Dunellen Board of Education Meeting - 09/24/2024

001year e e e hello good evening let's go ahead and get started so in accordance with uh the open public meetings njsa 10 4-6 uh adequate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising and The Courier News and posting notice in the Board of Education administration building and district schools and filing notice with the burrow clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting Tuesday September 24th 2024 in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 dellan Avenue at uh 704 this meeting is broadcast live for details check www.del and schools.org uh that was item one on the agenda item two is executive session so the denell and 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

002B the confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining agreements uh pending or anticipated litigation 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 may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will take place after the conclusion of the executive session at this time I'd like to ask for a motion to move into executive session please seconded all those in favor I opposed okay we're in executive session we'll see you at about 7:30 e e e last left e e e okay we are back so at this time uh can I have a

003motion please to come back into public motion to go back to public second all those in favor I I opposed okay moving on to item number three uh Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all 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 Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson is here Mrs Condit here Mr Dugen here Dr gendrano present Mrs Howard present Mr satoi present Miss schimp present Mrs Shep

004here and Mr Walker is absent okay thank you Mr Pepe moving on to item number five uh approval of minutes looking a minutes looking for um uh motion to approve the minutes from our August 27th uh board meeting motion to approve minutes second open question comments last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr Dugen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Mrs uh Miss sh yes Mrs Shep yes motion passes okay wonderful thank you so uh moving on to item number five presence remarks so uh welcome uh welcome back we are about three weeks into the 2024 2025 school year but with this being the first board meeting since the start of the Year we'd like to welcome everyone back to school

005and we have a great year planned uh so a couple things just to note since we last met um back in August uh we had some uh what was it I think um our last meeting was right before convocation and uh that was uh fantastic got to say uh heish Brewer was uh amazing thank you Mr repkin for getting him here um and it was a I think we we all left with a great sense of energy and and and ready Readiness to to start the year um since then also we've had a back to school night at both uh the high school and Faber great successes great turnouts lots of positive energy there um with LMS I believe tomorrow tomorrow night uh Thursday night sorry thank you um and just a little plug here

006uh from a little bird don't forget to sign up and participate in the PTO so um what else oh yesterday we had the pleasure to celebrate our hometown hero uh s cityne mlin lone who is as you know an Olympian um and um what a wonderful Ceremony this was yesterday at Columbia Park Mr tenant gave a great speech on behalf of the district and you know U he was uh Miss mclin lon's fourth grade teacher and she did mention him in uh an interview or a number of interviews as someone who supported her in pursuit of of of her of her goals um I believe she also mentioned some degree uh the whole juggling thing that she learned during her after care that's also another big big thing uh she showed that off I think

007it was at the University of Kentucky ceremony where they uh brought her into the Hall of Fame so and and she learned that here at Faber After School Mr Doro uh but anyway so the celebration went off yesterday and um she underscored the fact that it it it really took a village to get her to the heights of success and you know certainly can Echo those sentiments so congratulations to uh Miss mclock lone uh we're so proud of you um with the start of the year we healthy kids means healthy schools which means a healthy Community um looking at the the information on the department of health or NJ Department of Health there weren't any um updates just yet so just to say that you know we do encourage you to take Common Sense precautions

008you know to prevent uh the spread of infectious diseases like washing hands covering up when sneezing keeping kids sick home keeping K sick kids home keeping current with vaccinations and uh this way we can minimize the spread of any communic communicable diseases infectious diseases regarding monthly celebrations September is Spanish Heritage Month as well as National Suicide Prevention month and I'm sure there are other other other um celebrations as well but we mentioned this all 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's respectful positive supportive fair and most of all kind goes a long way in making our community stronger so um not to belabor things thanks so much let's go on with

009a great year ahead thanks for your time uh and I'll turn it over to you Mr Ross thank you Dr Jano so uh for the superintendence report we're going to begin with a required presentation from the spring 24 testing with njsla and the dynamic learning Maps so just give us a second and we'll transition into that presentation for hi everyone so tonight we'll go over the New Jersey student learning assessment and the dynamic learning Maps first we'll touch base on the njla as you know it's administered annually it's based on a subset of prioritized academic standards it meets Federal requirements it's reviewed by Educators and administrators and then for language arts grades 3 through nine mathematics is grades 3 through 8 Algebra 1 and geometry and then our science are grades 5 8 and 11

010so here our data analysis reports what the district gets are I uh evidence statements and those are broken down into standards analysis so it gives you the difficulty level and then there's evidence statements so it tells you actually what standards have been tested how many students were tested and then how they did on that so there's for math there's three types of questions they go over concept skills and direct content mathematical reasoning and process and then modeling and application it's multi-step and for language arts do the evidence-based technology and Pros constructed response with our Ela there are a lot of Science and History standards that are embedded into the test about 70% of the tests of language arts are rooted in non-fiction text and when it's broken out it will tell you how many science

011questions and how many History questions were asked for that grade level so the achievement scores these come home the individual student reports you'll see them on Genesis it goes from level one which is did not meet all the way to level five which is exceeds expectations they give you the performance level for the students how the school average did the district and then the state and you can see your child's report um compared to their school district and the state so for here we're going to take a look at the language arts and these are our same grade and different students so what you'll notice over time um from 21 20 2122 22 23 and the 23 to 24 school year we do see some drop offs in certain grade levels um but with the

012same grade you also kind of see a trend where there's they're plateauing a little bit like we're not seeing too much growth in those specific grade levels with our students so you'll notice in grade three we increased by by one in grades four and five we went down by a couple points then we increased a little more in grade six 78 we went down and then grade nine up but if you look over the three years they're just cohorted in about the same percentage in that grade level but when we go on to same students consecutive grade over two years you'll see that our third to Fourth to 5ifth we do see an increase in those students students test scorts our fourth graders that are now or were sixth graders they plateaued as well and

013then we see a small decrease from our um students that are fifth grade they were seventh grade last year our sixth graders that were eighth graders last year we see a big dip from our six to 7 7 to8 they went from 71% down to 46% and then students in grades 7 to 8 and to 9 we do see a little increase there so with all of these scores you'll notice here how we compare to the state but this doesn't speak to what we are doing in the district so a lot of changes have happened and you'll notice here that the state averages are higher than the district average so if you look at our subgroup program so this is going over our free and reduced our Section 504 special education and general education you

014will notice again that our scores are similar from our not meeting to exceeding our special education you do see that we have a high in uh population of students not meeting expectations so this is something that we are really looking at this year what are we going to do to make sure that our students that receive special education services are are getting the same programming and scaffolds in order to be able to take the assessment confidently and then if you take a look at our district subgroups so what you'll notice here it's very similar across the grade bands we do see that um our multiple subgroup and our weight do have more of a meeting rather than our other subgroup populations are um here as you know we are about 20% ml so our Focus

