WHRHS BOE MEETING | 5 - 22 - 18

001this is the Board of Education meeting for which adequate notice under the open public meetings act was provided by written notice on May 1st 2018 to the Korea news the echo Sentinel The star-ledger happened to warn the clerk's of the borough at Waukesha and the townships of Long Hill green book and Warren please sir sighs miss Perrone here's mr. Collins mr. musio yeah mr. Fahey yeah mr. heck mr. huntzinger here mr. Martin's hair to Morrison dr. Chappelle ski mr. wen let me first apologize for getting you here at 6:45 when we were supposed to be coming in late thank you for his graciousness so it's never a problem I think I know most of you but I'm Gwen for extra Jersey School Boards Association I am a field service rep and my goal this evening

002is just to help you become more comfortable with the new superintendent evaluation which has just been put into play this year it was a long time in coming we have worked collaboratively with NJ for well over three years in coming to this final conclusion I was fortunate enough to serve on that committee or unfortunate enough depending upon how you viewed it I think fortunate and so we are really delighted that it's out we think it's dramatic improvement we think it will make for a better tool for both boards as well as superintendents in terms of a more effective communications tool it is also more closely aligned with the kinds of evaluations that teachers and supervisors directors and all other educational leaders are using in that this is standards-based truly which is something that we think

003is important so there's a new tool there's a new step in the process and there is a new summative evaluation template which is an optional piece that we put together because we felt that boards really struggled taking the compilation that we gave them and turning that into a narrative or a final document to share with superintendents and so we have created this new template but again it's that is obviously purely very optional we've also come up with new standards and indicators where we used to call those leadership skills we now have them standards we've taken these from the is liqu standards which are the standards that all school board leaders across the stage have agreed to live by as well as nationally and we've combined them so that there are six of them if you

004go to look at the is liqu standards for school leaders there are eight but we've combined them to make it a little more manageable for Boards of Education and you can see there's what the is--look standards look like it's part of the reason we were held up for a year is that these go back to really 2006 or 7 and I sat on the statewide committee actually while we worked on the actual is League standards in the state but then they revised them and they were late in getting them out so we wanted to make sure that when they came out if there were any revisions that the new evaluation would be aligned with that as well and we truly believe that they better reflect all of the work that superintendents do on a regular

005basis and they really will assist the board in identifying areas of strength and perhaps where more focus is needed if that's certainly the circumstances we have a new rating scale this probably took more time that you can imagine splitting hairs over what all of these men from exemplary from commendable to exemplary from meets expectation to proficient rather than say needs improvement in light of the fact that we expect all students to be about continuous growth and enrichment we have identified this as an area for growth unsatisfactory remained as was as well as not observed for brand new board members and I know if there's an area in the evaluation that you are not comfortable that you had an opportunity to work on or have enough knowledge about you can simply check it on observe since

006neither positive nor negative it is simply a complete neutral that says you have an opportunity perhaps to observe in that particular area of the board and superintendent's work here you can actually see one of the standards as a standard on mission vision and core values you will notice that there is a rubric and with every we look for each of the six standard there are different definitions for exemplary proficient Arabic rotor unsatisfactory not observed remains the same for each of them for all six but for the other five standards you will see that all of the rubric of individual identifiers and language is different which is something new we're also now asking since we're focusing on standards that the board members not only rate the indicators that are impressive a standard but that you come

007to an overall rating for each particular standard because it is based on the standard itself okay so here you can see an indication and we believe that all of those indicators one four seven build towards overall standard and if you do the process and you look and see how you have ranked those indicators it should taken immediately to your overall written of the standard we found sometimes that word members might have checked different indicators and then when it got to the final rating completely they what they had graded all of the indices that supposedly made up the standard so we think this will help to make it a more thoughtful process and to help board members really think through each of the standards and what each of those indicators leads to okay the new process

008piece that we're recommending is that the board sit with the superintendent to have a pre evaluation conference your educators can speak to this but typically before teachers are observed there's a pre evaluation conference there's the observation and there's a post conference our evaluation was sort of missing that pretty complex piece and since we believe that really it is the discussion piece that is most helpful you can use this meeting to discuss and share progress on the district goals year to date so that everyone has the same knowledge ahead of beginning that process and talk about any kinds of questions or concerns that you had and also to set up a calendar of completion of the evaluation is statutorily mandated and it must be completed by July 1st it's worth six points on your two-second report

009before the state has not been paid extremely close attention to that completion date but our understanding is this year they are paying attention so making sure that you complete all parts of the process by July 1 is going to be important for your to stack report it would really be silly if you missed the deadline and lost point Center to sack another piece that we're very pleased about for board members since we've taken the time it working superintendents in the committee to identify some sample resources for each of the six standards they are not meant to require a superintendent to provide each one of those resources but they are to indicate support members where are the kinds of places that you could look to see what were standard and personal life and school and kids

010right it's hard to remember her perhaps but a lot of folks everything that took place between July 1 at the following end of the school year so we have tried to indicate here are some pieces that you could look at to see what they've been done mission and for batteries so if you were working on your strategic plan I noticed that you have a mere warrior vision up on the wall it was up here upon presentation and we're going to talk about that perhaps this evening that would be something you could look at to help remind you of the work that they've been done in that particular area here's the new summative evaluation template and that actually begins in your booklet and so we would certainly strongly suggest that you provide supporting documentation and remarks

011whatever in a given area some members have been telling me they've been trying to go in from their accounts on the website go to our home page pull all the way down to the bottom of the right hand side click on superintendent board self evaluation it will take you to exactly the right place to get to the new tool or the old so that email that we got don't use that that will take your transmitter - okay okay but some poor members just because they've been on the word for a while are used to going into our website through their account okay and they're running into a problem so I just want to erase that for all of you another piece that I really liked about the new we're here these are the last board

012presidents to track the completion so that the report president can go in see the last name and the date that it completed heretofore I could see that when your board president nor any white board presidents could see it so it meant they had to email me and ask me I did go through and look at it that I would email the board would then email all of you and we would go through this on a weekly basis and it was for everybody wherever it was board president this way you can go in and see who's completely once you have completed it you're also able to download - so that's available to you and if you will be able to see when they're done and go in and take care of it okay so you've seen

013this log before there's nothing new these are the legal guidelines dancers as a reminder you're required by law to put it in writing you have to meet as a full board of education to review the evaluation with the superintendent the importance of that is that the written report is a majority document that reflects the will of the majority of the board minority voice needs to be protected so when the full Board of Education meets with the superintendent if he was a board member have a different perspective than is reflected in the report which reflects the majority view you have an opportunity at that meeting to say while my colleagues think you've done an extraordinary job in a particular area I still have a concern around or I am want to discuss some piece of this

014that's not articulated the different work this conference where you meet together gives you the opportunity to do that as with all employees to receive rice notice before that meeting any kind of awarded meets to discuss personnel there has to be a price notice it's true with the superintendent as well she needs to be Reister he does so that you can meet and have that discussion the superintendent will sign contained a copy that signature and date is acknowledgement of receipt it's not an agreement with or disagreement with and this is true for all school employees not just for the superintendent as with all school employees the superintendent has ten teaching days and that's what the law says again which is interesting since it's July 1 and very few people are teaching and that's what our legislature

015put together ten teaching is to append to the evaluation any document any kind of material as he or she believes will amplify and clarify or valuation which should be notified that something's been attached and appended to the evaluation but again as with all employees in the district you don't get to say no to having to dependent it goes on and becomes part of the file a copy is kept by the Board of Education typically most boards file that report attorney so that in competed for some particular reason that some types of cusack they will ask to see my page to make sure it was done in a timely way and what I say that's why you need to make sure you have access to that particular document when in terms of that that deadline of

016July 1st we're talking about not just completing a report but meeting with the super [Music] so actually a part of it and hopefully you get to enjoy this entity here celebratory events that taking places as well Board of Education member which all the time isn't a lot of time sometimes but certainly a lot of fun you required in that final report to identify areas of performance strengths areas needing improvement if there are any recommendations that the board may have for professional growth and indicators of student progress and growth typically those indicators if excuse me of student growth come right from the administration to get attached and they are some of your standardized it or not standardized test results whatever you want to attach a CT says they pSATS those kinds of things get attached as

017well again we've talked a little bit about all of this from the documentation there are multiple sources of evidence from each one of the standards that you can look at another piece to this that I really like is that in the standards superintendent links to documents so that is you're going through with looking at it they can put in a link you can click on that link to this on your server it's an excuse me then you will be able to see actual documents if superintendent's wish to do that so they won't have to reproduce those documents for anybody click on it and that will help you go through that process of assessing in a particular way there's an evaluation process calendar of that calendar to be found on page five I strongly recommend it

018for presidents give board members drop-dead deadline for completion of that so that you have it finished in a timely way only non-constructive board members may participate in that process if you have a family member of in any capacity you are conflicted out of participation in the process by virtual above your family members employment in the district that's the school Ethics Commission that's not NJ SBA that makes that determination if there's any question you need to check with your board attorney for clarification but the general rule is if you have a family member in any competitive here in the district employee part-time substitute teacher full-time it doesn't matter what they do in the district if they're receiving remuneration and pay you're out okay the goals portion of the evaluation looks identical to the goals portion of

