August 29, 2022 Voorhees BOE Meeting

001i'm needing to order good afternoon or good evening everyone it's so wonderful to see so many faces at the board meeting um i love the beginning of the school year because i feel like there's a really cool energy that's in the air um and part of it is the students are aren't here yet but the teachers are are buzzing around and getting everything ready for school and the other part of it is the kids are buzzing around and they're finishing their summer experiences and getting ready for school and i feel like this is still when they're really excited you know in june it's a whole different thing that we're experiencing so this is my favorite time um and i wanna again thank all of our teachers for spending the time over the last couple of

002weeks getting prepared um with the curriculum getting our classrooms ready getting our students ready i've already received some phenomenal letters from teachers um and it just makes me that much more excited to start the year off correctly um with that i will get into the meeting pursuant to the open public meetings act public notice of this meeting has been given by the board secretary in the following matter posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the warheads township public schools administrative building on july 6 2022 sending written notice to the courier post on july 6 2022 filing written notice with the clerk of warheads township on july 6 2022 and posting on the voorhees township website on july 6 2022. please rise for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance one nation under god indivisible

003with liberty and justice i am going to turn it over to our solicitor board solicitor to do the oath of office thank you madam president just head over i'm going to hand you your oath but i'm going to read it out loud and i'm going to ask you to repeat after me okay but just you have it in front of you you could raise your right hand i say your name i julie head over do you solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and that i

004will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and to the governments established in the united states and this state under the authority of the people and to the governments established in the united states and the state under the authority of the people so help me god so help me god i state your name i julie headover do you solemnly swear or firm do you solemnly swear that i possess the pre-qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education thank you for giving me these papers that i possess the qualifications prescribed by law for the office of member of a board of education am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to rs19 colon 4-1 am not disqualified as a voter pursuant to rs19 colon 4-1 i'm not disqualified due to

005conviction of crime of a crime or offense listed in njsa 18a colon 12-1 i'm not disqualified due to conviction of a crime or offense listed in njsa 18a colon 12-1 and that i will faithfully impartially and justly and that i will faithfully and partially and justly perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god that's all let me be the first to congratulate you and welcome you to the board thank you board secretary will you do the call uh the roll call mr bryce here mrs casanza here dr fall scaliano here miss cat over here dr levy here mr schmooze here mrs stupler here this is watson here

006i get a motion to approve the minutes of the june 15 2022 meeting i'll move that second my voting is open there are also some seats still in the front row if anybody would like there's two seats up here and there's one seat over here motion carries all voted yes closing the online voting uh under information under information items fire drills and safety drills are shown on the attachment and as is the hip report um we had three oprah requests recently they've all been closed out that's their current status um if you need in for more information you can see that rnr agenda board secretary reports thank you every board member has received a packet of summer projects our maintenance department building the grounds department has been very busy this summer just like other summers

007they do routine maintenance throughout the whole district replacing ceiling tiles and painting and replacing equipment repairing things we've had some new windows installed some exterior doors installed paving done lines on pavement many things like that um in addition in the past we would do uh we would have an industrial hygienist or certified uh hygienist come in and do um an air quality air quality review and we would do it on a random sampling of classrooms or by request this year we decided to increase it so last fall and when we got the ester money we increased it to every classroom because we thought it's probably more thorough to do every classroom than just a random sampling of classrooms or by request so we did that and that was conducted in mid august and during that

008process we did find some that the person doing the inspection found some surface mold which is not the serious kind of mold but it's mold that can be cleaned up pretty easily so we contacted our insurance company and they gave us the protocol to follow so we had a certified industrial hygienist come in from hillman consulting they looked at the classrooms and they gave us the protocol and starting uh friday and over the weekend our maintenance department cleaned all the classrooms with the disinfectant cleaner where they wiped out all surface areas all desks underneath depths wooden doors wooden folding doors and so forth and then we rented air scrubbers to run the entire weekend hillman came back today they did a review of the district again and all classrooms are clear so we wanted to

009make sure that we reported that so that way people know but uh we do we we started doing the every classroom routine i think it was either the fall or in the winter of last year and we think that's a better approach than doing a random sampling of classrooms or by request it's just more thorough we started doing on a rotating basis to cover the whole district and then this august we did everything at one shot so yeah we were happy to know that it's all clear at this point um mr taylor if you can we had some really big projects this summer as you know we were building a uh 10 classroom edition on crescent and we got our temporary certificate of occupancy last week so that was great because our date of substantial

010completion was august 23rd and we met it so we were very thrilled with that um we also had some other projects where we renovated the osage library and we installed new lockers in bms so we're going to show you some pictures on that real soon but i really do want to thank clark mathis our director of buildings and grounds as well as the maintenance staff they have worked they always work hard but i think this summer they worked harder than ever and they really met every deadline and uh we're really proud of them and we do commend them so mr taylor if you could share um each of those projects i'll go over each of them with you guys okay the first picture is that's the ms so you can see the new lockers and

011you can see the floor so throughout throughout each year we're like ran not randomly like um we're scheduling replacement of carpeting with hard surface flooring so you can see that hallway has been replaced and the lockers have been replaced so that's a sample of how things will look everywhere at some point could you go to the next picture please okay there's a picture of there's one of them that has uh the carpeting in the hallway that's okay all right can you show the video of it okay the other one doesn't matter so much it's just one hallway head carpeting and then one has the new flooring but over time we will be replacing all the carpeting with hard surface flooring and that's happening throughout the district in classrooms and hallways um this sounds like one

012of the ones our um furniture people might have done because they put music to theirs we're not that i'm not that skilled [Music] if it doesn't work here we have it on our website that's okay i know you have a lot well if if by chance it doesn't work here what we did is we uploaded them to our facilities website and there's a tab on construction so what one of the videos is is the a classroom at the crescent edition it's our preschool classroom so it shows how beautiful the room is it shows um the new furniture another one of them is our osage media center and that one we did pretty much completely in-house this looks like okay this is crescent and this is the preschool a sample preschool classroom [Music] so [Music] so

013[Music] so [Music] the next one should be the library i guess some of our library renovations in the other two schools we had used an architect to help design it this one we did it in house so we used uh so clark mathis oversaw the project and he brought in various contractors so we had um somebody from emerald which is our furniture supplier designed the space with the media center uh director and uh specialist media center specialist so she picked out the colors and so forth and uh they ordered the furniture and our in-house painting crew painted the walls here you go this is this is the media center at osage so the media center specialist picked out the colors and they helped pick out the furniture we're going with furniture like instead of wooden

014furniture which can attract mold we're going with more of a metal and laminate um so that's lvt flooring that's not wooden flooring it's lvt flooring and like i said it's laminate or metal it all has roll uh posters on it so it can roll around so they can use the space for various things and our inside paint crew did that the furniture guy and then we had a we had another construction company do the renovation part of it [Music] so just a sampling of some of the projects that were done this summer so it was a pretty um pretty busy summer getting things cleaned up and new things in place this also came in under budget [Music] and in there before was all carpeting so again the carpeting is removed so that it makes it

015easier to clean better air quality and so forth [Music] and the funding for this comes from capital reserve money but like i said it came in under what was budgeted and it got done faster than we expected [Music] well for the sake of time you don't have to find the video on the lockers but uh we did see still pictures of the walkers and it will be on our website so if you want to look there you can look there um i'll move on to the next topic which is um which is free and reduced lunch um we have tried to put out as much notices as we could on facebook on our website on genesis and so forth just to let everyone know that um the waiver process has not been extended for free

016meals for everyone now the free and reduced process is still in place we encourage people to apply online uh it gets processed quicker that way and if people are eligible for cream reduced meals it does help them in other areas like the ebt cards and so forth but free and reduced would get meals at zero price the full price meals are three dollars and fifteen cents and the full price breakfast is 1.85 breakfast is only at osage and bms um the last item under my section is the ipad sale reverse bid so what we did we've done this one other time when we had a large number of assets to sell that are old and of no use to us anymore and um in this situation that we had apple ipads that were older generations

017so mr taylor oversaw this whole project and we put together a reverse bid put it out we we had a bottom a floor bid of 69 000 we advertised it on our website and also in the newspaper we had several companies ask for information on the bid but four of them submitted bids and we ended up getting the highest bid of 84 260 and 72 cents so again like we put the floor at 69 and the bids came in really great so we're pretty happy with that result too and that way that money can go back into our budget and be used for other things so that's all i have for my section thank you very much superintendent okay thank you good evening voorhees community i hope everyone is well today i want to acknowledge

018miss haley and mr mathis and the entire buildings and grounds team what a wonderful job they have done this summer i don't believe mr mathis is in the room but what a wonderful job and you can see the fruits of their labor this evening so i just want to acknowledge them in their hard work i'd like to begin by thanking the voorhees township community for extending to me such a warm welcome and best wishes my heart has been filled with the encouraging words and smiles that i have received since beginning my time as superintendent on july 1st i met with district personnel parents and community stakeholders and everyone i mean everyone has been so supportive so encouraging and so complimentary of the school district i have learned over the past eight weeks that the warheads

019township school district has committed staff members a supportive board of education members dedicated community members and engaged parents and guardians and i look forward to working side by side with everyone as we focus on providing our students with a rigorous and relevant learning experience in a safe and secure learning environment i have spent the last eight weeks implementing my 90-day plan which can be found on the district's website i am pleased to announce that i am on target to complete all of the action steps listed in the 90-day plan i look forward to my listen and learn meetings with district staff which will take place in september and eventually i have planned to have listen and learn meetings with fourth and fifth grade students from each school and our middle school student representatives to discuss