015this year is really making sure that we're implementing SEI strategies in order to support our students so our next steps with Ela we did a lot of work last year that we're going to make sure that we're continuing and implementing so while we see these scores it's not indicative of what we are working on in the district there's a lot of change and the teachers are really working hard they're excited and they're taking all these implementation with strides so you'll notice in our curriculum we have implemented wit and wisdom in grades 3 through five and recently I've been I like to do a lot of research and test scores you do see an increase in test scores it doesn't happen right away it happens in about two to three years you will start to notice

016that and if you're doing it um with Fidelity you're making sure that there's professional development and training we will see the growth in scores we are adopting this year new curricular resources in our K to 2 and 6 through 12 language arts we are looking to make sure that we have comprehensive curriculum in our K to 5 which is something that they've never had which means our kindergarten all the way to fifth grade will have a comprehensive resource that is very similar in structure so when they're moving on from kindergarten to First all the way to fifth grade there is a very similar structure and the students are used to these routines and procedures so they can dive right into the content instruction and assessment so we are enhancing our push and intervention to Target

017specific skills we rearrange the schedule a bit to be able to provide more intervention services we have non-fiction Fridays we noticed that in our 6th through 12th grade we weren't spending enough time in non-fiction so using newella which is a great platform we purchased language arts science and social studies and there's a lot of resources in there for our teach it looks very similar to what they're working on on the njsla and the more we expose our students to questions that are similar on the assessment they're building their stamina so while you know we're providing we're giving students an assessment remember our standards are aligned to the assessment so if we're Mo we're showing students what these questions look like all year long when it comes time for the test it's not scary and then

018assess regularly and analyze data to identify Trends and area for improvement professional development so we are we have instructional coaching across grades K through 12 we have Ashley Powell who's our in District instructional coach who's already in the classrooms she'll start her cycle shortly she's been supporting teachers she's going she's analyzing data for us we have Dian aaski who's coming in for our elementary she'll really be diving into our small group instruction um and then we have lots of other um coaching going on with Consultants that are coming in for stem for our SEI structure PD on best practices and Ela teaching strategies and literacy research so really making sure on a professional development days that our teachers are looking at different strategies and using research to make instructional and decisions in the classroom allocate

019PD time for collaboration so something we felt that was really beneficial and the teachers really liked was articulation but not just at the high school but having the articulation from sixth all the way through 12th grade so they know what is being worked on and they can continue forward progress with that so if this is what we're doing in sixth grade how are we going to up it in 7th 8th and continue on and then provide teachers with time uh to review resources and ensure that whatever we are looking at to bring into the district aligns with the new standards because New Jersey updated their standards and they really update there's a lot they made a lot of changes there so now we're taking a look at our math it's same grade and different students

020here you'll notice in the green this is where we see a slight increase and the Orange shows where students have where the scores have decreased and you'll notice here same thing our scores tend to just be very similar with that same grade so students in third grade are hovering around that 50% uh we see a dip in our fourth and fifth grade and then in sixth grade again we're seeing a slight increase our sixth grade I'm sorry our seventh grade a slight decrease our eighth grade we do see from 18% to 28% our Algebra 1 LMS scores took a little dive um and then you'll notice our high school scores did go up a little but everything tends to just stay in that same range so that's something we're really really focusing on this year

021is breaking down those evidence statements and looking at those standards that they're really assessing and seeing which ones we mastering and which ones we're not mastering and we need Improvement on and then here these are the same students consecutive grades over two years so you'll notice students that were in third grade in 2122 to fifth grade we saw a decrease and then our students that were in fourth grade in 2122 to last year we also saw a decrease our fifth grade to seventh grade we did see an increase in their math test scores at the end of last year and then here you'll also notice with our the difference with the state um in seventh grade and algebra one these are the only two in which we um were higher than the state average the

022rest of the the scores again we are below the state average and you'll see the differences there so a lot of changes again we're really focusing in on our math from kindergarten all the way up through high high school here you'll notice again our subgroup programs looking at our special education also 62% of our students are not meeting so what are we doing to ensure that we also we're providing special education with the proper resources and tools and then our subgroup by race it's very similar to our language arts if you take the scores next to each other they tend to be very similar in the pattern and then next steps for mathematics so last year our middle school and high school teacher spent a lot of time looking at a core resource for the

023students and then over the summer wrote the curriculum Big Ideas was What was decided on they spent a lot of time looking at it the alignment to the New Jersey standards how it will best fit the needs of our students and then looking to see how it aligns to the new math standards making sure that it was comprehensive so it wasn't just one thing and then I needed to go and purchase additional supplemental resources we wanted something that had a lot of scaffolds resources for our ml students an online platform and then also had a workbook that students could use take home bring back to school so that's what they're currently working on implementing we had professional development on at the beginning of the school year and we'll continue the conversation digging into the resource

024and making sure teachers feel really comfortable using it develop high quality instructional materials for grades K through five prioritizing conceptual understanding problem solving and critical thinking so uh envisions is currently the district resource but it's not the curriculum it's a resource that we use so how are we going to make sure that we are taking envisions and we are aligning it to the new math standards and we're providing students with rigorous instruction what are we doing to do that so one of the best ways is looking and focusing on concrete pictoral abstract learning making sure students are using manipulatives really honing in on that day one might just be we're spending time looking at problems using manipulatives whether it's word problems twep one step and how can we manipulate that then move it to the

025pictoral and then move it abstractly and once the students can go abstract they can really understand how they got there be able to explain it reason share it and write about it we're introducing building thinking classrooms at DHS and continuing prisms VR at LMS and DHS which are the virtual reality that we purchased last year the teachers like that that also helps our students conceptualize and really see everything in 3D so it's not just a 2d word problem on a sheet of paper they can actually move through a 3D word problem and solve it and building thinking classrooms that helps students it gets them up it gets them thinking about the math problems sharing how they got there and understanding that your way and my way might be different but we came to the same

026answer and this is how we got there and then being able to talk about it and also share whether they think their answer is right or wrong you know go almost debate with the student I think your answer is correct because or I don't agree with you because assess regularly and analyze data to identify Trends and areas for improvement and then PD maintain the instructional coaching structure collaborative PD on best practices and effective math teaching strategies and then allowing teachers time to look at their resources align um practices to the new standards and making sure it's following the scope and sequence of the math pacing guides so now our njsla science this is our same grade different students tested in 58 and 11 you will notice that our students um for 8th grade there was

027a little bit of an increase and then in 5 and 11 we saw a decrease there and then District to the state you will notice here that our scores are under the state average again we are working really hard in the science department last year they started working and articulating from 6 through 12 and really understanding how to use um c c uh claims evidence reasoning they're working on that this year we had PD on the embedding the new njsla Ela and math standards into science so how can they do that what are they doing to make sure that we are addressing our new standards and then taking a look at our science NJ dooe digital item Library which are released items and they have those available for our teachers in which they are going

