001thank you okay I'm going to call the meeting to order so roll call please Julie is Bradford here Mr chantouli here Dr forger here Mr Hyman here here Mrs Connor here Mrs Stanley here Mrs Young present Mrs Pena present adequate nurses of this meeting of the Berkeley Heights Board of Education was given as required by the open public meetings act as follows on January 6 2023 notice of the Board of Education meeting schedule was sent to the style edger in The Courier News and also provided to all schools Peter Province presidents the hea president and post at the administration building a copy was also provided to the public library and filed with the Municipal Court Clerk whereas the Berkeley Health Board of Education seeks to adjourn to Executive session in full compliance with the open
002public meetings Act njsa 10 colon 4-6 edsek and whereas the urban public meetings act provides that a public body May exclude the public from that portion of the meeting at which it discusses matters related to those identified below matters rendered confidential by federal law state law or Court rule individual privacy collective bargaining agreements purchase or lease of real property if public interest could be adversely affected investment of public funds public interest could be adversely affected tactics or techniques utilized in protecting Public Safety and property pending or anticipated litigation attorney client privilege Personnel employment matters affecting specific prospective or current employees be it resolved at the Berkeley Health Board of Education the journeys to Executive session to discuss matters related to student matters personnel and legal matters and be it resolved that the month the minutes
003of the discussion of any of these items will be disclosed to the public when matters have been determined and confidentiality is no longer applicable I'd like a motion to adjourn to Executive session so moved second all in favor aye okay Legend to exec session be back at 7 30. yeah Mr Hyman here Mrs Connor here Mrs Stanley here Mrs Young president Mrs Penner present can we all please stand for the fair excellent congratulations 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 right okay I'm going to go straight into the report of the student representative one two just the one okay all right um hi everyone I know we have a lot on the agenda for tonight so I'll
004try to keep my report relatively concise um firstly happy Black History Month in honor of this the GL unfiltered Club is planning to Spotlight a different important black figure each week on their Instagram page additionally they have arranged for songs to be played on the loudspeakers during the morning announcements which are written by black artists on the topic of Celebration the understanding Asian cultures Club held a Lunar New Year celebration meeting in honor of Lunar New Year which was on January 22nd this year there students gathered to try some popular Asian snacks and make paper lanterns now moving on to academics I'd like to congratulate the Highlander robotics team on their performance this past weekend the team competed in their Northeast Edge League State qualifying tournament this past Sunday and ended in first place as
005a part of the winning Alliance team which qualifies them for the state competition in March the team also earned the second place connect award for their excellence in inspiring others within the community the technology Student Association Club is in the process of preparing for their Regional competition which will be held virtually at GL this year students are currently completing the written portion of the competition which consists of an essay analyzing the use of engineering to solve a real world problem this year the prompt is about encouraging the use of eco-friendly transportation in cities physics students took the fnet equals ma exam this afternoon which is a challenging Physics Exam consisting of 25 multiple choice questions administered in a 75-minute time period students have the opportunity to qualify for the national physics Olympiad exam which is
006a prestigious accomplishment we all know that February 14th is coming up but the GL interact Club has decided to do something special in honor of the holiday this year the club made Valentine's Day cards for veterans to thank them for their service and lastly I'd like to share something exciting that all the clubs at GL have been working on during these past few months so representatives from each GL Club have formed a club a group called The Club Council which is an opportunity for GL clubs to meet with one another coordinate meetings and plan joint activities this will help maintain communication between the various clubs at GL oh and one last announcement I'd like to say that the senior class prom fashion show is on February 22nd this year and everyone is welcome to attend
007thank you does any any of the board members have any questions I do Catherine like the robotics competitions and everything I I've never been to one are those like open for spectators or is it really just among those competing no it's definitely open to Spectators I know last year was a little bit limited due to covid protocols but this year um the public is welcome to attend if you want to come to our state competition I think it will be in Rockaway New Jersey I forget the specific School we're going to but it's a bit of a drive but everyone's welcome to attend no just if you could share that would be great of course I'll get back to you on that club right yeah uh yes I am and congratulations on first place that's
008pretty awesome thank you any other questions for Catherine no so before I hand it over to the the superintendent's report I just wanted to very very quickly mention that the PTO is once again recognizing paraprofessionals day on March 29th so this was started actually last year by the PTO and they've continued it this year so I just wanted to thank the PTO for um basically celebrating and appreciating these important members of the staff and it's important that they're appreciated and recognized so and I also just wanted to mention that you may notice you have some pencils and a note did you put them on on everybody else's chair did you you did okay so some lucky people have that and there's also some lucky people that have something else another round of act of kindness
009I'll talk about later okay so I just wanted to to let you all know that uh Gail suggested this and Dr volley and I both agreed with her that this was a great idea so the district is kicking off kindness week on Monday at the schools so we wanted to do something a little bit tonight just to uh basically kick it off and uh the note I think says kindness matters at my school so um we thought we'd do something tonight so thank you Gail for the suggestion okay good evening everyone am I on okay good evening um so my actual superintendent's report is pretty brief I do want to mention it's not in my written part but um our wrestling team won the sectional state championship [Music] last night and they will compete again
010tomorrow and if they do well tomorrow then Sunday they will also compete once again we do have we are we have on the agenda tonight a fan bus to um send our fans Friday to watch the game the meat match something where they wrestle um so anyway um I want to take a moment to clear up some misinformation that's out there about the incident on January 20 2023. while I was not present at the middle school when it happened I did go back and watch the video along with members of the Berkeley Heights Police Department during lunch a student walked up to a teacher and made a statement the teacher quickly moved away from the student and radioed this Leo III officer this Leo 3 officer immediately isolated one of the students the police arrived
011momentarily while it was a terrible incident that resulted in a great deal of fear in staff and students the handling of the incident couldn't have gone any smoother I give a great deal of thanks and appreciation to the student for speaking up and the staff and the bhpd for reacting quickly and other news we have some energy Awards tonight so I'm going to call up Scott Muir and his associate to get this started okay yeah you hear me all right so good evening uh for those who don't already know us my name is Scott Muir and this is Jason Rivera and we're from uh synergistic so synergistic is an energy conservation company that helps school districts save money on their utilities so that they can spend it where it matters most and Berkeley Heights Public
012Schools partnered with synergistic back in 2018 and with the continued support from this board superintendent Dr Varley business administrator Julie Cott the head of buildings of grounds Rick romano and his maintenance and custodial team have all worked together to reduce the energy use in our schools as a result I'm happy to announce that three of these schools was awarded the energy star certification for the year 2022. much like an appliance in the home runs energy style label buildings are also awarded certification for Energy Efficiency a building earning Energy Star Building certification has met strict energy performance standards set by the EPA and uses less energy a less expensive to operate and emits fewer Greenhouse emissions to qualify for energy Stock Building certification the building must score in the top 25 percent based on the epa's
013national energy performance rating system this award is significant because it is it's recognition by the United States Environmental Protection Agency for excellent and Energy Efficiency acknowledges the district's Superior stewardship of its finances and environment and honors each person in your organization for all the hard work and commitment in sustaining an exemplary energy conservation program synergistic is proud and honored to announce that Berkeley Heights public schools has three buildings that are in the U.S Environmental Protection agencies energy star certification for Superior Energy performance those schools are Thomas P Hughes with a score of 76 Mountain Park Elementary School with a score of 84 and William Woodruff Elementary School with a score of 86 which means the top 14. so the score of 86 that means that the school performs in the top 14 percent in Energy
014Efficiency amongst all elementary schools Nationwide all right so on behalf of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and all of us are synergistic congratulations on the significant recognition and we're very proud of our partnership with Berkeley Heights Public Schools and your commitment to protect the environment both for today and for future Generations so could we please have a representative from each of those schools to come up and collect your energy star award [Applause] kids excuse me is it there's a sticker that you can put on the front door of your school if you wish to show it off to all the parents thank you very much foreign thank you and congratulations [Applause] thank you so much good evening everyone we um twice a year present on our goals this is our February goals update I
015am proud to talk about our strategic plan which has been in place for quite some time now and even during the pandemic we made progress toward our goals on our strategic plan probably not as fast as we would wanted to because you know we were in the middle of a pandemic but we sit down annually the um a couple times a year and look at our strategic plan and then in the summer we make goals to address parts of that strategic plan so I want to welcome up um I'm going to turn speaking of energy I'm going to turn it over to Dr Ashley janosko to talk about her goal within the district goals update do you want me to Quick it for you that'll keep me going yeah yeah before I knew it was
016environmental I was like I should be getting this award hi everyone all right so you're clicking for me all right can you go back to that all right so good evening I'm Ashley janasco the director of counseling the first goal as you can see of our strategic plan is to improve the overall climate of our schools to enhance student interactions and to provide a safer more productive environment for our students and staff some of our actionable items so from 2022 to 2023 the school year we had done identified specific tenants for students and staff that are actionable and necessary to contribute toward our Wellness goal broad-based actionable goals that ensure our district at large and individual schools within the entire Berkeley Heights Community receive and are part of the social and emotional education implementation and
017participation of taking care of ourselves and each other these items include providing all District administration and staff with training to be certified as a youth and Mental Health First Aid certification creating a Pre-K at 12 district-wide social and emotional precept framework and that includes both SEL and Justice diversity equity and inclusion awareness education and practices establishing and creating a cross-developmental programs lessons and activities that increase continuity of Concepts language and practices related to social emotional Wellness and acknowledging that one of the five SEL competencies of the model of Castle is social awareness by definition of social awareness it is the ability to understand the perspectives of and emphasize with others including those from diverse backgrounds cultures and contexts this includes the capacities to feel compassionate for others understand broader historical and social norms for behavior
