001e e e notice with the burrow clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting uh Tuesday October 15 2024 in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 denan Avenue at 700 p.m. this meeting is broadcast live uh for details check www.del and schools.org moving on to section or item section two on the agenda uh executive session 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 pending or anticipated litigation uh and Personnel any discussion any okay uh any discussion that does not need to remain confidential will be made public as soon as it
002is 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 may I have a motion to move into executive session please motion second all those in favor I I I opposed okay we are an executive we'll be back uh about 7:30 e e e okay we are back welcome welcome um so um may I uh please have a motion to come back into public motion to move to public second all those in favor I I opposed okay moving on to item number three uh Pledge of Allegiance moment of silence the flag is over here I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
003States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all will you please 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 to item number four roll call Mr Pepe could you please call the roll Mr Anderson is absent Mrs con present Mr Dugen here Dr gendrano present Mrs Howard present Mr satoi is absent Miss Shimp is absent Mrs Shep present and Mr Walker here and we have airum okay wonderful uh moving on to item number five approval of am minutes uh looking for a motion
004to approve the minutes from our previous Board of Education meeting on September 24th approve 5A second okay open for questions or comments last call okay uh Mr Pepe could you please call the roll Mrs condet yes Mr Dugen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes and the motion passes all right cool all right all right thank you very much Mr Pepe that's great uh so now moving on to item number six appointment of student Representatives Wooh so this is uh let me leave the resolution here uh may be D upon the recommendation of the superintendent the dellan Board of Education approves J sorry jazara mlan and Douglas guado Cibrian to serve as the student representatives to the board of education for the 2024 2025 school year so this is
005we need to make a motion may I please have a motion to uh move this item six uh item six approve 6A second all those in favor I I I opposed okay be it resolved welcome and uh moving on to item number seven uh student recognition I will turn this over to Mr Ross excellent thank you Dr gendrano good evening parents and good evening staff members that are here and of course good evening students we this is our first student recognition of the 2425 school year we're very excited to represent uh to recognize our students of the month we also have a very special recognition uh at tonight's meeting for students who have excelled on State Testing uh over the last year so we're going to start with the students of the month and uh
006I'm going to invite Mr Tenon up to get started from Faber good evening everybody uh we're really excited for faor student of the month we're starting with preschool Scarlet Bonia Lopez what up Scarlet Scarlet is a role model student who actively participates in class she can always be counted on for helping other students and showing kindness to others clap it up for scarlet please and parents we're gonna have all of the students at the school wait and then you can uh come up and take a picture once everybody's up here for kindergarten Belle coroli we are thrilled to recognize Belle as a kindergarten student of the month belel exemplifies kindness positivity and a strong sense of community in her classroom she's a thoughtful and caring friend and always the willing to lend a helping hand
007when someone needs it she approaches each day with a positive attitude giving her best effort in all she does she listens intently follows Direction and treats everyone and the students teachers and students alike with kindness and respect her teachers are especially proud of the way she's persevered and adjusted through exciting transition to kindergarten great job Riel first grade melage Duda melage come on up melage is an all-around great kid he enjoys playing soccer he is kind and caring and helpful to many of his friends he does very well in all subject areas and he's truly having first grade melage has done a wonderful job all around in the classroom great job melage second grade itsel po Marte itsel ilel is kind reliable and a great listener and is very respectful she always tries her best
008and always chooses to do the right thing in class great job itsel third grade Leah Molina Leia is very hardworking student who brings a positive attitude to the classroom every day she consistently leads class conversations and tries to get a deeper understanding of what she is learning she's the first volunteer when her teacher asked her classmates for help and she is always putting others first before herself great job fourth grade sister Amilia coroli come on up Amilia exemplifies leaderships in all settings during the school day she is friendly to everyone and makes them feel welcome with her in the classroom Amilia is respectful to her teachers and peers she goes above and beyond for homework and participates in class discussion she also participates after schools and the girls are run and plays the flute and
009school band and was a great principal for a day right fifth grade lisis espa Lewis come on up he comes to class every day prepared to work his hardest he's always on track and attentive in his lessons and shines bright with his assessments more importantly he's a tremendous kid and always has a smiling positive attitude great job Lewis and special areas with Marissa Lopez cillo Marissa Marissa is a diligent and hardworking child she's always trying her best and willing to lend a helping hand Melissa has shown great progress in her specials and she's a joy to teach great job Marissa CL it up for favor students of the month parents you want to come up take a picture [Applause] all right thank you Mr tenant next from Lincoln Middle School we have Mr altm thank
010you and welcome everyone our three students of the month um it's a very exciting award to present each month because not only is one teacher just recognizing this one student but we do it by committee at Lincoln middle school which makes it even more special because it's a collection of teachers along with Administration that weigh in on and make the decision so our first student of the month at 6th grade is Cola Azar if you can come forward Cola [Applause] the sixth grade team of teachers would like to congratulate Cola AAR for being selected as the student of the month she actively participates in class activities and is eager to share her experiences Cola earns excellent grades and is self-motivated she is friendly to her teachers and helpful towards her peers Cola is conscientious about
011the quality of work she produces congratulations on being recognized and keep up the outstanding performance our seventh grade recipient Allison [Applause] cheli the seventh grade teachers congratulate Allison cheli for being recognized as a student of the month she is off to a great start this school year Allison values her education and works extremely hard in all of her classes when working collaboratively with her peers Allison always contributes to the group and stays on task she is also kind and courteous to her teachers and classmates Allison is a pleasure to have in the seventh grade and our eighth grade representative Adam GMA please come forward you're welcome the eighth grade teachers are proud to announce the Adam GMA is our student of the month recipient Adam is off to a fantastic start this school year he
