001Heights Board of Education was given as required by the open public meetings act as follows notice of the revised 2022 Board of Education meeting schedule was sent to the Star Ledger and The Courier news on February 2nd 2022 on September 15 2022 notice of the revised Board of Education meeting through January 5th 2020-23 excuse me was sent to the Star Ledger and The Courier News and was also provided to all schools PTL presidents the bhea president and posted at the administration building a copy was also provided to the public library and filed with the municipal clerk can I have roll call please Mr Hyman Mrs akiri Mr chanchuli here uh Dr forger Mrs Penna Mrs Stanley yeah yeah Mrs Young Mr Tequila here whereas the board Berkeley Heights Board of Education seeks to adjourn to
002Executive session in full compliance with the open public meeting act and JSA 10 colon 4-6 and whereas the open public meaning act provides that a body public body May exclude May exclude the public from the portion of the meeting at which it discusses matters release those identified below matters render uh rendered confidential by federal law state law Court law individual privacy collective bargaining agreements purchase or at least a real property if public interest could be adversely affected investment in public funds and public interest could be public adversely affected tactics or techniques utilizing protecting Public Safety and property pending our anticipated litigation attorney client privilege and Personnel employment matters affecting specific correct prospective or current employees be it resolved at the Berkeley Heights Board of Education Insurance to Executive session has executive session to discuss and
003manage related to Personnel student matters bhea negotiations and legal matters be it further resolved that the minutes of the discussions of any of these items will be disclosed to the public when matters have been determined in confidentiality is no longer applicable can I have a motion to adjourn to Executive session so moved do I have a second second discussion roll call Mr Hyman yes Mrs zakiri absent uh Mr chanchuli yes Dr forger yes Mrs Penna yes Mrs Stanley yes uh Mr Tequila yes uh discussion roll call please Julie foreign [Music] yes Mrs akiri present Mr chanchuli President Dr forger president Mrs Penna yes Mrs Stanley here Mr Aquila yes uh I'll rise for the flagships one nation under God indivisible with liberty or justice for all right let's jump right into it we have a
004packed agenda this evening uh Julie quote board correspondence please good evening [Music] we received an email from Sue Seto regarding uh some thoughts she had about our last meeting on September 22nd a letter went to the board all the board members from William Swisher who is our auditor regarding the annual audit by his firm that's currently going on we received an email from dipty Khanna about streamlining email Communications we received emails from Jared and Melissa weisfeld regarding school security and an email from Thomas masajewski regarding payment in the roof busing all right thank you Julie thank you um reports of the students okay check [Music] so as the football as the fall Sports season winds down not over yet but coming to a close I would just like to recap and recognize our fall teams
005and outstanding performances by our student athlete Highlanders the football team led by coach Peter remicio is two and two this month with wins against JFK and South River improving their overall record to four and four the South River home game was senior day for the senior Highlander football players where they and the senior Highlander cheerleaders were recognized for their accomplishments in their High School athletic career the football team finishes their season on the road this week against Bernard's the football athlete of the month is Junior Owen Chase who has 302 rushing yards and a touchdown this season coach remichio says that Shea has been a reliable has been reliable All Season offensively but over the last three weeks he has stepped up big time defensively Owen has been our leading tackler two of the last
006three games and he has been a and he has been great at linebacker for us the boys soccer team has had a great 12-3-1 season led by coach Kevin Fontana they went 7-3 this month with impressive wins against oratory and a competitive and tough Scotch Plains Fanwood team and the Union County tournament Unfortunately they lost in the semi-final round against top ranked Elizabeth however the team clinched the division on Tuesday with a one goal Victory against Linden the boys soccer athlete of the month is senior Luca Napoli coach Fontana knows how he is a leader by his actions hard work and high level of play he is a top defender in the county who does an amazing job stopping the opposition's attack Napoli reflected on the impact the second year coach has had on him
007stating that his passion for the game and for the team is truly admirable because it pushes myself and the rest of our team to work hard the boys soccer had their pink out event today where they had a Krispy Kreme pink ribbon sale and a snacks in at the game the funds they made are being donated to the silver lambing foundation in Berkeley Heights which helps anyone in need spreading one kind gesture at a time the girls soccer team led by coach Michael roof is A8 overall and five and four this month with wins against rival New Providence and in the Union County tournament against Arthur L Johnson the girls soccer athlete of the month is senior Ava reinel who has put up five goals and two assists for the team coach roof noted that
008most importantly Ava has been consistent in their thrust in games every day While others around her have suffered from illness and long-term injuries Ava has been a Mainstay in the lineup her efforts on the field have been bored than noticeable and we have been very dependent on her to feature each and every time we go out there competing against the best in our area the feud hockey team led by coach Jacqueline wolves is five seven and two and three and five in the past month with wins against Union and Franklin the field hockey athlete of the month is sophomore Emma caparelli who is the team's goalie coach Wells says that capparelli is driven excited and ambitious when in goal she is a she is a dynamic goalie who is not afraid to approach the ball
009and dictate our off our defensive Circle Emma has received countless compliments from coaches officials and players this season for being a tremendous asset to our team the feud hockey team had a breast cancer fundraiser and pink out game and at practice coaches and players held a home run derby type contest which which was referred to as a shoot-a-thon to raise money for American Cancer societies strides Against Breast Cancer Foundation prior to this practice players were asked to seek donors to pledge an amount of money for every shot that results in a goal all donor money collected went to Shannon Vicks making strides Against Breast Cancer team the girls volleyball team led by coach Steve Hess is three and six and nine and four this month with wins against a tough Linden and Summit team the
010first two rounds of the Union County tournament however they were defeated by Westfield in the semi-final round the girls volleyball athlete of the month is senior Katie Brooks who on the season has 154 digs 21 assists and 21 Aces coach Hess noted that she is the one wearing the red jersey and represents the quarterback of the defense taking as many first balls as she can you can't run your offense without good passage to the center and Katie is the biggest reason we are a good passing team the girls volleyball staffed Rita's Italian ice at the end of the summer for a share of their profits and have sold volleyball t-shirts the team also participated in new providences dig pink event to raise money for breast cancer and hope to host the event next year for
011both schools the girls tennis team led by coach Joey panchenko has a record of 10 and 4 and 5-2 this month with wins in the njsia AAA tournament against marsupity Hills and Parsippany however they lost in the semi-final round to Bernard's the girls tennis athletes of the month are junior Arisa ramparata and freshman for any Anaya fertke they are in a doubles group and have pulled out some tough wins against teams like Oak Knoll recently the tennis team had two fundraisers this season one at Rita's and another at La Rosa in Berkeley Heights the boys and girls cross country team is led by coach Chris Coughlin on October 1st at the shore coaches Invitational in Homedale Park the governor Livingston boys varsity boys placed third overall the team also competed at the Union County conference
012championships at Oak Ridge Park in Clark on October 11th the varsity girls team placed second in the mountain division while the boys placed third the boys cross-country athlete of the month is sophomore Sean jacqua for his fourth place finish at the conference Championship and for the girls junior Samantha Richter for leading the team the entire season and earning medals and all of her races senior Molly Burke noted the change this season in that coach Coughlin has definitely increased the intensity of workouts something that cross country has taught me throughout the years is mental toughness where anyone who ever ran cross country before understands the mental toughness required to complete a workout or race the girls varsity cheerleading team cheers for the varsity football games the girls cheer athlete of the month is senior team captain
013Aaron Blake head coach Danielle ganelli notes she co-choreographed the fall halftime routine as well as leads the varsity team and chance at every game she motivates her team to reach their true potential which is which has shown in our performances this fall season lastly the GL marching band hosted its annual passion of Champions competition this past weekend where they improved their score significantly from last year code Trump drum major Sophia judica noted that everyone in the audience loved their loved their performances and the Geo marching band was especially proud of their performance at this event thank you foreign hi everyone October has been a whirlwind of excitement at GL um GL students in grades 9 to 11 took the PSAT in mid-october which is used to identify National Merit Scholars and award Merit Scholarships to
014some students while they took the test seniors attended their senior breakfast um yeah I had a lot of fun the first yeah uh the first event of Project Graduation at this breakfast students grabbed food chatted with friends and participated in a game of trivia with gift card rewards much better than testing I have to say all right as students are getting reacclimated to being back in school many clubs are meeting regularly to hold activities to end the month of September GL held its annual Club fair in person during lunch for the first time since 2019. students gathered in the blue gym to view posters and discuss clubs with Representatives the math League held its first to six contests this year of the Year this past Tuesday the Operation Smile Club hosted an interest meeting for
015prospective members the Olive Branch operation met to begin planning a clothing drive for this winter and more activities for the rest of the year the sexuality and gender acceptance club and the baking club collaborated to bake rainbow shortbread cookies in the cooking room this past week the Jewish student action team kicked off their first meeting by making goodie bags for hospice patients and learning about the Jewish New Year the Geo unfiltered Club gathered to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by making Sombreros in the counseling room looking ahead the GL unfiltered Club will be holding a Diwali event tomorrow where students will have the opportunity to make Diaz or small lanterns to celebrate the holiday next Saturday on October 29th the Highlander robotics team will be competing in their first competition of the season something special about
016this is that the team will be hosting this competition at GL now finally journalism students are holding a fudge fundraiser to raise money for New photography equipment and technology so that they can attend journalism conferences and workshops fudge can be ordered online and scheduled for direct delivery or pickup from GL thank you well thank you Catherine uh any questions for our student representatives from the board hmm oh no all right sounds good thank you both for a great report all right uh report of the superintendent but before we go into that I'd like to make a brief announcement that I'm very happy to announce that we now have a settled contract between uh the Board of Education and NJEA without teaches contract which is a great accomplishment uh so right now it is with them
