Dunellen Board of Education Meeting - 1/28/2025

001e e okay we're going to go ahead and get started so calling this meeting to order so in accordance with the open public meetings njsa 10 4-6 uh 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 January 28th 2025 in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 dellan Avenue at 7 p.m. this meeting is broadcast live for details check www. dellan schools.org moving on to uh agenda item number two 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 meeting meetings act C njsa 10 4-12

002B the confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining agreements pending or anticipated litigation and Personnel uh any discussion that does not need to remain confidential will be made public as soon as it 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 uh have been adequately notified action will take place after the conclusion of the executive session and we have a motion to move to Executive session please move to go into executive session all those in favor I I opposed okay we're an executive see you in about uh 30 minutes around 7:30 e e e you anywhere oh e e e okay we are back so

003um board members looking for a motion to come back into public move to go back to public second all those in favor I I opposed okay so at this time uh we're going to go to the uh Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all will you 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 Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson present Mrs Condit present um Miss ibeck is absent Dr gendrano present Mrs Howard

004present Mr satoi present Miss Shimp is absent Mrs Shep present Mr Walker here student rep jazar mclin and student rep Douglas guaro PR we do have a quorum wonderful moving on to item number five so looking for a motion to approve the minutes from both the December 17th board meeting as well as the January 7th board meeting or reorganization so looking for motion to approve uh 5 A and B approve 5 A and B second open for questions comments last call okay Mr Pepe please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr saoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes fantastic moving on to item number six uh student recognition I'll turn it over to Mr Ross thank you Dr gendrano parents students it's wonderful

005to see you for this uh January board meeting and uh very excited to recognize our January students of the month so without further Ado I'm going to call up uh first starting at Faber um our esteemed assistant principal Miss Felicia [Applause] Moody and just so everyone's aware the way that this works is that everyone from the school will come up you'll hold your certificate stay up in the front and then parents will take a quick break and you can all stand up and get good pictures and things like that so that nobody's rushed all right all right Miss Moody take it away good evening everybody um we're going to start with our special area student of the month this time for Mr Sosa's class Christopher Garcia roas [Music] [Applause] yay Christopher was unanimously voted by

006the special Area Teachers to be the student of the month he shows a high level of Competency competency in all his subject areas he's respectful completes his assignments and is an Engaged learner he tries his best and is very kind the special Area Teachers are honored to give Christopher this award for January our fifth grade student of the month is avalina learo from Mrs man's class [Applause] Aina is being named the fifth grade student of the month she's consistently demonstrated a positive attitude towards learning and helping her classmates whether it's excelling in class participating in school activities or showing kindness and respect to others avalina sets an example for her peers to follow keep up the amazing work we are so proud of you our fourth grade student of the month is Isaac Gonzalez from

007Miss delany's class congratulations to Isaac on being named student of the month he consistently demonstrates a strong work ethic in the classroom he's incredibly polite and respectful towards his teachers and takes our suggestions feedback and advice to heart he takes responsibility for his learning and participates in class discussions his willingness to share his work with others shows that he will support his classmates in their success he's a valuable member of the classroom and we are so proud of you congratulations Isaac okay we have two for third grade our first third grade student is Alexa Figaro Lopez here you go Alexa Alexa is a hardworking student who was always thoughtful and kind she can always be counted on for her positive attitude and determination she comes to school ready to learn and excited she looks out

008for her classmates and always lends a helping hand when someone is struggling congratulations Alexa also from third grade we have Wesley Davenport so Wesley was chosen um by his classmates and they had some things they wanted to make sure everybody knew he never takes a playoff with his homework and that helps the team grade go up uh he's getting high grades in the class and that's why his team gets really good grades he is a good teammate to everybody and he's very nice to everyone he's very kind and he gets hundreds on all his tests which helps his team congratulations Wesley our second grade student of the month is Emma du hi Emma hey girlfriend Emma is new to fa this year and an outstanding student to have in class she works very hard every

009day while working to learn English she's kind and friendly student to all those and looks out for her classmates congratulations Emma our first grade student of the month is Donovan doel come on Donovan [Applause] okay Donovan has Donovan has made huge Improvement since September and he continues to strive hard he's working to follow the directions a lot more he follows the structure and routine in the classroom and is very nice to his friends his teachers are very proud of how he's how far he's come congratulations Donovan Michael our kindergarten student of the month is Michael kallik I don't think he's here okay well Michael is an incredible friend and role model in his kindergarten class his kindness shines through in everything he does whether it's sharing his toys or helping his classmates with a tricky

010puzzle or cheering on his friends during activities he sets a wonderful example of patience teamwork and empathy and inspires his classmates to be their best selves congratulations [Applause] Michael and our pre soon of the month is Allison Sant [Applause] MZ goodfriend Allison has made significant progress in her social emotional development fine motor skills and is working extra hard to advance on the English language she's kind to all her friends and goes above and beyond to help open snacks or put on jackets she's a pleasure to have in class and her teachers can't wait to see her flourish congratulations Allison yay these are your favorite students of the month e all right thank you Miss Moody we're gonna move to the middle school so Mr altm please come on [Applause] up thank you and good evening

011all um we have three students here that we would like to recognize from Lincoln Middle School this evening and the one thing I always like to share is the fact that this is done by committee it's not just one person making that selection which makes it even more special for this person to be recognized our first recipient in sixth grade is Dylan Vera please come [Applause] forward Dylan is cooperative and respectful he is friendly and personable both in and out of the classroom Dylan is conscientious about the work he produces he assists his peers when necessary Dylan actively participates in classroom discussions and activities keep up the outstanding work [Applause] Dylan our seventh grade recipient is Brandon Ramirez aretta [Applause] the seventh grade teachers would like to congratulate Brandon for being recognized as our student

012of the month he is always working very hard in all of his classes and is making great progress in learning English Brandon is very helpful to his classmates he is always willing to work with his fellow English language Learners and take time to explain the activities every day brand comes to school with a positive attitude additionally he is always respectful and kind to his peers and his teachers congratulations [Applause] Brandon and finally our eighth grade recipient Stephania Vasquez Estrada congratulations Stephania is this month's e8th grade student of the month she is a hardworking and dedicated student who consistently puts forth her best effort in all of her assignments Stephania holds herself and her peers accountable ensuring that everyone stays on track and meets expectations with a positive attitude she approaches each day with enthusiasm and

013encourages others to do the same Stephania is always attentive in class actively particip I ating in offering assistance to her classmates whenever needed her contributions truly help to make LMS a supportive and productive learning environment congratulations Stephania and keep up the excellent work congratulations to all three individuals for being identified as students of the month and thank you for being the role models that you are at LMS on [Applause] all right thank you Mr Meer last certainly but not least Mr Lynch from dellan high school all right good evening everyone it's my pleasure to introduce our students of the month for denell and high school our ninth grade student of the month Sienna [Applause] Fuso Sienna's had a great start to her High School career uh she started off the year with cheerleading she is

014the class president for the ninth grade she is in all honors classes and she had a huge impact on me in probably the first month or so because she has two outstanding siblings and as she said to me she's the best of the three so she has big shoes to fill and I'm not sure whether they agree with her or not but she's done a great job so far in the high school so ninth grade student month Sienna Fuso [Applause] our 10th grade student of the month Nicholas [Applause] Bradshaw Nicholas is having another great school year this year uh he's got some honors classes he works very hard in all of his classes uh he has a great group of friends and one of the things I really enjoy about his his group of friends