028to start using those as practice in the classroom we are also looking at our sixth sth and eighth grade and taking a look at how our courses are are running to make sure that we are spiraling back a lot of our skills and Concepts so students aren't only seeing life science one school year and then they're not seeing anything until they're taking the assessment in e8th grade so that is something that we are looking at and working on you'll take a look here at our subgroup programs and then by race so right now we are evaluating our current resources um that we have in elementary middle and high school and how they're aligning with the standards we're make we're implementing just multiple modalities by incorporating Hands-On experiments visual aids and digital resources to make sure

029that we are accommodating the different learning styles in the classroom making sure that students are getting the Hands-On experiment but not just the handon Hands-On experiment what are they doing after that experiment are they doing a claims evidence reasoning task are they supporting it with evidence are they writing about it analyzing data to inform instructional decisions so actually looking at our science scores and then using released items as quizzes and seeing how we can make sure that students again are comfortable with the types of questions that are going to be asked on the assessment create a targeted Intervention Program for all students needing additional support and then our professional development so ongoing PD on integrating njsla science questions in into daily learning activities fostering collaboration among teachers and then establishing a coaching model so our

030coaching isn't just for language arts and math it's for all of our subject areas really ensuring that best practices are happening throughout all content areas and now our Dynamic learning Maps which this assessment measures the achievement level of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities it measures what students know and can do at their academic grade level regardless of their cognitive ability it's for each student based on their IEP so this assessment goes off of students IEPs and it's across a number of essential elements that are based on their subject level and grade level and then they're assessed in ela and math in grades 3 through 11 and then 3 through eight I'm sorry and then grade 11 and students take science in 5 8 and 11 and you will noce our scores here language

031arts math and science science the information is not reported it's less than 10 students so we just put an astrict through all of our science uh number of tested students and language arts are 10 we had two at or advance in mathematics 14 and there were five students that are at or Advanced on the mathematics portion and then our next steps this is what we've really been working on is ensuring the curriculum is accessible and appropriately challenging for students with special needs and making sure that we are modifying the curriculum to support their diverse learning needs increase inclusion opportunities and create inclusive classroom environments that celebrate diversity and positive interaction so we're really looking at making sure that our classrooms are inclusive for students and giving students our opportunities to go into the general education

032classrooms providing opportunities for our students to attend the after school program so our after school programs are for all students and then making sure that we are encouraging our students that receive special services to come and attend Implement assessments to track students progress and then professional development continuing with instructional strategies um for teaching students with special needs including Behavioral Management and personalized learning so making sure that we are providing the curriculum but also looking at students IEPs individual education programs and meeting their goals and then facilitate regular meetings for teachers to share their insights strategies and resources so the big picture districtwide so setting targets it's really important to establish our performance goals analyze the data and promote ongoing Improvement Cycles so as I discussed earlier something we're really looking at are those evidence statements

033and we're starting back in this 2021 school year actually they had go back to before covid all the way to now and breaking it down into what standards were tested and did our students meet and exceed or did they not meet and exceed and where are the patterns from third grade all the way up through high school and are we finding the same commonalities across grade levels and then providing support So roll out and train staff on our multi-tiered system of supports um for students academic and seal needs develop strong core resources and practices to promote critical thinking and problem solving structure PD on key priorities and stay focused on the high leverage topics so making sure that our PD sessions are meaningful for the staff they're walking away with something that they can use

034in their classroom and they feel that you know this was great I can't wait to do it again provide and then hopefully providing the time for teachers to share their bre best practices and resources and strategies offer supplemental programs for students who need the additional assistance create a districtwide um toolbox of resources that's something that really was working on over the summer with some of the teachers where they can find these materials so it's almost like an if my student is struggling here then what can I do next and really taking that based on standards and having teachers support these toolboxes and create the materials and then Reach Out promote family engagement workshops and information sessions to educate and support families on assessment so making some of our family engagement engagement uh sessions about what's

035going on when students are taking assessments what is the njsla how can I support it at home what are little things that we can do so it's really important you know we love the family engagement so really getting our families out and then Foster open stakeholders communication so looking to our staff parents students for information about how we can continue progress and areas for improvement thank you does anyone have any questions yeah I've got a couple questions um and looking at the slides that you went through uh there was a large range in Geometry there was a really broad range in in ter terms of the analysis from I think uh flipping back in there where you had I think before that in Geometry there on the geometry at the near bottom there's from uh

0362122 you went from 70 to 22 23 24 is 49 with uh in the middle year was even lower lower than that is there some sort of analysis around that why there's such a big range yes so the amount of students that test because if you take and do well in Algebra 1 or if you take Algebra 1 in 8th grade then you take the geometry test in n9th grade so it's really based on that number so if they're taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade they don't take the algebra 1 assessment again they'll take geometry but it's all based on how many students are taking geometry in ninth grade so sometimes those are students that may be taking your honors courses yeah I was going to ask how many of that's influenced with alge because

037a big part of geometry is a lot of like higher higher calculations in math so okay that makes sense then I have another question yes uh prism VR use um is it better to have that developed among the younger grades to develop a foundation and build interest in in those subject matters and does it show better response in the younger grades compared to that of the older grades so I think the younger grades would love it however there's a law that you have to be 12 years old old to use the headsets yes cuz I know it was super exciting and I had someone at our elementary level when she found out we had these in District even to support our ml students and I I was like I'm so sorry they have to be

03812 years old to use the headsets but I think in the near future or even soon there's other alternatives to VR headsets that can model things in in a similar manner to Foster that uh foundation and interest in the younger grades cuz I think developing those Foundations at a younger grade can help them a lot better as they go through yeah absolutely it's something I'll look into see how we can even get that interest because yes the students are very interested in it all right next question uh I was actually surprised that the sign scores show such a high volume in the red uh I would think more like math or or even Ela would would show more of that but surprising to see how how it was a lot more in the science scores

039and do we have any like contributing factors on that so the science it's it's a lot of reading so it needs a lot of stamina for it and the questions when you break it down if students aren't familiar with the content or they haven't seen it it it's harder for them to get through and read the problem I do think that we have to look at our science curriculum across the board especially starting in our elementary grade to see if it's aligning with um the standards properly and then making sure that they are seeing these type of questions and not just handson so I think it is US looking at our resources and evaluating how we are using them in the district and could it contributing factor be the ability of the students to understand

040like the sentence structure and really break down what's being asked or being um communicated yes I do I think a lot of it h they're very wordy questions so when the students are reading them and they have to look at the paragraphs it is like language arts but I think with the language arts they read the passage and they're comprehending that at a different level whereas the science it's very non-fiction that's where we have to you know up our non-fiction reading and it's just it's factual so getting the students to read and the academic vocabulary is higher level so I do I think it's getting the students to really understand that academic vocabulary and being able to apply it in the assessment just more exposure for our students so is that why we see a