017for Signature and once they sign and it comes back to to the board to myself to sign and then we are done with our contract uh negotiation between us and our teachers so very much thank you very much to those who are on the negotiating committee and everybody and of course with the bhea for working with us to get through that so great news um moving on to Dr Varley foreign so my actual part of the report is is um light tonight I do want to congratulate Sophia Judy key she is the October student of the month superintendent student of the month she's involved in many extracurricular activities at GL including fencing band Saga and various STEM related competition teams She was recently recognized and we just had this breakfast I think it was Wednesday
018morning as one of gl's commended students by the National Merit Scholarship program and her favorite part of being a student at GL is the diverse number of opportunities there are to take part in act in activities um she wants to just she wants to study computer science in college so congratulations to Sophia judicki and now I'm going to turn it over to Madison roholt and John Morrison for our HIV and violence and vandalism report which is not as great as being the student of the month oh um like I said I'm John Morrison I'm a principal at Mountain Park it's hard to tell check all right hi everyone I'm Madison rowald I'm the Student Assistance counselor for the district and we are also both the anti-bullying coordinators for the district so we're happy to be
019here with you all tonight okay we're gonna make a few assumptions as we go through the slideshow and we're pretty confident all of you can read so we are going to present the the visual reinforcement and then make comments throughout and then obviously provide you the opportunity to ask questions when we're finished all right so I'm quickly going to go through what is HIV under New Jersey's law HIV stands for harassment intimidation and bullying um there's three major components of this law the first is that an incident has to occur that incident can be a gesture it could be something verbal written it could be on social media it could be physical but an incident has to occur or a series of incidents and then the second component is that these incidents or incident has
020to be perceived to be motivated by an actual or perceived characteristic most of the time these characteristics are very Salient to someone's identity such as race gender ability level but it could also be things that aren't as aliens such as you know if a student is made fun of because their dog died that can be the reasonable um that can be the characteristic but a general dislike or personality difference wouldn't constitute this piece and then the last major component is that it has to cause substantial disruption or emotional harm to the student or the school day that is why we investigate incidences that happen outside of school because if they're affecting our students in school we want to talk to students and uh mediate it previously the Assumption was that if something is reported using
021the term bullying that it was automatically required to investigate now we're able to as administrators and as anti-bullying specialists have conversations to decide if HIV investigation is warranted if guidance procedures are warranted or if disciplinary procedures are warranted and oftentimes all three will take place but it gives us the law gives us some flexibility regarding how we proceed and how we support our children just like we would differentiate the construction of algebra or any other academic skill we have two uh specific procedural changes this year one is that if a child is found to be involved in a positive HIV as the aggressor not the victim but as the aggressor that finding becomes part of their permanent record and if a child in the course of their time in Berkeley Heights or any other school
022district whether it be K-12 or whenever they join the district and move through 12th grade if they have three positive findings against them the district is required to create which is the equivalent of a corrective action plan it's formally written um specific to the the child their difficulties and the goals to remediate their behavior and in any subsequent finding of a positive HIV after the third that corrective action plan would have to be updated so these Specialists broken down by each School in the district they're composed of all of our counselors and most of our child study team and school psychologists we try really hard for students to not have to participate in investigations with their direct counselor to not harm that counseling relationship and use that as the remedial follow-up piece um speaking of
023consequences and remedial actions this is very individualized for our students because once they go through this process we want to make it we yes the investigation is important and we want to make sure that Justice is served with all students but we also want to follow up and make sure that these behaviors don't continue so this can involve student counseling conferences with students and parents seat changes um you know referral for treatment and detention suspensions and consequences such as that when there's when there are incidences that also violate the code of conduct those consequences are going on at the same time as this HIV investigation okay if you look at the the chart that's in front of you you really need to look closely this represents data and information from the second reporting period of
024last school year the the line across the top is specific to HIV and that's what Madison I deal directly with when every investigation that takes place within the district we have conversations we help support our investigators when we report to the state mass and I cooperate to input those investigations into the State website so we we really take an active role in understanding the Dynamics within each investigation below that you have violence vandals and weapons and substance abuse that's that's less in our purview but obviously still important to our behavior management within the district this chart breaks down what was in the top line of the previous chart into more specific locations by the school and it also breaks down initial investigations and positive findings or confirmed cases that's the verbiences up there and also
025um comparison from year to year um like any data you can find things that support your feelings and your your uh your initial observations but I think what's important to take away from this chart is Middle School students generally have difficulty interacting positively therefore we do a lot of Investigations in the middle school and we have a fair number of positive confirmations high school kids do better than middle school kids but not as well as elementary school kids so as they get older they get a little worse and then they get a little better before they graduate but other than that you can draw your own conclusions and I would imagine there'll be some questions after we're finished in regard to to this chart so this is strictly for reporting period two last year but
026then this chart is for the full school year last year and the years prior so I'll give everyone a minute to really look over these numbers and then in the next slide I'll review some of what those numbers mean and I can flip back and forth if we need but this is what Mr Morrison and I do we go through our cases we look at the numbers and we really try to analyze what's working what's not and try to reflect the data so the one thing that we did see is that our our numbers were pretty consistent with pre-covered numbers in terms of cases um and the characteristics most noted in these confirmed cases were physical appearance race gender ability level and sexual orientation nine incidents we did use that preliminary determination that it would
027be more code of conduct oriented rather than HIV hot spots were in classrooms hallways and lunchrooms especially those less structured periods of the day we noticed is where you know students have more ability to interact with each other and more incidences occur and then as Mr Morrison was saying Middle School setting has the most confirmed HIV cases per investigations this is developmentally appropriate as we go through trainings and education middle school students this is where we typically see the most incidences of bullying not just in our district but across across middle schoolers everywhere okay this slide speaks to our due diligence our responsibilities of reporting um we have like I said earlier we input a lot of data into a State website we keep track of investigations both founded and unfounded we keep track of
028trainings that our staff takes part in we keep track of programs that our children take part in whether it's an assembly for a whole grade level or a whole school or class lessons run by a a grade level a specific teacher or often a a school counselor next yeah in this slide specifically breaks down the staff members that we we shoot to impact and some of the approaches and some of the activities that we have them take part in and some of the responsibilities that uh Madison and I have in regard to our positions yeah so the state sends us a self assessment report that every school's school safety and climate team comes together at the end of the year to complete these are the eight components within that self-assessment report and then these are
029the scores that we've given ourselves last year excuse me you'll see that we remain fairly consistent across the district which is positive because it means that we've kind of streamlined our processes and procedures um the one area which I'll speak about as our Focus for this year is a little bit more education and making sure our staff and families are really trained to handle these behaviors [Music] um this is still me right so then this takes the scores from here and just puts them into percentages um just so that we can look at the data a little bit differently you'll see that over the course of the past couple years we've remained fairly consistent um so some schools have even increased their scores through different procedural changes and trainings um one thing that I can
030say that is we really take a great deal of advantage of our our board attorney Madison and I have developed a pretty fluid relationship with her and she's very responsive to our questions and our concerns just yesterday we had a meeting of all the anti-bullying Specialists from district and and she spent about an hour with us making a presentation discussing the updates um in our regulations for this year but also referencing specific cases and how they were handled when they were taken to the highest level within the state for for support or denial of them that District's fine um so I just want to say that I feel like that's money well spent on the board's part relationship that we've developed with with our with our attorney um something that's been really important to us
031consistently but also more importantly recently is our focus on uh social emotional learning are importance that we place on um etiquette regarding electronic communication we use our classroom teachers our guidance counselors our computer and our computer teachers at the free five level Mountain parking huge share uh Mrs schiffel who's our computer teacher and there's a lot of consistency a lot of conversations about how we can help our children become more responsible in the way they communicate electronic because we found during especially during covert and post covert we had some real real sticky situations at the middle school where children were just having difficulty communicating properly and sharing information this is a pretty detailed list of activities that we take part in trainings that we conduct and programs that we have our children we expose our
032children to and it's we really make an effort to do similar things all throughout but make them developmentally appropriate so that children can relate to those lessons based on where they are it's and that's a a tough situation because you really have to modify things big difference between the way a third grader and a fifth grader interacts with their environment and then right up right up till 12th grade you really have to be careful that you're not presenting something that a child is going to receive as immature to them and then they just shut you off but you also don't want to be going over a child's head and potentially introducing them to something that they hadn't even thought of yet and putting on them on the fast track to potentially making bad choices yeah
