001very good okay i'd like to call this meeting to order the mission of the freehold township schools in partnership with our community is to prepare all students to be responsible citizens and lifelong learners a notice listing the time date and place of this meeting was posted on the public bulletin board of all freel township schools on the entrance door to the administrative offices of the board of education on the district website at the office of the freehold township clerk published in the asbury park press january 8 2021 and sent to the news transcript on january 6 2021. i'd like to invite anyone who'd like to join us in the pledge of and to allegiance republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with repeating justice for all roll call mr amoroso mrs costanza
002here mrs casolino here mrs holtz here mrs o'sullivan brother mrs thomann here mrs van der tulley here miss patton president mrs lambert here okay i'd like a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes from september 28 2021. second all in favor say aye bye i'd like a motion to approve the special meeting minutes from the october 12 2021 retreat meeting all in favor say aye aye aye yeah okay okay communications the only communication we have this evening is enrollment in june of 2021 we had 3 621 students in september of 2021 we had 3 488 students and compare that to the prior year in september it was 3581 students and that is all okay president's remarks i'd like to start by um welcoming andrew and joe our tech department who are our uh at our
003meeting this evening and our future meetings thank you our board had a retreat on october 12th and at that retreat we discussed the state of the district some board goals district goals you know just to keep that brief but one of the items that came up at the retreat regarding the increased parent population that we've had at meetings and what sometimes seems to be a lack of understanding on how our meetings function and thought that maybe we would do a quick primer on the board of education structure and the structure of our meetings so i guess um as we go from section to section i'll explain in greater detail how things go but for the most part um i'll just start by saying that open public meeting act known as the sunshine law in the
004state of new jersey requires that board of education meetings be held in public which means that all members of the public have access to attend and view the meeting it is not a public meeting per se it's a meeting held in public boards of education are required to have at least one opportunity for public participation where members of the public can address the board with questions or comments on any item that they feel affects the school district and the surrounding taxpayers members of the community the students what not during that opportunity for public participation there's rules that need to be followed you state your name address for the record um the board policy that we have in effect states that each participant in public participation is entitled to three minutes and that's to ensure that
005if there are multiple members of the public that would like to address a comment to the board each person would have their turn [Music] public participation is not meant to be a debate and it's not meant to be a q a session session every single member of this board hears all the comments during public participation and well we may not always respond in the meeting we hear and take into account all the comments that are made what you do see sometimes at meetings when questions are asked if there's a readily available answer to the question and the appropriate administrator can give that answer we allow them to answer to save time the other way to do that would be to take your question and have one of the administrators get back to you at a
006later point in time with the right answer and sometimes we do that if we need more time to answer or there's information that we don't have at our fingertips that's necessary but if it's not necessary and a question can be answered we allow a question to be answered but that shouldn't be confused with what public participation really is it's really an opportunity for the public to give comments to the board not um a debate back and forth and not technically a q an answer period so with that said i want to thank you all for being here tonight and as we go through the meeting if we need to clarify how things occur or anything else we will do so at that time so at this point i'll turn it over to mr dickstein for
007the administrative report good evening everybody thank you for coming i did want to share with the board as you know we are members of the garden state coalition of schools i've requested that each one of your email addresses are added to the email distribution list you should be getting if not soon if not now soon you should be getting the daily news and notes they cover a variety of topics typically newsworthy articles from different publications things that are happening in education in the state and also you should get invitations to monthly meetings the monthly meetings are very good because they have we get audience with um different representatives from the state whether it be the doe or the governor's office the um chief outreach officer that typically other organizations don't get audience with so it
008is an opportunity really to be able to get some feedback in a way that that that's constructive one example of that is executive order 253 we were a district of option one meaning that we were waiting for the state to assign us a vendor at their cost with the implementation date of october 18th and as that grew closer and closer uh it wasn't happening we weren't getting that communication so i did contact betsy ginsberg who was in charge of gordon state coalition of schools and by the end of the day she had confirmation from the doe that they were sending out a memo saying that option one districts would be delayed um so it really is a strong advocacy group for our for education but also for our concerns so it is something to keep
009in mind if you can attend the meetings i think you'd really enjoy them um they uncovered for me once and she goes to every meeting since they are really they're really good meetings um if you don't get them let me know so i can get you added i did send all the email addresses but if they missed one i'll i'll send it again going on with executive order 253 we did quickly one when we weren't getting that dispensation from the state saying uh the the last word that we got was um that you're on your own basically october 18th is the date and if you don't have a system in place you can reimburse your staff you can not reimburse your staff and have them pay on their own we really struggled as a central
010office sending that message so we quickly moved to option two bob being the diligent person he was recalled a state contract from middlesex county education services commission the most wonderful group that we've found responsive timely and we had in place for last week on thursday the nasal pcr for all staff who wanted to avail themselves of testing unvaccinated who want to avail themselves of testing for us otherwise they were able to go to a provider of their choosing and send it to dr brett our the results of dr brother if they didn't do that otherwise it goes into a system uh proprietary system that is um secure that she can go into and get all of the results um i would like to thank diane because as typical she sat there from two o'clock to
011six o'clock greeting every person that was there and making sure it went smoothly um and it did go smoothly by the end of the night sunday what 9 30 p.m we had the last result in and everybody complied we are moving this thursday now that we had a successful first week we are adding saliva pcr we only had nasal and there was a lot of rationale behind that that i don't want to waste your time explaining but with some decisions we're not moving to rapid which would preclude there is no rapid saliva from this company now that we've made the decision not to move to rapid we can now offer the saliva pcr as well as the nasal so any staff members that come have a choice of what they would like to do and
012if they don't again want to do it with us they are on their own for cost and just have to submit the results but i am very happy and appreciative to our staff for the 100 compliance also that went into place was volunteers even either showing the vaccination card that they're fully vaccinated or showing proof that in the week that they are volunteering that they were tested um and that has been going well also um we wanted to share with the board just for transparency sake uh the cost of the test is 60 65 60 60 the option to reimbursement rate is 40.72 cents bob brought up a very valid point we are using sr2 funds to for the difference in cost however if we use sr2 funds for the full amount of when we
