Dunellen Board of Education Meeting - 11/28/2023

001e but we we got cor all right let's go yeah you ready okay calling this meeting to to order so in accordance with the open public meetings uh njsa 10 uh 10 uh 4-6 uh adequate notification of this meeting has been provided by advertising in The Courier News and posting notice in the Board of Education Administration administration building and district schools and filing notice with the burrow clerk I hereby call to order the regular public meeting Tuesday November 28th 2023 in the Lincoln Middle School cafetorium 400 dellan Avenue at 7 is p.m is this meeting is broadcast live uh check www.del and schools.org for details moving on to item two 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

002uh njsa 10 412b the confidential matters discussed by the board during this executive session include items related to individual privacy Collective baining agreements as well as 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 who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will take place after the conclusion of the executive session at this time I'm looking for a motion to move into executive session move to executive second all those in favor I I opposed okay we'll be back in about 30 minutes for e for e sh e she e notw never here hard I know hello I e

003for me okay okay we are back so thank you for your patience and uh at this time I'm looking for a motion to uh come back to public motion to move back to public second all those in favor I I opposed okay uh at this time we're going to move to uh item number three uh Pledge of Allegiance if you wouldn't mind please stand I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all will you all please remain standing for a moment of reflection and respect for our TR 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

004of America thank you Mr Pepe can you please call the rooll Mr Anderson not here yet Mrs condet not here yet Mr dougen is not here yet Dr gendrano I'm here present Mrs Howard present sh not here Mrs Shep present Mr trada here Mr Walker here and Miss Sophia here we do have a quarum thank goodness thank you very much Mr Pepe moving on to um item number five approval of the minutes uh at this time asking or looking for a motion to approve uh the minutes for the October 17th uh board meeting approve 5A second open for questions or comments last call okay Mr Pepe please call the rooll Dr Jen Drano yes Mrs Howard yes Mrs Shep yes Mr trada yes Mr Walker yes motion passes fantastic moving on to item number six

005student recognition Mr Ross I will uh turn the floor over to you thank you Dr Jano so welcome welcome everyone to the board meeting hello um we're very excited to have our students of the month recognized for October um and we have with us some of our esteemed building administrators so we'd like to start with uh denell and high school and Mr Tobin so please Mr Tobin come on up let's give Mr Tobin a nice round of applause for you can use the uh handheld hi I missed the dress rehearsal I'm sorry uh welcome and thank you all for coming out uh it's nice to see a pretty packed cafeteria in here for for the meeting uh and for tonight's uh student recognition for the month of November uh for grade nine our student of

006the month is Maria Camila plada Torres why don't you come on [Applause] up stand over here uh Maria is uh doing wonderfully in her elll class her teacher Mrs Jordan has commented that she is really pushing herself with her language acquisition skills uh she's very insightful in that class when it comes to literary analysis and she participates in class to discussions and really helps move the conversation forward uh she is a natural leader as pointed out by her other teachers um she helps and assists her peers um and that just seems to come naturally from what her teachers have noticed uh and she's gotten all A's and B's and all of her academic classes which is a a great accomplishment uh so really a wonderful accomplishment for Maria throughout the whole year and especially in

007the month of November as well so congratul Maria as being the student of the month all four our student of the month for grade 10 is Jaden carvalo Jaden come on [Applause] down Jaden is returning to dellan Public Schools after one year at vot Tech as a freshman last year uh he achieved honor roll for the first marking period with all A's and B's he also was a member of the high school football team this past fall uh and one a couple things that I've noticed myself in particular uh always uh very brigh eyed and happy walking around the hall is a pleasure to come across paths with um and looking at his report card especially because he had a year off in between 8th grade and now 10th grade I really noticed a lot

008of improvement in his report card especially just from teacher comments things like he's a pleasure to have in class he's shown Improvement even throughout the first markeing period and he's an active participant in class so congratulations to Jaden and welcome back to denan our student of the month for grade 11 is Lloyd mangaroo come on down Lloyd Lloyd D honor roll in the first marking period with all A's and B's uh he has really challenged himself with a with a tough schedule he's in apus history pre-cal honors and also chemistry he participated in Cross Country this past fall uh and uh has a great job with perfect attendance this past uh first marking period up until this point um so congrat congratulations there and also uh very happy person to see around the building and

009always a pleasure so uh congratulations to Lloyd as a student of the month for grade 11 our final student of the month for grade 12 is laara Denis I don't believe she's here tonight uh she is a very busy student uh she's involved in the fall production of It's a Wonderful Life which will be shown sh on December 8th in the High School auditorium and also December 9th she's also a member of the French Club the safety ambassadors the environmental Club the book club uh she's been in in her third year of participating in the band uh and she also does dance outside of the high school which is where I believe she is tonight she's involved in in taking three AP classes AP Euro uh AP Literature and AP Cal and and achieved all

010A's in those classes and was also top five in her class so congratulations to Lara Denis if any parents at this time want to come up to get a picture um please feel free to do so one final round of applause for all our students of the month for the month of [Applause] November yeah parents feel free to to come up if you'd like to get a a better angle oh awesome thank you Mr Tobin all right so Lincoln Middle School Mr [Applause] altm good evening everyone thanks for coming out uh at Lincoln middle school we have three students that we would like to recognize this evening one at each grade level and what's special about it is the fact that this is not someone that was selected by one person it was selected by

011a Committee of teachers and staff members at Lincoln middle school which makes it even more special students when your name is called if you can come forward please our sixth grade recipient for the month is Justin Garcia Castro conat Justin is cooperative and respectful to both staff and peers he is always willing to help out his teachers and fellow classmates Justin is willing to share his experiences and contribute to the classroom experience he goes out of his way to help translate for students Justin maintains High grades and is internally motivated to do well at all that he encounters congratulations [Applause] Justin our seventh grade recipient Santiago naho Martinez please come forward congratulations Santiago should be commended for the attention he puts into his schoolwork not only does he work hard to make sure that he

012completes and turns in all assignments on a daily basis but he does all of it with a positive attitude Santiago should also be recognized for the positive character traits that he exhibits he is always respectful and kind to his peers and teachers Santiago also demonstrates cooperation and his willingness to work with others and help them congratulations [Applause] Santiago and finally our eighth grade recipient Maxwell Deo come on up please okay unfortunately Maxwell cannot make it tonight but we're going to respect that and also acknowledge Him it is a true pleasure to have Max in our classes we can always count on him to be cooperative and attentive during lessons and activities he shows interest and enthusiasm and is an active participant during group work and classroom discussions Max demonstrates creativity both inside the classroom on

013projects and outside in his extracurriculars such as band he is kind and friendly to both peers and teachers congratulations [Applause] Max finally congratulations again to our three students of the month and we thank them for making LMS an outstanding place to learn and to grow parents if you'd like to come forward for a picture please do so [Applause] all right next uh we'll bring up Mr tenant for the Faber November students of the month Mr [Applause] tenant good evening everybody thank you for coming out tonight for fa student of the month uh first up we have we have our prek student from Miss kean's class Lexi SoDo come on up [Applause] Lexi Miss Keane says Lexi shows such kindness and compassion towards her classmates and her teachers she loves to hug everyone Lexi is respectful

014to towards all her teachers and classmates Lexi loves to be helpful to her classmates getting them things and Hing them in items such as crayon boxes I'm very proud of Lexi and all the generosity and love she puts forth thank you Lexi congratulations you can stay here stay here stay [Applause] here kindergarten we have Merl Trey lockart come on [Applause] up Trey always comes to school with a smile and gives his best Trey is always the first to say please and thank you and letting and helping hand he's also a kind friend to make sure everyone is always included great job Trey [Applause] congratulations for first grade we have Simon Moore come on up Simon Simon is very good at following direction is a good role model for his friends he's getting better and better

015at using his voice to express himself good job Simon he's a great reader and a is a resident mathwiz really fantastic give it up for [Applause] Simon second grade we have Raheem Wallace Raheem is not here tonight but we're going to honor him just the same um Miss sto's class he's always tries his best on his assignments and is an active participate throughout lessons he's respectful towards his teachers and is kind to his friends and classmates let's clap it up for Raheem Wallace in third grade we have Thiago Pico [Applause] Thiago like the jacket sharp Thiago works hard at him his schoolwork and is good and His Kind friend Mrs Min can always count on Thiago to be an excellent example to his classmates clap it up for Thiago please next up we're going to

016skip fourth grade because of have a special one for for fourth in special areas but fifth grade right now we have Hudson Rios come on up [Applause] Hudson Mrs man says it is been an absolute pleasure having Hudson in her class last year as a fourth grader and now as a fifth grader Hudson is a hardworking student always putting forth his best effort in every subject and ready to grasp new ideas and Concepts he demonstrates excellent Behavior inside outside of the classroom and is well-mannered and respectful Hudson is always willing to help his peers and his teachers he works well with his classmates and gets along with everyone Hudson is a wonderful role model to other students and she looks forward to seeing his growth and his future future accomplishments congratulations [Applause] Hudson and for

017the first time we have a double winner a fourth grade winner student of the month and a special area student of the month please give it up for for Caroline [Applause] Alonzo Caroline was chosen by Miss canella because she's a student mon that chose responsibility leadership and willingness to help others Caroline's always working hard and does her best and is eager to lend a hand to anyone in need she sets a great example for all her peers both inside and outside classroom classroom and is highly deserving of this award the special Area Teachers say Carolyn's Delight to have in class as she's always kind to others and willing to help everyone Carolina is respectful and always tries her best give it up for Caroline Alonzo and clap it up one more time for favor students

018of the month parents if you like to come up get some pictures more all right thank you Mr tenant and uh thank you Mr Tobin Mr altm Miss Hoy thank you so much for assisting parents congratulations on the amazing recognition of your children we have a a nice long board meeting ahead you're certainly welcome to stay but if not we'll take a brief recess so you can uh you can head out was yeah e spe e okay so we are back in from the uh brief break there so um at this point now we're going to move on to item number seven uh presence report so uh hey that's me so good evening for those joining us here for the first time uh the dellan board of education is the governing body of the school

