Dunellen Board of Education Meeting - 2/25/2025

001got a lot to cover so let's get going oh so in accordance uh so item number one on the agenda uh call to order in accordance with the open public meetings njsa 10 4-6 adequate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising in The Courier News and posting notice in the Board of Education administration building and district schools and filing notice with the burough clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting Tuesday February 25th 2025 uh in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 dellen Avenue at 7 p.m. this meeting is broadcast live for details check out www.del and [Music] schools.org um okay all right at this time we're going to move on to item number two roll call Mr Pepe could you please call the rooll Mr Anderson present Mrs Condit present

002M ibeck present Dr gendrano present Mrs Howard is not here Mr satoi present Mrs Shep I went out of order out of order out of order Miss Shimp present and Mr Walker is not here we have seven board members present we have have a quarum okay fantastic moving on to item number three executive session the dellan Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within the specific exceptions to the open public meetings act C njsa 10 uh 4-12 B the confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining agreements pending or anticipated litigation as well as Personnel any discussion that does not need to remain confident will be made public as soon as it is practical minutes of the executive

003session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists that one okay uh we also will add um item uh tactics or techniques utilized in protecting Public Safety and property uh to our discussion executive assession discussion uh as I was saying um uh any discussion that does not to be during confidential will be made public as soon as is practical minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists all individuals who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will take place after the conclusion of the executive session at this time I'm looking for a motion to move into executive session move to go to exe second all those in favor I I opposed okay we'll be back in about uh

00425 minutes or so e e e let's go okay we are back thank you for your patience so at this time looking for a motion to come back into public move to go back to public second all those in favor I opposed okay moving on to uh item number four uh Pledge of Allegiance Flags over here please stand 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 will you all please remain standing for a moment of reflection and respect for our troops serving throughout the world our troops who have served and our troops who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our United States of America thank you okay moving on

005to item number five approval of minutes uh looking for a motion uh to approve uh the minutes from our last Board of Education meeting which was on January 28th 2025 I move to approve the board minutes from January 28 2025 seconded okay uh open for questions or [Music] comments okay Mr Pepe please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes misss ibck yes Dr gendrano yes Mr saoi yes Miss Shimp yes Mrs Shep yes motion passes fantastic all right moving on to item number six on the agenda uh student recognition I'll turn it over to Mr Ross wonderful thank you Dr gendrano good evening parents and good evening students it's wonderful to see you all here so many familiar faces um which is great and so many of you who are here joining your

006siblings who have also received student of the month recognitions this is a wonderful celebration of students who have really positively impacted our schools throughout the last month we're very excited to have some of our administrators and representatives from our schools who will present so what we're going to do is uh we're going to go school by school we're going to start with Faber students as your name is called come up to the front you're going to receive your certificate and then we're going to ask you to stand at the front and wait and then when all the students from the school are called and you're all standing in line we'll take a brief pause parents you can get up you can take nice pictures um and we'll make sure that there's no rush so that

007everyone gets a good a good photo up all right so we're going to start with Faber Elementary and we're going to start with Miss Melissa V Ross please come on up okay thank you I'm so happy to be here for Mr tenant I'm supervisor of Early Childhood so just so you know who I am but I've worked here for many years so it's so great to see familiar faces um I'm delighted to be here to present the student of the month Awards it is a remarkable honor that when teachers were asked to select a student for this month your name stood out among all the students in your grade I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to you for being a shining example for your peers your hard work dedication and strong character have made

008you a positive role model that others admire and respect I would also like to commend your families remember our first teachers are our families so keep up the work good work moms and dads siblings grandparents I encourage you to find a special way to celebrate this achievement tonight or sometime this week so I'll start and I think I'll start with the oldest in favor so that they can stand here the longest because you're very capable of that fifth grade so I would like to congratulate Elana Lance come on up so Eliana works extremely hard in class and is never afraid to ask for help which is a great quality her grades are always good and she participates in many different activities such as student council stem club and safety patrol she's very helpful to all

009her teachers and classmates as well Eliana comes to school with a positive attitude and great energy each day this is her first year at Faber and she has adjusted well and has made great connections with students and teachers already congratulations [Applause] stick around yeah okay all right our fourth grader is Jacqueline guado you here on up okay so Jackin works hard always does her best and is kind to others she's helpful to her classmates and makes makes the classroom a happy place we are proud of the positive attitude and great effort so we'll make sure we give this award to her for third grade Natalie huo come on up so Natalie is kind and respectful to her classmates and teachers she always tries her best and puts effort into everything she does Natalie is a

010positive role model at Faber [Applause] School our second grader is Melissa Gonzalez Salgado now it's the girls night all right Natalie is a kind and respectful student to her classmates she tries her best and puts effort oh Melissa Melissa I should know that's my name too Melissa is a hardworking and compassionate student she's grown more confident in her own abilities and now regularly Volunteers in class she has taken a new student under her Wing not only helping navigate a new classroom in school but a new language and culture as well congratulations Melissa okay our first grade student is Jana Thomas Jana come on up all right Jana comes into school every day following all of our classroom rules and expectations she's always on task and is consistently kind and respectful to all of her teachers

011and classmates she's very nice and includes others she's compassionate and checks in with her friends and she's energetic and makes everyone laugh she's fantastic example to all and truly deserves to be student of the month [Applause] congrats okay our kindergarten student Christopher Martinez representing the boys good work so Christopher is kind and welcoming he has a great attitude towards new students especially one that recently joined the class he has been very inclusive going out of his way to help make sure she feels part of the class additionally he has excelled in his learning actively participating in class and being an attentive listener during class activities congrats Chris and our preschooler Brody Martin you here okay well Brody has been doing wonderful in class he's using his words to request and share his thoughts and feelings

012Brody is a positive role model for all the preschoolers at at Faber School wonderful job Brody we'll make sure we get you your certificate we also have a special area student um that the special area teacher nominated Milan ooi there he is all right Milan is a Renaissance student he's a great athlete he has even run and had amazing times in the Girls on the Run 5K a talented musician he has creative ideas he is a pleasure to have in class he's always willing to help others and try his best he strives to be the best student he can be and it shows in every special way he has a joy for life and shares it with students and staff we're honored to have Milan as our student of the month congrats right so congrats

013to you all a wonderful achievement [Applause] SC [Applause] thank you miss van Ross congratulations favor students for Lincoln Middle School we have one of our amazing enl teachers Miss Abby Franklin thank you Mr Ross thank you board uh welcome students welcome parents I'm very honored to to be here standing in this evening as the representative from Lincoln Middle School to honor our incredible students first up for sixth grade we have Isabella Jimenez rosero the sixth grade teachers are proud to recognize Isabella Jimenez rosero as the February student of the month Isabella Works tirelessly to consistently maintain High honoral status throughout her days she she demonstrates a positive attitude and is always ready and willing to help classmates Isabella is a strong critical thinker and makes thoughtful contributions to classroom discussions she serves as a role

014model for other students and has an incredibly strong start to her career here at LS congratulations [Applause] Isabella for seventh grade Gabriella carda Suarez [Applause] the seventh grade teachers congratulate Gabriella Carina Suarez for being recognized as our student of the month Gabriella should be commended for putting forth her best effort in her classes she comes prepared to class every day with a smile and is ready to learn she works well with others and is always looking to help them out her positive outlook and attitude in the classroom set a positive example for her peers Gabriella is currently attending the Arts High program of middlex County for modern dance she attends the program one afternoon a week Gabby is a role model and leader at LMS and we are very proud of her congratulations gab and

015our eighth grader Naomi sto [Applause] Naomi suto is this month's eighth grade student of the month Naomi is excelling in every aspect of her education after returning to the LMS Community earlier this school year Naomi demonstrates responsibility consistently participates in class discussions and shows a genuine enthusiasm for learning Naomi's hard work and dedication were evident when she earned high honor role for the second marking period achieving all A's in her classes her respect for others and her commitment to creating a positive classroom environment makes her a true role model Naomi actively seeks out academic opportunities and is always striving to do her best we are excited to see all that she will accomplish this year congratulations Naomi on behalf of Lincoln Middle School congratulations to the students in the dellan school district being recognized for

016their outstanding accomplishment so far this school year [Applause] all right thank you Miss Franklin congratulations Lincoln Middle School students last but certainly not least we have Mr Tobin from dellan High School Mr [Applause] Tobin good evening nice to see everyone tonight thank you for coming out and congratulations to all those who are being recognized uh we are celebrating our four February uh students of the month in 9th 10th and 11th and 12th grade today starting with grade nine Isaiah Jackson I don't think he's here uh Isaiah has had a great start to his freshman year he's been on the honor rooll for the second marking period in a row which means he's been getting all A's and B's in his classes teachers have had mentioned that he expresses his ideas well in his writing uh

017and he's also taking a rigorous academic schedule he's in four honors classes so he's doing well with some very tough classes and uh a wonderful young man in the ninth grade so congratulations to [Applause] Isaiah our sophomore student of the month is Melanie gimenez araga [Applause] Melanie joined us this October uh after completing her freshman year in another District uh she's been a wonderful addition to the hallways and family of dellan high school she achieved honoral for the second markting period which is all A's and B's um and she's been noted to be cooperative attentative in her classes uh she did well on her midterm exams which is also a great accomplishment after uh starting in October and being in another school in September so uh well welld deserved accomplishment for Melanie our Junior student

018of the month is Abigail [Applause] barate Abigail achieved honor rooll in both the first and second marking periods uh she's taking AP language and composition and physics Al among other rigorous classes she is a member of the National Art Honor Society uh has been noted to do quality work in her industrial arts or wood shop class uh and she is going to be attending a summer boot camp this summer up at West Point and she might possibly be one of our best athletes under the radar because she is uh recently just went into a u8 USA Rugby uh try out for the USA under 18 rugby team uh so yeah a lot a lot to Abigail and a well-deserved recognition of her accomplishments for February our senior student of the month is Antonio sto I