015they're such a nice group but they also have some mean games of Uno during lunch it's very competitive with one another and they all get along really well doesn't admit to being the best Uno player but they all have a really good time together and we're happy to have Nicholas at the high school Nicholas [Applause] Bradshaw our 11th grade student of the month Brian V [Applause] Brian's another one of these amazingly hard workers he's done such a great job came to the United States a bunch of years ago uh learned the language has moved himself from CP classes even in onto the honors track he decided to start playing musical instrument he's now in the band he decided to go out for the play he's in the play and he does the choir so he's

016so well-rounded and he's done so much in his just two and a half years here at the high school and we're very much looking forward to what he has to do the remainder of the years so Brian [Applause] vrz and our 12th grade student of the month Fabiana Ames [Applause] Fabiana is truly one of the nicest people we have uh in the high school such a sweet uh student she's in honors and AP classes works very hard in order for her to get here tonight I had to make sure we talk to the basketball coach because she's on the varsity team and practice usually ends at 7:30 and we wanted to make sure she could get here in time uh she's been a starter on the varsity team and works uh incredibly hard with her

017Squad she's only one of a few seniors that they have on the team and we hope they have continued success this year our senior student of the month Fabiana Ames [Applause] so thank you to the administrators thank you parents congratulations students um it's quite an honor we're very happy to have you here uh we are going to take a little break um just so that folks um Can can file out if you'd like we do have a long meeting ahead of us you're certainly welcome to stay but I know tomorrow is a school day so um we're going to take five right now all right thank you and congratulations [Applause] again e e e all righty yeah all right so we're gonna move to the next section of of the agenda actually is this even

018the next section of the agenda or is it the the president's report CL I'm G to be aggravated you you're the president you can do whatever okay you're the superintendent yeah I have a boss in this room all right then so um so um welcome everyone we're at the D Board of Education meeting that's our first officially scheduled board meeting for 2025 so for those who may be joining us here for the first time the dellan board of education is governing body of the school district we donate our time out of a deep compassion for our students and work to make decisions based on what we believe will best help all of our students be successful the board meets once a month here in the cafetorium for a public meeting that covers schools district updates

019an update from our student Representatives student recognitions and important presentations our agendas are posted prior to the meeting on the denell and School District website along with past agendas and attachments I invite you to join us in our monthly discussion uh wanted to take a moment to uh congratulate again all the students who are recognized this evening we're very proud of the accomplishments and please keep up the good work um staying healthy always a big topic for me it's important to underscore that healthy kids means healthy schools which means a healthy Community bottom line we encourage you to take the common sense hygienic precautions and stay current with vaccinations to minimize the spread of infectious diseases that can really impact our school year and if kids are sick keep them home so that we don't

020they don't spread um monthly celebration so January as we're exiting January we uh celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday on the 15th we had the national day of racial healing on the 16th 27th of January was Holocaust Remembrance Day um and it was also um School Board recognition month um February looking forward to February uh Black History Month as well as Lunar New Year um and all this is to underscore the importance of diversity equity and inclusion in the fabric of our daily lives and the impact that that has on our community open honest and Equitable communication that is respectful positive supportive fair and most of all kind goes a long way in strengthening a community as we embark on 2025 I think it's important to acknowledge all of the hard work and be thankful for

021all the progress we made in 2024 a lot was accomplished and for that I'm grateful but we have plenty more to do looking forward to 2025 indeed we will encounter new new challenges and I'm confident we'll arise to the occasion I'm excited for all the possibilities the changes we've made this time uh since this time last year afford US especially the changes that will move our school district forward and put us on the better path to success I cannot wait to see what 2025 brings and I'm glad we as a board and our Dillan Community are continuing to work together to achieve that success lastly I want to thank the community for your support and confidence giving us board members the opportunity to serve the danilan community I would like to thank my fellow board

022members for electing me to another term as president it's my honor and privilege to serve as Board of Education president for 2025 let's go 2025 thanks everyone for your time and listening uh moving on to Mr Ross and the superintendent's report all right so uh I'm going to start the superintendent Report with just a brief District goals midyear update this is something that I've I've done uh each of the first uh this would be the third one and really the focus here is to try to just provide a little bit of information about where we are in the goal setting process at this point so this presentation is available online it is on the district website on the board uh minutes page or board meeting agenda genda's page and a lot of this information is

023some of this information appeared in the presentation from November so I'm not going to go through it super deeply but I will focus on a couple of slides so for all of these uh um presentations we really have the same objectives which is identify the district goals recognize how they serve as a Cornerstone to our operations and then understand our progress monitoring process um moving forward so here are our district goals right and this year we moved to four District goals we previously were at three we added Community engagement and we modified number three to become operational efficiency and basically again the district goals identify our key Focus areas and serve as the foundation of our work so we have been in a process of kind of setting goals and sort of throwing whatever works

024at the wall and we are in a much more aligned system of improvement this year and we'll talk a little bit more about that there's a full presentation about our alignment process but really our work this year has about has been about simplifying the work that we do especially at the board level about the at central office level and at the administrative level so that our priorities are really aligned from the district to the classroom and this really has the effect on uh students right ultimately but also on what's happening in the classroom in terms of instructional priorities and materials in terms of what's happening at the administrative level with meeting time and administrative goals and PLC goals and pdps um and then in the business office and our operational fluency with budgeting PD grants

025and board goals so this alignment has been stronger this year obviously there's always room for improvement and certainly looking forward to continuing this this approach in the future so the Cascade of District goals um again again I outlined this very very closely in November but we start with our goals we we then look at our measurable impacts that's substantive numbers that we want to improve on very specific things um which we'll talk about in the next slide or I'll address in the next Slide the actions that are associated with that so if we want to improve our test scores in certain area by five points what are the things that will be helpful for us to do right what must we do do in order for those changes to occur and then our action evidence

026is what is the evidence that those steps has have been occurring this is an accountability piece of it but it also helps uh those who set the goals which is right now the administrative team understand how they can um best articulate the fact that they they took the actions and that those actions impacted um the goals so this is a really linear process which I think has helped clarify the to work for everyone um and essentially the Strategic actions are the the behaviors that we want to see so if for example as superintendent I want the principles to become really fluent in data analysis right that is a strategic action that has to be associated with with one of the impacts and that allows me the the ability to hold administrators accountable for for that

027work similarly principles can do the same with their staff and similarly again staff can do that with their students so District goal one academic success in data use these are the impacts I've simplified these a little bit um and again the full District goals are are outlined on the website but you can see that in the academic success goal Faber is looking at tier one and tier two performance on I ready Lincoln uh Middle School is looking at linkit and the high school is looking at the end of year uh njsla Algebra 1 scores and so key drivers for this and this is really kind of what um this update is going to focus on just these bullets assessment Literacy for students and teachers this has been a process of um working with staff members

028and working with students to understand the value of assessment we have um District uh uh committees that are working on this we have regular meetings that are taking place at each of the schools we've had teachers who have talked about uh student progress monitoring so that the kids themselves are monitoring how they're doing on linkit and I um there's been a celebration of you know students or classes where there's been substantial growth and that's the type of thing that type of um assessment literacy is really what we're driving at data analysis Pro protocols is um something that we've been working on especially in in meeting time and really trying to get the administrators to to lead this work and and develop real competency with it so data analysis is obviously essential to understand why kids

029are doing well in certain areas but perhaps uh identify the areas that um students are not and whether that's a classroom level issue it's a curriculum level issue it's a grade level issue it is a uh prior year learning issue um those are all things that need to be addressed so part of that process uh relates to the third bullet which is professional learning communities this is now in place at the um at Faber where there has been um grade level meetings professional Learning Community meetings conversations and after school meetings where there's been conversation about data standards have been analyzed and will continue to be sort of broken apart and the uh the meeting time is used to identify perhaps gaps in the curriculum or novel ways of instructing on a particular topic that might