041higher Trend in the multilingual uh households with a higher scores in those areas yes last question um in the big picture slide that you had uh does finding commonalities look into uh yeah commonalities look into root cause and not just the reported data and what external factors contribute to areas where the students need Improvement so it's not just this data we look at all forms of data so we do have uh this year we'll have a power of assessment and data committee and we're not just looking at njsla data we'll look at local data so we use I ready and linkit and also classroom data formative assessment are we providing students with exit tickets so are we looking daily at what our students are doing and are we moving on too quickly so something that

042I'm really working with the teachers on especially in math is Mastery so if our 80% of our students at the end of that lesson aren't understanding it through an exit ticket don't move on you know retach it the next day if 20% of your students don't get it and 80% do you can retach that in a small group to the 20% so it's really getting us to Mastery on that um standard and skill rather than going through and through and through and I think you know Mr Ross can speak to this and myself when we came here teachers were under the impression they had to go through every lesson every day and just get through the book so we've tried to reframe that thinking that no we want our students to really master and understand

043the concept so if they're not understanding something we don't have to move on so we look at more resources than just our njsla assessment we'll be looking at local data formative assessment that's happening in the classroom to make sure that we're seeing are we seeing the same Trends across the board and then in some of the plc's I know something Faber's working on right now is they're looking at their assessments and then they're honing in on a skill so they're taking a look at where the students are struggling a little bit and then they're going to take that skill and work on it how can we implement it you know even throughout the day it doesn't just have to be in this one subject area where can we embed it throughout the day to make

044sure our students are seeing it all day long right because uh I know it's real tough and and teachers are working hard at it but I was also thinking beyond the framework what other external factors can be contributing to some of the areas that the students need Improvement so you don't necessarily have to answer it's just food for thought maybe we can touch base later on on that yeah absolutely thank you thanks if I if I could just mention I think it's worth um noting with such a high population of multilingual Learners students uh that are new to the country less than a year are able to be exempt from the ELA assessments but not math and science so they also have the option to take if they speak Spanish to take math and science

045in Spanish so sometimes there's a discrepancy in scores because we don't know if the students are taking the test in Spanish or English right um if they opt to take it in Spanish but they're learning science in English that could be causing a discrepancy in their scores so I think with the increase of multilingual Learners we have to look at the data a little bit more closely and look at the full picture like Miss drapkin is saying because um we have so many students that are in this category that their you know their testing environment isn't ideal for linguistic purposes we have students that perhaps have had interrupted instruction and have never taken such a test before so um you know especially science that's very wordy like she said it's more Ela almost than science

046so it' be interesting to see you know um to look deeper if those science scores are affected by um the fact that we have so many newcomers all right so thank you obviously to miss drapkin for that presentation and um for those of you at home uh or board members the presentation is available on the website uh so feel free to take a look at that and if you have any other questions don't leave without your phone that would be bad thank you Miss drapkin drive safely so uh moving forward from the testing presentation uh I just wanted to provide a little bit of discussion about the district goals this obviously does relate to some of the work that Mr rkin was referring referring to with regards to sort of big picture items so we

047have four District goals uh we have four District goal priority areas that we've talked about and I presented on this at the last board meeting um if you want to see that presentation it's also available under the August 26th uh agenda section so the four goal areas are uh similar to last year's as I uh spoke about last uh last meeting academic success and data use is goal one goal two is school climate and culture goal three had been um construction and fiscal responsibility it's been more generalized to operational efficiency and goal four is a new goal in its Community engagement so uh I discussed the goal language and the goals are actually available uh for everyone's review in the education section uh they are item D in education that enclosure is there uh for

048those of you who have access to it online or the big copies that we have but what I wanted to also just talk about a little bit is just some some of the impacts uh that we have here the work that the district has been doing with uh with goal setting and structured goal setting has allowed us to articulate specific impacts that should be taken at each school and at the district level with regard to each goal and so Faber and the middle school and the high school and central office have goals that are aligned with each of there there are specific outputs that should be measured that are measurable based on each of the goals and these impacts are listed here in the agenda so for example within the academic success goal there is

049a Faber goal related to students who are uh achieving at the tier one and tier two level at the middle school there's a goal that's related to link at proficiency and at the high school there's a goal that's related to njsla proficiency for ninth grade students um at for goal two School climate and culture the impacts are related to uh office referrals and chronic absenteeism which we know are big significant factors in both building School culture and just getting kids into the building and supporting their learning in that sense uh goal three operational efficiency is related to business office practices which is specifically uh requisitions and invoicing uh and also facilities planning uh life life cycle so looking at preventative maintenance and look at budgeting for long-term facilities repairs and um and Facilities maintenance goal

050four which is community engagement is related to participation it with the comprehensive needs assessment so trying to get more parents to participate in that survey uh which obviously we've been working with parents square and a lot of community outreach to do that and also Human Resources life cycle um support and expand engagement with the school Community involves external stakeholders and also internal stakeholders so the HR life cycle is really about Recruitment and Retention um from when people might see an ad to work in the district to getting them to stay within the district and feel supported as they're here so within each of those impacts there are also very specific um uh behaviors right uh there's evidence that's associated with each uh of these types of of impacts and basically that cascading of from goal

051to you know uh from from goal area to goal language to impacts to objectives and behaviors is the process that the admin team has been working on it is a very very clear line of steps um that everybody's getting used to a little bit and that we're still sort of working through but it is a very I think it will be a very effective model moving forward when we think about you know the comment that we want to we want to improve test scores in third grade right there are so many ways to do that but when we think about specific what our objective is right we want to increase let's say njsla scores in third grade by 10 10 percentage points there's the question then is really sort of almost root C root cause

052right where can we drill down to what behaviors what actions will actually move the needle on that and one of the things that we've really been working on with something like njsla is the use of the linkit assessment so linkit is aligned to the New Jersey state learning uh the standards and when students take linkit in the beginning of the year for their course they get results that are related to their Mastery at that time of the the the student learning standards when they then take that in the second window which is right around midterms or thereabouts right they have another sense of things uh at our elementary level the third link at window is actually going to be given prior to the njsla by about three weeks or so so that teachers can diagnose

053right they've had three Windows now of data that shows students Mastery based on certain standards so from an individual perspective it allows staff members to intervene in students learning and really say okay you know you're you need to work on this and you need to work on that and you need to work on that but from a programmatic perspective it also allows us to understand where we're strong and where we're weak so if we have a tendency to show you know low results in certain standards areas it means that perhaps we need to focus on those or there's a curriculum misalignment or there's something that needs to be addressed and that type of data analysis and structure hasn't been done well here um you know there wasn't a lot of assessment in the you know