033and so since we're reporting on last year these are a bunch of trainings that we uh worked through last year but I just want to highlight the one at the bottom that starred um this at the beginning of this school year our entire District staff went through youth Mental Health First Aid training and that really reflects uh us trying to hone in on that focus of more education for our staff this year um so even though that's something this year I just wanted to highlight that based off of the data that we did see last year um again these are some of the programs that we worked through last year with our school counseling departments our school safety and climate teams Administration um all of these would be you know uh developmentally appropriate for whatever
034school is um engaging in them but something that's really exciting this year is our district-wide precepts this is something that our school counseling department has worked really hard on is streamlining kind of having these themes monthly and bi-monthly with these taglines and these pictures that students can get excited about and then working through it at the different grade levels so the younger students will have different celebrations at school middle schoolers will talk about it in advisory at the high school we implement this through feel good Fridays and clubs and activities and this is just a way again the data is great but also Mr Morrison and I and our admin team we want to make sure that at the end of the day it's kids are coming to school and feeling safe and feeling as
035comfortable and connected as they can so implementing programs like these is the fun part of this job um and I feel very lucky to have such a strong supportive counseling team behind us to be able to do these things um and so part of the precept is um every year we participate in the week of respect across the state of New Jersey we do this but this year we've been able to tie in our activities with the precepts so you want to talk about the elementary schools yeah so I just I just want to lead off with you know I've been in Brooklyn for 26 years now and I can remember when it was a huge deal when we had two guidance counselors at Columbia Middle School for 600 kids you know soon after that
036we had three we used to have one counselor guys not guidance counseling school counselor I'm sorry school counselor for all our K-5 children and we've increased that number over time this year is the first year that each of the K-5 buildings has their own full-time Council and I I already see the uh the progress that we're making the relationships that we're building and at the end of the day I don't think anyone would deny that the best way to improve the way our children treat each other is engagement and making sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure that students are engaged at an age and and grade and developmental appropriate level so at memcam and Woodruff um Mrs Swan and Mrs Wallace work very closely together with their respective administrators to have
037a similar presentation as possible and they they do a lot of great activities really appropriate for our early Learners um there's a an activity that's on the books that take place it's called Don't yuck my yum and we've had some situations where children look over at what their table Partners eating at lunch and if it's something unfamiliar to them they might make a comment because that's what kids do and that can lead to a negative interaction of potential HIV investigation so those are the type of things that we're doing with our youngest Learners and then at um Mountain Park and Hughes school we have Mr Coughlin who's the Mountain Park counselor and at Hughes it's uh Ms Bartlett we have two bartletts in the district so I just say Miz because I've oftentimes will make
038a mistake for the first name it's jockey Park yes this is there it's it's late at night um they work very closely together to bring programs that build on what's taking place at the Early Childhood Center but aren't quite Middle School level programs to help the children make good choices and and as as Madison said have a good time engage with their peers and their environment yeah so then as I mentioned previously um CMS has a terrific advisory program where students are put into small groups and really encouraged to have more social emotional discussions surrounding these topics uh specifically for the week of respect there were spirit days to kind of boost the morale around the school and then the counselors put together this let's get talking uh PowerPoint presentation which was shown during lunch
039time and that was just a slideshow of different icebreakers that students can use to get connected with each other and start conversations in more pro-social ways that don't lead us to hivs and then at the high school so we've had these really terrific monthly awareness calendars which promote a lot of our activities um not just surround it just to you know School culture and Community to get students involved and feel like they're connected during week of respect we also uh created this Banner outside of the cafeteria during lunch uh you'll see it says you belong here and then students were invited to come and write down ways that they feel connected to GL or just things that they like about GL there was a lot of teacher names up there sports activities people even wrote
040like the cookies in the cafeterias what gets them here every day and that's fine with us so these were just some of the things that our counseling department and school safety and climate teams did to Foster this feelings in our school district so focus is um for this year are very similar to the focuses of last year we want to make sure that we're providing students the opportunity to interact with literature and subject matter that represents them so they they read about themselves they see pictures of themselves and their holidays and their cultural experiences are celebrated they feel like they can speak freely without judgment um we talk a lot about making sure that children have a deep investment in the success of their academics and their social lives and their life from school and
041and outside something that some of you may not be familiar with is there's there's a Dating Violence component to HIV and it's it's a kind of a sticky component because if there's a um if there's a negative interaction and it's seen as that's part of a potentially romantic relationship that changes the burden on our part to a certain extent we we report more quickly and we're required to to be more specific in what we look for and what's really important is and where it becomes difficult from an investigation standpoint is that child's or both children's privacy is of utmost importance so regardless of the nature of the relationship we have to be very careful that we don't out that relationship to family members or other members of the community regardless of the nature of the
042relationship that relationship is that students private business but we also need to make sure from a educational standpoint we're supporting the child and also from a legal standpoint we're following the law so there's a lot to that and that's something we talk a great deal about and we as you can imagine consult heavily with our lawyer um something we've also focused on uh extensively this year and that's partly because of its new the two components that have changed the regulations in fact that a positive finding becomes part of your record and the fact that we have to have a corrective action plan for child has three um positive findings in the course of their education career is we're really making an effort to report out to educate the community um back to school night uh
043every every teacher was asked to include a component to HIV in their presentation principles were asked if they're large group meetings to be specific about the changes and also in our Friday folders there there are links to The District page that includes information about HIV and that's not constantly but regularly being updated so the link stays the same it takes you to the same spot but that spot might have updated information so it's important for people to understand so okay I read it in September I understand it you know things could be added and they could change and obviously we'll do our best to report out on that and share that of really people need to go to the link and be aware of what's taking place and we've had I think Madison would agree
044we've had situations where parents have set things in course and then said off had I known I wouldn't have done that well there's not much we can do about that except our best effort to educate the community all right what questions do you guys have for us thank you questions from the board yeah I have a couple so um I know you mentioned that Columbia Middle School has the highest number of hrbs and I understand middle school but I noticed in particular 21 22 there seemed to be an exceeding amount what do you attribute that to seemed to be a really a large amount I'm getting us back there I mean and we were discussing this before we came here as well I was not surprised at an increase of numbers in this in this
045past school year especially because coming back from the pandemic there was a lot of um just social things that students had to get readjusted to there was a big adjustment period we noticed um so that coupled with um you know just the age of things and how things are different than they were in 18 or 19 before the pandemic I would really say that that was the biggest factor is that adjustment period and we also I can speak for the elementary schools we had students standing on exes with masks on six feet apart and you know moving robotically from one place to the next they got to move at all there was there were no pods within the classroom there was by law we could not do Cooperative learning it was you know children weren't
046interactive and you you're working on your game well every day all day socially and if all of fifth grade was half I called half day year for you when you got to sixth grade when we came back to normal you had missed out on a lot of opportunities to interact appropriately am I speaking loudly enough to interact appropriately with um with your peers and I think that that really contributed happily yeah I also I also think it's a testament to how comfortable our students feel reporting these things to their counselors and their teachers and knowing that we're going to follow through and do something about it and um my next question is now that you have more of a sort of flexibility in determining whether you feel something is HIV um are you finding that
047there are less cases because now you sort of have more uh so this was put into effect in 2020 so we've been already working with this preliminary determination for a while it's really reliant on our principles to make that determination but it really um I think it comes down to educating the community about what the difference is between HIV and just conflict um because the more that we receive ports of actual hibs the less that we have to make those preliminary determinations sure yeah thank you yeah I think at the beginning of the presentation Mr morso said that um if a child is identified as an aggressor um that it's going to stay on the permanent record so does that apply to all grade levels and is this the new state mandate that's forcing us
048yes so on August 29th uh New Jersey Department of Ed put out these implementation steps for the Amendments this year and one of those across the state is that uh these confirmed cases cases of HIV have to be put into the student's record uh so that is for K-12 so starting from kindergarten if there is an investigation and you confirm that that's an okay now we also spoke about so does this transfer from one District to another if it's on a permanent record I should what does the state law say yeah we have children who come to us with some kids have better records than others depending on where they're coming from and we can only get what we get and when we send things out we send we make a copy of child's fume
049folder and send the whole Cube so it doesn't tell you what we do but depending on where a child's coming from so the state law expects us to keep a permanent record starting from kindergarten and then transfer it if they move out of District or coming into the district now that follows I have a follow-up question on that and one of the slides you said that there was this dating and we we basically respect the Privacy so now my concern is these are all juveniles they're not even so what happens to the Privacy why are we keeping it as a permanent record starting at kindergarten like I think the question is there's two folks why are we separate from the dating if it's a part if you're found to be the perpetrator or the aggressor