020their perceptions of their learning experience here in the voorhees township public schools as part of my 90-day plan i've scheduled three community forums i've had two so far on july 27 and august 24th the august 24th forum resulted in engaging one and a half hour conversation about various topics my last forum for the 90 day plan is scheduled for september 21st at 6 pm in this room and i hope that you will be able to attend i'm also pleased to inform the community that the district completed an application for its preschool expansion grant the new jersey department of education conducted an information session on july the 12th the application was due on august 9th and the district submitted their application on august the 8th the new jersey department of education contacted me and scheduled an

021on-site visit on august the 15th to view our classroom space if we receive the grant funding we must implement a full day pre-kindergarten by october the 3rd of 2022 we believe that opening four additional pre-kindergarten classrooms this year is definitely possible we will partner with today's learning center to house two of the classrooms and the remaining two classrooms will be housed at crescent elementary school we will have five years to serve our entire preschool universe and the state has predicted our preschool universe of 500 3 and 4 year olds so we anticipate a response regarding the grant by september the 6th and is my hope that we will receive this grant this item can be found as 17.10 in your agenda as we have a ratification to submit the grant for this year which is

022over 1 million dollars on tonight's agenda we're asking the board also to approve some job descriptions for lead teachers we're asking the board to consider lead teachers two for every elementary school and these teachers would work with k to two one teacher worked with k to two and the second would work with three to five students three special education lead teachers for our self-contained elementary and middle departments middle school department and a math social studies science and health and p.e teacher for the middle school these teachers will be paid a stipend to provide coaching and support to teachers in the implementation of curriculum instruction and assessment i am pleased to announce that over 200 parents and guardians participated in our parent monthly virtual workshop survey this survey provides the district with information regarding the types

023of workshops that interest our parents and guardians there are 13 workshops scheduled for this year that will be conducted by administrators and teachers the link will be posted on our district's website that gives a list of all of our workshops the dates and the times i hope that you can come out and participate with our particular virtual workshops which will be online in an effort to build on the strong sense of community in this district we are excited to introduce monthly district spirit days the first one will occur on friday september 16th and we're calling that day teamwork day and we're asking everyone to dress in their sports attire all students and staff are encouraged to participate the list of our theme days will also be posted on the website a resolution appears on tonight's

024agenda 21.7 to request an rfp for professional development over the last two months it's been identified that we have some opportunities for success in the areas of writing small group instruction and differentiated instruction the rfp seeks a professional development vendor who can provide these services in addition the vendor will provide job embedded coaching to support our teachers after they learn these new techniques or get or reinforce these techniques this summer a significant amount of work has been completed to ensure that our students are presented with a standards-based and rigorous instructional program we have met the state standard mandate to align our curriculum with the new jersey student learning standards our curriculum includes resources and materials of high interest the resources include a diverse perspective representing our student population and include includes embedded interventions for all

025students we'll continue to work with our curriculum to make sure we have the mandated assessments to measure student achievements i like to commend dr young and her entire team for the work they have done this summer to ensure that our curriculum meets state mandates curriculum guides were posted on our website for the community to review and provide input on august 15th 26 health lessons will be posted for the community to provide input and review on september the 12th again 26 health lessons will be posted on our website on september 12th these 24 lessons which are six k to five lesson and eighteen six to eight lessons will address some of the new health standards and we're seeking the input of the community the health lesson opt-out letter will be sent to parents on september the

02616th the teachers will not implement any of the 24 lessons until the deadline to submit the opt-out letter has expired again i want to commend dr young um and her team for these 24 lessons i have read each and every one of them and i find them to be developmentally appropriate with a focus on the standards that the njdoe requires the district to address the safety of our borghese township public schools family remains our top priority the district has taken into consideration all of the current data from the center for disease control the new jersey department of education in regard to cobit 19 cases accessibility of testing and vaccination rates and we have revised our protocols of the 22-23 school year these protocols will be posted on the district's website and shared with parents and

027staff i want to commend dr alegria our director of special services and her team for their work on improving the district compliance with the special education medicaid initiative otherwise known as semi under her leadership and with the support of mrs khalil who's our former cst secretary the district has exceeded the state benchmark for parental consent forms district service reimbursement and service documentation and iep implementation for the 21 22 school year the district was able to receive of the budgeted reimbursement in the amount of 68 865 so congratulations to uh dr allegria and her team there are so many more announcements i can make tonight of all the wonderful things happening in the district but for the sake of time and we do have a few other presentations i limited my um report to these areas

028but there are so many wonderful things happening in the district and there's so many wonderful staff members here who are committed to ensuring that our students receive a quality education it is my privilege to serve as superintendent of this district at this point um we have in the on the agenda the annual report and that report is created by ms donnelly our supervisor special projects and she works very hard in putting this report together and this report highlights everything some of the things that happened in the 21 22 school year from the various departments schools subject areas it highlights the accomplishments of our staff members it's just a very well put together report and it summarizes the 21 22 school year so that report will be available on our district's website after tonight's meeting i

029would like to now turn over my report to dr melanie alegria our director of special services who will provide the annual special education report for the 22-23 school year dr alegria everyone good evening give you some information on our special education and then just talk about where our special education department is currently and where we're looking uh we're going to talk about the annual report give us some information on special services summer updates talk a little bit about the child study team our continued communication to families also our department next steps and then we're going to just show you a little recap of extended school year at the s5 so every year districts receive a local district special education report and this report basically just determines whether the district has made their targets according to

030the department of education and if we haven't then we should then come up with a plan or correction plan to address those areas that we did not need to target so as i go through the plan i'm going to show you where we um um but they give this to us and we still have to protect on it and then we'll go over kind of any areas that fisher did not need targets so we were the first question was in theater four on rates of suspension and explosion for our classified students and this is asking us if there was any discrepancy in our suspension for our students with ieps so as you'll see uh the district was not determined to be um in out of compliance with this excuse me so we are good we

031are in compliance we have met our target with expulsions there was also not a significant discrepancy in our classification of students of different racial categories and also we do not uh have any punitive um discipline in place for our students with special education as a discrepancy level that the department of education establishes a problem so for all of these targets we have met those targets as we look into least restrictive environment that is how much time our children with iep spend in a general education population and expose their non-disabled peers and so these questions are broken up in terms of 80 in a general education the state target is 45 as a district we graduate uh 49 so we have met our target in terms of our students being in regular education 80 or more

032of the day the next question is about students attending a special class separate school the state target is 38.75 the state target was 38.75 so we need to be under that so again the district has met its responsibility in that at 33.3 the last portion is our iep students each three to five on home instruction or receiving any of their services in a separate setting the nutrients department event is using this that here at the baseline so there is no local data um and what they're looking at all right so this also as long as this one is on this proportionality and frontal involvement so the new jersey department of education does random uh phone surveys for parents within the district they'll ask for home lists and they'll contact them for parents uh at random

033and so we scored a 90.36 percentage of our parents with the child receiving special education services indicating that we have involved parents in that process the state target is 85 so again we've met the target there okay and now it's easy this proportionality if you have any disproportionality this also goes along with indicator 4 but we are bound to be in compliance so there was no discrimination that we are out of compliance in that question so again indicators 11 and 12 these are general supervision so of course 100 is what we would like to be in compliance with every child who gets evaluated against an iep within a 90-day timeline the state target is 100 at the district we're at 96.34 so we did not need a target on this area um this again was

034during the topic year so trying to get parents for to participate in meetings trying to get our meetings scheduled virtual there were some lags in the timeline so that's why the district was not at 96 or it was at 96.34 when it comes to preschool um again that is asking us we need to get 100 as you'll see we were at 66.67 so we did not need to target so the district of the department we have put some safeguards in place to support the child study team and our teachers to ensure that we are being compliant in this area uh one thing that you'll see later on in the presentation our child study team assignment there have been some changes to child study team assignments to streamline peace management so in terms of preschool instead

035of there being multiple people for preschool there is just one so our hope is that we're able to streamline the referrals that come in through early intervention just to one person and really support that preschool case manager versus having multiple piece managers and again this was during proven year so there were some belief in getting children into the building and getting accepted and evaluated so that is another area that the district is working on so this is just the synopsis of where we are in terms of our students who are currently receiving services what you'll see is the number and then you'll see uh the parentheses the parentheses represent where we were at the same time last year so we currently have 419 students who are receiving special education services this time last year we're

036at 393. pending special education referrals we have 19 this time we were at 25 the number of students receiving speech only services is 133 and last year is 105 and then pending speech only referrals this year we have zero and this time last year so when you look at the numbers we have um you know over 500 students who are underneath the umbrella of special education some of them are receiving special education some of them are receiving speech and there is also as a combination group so i know this chart is very little but this will be on the website as well but just to give some special services update this summer we had a team of educators working to make some connections with our curriculum um so we had special education teachers we had

037ldtcs which are a learning disability teacher consultant who was on the child study team we've also had a reading specialist work together to come up with some specific interventions that we're going to be using in our special education programming classes for our resource room ourselves routine and also our autism programs the goal of this group this work group was to streamline our interventions to ensure that we have consistency from every elementary school and also in the middle school so we had an elementary group working and we also had a middle school reporting to ensure consistency across our interventions that we're using they also worked on a draft report card for our self-contained students so for families whose children are in a cell community classroom who maybe didn't receive a report card in the past this