054prior to my arrival in the district tenant Mr tenant was doing this work with Miss Moody at Faber a little bit they were piloting linkit uh in my first year we brought link it in in my second year last year we brought in I ready um and linkit but still we have to work on building that culture of assessment so that staff members understand why we're giving these tests how the data is going to be looked at when it will be looked at what time and professional development is provided for folks and um and then you know try to tie that to the outcomes so that's a really sort of basic example of what's happening in terms of you know the the cascading of the district goals process so I just wanted to kind of

055share a little bit more color and obviously board members we've talked about this quite a bit um but just members the public to understand the district goals are written somewhat generally but there is this really robust framework that that kind of lives beneath them that um you know the administrators are very very hard at work on and that staff members will be will be very much involved with so um any questions on that or any additional questions uh from the assessment presentation I me all right um so uh so other items um so like Dr gendrano I just want to um talk a little bit about the beginning of the school year I do want to thank uh the staff for a really amazing opening of the year we had two really nice professional development

056days for our new staff members um the Monday and Tuesday that was right before our board meeting then we had our two inservice days at the end of August which were uh really impactful a great day of professional development on day one and then a really nice uh convocation on day two we had Hamish Brewer who came in and gave a a really powerful opening speech that was incredibly inspiring um and then we welcomed our kids back on Tuesday and like every school district in the world we had some ups and downs in the first week or two um with minor things that had to be worked through and you know I think we've pretty much gotten through those for the most part and we're we're rolling pretty nicely um the feedback I've received from

057especially our our new staff and a lot of Staff members who I've spoken to that are that are returning but maybe in a different position is that there's a really good feeling about what's happening in the district right now people feel that you know they're they're feeling supported uh the addition of uh the assistant principal at the middle school has been a very positive impact the you know walking through the Middle School um there are far fewer students in the hallways uh Mr uh altm and Miss Caulfield have both been very visible um at pickup and drop off and throughout you know the period changes uh and there's a lot of good work being done there's new curriculum there's new resources there's a lot of things that people will just have to still get used

058to but I think we're in a very nice place uh so far I do want to thank the DEA um and uh Miss Miss Anastasia who's no longer the the the vice president of the association uh we we did not get to meet this year uh but I do want to thank uh Miss Laguna morau and uh Miss Cortez Miss corz for our meeting uh this month it was the first monthly meeting of the new DEA leadership and it was a very positive conversation um so I'm excited about that working relationship and um you know it was different not having you there but you know things change as uh Mr Anderson said change is the only thing that's constant in the world so uh back to school nights as well occurred last week we had

059uh the high school first and then followed by Faber and at Faber we also had a preschool back to school night which was really wonderful it's like I I think almost every preschool student's parent was there we had translation being provided by our staff members and also students from the high school who came down and and assisted um which was really wonderful it was great to have them there that was done through Project Connect um which was fantastic and then we had also our enl and interventionists um put together a separate program that also occurred before the sort of primary the plenary session uh and we had translation services there the main event was uh was you know the packed uh the packed gym and uh beatric gimenez who is our new um Community parent

060involvement specialist spoke at both of those events and introduced herself to parents she also had a table that was set up with uh materials that were in English and in Spanish regarding her role and the supports that she can provide within the the community and then Faber also had the entire opening session also translated in Spanish and presented in Spanish at the end of the evening so really great events um you know feedback has been very very positive about those very excited for the middle school which is on Thursday um Miss Jimenez will be there again to speak with uh with parents and uh it's just a really it's a you know it's nice to get people back in the buildings and uh the the vibe has been very positive so um moving on into

061sort of new positions uh we have four new positions and I just want to briefly just kind of mention staff members that have been doing a really wonderful job District security coordinator uh Jason marenberg who we hired at the last meeting has been really uh involved in just understanding our Safety and Security protocols our documentation and uh he's just been very present so those of you who are around pickup and drop off uh he's been at Faber almost every every morning and every afternoon he's also been at the High school he's been at the middle school he's been in the link he's been in sort of high traffic areas he spent time in the ca cafeteria he spoke to Middle School uh Social Studies classes on 911 because he was a first responder um to

062to that tragic event and he's just been around a lot um he's made a very positive impact I think he's a really uh wonderful gentleman um and he's just been able to speak to and connect with so many folks um students and staff members and uh and parents as well so he's doing a great job we are in the process of finalizing the the district uniform that he'll be using so he will have uh what's called a guardian vest which is a uh front button uh vest with a um a shield uh that's embedded into it and he will have a high VI um High VI vest that is available for you know areas uh times of the day where he needs that so for for traffic and you know pick up drop off um

063and then he'll have otherwise branded dellan gear that he'll wear under the vest for the most part obviously he won't need the vest at all times but all of that will have his name the dellan uh logo and then something on the back that rep that recognizes him as a a security officer or security individual for the district so every external piece of clothing that he wears will have that branding so that everyone will recognize that is um someone who holds that position there are a lot of districts that use um sort of police type shields for their Crest on the left uh left chest and I have uh a very strong feeling that that's the wrong thing to do so we are just using the district logo um as opposed to the shield which

064sort of represents in some way that the person is related to law enforcement um and I wanted to make very clear that this person is a District staff member not a member of law enforcement um but we have a vendor and we have a good you know sense of how that's all going to work out there will be a lead time for some of this material but we'll try to get him the Branded uh gear as quickly as possible so that he can you know be out there and sort of be recognizable but certainly I think people recognize him as the person in the position he has he's somewhat unmistakable um in his presentation and once he's fully geared out that will that will just help the situation um so we have two new school-based

065Wellness counselors uh this is a position that was added for this year to replace Thrive and as you remember Thrive had been paid for for a couple of years using Esser funds that was a a contracted service provider that provided uh mental health support services tier three supports for students that that needed those services so we have one uh who's at the middle school and high school that's Ava atana de olera she served last year as a school psychologist um in the district and we have a new staff member shija Curtis who's working at Faber um the two of them have collaborated really well to sort of introduce this program and the the protocols and things like that to the staff and um Miss uh DEA Dr DEA um spent most of the spring and

066many hours in the summer developing and honing the materials that would be sent out to parents and to staff members and um and just protocols in general so they will start seeing students um soon um and this process has really just been them understanding what student uh supports there are that are available where can where they can best fit in um in terms of their services what students saw thrive in the past and then would need to continue services this year and they've both been very proactive within their the school communi so very excited about both of them and and the position generally I've mentioned uh oh yeah well the new uh school-based Wellness counselors be in contact with Thrive for the transition period or are they already contact yeah there was a there was

067a there was a period of transition already Thrive is fully out of the district at this point but that that occurred during the Spring yeah um our new cpis uh beatric gimenez has been uh very active as I mentioned in terms of the school events and she's also been active out in in the school Community she comes to us from per Amboy where she uh had the same role but she's wonderful bless you um and uh I've met with her I have a standing meeting with her every other week she's developing protocols she's been doing a lot of support a lot of the kind of work at this point is trying to um help parents with registration help them with the completion of lunch forms because we have a you know a real representation problem