019the old evaluation so I'm not going to spend any time in going through this again I would encourage you if you're saying that someone is doing an outstanding job please take the time to say why skill sets behavior is transferable if someone's doing is doing an extraordinary job in one particular area and how it's helping them to know and why the point memories will be that to be the case skills are transferable and we believe that about educating the children I believe that about adults as well we can transfer our skills that are knowledge if you're going to say someone's in need of improvement or additional growth please say why I know that if my evaluation of someone says to me I need to do something differently I don't have a problem with that as

020well as you can tell me why that is and then I can process it and I can make the changes necessary to be more successful and at the end of the day the purpose of an evaluation is to provide feedback and to ensure that the former superintendent stay on the same page so the more you can evidence the board documentation you can provide the better than communication that's going to take place okay so again we've talked about it we make it back to compile the results to all of you people send the rice notice to your superintendent to review the compilation to determine the majority opinion and then the board and the president will complete it or if you were if you have an evaluation a Personnel Committee you may assign that to your Personnel

021Committee and you're done it's really not too overwhelming to evaluation template it's in the back of your booklet when the pre evaluation conference my understanding correct me if I'm wrong is that that at least in years going forward would be an opportunity for us to talk about the things we would like to superintendent to address when he or she fills out their their part of the form and talks about we because we got to this a little late and and got this training we're already at the stage now where we've got the superintendent's indication there's not really a real purpose for it this year good questions I don't understand these resources and where we're finding them if you look I tried to pull it up but I wouldn't let me like just skim through it

022it's gonna be on the grade 7 page 9 they'll be yeah page 7 and page 9 where you go so when we go into the standard to the student you will see this is ample resources listed so that if you needed more information those are the kinds of documents you could request or look for in the materials that you have so it's designed to provide you with some food for thought if there are areas that you think oh well I we did have that and I had forgotten we had done that I put I pulled some things that I the session that I went to we actually a superintendent to kind of started a list of what we thought would be a good artifact for each of them so I created a master list for

023myself and then went through and created links for you I created a folder in Google Drive translate all of these when we go into it W okay because you wouldn't let me get there cuz it had to let it go but you have to do the standard and you can go in and save and continue and go back and it will bring you back to where you left off so you don't have to do it all in one sitting if you don't have an opportunity to do that so that you can you know take your time and do it thoughtfully hmm why wouldn't you because you have to finish the section before you can get to the next like I couldn't go to standards because I finished reading goals something to fix for next year

024yes well but the goals are first you know so try to be sequential but certainly so quick but you have to go sequentially through the standards also that's you know I don't know the answer to that question that that's what I was i I will check and find out okay any other questions for the other question I have is the template is that online or were suppose that template is available online it will be sent to your board president as with the compilation so that it can be downloaded it's a Word document so you can cut and paste hopefully to make your life a little easier or who's ever writing that summative document to make life a little simpler for that and it is not available if you would like a copy of it I

025can send it to you I have it in the word format it's okay I just want to make sure we you will have it we'll say something for da you will have access if I could get to meeting it's not a stupid document we just send it routinely to the board president who's going to download the compilation and download the template you will all see a copy of it obviously once it's put together okay any other questions well then thank you very much I apologize for us being lazy they always a pleasure with do we know who is are there any people with no everyone ever did everyone here receive an email with the link BB Mike check the list everyone was on it so everyone gets that means everyone gets one okay you all

026have a great thank you [Music] it's an ad emotion of anything [Music] yeah okay we're gonna continue the meeting now superintendent stepped out briefly we're going to have the board secretin administrator's comments Thank You mr. president I do have to report that we did have our semiannual school bus the emergency evacuation drill that was conducted I have to reported to the board in the public it was conducted on May 3rd it was done from 7 a.m. to 7 20 here at the high school out in the front line we inspected or ate we did the drill for about 45 buses and the drill was led by our transportation coordinator Janet T and it went very well that's amazing that that many people and that many buses come here every morning qu and fit into this

027parking lot amazing is Janet enlisted both the superintendent and myself this time to volunteer and it's quite an experience in the morning so that's it that's it okay now we'll have the superintendent's cang-du I apologize it was just escorting out the school board's representative I am going to say most of my comments for the presentation I know our students have quite a few accomplishments to speak to one thing I will mention we do have we have two items on the walk-in handout that you have one of them I had emailed you about yesterday it was a field trip the other one is also a field trip that we just learned about yesterday because five of our soloists and our orchestra advanced from the local teen Arts Festival to the state teen Arts Festival and we

028just found out about that yesterday and they're going next week so we put that on there so that we make sure that that we board approve them and pay for the bus and the registration to get them there so just to bring that to your attention I would just like to thank the board members who came early today for the training on the superintendent evaluation piece and I ask you to all the get started on it as promptly as possible and you'll set some deadlines in the next two weeks that's all the comments that I have and I will turn it over to Emma and Aris hello everyone in student achievements the Watchung Hills drama students won the foxy Award for outstanding performance of a drama for Dracula at Montclair State University's theater night on

029May 14th they were also nominated in three other categories watch on house iversity club students won the fritz jones upstander award from the Council on global education citizenship an award of 250 dollars was given to the high school submitted an outstanding project on April 27th 28th the Watchung Hills has strable team competed at the Nationals in Arlington Virginia team captain Kevin tan qualified for the semi-finals of the International Geography Bee every year celebrating art called Sun ash a nationwide fall spring art contest for K to 12 students winners enjoy the wonderful accomplishments of having their artwork printed published in these and thrala G's each of the following students listed had work accepted into the spring 2018 celebrating our anthology Anna Kaplan Amanda Gaines slur Fiona Mulvey Natalie Zurich Oh Dallas Barrow hone Ordonez who chief

030Biswas Caitlin women Samantha Hoffman Joo Han Jung Monica sadhana Bobby Wacom on Abby Watkins Sarah young Kate family John Farley Chloe choy Marianne Orenda Lizzie Wilson ski and Yvonne Tang dance ensemble member katherine Patterson's choreography was selected to perform at the New Jersey high school dance festival in March her dance received glowing reviews from the judges and other high school dance instructors on Friday May 4th senior Sahil Patel organized our voter registration drive during lunch and for members of the League of Women Voters came to assist they've registered 87 students to vote senior denied Churchill and junior Gabriela Santos have earned the highest award and Girl Scouting the prestigious gold award Annabelle was honored at the Girl Scouts heart of NJ gold award ceremony on April 25th senior Matthew King has earned the rank of

031Eagle Scout the highest award in Scouting a boy scout must demonstrate leadership service and outdoor skills it is required to do a service project that benefits the community in school events the junior grade level council hosted this year's junior semi floor semi-formal on Friday April 20th at the pines Manor in Edison New Jersey it was a wonderful evening full of smiling faces delicious food and dancing throughout the evening there are approximately 400 guests in attendance students and faculty members had a wonderful time on April 23rd all eighth grade students were invited to attend our annual eighth grade orientation the evening took place in the pack and began with staff introductions followed by a question-and-answer period with our current students this session was followed by an athletics and co-curricular fair parents were invited to attend the

032evening's final event on April 26th the annual Music showcase and jazz concert was held in the PAC the concert featured co-curricular instrumental offerings from the Watchung Hills jazz band orchestra lab and Allstate Dixie Beth and two vocalists for solo performances [Music] in the north cap from 6-8 p.m. students had fun dancing with their peers and also enjoyed conversations with their teachers administrators and paraprofessionals dinner from natales restaurant in Gillette was served also graduating students were honored for their years of dedication to be prepared Club approximately sixty students for the 60 people were in attendance on Thursday May 3rd the visual arts department held its annual juried art show students from surrounding high schools submitted artwork from three categories which were painting and drawing photo in digital and 3d pieces the work was judged by three

033independent judges from local colleges and other schools winning pieces were selected based on overall artistic merit the culinary Club provided snacks and beverages for the opening reception the four winners received a complete gift cards and art supplies that were donated to the school by Sri Arco arts and ceramics supply of new jersey the watching hills all school council hosted the Harlem Wizards on May 3rd in gym five six there were approximately 500 people in attendance for the fundraiser to benefit the K through a Warren Township Schools watch Jose and the washing hose a SC charity of the year which is Tommy that's them for the National Alliance of mental illness student members of the ASD volunteered their time to take tickets at the front door SEL Harlem Wizards paraphernalia self food refreshments that you went

034to as well teachers and administrators from Warren middle school and the elementary schools also participated in the game so watching Hill Spring dance ensemble also performed priority on May 11th and 12th in the pack the members of the dance ensemble including 13 seniors choreographed and performed 21 selections for a combined crowd of over 200 people for sports we are in the midst of an exciting 2018 spring season of state tournaments we will celebrate our class of 2018 future college athletes on June 4th at 2:15 in the media center we have an impressive list this year for 30 student athletes that will be continuing their athletic careers at the collegiate level ocean thank you everyone interested in participating in fall sports should check the athletic page on the school website Burke important and complete registration information

035sports physicals are due two weeks prior to the start of the season we'd also like to extend our congratulations the team in New Jersey for taking first place in the National gymnastics high school competition held in Florida last week watching Hills was very well represented by gymnast Morgan Duran and general uno boys baseball has advanced in the state tournament I will play at Millburn on Thursday May 24th in the state quarterfinals girls softball will be hosting Bridgewater Raritan in the quarterfinals estate on Wednesday May 23rd boys golf swept the 2018 county sectional a group for state championship titles while boys lacrosse will play in the state sectional plan semifinals at home tomorrow Wednesday May 23rd hosting West the girls track and field team is extending their congratulations as they have some attractive field styling conference