012takes his studies seriously and is always prepared for class Adam participates in discussions and completes his work diligently he is kind and respectful to both teachers and peers we look forward to his inevitable success successes this year both in and outside of the classroom congratulations [Applause] Adam once again congratulations to our three recipients at Lincoln Middle School parents come forward if you'd like a picture all right thank you Mr Alm now from dellan high school Mr [Applause] Lynch good evening everybody we're very happy to be here this evening and I do want to congratulate our Junior and senior board Representatives Douglas and jazar I know you guys are going to do a great job this year so we have our four students of the month this year uh grades 9 through 12 so I'll call
013them up and say a few words about them our first student of the month is in n9th grade and he's new to the district and that is DeAndre Edgar conratulations now DeAndre like I said is new to the district but he's made a huge impact already on his teachers and his fellow students he's done a fantastic job uh when we started talking about who we should name as student of the month in 9th grade immediately the name jumped out to a lot of the teachers uh it's interesting the way he's dressed this evening which actually pales in comparison to the way he dresses many days because he challenges even me because most kids may get dressed up on picture day but DeAndre has gotten dressed up I mean actually collared shirt and tie on other
014days and so he's going to give us a run for our business but uh congratulations DeAndre our 10th grade student of the month is Angie [Applause] sto Angie's another fantastic student uh she was out a couple days last week when I named the students of the month so when I called her into my office today to tell her about it the good part is she had already known her friends had already let her know about it but she was out stayed a couple of days celebrating for Mom right which was very nice and I asked her if she was surprised that she won and she said she was uh which I always look at uh students that are humble don't always look for that recognition but she's a fantastic student I always love to walk
015walk into the lunchroom and see her at her table with her friends because inevitably on many days they're sitting there playing cards playing Uno with one another uh just having fun during lunchtime so our 10th grade student of the month Angie stto in 11th grade Ruth [Applause] palano conratulations Ruth is another fantastic student as was her sister who recently graduated uh she is one of those quiet strong students in all of her classes uh she started out as an e enl student uh learning the English language and has quickly uh gotten out of the program and is now one of our top students she really has done a fantastic job one of those teachers that know one of those students that teachers know is always going to get their work done always have the right
016answer and really works hard so our 11th grade student of the month Ruth palano and 12th grade Luke Pon congratulations thank you there's a lot people can say about Luke and all good things definitely uh he is one of those rare student athletes he's a fantastic student even taking AP courses and he is a three- sport athlete uh right now he's involved in football uh barely comes out of the games uh playing both ways he plays basketball during the winter and then baseball during the Spring uh he is as you can see one of the happiest smilest students that we will have in school uh there's a rare time that you don't see him smiling there are occasions on the football field where he's not so happy depending on how the game is going but
017uh last year he won our unsung hero award and it was great to have the opportunity to have dinner with his mom who had who works over at Faber and really get to know the parents uh he is an inspiration to everyone and he is in our leadership for Life class this year which we very much appreciate having him so our 12th grade student of the month Luke Pon parents come on up and grab a picture e all right congratulations students I'm going to do the last set of recognitions and this is something that we've done about twice a year uh recognizing students whose uh academic Pursuits have taken them to great places based on state assessments so uh the first thing that I'll do is I'll ask students I'm not sure if they're here
018uh Paulo Tron [Applause] y you're welcome Mariam rufi Isabel [Applause] tabaris and jazara [Applause] mcglaughlin so the four students the four students whose uh whose names I mentioned are students who scored a perfect score on one section of their uh their their end of year exam for the state this is uh this puts them in the 99th percentile of all students in their grade it's an incredible achievement uh Paulo did it on the New Jersey student learning assessment which is given in grades uh 3 through nine and jazara did it on the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment which is for students in 11th grade so truly remarkable feat and uh we wanted to make sure that we honored them here so congratulations again and if you want to grab a picture and now's a good
019time Mr Tron yeah all right the the last recognition that we have is I think uh extra special it is students who performed really well on their end of uh sort of end of course assessment um but these are students who are English language Learners multil linguage uh multilingual Learners so the test that students who are multilingual Learners take is called the access and all students in the state and many students across the country take the access exam and getting a passing score earning a passing score on the access exam shows that you have demonstrated Proficiency in the English language now given our community and given the the families that we have in town this is really important right we have many families who are not native English speakers at home and earning this passing
020score allows those families to celebrate their children for having achieved Proficiency in the English language for showing comfort and sort of the the American ways in a way um and it really is a wonderful thing so the students who achieved a passing score are arsani Romani wahib janesse Noemi K Moreno congratulations Milana Varn uh that's the wrong one uh Maria Camila pada Torres congratulations all right so congratulations students mom's pictures yeah okay thank you all right so that concludes our student recognition thank you students congratulations congratulations families this really wonderful um and hopefully we'll see you again next month thank you all right so I'm going to give everybody we we'll take about a fem minute break we have a lot of business to do if you're if you'd like to stay feel free to
021do so otherwise we're uh we understand it's a late night and so we wish you uh good night and thank you again for coming yeah e e e know I mean you don't have to swallow it it's okay okay we are back so moving on to item number eight on the agenda president's remarks so good evening everyone for those joining us here for the first time uh the dellan board of education is the governing body for this school district and we donate our time out of a deep compassion for our students and to work on and to 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 LMS cafetorium for a public meeting that covers School District updates
022uh happenings from our um updates and happenings from our student Representatives student recognitions and uh important presentations like uh some that we'll have tonight our agendas are posted prior to the meeting on the dellan school district website ite along with past agendas and attachments I invite you to join us in our monthly discussions so first uh I know we've said this already but it that definitely REM definitely Bears repeating I'd like to extend a warm welcome uh to miss jazar mlin and Mr Douglas gado Cibrian who are our student representatives to the board for the 2024 2025 school year we are so happy that you've joined us and look forward to hearing from you at our board meetings this year um as I've done in the past staying healthy healthy kids means healthy schools which