013get reimbursed they'll be reimbursed to a grant account and that grant account will need to be then amended over and over again for to expend on something else so what we are going to do in just full transparency for the board is it'll be like a placeholder in a fun 10 account where the money is going out the 40 will be reimbursed dollar for dollar until the federal funds run out and the balance is coming out of that arp account so whatever comes out of fund 10 will be reimbursed to fund 10 at 4072 a test the remaining balance of 10 and 19 and change will come out of a grant fund and that will not be reimbursed so there is no cost to the board it's like we're borrowing temporarily until the state reimburses
014the amount that we are actually putting out for our staff will come out of arp and is not reimbursable does anybody have any questions about that we just know you look at bill we won full transparency when you see an expense to know that that is being reimbursed by the state if and when they inform us that the federal government no longer has the funds we will then discuss what we will do next but it wouldn't well i can't we'll discuss then what will happen um but they they gave us the reimbursement rate and the process using the ssr2 funds is that taking money that we have been using what were good questions that uh very good question a couple of places uh first of all diane did not um fill the nursing position the
015floater nurse position that we put in s or two and when we started initially with esser one which is called also called cares the health office assistance functioning this year almost all minus a couple of thousand dollars were able to come out of s or one so what we budget an s or two for those health office assistants is now going to be freed up for that so it's not really taking the place of anything it's just that we found other ways or didn't didn't cover what we put in there so we're not losing anything we didn't use that money or found other means to fund the position but the the that grant money because that is that the same money that we also use for students it's task teams and after school tutoring so
016that's not coming out of it so technically then that 20 shortfall per employee per test per week directly impacts what could go to students yeah and yeah yeah but yeah it did yes but it didn't we still have in sr2 and in arp each seventy thousand dollars for the next two years right regardless of what we have it's like if we have if we have say 75 employees yes 20 a week per employee yes it adds up correct it adds up quickly i follow up on that um so neil at this point do you envision downsizing any of those other things that you have said that we're spending the money on no so you don't envision like cutting an after-school teacher or anything like that no and we still haven't submitted we got returned to
017us because arp esser what is that three now s or three they released more funds for specific buckets so we have not completed the process of allocating and submitting that revised um application so we do have other funds to avail avail ourselves as if of if we need them but if we if we deplete s or two i will come back to the board and let you know what we're what we did okay it's hard to tell at this point we don't know when it'll go away you know without that information so i do one if and when we move away from us or two because we depleted those funds i will let the board know what we're doing next i have okay question how long does it take for the saliva pcr to come
018back well and that's a good question we're finding a way to offer that to the staff good question i think that there were concerns for some people so i think that's great that you guys were able to do that there were and one of our issues as we're working through it was the delay in getting saliva tests back the saliva test has to be shipped to virginia but what we also learned is that there's a lab in woodbridge where they brought our nasal tests for this week but there's a cost for a courier to bring it there and we don't want that cost another 50 on top of it so we didn't know that at first so now the nasal pcr if if staff choose to do that and the saliva both will be shipped
019via fedex the next day to virginia from pickup to us getting the results can be up to 72 hours right it's they said if they get the samples the next morning they'll be guaranteed within 24 hours to get to the lab but we also clarified with our board attorney that it's the process of testing that is the enforcement of the executive order so while we may not have the results by sunday necessarily we should but if we didn't the fact that we held the testing and not everybody tested would mean that we met the criteria of the executive order yep um and the weekend we asked the weekend is included in that 72 hours they're not closed on the weekends they're still processing right right and we are um as a point of reference it
020was an excellent suggestion on the part of one of our staff members that you know thursdays um we're not here a couple of them in november so thursdays could be problematic so we are looking to shift testing to tuesdays um which from a calendar standpoint is a little more um user-friendly for most of the months of the year so we are going to make that change in november too it's been a collaborative effort i think you know i see lisa johnson out here and it's really been um a lot of back and forth and we're we're all trying to do our jobs and and we're trying to you know just do it as efficiently and effectively as possible to have very little impact on you know what we do every day with kids so thanks
021to everybody for being compliant super proud we can't say we can't say that enough to our staff for being compliant and everybody doing what they needed to and coming in being able to be here today or yesterday on monday uh yes you said you said for the elementary test team we have that for this year and next year yes well in just two different grants the thing with sr one two and three is you can duplicate in all of there's very little regulation as far as how you manage what you put in there there's regulation on but you can put something in s or two and the same thing in s or three you can build upon like you could put half and one and half in the other we put seventy thousand in s
022or two and then we put another seventy thousand sr3 to continue next year and um you know when it comes we'll have to revise because you can't predict that far out so we'll have to amend at some point it's likely we can maybe even do it another year yeah any other questions before i go on okay so um there is new legislation that substitutes um now you can apply to the district any district to be a substitute if you have 30 college credits and they're actively attending a college or university it does sound a little odd because obviously if you're attending a college or university the time that you can sub is limited but you know you get you have break and get out earlier than our schools do so garden state coalitions of collection
023of schools is advocating to remove the um component of attending a college or university because we need substitutes all year round but at this moment those uh members of anybody who has at least 30 college credits and is actively attending a college university is eligible to apply and be provided a substitute certificate it would be a five-year non-renewable at this point but garden state coalition of schools is advocating to take out the currently attending a college or university because that's going to significantly limit who can apply of course we still need substitute and we will train substitute bus drivers substitute bus drivers and substitute teachers bill has on the governor's desk for signature that nurses who have retired from the pension system school nurses can return without re-entering the pension system for a maximum of
024two years and we're grateful to michelle weissman who has agreed to at this moment until we can convince her of more um to do to do our screenings but we're very you know we could be very cohesive uh we can we can be very good at getting people to do yes we love michelle and we're very glad that she was coming back at least for screenings if not more not on the governor's desk yet through the house in new jersey but now at the senate not that there's an issue with it it just arrived at the senate is a bill similar for teachers who have retired um same thing teachers who retired from the from the pension system would be able to work up to two years without re-enrolling in the pension system and that
025is currently in the senate for discussion and then can will i don't know the timeliness uh can move to the governor's desk and we do we have at least one teacher we know wanted to come back but couldn't so this would help us greatly you know we still have a vacancy of barcolos in september that we haven't been able to fill um and i believe that is all that i have okay do you want to do oh the bullying report i'll do that before i turn it over thank you i'm sorry i would have forgotten this week we've had six reports of harassment intimidation and bullying of those six reports one was founded and five were unfounded as you're aware we have annually when students take a state assessment once the results are given to
