001Okay, hello everybody. Welcome to tonight's Board of Education meeting. It's really great to see all of you here. We called our meeting to order earlier in our closed executive session and I hope everyone was able to recharge during spring break and now here we go for our regularly scheduled agenda. Um uh Ms. Encarnacion, do you have any comments you'd like to start us off with? Uh Sure, thank you so much. Um I'm sitting in this evening as Dr. Adderhold is away um on a special invite to a conference and so um I'm just sitting in for this for this evening. Um first of all, I know that we're going to have some honorees in a little bit, so I'm looking forward to honoring some of our students um in our fine and performing arts. Um
002but honestly, I would like to give some credit to Dr. David Adderhold who had his uh book recently published and although not here this evening um when you do see him around the district when he returns, um his book The Octopus Mindset: A Framework for Educational Leadership, um we all had the heads up that it was coming out, but it is now published and I have the hard copy here with me um and so we look forward to we're fortunate enough to learn from him each and every day, but um now others can do the same um through this helpful guide. Awesome, thank you. And uh Dr. Adderhold, if you're watching, just a reminder to work on your uh autographs cuz we want signed copies. Thank you. And uh so next, I'd like to invite
003our student representatives from high school north and high school south. So from high school south, we have Anna Chen and from high school north, we have Logan Klein. Uh looks like Anna, you are going to start first, so thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you for having us again. Unfortunately, Alice was not able to make it tonight. We are well-rested from spring break and have many events planned as we enter the last marking period next week. Starting off with spring sports, the boys uh tennis team is currently undefeated and recently beat North and Princeton High School. Next, our boys volleyball team has also had had a successful season thus far going undefeated at the Navy Nation Invitational. They also held their annual Serve Up Hope game and raised a record of $3,419 for Joey's Little Angels.
004Last month, the head coach for volleyball boys volleyball and one of our gym teachers, Mr. Cologne, raised $720 for the St. Baldrick's Foundation, a program that funds cancer research. We are extremely grateful for the effort behind this fundraising success. On March 13th, North and South students organized a walkout protesting against Ice and WWP. There were about 1,000 attendees between um North and South, and students held speeches to spread awareness. We're so proud of the students for speaking out for other unheard voices. Prior to spring break, our orchestra, band, and choir visited Nashville, the city of music. The students visited the Country Music Hall and of Fame and Museum and Elvis Presley's recording studio. They had a lot of fun and enjoyed seeing some of America's musical roots. Next, we like to highlight the student panel
005for Grover and South staff members. Two of our seniors, Aidan Edwards and Ryan Thompson, MC'd the event, and some students from Grover and South shared impactful moments throughout their time at WWP to promote belonging and inclusivity amongst our staff and students. Another senior we'd like to congratulate is Annabella Ruiz, who is this year's unsung hero. South hosted their annual unsung heroes event where all the students throughout Mercer County attended and recognized a student who consistently demonstrated did strong integrity. We'd also like to highlight the 165 students that qualified for the Seal by Literacy exam led by Dr. Ashley Ward and we are extremely proud of each student's hard work and dedication. We'd now like to honor the student teachers from colleges across New Jersey that have been assisting at South. We're so grateful for their
006help and we hope to see them again at South in the coming years. We'd also like to take a moment to thank our counseling department who have thoughtfully be thoughtfully meeting with um, students to plan out the next year's courses accordingly to help prepare each student for success. As for our competitive after-school clubs, HOSA and FBLA both competed in state leadership conferences and this past weekend Model Congress competed at Rutgers. Congratulations to all the competitors and award winners. Last month our juniors held their annual annual um, talent show and had an amazing time and now the junior class council is planning for an eventful prom themed Starry Night and later this month we'll enjoy their time at the Four Day Country Club. Today the senior class took their yearbook photo with admin on turf and