068in terms of the completion of the free and reduced lunch uh forms and just general resources so she's identified some key resources for the community and she's she's shared them out and she'll be very active in that role as well so I'm excited for for her and the position there and then the fourth position that I want to just briefly mention is our uh District behaviorist this is a position that I didn't actually think we were going to be able to hire um as of I think our August committee meetings I had said we're going to have to use a contract contracted service provider we're not going to find someone and then uh uh Miss uh n CER fell in our lap and she has been great she's been already deployed to a couple of

069situations where there's a challenging student that's not responding appropriately to sort of first level um uh supports that the that staff member or the par professional is giving him or her and she's been able to provide some additional resources and additional supports and things like that she'll start working with some of the teachers on Behavior plans for individual students and some other protocols she's also is serving as a trainer for our um uh CPI program which is uh sort of retra restraint training um for you know for significant uh issues that arise and she's been very active at Faber she's also uh addressed a situation that was occurring at the I think it's the middle school so she's um she's been doing great work and again in terms of the new positions that we have

070this is another great position to have on staff because to contract for for these types of services is extraordinarily expensive and what you get for that is far less than having a full-time staff member on site at all times so with that uh I'll move on to uh qac so there's some information about qac on the board agenda the district Improvement plan is listed there I'll briefly explain why it's there and what it means so qac is a monitoring program from the state that occurs every three years it is the quality single Assurance continuum and every school district in the state has to go through monitoring uh once every 3 years in order to pass qac you have to earn a district score of 80% or higher on uh each of five categories the instruction

071and program category which is basically test scores and curriculum is based uh there's a huge portion of that that's based just on test scores alone and almost every district with a free and reduced population of about 30% or more fails the instruction and program portion of cusac because of the essentially because of the demographics of the district demographics are very um uh predictive of state test scores and the the same is certainly true in dellan we ended up losing 22 points um on qac for instruction program just on our test scores which brought us to a 78% and then we earned the rest of our points so our final score was a 7 8% the other four operational areas we scored 100 on three of them and I think 91 on the fifth one so

072we're in very good shape and obviously all of the work that we're doing with instruction and program is good our outputs were just not good enough to earn us a passing score over the last year there has been a significant um amount of uh lobbying um especially from districts like dellen uh superintendents have gotten together and pushed the state to try to change the way that the qac instruction and program category is scored and one week ago on Monday the New Jersey State Board of Education actually changed the the way that the inp category is scored so it is much much more scored now on growth than overall outputs so if a school district is improving they get more points than sort of the raw score uh and so we received our score scores we

073were reviewed at the beginning of March we received our our scores on qac two weeks ago so it took six months for them to tell us that you know what our scores were and then they changed the rules uh right after that I recalculated our scores based on the new rules that that are now in place and we actually would have passed within 80% I uh lobbied the office of cusac I lo uh our our uh County Executive County superintendent to see whether we could use the new scoring rubric because that's actually now what's in place and unfortunately the answer was no that that wasn't the rubric that was in place at the time that we were reviewed and so we do have to do an instruction uh a district Improvement plan so by current

074metrics we would actually be a uh we would have passed that category but we do have to go through this Improvement plan process um and so the the dip is the dip the dip is actually on the um the board agenda for approval so um I am confident that we will achieve what we need to achieve this coming year and then no longer need an improvement plan in this particular area um next topic uh we have uh a brief conversation about the student representatives to the board so this is a process that we are finalizing I'm working with Mr Lynch uh and I know we've had some conversation at the board table uh in the last two years we've had one representative to the board that person was the president of the student council uh

075that person was also a 12th grade student and so it was uh it was sort of easy in implementing this process that we would use the student council president who was also a 12th grader this year uh coming into this year there was uh an election that took place in the spring and uh Douglas who's here Douglas gado um did did win the student council election and he is the president of student council Douglas is an 11th grader and so that sort of brought into some question well you know should we have one representative should we have should we always have a senior uh you know that kind of conversation so we are looking at uh very likely bringing two students on as uh representatives to the board the 12th grade um the 12th grade

076uh class president was elected last last week and that is jazara mlin and uh we are just sort of finalizing having those two students uh Douglas and jazara as our two student Representatives so more on that to come but we do anticipate by October we'll have uh the the sort of the final setup in place so but Douglas thank you for being here appreciate it um fall NJ GPA testing which is uh for our current now it's our current 12th grade students these students took the assessment in the spring uh they probably some of them took it in the summer uh but now they still have to take it in the the spring the fall again we have 10 students who have to take Ela we have 38 students who have to take math that's

077happening in October um preschool update for 2425 uh we have three classrooms now at A+ Academy um A+ Academy did uh did open they opened a little bit later than we had uh expected that they might um sort of at first glance but they did open they will have to make some days Up For Students the feedback about A+ now that it's open has been very positive it's a it's a very it's a very nice looking space inside the people that are there are really positive and um have been very welcoming they obviously have their Kinks to work out as a brand new daycare facility um you know providing preschool Etc and then the sort of next step in this process is looking at how we can expand next year we have uh our universe

078of classrooms is uh 11 or 12 classrooms total we we have four here at uh in the district at fa we have three at a plus Academy so we we basically need five more classrooms and if we offer five more classrooms somewhere we will be able to say that we have fully implemented Universal prek for the town of dellan which would be remarkable so any three or four-year-old who lives in dellan would be able to access free full day preschool so we actually have identified a potential provider for that and we're finalizing sort of the information with that and you know our budgeting process for preschool is a little bit strange we have to know we have to commit basically by you know late October early November to what's going to happen in September of

0792025 um but we are relatively confident that we'll we will be able to offer up to five classrooms if we would like um at this new provider um and if that's the case then we will essentially have have achieved our universe of of preschool which would be amazing so very exciting stuff um what else the um Dell Public Library uh we had some conversation a couple months ago about um the the the efforts that the library was working on to um create a reciprocal borrowing agreement with the Somerset County library system and I think I had mentioned to you that that agreement was actually ratified about two months ago by the somerset uh County library system so um denan Public Library will be able to members of the public library will be able to use

080the Somerset County library system and vice versa and so this was really geared towards folks who are in Greenbrook also boundbrook there was a fire at at their uh Somerset County Library that's there and so those folks have a place that they can go to that's very close um this arrang uh hasn't formally been kind of it hasn't actually been pushed out to the public fully um and so the the the library folks are going to have an event on October 19th um that's going to kind of you know be a big announcement and a big celebration of this so the district will provide some uh support in you know messaging that and also um obviously some District Representatives will be there the president of the library board is Beth Willoughby who is the media