026us we have 60 days to present to the board the results of those assessments and tonight we have robin klim we have becky montgomery and kathleen rosen alisa ellman to present dlm dynamic learning maps and alisa and kathleen will be presenting access yelp access for ell so i'm going to turn it over to them screen yeah it is okay all right good evening um thank you for having us tonight we have the distinct honor of sharing with you the only state standardized tests that um students in the state of new jersey took post-pandemic um so in uh the spring of 2021 our students um oh then live stream can't hear okay okay is that better do i need to stand very close to the microphone okay maybe that one will be better yeah i can
027should i can i take my this one you mouse be in the vicinity okay is that better okay fabulous thank you thank you my apologies okay so um robin and i have the distinct honor of sharing with you tonight um information and results about our students um that took the dynamic learning maps assessment back in the spring of 2021. um our students with significant disabilities take the dynamic learning maps um the and the assessment was um administered to students across a series of weeks last spring between april and may oh sorry microphone thank you very much um so for those of you that have been on the board for quite some time a lot of this information will sound familiar to you um unlike the testing reports that uh dottie spec shared with you previously
028because we have such a very small population of students in the district taking the dynamic learning maps the data that we are able to share with you is much more limited because um anything that we would share with you more broadly would violate student confidentiality information okay so we're going to give you an overview about the assessment itself and then some data about how our kids perform on the test across a series of of recent years so as i said dlm is an altered in assessment back in 2014-15 it replaced the apa binder assessment that was previously given to our students with significant disabilities students are tested in three content areas english language arts math and science and testing like our standardized tests begins at third grade and runs through high school students take ela
029and math every year for those in ela and math and science is administered at grades 5 8 and 11. all right so who takes dlm um it is one percent of our total population of the school district um this is an iep team decision based on federal regulations and guidelines um the child study team and the teaching team actually makes a decision at the table about the level of access the child has to the general tier 1 curriculum and whether or not they should be tested on those state standards really the purpose of dynamic learning maps is to present a scaffolded approach up to what would be a new jersey state learning standard for a child in a general education program the children that test again very small population typically our students in our self-contained
030programming with some significant cognitive disabilities what's cool about this slide is i know it's hard to see but two from the bottom is actually the target level so when becky and i do dlm trainings what we focus on with the teachers is there's linkage levels um for instruction so just imagine you're scaffolding up and down a ladder you want to get the kid to the target level of what that essential element looks like the state calls them essential elements because they are the building bridge to what a state learning standard looks like in a general education curriculum so very similar to an iep how we scaffold the goals i'm sorry scaffold the objectives to get to the goal this is very similar to how the state kind of outlines for our students how to get
031to the target level no oh so sorry for my slide um so this really is uh it's a really cool computer adaptive assessment um what happens is the teacher creates a profile online it's called the first contact survey it's all about the student the adaptations they need the accommodations the modifications in the classroom and really that is what sort of initiates the testlet so that's sort of the baseline of where the ex the student is expected to perform and then the test levels for the child through the process of the the testing session um until the child hits a ceiling what's great about this is a lot of our children um are you know utilizing some adaptive equipment um so that is allowable through the test um you know anything that is provided instructionally in
032the learning environment is also accessible to the child during the testing session so very similar to the iep it is an adaptive assessment that allows our children to truly be tested on all of the tools and resources that they typically use in the classroom and from there you know really the reporting piece becky's going to go over but it's really nice because it is aligned to our standards um and we're allowed to kind of look at the output of the assessment reports and really tell our instruction accordingly so as robin said the adaptations that our students in our self-contained programs have access to is really very broad we have students with visual disabilities that need more expansive projectors and things the state actually just approved the use of projectors for dlm assessment this year braille
033oftentimes our students struggle to attend to the task and so just the teacher reading the the material to the students is is an adaptive tool that is allowed on this test the test has a variety of different adaptations that are built into the computer software so um things like computer over or color overlays um calculators those things are built right into the test where other things are adaptations that that may happen in the classroom on a regular basis students who use assistive devices for communication or switches to respond to questions those adaptive pieces of equipment can be used in the testing environment as well to help the kids meet with the greatest level of success using tools that they use every day in their learning environment so this is what a typical score report looks
034like and i just want to share um with the board what some samples a better view of them because it's easier to see from the website okay so this is oh that doesn't look much better at all sorry okay thank you oh that's good thank you so um this is what a sample score report would look like there are four uh achievement levels that are measured on this test students can either be emerging with which uh with a particular skill or in a content area approaching the target at target or advanced which means they've they've accelerated above the target and students get this level of score in in all three areas of testing language arts math and science um beneath the assessment level are the different domains within the content area so this is for
035language arts this student this sample student can you thank you um scored 23 out of 25 of the skills in constructing and understanding text so that student scored 92 percent in that particular domain um and and there are several domains in each of the content areas so you can see how students performed in the different domains like an ela for both reading and writing the thing that is really nice about dlm can you do the little camera thank you okay so this is a this is a new piece of reporting that uh dlm has provided to schools this year which is really wonderful um down the left-hand columns are the areas um that are in that are the new jersey student learning standards to the right of that is the essential element those are the
036um as robin said the modified connections to the student learning standards so how how dlm has scaffolded a particular standard to help me help students with cognitive disabilities get to that level of instruction and then from the one to the five is a sort of a developmental rubric of how students can demonstrate mastery of those particular standards across the board from one to be at the emerging level all the way across to a five at the advanced level for being the target level the thing that's really wonderful about this is that teachers can use this to plan instruction for kids so we have this data right now that robin and i can share with our teachers during our dlm training so that teachers can look at it and say oh so and so really did
037well and is like has it has mastered this particular area in english language arts but needs to work on a particular another particular standard in math or in science so from an instructional standpoint it's really wonderful that dlm has finally gotten on board with how to use standardized assessments to help inform instruction in the classroom so this is really exciting i'm excited to share that with everybody tonight and it will make a tremendous difference for teachers in terms of helping students be ready for taking this assessment as robin and i shared before one of the things that we do annually with teachers is we have to provide a training in terms of the delivery of the assessment but what we've built into that training for our teachers is work around these essential elements how can