050in a positive HIV it becomes part of your permanent record that and then the dating is slightly different in that we have we have to report more quickly we have to begin the investigation more quickly because it's this feeling of the state is that there's more at stake in in that negative interaction and we want to be able to provide support for that those children more quickly but also so for example if um if we if there's an HIV between two children uh in my building as soon as the investigation we've decided we're gonna have an investigation and the investigation starts I'm on the phone with all parties whether you're a witness a victim or the aggressor if it's seen as a as a part of a any kind of romantic relationship it's different because
051we need to make sure that we're not like I said outing a child unfairly based because of the relationship they're in for example they might be in a relationship that their parents don't know about so if you have a concern about this permanent record or the privacy of transferring from kindergarten we have to write to the Department of Ed or is is it State who do we write to the Department of Education because they're the ones mandating this um they're the ones mandating that we add something to the record to identify that there has been a confirmed case of HIV however they don't give guidelines on what that has to be so we've taken the approach where we want to protect students confidentiality we're not putting in specific information about the incident we're really just
052putting in that there was an incident and they were found as the offender so the state so the department of head has left it to the discretion of an individual School District yes on what goes on the permanent record and what gets sent out now my one last follow-up question is if we are keeping it in our district uh if it's an aggressor are we going to put it on their college record are we going to transfer it when they leave high school so the answer to that is no and this is because not every state has these uh laws and requirements anti-bullying laws so it wouldn't be fair for New Jersey students to be penalized for having something like this but we'll do it internally in in so it the district has I'll follow
053up with Dr Worley so basically the Department of Health Ed has left it to our discretion on what we put and what we transfer on permanent records and there's still conversations being had on the state level and on District levels too of you know needing more guidelines and what exactly this means for our students okay so before we implement this can we like hold off on this so that we can have like more of an exact session discussion and then so the state wants us to implement it starting August 29th yeah but the state doesn't mandate that we put this on the permanent record and then transfer it to other schools right that's our decision you said yeah what I said is that different districts have a lot a different varied the level of organization
054in the level of communication they provide us when a child moves in I can only tell you when a child moves out what I do and there's times when we have children move in and I'm looking at their record and I'm trying to provide a appropriate academic environment for them and I'm trying to figure out what they're saying and I'm trying to call their former counselor or someone I might know in their District just to accumulate the information okay what I will say is um I underst I think I understand what you're saying about the the permanent record College you know if a kid has three positive hivs before fifth grade it would be a part of their Hume forward but we would not voluntarily communicate with that with a college or an employee or
055military they would have to specifically ask us it's my understanding I'm not working at the high school that they don't ask because not every state has this program you know Mike concern is uh mainly we are documenting it on a permanent record starting from kindergarten and everybody makes mistakes like you know like we are not perfect like we're all mere mortals so why are we putting this on a permanent record and then letting the child like why is this going from kindergarten all the way to high school and we as a district are also like transferring it to out of District that's my concern but I'll definitely write that I hear you and that's the question for the state unfortunately you know in six months we could get different instructions from the state because something
056could happen and someone legally goes after the state because of the impact of that yeah these are all juveniles here like we're talking kindergarten kids here thank you okay any other questions from the board no thank you very much and just a reminder please speak very closely into the mic foreign yeah I thought they were going to come up good evening everyone um I'm Mary Beth kopas we're pleased to be here this evening to present our New Jersey student learning assessment data which our students took in Spring 2022 we received the results just this fall and are required to present them to our local board within 60 days I'm very here very pleased to be here alongside our my co-presenters Dr Greer and our 6-12 supervisors Lori Scott drew ziobro and James Finley thank you
057all for being here with us before we get to the results I think it's important for you to know is it not advancing there we go what'd you do yeah I know I did as well okay I'm sorry about that um before we get to the results I think it's important for you to know how we look at the data in all grades from grades if in all grades thank you in all grades from pre-k through 12 multiple data points are collected to determine student mastery and areas of growth information is gathered and plans are created and monitored via data teams and Touchstone meetings that happen throughout our schools throughout the year so some ways we look at the data we might identify a curricular Gap and in that case we have articulation meetings with
058supervisors principals Dr Greer myself to identify when where and how all of this will be addressed with our students the data may show that there's an instructional Gap we will utilize opportunities for small group instruction to reteach and provide additional opportunities for practice and in some cases the data May indicate a student need where we have to collaborate with teachers and instructional Specialists to remediate and assess progress so as you all may be aware already the New Jersey student learning assessment and jsla measures English language arts mathematics and science proficiency with skills for ELA and Mathematics it's based on a five point scale five level scale levels one two and three one is not meeting expectations two partially meeting expectations three approaching expectations levels four and five is what you'll see presented in our pieces
059tonight which is considered sometimes people use the term passing right level four is meeting expectations and level five is exceeding expectations I'm sure Mr Finley will share as well Science is based on a four level scale from the Department of Education level one minimal level two limited three proficient and level four Advanced for those of you that are following along at home this is posted on our website for our board members if you received this uh on Wednesday there were a couple tweaks that were in here due to a number that was caught but also some suppressed data you will see on these slides if there are fewer than 10 students we do not report out publicly because we're protecting student personal identifiable information so it will just say suppressed data in case you see
060that during the presentation this evening this is the first time that students have taken the njsla since the spring of 2019 it is required by the Department of Education and families have already received uh score reports isrs are called individual score reports that have been mailed home during the week of September 19th more information can be found on the website for individual questions as well the link is on our presentation we're also part um reporting on participation levels now I know some of you are looking at some of this saying how can we have over a hundred percent participation right 100.6 participation what happens is October 15th of each year there is a snapshot that is taken of all of the students in the district it happens in every District in New Jersey that is
061then reported for the number of students and that that is used in multiple ways however we have students who move into our district after that October 15th snapshot and so what you can see here are the numbers that are there and our participation rates are are very good you can see in the 97 98 100.6 So This Is the participation level pieces that you see the first content area we're going to share is our English language language arts or Ela and that's where students are assessed on reading and writing skills the bar graphs show Ela data on the top which is our Berkeley Heights data going across the top compared to the state which is the bottom row and the bar graphs going across the bottom as Dr Greer had said you can see the
062color coding the red are our not meeting standards students who are not meeting dark orange is our partially meeting students that's where students have fairly large gaps there's the dark yellow that's called approaching that's where students have met most of the standards but aren't quite meeting yet and then our light green and our dark green are both are solidly meeting and exceeding grade level expectations so on this next slide we took our two green bars and combine them so where you're you're seeing the first columns where it says bhps total percentage for meeting and exceeding standards in grades three four five and six and then the same thing that column on the right hand side for grades seven eight nine and then we average all our grades three through nine the really good news is
063that we're solidly above State averages as you can see our our averages compared to the state and also you can see that green indicates that we are meeting or exceeding State targets for the years 2019-20 remember that was the last time we took njsla and then again 21 and 22. so not only are we achieving at levels that are high above the state averages but we're also high above the state targets those are the the numbers that the state tells us that we have to be meeting at a certain period of time and we're achieving above those Target numbers um before we get there Lori did you want to jump in hi if can you hear me yep I never thought I'd have to pull it up a little that's it um if you look
064at the results there um I was pleasantly surprised with the Middle School results considering all the remote learning we had and the crazy scheduling I was quite relieved to see our middle school scores um of course I am a bit concerned with ninth grade that's a cohort that we've been following for some time and offering significant remediation and a lot of opportunities for them and what we're doing in particular with that group which are now our sophomores is kind of a Back to Basics approach with that group I have met with the actually there's two English teachers who have those sections right now and told them look we've got to break it down go back to some mini lessons really focus on breaking up writing and also on the reading side doing a lot with
065zinc learning Labs which has these reading Sprints that will actually adjust themselves to student abilities and we're going to try to Target what what many of those students need in an effort to pull up those numbers for the next testing I'd like to reiterate as well this is one measure right one measure of the pieces that we look at for all of our students and so when you start to see we use this as one piece of the whole picture for each of our students what we'll you'll see in the next few slides is broken down by some subgroups right some subpopulation so here is by race we can see each of the pieces our Asian students are passing it 87 percent black 59 percent uh Hispanic 62 percent multiple 78 and white 64 and