018in different settings and recognize families schools and communities resources and support as such we have worked very hard throughout the past year to ensure that we are merging our SEL and Jedi initiatives at the mid-year Mark there are very um there are a variety of updates that we've worked extremely hard to focus on our district partnered with the associate professor counseling graduate professor at the College of New Jersey to provide a training for administration and staff on the youth and Mental Health First Aid training certification and if you're not aware of what the certification is it's a certification similar to the comparison that they use is there are several of us that are probably first aid medically responsive certified so in the event of a medical emergency we are able to at least respond may
019not necessarily be medical experts that we can actually handle but similarly we have all become mental health professional responders so in the event we can see different social and emotional behavioral signs as it relates to mental health we can respond and make sure that we're getting appropriate support for that individual student or staff member in August of 2022 the entire administrative uh staff completed a two and a half hour training and then a five and a half hour in-person training to reach the certification the first day a professional development coming back to the beginning year it was Dr varley's uh priority and initiative to ensure that every District staff member also received this training the training was um met with it was elementary more specific they were in small classrooms middle school specific and high
020school specific okay go back one that's okay okay so a measurement of are we at updates we just hit update there we go measurement of success so I just thought I think I'm the only person that put pictures in but the only picture is this is exactly the certification that we all received as professional development hours and again is to say that we went through this type of training um and I continue to work with Stuart at the College of New Jersey he's providing an additional training that talks more about the self-help portion of that so we're working on taking care of others and which is the five uh portion online sequence to the rest the remainder of this training so this is just an example of what our certificate looks like um which we
021all have achieved um at the beginning of the year we identified what the precepts are and what these presets are various topics that district-wide we have instituted based on student and staff um data which I'll talk about in the next slide so for example the district initiatives that we focused on this year September October was community and connection November December self-love currently we're focusing on kindness March and April are resilience in May and Juno diversity that's district-wide and that's also building wide as it's appropriate I'm going to use the month of our kindness month as an example in way in ways in which we have utilized this precept it seps and kind of implemented it so for example the Pre-K to two buildings they've utilized the precip by providing and embracing school-wide be kind celebrations
022which includes the school counselor providing different lessons and reading different books doing group lessons for things like how to identify and create friendship soup and all preparation lessons for the big presentation that's with the music teacher they provide win groups that focus on being kind in January they did a winter solstice celebration let your light shine and the I'm sorry and then the three to five buildings focusing on their kindness challenge they provided and well still for the end of this week they're still providing uh minus mindfulness minutes in the morning journal entries that are focusing on being kind and taking care of yourself spirit days of kindness challenge rock painting kindness reading second and fourth grade buddy classes third and fifth grade buddy classes in the middle school student parents presentations on minding your
023mind student advisory classrooms are focusing all on maintaining healthy relationships counselor-driven lessons that are focusing on being kind at GL their kindness topic has been the focus of all of our feel good Fridays every Friday we provide an activity throughout the lunch in our in our Wellness room it's letting students know about the wellness room um we receive 9th or 12th grade students it's incredible they have the opportunity to maybe go out for lunch go outside in the cafeteria they love to come in and do the activities they could be they could be rock painting they could be as they say Retro Gaming like the Wii I don't think it's retro um but just activities about and um just getting to know each other and be kind to one another so those are different activities
024I'm an example of what's perpetuated throughout different months so overall what I did was I just provided a list of a variety of the different activities that have already happened district-wide since the beginning of the school year you can see that there's student and staff driven different types of programming for instance we at the high school were very successful the two different times we've offered a community Wellness fair that brought in different volunteer programs within the community um I see a couple staff members out there that participated myself included and a fun Pure Bar Method which was just getting people together to do something yeah I know um which was awesome I don't know if any of us have actually done it before but just bringing people together and people that you wouldn't necessarily spend
025time with and get to know more um and you will also see that some of the things that are on here like I are I diversity culture fair that happened in the elementary schools it's happening in the middle school and the high school as it relates to our June precepts next slide last slide evidence-based how do we know if it's working how do we know what we need to tweak how do we know what we need to do better we provide in the middle school and high school before school starts the first day of school we provide a relatively comprehensive yet fun social emotional self-efficacy survey we don't use that terminology but what that means is we're trying to gain a sense of how students and Staff feel about their own confidence and their own
026um self-esteem right their own feeling of how good they feel about themselves and what they could use and what they would need from us curricularly socially emotionally so um in addition to that I I happen to know the one of the abs's or two of them it was able to pull a little data for me that also demonstrated that last year at this time we um this year we have a 43 decrease in HIV investigations from period one last year which is awesome based on some of the survey results we found there was 69 um percent increase in students who feel their communication schools skills have improved since the beginning of this year 80 increase in students level of self-esteem 60 increase in students feeling that their self-discipline skills have improved and 75 percent increase
027in students who feel their self-advocacy skills have improved we create the precepts based on student staff feedback and so what we've already started doing this week is looking at our data and and determining what we want to do and propose for precepts for next year so we're already taking a look at being reflective and planning for monthly and bi-monthly precepts for next year I am now going to turn it back over to Dr barley thank you Dr janasco it's wonderful to hear about goal one uh what everyone can see here we're now presenting on the second goal that we have identify and analyze multiple formative assessment data to focus on closing identified achievement gaps Implement standards-based instruction and Target staff professional development to improve student achievement and some of the pieces that we have the
028action items that we shared with you um last time is how our teams are using data to make informed decisions so how our teachers are using data how our administrators are working with our teachers and how we're working as an administrative team identifying gaps and seeing where we can help our students where we can help build certain pieces first teachers are using internal and external benchmarks so what does that mean those are assessments that they're giving in their own courses these could be linked assessments looking at standardized data points these are things like the New Jersey student learning assessments the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment the to start strong assessments there are a lot of Assessments and we want we we spend a lot of time giving the assessments but we spend even more time
029using the data that comes back from these assessments to be able to see how to make informed decisions we are leveraging also our locally administered assessments State assessments as we Define achievement uh teachers and administrators engage in intensive student data discussions and I know that Mrs kopas will talk a little bit about this as well um when she when we talk about the Touchstone meetings that happen in our elementary schools when our Middle School teachers are working in teams to look at data when our high school teachers are using common planning time or working with our supervisors in articulation meetings looking at data to see how pieces are going across our curriculum and finally administrators and teachers are analyzing and reviewing curricula based on student achievement through curriculum management and revision cycle in December we
030shared with you the five-year curriculum cycle I know that the board also um I believe it was December uh share that information it was an agenda item it's part of a process that we go through as we're constantly looking at curriculum and ways to improve through a five-year cycle so I'll turn it over to Mrs kopez at this point to dig a little bit more thank you Dr Greer so when we created the goal we also created measurements of success and here is that list we wanted to ensure that building levels had an assessment schedule and then action plans were developed and implemented we wanted successful implementation of curriculum and programmings we wanted common resources and best practices that support student growth and achievement we wanted to Target student learning plans created as a result
031of school-based AD meetings teachers were meeting and department and grade level teams sharing instructional strategies planning for remediation or intervention or enrichment and we're adjusting instruction to meet the needs of the students we have a multi-tiered system of supports and we needed to ensure that that was taking place that's a state requirement and we needed to ensure that there was a standard operating procedure for that we wanted to have professional development take place around those tiered systems of of supports to ensure again that students were getting what they needed and then we wanted to make sure that data analysis and evidence of student growth was happening via our benchmarks those are our internal Berkeley Berkeley Heights benchmarks we have the i-Ready learning platform we have link it those are both predictive of how students will
032do on the state assessments and then of course our state assessments are start strong in the fall and our njsla in the spring we also have mid-year benchmarks to determine that students are making progress towards their goals so how do we know particularly that goals are being achieved here is our evidence we do have building level level assessment schedules that are being adhered to we give link it three times a year we give I ready three times a year we have student growth objectives again those are state required where we give students an assessment in the fall and then we want to make sure that there's they're achieving their growth targets and they take an assessment again in the spring we have our internal Berkeley Heights benchmarks both formative and summative assessments and again those
033Statewide assessments all of those are being administered according to the schedules that we have created or the state is requiring that we that we administer the assessments our winter assessments right now currently are ongoing and we're providing great evidence for us for mid-year progress and when we look at data analysis not only are we looking at at growth but we also want to see our students making typical growth or are they making stretch growth what we call stretch growth is where they're achieving more than we even would hope they would grow they would grow in a year's time and we have actual data points to determine that are they making some growth typical growth or stretch growth and obviously we want as many students as we can to make that stretch growth so they're making