019don't believe he's here uh Antonio's had one of the best he had the second best marking period to GPA of all seniors this past marking period so a great accomplishment for him uh he's taking three AP classes so a very rigorous schedule and what some might call you know senior year as a a year to kind of take a lot of electives so he's really pushing himself hard and achieving at the same time he's a member of the National Honor Society and the history club uh and he achieved high honor role in both the first and second markeing periods which means he's achieved all A's in all of his classes so also welld deserved FR Antonio to be February student of the month for 12th grade [Applause] thank you Mr Tobin congratulations parents congratulations students

020um it's an amazing accomplishment we're all very proud of you it's wonderful to see you here tonight thank you to some of our staff members who are here celebrating their students and our staff members who presented we are going to take about a f minute break um so I know that uh it's it's going to be a late night and we all have school tomorrow so we we'll take a five minute break break and um and and let you all depart you're certainly welcome to stay if you'd like we've got about a 2-hour meeting ahead of us um but certainly no obligation have a good night everyone thank you congratulations [Applause] the e e spe e are you abely e oh yeah they always do you set okay don't want okay it's online I'll use

021the mic just because I mean I'll use the mic anyway for your at home people but ridicul they do I I had to I felt like I had to go to Workshop I presentations that I had to give oh hi are you it's good to see you too I saw you walking in I was on the phone with my daughter because I wasn't sure if I was in the right spot and I know I had been here before and I said oh I see you're super and she my ask her if this is where I'm supposed to be so we were talking it a teacher she's a teacher in but she lives just you're ready give me the sign yep you'll see we're going to move and move around so I'm going to just turn

022it off okay we are back so uh moving on to item number six on the agenda uh well sorry item number seven on the agenda uh president's remarks so uh welcome everyone to our our board meeting uh so first of all I wanted to take a moment to congratulate again all the students who were recognized this evening were so proud of your accomplishments and keep up the great work I did want to mention since we spoke last uh there was an honorable assembly Dell and High School uh brought back The Honorable assembly on 11th of February recognizing students uh grades 9 through 12 on the honor rooll and high honor rooll the uh a torum was packed with students and families celebrating the Great accomplishments of our kids so congrats to the honores I did

023want to mention also since we spoke last uh there was a PTO talent show and I got to tell you it was a rousing success so check this out all seats were sold out approximately 30 folks had to actually be turned away because of the seating capacity issues um the event raised ready for this 2011 $31 which surpasses last year's event and that is fantastic [Applause] wow and uh we just like to say thank you to the PTO you know Dr gendrano sarrano uh Mrs Moore our talent show co-chairs the whole PTO membership Mr sua Miss piano Mr guer Mr petsinger our custodial staff the student volunteers especially Brian vres who was our student of the month last month uh for uh 11th grade um and all the uh AV lights and stage crew folks

024the supportive parents and the engaged audience and of course our dellan students who shared their awesome talents with us to make the event such a great success so thank you as I reiterate uh from meeting to meeting as the way you know staying healthy with the the droing the temperatures it's important to underscore that healthy kids means healthy schools means healthy Community the bottom line here is we encourage you to take the common sense precautions to minimize the spread of infectious disease that can really impact our school year so you know uh this way we can keep our school going and our community healthy um as I also do uh every month our monthly celebrations so February uh Black History Month Lunar New Year National Freedom day was February 1st which commemorates the signing of

025the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery in 1865 this was all and February is also School Board recognition month which was announced via Proclamation by Governor Murphy back in December of 2022 I mentioned this uh to underscore the importance of diversity Equity inclusion and most importantly belonging in the Fab as the fabric of our daily lives and the impact that that has in our community open honest and Equitable communication that is respectful positive supportive fair and most of all kind goes a long way in strengthening the community so just to reflect we are you know little time check here I know maybe this is a little premature we're about four months out until our denell and seniors walk um 2025 graduation stage and there are great many things that are going to be happening in our

026district and our community between now and then and I would greatly encourage you to be an active part of it thank you everyone for your time and listening uh moving on to the superintendent Report with Mr Ross Mr Ross thank you Dr gendrano so we will as always start the superintendent report off with the student Representatives report so I will turn it over to Douglas and jazara good evening we have the school's report for February so this report is a report of the sports activities environment of the school students thoughts and overall experience at DHS Lincoln middle and favor Elementary school so here are some current events on January 30th the safety ambassadors held their first presentation at fa Elementary School the high school students educated the kids on the topics of wheel safety pedestrian

027safety false prevention healthy eating and safety in and around cars on February 8th uh the peer leaders lectured The Freshman about diversity and the importance of inclusion students discussed the topics such as stereotypes personal bias and inclusivity there are currently only two weeks until the DHS drama club's production of The Adams Family the show will run from March 6th through the 8th as stated earlier on February 11th the First honoral Assembly for this school year was held almost 150 students earned this award for the second quarter the college acceptance bulletin board is up now at DHS displayed are the names of students in the colleges they have been accepted to miss marker and the counseling office have been adding names in the schools to be displayed in the bulletin board in the hallway outside of

028the counseling office office during the entire month of February the black student union has provided quotes from influential black leaders over the morning announcements to celebrate Black History Month transitioning into the sports winter sports season has come to a close our boys's basketball team has had an amazing season The Varsity Boys Basketball team currently holds a record of 15-9 the team is 12-2 in the silver division they've been named the greater middle sex conference silver division Champions on February 4th senior Ryan Hutchins joined the 10,00 point scorers Club in a Faceoff between dellan and middle sex due to their success this season the team has earned the 12th seed in the upcoming GMC tournament the boys will play Highland Park tomorrow at home at 6 PM for the njsi AA tournament first round of Central

029Jersey group one as for girls basketball our vars city girls basketball team currently holds a record of 6 and 17 with a record of 3 and 11 in the blue division the girls are playing their final game today as they face Piscataway votek going into the game the team is coming off of a win against Somerset votek with a score of 55-26 the spring Sports season is approaching any student interested in participating in baseball softball or boys tennis have been given the opportunity to attend an interest meeting in regards to the spring pre-season okay good evening everybody it is a pleasure to be here again and to have the opportunity to share the information about the state of the schools from dunan High School Lincoln Middle School and favor Elementary this reports information comes directly

030from the students points of view and also includes general information about the events happening uh I was able for this report to be uh to add the information directly from the student councils of each school so I I spoke to the administ ministration at fa and Lincoln and they worked with the student council uh of each school to gather the information hello to gather the information about the the school's uh activities and this the feeling of the students so from favor on February 18th and our fourth and fiveth grade one second sorry our fourth and fifth grade black history essay contest winners were were honored at the council meeting our fourth grade winner was Ash ashnik Su sui suikan sorry and our fifth grade winner was Thomas Tren both Ela students from Mrs desosa a

031new club of favor recently started the kindness Club students can already sign up on February 10th we celebrated 100 days of a school the first grade students already had their filter to the jainson aquarium fav had a black history assembly students in third fourth and fifth grade learn about Jud and involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement through dance the program involves racism and the struggle for Freedom as the students heard the words from Dr Martin Luther King Jr and learned how nonviolent Direct action help and and segregation students in grades PK K first and second grade learn about the principles of Hip Hop peace love unity and having fun they learn about inspiring positive change in J PE in John people through an exploration of the roots of Hip Hop culture we began our

032Ruckers hydrophonic workship with students in fourth and fifth grade the students had the opportunity to learn firsthand about Hydroponics using in the classroom and Project based learning they kick off the kids heart challenge they can register through the favorite newsletter for Lincoln Middle School they had the candy GRS Valentine's Day brought some exciting activities to Lincoln Middle School the highly anticipated candr were a bit a big headit as the students had the chance to purchased them to for $1 to each $1 each to send to their friends on Valentine's Day these sweets messages and treats were distributed to the lucky recipients ex spreading joy and appreciation throughout the school another highlight was the Valentine's Day door decorating an initiative started by a group of girls who took on the challenge of decorating nearly all the

033eighth grade doors their creative and festive designs added Special Touch to the hallways making the school feel even more lively and full of love to top it all of LMS hosted an epic botle of the classes where the six seven eth graders faced off in a series of competitive games including Red Light Green Light dog of war and more each grade brought their best energy and teamwork making it a thrilling event for everyone involved the eight graders were the winners but both the boys and the girls basketball teams wrapped up an incredible season showing of their hard work teamw work and dedication on the court their efficient throughout their effort throughout the season led to some amazing games and their determination made the LMS Community proud congratulated congratulations to all the players and coaches for

034an unforgettable season on February 19th LMS held its honorable C ceremony to recognize the students from all grades for their academic achievements parents were invited to attend in person and for those who couldn't make it the ceremony was a Streamlight allowing families to celebrate their students success from anywhere okay so from donalan high school today David flood gave an interactive speech to the whole high school students really enjoyed the topics discussed like empathy inclus and the important difference between awareness and acceptance he seemed really passionate about his speech as he also shares personal experience and thoughts in his speech he encourages the students to look at the inside rather rather than the outside of individuals personally it was great meeting him and having him share with us dellan performing art Arts as priorly mentioned is

035presenting the Adam's Family the students and the staff are putting a lot of effort into this show in order for it to to be great I have no doubt that this show will be a huge success as everything is looking great already the G who Cod Club is an expanding club that previously began with small meetings between advisers our goal with the G who code Club is to spand interested interested interest and provide opportunities for girls interested in a steam class careers the club is also looking to diversify the steam field and is now aecting more members here at DHS the club has now 15 members that are eager to learn and exciting about entering a coding competition that promotes driver safety this club also re is also receiving funding from the brain injury Alliance

036of New Jersey sponsored by by the new New Jersey Manufacturer Insurance Group as the club spans one of their goal is to open up membership to Middle School and Middle School gears as well dland high school held the their honorable assembly on February 11th this one this was an exciting moment to celebrate the success of peers as they perform highly academically freshman classes holding an apparal sell to gather funds for their class they are selling sip of sweaters hoodies and sweatpants I think this is a great way of f fundraising while giving people the opportunity to purchase a school branded clothing this is for me report thank you awesome thank you both so much this was a really great report let's give them a beautiful round of applause nice work and also we have with

