001Um, notice is hereby given of the special board meeting of the board of education of the town of Westfield in the county of Union, New Jersey at 7 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, August 12th, 2025 in room 105 at the administration administration building, 302 Elm Street, Westfield, New Jersey. The purpose of this special meeting is to transact the regular business of the board and to transact any other business to come properly before the board. This meeting will not be livereamed. This is to advise the general public and to instruct that it will be recorded [clears throat] in the minutes that in compliance with chapter 231 of the public laws of 1975 entitled the open public meetings act the Westfield school board on Thursday August 7th 2025 caused to be posted at the office of
002the board of education located at 302 Elm Street Westfield New Jersey and delivered to the Westfield leader the Star Ledger and the Westfield Library Town Clerk of Westfield tap into Westfield and patch.com a meeting notice setting forth the time, date, and location of the meeting. >> Can we have a roll call? Rob Bacio, Ken Diamonds >> here, >> Brendan Galligan, Charles Galinus >> here, >> Leila Morelli here, Sonel Patel here, Kristen Sonic Schmemell >> here, >> Julie Steinberg, Mary Wickens, >> 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. >> Okay, I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Gonzalez for the district um administration report. >> Thank you very much. And thank you uh to
003all the board members who were able to join us this evening uh and for all those who are tuning in. Um the purpose of tonight's uh presentation is to comply with the New Jersey Department of Education's requirements that upon receipt of any state assessment uh data, we are to report out the results uh publicly at a uh board meeting within 60 days. So in order to meet that timeline, we needed to make sure that we had this uh special meeting convened. Um so tonight we have with us uh deputy superintendent Dr. uh Matt Bolton who will be uh sharing with us the results of the spring administration of the New Jersey graduate proficiency uh assessment as well as that access uh forel's performance overview. So at this time I'd like to invite Dr. Bolton. So
004he will present here. I'm going to move over. So if anyone would like to either turn around or or sit elsewhere, you're welcome to. I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you so much for having a special meeting all for me. [laughter] Um, no, but um, in sincerity, thank you, board of education, Dr. Gonzalez, for allowing me just a few moments to present on our New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment results and our access for L's scores from last year. Okay. So, I I won't read all of the the slides. You've seen this slide repeatedly. Um, this just gives a broad overview of what the NJGPA is. The NJGPA is a required assessment of all 11th graders throughout the state of New Jersey. Um, cut scores were established multiple years ago at 725. This the assessment in ELA is
005aligned to grade 10 standards and math it is aligned to algebra and geometry standards. So, a little bit of context around NJGPA. NJGPA, as I said, it's it's a requirement. Students, every every 11th grader must take and meet proficiency on this assessment. Um, if they do not meet proficiency, thankfully, the state has provided us with multiple options and pathways to ensure that students meet this requirement. Um, students sat for this test last March. If they received a 725 score in ELA and math, then they are good to go and they satisfied the requirement. If they did not, and and by the way, just a note, uh a mailing was sent home to all 11th grade parents in June and to all parents and the scores are available on the Genis Genesis parent portal. Um so
006if a student did not satisfy that requirement in March in the first administration, they are then going to sit for a second administration. And the dates haven't been released yet, but typically it's the first week in October for second administration. We really do require any student who has not satisfied this requirement um at this point to retest. Um and and many students do pass in the retest. While we're doing that, we al also keep an eye on secondary pathways. The secondary pathways are qualifying scores on the ACT, SAT, ACUPPLACE, or PSAT. So students in in a few weeks are going to be taking an August SAT and a September SAT. Those scores count. So if students meet a qualifying score on one of those assessments, then they have satisfied the requirement for graduation readiness and
007are done with this requirement. For those students who have not met either one of those pathways, they then will be supported by the district through a portfolio assessment. That's a one-on-one facultyguided uh portfolio of constructed response items. Uh just to provide a little bit of context to to that scenario for for students and for parents, last year we had 26 students in ELA who did not um satisfy graduation readiness in the initial assessment. We had 57 students in math. And of those after all the secondary pathways and retakes, we had 22 students who ended up being um eligible to take a portfolio. Of those 22 students, every single one of them met graduation readiness. So we really do support every student to ensure that they meet this requirement. To dive into a little bit of
008our aggregate performance, um we we we always do extremely well on this assessment. Our students do very well. they they well outperform state averages. Um and not only do they do perform well, but they consistently perform well. And this is not so this is um ELA scores passing rate at 96.4% and math scores of 87.5%. Um compared to last year's scores again pretty steady uh in performance even though those are completely different groups of students. [clears throat] Then to break it down a little bit further by subgroup comparisons. So just a note before we dive into subgroups. Subgroups are only groups of students that have an N of 10 or more. So if there's a group of students who are represented in our high school, but there's only five students in that group, then we