030be challenging for kids or just talking about data generally um the tiered systems of support has been a a a really strong driver for this and this is on the academic side tiered systems identifies students students that need additional support and what we've been able to do is provide intervention in the classroom in almost every classroom um so that kids don't get pulled out from their core instruction and that has allowed students to learn in the least restrictive environment and has been very good for overall academic development um you know grade wise continuous Improvement Cycles is our process of just just basically regularly reviewing this information so when we look at academic success we can just look at you know the day after students take the assessment in September and then again in January this

031has to be a regular data cycle where there's conversations and there's a recognition that this is work that's ongoing obviously the teachers know this because they're doing this work on a daily basis but Administration has to establish U meaningful time for this work to to take place so that this is that everybody understands how important this is so that's goal one goal two is very similar right uh Faber LMS were looking at principal and uh teacher referrals the high school is looking at Chronic absenteeism this is really School climate and culture based just sort of generally so we're talking about uh improved processes for Teacher responses to behavior classroom management has been uh a point of conversation especially in in 612 um how can teachers approach classrooms positively to work positively with their students um

032What mechanisms are there to support teach teachers who have students that might not be feeling it on a particular day right so that we're not removing students from a learning environment but rather providing them with supports we've looked at incentives uh and different types of um celebrations or things like that that can be provided this incentives idea is obviously very strong at the elementary level when we get to 612 there's this sort of sense that students don't respond as well to incentives but but we certainly know as adults we respond to incentives and so just understanding that and and working with you know students at these grade levels to find ways to motivate them um has definitely been something we've explored and has shown some early success increased counseling support and student surveys um as

033you all know the Lincoln Middle School added a second counselor this year we've been doing student surveys through Urban assembly um where we've asked students about various uh related competencies that second set of of surveys will be administered shortly and then we look at you know student progress through these areas and kind of our responses to that attendance monitoring um is something that we do regularly we do need to probably get better at this but this is one piece of this especially when we look at Chronic absenteeism tiered system of supports for social emotional Wellness we implemented our um uh school-based Wellness counselor program this year um as we moved away from Thrive and and those folks have seen uh a a a a growing case load of what would be considered tier three students

034um so that's been helpful we also have counselors who are teaching seal lessons in the classrooms and so again the goal is to get as much instruction to as many students in the general classroom environment and then provide additional supports for those students that need them and then continuous Improvement in this area as well operational efficiency we have some business office goals and a facilities plan life cycle goal so staff training and processes has been probably the most important thing how do we get um the right process in place to ensure that vendors get paid that invoices get paid that requisitions get processed Etc development of standard operating procedures has been also something that uh Mr Pep's worked very well on and then uh the the the the continuous Improvement Cycles here is really about

035looking at the data on a monthly basis meeting regularly with team members and having convers ations about where we might be still have some some things falling through the cracks or some areas of additional Focus Community engagement we have two goals one is increasing the number of parents who participate in the comprehensive needs assessment the other is about a human resources goal which is defining the employee life cycle process um so we've done a lot of pro proactive parent Outreach obviously this year we transition to parent Square which has been helpful in in terms of General messaging we've we' done a ton of parent and Community sessions on a wide range of topics we're still exploring ways to engage parents we had some sessions where there's been 50 parents and we've had some where there

036have been three and so understanding the difference between those things and what works and what doesn't work this is going to be you know sort of our ongoing Challenge and not just our challenge but kind of the challenge everywhere and then the development of key areas of focus and and needs assessment this in terms of the employee life cycle processes especially is what do staff members know what do they need to know what do we communicate regularly is there an easy place for staff members to find meaningful information do they have the right people to contact I think we've done a lot better with this over the last couple of years but there's still a lot more to do we're in the development process for a staff uh a staff handbook which will be kind

037of a living document but which everyone will have access to which will address all of these things um and really serve as a a just a central database for for any staff member questions resource so we have quarterly an annual impact tracking the colors are a little bit uh washed out here um but basically these are the impacts and this is the way that we are tracking our goals so each quarter we're looking at the impacts and we're looking at whether the work that we're doing is putting us on track to meet that impact if we're slightly off track or if we have not yet started that work so I can tell you because the colors don't look great here we have a couple of items that are slightly off track um the algebra one

038work was a little slow to get off the ground in q1 but we are working on it well now the facility's life cycle planning guide is something that we've also picked some steam up on and as well the employee life cycle process um and Associated materials all the other work is on track we are meeting for our Q2 review at the end of February and and um I'll provide some more updates and information at that point but as you can tell again this has become very systematized work there's a lot of clarity for everybody that's involved about what is expected of them about what we are measuring why we're measuring it it is really agreed upon you know mutually agreed upon um really high leverage pieces of what we do on a daily basis and

039uh I'm you know I'm happy to share this information with you so if anyone has any questions I'm I'm happy to answer them otherwise you know I'll I'll provide another update in a couple months so for the algebra um area where you have um slightly off track what is it going to take to get us on track and how far really are we off on that yeah so the the work at the begin so the algebra indicator is actually the that's sort of a uh it's a lagging it's not a lagging indicator it is an indicator that we won't have complete data on by the end of the school year because we won't have the test scores but the a lot of the work that's focused in Algebra 1 is about changing the instructional approach

040in that class and in our math classes generally and so the teachers have been really engaged in a process that's related to uh what's called a thinking classroom which is where students are much more actively engaged they're up and around they're using whiteboard sort of around the room their thinking becomes very visible ible it's much more collaborative as opposed to a teacher type of lesson and that work is underway Mr Tobin's doing a great job of leading it um we didn't really start that work in September October and so that's where we're sort of slightly off track the framework was there um and the work has now been accelerated but we did just kind of it was just a slow start and so in in trying to really be honest about our work um it's

041important that we recognize where where we were kind of hit the ground running right with I ready and Link it testing that's just like we're we're just on it and then some areas where um we're a little slower to get started so two-part question um because of the demographics that are changing here in the town does that have some impact on on being on track or off track and then the second part would be uh we have a lot of students who are um artistically inclined do we see a disparity between uh lower scores and higher scores so the the the question of being on track or off track is about process much more than it is outcomes um so where we have midyear testing like the Q2 results will be much more about outcomes

042for I ready and linkit because we will have midyear assessment data um but the other some of the other things will be much more process oriented employee life cycle operational types of things that sort of sort of thing so demographics wouldn't affect that when we look at setting goals you know the when goals are Set uh we know who our students are who are going to be testing so that's already factored in um I don't quite understand the second question about students who are artistically inclined it was just um something that I read in terms of percentages with artistically inclined students some of the higher performers would um skew some of the scores because it would also score higher in the math areas I am not aware that there's any study that shows that students

043who are artistically inclined do better in math I I've got to go I found it someplace like a while back okay I mean it's it's an interesting idea there are a lot of people who pick up art because they can't stand math and probably there are a lot of people that where math and and art are some sort of overlap in in an interesting ven diagram but I'm not sure that that would be enough to to skew our data um just to clarify that goal is related to ninth graders currently in Algebra 1 not eighth graders that are in Algebra 1 that's correct right so a large portion there are a lot of eighth graders that take the algebra 1 uh test maybe more so than nth graders there are more nth graders who take

044it there are more eighth graders who um who pass it yeah I was going to say the eighth grade results were quite good they're better comparatively yes um but but um I think just you know knowing traditionally the students who take algebra in ninth grade are maybe on a different path in math so there's students that need more support and it's important that we're focusing on um raising the expectations for that group because it's such a vital um you know they need to know the subject matter for various tests that they'll be taking it is and and if you look at again the the goal is the starting point and the end point so last year 3.5% of our high school algebra cohort uh achieved the score of met expectations or higher so I mean