037winter sports we have the the winter sports banquet right is the 13th right March 13th Thursday the 13th so excellent work both of you really appreciate it tons of information really great stuff so thank you thank um so we have some presentations um before we get to the um school board's uh present presentation trining I'm going to invite Liz Lopez up from denan Public Library um one of the things that we have really worked on with the school district is connecting the district to the burough and um burough organizations and obviously we've had a very close relationship with the library in terms of enl programming and um parent classes and public events and things like that and so um we thought it would be great to have Liz here and just give kind of a

038little update on um new things happening on the library uh front and you know we'll share information out with parents as well um but without any further Ado Liz why don't you use the microphone please come on up the floor is yours hello all right thank you very much um and thank you to everybody who's viewing online uh February's Library Lovers Month and so I asked superintendent Ross to have me to invite me to come to speak to everybody to tell you a little bit about what we do at the library because if I had a dollar for every time I tell somebody about our library services and they say I didn't know you did that we might have any gaps in our budget but um we really want to get out and perform some

039Outreach and spread the word and encourage everybody to sign up for our for a library card so just a little bit about our library our library is located at 100 New Market Road in the center of town um our library was donated to us by the art color factory when they closed the factory back in the 70s and we are currently supported through tax dollars about 1% of your taxes goes towards the library's budget and we still receive a grant from the art color foundation for the acquisition of books and circulated materials uh so who's eligible for a library card everybody is eligible for a free library card if you are a resident of dellan if you are a student in dellan schools or if you are an employee of a business in dellan you

040are eligible for a free library card and with your free library card of course we have books there you go good job we have books everybody thinks Library you think books um and we have so much more in 2025 we have obviously books magazines newspapers DVDs audio books and music's on CD we have digital downloads so you don't have to renew your audible subscriptions you could just sign up for a library card and use El libr New Jersey we have a library of things which includes iPads Chromebooks and Wi-Fi hotspots we have home delivery of books and we have newly added museum pass program which includes free access to six museums in the New York and New Jersey region and the turtleback zoo so we are the first library in New Jersey to have this

041partnership with the turtleback zoo the program is sponsored by the friends of the denalan public library and a great opportunity to uh have some enrichment and have some free activities with your kids we also offer technology resources through our computer lab we have free Wi-Fi that is open and it is accessible on the exterior of the building when the building is closed which was very helpful obviously to a lot of people during the pandemic and even now of course most people have a cellular device with Wi-Fi but there are many individuals who do not and we have a computer lab available with staff to support them and guide them through the process we also have print services and faxing Services you would be surprised how many people come in on a daily basis because if

042you need to fax a document to refinance your mortgage finalize your retirement or for medical reasons we've got the fax machine for you we also have programs we've had a wonderful partnership with the school district to expand our ESL program and we've started a new ESL program for teens and young people we have story times for babies and toddlers Dungeons and Dragons our and craft workshops cultural heritage celebrations we currently have a Black History Month display going on with some of our wonderful students who have produced some amazing work Larry royel is a great phenomenal teacher uh and that's a Cooperative effort with the dellan Arts culture and inclusion commission and we have staff which is available on hand to answer reference questions guide you through using technology signing up for email um accounts using

043social media and they really are our most valuable resource and most of our staff started as volunteers as denell and students we have two current students Jackson Rios uh who attends votch through the district and AJ Romero who is a senior McKenzie barate from the class of 2023 does our children's programs Megan Parish from the class of 2022 is our Outreach coordinator fiorella fona from the class of 21 is our bilingual baddy and Pat lner from the class of 62 has been with us for 20 years our principal library assistant Nicole Rodriguez graduated with our own mayor Jason salento with a class of 2007 and honorable mention would have to go to Viola man who while she did not graduate from dellan schools many branches of her family tree did and one of her grandchildren

044has joined the faculty in the athletics department so I like to think of our library as the center of our community it's our Town's Living Room everybody is welcome it is open to the public you don't have a library card have to have a library card to use the library it would be a lot cooler if you did and ways that you could support your library include getting a library card everybody in your family is eligible we have a lot of households that share a card and while that is allowed we would prefer that everybody register for their own library card we registered 450 new users last year and our goal this year is to register 1,000 new library card holders so we have a QR code on a flyer at the at the exit

045if you're interested you can sign up for a library card online you can attend a program we have lots of great programs and anybody who knows me knows if you mention something that might be fun to do I will most likely respond with oh we could do that at the library um and we have have please come by and use our digital printing services when your kids tell you at 6:00 p.m. that they need you to print something and sign it and there's no ink in that HP printer on your desk come on down to the library we got you covered so come check us out and thank you so much for having us today thank you Liz and your girls got a lot of footage which will be edited I'm sure in the most

046most wonderful and flattering way um the library really has been a great partner uh with us and Liz if you want to send me info we'll distribute it uh electronically as well we're also putting together public uh events we're doing um a project with keep middle sex moving which will be sort of like a community fair and also Bike Rodeo which will have sort of bike helmets and bike safety programming and we'll have the library there as well to get people to register for cards there's also a new partnership with Somerset County Library Services which is a huge huge win for denell and Public Library uh the superintendent in Greenbrook and I um worked with Liz and some a representative who we have who we have in common uh in the Somerset County library system

047and there I guess had been pre prior uh relationships between the organizations but this basically was all renewed so now dellan residents can uh use Somerset County Library services and vice versa so if you're a greenbook resident and you live right on the other side of you know dellen and you're in another County you can just head down to the library and use those services and obviously Somerset County has a lot of services that you know a small Municipal Library wouldn't have so there's a lot of access that's been expanded as well for those residents so thank you as always for your partnership and and uh for all of your work on this bring yep yep yeah concise is not my my fine point so yeah um all right without any further Ado we have

048um so the uh School Board is uh during the organization meeting each year the um denel Public School Board uh basically signs on as a uh member district to the New Jersey school boards Association and so through the partnership with school boards Association there's a lot lot of information about training for Schoolboard members and uh informational updates about legislation and things like that and uh also the board uh is assigned a representative and the representative is sort of the conduit for all questions that board members can have about ethical responsibilities and process questions and the law and and all of those things and we're very honored and very pleased um that our representative marann Friedman is here with us today and um we're going to give for the floor and she's going to be talking

049about my evaluation so and I'm not sure how to put this up yeah we we we'll put it on we put it on there yeah and we're going to get out of the way so while that's all happening I'm Maryann Friedman I know some of you um remember some of of you Jason um from before and some of you folks from before so it's good to see you again and I'm very happy to be back in middle seex County I was with middle sex from 2017 to 22 I got pulled into I do this all this is why I dislike microphones because I knock them over all the time um I was pulled into Mammoth County and Ocean County in 2022 and so I wasn't able to represent middle sex anymore and now I'm back

050in middle sex and I'm thrilled to be here so very happy to see you all tonight so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the chief School administrator evaluation the CSA evaluation as we call it which is this we use CSA Chief School administrator and superintendent as as one and then the board self evaluation process we have a brand new board self- evaluation that I'm excited to tell you about and we'll go through this as easily as we can there's a lot of stuff that you've already heard before about these things and if anybody just went to New board member orientation I saw your name on the list congratulations and welcome um and anybody else who just joined the board this this January um welcome to boardsmy and I hope that you'll

051find the information in the packet this is all on your right side the PDF of this PowerPoint and then there's helpful information on the left side along with my business card please don't hesitate to call me or send me an email if you have any questions about governance ethics any of the things that um Mr Ross talked about so we're going to talk tonight about the legal guidelines the evaluation process itself and the evaluation tools that we have and just as a reminder anybody who has a family member or Rel immediate family member or relative who's working in the district would not would be conflicted and would not be able to take part in the evaluation process and I'm going to count on either U Mr Pepe to let me know who those folks are

052so that I can put them in our system as conflicted for this year and and I'll explain that as we go through in a little bit so this is how you hold your superintendent accountable to you you have one employee as a board and that's your superintendent so this really is your means of oversight and Appraisal of the effective management of the school district and that's what you're looking for so if you started in January you're going to use your knowledge from January having been sworn in until you do the superintendent value valtion to evaluate the superintendent if you've been here since July 1st of last year this goes from July 1st until June 30th okay so the legal guidelines njsa is New Jersey statutes annotated and 18a is what takes care of education and

053that stipulates that the board shall evaluate the performance of the superintendent at least once a year that evaluation shall be in writing the board and the superintendent will meet to discuss those findings and the evaluation will be based on goals and objectives and the responsibilities of the superintendent by criteria and by job description and other criteria prescribed by the State Board of Education njac is New Jersey administrative code and 6A is what relates to education again and that stipulates that the annual performance report shall be prepared by July 1st and you will lose Q you'll gain qac points if you do it by July 1st if you don't do it by July 1st you'll lose qack points and I'll go over that in a minute but it also is going to let you know that

054you need to identify areas of strength any areas that might need Improvement any recommendations for professional growth and indicators of student progress and growth and that summary conference needs to be held by the non-conflicted members of the board in executive session having raced the superintendent giving the superintendent a rice notice which just means that you have let him know that you are going to be evaluating and And discussing his performance during that executive um e executive session okay and a rice notice is what you give to any staff when you might be discussing them in executive session and so the qac requirements are that you have a policy and a contract with the superintendent to annually evaluate him or her based on the adoption of goals and performance measures and that highest priority is given

055to student achievement and you have subgroup achievement and and also each new member has received their training on the CSA evaluation new members received their training on the superintendent's evaluation at new board member orientation at either the weekend program or at governance one there is a um there's going to be a March Saturday date that I don't have off the top of my head I apologize that if you haven't gone to new board member orientation yet and we're just sworn in in January you'll need to do that or a self-paced program the self-paced program is online but the other opportunity to do a one-day program is March and I think it's the 8th I think it might be the 8th and you can ask um Mr Pepe to register you for that if you haven't