019district we donate our time out of a deep compassion for our students and work to make decisions based on what we believe what we believe will be will best help all of our students be successful so if you didn't know the board meets once a month here in the LMS cafetorium for a public meeting that covers School District updates an update from our student representative student recognitions as well as important presentations our agendas are posted prior to the meeting on the dellan school district website along with past agendas and attachments I invite you to join us in our monthly discussions uh as we go as we go forward so uh first of I'd like to just reiterate how proud We Are of our students who we just recognized and celebrated so congratulations to again again

020on the Great accomplishments so continuing along the lines of recognition uh this past November 16th I had the opportunity to join the dellan community in celebrating our athletes at the fall Sports Awards and it was a it was wonderful absolutely wonderful seeing our athletes receive recog for their hard work and outstanding efforts on the playing field hearing the warm anecdotes from all of our coaches and the tremendous reactions from their respective players made the evening quite a delight special shout outs to coach Carrie Johnson and Coach Allison Egan for the GMC accolades and a great big thank you to Mr denapoli Miss Boltz Mr Tapia Hernando uh Mr Tobin and Mr Lynch for making the awards ceremony and anybody else that missed making the award ceremony in the fall 2023 season a great success so

021so thank you to them um and also continuing on with student recognition I also wanted to recognize and would like to recognize our students who were selected by audition uh to participate in the College of New Jersey honors festivals our talented students participated in the College of New Jersey honors course during a performance on November 5th and in the College of New Jersey honors wind in jazz ensembles on November 19th so I wanted to extend a thank you to miss piano Mr sua Miss Anastasia Mr gerer and all of our art staff and administrators for supporting our students and preparing them well for these great opportunities um and one final kudos to all of our students for working hard and sharing their talents we see you and are so very proud of you please keep

022up the great efforts so changing gears in October uh Mr Ross in addition to myself Mrs Howard Mr Shep Mr dougen and Miss schimp with the contingent representing the den School District the denan school district at the New Jersey school boards Association Workshop convention in Atlantic City we participated in a number of sessions and met with a number of groups adjacent to our school board work it was a tremendous learning experience that um and we will and we look we will look to apply our learnings to ongoing and future uh discussions so it's been a while since we spoke so lot's happened since then since October so staying healthy right so as the weather changes changing years again as the weather changes and the temperatures drop it's what is it like 20 something degrees now

023it's important to underscore that healthy kids means healthy schools which means a healthy community and as of the week ending November 18th 1,911 schools reported their data that they had on on outbreaks and uh the percentage of schools reporting nonflu respiratory outbreaks from covid-19 and other respiratory pathogens was 0% this week let me say that again again 0% this week on on on the reports so there was there was no covid-19 as per the Department of Health so no covid-19 no nonflu viral respiratory outbreaks were reported by K through 12 schools RSV activity has increased in recent weeks yes and percent positivity rates across the state are about 12 uh 12.2% so if the percent positivity rate stays above 10 uh for next week this will signal the official start of the RSV season but

024it was very encouraging very surprising to see you know that the the covid and other respiratory pathogens uh notes were really surprising nothing it which was great so we're doing something right let's keep it up bottom line we encourage you to take the 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 um that can really impact our school as I do uh most meetings or all meetings now I bring about uh monthly celebration so I wanted to call out November and we're just at the end of November here as well as December and and November uh it's uh American Indian and Alaskan natives uh heritage month so there's that October the 10th was World mental health day world

025inclusion day um and 11th of October was National Coming Out day and then December it's Universal human rights month right December 2nd is International Day for the abolition of slavery December 3rd International Day of persons with disabilities December 18th International migrants Day and December 20th international human solidarity day now there many other days for recognition and celebrations but I called those out in specific 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 opened open honest and Equitable communication that's respectful positive supportive fair and most of all kind goes a long way in and strengthening a community um and this one uh took a little bit extra so almost done here guys so bear with me we will be approving

026her resignation later in the agenda this evening but I wanted to take a moment to personally say thank you to miss Anne North for all that she has done for the dellan school district in community we are so incredibly grateful for your service and literally giving the absolute best care possible to our kids and community thank you thank you thankk you miss North for making dellan such a great place and I'm I'm not I'm not one for goodbyes as the world for as big as it is can also be quite small especially in a small town like ours so so long for now until we meet again and congratulations on your retirement and your next adventure we look forward to celebrating with you in the spring when we recognize all of our retirees thank you

027moving on to uh Mr Ross the floor is yours great thank you Dr Jano so um superintendent report is uh has a couple of presentations and other items but I am going to begin with giving the floor to Sophia for the student representative update okay so continuing with the fall he was talking about the fall Sports and the new sports uh the fall Sports the students oh my god with the end of the Fall Sports the students have been very excited about the winter sports and that started last week and so far everyone's been enjoying the addition of winter track and I've just heard a lot about how cold it is and how difficult bask has beenin yeah that comes with it uh also with an ending of the marking period comes the Renaissance cards

028that are handed out to the students and I thought I would mention that Mr Lynch he claimed that he had never distributed more gold Renaissance cards to a class our senior class than he did during the assembly the other day which I thought was pretty cool um uh there had been quite a buzz about the new Auditorium especially from our theater kids the vocals are amazing as well as looks of it and we are very excited to be performing in there next Friday and Saturday for the drama club's production of It's a Wonderful Life tomorrow actually the Montclair State touring touring drama group is coming to do an SE seal assembly on drama therapy 20 of our drama students uh including me will be participating we're all very much looking forward to what they have

029to teach us and learning something new there was our first interest meeting for our upcoming musical Greece just yesterday and the outcome was very promising so look forward to another really great production and contributing to the show The Art Club has been working hard on painting the set every day after school and has done such an amazing job following with the arts department and the performances the band concert uh is December 14th and the choir concert is December 20th the magicals have three runout concerts that they do in December and which uh it's during the school day they'll they will be going to local events in town and Performing the beautiful songs that they have been working on just last Saturday morning the newly created environmental Club had had gone out on their first project

030and had spent over 2 hours cleaning trash from the Second Street park right here in dellen gathering a dozen bags of trash and Miss piano is very happy with the turnout and the amount of students who genuinely seem concerned and interested in the wellness of the environment the black student union had voted for their Council and Elijah dupus Brown was elected as president and this Friday is the high school's mistletoe dance the mistletoe committee has been working very hard on preparation for this Friday and it looks like it will be just as beautiful as ever the students just voted today for the mistleto king and queen court and everyone is very excited to see who gets crowned and US seniors have tirelessly been working on getting our applications in and some have already been hearing

031back and been accepted from some and I'm hoping all the hard work will be paying off for everyone soon and there's at least a little weight lifted off of our shoulders thank you thank you Sophia and we look forward to celebrating you and your uh accomplishments as well so thank you for a very nice uh student report um we are going to move now Mr petsinger to our ssds presentation so we'll take a little transition to get everything set up and Miss Hoy feel free to get set up at the computer can't stay here and make mes good evening everybody thank you Mr Ross today we have the student safety data system which is more recognizably known as ssds it's a report qu required by the state compiled by school districts twice a year that

032collects incidents of violence vandalism weapons substance abuse and harassment intimidation and bullying as well as what school districts do in Hip trainings and programs conducted to support anti-bullying efforts and a positive School climate reporting period 1 which goes from September 2022 through December 2022 was publicly reported in the spring of 2023 as required this report as you see on the bottom is report Period 2 which is what we did as a school district January 1st 2023 to June 2023 I have also included in this presentation a summary of the year each school is represented with a section broken into periods one and period two of incidents trainings and programs I'll give you denell in high school as an example incidents and they combine violence vandalism substances weapons and confirmed hivs into one category later in

033the presentation I'm going to separate them other incidents leading to removal as well as hip trainings and programs there is period one and period two the same thing goes for Faber School Lincoln Middle School and districtwide trainings so if you remember from period one we did that already in the spring I just added period two so you can see it as a whole these trainings are provided through different vehicles for stakeholders of the district uh they go with in-house training student training training videos outside PD professionals brought in for in-person trainings there's all different types of vehicles that we do our training on programs provided for the district every single one of those on the top is done in each School except for the fourth bullet down which is pbsis which stands for positive behavior

034support intervention system which Faber has implemented over the last several years Faber staff gets training but it also is a program that includes Faber staff and students and all District administration we target all these populations in these trainings and these programs here is a slide for the district that has broken down for the last 16 years that the states have had to report to the state on the first four elements in column number number one violence vandalism weapons and substance abuse in 2012 2013 you're going to see the Hib has five columns of blue and in the column of 2012 2013 it uh the Billy anti-bullying Bill of Rights Act was enacted requiring us to report honoral hips moving over to 2021 you see in Orange that indicates the covid year beginning in 2017 2018

035the state decided to include other incidents leading to removal in the last row which you can see is indicated by asteris other incidents leading to removal could be examples of other suspensions for reasons as an example Defiance inappropriate behavior theft bringing a vape to school it's just just depends on which school and which grade here we have it all combined incidents of violence vanin substances and weapons into one category going across and as I said in 20178 the state wanted us also to include incidents leading to other removal so there is that column in 2017 and 18 and then there is confirmed hibs on the bottom I put together what the whole District did for Hib investigations for 2022 and 2023 the top blue not uh gives you the indication of which school it is

036and going down you see period 1 period two going ac across and giving you a total detail for hi investigations that were uh done for the district was nine and there was four confirmed tibs for the District of the Year 2223 going into more detail of what the district why trainings and programs are here's a list of trainings now you're going to see everything in Black which was reported in Period one and I added additional trainings that was that is listed in pink so you can see that we have ongoing training on understanding harass intimidation and bullying uh we have ongoing training of District policy ongoing training of understanding harassment intimidation and bullying with protected characteristics cyber bullying Suicide Prevention addressing gender identity legal one law updates as well as diversity inclusion and ethics and