036champions of Porsha Jones in the 400 meters mahogany Jenkins in the triple jump and Jessica Carey Aires and the 400 meter hurdles so the girls will continue to compete at meats throughout the speak in Ultimate Frisbee James Kennedy and Allison rst were invited to try out for the US national team tryouts this past winter girls finished second at their home tournament in April both teams will be in action immortal Day weekend as they seem to bring a home state championship Thank You Emma and Aris I'd also just like to note that board member Bob Morrison is not here tonight he's hosting the governor's arts education Awards this year he was a recipient last year and I think we also have a watch on Hill student receiving an award there tonight Chris Collins on the other

037hand is not here because he had a root canal tonight not the first member to choose a root canal over a board meeting but first in a while we're now at the point three I want to thank the principal and all the supervisors and directors who are here tonight we're going to have a presentation on our strategic plan Department goals and report on progress that's for thank you everyone for being here tonight and whether you hear from everyone or not everyone in this group right here has played a part in as has our entire staff in carrying out the strategic plan and and the folks here have really taken on leadership roles in the actualization of our strategic plan goals so I'm going to speak and then I'll introduce our principal mr. Alexis what what

038is really nice is that I don't think I have to actually repeat the three goals at this point because they really have started to become part of the vernacular in the district it warmed my heart last night when a student in their TED talk referred to our strategic plan go about student wellness and was talking about all that has been done within schools surrounding that particular goal so it's really nice to see that it has started to become systemic so as you know we have our three goals around wellness around post-secondary planning and around creative innovative and interdisciplinary learning and so what you're going to hear tonight it's a little update on progress towards those goals we are currently in year three of the strategic plan and you're going to hear from the strategic plan

039action team chairs about the work that has been done district-wide on the goals and then you're also going to hear from each of the department supervisors about the work that has been done in their departments towards the actualization of their department goals that they spoke about in November's presentation which are directly aligned with the strategic plan so now I will call up my favorite high school principal mr. Alexis thank you miss Jewett good evening everyone the beauty of the strategic plan is that it grew naturally out of our school vision and as you know central to this vision is a commitment to authentic learning inquiry collaboration and problem solving and that commitment is deepening our understanding of how learning is taking place in our classrooms on stage playing fields and really in all parts of

040our school community so this evening when you hear about the advances we've made in wellness social-emotional learning arts and athletics the ninth grade transition new courses interdisciplinary learning Chromebook use College advising senior career day flex day scheduling student-run hackathons and TEDx programs when you hear about higher levels of critical thought and inquiry in English about increased rigor in social studies c.p classes more authentic literacy in world languages additional support for our ëall students deeper engagement through higher-order questioning and math classes wider interest in computer science and coding more opportunity to perform science and solve problems with sophisticated technology improve curricular pathways in the arts and an expanded music curriculum the effectiveness of the new culinary facility assessment feedback in phys ed classes improve literacy for our special education students you'll see that our vision for

041learning touches all places in our school community and serves all students when you hear about the redesigned PLC's the professional learning communities you'll also discover that we're modeling our vision for our students by promoting teacher agency and ownership we're engaging in deeper learning an authentic problem-solving through inquiry research and collaboration our vision is broad and deep and through the strategic plan we're actualizing the vision and advancing learning in our school exciting work is taking place every day and as I told the eighth graders last month there's never been a better time to be at watching Hills so thank you for this opportunity to share our progress we'll begin with mrs. Sherman and this cup hi good evening our wellness initiative has continued to expand this year and I think we've had a really good year

042the first indicator that we had under this goal was really to increase the awareness of wellness in the school community and this year we've really been able to do that we've presented programs many of which are listed there that have been available to the students the staff and the community some of the highlights of some of the things that we've done this year - as part of this was our new parent presentation series that's something that we started this year with the Chris Herren presentation in January on substance abuse prevention and then we went on from there and had two more nighttime programs for parents in the community to learn about substance abuse prevention and also mental health issues they were pretty well attended I have to say and I think we're going to continue

043on with them so that was something that was pretty exciting there's the basketball team with Chris Herren right there also as part of these programs some of the things that are listed there and some of the things that are going on with wellness we were really collaborating with the community there's a lot of community groups that have money they have interested people they are excited about our wellness initiative and they've they've been right on board with this all along they provided funding for a lot of our programs and will continue to do so and I think there's a lot of excitement in some of the community groups that we've talked to in some of the parent groups about some of this stuff we're doing I think there's a lot of of wellness in the air

044at Watchung Hills these days as you mentioned teachers come to me all the time and have ideas kids are coming to me we're getting feedback from people on some of the programs we are doing so that as we plan we all know how to go forward but I think there is a little bit of a wellness buzz in the school these days okay our second performance indicator really had to do with we wanted to make sure that students had access to wellness information so we've been excited with some of the things that are going on in this area we've got more counseling going on we have Fitness activities going on for kids we even added a student subcommittee this year which was pretty exciting we've got a bunch of students who are leadership minded they

045wanted to get together and do something for the school they were natural for our Wellness Committee so we now have something called the Teen Action Group also known as tag kind of tag you're it and trying to help make a better school so they're already in action they come to our Wellness Committee meetings and I think they've got great things ahead of them one of the things that they've started already I don't know if you students have noticed but they initiated music in the morning before school starts they contacted through coordination with the music department they're having people musicians sing and play instruments before school starts in the atrium on some mornings so it kind of starts the day with a little special a special musical part so I think we're doing pretty well so

046far and all these things the third performance indicator was to have two to four district-wide wellness days in the district and at this point I just want to acknowledge also Patricia Tobin vice principal has been working with Julie come on running the Wellness Committee and really just did such an incredible job in a lot of work particularly with the December wellness day which included wellness in the curriculum so every student had wellness activities throughout that day we had room 107 set up for wellness for the faculty while her faculty health fair and then challenge day occurred on that same day and the second day is planned for June 8th when again there will be wellness in the curriculum in the classrooms slightly different than what we did in December but we've been able to achieve

047that goal in the in the wellness plan I'd like to introduce Terry McConnell and Sean D Giovanna hello everyone again for the record I'm just a figurehead dr. Z has done all the work that's all I apologize to the group ok with again we came to the board last year talking about the first step was the diversity survey that was a survey of just over 1,100 students which is pretty good because that's more than half of the student body that participated in the survey we there's a wide number of things that then that we learned and again we think this process is going to be forever that we this is something that's not going to end in the next year the following year it's gonna be an ongoing process one of the things we wanted

048to do first was at first give the survey and show the survey to the teachers so they kind of understood where students were coming from and I believe miss Jewett where the board will be getting the survey as well ok when we did that in January it was interesting that the teachers were somewhat surprised as well because again we all believe you know that there needs to be more training and understanding dealing with diversity so - miss Schneider means credit we now will be trying we're trying to have a speaker for the first in-service day that is in September we're looking at also trying to have some more professional development and possibly have some type of workshops during some of the in-service days one of the things we also did was we started to talk

049about focus groups just getting small groups that for example what we did a couple weeks ago we had two of our teachers from the committee meet with some of the Muslim students and some of their concerns and one of the things that came out of that was again as some of you know this is the month of ramadhan where where they observe a time period where for 30 days you have to fast from sunup to sundown so their concerns was up as far as participating in gym and again they working and everything so what we were able to do was to get them a study hall during this time period so we're looking at talking to small focus groups to maybe give us a better understanding of how people are feeling and what we can

050do to help we did this year have a during the pSATS for the freshmen a number of diversity activities which we're going to do again next year we already have a speaker lined up and as far as again we talked about a diversity day and again it's going to maybe combine with the Wellness Program but that's going to take time because it's something that that you can't do overnight and it would like we'd like to have a program that it's the whole day where it's it's even workshop for students as well so there's a lot of things we collected from the survey and now the the hard part is is just making sure we have the time and be able to help students in every way we can and I'll turn it over to mr.