045that is that is not good right and that means that we've got only really up to go right so we're going to try some additional uh you know some some instructional methodology obviously we've got link it now we've got I ready in place and there's a lot more data there's a lot more curricular conversations happening the teachers have been have been good throughout they just need the the support and the the structure that's been provided so definitely looking forward to to seeing those outcomes bless you okay well thank you appreciate it um more on this to come in the future all right so without further Ado I'm going to transition now to um Anthony Ido uh Anthony Ido has been the district auditor for at least 10 years at Le 20 20 okay so about

04610 years um and he is here to present on uh our annual audit as he does every year um and I'm going [Music] to there you go all right Mr adid yeah how are you good to see you thank you Dan um I'm going to uh just hand out some paper copies also okay I mean we have it on the screen here uh but we'll go through the uh presentation this is a high level presentation give you the financial overview of the school as of 63024 I know you're in fiscal 25 now but this is last year's audit we finished up the audit um back in the uh fall early or late fall and uh so we're going to just okay go over a little bit of the this uh accounting of the district before

047we go over the accounting of the district I have a few accounting jokes for you so what do accountants suffer from that Ordinary People don't depreciation so what what do you call a trial balance that's not in balance a long night this is in the old days when we had green Ledger pads we had to add everything by by hand okay so the last one is uh uh oops I got that off track there uh but we have a a good one here what do you call an accountant without a spreadsheet lost completely lost okay so we're going to go to our first slide here and you could stop me at any time and ask me questions this is your governmental fund expenditures by function your governmental fund includes both your uh general fund that

048you base your your tax rate on your budget it also includes your special Revenue fund where you spend all of your taxes all of your grants I'm sorry and your capital projects fund where you spend projects like your referendum project your Farber classroom project and the fourth thing is your debt service fund so you took out bonds a number of years ago and you're servicing those bonds so those four funds are combined in this governmental fund chart right here so instruction we see here at the very bottom left a little bit over $10 million 24.4% of your instructional pie that's teachers salaries and direct classroom supplies it doesn't include benefits and we'll get the benefits as we go around the chart if we just go clockwise tuition a million 423 uh those are mostly special

049ed tuition you you have uh private schools for the disabled in there you have other uh special ed students being transported to other uh other school districts in the State uh support there's a lot of things in support uh 2 million 271 you have a Improvement of instruction libraries child study teams big component of that attendance Health Services related Services extra Services the library uh guidance staff uh training is in there so that that support piece of Pi is everything that supports the instruction uh function uh right above that is general and admin almost $2.3 million 5.5% of your government governmental pie here and I I say this every year you're doing a great job of containing that GNA cost uh the typical percentage that a New Jersey school shows is is about 8% so

050you're you're uh well below the average of a typical New Jersey school and that not only includes your uh you know your board of ed costs your your your front office back office secretarial your uh you know your Chief School administrator uh principals assistant principles uh but it also includes all of your information technology is in there your telecommunications your legal costs your audit costs are all in that GNA slice right there plant and maintenance right above that that's kind of obvious it's everything that needs to to be spent to maintain your physical plants of all your schools salaries for the custodians um and also non-salary things like Insurance uh utilities you know everything to keep everything running cleaning and repair and maintenance Transportation that's mostly special ed Transportation uh right next to that is

051something called on behalf benefits now on govern governmental accounting you have to show what the state spends for you on your behalf for the teachers pensions and the teachers uh postretirement health plan so the the state of New Jersey spent almost $4.8 million on those benefits so governmental accounting says we have to show that as an expenditure and we show the same exact dollar amount as a revenue so they offset each other other so it doesn't affect your budget you didn't actually spend this money doesn't affect your fund balance but if you look at your annual comprehensive report you'll see a big number in there 8 point or $4.8 million so that's in there as a revenue and an expenditure employee benefits right next to that 4 point almost $4.5 million mostly health health insurance

0523.7 million of that is health insurance the rest is payroll taxes Social Security match things of that nature uh the pur payment that you make for the purs employees for their pension you make that contribution every year tuition uh sick time and things of that nature and in employee benefits uh special Revenue off to the right uh this number is all of your Grant spending your title programs your idea your arp you remember Sr one 2 and three ARP is sr3 uh Corona all the corona 19 uh era grants are embedded in special Revenue so that's uh coming to an end so you are pretty much spent of all those Corona grants at the end of uh fiscal 24 that those programs lasted until September 30th so that's over with and from an Auditor's perspec

053perspective I'm very glad of that because we don't have to deal with that anymore um it was a a very intense auditing um issue because it's it's it's a high-risk program and that federal government um needs uh a single audit done on all those programs so we're glad it's over but you guys probably aren't you'd like the funding to continue um Debt Service right below that uh almost 2.6 million that's on your two Bond issues in 2012 and in 2020 you did the referendum uh so you're spending uh that money going forward and that ends in 2035 so you have a little bit of uh little long road um to pay that debt service off right below that is capital outlay and you've had uh some significant projects going going on in the last few

054years mainly the Faber classroom addition and the continuing referendum project that's what that rep represents right there so this governmental fund expenditures for this year it's 41 a little bit over $41 million and if we go to the next slide we just tracked that actual expenditure which is the green line there and we we strip out of there capital projects and those on behalf benefits I talked about on behalf you don't pay for them and capital projects are one-time um situations so you could see that the green line is going up and the blue line is your 2020 expenditures adjusted for inflation so as we know inflation has been increasing over the years um it's going to up about 20% since um so your uh run rate has been higher than inflation uh so why

055is that so we have we have a lot of um different revenues coming into into the school and we'll we'll check this out in the next slide uh your state aid has increased significantly over the years and you've been able to utilize that uh in order to you know maintain your curriculum um increase teacher salaries go on a plan of um making sure you're competitive in the markting place Marketplace so if we we switch to the next page we could see where revenues are now these are the revenues that cover those expenditures that we just talked about so in that red bar in the middle that's your tax levy it's been pretty stable you've been able to keep it uh stable and you can see that the orange triangles there is your state aid and

056you can see how that's increasing over the years so between 23 and 24 you've had like a $3.5 million increase in state aid both within Equalization Aid you had uh almost a $500,000 uh preschool education Aid um influx in there and that's that's going to increase next year also so you're you're you're us utilizing that state aid um in order to maintain your expenditure programs after that there's not a lot of funding at the very bottom you could see the the black line there uh and that's federal revenue that's all of your grant grant receipts that you received and you have a small little blue line which is your local Revenue which is starting to increase due to the fact that we're now earning interest on our bank accounts in the past we have not

057done that since through you know probably two years ago there was no interest to be to be made um so now you have a large chunk of your money invested in um uh it's the arm program uh which the state of New Jersey uh says you can invest in and you're earning a lot of interest on that about 47,000 uh next page is your oops next p next page is your excess Surplus I'm messing up this here sorry about that excess Surplus so excess Surplus is you're only allowed to have 2% of your expenditures recorded as unreserved Surplus so unreserved is it's unencumbered you could spend it on whatever whatever you want to spend it on you're only allowed 2% your number is hovering around 7 50,000 that's the Red Bar there that's your 2%

058you've come in consistently higher than the maximum amount that you're allowed so this past year in fiscal 24 you're $1.7 million higher than the maximum so that's called excess Surplus the previous year you could see you were 1 Point almost 1.6 million that excess first Surplus gets put into the following budget and it's called going back to the tax pairs so that money gets put in by the by the department of Ed so this is a source of Revenue that you have to use um to support your expenditures so 1.7 million will be an excess Surplus that goes into your fiscal 26 budget that you're going to start working on in a few months 1.5 million was the amount the amount that went into your fiscal 25 budget so you're Apples to Apples uh you're