056registered the most important thing about new board members is that you have to um go through new board member orientation or governance one within 90 days of being sworn in okay and then you want to complete the superintendent's evaluation by July 1st so you get seven points through the policy and the contract perform performance measures that reflect the highest um priorities given to student achievement and then you get six points for completing the annual superintendence evaluation by July 1st okay these are things the superintendent evaluation is something that is absolutely within the board's control okay it's not just the board president's responsibility to remember to do this it's every Board memb responsibility to be able to say if you get into April and you haven't been talking about this yet or you haven't asked the

057superintendent to go in and start it off and I'll explain that in a few minutes then it's everybody's responsibility to bring that up where are we in terms of the superintendent evaluation because you really want to get it done by July 1st so is the use of the evaluation a requirement by njsba no it's not there are evaluation tools we think we have a pretty wonderful evaluation tool it was developed in collaboration with New Jersey Association of school administrators which is basically the superintendent Association it is it provides a standardized methodology for you to be able to meet the statutory requirements it allows for full participation of all non-conflicted board members and it is an optional service so you don't have to use our evaluation tool but if you don't use our evaluation tool please

058make sure because it's in um statute and code you have to have an area that evaluates the superintendent on progress towards District goals every year okay so how to make the SE the process seamless you first want to know is the district census up to date and I did look at the district census your board President and Vice President are clearly noted in that um any you don't have any sending members from other school districts and all of your board members have accurate email addresses you're all using a district email account right correct okay perfect and that you will get sent that information as soon as Mr Ross goes in and completes his portion within 48 hours you'll all get an email that says your superintendent Mr Daniel Ross has completed his superintendent evaluation his

059portion and it invites you to go in and do yours it gives you the link it tells you what email address you're going to be using and it sends you it sends that email to your District email account okay have we identified all members who can participate so this the red arrow there is if the president is conflicted the president can ask for an alternate member to be assigned and that would be done by Mr Pepe also okay and then that person would take care of talking with me seeing where we are in the process getting any kind of updates and things like that and then has the board developed a superintendent evaluation calendar it's the very first thing on the left side of your packet and I can promise you as I have with

060boards that I've worked with over the past 15 years years if you fill out that evaluation process calendar it gives you our time frames so you can get it all done by July 1 and then it gives you a column to put in your own dates if you do that shortly after reorganization and then keep that as part of your packet and as part of your board packet you'll never be late in completing the superintendent's evaluation it'll always be done because everybody's looking at it everybody's aware of it okay so the business administrator as I said must enter enter the board president as the board president into our platform and census that has already been done um making sure the census is correct this is something that the business administrator does and this is going

061to be in the handout that I've given you so the all of the links are there for Mr Pepe but I don't think that he needs this because I think he's done this before and as I said I did check the um our census information and everything seems to be in good good place so this is a sample of the evaluation calendar you have part of this on the leftand side so typically the board and the superintendent will establish annual District goals and then board goals Somewhere over the summer anytime between June and September and then the superintendent will develop action plans for those so the district goals are basically the what the board wants to see happen in the district in the upcoming year and then the action plans talk to you about how

062the superintendent's going to get you there okay and there's going to be different time phrases who frames who's responsible and things like that and then the board and the superintendent should develop a process for providing updates on the progress towards the district goals we recommend four times a year usually um November January November is good because it's generally your first one um after you've developed those goals and then January because as you have new board members come in it's a good time to let them know what those District goals are and how you're doing towards those then March or early April because that's when you want the superintendent to be going in and dropping in those District goals and his own ratings as to how he feels he's doing to start off that evaluation process

063and then June to wrap the year up okay so typically the superintendent will complete their portion sometime in March or April and then board members can go in as soon as they get that that email letting them know and then when everybody who is not conflicted has comp has completed it I will be sending um Mr G Dr G gendrano sorry butchering your name haven't seen you in a while um it's okay I've heard worse and I will be communicating with him and then you'll let me know when you want me to compile the evaluation I'll compile it and I'll send it to you in a secure and um password protected email or I can allow you access and you can go in and get it through our system which is a secure and confidential

064system that we have then what happens is that's not the end of it so getting just getting the compilation a lot of times people think oh we got the compilation now we're done the compilation is then for the board the non-conflicted members of the board having RIS the superintendent to meet and discuss that compilation and identify what the majority opinion of the board is in that compilation okay that gets written then into a summative evaluation document that I provide you with and then in your next executive session you would be able to we suggest that once that sumita of evaluation has been done that be given provided to the superintendent about 24 to 48 hours before you meet again this time it will be non-conflicted members with the superintendent and that's the executive summary conference

065for the superintendent's evaluation and that's what needs to be completed by July 1st okay so the process really starts with District goal settings and ction plans then the goals and the progress reports and updates are done you can have a pre-evaluation conference sometime in March which would again be one of those updates on the on how the the district goals how the superintendent is do doing towards the completion of the district goals the superintendent completes the district goals and a self assessment and the executive um evidence of six leadership standards so he'll be able to provide you with a hyperlink in each of the goal areas that he wants you to see evidence that supports what he gave himself a rating for and then in the leadership standards the superintendent doesn't get to do a

066self- evaluation but they can provide you with those hyperlinks again that will give you evidence of how he feels he has done towards those specific standards okay then superintendent completes the um the board then completes the individual superintendent evaluations the board non-conflicted members meet to to discuss that comp compilation and identify the majority opinion then you have your annual summary conference at the next executive session having R the superintendent for both of those executive sessions and then the board president and the superintendent sign and date the annual performance report that should be done by July 1st okay any questions so far okay so the pre-conference which would be held in March is really pretty much just a progress on the district goals and talking about that and talking about qu student progress and then also

067any questions or concerns that the board might have and then the goals assessment is really going to be part of ATA which says that the evaluation shall be based on goals and objectives of the district and those are generally three to five critical Focus areas that you all feel with the superintendent need to be focused on in the upcoming year so that's why you generally will do those over the summer because you'll know exactly what has been accomplished in the previous year's evaluation and if there's anything you need to carry over which there might be um or things that need to be further expanded on okay then that really is an annual collaborative process between the superintendent and the board some goals may be multi-year and when you're evaluating remember you're always evaluating on the

068progress towards the achievement of the district goals because the superintendent has until June 30th of each year to complete those and then the superintendent is going to provide you with those action plans that will really show you how he's going to get you from point A where you are in June or July or August to June of the following year okay and you should be receiving and identifying areas time frames when you'd like to receive those updates so on our landing page you would go about halfway down and see in quick resources the CSA and board self- evaluation click on that and that will take you directly to both of the evaluation pieces that you can start on the goals assessment looks just like this the superintendent will drop in the description of the goal

069whether he feels he's achieved satisfactory progress was made or little or no progress was made and then put in comments then whether you're the first person who goes in to do the evaluation or the last person who goes in you will only see what the superintendent has entered okay you won't see anybody else's ratings or comments until you get that compilation so then you'll be able to go in again non-conflicted members only you'll be able to go in you'll see whether the superintendent felt that they achieved satisfactory progress or literally no progress was made and you can either agree with that or Mark your own rating achieve satisfactory progress or little or none and then put in comments that reflect why you made those that rating okay a lot of times I'm delivering the sup

070the superintendent's evaluation and somebody will call me and say why did somebody say this we don't know that I'm not a mind reader I don't think anybody here is so if you can put in in a very constructive way why you're giving that rating it will help the superintendent understand where he is with those those particular areas okay and think about it this way if you're working outside the home and you're not working for yourself you probably have an evaluation done every year and you really do need to know that so that you know from your employer perspective whether you're doing a good job or whether they want to see you improve on any areas so that's really what this is about and it really does help to give you a communication um Avenue also

071to be able to talk about these things so a sample of a compilation for a goal the goal might have been improved Safety and Security of students and staff the superintendent put in that they achieved the goal and their comments were the superintendent reports out monthly at board meetings on the progress made toward the district goals attached as the yearly action plan for those goals and additional evidence can be found at the attached standard links too and then board members are able to put in their comments okay and you can see from the from the ratings there SE the superintendent felt that he had achieved this goal he or she and seven members agreed with that one person felt satisfactory progress was made and one person felt little or no no progress was made so

072the the um the majority opinion in that particular area area would be the seven who felt that the superintendent had achieved the goal okay and then you can pick out comments when you're having that first um executive session you can look through that and I always suggest that whoever's going to be typing it up bring in a highlighter and highlight the areas the comments that board members said that really reflects what we're trying to say here okay because if you do what I did my first year doing that you think you're going to get home and remember and you don't okay so learn from my mistake I was calling board members the next day and saying what did we say about this so highlighters are great the Professional Standards of have been um put together

073by the is they're the isck standards which is the interstate School leaders licenser Consortium and they were updated in 2015 which led to our updating the superintendent evaluation in 201617 and it does reflect the qualities and the values of leadership that work leadership work that's integral really to Student Success and it also helps you identify as a board areas of strength and areas where more focus should be so those standards are Mission Vision core values governance ethics and professional Norms operations management curriculum instruction assessment and school Improvement community of care equity and family engagement and professional capacity community of school district Personnel so remember in the standards the superintendent can't give themselves a rating but they can give you those hyperlinks that they want you to look at that they feel will attest to how

074they did in those particular standards each of the standard has a separate name and a separate definition the rating scale is always going to be the same exemplary proficient area for growth unsatisfactory or not observed but the definition for that may be different based on that particular standard okay and then the superintendent can also add in those sample resources for those particular standards with those hyperlinks and for the superintendent's perspective you need to know that anything that you put type in there when you hit the space bar it's going to show you that it's a hyperlink but if it isn't it won't take you anywhere so you want to make sure that when you go in and do that you try again before you submit it try again from another computer maybe from home or

075if you were at work do the opposite and make sure that those hyperlinks actually bring them to someplace okay and then there will be indicators there that um for each of the the standards there's usually five to seven there's the rating exemplary proficient area for growth unsatisfactory and not observed the not observed gives especially new board members the opportunity to say I don't really have enough information to evaluate the superintendent on this it doesn't count for them and it doesn't count against them okay it's just I don't have enough information and then you'll be able to give an overall assessment of that standard and in that particular case it was proficient and um and then you can put in your board member comments that support those ratings okay and we really do your board members