007we were especially pleased by the warm weather and we hope to see the same warm weather on Friday for our spring pep rally. Speaking of which, this week student council's holding their annual spring spirit week. Monday was Hawaiian Day, today was Disney, tomorrow's pastel, Thursday's twin and Friday our pep rally is class color day. We're excited to bring new pep rally events to the field and after the pep rally students have the opportunity to collect candy and free prom tickets tickets hidden hidden in the field. Recently SASA has been particularly busy. Last month they held Mehendi night where everyone was able to get Mehendi done by professionals and enjoyed some food afterwards. This Saturday SASA's holding their annual show full of cultural dances across India, funny skits and more and we can't wait to see
008all the hard work they've been putting in for the last past months. And as the third marking period wraps up and students are preparing for the AP exams, seniors commit to college, and um juniors begin their college process. We can't wait to see what the spring will bring us, and now we are ready to pass it on to North. Thank you. Thank you. To start off, we hope you guys enjoyed your break and the warm weather outside. Prior to leaving for break, the freshman class council hosted our spring pep rally. It was their first time running a pep rally on their own, and they did an amazing job with fun new activities like a food relay and interactive scavenger hunt. Moving on to sports, all our spring sports have been having such a great season
009so far. We want to highlight some achievements from specific people and sports teams. Congratulations to Eva Gedrych for breaking the school record for the javelin throw by throwing it 34.01 m. And congratulations to Aliyah Khanan for having 100 draw and controls in lacrosse. Continuing sports, North and South volleyball teams have their annual serve up for hope game on April 10th. It was a fun watch despite a sad loss from North, but it was a good cause with proceeds from the event going to Joey's Little Angels. Moving on, North SASA held their annual show on April 11th. They had a sold-out theater, and part of the proceeds were donated to South Asian Americans for a Change, also known as SAAFC, a nonprofit dedicated to providing mental health resources to Asian American youth. The show consisted of
010of various specialty dances consisting of classical, Ross, South Indian, hip-hop, and bhangra. It was such a fun night to see all the hard work of the members of North SASA. Moving on, the North Student Council will be hosting our annual Blitz on April 19th. Blitz is an opportunity for us to receive donations from various local businesses to help run our event tonight show, which is on May 30th. Additionally, the annual West Windsor Plainsboro Art Show has the reception tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. The art pieces range of students in various grades and we showcase for a month. To wrap it up, the junior class is getting ready for their prom on Friday at Forsgate Country Club. They'll They'll enjoy a night in the rain night garden and we hope they have so much fun.
011Awesome. Thank you guys for the report. It's so nice to hear about all the advocacy work and charity support you guys have been doing and a lot of events and the recognition showcasing um your talents and different cultures and language fluency and uh what else? Oh, and you mentioned the art show tonight. So, lots of great things happening. You guys just do not know how to slow down. So, thank you so much for the report. It's great to live vicariously through through these updates. So, thank you. And uh next, uh I'd like to move on and give the floor to Mr. Jeff Santoro. He's our fine and performing arts supervisor for K-12 and uh he's going to be giving us an acknowledgement tonight. All right. Thank you very much. Um thank you to Dr. Aderhold,
012the entire board for the opportunity to be here this evening. Um as was just mentioned, I'm Jeff Santoro. I'm the supervisor of fine and performing arts. Um and I'm really excited to be able to be here to acknowledge some of our students. I'd like to begin by stating that while we are acknowledging some individual students here tonight, there are thousands of students in our school district who are doing amazing things in their art, music, dance, and theater classrooms every day. As many of you already know, our students are regularly regularly presenting to the community all their hard work in concerts, plays, musicals, dance performances, and art displays both in the schools and around the community. In fact, just last night and this evening as well, we kicked off the district art show at the Plainsboro