038the teachers better understand these components of the of the standards these these links to the student learning standards to help our students with significant disabilities get close to learning what what their typical peers are learning so we will in the next several weeks when the state releases guidelines be identifying which students per ieps will be taking the dln and planning our training sessions for the in the upcoming months um and this is the one piece of student data that i can share with you so this looks at our student dlm performance over the last several years you can see there's no data for the 1920 year because we were all home that spring um but um you can so the blue bar on the far left is emerging and then as you move to the
039right the bars show move across the proficiency level the with yellow being the most advanced level um and some things to note that i think are really important is um the combination of our at target and advanced students those are those group those two colors together for our kids who are showing uh mastery of what is expected in the essential elements and and those bars continue to rise and so that's really impressive that i think that that has a tremendous amount to do with the work that are doing with teachers to help them better understand the essential elements so that they can better deliver instruction to students in the classroom um it's like a developmental continuum so they're getting closer they're just not at target yet sure how did markets divide are they are they
040norm score like how do they come up with what those targets should be they are normed to some extent as the as dlm is given nationally this is an assessment that's given across across the country not just in new jersey um so there is a large pool of kids that that they use to to determine those norms yeah now when they come up with the targets where are they getting like what that target should be or is they are they doing it by age level are they doing it by grade level um on the linkage uh chart that i showed is that we were talking about yeah i was talking about like the standards all the way across like when it went how how did they devise those so so they're connected to grade level
041standards they are connected absolutely connected to grade level standards and again as robin showed that that that linkage level that we have precursor um linkage levels we have distal like so there's linkage levels that are really far from what the target is and then they get incrementally closer um but the targets are all linked directly to the grade level contact standards it's almost like so if you have a child with a cognitive disability you're building in the prerequisite skills before you get to the target and that's what the linkage level addresses but they're all tied to grade level standards so it doesn't matter how far you weigh you are from grade level they tie it back to grade level standards which is nice the um between the glm because i know you and i have
042had many problems understanding the correlation between the dlms is there a way but i mean this was yeah so this information didn't come this is new yeah it's brand new yeah yeah so the short answer is absolutely that's something that that i would hope and expect that case managers would do or teachers would do with parents um that's part of when we when i send out the scores to parents with the letter if you have questions please reach out to your case manager or to me i'm happy to sit down with any parent that has questions about their kids dlm scores call me we'll pull it i'll pull them up and we can have that conversation here's what i'm trying to instead of that's free because i know you can do that no no no
043is there a way to say like you know like a form almost like this is a grade level standard grade 3 4 5 6 ela yeah so so on the dlm website there are what they call blueprints and those blueprints tie grade level standards to the dlm essential elements it's a voluminous document and one that as a parent you would open and say i don't want to spend time with this it's too overwhelming and so you know what i can suggest and we've talked about this i mean i'd be happy to come to a presentation at a pace meeting yeah um for parents to help understand those things um because you know that's what's most helpful is to figure out where your kid is on the linkage level right so here's the essential element that
044pairs with this but this is where my kid is and this is the state target that's expected so right right so it's easy for me but for parents and teachers sure right how do i know where my kids perform right what does this information mean absolutely we can turn key the same training we do for teachers and how they do the mappings and the blueprints for parents sure don't understand where it's going yeah and again as a parent you're looking at this and you're seeing what it's like what the standard number is but a parent doesn't you know doesn't know what that standard means or what it represents sure so little less than one percent of our entire school population takes this test yep 30 to 30 yes yeah like under 40 um our number
045of kids in our self-contained programs has definitely grown but but i believe and certainly robin can speak to this and just my history in the district and working with those programs at applegate we have grown our ability to serve more disabled kids so we are better serving that population of kids more and more of those kids are staying in district and attending our programs rather than being sent to out of district placements is that and what's not captured here is the number of students we have for receiving so we have six tuition kids right now as we speak i'm looking at a seventh because our county is having a difficult time you know finding placements for different student profiles for whatever reason so they're not captured here because they test their home district is responsible
046so they our district is responsible for administering the test but their scores get report reported back in their resident districts like slight change yeah it's incremental incrementally larger yeah yeah i think only because we're able to service more kids in i think you're correct yeah okay all right i'll close up my stuff and i will turn it over to mrs rosen thank you thank you yes thank you all right good evening everybody um here to present another one of our state assessments that was taken and completed in this spring uh that is the test called access for english language learners the wida access for ells 2.0 test began about five years ago in 2016 and it measures a student's growth towards the in their english language proficiency students take it every year it evaluates their
047progress towards their proficiency it's typically given over a course of four days students in grades one to eight take the test online and it is done and administered in person for our kindergarten students this test is also adaptive meaning that students will take and complete the listening and reading test items to determine where they will place in writing and speaking okay based on the students initial baseline score is determined by the state they have up to five years to meet the proficiency cut score so there's a formula it's all dependent upon how they score in the first year and that was started in 2017. the weta access test is developed based off of the wida standards for english language development uh these standards highlight the need for english language learners to develop their academic vocabulary
048in content areas that we teach so you can see here the language of social instructional language language of language arts mathematics science and social studies and these are the weeded standards that we base our curriculum off of in the esl classroom english has a second language so again the language domains that are highlighted on the access test are listening speaking reading and writing each one of those scores is usually completed over you know one day each and they'll come back in our proficiency levels i just wanted to explain a little bit about them they're scored in each domain on a score of one through six uh the proficiency levels are determined in our state is a 4.5 as determined in new jersey so that is that kind of cut score if you will that we
049can start to identify students that may be ready to exit from our services so we're looking for that composite score of a 4.5 so to turn to help illustrate the proficiency levels a student in level one or entering level of english may only be able to draw pictures to show their understanding but a student in level two or that beginning level may begin to label these drawings while a level three or four student might be able to use more description when labeling potentially writing sentences that integrate some social and technical language but a student in that four or five level is at the highest levels of proficiency and will be able to express their understanding of grade level material both verbally and in writing using rich academic language and extending and applying that learning to
