Cedar Grove Board of Education Meeting 10-26-21

001i call this meeting to order will everybody please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the cedar grove board of education has caused notice of this meeting to be advertised by having the date time and place thereof posted on bulletin boards in the district published and or transmitted to the verona cedar grove times in star ledger newspapers

002tap into online news file with the township clerk and post it on the district's website roll call please mrs dechara here mrs miga mr swandoria present mr schoener present mrs dye here we now come to the portion of our meeting where we allow members of the public to address the board in this section we allow public comments on resolutions only our board regulations allot 20 minutes for these communications each person shall be limited to three minutes there will be a countdown timer and at the end of the three minutes the microphone will be shut off and the speaker will be interrupted speakers may speak more than once only after all others wishing to speak on a topic have been heard issues raised by the members of the public may or may not be responded to

003by the board all comments will be considered and response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate this portion of the meeting is meant to hear public comment not to have a dialogue between the board and the person speaking the board asks the members of the public to be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students district employees and members of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board the public is reminded that students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified

004in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments all statements will be directed to me as the presiding officer and no one may address board members individually please be reminded that if your statement is too lengthy abusive obscene or defamatory you may be interrupted warned or your participation may be terminated please also be reminded that if any person does not observe reasonable decorum is disorderly or disrupts the meeting you will be asked to leave the meeting the board reminds those individuals who take this opportunity to speak to identify themselves by name address and group affiliation if applicable every time you address the board and to limit their comments on items on the agenda the first person i have is leo stringer good evening excuse me one second mr

005stranger i apologize okay good evening uh yes i wanted to leo stronger for hiv terrorists i wanted to address the i picked their s26 and s32 and they're both related to teachers leaving we are losing a lot of good teachers at the high school and i believe that also at the middle school and lower north and south end so there is a pattern and i like to know if the board has been doing anything to see what the pattern is because we can i we see what it is we see that it's teachers are not happy teachers are being not treated the way they should be they're not being paid a fair wage in comparison with other areas around the town around different towns and it's very disruptive towards to our kids they're going through

006four three four teachers and the years only half a half over so as you can see that's 26 there you have four replacement teachers doing extra classes to fill one teacher for one example and this is not a just one example there's many others so i think as a school we should see that something's going on and why are we losing so many teachers well mr stringer i appreciate the question i think unfortunately it's a personnel issue we can't discuss reasons why people leave or want to leave but i think it's also a testament to the four people on s26 for rising to the occasion and wanting to support the students in this building you've got four people that do not need to take on that type of load and they are and so we're

007very appreciative of that because they do hold students first and foremost so um i appreciate that appreciate the comment um and i also appreciate the fact that we're pointing out that there's four people that are exceptional educators that are willing to go above and beyond their call of duty and what's expected of that okay i agree with that part but i don't agree with the part that it's not an isolated case i have never seen this many teachers leave a school system i've been in the school system for 19 years with my kids so do you do i know in business they do exit interviews do you do that why are they why are the teachers leaving do we know i mean it's something maybe it can't answer it now but i think it's something

008you should should consider so to think the teachers are seeing that they they don't like the way the curriculum is going or what's what's going on with the school so that's it's a it's a big concern to parents well mr stringer um i will share that like i said every year you have teachers that will retire uh some move for various reasons whether it's child care issues um so uh you know i i thank you for for being concerned about that and that's something we always look at we you know our our goal is to retain high quality individuals that will help to educate our students and bring them to the next level okay all right let's hopefully we look at other towns around what to make sure that we're being competitive next i have

009uh janine patel hi janine patel 87 stevens avenue so my question is under s36 the three federal federal award policies that you are adopting so i just like to know exactly why these three policies are being adopted the reason why because every town near us is adopting the same exact three policies so i would like to know the second the second one of them i noticed it says you know if you are awarded more than 10 million dollars so i'm just curious to know how much money were you awarded that you needed to make up these three policies and why mr david can help with this as well the uh if you look at you're talking about 6 61 15 02 001 003 right yes correct those are mandated so you're you're correct you would

010see that every school district in the state of new jersey would have would have that mandated uh policy but why what's the reason what's the reason for these three policies uh it's so when you look at the state of new jersey and when you look at who governs that through the state board of education they are they're deeming that these policies have to be put into place so when you look at a policy and you adopt the policy there are depends on what it would be but there are options in there that you would have to choose from and but these are things that you these are policies that you cannot not have part of your uh policy repertoire it is so you don't know the reason why they made these three policies jersey public

011and foreign schools were given 457 million dollars to force the mandates in the schools so i'm just curious to know does that have to do with the money that you guys took to force the mandates that's my reason for asking the question i want to know if these three policies are the three policies because of that money those grants oh well we we we um we have a um a third party uh strauss esme um that we get all of our policy alerts from uh they handle the majority of districts in the state and they usually send alerts to us every you know couple months quarter or whenever there's a time needed for some updates and these three policies they were all new policies and it said that they were all all districts that receive

012federal funds are mandated to uh approve these policies okay so we never received federal funds before this is the first time we've received federal funds now we've always received federal funds but now it it's a mandate now um that that you have to have these policies in place because it exceeded a dollar amount no i'm not sure that it's just that update that we received um i'm not sure if they didn't let you know just to on the district update which is archived you can you can see all of those uh policy alerts to them within the bridge i've been trying to read through them we did we did yeah i'm just i know you read it but i didn't understand it when you read it the first time so i know the second reading

013is tonight yes all right thank you [Applause] okay i closed that portion of the meeting next i have um committee reports good evening everyone good morning is everybody this evening anybody have any committee reports i do all right mr chair so i went on the sixth no the 18th to the south end fsa meeting it was a great meeting there was a wonderful turnout um lots of involved parents a lot of the things let me see one of the things that we talked about was i believe as a result of the incredible support and amount of the community purchasing of the nikki strong signs i believe that they are looking to create a scholarship from that and i'm sure there will be much more to come but i think that's just an absolutely wonderful wonderful

014idea and tribute um let's see southend has the big their big fundraiser this year and right now there are no dates yet and they're hoping to have it in march so that's something that everybody should definitely come out and support i know we have some time but um i know they're they're putting that together so uh let's see was talking she talked about what a wonderful opening it was she thanked all the parents that were there about how wonderful it was just to see everybody back in the school the chalk on the sidewalks just meant so much to her the administrators and the teachers back to school night was fantastic and there was a she thanked cedar beans for the fundraiser for their outside equipment and that basically they were just trying to get everyone

015to acclimate back into the building and being back in the building full time mr skaronic is she mentioned is there as dedicated there all day um to south end and i believe she stated that she started the year by reading to the kindergarten class have you filled a bucket today which is something that nor i remember from my north end days miss dyer used to talk about filling the bucket as well so that's something that i think um is wonderful and it just sounds like they're they're starting off really great this year and just really wonderful things happening so it was um it was a very nice and encouraging meeting so that's it thank you i'm quite a fan of that book myself i would not yeah yes all right anybody else i went to

016the you have to turn it on i went to the recreation advisory board meeting um just so you all know sorry just so you all know winters that's what's wrong the mask winter programs are online if you want to register for any i know basketball tryouts are starting very shortly if not they might be starting tonight even there's also a radio city trip and ski trips that have limits on them so if you're interested i'd highly recommend you do it sooner than later um i went to a bunch of athletic events and a nice shout out to how our fall sports seasons are all going for all of our athletes the college fair last week very well attended thank you to ms sloat and miss testa for a job well done for all those who

017attended the teen dating abuse awareness night they had a very nice turnout at that thank you to ms valandi for it was kind of a little rough topic but it was very well attended and the last thing i did was um i went to the seventh annual breast cancer walk that was down to panther park i thought that had a fantastic turnout i've been a lot i've been at them all and they continue to grow great job by the recreation department and marisa landolfe and that's it thank you anyone else i also attended the the college fair and uh it was great um we had over 73 colleges there and a big shout out to um to miss sloane and ms testa who organized the entire thing they did a phenomenal job uh and obviously

018mr bay or miss english who without them that we couldn't have been able to pull it off either um just such a such it's just so great um what has happened to guidance in the high school and so i'm really happy with the progression we've made so quickly um i think ms sloda loves our new home and ms testa is doing a great job so that's great and the first meeting of edact was held and then also the first meeting of sel was also held all right uh moving on we have our board presentation um and we have it's uh new jersey start strong data it's a curriculum and instruction and are we gonna sit up here for that or are we moving okay all right we have mr um pearson ms marboza i believe

019who are giving the presentation so thank you [Music] um [Music] they're starting good evening is this on my name is bart pearson i'm the supervisor of secondary education um this is my partner this is janine barboza she's the supervisor of elementary education today we want to talk about the results of the start strong assessment which was we finished up i believe at the beginning of last week tonight just to give you a brief outline what we're going to cover we're going to look at the intentions of the star strong assessment the preliminary reporting of the assessments itself grade level data charts for ela math and science and basically what we're doing with the data to move forward and to address the situation so the start strong assessment is based on a subset of prioritized prior

020year academic standards um by prior prioritized standards they are learning goals that have been identified as the most essential to a particular grade level content area or course we administer in the fall of 2021 and it satisfies the federal statewide assessment requirement this is mainly because we didn't take the nj sla last spring star strong assessment will provide immediate results to educators and administrators and we administered between september 13th and october 22nd that was a testing window it tested ela grades four through ten uh mathematics grades four to eight algebra one geometry and algebra two and science uh grades six nine and twelve um what will the results of the start strong assessment what will show us and this basically breaks down in terms of three categories district administrators teachers and school administrators and just

021to summarize some of the things that it's going to show us for example for curriculum instruction for our department helps us evaluate the scope and sequence of our curriculum based on the distribution of student support needed and this is very important i can tell you something we've already started looking into for teachers it helps focus instructional planning time on analysis of data to enhance student engagement and learning and for school administration helps enhance intervention services as well as to develop school-based teams to provide data-driven decision-making and when it comes down to it i think the most important idea is that this is data is data on our students and their growth and basically where we want them to be it to be the beginning of the year where we want them to be at the

022end of the year we're going to tag team a little bit so we're doubling up on the microphones as mr pearson said i'm janine barboza supervisor of elementary education and i will continue the conversation with what the results of start strong will tell us a little bit of a fair warning i am going to veer off on a little bit of a tangent at this point because i do want to address the first bullet point if learning loss has occurred i will tell you right off the bat after looking at the data that we have for start strong after the in-house assessments link it moby max we are in a much better place than i think anyone would have ever imagined this to say that this was a challenging year is an understatement i myself

023as am apparent i watched my current second grader in first grade learn off of a chromebook the same way but what those teachers did is nothing short of amazing mr pearson and i hopped in many a google meet last year we saw the gamut and i question whether there was truly a loss of learning because and and i it's understandable because in terms of academic academics we're concerned are they behind are they ahead but the definition of behind is rewritten at this point where it's almost like we're starting fresh but we do want to start in a good place and i do think we're in a good place we're going to show lots of data tonight and charts and pie graphs and things answer any questions you may have but we're excited to move forward

024and it's definitely with the support of the teachers the parents the administration that we are going to move forward with these students now when it comes to to learning loss i i do believe that the students gained a whole lot and in fact there is i'm going to share a quote from an article in march the washington post put out an article pretty lengthy talking about learning loss and i just want to just as a reminder some of the things because we always have to be optimistic and hopeful in these situations right students learned how to reset the rhythms and structures of their days they learned different patterns and modes of communication they learned how to complete new tasks take on different roles in their own homes engage in new games develop or sustain new

025and different activities learn more about the world around them nature going for walks spending more time in their imaginations students can't help but learn about themselves more now even if it's alongside disconnection and uncertainty even those who are too young to verbalize their understandings understand that the world has changed and we're changing right along with it and and everyone grew up a little bit and when it comes to transitioning back into the school because the second thing the second bullet bullet point i have here is current academic needs and challenges well i will tell you a couple of those challenges from our perspective now i would say when the world shut down we had to work from home right a lot of people had adjust their routines and it was a little bit of a

026different world and when we went back into the office when people went back into their facilities all of a sudden they had to say oh i have to put gas in my car i what pants am i going to wear do any of them even fit i have to not put my hair in a ponytail i have to shave all of these minor things we as adults we didn't forget how to do our jobs we had to reacclimate ourselves to being professionals again and the students our children our children never forgot how to be learners we are working on reminding them how to be students again because in the classroom just like uh they get up they go to the bathroom i'm gonna grab 15 snacks almost like it it was when they were at

027home and so this is what the teachers realize they are working from that perspective they are seeing past the behavior and as they support and hold these kids we are going to address those academic needs the start strong assessments is a phenomenal place to start and i will give credit to the state this year because the data and the detail that they provide it to schools this year is different than any other year in the past they would just give some random not random they would give they would give scores they would give raw scores this year the tests that are coming the reports that are being generated we can actually see what the actual questions are we never had that in the past that's really going to help teachers and students and parents pinpoint