023means a healthy Community from the New Jersey Department of Health respiratory illness surveillance report as of uh the 5th of October respiratory viruses I'm happy to say circulating in New Jersey um which include um covid-19 influenza and RSV are low except for Rhino virus and intera virus those are the those are seasonal highs and those are the ones that cause the common cold anyway I mentioned this to say like you bottom line we got to encour we encourage encourage you to take Common Sense precautions like washing hands well covering up when sneezing keeping sick kids home keeping current with vaccinations to minimize the spread of infectious diseases that can really impact our school year as I've done in the past as well monthly uh celebrations so October is a Heritage Month celebrations for a number
024of groups for German Americans for italian-americans and Philipino Americans uh we have specific celebrations on October 10th was World mental health day day and World inclusion day and October 11th was National Coming Out day so I mentioned these celebrations to underscore the importance of diversity equity and inclusion in 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 making our community stronger thank you for your time and listening moving on to Mr uh Mr Ross and the superintendent's report thank you Dr Jano so we are going to start the superintendent Report with uh Miss ho do you want to go first or should we have the students go first
025we'll have the okay you sure okay all right so we're going to start with the student report and um this is the first report that our student Representatives will give uh they and I had a wonderful set of conversations about the nature of these reports and what could be put into them and the types of things that um that the public and the board is interested in hearing about they did a really phenomenal job with this first one so I'm very excited uh to see what comes next so take it away press the R button to speak okay so um Douglas and I would like to start off the report talking about the start of the school year so on June 10th members of our high school's National Honor Society had the privilege of welcoming
026fresh and their parents by providing guided tours of the school during these tours NHS members answered questions and offered insights to ensure a smooth transition from Lincoln Middle School to DHS this initiative combined with the ongoing efforts of the peer leader groups has played a key role in helping the freshmen acclimate to their new environment with confident and ease at the start of the school year we observed a marked increase in student engagement particularly in relation to clubs and extracurricular activities notably the school has has introduced two new clubs The Dungeons and Dragons club and the volleyball club further enriching the uh the variety of opportunities available to students on October 4th we kicked off the school year with our first pep rally which was a tremendous success the energy in the gym was palpable
027with students and staff fully engaged creating an atmosphere that truly elevated School morale school spirit was on full display as each class proudly represented their designated colors the class competitions brought out a strong sense of unity and friendly rivalry showcasing our community's passion and pride then we're going to transition and talking to our fall Sports so first up we have football our destroyers currently hold a record of zero wins and seven losses the team is fairly young this year with a number of upper classmen stepping up to fill in roles on and off the field team has played their last home game of the season last Friday unfortunately falling short of a win against Manville destroyers have two games coming up on October 18th they will play Dayton at their place and on October 25th
028they will be going up against South hunon playing on their field as well next up we have our girl soccer team our girl soccer team has a record of four wins six losses and one tie so far this season as stated by Coach Johnson our biggest accomplishments are not just our wins but also the fact that we are playing a lot stronger we are more aggressive and seem to be having a bit more fun on the field the team has a big game coming up on Wednesday against Timothy Christian for the GMC Invitational sophomore goalie Rose Chella has scored scored over 100 saves in the season and his top 10 goalies for the GMC in saves next up we have our boy soccer team our boy soccer team currently holds a record of six wins
029four losses and one tie the team is currently on a seven game undefeated streak as stated by coach orango team is currently on fire and needs all the support they can get the Destroyers upset middle sex 1 to zero pulling away with a victory against the Blue Jays for the first time in history on October 16th the boys will be playing Calvary Christian for senior night so please come out out to Columbia Park in support next we have our girl tennis team our girl tennis team currently holds a record of zero wins and 11 losses this season the team is predominantly made up of underclassmen reflecting the youth and potential for fut uh future growth in the program the team has two games this week October 15th they will be playing away at mother seatan
030and October 17th they will be playing South Amboy at Columbia Park and last but not least for swim we have two of the Destroyers who will compete in the GMC's individually but representing DHS their scores are Gabriela roses 11th over 39 and 17th over 44 and Jason Young goes 45th over 73 and 37th over 51 we hope that they continue to improve this year and keep representing the Destroyers all right so I'm going to talk about the envir of the environment of the schools on on this school year so the environment and overall feeling of the 2024 2025 school year from the student point of view shows to be positive students talk about their classes as more engaging and more entertaining which shows that they are going to be able to learn while interative interacting
031and having a good time the feeling of safety on DHS is huge as well as the students do not feel scared of walking in the hallways there might be things to improve but as right now I will describe our schools as a strategic tool to approach individuals of our community and exp expand their knowledge assuring their success in the near and the longterm future when talking about the classes uh we have classes fundraisers on Ninth Grade we have our freshments which are in the process of adaptation to this new high school environment uh the officers have been uh elected already and they are planning on their near to come fundraising events as they're new to these kind of events we are looking forward to helping them succeed in every single fund racing that they do
032um for 10th grade the 10th grade class officers are doing a great job in their role as class officers they have successfully completed completed their F first V sale of the year and it was a pleasant success they are now looking towards to their future fundraisers as they have a cloting drive coming up soon the Juniors have been assigned the school store this year they have not yet started their fundraising events but the class officer are expanding their possibilities as they are in the most important year to do fund Racers the 12th grade seniors have started strong this year as they have already completed two fund Racers and have two coming up soon they have a custom contest and a basketball tournament coming up soon and it looks like it's going to be a complete
033success uh for the clubs we have a Spanish club um that has already had their first meeting and they are we are going to have a bake sale coming up tomorrow we will be selling Hispanic candies and desserts as well as food uh to kind of bring this um culture to the school and have all the students immersed into the Hispanic culture as well which we think is good for them to adapt uh I don't have much information about the other clubs I'm going to try to have more information in the next meetings but this is what I have right now and then for the student executive student council I have for spirit week uh the secutive student council worked hard and quick on making the best decisions for our spirit week it was fun
