this question but the whole thing is if something bad happens to the child or he did something bad and the parent doesn't know about it that you do investigation it finds out the school is involved it seems like the school is going to get in a lot of trouble for that it seems like the parent's going to be really upset about that it seems like everyone's going to lose and the child loses on it when you could have uh you could have I have to be honest I'm not really sure what you're asking well it's a hypothetical situation because there's information that you're not telling the parents I wouldn't
078know anything about that so I I don't know anything about that so that's part of the the policy was it uh the trans policy at the respiration whatever I think it's 56 57 I forgot the what it is but I mean it's pretty adult are you telling me that there's that there's no information that the school holds from the parents with every situation he said a child does something bad right no no that's okay I mean there could be something going on as the school is talking to the kid that he could be having some kind of problem well having a problem and doing something bad bad to me would indicate that there was some action that occurred that required um some sort of disciplinary intervention because it violated our school code of conducted but
079what happens if um what happens if the child hurts himself though and it was something that was going on it was a discussion that was only happening between the child and the school and the parent had no idea that the Situation's going on at home we're not talking about bullying we're talking about just something if there's bullying going on I'm hoping you're informing the parents but I'm talking about the situations that happen where you don't have to inform the parents yeah if you want to email more specific questions we can um have them answered for you outside the board meeting okay I don't I I can't answer in hypotheticals because we have various policies and your questions aren't specific enough to be answered honestly so if you have specific questions regarding School discipline you can
080address them to uh Dr breath hour it's not a discipline problem curriculum it would be Miss Montgomery and any other school policy can address directly to Mr Dixie who's Mr Dixon the superintendent okay so all right I'll talk to him then he's in charge of policy all right okay thanks guys thank you your microphone um the start of your comments reference that um parents that you were talking with in the community were not aware of things happening in the school and I just want to refer back to the survey that I the results that I shared earlier that overwhelmingly the parents in our school Community responded that they was talking about the education though I thought that's the education material we're talking about policies that are in school that's what I was talking about thanks
081good evening my name is Deb Smith I'm a Freehold Township resident and um I've addressed the board before and I'm happy to come back again and to just say thank you to all of you for your amazing leadership over the last few months I've made it a practice to attend some of the area school board meetings so where do I begin I'll start with gratitude that our town is not embroiled in controversy and has not shamefully violated New Jersey Law and made the news in a most unflattering way I'm grateful for your steady leadership and for following the law which is 5756 based on policies written by experts in the field I've heard testimony from those countless experts and I've learned so much in the process I'm a 40-year professional social worker retired but my
082background is in medical social work so what I've done is I've leaned into the experts and I do hope that the board will do the same I've heard from psychiatrists psychiatric nurse practitioners social workers and therapists working with the lgbtq community who have unequivocally spoken out encouraging that the policy not be changed in any way it is a fact that this population faces extreme depression elevated suicide risk and homelessness some argue that parental rights are being challenged and I'd like to challenge that narrative I'd like us to reframe that narrative and suggest that these policies actually help support a family the entire family by protecting their children from a practical perspective I'm a taxpayer and have been for nearly 38 years my daughter at age 30 now is an extremely successful product of Laura Donovan
083and Barclay special props to Mrs Johnston acknowledgments to Mrs pagel's tumulty Leslie Rubens all incredibly influential in developing her skills as a writer I'm deeply deeply grateful for them and for all of the other Educators and for the guidance of this board I value our schools and I want to keep our reputation as is and do not want us to be undidly influenced by outside influencers thank you so much for your time thank you would anyone else like to address the board any questions or comments okay we have a taker sing none I want to thank you all for coming out participating this evening I wish you our happy and uh healthy summer until our next meeting enjoy hopefully non-rainy weather on any random day as that's how it goes these days and have a
084safe trip home I'd like a motion to adjourn second all in favor say aye aye see you soon my family