081specialist uh at Faber and we also have a District representative to the public library who is Abby Franklin who is the one of our two Middle School uh enl teachers so it's very exciting news you know we're very excited that that was able to to go forward all right last update for me is uh just about facilities projects so we have a number of facilities projects that we're working on um we are districtwide we are looking at um external cameras in strategic places we've added quite a number of new cameras or we're adding a bunch of new cameras that that work will all be done by October we recognize that there are some blind spots that we needed to take care of and we have the infrastructure to do that we're working with a company

082that is helping us uh sort of identify spaces and then provide us with good options for that we still have a lot of repairs going on throughout the schools um and that's sort of going to be an ongoing thing but that's been a process that's been really great and our facilities and custodial team maintenance folks have been very responsive um we're also looking at Columbia Park and upgrading security system with the burrow so we anticipate that being done in October as well at the high school we are redesigning or adding improvements to the Technology Center the tech center um if you were there last year and then you're there this year you not you'll notice that there's been new shelving and new storage that's been added along the window all of the 3D printers have

083also been added to that space and there's other um stem Machinery uh and uh and and processes that will be there there's also going to be a designated or dedicated robotic space um in the tech center and we're just waiting on some furniture for that work to all be finalized we are also looking at we're working on upgrades to the building management systems uh at the high school and at Faber these are basically you know the HVAC systems that exist in the building so when someone in room 215 says it's a little hot in here can you turn the air up you know someone can just go on their phone and just turn the air up um so it's it's basically that it also will help us with things like uh power outages that exist

084so we've had you know we had an incident where a circuit breaker tripped in one of the cafeterias that resulted in a refrigerator being out overnight and the food that was in the refrigerator had to be discarded and that's something that you know there's no alarm set for that uh for our folks and this is the type of thing that allows you know to automatically be triggered so that you know people can respond accordingly so that's that's a huge upgrade and um that's going to be new controls for heating ventilation and air conditioning um in those buildings we have some room window repairs occurring at the middle school um there are some windows in the in the very old part of the building that don't really have uh screens that work and you know rather

085than have every window be sort of you know uh clas clas shut forever um we're looking at replacing those uh those windows and and the screens there uh there are some facade repairs that we're looking at for the winter and there's a brand new uh vice principal or assistant principal office that was completed prior to the school year beginning board members we'll we'll take a little uh jaunt upstairs um since it was uh it it had just been newly waxed uh last meeting but that's right at the top of the stairwell which is amazing also there's a new conference room which was added to to a storage closet in the science lab um right next to the main office that was a brand new you know sort of piece of construction as well so a

086lot of really cool work there to just get more out of the very limited space that we have um and then at Faber we have uh we have had some gym improvements that have been ongoing obviously you know that the floor was um was stripped and rewaxed and resurfaced we also just had new wall pads put in um beautiful blue denell and Destro wall pads um right under the the um the backboards at each of each side of the gym the media center has also undergone a complete uh reface with new improvements and there's some new furniture that's going to be coming in to have have it be a really flexible Media Center space within the media center we've also built uh four new offices that that are now occupied by um our our preschool

087folks and um other related Services folks and then um as you all know we had the Hydroponics tank installed in the preschool wing it is the largest Hydroponics tank in any K12 school in New Jersey and um Mr shimko actually built the um the storage the the the platform for the tank um but the tank itself was installed by the folks at you know from drop the beat farms and they did that work and then they also did um a refacing and a restructuring of the garden beds in the elementary Gardens which you know is just beautiful so a lot going on in the district I know that was a long update but uh so thank you for indulging me and uh I'm happy to take any questions if anyone has them otherwise thank you

088thank you Mr Ross I did have one follow-up comment actually um with the cpis uh um role and specifically uh oh sorry so with cpis role um in addition to or with the community engagement goal four has there consideration has consider consideration been taken for harvestfest since it is the biggest Community or one of the biggest community events uh that dellan has in in the course of a year yeah I think all of the the the sort of the big community events there's going to be some sort of District representation for okay um and one of the ways that we've uh outlined the responsibilities for this position is that there's a lot of flex time that's available and so if we are going to ask Miss Jimenez or our preschool cpis to appear at an

089evening and event right that we we give them some relief during the school day um there's a lot of things that might not happen you know not a lot of businesses are open at 8:00 in the morning but many might be at 3:00 um and there might be things on Saturday for two hours that might be beneficial so absolutely okay cool all right uh other questions comments guys oh I also uh have the enrollment report I'm sorry yeah the enrollment report is listed on the agenda um I don't have it neatly in front of me but uh the information is there let me just take a quick quick look so we have uh 1354 students in the district there are currently 20 pending registrations obviously we saw a big increase in preschool because we added

090the fourth class back at Fab um but otherwise our sort of estimates for this year are about spoton and um the high school is now at 403 the middle school is at 3:32 and Faber is at 619 so um we know that there's still going to be you know a lot more kids coming in over the next two or three months so we're at a kind of a high point right now um but we we'll we'll see you know track this very carefully as time goes on and uh I I believe there's also additional plan construction going on in the district right so yes so I do have a follow-up question on that uh the estimates that the district had for the incoming students I believe that took into account for the the new construction

091and the new residents moving in is that in line with what the the city had also estimated with the developers yeah I believe so I don't I don't know off the top of my head what the estimates were but I know that probably every six weeks or eight weeks or so I provide you know there's a question from the developers because it's a it's definitely a matter of community interest um and I think at last count all of the new construction with the Nell and there was another project I think we're had had totaled about 40 40 students or 46 students something like that um which is surprisingly low if you think about the number of actual units that are there uh but there are also I think there are I think a lot of

092students that will be coming in to the district who are not yet necessarily of school age um but I do believe that we're we're pretty much in line with what the estimates were okay any other comments all right moving on to item number uh item number eight uh public comments so uh the board invites public comments on agenda items only from um on on agenda items only from 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 the public comment but will not provide substantive responses uh to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response

093after the entire public Comon 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 would like to make comments on the agenda items only last call okay moving on to item number nine education discussion items so at this time I'll turn over uh the floor to Mr dougen for uh the chair of the education uh committee the education committee met on September 16th at 6 PM in attendance were myself um Mrs Howard Miss Shimp Dr djano

094Miss trapkin and Mr Ross we met on this state and discussed a number of items including a wi range of updates from Mr drapkin regarding professional development curricular initiatives summer programming and grant-funded initiatives information on the district's work with stter education related to goal setting preschool expansion efforts with A+ Academy and planning for the 2425 school year information related to qac review from last school year materials developed for the district's new school-based Wellness counseling structure details about the full 2024 assessment window for the current 12th grade students a policy being recommended for second reading and a variety of confidential matters thank you thank you Mr dougen uh moving on to item number uh excuse me number 10 education action items uh looking for a motion to approve items a through d as a [Music] block