034and joyful process and the students enjoyed the activities set for every week we had a first homecoming dance in a long time in the DHS history we we accomplished something huge as we worked really hard on our mission of bringing back homecoming dances here at DHS it was something that looked really hard nearly impossible but everyone gave their best efforts on this Mission there was a big self heeld which was which went really really well and then we had a d to donate at dunell ambigo and also we had a ticket sell for for the hoko dance since we were given a very little like a really low start starting budget we had to look for all possible ways of fundraising for this Pepsi kindly donated to us sodas and water and there were families
035who donated to help on this mission after preparing everything we have a very successful homecoming dance uh we are looking to partner up with uh the classes on future events and make f Racers to help them collect money for their budgets so they can uh gather money for their classes and have like a better budget so the final section of our report is going to be talking about um our part of our curriculum so this year I've observed a significant improvements in our stem curriculum in previous years we were offered a Computer Applications course which provided a basic introduction to computer fundamentals however for students who quickly grasp the Mater I the course lacked the level of challenge it could have offered this was only uh this was the only entry-level computer course offered serving
036as a prerequisite to the advanced placement computer class this year two new computer courses have been added introduction to engineering design and Robotics greatly enhancing the scope of our stem program personally I found the introduction to engineering course particularly beneficial as it challenges my critical thinking and builds upon the foundational skills I acquired in the computer applications course thank you awesome thank you both so much for a really really extensive report let's give them a nice round of applause for their first one well done excellent all right so now we're going to move on to miss Hoy and uh Miss Hoy is going to give us two required presentations for the Department of Education e e thank you Mr R good me good more um good evening everybody uh we have one of our presentations
037that is St required one is this one is called the school self assessment for determining grades under the anti-bullying bills of Rights Act each school safety team which is SST completes a 38 page self- assessment and they completed this in October of 2024 consisting of eight elements that are listed below so there's programs there's training on the policy staff instruction curriculum initiatives um hi Personnel incident reporting procedures investigation procedures and um Hib reporting each of these core elements I just want to mention that there are at least three to six um subcategories that they also have to grade themselves on uh in order to to get their final score for that core element here's the ratings that the school self assessment team uses it goes from zero to three so zero does not me the
038requirements three exceeds the requirements and the SST assigns the ratings based on the criteria that they have done throughout the year as well as available documentation in the event there is monitoring the school grade is a raw score of data and the sum of the ratings for all indicators within each core element as I said there are several indicators in each core element so they have to add the all up to see what they uh that sum comes to the maximum total store uh school can score themselves to 78 points and the minimum score that a school can score themselves with 52 points and still pass the district grade is an average of all the total scores of the schools in the district and the Department issues the grade in the spring of 2025 here
039is how each School scored under each of the core elements the core elements are on the top so the first one has the school the second the First Column over to the second to the last are the eight reporting elements as well as a school grade on the on the last blue square if you notice that underneath each of the core element titles it says a maximum score so that's the maximum score saying Hib programs and approaches and other initiatives the max score that you can receive on this is a 15 and in the first White column if you still want to meet all the requirements for with a passing score you can score yourself a 10 and so on and so forth all the way through training on Board of Ed approved hit policies
040Max is nine and the lowest you can score yourself is a six if you want to pass 15 is Staff instruction and training programs 10 is the lowest you can score yourself to pass cni and hi related information and skills the max you can get a six four is the lowest if you want to pass hi Personnel Max is nine lowest is six School level hip incident reporting procedures the maximum you can score yourself as a six the lowest is a four if you want to pass hip investigation procedures the max you could score get its score of 12 and the lowest you can get if you want to pass is an eight and hi reporting the max you can get is a six and the lowest you can get is a four so the
041max is 78 as it states on the last Blue Square maximum score is 78 and on the first row where score is required to meet all requirements you can get a 52 as low as a 52 so here's how each School uh in Allen High School Linka middle school and Faber scored themselves under the appropriate headings of their core elements as you can see in the First Column hi programs and approaches or another initiatives we have Faber and DHS squaring themselves of 14 uh that's because they have asked for the school safety team more time to identify patterns in other staff instruction and training programs LMS and DHS both scored themselves a 14 because they want more time for PD on school climate in order to support their school initiatives so all the way over
042to the right DHS scored themselves a 76 LMS was a 77 and Faber was a 76 and I just want to note that DHS uh scores a 76 this year last year they were a 74 and Lamas was a 76 they went up one point to a 77 so they are working towards it and these are going to be determined we won't find out from the state until the spring of 2025 so here is our strength through our self assessment the curriculum instruction on Hib we did bullying prevention program from njcs uh for all students in prek through 8 and that was through October and November we also had evening parents for these uh Faber and LMS parents as well as a district one at night we also had Spanish speaking sessions as well so
043we had two going on at the same time middle sex County New Jersey for L for grade 6 through 12 and that was done in January February 2024 and we had three assemblies uh separate from LMS and DHS one was on bullying one was on social media safety and sexting and one was on ersal community relations uh relationships and how to deal with um being personable these were also offered in evening parent emies for the district um which were held which they would know what the students would learn and we also are partnering with Urban assembly which has helped us with our social emotional learning and infusing that into our lessons we also are strong on hi reporting procedures investigation procedures here reporting and student educational activities we always can have Improvement so for the
044upcoming year we're going to focus on ongoing training for new hires increasing PD for the school safety team members as they requested we're going to continue to partner with Urban assembly and working with the school climate teams to enrich our climate instruction in the classroom throughout the district we also have to make sure that we maintain documentation uh that is required in case we get monitored uh and continueing to create parent Workshop sessions to support the work that we're doing in the district any questions good thanks okay another of the reporting systems that we have to do for the state is the student safety data system which is um known by ssds it's a report required by the state compiled by school districts twice a year that collects incidents of violence vandalism weapons substance abuse