034even more than a Year's growth in one year's time or 10 months time we have successful implementation of our curricula that's an ongoing process through our five-year curriculum cycle we continuously revise curricular documents to meet the needs of our our students and our teachers for that matter um we're constantly looking at programming and resources to make sure that we have research-based resources to help teachers implement the curriculum and really again meet meet the needs and find out if we have particular gaps and how we're addressing those gaps and we can address it through curriculum and through resources and obviously professional development we determine evidence of student growth and achievement as evidenced by our walkthroughs so we're continuously in the classrooms our formal and informal assessments so all of our administrative team whether it's supervisors principals
035directors we're in and out of the classrooms all the time to make sure that the curriculum is being implemented that that students are on Target and engaged and again that that everything is being done to um to our expectations and also teachers can meet through professional learning communities again that's part of their professional development and the both vertical and horizontal articulation through grade level meetings team meetings and department meetings students have targeted plans that are implemented by the teachers and staff they've been created as a result of school-based data team meetings again we want to make sure that student growth is measured via pre and post assessments we have created a standard operating procedure that is utilizing a multi-tiered system of supports that will help to advance student achievement and teachers and administrators are using
036articulation articulation meetings to evaluate and adjust the scope and sequence timelines as necessary and now we have Mr Hopkins who's going to talk about goal three good evening um this is our district diversity inclusion Equity inclusion goal which which some clever fellow has renamed Jedi um so I am now a Jedi master which I'm very excited about uh unfortunately the body is going towards Yoda even if I'm trying to get the voice to Vader so uh this is our third goal it is based on our mild our motto include Inspire and Power in the Berkeley Heights Public Schools will focus on a truly inclusive mindset or administrative approach in our buildings and our classrooms we're also going to focus on metrics creation through use of data mining and research evaluative integration and Survey creation and
037implementation as you can see just from that this is a multi-level ongoing goal that is attacking several things across the district at the most basic level what we're doing is to ask our principals to come up with building level or grade level when we have code buildings activities that celebrate the diversity the district can provide students with opportunities of feeling included um did that help should I I can enunciate clearly a little so um what this means is we're asking principals to develop activities at the building level for the students the principles are also analyzing their data for subgroups this is a very important part of the goal which uh is about making inclusivity one of the lenses that we use as part of our district evaluative tools right every question we ask should also
038include the question who's not included or who is included who's missing who's not missing what does the data tell us about every population that we have um the diac committee which was chaired by Dr Greer Ms kopas is looking at the redoing the evaluative process with an eye towards hopefully building in some inclusion practice into the evaluative approach and the last two are kind of combined working on making a better presentation of the HIV plan which HIV can be for those of you who've gone through it a rather daunting and confusing um exercise and also um particularly uh looking at digital citizenship uh digital citizenship educational plan because digital digital citizenship and HIV tend to be very closely tied particularly amongst our middle school students so those are measurements of success I won't go through
039them I'll just highlight some of them as we move on to our next piece which is next slide okay uh the evidence of the goals um so the buildings have developed action plans uh what we asked for was 16 small group and two large group activities um to give you a cross-section of those plans just over the course of the last month uh at Woodruff and Mary Kay for Black History Month students in each class were tested researching a black hero creating a slideshow about that person the slide shows were then shared with classes with all the classes and the parents March is a women's History Month with the precept for the month being the very appropriate persistent and passion equals Grit both buildings will celebrate women's history and women's lives both the famous and
040the Ordinary by reading a cross-section of books celebrating women in history and across cultures at Hughes in Mountain Park for Black History Month students researched and presented on black Heroes and created a Google slide for a paint or a painting that included the highlights of their person's accomplishments and for women's History Month at Mountain Park students will be engaging in a women's History Month doll exhibit that features famous women from different cultures and history there will be a discussion of the exhibit and then students will be tasked with dining they're designing their own contributions at CMS for Black History Month the grade seven we'll be doing a lit lunch for the graphic novel new kid and on every Friday there will be a playing of music by African-American musicians and composers during daily announcements I'll
041forgo some of the GL events since you already got the wonderful student report I'll only add that on February 17th glhs will be doing an in-service for its staff developing inclusive practices through informed staff response and all staffs will be getting that training uh building principles are tasks with sharing out all of these activities with their parents through the normal communication channels such as the Friday folders at the district level we've done several events as well we've organized a highly successful Mouse one lit lunch at CMS there was a nice article in the uh tap uh about that and we are planning to hold another student-led lunch for Mouse 2 as well as a lunch and learn around the Holocaust and both of the events will be during the Holocaust remembrance month in April in
042the CMS Inc uh and we are hoping to organize a women's history lit lunch at glhs for women's history month and there's a district-wide trading on February 17th on a culture of inclusion featuring lederic horn metrics metrics are an incredibly important piece of how we develop um and identify what we are tracking uh it is a culture change and with all culture change it's a slow process and we are engaged in building uh from the bottom asking questions many of the questions that we're asking we're asking for the first time and they lead to knock on questions and so on um the building principles are tests the K-5 principles have done an excellent job researching their archives identifying data points tracking inclusion uh as these metrics begin to come into play other areas can be
043explored uh for example the Dei committees at Mary Kay and Woodruff are working together to evaluate their school's current state of equity uh using the middle school or the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium model and their Equity Tool uh the committee has decided to focus on teacher behaviors that encourage students persistence specifically instructional strategies classroom management takes techniques and teaching interpersonal skills the identification of metrics at the 612 level is more complicated because it involves not only the social inclusion but also by researching data and developing questions around academic placements and results of vis-a-vis subgroups and populations for example if something in the neighborhood of 16 to 18 of our students uh population identify as Hispanic or Latin what are the proportions of that population in honors or AP classes uh is if it's 15 okay if
044it's zero percent that's certainly something we would have to investigate and and see why that population would be relatively unrepresented now this doesn't mean for example that we would shoehorn 12 of Hispanic Latin students into AP classes to get a number it means it identifies an area where we have to do research and get answers and find out what our program is or is not doing for each individual group uh one of the main thrusts behind the Metro's development at the building level is to nurture an administrative and building culture among the staff that incorporates asking inclusion questions of all of our data not in addition to everything else what we that we do but it's a fundamental part of what we do as an administrative team and as a teaching faculty in conclusion inclusion
045has to be one of our lenses and through which we evaluate everything that we do at the district level we have developed surveys for students 612 parents K-12 and staff table K-12 to develop other metrics this is a lot of likert scale questions and these were years years and years in development because I'm sure are attorney can tell us the multiple lawsuits surrounding surveys and the state of New Jersey um we are a process refusing reviewing our surveys with different stakeholder groups to get feedback and hopefully moving forward for establishing a nice Baseline at the end of the year based on District surveys on inclusive practices and student experiences uh finally the last two points very briefly again the DAC committee is researching evaluative models and we haven't developed an intubated intimate developed and implemented
046a new HIV presentation for parent students it was presented in the fall uh I think it's an improvement on our past trading but on all things that we do we are taking feedback from parent staff and students and student experiences as we move through the HIV process to hone and improve everyone understanding of what we all know is a rather complicated law and finally we are developing new and improved uh developing new and improving current digital citizen programs with an eye towards hopefully developing an entry-level class at Columbia where our students are both technologically and developmentally in the most likely place to engage in HIV behaviors um I believe that at all and I'd like to introduce Miss Gardner and Miss Corley hand for your fourth goal Mrs kopez and I need our own podium
047so I don't look so tiny hi everyone um so Annie and I are going to talk to you about uh our preschool goal uh this was a new goal for the district this year uh as we work to make our preschool environment more accessible to students with more significant support needs we've been involved in the New Jersey Department of Ed's New Jersey inclusive education technical assistance and it's just njieta for short systemic change project for over a year now we've been working with an inclusion facilitator Eva Kovach from Montclair State University and njieta Montclair State University has a partnership with the Department of Ed for supporting preschools specifically the project is a three-year commitment to work with our facilitator who has observed our classes met with our team many times and has been providing some
048professional development on topics specific to our needs uh this year we completed a lengthy self-assessment uh with the preschool inclusion quality indicators uh in collaboration with our school-based leadership team uh which was formed out of the njieta systemic change project this team includes our two preschool teachers one of our special education teachers several child study team members our district physical therapists and Mrs Corley hand and I uh Eva Kovach our facilitator facilitated the many hours of review of these quality indicators and our assessment of our programs and our resources and it took several meetings and visits for us to get through I believe there are 32 indicators we're going to revisit this document the self-assessment each year and select new targets as often as other ones are achieved once we completed the self-assessment we developed
049an action plan with our school-based leadership team and our njieta facilitator where we targeted areas that we felt we could begin to make an impact on our programming and it's not that our preschool program wasn't already extraordinary but we were just looking to make it super extraordinary we collaborated with our school-based leadership team to revise the mkm mission statement and make it more inclusive and family oriented Mrs Corley hand and I did that worked on that initially over the summer and then we brought it to our school-based leadership team in the fall and then Mrs Corley hand shared it with her entire faculty so that everyone had input into our beliefs and our vision for Mary Kay McMillan this year our staff have so far engaged in training focused on functional goals and developing child