059you're basically replacing that those funds that you used in your fiscal budget uh next page we have your all of your fund balance components so down at the very bottom is the unrestricted fund balance that's the maximum that we talked about in the previous slide 75300 but that's not all of your components right above that is the 1.7 million that we talked about that was excess above that is the 1.55 million that that's earmarked for fiscal 25 so we're at June 30th 24 here in this slide and fiscal 25 hasn't kicked off yet so you have to reserve for that 1.5 million also to make sure that that's available when fiscal 25 starts uh we have encumbrances that's a fancy governmental name for open purchase orders you issue purchase orders and no Services have been

060rendered nothing's been delivered but you have to encumber that money so when you spend it in fiscal 25 it's available and then your biggest piece of the pie capital reserve 4 point almost 4.4 million so you started off the year with 1.8 million in capital reserve and then you withdrew 988 th000 of that to help pay for Debt Service part of that every year you withdraw about that same amount to pay for Debt Service um along with your uh state aid tax levies and then you added back $3.5 million so we remember we talked about your large increase in um state aid and uh Revenue coming into the district every June you pass a resolution that says any excess revenues any excess uh or unspent Appropriations expenditures we can plow back into capital reserve so

061you passed that resolution so you put $3.5 million back in there so you went from 1.8 now you're at uh 4.4 almost so your your uh situation from a Financial standpoint is looking pretty um the the the district is in a great great financial position um has plenty of reserves to go forward and these Capital reserves are unarm marked you could use them for future projects um the fav project and the referendum project they're already funded so this 4.4 million set you up for the future and uh I think your fiscal 26 bu budget should be uh fairly easy to balance now that you have $1.7 million uh going in there to fund that uh from the excess Surplus from this year we uh we completed the audit back in October and I'm happy to

062report there's no audit findings this year uh no administrative findings we had a few findings last year but they've all been cleared and it's uh everything's a clean audit this year so congratulations to the admin staff rich and his team and Dan and his team um so good days and D Allen any questions for me I was just going to ask if was yeah I think you're in a unique uh situation um with your funding sources um I think financially I don't think you could do anything better um from a internal control and accounting standpoint last year we had some issues with bank reconciliations and and uh some account reconciliations on the balance sheet but they've been cleared so if we if we were to say that you can do something better I think we

063would have an audit recommendation and we don't um I think you're I wouldn't I would I wouldn't say that you can do anything better you're welcome okay well no other questions thank you very much for having me than all right so good good good stuff with the audit again thank you to Rich and uh the whole business office team for their very clean work throughout this year and uh getting all the paperwork done for for the audit so very much appreciated yes cheers uh and just you know to to sort of roll that conversation up we have been talking about this year's uh the budget for fiscal year 26 which is the 2526 school year um all of our budget managers have met with Mr Pepe and there's been conversation about the requests and the

064kinds of things we need to be focusing on obviously we are in good shape with capital reserve which is excellent we do have the facilities Expansion Project that we're doing at Faber which is going to pull 2.6 million out of capital reserve um and so that's a known project which now we we are sure that we can fund and then we will just uh continue to uh preserve all the things that we're doing curriculum wise um Staffing wise find areas where we can increase uh support for students or improve the things that we're doing and more updates on the budget will be be provided in February we will get our state aid uh notice at the end of February very likely after our meeting and so then uh in March will sort of be a

065Mad Dash to put together the first kind of picture of what the the budget will look like but for February we will have a sense of what happens if we have a cut in state aid or whether we have flat state aid I I don't think that we're anticipating any increase in state aid anymore and I know that there is some concern about potential Cuts in state aid um pretty much across the state we do anticipate seeing a pretty large increase again in our preschool expansion Aid as we move from the seven classes that we have to uh 11 classes um potentially even 12 classes next year so that's going to be a a really significant add in terms of Revenue which is obviously allocated directly to preschool and you know can't be used for

066for General use items but um yeah but in other in in in general we're in very good shape uh I'm glad that Mr was very was was happy with the work that we're doing and uh we'll share more on that as we move forward so uh next in my report I'm going to turn it over to Douglas uh for the student report well good evening everyone I hope everyone is doing well it's nice to see everyone of you again um so for this report I really try to make it as quick as possible and also to put all the information that is most relevant for all three schools I wasn't able to get that much information from uh Lincoln Middle School uh I'm going to try to get more for the next report as well

067as for favor so for this uh report I'm going to start with the dunan High School uh part so for dunan high school we ended December with our winter break the students uh shared that they really enjoyed their time off and got some stress out of of their backs starting January first January I observed tension between students since midterms were coming up not a lot of students get um excited about mters coming up because they just came back from break and they don't want to have to deal with all the workload of having to study and having to deal with the classes so I think they were a little bit stressed about it but they came from break so they are supposed to have distress already of their Works um teachers gave support and also

068the necessary tools for students to succeed in today's society students do have a lack of focus in on school matters there are a lot of factors that affect a students performance I am working with my team in the executive Council to see what approach is the most effective to bring academic awareness and Su and success to our students at DHS as of right now there is not much activity from class councils the school story is open on a daily basis and seems to be going great uh the executive student council continues its searches on uh of businesses that want to collaborate with us in having partner on fundra with each grade level also the executive student council is looking forward to increasing the student participation based on student feedback we are brainstorming ideas and considering

069key aspects for the correct approach of students needs and also to be able to provide position positions of leadership for a greater number of students for dunan high school and Lincoln Middle School there are 20 students who have successfully completed the enl program from personal experience I am extremely extremely proud of those who had seated the program along with our currently en enrolled enl students learning a second language can be challenging mastering it is even more difficult speaking from experience the skill set the skill that Acquire from this from this is extremely beneficial in that it increases opportunities and also opens a variety of doors for those who seek success I think that this is really significant since we are um getting a higher amount of students um completely that'sit in the enl program also

070they are approaching like a higher level of understanding of the language which is going to make it easy for them and also give them a better understanding on the subjects and I think this is a a great job uh I really uh admire the work from dunan school district that they are doing the approach that they have with the English Learners and also the they really give us the tools necessary for each student to succeed succeed in the classes from Lincoln Middle School again I don't have that that much information I just know that the number of the 20 students that are exiting the enl program there is 10 from D high school and 10 from Lincoln Middle School uh I know that LMS is focusing a lot on the academic Concepts the classes are

071getting into deepest U material and students are doing great they seem to be performing good on the classes having good scores also having a good environment everyone is seems to be going uh into the school year we had already mid school year so I think for for LMS everything is going great from fav they also held the enl exit celebration on January 16th they had 16 students exiting the enl program which I think is great uh and I think it's this number is just going to keep getting uh higher since we have excellent enl programs and I really hope to see a higher number of students exiting this enl program because I know that there is going to be also more students coming uh to the district as the years goes by so if the

072students are able to uh successfully exit the program then we're going to have also the space for the new students to go in the program uh the student uh Council over at favor ran a food drive and donations went to the St John Evangelist Church also they held the staff versus student basketball game for r on and the students raise uh $1,100 which I think is great for favor students to do that already uh they are young and they are already uh making those kind of uh uh collecting those that kind of money which I think is going to make it easy for them to as they go into grade uh grade levels higher than that for make for them to get into class activities and also fund raise money for their classes easier uh

073this is what I have for this report thank you I appreciate it yeah thank you Douglas and I just want to thank you for for pointing out the success of the the ESL program um I know it is very personal to you we've had a lot of conversations about that when uh I was talking to Mr Lynch today before our admin team meeting and he mentioned that was about 10 years ago the high school had 340 students and there were I think 13 um ESL students and now we're over 200 the high school has 425 students or something like that and we have over 200 um English language Learners in the in the district so um and we have two dedicated full-time staff members at the high school two at the middle school and four