050future or additional scenarios so that's where we look to see our students a look uh just over the past two years here of our freehold township students enrolled in our english language programs it's typically in kindergarten through eighth grade about 50 students so it's that same less than one percent that our my colleagues were just referring to but it's a small and mighty crew just like yours our graph here shows that you can see most of our students fall in that kindergarten first and second grade please note that our ecl students are not included in this graph but we certainly love providing support to our younger students and will be this year a little overview of the 2020 21 administration our students that um took the access or actually were involved in esl or ell
051programming you can see how uh we're celebrating some things here 40 of our students meeting the target less than a 40 percent of our students were taking the access test for the very first time this past spring so you can see it was a very new group testing but you know to really be celebrating um the year prior uh the march of our uh pandemic well before our schools closed we were actually in full swing with access testing and many of our students had started the test now we didn't get the full composite score on students because they maybe didn't complete all domains however we as an esl team were watching how our students and i'm happy to report that before the administration of our spring access testing in march or may we were able
052to exit nine students in our programming to really show that they were ready to meet their needs and they were able to exit prior to even taking our spring administration in the middle of a pandemic that's pretty impressive 27 percent of our students met proficiency to exit during the course of the 2021 school year 20 percent of our students as depicted there are working still working towards their target and that number is kind of based off of the initial cut score that they had started with and how many years they have to reach proficiency as determined by the state so the percentage of students um based off the 2021 access test you can see that uh 47 of our students that tested were in that developing range of proficiency so that's a wonderful place to
053be as we take on this school year you can see that about that same number is in that entering or emerging but that kind of makes sense based on the 40 that we're new to take the test for the first time so we are excited to get ready for learning over time so you can see i've included here the three-year trend of our scores that's 2019 2020. as you can see i wasn't able to total some of our columns there just because of the coveted closures and we didn't complete the testing but i felt like it was important to really look at it because we were given reports back on it so when you look at our scores it's hard really to compare grade level from year to year simply because the students don't remain
054the same in each grade level they may exit they may move from the district all different things but it is important for our team to look for trends and to goal set using this information so today i'm going to highlight just a couple of things when i compare this spring's assessment to previous years you can see that our school averages or those yellow rows really um speak to the same levels of proficiency and our dedicated teachers mrs elements here today mrs holman mrs ramos mrs mccarroll mrs de qualio as well as our teacher's assistants mrs gonzalez and mrs aurora are really here to meet the needs of our students and this information shows that in the midst of a very trying last year we were able to accomplish some great things in 2020 our esl
055teams really focused in on reading as an area of focus and as you can see there in 2020 our average score was a 3.3 and that's the highest it's been since we started taking the 2.0 test which is about five years so it shows us when we put our minds to it we're definitely on the right track so for 2021 2022 school year our esl teachers have increased our focus in writing domains and so we've used that information to help us guide through our this uh this school year right now our reading comprehension groups and um include very intense vocabulary and phonics support and we're happy to report they're underway um writing has been selected as i said is our area of focus we're learning all about the new 2020 standards for wida so we'll
056be doing our professional development trainings in regards to those and of course revising our curriculum documents and we're happy that this year through increased staffing we are able to increase our overall support to our learners at the barcelo school here at the early childhood learning center and also at lds so it's been a great start to the school year with some good information that was given to us from the city so if there's any questions yeah yes um now when when you say kids exit out so could we conceivably have a child exit out who is a profes a proficient speaker um and is not even on the map when it comes to writing like because you said it's an average so i'm wondering if somebody comes up like as a six on something and
057a one on something else each domain is weighted differently so to get that overall composite score it does look at the different proficiency domains forgive me for not knowing them off the top of my head maybe my colleague mrs ellman does but writing let's say is a bigger focus than the speaking standards okay um i was just wondering if you know what is the average time it takes for our students to journey from level one to level six and is there any concerted effort to shorten that time span and what does that look like sure so um several years ago we started implementing support at the eclc for our district students recognizing that the earlier we started to intervene the shorter their time is in the program i'm going to probably say a generalization here
058but usually by grade level band 2 3 as most of our students exit as i explain the state does say they have five years based on that initial score but that's up to five years if they come in as a level three student their trajectory might look a bit different than a native or newcomer speaker so um so coming in at kindergarten at level one it's it's about two to three years i would imagine also yes thank you and it does look at the grade level band of the students because that is what the test is tiered based on the grade level band so the work that a a newcomer might be facing on a fifth grade version of this assessment is quite different to celebrate last year we had three students exit very quickly
059in the program that had only been in the country two years i mean that's at a now in middle school i mean that's pretty impressive so it's important too and it's confusing with because it's english language proficiency it's not student achievement so you've had students and we have this sometimes it's difficult for us to service um it's more challenging i should say you can have somebody move in as port of entry to the country in sixth grade being on level one so it's hard when you look at it to say how come you have so many things it's really about and we did this years ago it's the growth of each individual child and under kathleen's leadership at donna with the esl program they this is broad data they look at every single student and
060look at every single student's trajectory and determine big nose that's why somebody who might get a four or five but they see concerns they want and and you know the cut score like as determined by the state is a 4.5 but we really look at how the child is performing through all areas not just within the asl classroom we want to make sure that they are really ready for that exit so just because they hit that number doesn't mean we're automatically exiting most times yes they are ready that's what we've been finding but we did put two year supports in place so a student may be attending lord donovan school because they um that's where our program is offered however for the two years after they may stay at laura donovan to you know provide
061the supports because if we need to scoop them back in we certainly can or we may have consultation meetings with the interventionist team and provide summer summertime support and all those things that we have in place so we really progress monitor the data of our students that have newly exited as well if a student were to go back to their home school we have our check-in meetings and mrs ellman and the team will have reach out consultation visits you know with the student also with the teacher that's involved to not only train the teacher because once a language learner you're still a language learner that's amazing to celebrate our bilingual students learning english as their second language so okay uh two questions my first one is have we had any students have to re-enroll in