009don't report out. Um so again, ELA performance was excellent across all subgroups. Math performance was also very strong across our subgroups. there is a subgroup that students with disabilities we really do work to support through getting them through this assessment. Um those students with IEPs some of the things that we dive deep on in terms of this particular subgroup is um one that score represent represents a 3% increase in passing scores from the previous year. Also what we noticed is as I stated 725 is the passing score for NJGPA. this the median or I'm sorry the mean scale score for this subgroup was 732 and we look at that score all of those scores across the spectrum and say there's no real wild outliers. So that's a pretty good measure of central tendency for us
010to that indicates there's a lot of kids that are very close to passing. So with a bit of support and a second administration or a second pathway this group is going to be just fine in satisfying this requirement. So, one one of the things that we do as soon as we get these scores, our math supervisor, Liz Delandro, our language arts supervisor, Liz Riley, our special ed supervisor, Alex Lindon, they really do dive deep into the scores and analyze everything they possibly can in every report that Pearson and the state provides us with these scores. So some of the things that that we observed um in these scores and again I don't want to read every bullet on the on the slides but just in terms of changes from this year to last and I
011think those are some of the questions that are often asked after this presentation is so do we see trends in areas of strength and areas of weakness. Um so the areas of strength um in language arts are are areas that we worked on last year. I'll also say the le this this past assessment f we were asked students were asked five more questions eight of those questions were RST questions or response to science and technical information so so that's an interesting those are interesting types of questions those are really complexformational text real technical manual type stuff that kids are expected to site textual evidence of and summarize so again really complex questions but it gives us some ideas when we break the test down to this level of things that are being emphasized by the
012state and areas for us to emphasize with our teachers and as we work for professional learning. All of our writing scores improved from last year to this year as well. In math scores, we noticed again the first two point first two areas were the the first two bullet points of strengths were similar to last year. The second two bullet points that really had more to do with geometry, which is an area of emphasis. We consistently work on developing our students geometry skills because we notice that's an area of weakness as we approach this assessment. Those two areas were new areas of strengths for us. So again, it just goes to show that when we hone in on these things and we build teacher capacity around them and work with individual students, um, we see growth.
013So what do we do after we have these scores, we've analyzed them, what are our next steps? Our next step is intervening first with individuals, finding out who those students are, where they are, does it make sense? Does this does their score, if they were not graduation ready? Does it triangulate with their overall experience? Does it triangulate with their grades, with their midterm and final scores? Um, so we really try to pin down who they are and where they are and what levels of support we can provide them with. We also then work with our teachers on creating points of emphasis, developing their professional capacity and implementing the various programs that we're working to implement such as MTSS, building their classroom strategies through tier one supports, developing, we're really excited about this coming year and
014developing tier 2 or the ways in which teachers are working with small groups of students in their classrooms. Uh, I think it's going to be a really powerful intervention strategy, especially in light of a 55m minute block period where we're going to be able to capitalize on and maximize all of that time where students where teachers can provide students with more individualized time and attention. Something else that we're really excited about next year and um the SIP committee has has heard about this um is the creation of new courses to intervene. So our our math supervisor, Liz Delandra, worked with a group of teachers to develop a new course, algebra 1A and 1B. And basically what that is is that's like a double dose of foundational algebra for those students who have demonstrated that they
015need that layer of support. So that's a double block period for students who have been identified as needing more foundational knowledge before they can move on to more complex courses. Um so so we're excited to see the results of that course being implemented as well. So, next steps for Westfield students in terms of NJGPA, uh, we continue to be on top of these things. So, we will continue to be on top of second pathways as students are pretty pretty soon are going to be taking another rounds of SATs. So, we're going to look at those second pathways to see if we can remove anybody from that list because they've satisfied a secondary pathway. We'll be readministering the NJGPA in October to those students who have not satisfied readiness scores. Um once we get to around