050profiles a way to talk about children who maybe cannot talk about themselves or Express who they are which requires a lot of family input we've also engaged in information sessions and discussions surrounding classroom environment assessment tools that are directly associated with our preschool curriculum this includes something called review of the preschool day it's a document that the department of Ed shared many years ago and it's associated with the creative curriculum for preschool that helps our staff work with preschool routines and how they can be incorporated into the development of functional IEP goals creative curriculum is a state approved preschool curriculum that we've been using for years Mrs Corley hand and I understand the value of collaborating with other professionals sharing our story and our successes and even maybe some of our frustrations and working to
051find additional ideas to bring back to our team we co-presented at the njpsa fall conference and the national Tash conference on General and special education collaboration because sometimes in in some places that is a novel concept we were also selected to join the inclusion leadership development group with njieta which is this interdisciplinary group of stakeholders who are really invested in expanding inclusive education for students with disabilities from all over the state and so we've had a really great opportunity to collaborate with Representatives uh throughout the state who are in Span who are working at colleges who are working in the private sector who are working in other public schools as well as the Department of Education uh additionally Mrs Corley hand was invited to participate at the national P3 Institute and she also served as
052a keynote speaker at the njascd state Early Childhood conference on inclusive practices uh continuing to share ideas and receive ideas from other professionals and experts throughout the country our philosophy continues to be that the more that we can share our successes uh the more inclusive preschools will become in the hopes that if students move out to another District in the state they will have similar options and experiences and if students move into our district they're coming from a place where they have had similar options and experiences and finally very recently the preschool was selected for the Department of Ed Spotlight on special ed back in December and Mrs corlingand and I were invited to talk about our approach and our mindset surrounding inclusion and early childhood education at the state special ed advisory Council next
053week so a number of things that are we're planning for the remainder of the years we'll be drafting a family climate survey to get a um a feel from parents on student engagement and and the environment in our preschool classrooms um we'll be creating that with our school-based leadership team um on Friday we're going to be providing training Friday the professional development day on the 17th Michelle and I will be providing training for our paraprofessionals on developmental milestones and practices surrounding students at the Early Childhood level this will also include you know ways to talk to Children um you know very often we hear teachers Paris parents um telling children what they they want them not to do stop running those kinds of things instead of telling what they want to do and and these
054are things that we just need to remind people um about the best ways to interact with children and get them to come apply we'll be planning with the school-based leadership team next steps the climate survey will will help Drive some of that we'll be planning for um what we'll be doing next with njet it's a mouthful um Mrs Gardner um will be presenting at the National Council for exceptional children this is a really great honor for her um it is not something that has come by easily and continuing to have these conversations about overcoming barriers to inclusive practices you know we know that children we heard this at a meeting just yesterday that begin their schooling included um stay included typically that's what research supports and those children that start their schooling segregated stay segregated
055so that is a mindset that we're hoping to change as Michelle said not just in our district um but in in other districts because we want kids to not leave us and go to more segregated settings and we want parents to be open to those inclusive settings when they come here as as new students um as Michelle said um based on that uh Spotlight that the doe had done um we are we will be speaking at the special education advisory council meeting uh virtual conference not a meeting not a virtual conference it's a virtual meeting um regarding the inclusive practices and how we've been successful and and how we plan to move forward um and Michelle and I after uh presenting at the njpsa conference and um the work we've done with with njpsa as
056with the special education committee and the Early Childhood committees we've been asked to present in the spring on the topics discussed at the fall conference and um the plan is for a team of people from Berkeley Heights to um do that and we've cut the ldtc in our building program committed to coming and a teacher and one of our former students who is now an employee in our building has also been included in that so we're excited about that opportunity and lastly one of the things that we you know Michelle's talked about the rating scales teachers uh the preschool teachers are now involved in in training for this eckers which is the Early Childhood environment rating scales which uh looks at all aspects of a preschool classroom so we're delving into that now and hopefully
057that will give us more information as we look forward to next year thank you very much everyone who presented on the goals do are there any questions from the board well I still have them here yes dipty so I have a couple of questions and um I just want to commend both Mrs Gardner and Mrs corlihan I think the recognition that you're receiving outside of working guys I think speaks to some of the programs that we have so I think that's uh that's really amazing uh the question that I have um is uh it goes back to I guess that was goal number two um we talked about targeted student plans I'm curious if parents are going to see sort of these what I'm assuming are individualized uh plans on you know whatever was assessed
058in the fall what steps are being taken like are they going to get our parents going to get a preview of that yes I could speak to Elementary student parents should get i-Ready reports and also obviously between conferences and progress reports um the communication should be ongoing okay um I was more Curious when you guys talked about the targeted student learning plans is that outside of you know what usually comes from the schools to the no essentially the learning plans are once once data team meetings are done then students are recommended either they might be recommended for win groups have you heard us talk about when what I need yeah so they might be that might be part of their plan they might have to go to an interventionist um to get some support they
059might go to Mrs Genoa as an as an enrichment or an extension all of that information is ongoing shared in an ongoing fashion with families so these these plans that are created are are not Secrets it's it's how we're supporting students and it's usually done in six weeks six week chunks of time okay um and my second question was um will the board get to see let's just say we were within our district the student proficiency and math was at a certain level that are in the fall and the assessment that came out there are n number of initiatives that you guys are working on will we get to see some sort of a mid-year assessment of where we are in that progression of improvement or we have to wait till like the spring yeah
060we we present we're required to present to the board um so for example yeah I'm just trying to figure out the timing yes okay all right I'll move out of the way sorry so in terms of the state assessments that we talked about the presentations are given to the board uh individual score reports have gone out to families as well so at the beginning of this year we sent the New Jersey student student learning assessments from last year to start strong assessments those reports all come out individually to families as well they have access to log into the Pearson Access Network as well we're now gearing up for the next round of Assessments and so the first ones that are coming up so thank you for the question information will be going out tomorrow to
061our Juniors and their families about the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment so Catherine you're okay so these will be coming up the week of the 13th of March more information will be coming out about those those are uh it's an assessment for all Juniors that they must take Ela and Mathematics we have also been chosen as part of a pilot um from the New Jersey Department of Education for an extra unit of English language arts this year as well so if you see that there's hey this seems like there's more assessment that's the reason why and then in may we are finalizing our dates and plans for the New Jersey student learning assessments that will happen in grades three through all the way through the secondary level after those assessments as well when those scores
062come back to us we have a certain amount of time to reply back to the board or share with the board and then those individual student reports also then go back they take a little bit more time to go to the state be sliced and diced come back to us and share but parents will do have access to that data as well got it so you talked about March so in the March meeting or thereafter we get to see the the trend if you will from the time when it comes back to us I believe we have 60 days to report to the board of education but it takes some time from that for them to give them back to us so we don't have an exact time frame to say when it is but
063from when they give them to us it will be within 60 days that we report to the board thank you for those questions I have a few questions so um when it comes to the bitmoji classrooms can you talk a little bit more about what they are and what parents should be doing with these uh links that we see in Friday folders Dr janasco is very excited that you asked her a question you have to go to the mic I know [Music] so bitmoji classrooms if you go into the counselor I'm going to speak specifically to the counselors and on the district website the wellness website that Madison roll wall occupies if you go on it it's like a visual Avatar so you'll see like one of the counselors and you'll click on it and
064it provides an introduction to who who I am and what's my capacity and how you see me and then you might you'll click on like a heart and that'll explain this is the monthly precept and it'll link to what the precept is and some helpful literature and different um what the books that we're going to be reading in parent literature things of that nature um if there's any things that are going on for that month like it um there's a calendar so if there's any International celebrations national celebrations that's also on the calendar you click on a little calendar and it tells you what it is and what they mean so it's very like aesthetically nice for uh parents and for students it was a really a way that began during covid which is a
065good way they started like tinkering around which like what is a better way to kind of communicate this information especially for little ones and their parents to make it more fun right like so we click on this what does this do so and some of them will open up and tell you like a story it'll link to like a YouTube video something like that so so for the elementary school this is kind of like a parent yep and student together should be looking at this and kind of going through and yeah and that's middle school as well they have bitmoji classrooms A Student Assistance counselor she has one as well that's on the district Wellness website so yeah if you go on them it is for students but really it's more for parents this is
066what we've been doing and this is what you can do to kind of supplement the dialogues that we're having and the topics that we're having or the different conversations so with different resources yeah it's kind of fun I have another question for you too please the mental health first aid is this like an immediate need like we see a student in distress in the classroom or in the hallway or is this more like a long term like how do we help this student because we see an issue how do we do long-term health so it's both it's really the first response so what we're doing is I hate saying this like due to covid but there has been an increase in mental health concerns and there's been a shift in our students behaviors and you
067know because of that a lot of pressure and expectations have gone down come out to administrators teachers people that aren't counselors we're asking them to be able to survey and recognize a different and a difference in a student and then how to respond to that but they've never really been trained to do that they've been trained to teach and um you know their classroom so the treating is really how to be a first responder if they they recognize a student maybe with their head down that's demonstrated a little bit of no shift or if they actually sees a student that maybe you know might be in Mental Health crisis and they don't know how to respond but not responding in walking away is not either an appropriate response so how to respond in a kind