037boundaries so we continue everyone and the staff in this District continues to train on these aspects programs throughout the year which is required by the state is listed below the school climate team I added in pink because they continue to meet throughout the year I've broken it down to schools so for John P Faber getting to more specific the trainings are on the left and the programs they do on the right the first two bullets in the trainings anti-bullying law review District policy code of conduct and prevention School climate and cyber bullying various dayses throughout reporting period one and of course re they have re um trainings during period two as well as District H policy and building prevention there's ongoing train training for that pbsis tier 2 and 3 as you can see they

038had in the fall of 2022 and in the spring of 2023 going down to Suicide Prevention we also continue to do that training in Period 2 as well as the ABS going out for Behavior threat assessment in June the programs on the right all listed on the black which we do I mean all all the schools do it as well but I left on the bottom the checkin checkout program with the ABS which is the anti-bullying Specialist or the student or the counselor has recognizes students or students that need extra support and assign them with a teacher and they check in two times a year now it says 11722 and there's a hyphen that shows that it went through the whole year 525 23 fa has continued programs as you can see more of these

039are in Period two as well as continuing through period one pbsis is a very big one they have incentive days they also include kindness week mindfulness character education program they had a color run and they had walked to school safety in June 6th I do want to note that on bullet number two safety Ambassador presentations that is when high school students go to the second grade and they teach them about leadership respect making right choices and I know that the students are fully engaged in it and they continue to learn about it through the teachers throughout the year Lincoln Middle School like I said the first two bullets in training is continuing and that'll be in all three schools that you will see school climate and culture also had another uh person go to PD

040on in May and on the right additional programs continued social skills class continued Lunch Bunch groups continued that's building relationships and social skills and Leadership positive School culture uh they have four different events that they did Spirit weeks with different themes and in may they had a transition project which was positive adjustment to school and making good choices so that was 8th grade going to nth grade the den Allan High School again on the left same thing continuing training for all the staff members the ABS did go in April to Immigrant connections a two-hour training on that and as you can see on the right the programs in pink continues to continue for lessons for Life the leadership Life Class continues all year long freshman Focus has several dates where they bring the Freshman all

041together to discuss behaviors in school they cele celebrate academic success not only here but in in the auditorium day of dialogue which has been a special event once a year for the high school and where they get together with other high school students in discussion of race gender and social class and of course they have school spirit staff versus student volleyball which is very successful and a spirit week of seven in April so as you can see we are continually being trained on laws prevention diversity and mental health through collaboration and ongoing dedication the district brings innovative ways to be proactive in creating a positive School culture and climate for our students any questions I Sandy yeah I have a couple questions going back to the data aspect okay see all the programs and trainings

042are great yes you're showing us those numbers where where do we stand as far as against Statewide averages incidents per student against like districts do we have any any type of comparative data like that comparative I can get see what I can get from the state but this is also reflected on our uh self assessment where we get our Hib grades and we do very well on that and I reported about what our school self assessment was putting into the state um maybe two months ago and then we'll find that answer in April or May okay that's showed against State averages I could try to find that out for you in per student because we are a rather small District yes absolutely to to look at them from that perspective a larger District that may

043have numbers or slightly larg correct I could find that out for you get it to Mr Petzinger are we having issues with Mr tra's microphone [Music] or not sure that he's coming through the speakers sure can you hear me okay all right thank you okay other any other questions for misso I don't really question um just so much as a comment that I noticed uh when we were when you were showing all of the different trainings that everyone has done one of the things that I noted was there was a lgbtq plus um noted and that was the only one where there was only one instance of that training that being such a prevalent issue I'm just wondering if that's something that's offered more to staff to be able to provide that to them if

044they're interested Miss if you could uh just come back and use the microphone please we do gener we do is it on we do gener gend gender identity and expression um we have a lot of trainings on those that we have through video trainings that we're all going through as well so I mean there's staff does it at different times sometimes on PD days sometimes on their own a lot of them do it on their own and we discuss them when it comes to their faculty meetings does that answer your question well there was only one date that was listed whereas all the other trainings there were multiple instances of it having happened so that was just something I was observing in terms of Are We offering that enough for staff I can look into

045more of those thank you thank you thank you Miss chap any other questions for Miss Hoy or comments regarding the presentation all right thank you very much much Miss Hoy um so moving forward in the superintendent uh report I'm actually going to move directly into the preschool presentation so Mr Petzinger if you could do that uh get that queued up gentleman I'm gonna have to ask you to move again I can make bunnies all right so um the preschool presentation this is really designed originally as just commentary on the district's preschool expansion and as I was thinking about how to present this information I realized that it was probably best to put it in presentation form so we could then put it on the website and there would be actual information that people could refer

046to so this is essentially an encapsulation of the district's preschool expansion process uh that began um about a year ago or or even longer um and the conversations and some of the parameters that we're we're going to be working with so this is now posted publicly on the district website you can see it on the board of education page it's under the agenda um along with the ssds presentation um and so here we go uh starting off this presentation with just a basic overview because it's important to just get all this information out in one place um the dellan was one of only two districts in middlex County who was selected to uh expand preschool this year this is really I think important news it's important information our team was very interested in preschool expansion

047we were very dedicated to this idea of moving towards uh providing Universal preschool for all three and four year olds in Den Allen and so we really did spend quite a bit of time putting together a meaningful application doing the type of stakeholder engagement that's required um miss drapkin our director of curriculum and instruction visited uh about 30 Private Preschool providers within a Four mile radius or five mile radius or so and so this work paid off um we wrote a good application we had um good planning in this and we're very excited to be one of only two districts to uh to be receiving the uh recurring Aid uh selected to receive it this year so this year's funding is approximately $445,000 um which is great this is money that uh removes the pressure

048from our general operating budget so you know we are running a preschool program with three integrated preschool classes currently in the district through our regular District operating budget we have paid for uh all the supplies the materials staff salaries uh health benefits um all of the things that might be required to run a preschool program this funding is additional state aid that is awarded it's not pro-rated so we are receiving an additional $445,000 in state aid this year which is phenomenal um the way that the aid works is that this is not a preschool uh education or preschool expansion Grant this is actually additional Aid that will be a line in future years in every budget year so at a minimum the district if we were not to expand we would receive $445,000 additional each

049year um but obviously we're looking to expand so we'll talk more about that preschool expansion will be a gradual process we are uh very much space limited uh within the district and prior to my arrival here this is part of the rationale for um some of the the projects that were done um in terms of the expansion at Faber and also the projects done through referendum so we do not have space to accommodate 90% of our total Universe of students and I'll explain all of that what that means so we really do have to take a sort of stepwise process to try to increase the number of students we can serve either through District resources through spaces within the district um which are very limited or through the use of private private providers which is

050a process that we've engaged with for next year or potentially considering um what additional space we might need in terms of new construction or repurposed uh existing buildings or things like that and in school year 2425 so next school year the district plans to add four new classrooms to serve an additional 60 students according to the ramp up that's required by the aid um this is well beyond what our Target uh population is so we're being very ambitious with this number we're anticipating that we're going to be able to have four new classrooms uh with two private providers that we have contracted with and um on the board agenda you'll see that there are two approvals related to preschool that kind of outline um what's required there so this is just a timeline that I

051thought would be interesting it also has some helpful links to some of the documents that the state's put together so the Department of Education uh put a a preschool strategic plan together that was released in October of 2022 and essentially it was a project with near which is uh a a Ruckers based organization and also Ruckers Graduate School of Education so the state is using um expert resources in both areas to provide research to support the expansion to preschool and why it's a meaningful Endeavor uh to to to move forward through strategic plan is really interesting it's got good information it's got good data um and in May of 2023 there was a broadcast that was was released which had some initial information at that time we did not have the notice of funding opportunity

052the nfo um but that was then released in July now I've talked about this a little bit in the past but if you work with the Department of Education you can expect that um there are very very short timelines for things to be done and so we got the notice of funding opportunity uh July 3rd and we had to submit our application by uh August 11th and of course the summer is the summer meaning that there are not a lot of people around it's very hard to get in touch with people many of the private providers had been closed or whatnot and so putting together a very intense uh application was challenging but we were able to do that uh by October 11th by the deadline we were then awarded the funding on September 22nd

053which is great because September 22nd theoretically gives the district a fair amount of time to plan and lots of time to hire and all of those things but at the time that the funding was awarded we were also told that the information was under embargo and that we weren't allowed to do anything with it so in the September board meeting and the October board meeting I spoke very cryptically About Preschool expansion and I said if we're going to get the money then we should have this we need these positions and we need this facility and we need this resource Etc um and finally uh October 18th the Embargo was lifted and that's when information was shared with the community the thinking behind the rationale of of why the Embargo was in place for so long

054was that essentially the state is uh is uh requiring itself to pay districts for this to provide this Aid and so as part of the budget development process the governor needed to be able to say essentially yes we're you know we have whatever number of millions of dollars is available for next year and uh and so the Embargo took almost a month to be lifted so the paa requirements are listed here and these are the requirements that that we have to work with when we talk about preschool expansion so it's very easy to think in a way well any space that we could find um you know to fit six or 10 or 12 preschool students that would be great and that would totally be you know an easy process to do the requirements are

055actually very strict so obviously we already have full day kindergarten which is great um space is a significant factor in the ability for the district to be able to expand preschool and find classrooms that are suitable so preschool classrooms have to be 950 Square fet which is very large um when you think about a regular classroom it's usually about 600 to 700 square feet um and so that uh that includes 50 s ft for a bathroom and 100 ft for storage there are waivers that that are permitted and these are actual waivers that do get granted as long as the application does make sense um for classrooms as long as they have at least 700 squ feet of usable space and also not every classroom needs a bathroom if there is a bathroom within uh