066so we will dig into these numbers continue to dig in with our sub populations looking at the larger picture of how our students are doing and where we can help support we also report uh by gender so our female students are passing this is English language arts uh 74 and males 65 and I know that we have been engaging in these conversations as well about gender in particular what this looks like in our classrooms what it means for our instruction finally by program and so the pieces that are on here F slash R lunch means free and reduced lunch is 41 Section 504 is 63 percent our English Learners at 58 special education at 25 and our general education at 77 percent on this slide you can see our math data again on these bar
067graphs the top row is our Berkeley Heights scores and the bottom row are the state scores so again you're comparing the top to the bottom for each grade level and then we did the same thing to break it down as you can see our third graders knocked it out of the park um they again that 85 percent is both our meeting and exceeding expectations far above the state averages but we did quite well in the Elementary grades 85 70 and 70 and then Drew if you want to talk about middle school and high school so a couple pieces I want to talk about here thank you so a couple pieces I want to talk about here in addition to the data that you're seeing here we dive in pretty detailed into some of the score
068reports that we get from the state and we have data meetings with our teachers and go through some item analysis uh on the mathematics side when we do some of that we saw that our students showed strength and interpreting expressions and also in relating the domain of a function to its graph and quantitative relationships it describes we did notice that statistics and probability was an area of concern and that's one piece that we'll be focusing on we also could take a look at some of the differences in the questions and see that some of our students need to build perseverance and writing and reasoning with mathematics uh we also noticed that during remote and hybrid instruction some of the remediation that we tried to provide was much more challenging and wasn't as effective as we
069wished it could have been uh social distancing limited group work and it limited the use of physical models which really helped to build those concepts for students one thing to note on the slide and I'll go to the next one in a second Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 are related by the course after pretty much eighth grade we go by course not the grade level that the student is in it's important to understand a little bit about the populations of our students taking algebra one so all of our eighth grade students take Algebra 1 or higher some students though take a second year of Algebra 1 at GL and we'll test a second time 78 of our ninth grade students took the geometry test or higher in grade nine algebra 1 is focused on
070topics and skills on Algebra 1 based on the data from NJ SLA Link at benchmarks and other data sources what does that mean we've go back in and so that group of students that's taking algebra one in ninth grade that's getting that second year we really go in and focus and Target those pieces that we can use from the last year's njsla as well as those linked benchmarks and other data points thank you Mr Gilbert so again same thing where we're breaking down by a subgroup for race you can see here our Asian uh population 86 percent and again this is at that passing that levels four and five uh our black students 27 uh Hispanic 56 multiple 75 and white 60 percent uh followed by gender we can see here our female students uh
071at the 61 level and male 67 percent again please note this is all grades right so all of the tested grades uh and then finally where you can see the pieces here by program free and reduced lunch 25 section 504 56 ell 76 special education 24 and general education 71 percent as well Mr Finley good evening everyone thank you for having me so uh similar to other subject areas these charts illustrate our performance in science against the state science is assessed across disciplines three times in fifth eighth and 11th grade the disciplines are physics chemistry biology and Earth and space science as well as the science and engineering practices a summation chart is also included for the district and the state on the far side um and as Dr Greer had mentioned each of the
072categories in dark green you have advanced proficient light green or lime you have proficient yellow is your near proficient and then your red is your below prevention proficiency so this is now the second time that this assessment has been administered the first occurring in 2019 and it really represents a significant departure from the NJ NJ ASK and the engine the biology competency test assessments which were which were uh paper test prior to this looking at our results we see that our Trends mirror those of the state similar to the state our lowest score is at the middle school which seems to be a more challenging assessment for students and when interpreting these results it's also important to remember that students have had limited access as Mr gioborough spoke about to inquiry-based and experiential science learning
073for two years which is really the the Crux of The Next Gen Science standards um a fine-grain analysis so they'll break it down by uh science and engineering practice as well as the the content areas so A fine grain analysis shows that the investigative skills are our lowest area across all all grade levels which really tracks considering the limited access to inquiry uh learning during covid thus our primary goal is to get students back to doing science and focusing on inquiry and phenomena based instruction these are our subgroups broken down by race here we have gender we are pleased to see that the results were relatively distributed between both male and female um it seems to it seems that our programs are supporting supporting all and uh here is our special educa our uh our
074uh program um special education continues to be an area of focus for us but we have shown significant growth from the 2018-19 school year when we had 77 77 percentage that were in the not proficient category so we are moving the bars and I'll turn it over to Dr Greer once more you see on this slide here are the results for Access for L's access for L's uh is an assessment for our English language Learners so in addition to njsla this is how our students are doing who are identified as English Learners you can see the skills that are identified oral language listening and speaking literacy reading and writing and comprehension reading and listening um so years in District right the anticipation is that the longer that students are in our district receiving an education
075with us with our English language learner teachers they continue to grow in their proficiency as as they're here so for students that have been in the district zero to two years uh there's 21 students the percent of students with a score below 4.5 is 52 percent and a percent of students above at or above 4.5 is 48 uh the score the assessment is scored out of 6.0 this is only one piece that we look at for when we are making decisions to exit a student from the ell program um when students arrive they are given an assessment called the Wida screener that identifies them for the program and when they exit this is one piece and then we take into account multiple criteria so we gather information from the classroom teachers from the ell teacher
076we uh hear how they've been doing across the board and then we follow those students for two years um for F1 and F2 is the technical term former uh English Learners just to see how they are doing so we're not just exiting our students and saying you know best of luck to you we are really working with them as they continue to grow so it is not only their academic language but their basic interpersonal skills that they're growing with as well many of our students who are in the lowest uh levels grade levels K one and two exit our program fairly quickly because the way that language acquisition works right when you think of little children learning languages uh happens much faster at the K1 and 2 level when we have students who move in
077at the high school levels a little bit more difficult takes a little bit more time because they don't have the language proficiency they have the content and their language or languages but they need more time to build language Proficiency in English so that's a little bit about our access for l scores at this point I want to turn it over to principal uh Nixon here to share a little bit this was shared at our last board meeting but it is really a point of Pride and when you look at these numbers and as we start to look as they're released throughout the state the district is doing well in many areas there is always work to be done and that's the work that we continue to do to look at but there are some real
078big points of Pride for us to really take and look at considering that our students were taking this assessment after a pandemic looking at all of these pieces and so Mr Nixon would like to share a little bit as well about our GL HS high school student achievement thank you Dr Greer uh so yeah despite some misconceptions of declining student performance uh what we see here is not only our students achieving but they're actually excelling at Governor Livingston high school um and that is a great Testament to the hard work of not only our students but also our staff and the support that we've received from the community through three of the most challenging years that we could possibly have faced in education so if we if we take a look at something some of
079the really great items to highlight is that our students scored an all-time high of 26.8 on average the class of 22 um on the ACT we can see that for the third time in the records that we have that our average SAT score was over 1200 with math being at a average score of 604 language arts being at an average score of 601. we're happy to report as Dr barley mentioned earlier that we enjoyed breakfast yesterday with 16 students that were recognized by the National Merit Scholarship program for their achievement as part of the assessment they took their junior year the PSAT and msqt um that number of 16 is our highest total since 2016. um and resent and resent and represents uh almost the combined total of the previous two years put together and
080finally our our AP program remains strong and remains a source of Pride uh 245 students took a total of 715 exams uh with 88.57 percent of all test takers scoring at least one three on an assessment we're also happy to say when taking a look at the overall courses as we've worked really hard to try and recover over the past couple years 20 out of our 25 courses showed an increase in overall passing rate and all great job done by our students amazing job done by our staff great job done by our supervisors supporting our teachers as we've worked to try and overcome a lot of challenges and this is some this is some information that we are really really proud of at GL thank you foreign so if I can Circle back I started
081the presentation talking about how we look at data and in addition to celebrating some amazing achievements that have happened again to Mr Nixon's point in the most trying times probably in education I I really have to take a moment to thank everybody who's allowed us to support children over the last three years Dr Varley and helping to keep our schools open board members community members our incredible staff who work tirelessly through the last three years our whole admin admin team principles supervisors um really it was it was an incredible feat what we were able to do over the last three years and I think the evidence is in the data if you compare our evidence not only to the state but when we start looking and we we have some preliminary data not a lot
082but when we start looking at even like districts we can be very very proud of where we are so where do we go from here not only do we want to celebrate our great achievements that have happened but we know we still have work to do so we'll talk a little bit about what that work looks like through our data team meetings our grade level meetings our department meetings Touchstone meetings we talk about all children and through those discussions we make plans for each and every child how do we address it we address it through tiered system of supports we have three tiers not only the core but then we also have interventions that take place to support them whether it's on a strategic level or an intensive level do they need to do students