068manner that gets the student to the right person in that time so it's helping um the counselors in its helping Administration to help them identify so that there's not students that maybe you know are in the hallway that aren't just saying like can I can I walk you to your counselor or you know how to have those open-ended questions um not providing therapy but how to provide those type of questions that can get the student to the right place okay thank you and a student um for goal number three um I know we're doing a lot of training about um teaching our teachers how to teach diverse classrooms and I was wondering what kind of training is going to the elementary level teachers foreign hello oh sorry um so first of all on 217 which
069is our full professional development day all of our staff members are being trained so that's that's K-12 but the training that goes on in large part happens in the individual buildings so the principles really are responsible for working with the staff members to support the the practices and it really happens also through our ongoing professional development that's part of our district plan so one example is I've I'm sure you've heard me talk about lln which is a reading workshop training they do an awful lot of diversity and equity in um and inclusion training through those workshops and that's ongoing throughout the year so those are two examples okay so awesome so also like to share it to you um the district counselors and child study team members Pre-K to 12 are having like an intensive
070training uh with um with a professor a private practice therapist and he is providing us training with case studies on how to counsel and work with students from Dice for diverse backgrounds so that's very much like a specific to our district they can provide different case studies we're pulling different HIV reports that reflects peer examples of in the event there was some level of you know HIV that has to do with Justice diverse Equity inclusion so that's like a really Hands-On training that we're having that's awesome thank you you're welcome can I keep you up here for one more I I have one more goal one question sorry we should just kept you up there I think I'm like sure yeah I don't know it's like a panel um a question about um I'm looking
071at the slide seven that has the uh the survey results um did we was this survey for all K to 12 the survey done at the start of school no it's not it was middle school and high school because we were allowed to very easily survey them through like a Google form the counselors have been doing like a likert scale of circling like smiley face kind of like her scale for the younger ones than collecting that information and then using that for things like the win groups and the counselor lessons and things of that nature but all of that information that we use is is drives our a lot of our precepts as well you did Elementary did one Mrs kobats and Mrs Nardi said Elementary did one as well I assume we started this
072in 2021 or at the start of the 21 2016. 2020 was actually when we started it because we were trying to gain a sense of like where are our children physically and how are they doing physically where are you and how are you doing yes at this point I assume it's an annuity so it will as far as we know it will continue for 23 24. oh yes yeah oh yes it's in implementation of a practice that so the Student Assistance counselor um she works a couple days in the summertime we work to update the survey and then she goes in and does lessons and in the lessons we kind of make the kids complete the survey so that we get a lot of participation yeah you're welcome if there are no more questions I
073will close the superintendent's report [Music] thank you Dr barley and to all the administrators your presentation okay committee and liaison reports do we have any committee only his own reports yes sorry yes I attended last weekend the uh njsba governance one weekend paid for by njsba and it was very exciting I know dipty is going to go next month as a new board member a lot of information over these three days and I felt I really came out with a good understanding of how a board works even as a new member and still learning um Town Council I was the liaison to the Town Council I went to the Town Council on Tuesday the biggest issue coming up is we have a waste water treatment plant that is in need of repair and the Town
074Council voted to take a step one toward an initial repair but there's still a lot of work to be done the historical markers I believe are going to be done in cooperation with our woodworking here at GL in terms of placing them around Berkeley Heights and there was Taco some legislation legislation at the state level regarding Oprah modernization I also attended the Union County Exceptional Services committee uh Hillcrest Academy the south campus that was flooded by the storm and had been meeting at the Lord and Taylor Building in Melbourne Heather Springfield has now moved back to their original building and we saw pictures it looked great the West like students there in their home at Department have doing a fundraising for Valentine's Day and they were doing chocolate covered pretzels and if you were lucky
075enough to sit at a seat that had one of those that's thanks to the homec department at that school um and I also want to thank the Board of Education um Mrs Penna as the board and Dr barley for including the Friday Focus for us as board members and all of that so we get to see what's happening and very excited about the kindness challenge starting next week and we're really pleased to be able to start it off kindness counts and that's one of the goals that I have as a board member thank you thank you Gail any other board members committee or liaison reports please so I only have one I have the district diversity committee um so one of the things on our agenda for the February 3rd meeting was um it came
076to our attention that the Livingston family um enslaved hundreds of um people and uh when William Livingston arrived in New Jersey he still had two people enslaved to him um we got we were notified that Rutgers have put up a plaque um to recognize this to understand our history and what it comes with and so we are talking about what we can do in our district uh to recognize that as well right now we're in the basic planning of that we don't have any uh specific things yet we're still talking about it but just to recognize that Governor Livingston had a history and it comes with um good things and flaws and we need to recognize that um we had the high schoolers talk about their cultural walk and the success they had we also
077had um as Catherine talked about the clubs are now trying to work together um so we had the dance club working with the understanding Asian Culture Club and all these other clubs working together and I think that's really really something special um so I commend them for doing that um they have upcoming staff training which we just talked about as well uh CMS I was really impressed with these students um but they talked about what they're doing for Black History Month they talked about diversity day coming up in June and what they're doing they're also holding multiple bake sales to renew the flags outside that we all love outside of Columbia so I'm just really proud of those students and they're going to have a holy event coming up in March um we talked about
078the different ways that we are talking about kindness and SEL and incorporating um d e and i into some of these so we talked about incorporating civil rights with kindness programs um we are also looking at World autism day in April um and adding culture to our Steam and talking about heroes um and not just talking about the Civil Rights but talking about heroes and adding that into our everyday programs um not just on black history month and then we did talk about sending out surveys which I know we also talked about tonight um and trying to get um an idea of where our students are and how they feel and we've been taking these surveys really seriously because we don't want to have any issues of asking the kids the wrong questions um they
079will be volunteer and Anonymous and that's it anybody else I just have a question about the um what the history with Governor Livingston so I mean as that if that occurs is that going are we going to look at other cultures that maybe have been negatively impacted like if that plaque goes up will there be Research into other things that may have done I mean The World Is Not Perfect by any means and I'm just curious how we're going to well it would just be recognition that our name comes along with that history right just recognizing it so whether we put it on the website or the student handbook or right here at Governor Livingston and recognizing that though he was the governor and we you know we appreciate all he has done and we
080have named our building after him there's also this history alone well there is that part of and then you may not be able to answer this because you're not doing curriculum but you know what about just general part of history as you're doing history classes is that something that's discussed was that discussed I don't know it was yeah the short answers yes well I mean specifically could that be with yeah like just is that folded in as like as a point of reference knowing that okay so there was a pretty big discussion we're still talking about what exactly we want to do because we don't want it to become uh an issue as in we don't want people to feel um separate right and you know when you turn your head on that I know
081and no but I'm just making sure it's okay are we having a I don't know but I think you should also make sure you're engaging the community that you feel is impacted yeah definitely we just discovered this information recently so the conversation was an initial conversation at the district diversity committee and then we're going to have a separate meeting where we just discuss options and then bring it to the community right now we just have to we just found out this information so we have to flesh out the details and Mr Hopkins will be a big part of that along with the diversity committee thank you anybody else anybody else go to committee your liaison report no okay so I have one very quick uh the technology and Communications committee had a kickoff meeting on
082January 31st um Dr Greer talked a bit about updating the technology infrastructure there was talk about updating potentially updating the website making it more user-friendly and more consistent sort of communication stream and then there was other talks about other avenues for communication for the Board of Ed and there were talks about potential coffees some chats and potentially a newsletter so more coming up on that and that concludes my report right uh board if nobody else's board communication [Music] received a few emails one Community member commented on board meeting um [Music] on board meeting rules um the use of the board attorney and an Ethics settlement three community members sent in correspondence regarding school security six community members sent correspondence regarding open requests and the custodian of Records position one Community member sent correspondence regarding the
083posting of the agenda attachments and one Community member invited the board to post on their website thank you all right Judy the report of the business administrator please so we have very little on the agenda in terms of business and finance so I'm going to give you an update on both budget development for the 2023-2024 budget laughs so at this stage individual meetings between the administration and department heads were held throughout November and December the New Jersey homeroom budget software which is where we plug in all of our numbers uh recently opened uh we were able to find out that the district is not eligible for an enrollment adjustment and I'm going to speak about enrollment a little bit later the district may be entitled to a health care cost adjustment depending on the rate
084of our premiums we would be entitled to some adjustment in between the for any amount over a two percent increase and up to a 15.1 percent increase that 15 1 15.1 percent is marked by the actual increase to the state employee health benefits plan the governor's budget address is still scheduled for February 28th but always subject to change the estimated date for districts to receive state aid information is two days after that or on Thursday March 2nd barring any snow days or significant delays or a new pandemic um significant delays in the state aid numbers the district will hold its tentative budget approval on Monday March 13th please remember that changes can be made following the March 13th meeting through the final budget hearing which is scheduled for April 27th so regarding District enrollment it