051dignity okay thank you so I'll talk a little bit about the work that we've been doing particularly with transgender LGBTQ issues which was one of the tasks we were given in our charge and it's actually appropriate that we're talking about today because it is Harvey Milk day today so I wish everyone that happy Harvey Milk day and in school today a few of us the GSA gave out some white ribbons to some people and we talked about Harvey Milk in our classes so that's part of an inclusive curriculum that we're working on here at watching Hills the state of New Jersey is considering implementing statewide and inclusive LGBTQ curriculum throughout all of schooling so we're trying to get ahead of that and see you know what it would look like to do that here at

052watchon Hills so I've been participating in that white bean Miller also in English we went to a summit meeting in Red Bank a couple months ago and we're starting to get that ball rolling we've also been approached the GSA's approach to school to look into a gender-neutral bathroom facility and so we're doing some research on that and seeing how other schools are doing it and what the best model is for our school might be for that and then finally our thunder was stolen a little bit by our student reps but yeah the Bridgestone is the high school off center award the diversity Club which is run by Jimmy lot Jones and Marisa they applied for and won this upstander award for the work they've been doing mostly on anti-bullying but also awareness around diversity issues

053as well so we're off to a good start we have a lot of work still to do but we're hopeful that we're going to be able to make a big difference [Music] everyone so I was Lynn Raimondo is also supposed to be here but her daughter got all her booster shots today and not feeling well when you have that little baby so she is not able to make it just to bring you up to date last year I presented at this time what we did in developing that summer 700 and Tony guidance directors survey for colleges in the area what they thought about admissions and I'm just going to quickly review what some of the colleges said because that affects how we did this year which was a standout year one of the best things

054we did was talking with the college reps we also surveyed about 400 students five colleges before I go to that because Terry I thought I was going in before Terry and Shawn you are in that picture right there on the right that is from PSAT day that was one of the activities we did with the diversity group on the bottom left is Joe Toye doing one of our group meet as student group meetings right here in this office here so last year we did all these surveys talking with the college reps what I want to remind you and again I'll go quickly is that the majority of colleges recalculate GPA with the focus on core courses there's not really strong preference on weighted versus unweighted colleges are looking at the academic rigor of your courses

055the most important thing that they look at will be their GPA and ACT they do read the essays the letters of recommendation but they're ranked a little lower and last year just so you know and which there was an emerging trend called Z me video resumes and students were submitting the resumes video fight through a video well of course when colleges get so many applications even though it's online and so much to read the last thing they wanted to do was watch a video so that has somewhat Dido up the newest trend this past year has been an increase in self reporting colleges colleges where the students are responsible for reporting all their information they don't need official transcripts from us until the end not looking for recommendations and the newest thing for next year

056will be students will be self reporting their SAT and a CT scores and again I think it's just taken College Board a long time to get everything to them on time so there they will be switching to this self report system just because using all this information we had last year and applying it this year some of the fun facts or noteworthy facts for this year from using that information it's an era said mentioned when one of the one of the facts thirty students this year will be continuing as athletes catholic college athletes next year guidance process about forty one hundred applications this year for a student class of five hundred fifty eight which is really quite a lot of applications 1295 or early action most of the students are going early action because they

057here sooner obviously ninety six were early decision again a student has to want to go to that school for early decision IVs we had seven students at cornell we have students accepted at Yale Brown u Penn Columbia Harvard and Princeton we also had students admitted said Michigan Carnegie Mellon Stanford Rutgers we have 230 applications one hundred and forty students were accepted Seton Hall actually have 54 students admitted and Montclair had 29 so we have a good variety of schools also I know you can't read this but as I'm talking about the school these were the colleges who gave us information again as I gave you a range of colleges for our college acceptances we have University of Penn respondent Notre Dame we have Montclair State responding Seton Hall Raritan Valley so we had quite the

058gamut of Scot colleges that responded to this survey and I think we sent out to about 400 colleges that respond to that serving another noteworthy National Merit this year all fifteen semi finals were named as finalists for National Merit AP's which we are in a peel and right now we have ordered almost fourteen hundred and fifty AP exams we are still doing ap testing it was two weeks and now Wednesday Thursday Friday of this week so I'll keep you updated but we have about five hundred plus students that are taking AP exams some of the new things this year we're looking into and I'm a crust go back and forth on this we're developing actually two parent fa Q's on the website it's not they're not up there yet one is going to be a

059general information for students we're talking about transitioning having students come the ninth grade especially will be what do I do if my lockers broke in how do what do I do if I Madsen how do I make up homework general questions the second one will be more for college transitioning when do I start looking at colleges how many applications should I be sending out so we're we will be developing probably over the son some are these two fa Q's just to give open that communication for students and parents on what's happening in the high school the alumni survey and tenth grade survey this year we used to call it reverse college day but this year we ran an alumni Day in November so we had students who graduated last year class of 2017 come to

060the high school and Vaness panel and we invited all the junior classes came for one timeslot and all the senior classes came for another timeslot just a casual question answer period which went over very well from that alumni day we developed an alumni list and we will be sending out an alumni survey in June just to get some feedback from the students on their experience here at the high school Lin Raimondo also I did a survey with the tenth grade students I don't have the results yet but we will get information on what the tenth graders thought of their freshman year with the transitioning here this year we started eighth grade scheduling we're talking about communication with students this year we opened up electronically eighth grade scheduling so this April instead of snail mail to

061the five hundred students of parents on scheduling and high school information everything was sent electronically and it has saved everybody a lot of time parents have direct contact with the high school counselors or myself or anybody they need scheduling questions were answered so it gave a little more of a personal touch to that alumni day I spoke about PSAT day we organized that morning again for freshmen this was in freshman transitioning they have four sessions to go to and if you look at the pictures which I know are hard to see actually the first picture on the top with all the students was where our Vice Principals run a certain day the day before school starts so that's the assembly during that time going left to right on the bottom left is Lauren Krueger in

062with one of our students for a grade level meeting the second one was from PSAT d today is Lauren's Sagat she was working on wellness during that day we broke up the freshman's into the freshman into four groups the third pictures tara miles students were given Chromebooks this year so the sessions with the freshmen they all had a session with their counselor on Chromebooks using the Chromebook Theon's so that was very helpful because a lot of the sessions with the guidance counselors are pulling up now Rihanna pulling up the grades let's look at gradebook so it instead of like grouping everybody in this room it was more one-to-one after that session began and the last picture was Lincoln in it is Ken Karnas because PSAT day we also did a note-taking session and that was

063Ken during the note-taking session and lastly other quick freshmen transitioning this is all been about freshmen transitioning and communication opening up to eighth graders giving more information for freshmen so I think I've covered everything and at this time mrs. Phelan and Mr Norrell speaking good evening what Mike and I have done is we were chair of the creative innovative and interdisciplinary learning committee for the strategic plan and so we've been together this is our third year so I'll just give the first two highlights one is on ESL R and the second one is on our PLC and then Michael will take it from there so as some of the board members know we created a committee subcommittee of the board to talk about ESL R and for some of the parents in the meeting tonight

064we're talking about expected student learning results other districts call this the profile of a graduate so through miss Judith's leadership and the subcommittee of the ed committee and other board members and the Academic Council we looked at 30 high schools who had ELC SLRs and we got a template and then we went to department meetings and through department meetings we had multiple suggestions and so the areas that we concentrated on were critical thinking communication artistic expression we also wanted to look at our social and emotional wellness as well as our international awareness and then finally we looked at steam which Michael is going to talk about in one minute additionally the next slide is fine additionally we tried to talk more this summer about our PLC's which are again professional learning communities for our faculty

065and we talk through academic council about the research which talks about teacher agency and teacher autonomy and interdisciplinary collaboration so this year we piloted a very successful transition from bringing in the sage on the stage to tell teachers what they should do and what they should not do and we had them embrace their own learning so next month on June 5th you'll be able to see a few examples of that learning thank you so for our performance indicator 3b we had some changes in our schedule this year to allocate time recreate our time and repurpose it for the benefit of our students so this year we piloted two flex days in December and March and on the right is the flex day schedule where we incorporated time in the day for our students to meet

066with their teachers whether it be the teacher they had the previous period or another teacher somewhere throughout the school the overall feedback we got was very positive our students enjoyed flex day they wanted more of more flex days in their schedule and basically with what it was as a 48 minute period in which students were able to go around the school predetermined with their with teachers to make up assignments have discussions with teachers about assignments and basically have their their time to to get together with their teachers was very positive there was no mr. McConnell and mrs. noon yet miss week me mr. CFO said mrs. Nunez were the two faculty members that piloted this this year and they came up with these days and times and was very successful and like we said the

067feedback we have from students is I'd like to see some more our performance indicator 3c is about advancing our steam offerings and for some members of the board you may have heard of these earlier this year it's different committees we do have several new courses that we're going to be running next year including a music technology course guitar keyboarding and a freshman band we added a robotics course for the first time in Watchung Hills very proud of that with a dedicated robotics teacher Peter Ponzio we put in a modern genetics course to beef up our our offerings and the biological sciences and in the math department a peak principles of computer science has been put in we continue to have innovative summer opportunities for our students and innovative opportunities during the school year including summer

068enrichment and coding and entrepreneurship ap Project Lead the Way which is something I'll talk about when I get to the department presentations we had a hill's hack this year led by mr. twizzler and the hills presents so we've had a lot of extra co-curricular activities for students on the weekends and at night to get them more involved enhancing our course offerings especially in the steam area performance indicator three day 3d we're trying to incorporate critical and more connected thinking through career exploration so last year we've had our first senior career exploration and this is a picture from last year and it's Chris Collins I believe in there he's he was one of our panel members last year as you recall we had a we have a keynote speaker that is a graduate from the school

069last year was Justin and Michael Ben adduce who came and talked to our speakers this year I say who's here is it a surprise okay it's Alisa distr Co she's a graduate from 2005 and she's a Passaic County prosecutor and she's gonna become talking to our seniors on June 12th and we have a whole panel of people coming again this year whole new group coming for our panel discussions on June 12th for the senior exploration we have dual enrollment classes in Holocaust and genocide and PLTW where we look to get students college credit college opportunities in number theory and summer opportunities and we continue to look to expand for dual enrollment opportunities beyond the APB on where students get ap credit but dual enrollment where they're taking courses here that are non AP and getting