038year in addition to the progress and honest reasons also this document is a two-page document one for elementary one for middle and this is uploaded atlas so parents also can see the interventions specific interventions that we're using for special education just a quick recap on the child study team and what some of their responsibilities are they will be supporting teachers administrators instructional associate this year the child study queue is made into the school building so previously the child study team is housed here and then we'll go to school to provide support um for for pre-k through five this year all of the child's buddies members will be located in a school so the reason behind that is they're able to provide hands-on support for our teachers if we have any students who are in need

039crisis counseling or anything like that they are available to support the students teachers and also any exact members regarding student needs um the child study team also does the evaluation they also create the ieps for families for students excuse me they work very closely with the special education teachers to identify needs that the children have and outlining the goals for those students so here's just a quick chart uh previously every elementary has three case matters that that were assigned to that building this year each building has one case manager that's assigned a whole building so they will be the case manager of the building we're really working to build relationships amongst families and students and case managers in the special services department so this will information will go out to all of our special education

040families in our newsletter that goes out on the first friday of every month this will also be posted on our website as well and it's currently on our social services have a website as well case managers will be reaching out to families the second week of school introducing themselves and letting them know letting your families know that they are the new peace managers case managers have been working this summer to transition their pieces if they're moving to a different school and they're no longer going to have their same students so they have been working on that transition plan throughout the summer if your child has 504 or an iep you probably have seen a special service this monthly newsletter that comes out this comes every friday or the first friday of every month the goal

041is just to improve our communication identify different resources in the community highlight staff members so we have a a forum on there where parents can nominate a special staff member to highlight and so we use that to highlight those staff members within this newsletter provide information on upcoming dates and just provide as much information on special services as possible so our first newsletter for this year will go out on september just as a recap special services will be working to really support the curriculum alignment for the correct agenda curriculum and then also making sure that we have interventions in place for special education students that are in alignment and in support of closing those achievement gaps that some of our students have we'll be working on inclusion opportunities um that is something that we started

042last year with monthly special education meetings for our teachers we will continue that moving forward so our special education teachers meet once a month and have professional development so that is something that will continue and also just looking at program expansion and supports and identifying different needs that we have as especially i just wanted to end with of our esi program esy this year um was held at signal hill for elementary it was held at yes at signal hills for elementary beforehand middle school for for middle school students our incoming sixth graders through our eighth grade we really were to um we had two lead teachers for esy who were special education teachers who really supported the program and designing activities for students activities for families to have at home there were different science science

043experiments so we do have an es5 website that is on our district website as well but i was just going to show different pictures that we have gathered throughout the summer time our children really had a great time i've heard a lot of positive feedback from families so i do want to just make sure that that is out there so i'll make sure everyone has so you can see the pictures um of our program thank you thank you thank you very much and i had the pleasure of visiting the esy program in my first few days in the district and it was truly a wonderful program students were very very engaged the staff members were doing a phenomenal job uh at this time i'd like to invite dr young assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction who

044will provide the annual new jersey student learning assessment report for the 21-22 year good evening everyone i hope that uh you all had an enjoyable summer and we're looking forward to everyone coming back to the next school year hopefully it's going to be a lot more normal than it has been in the past getting back on track um okay so tonight i'm going to be sharing the 2021-2020 njsla results um and njsala is the standardized assessment that students in grades three through eight participate in the end at the end of every year however the last time that i shared the results of the njsla is in 2019. so our students haven't taken that standardized assessment since 2019 and a lot has happened since then so as a reminder um bmjsla is one measure to determine

045if students are considered to be college so um students receive a score of either a one a two a three four or a five and the goal is for all students to be out of work that is what the state has determined shows that our students are colleges so here are the language arts literacy for sense scores and the board has the presentation in front of them but i can also um post this online for for you in the audience to see what it is um but the you can see that these scores are over a four-year period and even though it's small i think it's really important for me to include that four years of scores because when we analyze scores we want to look at the current year scores of course but we

046also want to look at trends over time we want to compare grade level scores and we also want to look at the cohort scores so this year we're able to see the impact of covet 19 on student achievement prior to coven scores were trending up in literacy and now overall we do see a decline compared to 2015. this was expected as students and teachers navigated remote and hybrid learning however if you look at the scores in blue which i know is really hard for you to see um so i do apologize for that um you will see that when we compare students who took the test so looking at the same students over time so those third graders that took the test in 2017 last school year were eighth graders we can see that the

047students at the lower levels struggled more and had more of an impact than our students who were at the top okay so actually you can see that in 2022 more students scored a five compared to when they last took the njsla in 2019. this is not surprising because as we expected there was a more negative impact on those learners who struggled academically it was hard for them to be at home on remote and it was also hard for them to be hybrid so now that we have everybody back in person and we have um had everybody back in person for last year and moving into this year we're going to be able to continue our work to remediate those students so if you go to the next slide this hopefully is a little bit clearer

048you can see that of change from 2019 to 2022. and we focus on all areas however our primary focus is on those scores that we're above 5 so we always have variability in scores but we really want to look at those areas where we see above 5 and those scores are in green so we did see that drop at the top as well however we look at seventh grade they actually had an increase in level four but part of that was due to the fact that there was a decrease but you can kind of see where um the greatest the next slide shows the percentage of students considered college and career ready by grade level the blue tracks the same cohort of students over time so third graders when they took it in 2017 they

049were at a 65 and the next year 2018 is 71 the next year they were at 73 so they were trending up and then um this past school year and 8th grade they were at so there was a drop but it was a pretty minor drop when you look at the other grade levels if it's in green that means it was greater than five percent of a job um those are not comparing the same students it's just looking at the same ratio and then the yellow is where we really want to put a lot of our focus we saw that our sixth grade students in literacy really had a sharp deep mind and so that would definitely be an area of focus for us okay so this next slide really is giving you the information

050um by school and i just want to give kudos to signal hills fifth grade um because their students scored at the 81 81 of their students were college and career ready and that was compared to 68 um prior to token so that was really remarkable and so um definitely kudos to signal health for free but for us it really gives us the opportunity to look at that school that grade and talk to those teachers to say okay what really was working for you so that we can share that across the distance okay let's go to the next slide okay so the next we look at our subgroup scores and we continue to see an achievement gap between our subjects i'll caution you that in all cases student scores are reported in multiple subjects so they

051might be one student could be represented in actually recently um so some of those scores we have to use and when we look at it the important thing though is that when we look at those subgroup differences we want to ensure that all students are receiving the necessary interventions so that will be our focus when i get to the end of the presentation and i talk to you about what things are we doing to improve our student achievement scores for our subgroups it's making sure that they're actually having access to all of the interventions that we have available so next we have our math results over four years we can't we cannot compare cohorts because eighth grade math um consists of algebra one and on level eighth grade math so once we get to that

052eighth grade math get the scores separate out with our higher achievers taking action and um our on level achievers taking um the regular eighth grade event but again we see a decline from free pandemic data but the decline is less compared to literacy so you'll see that on the next slide okay so the next slide shows the percentage of change from 2019 to 2022 again the last time we took these 2019. you can see the areas in green that showed a greater than 5 change so this is less the change was less significant in math and um less groups were impacted and actually there are groups that have a higher score but again where you see the higher score it's basically because the level five dropped um um this slide compares um the students or

053shows you the students who scored a four or five by grade level again the green indicates where we had a greater than five percent change so we saw a greater than five percent change in grade three in grade five and in grade eight okay and then this slide again compares the math scores by building and kudos to fourth grade at crescent and signal hill who actually saw an increase from three pandemic scores and those those are significant especially at crescent because they went from 58 to 62 and when we look at the trend data 62 is the highest that they ever had in math um and actually the same thing for signal bill they scored from a 67 to a and that was the highest that they've ever seen um when we look back at

054over the four years and fourth grade was an area that we really really focused on especially at crescent so it tells us that when we put the work in and when we put those interventions in place that we kind of see a difference in our achievements so i'm really proud of the work that they did to make sure that our student scores were increased together okay so um that's okay i'll just talk to it okay there it is um so again this is subgroup data clearly there's an achievement gap between subgroups and again we want to make sure that all students are getting those interventions that we know will positively impact their achievement moving forward and so when we go to the next slide i can address this and i do apologize if it's so

055small and make sure that this is on the website okay so the first thing that we want to do is we want to make sure we've already started the process with our listeners this summer we really want to analyze our data to determine trends in literacy and math and we don't want to just look at i showed you the overall summary of course but we really need to take time to drill down and look at individual students and individual standards so we are able to do that with our nj sla results but we also are able to do that with our ibrady results so we spend a whole lot of time talking to our teachers at grade level meetings and faculty meetings and other trainings to to say to them okay we really need to

056take a look at your each individual student and and plan for that as you move forward to plan your instruction for the classroom um we also have teachers work together in groups called professional learning communities so that they can acquire strategies for small group differentiated instruction that's going to address the needs of all students so we all we always knew that differentiating our instruction was really important and the small groups are critical but they're even more critical because some of our students are showing more of a gap than we've ever seen before and so having that small individual time with their teacher during the school day is really important we're going to continue our i-ready literacy and math diagnostic program and instruction and altery levels so all of our students have um access to the