074at Faber um and we probably need more so it is um it's something that we've looked very closely at in terms of Staffing we've also transitioned our programming completely um from what had been previously a pullout model to a real pushin model so that students are learning in uh their they're in an environment where English is being spoken for most of the day which obviously we know that's how you actually learn a language so there's obviously more to come on that but it's it's great work we've done a lot of celebrations with the families with the students and I think I shared this last year when uh I attended the one of the breakfasts and there were parents that were crying just you know out of how proud they were because of their their kids'

075successes and we don't think about this if you're if you're a native um English speaker if you're from this country you don't recognize the uh the privilege of speaking the language right that is spoken around you and when you don't speak that language the challenges that you face um and so to be able to demonstrate proficiency and just recognize that you know that's one step towards integration um into kind of the cultural society is I think really important so um I'm very proud of our team I'm proud of our leadership um and you know again I thank you for for calling that out so all right so I'm G to talk about a couple of uh of other topics I'm gonna I guess I'll just uh start here with uh immigration and just kind of

076where we are I was just reading my my phone I just got a series of messages about a funding plan there was a a memo that um came out last night at about 5: PM that halted all federal funding um for public schools in certain areas um a judge just um put that on hold at 5:00 pm tonight and so that was Federal funding related to Ida idea and title one so we are in this world of sort of chaos at the moment um and we all have personal political views and everybody's personal political views are fine um to have um but as a superintendent of a school district the chaos is really disconcerting and what is really essential to communicate is that our job as administrators as um you know as a superintendent as

077the board as teachers is to uh provide a safe and secure learning environment for our students and that is that's it that's all that it is right fundamentally that's what we have to do whether we feel a certain way or not that is our responsibility as an organization and um there is a lot of fear within our community and within the communities of neighboring towns um we obviously have a large Hispanic population in this District as do many of our our neighbors but many of our neighbors also have large South Asian populations or East Asian populations and anybody who is in any sort of immigrant Community or anybody that looks different is feeling some level of anxiety so when we think about the responsibility that we have as a school district right what is critical

078to understand is that we will not be complicit with uh we will always comply with the law right we will always follow the rules and responsibilities that we have with regard to the law um but we will always also protect our students where we can and so there has been guidance that was promoted by the Department of Education which has been shared out to school districts which I've shared with my staff and my administrative team we had a conversation today at our administrative meeting about it and essent um Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the right to enter Public Schools under certain circumstances if they have a Judicial warrant or if there are exent circumstances um you know uh those agents have the right and are able to enter a school building um in all other

079circumstances their right is contingent on um what documentation they have and our willingness to allow those folks in um and it is the Department of education's guidance that school districts understand this very closely that uh when if someone comes to the door and claims they are from somewhere or that they have some some sort of documentation that that documentation be reviewed first and foremost um referred to the superintendent referred then to legal counsel and then a decision can be made at that time um but you know our students right we we rely on our students feeling comfortable to uh to come into school every day and we rely on our parents to feel comfortable dropping their kids off and attending evening events and those sorts of things we cannot function unless those things are in

080place and so we will do everything in our power to ensure that that sense of calm and security uh remains now I have not sent a message out to the parent Community um because it's just a very hard message to send I can't quite I haven't quite figured out exactly what to say because a message that's too simple really does miss a lot of the important details but a message that is too details too detailed is just very hard to comprehend and so I'm trying to figure out what the balance is um if I do decide to send something out it will really strike that balance to kind of set our values and make those values very clear um also provide links for those who are more interested in learning but for our staff members

081I have sent a message out that basically outlines what are what the expectations are what the directives are from my office um we have a incredible staff the staff is very supportive of our students um we haven't had any issues like you know you may have heard about in Texas where you know there was a teacher that that called ice and said you should come to my school right we don't have staff members like that or even you know anybody who would think like that our staff members have been incredibly supportive of our students and I know that they will continue to be um and so you know this this whole thing is is new to superintendence it's uh yet another bizarre thing that we have to sort of manage um as an as Educators

082and as educational leaders but as information comes out I will keep the board apprised I'll keep certainly the teachers apprised and the Association apprised and and parents as well um and if we see any drop off in participation in terms of attendance or families at events then we will recognize that we need to be a little bit more proactive in you know expressing those values to folks so that they feel comfortable coming to school so uh does anybody have any thoughts on that comments on that um having previously served under the DHS and having been a military officer working with Customs Border Protection in ice there is a priority list and uh the situation that we would be in would be on the lowest priority of that list uh my personal analysis on it is

083the priorities will be clear and present danger to the United States of America which would be uh highle criminals as well as anything that is characterized as a terroristic group so those are the priorities ice is not that big of an organization so the priority list will take care of the the top level uh imminent danger to what they say to the economy they also have a public perception uh component that they need to that they are aware of so they don't just show up uh they have to coordinate with local authorities as per uh the the documentation and uh legal um uh the law that's out there already so they they they cannot uh come in and just barge their way in so there is from a previous experience a a certain level that

084they have to go through as well as uh respect for the local Authority and local jurisdiction so uh in terms of having a conversation I've had conversations with a couple kids who have uh expired uh green cards and I I just told them that they they can relax as long as they're not on a government threat list or if they're not hardened criminals and convicted of federal crimes they they really don't have that much to worry about I will say that I hope I hope that everything that you said is right I'm skeptical uh that it is I heard uh an interview uh today with an official who talked about the fact that yes they're looking at uh folks who have been you know convicted of felonies and that sort of thing the commentary was

085that other people will get swept up as part of this right as just a natural course of things um I think there's a level of impunity that's probably that probably exists currently um and the question of course of how much of that okay all right great to see you it's like um none of us it's like a episode of Seinfeld is like Kramer right um but there's a there seems to be and again the the question of reality and perception right is a really big one but I think that there is a as much as we would like to tell people to remain calm um I think vigilance is is a is especially important and I think for me it's about clarifying expectations so even if nothing ever happens people will understand what they should

086have done had something happened and I and I would much rather ER on that on that side of things um you know with the hope of course that you know our little Community is just bypassed as our you know many of our neighbors but we do know that there have been raids in New Brunswick North planfield I think planfield right um I have a friend that works at a charter school in Jersey City I mean that's you know so it's Jersey City it is Jersey City just just high level terrorist watch lists are are present in Jersey City so you know take it with the level that they're they're looking at so there's there's a lot of visibility on on the D s side within Jersey City yeah like I said I hope that you're

087right and we'll uh we'll take it from there I okay sorry I I do agree Dan um I think it's really important that while we'd all like to hope for the best none of us work for these agencies um and are part of the conversations that are happening and I think it's great to offer off for support and encouragement and and try and establish that sense of safety but also in being realistic that we we don't know what the agenda is and what it amounts to and and that's a very fine line to walk to make promises that we can't keep um I did I I was wondering with Miss jimnez working with families in the community have we had any feedback from anyone in terms of concerns or um vocalizing stress about sending their

088children to school so I I haven't heard of families who have articulated stress about sending their kids to school but I know that kids have expressed concern about coming to school and so that is a that's an issue now we've kids are saying this in school right so it's good they they they're coming to school um and we hope that they continue to come to school but there is that that sense of if I leave home what will happen what will happen to my mom if she drops me off um which was another story that I heard today about a woman who dropped her son her child off at school and then was was picked up so I mean there the the the anxiety is real I think again I started my comments on this