070an and dual enrollment status out of college right now I'm gonna turn to mr. clay via Supervisor of English to start the apartment presentations the English department has been engaged in a more than year-long process to develop curriculum support of the Diversity Committee goals to develop more inclusive curriculum we're becoming more systematic and improving writing instruction and assessment and we're advancing the school's goal of engaging students and higher levels of critical thought and inquiry over the summer we develop new units of study for grades 11 and 12 and also professional learning for full departments to expand LGBTQ voices in the curriculum this was for us a detailed and thoughtful process which started with discussion of Diversity Committee goals the formation of a team of teachers to research and identify high-quality works of LGBTQ literature an

071English department review of these books and then we purchased fund home and the realm of possibility for all English teachers to review more recently April 11th during our department meeting we had a full meeting professional development session which focused on LGBTQ studies and also on historical context for teaching fun home we're now piloting units of study in grades 11 and well to advance the goal of becoming more systematic in the teaching of writing we reviewed student writing samples to generate shared areas of focus so teachers brought with them to meetings samples of very strong writing and dramatic of what they wanted to see at particular grade levels what we derived from that by grade level focused on maintaining organizational focus and student writing using textual evidence effectively and properly documenting source material higher-order questioning strategies

072and facilitation strategies of student discussion is an area of focus school-wide we offered professional development for teachers early on and followed through on those goals during department meetings and during post observations post-observation conferences with teachers throughout the school year to be sure that that goal remained alive in people's minds and in people's practice I need a father will speak with you next about social studies [Music] oh good evening thank you I just wanted to talk briefly about our accomplishments with our three goals [Music] okay here we go okay one of the things that we are focused on social studies which I've mentioned a couple of times before is working on that just the memorization of facts like we have done yours in the past but instead working on skill building so I put this revised

073Bloom's taxonomy the chart up there just to kind of give you an idea of the focus of what we're doing so we're incorporating these skills through the basis of the content that we're studying and it's all in in hopes that after well in high school and then after and post-secondary that they will develop and incorporate these skills in college careers as they go through the rest of their lives the different in different settings so to focus on under three goals I just wanted to touch on on just a few of them one of the things that we've been doing recently the last couple of years is working on having students read actual documents primary sources what we found with that is that going back to the basics they didn't even quite understand the vocabulary the

074way that the sentences were structured so what we've decided to do is use these primary source documents but teach them things such as the terminology and the vocabulary because that will help them not just in the skills were trying to build in social studies but in other areas as well we found that that's been quite successful we kind of isolate that that will help with SATs with pSATS ApS and so on so it kind of flows into other areas but I think what we're most proud of this year is the advances in CP rigor we've worked on our EP scores we've increased them over the last couple of years now we thought we would take a turn at looking at our CP students as well and one of the things that we really focused on

075this year and and the reason I put that one picture up there right here this is a Google slide from one of our CP freshman classes where they were studying the Renaissance and what they had to do in their classes would they actually use the Chromebooks as part of this project the use of Google slides in teams in group work came up with the research that they did on the Chromebooks and then presented through these slides that they developed to the rest of the class so not only are they using the technology researching they're also sharing and learning public speaking skills and we've really kind of tried to focus that the first skills that they just talked about in that first slide we want to integrate into all the levels that we are teaching and

076we're finding success with that we're going to continue to advance that next year as well so I will now introduce mr. Kummer Fred hi we began the year with four goals and we're quite pleased with the progress we've made one of the biggest things we did this year we introduced that idea of teaching without a textbook it's become a movement if you will in the state of New Jersey yes and mr. slides are really happy the purpose behind teaching without a textbook is it offers us the flexibility to create our own common communicative approach in our different language levels and of course it addresses the the cost of of textbooks every year they're increasing many of them are over $100 a textbook and with new editions coming out every three years makes it almost impossible

077to stay current so we began the year by having an exemplary school come and talk to us about teaching without a textbook what that entails they came from West Windsor Plainsboro this is the second year they're here we turn key that then to our department with all of our different languages we got together in groups created our own teaching without a textbook and then we collaborated with our sending districts we went out to the different sending dishes to see what they were doing how they're instituting this and some of their teachers have come up here to take a look at what we're doing we're going to continue that again for next year what we're hoping is to coordinate and extend it to other other schools in our district as well we took a look at

078the middle schools but we're certainly looking at of the entire program K through 12 so the teaching without a textbook becomes important because it allows us like I said to create that communicative approach that is ours it's something that we can use the idea behind it though is if you don't have a textbook we have to be able to measure ourself against something so that's where integrated performance assessments comes in yet it's another acronym in the world of a world languages are called IPAs that allows us to create assessment strategies and different assessment formats that are going to be a barometer for how well we're doing in the different languages but the idea behind this is not to go by language but by level so we'll have a performance assessment for a level one and

079that performance assessment will be the same for all languages across the board and the same thing from level one all the way through EPP a big help to us this year was the Selah by literacy New Jersey has entered into the sealed by literacy which allows us to offer our students the ability to test on a state level and demonstrate their proficiency the proficiency is different from performance most of the time our core content material is based on performance student learns something in the content area there are tested on it and they see how well they do the idea behind that is a year later how much of that do you actually remember what proficiency level do you have so through this yielded by literacy where students are tested on their proficiency we are able

080to take that data that we get from those two companies stamp and Apple you see up there yet two more acronyms to remember about how well our students do and you'll remember from this year if you were if you looked at the world language Honor Society induction along with the seal abilities we had fifty students that did make the seal of illiteracy one of the additions to that is they give us back information about how well our students did so we actually get the writing samples and their speech samples and then we can take that assessment and turn it into our lessons so include our actual students abilities in designing our lesson plans which is of great help to the barometer to see exactly what we're doing in the upper levels next year we're also

081looking at our English language learners each year we have an increasing number of students that are coming into district that have limited English we've always been a school with a very small number of students six and fifteen was a huge number all of a sudden and now next year we're looking at twenty the issue becomes that they're coming in in different levels so we have students that come in at the the word level they understand some words and then there are students that know everything from word level to sentence level to paragraph level and that's great but how do you deal with twenty students like that went on a variety of levels you have to adopt some other method that addresses their needs because not everyone has the same needs so we're looking into something

082called SIOP which is again is an acronym for sheltered instruction observation protocol it comes from the Center for Applied linguistics it's 20 years of research on how to deal with English language learners at the varying levels this requires that we give training to administrators teachers and guidance counselor's in order to perfect the perfect schedule for that student understanding where they come from their background what they call comprehensible input what they know in their language in their native language in the different academic areas and how we can devise a schedule here at Watson Hills in English for them to succeed and tip math business hey buddy so we had several goals in the math and business department one was to increase higher-order questioning and get students to talk a little bit more whether the students were

083talking to each other or whether they were talking to the teacher we found that a lot of the classrooms it was teacher led lecture and the students didn't have much of a voice so we really battled hard to try and give students more of a voice in class second you might recall that this was the first year that we asked all students to purchase a calculator instead of using school-issued calculators with that in mind we really wanted to try and empower the students to be able to use them in class and develop activities that would showcase that and thirdly we wanted to increase student engagement that comes together with the student talking if the students are having a conversation about what they're learning in class then they're learning it a little bit better we're hoping

084for better retention the questioning and student to student talk was led primarily through observation it was a big topic in our post conferences being able to talk about students talking the technology we had a couple of great advances one is up on the screen right there is the Smart View from Texas Instrument this is actually a virtual calculator that we got free from our speaker Tom Reardon that came in during October Pb last year and our teachers are making use of it this is fantastic software because it allows teachers to be able to model the keystrokes to be able to use the calculator and it actually keeps a log of what all those keystrokes are and then the teacher can even take software that they're writing in that and export it out to the students

085should we want and it's really been helpful to guide the students through how to use this calculator that we've asked them to purchase we've also had teachers use coding in the classroom during some of the spring break days we had teachers run small workshops for the students that showed up to be able to have something for the class to do because it was a little bit hard to move forward with content so instead they took the opportunity to have the kids learn a little bit about coding we've also had coding play a role in our accounting classes the CS Club offered the ability to link sheets together and I believe it's closed is that what they were able to actually pull off just by having things automated funny story there was a student that came

086in today Matt Dietz and came back to talk as a guest speaker to the accounting classes and when he saw that software his jaw dropped that our students put together something that he actually wanted senior year in college as an accounting major so it's pretty awesome that we're offering these kinds of experiences to our students so in science we also had several goals one was to expand student learning and recognition for our AP PLTW students and our additions to the program of studies through new coursework in robotics and modern genetics we implemented verniers software technology to enhance student learning this is goes hand in hand with our Chromebook initiative that we have each year oh for freshmen and sophomores next year so having big changes in our curriculum so that our students will have this

087technology in the future and extend our reading across the curriculum this past year our ninth graders continue to read the Martian 10th graders read Ender's Game and next year our 11th graders will read Neil deGrasse Tyson book Neil deGrasse Tyson is considered America's astrophysicist and it's a book about the universe physics for those who are in a hurry or people know it's not evidence of progress in indicates for students this year earned P actually last year when they applied earned a ppl TWU recognition in this category of an in the category of engineering that's a combination of AP courses in math and science as well as PLTW courses our project lead the way this year we have students again that are that are going to be eligible for that and they're applying for the APPL