057i ready diagnostic which they will take in september um and that will report we'll get a report back to let us know what their strengths are what their weaknesses are we'll share that out with parents so we we know how important that parent partnership is so that you are aware of what weaknesses and strengths your students have um and then we will continue to make sure that they have access to that on level instruction that already provides them that they can work at home and in school we will provide more targeted basic skills instruction in literacy and math at the middle school we are going to utilize atlas which hopefully have the opportunity to look at our curriculum documents online um but as that list is a platform that allows our teachers to collaborate across

058the district it will provide them with more resources and increase the consistency with our spoken sequence and also we plan to provide teachers training and writing instruction and create better benchmark assessments we're going to provide training and support to teachers at bms it's focused on the differentiated and small group construction we're going to expand our before and after school literacy and math programs we're going to implement training for teachers focused on inclusion and co-teaching to better support our students with special needs and we are going to continue to focus on improving our student intent we know that if students are in school it's hard for them to work the material on their own at home and kovid has been of concern for some of our students who um aren't now in a pattern of not

059coming to school so we need to get them back on track and make sure that they have consistent attendance and that they're here every day so that we can give them thank you does anybody have any questions thank you very much thank you donkey thank you so as i conclude my report i want to thank dr young for a very informative report although we have as women here to celebrate there's also room for growth and we know that we understand that and there's a robust intervention plan that she discussed but the most important thing that dr young said is that when we put the work in we get it done and we will put the work in the work that's necessary to improve student achievement and we will get it done based on the administrators

060and the teachers who i've met so far there will be no doubt in my mind that we will all work together as a team put the work in and get things done so i look forward to getting to know the staff at the convocation this wednesday august 31st and i look forward so forward to meeting our students on tuesday september 6th for president that ends my report thank you very much committee reports scalia policy today yes good evening um the policy committee met this evening and we reviewed um some policies for first street and second grade thank you very much uh miss casenza could you give the personnel committee yeah um at our personnel committee meetings this evening and over the summer we discussed the implementation of an after-school professional development training for teachers and

061a supportive curriculum to be led by lead teachers within the district we also discussed job posting for a preschool master teacher for early childhood instructional program and also a job posting for lunch recessing to help and insist in supervising the children during lunch and recess time to alleviate the time constraints on the teaching staff thank you um before we get into the audience participation i just want to set some ground rules so that everybody understands you will have three minutes when you come to the podium we're going to let everybody try and speak i'm not sure if there are people online but everybody will only speak one time before we let anybody come up for a second time to the extent anybody disrupts you get one warning and i will ask our officers to escort

062you out i just asked that everybody be professional and polite to one another and allow everybody to allow their time up at the podium and speak without anybody outbursts yelling etc um and i expect the same professionalism in decorum to be exhibited when you exit this building anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the login sheet if you are attending via zoom please use the raise your hand feature to be acknowledged while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving personnel litigation negotiations and attorney-client privilege the board will now hear comments from the public relating to the items on the agenda for this board meeting comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this

063evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in context of a later board meeting of any action the board does take hello everybody that's a great idea to put that there uh my name is eric simkin i'm a resident of ortiz township and my comment is regarding the agenda new jersey statute the government's building vacancies njsa 18a which begins in part by clearly stating that vacancies and membership awards shall be filled as follows by the county superintendent if the vacancy is not filled within 65 days the wording is also reiterated in 40th district policy so in the spirit of transparency we'd like to ask dr paul why did you what was the course of events that led you to change and the votes that you made on both

064march 16 march 10th april 11th jesus what happened between the time you change your mind and the vote that occurred is there a further interview of the nominees thank you my name is patricia klein from school new jersey um before i start i just wanted somebody called my radio program and asked me some questions about my behavior and i said i wanted to apologize to the board for interrupting the last time that i was here i'm not apologizing based on what i said i stand behind what i said but i want to apologize for interrupting the speaker i have a question concerning the esser funds the ester funds are the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds and that's 15.16 and 17.13 13. there were three um best are funds that were given first second

065and third of the three the first you were given almost two hundred thousand dollars here the second one you were given close to our little more than seven hundred 000 and on the third esser fund you were given over 2 million so my question you're close to 3 million my question would be what did you spend or what are you spending the three million dollars on and also how do we find out specifically what did you do with the monies or what you plan on doing with your money now i noticed that you said mold i'm sure it did not cost three million dollars so i like to find out more about that also you mentioned about changing subjects superintendent mentioned about health lessons being some of the health lessons being posted to meet the

066standards i have a question about that when will all of these health lessons be posted so that the parents can make a wise decision to opt out of the program the comprehensive health program um also i'm really concerned about the opt out i am not an opt-out person when you um send your child on a trip a field trip at least when i was in school you had to sign a permission slip that's opting in and we should be opting our children in giving you permission to speak on those subjects to our children so i am for um opting in giving you permission now i had some a young man say to me he said when you enroll your children into our schools you're opting in i'm going to address that i am a i'll

067come back don't worry uh issues here the first thing is um the board does not respond back to us so folks that come up and they have an issue sometimes i feel it's a complaint or an issue but it's never addressed and so what i would like uh as a solution if there could be at the next meeting it could be a dress because it's not addressed from previous um the second is you know from what mr simkin said is that we had a another general election it was a election that night and you know the board is the basic element of government basic element of democracy and so if if there was a uh you know from what because iran and so the from what i got is the uh the superintendent of the

068county was supposed to make the decision and so you know with with government now with the fraud elections and so forth it's not coal if you made up your own policy so policy could be addressed all right the third thing is um you know i'd like to set up a advocacy group for parents and so it would be a voice for them it would be written and we could just submit it to the board now we could have partnerships with dr hackney which is here and so it would be a lot more cleaner to address parents voices on paper to address rather than not being heard that's it thank you um i just want to reiterate um what dr alabado just asked some kind of parental committee we did speak at um and you didn't

069give me feedback about that but i just you know um i want to reiterate exactly what he said because we do come to these meetings we've been coming to these for about a year and a half we really don't get feedback so we just want to answer that um i have concerns about the new health curriculum as to a lot of people um we want to know when the apparently there's there's going to be an on deal for this sex day but for the other gender uh infused curriculum we want to know when we would be able to do that um and we also i want to reiterate or agree with patricia as to what knocked in because a lot of parents won't opt out a lot of the information is highly highly inappropriate to

070for kids starting in kindergarten why do we want to teach gender identity issues to kindergarteners it's only going to confuse them there are a lot of passionate parents that are against this so we just want to be heard we wanted that to be an opt-in uh situation um basically you know this is all around all of the schools the content that's that was requested uh was written for special interest groups the state is putting this through so people have to think about why are this being taught to kids but it's only going to confuse and it's basically it's highly inappropriate um the stakeholders of the schools are the parents it seems to me that we don't have parent rights as to what what is our child is going to be exposed to and that's it's

071just down right wrong you know uh a lot of taxpayers in this county as across new jersey pay a lot of taxes and if we feel our rights are infringed upon roosevelt park school today updated their curriculum to have all the controversial health topics be opt-in only so that's what a lot of people are requesting um there are a lot of districts that have vetoed it entirely so yes for that same courtesy it's it's it's such a lot of the content is going to be detrimental and it's downright abusive thank you my name is john solo i'd like to speak again to the curriculum especially the health and other gender issues one of the things that is lost in all of these discussions about parents rights and all that is that these students are the

072ones who are in the situation and there is proven evidence that having an affirming and accepting environment even if it's school in one affirming parent reduces suicide rates among gay and lesbian and trans children by over 40 percent that's and if it's an entire community that reduction goes down to 80 literally advocating against this curriculum is advocating for dead children a health curriculum around letting children know what their what who their bodies what their bodies are what the names of things are actually improving again with research to reduce incidences of child molestation and exploitation because children actually know what's happening to them and they know how no outburst how to speak about this kind of work actually helps save and protect children and should be supported good evening my name is smith come to these

073things because they're important to have discussions now i remember it before me spoke very passionate and i believe that peace as a remodel if i met one really scary statistic and there's a lot of scary statistics you can use statistics to kind of paint whatever picture you want um that's the thing about this don't lie you want to consider that uh 40 of all transgender children have tried to commit suicide 82 of them are seriously considered now does that mean that i do not support loving and caring environments for children to explore whoever they are absolutely not i think every child not only in new jersey good idea of education um no parent means their child want some parents just want to be able to do it in their own respect not have a motto

074or a universal system that they didn't weigh in on tell their kids there's no reason that we can't as communities form groups or at least children who do want to look for that i think i may kind of touch on what mr time is saying um there's a post [Music] um by a member of this board of education from october 31st 121. not sure where this quote parents should control what is taught in schools because they empower our kids end quote is operating but parents do have an option to send their kids to hand select private school at their own expenses desire judge wants to say the purpose of a public education in a publishable is not to teach kids only what parents want parents but it is to teach them what society needs them

075to know the client of the public school is not the parent but the entire community i beg to differ on that and i think that as a board member that is a dangerous way to approach the job that you have been honored and given by the people of this community your job is not to dictate is to hear listen and respond um that's a very disappointing book coming from somebody who has been given a position that's hi my name is andy hartley um i actually am a resident of orbeez um and unlike the person that just by me who i don't think you should be taking advice from um i do believe that public school is and for the entire society that was the establishment of public school if you don't like what they're teaching