076your fellow board members will appreciate you putting in comments and if you don't put in a comment you have you won't be able to advance to the next page so either you need to put in na or something to that effect but we would really appreciate it and your board members will appreciate it if you put in a comment so then this is a sample of the compilation of a standard and you can see that most of the people on that eight member board so there was probably one person who was conflicted um marked the superintendent as proficient in those areas proficient or area for growth and if it's not clear if if say there were four and four four proficient for area for growth you could say in your summary that the board was

077you know was equally split between proficient and area for growth when you're doing that final report and then you see at the bottom that the overall assessment was five for proficient which would mean that was the majority of the board members who participated okay so the compilation is going to be non-conflicted members opinions it's going to be a data source that gives you allows you to identify what that majority opinion is then the majority opinion is going to take care of the annual performance report the summary report and that summary report will be what you hold the annual summary conference for and you'll give it to the superintendent about 24 to 48 hours ahead of time so he can process everything and the summary conference is really for the superintendent to be able to address

078the board board members and for board members to be able to address the superintendent most importantly it's also the opportunity for anybody who is not in the majority to voice their opinion if they so choose okay so again that summary report is going to be all non-conflicted members you're going to race the superintendent you're going to identify the majority opinion in that one executive session so that's just the non-conflicted members of the the board that meet an exec for that then you'll have that um annual performance report usually it's written by the board president or a designate um and even if the board president isn't conflicted it can be a designate and that's going to reflect the agreed upon majority opinion and then that next executive sum executive session at your next board meeting you'll

079have R the superintendent again and you'll have given him the annual summary report 24 to 48 hours ahead of time then the superintendent signs and dates one copy if you have if you're using hard copies the board president signs and dates one hard copy the superintendent should keep a hard copy or an electronic copy for themselves and the board President should keep an electronic or hard copy for the board attorney Okay the reason we say the board attorney is because if you had in your confidential files the superintendent has a file also but other confidential secretaries or conf idential staff may have access to that the only people that should see the superintendent evaluation are non-conflicted board members employees of the district should not be able to have access to that so that's why we

080suggest you give it to your board attorney okay the annual performance template looks something like this you'll drop in the superintendent's name the school year the district the Board of Education met on what date to discuss and complete um the goals for that particular year and the superintendent leadership ship skills how many board members participated what the district goal was what the indicators of student progress was whether the goal had been achieved satisfactory or little or no progress and any supporting remarks okay and then for the the standards you'll be able to yes oh they're just to show you that that's where your supporting remarks can go I didn't do that part of this so I'm not really sure why they put red marks there I think it was probably to remind us to talk

081about the supporting remarks okay I did most of this but not that one um and then the leadership standards again you'll be able to mark off one thing that was the overall rating the majority opinion of the board and then you'll be able to put in reporting supporting remarks then the last two things we ask you to look at are what were the what are the overall strengths of the superintendent in those standards and we list the six St the six standards you can check off more than one box and then you can put in supporting remarks and you can talk you'll talk about that in your um in that evaluation period that when you're looking at the the majority opinion and then the option is also to provide overall summary evaluation comments so then

082of the six standards which areas might require professional growth or Improvement and again you can check off more than one box okay and again please put in supporting remarks so that you have that opportunity your fellow board members have the opportunity to know why those things showed up the way they did okay so the summary conference is going to be the non-conflicted members of the board and the superintendent me to discuss WR notice to the superintendent you're going to share that evaluation prior to the conference it should be a majority of the total members of the board or at least all of the non-conflicted members of the board the minority opinion can be voiced at that time that's really important important because sometimes board members who you know if everybody checked off or if seven

083people checked off you know that the superintendent had achieved that goal and if there's somebody that's not that didn't mark off achieve they may really want to share with the superintendent why they said that it's their opportunity to do that but also understand that anybody who checked off something that's different than the majority opinion may have learned in that identification of the majority opinion why other people thought that it had been achieved or differently than they did and may not have that same opinion anymore okay because sometimes we forget things it's part of who we are as human beings and then um you'll have the minutes of the executive session that'll reflect that the annual summary Conference was held needs to be completed by July 1st superintendent's going to retain a copy and the board

084president will give the board copy to the um board attorney I really will beg you to make sure that you have a copy because we cannot keep a copy of this once December 31st has passed we have to purge these from our system because we can't keep compilations and we can't keep Personnel documents okay so once you've the superintendent has done their part and you've all started to do your individual responses I'll compile that send it to um the board president or a design or you can retrieve it from the website write notice to the superintendent to meet an executive session just to discuss the compilation identify that majority opinion then the board president or a designate types up that annual performance report which the template is on our website as well and I but

085I'll send that to you in a Word document so you can actually enter things into it because the template that's on there is a PDF and a lot of times people have a problem with entering information into that then you'll WR the superintendent again for that meeting with the non-conflicted members of the board and the superintendent to meet an executive session for the summary conference okay so who keeps a copy I already did this we can't keep a copy of the compiled so we'll Purge it on December 31st we won't have access to it anymore we often have board members who want to try and get that um and you would have to go through your board attorney for that then okay so we suggest very highly that the soup keeps a copy and the

086board keeps a copy that goes to the board attorney so in thinking about the board the superintendent evaluation this is not a once a year event this is something that you're really going to whether you started in January or July you're going to look back as a board member for the time you've been a board member on the superintendent's performance in any of those areas okay you want to review the process the performance over the full year or since January you don't want to base it on your last conversation with the superintendent so I often say if the superintendent calls you the night before you're doing their evaluation and says I got your kid into har it's not going to cost you anything don't give them Exemplar on everything just because of that but also

087likewise if they call you the night before and say I couldn't get your kid into Harvard and you're paying a full run whatever school they go to don't give them needs Improvement or unsatisfactory on everything because you want to look at the whole year um you want to develop a system to superintendent's going to develop a system to retain that evidence and it really is the responsibility of all non-conflicted board members to participate and you want to have those progress reports so that you're you're understanding exactly where the superintendent is in the process at each of those points in time okay any questions on the superintendent of Al okay if you have questions call me board self- evaluation this is new um it provides a time when the board can actually do that have that

088self-reflection for themselves as board members as individual board members and as a whole it can be completed by all board members there's no conflicts here if you're a board member you can participate there's no statutory deadline and it's not required but it really is a best practice because it's that one time a year when you can really sit down and say I feel like I did a good job at this or I feel like I need Improvement in these areas and I think the board did a really great job in this or I think the board may need some improvement in these areas so why do you do it it improves your governance and your management the results can be used to develop future board goals it brings the individuals together as a team and

089it also sets a standard for board conduct okay how is it done it's completed annually the superintendent can participate as well there are two components board and individual it determines the priorities in the six areas of board governance there used to be nine now there's six the field service rep will complete your compile the results and deliver that to the board president along with a chart and I can also come in and review those findings with the board to talk about your areas of strength and areas that you may want to improve upon and then completion times are really based on your reorganization and goal setting times so if you're going to set goals over the summer you'll probably want to do this before the summer so that you have this information to then use

090it for goal setting okay so when you go to the board self- evaluation you're going to see not MSU Charter or MSU District you're going to see your District because you're going to have to go in enter your District email account and your password if you forgot your password click on forgot password it will send you an email to your District email account okay and then you'll click on your school district we had this is showing too because some board members are ascending rep to another distri district and they have the opportunity to evaluate both superintendents so in your case you'll it will just say dellen okay then you're going to see some um some directions and we really want you to understand that enhancing the value of every voice contributing to a meaningful evaluation

091really requires that all fields are completed okay um that just gives you some directions on what you're going to go through and it should the your responses and comments really should reflect the performance of the board as a team okay not individual members or staff if you're putting comments it first of all the board can only evaluate non-conflicted members can only evaluate the superintendent conflicted members can participate in the evaluation sometimes conflicted members put in the board self- evaluation things that they feel about the superintendent or the business administrator even though board members do not evaluate the the um business administrator only the superintendent so if there are things in there that are evaluative in any or could be perceived as evaluative we would redact those I would send those to um the board president

092highlighted and ask you to pass it on to your board attorney the board attorney agrees that they could be evaluative then we would redact those and just say evaluative okay the um the new rating scale is exemplary proficient the same as the superintendent's evaluation okay they they align completely and the previous ratings were commendable good adequate unsatisfactory or not observed okay and again the not observed means that you don't have enough information to have evaluated the board on that we already talked about this your census is in good shape so now with the new board self- evaluation the board president will need to go in and start this off just like in the superintendent's evaluation the superintendent has to start it off you can't do anything until the superintendent has completed their part now the

093board president must go in if you don't have any board goals you would check that box that circled and say board has no goals okay if you do have goals you're going to type in the goals and then you'll be able to put in one board goal um and you don't use a number for that but you can go up to five board goals there'll be space for five board goals then once the board president has completed that part you'll be able to go in complete your parts as well okay and then it's going to give you these um these wonderful for this is for the goals whether it's achieved satisfactory progress or little or no progress was made I do highly recommend that if you have board goals you've developed some action plans for

094those so that you'll be able to and I always suggest when the you ask the superintendent to talk about the progress towards the district goals that you talk about the progress towards the board goals because otherwise it's too easy to forget what you you did and you don't discuss them at all then and you want people to know that you did that because you got together usually over the summer and created these and you want to let them know where you are with that so again you would be able to mark whether you felt it was achieved satisfactory progress or little or no progress was made we want you to use those previous or next buttons that are below at the bottom of that page not the arrows up top that are in you can't

095see them here but that are on your browser okay okay if you use the browser hours it's going to throw you out it will save wherever you've thr wherever you've stopped if you you know had an emergency you had to get up and leave or something it will save where you are automatically and then it will bring the next time you log in it'll bring you it'll self time out and then it will bring you to where you left off okay so then there are six standards that um that we came up with and they're from the keywork of school boards which is National School boards Association keywork and you'll evaluate the board's overall performance vision mission goals policy accountability for student achievement governance team relationships and accountability resource management and oversight and Community leadership