045effort uh substance abuse and harassment intimidation and bullying as well as well as tip trainings and programs conducted to support anti- billing efforts and also a positive School climate reporting period one which goes from September to December of 2023 was publicly reported in the spring of 2024 this report is for reporting period two which is January 1st June 30th 2024 and I have also included a summary for the year in this presentation each School District each school and district is represented with its sections broken into period one and period two as I had just uh informed you of the different period dates of incidents trainings and programs if you want to take a quick look at that I am going to go more into detail in the following slides here is a compilation of the
046district trainings and programs and this is not all of them this is just some of them that we have done throughout the district to provide with different vehicles for stakeholders so we did in-house trainings training videos outside PD and of course pday sessions for parents Administration here are the programs that were provided for the year they are not all of them I just want to point out that the fourth bullet down we had NJ cap come in and talk to students and staff in grades k through eight as well as um parents PD sessions which were both in English and in Spanish the fifth bullet down and j4s middlex county Support Services for grades 6 through 8 they came in and did those three presentations um that I had mentioned earlier and they also did
047parent PD sessions for the district that were also in Spanish if parents wanted it that way as well for the last 17 years districts have reported to the state on the first four elements in column one so if you go down column one you see violence vandalism weapons and substance abuse in 2013 or 2012 2013 where you under the Hib column you're going to see the first number for Hib that was when the anti-bullying Rights Act was enacted requiring us to report all hips oops in 2021 you're going to see see that that column is all orange and that was our Co year and if you look at the bottom in the last row under the 2017 2018 school year the state decided that districts were to include other incidents leading to removal in the
048last row that's why there's asterisk there what is a example of incidents leading to removal could be for defiance inappropriate behavior a or theft it's anything other than those first five listed on the left if you look at the last column 2023 2024 we had one other incident leading to removal and we had three hibs here's our hi investigations for each School drawing each period there is 10 total Hib investigations and a total of three confirmed hibs okay so here's District y trainings and and programs so you're going to see that it is ongoing um I put the letters in pink or red that have come for this second period so we're still learning about the anti-bill Rights Act as well as protected categories uh protected characteristics middle six county Support Services uh we were
049trained on that program and parents are trained in evening programs on those particular dates we continue with suicide prevention and affirmative action officer certificates the programs on the bottom School climate teams also various States throughout the year and I included Urban assembly because they kept coming coming in meeting with each School climate teams on various States throughout the year as well as middlex county Support Services which um we were had them in the high school and the middle school in January and February I'm going to break it apart per school okay so again this um everything is going and the additions in pink are for period two so as you see the first one um conduct School climate cyber bullying anti law anti-bullying law District policy various stes throughout period too we done by the
050staff Urban assembly trainings were various um One More in April for fav school and if you go over to the program side I had everything from period one which is in in the black text and in the red for period two so you can see check-in checkout program when for the year as well as pbsis mindfulness character education and Thrive went through the year uh we had principles of Hip Hop okay that was the black during Black History Month dancers used break dancing with audience participation of course to explore the culture and history that brings love unity and having fun together there was also safety Ambassador presentations that were given by high school ambass safety ambassadors to the second graders on safety precautions on different on different um subjects different titles topics and they had
051little red and the big bully wolf which was a two-person play to demonstrate how to overcome bullying and of course launch Bunch groups went from March to May the end of May these are groups that this school counselors have talked about students that need extra social skills so they had lunch with them had their conversations made the groups a little bit more fun and interactive same for Middle School trainings on the left programs on the right Urban assembly Hib policy bullying prevention we had middle sex and Jrs uh for the parents and for the students as well but for the parents at night we had cyber bullying social media safety and interpersonal Community relationships and anti-bullying bills of Rights Act social media safety also included sexting and what parents should look out for the programs
052again on this first slide shows that social skills in grade six continue throughout the year as well as Thrive support throughout the year anti- billing certificate was um achieved by our new counselor in LMS and then the programs in LMS you see mostly on this slide is from the second period again M six County and J fors for the student assemblies which were three on three separate dates we had um Dr Mikey Fallon Fallon an actor who played different roles demonstrating that one doesn't know what the other is going through and how to handle the differences there was Urban assembly projects being kind the counselors here developed a social emotional slideshow where students had Reflections and discussions and from there if you look a few few bullets down they did social emotional skill lessons based
053on the students responses not buying a program The Bullying prevention program for seventh graders was partnered with the municipal Alliance and Wellspring Center they came into the seventh grade in order to get all of the students in seventh grade they went to health and Gym classes and they were teaching them ways of making good choices self-respect respect for others conflict resolution as just some of those topics uh on the days that they were here of course there school spirit week positive School cultures and they had a transition project for incoming sixth graders and parents an Allen High School on the left basically the same as what we just saw of course we continue with the anti-bullying law policy Urban assembly uh we had middle six County come in for the students as well as the
054parents they were two separate two separate assemblies one for LMS one geared towards High School uh and the parents received that as well it wasn't just from for middle school and high school parents it was also for the district parents and that information had gone out the programs that you see here um are also ining for positive School climate uh things throughout the year was peer leaders leadership for Life classes projects connect and Thrive and in addition of course we had the middlex county for the students Dr Mikey Fon which I just discussed for Alam Mas there was two different um two different assem that he put on one for LMS students one for Zen and high school students School Spirits unity all kinds of different things and and I believe one of our student
055Representatives was talking about how they're coming together with the teams and and respectful of each other there was a woman's empowerment um oops did that again women's empowerment conference uh for 10th and 11th graders that was with uh the Coalition for Healthy Communities partnering with Wellspring and it was held at middle sex College we had human trafficking partnering with the municipal Alliance and the New Jersey Coalition of human trafficking the first day the students learned what is human trafficking so you want to look at that as human trafficking 101 and the second day a Survivor who talked about her story of how she got involved in human trafficking and how she got away from it uh it was a very informative and moving assembly students were actively engaged staff actively en listened and came away