056within the line of sight then that room can be considered a valid preschool classroom uh you can't put uh classrooms on the basement or on the third floor because of egress um and the teachers have to be certified uh with a P3 certificate from the Department of Education so again when we think about this process right ideally we would be able to serve all of the entire universe of denell and public school students immediately but these requirements are significant challenging to meet and we have to do a lot of planning to make sure that uh that that what the steps that we take will be appropriate for the future the use of private provider is called mixed delivery and so uh essentially when we commit to saying we're going to offer 60 more seats uh

057we're committing to offering 60 more seats so whether that is through our own space or through the use of the private provider we do have to find that space either within our classrooms or someone else's so we were given priority points uh during the application process because we had worked with private providers and we were making that step um and there is a lot of Partnerships that's required regarding the Outreach the site visits the measurements of the spaces we did have a site visit from our representative from the state who checked out our own spaces and also the spaces of some of the private providers and then we work collaboratively on budgeting and other details because this is an Endeavor that has to work financially both for the district and the private provider so if

058you're thinking about if you run a private preschool and you're getting some amount of private tuition per month from your families you have to say that either they there's uh there's a financial benefit to partnering with the district right it makes sense from a financial perspective because we can make more revenue or make the same amount of Revenue or you sort of recognize that at some point the three and four year olds that you're servicing are going to be going to a public school or working within a public school framework and so you want to create that partnership early so these are the conversations we've had with private providers and we've been relatively successful so far convincing folks to work with us um but again this is not about uh padding the pockets of private

059providers um really the budgeting process is line item and it's very strict and so the aid that is provided to the private providers is actually in the form of reimbursement so private providers say these are our actual expenses and we verify those and we submit those to the state and then there is a reimbursement process so um you know the the private childcare agencies do have to be very clear with their budgeting very transparent um because this is all taxpayer funding so in the letters that I've sent out uh the two letters and the the you know majority of the information with the two letters were the same but I did outline a couple of key uh aspects so current denell and families who uh whose children uh go to preschool attend preschool there's no

060change for their enrollment there's no process that's needed those students are just enrolled um and uh any payments that have been made during the school year um do get reimbursed to the families so there are refunds that are uh going to be distributed through an electronic payment system in uh January and again this is because we are receiving a full the full allocation of preschool funding not just the per rated amount so it's great because we actually get to give money back to the folks that have paid this year um and those folks don't need to take any additional steps with regard to meeting the needs of the program and Staffing we've determined that uh we wanted to change the daily schedule from uh what it currently is to 9:00 to 300 p.m. which is

0616 hours which is required by the aid we are still going to offer before care and Bridge care uh Bridge care is now going to run from 8:05 to 9 o' so that uh the actual school day begins at 9:00 for preschool students and Bridge care PM is not Le is no longer needed um because um the school day runs until 3:00 which is the same time that Faber lets out and students can go to Aftercare for prospective families in the current school year we're going to be adding six seats and these six seats are going to be added for three-year-old children who are born before October 1st 2020 on a lottery basis based on economic need so with the expansion uh the District needs to essentially strive to meet a certain balance of three-year-olds

062and four-year-olds and must also meet a general sort of balance of uh regular sort of proportionality with um families with economic need and those who uh do not qualify for free or free or reduced meals so we are going to take those six seats we're going to um we've been going through a registration process a reminder will go out tomorrow the deadline is Friday a reminder will go out Friday again for folks to express their interest we will then collate all that information see which of the families are three have three-year-olds and with the appropriate birthday and then uh look at economic need as the second factor and then uh then Lottery uh select people from that point so uh the start date for our new students is going to be January 16th so we

063have a new schedule coming in immediately after the school year and then we're doing a twoe period so so that our current students can transition with the new start times and the new uh the new the new pickup and drop off schedule and then we'll bring our new students in January 16th um that also gives us more time for planning more time for the purchasing of materials um we've had very good collaborative meetings with the preschool teachers we're thankful for their efforts in terms of the information and the perspectives that they've shared with us um and uh it just makes more sense to give us a little bit more time to make sure everything's in place properly these are still public school students so they will still have all vaccinations required uh and all of

064the registration information is listed there for the future we have uh next year planning right so we have submissions for the 24 25 school year that we have to do uh provide to the state so tonight's agenda contains two required board approvals um which include uh the operational plan and also the uh enrollment count which is essentially linked to the budget count um we do as I mentioned plan to add four classrooms next year and the additional state aid will support new staff and new classes so the state aid that's provided for 60 students is somewhere in the ballpark of $975,000 or so and that will cover the staff members that uh that work at these per uh these new classrooms it will also cover administrative expens we have to hire a uh preschool supervisor

065position um and that person will be responsible for going out on site visits and also doing work internally and um and uh we have a preschool instructional coach uh and a preschool social worker both positions were added on the last agenda and those staff members have been hired and have begun working in the district and so the aid will cover all of those positions um essentially we are operating the program with the additional state aid um which is phenomenal planning for the University of students is as I mentioned the step wise process for the future the universe is based on two times the number of first grade students in dellan um the reason this is done is because typically kindergarten enrollment is a little bit um smaller than first grade because there there are a

066higher number of students who attend private kindergarten as opposed to public kindergarten so they use first grade enrollment uh and they multiply that by two because if you have uh both three-year-olds and four-year-olds you're talking about two grades worth of students and so this is including public school and Charter School enr enrollment right now that that Universe looks like it's about 180 students and at 14 or 15 students per class the goal would be to end up at about 12 to 13 classes 12 13 14 classes total so right now we're operating three integrated preschool classrooms we add for next year we will be at 7 we will still have five six seven more classes that we need to be able to house um over the next 5 years the district has to strive to

067serve 90% of the universe within 5 years so 90% of 180 is 160 or something like that is that right 90 and 72 is 152 right 152 students so we are going to be uh at at 105 so we're going to need about 50 more seats over the next 5 years which I think is very doable um given some of the momentum that we have and and I think the quality of our efforts in this area so that's that um as I mentioned this is going to be uh this is on the website already so if you're here uh please take a look at it if you're home and you're listening please take a look at the presentation uh and I'm happy to take questions from board members Transportation so if we end up with

068some classes at a district and some in District how do you determine who gets which seats is it by Lottery as well it is going to be by by Lottery as well we're not going to displace any of the current students um and the district's not required to provide transportation any other questions to that end will there be a way for the families that would be applying um for those private providers to kind of make their bid in terms of if if they couldn't transfer their child out of District versus if they are able to yeah so we haven't worked through this process yet and we definitely have to have a determination about what seats we're going to offer to which students probably by April or something like that because it's going to take a

069lot of planning for families and we recognize if you're you're you know we're we're able to provide free preschool right so that's a massive benefit but if if the logistics of that are just not tenable for a family they need appropriate time to plan an alternate course of action so we're we're looking to provide at least four or five months of of notice for folks any other questions so uh one 162 by uh with the next five years 160 is it 152 152 right 62 man really 90 and 72 oh yeah 162 yeah yeah comments or just questions yeah sure comments are great I mean maybe I don't have any questions um just comment wise um it's wonderful like there's so much data and research out there that shows how important it is to get

070children into school younger and how much it provides opportunities for families that may to work uh having free child care it opens up so many doors for so many people and I just think it's a wonderful opportunity and I'm so glad we're pursuing this yeah thank you very much you're here yeah can I just add yeah um I'm I'm glad that the district was able to provide before care for the preschool students I do know that was causing some anxiety among some um families in town so I you know I'm really thankful that the administration was responsive to these concerns and were able to provide it for the rest of the year yeah absolutely yeah thank you any other comments or questions okay all right thank you Mr Ross the floor is still yours thank

071you Dr Jano all right so the uh I'll try to get through the remainder of the superintendent Report with some uh some speed uh some construction updates uh we are pretty much in punch list uh territory for most of these projects the fa preschool has a couple of minor punch list items the cafeteria and uh Auditorium have building management system uh issues that have to be resolved we also have some uh AV system concerns with the auditorium that have to um do with delivery of materials and then training appropriately so we have um temporary AV system that's in installed currently in the auditorium there uh we have the dust collector for the wood shop um and you'll remember that there was a complete redesign of this of this room um to keep it as a

072wood shop as opposed to a stem classroom we did uh have an a dust collector that will be installed the shipping date for that is December 4th the pad has been laid outside of Mr shim's room um it is a very large pad it is a very large dust collector there is a lot of HVAC that has been installed and it's going to be great once it's in place um but that room is fully functional and it's phenomenal the Faber stem lab is pretty much completed as well we're still waiting on the large format poster printer and some other miscellaneous items but um all of the major um Furniture is in and 3D printers are in and things like that we've obviously been working on training with Miss Brown and she's been really responsive to

073that and she's been a fantastic partner and then other General work we have uh the we've received the Kiln for Faber Elementary School installation is tentatively scheduled for later in the month of December and then there's just continuous beautification work going on doors being painted things being repaired here and there that just make the buildings look a lot more welcoming and uh a lot a lot more like somewhere that you'd want to learn so I'm I'm very thankful very thankful to uh Ronnie Haynes for all of his leadership in the area of facilities and um and Mr Pepe for his support in leadership in that area as well enrollment update we are continuing to increase our enrollment we have um the board agenda has an attachment that shows enrollment at 1361 I checked yesterday and

074our enrollment is 1365 um so even within you know that week or so we saw four new students enroll in the district so we have 16 new enrollments since October 11th which is the last date that's uh that's listed here and we have 35 students in preschool we have 97 in kindergarten 88 in first grade 98 in 2 grade 90 in third grade 97 in fourth grade and then 119 in fifth grade 122 in sixth grade 106 in 7th grade 11 in 8th grade 101 in 9th grade 120 in 10th Grade 96 in 11th grade and 12 uh 12th grade is 85 students so we have currently approximately the same number of students at fabber that we did at the end of last year but we have 30 students more at the middle school than