096and then there will be sections in those the standards will have a statement again just like the superintendent standard was and then you'll be able to click those radio buttons all those little circles are called radio buttons I learned that about four years ago I'd never heard of a radio button before I just knew you clicked the circle but um and then you'll be able to put in your team's greatest strength in that particular area and the team's greatest challenge or opportunity in that area okay then you'll have an indivi rating um your individual's contribution to the team there'll be a section for that and there are 11 indicators there's no comment section there so you'll just put down whether you feel you were exemplary proficient yada yada okay and then what do you consider

097to be the board's overall greatest strengths that you can build from and what governance areas do we need to focus on to further our work as an effective board team then we'll give you a report when that's done it will look something like that with the numbers just like it's it's really modeled parallel to what the superintendent compilation looks like so you'll be able to see those you'll see the greatest strengths you'll see the greatest challenges and um also those are based on ratings from from one to four so four is exemplary proficient is three area for growth is is two points and unsatisfactory as one and again not observed doesn't count either positively or negatively and then now we have instead of just giving you the charts that we've given you in the past

098the new chart summarizes really the ratings of the board board in the six standards so you'll see that in that first area vision mission and goals 36% of the board said that the board was exemplary 50% said that the board was proficient and 10% felt that it was an area for for growth okay so you'll be able to see those and really be able to measure does the board really feel that we're proficient you know to ex ranging from proficient to exemplary and in all of these areas the board did feel that they were consider that they were considering themselves proficient to exemplary okay and you'll always want to try and get more exemplary the next year and then we'll give you this year you'll only have the chart for this year because the charts

099for last year don't pertain to this year because last year had nine um standards this year has six so this year you'll have one one set of columns next year you would have two okay these are the resources that we have so when you click on that um the quick resources or the um yeah the quick resources you'll be able to click on superintendent board self- evaluation it brings you to this link and you'll be able to look at all of those different samples and FAQs and things like that there's also a CSA evaluation guide book that you can download in there that you're you're welcome to to look at as well okay and remember you're evaluating in the board self- evaluation you're evaluating only the board your team's performance and efficacy you're not evaluating

100the district and you're not evaluating any staff and we really hope that you'll use this as an opportunity um for really a conscious governance tool for improvement okay what questions might you have so I did have one sure so going back to the slide uh 40 40 42 I think it was rating individuals contribution to board team that would be like me saying how I think I did yes so you'll be indicating whether you feel you did a good job whe whether you feel you were exemplary proficient um satisfactory you know needs Improvement area for growth those kinds of things evaluating myself okay on yourself yes so another question do boards typically have a lot of board goals that you've seen so usually three to five is what we recommend because we want you to

101develop board goals they generally have to do with governance your own performance areas that you'd like to improve upon there could be communication you know Community engagement it could be communicating with the community um it could be taking a look at your governance structure do you want to use specific go um specific committees or do you want to be a board of the whole those kinds of things you may have policy revision goal policy revision goal in there because you know that you need to be reviewing those policies really at every meeting um and we can also let you know what policies might need to be updated before your qac your next qac review if you send that to us for a wellness policy check okay you don't have to use our policy system for

102that we'll just evaluate whether the the policies need to be updated or not or revised by a certain date for qac okay so those are the kinds of things that you'll really look at when you're talking about improving you know the governance structure of the board so do other boards that you've seen have a specific cence like they'll do this every May or every June or every July or November so sometimes board so boards that have November elections are sometimes now doing them in September they'll do the self- evaluation in September October of the of the of this so this year would be September or October because even your newest members in January would have eight or nine months on on the board to evaluate the board right okay and then sometimes the board will

103do their board goals for January to December okay rather than the school year okay because your District goals are always going to be July 1st to June 30th right so um it's really up to the board as to how they want to do that either way is fine you can do it in the spring um when I was on the board we had April elections that's how long ago that was and we always did it in conjunction with the superintendent's evaluation so we knew we got both of them done and we were good for the rest of the year and then we would sit down over the summer at a retreat and develop District goals and board goals based on largely what we learned from the superintendent evaluation and the board self- evaluation I was

104just thinking from the standpoint it's we're we're in February Y and where where would that potentially land or make the most sense to so if you wanted to develop some board goals now you could do that you could develop you know one or two three um um not more than five though we never want the superintendent to have more than five either because if you have more than five you can't provide that laser focus on those particular areas and I often tell the story when I first came to the association in 2008 my board that I had just come off of to work for njsba superintendent called me on my way into Trenton and she said so we did goal setting last night and I said great how did that work out for you and

105I said did you have Kathy come in and do your goals cuz she was the FSR and she said no the board president decided that he wanted to run that knowing who the board president was I said so how'd that work out for you and she said I now have 36 goals 366 okay so I said you can't have 36 goals and give attention you know primary attention to any one of those I said I'll bet you they're probably more like objectives so what I would say is take a look look at the goal at what they've you know what you've all agreed to and see if they can go into three to five buckets put everything that's alike into a similar bu you know into a single bucket and she said I can do

106that she called me the following week and she said I came up with four buckets I have four goals everybody's happy most of those were really objectives like you said anyway so you know but you can't you you can't ask a superintendent to run a district on a daily basis and then have 30 six goals that they have to focus on every single day it's just it's not possible so three to five for soup goal for district goals and three to five for board goals if you have one or two that's fine okay okay your goal could be to create it's to annually set board and District goals it could okay okay so and you actually have a sample of um I think you have a sample in the packet let me see of action

107plans I put an example of action plans which includes I may not have if I didn't I will send to you oh I did not okay I will send to you um I will send you a copy of a template for district and board goals the district goals would be for the superintendent to do obviously the board goals it has there's a sample of of what the goals could be like and what the action plans could be like okay okay cool okay any other questions uh guys any other questions I thank you so much for everything you do for your students and your staff and your community it's a pleasure seeing you again and I hope to see you again soon if you have any questions please don't hesitate to either call me or shoot

108me an email okay absolutely thank you thank you maram [Applause] oh okay I'm just gonna so I just want to thank you uh Maryann and and board members you know that I was a board member uh as well before becoming a superintendent I will say it is uh field service reps are very much underutilized resources I think generally so I know some of you might have individual questions about conflicts or other types of things or process or policy or whatever marann is a great resource for those things um School boards is an organization that we that we work very closely with on a lot of things so as we go through these processes as you go through your trainings as individual questions come up please feel free to reach out you have her contact information

109and obviously she's here for all of you so thank you again for for being here you're welcome I'm going to say good night have a good rest of the evening I hope the rest of your meeting goes well you all right you do have a coat just I'll remind you of that temperature does fluctuate in here you got to have layers all right so um I'm going to just move very quickly through the the ssds report which is a student safety data system report rep typically this report would be given by uh Miss Hoy unfortunately she's ill and so I am I have the honor of presenting this uh very exciting information so I'm going to go through this quickly the presentation is available online student safety data system uh was previously the EV vrs

110which is a required presentation uh regarding District programming around um violence vandalism weapon system substance abuse and then Hib trainings and programs um and this report is required to be given twice annually and so the first reporting period is September 1st to December 31st and uh essentially it's an overview so you can see here by school the number of incidents uh of different types there are a couple of categories that the incidents are broken into the first is the violence vandalism substance abuse weapons and confirmed HIV incidents and then other incidents leading to removal um which might be outside of those and then HIV trainings and programs that are associated there and so you can see those listed and again this is from September 1st to December 31st this does get updated so there is

111a reporting of the types of incidents and how uh what the what the occurrence are for those District trainings and programs um we do a lot that is associated with mandatory training and then obviously we have additional work that's done through uh related service providers or our own staff so you can see the list there I'm not going to read it all um a lot of this is required by Statute and so we have uh mandatory training that's provided to staff members through an electronic portal and the um completion date for that those trainings has been moved up uh over the few years that I've been here um to really being December 31st at this point or the very beginning of January and so now all staff members are also required to not only complete

112mandatory training but also do a policy acknowledgement that indicates that they've read through uh or they've made been made aware of really critical policies and regulations that are uh involve things like uh affirmative action or um hostile work environment or healthy workplace environment or other sorts of things so that is now also baked into you know what we do um on an annual basis with all staff members programs provided this is more uh more directed types of programming so rather than just basic trainings what are some activities that might be done at different schools that focus on practices that that you know sort of preempt these types of behavor behaviors obviously we want to be moving and we have been moving in a more restorative practices type of approach right which doesn't mean that there's

113no discipline but it means that we have to build very strong relationships with students first and that's that's the level that we want to restore the relationship with our students back to if there's some sort of incident that occurs and so restorative practices is a is a really widely misunderstood sort of framework um but it really comes from the fact that um if you start from a very strong place of a relationship with someone and then they they break that relationship in some way by you know uh violating the student code of conduct or creating some you know Act of harassment intimidation and bullying that we we then work with them to get them back to that point of that strong relationship of trust and um compassion and empathy and all of those things so

114Hib investigations here for the beginning of the year was actually very very uh just a really wonderful beginning of the year in terms of of these incidents um we have seen an uptick in the second half of the year of these types of incidents and it's very typical that in the spring especially um you know we we will see more of this um but the beginning of the year was very quiet which is always nice and then here is the list uh the really exhaustive list of the types of trainings and programs that are done um this again is is the inclusion of mandatory training and then also programs that we have weak of respect School violence Awareness Week Red Ribbon Week which are all um you know outlined in code um we've been working

115with Urban assembly as we've discussed um we've had mixed results with Urban assembly but there there has been a focus at least on um the types of practices that could be beneficial to building a positive School climate and then we've been working uh I've been working with the teacher climate and culture uh uh committee which is a grant-funded group of Staff members that will be will continue to work with um the grant actually ends at the end of this month the grant period but we will continue that work through title 2 and um ensure that we have those conversations and then this is essentially just a school by school um outline you know the the the many of the same things that you see sort of every year trainings are really very much the same