028and target where these gaps are the reports are grouping they're grouped by standard there's item analysis there's a lot of good information out there and we're diving into all of it and part of the plan will be mentioned a little bit later now in terms of what the reports come back we have put together an average of the percentages of students that need minimal support i'll explain what minimal support means momentarily but in terms of ela math and science ela 76.5 of our student population grades 4 through 12. it's encouraged to have minimal support math 61.3 percent and science 60.1 percent now on the next slide you are going to see what you will see on a student report i will tell you right now we do not have those individual reports because they a

029lot of this just closed on friday so a lot of this data is is hot off the presses but you will be getting this information and when you see it it really is just a range that's very simply put less support may be needed some support may be needed and strong support may be needed less support could be as simple as the parent the teacher and the student have to be on the same page you accept the responsibilities as a student you do all of your homework you ask questions you participate you meet the expectations that really could be what less support is some support is going the extra mile let's look for some extra help let's do extra practice sets maybe re-read a chapter revise edit your essays a little bit more a little

030bit more attention so that students become proficient at what they're learning strong support is the area of focus in terms of intervention we've already had different tools that we are using to identify students who are receiving support with reading and mathematics but this is the same population that we're referring to now what you will see in the next several slides is a specific breakdown of each grade level in grades 4 through 12 in the areas of ela math and science if applicable science historically has only been administered in grades 5 8 and 11 so this is why this year you will see science appear in grades 6 8 and excuse me 6 9 and 12. so in ela 66.3 of our populations of our students need minimal support they are the students that are in

031a good place right now we have identified where they are and the teachers are differentiating and working to communicate with parents and students to get them on a good path great for math 63.5 of students um in need of minimal support as well and results for grade five ela 82.5 percent in need of minimal support and in math 54.2 percent in grade 6 for ela math and science we had 73.3 of our students needed minimal support for ela 63 of our students needed medical support for science and 54.5 percent of our students needed minimal support for math grade 7 ela math 77.7 of our students need minimal support for ela and for math 70 of our students needed minimal support grade eight 75.2 percent of our students needed minimal support in ela and 72.9 of

032our students needed support minimal support in math ela grades nine and ten these grades both use the same standards which is why they're grouped together uh 78.2 percent of our students in ninth grade ela need minimal support and 77.7 of our students needed minimal support in ela grade 10. in algebra geometry and algebra 2. 37.2 of our students need minimal support in algebra 1. 52.8 of our students need minimal support in geometry and 73.5 percent of our students need minimal support in entrepreneur 2. if you want the one thing i wanted to add is that the test given to the algebra 1 students does not represent the total population of students taking algebra 1 right now for reasons that i believe the state maybe didn't clarify um enough i would say but we have um

033our accelerated students in grade eight also taking algebra one but they because they're in middle school they were administered the grade eight test as opposed to the algebra one test so if we compare previous year's data this is why there is a little bit less of a percentage than than we would expect from that population of students in algebra one we also have students in eighth grade taking algebra one it's not necessarily just a pure ninth grade idea and we moved to science and science in grades 9 and 12. 54.6 of our students needed minimal support in grade 9 and 82.5 percent of our student needed minimal support in grade 12. the one thing i will say about science is i believe the teachers will be excited to dig into the specific data because back

034in 2018 i believe this is the first year that the state created a science assessment at the end of the year it was a field test we did not get any data from that we had it again in 2019 we did not get any data from that we didn't even get we didn't even get scores i believe we um we not we didn't get individual scores we got district-wide scores so this is really going to be a good place to start because it's the first time the state has given us this type of information back to our teachers so that leads us to our overall district proficiency percentage so for ela and we stated this in the beginning of the presentation 76.5 percent of our students met the proficiency level and math 61.3 percent of

035our students met the proficiency level and science 60.1 of our students percent of our students met the proficiency level for science so then we say how are we moving forward with this data and it's a lot of data and when you look at it it's lined up there's a lot to go through and we're going to put it into our teachers hands very soon in terms of how they're going to use that particular data to push their classes forward so the first is connections to our district goals and the use of the data itself really hits two of the goals that we set this year as a district to increase the use of data from students who help drive the formation strategies of instructional practices to provide what is appropriate in the areas of identification

036and support and to develop a cohort of professional development practices that will enhance performance in the classroom allowing staff to utilize understand segregated student data to drive instruction and that is truly the key we're using lynch linked benchmarks which we gave in september we're going to begin in january we're going to give again in june to see the development of individual student progress and we're going to be looking at the analysis of multiple measures to our sgos when it comes to the sgos this year we really encouraged teachers to use multiple measures because it really evaluates students at multiple angles when you have a snapshot of a standardized test that's in multiple choice you're evaluating them with an extra skill set and that's a test taking ability and there's there's other factors in there but

037when you add to that let's say and i'll use the example fractions in grade four right if you pull some start strong data if you pull link it data and you have assessment another assessment that the teachers are using could be fractions in real world context and problem solving and word problems a third measure would be simple computation show all your work show me your thinking a fourth possible measure could be here's the gamut of manipulatives that we have learned to use when we're studying fractions whether it's circular fractions or or fraction tiles or things like that how are you understanding this concept with the tools that you've been given and if we encourage teachers to do those types of assessments all year round even if it's an oral assessment record something in spanish on

038flipgrid or use non-non-fiction text in science and social studies to to do analysis you know research part like there's there's so many possibilities and that is a goal for this year to really get into all of those angles and something that is new is the the addition of some half day pd days there's a lot of work to be done we want the teachers to use the data we want them to take time to to create meaningful assessments and extract as much as they can from it and we need time to do that so that's absolutely what we're doing beginning two days from now on thursday we have the the different staff populations broken up into different areas and they all have a task with an end goal for that day and it's all using

039data when you have an ailment right you go to a doctor the doctor does run some tests they evaluate you they diagnose you with something they try to pinpoint what it is and then they prescribe something to you medication or pt or something like that when you are trying to figure out where students are this is exactly what you're doing you're diagnosing and you're prescribing and it's a phrase that i keep close to my heart and i know that it's something that we talk about as you know with with the staff we need to figure out exactly what's going on individually the besides linkit and and the start strong assessments and the end of the year nj sls assessments that are going to come back in april we have ongoing tools that we use to

040evaluate our students in k5 it's star lexia dra which is word recognition and reading levels moby max mobiax really should be in that's my typo it really should be in k8 i believe that k5 and k6 utilize it the most and a lot of those students transition out into the middle school the the the data that we have at this point is really what has been driving our intervention program in kfor we have tier support with strategies and the strategies are much more than here's an extra worksheet you're going to move closer to the teacher it's not about that it's let's go back and see if you need a different representation of this concept let's see if you need to revisit some previous year's standards in order to really flourish in persuasive writing things like

041this they're very specific um we with the help of our new reading specialist we not only have support for the students but we have coaching opportunities for the teachers that are really going to empower them to elevate their instruction so we're excited about that and of course focus on mathematical standards and practices and also three stages of developmental learning to identify where those students are in the process of math comprehension in addition to the support services during the school day we have options for pathways for grades three five and ela excuse me three four and then ela in grade five terms of intervention and support for grades six through twelve what we're really doing with the data is looking at how can we effectively change instructional routines across the board part of this is using

042the individual student data gathered to differentiate instruction in the individual student need it's also we're going to be attempting an idea of addressing reading standards one of the prioritized skills and standards they were talking about in the beginning they come down to informational tech standards any class that reads is a reading class regardless of subject area regardless of grade level we're going to try to address better reading instruction within these particular in other areas of content areas such as science social studies world languages art music basically any of the technical subjects that touch upon reading a lot of the skills can be reinforced reiterated and really help develop better readers which in turn create better writers we're looking at using delta math at the high school which is a new program for us it is

043an assessment tool that offers teachers tutorials guided lessons practice problem sets for different things and provide students with guidance and additional guidance of how to solve certain equations and how to basically address different math skills we also use delta math to generate more data again to go back to the idea of different instruction and to meet the individual student needs we're going to be looking at realignment of department and grade level assessments assessments itself is something we're looking at especially in our department very carefully this year in terms of how students are assessed and what they're assessed upon throughout each grade level we're collecting more data we have it now current data for psat act sat in the ap college board we have the math strategy program at the middle school and at the high

044school two new classes we started the ela and the math labs it's algebra one and geometry i believe math labs each directed to basically build on the skills that they're going to need throughout algebra one and geometry itself and we have the national honor society and peer leaders tutoring program which is students basically tutoring other students now it generally was done in the high school this year we're pushing out from the high school into the middle school into the elementary grades as well research always says that students learn better from each other than they do from their teachers which i always find kind of strange but i know it's true we're going to see how true that really is when it comes down to it and this is going to happen through grades three through

045eight and that's a lot right there really when it comes down to it when we looked at the data there was so much to address and our teachers literally have been addressing data in one form or another since beginning of the year many of these interventions and supports for both for all grade levels k-12 are already in place and the idea now is to just continue them and to revise them and to refine them and to make sure each student's needs are met that leads us to something very important one thing i want to add when it comes to the test taking because it it just popped into my head because i did mention that we were getting the questions back right when you take a standardized test there's added factors in there which i

046already mentioned so there might be specific test taking strategies separate from the content that the teachers can then um can acknowledge and i'll give you a quick example i don't remember what grade i was looking at but there there were two different problems that had to do with double digit multiplication one of them was a there was a visual there was a graphic along with it and then the other one was a word problem same skill more like 80 percent of the kids got the one correct with the graphic and then the word problem i think it was 30 or 40 percent so by taking away this the skill and separating it from the test type the question type you're adding to your data in a way then you're really figuring out okay well all

047right these kids have it if there's a visual along with it but maybe we need to do more work on the word problems let's tie it to the reading goals and things like that everything's got to be connected there should be no i feel like i say this every time i come up here there's no silos in education you should blur the lines so that's something else that i wanted to throw out there and i think really when it comes out we look at this data especially for uh for start strong and there's a very important ingredient that we haven't talked about yet that i think we need to address and that is our teachers um janine and i work very closely with the teachers in the district we have for many years uh what

048we saw last year in terms of instruction during our times of hybrid learning it was probably the most amazing amount of great teaching i've seen in our district since i started working here i started in this district oh my god my kids were born another in high school 17 years ago so the department of curriculum distraction would like to thank our district staff members who took risks explored learned on the fly in so many ways and never gave up their commitment resilience and patience what had and what helped our students persevere and continue learning through a challenging extremely challenging school year it was inspiring and i can't thank them enough for the efforts that they put in to what they did last year in particular over probably the hardest school year any of us have

049seen so to not address them in this presentation didn't seem correct the work came from them we do have work to do we were never going to hide that and that was not the point of this presentation for the presentations is we are working on it and we're going to continue to work on it we thank you for your time we're going to post this presentation hopefully the next couple of days on the website for you to look if you want to check out the charts yourself thank you very much thank you [Applause] so i remember a couple years ago the last time you guys were able to present to us the park results that we had this is how many years ago it was it was still park and i remember you were specifically

050ginny you were talking about the um the graph and being able to drill down and but it took a lot of work to drill down to the specific questions that our students seem to be struggling the most on is when you were it hit me and it struck me and brought me right back to that presentation is that how they've redone the data now that you guys are getting that you actually are going to be able to instead of like digging and on you know getting your hands dirty go in and actually presenting that level of data to you quickly we are hoping that this is the first time we've seen that in terms of questioning we've asked every year for two things yeah we'd like to see the questions we like to see results

051well that's what the students did like for example they do a writing aspect on the nj sla that we've never actually seen what our students have completed we would love to see what that is it would help us plan more better in terms of what is necessary for students to do the best they can on these things the first step was providing the questions for us you know and jeanne talked about how in ela and in math certain kind of questions especially the word questions became tricky i could tell you for ela um the manipulative questions where you have to actually drag and drop information for some reason those were the trickiest ones for our students traditionally we didn't see that this year the star strong data didn't point in that direction so it's an

052interesting start but we're hoping that since this is a state created test that in the future that it'll follow the same outline and the same especially the way they presented the data back to us uh that was it was for the first time we looked at and said we could actually use this this is helpful you know overall averages don't help an individual student and we want to make sure we can help individual students we should be able not only to see every question that was asked and the percentage of students who you know got it incorrect or correct but it will it should be giving us right down to the the individual student like okay here's matt's test here's what he answered for question one here's what he answered for question two we never

053had that before yeah it also works for standard it breaks it down the problem standards that students have which shows the greatest deficiency and they show standards that all of our students excelled in using that data we we pinpointed three or four exact standards that we need to reinforce and that led us to the reinforcement of these standards within other classes that do reading and it's a way to address one problem in multiple ways throughout a student's school day you know throughout a student's school year really is what it comes down to which is interesting stuff when it comes to it thank you is there a question in a certain yeah so you can help empower the teachers so you can know if this class performs well on an innocent how they did it and

054this one didn't whether you're doing the same thing maybe this teacher needs to address them we take the data basically and we we jeanne and i went through it ourselves first but the the teachers now it's in their hands part of what we're going to be working on on our half day p day pd day the other in two days is having the teachers break down their classes in particular and to see what the problem areas might have been in their classes and see what the problem areas what what weren't the problem areas are we spending more time on the non-problem areas and the problem areas you know it's a very common teacher idea we want to we don't want to teach a lesson that just takes one blank and throws it over the idea