088t w student recognition we introduced robotics and modern genetics into the nineteen to the 1819 program of studies we've had professional development within the on line four vernier software in our science labs you can see a picture there of our students using vernier software in our physics classes basically what vernier software and probes allow you to do is collect scientific data at highly precise way in a quicker way allowing students to have more inquiry based study of the data rather than struggling to to collect data get their data sit down and try to analyze it in a scientific way mr. Patel he's going to come up and talk about hearts physical education and health we had a number of goals this year in the arts of physical education and Health Department number one we our

089goal was to expand the music offerings currently we offer about a 1/4 of our students are enrolled in music classes so we're the goal for next year is to introduce new courses and a new facility and hopefully attract more students to take music we also unveiled our new culinary facility in the culinary arts department as well so that our goal this year was just just to kind of get in there maybe here and kind of become acclimated to the new environment and tried to transition by moving from the whole MEC kind of philosophy of culinary war towards the culinary art aspect and in health and PE a goal of ours that we focus on a lot in our post conferences and was to improve the assessment strategies by the teacher give the students authentic feedback

090give them skills tests and we also talked a lot about the impotent activity philosophy which kind of eliminates the use of squads and PE and gets them gets the students moving right when they enter the gym instead of sitting down and waiting like they you know they sitting in the chairs all day in class so we'd get when we enter the gym I did a lot of research in the well I'll talk about music first I this year I did a lot of resource I visited a lot of schools and talked to supervisors and teachers about the music tech experience in high schools and we are going to be offering next year a three new classes in the music tech lab each station in that lab will have a keyboard a computer a guitar and

091there will also be a teacher station in the room where the teacher can listen and the experience will be all through headphones so there will be completely silent and the kids will be playing on the the keyboard and the teacher can interact with one student or a group of students at a time you have them kind of played together and move them along on the computer as well so there will be teaching guitar in that lab will be teaching keyboarding and will also be teaching a full year course on music Tech which will deal with recording music sound waves writing songs and just you know audio engineering in general which is a very lucrative you know post-secondary career in music as well also in that lab we will be using the music theory and the

092music appreciation courses into that lab and we will be having software that will enhance the instruction in that lab as well in music as well we also moved the Advanced Course to an honors level class to align with the Wind Ensemble honors level class and we will also be offering a freshmen band which will enable the teacher to kind of move all the freshmen along and give them more feedback without ignoring the sophomores and juniors which they were all in the band for last year so it will it will definitely enhance the musicianship and technique of our students and we expect to see big things from our band in general next year for PE we brought in some professional development in the beginning of the year and discussed how to give a large number of

093students feedback and assessment on the skills and techniques that there were teaching in class instead of just rolling out the the ball and playing games we've moved towards more towards skill development drills in class and giving the students effort you know based or feedback on their effort on how well they are trying to kind of not kind of what how much they are trying to improve on the skills they're teaching in the PE class and in the arts we've tried to align the arts curriculum for more clear pathways up to the AP level so we've introduced a sculpture to class to the program of studies which now all of the students whether you're focusing on 3d level or the 2d level or the photo level or art history level you all they all have a

094pathway to get to the to an AP class from if they work hard from there their freshman year now they just have a couple pictures from in the new kitchen this is a picture of the kitchen without students in it and here is a picture with the students working ah you know cooking the philosophy is to provide the students with a more authentic kind of restaurant style culinary experience versus the home X style of the home cooking experience hopefully giving more students the inspiration to move on to into the culinary field in college and beyond and then just a couple of pictures from our latest dessert unit it's about that time so when you guys all go home tonight you can you know we think into the there are no leftovers but stay tuned so

095that's basically it from the artem PE and health department and i now like to turn it over to miss marietta sales thank you very much everybody [Music] okay so special services and two primary goals this year the first was to work on building literacy among our students and also in the process help with their writing skills and the second was to expand and our community-based instruction program and get students better prepared for work with workplace readiness skills so in achieve 3000 our students are making progress there and they're improving their Lexile levels there there is a writing component to achieve 3000 and through that process they're also building their writing skills and in our community-based program our transition coordinator mr. Betty has been working to find additional placements in our community and we have a

096wonderfully warm and open community who provides opportunities for our kids to get real life experiences practicing those skills that we're learning here workplace readiness skills that we're learning here in the building through our in-house structured learning program where they're working in the cafeteria and with buildings and grounds they do some work in the guidance office and several the other offices they deliver mail throughout the building those pre-vocational skills that they then take out into the community and practice in real-life environments thank you [Music] any questions women I'm happy to start it all if you'd like okay sure Tim is Angela Stroh I appreciate your presentation in the slide that you had on trends from survey and interviews there were a couple of points that were highlighted one was a comment that colleges don't really have

097a strong preference on weighted versus unweighted GPA and I'll get to that in a second second that academic rigor of their studies is held in high regard and then finally there seems to be a focus more on the numbers ie GPA and as a CT SAT scores so putting that all together and seeing some of the parent concerns that were brought to the board in different occasions in the past I want your insight if you would on a couple of things one it's been at least my observation I think that of others that the colleges really are uninterested in the way to GPL together as opposed to not having a preference which actually says something slightly different and probably the reason that they don't have an interest in weighted GPA is how its weighted from

098school to school becomes hard to compare so you might as well just do the unweighted GPA we had parents come to the board who argued about having more rigorous classes for fear that they were not having the potential stretch opportunities and I think there's a general perhaps misunderstanding that you need to be taking all AP classes and we all know that there is risk in spreading yourself so thin that that's going to affect your GPA unweighted even though it may balance out weighted so there was a parental focus on that weighted GPA when in fact I think that's not really where the focus should be obviously as a board and as a community we'd like to see our school very highly rated and part of that metric is how many people participate in AP classes

099etc but on a personal note seeing how my own children at various age groups have gone through the high school one of the things that we've learned as parents is overloading on APA does not provide them with wellness and does not provide them with advantage in their college application because it's actually hurting their unweighted GPA as opposed to helping it so if you could provide us some clarity about and whether those statements are correctly representing the climate today and in what ways do you recommend that we educate the parental community about how to achieve balance as opposed to I took all AP classes i we did do a survey with the teachers first of all because one of the and that was last year on levels do should we have AP judging from what the

100colleges told us that you know we are our highest GPAs of 5.3 no one in the school can reach of 5.3 because we have so many AP courses no one can take all the AP courses that we have so each year we provide the college's the highest GPA out of the class no names there's no ranking when we talk to college reps and again we did a survey but we do have over 100 colleges that come with you talk to the college reps about what would they like to see colleges off the record would rather see us through a regular College four three two one just make a plain and simple that that would take a lot of education in the community because we're very competitive there's competition within the building and parents even now

101pulling from the eighth grade we we talked about the eighth grade communication our calling to ask can my student be in all honors classes they were recommended for this this should be in honors here's the path they want to take so what we try to say them most of the recommendations on all our tea from all our teachers 98% students are going to receive an A or B in the level that they're recommended for that's a happy that that's a happy place don't have to push because your your application says AP and you're getting a seat because a C in an AP class first of all it is weighted it's going to pull your weight down college it doesn't really see that you have the rigor because you're not performing as well however the other

102side is for parent comes to me and I don't really care about that I want them to experience AP that's fine but we do have parents who would like their students to be in seven AP classes out of eight so the conversation will then go to you talked about we've been talking about wellness you're talking about stress on average I'd say an AP class gets and the supervisors can correct me 45 minutes to an hour of homework okay so you're now in seven AP classes so seven hours of homework is ahead of you but wait all of our students participate in clubs and activities they're in sports so school ends of to 15 to 20 our students go to practice clubs and activity let's say they get home at 6 it's good for them to

103smile once in a while shower eat and then go to seven hours of homework so that's not even an academic conversation now that is simply a conversation with a parent that's talking about the Wellness of their student this this is what you would like conversations with students coming to guidance counselors are I really don't want to do this but my mother wants me to go into this class so there's a real mix and I think we need educating parents on levels some high schools have gone to this four-three-two-one model like that would it would take a long time for us to do that but I do think we do have to have a lot more communication on the stress that being in AP levels what colleges are really looking for they're using unweighted more than

104weighted because as you you kind of answer your question there's no there's nothing common in New Jersey high schools like say that say every high school is doing it this way every high school is doing it that way so the common factor is four three two one so a lot of colleges are recalculating and they don't always take into account the electives and I know that that's an important part of our curriculum but it's it's just pumping up the GPA and realistically they're looking at fourth year to looking at the core courses so a lot of conversations a lot of education and I've Center a lot of time we want to keep educating parents on the stress levels the Wellness they don't all have to be in ApS the college is looking at academic rigor

105that doesn't mean ap that means for a CP student that went from getting a's in the CP class freshman year has now moved to an a-level the next that's that's rigorous for that CP student and then maybe during the senior year there's some AP classes that's the academic rigor for that student so it's so personalized but you know it's just changing the tone I'm happy to yield but I have more Thanks so since Ms jus had kept looking over at me I can't resist but commenting on this so both miss Falvo and mr. Comerford mentioned Chromebooks and as all of you know we invest that as a board in Chromebooks for the freshman class and have since invested for the incoming freshman class one of the things that we have not seen or at least