013Recreation Center as well as in the West Windsor and Plainsboro libraries. Student artwork Student artwork will be displayed in these three locations throughout the month of April, and I encourage you all to take a time to visit these three displays. I can tell you I go to this event every year, and I'm continually blown away at the amazing artwork that our students uh present every single year. Uh in addition to the great work our students are doing in the classrooms on a daily basis, many of our students choose to go above and beyond the curricular expectations, and they go on to receive honors and awards or acceptances into very competitive regional and statewide music ensembles. So, this evening we're going to take a moment to recognize some of those students. First, I'd like to recognize
014a student um in our area of visual art who did a really neat collaborative project. Uh the green stitch project was co-created by High School South senior Rachel Berliner and Emily Sulay, who is an art teacher at Village School. They turned an idea about sustainability into a student-centered learning experience. The project was co-created, and it resulted in 1,100 clothing donations from the WWPRSD community. Fifth grade students transformed the donated t-shirts into tote bags, and fourth grade students explored and created fabric suns sun prints, helping students connect creativity, art, environmental responsibility, and community service action. Rachel then took the fourth grade artwork, the extra donated clothing, and co-designed an art installation. Uh their collaboration extended beyond just the classroom and into Village's library, where this final installation continues to hang. Because of Rachel's leadership and service,
015Village students experienced art as a way to care for their school, their community, and the environment. As an additional result, uh Rachel and Miss Sulay co-wrote an article that was featured in Davis Publication School Arts magazine, which reaches about 37,000 teachers internationally, and the article was so well so well received that it was a featured article in a limited print edition given to all members at the National Art Educators Association conference this past month. Um Miss Salay couldn't be here tonight, but I'd like to ask Rachel to come up to the front to be recognized for this amazing amazing project and achievement. And if you're at Village, I encourage you to swing through the library and check out the uh amazing installation that is there. Uh all right, we're going to move on to our
016music department next. There are two organizations in New Jersey that offer honors ensembles to students to audition to be accepted into. Uh the first of those I would like to speak about tonight is the Central Jersey Music Educators Association or CJMEA. That's comprised of the six counties that make up the Central New Jersey region of the state including Mercer and Middlesex. Now, we have many many more students and you're going to see named here tonight that prepare or take the time to prepare and audition for these ensembles, but we do get a lot who get accepted each year. Um so, you can see on the screen here all the different um CJMEA ensembles that students can audition for. Our state organization, the New Jersey Music Educators Association, is comprised of schools from all over the
017state, and their structure is very similar to CJMEA. They also provide these honors opportunities for students who for the most part have already been accepted into the regional organizations. So, what I'd like to do now is recognize students have who have been accepted into these ensembles. As you will see on the slides, many students were accepted to multiple ensembles, some CJMEA, some NJMEA. It's also worth noting that due to how the performance calendar is structured for these organizations, some of the students were accepted last year, but performed this school year, some were accepted this school year and will perform last this school year. It's a little bit hard to track in that sense, but essentially these are students who were accepted approximately over the last 12 months into one of these organizations honor ensembles. So
018as I read the names, I would like like to ask that any students who are in attendance to please come to the front and just remain here while all the names are being read. And in the interest of time, we're going to hold our applause to the end so we cuz there are a lot of names to read. Um I will point out that we have some of our students here tonight. There is actually a youth orchestra on rehearsal at High School North tonight that a lot of our music kids are in. So Tuesday night was always going to be a conflict with them, but I'm so glad so many of you were able to make it here today. Um lastly before I read the names, I just want to take a moment to recognize