076you should definitely feel free to home school or private to your child um but i wanted to say speaking about statistics um you know it's estimated there are over 60 million americans that are survivors of sexual abuse one in four girls one in 13 boys although megan's law says that it could be one in three girls and one in six boys because sexual abuse is highly underreported in 91 of child abuse sexual uh cases it's someone that's known and trusted by the child or the child's family members in fact 34.2 were family members fabricated abuse constitutes only one to four percent of reported cases with 75 being reported by the adult children don't fabricate sexual abuse with 91 abusers being trusted adults and family members just teaching that stranger danger doesn't work just hoping that

077it's going to get taken care of at home isn't going to work because some of the abusers might live in a childhood children must be able to identify their own body parts using medically correct terminology in case someone hurts them if that upsets your religious beliefs i'm so sorry but you should definitely home school or privates for your child teaching children to trust their gut or a yucky feeling and teaching them who a trusted adult is if it is not their own parent is helping save the child from possible abuse or further abuse if the child feels comfortable talking to somebody about anything they should be able to talk to them if the abuser is at home why shouldn't the child have a trusted adult as we've seen abusers can be family or or friends

078of family and learning who to identify as a trusted adult is extremely important for children that said these prevention tips all apply to all of these lgbt lgbtq plus youth are overrepresented in child welfare systems they're likely to be under reported because they risk abuse if they identify this is there's an estimated 30 of children in foster care that identify as lgbtq plus and five percent identify as transgender and let's clarify that informing children about these identities and communities does not make them anything that they aren't already so teaching something turn children what they were taught everyone would be cis head around so let's get that true if a child is uncomfortable coming to their family about their identity for fear of abuse they should absolutely have the right to seek help from a trusted

079adult more than 60 percent of those youth have said that their home was not affirming and nearly two and five said that they lived in a community that wasn't accepted according to the trevor project nearly half of the lgbtq have seriously considered suicide i have to ask audience members to stop having private conversations we're getting a lot of feedback and there's please stop talking while other people are up at the podium hi my name is gloria anderson i live in 52 matlab drive in fort east new jersey i had not planned to speak at all i apologize i didn't think i was going to be speaking well first of all i wanted to thank you for listening i used to teach high school it was incredible listening to the curriculum what we're looking at it

080was wonderful listening to the inclusion there were a lot of things that i absolutely loved about this meeting and then um i do agree with men you have to have some sort of health program the example i keep thinking of is one of the girls in my school committed suicide turned out that she'd been abused when they went to look at the body she had been abused but she didn't have the words for it she didn't know what was going on so no to a six-year-old you're not having a major discussion but most of the schools do they say if somebody touches you or you don't find you touch tell somebody that's it it's not this big deal and yes maybe you do teach them a little bit of language um two other things came

081up the board of elected uh the board of education is elected they're duly elected and just like congress and just like senators and state legislators they don't respond to you totally immediately because they are representative government everyone understand what i'm saying they represent us in every two years or three years sorry we're relatively new to new jersey we don't like them we ask them the bottom line is yes it should be an opt-out and the reason why you give the parents the option to have not i've been is we just had an election and you'll vouch for me in an election about gays in my community we couldn't even get 50 of the people to vote so you don't know if the opt-in is really going to come in if it means anything for those

082of you that it means a lot for your child not to be in this program simply not that um whoever's coming next i have an ascension trender and this is going to take a while for me to find out uh i can write for you okay my name is marlene kaplan i would like to address just a few things that have been discussed i wasn't prepared to speak so i don't have anything prepared i was that trusted adult in the winslow cancer school system for 25 years i am an lcsw a licensed clinical social worker um i did many things in that job i'm in that position and one of them was that if there were kids who were experiencing any abuse of any sort they came and talked to me and i called i

083dealt with it and and dealt with uh with dices now has a different name um the kids knew me and they knew that they could trust me and they knew that their their interests interest would be believed and um and and supported um it is my understanding to mention something else that with this new curriculum i do not believe that gender issues are discussed in the early grades that is not my belief when i went over the proposed program i haven't seen what is newly posted but gender issues are not um are not even mentioned in kindergarten first grade second grade that's my impression of what i read early so to say that um that we we shouldn't be teaching that we're not teaching them where it's not proposed to be teaching to be taught

084at those levels thank you hi my name is terry young 22-year resident um i start out with something discussed but apparently a lot of people already discussed it already but i still like foreign member of the lgbt community uh no one here is saying that they are against that community or against kids that you want certain things what we're talking about it's developmentally in age appropriate discussion in our schools to which parents have the right to decide what their children are exposed to and whether or not it's appropriate that certain race i have reviewed some of the curriculum but to be honest i have some concerns about the curriculum the guardians and community stakeholders can view the actual lessons associated with the curriculum especially in the subject that's health and physical uh and where controversial

085issues are introduced it's great and parents will be able to review digest and discuss the associated presentation material as the howard children's educational topics that may be in opposition to our cultural kind of speech when we send their children we are not we are sending ourselves to schools that they are entitled to we're not talking about putting religion in the school no one's saying that but you can't discount those police when they're in the school system we all have to respect that we'll [Music] it's just respecting our parents belief systems and that they have the right to do that great thank you hi my name is julianne verde and i am a mother of four young children in vorhees including a one month old you may hear in the background so i apologize in advance

086in june i addressed this board and laid out the case for the importance of world language education in the elementary school years i have reviewed the proposed curriculum and i'm disappointed to see more of the same currently our district is relying on an outdated video-based spanish-language curriculum for the elementary school years these videos are supposed to be shown by a student's primary teacher and from conversations i've had with dozens and dozens of families i've yet to find one that knows of these videos actually being shown to their learners because they're so outdated and because it puts the burden on our already overwhelmed teachers to teach a subject they likely have little to no proficiency in themselves it's simply not being used and our children are not being not actually learning spanish this curriculum seems like

087more of an attempt to check a box and say we're meeting the new jersey learning standards rather rather than attempting to actually teach our kids the language we need an in-person spanish language teacher to teach our students if we want to give our children a meaningful world language education and i am for this board to make this issue a top priority for the 2023-2024 school year next i'd like to share my support for the health education curriculum curriculum including the new sex education standards as a survivor of intimate partner violence and a member of the lgbtq community i wish i had received this education when i was in school and i'm so glad that my four children will be i'm a second generation survivor of violence and didn't see healthy relationships in my own home

088and i think it's really important for for our students who are in similar situations to learn about healthy relationships in the classroom sex education saves lives this curriculum is medically accurate age-appropriate and inclusive it will help prevent abuse teen suicide and help empower our kids to have the information they need to make healthy choices it appropriately starts in the early ages and builds on medically accurate information about their bodies less lessons on identifying trusted adults and consent and for families to object there is an option to opt out which is an excellent compromise i look forward to reviewing the lesson plans once available next next month and thank the board for the opportunity to speak to you tonight on these issues thank you and i my whole education was spent in england i have a

089degree um and i spent all my working life in for most of my life working in america in los angeles we just moved here and in our lives they defunded the schools they took the money out of lausd and then they're not very generally speaking that you can't send your kid to lec it's really sad um had a child that went through the education system there and we actually ended up sending her to private school it's one of the top private schools in the united states we take 40 000 dollars a year and you know that's not fun you shouldn't have to do that um i can tell you that it wasn't a weak sport we were really fortunate that at those elite schools they're not talking about these low-level things more do we do

090health education that's basic in developed countries all over the world most countries are doing health education that's enormous what you can see is they're putting they put the curriculum out there you can opt out it's really it's right there they're saying we're doing this we got a letter when my child was up for doing health education they've said we're doing it this year this is when we're doing it and this is what we're teaching it's fantastic you can opt out of that it's so small to be thinking oh we need to just take them out is this right can we need to take them this is small cheese for them it's nothing like we need to get over this and think about what are we doing what else are we doing to educate our kids

091languages like why are we not talking about math levels all of that dosing has this they're so comfortable with themselves they're so comfortable with their bodies they're so comfortable expressing themselves they're incredible and they operate at a level way above you know a normal standard because they've been educated at this high standard and they've been taught these things are normal and they're ahead of the game like the rest of the developed world so if we can put this normal thing aside and get to the real education of education and help our teachers help our boards and be sort of supportive maybe we'll push our education a bit higher than doing what we're doing special yes hi my name 27 is um for anything else i just wanted to talk about superintendent's comments and i am

092absolutely in awe at how quickly you were able to transform pre-k and that's something that we've been bringing up at several world meetings as being so important to this district that we are a township my son's five he's entering kindergarten this year i was paying 1200 a month and surrounding towns have that option available for free for all of the students in town and to be able to know how quickly you can afford it and worked on that being a real solution for the new parents that are moving to bridges and moving here for the school system that are going to have this opportunity to begin the education that's transformative for children for the duration of their educational path starting at three to four years um that's a really big deal uh and all of

093this other stuff is is flossing over that and we should not cross over that it's a big deal and it matters for the kids in our community so thank you for that um i just want to unequivocally state my support for the health curriculum i absolutely think everything that's been listed in the curriculum that i reviewed was on point what it should be was age-appropriate things that i have absolutely spoken to my son about at home um was reasonable topics to discuss it built upon each other through the whole duration of um schooling as he grows that it's reasonable material there's nothing in there there's nothing in there that i didn't want when i was that age i learned all of those things at those times i just don't think that and i'm not that