083need support for a few days a week or do they need support every day there we have the beyond the school day program we've been very proud to use our Esther funds to be able to provide the beyond the school day program for our students in all schools again I talked about the department and team meetings where we identify standards and skills that might need emphasis or reteaching a small group instruction or even one-on-one instruction that happens in some cases targeted remediation and enrichment programs that are happening across all schools we create individualized differentiated lessons and student plans in the Elementary grades we have the win period That's the what I need additional instructional period we have additional support provided by our Specialists and our interventionists we use specific targeted intervention materials depending on student
084needs and we continue to train our staff in the teaching of specific content areas to include Reading Writing and Mathematics instructions so again I just wanted to thank everyone for being here congratulate everyone for the really great work that's been done and most importantly congratulate our students for really achieving quite well under extraordinary circumstances so thank you everybody questions any questions from the board Angela so um you talked about I noticed with ninth grade I noticed with the ELA there is a concern there and I know Mr Scott touched on it do we know why we feel that ninth grade is struggling is there a is there a reason why you feel can you speak into Mike sorry it's for the people at home oh sorry about that um okay so that cohort I've been
085following them for quite some time pre-pandemic for whatever reason they've been a group that's been scoring below what's our norms and in the pandemic that doesn't help through their middle school years we didn't have time to do the level of remediation we would normally do especially during the remote stuff that was not optimal for remediation by any means we did remediate but again not as good as we'd like then add in the change in that population once they become ninth graders we lose a lot of our kids to both private and magnet and then we re-average when we bring in the Deerfield students as well so we're talking about a group of ninth graders that are not the same cohort as they were before in addition to the fact that they were struggling one of
086the big things our teachers noticed as ninth graders they were not high school ready and a lot of that comes out of the pandemic they had missed a lot of what they would have gotten in the middle school years what I'm doing in language arts is simply taking that entire group obviously not the honors classes the regular sections of English too and we're going back to the basics with them I've said break down your writing into many lessons start to really go and do things you would normally do at the middle school level and go from there and reading we're lucky to have the zinc program which will individualize it based on where the students are but in terms of that specific group they've been someone we've been a group we've been following for quite
087some time okay thank you sure Mrs Kopec you also mentioned talking about I know our schools we've seen our scores against the state but you touched on very briefly on scores against peers is that something that data that we will be able to get as a district because I'd be very interested to see how we're doing among our peers we will get it as soon as the state releases that information um then we can start digging in do you want to jump in jump in sorry uh what happens with the assessments they're taken in September when the scores are released to districts once we receive those we have 30 days to share them with families and then 60 days to report so districts across the state are within the 60-day time frame at this point
088by Administrative Code reporting out and so as we watch other things right it's not fully public yet but we watch you know public meetings to see what's happening that's where we're starting to gather some of the information it will be fully released in the future right once we're able to see the school performance reports from that October 15th snapshot to be able to do a real full comparison of other districts as well so right now it's just starting to hear and listen to other districts and from the ones that I've been watching and listening to as well um that I won't name uh at this time but we're our scores are really well we are doing well as a district as well great thank you can you just go back to the math comparison mathematics
089bhps 2022 compared to state okay I I don't understand what you're telling me here matter exceeded State targets for 1920 and 2122 okay so when we see Algebra 1 49 percent you're saying 49 of the students matter exceeded it for both years what percent exceeded it just for 21.22 because I was looking for I'm basically looking for results from the most recent test so one of the pieces that you see for 2019 targets and 2021 targets I know there's been a lot of discussion about what these targets mean these come from our Essa plan our state plan right and what happens is was by 2030 the state said these are goals that we have that we're trying to meet the Department of Education has put out a broadcast pushing it out two years so right
090now we are technically able to compare ourselves to the 2019-2020 data but also looking at it when we look at the 2122 targets we're also exceeding but right now when you look at what's on here is only the data from this past spring and the targets or what's on here so the state percentages and our district percentages okay so let's just take geometry you're saying 45 or proficient or Advanced proficient on the most recent test that is correct yes that's level four level five that is correct sir and 49 were proficient or Advanced proficient on algebra one that is correct okay and uh now also on the Cusack uh one of the uh indicators is we're supposed to receive Trend and comparative analyzes and appropriate intervention strategies at this report okay I didn't see any
091Trend data all you're giving me is one year's worth of data namely the most recent test where's the trend data so we would have to go back to the 2019 when it was given at that last time and we were at a Cusack meeting yesterday as well looking at what they're going to look at for this year it's going to be a comparison of just that 2018-2019 data so we're unable to look at the trends because the test hasn't been again hasn't been given in three years the njsla okay so so it's difficult I'm sorry you're saying you're not going to give us Trend data then for this report what we're reporting out here are just at this assessment from the spring 2022 it's tough to make a comparison over the years before when the
092assessment wasn't given so that's why we look back at the 2019. how many years do you have of this kind of data you say you have 1920 do you have anything before that we have 18 19 we have is it 19. you have what do you have before that yeah every year this report is given every year okay so you could have you could show us as Trend data you could show us like five years worth of data right right the the you start to go back that far that the test is not the same test we went from three units down to two units in mathematics and language arts so you do have to be careful when you start going back further you're also going to go back to park versus njsls scores okay
093when does it when did when does NJ SLA start we have one year right we had one year I think it was a 2018-19 so basically if we want comparable data we got two data points right that is correct and next year we'll have three yes yes there's one other thing to be really careful of they've changed the rules and how we're administering the tests so when you go back that far at the high school level we would have given the test to ninth graders 10th graders 11th graders and 12th graders depending on the program they're in now we only give it to ninth graders okay 45 that means more than half our kids are not proficient or Advanced proficient and geometry what explains that more than half not proficient what's going on it's just
094general trends when you look and you compare it to the state as well right so we'll continue to look at what's happening why it is looking at from the spring of 2022 45 still above the state right so our colleagues throughout the district throughout the state are doing the same but would we like to see these get better absolutely what are some things that we can do to help support our students this is the type of work that we're doing it was mentioned here as well beyond the school day so we encourage All Families to take advantage of the extra Federal funding that we have to learn more have a little bit more direct instruction so there are pieces that we are doing as a team to move it forward but yes you are correct
095if we look specifically at the number it's 45 compared to the state of 44 what you're saying is that freshman cohort as well what I'm hearing is the stop the curriculum it's something about the teaching there's also a piece uh we have to be a little bit careful with with the test once you go up in mathematics if you look at all of the tests and you look at all of the scores the way that the tests are structured you can't compare year over year with the results so for example geometry when the state used that for graduation passing requirements which I know we're not talking about that tonight they considered a three four and a five passing because the scores were so low on that geometry test for uh overall so the test itself
096has some issues with it I will say we have to be careful too when we start to look at our scores and that's why I gave you the slide with the populations on it we have a large number of our students taking geometry in the freshman year most schools that were being compared to when you start to look at the state level they're going to only be taking algebra one so because of the fact that they're a year Advanced you're going to be comparing our geometry students that are are at large population to schools where only maybe one cohort of students of about 10 or 15 students their top students are taking geometry in the freshman year I I thought this was uh District scores here this 40 45 percent correct this is not just
097the high school isn't correct but we only have 20 students or so at the middle school that would be in that number and it's only half of our students we don't include Mountainside numbers in there so this doesn't include Mountainside numbers I'm I'm not following this 45 of the student this is all students who are taking geometry or tested right correct and 45 were proficient or Advanced proficient correct and you're saying that's something to do with the size but it's probably over 200 students isn't it uh I don't remember the exact number but it's probably in the 150 to 160 range I'd have to look that one up do we still teach proof yes how much um that's more of a curriculum issue if you'd like to go into those particular pieces I I'd be
098more than happy to chat about it but there is a large component of proofs in there um the way that we teach proofs though is not pure euclidean geometry because that is not what the state standards are and that's not what we're being tested on yeah okay I'd like to talk to you about that sometime okay thank you Tom Jordan just too quick I think general questions um I think I've heard correctly the state standards are basically on on a scale up to 2030 or on it on a goal schedule up to 20 30. so let me just not the state standard so the ELA and math standards are currently under review and revision by the New Jersey Department of Education so they will be releasing those standards with a rollout date but that 2030
099are the targets for the assessments through 2032 now okay sorry I just heard standards and said oh yeah I was I guess I'm curious is is the I mean some of the the numbers the State numbers um you know if you look at them first Glimpse it they look low are those numbers have they any pattern changes from say 2019 what those numbers look like I guess is what I'm really asking is that they flatten them out you know with with expectations posts there's the same type of dip that we're seeing that districts have that they're reporting at right and so the few that I've been able to see once we're able to get our hands on that data I'm sure we will see similar types of dips that have happened because of the the