075we did at the end of last year um and as you know the middle school is has no additional space um so we did make some adjustments obviously to the master schedule um we now have five core classes instead of four which has helped significantly with class sizes in most areas um and we have um some other work that we're going to be looking at to to expand that even further we do have 402 students at the high school which is 14 more than there were at the end of last year so as you remember uh we have approved the district moving forward with a demographic Report with Dr Richard grip and he's going to prepare that um by Spring 24 so we'll share that information out with B members in its sort of draft

076form we'll bring uh Dr grip in for conversation with board members to have some um discussion about what he uh foresees in the future and then we can have some sort of Public Presentation which will either be given by him or by me or by Mr Pepe and we also along with that and part of the preschool conversation is we have to continue to discuss new potential construction or the expansion of facilities because we are um we're sort of bursting at the seams and we need space for program expansion and even just to house the programs that we want to keep so um I know it's not the most popular conversation to be having uh at any one given time but we wouldn't be having it unless there was a need and we have a

077need so we need to be talking about it we certainly all know that there's also sort of a long timeline on this type of work so if we were looking to make a change next year we couldn't do that but if we want to make a change in two years or three years we need to start having that discussion now so uh I want to highlight the DEA uh the efforts of the make a difference Monday which I talked about at the last board meeting it had just gotten underway with I think the first two weeks of Staff members who are recognized this is something that did not come from administration at all this is entirely the work of the DEA leadership team and the members so I do want to recognize the staff members

078who have been recognized week three was Abby Franklin who who is our ESL teacher one of our ESL teachers at Lincoln middle school week four was uh Mr Deo at Faber third grade week five is Miss McCarthy who is a science teacher at dellan high school week six is Mr Perry a Lincoln middle school English teacher week seven was Miss Pon a Faber prek paraprofessional and week eight this this past week uh was uh Laura Murray DHS Prof uh par professional who I think many of you know as uh does amazing work with the Carol fund so congratulations to those staff members thank you to the DEA team for continuing this this work it's really wonderful uh ESL parent classes are moving forward uh through the district funds through title three uh which is related

079to community outreach and parent support I have a meeting tomorrow scheduled with uh staff members who might be interested it's a general interest meeting for anyone who might be interested in teaching the courses uh I spoke with Liz Lopez at uh the Den Allan Public Library we've been keeping a running tally of folks that are interested and right now we have 74 interested community members who have signed up to take the course so we're hoping to offer you know seats for 45 or so students um in the community at at at this point and then expand it further I'm not sure what kind of Staff interest there there will be but we'll see tomorrow these courses would run twice a week um in the evenings and so um we're certainly open to having people split

080classes or you know something like that we can run a Monday Wednesday and a Tuesday Thursday course um again depending on Staffing and and that sort of thing we certainly have the funds to support it and um there's obviously the interest an update on seal work um Urban assembly team met on uh November 15th with the school climate teams these are the teams at each school that is leading the work on Urban assembly and um they've been discussing the progress on the resilience scholar program which is the the dashboard of um indicators that relate to seal and District's progress in that area there was also a meeting today with the administrative team and a separate progress meeting with me to kind of address how things are going and areas that we might need Improvement on

081and so we've got a good plan moving forward with a kind of good Cadence of meetings with different folks so that the me the work can just continue to get pushed out in a a meaningful way uh I want to just make a note uh about DEA negotiations this is um something that is between the board and the um the denel and Education Association the collective bargaining agreement for the DEA and the board uh runs out June 30th 2024 and so I'm thankful to the DEA team uh for reaching out and being proactive in this I know that um speaking on behalf of the board I know the board is very eager to begin these conversations as well so I'm looking forward to for uh these these bodies having a productive conversation in that regard

082I want to make note of the high impact tutoring Grant this is a a grant that we applied for this is a competitive Grant through the Department of Education um the state indicated so this so we we received the grant uh which is phenomenal and it's uh $74,000 in grant funding to run U an evidence-based after school um enrichment and intervention uh support program so we originally were told that the program had to begin October 11th um but we weren't told that we had been um accepted for the the grant funds until November 1st and so we're not starting the program October 11th we are going to be starting the program in mid January um there was a lot of media about this um this grant program and the Department of Education really kind of

083messed up the way that it did the Outreach to private companies that were going to be potentially serving some of these um some of the grantees we designed our program to not use any third party so none of this affects us at all which is great um but this is a program that will run for students in grades three and four in the current year and these are students who were either in prek four-year-old prek or they were in kindergarten um in the 1920 school year and so they missed the second half of their school year second half of kindergarten or whatever it might have been and then in the 2021 school year would have been the first half of the next year where you know a lot of enrollment was significantly affected so we

084have 18 weeks of instruction in the spring that we're planning plus additional summer planning as well we also have two other some um programs that that are on the board agenda for approval we have um uh another evidence-based program which uses ARP funds which will sunset at the end of September of uh 2024 and we also have a new new CER program for multilingual Learners which is really designed to help a culturize students who are new to the country these are English language Learners who are new to um new to denell and new to the United States and the goal is to give them really more of a social outlet after school where they can practice their English and feel comfortable doing that um with the support of a teacher in a safe positive learning

085environment um you know and all of those things so very excited about that we also have minority teacher development Grant uh which is actually being uh put together by Kane University so we reached out to a number of providers actually Mr Pepe was really the point person on this um these are this is a grant program to identify programs and strategies that um school districts educator preparation programs and supporting organizations can use to increase the number of minority teachers in New Jersey schools the grant is going to provide funding uh for the recruitment training and placement of new teachers um with special emphasis on minority teachers and um with special EMP emphasis on high poverty districts within the state so uh we reached out to a bunch of colleges and universities C was very interested

086in working with us and so um we are establishing a partnership with them they do all the grant leg work and we really serve as kind of a learning lab in a way uh partner in terms of what we need how we can support uh potential staff members uh and teachers new to the profession and uh any other sort of um support that we can provide so that's very exciting we're very happy to be working with them we have two items for new business uh that we'll discuss so I'm not going to talk too much about them now but just to highlight them we have board meeting dates proposed for 2024 this is just a discussion item so no action will be taken on them but we worked on looking at the budget calendar and

087other sorts of things things um to try to create a calendar that wouldn't be changed or need to be changed throughout the year and then we'll also be discussing the 20242 District calendar again no action will be taken on it but this is just kind of a first public conversation on the design of the calendar and I want to just end my superintendent report also by uh recognizing miss an north um for her incredible service to the district um running around Faber school where my office is um always on a mission to help a student or uh find someone who's in need or something to that effect um with an incredible Caring Heart and just amazing amount of dedication so I want to thank you for your your dedication to the district I also want

088to thank you um just for the conversation that we had um I've made it a practice of having exit interviews with staff members um as as often as I can um when staff members are departing um and Miss North and I had a really wonderful conversation about the district and the kinds of things that we can um enhance to improve the student experience and I really appreciate your openness in that in that discussion so congratulations we wish that you were staying six more months but we totally understand and uh I know that January is going to be an amazing month for you so congratulations and thank you again for all you've done and that ends my report okay thank you Mr Ross I did have just one quick question if I may actually two two

089quick ones um the increase in enrollment is that do we know uh how much of that is due to the new construction we do have information on that that we've actually provided to uh to the builders um I can get that information to the board just be curious if there if what we're actually seeing lines up with the estimates that they gave us yeah we we can take a look at that certainly okay and the other question was um on the looking ahead so is the um December 11th is the combined winter choir and band concert I thought I'd saw no it's the 14th right oh band's 14th right right okay different no band concert oh no band concert got it right for Faber right okay got it thank you okay all right thank you

090very much moving along uh wow up some time here item nine uh public comments on agenda items only only the board invites public comment on agenda items only from members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on School matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public comment but will not provide substantive responses to questions or concerns raised by individual speakers if necessary superintendent May provide a brief response after the entire public comment period is completed the board appreciates and welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty to engage in back in a back and forth dialogue with members of the public during this portion of the meeting prior

091to making your public comment 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 thank you uh if you would like to make comments on agenda items [Music] only there we go there we go right an North 301 High Street dellan agenda not agenda items but thank you for your kind words I appreciate that um and just on the tail end of the presentation for preschool and the the uh listings here it's got my name with 35 students for prek and I'm sure that's what we have now and it says like the 1 to 300 ratio um better get another nurse in addition to what you're finding for me um but it just it I just didn't know if

092that needed to be corrected for future saying like to be hired or if my name should stay on there but understood could be a little bit of an issue yes absolutely not going to be there of I actually had to Made made a note to to mention that a little bit later in Personnel but okay thank you that's good to know hi Jessica Rodriguez 224 Sanford AV um I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the hard work that you guys have been putting forth with this preschool grant program um like you said earlier it's it's really exciting to see all the changes that are happening in the community and to see all the success that's to come with this program um and I also want to say thank you for really

093listening to our words and our emails that we sent because when that memo came out there was panic attacks all over the community um um in addition to that I just wanted you to consider and and maybe I'm just curious as to why the late start for the preschool at 9:00 a.m. considering they are the youngest ones in the community they learn better they're usually up at 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. so why wouldn't the day start at 805 and then Bridge care and the after CARE program that you already have set up continue just because it provides them continuity with their teachers they have an earlier learning start which is obviously best for them because half of them don't take naps in the afternoon like they should um and I just love for you

094to consider that uh one other thing was if the before Care Program does happen we were curious how the payment for that would occur would it still be part of the Aftercare and Bridge CARE program that is there now or is it a different program all together um given that majority of the staff my understanding is is they will be teaching at that time so the current Bridge Care staff cannot be utilized in the morning thank you thank you for your comment appreciate it any other comments another comment Hi how are you um Clara safari4 Second Street um congratulations on the grand I think it's wonderful um my question I had the question um about the cost of bridge care that Mrs Rodriguez also had but regarding the drop off at 805 where will it