016December, January and there students who still have not met a first or second pathway, that's when individual meetings are happening with school counselors, school counselors are communicating with families um and developing that a sense of that portfolio process. Um the students will be partnered up with an individual faculty member and then supported throughout the portfolio. Okay, so that's NJGPA. Now we're moving on to access for our LS. So what this So the access assessment is an assessment that's given to every student in our ESL program annually. Um it assesses students oral language, their literacy skills in reading and writing and their comprehension reading and listening. And what this table shows you is exactly what you would want to see from a quality ESL program in that students who are just developing language acquisition of of
017English and are spending a very short amount of time in district zero to two years in the district. There's a large number of them at the longer they spend in the district, the longer they spend in the program, they start to meet proficiency on this assessment and then are able to exit the program. So you can see that just through the the 89 students that were even assessed in year years 0ero to two in the program and then that significant drop of just numbers of students in the program who were in the program for three to four years. So that's really the trend that we want to see is that students within their first two to three years in the program are satisfying these requirements and then being exited from the program again with continuous
018support. What we do for students after this assessment is administered is we our ESL teachers work with our ESL supervisor Enrique Pink and again they identify areas that they need to emphasize with students instructionally but more importantly they take those areas and they share them with our mainstream teachers. So our ESL students spend one maybe two periods a day in an ESL instructional space. The vast majority of time they're in school they're spending in a mainstream classroom. So, it is so important that our ESL teachers are partnering and collaborating with mainstream teachers and they're even going one step further where they're providing push in instruction in those those spaces. So, they're modeling instructional strategies. They're modeling best practices in front of mainstream teachers so that when they leave and go on to the next classroom,
019those teachers can continue to to implement those best practices with their ESL students. And that is what you drove up from the shore for. [laughter] >> Does anybody have any questions? >> Does the state define the test? Because you said they have five different questions or five additional questions. They define the question. >> Yeah. >> And you have in collaboration with >> Pearson is the the company that develops the test, administers the test. the state it's it's guided by it's in and informed by state standards. >> Does the state give you a heads up over what they're going to highlight more of year-over-year? >> Not necessarily. >> I don't think so. >> I mean, for example, like and again, there's different forms of the test too. So, you don't know that if you know the
020other form had not uh reading science and technical questions on it, right? Um, there's another companion standard of reading history, which to be perfectly honest, companion standards don't exist anymore. They were infused into the readingformational text standards in the new 2023 standards. However, on this assessment, they're still clearly identified as those companion standards, but reading history that we had a lot of reading history standards addressed last year. Last year's assessment and then this year's assessment, it was more about reading science technical subjects. So, um, yeah, we need to be good at all things. [laughter] That's the goal. >> Are our, um, areas that we need support in math the same? I know you said two of them ended up being our strengths, but >> So, the areas of support are all new. >> They're all
021new. That's all. >> Yep. and some of the topics that so again to to Ken's question the topics that were areas of support last year many of them did not show up on the assessment this year >> interesting >> so that's the but that's the benefit of really taking a deep dive into the reports and not just looking at the the aggregate subgroup scores that that's important obviously but then there are reports that were provided from the state that really dissect the the standards that are addressed and which standards and how many questions were asked with that specific standard in mind. So it it the the taking that deep dive and analyzing the standard is incredibly important for us. >> How does the math gap compare to last year? Like it seems like ELA doesn't
022really have much of a gap, but >> So it I mean it it does it's it's relatively similar. Um, like I said, the special education subgroups, 3% increase from last year. That's one student. So, it's it it's pretty steady in terms of performance. >> Any other questions? No. Thank you so much. >> I like that you have my son on the screen. >> That's that was done strategically. This is actually last year's presentation out of [laughter] >> your picture. That was a stem. Um, all right. See the next one is recognize the public. But seeing there's no public here, we will um move forward to number five on the agenda. And I am going to um move that we that all the items under governance, personnel, finance and facilities um and curriculum instruction and program
023of of tonight's agenda. Um I'm going to move those if I can get a second. >> All right. So and then we vote >> discussion. >> Any discussion? Do we have any discussion on any of those items? >> All right. Rob Bacio, Kent Diamond, >> yes. >> Brendan Gallagghan. Charles Galinus, >> yes. >> Leila Morali, yes. Son Patel, >> yes. >> Kristen Sonic Schmemells, >> yes. >> Julie Steinberg, Mary Wiggins. And now I'm going to move for Can I get a second? >> Second, >> Kent. Thank you. All right. Can we uh All in favor? All in favor? I >> Okay, great. >> Thank you. So,