085is fluctuating and on the decline as of January 31st we had 2482 students down from our June 2022 data number of 2510 students and short of the mark that we projected significantly Mountainside enrollment is also declining and because of that send received relationship this will translate into a fewer revenues for us from their tuition they have a large 12th grade class that is being replaced by a small incoming 9th grade class and uh we have reached the point that we need to talk about the fiscal cliff um this uh hits different schools at different times and this is our time so what that means is that the rate of growth cannot be maintained with a two percent tax levy and this really is not too hard to understand um you know based on a few
086uh high high valued items so the two percent increase over last year's tax levy comes to about 898 thousand dollars the teacher's contract recently settled with 3.2 percent raises the district has over 37 million dollars in salaries if most are increasing at 3.2 percent we would need 1.2 million dollars just to fulfill the need of the salaries the district has over 7 million dollars in benefits which right now seem to be increasing between 15 and 20 percent which would roughly be between 700 between a million and a million four um and so while salaries and benefits represent those large increases they're certainly not the only ones other large dollar value increases include special education out of District tuition we are receiving more special education students and transportation as you know went up substantially this year
087it is not going to go down in the coming year and uh there's additional uh Transportation needs with the special ed students there are obviously inflationary pressures on everything in society right now gas electric water soar paper products cleaning products you only have to go to the store to see that eggs are up 300 so um that is is where we are at this time it does look like we are going to need to make some staffing Cuts but we will know not know that for certain or how much it may be until we receive our final state aid numbers from the state and I have been given I am going to a county meeting tomorrow um but I have been given no indication sometimes there's feelers out uh we get something uh rumor no
088indication whatsoever what Murphy Murphy will be doing with stated thank you Julie okay we have now reached the uh comments from the public on agenda items section during this portion of the meeting District residents and staff are invited to address the board of education on agenda action items only the board requests that individual states their name and town of residence or School of attendance for the record all comments should be directed to the board president and depending upon the nature the complexity of the question it may or may not be answered during the meeting by the administration if so the response will occur after this public portion the meeting has concluded although the board may not respond to all items raised during the public forum all public comments will be considered board asks members of
089the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding personal matters or discouraged and cannot be responded to by the board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of New Jersey the board Bears no responsibility nor be liable for any comments made by members of the public please note that if any member of the public becomes disruptive during the meeting the board president May terminate the participant statement continued disruption may result in removal from or adjournment of the meeting each speaker statement will be limited to three minutes duration thank you so please anybody who would like to address the board on agenda items only please could you come up no hi I just wanted to add commenting on the goals I want to thank
090oh sorry Susan pogued uh 12 Eaton Court but Woodruff school I want to thank the board for the full-time um counselor that we got at the elementary schools because it really makes a difference so thank you very much thank you okay all right nobody else wanting to dress the board on agenda items only no okay so if nobody's coming up we will close that portion of the meeting so now moving on to agenda items okay so minutes I would like to make a motion to approve resolution a all World members which is the minutes from executive session minutes from January the 19th 2023 regular session minutes from January the 19th 2023 and regular session minutes from February the 2nd 2023. you'll have a motion to approve please some moved second second discussion no discussion roll
091call please Julie Ms Bradford yes Mr chanchuli yes to all Dr forger yes Mr Hyman uh yes to a and b abstain on C I did not attend sub two thank you Mrs Connor yes foreign Stanley yes Mrs Young yes Mrs perner yes Administration resolution a through I all board members another motion to approve please so moved second discussion policy p2531 the use of copyrighted materials um I think in the language we talk about um we basically are saying that a student or a staff member who reproduces our users copyrighted material in violation of this policy will be subject to discipline students in this case it's going to be the owners and the parents to figure out you know what is copyrighted like how are we going to figure that out or how are we
092expecting the students to go figure that out if they create a little presentation in school and they add you know music to it who knows like or how are we going to police this I guess okay um so in the world of copyright law um there is exceptions for students use so if you have a tune in the background if you're putting out a presentation that's not a vice violation to copyright really the violation of a copyright would be um you know if they're taking um you know images that are copyrighted and somehow using them to you know they're creating merchandise for a team logo and they're going to sell it at a fundraiser that would be the what we're talking about but students in there in copyright there's a specific exception for uh teachers
093and students to use copyrighted material in the process of the educational environment so if you're making a presentation and you're um and that's why they always cite to the works of it but they can uh reference books and things like that without violating copyright it's really more if they're doing it more in a commercial context if there's any way for us to begin I mean I think that that's the policy that Strauss asked me puts out I can take a look at it my suggestion would be um you know go ahead and pass it or introduce it we can always refine it later on we can maybe put in the language like I'm talking about with the educational exceptions so people aren't you don't have parents losing their minds over like oh my goodness I
094have to double check this copyrighted exactly it's right it puts the onus on the parents to go and see because students have no idea clearly yeah I mean it the the way the federal government passed the copyright laws though it gives a lot of it's much broader in the use of schools in terms of of not you don't violate it it's quite as easily as you would if you're at a bar playing somebody's music without paying them question with regards to that same comment is there like some other policy that just could be referenced you know related to students that you could plug in here that would cover that or um well I don't think you probably have another policy to stress this and he put this out um what we could do regulations there's
095a lot of federal statutes on copyright but there's actually language that we could insert that specifically uh explains that um use of copyright materials that are tangential to educational things presentations is not a violation of copyright laws so I think that that's a good point and it probably gives parents some peace of mind peace of mind the way they're doing the book report they're not going to end up in a copyright lawsuit I think part of this policy states that the board directs the superintendent to promulgate regulations regarding the copying distribution of copyrighted materials for instructional purposes so I might even be better to put right in the regulation that's what I'm suggesting I do have the regulation here but I it's like 14 pages long so I'm not sure I can digest it I'll
096send it to you yeah I'll take a look at it and if we can put that in that wouldn't even you could even do a second reading on that that would be a substantial modification would just be a clarification thank you yep anybody else no okay so Julie can we have Roku please Miss Miss Bradford yes to all Mr Chan truly yes you all Dr forger okay uh yes on the first reading that's a uh no on policy 8310 second reading no on regulation 84 25 sorry hold on a minute no one say that again 8310 83 10. and that's no on regulation 8420.10 [Music] no on regulation 84 20.2 no 184 20.7 no on policy 8140 regulation 8140 and yes and all the others uh excellent it's okay when we were in order I
097mean Dr Fourier jumped on me thank you and that would be for B how about the remainder C through yes on c d e f g h and I okay thank you Mr Hyman yes tall Mrs Khanna yes to the first reading so that's a under B um yes to everything except p8310 I think it's too broad there are no guard rails uh for what's being proposed there uh and a no to regulation 8420.10 regulation 8420.2 and regulation 8420.7 looking at what happened on January 20th I think we need some transparency as to what the processes of the district are um I'm not comfortable just striking everything out without seeing what you know what the the replacement text is and yes to everything else see through so no to p8310 yep eight four two zero
098point one eight four two zero point two eight four two zero point seven that's right and it's eight four two zero point ten I think okay thank you okay um Mrs Stanley yes Mrs Young yes Mrs Turner yes okay improve appointment resolution a all board members can have a motion to approve summer second [Music] discussion yes I would like to uh have a discussion I am a new board member and I've been on the other side of this um issue or the open requests in the public and for the past two years and I've had a lot of questions I've had a lot of um information given to me and I've had to reevaluate and look at everything that's been given and I want to thank everyone on the board in the business office and
099to um commend them for answering all my questions when I ask questions I got information from other board members from Dr barley I've been given a lot of information about this and this is all contributed this new information that I've had in this past month and a half since I've been on the board has contributed to a decision that I'm going to be making tonight but I want to thank everyone for the information thank you thank you any more discussion [Music] this is for yeah this is the approved annual appointment correct yeah yeah my understanding is that we don't really have a position called custodian of school records designee is that right we don't have a formal position like that we do we um approved it in the December meeting I are you sure because
100I checked and the the exact title that you have your custodian of school records designee you can find it it's it's in the policy that's what it's yeah it's it's this so the policy states custodian of school records um could be the business administrator or the designee so this is just adding the word designate because certainly we can strike it out everybody feel better Tom yeah I'm not sure I guess you're talking about 83 10 public records and the title of there is custodian of government records uh so there is no custodial school records position uh and I don't think we ever created that position so I don't think we can even appoint somebody to it I can look up the agenda well uh you actually um the law under the open public records act
101mandates that all public entities have a custodian of you can call them school records governmental records uh that's mandated by law so you have to have somebody designated so you guys can take out the word designee but you have to have you can call it just taking a message the title is custodian of government records you guys could amend this to be custodian of government records that's fine that's you can call it government records the government records just you know like for example the government records council is the state agency though oversees Oprah uh but they also cover all school records as well so it's a broader statement in school records but I see no problem changing it to custodian of School record of government records which is consistent with your policy any more discussion
102[Music] okay so who does this portion person report to if there is such a thing as custodian and government records designee who does that person report well ultimately this person would report to the Chief School administrator who's Dr Varley who oversees all employees and I would imagine that in hierarchy I don't know the person's other position they would report to uh to Dr just to Dr Farley so this is a direct report to Dr barley I'm I don't know the person's position I can't speak to that but Dr Varley oversees all employees in your school district so that's who they they report to and who does their evaluations I do that evaluation in conjunction with Miss cot so the position is custodian of government records designee is that what we're creating well I think it