094young i mean i just don't think that that's unfair um i also wanted to speak about world language um in our elementary schools and i think that this is really critically important there are studies that show not only the um that how world language impacts you know our children or you know their future ability for jobs that are bilingual i mean how many jobs do you need to be viable but beyond that even their their brain capacity to function at an advanced level by being exposed to second languages and what it does um you know for their ability to learn and their ability to process information and their ability to absorb information at an advanced level it is transformative there are so many townships surrounding us that provide that um i just think that it's

095really important that we don't leave that on the back corner for a long period of time what we provide currently i've spoken to so many people in the district there is no world language in canada there is no world language so my name is clina mintz i'm a president of cherry hill i'd like to voice my opposition to the new health education standards i would like to make an argument today that the parent is the sole authority over their child not just kids not other parents not untrusted adults the parent is the sole authority the responsible party for that child and therefore the parent makes the ultimate decision what content especially sexual content is their child exposed to i don't care what the department of event says or what all the expert says the parent

096is the expert who has the sole authority over the child and if you want to expose their child to any conflict you have to gather themselves nobody in this room has the permission to teach any child sexual contacts that the parent does not consent to not the respected superintendent not the respected board of federal members nobody okay another question that i have if you're so convinced that this is so important and so normal for children to know about sexuality from five years really did we forget about childhood innocence it doesn't matter anymore you don't reach out to medicines all these notions and we can trust them we don't trust their decision they can trust what they want to be when they wake up anymore we don't need parents actually the curriculum eliminates all parents if

097you hear the curriculum you will see that parents category has been eliminated now they are bunched up with other bargains and family numbers and there's a category of family members so no more parents so the objective is to delete parents of the conversation okay but this is not limited to voorhees and it's not limited to every new jersey school it's in all 50 states and it's global okay and the purpose is to separate the child from their parents under the guise of all these wonderful curriculums okay so we're not teaching them math we're not teaching them writing we're not teaching them to think okay all they need to know all they need to know is about your sexual parts another question that i have this very same conversation that is in the curriculum is actually

098harassment in the workplace if you want to talk about this content in your workplace you are gonna be going to jail and and accused of sexual harassment on your colleague at work so why is it okay to use the same contact and speak to a child in the absence of your parents why is that okay okay this is your wrestling in the workplace we also have thomas thank you so much hey guys uh all right everyone seems to be arguing over uh the sex ed program and what i'm gonna say is not about either your arguments or beliefs but merely about the logic of opting in or opting out just the way i see it if you disagree with the program i don't understand why you would have a problem with update yeah it's like

099you are given this decision right there saying no my kid doesn't it shouldn't be one of those if you find it inappropriate then why not do that uh i mean when i was in marlton in elementary school in fourth grade we had our first talk about uh body parts fifth grade we had to talk about steps seems pretty normal to me and some students their parents chose to stop them out and it's not like they were uh it felt like included or felt you know targeted it just was a thing and everyone's kind of normally you're blowing this issue out of proportion everybody uh and i don't understand why you can't just say okay here's our program we don't agree with it then just take them out for these few lessons you already have the

100option like opting in versus opting out it's the same thing except for you are given the government right school school's government uh it is sorry i can go off of it but it's like the the knowledge they give in school should be seen as a privilege and if you don't want your kids to learn that then they shouldn't be opting in to learn it you should be opting out to y'all we all kind of know in elementary school about sex there is no innocence like the thing is we don't talk about it that's that way we just talk about sex as a joke usually that's my little speech [Applause] she's i did not want to talk today but all this chocolate curriculum is really important to me i personally have curriculum extremely important as a

101child like went through not having the education and the like like the life i love so i am i ended up having years of abusive relationships i had no sense of like self despite self-worth if school had educated me giving me one option one safe place my whole life could be different so not happy i had to say it would someone have to say that's the reality that we're talking about that nobody wants their kid to be that nobody trust me and you guys may not be people doing it the person that chooses sometimes [Music] hello can you hear me yes yes thank you so much uh i don't know if i need to stay oh i'll go ahead and state i live at 1 william public drive in board he's new jersey so i'm

102a more he's resident and i also have a young person in the in the middle school a son and going into seventh grade first i want to state my support for voorhees public schools adopting the new jersey health education curriculum in an age-appropriate way i look forward to reading the lesson plans when they are made available i don't understand well i do understand that people getting people very worked up about this but learning the anatomical names for the human body parts body autonomy and gender identity and what children can do if something is happening improper in their household or elsewhere since we do know that these crimes tend to happen with people they know i don't know how that is problematic but moving forward for those who do not agree with this curriculum for their

103children please go ahead and opt out and allow us to move forward in areas where our schools are really struggling and what i mean about that what i mean by that is i'm concerned about the pandemics learning gap i look at those test scores and it's very concerning with me concerning to me i'm also concerned about our children's social emotional and mental health coming out of the pandemic i see it professionally not with children but with adults so i can just imagine with children there's also a gap just with preparing our middle schoolers to go into eastern that by focusing on this curriculum and on health curriculum and not thinking about overall um we're we're missing out on smoking both focusing on the smile and starting instead of the larger picture lastly i just want

104to say we need to think about what we're trying to do here we are raising young men and young women who are going to go out into a diverse world who need to not only be exposed to different ideas and not be afraid of them whether they agree with them or not but be able to critically think about that uh i am concerned with this whole opt in as opposed to opt out uh talking about field trips well this is a curriculum you don't get to opt in to learning about algebra or opt into learning about um similes and grammar so you shouldn't be able to opt into learning about health education and that's my time thank you can i just get clarification is something happening in the in the back i just saw a

105bunch of conversations i just want to make sure that everything is okay are they i didn't see them speaking but i have warned you i have warned you both already if i see you speak to anybody additional you will be escorted out both of you the two people younger than every single person in this group and i have way more mature than old knock it off i'm handling it i don't know what's going on back there i just see people having back and forth conversations i have no idea our officers are taking care of it all right we're no more no more side conversation does anybody else have a comment [Music] i think there's still another one online oh and there's another home hello good evening my name is nicole nance i am a cherry

106hill resident and i wanted to speak up at this board of education because i speak up and out at my cherry hill board of education and i am not in support of opting out i would like to use this very graphic example if i showed up at your board meeting and i walked up to a stranger or a board member and asked them could i kiss them on the lips and they say no then they're given the opportunity to opt in to my kids on the lips but if i walk up to a board member or stranger at that board of education meeting and i kiss them on the lips without their permission then they say stop they're opting out so there is a difference between opting in and opting out of something sexual education

107is not for kindergartners it's not for five-year-olds health education is sexual education is not so i encourage and urge every parent that will listen to this that are present and that may listen in the future please push for opting in you shouldn't have this curriculum period but it certainly should not be opt out there is a difference between opting in something and opting out of something so i am not in support of sexual education with this health education curriculum from the state on down i i have two adult children i have two grandchildren i don't understand how wide we're making this hard school is not for my five-year-old granddaughter to be learning about sexual education in kindergarten it's not rocket science people so i am not in support of this sex ed sex education being

108included within the health education and i just wanted to say that because there is a difference between opting into something and opting out of something i thought we were taught just say no or young girls are taught say no when someone tries to push something on them sexually that they don't want well just say no we don't want this curriculum for our young children it's the same principle thank you hello my name is philip brooks i'm a resident of gorges uh i know this has been pretty long two quick ones one if you think that it's possible that our children are going to be affected by this what why is it such a small percentage of the population worthy that's coming out here and worrying about this every single person that i'm seeing over here

109is they're bringing in people from cherry hill they're bringing people from marvel they're bringing people they're looking for these people and making it into a political service it's ridiculous grow up and take your situation make a referendum if you're not worried about it that's how democracy works you were outvoted you're a small percentage of the population very loud and rude loud part of the population you should just go ahead and sit down and make a referendum if this is what you're worried about because honestly this is ridiculous thank you yeah hi my name is [Music] uh good evening so i wanted to thank all our out of town guests coming tonight i appreciate it very much it seems we care a lot about our kids uh i think as well um what i think we

110should really be focused on is through education right we talk about the sex ed story education the young lady from uh uk said it very well i think that's very important for her to say about how you know we really should be focused on getting our kids better so they can thrive in society that's the most important um i'm a competitive person and i feel like the focus should be more on how my child can thrive in today's world it's a very tough world out there and that's where the focus should be so we talked about the comment earlier from mr smith about society and parents and all that i totally get where he's coming from i do agree parents have uh the right to their children's education uh but i also think society does

111well we all pay taxes for community uh we want our kids to be better so that our society so it's not just parents it's society uh working together to make education thank you hi my name is sherry coleman i live in boardings i'll keep this really free the constitution guarantees us the right to a free and appropriate public education it is not the right to care for parents to dictate what the school we delegate that to our government and gordhis is going to find out thank you nope patricia fine again someone made a statement that they don't believe that they're teaching gender and all this um you haven't read the standards there's a different standard curriculum totally different the standard says by the end of second grade they're going to talk about gender by the