100pandemic and all of the issues that were there um so we'll be able to dig a little bit more into that once we get the other data as well but you can see the State numbers like we are well above the State numbers but we'll need to look at what our other districts are doing to be able to see how that dip is going the two years this um the other it's not that they change them because of covid it's that they push them out so what would have been a target for this year is now a target for two years down the road because they're understanding got it so or these targets are technically targets from what would have been a year or two ago essentially well yeah got it got it got it
101yeah okay what's confusing yeah no it is but it also makes sense I mean you you I assume to see some of the that numbers those numbers shift over time uh the other question I have I know it's not Apples to Apples but start strong which I know we just took when do we expect to get results uh and again I know it's not 100 applicable to what we're seeing here but in the in the realm of data thank you for the questions tomorrow the window closes right at the end of August the New Jersey Department of Education uh released a broadcast saying that they were extending the deadline start strong was supposed to be completed by September 30th but they pushed it out until tomorrow uh October 21st so by the time that the
102reports get back to the Department of Education they will slice and dice the data they will send the reports to us and we will give a report on that in the future and those individual score reports will also be going out in addition they have just released the New Jersey uh graduation proficiency assessment the NJ GPA that Juniors took last year uh so for current seniors any um students that took that those reports will be going home and we will give that presentation as well again with all of the assessments it's 30 days from when we receive them to get to the families those individual scores and then 60 days to report we are just as anxious to see that data as well thanks I think Pam yeah I just had a few questions so
103I know right when we look at the data our free and reduced lunch right we see an increase in need along with our Black and Hispanic students so is this based on percentage of students that we see such a big increase in need and if there really is a big need what are we doing to make sure that these students are going to utilize our beyond the school right beyond the school day we can tap shoulders of students to be able to say here are some things that you're able to do to be able to support working with teachers as well outside of the school day for assistance there were some numbers in there as well that sort of were eye-opening for us and as we continue to look as a team again one piece
104we'll want to compare with the other data sets that we have as well to see if it's sort of playing out in the same type of way and then figure out the targeted supports that we can provide for those students yeah because you just right like I think especially with the free and reduced lunch right those are the students who maybe are not getting the tutors at home and they're not getting those extra supports so we want to make sure we do provide them with as much as possible absolutely right each of those subgroups as well and I keep akina as a former teacher of English Learners I keep an eye on that number um each of these pieces to ensure that all of our students in these subgroups are receiving what they need to
105be able to help grow as well I appreciate that question any other questions from the board I do have one question um Miss copaz in the uh Where Do We Go From Here slide one thing my question is the new programs that we got and I'm sure I'm going to get the program wrong the link it and all that how is this data incorporated into that data to help with the programming of the students yeah remember these stuff yeah I talked about looking at data you through several lenses and we use multiple measures and it's really important for us to look at children um through a variety of lenses because a child can have a bad day on any given day which is why it's very important to use several data points so some of
106the data points we use and I'll just give you an example in the K5 world we use Link it which is actually very predictive of how students will do on njsla and what's really nice about linkit is students take a fall Benchmark or that's a baseline assessment it assesses end of grade level standards so what it allows teachers to do is then really start targeting instruction and saying I see where a student is falling down and I can support the student in the areas X Y and Z then we remediate throughout the year we teach throughout the year and then there's a mid-year Benchmark again still giving time to remediate but we want to see students moving so that the trajectory is that they will eventually be able to pass njsla so that's the beauty
107of link it because it is addressing grade level end of grade level standards i-Ready is another assessment tool that we use that's an Adaptive assessment tool it's predictive of how students will do um at the time it's it's a real-time data so with iready there is an Adaptive program that goes along with it so they take a a prescriptive assessment that assessment then places them on an individualized learning platform and program in both Ela and Mathematics and they have individualized learning so as students are acquiring the skills then they get harder and harder lessons or if they need if they're struggling in a certain skill then the lessons are tailored to the student and it's retaught it's adaptive technology and it's a really amazing program not only do we have technology-based programs that we look
108at but there's also teacher directed Pro assessments that we use both formative and summative assessments so some examples might be foundus and Pinel reading assessment where a student sits side by side with a teacher and a teacher can see exactly how a student is learning how to read or our dyslexia screening tool is called Dibbles we give the Dibbles assessment in grades K through three to determine if students have any signs of a dyslexic tendency and again how we could support them through a multi-sensory approach so these are just some examples of all the assessment tools that we use to get a full picture of a student not just a snapshot on one day or a few days but a full picture of a student and how we can not only enrich if a student
109is achieving at a high level but also remediate if a student needs to support in any kind of way I hope that answers your answers your question thank you it does thank you all right thank you very much for your presentation and information thank you everybody thank you before we move on to committee and liaison reports to our student representative you're free to go unless you want to stay more than happy to yeah all righty moving on to where are we uh committing a liaison reports do we have any members of the board that want to provide a report I can give you Athletics if you want absolutely I know Jake gave a great great report though I I will not top that and I have no students of the month but uh yeah that's
110awesome uh so uh yeah the the Athletics committee met on um October 11th uh just a couple of items that we covered um uh and updated us uh we talked about a uh a co-op possibility for field hockey in the future with New Providence um the there's there's no action on it just we've discussed it uh The Next Step would be just a survey to the parents that Anne was going to send out just to get feedback on that possibility talked about pool usage um uh and whether to stay at tow cash or eventually Berkeley Aquatics for now we're staying at tow cash in Warren uh which includes some better swim times for the teams um and updated us on the Red Gym Blue gyms sanding and painting which will happen in the summer which
111is exciting we touched on uh kicked around some ideas for future alumni nights uh sporting event alumni nights and the possibility of a homecoming idea we talked about which I may come back to foreshadowing a new business um we we and updated us just on the ongoing challenges with buses and officials um she's done a great job I think in managing some of that it's not a it's not a district issue it's a probably a national issue but um I think we've managed despite some of the creative ways to get uh teams to their to their games um updates which I won't cover on on where Sports were in terms of County tournaments and such we got a great update tonight we got an update on on the football program and some of the great
112momentum there which was encouraging me here inclusive of the move of the former Thanksgiving Day game to uh the the season opener with the Providence and then we also just talked about uh the possibility down the road uh of a Press Box replacement and what that would entail again no action just figuring out what that would take and next steps on sort of figuring out a price for that and then December one will be uh fall Sports Awards and that's it thank you John anybody else with liaison report Pam so luckily Town Council has been short and sweet so mostly it's just events coming up they're having environmental Day November 6th the Trunk or Treat is this weekend on Saturday October 22nd at Canal parking lot from 11 to 1 you need to participate in
113order to participate um you have to have a trunk yes in order to be able to get candy from other people um you need to set up around 10 a.m um the family Fall Festival at the latel Lord Farmstead is from 12 to 4 our GL students are Woodworking and art class students will be there that's again Saturday October 22nd the Berkeley Heights Ed Foundation has their zombie Color Run on Sunday October 23rd from three to five at Lower Columbia there's a Diwali celebration coming up on November 5th from four to six Winter Walk on December 3rd the PTO admin meeting um they had their um they multiply multiple times a year they have an all admin meeting this is for all principals uh we're there there was not that many questions but Mr kabliska
114did speak about renewing their procedures to help students remember what to do when there's an issue outside at um when students are being dismissed so they're going over that um de and I will become more uniform now that it is on our strategic plan and District plans that both the principal and superintendent will get evaluated on um our head committee met you pretty much heard all the stuff there but Francis really did do a great job at going over the really detailed um way of looking at the preliminary reports and trying to decide what would be ahib and now after the third finding we will have a student intervention plan and that will give us a chance to really sit down with that student and make sure that they understand uh what's going on so
115yeah that's it all right thank you any other reports okay um Julie business report please so was it I'm sorry that's loud budget season kicked off on October 3. uh with an initial discussion about the process and expectations at our administrative council meeting by October 5th all of the department heads and budget managers had received their new budget workbooks on October 6th the budget development calendar was shared with all budget managers as well as board members the budget development calendar sets forth important deadlines for the budget and those deadlines occur between October of 2022 through May or June of 2023 so because of that the process takes obviously seven to eight months and um there are numerous stakeholders involved as well as Reliance upon certain State uh deadlines being met so all those those deadlines
116are subject to change if they do change I will send out a revised calendar uh on not so great news the bid opening for Mountain Park drainage uh Capital project occurred on October 12th and once again we received no bids on a more positive note on tonight's agenda is a resolution to hire a full-time bus driver which we badly needed so now um our transportation supervisor can go back to uh doing her job and not driving buses additionally I just wanted to point out we're receiving two very generous donations tonight for Friday and Saturday Night Light events one is from the Highlander booster club and the other is from the Berkeley Heights pal so thank you very much for that thank you all right thank you Julie any questions for the administrator you know does
117anybody actually get one of these bid packages and they're just not returning it or what yes um six people picked up the vidpack three indicated to the architect that they were interested and we're going to submit bids and then they did not so right now it seems as though obviously labor shortages it is a relatively small project so people either do not have um the staff to fill the project or they'd rather take a larger project that is going to earn them more money so we're uh it's a it's a bit of a pickle right now but we're gonna keep trying and we're gonna see if there's some other opportunities now that we have bid multiple times without a successful bid if we can start to negotiate uh with uh vendors uh instead of going