103was amended to be custodian of governmental records is that what you just asked for so the emotion should be amended so it's the appointment of the custodian of government records which is consistent with your Port policy um I yield to dipty if she'd like to go so we we debated this in the last meeting I thought it was the exact same problem as what we have here no we never had that position created correct we did it's on the 12 20 I'm looking at it right now it's on the 1222 agenda and it was the creation of the stipend for the custodian of school records and then what we had last time is we didn't have it in the policy where there could be a designee but you just approved the 8310 where it can
104be a designate we enabled the individual appointment of a person so in the December meeting did you did you read the stipend or did or did create the position it sounds like you guys created the stipend and and in the policy that was just approved the 8310 the so let's just back up the custodian of governmental records is mandated by law that's that's in um the open public records act so what you did in the policy is you've created the ability to designate somebody to serve in that statutory role for the district so we could amend the title to custodian of governmental records designee because that's what's in your policy um instead of using the word school just call it government record um and that's what you're appointing so you do have the ability of
105the policy to to designate somebody to serve as the custodian of governmental records and it is a statutorily required position that all public entities must have I I think that we're talking about it it's semantics whether it's school records or government records I don't think you need a formal motion to amend it I think you guys can just when you when you uh read it just it should be the appointment uh the following annual appointment custodian of government records designee okay if there is no more discussion can I have a roll call please Miss Bradford yes Mr Chan truly yes Dr forger no Mr Hyman yes Mrs Connor no Mrs Stanley yes Mrs Young yes Mrs Penna yes motion passes okay education uh resolutions a to H or board members I would like a motion
106to approve resolutions a2h so moved second discussion so I just want to ask [Music] um sorry the wrestling coaches reimbursements and it has Daniel hiltz as the third but on the field trips he's not on there okay because non-employees cannot he's not he's just a coach he's not an employee okay I just wanted to make sure we didn't miss him yeah and then um me and Jordan were wondering if we needed to put something under B just in case they win I'm not jinxing it you're saying it so got the record got the record they're used to it um I'll probably be reaching out to you guys probably on Saturday to make sure you're okay to retroactively approve a bus okay okay thank you I have a question about f um the challenge day ignite
107school connectedness program is that a one-time program or is that like a series of sessions and then it says it provides 100 sophomore students is that a limit is it not available to everybody so this all right [Music] so this is a one-day program there are pieces that go up to it as well working on it the cap is at 100 so I know that uh Dr janosko associate has left she would be able to answer this uh more fully but there is a cap on the amount of students that are able to participate because of what the program is like and so discussions are now happening about what that looks like of who the students how they're selected and the pieces that they're able to engage in in doing this you know this Tool
108uh working together as groups of students to to do this program the the reason that stood out was this is a program sort of about you know tearing down walls of Separation it's a little ironic that we are going to choose only 100 of the students that we have instead of being able to offer it to like everybody everybody it is a part of the contract with the organization that does this they're the ones that limit the number saying that it's most effective for these groups of students keeping it at a small number for now it doesn't mean that we can't continue in the future what it looks like but that's the recommendation of the contract itself the organization and this is targeted for GL students only yeah correct okay and then my second question
109I'm just curious I see um item d and e looks like we're swapping the speakers of the Consultants um we just approved them the last time what prompted the change um so the um under D that present presenter became unavailable so we had to switch it with e thank you okay if there's no more discussion welcome Julie please Miss Bradford yes to all Mr Chan truly yes to all Dr forger uh yes to a through D no on E and F and yes on g h no no to E and F yes to all others yes Mr Hyman yes to all Mrs Connor yes to all Mrs Stanley uh yes I'm sorry I was thinking in my head this is Young yes this is better yes okay Personnel I'd like a motion to approve resolutions
110a through all board members and resolution p through V booklets only so moved second second discussion no discussion all right moving on roll call please Julie Miss Bradford yes to all Mr chair yes to all Dr Forger um Yes except no one in and as a Nancy yes I mean you're correct Mr Hyman yes on items a through o Mrs Connor yes for all items except n R Stanley yes to all Mrs Young yes Mrs Pena yes okay business I like emotion to approve resolution a through b or Boardman cell move second discussion I have a dumb question I don't know if we know this or not but for a um are we approving the pool use or the Lifeguard Services that's for the Lifeguard service okay yeah it probably should have been done at
111the same time as the pool right okay yeah I assume that's the case thanks any other discussion okay if there's no other discussion roll call please Julie Miss Bradford yes to a and b Mr tantuli yes to both Dr Forger yes to a and b Mr Hyman yesterday Mrs Connor yes to a and b Mrs Stanley yes Mrs Young yes Mrs pero yes Finance I'd like a motion to approve resolution a through D all board members I reviewed the bills this afternoon everything is in order I I make the motion second discussion if there's no discussion we'll call Julie please miss Bradford yes to all Mr chanchuli yes Dr forger yes yes to all Mr Hyman yes to all right Mrs Khanna yes to a through d Mr Mrs Stanley sorry yes Mrs Young yes
112Mrs Penner yes now we have come to the comments section from sorry oh okay sorry I thought you were asking me comment section from the public on any topic do you need me to read this all again no no so please come up to the board and state your name and your residence or your school thank you it should work [Music] I'm a social studies teacher at Governor Livingston high school I'm frankly dismayed and Disturbed the board of education has not accepted a donation of books entitled ejaculate responsibly donation was submitted in time for inclusion on tonight's agenda the purpose of the donation is to support a student-driven literary lunch at Governor Livingston the literary lunch program is optional and will require parental permission we're extremely disappointed that the Berkeley Heights Ed Foundation chose not
113to support its literary lunch over the years the selected books for lit lunch have included discussions on school shootings immigration islamophobia race the Holocaust and most recently child soldiers and ethical churches compromised by War this lit lunch is voluntary and at no cost to the district therefore the issue must be content I do not understand why you the Board of Ed or the bhef for that matter would prevent students from participating in an academic discussion about women's health during women's History Month the discussion at the heart of the book does not focus on religious or sexual morality it reframes the arguments around the abortion debate which is a Monumental women's issue and societal battle that has lasted over 50 years the last election indicates the relevancy of this topic we ask our students to be
114included inspired and empowered but not this topic why can't students engage in discussion about an issue that is Central to their personal autonomy if it's the title then don't judge the book by its cover if it's truly the content then that unfortunately Flex the misogyny women face and society and highlights the fundamental reason we need this discussion I urge you to accept the donation now in order to coordinate a discussion for women's history month thank you thank you for your comments foreign Buckley I'm a junior at Governor Livingston high school in discussing the sexism that me and my peers have experienced and what we could do to better educate and Empower women within our community Mr Hopkins offered us as he put it a voice in our community and directed us to miss Leahy's idea
115for a lit lunch on the book titled ejaculate responsibly This was meant to be an opportunity for us to have a safe place for a discussion of hard topics a discussion that would no doubt enrich our community on really important yet rarely discussed topics such as sexual education in America Prejudice and the medical field and our culture's attitude towards sexually active women I would like to start by alleviating some of the concerns that I've heard regarding this book and its discussion I want to point out that this Neville novel is incredibly well researched and regarded it takes a relatively non-partisan approach towards issues such as abortion and continuously cites relevant and reliable data to make a total of 28 supportive claims for a piece of writing on such a complex topic the novel is also
116been also notably written in simple language and is rather short which makes it incredibly easy to understand and accessible for a wide variety of students I've heard people claim that it's too adult too political or too uncomfortable for discussion but let me remind you that nothing worth discussing is without discomfort those are the areas we are able to grow most as a community what I would like you to consider most of all is the impact that a novel like this could have on an individual women in our community and what you and not approving it could Rob them of as someone who has experienced sexual assault and simply as a growing woman I found this book incredibly validating empowering and moving I tell you this to assert as openly as possible the tangible benefits of
117this discussion I would not be here today advocating so fervently for this discussion if I did not feel incredibly passionate about the good that this book could do for women in the school I implore you to read the book give it a chance and ask you blatantly when we can expect a decision because quite frankly we are not going anywhere and we will continue to push for this novel to be shared the last thing I want to do is deprive our high school community of the opportunity to share their voices on their rights and on their bodies these circumstances have been very disheartening and I hope you will do your best to fix this situation thank you thank you my name is Karina grahauser and I'm a junior at GL and I would like to
118continue this discussion with the fact that books of this nature mean the biological and psychological aspects of pregnancy prevention should not be banned for discussion amongst the teens of Geo it is an opportunity to create a sense of community among the women who would like to participate and men that would like to be further educated informed on this subject which I would like to add no voices silenced and this is open to all I would also like to bring attention to how this literally lunch is optional if parents do not want their child to participate they do not have to it is for students who are comfortable in taking part in this discussion who have parents which allow them to this discussion can also have permission slips so if a parent is truly worried about
119the involvement of their child and their child will not be allowed to participate without a parent sign slip on the other hand administrators and Board of Ed staff this is not a funding issue to consider this has been completely privately funded so please remove that aspect from your consideration I would also like to encourage you all to approve this in time for women's history month coming up in March this would be a great addition to the school's involvement of this month's historical significance on another note I understand that the title of this book is alarming although it is a formal title with a biological term it is not vulgar or inappropriate it is scientific and direct the book is not meant to be sexual in an inappropriate sense it is a book backed with scientific