106I've not been convinced of is that they're actually being utilized to their full potential so one I'm surprised that we're not seeing the Chromebook comment in every section of presentation but more substantively what plan do we have to use that technology and use and utilize professional development to help our teachers really incorporate that perhaps even as a replacement of all paper and textbooks which is where I hope we would go so that the students aren't just carrying is 3.3 pound device in their backpacks every day and finding that they're not using it in the vast majority of their classes and our best metric is how many times they connect it as opposed to what they've done with it so I don't know who would like to answer that question because it's fairly broad for everyone

107so I'll make a couple comments and analyze mr. D'Alessio to expand so one of the things that I did put together after our conversation with mr. Bayer check and mr. D'Alessio and mr. Sherman is she oversees professional development is we sat down and mapped out based on everything we've done so far and what they had been planning just to communicate a little bit better for the board what we're looking at in terms of year 1 and year 2 with the rollout and with the professional development and one thing I will agree with your initial comment of yes they are not being utilized to their full extent so if that is number one we need to lay out what our expectations are for their use because that's something else that we talked about needing to clarify

108is what is the goal for their use just like you know with the graphing calculators the students don't we ask them to purchase them it doesn't mean that they're going to be utilizing them every single minute of every single math period however there is an expectation that they're going to be an active part of the curriculum and they're not just going to take them out you know once a month for for some kind of activity or test so similar to the Chromebooks that's what we've been talking about with the leadership team and with the supervisors in terms of the different departments and one of the key components that was identified this year the departments that you were speaking about them had an easier time implementing them into the instruction whereas and I'll let Mike pick

109up here where some of the other departments realized that they needed some additional software in order to be able to utilize them more effectively in class and then following with that more targeted professional development so I'll turn that over to Mike so he can elaborate on that a little bit because he's gotten a lot of the feedback from on that cylinder so when I walk the building I do see a lot of Chromebooks being used like do you see a lot of computers out I think of classes in each of the departments my department and the Aaron courses are exclusively taught on computers the business department several courses are taught exclusively on computers and you know in my travels around the when I talk to ninth grade teachers they do use them a lot but

110what I'm getting a lot of is now that I know they're going to be there for me next year I have a I have a plan in my mind on how I'm going to use these know teachers when given opportunities to use these types of instruments will organically come up with lessons come up with collaborate with their with their colleagues and use this we have to recognize it it is the first year with it and you know I've been in high school 20 years and things just don't happen quickly they really don't but I have seen it just in my own eyes walking the building trying to sign out a Chromebook cart just for myself the grief I get when I have to take the Chromebook cards out and administer the PARCC exam I get

111a lot of grief from teachers because they want to use the Chromebooks and they can't because we're using them during testing so you know that kind of data comes to my office and I and I see it this year we we talked with our Technology Committee we have members from each of the departments in the committee and they came back with feedback on what they would want to see in terms of both software and hardware so for example the math department like to see touch screens they want to be able to write on the Chromebooks if and have students be able to write on there so they can do more interactive lessons we actually found I found a platform for that and that's the next year's Chromebooks have that ability science obviously the vernier equipment

112which has always been part of the science department but a real push now to use that and in in a lot of the the arts department with many things they do there and that in their digital classes being able to have the Chromebook is going to be important also so we're getting a lot of feedback from our Technology Committee and we're putting that into play through with with both mr. Bay check on the on the tech side of myself on the educational side so you know I expect more and more to be used I really do and and I could tell you it there's high there's high amounts of classes you know with them I mean I for myself I use it three times a week in my physics class you know simulations sharing the

113documents experiments through vernier so over the next few years I do see that Tim and I have been talking about textbook utilization and has gone down you know we're put we're talking with supervisors about a textbook free initiative here and I do see that too and I and I will tell you that I get there's not a day goes by where a textbook company doesn't email me or call me and ask me for you know for to buy textbooks and I say we don't right now we can you know we have the internet so I see the next few years really the second they explode but you know it takes time for teachers you know when they're given the tool they'll use it when they know it's there you know that they'll it organically happened

114I've seen that I think the thing that would at least give me comfort and perhaps other board members is as as you Illustrated some sort of timetable or planned with goal expectations and then seeing if those goals were met obviously there's no expectation all of a sudden there's 100 percent utilization every class but if it's left to happen by design I think it's gonna happen at a much slower process than if there is some goal to reach will reach for any metric to measure than you've achieved without regular intervals we did meet with Liz last week to come up with timetables and initiative and we want to see this summer is a big summer for Brian and myself to really come up with timetables and you know how we're gonna do this you know we're

115kind of past the whole Google thing you know everybody you know everybody knows how to use Google now we're trying to learn you know more advanced techniques for our teachers now that they have this technology in hand and you know that's what we're trying to do and I think one of the greatest struggles that teachers have they want to use the tools and they you know when they see anything whether it's technology related whether it's an innovative you know teaching technique but when it's something that they have to take time to learn we have to figure out how structure that time for them to give them that time to learn it and I really credit you know mr. Sugarman and miss Phelan when they designed the professional development days and and mr. Alexis with the

116really the reallocation of the traditional department and faculty meeting time to be really more teacher learning focused time and I think you know what that will continue to evolve but that is certainly something that we've realized you know that when we give them these tools if we're gonna have the expectation that they implement it we really have to make sure that we build in the time for them to learn how to use it so you know that's that's something that we certainly will look to to enhance as well Thanks and if I could just follow up on Greg's point the board has been asked the last two years to make these big investments and I think in terms of time frame what we're looking at is to have some feedback on where we're getting towards

117these goals in time for being asked by Tim to make next year's investment because then after that it's gonna be well you did three years why not four no Barry it's a big learning curve and we've had a year we're just about done with the first year and I think now that it's in place things are moving forward I think you're going to see it accelerating as far as learning and use of it and I think people are more comfortable now and it's going to accelerate each year faster than you think better than the first year did I think you're 2 or 3 you're gonna be much faster and after that it's just gonna be automatic right and I don't disagree with you I I'm just looking as a board member I want to have

118a rubric next year so we can when we're asked to you know make make the next year's installment which I fully believe this boards gonna support but we want to do it on data based analysis thank you we set a almost impossible task for all of you tonight to come not only fill us in on the progress we made this year but also to relate it to each of our strategic plan goals I want to thank all of you for the effort that you put into doing that in a concise and clear fashion this was very helpful to the board and we appreciate the time of all of you every everyone on the committee and we helped put this together so thank you very much I'm gonna ask you to hang on for just a

119few more minutes we're going to have the first opportunity for public comment in case there's something relevant there that we want to ask you to to respond to will have you here but so it'll just be a few minutes did you have any so we will then move on now in our agenda to the first opportunity for public comment this first public comment period will be limited to agenda items for this meeting only would be a second public comment period later in the meeting all comments are limited to five minutes if you would like to address the board please come up to the podium state your name address and address us [Music] thank you for the opportunity to speak my name's Steve mr. ko I had his son who graduated in 2017 another in 2015

120have a daughter who's currently a junior she's actually one of the founding members members of the Teen Action Group but Isabelle it's jerko that mr. Koh mentioned before she was also on the successful basketball team although she had a little help from Julia Cunningham and mr. gob you did still tell us what town you're from sure from Warren thank you so we were in reviewing the reading materials for for next year in the curriculum we came across the fun home book donors mention my name is Jack over yet you may or may not be aware but in that's a graphic memoir that has nudity sexual activity in the pictures masturbation and when my wife and I learned a bit we were dumbfounded upon hearing about it and in and I have the book here for

121those who haven't seen that you're welcome I put some bookmarks on some of the pages that were very disturbing to us and as a part of that we reached out to other members both people in the school and not to get a mix of reaction to make sure we weren't overreacting and everybody we spoke to was shocked and literally could not believe that that book was included in the curriculum I do reach out to mr. aqua VA was very welcoming I did speak with him my wife and I came today I didn't know whether was appropriate to bring it up to the board now but given where we are in the school year and the desire to get this resolved prior to the summer probably in everybody's best interest I want to least raise it

122to the attention of the board our request is that it be removed from the curriculum we do not feel that it's appropriate for this material to be presented to our children many of which will be under you know under age 18 at the time that there you'll be required to do the reading we also don't want children to be singled out we feel that that'll be not in the best interest of the children or the community at large I am happy to do what is needed to make sure that you agree that it's more than a few families and if you know gonna continue to work with the English department and hopefully get to resolution without having to spread this more than it needs to be I certainly don't want to raise an issue if

123it doesn't need to be an issue but at the same time very convicted that this be removed from the curriculum and that our children are not you know exposed is material thank you I also want to thank you for talking to our English department supervisor it's always helpful for things when the board has to consider them to to have the things go through the proper chain of command so I will appreciate your doing that and we'll continue to do that thank you thank you hello good evening April Larson 10 Pine Street in green Brook I also agree with the other parents and I have also reached out to the English teacher our book is of concern was the Perks of Being a Wallflower that's not why I'm up here I'm up here to ask with

124regards to the expanding arts section with regards to the English I'm sorry the freshman band and the chorus I was wondering I know you had on the 6th of January you had the teacher of the high school music band position posted and I'm not sure where we are with regards to supporting the expansion of that program can you please speak to that point yeah we're we're in the hiring process right now we're in the midst of the interview process so you do think you'll have that person on board but oh it's a position is in the budget the the courses are subscribed to so I mean that is a yes that's a big deal the position is still posted on the website so it's a little confusing thank you hello mark be Phoebe is ci