055we want to break that into tears address individual problems as opposed to an entire class worth of problems but we're putting that data directly into the hands of our teachers and it's the reason why we use something like linkit which gives us a multitude of data to look at so between the data generated through linkit and the data generated through the star trunk we have a really good view of where we what we need to do um where we're where we want to be when this is over when this year is complete um we could look at that as start strong well the nj sla come april and are two different linked assessments in what is that that's january and in may we'll see a good deal of that but teachers be able to break

056down their own information we'll be able to see what is going on in each particular class and what needs to be addressed and what will come down to that is adjustment of curriculum and scope and sequence we like to see how these are all connected and that's really what how it works i will add this so let's say the current sixth graders right if their assessments were primarily based on grade five standards then their current grade six teacher they haven't yet like gotten into you know the dirt with them and worked on it so for for that reason start strong link it sgo assessments anything we do right now will have even more weight and significance when we follow it up with a benchmark in january and we follow it up next year and we're

057as a district we're looking forward to keep keeping this momentum going and constantly having data because we can get even more ahead of the curve because imagine what we can do to support kids you know over the summer or next school year if we have both the form c linkit benchmark assessment in may with the april may you know administration of njsls that's a lot of that's the ending point so now we can put it all together and create an even more powerful plan for you know the the next year the next year coming yes talk a little bit about what the plan what is that look like primarily for the students that fall in the lower category and the middle category what is that what does that look like what is that going to

058look like so starting last week we had um after weeks of you know diving into the data and everything we had our math interventionist and our reading specialist create a schedule in which they are pushing into multiple classrooms and as they are following along with what the teacher is doing those specialists and interventionists they're they're sitting with individual groups of kids doing small group instruction they are they're they're basically starting with preliminary standards they're they're giving them additional tasks not extra homework per se they're giving them additional tasks in order to really figure out where where they're they're lacking and i'll give you a quick example so jessica kunit is our reading specialist i had a follow-up meeting with her last week she went into a first grade classroom and she one at a time

059took a student and went through a simple list of words to pronounce and she took notes on that they created the the teachers the interventionists they're they're doing running records they're trying to collect more data so that they can prescribe something else and this year we have a shift that we're going to be focusing more on a a little bit more of a um a cleaner process for inrs we are using we're going to be using a feature of linkit we have a new health mental health coordinator that's going to be in the conversation as well so we're we're doing a lot of housekeeping when it comes to the intervention the ieps the paperwork and things like that so that everyone's on the same page and that everything is documented a little bit more the

060reading specialist is obtaining some additional resources and and kits to further work with the students in the reading program um i as having a math background i'm going to be working specifically with miss malagiere and miss fodie who are the two math interventionists to make sure that we are touching base with the three stages of developmental learning all of the good training that our entire staff went to for five six years for conquer mathematics we're going to revisit reinforce and um not to forget about any other subject areas um science and social studies were revisiting the standards we have we have we have a long list the interventionists are just for elementary schools right now yeah we created the for math which has always been traditionally where a problem has come up for us we

061created i'm sorry i don't know the name of it off the top of my head so many things to remember tonight the math strategy is classes which is a full year class is correct right the math strategies an additional math class basically tacked on to work on general skills and it's basically where we take the data and use the most to address it and it covers students of all levels it's not like just low-level kids are in the class but it covers kids with all level uh of development to work on their particular area of of you know deficiency the relatively new program i believe too is that correct in terms of math math strategies it's it's it's been the next couple years yeah yeah and in high school we we started new classes specifically

062to address it those would be the lab classes the ela math and algebra lab or geometry labs these are as you saw in the data very much needed and it's going to across the board address those issues and basically all students in those grade levels will be taking those particular labs yes [Music] i think to compare it's almost it's almost comparing it to meets expectations and exceeds expectations and proficiency if we were to compare reports that we usually get with the state it breaks it up into different areas and approaching and partially meeting are the the identifiers that we would associate with strong support may be needed and the other two populations are put together because they are considered proficient they're considered to be in a good place right now um there there wasn't at

063this point there wasn't any specific feedback given from the state or from start strong to detail why the wording was chosen because they haven't done that it before i mean the blue which is strong support i mean there's high percentages here but when you lock the two the two others together it doesn't seem as you know as that i'm just saying it's just can you go back to that we'll go back to like say science here so is some some support meaning expectation some support yes it's still proficient is what it is it's not they don't ever put it into terms of highly effective or effective it just puts it in terms of three proficiency levels you know performance levels actually they don't even go into proficiency they go into performance but like i said

064we're basing this on the initial data to adapt by the state not by individual student scores or anything of the sort of minimal support minimal support district yeah created to describe those two categories or is that a term part that's used by standards there were no in terms of the state they like we said we did they did not give us guidance in terms of wordage to use in this um we could look at it as 82.5 of our students needed some or less support um but it still falls within the proficiency range of what we're looking at you know of what we're trying to attain but remember this is also talking about students from last year as opposed to this year like we're looking at fifth grade ela and math right now remember we're

065looking at students in fifth grade tested on fourth grade idea so i'm not sure i mean is there another term that you think would be better and for instead of minimum because minimum is i mean minimum as in the smallest amount of support we wanted to focus on the students that needed the most yeah we wanted to focus our intervention across the board on the students that needed the most support that's like the most important aspect of this i i do think that the wording that the state chose itself is um i don't want to say confusing i don't think it was the most appropriate especially because we have a history of having terminology like meet standards and exceed standards and things like that when we look to and and i'll be honest with you

066a lot of these scores do not look drastically different than the breakdowns that we've seen in the past and when we work with the teachers and we we look at everything our target area first goes to the the bottom third or or the lower performing students whatever it's called whether if it's meet um partially meaning or not meeting expectations or strong support may be needed that's where we're going to look first for the intervention for the extra work for for increased communication with the parents with additional assessments with alternate assessments um when the teachers look at this they're not just looking at you know the strong support may be needed population but they're going to look at the whole list they're going to see where the kids scored and just as much as your lower

067performing students let's take those high performing students and put them through the roof let's challenge them some of this data you know is is going to be used to differentiate up there are plenty of students that regardless of the challenges they faced last year they thrived a lot of them stepped up and found a newfound desire in taking on this responsibility and things like that and we don't want to put those students aside just because we do need to focus on some of the other students that are underperforming so um whereas you know like i said the the target the target is to start with with the area in blue we want to make sure every student is is growing and meeting their potential and and and working to their capacity primarily um when we

068look at individual grade standards there's a range of how those stand those standards are implemented in the classroom those skills are are presented it could range from exposure and we touched upon this all the way to there's an expectation for this skill to be mastered so whereas and and i'll i'll pull out a fourth grade standard two-digit multiplication there i believe there was a two-digit multiplication problem on in the fourth grade test even though that's a standard to be mastered in the fourth grade students could have been exposed to it after single digit after arrays in third grade and this is where the conversation happens with these specific questions whereas okay well maybe that student got that wrong but there was minimal exposure of that standard and that's why having those questions and seeing the

069exact questions are really going to be even more helpful to all of us as as we're looking at this because then it will it will provide some more explanations in terms of intervention well i don't think it i think overlooks not the word i would choose there um it's being addressed i mean in class and through the support of the teachers in the classroom i mean remember an english class or a math class most likely has both a regular ed teacher and a special ed teacher working simultaneously within that classroom together that that one-on-one support offered by the inclusion teacher is huge that makes all the difference and a lot of people look at in terms of how students are going to be increasing in their scores on say state tests any increase is a

070good increase i can definitely help and answer some of these questions let's break this down at an elementary middle and high school level and the differences between those so when you look at an elementary level you're looking at foundational skills you're looking at introductory skills that a high school student would necessarily have been introduced to that environment right so if we look at k those are our early childhood grades so when you're looking at a reading specialist or math interventionist at those levels those children at that level have never been exposed to that content before so therefore there are some students and it depends upon their their history have some of the students been to preschool yes have some of them not been to preschool absolutely but they all come together as one and there

071is an intention to meet a specific standard that the state of new jersey has set for those students as they have completed those grades so very often when you look at a dra at a elementary level you're looking at a reading level of students that you might have a vast variety of levels for those students but they start off at one level and they're supposed to end at a different level some do some exceed that so therefore those students that don't exceed that level or are behind or don't meet that that proficiency level for them at the elementary level those levels of support those tiered levels of intervention the response to intervention rti you've got a tier one tier two tier three a tier one level is really that basic we're all in a class

072right now that's basic intervention it's basic um inter it's the basic instruction that we're providing our students with some help here and there but it's an overall instructional practice tier two tier two if you are a tier two student we may enhance those uh intervention practices those practices could be exactly janine may have talked about perhaps it's one time a week uh guided reading or guided math practices or perhaps it's um some uh some cycled interventional work uh that is individualized when you get to the tier three levels and i'm speaking specifically at the elementary i'll walk us all through what that will look like at all different levels that tier three intervention level that is a level as an educational as an elementary instructional leader you would look at you say these are the

073kids that are in massive need of support they're the ones that by the end of the year when we looked at the previous year's scores based on multiple measures we don't want to look at just one particular measure because one measure doesn't tell us all about a child it's just a snapshot when you combine multiple measures together and you see how there is a discrepancy between maybe measure one compared to measure two to measure three what you're ultimately seeing is there needs to be there needs to be a high level of support that can be where you have a reading interventions coming and doing small group instruction with that student maybe it's not necessarily what is that modeled lesson but it's those other levels of instructional supports that are needed so for example if we're

074talking about a math class and perhaps it is we're using for a two-digit um multiplication if a child is in is is in that grade and is being presented that two-digit multiplication lesson if they don't know their basic multiplication factor even their addition subtraction facts that information is going to push them further behind because they will not be able to they won't be able to attain that level that is expected of them because they've lost that foundational skill so it's rebuilding those tier three students are rebuilding those foundational skills to a level where they can start to be successful now there's a key here and part of this is what we talked about we are so used to the um what was the word you were using before bar it was the um i call

075it more proficiency i'm sorry it's a proficiency this is more of a performance this has never been done before it's never had to have been done before has it been done in other assessments and measures yes it has been but this is purely on performance so when you so when you look at the next step in the next level when you go to a middle school there is a common when you get to four um fifth sixth seventh and eighth there is still introductory levels so what does that look like well it can look like exactly what we talked about the elementary level it can have an interventionist level at that point it can have a little bit of a different way of instructing your students as a teacher in the classroom where it's not

076blanketed instruction it's not a one-size-fits-all so it's understanding using this type of information this data and data in education can be a very dirty word but it is not what it is it is an extremely helpful tool to help guide what should be paid attention to and what can we move forward with so for example if we're at if we're at a middle school level and we're working on an area of writing or informational texts if you look at it as an assessment whether it's link it whether it's uh start strong for this year or moving forward nj sla teranova's years ago park nj ask it is essential to look at those particular cohorts look at those skill sets janine is correct i want to bring this up to everybody those of us in this

077room who are in education know this any time any of our students have taken any of these assessments we've gotten this information back in the summer time and then had to apply and use it for september but the kids sitting in front of us are not the kids that that information says anything about it was my previous year's class so therefore that's great if bart is the teacher that was in follow-up we could have that that high level articulation but this particular assessment which i think is essential it's telling us about the student now so therefore when we look at that middle school level we say okay how do i change my instructional practices do i focus as much attention on this particular piece of the curriculum or this particular skill set or can i

078break my students into groupings can i work with them individually and cycle through the classroom there's a lot of instructional practices that we can do without having somebody pushing in or pulling out of the classroom when you get to the high school level this has been i think for any administrator at a high school level the most challenging piece because this is where you have your academic or your college prep level courses your honors and then your ap that's where you're seeing the differentiation in the in the in the class and the work that goes on in that class now when you look at an academic or college prep when you look at an honors or you look at an ap course you take an ap course a lot of course what's going on in

079those that course there's a lot of facilitation going on by that teacher those students that are in those courses are high level students that are looking at those college credits those college credit courses exactly so i'm going to share i'm going to share something with you that you and i are probably in great agreements with when we look at this and and bart and jeanine will know this because bart and jeannine and i meet weekly about data and i give them a pretty hard time about some of this as well when we look at this we see some very strong attributes at the elementary level some very strong attributes at the middle and very strong attributes at the high school but are there gaps yes this is what this is showing today we could have

080come up here and talked about hey we're the greatest we're the greatest school district on earth and we're doing wonderfully but we're not we're showing that there are areas of support that we have to pay attention to and how do we do that it doesn't happen overnight it happens through the dissection of the data it happens through working through professional development with teachers enabling them the skills setting high expectation for our students high expectation for teachers pushing that level of instruction to a place where we can start to flip those percentages to a different level so this is what this process is it start it started last year in the middle of that crisis and we're still living in this crisis in the middle of the crisis last year we were making we were able

081to identify those factors that said hey this is what we need to do here this is what we need to do there we're doing really great here but we need we need to we need to put some more energy and effort into this that is what that showed you there tonight we're very cognizant of that and that's where we're moving forward forward one of the reasons i will share this bart and janine have been here for eight years but bar and genie have taken on new positions this year where bart is taking on the position of six through 12 supervisor and genius k through five it's a more central focus rather than taking on a content area k-12 focusing on the higher level and focusing on that primary level that's how we're going to make