056with a lot of really good information U Wallace worked on from Wellspring from teen dating respect and then there's a Young Men's Conference and this conference is for young men on the cusp of thinking about college or at risk students that are chosen uh to go and get a better Insight at middle sex College to find out what college is all about so as you can see we are continually being trained on laws prevention diversity mental health support and through collaboration ongoing dedication the district brings innovative ways to be proactive in creating a positive School culture and climate for our students any questions well thanks have a good night thank you Miss way all right so I will continue the superintendent report um so again uh first of all welcoming the new the new student
057reps who I think did a wonderful job um harvestfest was held on Saturday um and we had the an annual poster competition so at dellan High School school first place winner was Janine Adrien second place was Hunter Mulligan third place was Miguel Navaro and honorable mention was given to uh Genevie saoi at the middle school the first place winner was Isabella gimenez second place was Stefania Vasquez third place was Colin Reynolds and honorable mention was CA Rodriguez so congratulations to those students um I want to update you all on the new positions that we've put into place our school-based Wellness counselors are doing well they've put out information to uh each of the staffs they're working with the school counselors and they've got their uh first initial student case loads so those positions are are
058are doing well to kind of pick up uh that student population that needs additional support her behaviorist has worked now in uh throughout the the elementary school and also with A+ Academy which is our preschool uh outside provider she's done very well so far acclimating to uh to those enir environments as well and providing support there uh we have our community parent involvement specialist U Miss Jimenez who has been very active throughout the community and she's attended many of the community events just to make sure that folks understand who she is I know she attended the PTO meeting um and she's been able to both meet people and give uh provide feedback about you know ways that uh interactions with parents can be improved or um you know expansion efforts can be can be improved
059uh and lastly the district security coordinator uh Mr marenberg um has been doing excellent work throughout the district we have him positioned throughout the the buildings at various times of the day where he's identified some needs that the district might have there are a couple things that we've gone sort of immediately to um to addressing the first is the uh parents parking in the Faber lot during um student drop off and also during student pickup so we talked about a lot of ways to address that issue which really is uh both challenging for staff members because there are only so many parking spaces in the lot but also uh real student safety issue because each of the entrances for cars is a place that students walk across and families walk across and dogs walk across
060so we uh we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to block the entrances off in in a way that's strategic and does make sense so that that has been a real significant uh Improvement but the second piece is uh that now all of the staff members at fa have parking placards um that identify their cars as staff parking and so when someone comes towards one of those entrances it's easy for him or whoever it is that's there to recognize who a staff member is and they can just come into the lot someone without that pass is assumed to not be a staff member is assume that they do not belong there um and really the sort of goal here is to train parents out of trying to sneak into the lot
061we had an incident with a staff member on Wednesday or Thursday of last week where the staff member was outside directing traffic and a car uh a woman who was on her phone drove around the staff member um and there were students walking there were kids walking in the in the crosswalk also um it was a very dangerous situation the parent did Apologize profusely the next day um this is the problem with acting like that in a place that you're going to return to um also in a small town where everybody actually knows who you are you can't do something that's sort of that Reckless and and assume that it's okay uh but it was a very dangerous situation and luckily no one was hurt and there was no injuries Etc but it was the
062type of thing that we just want to avoid completely uh at the beginning of the year I had a number of interactions with parents that were parking in the lot at you know 2:15 to pick their kid up from from school after after school because they had to get that spot that was in the in the lot rather than parking 20 feet away on the street um and some parents most parents were very pleasant and they said not a problem you know I'll I'll I won't Park here tomorrow or whatever and I had one parent who argued vly with me that she was going to park there no matter what and I told her that she wasn't and you know now we have a situation we have a setup where that's she's just not able
063to get into the lot but uh but again there's this sense of entitlement which is just spread from years of doing the same thing um and now we we have to train people out of that so that's been one really significant piece of that that he put together and you know the Faber staff and has been wonderful with it the second real big move that we're that we're looking at uh I guess there's two the the the second of three is about uh the signage on the exterior of Windows that identifies what classroom each thing each classroom is what number it is this is obviously used in emergency situations for First Responders and in the district we've had those signs up because they've been required for many years but the signs are they're falling apart
064or they're sort of in disrepair or they're uneven or there might be one when they're supposed to be two and basically basically the the idea is that when you look at a classroom from the outside you should see two signs and the two signs show you where the classroom begins and ends so room four starts here and room four ends here right and so we need durable signs that are easily read that have anti-glare you know properties that can be seen from 50 feet from by a first responder so we're in the process of going through that process that's been a larger conversation about signage in the district and we really have a lot of uh room for growth in terms of our wayfinding signage inside buildings and also outside of buildings we don't have
065uh visitor entrance signs well marked we don't have good signage for when deliveries get get um get brought to schools and so this is something that we've identified probably 250 different signs that need to be added many of those are you know 30 of one one type it's not 250 different types of signs but uh but I was at an elementary school actually Mr duin School uh today and they have signage at each of the intersections of hallways right and we've talked about this a lot I still don't know really which direction the the numbers go at Faber I I know though if I walk all the way around it I will eventually get to the right room um but it does go from room one to like 50 something and then to 20 something
066and you know so those typ of things are very helpful uh as well as just just being able to understand how to navigate the building so when you think about U emergency situations if you're in a classroom you might not know what classroom you're in that might not be a room that's familiar to you or if you're a substitute and so best practice also indicates that you should have a sign on the inside of the door of the classroom right which is not something that we have in all cases we have good signs on the outside you'll notice that if you walk around Faber or our schools we have our doors are lettered um and that was a decision we made when we went through the mapping exercise um that we did with uh through