089topic by saying we're in a time of chaos um which is you know it's a a purposeful form of chaos that sort of just puts people on edge um and I don't know what's going to happen um but again I think that all we can do is of course control the things that we can control and that's providing some sense of Safety and Security within our walls um and kind of just continuing business as usual with the understanding that there is this underlying stress level that students may be experiencing all right so that's about the heaviest topic that I probably will ever cover a superintendence report or hopefully it is um I'm going to move on to some lighter things um we had uh 11 students were accepted at Arts High uh middle which is

090the um the the Arts the arts program that the county puts together so three students from the high school uh Janine Adrien zarena Corton and Hunter Mulligan were accepted at the high school at the middle school Gabriella Cardenas Sonia Diaz Dylan Dao priia gotra Bridget Gomez Celeste Derrik Hernandez and Kayla husek um so these folks will be doing uh it's either an 11 or 12we program depending on high school or middle school um at middlex County College it's it's this real like magnet program of of of cool things with really great people and great instructors um that the district supports um in full and this is something that we we brought in my first year um and we've been very good partners with them so congratulations to those students and their families uh we have

091really been doing a ton of professional development training and coaching which I think is worth worth mentioning we have a PD day next Thursday which is um a half PD day in the afternoon we've also been doing administrator training on professional learning communities so we've had three sessions with uh with jna Lee and this is about how uh how meetings can be run more efficiently this has been very strong feedback from the teacher climate and culture Grant committee strong feedback from conversations I've had with teachers throughout the district and the association about the fact that we have time that is set aside for meetings and that sometimes those meetings might be uh less effective than they could be part of the PLC process is also about allowing teachers to lead meetings and understand what meeting

092protocols can be used for you know valuable uh valuable sessions to be held and how data can be analyzed during that process and so that's training the administrators are going through and then they'll be rolling this out to their to their staff in the in the sort of later winter plcs already exist at Faber um which has been very successful in terms of understanding data and understanding question Types on assessments and you know those sorts of things um but that'll be refined after school meeting time will be refined and then all of the stuff that's happening 612 will also be continue to be refined find we have a lot of instructional coaching that's happening uh Ashley Powell who is um our district instructional coach she's doing 612 work um she's been doing Drop In professional

093development days our school-based Wellness counselors have also done those days um they just actually had their first one and there's more planned we've doing we're doing sheltered English instruction which is uh general education teachers learning uh best practices and working with English language Learners or multilingual Learners um that's being provided by up the bar and then we have Diana opatas who's been doing small group instruction at Faber and Jason ERD who has been our excellent stem and computer science consultant has continued his work we have foundations training happening in February and we also just partnered with the New Jersey Coalition for inclusive education which is going to really focus on Direct coaching to staff on um best practices for co- teing uh environments because prior to really last year we did not have special education

094teachers um providing uh the Collaborative Learning environment it was almost entirely based uh on par professionals and so having hired a number of special education teachers and putting that model in place has allowed us to take students from a more restrictive environment of a resource room and bring them back into a a whole General classroom environment and you know again the goal is to try to figure figure out the best ways that those collaborative teaching pairs can can work together we also have our after school programs starting soon um we have our after school coordinators who are approved already Abby Franklin for the fav program and Jessica McCarthy who's doing the middle school high school programs um we have a ton of teachers who are being approved actually I think on this agenda to work

095those programs so I'm very very thankful for the very large number of Staff members who have indicated an interest and who have who have expressed a willingness to work through those programs for our students we've been doing a lot of family engagement nights as well uh Miss Hoy has been working with NJ 4S um on a series of parent night events which have been really interesting we've also done literacy events we've done a number of preschool events and we'll continue to to try to get parents out to uh build that homeschool connection I talked about budgeting already um so I'll I'll skip that Universal prek Grant info um we've we've talked about this a little bit uh certainly the project of $6 million is going to be funded by $3.5 million or so from the

096state and the remainder will be paid for through capital reserve we had an original timeline that we need to adjust um primarily because of the availability of Steel and so we will share a revised timeline with the public um when that becomes available we have some concerns we have to address noise construction the location of the playground at Faber um and some rooms that may need to be relocated um but all of that information will be shared when it is available and then the last thing that I have is just that I had my second uh second meeting with the working group on educator evaluation today so I was in Trenton this morning uh my the group that I'm working with is the sgo group um and it is it comprises I'm the superintend on

097the group there are five superintendents in the probably 40 uh folks that are involved overall our group is about eight people or or thereabouts and the goal is really to try to reimagine what educator evaluation looks like the way that the Department of Education has its uh evaluation program is that it comes from statute first and foremost the achieve NJ is the name of the statute that was test in the Christie Administration a series of regulations was then created from the statute that's called Teach NJ that that's regulations that are approved by the State Board of Education Guided by the department and then there's this guidance that's provided about what you do with those regulations when the regulations were created the State Board of Education sort of out of whole cloth created something called student

098growth objectives which we all know as sgos which has been in place for about 10 years so from that regulation the department had to then create guidelines for teachers uh and districts to create these sgos and they put out a couple of ideas some templates and some guidance and things like that and districts basically said okay this is what we're going to do they took the Department's guidance as the only thing that they could do and now we're in this process where every District does sgos um using this sort of form that you know where students are tiered by their Baseline data levels and there's extraordinary amount of paperwork and usually the assessment that's used in a sort of pre- and post- test environment is an artificial assessment it's not actually something that is inherent

099in the class itself it's a tremendous amount of time for teaching staff members it's also a tremendous amount of time for administrators and the sort of effectiveness of this model is very limited at best I will say that the sgo creation of the sjo process was I think very valuable for the idea that we should be thinking about student data right just fundamentally we should be thinking about data on students and there's been a lot of normed Assessments linkit sort of has has come up a lot but star and map and I ready and other platforms that have been really helpful in ident identifying student strengths and weaknesses so this is a good thing the implementation of sgos is basically it's dead so this year there was a law that was passed or for this

100school year that at the sgo implementation was paused which meant that the student growth objective score that people got last year was their same score this year which of course was terrible if people didn't do well on their sgos last year it was fine for people who did well this year um it is likely that the sgo process will be will be paused again for one year um and then after that it'll be may it might be revamped or whatever it is my group and the rest of these uh folks are involved in reimagining what these student growth objectives should look like and we've had a lot of really valuable conversations on this group are uh njaa Representatives District administrators School administrators other teachers we have the state teacher of the year uh from 2024

101and it's been very valuable to understand the fact that kind of everybody feels like the current model is just broken and then what can we do instead there are also two other working group uh components one is about um just general waivers to or not waivers um I guess equivalencies to the uh evaluation Frameworks so there's there are a bunch of approved evaluation Frameworks that the state has and then the question is what other in in what other ways could we evaluate teachers that's what one group is looking at and the other one is uh the highly effective teachers model which is if you are a teacher who scores in the highly effective range how can your evaluation the subsequent year be different or easier or more interesting than the sort of traditional model so

102this is what the group's working on we have I think maybe six or seven more sessions um but I just wanted to report out on that it's a really collaborative really interesting group of people um and I'm I'm very excited to be a part of the work so with that uh that's my report thank you okay thank you Mr Ross all right moving on to uh item number nine uh moving on to item number nine board appointments so with this one here uh I'll just go ahead and read it first right yeah so um for item number nine we're going to I'm going to ask for a motion in just a minute but just wanted to read this out first before asking for that motion so it's uh the motion or the resolution is be

103resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent the nelan Board of Education approves the following board appointments for 2025 so um the the folks for these individual titles for New Jersey school boards Association delegate um I'm uh I'm uh proposing uh Mrs qu Guadalupe Condit for the New Jersey school boards Association alternate I'm proposing Miss Sarah uh ibach and for the middle sex County School boards Association delegate um I'm proposing Mr Jason Anderson so um that that's the resolution so at this time I'd like to ask for a motion to approve uh those titles and the folks in those in those title in those positions oh sure go ahead Mr just for the board members I just want to clarify the process because this is a little different than the past I did some research and