082that difference it also depends it also takes a lot of time and energy and effort into that professional development for the teacher it's having those conversations if teachers can't have those conversations with each other about that data if they can't look at that dissect that you can have that in place in front of you but you may not even know what to do with it so it's taking that information and guiding us through and guiding the teachers through and saying hey listen this is where we really need to place our focus and i i i wasn't able to see this but we talked about before about the combining of the less some and strong there is a definite reason why we here in cedar grove use that model there's a very specific reason that reason

083is because you're looking at some and less and strong that's what gene was saying strong is an area where you would look at a student that is in need of various levels of support we have to pull those students out of that equation because that is our tier three students if you look at it as an rti model a response to intervention model although the start strong assessments they don't show you that it is left up for interpretation for each district so that strong category that strong percentage and some of those pie charts it was small and some of those pie charts it was the majority those are our students that we have to focus that tiered three heavy intervention work you combine the some in the less those are tiered one and tier two

084students those are the students that we have to provide some or less support with doesn't mean you don't support them at all but it means that you have to find a pattern of success for them along with the teacher along with the interventionists and you this is not just about the school this is about you as the family unit as a caregiver unit and it talks specifically about this those of us in this room that are educators they look at this data on a daily basis when you look at this and you see those reports back and it's there's actually a great um eight slide uh demonstration from the state of new jersey it talks about how it's not it's about the teacher it's about the administrators it's about the the teaching the instructional staff

085and it's about the families and caregivers because without though that trifecta this is all worthless you can't have one without the other it all blends in together so the purpose of tonight was and it was it was it was an appropriate time to share this information what bart and jeannine did and barton jenny put a lot of effort i appreciate that i thank you for this and diving into that that that work i also appreciate the fact embark touched upon engineering touch upon it too it's our staff there's a great thing there's a one one of my colleagues in another district talks about this and i i heard them saying this on a meeting the other day we talk about learning loss you you you would have had to have lost something would have been

086there to have lost it when we look at last year we may have not had a traditional year of what we were used to but the students were still working they were still learning and the teachers were still instructing and supporting so therefore when we talk about loss it's not the loss in the sense of what we think about if we lost a year we didn't lose a year that year was still there it looked very different than what we normally had what we're used to in that traditional sense but based on those numbers whether you break it out into thirds or halves it tells a very specific story and to your part to your point that story starts now and allows us to develop an engineer a support system because the only way that

087we can move is up i've said this to janine and i've said this to bart and i've said this to the board we cannot tolerate here i've done presentations to hear what i've showed you i i've even talked about ap scores this is not acceptable nobody in this room should accept this this this and this is where you want to go this is beginning this is the identification of where we need to move forward there's also pieces behind the background which janine and bart had shared it talks about the renaissance learning and star assessment lexia we've made it into link it this year using that form a form b form c taking previous year's data comparing that data together seeing where what has the trend been from all those years from f from three to

088five years ago and where are we now are we are we continuing on this line are we moving here's the one thing that we never really look at it is growth i know we always look at those numbers and we say where our kids should be here the state of new jersey says our kids should be here but what about that kid that was here and then actually got to here but they didn't make that mark according to the state of new jersey but it's that growth model that right there that student if you're a freshman in high school and you were here and you kept on growing do you know that mr baer has sat here and talked about this the college admissions officers look at that [Music] as a much higher success than

089if you had a kid that was doing this the whole entire time and that applies to to elementary it applies to middle applies to high school so that what you're what you're seeing right here and what you've looked at is a great starting point for us we all look at these start strong assessments at the very beginning like oh you've got to be kidding me but it is a valuable piece of information that will help us grow and guide us to really what we need to do instead of saying well i think we need to do this i want to keep doing the same thing that we've always done and that's that's good enough it's not good enough we need to be specific and identify those factors to make a major difference in change and

090also just to continue with your question uh this is new data for us both link it and star strong we want to use this data to figure out those programs that we can and begin to institute in the middle school and high school based on this data itself it's going to push our students forward we've never had access to this kind of in-depth data before part of our jobs june and myself is to institute new programs that specifically address these particular ideas this is our first year with the reading specialist who's doing the intervention in the elementary schools reading special is something we've tried to obtain for the district for a couple years now you know i would think the next step would be to have an equivalent both in the elementaries i'm sorry in

091the middle school and in the high school and our data now shows that yeah this kind of idea is needed but it also speaks for individual programs that will be we're going to begin both in the middle school and in high school we've begun that's the important we have begun we're looking at the data now to think how can we use this data to help what is needed for our students now to push them forward and that's been a question that we've addressed in the element in the middle school i can tell you we've already had data meetings based on it from sixth grade to eighth grade so it is starting but we haven't instituted a new program yet we like we just got this data last week so what we we can't just jump

092into this without knowing what we're up against now we know what we're up against now we begin and that's that's an important step in the process thank you [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] i just want to take a moment and thank miss barboza mr pearson for uh for the presentation i appreciate it and i appreciate all the the work that you put into it and all the the dissecting of the data and we look forward to uh to updates thank you very much um let's see now we have the superintendent update okay i want to again i want to thank uh janine and bart uh this is a very different approach um to what what we've done we've had we've had that conversation as a curriculum instruction department a lot of this is last year

093although it was a very unsettling year based on how we had to move forward in the field of education not just in cedar grove but i'm talking globally it offered a time for us to reflect and to identify needs and to reorganize and one of those reorganizational periods was looking at the department of curriculum instruction really looking and seeing what is the purpose of a curriculum instruction department excuse me in the district this size how can we use utilize the tools at our disposal and then how do we help support our children our staff and our families and i i do want to say that you know i do thank janine bart because it's been a heavy lift and it's about taking a very different approach to how things have been done before now you

094know looking at information like this that you that you've just seen it raises a lot of questions and this the questions that are raised in your minds and in your hearts are the same questions that have been raised in our meetings we understand this we see that we we we have been able to identify our areas of need and support in our areas of great achievement but even through all of those areas of achievement you strive and you set the bar higher in those areas of support i do want to just i took some notes while um janine and bart were talking and just to clarify a couple pieces i mean i did talk about that september data we've never had data like this before in september that was relevant to the current population of

095students that are sitting in front of that teacher in the classroom right now so that's a big huge change and that we plan to uh utilize in a very very productive way you know we took janine was talking about some housekeeping looking at inrs that's the intervention referral service that is a state mandated tool we can reflect back on what we've done in the past how well that has worked i will share that through a lot of our administrative meetings uh which happen twice a month we have analyzed and evaluated what we've done and how we can do things better how can we tend to the needs of students and to your point uh ma'am you talk about let's just do this now i hear you i understand that i hear that call to action

096but part of that is is what have we been doing and how can we can we do it better and how do we identify that to make that change sustainable i think that's very important those are very important terms we talk about something that is sustainable doing something that will leave a life lasting impact on that student not just something that will tend to the needs at that particular moment in time and pop a score up it's about that gradual progression of growth so i did want to clarify that it's about building that support system after school programs aren't enough we talk about that we have those and they work wonderfully but it's about those instructional practices those instructional practices that are happening inside the classroom how do we how do we take that approach

097a little bit differently you know maybe what we've been doing is some of that's working but some of it may not be working so how do we do that a little bit differently so it's really being able to identify that and data helps to identify that but the biggest piece is is that it's not just one test it's multiple tests it's multiple measures it's watching that progression watching that growth watching that growth so that will help us to identify that and again today's presentation tonight's presentation was not necessarily about proficiency but it was about performance and meeting particular benchmarks as mr pearson bart had shared it's meeting those particular benchmarks at a particular time and now how do we move forward with that so um i will walk through a bit of a report here

098i did talk about that report and i uh about the about the um start strong results we look at high quality classroom instruction and screening and grouping interventions which we would look at as a tier one as a tier one intervention as well as targeted interventions is what you would look at for your tier two students and for your tier three students is the ones that we pulled out of those pie charts those are those are the intensive interventions those are the comprehensive evaluations and the progress monitoring that you consistently revisit whether it's weekly whether it's bi-weekly and so on based on the intervention through through an irs process or through a a group um calibration of where that child may be i do want to also share some happenings that are happening uh in

099each of our schools so the zen den uh you'll be seeing the the opening of that shortly but cedar grove high school is proud to announce the addition of a newly repurposed room dedicated solely to the social and emotional well-being of our students that is known as the the zen den we talk about studies and we we share how it has shown that mental health is really related concerns among high school age students have consistently risen over the past decade cover 19 pandemic has further exacerbated these concerns and we recognize that many cedar grove students are or may be struggling so furthermore there is no denying that the mental health can have a negative and a direct impact on academics and student achievement and we've seen that already we've seen it happening in the first

100couple of months so for reasons listed above the idea of a social and emotional learning space at cedar grove high school first came to light in the 2021 that is last year school year after carefully planning in collaboration with key stakeholders high school is ready to open the space known as the zenden and it's a student named room they named it for quite reflection of mindfulness through guided activities students will have the opportunity to pause regroup center themselves and return to the classroom with a clear mind guided activities will include but are not limited to journaling meditation mindfulness exercises and artistic expression throughout the remainder of the school year the zen den will host very small group in individual counseling sessions aimed at student wellness the zen den will also serve as a resource for

101students on and as needed basis partition participation in the zenden activities is voluntary of course and interested students are always asked to speak to the counselor and there will be a grand opening of that space it's actually directly across from this room it's a beautiful space a lot of energy and hard hard work has gone into that with some very very thoughtful design for our students but also at the high school all together now this uh cedar grove high school music and theater department will be presenting a broadway musical review on november 12th and 13th at 7 p.m called altogether now a global theater event all together now provides a fantastic selection of songs that are featured in the in this brand new musical review uh from shows including les mis into the woods hairspray

102disney's beauty the beast little shop of horrors mama me and many more it's right here um again and the and the 12th and the 13th of november at 7. uh this is actually uh ours our music and theater department will be joining thousands of theatrical organizations around the globe by producing their own local production of music theater internationals all together now which is a global event celebrating local theater theatrical uh licensor which is mti who's created this review for theaters across the globe and everybody will be doing that who's participated in this at the same time during that same week so please i encourage you to come out and take a look at our students and the hard work they've been putting into that red web red ribbon week this week is red ribbon week

103red ribbon week is an alcohol tobacco and drug and violence prevention awareness campaign observed every october in schools across the u.s it began as a tribute to the fallen dea special agent enrique carmen sorry camarena in 1985 to celebrate bring being drug free all schools are encouraging staff and students to participate in a spirit activity it's that time of year again where it is the governor educators of the year award and i will share this it's not only open to our staff nominating each other but it's open to our students nominating staff and our families and caregivers nominating staff so please i know that excuse me each of these schools have put out their um weekly updates and last week they talked about the educator of the year award there's links there click on it

104your teachers your children's educators your paraprofessionals support staff child study teams um they're all they're all working they're they're working very hard for for your children and it would be a it's it's an honor to be acknowledged and even if i will share this even if who you nominate does not necessarily get that award for that school or for for the district or for the county or all the way onto the state they will be able to see that they've been nominated in the wonderful things that you will have said about them so i think that's a that's a that's a big deal that's a very very big deal so please take a look at that um and if you if you lost the link you can always go online to the department of education's

105website where you can nominate that time is coming up and it will close uh in november mental health parent caregiver series on october 19th which was last week the department of mental health held the first workshop in a series for parents and caregivers this workshop explored teen dating abuse and violence teen dating abuse in the digital age was presented by diane benny of the national council of jewish women essex teen dating abuse awareness project and edward de la fuenta a recently retired millburn police department detective who's actually now a fifth grade teacher fantastic workshop this presentation was held for parents and guardians and their children which were of middle and high school age that was on at seven o'clock in right here in this auditorium it was a great turnout there was around 50 participants

106here which was an excellent turnout for for for that event uh the next scheduled workshop topic is on vaping which will take place right here in cedar grove high school auditorium on november 9th at 7 pm more information will follow so please i encourage you that vaping is not just a high school and it is not just a middle school issue believe it or not folks it is an elementary issue as well and there's a lot to learn about and things that we don't know and of course i always say this we don't know what we don't know so please come out uh and check out the presentation because it really will help you engage it will help to enlighten you and will help you engage in conversations with your children i also want to

107share now we've talked about this before about the college fair the college fair uh that took place last week i want to commend miss testa and miss slota for an absolutely outstanding uh organization of a fair of that size for a school of this size we have a graduating class averaging around 120 130 students we had 73 colleges universities come out as well as the armed forces come out to uh share information with our students like i said you had all branches of the military out here but you also had temple alabama thousand william patterson you had montclair state um it was it was fantastic 73 students of 73 students 73 colleges and universities to a size school as this you're looking at schools that will hold around 2 20 2 000 students here and

108you're looking at around 120 uh colleges and universities come out so that's a huge showing big big time so i want to thank uh the counseling department here mr bear and hopefully everybody um i see some faces here that were there so i hope you had a good time he had got some great information and we look to just grow that experience for our students because the more information that we can provide to our students the better off they will be and better decisions they will make i also want to share that um i placed out in the monthly in the september edition of the uh district update the superintendent series so this is something uh i would have loved to have done last year but i can do this year based on the fact