062the program after they've exited out like as it gets you know as ela gets harder as the grades go up with like vocabulary and things like that are we seeing any happy question no okay i've been overseeing the program since 2012 and we have not had a student have to re-enroll have we had to bump up the level of tiered system of support yeah okay but that's just what they needed at that time it might be short-term intervention it might you know and we re-evaluate but no thank you we really look at that exit criteria and it's a team meeting between myself the teachers the grade level teacher and we work in tandem with your interventionists guidance counselors really to make sure that empire support is still there okay do we include the parents in
063those meetings of course of course yep and then my second question is the barcelo um numbers and the eisenhower they i guess barclaw they they seem to be not as high as the younger grades is that because those kids are showing up in middle school or are those kids just never progressing that's exactly the right um the the right uh thinking there they are newcomer students um that typically come because a lot of the times i explained before if they've been with us since kindergarten they've exited our program by third grade so they are typically newcomer students that's why we asked for what they have even us going into this year and also our teachers assistant that's their supporting at um the middle school is able to follow our students into core content classes to
064provide translation on the fly as needed or something you know to that end mm-hmm sure um you know one of the easiest methods i could say is you know when we do our say our math pages or our curriculum documents we flip and provide both so the student may be working off of an english print textbook but we know that mom's sitting down she might need that spanish copy right next or and translate it into another language that might be one we have our parent meetings quarterly um throughout the course of the year of course our esl team also reaches out in addition to the conferences that are scheduled to really update students on progress we also have our esl report cards so they received a separate report card just for how they're working towards
065language proficiency in addition to the grade level standards as reported by the classroom teacher i just want to say thank you um this was a challenging year when you've acknowledged something or you're not shipping when students go home who are enrolled in our programs and it's very typical that they're immersed in their native language when they're home and to have a pandemic where most of the time when school is closed to be spent at home makes it that much more challenging for english language so to see the sports that were shared today it's very impressive i do want to give thanks to mrs rosen who has supervised our program and seen it through several changes since 2012 and also to mrs bowman who has been the senior esl teacher as we have a as a
066teacher and and mentoring and working with the new teachers that we have and we're very gracious for sure that she's stepping up as always to support the department sure oh this year's probably our smallest number yet um there was one year where we were really looking for help in all uh many different languages i would say six is my number so let's see what you say and she says five i go with her the majority okay [Music] right now we're relying on google translate we have many different resources yes we have as nice yes i i did happen to stumble upon one of those at an office visit recently i was like what is this but no we do yep yes we haven't um really stumbled upon an experience where we weren't able to effectively
067communicate with home so i'm happy to you know share that but we have plethora of resources you know the state site for bilingual education has many different documents already translated for us into different languages but as mr dickstein spoke predominantly our language that we need resources for is is spanish and that's our bilingual program that we offer in the district and so we are able to support in that regard right thank you um um okay as i mentioned earlier we are required to have public participation this board chooses to do public participation twice during our meetings the first opportunity for public participation is regarding agenda items only and that's why the session is bifurcated it's an opportunity for the board to hear your comments regarding any item we are voting on on the agenda tonight
068so this would be the first opportunity for public participation um again i'll remind you what i stated earlier uh if you would like to just make comments let the board hear what you have to say we may not answer back but we certainly hear you and take everything into consideration please sign your name and address at the podium state your name and address for the record if you don't feel comfortable stating your address because we are live streaming on youtube that's fine but just make sure you write it on the attendance sheet statements are limited to three minutes in length should not be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature so if anyone would like to address the board on an agenda item please do so no takers um okay i just want to make sure
069seeing none i'm going to move on to personnel uh committee chairperson ms costanza the personnel completely met this evening in attendance was dr brethour mrs lambert mr amarosa and myself we had a brief meeting and just discussed the items on the agenda i'd like the moo to move the following items number three retirement congratulations to carol bachman whom i had the pleasure of working with at applegate 14 years of service and david deriso also 14 years of service item number five new employment we welcome the following paula beer anthony piperullo christine d geronimo and melissa heberwicz congratulations and we wish you the best yeah recent resignation oh yes i can't believe i missed that one why did i miss that one respind resignation thank you god larissa we're glad you're back okay uh number six
070change of assignment salary adjustment as listed number seven transfer of assignment as listed number eight leaves of absence as listed number nine curricular commit curriculum committee as listed number 10 summer professional development as listed number 11 contact tracers as listed number 12 rescind honorarium as listed 13 district honoraria as listed 14 pto honorarium as listed 15 elementary task teams as listed well actually number nine under that just change it from mourinho moreno to marine obama marisa [Music] number 16 certified substitutes as listed number 17 non-certified substitutes as listed and that's it any questions but can you just briefly what the contact tracers like how what their response plan at what point in the day they'll be doing that absolutely so oh but sorry her question was what do the contact tracers do and at what
071point in the day did they do what they do so as you know part of our protocols uh for keeping our schools opened is that we agree to contact trace any positive cases that we have at school but that can happen at all hours of the day and night and also on the weekends and so in order to support our nurses who can do some of this work outside of the day and night but they also have families and and other things going on we have recruited some staff members which i'm thrilled to say um that there are this many and there were some i believe on the last one as well um also funded through the grant so what will happen is the nurse will do the initial identification of who might be you
072know would be considered a contact a close contact and the days of quarantine and then these staff members um have volunteered to then make calls to the homes of the and this would happen after hours and it would also happen on the weekends and it's really because um by by working and identifying close contacts and asking them not to come to school we are potentially minimizing spread so a lot of times we may find out over the weekend and and we don't want anyone on monday reporting they could potentially uh spread you know to someone else so it's kind of time sensitive um so i'm very grateful for those staff members who have volunteered to join the nursing team they will basically contact the families identify dates do a follow-up email and then if there
073are any questions the nurses will follow up during the business day okay any other questions oh okay can i have a second second roll call mr amoroso yeah mrs costanza yes mrs coslino i'm a yes on everything but i need to abstain on number 10 item 10 number 3 4 and 6 and number 14 number two all right this is holtz yes mrs o'sullivan yeah mrs thoman yeah this is van the toy yes this is patton yes mrs lambert yes ocean's carry okay um curriculum policy and committee ms o'sullivan all right we met in a committee meeting on monday people in attendance from mr dickstein daddy spect mary casolino and myself we discussed all items on the agenda we discussed professional development for guidance counselors the after-school academic support program was discussed dottie spect explained