104and looked at our bylaws and the bylaw actually requires that these three position be appointed by the board which is why we're putting it on here NL has made his recommendations and we're asking you to approve those so that the board has appointed these three positions that's right so at this time I'm looking for a motion to approve uh that resolution as as I just read it move to approve resolution as noted second okay open for questions or comments okay if I was if a person was nominated do they have to not vote Mr no you can vote for yourself I mean a person could vote for themselves yes [Laughter] so last call questions comments you you can also vote no for yourself although I don't know if you could abstain I mean so okay

105okay um so last last call question and comments okay Mr Pepe could you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Mrs Shep yes and Mr Walker yes motion passes okay wonderful moving on to item number 10 public comments on agenda items only so the board invites public comment on agenda items only from members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity un 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 superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period

106is 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 oh the the GMC Terrain yeah see um okay so moving on to item number 11 uh education discussion item I'll turn it over to the uh education committee chair uh Mrs Howard hi thank you um the education committee met on January 21st at 6 PM president well I was not present Miss Shimp was there miss um it's

107ibach is that ibach ibach ibach um Dr Jano Miss japin and Mr Ross the education committee um discussed a number of items including a wide range of updates from Miss japin regarding professional development curricular initiatives Afterschool programming committee work and Grant funded activities instructional walkthroughs being completed by teams of Administrators Across The District Preschool expansion efforts and plans for next year and a variety of confidential matters thank you thank you Mrs hard so moving on to item number 12 education uh action items so looking for a motion to approve 12 a b and c approve 12 a through C second okay uh open for questions or comments note that uh the 2026 2025 2026 District calendar is on there in item C right last call all right uh Mr Pepe can you please call the

108role Mr Anderson yes to a and b no to C Mrs Condit yes Dr J Drano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Mrs Shep yes and Mr Walker yes motion passes okay thank you moving on to item number 13 Personnel uh discussion items and the Personnel committee report I'll read that here so the um um Personnel committee met on January 21st um in attendance for myself as chair Mr Anderson Mrs Shep and Mr Ross and we discussed the number of items including Staffing and evaluation for the current school year items related to the work of the district security coordinator and a number of confidential uh items U moving on to item 14 Personnel action items looking for a motion to approve 14 a through L as a block approv 14 a through L second

109all right open for questions or comments got to say I like the um all all of the staff travel for uh PD that's great have to say that last call all right Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs condet yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr anoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes okay wonderful moving on to item number 15 uh operations discussion items and the operations uh committee report I'll turn it over to the chair of the operations committee uh Mr Walker thank you Dr Jano the operations committee met on January 22nd at 7M I was President along with Miss conduit Mr sooi uh Mr Jano Mr pepy Mr Ross uh the operations committee discussed facilities work ongoing throughout the district information about the district's

110Universal prek facilities expansion Grant the FY 24 audit which is just outlined by Mr adido and which appears on tonight's agenda for approval budget planning for the 2526 school year and a variety of confidential matters that's it thank you thank you Mr Walker so moving on to item number 16 uh operations action items looking for a motion to approve items 16 a through p as a block move to approve items a through p as a block second okay open for questions or comments um first I just would like to to say for item H I would like to thank uh Mrs Moore uh Dr Stark gendrano and the entire PTO uh for the generous donation of $9,000 uh for for field trips for our kids I think that's fantastic that's a wonderful donation thank you

111any other questions comments okay um Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Dr Jano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr saoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes okay wonderful all right moving on to item number 17 uh old business I think we have a couple things here we wanted to uh uh address first uh the calendar yeah so we um Miss Che pointed out that uh April 15th is during spring break and that is our planned April board meeting date for 2025 so we need to adopt a new uh calendar of board meeting dates so I have uh I printed out the one that that we approved and basically the only change is that needs to be made is on the fourth line changing April 15th

112to April 8th which is the Tuesday before spring break so that would be my recommendation any discussion okay so uh can I uh have a motion to approve that change to the uh to the board meeting dates changing April 15th 2025 to April 8th 202020 202 motion to approve change in board meeting date it second okay any other discussion all right all those in favor oh I'm sorry Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Dr jenjo yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes okay motion passes awesome thank you okay um continuing on with old business um any other old business to I was going to mention that um I think when we met last time we also went through the Committees I

113just wanted to take a moment to just recognize I believe it's already on the website but to recognize who's on the various committees so in fact you've heard everyone speak already but just in put it out there um for the education committee Mrs Howard is chairing the committee this year um with um Miss ibok and um Miss Shimp um joining um I'm ex officio um for the operations committee um Mr Walker is the chair again um Mr saoi uh and Mrs Condit um I've joined for personnel um I'm continuing on as a chair of the Personnel Committee in addition Mrs Shep Mr Anderson are joining and for the negotiations committee um Mr Walker's chairing that I hope he's still okay with that awesome and um uh Miss Shimp as well as Mr Sato will be

114joining uh as well so uh lots to do on that on those fronts but I wanted to just make sure that uh we're all aware and it was out in the record who's on the very committees we kind of already knew it but let's just state it publicly and make it transparent um any other old business that anyone would like to talk about okay moving on to uh new business um I did want to I know um I did want to just mention so um correct me if I'm wrong Mr Pepe uh next board meeting on the 25th uh Maryann fredman will be joining us she yes we need to get back to her with what the topic will be but yes she does have us on her calendar that's right so Maryann Freeman just

115for for those remember um is our new new New Jersey school boards bless you New Jersey school boards Association field service rep uh she's uh back with us now for after uh going away for a little while to another County but she's back with us now and has agreed to come and join us for a presentation of our choosing so um I will circulate after after this meeting uh a list of all the different presentations that um njsba um provides um and may maybe some recommendations and we can chat in terms of which one in specific we would like her you know to provide to us I think last year we did ethics uh so we could do that one again or maybe there's some other one that may be more timely but just to

116note that she will be joining us next time and um uh We've secured that that date um but um we need to give her a top I uh specifi topic for her to present on so any questions we Mo the meting okay any other new business uh yes I just wanted to mention that um last week I sent an email in regards to uh possibilities for federal grants for emergency management and conducting drills to leverage that for an opportunity to uh purchase emergency communication equipment and or tools also to provide educational opportunities for emergency responses and other uh supporting U crisis for for students so the educational um exercises as well as Emergency Management exercises are part of Homeland Security they're available in coordination with local law enforcement and local support services and Emergency Management

117so if um if we can coordinate with our local emergency management groups that would be a great opportunity to leverage you know full scale exercises to to obtain some of those grants to to work on uh supporting our infrastructure as well as education and supporting our students thank you Mr sanoi that's good make sure we get that into the record just a question who did you who did you send an email to you just said you sent an email yes I sent the email to uh Mr Ross and Mr gendrano oh okay thank you Dr gendrano sorry okay okay any other new business that anyone would like to talk about okay so closing up that section um moving on to section 19 president's remarks I'll stick with what I said before um and uh nothing

118to add item number 20 public comments on any issue any topic the board invites public comment on any issue a topic for members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to 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 comments um 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

119your name and municipality please note that all uh statements must be directed to the residing officer please come to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make a comment um on any issue or any topic last call okay uh we don't need a executive session right okay so we uh we'll go through and Skip uh item 20 uh item 21 and we will go right to item 22 which is adjournment so uh looking for a motion uh to adjourn move to adjourn all those in favor I opposed all right we'll see you in a month February 25th