120evidence and includes many perspectives on the science behind certain things this discussion was started to give the students the power of having a voice when discussing this important and ever-present Topic in everyday life and since this was not approved this power and voice has been taken away from students there are not many students here although almost 20 expressed their support and belief in getting this book passed so please further discuss and reconsider the approval of This Book thank you foreign [Music] good evening Margaret Ellis 102 Twin Falls Road as one of the parents who is sponsoring the books for this literary lunch I am very disappointed that that this was not on the agenda for tonight and with the new timing it will be very difficult for the teacher and students to be able to
121hold this during women's History Month which was the intention the title of the book may be provocative to our generation to my generation but it isn't to these students these students chose this book they deserve to be heard they deserve to read together a book that is fundamental to their lives so please do whatever research you need talk to Mr Hopkins talk to Mrs Leahy read the book it's short it's only 138 pages so it's very informative it's very straightforward and the students picked it it's a student-led program thank you [Music] thank you anybody else like to address support [Music] hey cyborg of your kitty um I would like to ask the board president and the superintendent if you could give me an ETA on when my questions will be answered they've been I've sent
122an email this afternoon and these are questions from January I think the fifth three York meeting the January 19th meeting and all the meetings till late um so if you could give me you can respond to my email and tell me by when will these questions be answered that would be great uh also is the board documenting I know I did I heard the statement that was read before the initial public citizens hearing uh my question is is the board documenting all the questions and the comments made at the board meeting um coming to thinking classroom this is again an unanswered question from last meeting can we get a Clarity on percentage of direct instruction in thinking classroom on remote participation on Zoom again an unanswered question from two meetings ago we know that the
123district has spent over ten thousand dollars to procure the equipment and move the location of the meetings from Colombia to GL uh when asked in late 2021 the response from the board president was let the new boat decide in 2022 we know there were delays but we've got the equipment we've moved the location so I would like to understand when does the board plan on opening up remote participation via Zoom uh in regards to the superintendent settlement offer on the nepotism case I would like to know with the board attorney defending the superintendent and I'm aware that she's allowed to a legal defense in her contract who is the board attorney actually representing the board the district or the superintendent uh and how much have we spent on this case till date and with the
124settlement offer out in the public it's a public document right now and what's stated in the settlement offer is in stark contrast to uh what was stated by the superintendent at a public board meeting on June 24 2021 my question to the entire board and the board attorney here is if we were aware of this information why were we defending this ethics complaint from August 2021 I think we were charged at around 165 dollars an hour how many hours were spent and if it was all going to end it with this settlement offer widen this you know acceptance that was there on the settlement offer now offered back in 2021 saving the taxpayer dollars thank you [Music] anybody else let you address the vote please so I just want to say how proud I am
125of these girls I remember them when they were younger so it takes a lot of courage to get up here and face a bunch of grown-ups so your voices were heard tonight I hope people are listening I'm one of the families also that is supporting this literary lunch so thank you for consideration thank you anybody else like to address the board no so if there is nobody else who'd like to address the board I'll close the public session so I'll see if we can answer some of your questions tonight if we can't answer your questions tonight we will get back to you to make sure that your questions are answered in a timely manner so with regards to the book the book is going to be on the agenda the March meeting for the board
126to look at approving so it will be on the agenda okay um with regards to the question for your Zoom sorry the question the answer I have is that that will be a discussion at some point during with the technology and Communications committee so that is to be determined and Dr Greer did you want to answer the question regarding the building thinking classrooms our teachers continue to differentiate their instruction based on the students that they have in their classrooms we work in professional learning opportunities specifically next week the work of Carol Ann Tomlinson for differentiating based on their needs so students are able to get what they need based on their students we hear the feedback we held six small uh Workshop sessions had information come from parents as well as we continue to undress
127adjust instruction based on the needs of our students thank you um are there any other questions at the administration nope so if there's any questions that we haven't answered this evening we will do our best to get back to you thank you Angela yes sorry um I don't know if we know this so March 13th is our next meeting does that does a potential approval of the book on March 13th allow for the timing of the lit lunch in women's History Month I don't I don't know the timing of all this but um no I'm not actually sure about that it's just that's when that's when I'm explored meeting all right totally yeah I mean no it's not enough time for women's history month for you proven us to purchase the books I mean if
128you can retro approve the fan boss and get the fan bus in one day I think you can improve this book sooner thank you um so if there are no answers to the questions we'll get back to you with the ones we don't have so I would like to then close the public session new business anybody got any new business I would like to make a motion to approve a donation if it's still available um for the book and so we can have it in time for women's History Month I think this has been a student-led issue and um I know many of us are aware of the book and have looked into it ourselves um this book is not um some super informative book but it makes you ask questions and that is what
129we want our students to do we want them to ask questions and have a forum to actually talk about these things and I think that we should support our students and I would appreciate if we could have a motion to vote on it tonight if that donation is even available Dr barley do you know if it would be available is that something I would have to ask [Music] all right so I make a motion to accept a donation for books for our literary high school students oh I will need a second then I second that emotion I have also read the book and I am in support of the motion okay um I've also read the book and I'm in support of the motion so um can we have if there's any discussion does anybody
130on the board want to have a discussion before we look I just got the book about two hours ago before the meeting as I walked in I kind of wanted to read it first I haven't had an opportunity to do that because as some others apparently have gotten to it um I've just gotten like I said when I walked in the door so I would like to read it so we approved Mouse and I don't remember anybody asking us if we read it but we approved that donation we have students begging us to listen right I I applaud them I applaud our teachers I applaud our staff for even getting it to us this is a really difficult topic and people are uncomfortable talking about it but the reality is our students see much more
131on the internet on Instagram and Tick Tock and Twitter that are talking about these topics and this gives them a forum to actually discuss it and hear feedback that is different than their own right different than their own social look at the world it is also teacher-led I'm a teacher facilitated so I do want to they're not sitting in a room by themselves with the books I do want you to know that teachers will be um instrumental in having these conversations and it is also optional so parents will actually get to you decide whether they want their students to participate so that's something else to your point I haven't read it either but to hear the passion of the students and like you said if you don't want to read it you don't have to
132read it there's a permission slip or whatever you may want to do um to you know participate or not participate so um Catherine I hate to put you on the spot but have you done one of these lunches foreign I definitely did one last year I can't even remember the name of the book looking back now because I was so busy at that time but it was really great experience I don't think anyone like previewed the book beforehand so I mean I'm with the students in the crowd right now so what happens at a lit lunch just so board members know if they haven't um well there's free food firstly um but aside from that everyone reads the book beforehand uh there are some adults there to facilitate the conversation and the students just have
133the opportunity to get together talk about their opinions you know we're not pushing our opinions on to other people but we're more just sharing our thoughts to people so so based on the discussion tonight I think they seem to throw I think a lot of board members here seem to be in favor of this so I mean we have a motion to approve every second so I would like to do a roll call wait a minute uh let's see are you having a discussion it's not done with discussion are we I thought we were but if you have something to say before we move on well I mean I haven't read it I heard about this yesterday uh I did read the Amazon reviews got pretty good reviews [Music] um I'm a little troubled by
134the way we're doing this though uh the superintendent is supposed to make a recommendation on any donation and that goes on the agenda and you know we're not following our own policy and that bothers me uh um not only that new business is supposed to be you know you you bring something up but it either gets tabled or gets referred to committee you don't act on it at the same meeting that's that's what we were advised by the attorney that's the way that's what new business is for uh the other thing is though I know if I tell a kid don't read this book the first thing they're going to go out and do is read the book right the best way to get a kid to read a book is to tell them don't
135read this okay so I don't know what to do we can have a vote I just want to say I'm supportive of the way I think our students have come up and put forward their point of view I think it's amazing that you guys are doing that um policy aside for a minute I personally am supportive of open dialogue and in this case if it's voluntary you know you're not forcing anybody to have the conversation the better instead of air and you are you know involving them in the process to make sure that they're comfortable as a board member I I want to be supportive of the students sorry you said you are yeah so um I understand where you're coming from productive project I think that based on the time that we have so
136that the literary lunch can actually take place yeah and the board has to approve uh it's the acceptance of it this isn't a curriculum where this returns recommending the approval of a curriculum this is a donation for students to read a book uh voluntarily with parental permission so under new business the board does have the right to accept the donation just like they'd have the right to accept a donation from a PTA or a you know a donor so no problem with that and Jennifer you read our policy on donations though um I can read it for you if you like if you want me to take a minute I'll look it up yeah okay sure Dr forger if it makes you feel better I will I recommend to the board to approve the donation
137of This Book thank you well that does help yes do you want me to read the policy still or is that okay uh actually if I have you read it now I don't there's no charge exactly go back to the office and read it I'll get a charge I like it don't read it let's have a move okay so just to clarify I have a motion to approve and I am second we've had discussions so roll call please Judy I just want to read the motion out loud because we don't really I want to say as the um the parent had sent me the information I believe this is still accurate motion to approve uh the donation of 40 copies of uh ejaculate responsibly a whole new way to think about abortion by Gabrielle Stanley
138Blair for use at the uh Governor Livingston high school lit launch we're ready Ms Bradford yes Mr chanchuli not honest at this time no Dr Forger yes uh Mr Hyman yes Mrs Connor yes Mrs Stanley yes Mrs Young yes Mrs Penna yes motion passes [Music] I would just like to commend the students for coming up and giving their feedback it's very very due to stand up so congratulations uh for standing up there and telling us your feelings and your thoughts thank you so uh if we have no more new business I would like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting second all in favor meeting adjourned