109that we can be in person with each other and have these conversations so the superintendent series is an opportunity for us as a community and myself to talk about um quite may have some questions uh you may have some burning desires and issues uh it's a much more relaxed setting it is not as formal as it is here at a board meeting it's a conversation that um we can have and i even put together uh several dates our first date in that series is on the 10th of november and that's the only date in that series that there will be a morning and an aft and an evening session on the same day all morning sessions will be at um cedar grove library which i wanted to share i i you know i i just

110went to my uh one of my first board meetings of cedar grove library wonderful um wonderful place i i hope you do get a chance to go there you have some wonderful people working there i had a wonderful time um just having that conversation about what they're doing and they have some great calendars of events with what they're doing for for for kids um and especially for you for the elementary based students and some great opportunities for um for you as adults but i that i am very grateful that they are allowing us to utilize their space um and the reason why we're doing in the library is because we really want to reduce the amount of traffic in the uh in the schools uh having visitors so uh they have a great open space

111for us so that will be at the 10th of november and then on the 10th of november at night we will be able to have a conversation at north end on the 16th it will take place on the evening at south end the 24th of february we will be at the middle school and the 12th of may will be at the high school so we're trying to hit every school that doesn't mean that you if you if your kids are in elementary that doesn't mean that you can't come to the high school but you can uh there's also on the on the um on the district update if you i asked you please submit your questions ahead of time so i can kind of focus those conversations around some of those burning desires i so

112there was one person that started that um that list going so please please uh come out and i'd love to have a conversation and and talk about what's going on and just some of some of the great plans and get some feedback and collaborate together lrp update i know i talked last time about um lrp and where we are i know that i was at the south end fsa meeting with nicole and we you know we talked a lot about there's some there's some questions about lrp as a whole um just to reiterate for for you that over the past seven years uh there has been around a sixteen six and a half percent increase of enrollment at at both south end and over the past five years a 16.4 increase over at north end

113so you're looking at a rather large average where you're having 18 students in the class compared to around having 23. in fact our kindergarten south end our kindergarten teachers actually talked about how they had a class sizes of 23 and 24 over there so the need for lrp excuse me is real but just to give you an idea where we are because i talked a lot about this last time is that um our we talked about our surveying uh company that we have contracted uh they are all they're pretty much finished the surveys uh surveyors have to go back to get additional roadway information for any dot approvals uh they will be scheduled to go back this week on thursday but overall they have a good amount of serving information where they can beginning where

114they can begin to develop the concept plans of how that will look and how that will affect our fourth and fifth grade possible populations so that is the update thank you all right moving along on the agenda uh from the office of the business administrator and board secretary under minutes can i have a motion for b1 through b5 second b1 is a motion to approve the public and executive minutes of september 28th b2 is a motion to approve the budgetary transfers for the month of september b3 is a motion to approve the treasurer's report for the month of august b4 is a motion to approve the board secretary report for the month of august and b5 is a motion to approve the board secretary's certification to the cedar grove board of education pursuant to the

115code that no line item account has encumbrances and expenditures which in total exceed the line item appropriation in violation of the code any discussion no no roll call please mrs de charro yes mrs miga yes mrs pandoria aye mr schoener i to everything but be one i'm abstaining from b1 and mrs die yes under bills can i have a motion for b6 somo second b6 is a motion to pay the list of bills that were in our packet for the amount listed um there for the period of september 28 through october 26th any discussion no no roll call please this is the chara yes this is miguel yes mr spondoria hi mr schoener hi mrs dye yes under business can i have a motion for b7 through b15 [Music] b7 is a motion to approve

116the subscription bussing contract with the parents of the student with the number listed b8 is a motion to accept the generous donation from the cedar grove high school diamond club b9 is a motion to approve the location agreement with gabrielle gumeris and the cedar grove board of education b10 is a motion to approve the following for submission of the comprehensive maintenance plan for the 21-22 school year b11 is a motion to approve the proposals from ame inc for the purchase of upgrading hvac controls for offices gymnasium the gymnasium and hallways of north end school and southend school b12 is a motion to approve the proposals from ame inc for the purchase of upgrading hvac controls for the media centers bathrooms and offices at north end and southend schools b13 is a motion to approve the

117proposals from ame inc for purchase for the purchase of upgrading hvac controls in the boiler room including boilers pumps and exhaust fans at north end school and south end school b14 is a motion to approve the removal of one bob katz skidster from the board of education equipment list and b15 is a motion to approve the removal of one 2010 walker lawn mower from the board of education equipment list any discussion no no no roll call please mrs dichara yes mrs miga yes mr spandoria aye mr schoener aye mrs dye yes from the office of the superintendent of schools under personnel can i have a motion for s-1 through s-35 so moved second s-1 is second reading be it resolved from the board hereby affirms the superintendent's decision in hiv invasive investigation involving the student

118number listed for freezing set forth and the superintendent's report to the board and directs the board secretary board of board administrators transmit a copy of the board's decision um to affected students parents uh confirmed non-hib s2 upon second reading be it resolved that the board hereby affirms the superintendent's decision an hiv investigation involving student number listed for reasons set forth in the superintendent's report to the board and directs the board secretary school business administrator to transmit a copy of the board's decision to the affected students parents for forthwith confirmed non-hib s3 is a motion to rescind s7 on september 28th agenda and approved suzanne marzuka memorial middle school math teacher maternity leave replacement s4 is a motion to retroactively approve lauren ocker return medical leave replacement s5 is a motion to appoint the following staff

119in accordance with the state emergent hiring start date procedures s6 is a motion to approve the resignation of brian meisner high school business teacher s7 is a motion to approve the resignation for purposes of retirement virginia perizone s 8 is a motion to approve the resignation of laura free as paraprofessional s9 is a motion to approve the building transfer of rachel valdemente high school paraprofessional to north end school s10 is a motion to rescind s44 motion on september 28th agenda and a motion to approve the following lunch aids at the salary salary rate listed s11 is a motion to retroactively approve the per diem rate for substitute teachers at the amount listed s12 is a motion to approve robin levy to provide after-school curricular assistance to students at mms s13 is a motion to approve

120the following stipend updates for the 21-22 school year s14 is a motion to approve cara conklin to provide the lunch supervision s 15 is a motion to approve ann roddy to provide after-school assistance 16 is a motion to retroactively approve carol storm district substitute nurse s 17 is a motion to approve the following volunteers s18 is a motion trooper the following 10-year teachers for reimbursement of mentoring fees s19 is a motion to approve the settlement agreement between the board of ed and the parent of the student number listed as directed by the director of special services s20 is a motion to approve beth legraw as a pathways instructor s21 is a motion to retroactively approve physical as education coverage by thomas jones and heather de puzzo s s22 is a motion to authorize attendance at

121the following events s23 is a motion to approve the following leaves of absence s24 is a motion to approve the following students for classroom observation s25 is a motion to retroactively approve the following middle school grade 5 math teachers to instruct extra classes s26 is a motion to retroactively approve the following high school social studies teachers to instruct extra classes s27 is a motion to rescind s23 from the september 28th agenda and retroactively approve the following high school math teachers to instruct an extra class s28 is a motion to send s25 from september 28th agenda and retroactively approve the following middle school teachers to instruct an extra class s29 is a motion to approve the submission of the business administrator slash board secretary merkel s30 is a motion to approve the following winter coaches for

122the 21 22 school year s31 we're going to remove from the agenda um for this time s 32 is a motion to accept the resignation of alexander pena s 33 is a motion to approve brittany maguire s 34 is a motion to approve rachel root north northern grade 1 replacement teacher and s35 is a motion to approve the memorial middle school's chemical hygiene plan naming john bannon as the district's hygiene officer and liz shane as the site chemical hygiene manager any discussion no no [Music] can i just say one thing okay it's on oh it doesn't ask you again i i just um mrs perezone who's retiring mm-hmm i just want to wish her very well she was an excellent teacher my uh my daughter had her up there in seventh grade with those those

123of us who i don't know if they still do it but the portfolios oh yeah so um she really taught my daughter had or my daughter had a great face but she also helped teach her how to write and i i appreciate it i think she's a great person and i just want to say i wish her well she'll be missed yeah absolutely phenomenal teacher great great job absolutely any further discussion no roll call please mrs dechara yes mrs miga yes mrs pandoria hi mr schoener i but i'm abstaining from s1 and s2 this is dye yes but i'm abstaining from s1 [Music] okay under policies can i have a motion for s36 second s36 is a motion to approve the the second reading of the following policies any discussion no no roll call please

124mrs dicharra yes mrs amiga yes mr pandoria hi mr schoener i'm abstaining from s36 mrs dye yes under contracts can i have a motion for s-37 second i'm sorry s um 37 is a motion to approve the following contracts for special education students as recommended by the director of special services any discussion no no roll call please mrs dichara yes mrs miga yes mr spondoria aye mr schoener aye mrs dye yes at this time the board of education offers members of the public an opportunity to address issues regarding the operation of cedar grove public schools in this section we allow public comments on all school related matters our regulations allot 40 minutes for these communications again each person shall be limited to three minutes there will be a countdown timer and at the end of

125the three minutes the microphone will be shut off and the speaker will be interrupted speakers may speak more than once only after all others wishing to speak on a topic have been heard issues raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board all comments will be considered and a response will be forthcoming if and when appropriate this portion of the meeting is meant to hear public comment not to have a dialogue between the board and the person speaking the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding the students district district employees and members of the board are discouraged and will not be responded to by the board the public is reminded that students and

126employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of new jersey the board bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by members of the public members of the public should consider their comments in light of the legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are legally responsible and liable for their comments as i stated earlier all statements will be directed to me as the presiding officer and no one may address board members individually please be reminded that if your statement is too lengthy abusive obscene or defamatory you may be interrupted warned or your participation may be terminated please also be reminded that if any person does not observe reasonable decorum is disorderly or disrupts the meaning you'll be asked to leave the meeting

127the board reminds those individuals who take this opportunity to speak to identify themselves by name address and group affiliation if applicable every time you address the board and to limit their comments to items directly related to the operation of the school district the first person i have is mike tedesco good evening i'm mike tedesco 90 rugby road i'm proud to say that i am a high school teacher right here at cedar grove high school uh i am also here tonight to speak as the vice president of the cedar grove education association and it's my privilege uh to come up here tonight to uh because we at the cgea want to say thank you to the candidates for the upcoming board of education election all four were invited to fill out a questionnaire and attend our

128general membership meeting that took place on october 14th all four candidates did participate in the process and the cga is seriously thank you thankful for that uh the information that we gathered from the questionnaire has been sent out to over 450 njea members that live in cedar grove along with a statement of our beliefs on the issues of the day while there have been issues that we may have disagreed with the board on we are proud that we currently have a strong relationship with this board and the administration and our plan is to keep it that way uh real quick is that clock is no joke there uh i don't know how people do it in response to uh staff concerns that were brought up earlier tonight uh i would just like to encourage anybody

129uh to please reach out to the cga particularly our cga president mr chris canella to have an open dialogue about uh staff because they are our members uh so i just want to say again thank you for this time and best of luck to all the candidates in november thank you very much [Applause] thank you mr tedesco next i have leo stringer [Music] okay hello again leo stringer for hiv tires i want to do a follow-up on a question that a few people had a couple of meetings ago cafeteria we went to um free lunch program in the cafeteria which was a obviously a state-run program the level of food service has gone depleted and it's gotten worse it hasn't gotten better i don't know if anything's going to happen with it but basically my

130understanding is a lot of the kids have decided just not to bother with it anymore including mine that is it's not worth it so i don't know what the purpose of there was no benefit to this free lunch program to most of our students so it's a um we need to we should be increasing the level of food service not making it worse so i think there was a big disconnect with that and also as far as funding we had um looking at the today's agenda it looks like north and south end did a lot of hvac contracts it looks about 125 000 for today for today's that were considered coveted coveted contracts we seem to be putting everything as covert so my understanding is we're considering hvac for i mean air conditioning for a

131north and south end so why are we spending 125 thousand dollars to fix what they have now if they may be replacing it and how is everything covered related including the cafeteria lunch program that that cafeteria system was covered the school bus was covered the two pickup trucks and the tractor you spent about a few months ago so it's kind of like we're stretching the lines or what we're calling coveted purchases so i think we need to go back to making maybe that should have been spent on teachers maybe that should be spent on education not not just to use it for something else okay thank you this is australian i think this is a vehicle maybe might want to chime in on this as well so as far as the food service your concern

132over food service we actually received what would you say like a monthly report yes a monthly report and it shows the uh revenue that was brought into the district through that uh and and it shows at all levels excuse me um the participation and in fact i don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that but they are at extremely high levels in fact mr v we just actually went over this today it's probably one of the highest levels that we've ever had here in cedar grove in the past so i want to share a little bit about that yep i will um the the main point of um joining the um state lunch program this year um was because uh every student is considered free it doesn't matter if you're a