095be the horseshoe the main door the side door the prek door it's I'm just who's going to like if they have older siblings are they going to walk them there will the teachers be there just thinking of like the traffic that it's already a chaos in the morning and parking how will it work um and I think Jessica covered a lot of what we discussed but thank you again for responding to our emails um because we like she said we all just went into serious mom mode but um you know um but that's just our concerns what time where if someone can get back to us that's it but thank you and congratulations again I think it's wonderful great thank you thank you very much I think you to flip I think you yeah hello

096hello you're good my name is Louis Lopez I live at 420 dellan Avenue right next door um my son is actually in a prek-3 program the IEP program and um you said something about um they wouldn't be displaced but as he's in a prek 3 so what about prek4 is he going to be okay for prek4 or will he go straight into the prek4 program or do I have to be concerned about that that was my main question okay thank you great thank you very much okay any other questions comments that's call did you want to okay Mr Ross all right well first of all thank you all for your for your comments and Miss Safari it's nice to finally meet you um so uh so there are a lot of questions about um the

097preschool changes are we don't have firm firm answers on them um obviously one of the reasons though that we're going with the 9:00 start time is because having all new preschool students have all preschool students drop off with the current favor students was not going to work um and so we we wanted to push that that start time later um we also have requirements that we have for our staff members um with regard to their prep time and their contractual obligations and so we're able to provide staff members with a common prep in the morning um in order to uh ensure that students have that 9:00 to 3:00 dedicated classroom time so there are you know there are a lot of things with drop off and other particular uh items that we'll work through and

098we'll certainly communicate um but that's really sort of what we're looking at right now there's no saying that the way that the program runs from January to June is the way the program has to run for time of Memorial right so we will make decisions about whether the 9 to3 schedule is the right schedule um and adjust as needed um but that's really sort of the the goal for for the uh the change at this point um some of the other questions um are going to be logistical questions about before care and payment um drop off locations Etc um but these are all things that we will work through and we'll certainly make sure that we have as much input from parents uh as possible and if something is not going well then we'll just

099change it I mean we have no I have no pride in uh doing something that we've thought through and we thought we were going to work uh thought would work and then having to having to adjust or shift um I think that's just a good general practice so we certainly share that information um and you know all families will have that moving forward um the question with regard to the prek 3 Program I think is a if I'm understanding the question correctly students that are in the preschool disabilities or pres preschool disabled class um will are not affected by the preschool expansion at all that's a separate program that is that is completely uh it's mandated by the Department of Education we have to run that program the integrated preschool classrooms are the classrooms that

100we're that we are changing um those are the ones that will be affected So currently the district if if if you know the the expansion uh space we have four classrooms in the expanded spaces three of the classrooms are integrated spaces and one classroom is a self-contained preschool disabilities uh classroom so the preschool disabilities classroom is separate and apart has no effect on anything and students with special needs who are identif ifed as needing services in the district the district has to educate them and so there's not a question about whether or uh whether we choose to do that we have an obligation to do that as part of uh the Department of Education and part of the the the statute and code so um you know if there's a more specific concern that I

101haven't addressed certainly you know would be happy to answer an email or um set up a time to to speak by phone but that's generally kind of the from what I am Gathering From the the question that's that would be my response thank you and thank you again for all the um all the all the great comments um okay moving along um moving on to item 10 uh education uh discussion items I will uh turn the floor over to our education committee um chairperson uh Mr [Music] dougen thank you uh the education committee met on November 13th it was myself Miss Howard Miss Shimp Dr janjo miss drapkin Mr Ross and we also had a visitor of Miss casual Dunn who uh attended in her capacity to kind of observe and see how our committee

102ran uh the education committee met at this time to discuss a number of items including an update on a wide range of curriculum and instruction items presented by Mr drapkin including professional development the district's ongoing stem articulation instructional coaching initiatives throughout the district ESL supports after school programs that will now begin in January 2024 and ESL now I believe is called ml supports so multilanguage Learners um more positive spin on that after school programs that will begin in January 2024 core resource updates to be considered during program evaluation and curriculum planning for the new math and Ela standards for next year preliminary discussions about the structure of the 20242 District calendar which was mentioned earlier the steps the district is taking regarding its transition to a schoolwide tier one program plus the benefits that will

103occur through that change preschool expansion for the current year and planning for the 202 2425 school year and a number of confidential items thank you thank you Mr dougen so at this time I'm moving on to item 11 action items for the educa under education U looking for a motion to approve 10 a through G as a block I move to approve items a through G as a block second open for questions and comments just to note some of the programs that Mr mentioned in the superintendent report are under that se are under that uh under that section E and F I believe actually and EF and G just a question um certainly with Item B one of the sites was the fire department are they going to the construction site it's a Hot Topic

104it's a Hot Topic it's res resiliency training right okay it's a good that's a that's a good question and it might be um that a carryover this is a forward looking list for when when that site is appropriate and not a hazardous uh work site okay La last call for questions and comments um Mr Ross can you expand on item e the clinical fellowship program I'm sorry I'm jumping ahead um yeah are you jumping committees man I am out of here all right yeah we still have to turn on your mic I had it on it's on it's supposed to be on sure it's on okay um move so uh last call for questions and comments for uh education we have a motion on the floor for um 11 a through G last call all

105right let's go Mr pippe could you please call the role Mr dougen yes Dr Jr yes Mrs Howard yes Miss schimp yes Mrs Shep yes Mr trada yes Mr Walker yes motion passes wonderful okay so uh moving on to item 12 personnel and for the Personnel committee report that's me um so the Personnel committee met on November 13th in attendance uh myself Mr Anderson uh Mrs Shep and Mr Ross um uh as a committee we discussed a number of items including new hires and resignations for the current agenda the proposed stien for clinical supervision of speech therapist which is on tonight's agenda for approval uh preliminary discussions about about the structure of the 2024 to 2025 District calendar the expansion of after school offerings beginning in January and the Staffing that will be required to

106run those programs uh updates on instructional coaching taking place throughout the district and a number of confidential items and that conclud concludes uh the Personnel report so at this time um and moving on to item 13 ask uh looking for motion to approve 13 a through L as a block motion to approve 13 a through L as a block second open for questions and comments yep okay please go ahead now yeah I was just wondering if uh Mr Ross can can elaborate on item number e the clinical fellowships curious what that that is yes so uh Mr CH asked about item e which is the clinical Fellowship um uh it's the approval to uh for two staff members who are overseeing clinical fellows um in order to get their ahsa certification so this is uh

107this is the difference again some of the related Services areas primarily have this where there's a there's a difference between what's uh Allowed by the state under the state certification which is what gets you in the and allows you to have the job that is entitled whatever it is with the particular job description and then there is a professional certification that is uh that permits additional things to be done or encompassed within the work that's that's done um if I get anything wrong then you can make this you can correct me in public comment um but uh the ahsa certification is required for the district to be able to get reimbursement for speech evaluations through semi which is Medicaid um um without an ahsa certification uh evaluations can't be done that are reimbursable and so

108what that means is that either the existing speech therapists have to do all the evaluations which takes them away from their work uh as direct service providers to students or we have to send those Services send the evaluations out to other providers um and contracted service providers the number of evaluations that have to be done is far too large for for two staff members to do um all of them and we all know because the board approves contracted services that each evaluation for students um I mean it would probably take two or three throughout the entire year to cover the costs here so what this does is it actually leverages the ability for our experienced certified staff members to support our newer staff members so that they can provide the benefit to the district of

109having the evaluations done on site thank you yeah thank you great question any other questions or comments I would just add here two things one first of all item C when we're approving the res your resignation is North so and um the other the um other item is um item L I just wanted to note that with the staff travel so I'm I'm still blown away every time we come here 25 requests among 23 staff for professional development I think that's outstanding um and you know said it before I'll say it again we develop our we we develop our folks we develop our people and there are benefits all around for for you know for staff for students everybody wins so I love absolutely love seeing this so I just wanted to underscore that I

110can't say it any louder thank you Dr janana okay any last uh last call guys questions comments all right Mr Pepe please call the roll Mr dougen yes Dr Jr yes Mrs Howard yes Miss Shimp yes Mrs Shep yes Mr trada yes yes Mr Walker yes motion passes fantastic uh moving on to item 14 operations and the operations committee report I'll turn the floor over to the committee chair Mr Walker thank you Dr janjo the operations committee meeting was held on November 13 2023 at 7M I was present along with Miss conduit Mr gendrano Mr Ross Mr Pepe discussed at the meeting War updates on many construction projects ongoing throughout the district District preliminary discussions about the structure of the 2425 District calendar preschool expansion for the 2425 school year and the submissions that are

111required the disposition or sale of excess or unneeded property to schools which will have free up space for better uses and a variety of confidential matters that's it thank you great thank you Mr Walker moving on to item 15 uh operations uh action items looking for a motion to approve items 15 15 a through y um as a block why because it's a block okay move 15a through y second questions comments and any other jokes um I have one question okay um the parent engagement session that's taking place next week on December 6th do you know what time that is Mr Ross it's the um minding your mind parent session with title three money I don't know off the top of my head I'm sorry that's okay I I would I would like to attend

112so if you can when you find the time when you find the time to tell me the time now I'm taking after n that'd be great uh item M as in Mary yeah I'll I'll get that information thank you yep any other questions comments uh I did want to just add if I if I may two two quick things one um I love the new Auditorium I think it's awesome which is great um I know that's uh within within our action items here but just to mention that it looks really great um and the second second thing um item W the first reading for policy P 8500 for Food Services I just wanted to double check so we we have to basically make a choice between one of those two things right whether to accept

113the first one or the the thing with in fig and okay uh should we expand on that here or yeah so Mr pepy when the when the policy was added was a choice selected on that I don't think I don't think the choice is selected on the agenda now all right so yes Dr J will need to we'll need to do that and Mr Pepe I know this is your area of expert expertise can you direct the board to a recommendation from the administration sure this is a relatively simple one the the choice is whether we allow um parents to pay through like online credit cards or not and we already do so I would recommend that we say yes to that option so that would be option two correct on the uh policy yes