125from Warren Township third concerned parent about the reading list and the English director was very gracious and spent a half an hour with me already we're scheduled to go over with the curriculum coordinator on Friday so I'm happy to follow through with that process but I need education as a parent I think somebody used the term parent education it is there a written process that I can follow I don't know what the process is and rather than asking you whether private is there anything in writing that I could go to that would explain to me what the process is for parents to express their concerns and have folks removed from the reading list we don't have that set out in a particular policy the normally if you go to a board of education member and

126I'm from Warren Township if you were to ask me I would tell you you know the way we go through the chain of command is first address it with your child's teacher then then if necessary the supervisor where the principal if it doesn't get resolved there to the superintendent it doesn't get resolved there to the board okay so and I'm not sure if I should be directing this to you or whomever but the I guess the process that would be the English director and the director of curriculum then the superintendent I this is a unique situation because generally you know a parent parent don't determine curriculum for the entire school you would generally be expressing a concern about your child which is why we have a process where if you do want your child to

127participate in a certain part of the curriculum right we have a process for that okay so if there's a particular lab that you know you're not comfortable with your student doing in science class and that they object to if there's a particular book that you don't want them to read we have alternatives for all of those things um so that's really the process that you'd want to look to go through if there's nothing just to be that's not the process I'm speaking of but go ahead well so with you know if there was a larger picture issue that you wanted the board to consider or the administration to consider you know you've done that but if this is a very you know this is this is a very unique sensitive issue in terms of determining

128curriculum because you know we look at research and best practices and as you heard mr. equaiiy abhi for you know the English department went through a very thoughtful process with regard to this and we also have you know we have expected school-wide learning results that speak to our our strive to develop empathetic individuals that graduate from the school that have you know that are accepting and that embrace diverse students and and diverse cultures and diverse backgrounds but um and just to be sure I'm talking about sexually explicit material I am not having a problem with the word diverse that you mentioned and I'm happy to go through the process so I don't want to get ahead of ourselves ask you so well that's why and again that's why I encourage you to you know to

129continue the conversation with mr. aquellia because that is one isolated piece of the literature one thing you know that I my questions about the process certainly but just so you know to understand some of the context of where these conversations come up at this is my my fifth year as superintendent and at the end of the end of each year after graduation I generally always get a couple of emails from students who graduated who wants to just share with me some things about their high school experience and it ranges from you know a particular meal they may not have liked that was served in the CAF period that they won't express to me to some bigger picture issues of concerns that they had from when they were in the high school and I always invite

130them to come in and meet with me so that I can get more information and they generally don't take me up on that but after my first two years here there were a handful of students that had sent me emails about their experience here with regard to the fact that they felt that our health curriculum and the literature in our classes was very it was all related to very traditional gender roles and identities and that they felt marginalized because we were not more inclusive so I just you know want you to have an understanding and that's something that really you know resonated with me and really concerned me because I I did not want students to graduate from the school having had an experience where they did not feel an included part of our school

131community and they that they'd also did not feel we were meeting their educational needs in terms of being exposed to literature and being exposed to curriculum in their health classes that was going to help them develop and grow as individuals so these are not decisions we take lightly and we certainly hear your concerns and we will have more discussions about this but there are multiple perspectives we have to consider and and you know this is certainly a more complicated conversation than determining you know which units to include in a math course for curriculum because there's a lot more that comes into play here so we certainly you know are hearing what you're saying and that will take many it's clear I'm not sure so you're mentioning the words diversity and health class and I'm mentioning

132the word sexually explicit material so I'm happy to go through the process again but I think we're talking past one another so I guess this is a conversation maybe for the next board meeting have to go that far my question for me I encourage you to talk with mr. clay via more about some of the other literature in the English classes there's there are a lot of controversial topics covered in a lot of the literature that the students read in English class so this is not you know this is a sexually explicit material that would be viewed as sexual harassment in my workplace okay which is where I think you are preparing most of your student body to go so let's bring it back in so we can have that conversation again I don't mean

133to bring that up now I'm happy to go through the process after if I'm unsatisfied with the process with my meeting on Friday what is the next step and what is the timeframe but the reason I'm mentioning it now without having gone through the process as I as mr. Koh and concerned with the time so I'm just trying to get a feel for the next steps and when I can ultimately get resolution of whether that requires another board I think at this point I I don't have a strict timetable for you to follow it I think as we suggested talk to mr. Olivier if if you don't feel I did that already to also talk with the curriculum director if if you feel there is more that you need to bring to the attention of

134the board after that come come to either the next board meeting with or any board meeting and bring it to our attention okay you know be it beyond that or you know we've engaged in a bit of back and forth today and trying to provide information generally we will ask you to come state your concerns and we will consider it and then at the end of the day you know we we as a board have to make a decision about the curriculum that's recommended to us okay the Superbird that helps that it's very clear so then the next board meeting would be June 9th I guess June 5th and that's okay that I come to that one we could discuss it more we again I kind of broke the rules a little bit with the

135discussion that occurred there's generally not a discussion with the public so you can come and share your feedback with the board and then either I or somebody else will get back to following the board meetings okay um but because we had the presentation you know a little more oh yeah this should've been the agenda right I understood okay I'm good thank you any other members of the public at this point I'll close the opportunity public comment and again thank the supervisors principal the other staff members who came out tonight and go home and see if he would get some of that dessert that we were told [Music] if we want to get a copy we can get it from the administration so in that you're looking at a column we've got to go on with

136the rest of our it's necessary to read the entire book and not just take it all out of context it's the images that are mr. I can just read it not just page by page read it or together okay now at word discussion [Music] will be board discussion of the addendum items yes sorry and and I just want a little context so a concern that we had your plus ago especially for your board members was the last-minute request for trips and that seemed to disappear and then lo and behold that's not just one but two hot off the press and I don't I understand the timing of this I just don't want to see that we're starting that slippery slope oh well you let it happen last time so we're not gonna follow the guidelines

137of timeliness 100% correct with that and you know so I I really do appreciate with the the trip that was avoidable if that really was a paperwork mishap and we can't figure out where that was but regardless that was on our end the second one is one that would have happened regardless but I you are absolutely right and we actually did also just follow up with regard to some of the other issues because just so you know when they came to me about this they they knew they said oh okay we know that you had just talked to us it was about something else that the board asked for in terms of timeliness because we were doing some retroactive approvals for some different services so that is duly noted I completely accept responsibility for that

138and I agree to appreciate your willingness to approve them tonight but no we are not slipping back into that pattern I have my word on that a 12 though sometimes does anybody wanna make a motion on a 1/2 a second okay any discussion on items one through a six mr. Starsky little bit Ms Brown yes mr. musio yeah hey yes Hey yes I'm singer yes good morning yes dr. Chappelle ski yes mr. Palin yes Carrie so move 87 through 810 next yes second any discussion on a 7 to a 10 we have a vote please mr. Stiles miss Perrone yes miss de Mesilla yes babe yes Hey yes huntzinger yes dr. Chappelle ski yes and it sounds yes with a 11 to a 12 thank you Lisa any discussion on a 11 and 812 we

139have a vote please mr. Stein's miss Perrone yes Vizio yes baby yes Hey yes mr. huntzinger yes Martin's yes yes yes just to get one page when Duman box no see 28 OCT 28 1 through 28 second any discussion on abc1 through c28 yes it is yeah yeah baby yes all of them but I'll vote no on c-27 see 27 c-27j Mr Hague yes mr. hunt singer yes marks yes Thank You Sookie David's family [Music] 12-second thank you please any discussion on resolutions d1 through d12 just just a special highlight to d8 and the Board of Education appreciation and gratitude for the donation from Rochester Institute of Technology Project Lead the Way thank you very sure for the discussion can we have a vote on d1 through d12 is grow yes Visio yes Hey yes

140Hey yes Hunsinger dress Martens yes yes yes resolution 13 to 21 miss Burrell yes wisdom izya yes baby yes haic yes huntzinger yes yes yes thank you any discussion and Di's 22a a similar highlight for our gratitude to aspiring kindness foundation for their generous grant thank you great vote on resolution D 22 Ms Brown yes mr. musio yes Jaffe yes Hey yes on singer yes Lauren yes dr. Schakowsky yesterday and response yes motion is carried now the second opportunity for public comment and any wishes to address the board seeing will close the second opportunity for public comment remember any other business you're gonna give us deadlines yes email to us yes and some of us don't work tomorrow that's why it's gonna be okay let me ask this since we're here we've got training these

141are far more easily comprehended them evaluations in the past people think two weeks is enough time well I think so we have to get it done by jump you have to get them in by June 9th so before June 9th so that we can have the discussion I mean fifth I'd you fit right I mean let's listen unless you're the only sure come another ninth to know I'm sorry somebody else there been years when it's been done at graduation we don't want to do this yeah it'll be a shorter deadline than two weeks but you'll have a set date down okay any other other business unfortunately Afghans for the motion to go into executive session and accordance with the provisions of the New Jersey open public meetings out to Europe are resolved aboard moving the

142executive session to discuss confidential personality and leave a matter after which actually will not be taken it is expected that the matters discussed in executive session as we made public as soon as the me [Music] it's a second