116that we do each year we do trainings with new staff members as well at new staff orientation and then we have programs that are slightly different at each School level obviously pbsis is um part of fa elementary schools sort of DNA and they've been doing that for for some years and sort of re-engaged with that process a little bit there are now incentive programs at the middle school for various things as we try to kind of build capacity in that in that respect um um and then miss Hoy as the anti-bullying coordinator works with the anti-bullying specialists at each of the schools um on a lot of training that's associated with with with those um those types of things and she herself is also required to do a lot of training on you know uh

117Trends and suicide prevention and other kinds of of things so here's the high school one um so that's it and this will be available online um if it's not already so please feel free to review it and then I'm happy to answer any questions as they come up all right all right thank you all right I will uh continue with the superintendent report um so a couple of really important items uh today was the governor's budget address and so uh there was a lot of fanfare around that a lot of sort of curiosity what was going to happen we did actually get information from his office through njasa regarding the state of the budget for next year uh during the address basically he said a couple things which I'll just share here uh he he

118is committed to fully funding the school funding formula um first and foremost so that is a good sign for everybody um he's recommending that it this is the single largest investment in education um in history this year um there's $36 million that's being recommended for new preschool expansion and this is obviously a big thing because we are our entire preschool expansion opportunities are um based on the idea that we that we're getting School uh state aid for these seats and so if the aid goes away then the seats go away because we just we can't possibly um afford you know that that program without that additional state aid um and then there is also he also mentioned uh cell phone ban um and Grant funds that were going to be used for piloting uh with

119schools that are interested in doing this sort of a phone-free school environment so from Asa from njasa um we got a couple of much more sort of detailed pieces of information K12 direct Aid is um is planning to be increased to 12 billion which is um out of the $22 billion in total education funding which represents over a third of the entire state budget which is a which is just a mind-boggling um sort of understanding preschool funding reached 1.3 billion uh which is up a half uh 550 million since 2018 and then also School employee benefits supports total 6.3 billion which is super important this is for tpf um and Social Security this is basically the pension system so we talk about fully funding the pension system um and keeping that solvent that's obviously a

120huge uh piece of information and then total school aid since he took office was up 48% % so uh dellan has been in a very uh good place for the last couple of years because it was um historically underfunded for many many years and so the last couple of years we've gotten a tremendous amount of additional state aid which was basically owed to us um based on the formula at the same time that we've gotten that increase in state aid their districts across the state that have received like $12 million or $20 million less in funding and the way the budgets work you know the budget addresses today by the end of the day on Thursday all of the state aid numbers come out so we we will get you know we're anticipated to get

121a you know all the the worksheets with all of our funding and then we have essentially two weeks to put together a budget and present the tentative budget this is all you know the deadlines are all in code and things like that so for us doing that with money is a very easy thing for districts that have lost $10 million it's basically an impossible ask and these districts many of whom are in Middle sex County some of whom are in Middle sex County South Brunswick being one of them um sort of the most prominent one throughout the state you've seen a lot about Jackson Tom's River they've had to sell schools they've had to cut busing and cut programs make things pay to play all of those types of things uh Lakewood obviously which is

122a very very unique District is bankrupt and has been borrowing money for the last 10 years just to make payroll um and uh so one of the key things that has been fought for in legislation has been to try to limit the amount of reduction that these districts are going to be receiving they're not going to get their money back um but there is a there's commentary about possibly limiting the reduction to 3% and so if you if you received you know $100 million then you would receive no less than $97 million in the subsequent year um which will at least be a little bit more helpful for those districts for us we are very very close to being fully funded according to the formula I think we're 98% or something like that we're anticipating

123uh hoping for Flat state aid at a minimum um I don't necessarily anticipate that we will see a decrease in state aid we will certainly we're our overall state aid number is going to go up regardless because we're going to receive much more funding for preschool but the rest of our budget we're we're hoping at least remains flat if we do receive a little bit of a bump that's a good thing um but um I had a conversation with the DEA leadership this week uh last week um certainly not anticipating any Cuts we're not anticipating any program Cuts uh staff Cuts or loss of Services of any sort we've been very deliberate about building things out to help students and help families and help those who are in need and I anticipate that all of

124those things are going to remain so that's a good thing um there is just I I'll just say one other thing which is that there are going to be some new uh grants and uh education initiatives that we'll certainly hop on um one of them is uh a continued funding for high impact tutoring and so we've actually received two grants related to high impact tutoring we're running the second one right now throughout the the end of the year which has been very beneficial um we also uh there is a three $3 million for phone free schools program uh that's going to be anticipated and then continued funding for the computer science education which we we have received two rounds of funding for literacy screening grants which I'm definitely uh interested in us applying for because

125we now have a very strong robust screening program that can be used as a model throughout the state the office of learning and Recovery uh which I'm not quite sure what that is um but that's a new a new initiative that they're looking for student Mental Health Services um and school SEC security improvements so we're we're sort of on the Forefront of a lot of these initiatives the student Mental Health Services the fact that we've been able to transition away from a related service provider and build our school-based wellness program um which is in its infancy and has a lot of work to do um I think is a is a strong um a strong program and obviously from a school security Improvement we we've been a district that has invited a lot of superintendents

126and Security Experts in to to look at you know for example the keyless entry system and um the security system and and the the the way that we're using genitech and the types of enhancements that we can can do with that so all of that is to say uh education is in good shape this year um this is the last year of Murphy's term and obviously I think as a sitting Governor um he wants to have a good showing to help his party in the future so this was sort of anticipated that this would occur um but from a very practical pragmatic perspective I think we're in good shape for next year um we will as I said get our state aid funding by the end of the day on Thursday uh and then we

127will share the tentative budget present ation on March 11th which is our next board meeting okay any questions about the budget not necessarily about the budget but you brought something to our attention about Urban assembly you said it's been met with mixed Revol uh results can you expand on that sure so yeah I mean I I I'm not sure that I that I want to go into a lot of detail about it right now um I think it's when we think about the types of things that we look you know school school districts have uh costs that increase at at a a much higher percent than 2% each year Personnel costs you know Transportation costs for out of out for us it would be out of District um uh student transportation obviously out of District

128placements for students with special needs um health benefits right these are costs that increase so when you think about a flat budget even right you have these ballooning costs in other areas which means that you've got to tighten um in in other areas that you might have spent funds so Urban assembly right now and actually a number of things are paid for through grants they're either paid for through Esser funds um which have now you know totally gone away or they've been paid for through competitive grants that we've written um or you know other types of Grant funds we have to take a look at all of the programs that we are funding through those programs and determine what's going to be the most valuable to sustain um and so Urban assembly is one of

129those those groups that um you know their services um are adding a certain amount of value we have to determine whether that value is worth spending what will be a smaller pot of funding to maintain thank you yep so a couple of uh other items just for the superintendent's report um we have uh we're beginning our transition at the high school away from uh navian or Naviance um we're we're onboarding a program called School links which is going to be a it's just it's a College and Career planning uh software uh navian is owned by power school and power school has had a lot of issues with privacy and support and other types of things and so we're excited about School links it's kind of an upand Comer in the field um it's in a

130lot of Texas districts it's been around for probably seven or eight years uh at least um it's a a lighter tool that students will will that we anticipate students will engage with much more highly and it has a tie-in to Common App and and all of the kinds of functionality that we would need um we uh the district was approved for Lincoln Middle School to run a schoolwide title one program next year this is something that uh we're in the first year now of Faber we applied last year and what the difference between uh the two Title One program types there's a targeted Title One program and then there's a schoolwide program and districts that are over 40% economic disadvantage can run schoolwide programs and what that means is that essentially every student in the

131school is considered eligible for Title One funded services so when you run an after school program anybody can come right it doesn't have to just be targeted to certain students so it's been a a a boon for fav because we can just expand who we're inviting to these programs and providing services for the same thing will be true now at the middle school next year and then we will complete the application throughout next year for the high school for the subsequent year uh for 2627 some grants updates um we have the expanding access to climate change Grant there is uh we had a a staff member from Ruckers a professor uh doing Hydroponics work which uh Douglas mentioned came in and worked with the teachers on the 18th and uh the second day is tomorrow

132and then on March 12th there's a a convening at Rutter's who is our sort of University partner um it will be attended by the acting commissioner Kevin damer um and the the Faber team led by uh Miss Gunther and Mr tenant and Miss drapkin will be presenting on the Hydroponics work that's happening at Faber um which is super cool obviously we're also waiting to hear about an additional $155,000 in funding which we believe we're going to receive and that will allow us to formally bring that climate change education work to the K2 group even though those kids have been working on it uh it's been sort of informal so this will give them more access to to really get involved in that work our computer science grant is going well we have a couple of

133folks that are doing Master's programs in computer science education we also have our favorite after school program which is being run by uh Miss Brown we have Middle School uh work done by Mr puso designing and testing catapults and at the high school Mr Santiago is doing the girls who code um uh Club as well as computer science uh targeted support for AP students and then some general coding and Robotics work we have a visit from the Department of Education coming up on March 6th and then we're looking at parent engagement events and this now runs through the summer so we can also take some of these funds and run some summer programming for with that as well our teacher climate and culture Grant um as I mentioned the grant period is a very very

134short Grant period it was maybe four months the entire Grant um which is just this just unheard of uh but that actually uh runs out at the end of this month we have um we've held a number of meetings uh We've focused on a couple of uh AI programs and some uh curriculum management software that we think is going to will will help some things so uh We've we're sort of slowly rolling some of that out um and then Saturday we had a really great convening um we invited staff members we paid staff members uh we invited staff members to attend a paid professional development opportunity that was led by um Evelyn Swift who is a principal in Manchester Township it's an elementary principal who's had sort of a just a extraordinary wide range of

135jobs K12 um and the session that she led was resilience and educational leadership so really it's about uh educator leadership teacher leadership um the type of systems and structures that can be put together in schools to to ensure that staff members feel supported and that they have a voice in you know the educational program we had over 40 staff members attend um which is incredible so uh I'm extremely grateful to the staff members who did attend um the feedback that we've received is very very positive also very constructive about the types of things that we can do with future sessions based on the experience that the staff members had uh and obviously Miss drapkin um had a tremendous role in putting this together so I'm very thankful for for her we're also thankful to uh