114yes okay so with regard to item W the policy just making note again that this would be option two would be the choice that selected okay great and this this is the first reading we'll do this one more time before we make it uh uh in stone yeah and for a second reading the option one will be removed it will just be the version that will be approved or will be recommended for a second reading and approval gotcha gotcha any other questions or comments okay Mr Pepe can you please call the role Mr dougen yes Dr gendrano yes Mrs Howard yes Miss shim yes Mrs Shep yes Mr tra yes Mr Walker yes motion passes wonderful wonderful okay moving on to um item number 16 uh old business uh do we have any old business

115you want to bring back up uh in this section anything from previous meetings Okay moving on to uh item 17 uh new business so I believe we have two two items here under new business to discuss Mr Ross yes so um I real that we don't have this printed out for folks so um I want to just make sure that everybody has the dates the proposed dates in front of them all right so if you look at my email from Friday November or from Wednesday November 22nd if you have the ability to pull that up the board agenda memo M um you'll see in general items the board meeting calendar draft is listed as the fourth bullet just give me a give me a high sign when you have the yeah okay Mr trada you

116don't care about these dates do you miss sh you have them in front of you okay Mr Walker yeah Miss sheep Perfect all right so the proposed calendar for next year um is listed here and essentially what we did again was to try to do one meeting per month and generally we're looking at the end of the month again because that's better for the development of minutes and also the close from the prior month Etc but we did have some months where we recognized this year's budget presentation calendar was not ideal for the administration or for the board or for the public so we made some changes there and we also anticipated things like the school board's um Conference in October so we moved that meeting earlier and and we also adjusted for Thanksgiving in

117advance of that holiday so the January reorganization meeting we already know is going to be uh January 2nd which is the first Tuesday in January then we have our regular meeting anticipated for January 30th then Fe February 20th which is the second one um and then Mr Pepe can you just talk about the budget meeting information we did Mr Pepe and I spent a lot of time talking about the calendaring for budget presentations and so you've got budget meeting notes below that tentative budget presentation and and public board uh budget hearing right so the the tentative budget presentation is our first presentation to the board of um the budget at that point the budget is mostly complete we can still make changes to it based on feedback from the board or or any um new

118information that may come from the state we selected March 12th because that's a as late as we can get to to hopefully have our state aid numbers before that and make it our our pretty much our final budget um the budget has to be submitted to the county by March 20th um depending on there's a calendar that will come out but March 20th is the latest that can be submitted so March 12th gives me a little bit of time to do any last minute tweaks if anything comes up at the board meeting then I have to modify in the budget before I submit it to the county the second meeting is the public hearing ing that's when the at that point the budget has been submitted to the county reviewed by the county and approved

119by the county once we get the approval we can then advertise the budget hearing we're required to advertise four days prior to the budget hearing because of this size of that advertisement we have to give the newspaper about a week lead so we had to make sure that we scheduled that meeting late enough so that the county would have had enough time to approve our budget that gets submitted in the end of March and we would be able to then advertise it and um hold our meeting so um it had to either be April 30th or May 7th we already had May 7th scheduled for the personnel and so we decided to just put that with that May 7th is actually the last day that we can have the budget hearing so it's a very

120small window of when you can have that budget hearing that's great thank you so um so then we have because of that we have a pretty good Cadence of about three or four weeks between each meeting pretty much throughout so you know we had October was early because we adjusted it with school boards and then we had I think a six- week break for this meeting um so just to try to make sure that things just continue to be on a regular basis we've got April 16th which is a little earlier than it would be typically and then May 7th which is going to be the public budget hearing budget adoption and then also the meeting for the renewal of non-tenured Staff members um and then May 28th and then June 11th which allows us

121to regardless of what the calendar looks like for students means that the June meeting will be before the end of the school year which it wasn't this year which was which was an awkward and strange thing um so that provides a little bit of a better balance I think moving forward forward so if there are no you know we don't have to decide anything right now but I just wanted to make sure that we gave this some due and some conversation does anybody have any immediate concerns or questions with any of the dates that have been presented just to add I think it's good that we're moving the June date up because it was awkward this year um and that allows us a big break between the June and July meetings which makes more sense

122yeah um rather than this fall where we had a big break between October November so it slows down a little bit so it makes more sense with the workflow that needs to get done yeah agreed and I think in May having two meetings in May does that help with hiring staff well I possibly the board the board has has given me the authority to hire staff outside of board meetings right so it's it's you know I hope that it's something that the board will put on the organization meeting again so that we can just move forward with it um typically there there are almost always two meetings in May um but it allows us to break up some of the staff recognition stuff so we have the retirees we have teachers of the year we

123have other things that happen in May so um to be able to have the May 28th and the June 11th date it's going to be quick in terms of agenda development but it'll be good for recognition and end of the year ceremonies and that kind of thing so take a look at it you know we will uh if the board is comfortable we'll talk about it again in committee and then we can put it on the agenda for approval um in December all right so the second item is uh Dr Nano can we move to the second item oh yeah please okay so the second item is discussion of the 2425 District calendar and I don't have any um models for us to look at at this point in terms of you know public conversation

124um I did share some potential mockups we have some basic parameters that we're looking at in terms of uh the DEA contract the number of days that staff members can work the days that are off some very basic kinds of things like um uh when our breaks will be how much professional development will will we have um Etc so one of the really significant changes for next year is that uh nov November 2024 is a presidential election and so for this the past two novembers that I've been here the district has remained open um because November in sort of midyear um you know offe elections in Den Allen there there just aren't that many potential voters that are going to be in those sites and after speaking with Mr altme we determined that it was

125feasible to just run school as normal and just have the lunches um um be eaten in students uh classrooms less than ideal but better than giving up a full day of school with the presidential election I definitely do not want to have students in school um just primarily I mean there's a logistical there are a lot of logistical reasons but I think safety is a tremendous concern um in you know for a presidential election um especially one that we can anticipate is going to be very contentious and probably a lot of polarizing behavior um among folks in every community and and all of that so with that we then have the kind of awkward um what do we do with that week of uh the njaa convention which is the first full week of November

126and districts approach this in a lot of different ways some districts have um school for staff and students on Monday and Wednesday um some districts would have staff members work on on the Tuesday of election day but not have students in um which again for students it would be Monday off Tuesday and then Wednesday for staff members it would be Monday Tuesday Wednesday um all days um we could have Wednesday not be a school day we could have the whole week be off um which would be good in a lot of respects and also challenging for parents in other respects and so um you know a lot of this is going to be sort of working on trying to figure out some of the middle section of the calendar uh other things that I've been

127looking at obviously we started the school year for staff members prior to Labor Day uh this year this school year my plan is to do the same to recommend the same for next year uh I think that it's valuable to have students start on the Tuesday after Labor Day rather than have sort of a uh you know two or three day in service and then have kids have one or two school days of that week um they can have those four full school days you know the first day being a half day it gives staff members time to kind of ramp up as well this year uh in the calendar we had two inservice days um I know that the administrative team is interested in potentially having three uh inservice days which would mean um

128looking at either Wednesday Thursday Friday or Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and potentially changing something with the way new staff orientation was designed this year new staff orientation is two days which this year we had it on Monday Tuesday of the same week as the inservice which was Wednesday Thursday so there are a lot of different ways that we can approach the calendar um and obviously there are uh some sort of tried andrue things that can be done um you know to to look at the way that uh staff members begin the school year and students begin the school year as well so all that is to say say you know any any date that we take uh any day that we can move earlier means that students get out earlier generally um it also means more

129days of preparation for students for things like college applications standardized testing um you know support within the school year we know that June is a challenging month for students um my experience in schools is that there's there are fewer effective days in June of instruction than there are early in the year when students just have kind of a different feel to them and staff members have a different feel to them as well um but certainly we want to do um a create a calendar that's you know that meets the community's needs and also meets the needs of staff and administration and of course most of all students so with all of that if anybody has any particular perspectives one way or another about um starting school at a a particular time or a particular date

130uh starting earlier starting later ha what thoughts are about November um ending school it has to be on a Friday you know other sorts of concerns or questions or or ideas I think now would be a good time to to onboard on board those publicly and then if nobody really has any particular concerns then we could come with um a recommendation for the calendar in December and depending on the board Comfort level we could either adopt it at that time or we could just have it for a discussion I mean I'll start I think that um you're absolutely right about not having students here on Election Day I think that makes perfect sense for all the things that you noted and I think it's it's it's going to be a circus I agree with that

131that's going to be a uh very busy day me best not to have anybody here wow kids anyway no yeah no kids in building I I would even say I would prefer staff and students aren't here on that day I just don't think it's worth the risk and I know this is important of the discussion but I don't think elections should be held in schools I think we should look for other locations in town whether it vfw's or it's just not it's just not appropriate for elections to take place in schools I would agree with that is that an option to actually have it moved elsewhere there's no way that the election will be the there's no way that voting will be moved because this is the only space that is big enough to host

132an election but staff members could either be off that day the district could be closed or we could just move professional development so that there were no staff members in the building um which is certainly an option there's I I mean not know what it'll look like then but um we used in the firehouse and is that going to be completed by then or not and that's a large base the the firehouse that's on the wrong side is that the wrong side of town okay for for where it pulls okay all right yeah yeah I mean this is a you all know this better than I do this is a very small town yes there are very very very few large large spaces in this town so this has you know excellent public egress it's

133got a lot of safety features um it's got power requirements it's got a generator if if need you know if something goes wrong it's it's actually a very good if it wasn't a school right it would be a very good polling place um given that it is a school it's important to recognize that we need to take appropriate precautions which I think is kind of the spirit of the comment which I agree with I mean I think I would agree with Mr Dougan as well like not just protecting the kids but also our staff I think is important and just quickly we don't we don't foresee any um construction or enhancement projects pushing back the start of the school year no no there's nothing no there's nothing going on now that would affect any any