095MO to approve a through d as a Block H open for questions and comments um just to note item D is the uh approval of the district [Music] goals last call question comments okay Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr dougen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr satoi yes Miss Shimp yes Mrs Shep yes motion passes wonderful moving on to item 11 personnel discussion items um as the chair of the Personnel committee I'll go read read this here so the Personnel committee met on September 16th uh in attendance were uh myself Mr Anderson uh Mrs Shep and Mr Ross and we disced a number of items including the district's ongoing work with stuter related to goal setting and monitoring the implementation of new positions uh

096throughout the district including the school-based wellness uh counselors the community parent information excuse me involvement specialist and the district security coordinator we also discuss Staffing for the current school year policies and regulations that are on tonight's agenda for approval and a number of confidential items so that's the uh summary of our um committee meeting so at this point uh moving on to item number 12 action items for personnel looking for a motion to approve items a through W as a block move to approve a through W as a block second okay um open for questions or com comments um I would just say um Mr Ross correct me if I'm wrong here for item number t uh congratulations to Dr Ola okay awesome I'll just add that it's great to add two more substitutes to

097the district that um that's a tremendous help in allowing our staff members to attend professional development days or enjoy their personal days any other uh questions comments and we are also just as under is it you adopting uh the physical examination uh language uh policies and regulations last call okay Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs Condit yes Mr dougen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Mr saoi yes Miss schimp yes Mrs sheep yes motion passes okay wonderful moving on to um item number 13 operations dis uh discussion items in um in uh Mr Walker's absence I'll ask um uh Mrs condet to share with us the operations committee report the operations committee met on September 23rd and in attendance was Mr Walker Mr sanoi Mr Jano Mr Pepe

098and myself uh we discussed a number of items including District goals and processes related to facilities and The Business office the corrective action plan related to exess balances in the Food Services fund the district Improvement plan related to the qac monitoring process facilities work ongoing throughout the district a number of customy items that are on tonight's agenda for approval and a variety of confidential matters thank you thank you Mrs scant moving on to item number 14 operation uh action items looking for a motion to approve items uh 14 a through M as a block motion to approve items a through M as a block second okay open for questions comments um I did have one I wanted to ask for item M that we added today or recently um yay right we're accepting that Grant

099that's the um uh what is it yeah this is the the grant was uh we were awarded the grant last school year right and then there was more there was a a larger appropriation that was available than they had originally distributed we had to amend the Grant and then they gave us the the full amount basically so this is that amount so again yay yeah it's very exciting very exciting indeed we're doing good stuff with it so I'm excited absolutely any other questions comments last call what's that oh sure um yeah I should okay so um before we vote i' like to just uh mention or uh bring your attention to uh item C uh which is the uh ratification of the memorandum of agreement with the denell and Education Association um and uh that

100was so um we're looking to uh we let's let's just say we spent a a good amount of time discussing and uh we've reached a good place um so the item item C that is on um up for approval I think uh is uh is here because of a lot of hard work by members of the negotiations committee as well as the committee members from the DEA and their negot both both negotiations committees so um I would just like to recognize that uh here attendance um Mrs Shep uh Mrs Condit as well as Mr Pepe uh who joined uh myself um on the on the board side I know uh there were folks from the DEA this morale um M Miss anastasy um I'm going to miss a bunch of folks you'll get it later

101okay thank you um but I just and as well as don't forget Brian forget Brian and I can't forget Joe our from um for our attorney but I want to just say thank you to to everyone both teams uh for for um getting us here uh definitely a lot less time than last time um but we certainly got there and we um happy that we we're at this point uh to move forward so Mr Ross is there anything you'd like to add oh sorry Miss sheep anything on that I'll just say that as the superintendent although I was not involved in the negotiations process I'm very grateful to the board members who served on the negotiations committee uh represented the the board's interests well and obviously to the DEA uh members who served on the

102committee as well um it is much better uh for District Operations when the board and the association work well together and work proactively together to find resolution um it's my understanding that that's how this process worked um and even with a little bit of a hiccup or here and there um a slight delay in the you know the overall ratification and the end of this process uh I'm grateful for all the work that everyone did I know it's a lot of hours it's a lot of um a lot of emotions there's a lot of feelings behind it and uh to find a place where you can talk about something as large as a collective bargaining agreement that has you know a hundred different important things in it and find resolution and agreement is a really

103significant factor that really shouldn't be kind of you know underestimated so I'm very appreciative of everyone's work on it and uh I thank you for you know for getting it done thank you Mr Ross so any other comments questions okay Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr Anderson yes Mrs condet yes Mr dougen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard uh yes but abstain to letter C due to a conflict Mr saoi yes Miss schimp yes Mrs Shep yes motion passes okay [Applause] wonderful okay moving on to item number 15 uh old business any uh old business anyone would like to rehash um I would just uh bring up again we have our New Jersey school board's Workshop coming up in October like it's the 21st to the 24th um and just to mention

104that um we are we do have approval for board members to go uh I believe housing has to be done if it hasn't been done already um but it's going to be a great uh learning experience so um just just as a reminder that that date is fast approaching um any other points for old business okay moving on to item 16 new business anything new that anyone would like to surprise us with no uh okay moving on to item number 17 president's remarks um I stand by what I said earlier and um nothing new to add here um and moving on to item 18 public comments so the board invites public comment on any issue topic for members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an

105opportunity for m members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary the superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in a back and forth uh dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior to making your comments your public comments please state your name in 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 any comments on any issue any topic good evening

106I am Terry anastasy denell and staff member and the dea's negotiation team chairperson I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the board of education's negotiation team members as well as the dea's negotiation team members for their efforts in getting us to tonight's vote on our contract the board of EDS team as we heard earlier Mrs Condit Dr gendrano their chairperson Mrs Shep along with Mr pepy and their attorney Mr roselli Rosell or roselli roselli I was right the first time great and the de A's Team Ed zakowski dorine denapoli Samantha panesi our DEA president Asel Laguna morale our njaa uniserve representative Brian joffroy and myself the negotiations process which started at the beginning of last school year was truly a partnership striving for a common goal the dea's team appreciated the open

107dialogue and communication throughout the process mutual respect and profession professionalism were always present on both sides of the table we are hopeful that communication between the DEA and the board can be ongoing the many extra hours that both teams spent on the negotiations process are greatly appreciated thank you to all invol who were involved for your efforts and finally thank you to all of our board members for your your unanimous vote tonight to accept our memorandum of agreement thank you thank you Miss [Applause] anastasy well said um any other uh public comments any other [Music] issues okay fantastic all right so moving on now to uh item 19 uh executive session second one the Dell Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the open

108public meetings Act njsa 10 412b the confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy collective bargaining agreements um pending or anticip ated litigation any discussion that does not need to remain confidential will be made public as soon as it is practical um 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 adequately notified action will not take place after the conclusion of the executive session so may I have a motion please uh to move into um executive session motion to move to exec second all those in favor I I opposed okay so we will see you guys uh next time around it's uh what is it