112end of second grade listen to the english by the end which means they can be taught kindergarten first grade second grade by the end you have to read the standard is totally different from the curriculum it says by the end of grade five that means kindergarten first second third fourth by the end of fifth they're gonna be taught about how to feel on their bodies i don't wanna be worried if you have some kids in here but you know what i'm talking about right these are the ends that's what they're teaching that's why i didn't say it i didn't say it um so they're taught that yes romantic and sexual feelings by the end of grade five okay by the end of grade eight they're taught with this is what the standard says not the

113curriculum totally different you've come up here and you said to us um if you don't know um if you want to you don't want to come to the public school and be taught this go to a private school that's why i am one who supports school choice 100 our money should follow us wherever we choose to put our children school choice and once it's approved because i am running for congress once it's approved we will be removing our children from the public school and we will be able to pay for private school thank you for supporting that i totally agree with you if you're not at the podium please refrain from speaking my name is that was a really good demonstration of what makes me really nervous about the things that i'm seeing if we

114move here specifically because of this whole system and we don't want to be private and it's really disturbing to hear from people that are not from here talk about what they're advocating for our kids their kids don't go here they don't live here or maybe they're newly relocated and so i have to wonder what is their motivation i'm guessing that your motivation is your kids go to school here this takes time it takes effort so i can only guess that there are something else for these people to gain other than the interest of my child right you don't drive across the state because you care what's going on with the kids so i ask that those of you who are listening who might be on the fence about these issues investigate the people who are

115speaking look and see where they're coming from what is driving them where are they getting their pay off i'm getting my payout because of my kid otherwise i wouldn't be here quite frankly i would have other things to do but unless i'm being paid to be here unless i'm getting some other benefit from it so as we go into the polls and start looking at who's going to be coming look at the people who are talking where they're coming from ask simple questions your kids go here do you live here really basic that should be a bare minimum for any type of discourse on this topic in our schools when people that don't live here show up and are videotaping people who are speaking we're afraid because we don't know where that's going we don't

116know what groups you're belonging to we know that we've read in online groups that there's this mass movement across town we've got people showing up running for congress trying to get money out of school because follow the money and they use fear and intimidation tactics i don't want videos of my wife showing up on facebook somewhere so yeah we're gonna we're gonna ask questions and ask it to be deleted because we don't know you you don't live here good evening my name is um kelly morrison and uh i've been a sub for 15 years worked in moorheas for uh over a decade prior to code and i just want to put my two cents in for the fact that this curriculum that we're talking about and the teachers that we're having teach it are not

117trained and educated clinicians and educated in the mental health aspect of things which leaves me at a loss for claiming jobs and taking jobs for health teachers and who knows at the elementary level isn't going to be spread out into the elementary classroom that i have to worry about taking an elementary job because it's going to come over into other subject areas and things like that that's where i see this going and i see that there's not really a good handle on it right now because it seems to be that we didn't even have a say so at the our own district level of implementing this it's just been forced upon us so i i'm basically feeling the need to just step aside up from my job because i i'm not trained to handle a

118lot of these topics with kids i'd be embarrassed to handle some of these topics um at the eighth grade level and stuff like that so it's you're you're putting people in a position where we're not trained to handle it so i'm not sure what kind of training you're doing for all your health teachers but they're certainly not going to get a degree in clinician you know a mental health clinician between now and october so that's my big problem hello can you hear me yes again nicole nance here jerry hill i just wanted to address a statement that was made there is a payoff for me absolutely i live in cherry hill the payoff is called human kindness compassion and care i would hope that if my grandchildren were somewhere outside of voorhees and that parent

119that got up to speak saw them in danger or saw something being done to them that was not right that they would speak up for them even if even if my grandchild which they do not live in vorhees i would hope that human compassion and kindness and care would be the motivating factor for why they would speak up because it sure would be mine that would be my payoff if i saw that parent or any parent's child about to have something done to them that was age inappropriate that was not um in the kind in in kindness or done in out of love i would certainly speak up and they don't i wouldn't have to know them and they wouldn't have to be from cherry hill for me to speak up so that's the payoff

120kindness compassion human care and i just wanted to address that that is why we are visiting this board of education meeting because we care about children period they don't have to be hours i wanted to add that for the record thank you we're going to move to board comments um i'd like to first start by thanking dr hackett um for her clear and consistent communication in weekly updates uh we've come to the meetings uh the meeting today i knew everything that was going to be on the agenda um and she's done a great job in the first i can't even believe it's been eight weeks the time is already flying by and i feel like i know what's going on in the district not just because of my kids but because i'm hearing um from

121dr hackett uh second i want to thank dr alegria um it's very clear that she has done a lot of work um since she started here in progress in the district with regard to special services um obviously we have passed through all we needed to in terms of the state level but i think what's more important is that our children within the district are being served so i want to thank you for your work in that area um and finally i want to thank dr young um the test scores as we know are not where we want them to be um i don't think test scores are the only thing that are important to our children but it is one metric for success and i do think we need to be working harder as a

122district to make sure we get where we need to go i was encouraged by your presentation i was encouraged by dr hackett's words it is not within my job duties or responsibilities to dictate outcomes or reports but i have a sincere hope that we continue to move in a positive direction i was particularly disturbed tonight with seeing some of the subgroups um not performing in comparison to other subgroups within our district and historically we have seen lower test scores at certain schools versus other schools and as much as i want to celebrate um and give kudos to some at signal hill or at crescent in different areas that means that the other schools are underperforming with regard to those so i'm really looking forward to hopefully having a more typical school year this year and

123really seeing our students perform at a level that we want to see them performing at and i thank you dr young for sharing those data with us and i look forward to the next year thank you thank you i just wanted to say something um regarding the emails um someone had mentioned that we're not responding i would um ask and recommend that when you do send an email to us that you are copying the superintendent on it a lot of times the superintendent is not copied on it if i catch it i would um in the past try to forward it we do try to always go through the proper channels um you know depending on if it was curriculum or another type of issue we want to let our superintendent and assistant superintendent address

124that first that is the proper way that we go about it so if we are not replying to um in the past maybe we're not catching that the superintendent or assistant superintendent isn't copied on it so if you could um please do that and as far as the curriculum i will probably lose sleep that i'm even talking about this right now um i just you know i am somewhere in between all of you with my thinking i agree with certain uh people when they speak on one topic and other people in the other direction um on the other topic all i can say is that you know i may not be as fast forward or progressive as other people i um as you know i always talk about all the time that i've spent in

125school these are babies i um wasn't super happy but not with what we are with the um curriculum or what we're teaching maybe not so much with the timeline made me um really nervous but i said to myself um you know i i'm not that educated on it i don't have enough information so i made sure that i went to dr young we talked about it she made me feel better about it um i'm not speaking on behalf of the school district but you know there's state standards and then there's workings and the way that we implement things so all i can say is that i have a lot of faith in our leaders here in our assistant superintendent um our director of special ed when it comes to any mental health component and also

126our superintendent so um i've spoken with them and i trust the way that vorhees is implementing it and that's the best job that we can do we can't stop the state standard but we can also we can definitely manage it for an age-appropriate delivery so that's what i'm hoping um on a personal level i try not to make my decisions or my votes on um you know any religious views or anything that i have personally but i do try to incorporate my life experiences and things that i have gone through um in my past that have helped me come to my decision or the way that i'm going to vote um i think some of the stuff that is on paper on the um standards that came from the state are a lot are very

127shocking and seem vague so if you do have any questions please reach out to dr young ask her talk to her about it again or he's um you know we want to implement things in a very age-appropriate way so um on a personal level i didn't have i came from a single parent home i didn't have a parent who talked to me about anything nothing i was a fish out of water my whole life everyone else knew what was going on half the time and i did not i did not have the support i went to catholic school my mother didn't want to talk about um you know topics as far as puberty or um you know any type of sexual offense or anything like that i was i was completely on my own so

128we don't all have those parents that make us feel comfortable in our own skin or okay in the world so um i for myself however i vote and i don't want anybody to be upset either way i have to do the best job for the kids and that's what i plan on doing and that's what i keep backing my decision on um i come from a family of old school people we have old school ways of thinking and that's not the world that we live in now and that's not really what is the best for my own children um i just have trust like i said that in this district in this township that we are going to make our delivery as age appropriate and as sensitive as possible without it being gross or disgusting

129or um you know over the top shoving it down so i just wanted to say that i'm really struggling with my decision because like i said i agree with both sides of certain things i have a really hard time with it but i just really have to make the best decision for the kids as a whole not just my own kids so that's all i really wanted to say thank you all right can i talk i just wanted to say um i just it really upsets me that not one person will maybe one person that came up here started off by saying thank you to any of our administration that has done so much for us this summer and all of last school year and going into the school year no like oh thank you

130to our superintendent to dr legard to for clark mathis for any of the improvements any positive things that have occurred everything is always negative and i really really hope that that's gonna change i really really do because i i'm almost i've been on the school board for almost six years and because of this environment i am not running again and i really i feel bad i really really do because if you guys have you think you know what you're getting into you have no idea but you should respect the things and be positive before you're negative before judging everyone thank you i'm going to take a slightly different approach from that last comment and say that i'm really honored to be here and i see a lot of possibility i see a lot of possibility

131i'm really honored to be sitting up here i'm really heartened by the engagement in this community i'm disappointed by the people who come from out of town and insert themselves in this dialogue when it doesn't relate to them i am really impressed with that osage library i think it's state of the art and it's to be commended i really appreciate everyone's work in that vms looks amazing my daughter is about to start seventh grade and it looks tremendous um i am disappointed with the test scores and i appreciate dr young owning the gaps and really recognizing that there are gaps i am curious to know whether any data has been looked at around evening out of schools by middle school it seems like there's a disparity in the schools whether there's been any effort to