133millionaire if you're a free reduced student every student receives a free meal so that's the main point of doing it in september alone we sold or we gave 14 394 meals so i mean i i think that's a pretty high population of the people that are um actually um doing the lunch program and enjoying the meals and with that we get a reimbursement rate of um a little over four four dollars and 25 cents um so the money that we receive from the state um for all those meals uh was just uh just under sixty four thousand dollars um so that's the point of doing it um is that it basically pays for itself um it's a all the food costs are covered the salaries are covered uh we've actually had to um increase our

134staffing for the cafeteria people at um all the schools uh just because the uh the number of people doing um and enjoying the meals is a lot more than we expected um so that's yeah and to your point too also about the the hvac these that is directly covered related based on the fact that when you look at the dampers on those unit vents what we're looking at is a universal control rather than a pneumatic control and electronic control which will allow us a better flow of air into the room rather than how that system was created back when it was set up like in the 60s and utilized in the 70s and 80s all the way to the current period of time so without those electronic controls what our department or our facilities and

135grounds department can do is they can actually place those uh units on a schedule and allow that fresh air component to really come into that room prior to the teachers coming in and throughout the course of the day one of the things we talked about last year and one of the biggest concerns was about getting that fresh air component in there and how were you able to the percentage-wise of what you were able to do that is directly related to covid based on the certain circumstances so those controls actually do that for us they go onto a schedule and we can act i mean our buildings and grounds department can actually control it right from their phone or their computer so rather than looking at in a pneumatic way which is a very antiquated way

136of adjusting those dampers for uh each individual classroom okay yeah i think it's questionable and how much that's controlling kobe but back to the cafeteria use the word enjoyed do you um personal question do you guys eat do you eat the three lunches because what i've seen is that a lot of the students are purchasing what's considered not the free park even from like french fries which actually they're just discontinued for some reason but it looks like the lunches that are considered free or not the ones that students want to eat and i don't know if we're using the word if you're actually checking on students i don't haven't seen any questionnaires or anything do we know if the students are actually enjoying these or they're eating them so the the unique piece about this

137is is that you don't have to join it all right so it's available to all students this year uh regardless of qualifying factors uh at a free component um if you don't like what what that meal is served that day you don't have to take that meal if you don't like the service from pomptonian you can you could brown bag your lunch and bring it in or if you're in the high school uh you're more than welcome to to if you're a junior senior you're more than welcome to uh patronize any of our local businesses or go home for that in fact mr david and i did just have that lunch we actually had on friday together and so we had actually from the high school um so we have we ourselves uh partake in

138that and uh we want and we follow the quality of the food very closely it meets all national standards based on what is involved in the in the national food program so again like i said it is it is something that um all schools have had the uh if they participated in it because some districts did not they did not want to participate in it uh but as mr david has shared we had a high um enrollment for this past month which will eventually provide us some great revenue that will go back into our food service program to continue to enhance it okay well what i've been hearing from different places that the level of food has gone down and possibly because pontone is getting less money i don't know what they're getting but they're

139been not sure if they're getting the same money they would get if you bought paid for their meal yes components getting the same amount of money it's the same contract okay but their food level has gone down you know they have you know they have different levels of food all food services do they so they they've kind of ignored complaints they don't they don't follow up on them but they're but they're real complaints and they're valid complaints because they've gotten sick off of them you should you guys should know that so but it seems like you're just looking at dollars and thinking that's great we don't agree thank you [Applause] just to the members of the public just remember to wear your mask until you come to the microphone uh we're required by state mandate

140to to enforce the massacre so some of you don't have mask on so i would just ask that that you put them on it's on your mouth um [Music] oh so so just yes so everybody we're required by state mandate by the governor's orders to enforce the mass rule so uh we have students here and we have many members of the community here please be respectful of one another and just keep your mask on until you come to the microphone [Music] we are we talking i'm asking everybody to please stop and be respectful please so we can move on to the next speaker all we're asking is that everybody please wear their masks and just be respectful of everyone so we can continue this part of the meeting thank you i'm just asking for everybody

141to please be respectful of each other please mrs marinelli please please be respectful as a former board member i would really hope that you would be respectful now i'm going to ask miss the next person to come up mrs marinelli please who's next let's go to the next person miss lampty you're up please [Music] good evening my name is affy lampty i live at 40 pine drive um tonight i want to speak on some things that have been going on in the community so basically i'm going to start off saying i've had enough i'm tired the constant fighting and personal attacks on facebook have gone too far what we are teaching our kids i have no idea that is not modeling of good behavior we are adults and some of us are acting like we

142are in grade school the constant lies about me and the social justice group have gotten out of control it is now at the level of online harassment you are attacking fellow parents and alumni of sea of grove community i guess somebody thinks it's funny in the back i guess i don't know anyway i will be very clear and transparent as i have always been i am a parent i do not work for the boe i'm not a boe member i'm not an employee of the cedar grove school district i'm a parent who is an active member in my children's education volunteering for various school committees functions in attending monthly board of ed meetings these lies keep continuing on the cg advocacy facebook group page one person put i'm a hidden hand i get others to

143do what i want that's a lie i tried to present pretend that i wasn't on the committee that i put a survey out that's a lie i was told that i'm really making a name for myself not really sure what that implies nor do i care the social justice group also they've said is a secret society nope that's a lie it's just a private group you know facebook gives people that option to create private groups shocker i'm talking also they have put we are a sick group that follows children on social media that's a lie the social justice group has never followed a child on social media i affilamphi has never friend requested a child or followed a child on ig lie lie lie i have never done that you will not it has to

144do with empty please stop for a second and stop the plot with just empty miss lampty it does it's missing please stop talking stop the call please please stop interrupting please please give me my time hold on one second please okay i'm sorry to interrupt you please be respectful or you'll be asked to be removed okay everybody gets their three minutes to have their public comment please it is a is it it is a public forum to make your public comment for three minutes that's exactly what it is it is continue i will continue please stop when you come up i give you your respect i don't make any comments okay so it's my turn to speak thank you you will not defame my character and those in the social justice group by spreading these

145lies when 10 people verbally attack me on facebook that's abusive and considered harassment when someone uses my profile picture which is a picture of a baby and a young girl to make a post on the advocacy page that's a violation to me and my family you have no right to use my profile picture for your personal vendetta this is the very definition of psycho give me back my time what i think her time is thank you mrs lampty your time is up i'm sorry actually excuse me [Music] your time is up please ma'am ma'am your time is your time is up we're gonna have to ask thank you they interrupted i didn't get back any time okay thank you make sure we interrupt when they speak so that they don't get there thank you be

146fair it does have to do with next i have next person next i have don elting i'm calling you a name [Music] everybody that's that's that's talking out this is a board of education meeting and we'll give you a little bit of leeway and and and so we're letting a little bit of leeway but if it continues i would suggest that we just end this meeting so we want to hear you give it everybody an opportunity i just asked please follow the rules give everybody respect no speaking out of turn just listen and let the when the time expires your time is expired thank you [Applause] [Music] mr alton go ahead hi donald delting 43 greendale road um back to school night which is always a great night i wish we had more than seven

147minutes but i know you got to keep it you know brief my last one in the middle school um it took me that long to figure out where all the classes are so now i'm done um in spanish class one of the curriculum items was climate change and i saw that in science and i wasn't you know it was just part of the curriculum i didn't think anything of it and then when i saw it in spanish class and i asked the teacher about it she said well i don't really know anything about science but you know the state mandates we teach it um so i was just wondering if you could expand onto i understand it's a state mandate but they say which classes uh you put it in because when i saw it

148in science i said okay that's where it belongs or or whether you agree with that or not but spanish i just didn't understand that yes you're absolutely right it's uh it's actually we've had this conversation with the curriculum and instruction department as well um about the placement of climate change within um the spanish world language so it is it is one of the things that is mandated uh through the state in that area um it's interesting we're looking at how that can be utilized um one of the ways that we talked about this is that you look at climate change in general um and how it can be utilized throughout the language how it can be utilized throughout the cultures of various countries because part of world language isn't just learning the language is learning

149the culture as well and learning the geographic areas of where that language originated so to look at how climate change you know in the eyes of the state of new jersey how it has impacted those particular regions and cultures and how can we infuse it into the curriculum uh through the world language it just seemed a little out of place that's why i uh yeah no we are we ourselves it kind of kind of threw us for a loop too to say why you know but i will say this i think like anything um like any any um mr pearson bart was talking about this tonight he spoke about it specifically with uh reading and literature and uh informational text uh it shouldn't be just bro it shouldn't just be taught in an english course

150uh it can you can provide a cross-curricular approach uh that starts conversation that also uh provides the ability to explore uh various regions of the curriculum so um it's something uh cross-curricular approaches isn't something new but like i said yes i i appreciate that we've we've looked into that ourselves and we're looking at how uh how we can implement that appropriately within that language okay and then my uh last part is about the edac committee and the selection process i think as we've seen in prior board meetings and you know this board meeting um part of the reason why there's so much discourse is it's not that people are against edac it's that people like myself were against a survey and very vocal about that but i wanted to be part of the edac committee

151because number one i've been spending two decades as an administrator doing work like that i never got the chance to speak to anyone about that and when i saw the edac committee come out and who was on it i felt that not all the voices were being heard and someone like myself who's been vocal against a survey getting an opportunity to at least talk to the people who make the decision i think it could have made a big difference because we could have bridged those gaps instead of getting one side versus the other side and there's a couple members on the edoc committee that um that are new but most of the people on there when i see their they i don't know what the selection process was it didn't seem fair i would have

152appreciated a call i could have explained what i bring to the table um and i think we could have done some better work i think a committee that doesn't have credibility in the eyes of the people is never going to amount to much jackie i i could definitely um [Applause] one of the pieces from last year was about how do people get on the edac committee um and essentially last year it was a council an advisory council in its infancy it was something that was brought up as a germ of an idea to see where and how we as a district can be inclusive of all people who go here whether they're families or whether they're students uh and one of the one of the comments that was brought up at one of the one

153of our meetings here was a process and that was something that we listened to and it was put into place online which which was done through a form a google form application and one of those questions was you know please share why you feel that you would be a good um participant in this edac was one of the most commented on items from last year we had to place a limit the same way that we did on selc a 20 person limit 20 21 person limit and that reason was because the larger a council voices can be lost but if i speak specifically about edac that is it spells it out directly in its title it is equity and diversity diversity advisory council one of one of the requirements when you apply to this was

154tell us a little bit about your background tell us a little bit about who you are so we can put together a committee that has a large amount of voices that represent the community as a whole uh when you look at the people that are on that committee they are representative of all people um from various backgrounds from various uh ethnic racial backgrounds from various gender backgrounds from various religious backgrounds uh most of the people that we're on that are on that committee currently that are city members right now for the 21 22 school year uh they're volunt everybody's volunteers right so those are people uh that were asked if you would like to continue some people didn't didn't want to continue doing this uh they didn't want to continue this this kind of work

155excuse me but the majority did which left minimal spots that were open and for the people that did apply through that process uh the people that did apply came back with a very very diverse background and when i speak about a diverse background i speak about a diverse ethnic gender and religious background that can really lend a different perspective on things uh and how we can grow as a district so uh i will share this with you uh if you're interested i and i actually i actually just had a conversation with another community member about this i said just because you're on the community community doesn't mean that you don't have a voice you are more than welcome to if you want to arrange a time we can sit down you can share your your

156feelings with me i mean that counsel is to advise me and the board they don't make decisions right so selk an advisory council doesn't make a decision they are a contributor to how we can move forward and how we can support all students in the district so i encourage you i i mean that i mean if you would like i would more than happy to arrange a time we could sit down together and you could share your thoughts you might have some ideas that are fantastic and that we can kind of we can kind of roll with or you can share your opinions on things and i'm more than willing to listen to that as well so i i just think that there can't be members that are anonymous and i think that a committee

157you have to have different ideas you can't beat all one group of people that come together and if you look at the edac committee and the people who are on the social justice page for example i have never tried to join the social justice page i'm not interested in joining that but i would like to do some other work involving the edac committee and i've had success in doing that in the past and i just feel that you're having a committee to make things fair but you're sort of discriminating against me i'm sorry i'm not going to apologize that you know my skin is white and i'm catholic and i'm a male you have to be accepting of everyone everyone has good ideas and it's not going to move forward if you have anonymous members

158you have to be transparent and that's what everybody's asking right and mr i want to share this with you and i appreciate what you just said because there are actually white people on that council there are catholic people on that council other males on on that council or there are also people from various cultures in various religious backgrounds and various genders and how they identify themselves so that is true you're right you can't have one group of people that will will provide insight or advice to um administration if you're because it would be lopsided right um so like i said i i do appreciate that and i want to share one other piece with you i'm not on facebook i purposely am not on that um because i'm not on any social media uh personally

159uh so i don't know who's on so i don't know who's on the social justice group i don't know who's in any advocacy group i don't know that because i'm not on it and i don't it's to be quite honest with you it works out better that way because this this way i see you as a member of the community i'm not interested in uh followings on facebook or on twitter on instagram or snapchat or whatever maybe with social media wise i'm interested in you know productive conversations that will help move this district forward and help to include be inclusive of all children and all families in this district and you know like i said i that offer stands always with you sir that if you would like to sit down and have a conversation