074how the la curriculum was turnkey to the teachers by viewing lessons and then debriefing online social studies professional development was discussed science and math extension activities and bridges are being infused into the curriculum and in november there will be a related arts pd for pre-k to 8 and teaching strategies for the eclc number three was the strategic plan uh just approval of the and accepting the strategic plan for the school year 2021 to 2026. number four the student teacher practicum observation placements as listed number five ratifying student teacher placement as listed number six affiliation agreement with columbia university as listed affiliation agreement with stockton university as listed home instruction number eight as listed number nine the first reading of policies and regulations as listed number 10 the second reading of policies and regulations as listed
075and that is it anybody have any questions i just have one just a quick question with the strategic plan only because we've seen such a big change over you know the last 18 months if do we have to wait five years like if we notice a significant change of okay so we can it's a good it's a president it's a really good question because when we started the process i was hesitant to do five years i think i was vocal about a three-year plan being acceptable the the practice is five so we have one for five years if we choose to stay with if we want to revisit it and choose to stay with school boards they have a program that is a fee base of course where they will facilitate a different process to
076revisit and restructure or we can we have other way it means in which to achieve that whether we do it ourselves or find a consultant to run it so although we are adopting it for 20 20 20 21 2026 we can determine that we want to revisit it after two years after three years and revise good question thank you any other questions can i have a second all in favor say aye aye aye finance facilities and transportation ms bender doley thank you uh the finance facilities and transportation committee did not meet this evening um so i'm just going to uh move the agenda items and there are a lot of them so bear with me uh number three certification as listed number four secretary and treasurer's report as listed number five bills and claims in
077the amount of one million one hundred and eighty four thousand five hundred and sixty seven dollars and 88 cents as listed thank you meg for doing the bills number six travel and related expense as listed number seven travel and related expenses ratifying as listed number eight traveling related expenses rescind as listed number nine travel and related expenses updated as listed sorry number 10 transfers as listed number 11 a donation from red dog designs for the applegate elementary school number 12 honorarium for eisenhower middle school as listed number 13 rescind honorarium as listed number 14 the emergency evacuation safety drills as listed number 15 the teachers college reading and writing workshop i'm sorry the reading and writing project as listed number 16 ratified consultants ratify is listed number 17 out of district contracts as listed number
07818. the resolution authorizing the submission of other capital project documents the new jersey department of education for the hvac updates is listed number 19 the resolution to submit the long-range facility plan to the department of education number 20 the comprehensive maintenance plan number 21 the disposals of in the technology department as listed number 22 the ecip payments as listed number 23 to update membership as listed number 24. uh spark ta salaries ratify as listed number 25 grant funded salaries for 2021 through 2022 as listed number 26 consultant services as listed and that's it for me and no any questions does anybody have any questions hello um number 17 the out-of-district contract for the m-o-e-s-c um is that for an alternate placement that is for at this moment a 45-day placement is that the term a
07945-day placement of a regular education student that's what i thought it was i just wanted to check it okay any other questions i'd like the last payment okay the old architectural firm on item 22 or do you still know them it's still outstanding um there's a couple left that will be through the esip and then there'll be some residual for their work with the engineer for the grant processing on the back end but i think there's only uh the po that's left in the escrow funds is very small at this point in time any other questions i'd like to thank uh red dog designs for their donation to the applegate school and the eisenhower pto for their donation to eisenhower it's greatly appreciated can i have a second all in favor say aye hi all
080right moving on to old business new business i kind of combine it um all at once um i'd like to in old business new business congratulate our um our eisenhower and barcelo soccer teams both of whom were their respective conference champions we would like to try to acknowledge them somehow some way and while our presence in the schools is minimal due to kovid we spoke as a board about just trying to get a better handle on what is going on in each of the buildings so we're going to figure out what we should do with that how we want to work with that i'll work with neil and diane on how to get that information because even though not everything has returned to normal there are still activities going on with our students in our
081schools and the one thing we do miss having is our students at the board meetings because that was always the the highlight to see uh the children and celebrate their accomplishments so we do want to have a better handle on what they are doing even if they're doing it differently and maybe not um as you know in in public or in person we do want to know that and um acknowledge it um in addition to that uh we spoke about at our retreat reinstituting our community roundtable not that it it went anywhere but we will be doing that we'll get grouped together and start that format as well so that's something to keep on everybody's radar how and when we want to start it within the coming um within the next coming months um does
082anybody else have any questions coming off our retreat or in new business or old business i just wanted to share just an explanation that the eisenhower embarked on teams did both win their divisions and in a traditional year oh that's right they would have played each other and one school would have won the championship was it which is exciting to our district however the organization and i each sport has a different governing body so i don't recall the name but the organization that governs middle school sports with whom with what we we have for our programs um what happened was while eisenhower and barclay played a majority of their games there are districts because of not only lack of transportation but lack of officials to be at games who played a minimal number of games
083some as low as two so the association determined that they would have division champions but didn't feel it appropriate to have a conference champion so i'm equally as thrilled that both of our middle schools stepped on one and won their divisions it would have been really exciting to have them play each other but now being in the central office and uh kathy's here who represents sends kids to both middle schools we don't have to choose we can celebrate both middle schools so um the other is just to remind everybody that every friday we do update that covet dashboard so if anybody has any questions on our numbers of cases by school or cumulatively every friday no later than five if not earlier it is updated and there's a link right on the main page that
084you click and it'll open up and show you where our numbers are okay any other board questions or updates from anybody nope okay um seeing none i'll move on to the second opportunity for public participation this is the second opportunity so it is an opportunity to address the board on any item of concern involving the school district please sign in state your name and address for the record or at least sign your address and state your name for the record statements are limited to three minutes and should not be abusive obscene or defamatory in nature okay thank you good evening my name is katie saluccio i have two young children in the school district i have three minutes to speak so this will only take me about two minutes and 30 minutes two minutes and
08530 seconds to read the attorney general of the united states merrick garland and the national school boards association have been loudly rebuked after threatening to use the fbi to silence parents that speak up at board meetings labeling them as domestic terrorists what are school boards trying to hide well it turns out that his son-in-law's company panorama sells local educators on the woke educational materials panorama produces teaching materials focused on systemic racism oppression white supremacy and intersectionality all under the rubric of social emotional learning or sel the multi-million dollar company's marketing plan is to get educators to buy in and then show them how to pay for it with government grants 21 state school boards have now distanced themselves from the national school boards association currently new jersey is not one of them why it's clear