132understand whether those disparities diminish over time in middle school whether they level out by high school on the subject of high school while i know that's not in the purview of this board i think it's really important for us to be thoughtful as a community about how we make the transition from 8th grade to high school more seamless easier my anecdotally i think students are ill-equipped to get to high school for their rigors for a lot of the study skills learning how to be have adequate student hygiene to organize their time and i think a lot can be done to partner between vms and eastern to understand what those rigors are where those gaps are to support the students to be ready at a new level thank you um i encourage everybody to come out

133to dr hackett's next roundtable that she had i i attended last week there was about a bunch of you in the audience i thought we had great discussion some really great ideas including from this very well-spoken young gentleman which gave us his own perspective from going through school and in the high school perspective which i think everybody appreciated and i think i appreciate dr hackett i'll um i agree with what dr levy said she's an excellent communicator she's very organized in her communication keeping us very up to date on everything and even at our round table the other evening she was taking notes she encouraged every one of you to set up meetings with her which i commend and appreciate and i think it's important to have that ongoing communication we also talked about i

134think all of us being maybe uneducated on some of these terms and maybe misinformation out there i was just looking at the you know some of the curriculum some of the people i think in the audience stated certain things and i didn't even see it in the curriculum so i think some of us and even myself included i don't fully understand some of these terms and i asked dr hackett to kind of create some sort of education for all of us because maybe if we're all educated maybe we have better understanding we can agree and kind of bridge that gap um i'm really at a crux on this health curriculum i understand both sides i never thought about tonight the impact on suicide and you know that impact on people so that is really trying

135to me as a parent of you know three young children i did think i read something that they are putting the suicide hotlines on the back of the id cards so i think you know our attention needs to be more on these aspects and i do agree with the other person speaking about uh foreign language and really stepping up and you know competing in the world that we're living in and not focusing on the nitty-gritty and focusing on the important stuff and educating our kids and focusing on what's important for our kids but i'm still at a crux on how i will vote on this health curriculum and personally i really would like to see the the 26 lesson plans before i'm comfortable voting on it um so that's just my personal aspect but i

136think both sides because i think both sides are probably misinformed so i think if we can all digest what's coming then maybe we'll all be comfortable and you know for those who still aren't maybe you'll have to opt out or however we go but that's where i'm at personally on my thinking of voting i'd like to take a moment and thank each and every one of you guys for coming out excuse me i'm sorry i'd like to thank each and every one of you guys for coming out um you know i appreciate all your passion know your concern and um i just want to just kind of give that assurance that everybody up here that's working as a team we're here in the best interest of children that's why you're here and that's why we

137here and we do promise to make the best decisions in the best interest of children i also want to thank um the principal for crescent and also the principal from osage i didn't do this last time when i was uh back in june but they i i was able to tour their buildings and what a wonderful building that they do have i do like to thank mr clark mathis for his um uh walking me around the kindergarten um with the new addition to the building i definitely had a hard hat on and walked around and it was a good time so um just wanted to you know kind of say those things and say thank you but um just want to give you the further reassurance that we everybody up here is in the business

138of caring about children and we just want to really really really assure you that we will always make the best decisions in the best interest of all children i'm going to move forward items under transportation can i get a motion to approve all the items under transportation still moved second online voting is open voting is unanimously in favor i'm closing the voting motion carries i get a motion to approve all of the items under policy second online voting is open motion you now unanimously passes i'm closing the voting pushing carries they get a motion to approve all of the items under personnel i'll move that oh online voting is open motion unanimously passes i'm closing voting motion carries i'm going to take a quick second and turn it over to the superintendent for an introduction

139okay thank you so much i am pleased and i thank the board for approving the appointment of our new uh vorhees middle school assistant principal and i see mrs calabria with a big smile on her face and she has a new member of her team i like to invite at this time this inch to come up and just uh briefly meet the community and we can give her a round of [Applause] i want to say applause you first of all to mrs watson and dr hackett the entire board of education dr john this is calabria thank you very much for this opportunity i really sincerely look forward to becoming a member of the voorhees township school i want to be a partner i have a mother of three they all went to public schools i

140believe in public education you guys have a wonderful system and i take it as an honor to become a partner in education with all of you and i look forward to the upcoming year thank you for the opportunity [Applause] can i get a motion to approve all of the items under new business second online voting is open um that's what's tricky about this software here um okay why don't we do this if you can just tell me i will write it down i'm gonna do business on here okay so this is stupler 17. you would like to abstain on which item 17 to 17 too okay um yes so your yes on everything else yes so what i'm going to do is i'm going to mark it as abstain on here so we don't forget

141okay thank you you're welcome so we're going to market a sustain and then we have yes on everything else i'll talk to the lady about that later okay so um everybody's vote is in we have all yeses with one abstention on 17.2 by mrs stupler but yes on everything else motion carries our next regular scheduled meeting at the administration building will be on september 28 2022 at 7 pm audience participation anyone wishing to address the board please approach the podium and write your name and address on the login sheet if you are attending via zoom please use the raise your hand feature to be acknowledged while the board is limited in its ability to respond to the public on matters involving personnel litigation negotiations and attorney client privilege the board will now hear comments from

142the public comments are limited to three minutes the board will not take action this evening you will be notified at some later time by letter electronic mail telephone or in the context of a later board meeting of any action the board yes uh first of all i would actually very much like to uh thank the board and especially um at dr hackett we had a really straight meeting the other night i didn't know what to expect and i i was impressed i also want to relay uh the excitement from my son uh well first of all last uh school year or first district uh he kept on going on about the incredible level of empathy that the teacher seemed to have at vms the kind of contrast there um i do have some things uh

143to go on tonight so i wanted to advocate for a broader approach to stem in our district so i am a roboticist an engineer that designs builds automation and so my experience gives me insight into the changes coming through and they are drastic i have been pleased to hear many of you all to prepare our students for 21st century jobs that's the phrasing but i want to be clear what that looks like first i'd like to point out that a classroom technology investment i how important uh is not enough to prepare students so a smart board does not make a smart kid it helps right so that i just sometimes when i talk about this that it's confused about technology in the classroom versus technology education so the labor market will not need students that

144just pass a standardized test software and robots are perfectly capable of following instructions students should emerge from middle school with high degree of self-direction problem solving communication and creativity even in elementary they should have hands-on experience designing building and programming their own creations that comes from techniques like project-based learning and actual involvement stem projects and contexts unlike the approach to test like testing in general students should make mistakes and learn the joy of recovering from it they should learn how to identify their assumptions the solution stage space and formulate a plan thank you so we really wanted to come to your meeting but it's like at five o'clock and that's it so if there's any flexibility you hate to put it on your schedule either zoom which is never you really want to come um

145but if you could do it like seven would be ideal but any like five is just [Laughter] hi i'm marlene kaplan again and i am remiss in not welcoming dr hackett to vorhees thank you very much and thanking all of you for the very hard work that you do each and every day i would ask i am i have hearing aids sit in the very front i can't hear many of you you can hear some of the people who come up here have asked about microphones or something or moving the audience closer it would be wonderful for me to hear all of you and i can hear very few of you even with my hearing aids and i turn them up to the highest level so if you could consider that i would appreciate thank

146you [Music] i came across an interesting post this week i was a member of our community and they were posting online a petition called diwali day off my basic understanding is that diwali is a festival of lights and i understand further that it is a celebration of good over evil in our hindu community roughly 23 other new jersey school districts added a day off in observance of diwali so can vortice township public schools make monday october 24th 2022 the bali day off and will board east township public schools consider a day off an observance of future years thank you uh hello um so i'm actually from marlton i know a lot of people may not like that but basically i heard a lot of stuff about um how we shouldn't be teaching gender and sexual

147identity earlier on because it may not be age appropriate but i'd like to make a correlation here is we teach um fire safety at an early age for them to internalize it for them to basically make it become the norm yeah i would also like to take credit for credit soon your job looks really intense yeah all right board comments oh i'm sorry all right uh we're gonna move on to finance can i get a motion to approve all of the items under finance online voting is open mr price is yours registering oh no i'm not okay is it working refresh okay very good um unanimously yes in support of the items under finance i'm closing voting motion carries we will have a brief executive session it will probably last 15 minutes um i strongly

148recommend go home because when we come back uh i don't believe we're taking any action um and uh we're just going to be adjourning the meeting so i don't want to keep you any later than we already have um be it result that pursuant to section 8 of the open public speaking act the public shall be excluded from that portion of the meeting involving discussion of litigation matters further resolve but the discussion of such matters in executive session can be disclosed to the public at such time as the board takes formal action further resolved that the board may be in executive session for again it'll probably be 15 minutes um action will not be taken when we return um can i get a motion to adjourn to executive i'll move that second online voting is

149open where i could just mark everyone you know see yes yes yes everybody yes thank you all for coming out um i can do it for you guys are you gonna do it yeah i will i'll do it okay so dr levy made the motion okay yeah yeah i did okay um okay i need a second to return to public session okay okay um rather than call roll and i'm mark unanimous that we return from executive session all right i'm gonna mark it unanimously wait um [Music] thank you [Applause]