019all of our teachers who work with these students as well. Um Jesse Argentinian who's the band director at High School South is here. So I want to recognize Jesse and thank him for being here. As you would expect with a bunch of musicians, um when I asked them if they could be here tonight, most of them had gigs and couldn't uh make the commitment, but um they are very proud of their students and are here in spirit for sure. So we're going to start with the students from High School North. And I will do my best to get through these uh in an efficient manner. So again, if you're here students, just come on up. Um first we have Ashani Banjeri, Rhea Kadambi, Arav Gupta, Romit Kundu, Yashanth Yo uh Yogaraj, Calvin Long, Emily Lu,
020Arsh Mahan, uh Walker Paluwu, Rayansh Pierk, Wallace Snow, Samrat Solanki, uh Mahika Srivastava, Parker Wu, Eddie Zhao, and Shannon Shu. So let's give these students that are here and all of them a big round of applause. Thank you guys. Um I'd like to now move on to the students from High School South. And again, as I read the names, if you're here, please come on up and stand in the front to be recognized. We have Kaya Ambashtha, Anagha Avananam, uh Prisha Bakshi, Amabak, Joydeep Basu, Gurnehal Bhatra, Siddanth Bhatra, Siddanth Burra, Trista Chow, Nathan Chow, Caden Coe, uh Jeshna Darmarajan, Anjali Gaddam, uh Devout Kawar, Surabhi Guha, Richard Hou, Nicholas Hudek, Nabiha Jha, Dennis G, Neal Kamath, Anna Kang, Neal Katuri, Noam Kestenbaum, Varsha Katteredy, Annie Lockman, Jeremy Maletzky, Silvano Massa, Veer Mehrotra, Aditya Nerkar, Moinak
021Paul, Alekhya Parimi, uh Arya Firke, Rishab Ramakrishnan, Leon Sato, Sashwat Senthu Kumar, Mahad Shabbab, Krishiv Sharma, Olivia Swarup, one more. Uh Parvica Talagadadeevi, Sravya Tanguturi, Bahia Vacarro, Sloka Vendra, Aganav Venud, Shreya Vis uh Visvanathan, uh Ashley Shu, Dennis Yu, Andrew Yuan, Annie White Kevin Zhang Let's give these students all Oh, wait, hold on. All right, get up there. No, no, go ahead. I wanted to wait for the applause. Here we go, big round of applause. Thank you so much, everyone. You can have a seat. Um now, believe it or not, we have just as many students who do this at the uh middle school level as well. Um but, realizing that that would be a lot of people here, um I'm hoping we'll have an opportunity to invite them in person as they continue to
022do this in the high school. But, I do want to just point out that at the uh middle school level, it's called intermediate. Similar structure. You'll see a lot of the same types of ensembles here. I'm sure a lot of the students who are here tonight were in these ensembles as middle school students as well. I'm not going to read all the names, but I'm going to show you their names. And I want to give a round of applause for them anyway, and they can watch on the live stream. So, we got two sets of slides for the community students. So, here's some of the students that were accepted to some of these organizations on honors ensembles over the past 12 months. And we have a few more on the next page as well. I'll
023just give it a second here, so we all have a chance to check out the names. And here's the second page. And I just like to give these kids a round of a round of applause as well. And we have three sets of slides for the Grover kids. So, here's the first set of Grover kids. And slide two. And few more on slide three. So, let's hear it for the Grover students as well. And I just have um just a few more really quick uh acknowledgements here on this last slide. Um Ashani, who we mentioned earlier on the High School North slide, uh came in second in the NJMEA Young Composers Competition. And her piece that uh she got second place with is actually going to be performed by our High School North band at
024their concert on April 30th. So, if anyone wants to come out and check out that concert, you will hear the world premiere of an award-winning piece written by one of our very own students. Um and not to take anything away from Ashani, but I I'm proud to say not the first student we've had premiere do a world premiere with our groups here. So, that's a really cool thing. So, if you're around on April 30th, you can check that out. Um and it's it's perfect cuz Mr. Argentino's here. Um two sets of his students performed at the New Jersey Music Educators Conference in Atlantic City back in February. The High School South Wind Ensemble, which you see pictured there on the left, gave a a concert performance at the conference. And a little while after that