067crg but on the inside of those doors not every one of those doors has a letter right and so again it's this type of thing where the consistency does matter and this is really just planning for worst case scenario but it also does serve a very practical purpose so uh with his background in emergency services that's been a very helpful addition um to the to the to the conversation uh Mr marenberg is also attending uh SRO training later this uh this this fall school safety specialist started uh spe school safety specialist training started today for him so uh he will soon become our school safety specialist taking over that role from Mr Tobin who's been doing it since the Inception uh he's also doing behavioral threat assessment man Management training and then we've connected him
068with some security uh coordinators or directors from neighboring districts um to talk about some learnings that they've had some best practices Etc so that's been great um he's really been a wonderful addition to uh to the district this position was designed to be an open carry uh firearm position and we did transition to that uh yesterday and so Mr marenberg basically when he came on on staff I wanted to make sure that he spent about a month in the district just getting to know people and getting to know kids and being in classrooms and that sort of thing I think he's done that very well um but now we also recognize he's not a superum individual right so he now has H he has his vest on his body armor he also does have his
069firearm and a number of other sort of um you know autr mon that go with the position and uh official sort of denell and security gear has been ordered um it does take some time for that to be processed but he'll soon have that but in the meantime he's you know he's got something that uh marks him as security it has his name he has his firearm which is carried openly uh and I think it will kind of re regain you know for everyone that sense of of comfort that there is armed security on site that's able to respond if necessary so uh moving on from that that uh we did visit me menow Park Elementary um at the the wonderful invite of Mr Dugen and uh this was part of a an initiative about
070building thinking classrooms which is sort of invogue this this you know the there was a book that came out by a gentleman named Peter ladal and the the approach is really sort of an exploration for mathematics instruction so rather than starting with explicit instruction on a particular ular topic you give kids a problem to explore and they work in small groups around the room and they explore it with each other and the teacher goes around and makes observations about the ways in which the kids are interacting what concepts they're clearly understanding which Concepts seem very challenging for them and from that you have a lot of great dialogue already between students this sense of classroom culture that you've built because kids now have to work with each other every day um and there's all this
071data as the teacher that you can collect because you've listened to these conversations and so we there are two teachers who started this work with thinking classrooms in April or so April May of last school year and they are not expert teachers they're not uh teachers who are doing paid professional development they're teachers who are in The Learning phase of how to implement this within their school and um so we went with the district team and we had uh quite a few people uh so from Faber we had Mr tenant uh Miss Gunther Mr fortuno miss wiel and miss Bey from the Middle School we had Miss Caulfield and miss denapoli and from the high school we had Mr Tobin Mr Valenzuela and Mr Desai so some Elementary folks from grades you know 1 through
072four five Middle School assistant principal and uh science teacher and then High School Math teachers and Mr Tobin and I think you know uniformly the perspective was this is great right we have high levels of student engagement in a math class doing you know really interesting problems where kids have to talk to each other and they have to write and they have to explain their thinking and the the High School Math teachers were uh were asking really good questions because as a high school math teacher often you you have this sense that you've got to explain things first you have to start with well I have a new topic I have to explain it first and Elementary folks know that letting kids work stuff out right in a sort of messy way is just that's
073part of learning and so changing that Paradigm to allowing kids that opportunity that freedom to learn sort of through that messy process is a is a paradigm shift at the middle school and high school level um but I think everyone walked away with a really great feel for it the teachers were wonderful Mr duin's Hospitality was fantastic and uh really appreciate that so thank you um so we have a couple of Staff members administrators who are going to conferences uh coming up obviously we've got the school boards Association conference next week uh I will be presenting on Tuesday night or Tuesday afternoon on uh demystifying school ratings and rankings so that should be an interesting and fun uh session and then we also have Miss drapkin and Mr tenant are going to Colorado for the
074studor what's right in education conference um and this is part of our work with stutter and the Consulting that they've done they run a conference a National Conference every year which is really just that's the best work that's being done across the country in strategic planning and strategic organization and organizational growth so I'm excited to have those two folks go and be able to bring that those learnings back to us um work with stter has been ongoing probably in the next month or two we'll be introducing work on portrait of a graduate which is going to be a really engaging Community process where we get stakeholders this is essentially strategic planning but done in a more deliberate way um with a different type of output so Community engagement PTO engagement staff member engagement parent engagement
075board member engagement you know uh administrators folks like that uh with this this uh process of understanding what we want our kids to walk away uh what skills we want our kids to walk away with as they graduate Den nen high school and then from from there where what does that mean for what we do at the middle school what does that mean for what we do at the elementary school so more on that to come uh we have a preschool update for 2425 we still have our three classrooms at A+ Academy we're about a month away from the deadline of submitting our proposals for next school year uh and so again the sort of absurdity of this process is we have to be able to anticipate in November how many preschool classrooms we're going
076to have in September of 2025 um but I think we have a pretty good plan we have another partner that we've identified who seems to have uh some good space for us and has a lot of experience running a preschool program so we're excited we have the potential to get to 80 85 90% of our universe next year um which I think is going to be really massive significant we can get all the way there U but I just don't know that we need to at this point we don't necessarily have all the students identified so grants updates we have a number of grants that are ongoing in the district we have expanding access to climate change Grant this is the grant that that um that brought in the big aquaponics setup at Faber and
077also the elementary Gardens so we're we're having a visit from the state in November to talk about that work and what we're doing with the curriculum we have the computer science High School Grant and we have five teachers who we're going to be able to support in their Master's programs um this is in the science uh the teaching and learning of computer science and this is going to be a program that we're gonna fund five teachers to earn their masters through this development process and then they'll be able to bring that that uh that coursework and that that information back to the staff and then also to our classroom this is really about building computational thinking and also computer science principles and those sorts of things we have the teacher climate and culture Grant um