086that there needs to be more transparency with the parents when the curriculum is being implemented at bowdoin on too often things get approved and nobody has any idea of what actually is being passed there's a false assumption that the parents agree with the agenda because they are silent the fact is many parents have no idea what is actually in the curriculum because if they did many would object i watched them meet the candidates zoom meeting for the school board election it was apparent to me that the incumbents on the board kept saying that their hands are tied and they really can't do anything they say that about the mass the curriculum and i'm assuming the same thing will happen when it comes to the upcoming vaccine mandate so how exactly can you run on a
087kids come first platform your hands are not tied you have a lot of leeway as long as you work within the state guidelines this board tends to take everything to the extreme and sides with the political agenda of the current administration we need fresh ideas and people with skills to navigate these important issues to really fight for the best interests of our children now on to the upcoming vaccine mandate for children 5 to 11 years old are you prepared to fight these mandates that are going to be pushed i was talking with a lot of concerned parents and we agree that if a vaccine mandate is implemented we will be pulling our kids out of the district and homeschooling them maybe this will be the wake-up call that is needed this is where we draw
088the line thank you thank you would anyone else like to address the school board thank you good evening my name is neil gargiulo and i just basically have a question some school districts have affinity spaces and i would like to know if in the five-year strategic plan are you going to have affinity spaces which is that divides students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the school district's diversity equity and inclusion plan the affinity spaces like some of the school district massachusetts there's there is one or two and across the country so i just were wondering if this is in our plan yeah i've never heard of an affinity space and it's not in our five-year plan or anywhere in our thinking to differentiate or group students in that manner thank
089you you're welcome our plan is only on i have to get up there that's right the plan will be put up on the website after its formal approval as well hi i'm shanna pizuda um i overheard um earlier in the meeting you had mentioned that you're going to be allowing the teachers to provide a saliva test weekly um will you be allowing that for the volunteers that are going to be coming in the school as well no we're accepting them but we're not providing we're we're not providing the service okay we might in the future we're very new at it with this company so we're just starting if there's an interest for volunteers we might be able to speak with the um vendor and have a time where we can have volunteers come but we're
090accepting from our volunteers any type of pcr or so or um also i just wanted to discuss um the mask mandate i understand it's an executive order it's out of your hands um but i was just wanted to plea like possibly you guys could back up the parents that do want it to be a choice i mean it's already almost midway through this school year and we really hope that possibly you could fight for us fight with us back us up in the you know choice to have the um masked mandate lifted or just have it be a choice also um something that i do understand is that um the um close contact is considered six feet or less 15 minutes or more more is that correct okay right but if they're not masked three
091feet is considered close contact for 15 minutes or more so can they so can we possibly um maybe make our own you know the school board make your own rules within the district say stating that they could wear masks or not wear masks for 14 minutes rather than only take them off for five minutes 13 minutes like you know just kind of like you know is there a way that it's cumulative it's a cumulative 15 minutes over 24 hours okay so there could be times where they're eating or they're outdoors or there those are different areas of the school right so maybe possibly just in the classroom you could have it offer 14 minutes rather than just you know five minutes or it doesn't matter only because they're running small groups there's it's going to
092hit the cumulative so similarly in hearing some of the concerns we've made all of our schools make accommodations during the day to have them outside as much as possible when appropriate they have time after lunch to be outside we just moved and are moving in almost all of our elementary schools to eliminate the cohorting so the kids can play together and they're outside for under under 15 minutes okay um and that's why we're able to do that in the after school lunch time so we're working towards trying to take steps like you're like you're stating okay while following the executive order right so in the in phys ed if they're active we keep the two classes separate but they are allowed to so we're doing a lot to try to um make it reasonable while
093following the executive order when we're allowed to have that dispensation so if you i'm sure you do talk to your children so you'll hear like we are doing things it's not yeah um but we still while being in line with right okay that's why i was wondering because i was saying it's if it's 15 minutes or less maybe they could take it off for an entire 14 minutes maybe there was just something maybe i don't know nobody ever thought about i just thought we welcome the suggestions we're doing as much as we can to give them that time but it is across a full day and then uh dr brett howard told us this evening um if you want to share that the governor's office will be yeah yeah of course let's see yeah yeah
094no that's what we can so the at the garden state coalition of schools the uh whoever is the second in command of the governor i don't remember what the title is but she said that they are at the point where they're reevaluating the data and potentially reconsidering the mask mandate so you know alluded to and i know our county is still in orange and we watch every week and praying that monmouth county comes back down to yellow but alluded to that the data it's starting to fall um that they will consider a change so i don't know when if but they to say that in our district she's talking as new jersey as the state she was speaking to superintendents and board members on the call and said they are reconsidering with the data don't
095know time wise but we have seen the data fall thank you all right no it's okay my stuff goes to katina and i have seen several weeks of zero numbers so it's sorry write my time but it's a pot you know it's positive thinking and it just makes me feel like you know maybe we are kind of you know they're not wearing masks anywhere else i mean they're going to concerts they're going not my son specifically but adults you know children inside arenas outside arenas play dates uh birthday parties everything i mean they're not wearing it so to wear it seven plus hours it just feels like they're they're they're considered diseased and they're not so it's really you know it's hurtful so i just really wanted to just voice my opinion and hope that
096you guys agree with me that hopefully a change can be made soon thank you thank you okay thank you thank you would anybody else like to address the board okay um okay did you need to say something oh okay oh okay i know you were getting up for something okay um okay at this at this point i'd like to thank um everyone who came out this evening um this board is now going to enter an executive session whereas pursuant to njsa 10 412 b the board of education may exclude the public from that portion of a public meeting at which the board discusses any of the matters described at njsa 10 412 b items 1-9 now therefore be it resolved that in accordance with the provisions of the open public meeting act the board of
097education shall conduct a closed session pursuant to the personnel and legal exceptions prescribed by njsa 10-4-12 for the purpose of discussing matters concerning collective negotiations or the negotiations of terms and conditions of employment of employees of the board of education the twu it is anticipated that the length of time of this executive session will be 30 minutes and that action will not be taken in public after the executive session be it further resolved that said discussion may be disclosed to the public when reasons for discussing and acting upon it in closed session no longer exist so we will go into executive session we will resume public session merely to adjourn the meeting you are welcome to to wait outside for that or you can go and again thank you for coming this evening