025in a lobby performance in the convention center, the picture on the right, the High School South Saxophone Ensemble also gave a performance. So, this is a a conference that is attended by about 3,000 music educators from all over New Jersey. And they had to apply to be accepted um you know, competing against bands and small ensembles from all of the other high schools in New Jersey. And they were selected. Also not the first time Mr. Argentino has had the Wind Ensemble perform at the conference. So, I'd like to have a round of applause for the students at South that were part of that and Mr. Argentino. So, once again, um thank you very much to Dr. Adderhold, the board, um for the invitation to be here tonight. I hope we can make it a regular
026occurrence. Thank you so much to the families and students who are here tonight. I can't tell you how proud I am to work as a supervisor that oversees the department with so many talented young students. So, thank you for being here and have a good night. Wow, thank you, Mr. Santora, for all that and congratulations to everyone um who was here or um watching from home. Uh amazing talent in the district. Congratulations on making it into these prestigious organizations and for um the art projects. Very Ah, you're still glowing. I love it. Um I'm hoping we get a chance to to see your art installation at Village soon. Um so, we will continue with our regularly scheduled program. So, if you're not um planning to stay for the rest of the very exciting agenda items,
027okay? The next thing is the public comment period, but this would be a good opportunity to, you know, um scooch on out of here if you so desire. Loved having you here. Really did. But, I get it. I get it. Yeah, so uh in just a moment, I will read the statement for the first opportunity for public comments as everyone's getting resettled. We still have some people left. Exciting. Well, the board invites thoughts and reactions on agenda items and items of concern from members of our community who are still present. Each participant is asked to give his or her name and address prior to making a statement, which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167. All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer. This public comment period shall be
028limited to 60 minutes. Any takers? Seeing none, I will close this public comment period. And um there were no committee meetings since our last Board of Education meeting, so we don't have any reports. And now on to the voting portion of our meeting. So, um can I get a motion for administration items numbers 1 through 4? Uh Liz and Pooja. Um any questions or comments on administration items? Nope. Okay. Okay, we'll start we'll start with Ms. Cheniera. Yes. Ms. Shah. Yes. Ms. De Sebastian. Yes. Ms. Krug. Yes. >> Ms. Maliga. Yes. >> Mr. O'Brien. Yes. >> Ms. Bonsall. Yes. Ms. McEwen. Yes. Uh we have no curriculum and instruction items to vote on this evening. So, can I get a motion for finance items numbers 1 through 11? Dana and Paul, any questions or comments?
029Okay, we'll start with Ms. Krug. Yes. Mr. O'Brien. Uh yes to all with the abstaining on number four. Okay, got it. Ms. De Sebastian. Yes. Ms. Cheniera. Yes. Ms. Maliga. Yes. Ms. Shah. Yes. Ms. Bonsall. Yes. >> Ms. McEwen. Yes. Um can I get a motion for personnel item number one plus the green addendum with a quick verbal correction? Um for Latrice Doctor listed on here, there is a capital T in her name. Just want to make sure that was clear. Um Ajanta and Lloyd, um any questions or comments? Okay, I'll set. Okay, we'll start with Ms. Shah. Yes. Ms. Maliga. Yes. Ms. De Sebastian. Yes. Ms. Cheniera. Yes. Ms. Krug. Yes. Mr. O'Brien. Yes. Ms. Bonsall. Yes. Ms. McEwen. Yes. Uh before we move on, I do want to acknowledge two retirements. Um each
030of these two have uh dedicated 25 years of service to WWP. So thank you to first Steven best. He is our special education teacher at Millstone River and then we have Charmaine Schraft secretary at Village Elementary School. So thank you once again and congratulations on this next chapter enjoy and again thank you so much for your dedication. Next can I get a motion to approve the Board of Education minutes see Liz and Paul yes all in favor say I I any abstentions I'm not sure if Sharon you may need to abstain from March 19th. Do we have any board of liaison reports? New business. That takes us to our second opportunity for public comments. The board invites comments from members of our community who are present. Each participant is asked to give his or her
031name and address prior to making a statement which will be limited to 3 minutes in accordance with board policy 0167. All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer. This public comment period shall be limited to 15 minutes. Anyone change your mind want to add something this second opportunity? All right. Seeing none I will close this public comment period and move to adjourn. Can I get a motion to adjourn? Lloyd and Anjanette all in favor say I I all right. Well, thank you so much and have a good night.