078which is ongoing we have 19 staff members who have uh expressed an interest in serving on an initial committee where we'll be talking about how to best roll that out and that Grant has $125,000 associated with it that is um which is a lot of money uh for a grant and so finding good ways to use that and pay teams of teachers to do good work that can help them throughout the year or in the future years or their their colleagues is going to be really important and then we have our high impact tutoring Grant where we received a couple extra dollars uh as part of that allocation that we're mostly putting towards supplies um which can be used to help support students uh Miss drapkin is also doing committee work in four areas I
079ready to inspire the power of data and assessment denell and tiered system of supports um and actually just those three uh those meetings are this week so one was yesterday one was today and one is tomorrow um turnout for that has been very good and we're looking forward to that work and then last ly we've had State Testing uh since uh the last board meeting we had njpa retests on the 9th and 10th we had uh PSAT testing for all 9th 10th and 11th graders also on October 9th and then we have seal of biliteracy which is the state by literacy program the seal goes on your transcript for students it's wonderful uh we're doing testing in November and then we're doing testing again in January uh we've had I think it was about 13
080students the first year it was a little smaller the second year and uh we're hoping to get many many more students um recognized through the seal this year so uh the only other thing with the superintendent report is the enrollment update and so the enrollment update at current we are 1,364 students uh which is up 10 students from September's report we have 18 pending registrations uh at present Faber is at 622 students the middle school is at 3 34 students and the high school is at 48 students so um historically we are um about a 100 students more than during the 1920 school year uh at this point um and that does not count the 40 additional students that are at A+ Academy um so you know we'll have an additional 40 or 50 or
081so uh next year as well for preschool so uh we continue to grow um but I think we've got a good sense certainly of our growth and uh you know we've made some plans to try to adjust to that so with that that is my report thank you um Mr Ross there's I just want to point out there's a typo on the agenda um for the board meeting date it says November 15th it's actually November 19th under looking ahead great thank you Mr pppy okay thank you Mr Ross So moving on to item number 10 public comments um so the the board invites public comment on agenda items only 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
082express 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 okay last call okay moving along to item number 11 um for the education committee
083report I'll turn the um microphone over to the committee chair uh Mr dougen thank you Dr Jano uh pres we myself Miss Howard Miss Shimp doc yourself Dr gendrano Miss drapkin and Mr Ross we met on October and discussed a number of items including a wide range of updates from Mr drapkin regarding professional development curricular initiatives summer programming and Grant funded initiatives information on the district's work with stuter education related to goal setting preschool expansion efforts and plans for next year details about the NJ GPA and PSAT testing Windows theater competitions that DHS students May participate in this year and a variety of confidential matters thank you okay thank you Mr dougen moving on to item number 12 education uh action items uh looking for a motion to approve uh 12 a through e as
084a block approve 12 a through e second okay we are open for questions or comments um I did have one disc comment Mr Mr Pepe for item D just to clarifi clarify is it uh for the rate it's 4250 per hour right not just 4250 or was it 4250 you know in the column yeah that should be hourly okay I just want to be sure that it's clear I mean it'd be a lot less expensive but but I don't think that's right okay okay so again we're open for questions or comments on um items 12 a through e okay last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the roll Mrs Condit yes Mr Dugen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mrs sheep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes okay wonderful moving on to
085item number 13 disc discussion items from Personnel uh Personnel committee report so I'm I'm the chair so I'll provide the report um uh we Personnel committee met on October 7th uh in attendance for myself Mr Anderson uh Mrs Shep and Mr Ross and uh we discussed a number of items including the district's ongoing work with stter related to goal setting and monitoring Staffing for the current school year items related to the work of the new District security coordinator and a number of confidential items so um with that we move on to item number 14 uh action items within Personnel um looking for a motion to approve 14 a through n as a block motion to approve 14 a through n as a block second open for questions and or comments last call okay Mr Pepe
086can you please call the rooll Mrs Condit yes Mr dougen yes Dr Jen Dro yes Mrs Howard yes Mrs Shep yes Mr Walker yes motion passes wonderful thank you moving on to item number 15 uh operations committee uh discussion items I'll turn the uh floor over to Mr Walker the um committee chair thank you Dr Jano the operations committee met on October 8th 2024 at 7 pm president were Mr Mr satoi Dr gendrano Mr Pepe Mr Ross the operations committee discussed a number of items including facilities work ongoing throughout the district information regarding the implementation of the new District security coordinator a number of customary items are on tonight's agenda for approval and a variety of confidential matters thank you thank you Mr Walker moving on to item number 16 action items with an operation
087looking for um under operations looking for an um a motion to approve items 16 a through H as a block move 16a through H second open for questions or comments okay last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mrs Condit yes Mr Dougan yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mrs Shep yes and Mr Walker yes motion passes wonderful moving on to item number 17 um old business um so the um only thing I would just remind is school boards does next week uh Monday through Thursday I believe it is so um see be there or be square um any old business anyone would like to bring up okay moving along to item number 18 any new business anyone would like to bring up okay moving on to item number 19 president's
088remarks I have uh nothing further to add from from earlier um and mo item number 20 public comments so the board invites public comment on any issue or topic for members of the community in accordance uh 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 Administration excuse me will be taking n uh 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 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
089the meeting prior to making your comment please state your name and municipality please note uh that all statements must be directed to the residing officer please come to the mic phone at this time if you'd like to make comments on any issue or any topic okay last call okay moving along to item number 21 uh executive session 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 uh related to individual privacy Collective paring agreements pending or anticipated litigation and Personnel um any discussion that does not need to remain confidential uh will be made public as soon as it is practical uh
090all individuals who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will not take place after the conclusion of the executive session so at this time may I have please have a motion to move into executive session move to exe second all those in favor I I opposed okay and uh that's it we'll be uh journeying from the um you executive session so we will see you again on November 19th