160and share your insight with me i'm more than happy to welcome that listening time thank you [Applause] next i have cindy taylor [Music] cindy taylor 45 young ab cedar grove i have three daughters all which went through the school system here at cedar grove when i moved to this town 25 years ago i chose cedar grove because of the school system i played a huge role in the cedar grove school serving on the board of the fsa class parent as well as multiple committees in all my years here i have watched the board meetings pretty much for the whole year and it makes me very happy to see new parents stepping up and trying their hardest to make the schools a safe place for our children sorry i have allergies so i apologize i wanted

161to come here tonight not to bash the cedar grove administration and its board members but to make others aware who are struggling with hiv investigations that always come up unfounded or litigation suits that drag on for years that there is all hope for you i encourage every parent out there to come forward and stand up for their children no matter what others think of you stop wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money what happened with my daughter who protected her where were the administrators former principal former superintendent athletic director school board when my daughter needed protection what happens if the bullies are the coaches or the administrators how come when there are several complaints it gets pushed aside or not documented what happened when my daughter was deprived of her senior and junior

162and senior year basketball season she missed out on senior night senior dinners as well as broken friendships something she will never get back what about a coach who has private off-site meetings one being at a local bar and text messages to girls one-on-one even go as far as sending girls vacation photos is this the appropriate and accepted here at cedar grove what about a coach you're making allegations no no i'm not i'm not i'm not stating any names you are identifying i'll move on to the next section thank you you failed my child luckily for me and my daughter it ended well but what about the others who are not strong enough to get through it what about them what if i didn't fight for her what about the 8 27 special board meeting they

163held and the cameras were on before the meeting and our board attorney and ba were speaking about confidential information my confidential information i will leave you with this there was a tweet about my daughter and i dated july 19 2019 by a previous communication with a former coach and sidelined chatter bully once again we have administrators who are cowards in this case the cg super and we have one mother who can be described as a hateful sob clueless about the reality of her daughter's abilities so i hand you this torch tonight christine die for the most disliked board president in the history of cedar grove no need to thank me for my comment [Applause] thank you for your comment [Music] [Applause] next i have myra medina [Music] meyer medina 76 old orchard court um it's

164definitely been um quite interesting start of the school year um i am a product of the new york city public school system i am a first generation graduated from college i am first generation american my parents are from honduras who immigrated here and i my daughters were also born in the bronx i don't speak ghetto i am not ghetto and i say this because this was told to my daughter um [Music] it's definitely been rough [Music] it's one of the things that i've brought up as well that words do matter just because we come from a different part that doesn't make us any less of who we are you know i you know people don't see an educated female they see a brown-skinned person um that to them probably may look as ghetto but what

165is that in reality right um my husband is an educated person as well first generation does that make him ghetto too it's offensive to my daughter she was taken aback when she was told this she was like i as a joke or not a joke i'm not ghetto it's not funny it hurts so you know to me there's a lot to be done in the work here i am an edac member i am also an admin for the social justice group on facebook and i'm also an advisory at a university in new york i'm part of their council there as well um so it's like you know i'm just baffled by all of this that's been going on and it really hurts i'm not one to go and tell people what they need to do

166what how they need to do it or anything i'm respectful of all opinions i don't take and call anyone out of their name but yet they love to call me out of my name and just to reiterate my name is myra m-a-y-r-a medina last name so remember that thank you for your comment next i have michelle mariello michelle moriello 51 bennett ave cedar grove the high school has several teachers resign or disappear within the last few weeks and my concern is the lack of instructional time the students are receiving i'm aware that a teacher is assigned to is assigning work but who's instructing this work so when you have uh you have teachers instructing that work you have teachers preparing you uh you have teachers uh preparing for the instruction and teachers who are preparing

167the lessons as well they're preparing the lessons who's instructing the lesson teachers teachers are instructing as well not according to my son well i will share with you that on the agenda tonight when you look at those those clusters of teachers those are teachers that are taking on uh an extra period of time because the one teacher or classes i'm sorry i just want to be able to finish reiterate that when you look at the agenda for those approvals of those teachers those teachers are taking on extra load um in their schedule to instruct those classes because the email that i received though there was a conflict in scheduling so therefore another teacher was going to be sitting in not instructing while the other teacher was assigning the work and this is for an honors

168class and you did talk mr grosso about sustainable thing and and that's not acceptable and that's not sustainable i do want to share this though um and i can't get into personnel matters because you're private right absolutely and like we know as with everything in life in any job uh you know they're a private thing there are private opportunities that come up in life um so therefore what we have in place is a structure that would sustain that that class continues for example we did have a teacher that was out for a week and that those classes were covered by other teachers and prepared by other teachers those kids those children those students in those classes were never left in the dark you see that right there on that agenda for those for those teachers

169that were uh covering those classes for that teacher that was out because i just know like last year in the middle school for five weeks there was a teacher out the science teacher there was never an email given to the parents and it was more or less like independent instruction and when we talk about acceptable and levels and everything like that that's unacceptable right i believe you also had a conversation with mr de court about that i absolutely explained to the rationale and i don't necessarily want to go into the personal matter of that particular person but i believe he did have that but but i'm just saying what is the plan in place like there is a teacher shortage you know we're talking about we have to open another school we can't staff the

170schools we have well i'm i'm i'm gonna i mean i don't mean to be rude but that's misinformation right there for the simple fact that we are staffing our schools i'm gonna share this there is no that is that's a that's a false narrative of we are not staffing our schools every one of our classes are staffed they're either staffed with the teacher that was interviewed and selected for that class whether that teacher was assigned to that class or whether that teacher is covering that class while that teacher may be out but there is no class that is left flapping in the wind are they receiving the instruction they deserve when you're getting just an assignment and you're expected to complete it independently it's more yellow yes or no yes are they they are yes

171so so i'm gonna share this for a teacher that is that is assigned to cover a course [Applause] who is certified to teach that course they're preparing plans and the execution of the instruction that teacher is doing the job and following the standards and the curriculum there i don't understand the question of that of that teacher not fulfilling their duty in that particular position there is a teacher creating plans yes who is instructing the plans i don't necessarily think is qualified the teacher who's like a substitute in that class well i i will share we've all i mean have you have you gone to public you were in public school or you were in private school i'm a teacher right exactly i'm talking about as a child right so we've all had substitutes yes so

172when the substitute is is is taking over that class the teacher of that class has prepared the lesson for that substitute to execute right yes and i've had teachers who were on maternity leave i was on auditorium perhaps absolutely what i'm trying to say is at what point are we just going to have a teacher assigning work and another teacher sitting in the room to make sure the kids work is done opposed to instructing that work like when you have a maternity leave replacement or a medical leave replacement that teacher pretty much takes those long those are long-term leaves right right when you have it but when you have a shower say we're going to put in a long-term leave if we don't have another a replacement for the teachers who have vanished or have

173moved on right but when you have a short term leave when you don't know the end date of that leave you you put into place plan b which is finding coverage for that class or putting absolutely right so that's what you do i will share with you i believe what you're referring to is a personnel matter that i can't go into right um but i will share with you is that there is never a class that is left without instruction or plans for that class plans yes but you have say ap classes and honor classes let's be honest it's doing a disservice to our children our school rating has dropped okay and this this contributes to that what's what our children deserve is better than this it might not it might be a personnel matter

174or whatever but at what time are we gonna say okay we're gonna put in a permanent replacement you know so is that process happening what are we doing to incentivize our teachers to stay within this district so i will share this and i'll touch upon a couple of different aspects when you have a short term leave i'll just repeat this we have a short term leave from a an instructor a teacher that doesn't have an end date that teacher perhaps could have pneumonia they could have an illness they could have a death in the family they could have a an accident that is something where you you take that preparation as a short term you find coverage you would not necessarily advertise and i'm sharing with you just the the procedures you wouldn't advertise the

175way that you would advertise for a maternity leave right but to your point of the quality of teachers in sustaining and keeping teachers i will share this cedar grove has a rather long reputation of keeping teachers in the district who have been here for quite some time and in fact a testament to that is even when we look at some of our paraprofessionals that work here who have been here for 16 years when you look at an average an average time span that a paraprofessional works in the district is anywhere between two to five years and they may move on and they may find themselves uh acquiring a full-time teaching position uh you may you will often see as the springtime rolls around retirements for our staff cedar grove has a natural turnover of staff

176based on excelling up into another level whether you like i said you're a paraprofessional moving up into a full-time teaching position or you may be a teacher that may have gotten something at a university level right or um you may see some retirements there's definitely not a there's a there is a shortage of educators there's a shortage of bus drivers there's a shortage of a lot of uh professionals in the education field right now um but cedar grove has been consistent with their uh tenure of their of their teaching staff i mean i just know that my son in particular at the high school has two teachers that one is resigning has that teacher been replaced and that teacher was going to do the deca club that's now on the table um and a history

177teacher i you know it's concerning right but i will share with you there's never a time where those teachers aren't replacing that's not what i was saying when like at what point are you know like it's concerning as a parent that these two positions there's some students with three teachers that are leaving like that's a concern like at what point like i mean i get it oh it's a personality or something it is it is it's a absolutely absolutely thank you next i have leonor yee [Applause] leonore oh i'm sorry hi is this on okay um okay so uh my name is lenore i live at five aspen drive uh just state your last name too oh please lenore yi thank you okay parents typically view themselves as primary moral educators of their children and

178expect public schools to teach their kids basic academic principles disciplines like math english history and science but as you have said yourselves and is publicly available information more and more time is now being redirected from academic instruction to social emotional learning or sel proponents of sel call for schools to focus less on academic content and more on correct attitudes beliefs mindsets opinions and behaviors of students and i thought that was my job so in a june 2020 webinar called sel as a lever for equity and social justice case president and ceo advocated that sel should be used to favor certain students over others primarily because of their race have you considered how all this focus on students immutable characteristics like race and an emphasis on power and privilege will play out the ca scl resource

179sel roadmap for reopening schools argues schools and educators should adopt anti-racist practices focus on classroom lessons on social justice conduct staff-wide implicit bias trainings and make educators aware of their white privilege meanwhile you told me that critical race theory and social justice education is not happening here you are likely unaware or uninformed about the underlying agenda of sel but however is blunt about their transformative goals and believes that parents and well-meaning officials like yourselves will be too stupid or afraid to object on this issue we're not left or right black or white this is a question of reason and unreason the overwhelming focus on race that is now prevalent in our very own community will have will have the opposite effect of the one intended this is truly damaging and as kids get older what

180the studies show is that these sort of implicit biased education efforts bring out racism so if somebody's having racist thoughts in the back of their head this brings it to the frontal lobe and more people act on their latent racism than they otherwise would have so i'm here to stand in opposition to the blind implementation of sel in our school curriculum and to plead with you to please vet the methods and ideologies that have been implemented without question you are the advocates for our children so i'm asking you to please do your part in protecting them from these harmful ideas sel supposedly affirms the identities and experiences of all children i am the mother of a christian bible believing child her identity lies in the person of jesus christ and what it means that he

181is her savior how are you going to prepare her how are you going to have that conversation thank you for your comment missy i'm sorry i can't if i give you more time than everybody else is going to yell that i didn't give them more time i'm sorry missy i have to go to the next person thank you very much okay mr mr grosso did you want to comment on that at all because i don't think you're too stupid or afraid to to comment so if you could please i know you were quoting somebody nope and i just don't believe the superintendent is too stupid or afraid to to comment on sel so if you could please mr grosso yeah i i i appreciate your perspective and that and that is your opinion and i

182respect that i will share with you that social emotional learning has been around a very long time it's it's it's it's primary focus was to engage students with a healthy attribute of how to engage with other individuals in a in a healthy way both mentally socially and emotionally there has been a connection to social emotional learning to as you've shared with crt and we've had a lot of conversations in this room about that and personal beliefs and my job is not to change minds i'm i i realize that that's not my job and i'm not going to do that um i will share i've always tried to share the facts about that so our our take on social emotional learning and our efforts on mental health in this district have increased and the rationale and

183the reasoning why it has increased is because we've just come off of the world's one of the world's worst crises ever and it has affect not only the adults that live in this world but it has affected the children and very often we as adults and this and this is something that i'm not creating it's something that is is researched and is instrumental is that we as adults at times will project our feelings and our fears on our own children and our children have created fears based on what they see around them in their environment and how they will react and how they will will respond and i'm sure each of us sitting in this room including yourself has had some event in their life that has been traumatic with lost grief fear our children

184come every day into school with that they carry baggage and we often as adults will say drop your baggage at the door come in and learn you can't do that we as adults can't do that we as adults have and i've shared at this in this forum before we as adults have had issues whether it's in our personal life or a professional life where it's very difficult for us to continue to move on with our day but we do and we find a way to do that but sometimes we we do it in a way that is not not efficient or successful for us or the people that we're working with our children are no different so our children are learning the developing and maturing and they're trying to find a way to navigate through

185this very cluttered messy world that we live in and through that one of our jobs in public education is to help provide that student with a mental health and capacity and interventions that we can provide them with to be well before a student can learn appropriately and achieve everything that we talked about tonight why is we watched on the screen that is all nonsense compared to that child can't personally sit in their seat and collaborate with the teacher and with the other students in their classroom in a way that is mentally sustainable and well for them so our take in cedar grove on social emotional learning is not connected to crt it's not connected to a narrative that may be out there or what people may have been saying uh when we flip on news