136dell and bagel which uh provided a really nice donation uh for the teachers um which was great and uh and yeah I mean I think it was just it was a wonderful uh session overall free from kind of the The Daily Grind of like you go to work and then you've got like a two-hour afternoon session but you're kind of burned out from the first half of the day this was Saturday 9 to 12 people showed up at 8:30 8:45 the mood was really good um you know and then it was a really interactive positive session so uh and then you know the the last piece of that that Grant work is our work with stter which is ongoing uh with goal setting and uh we're actually meeting with Melissa Matarazzo on Thursday for our

137Q2 um review and then talk about next year and you know closing the year out strong and all of that so that's very exciting stuff high impact tutoring Grant is the last grant that we have uh access to and we have that just a very narrowly tailored program for Wilson instruction that's happening at Faber um throughout the end of May uh that's an after school program we have uh ESL adult classes are running we've had we have over 36 participants now which is incredible um we also uh just completed access testing at the middle school high school is almost done Faber has a while to go um because of the number of students and the way that students at that level are tested and then we also had 13 students pass the Seal of biliteracy

138which is up from four students last year my first year in the district uh I brought the sealed by literacy in and I think we had something like six students last year was a smaller year this year we're up to 13 and that's really due a lot uh to the Outreach that we did to parents and we had a Saturday session also where kids could come in and test um and take the stamp test and that sort of thing and then uh my last item uh is the preschool expansion we have a um we have our room set up we have our budget which we'll put together once we get our numbers on Thursday um but we are holding an in-person registration on Saturday March 8th um it's actually in this room and it's from

1399 to 12 we have almost all of our seats that we're all that we've allocated for next year are anticipated to be filled already so we're going to be above 90% for our universe which is 150 160 kids um and uh the registration event will allow people to start to engage with the district uh meet beatric gimenez who is our community parent involvement specialist uh meet Karen riggy who is our preschool cpis and um you know we'll have other folks here from the community to support that registration process so there's a lot of a lot of great stuff going on um I'll also just add that I spent uh today in Trenton um I had maybe it was the third or fourth convening of the evaluation working group and so we're at we're working with

140folks um from different agencies and organizations across the state on sgo and teacher valuation practices generally so there's a lot of a lot of really nice conversations happening about education um you know throughout the state sometimes we don't hear about them every day because of sort of The Daily Grind but there's a lot to be proud of and thankful of um in terms of the work that we do so I certainly feel that way uh lastly I'll just do the enrollment report real quick we are once again up uh a number of students we're up uh 20 students from the beginning of the year we're now at 1,416 including our Private Preschool providers 1374 in the district which is actually the same number that we ended the school year last year with so uh we

141we have 92 students in kindergarten 93 in first grade 91 in 2 grade 97 in third grade 91 in 4th grade 100 and fifth grade middle school is 109 119 and 108 and the high school is 104 97 112 and 99 so again a total of 1374 we're up 20 students from the beginning of the year and then we've got the 42 students who are at A+ Academy through the preschool expansion Grant so um we are serving a lot of students in in in the town we're very excited to be doing so thank you Mr Ross would it be fair to say that we are definitely getting kids from from for more color yeah what was that is would it be fair to say that with the new construction projects are we finally seeing the

142influx of kids I don't think it's I think that the projections were were were actually pretty accurate okay as as of right now there there was a report that was done in October or November um as part of Mayor sento's sort of town hall meeting bro you know meeting um and the projections were were were pretty spot-on okay there are a lot of other projects though that that are being built um and sort of every every day there's you know I'm hearing about a new a new dual use you know commercial residential building that's coming up on North Avenue or or something like that and we will continue to see you know families moving in um the immigration question has been an interesting one that you know I'm not sure how that's going to affect

143us in the long run we have really maintained strong relationships with um Hispanic families that are new to the country that are you know new to the area and they're you know they are accessing the kinds of services and you know functions that we provide like the meals and um you know other types of things so uh you know as long as we we make people feel welcome I think that you know we'll continue to be able to serve them properly and with that that is my report great thank you Mr Ross thank you any questions guys all right so moving along to uh item number nine public comments so the board invites public comments on agenda items only for members of the community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended

144to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in a back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making your public comment please State your name and municipality please note that all statements must be directed to the presiding officer please come to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make comments on agenda items only last call okay moving along

145uh item number 10 uh education so we're going to uh hear about uh the education committee uh report and I'll turn the floor over to miss ibach okay the dellan Board of Education committee uh agenda um was our meeting was conducted on February 18th uh in attendance were Miss Howard M shrimp miss ibok Mr J Dro Mr drapkin and miss drapkin and Mr Ross and during the uh discussion we discussed information about a number of items on tonight's agenda including the approval of special education programs for County Office recordkeeping a survey being given to some DHS students about Civic engagement and the Hib presentation a plan to have eth and nth grade students visit middle sex College to help to build the concept of college as a postgraduate pathway also we discussed a wide range

146of updat from Miss drapkin on professional development grants information committee work after school programming curriculum resources and other items and a variety of other confidential matters okay thank you miss ibach moving on to item number 11 uh education action items uh looking for a motion uh to approve items 11 a through G as block move to approve items 11 a through G is a block second okay open for questions or comments uh I just have to say um if the environmental club would need a chaperon I would be happy to join them in camel back just saying so any uh any questions or comments okay all right Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes M ibach yes Dr gendrano yes Mr satoi yes Miss Shimp yes Mrs Shep

147yes motion passes all right wonderful moving on to item number 12 uh person El discussion items um so I'll I'll give an update here so the Personnel committee met on February 18th in attendance were uh myself as chair um uh Mr Anderson uh Mrs Shep and Mr Ross uh we discussed a number of items including open positions and Staffing in the district uh approval for Mr marenberg to complete work on a wide range of Safety and Security items uh approval for uh Mr Zukowski to oversee an independent study for a student who needs an additional course to meet graduation requirements and a number of confidential items and that uh sums up the Personnel committee uh meeting um so moving on to item 13 Personnel action items looking for a motion to approve items 13 a

148through L as a block I move to approve items a through L is a block second okay open for questions or comments uh yes um I see that we had this um eth annual women's leadership conference on here which item uh is I okay and we only have one of our we have six women in leadership positions don't we in the district and only one one seems to were they not asked if they wanted to go uh information was shared regarding it um Mr drapkin is actually presenting at the uh at the event but none of our other female administrators wanted to go did they not respond or there I see that you ended up on there we have yeah I I will be there there is another board meeting so uh between between now

149and then so we certainly uh yeah any other questions or comments okay last call okay uh Mr PEB can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Miss ibach abstain Miss ibach did you mean to abstain to everything or to the one item you can vote on on the rest if you'd like okay um so on item e m sorry yep yeah you have to vote on the rest so are you saying yes to the rest yes sorry to the rest Dr janjo yes Mr sat anoi yes Miss Shimp yes and Mrs CH yes okay motion passes okay wonderful moving on to item number 14 uh operations uh discussion items and uh the operations committee report I'll turn the floor over to Mrs cond thank you the operation you got to bring

150it a little closer sorry got to hear got to hear it R can you hear me now yes okay the operations committee met on February 18th and in attendance was Mr Walker Mr sanoi Mr gendrano Mr pepy Mr Ross Miss dropkin and myself um and discuss a number of items including the creation of a law enforcement unit as per the recommendation of the memorandum of agreement with law enforcement an update on budget planning for the 2025 2026 school year a wide range of facilities updates information about the district's Universal prek facilities expansion Grant and a variety of confidential matters thank you okay thank you Mrs cond so moving on to item number 15 operations action items looking for motion to approve 15 a through J as a block move to approve items a through J

151as a block second okay open for questions comments last call okay Mr Pepe could you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Miss ibach yes Dr Jen Dro yes Mr sa anoi yes Miss Shimp yes Miss Shep yes motion passes all right wonderful thank you moving on to item number 16 old business is there anything from previous meetings that we'd like to bring back up to discuss or to continue to discuss okay take that as oh please goad just a reminder um for future purposes the the item I brought up earlier in regards to leveraging some of those uh grants uh to leverage emergency uh operations uh exercises and items like that so that we could leverage some of the benefits to enhance school safety as well as operational Readiness and Recovery

152okay duly noted any other uh old business okay moving on to number 177 uh new business um I would just like oh so let's actually any any anyone have a comment for new business um just a comment um after M Lopez's report maybe we could encourage a a trip to the library for our younger students to get library cards if could be a walking trip in the spring help us out with new readers and help our library out as well great idea that sounds great any other comments or any new business or anything wants to bring up I was just going to add um with the presentation that we had this evening with um Marian fredman um perhaps you know we should uh think more I know that we haven't done a board self- evaluation

153um definitely not in the time that I've been here so we it's something that I think we should discuss we don't have to discuss it tonight we can certainly think about it and we when we reconvene uh next time um have some points uh have some discussion about that I should say um and uh see uh about moving that forward because I think it's something that uh now that we have good stability within our board to be able to um to evaluate ourselves to see how we're doing in um uh approve on what on the way that we're do we're doing the stuff that we do any other comments guys okay moving on to item 18 presence remarks I think I've said enough and moving on to 19 public comments on any issue or any

154topic the board invites public comment on any issue or topic from members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members MERS of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in the back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making your public comment please please state your name in municipality please note that all statements must

155be directed to the presiding officer please come to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make any comments um make comments on any issue or any topic ask call CH that's a chance don't all run up quickly at one you know at once okay all right so moving on to item number 20 Executive session number two so the dellan Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the open public meetings act C njsa 10 4-12 B the confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining agreements tactics or techniques utilized in protecting Public Safety and property pending or anticipated litigation um as well as Personnel so at this time uh looking for a motion

156to go into executive session move to go to exe seconded all in favor I I opposed okay so we are going to move to Executive session um and we will adjourn from there so thanks everyone for coming tonight we will see you on March 11th same bat Time same bat Channel