134opening of school so yeah a short a short summer would be fine a regular summer you know any any length summer will be fine there's uh any projects that we would be doing would be small enough scale so that they wouldn't affect the opening great thank you yep my other two sents is the week in November I know sometimes it's a hardship for families with child care but um with the shortage of substitutes and sometimes people take advantage of personal days and sick days are relaxed that there could be more staff out on that week and finding substitutes would be difficult and then you kind of call into question the quality of instruction that would be going on when it's a two-day week um as opposed to just being closed for the week yeah thank

135you I would add I I support the idea of the school not having students in it or teachers for election day um when we discussed it in committee I had brought up the concern of starting earlier and only having students here for two or three days prior to the Labor Day weekend I just don't know that we would see a lot of attendance um in terms of that's something very different than what we've done uh and I think you would end up seeing a lot of people who would just take advantage of a a long weekend and then start fresh the following week so that would be a concern for me so you'd be in favor of a full week of school I would be in favor of the later start date and not bringing

136everybody back in August I understand thank you I will add that um the point that was raised in committee about having in the you know probably again maybe unpopular but giving every day makes difference I think in with the instruction especially when you're preparing our kids for for tests for applications for things like that and if some of those days even a few extra days if that gives them an advantage then you know why why not give them an advantage but again I understand it's unpopular and to your point we may not see folks show up but you know we we are the Board of Education not the board of [Music] vacation thank [Music] you I I appreciate us having an opportunity to discuss it though um I don't know if that was always past

137practice and it's nice that um there's input on it and some discussion about the calendar so thank you absolutely absolutely okay well so I mean we we have uh some time to think about this consider the options consider you know any other different um ways the calendar could be designed certainly happy to take any feedback and then we can discuss it um to the extent that's appropriate in December just one last thing so starting earlier also means we end earlier potentially absolutely so there's that yep I will say that if we're if we're looking to start earlier and possibly have a week off in November we should definitely have this published by January so families have enough time to plan accordingly and and staff members who might usually take a vacation late in the summer

138yep absolutely all right thank you okay um I have one other new business item if that's okay oh sure please go ahead so I wanted to uh Mr Petzinger today put together the um the Assa which is the application for for state school aid so this is a report this is one of the reports that we do each year that is incredibly important it's tied to all sorts of funding um state and federal funding and it's uh it's very important that it be done correctly so it's a snapshot as of October 15th and it shows our enrollment it also shows um LEP which is limited English proficiency our uh multilingual learner students and um I AP students and uh free and reduced meal students so the The District in uh 2020 right which is the

139year that Co occurred uh reported 46.9 % of District students were eligible for free or reduced meals in the 2020 21 school year and the subsequent school year the 2122 school year those numbers dropped to 23.5% and 25.3% the reason for the drop isn't because fewer people were uh eligible it's because during those two school years the state and federal government provided free meals for everybody and so one of the primary drivers of filling out these this um the the application is the eligibility for uh meal services one of the problems with that and many districts have felt this is not unique to dellan is that when you report that level of economic disadvantage you as a district it changes your classification so it means that you're you're not eligible for certain things so for

140example there are number of programs that are eligible for that districts are only eligible for if they have 30% um economic disadvantage or 40% it also changes the way that you can get reimbursement for certain things there's a federal program called eate which is related to telecommunications and if you're at 50% or above you get something like an 80% reimbursement on anything that you spend that's funded through e rate but if you're at 25% you might get 10% reimbursement right so we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost potential Revenue so this year the district uh reports uh 47% economic disadvantage um which by the state's definition means that we are a high poverty um school district and I think 47% is probably it's we're as a community uh of you know with

141with uh as a school Community we're probably more like 55 to 60% would be my guess there's stigma attached with the completion of applications there are you know there's non-completion just because folks don't understand what the application is for or what benefits it provides and so there's always an Under reporting here but I think what's very good about this is that this is a far more accurate view of the district the demographics of the school district um and what's been really interesting for me when I came here is looking at the performance report and seeing the district reports at 23.5% or 25% or whatever it might be which is just completely inaccurate but that's what's on the state performance report that's what's on the school performance report and the district performance report so now this

142information won't appear until uh the next report is released which is another I don't know year I guess right until that's made public um but in the meantime this is the number that we can report when we um when we work with the state or when we're looking at Title One funding or when we're considering things with the federal government or our eligibility for other types of programs so I just wanted to make everybody aware of that um this is a very good thing I really appreciate Mr Peter's work on it um he spent a lot of time validating the data with our administrative team and we've had a lot of conversations about how important this is so um so we have the report it's now been submitted uncertified um and and I just wanted

143to make sure that the the board members and community members who are listening that that that information is much more accurate in terms of the the picture of of who's here in the district um just quick question how were those numbers gathered during the times when there was free lunch like what were they using to get percentages well it was it was all the same it was the same thing except that uh when families don't complete the form then they're just deemed not eligible right so if if I decide as a as a parent you know this form is too confusing um and I don't submit it then I'm not eligible I will never be counted as um economically disadvantaged even though my income level may put me in the category that allows my child

144to to get a reduced meal plan and so the there was no incentive there was a there was a tremendous uh tremendous dip in the incentive to complete the form um so it's a lot and you know in a way it's a lot like FAFSA right where there's a there are there's a percentage of the population of families that don't complete the FAFSA because it's too confusing or they don't understand it and it's not because they're stupid right it's because it's incredibly confusing right and so districts spend a lot of time providing support to students and families to complete the form because the form is the gateway to eligibility for need-based Aid right and if you don't complete it then the assumption is you don't need it and then you have no financial assistance when

145you apply to college which means that you might go to college for a semester but then it's too expensive and you decide that you can't pay for four years right whereas if you had just completed it you would have been knowable and then you would have a reduced rate uh of payment Etc and so um you know it's very important that you know we be very proactive as a school district to encourage parents to do this and that we also provide them whatever technical support is necessary for them to to do it as well so you mentioned that the true rate is probably greater than 44 something per how do we close the G yeah so I mean you know the we're never going to 100% close the gap but I mean I think it's

146it's kind of the two things that I said which is just more direct Outreach to folks through different means um and the offering of technical assistance to people okay you know we have our you know when we enroll students it is like such a crush especially this year I mean if you look at the enrollment report I don't have in front of me the enrollment report in August to the enrollment report in the end of octo or mid mid October there like 150 more students right and so you think about the technical challenges of just enrolling someone let alone enrolling them and also making sure that they're doing a really good job and that they have all the support that they need and all of that right that's a capacity problem that we have to

147figure out how to manage a little bit better um and the other piece of it is just providing people with information and knowledge about what the benefits of actually completing the form are right if you complete the form it doesn't go to doesn't go anywhere bad first and foremost and if you're not eligible then you're not eligible and that's the end of it the form just goes away right there's really no downside um but it's easy for me to say that it's a lot different for um someone who's new to the country who's not sure about all of this to assume that that's that's actually true and trust that and you know act accordingly right okay all right uh any other items guys for new business okay all right then uh moving on to uh

148item number 18 president's remarks um not anything um uh two you know two verbos but I uh wanted realize I didn't mentioned this earlier so since we Al also since we last met uh we had an election and we had people elected and I think it was just recently certified uh the numers the so so what we saw in in those preliminary results actually is true and I just wanted to take a minute to recognize our board members who were elected um in the November elections so first of all for the three-year terms uh Mr Anderson uh Miss Shimp and Miss uh Mrs Shep uh were were elected and for the one-year term um Mrs Condit as well as um new person joining us uh Mr saoi will be joining us in January uh we're

149we're elected for those one-year terms so wanted to just uh raise that here and uh say congratulations all right and uh with that um moving on to item 19 uh public comments on any issue any topic so the board invites public comments on any issue any topic for members of our community in accordance with board policy 0167 public comment sections are intended to provide an opportunity for members of the public to express themselves on school matters of community interest the board and administration will be taking notes during public 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 wel welcomes feedback from the community but is not at Liberty

150to 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 M and municipality please note that all excuse me statements must be directed to the presiding officer please come forward uh to the microphone at this time if you'd like to make comments on any issue any topic I think you need to switch it on there you go hi my name is Trina Ros 3173 Street first of all it's really cold in here um so a suggestion to help enrollment for the lunch program in my opinion would be to provide assistance in completing the form instead of handing them form or the website and or sending them home or to the library which we've gotten a lot

151of people and we're not you know like fully educated on how to fill these forms forms out and we help to the best of our knowledge but perhaps a session after school in the media room you have an open Forum at the U back to school night say on this date we will have a session if you need assistance on filling out um any of the forms that we provide that we are sending home including the lunch program I know a friend of mine just tried to fill out um the form online and she had about seven attempts before it actually took it before it actually um you know like she was able to finish it so that's just a suggestion thank you okay great thank you that's great to hear great feedback I mean

152any other comments questions I'm sorry uh comments programmed okay so uh closing that section up moving on to item 20 now um the dellan Board of Education will now adjourn into executive session to discuss to discuss items that fall within specific exceptions to the PO open public meetings Act njsa 10 412b the confidential Matters by the board during this executive session during this exe executive session include items related uh to collective bargaining agreements as well as pending or anticipated uh litigation uh any discussion that does not need to remain confidential will be made public as soon as it is practical uh minutes of the executive session will not be disclosed until the need for confidentiality no longer exists um all individuals who may be discussed in executive session have been adequately notified action will not

153take place after the conclusion of the executive session so uh looking for a motion to go to uh executive session motion to move to Executive second all those in favor I I opposed okay thank you very much guys we'll see you uh in December the 18th right 19th yeah yeah we'll see in December I think it's the 19th of December or something like that cheers stay cold uh stay warm it's cold outside I need coffee who has coffee who has coffee coffee right there oh yeah I need coffee the donuts by the donuts okay