186read papers or watch other people speak about it it is clear clearly a clinical perspective where we look at our students and say are you well are you well today and if you aren't well how can we help you how can we assist you how can we support you and how can we as a public institution support you as a family with resources that can help you because we as individuals in this room don't have the answers to all of this we don't we can't we don't have necessarily the capacity i always say this it takes a village we are that village now we may have differing opinions and and you share with me your your thoughts about your religion and that is your personal beliefs and i respect that and that is not our

187job as as a public institution to to inter interfere with your religious beliefs but it is our job as a public institution to make sure that all students are respected based on their beliefs and that does not happen all the time i've been in education for 20 years and in 20 years whether i've been at an elementary middle or high school level i have seen where students and and families and and adults don't necessarily always respect that that is our job as a public institution to do that to model the correct behavior to make sure that we when these students leave from a k to a 12 grade level that they are engaged and equipped with tools that will help them navigate the world around them because if they are not equipped with that if

188they can't be sensitive to others if they can't be sympathetic or empathetic or even listen with respect we're setting our children up for failure and that is purely what we do here in public schools and what we've done for the past 20 to 30 years and that is not connected to an organization it is connected to a philosophy of are the children well yes so that's really great thank you thank you your three minutes are up thank you very much miss you okay missy your your time is up please please can you have a seat it's somebody else's turn thank you thank you mr martinelli you're up next [Applause] [Music] don nelly 30 hillside avenue good evening board good evening everybody in the audience here uh first off i want to thank that young lady

189that just came up my sentiments are the same 150 percent um i know mr russo good evening good evening board i'm here for about maybe the six months in a row and this is in reference to yank because i know i'm beating the dead horse to eat that committee i want to know who the members are who the political affiliation is what their beliefs are what they support for example if they support critical race theory and the missed aggressor a little due respect um you mentioned a few months ago that um you didn't know what crt meant this is the number one topic the united states here as far as education and how much the board and different groups have been fighting back and forth i just find it very uh i don't understand how

190you didn't realize what clt is i mean that's just you know a question uh the thing is uh donna you and i are not like-minded so it could be different people that are up there as i pointed out before this is only one point of view all right you mentioned um that you would release the names when you felt it was appropriate my question to you is there's a couple questions one has any deck committee member have been physically assaulted if they not then what are you ashamed that they don't want children to learn socially like what are they teaching our children if they're not you know why are they afraid of their identity um and also i filled out also an edac uh application i heard crickets nobody even called me back i guess

191i'm not like-minded a young lady came here less uh last meeting mentioned the diversity and equity inclusion guide being used by our teachers in cedar grove i'm trying to wrap around my head about the true meaning of white privilege i was taught many years ago the true meaning of racism is when you take an entire race religious group or ethnicity and paint the entire group with one stroke the question we must all ask ourselves tonight isn't it racist to say entire race of people have white privilege especially when the fact is most people on welfare and people that are poor are white also the fact the most successful race by far in the united states is asian people so i guess i must have asian privilege also would it be racist to say the entire

192race has made up what a particular race is time made up of criminals and thugs would it be racist to say an entire ethnic group is comprised of mobsters and womanizers would it be racist to say that entire ethnic group is comprised of alcoholics would it be racist to say an entire religion is comprised of terrorists see my point we all god's children and all this stuff that i still feel being teaching this education system to in my opinion is divisive lastly at the last board meeting i asked if the boe had any affiliation with social justice groups and was told no okay second question i have is i believe there is social justice group using the city grove school district in their title so is that group now affiliated with the board of v

193i'm just asking a question um so i i i i'm gonna attempt to answer a lot of your questions here um so mr martinelli uh edac members they are actually available online i don't know if you've had a chance to go look at that uh it's on there's an edac webpage uh you can access it through our main webpage our main website you go down to the very bottom there's a button for edac and self and you can see all the members on there so they are they are actually public uh for those members who do not want to be i'll just continue with that um for a member when you see an area that says community member or you see an area that's a staff member those particular members i believe there's probably three

194of them actually uh those members did not come to the first meeting and therefore their their their question of would they be would they feel comfortable putting their name in print for this pure reason is is because uh for your for your um for the answer to your question have they been attacked physically no but have they been attacked verbally yes they have been so therefore their volunteers uh i want to respect a person that's volunteering and therefore that's the prerogative if they want to put their name on or not i'd say probably 95 of those members are up there so please go take a look at that um the other issue is you talk about crt and um just to clarify uh i'm very aware of what crt is uh what i spoke what

195i spoke about was uh critically responsive teaching is what we've always known in education so let me i'll just give a brief overview of crt crt comes from a gentleman named derek bell was a lawyer for the naacp he fought he was he worked with thurgood marshall he actually uh worked on a lot of the civil rights movement during the 60s including selma he was a huge contributor to the civil rights movement in this country mr bell went on to be a very successful lawyer through the naacp and then he went on to become a very successful professor uh at major universities such as harvard and i guess it was probably in the 80s where mr professor bell looked upon his work his life's work and he questioned if the work that he had done

196was actually relevant he questioned if the time and efforts and energy and the message that he and others such as martin luther king and thurgood marshall tried to put out there to people if that message actually was being fulfilled and in his mind in derrick bell's mind he felt it was no that was not the case so therefore he started to fear theorize the critical race theory at a very high level at a college level at a university level in fact derek bell lost many jobs because of that and he moved on to various uh universities because of that he wrote many books on it you can look this up but the reality of it all is and to answer your question for many of those out there that say do crt belong in our

197schools the reality of that is no it doesn't and the reason why it doesn't belong in our schools is because it is unattainable maturation wise academic wise by a k-12 student it is difficult for an adult to grasp the concept it is difficult for a person that was not involved in that movement to grasp that concept because that concept was built from derrick bell's involvement in the civil rights movement so i'm very aware of what critical race is and i'm very aware of the fact that it does not belong in our public schools k through 12 because our students are not capable of handling the mature investigation that it would intend and the background and historical knowledge that it would intend so i wanted to set the record straight because i'm very clear on a

198lot of these things that everybody talks about i watch the news i read the papers and i educate myself i will share this i did not know what crt was back when this first back when this first came to light so i educated myself on it there's some really great articles out there and from those articles and from the listening to all sides and being very respectful of it i can honestly sit here and share with you that historical walk through the journey of where that came from because i didn't know where it came from myself but i educated myself through that and understand that crt as critical race theory cannot be created or taught in our schools culturally responsive teaching 100 should be and that is what we do [Applause] there is a with

199anything in life right there can be misinformation there can be false narratives on things right but the reality of it is if we can come together we can have an honest conversation whether it's inform like this or whether it's privately together whether it's through councils or whether it's through a superintendent series and really have really good solid conversations and be respectful of each other i think we're gonna learn a lot from that right we can learn a lot from that we can gain perspective on this anything that we do in public school it should be inclusive of all people that mr martinelli your your time is up please right thank you mr martinelli maybe maybe mr grocer you could reach out to martinelli to talk about this 100 i'd appreciate it um next i have

200jeanne patel but i'm not sure if you wanted if you already spoke and you want to come up again or if you had signed both forms or okay you know that's fine i just wasn't sure totally fine janine patel 87 stevens avenue when i saw the agenda for today and i saw that miss parazon was retiring and i told my son he was just so upset he said that she is his favorite teacher this year which most kids say oh she's hard oh my god if you get her and he loves her so much and i just want my heart hurts for him because he's only going to have her half a year now so i just wanted to say that no i agree she's fantastic and a lot of people don't like her because

201she's so difficult but how she prepares them he thinks she's eating she's she's fantastic absolutely i completely agree with my children so thank you thank you my first thought when i saw that was my daughter's not going to get to have her yeah but we have other amazing teachers i know i know all right and last we have nat harris so [Music] howdy gang am i the last one thank god uh i'm tough it is so far past my bedtime right now uh so i represent the cgaa which is the cedar grove artist mr narrative oh nice harris 238 ridge thank you i'm so sorry the brain isn't working right now so i represent the cgaa which is a cedar grove artists alliance and uh i was trying to organize a candidate forum for the

202election oh you guys are missing the best part i'm the closer uh i'm kidding with you don't worry about it uh so i was trying to have a candidate for him to get all the candidates who were running for the boe together but it didn't work out because of timing um and so i went on today to facebook and i put on nicole and haley and on uh dawn and leo's page some questions what did i say who are you there's so many signs i should have known i'm so sorry i do apologize for that i had written it down and i messed it up uh what's that huh yeah i know but i'm saying i don't i couldn't remember i apologize thank you uh but what i was hoping is that you guys can

203go on and answer the questions because i think what a lot of people are having a problem with is we haven't seen all the candidates together and it'd be nice to have a set list of questions that you guys answer and then we kind of know where everyone is and where everyone stands not in a meet and greet or whatever like that work and you can say this to joe and this to bob but like actually where we can see the answers to questions and i think that'll help out the community a lot and that's i mean it's everybody i think it would be much appreciated [Music] so you don't want to answer questions okay okay that's cool that's all right we're in a board of education meetings yeah i'm sorry yeah i mean i

204was just i gave you guys some questions i was hoping i'd get answers thank you so much sir uh and now i know who i'm voting for um so the other thing is then this is for john and i'm not commenting on you but there's also the selc if you google cedar grove sclc i know you mentioned edac but it's you've got everybody who's on there so it's uh the whole team's out to play and that's my time and i'm gonna go to sleep so thank you guys very much have a good night [Applause] [Music] thank you for your comment [Applause] so i closed that portion of the meeting um one thing i just wanted uh to mention and have our attorney talk about it i've had our comment on really is i've had some

205parents ask me about some misinformation and i i wanted mr molino to clear it up i've been asked about the fact that parents have been told that they're going to get a letter from the department of education in about six weeks regarding the illegal survey um can you speak about like anything you might know about that as well as any of the other you know illegal survey information you have it's possible that they get a letter but it's not going to say that it was an illegal survey so um judge bond so going back a little bit so from this edac there was four complaints were filed under state law with the department of education two were petitions of appeal that were assigned to the office of administrative law two were ethics complaints against certain

206board members individually in support of eid act and and and some conduct at board meetings those were sent to the school at this commission both are under the department of education state law state state laws apply state laws are looked at um the the two that were for the petitions of appeal were against the school district with respect to the e-dac survey um and both were very similar um one one was a group of of petitioners one was a sole petitioner the group was assigned was first it was assigned to judge cookson um the other one that was um assigned to judge bon giovanni they are both administrative law judges appointed by the governor they they worked in trenton and newark and and they um they both had preliminary conferences on both of the separate

207matters um the the allegations are that parental consent was necessary before these anonymous voluntary surveys went out and putting aside any debate about if they're truly voluntary enough but the surveys went out and it's undisputed and the the allegation was that parental consent was necessary because of one can one question in particular for the elementary surveys and and on the first page of the survey the question was gender identity and then there was a line for for the per the student who's answering it to put in the gender identity and both petitions allege that gender identity is akin or the same as asking a student their sexual behaviors judge bon giovanni said absolutely not the case was dismissed so the second one dismissed um the first one judge cookson judge cookson is asked for briefs

208on it so legal briefs they were both submitted we filed a motion to dismiss we've asked judge cookson to dismiss it um judge cookson has asked for the board of education the school district's legal brief in word the indication is that judge cookson is not going to put gender identity to sexual behavior totally separate um and therefore it's not an illegal survey and if there is a letter in six weeks maybe sooner from judge cookson it's gonna say that the survey was was proper um the other two matters are ethics complaints against individual board members um and we can say why why certain board members were were chosen uh i'm sure election time as is probably the part of that um but motions were to to dismiss were filed in both of those so the

209school district the board of education filed motions to dismiss both of the ethics matters we still have the other emotions to dismiss the other matters but similarly the ethics matters were also removed to dismiss um one of them the motion to dismiss needed a response from the person who filed it there was no response given and 20 days to to respond those 20 days went by the school ethics commission in the department of education gave another 20 days that was blown by that one was never responded to school ethics commission will then dismiss that um we've also asked that it was considered a frivolous complaint again there's no response the expectation is that the school at this commission department of ed will find that to be a frivolous complaint and therefore fees and fines can

210be issued against not the board of education and not the school district but the person who filed that that's his complaint the second one is related to again back to the edac survey and and support of the survey um that is being decided on november 16th so in two week three weeks uh the school at this commission will decide that motion to dismiss um the board of education also filed a claim that that is also a frivolous complaint um and the school at this commission will also rule on that piece of it again if it's considered frivolous it's not the board of education that pays fees but it actually this is one of the times where the prevailing parties the board of education and and the other side who file this can be ordered to

211pay fees or restitution or fines great thank you very much i'm sorry the public comment portion is over i was asking i'm sorry there's nothing rude about anything i was get i asked our attorney to give an update so uh announcement of future meetings november 16th december 14th is listed on there but december 14th is going to be changed can i have a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved thank you second okay roll call please uh mrs duchara yes this is mega mr pandoria mr splindoria can you uh say yes hi mr schoener hi this is that yes i end this portion of the meeting everybody have a good night