118through the formal bid process so but I need to to vet that with the attorney yes I just wanted I wanted to have the statutes and look that over and work with you on that after two after two unsuccessful vids you have the right to go out and um solicit quotes um and basically take it into your own hands so you can contact other uh contractors who are capable of doing this work and then go through that process so you can do that so that is the next step with the Architects but I mean what you said is absolutely true that's happening all over the state not just with buses or bus drivers just with contractors I mean there's just not enough employees that are doing these these jobs so um they're really allocating their
119Workforce to you know key projects to the Daily timelines and they don't want to take our next work because they can't get enough uh workers to fill these spots right now okay thank you all right comments from the public on agenda items only during this portion of the meeting District residents and staff are invited to dress the board of education on agenda items only the board requests that individual State their name and town of residence or School of attendance for the record the specific action item or items they are commenting on and ask that all remarks redirected to the board president or designee not to individual members or staff the board asks that members of the public be courteous and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding Personnel matter are
120discouraged and cannot be responded by this board students and employees have specific legal rights afforded by the laws of New Jersey the board Bears no responsibility nor will it be liable for any comments made by public by members of the public a matter concerning a District staff member is of Interest or concern to a resident the matter should be referred to the responsible building principal superintendent of schools or the Board of Education either by telephone letter or email although the board may not respond to items raised or in the public forum all public comments will be considered please note that if any member of the public becomes disruptive during the meeting the board president May terminate the participant statement continue disruption may result in removal from the meaning or adjoint of the meeting each speaker
121statement will be limited to three minutes in duration does anyone wish to provide a comment on agenda items only okay Marlins and caglia 22 Robbins Avenue Berkeley Heights uh program chair for the League of Women Voters Berkeley Heights New Providence and Summit when I received the email from the business administrator saying that the superintendent of schools upon advice of the board attorney was denying the leave Women Voters the opportunity to host the candidates Forum in school facilities because we were sponsoring a so-called partisan political activity I was stunned for over 100 years the league has been the premier non-partisan civil Civic organization sponsoring non-partisan forums and programs to educate the public on candidates running for office or for Public Policy issues the League of Women Voters could not and would not let history be Rewritten
122although I firmly believe that there was no reason to change policy 7510 as an educator I know that one learns by repetition and you don't repeat things in the same way you use different modalities so after more people hours and probably attorney fees to get the correct wordage adding the sentence to the policy that permits candidates forms and codifying the League of Women Voters as an organization that is entitled to use school facilities spells this out and all I can say mission accomplished thank you foreign [Music] I have a question on the proficiency data that we just looked at um so essentially if I remember right the Algebra 1 and geometry showed that 51 and 55 percent students were not meeting the expected proficiency level is that right if I remember right the geometry number
123was 55 percent the algebra one was 51 is that right okay um given that that data was not at the grade level do we have a breakup of what that means between for geometry specifically what that means between Grade 8 and grade 9. do we have the breakup okay and then you know that's one question the other one is now that we've seen the data I'm assuming there's some root cause analysis that was done to figure out why it is so high why we are more than you know 50 percent what sort of intervention programs are we thinking about at the middle school level at the high school level to help build the proficiency to help our students build the proficiency have we figured out specific either curriculum or instruction changes that will help our
124students do better is that all your comments yeah okay thank you foreign so as far as the breakdown we do have the breakdown by uh grade level and we do look at that data as far as that cohort that ninth grade cohort that was kind of spoken about earlier that is similar results in mathematics when we go back and we look at that cohort back in sixth grade so it is a cohort that we've been following um because of some of the stuff that happened with the pandemic we had a little less data or a little less accurate data during those times to make some of those decisions when they moved up to ninth grade um so what we're doing now is we're taking a look at that data right and we will be making
125uh recommendations for students with math strategies courses we have math strategies courses up at the high school where we'll go back and fill those gaps in so that the students can still progress through the progression of courses but we're going to be looking to make sure that we support those students so that they can achieve success especially when they get to the NJ GPA test in their junior year so was this grid also the one where they did not have as many students in the accelerated courses like the accelerated map course that you have in Middle School uh we it's typically been around one cohort for a couple of years um I'd have to go back and look to see when it was where we had close to two classes most of the time it's
126somewhere around uh 20 students to 27 students in that cohort I don't remember the exact number for that class though I think it was lower but I don't have that number right here in my hand and then are you are you doing anything to sort of evangelize these accelerated courses better in the Middle School like having a wider path for more students to you know get access to these courses so that kind of goes again against what you were just saying there you know right so I I realized that ninth grade is a problem I get that but my question is for the other grades are you doing anything to kind of make a wider path for more students to get into these accelerated courses so we we make kind of an identification in the
127fifth to sixth grade assessment we put out a letter which I know we have a letter just about to go out again to parents to kind of let them know about that process that starts in grade five those students there's various tools that they can use they have I ready available to them uh in fifth grade and they can actually work ahead of uh where they're at in their fifth grade pieces that's one of those data points that we talk about in that letter that I do take a look at I do my best to make sure that we're putting students that can achieve success in this program realize that when a student is taking geometry in grade eight that's a I'll call it a twice accelerated program because those students are going to be
128taking AP Calculus BC which is the equivalent of calc 1 and 2 in their junior year of high school right so you know with with the data that's coming out there we're trying to keep our students competitive but the the pushback is actually coming back now from the universities Harvard actually put out a position statement the other day saying that you know you don't need calculus for admission into Harvard and they would rather see you achieve higher on the test results there so we're trying to balance advancement with also Student Success all right thank you thank you any other questions on agenda items hi Ramya kastori86 Cromwell Court I just wanted to thank all of our administrators for your thoughtful and comprehensive um presentation it was it was great and I know a lot of
129hard work went into it so just I wanted to thank everyone and I also wanted to thank Mr Nixon for listing all of the great achievements at the high school it was very pleasant to see and I'm sure lots of parents are feeling the same way so thank you to all hey I'm sorry Steve gregowski Berkeley Heights two two items uh first one kind of a hypothetical about HIV if Sally doesn't want to use Timothy as personal pronouns of she he or she her is she guilty of HIV can you oh please save your questions sorry all your questions well the second one is more of a comment second one is really a comment um that's the question uh the comment that I have is with regard to the presentation of all the numbers for
130me it's more informative if rather than showing a comparison to the state versus US it doesn't take into account the mix of race within our town versus the state I think a better comparison for me is to compare what the state average is for a particular race and what it was for us within our town so we can get a better idea of how we're doing for that particular group or maybe a different way might be to look at cognitive ability ranges and see how we're doing versus the state I have a feeling we're always going to be better than the state just because of the mix of people who are here in our town thank you with regard to the question of the HIV I don't know if we have anyone that can answer
131it I can answer it make sure my microphone's on um so under hi beaches just to try to simplify it um as adults we all know that in the workplace we have you know harassment training that we go through and that emanates from the New Jersey law against discrimination HIV is very similar so if you are making decisions or statements that are pejorative or inappropriate based on somebody's gender sexual orientation sexual identity it could ultimately be HIV it depends on the context and that's why the the Specialists The Bullying specialists in all of the schools are trained and they investigate to see uh it was that if if a child is saying I'm not going to use your pronouns because I don't believe that um you know I don't believe in transgender that clearly could
132be HIV so you have to look at the specific facts but it can be and the law of New Jersey the New Jersey law against discrimination Nation all this emanates from that law and what happened was there's a case in Toms River a number of years ago tells your schools where the court utilized the New Jersey law against discrimination and the state said wait a second after the tragedy at Rutgers we're going to have HIV harassment intimidation and bullying much of it is is modeled after the New Jersey law against discrimination it's very very Broad in terms of the if how you define somebody who fits into a classification that could be subject to harassment intimidation and bullying and that can I mean if you if you read the court cases you'd be amazed on
133how many uh subcategories there are but clearly if it deals with somebody's sexual orientation or their gender identity that you clearly could be a basis for an HIV determination the NJ lad really was developed originally for non-discrimination when it came to housing jobs things of that nature so has the legislature actually made that apply to children the New Jersey law against discrimination as I said was utilized in a court decision dealing with the Toms River Board of Education before HIV was codified once the HIV law was codified and the regulations that they've talked about tonight have changed and evolved HIV is what applies to school children but it's very very similar the Court decisions the analysis that goes into it in terms of identifying perceived or actual characteristics that define somebody from being different it
134could be your weight your height all kinds of things sickle cell anemia you name it it can be covered so basically the purpose of HIV is to teach children that you have to be kind to one another you can't make decisions and cruel decisions to one another because ultimately these kids they're going to be going to the workplace and I think the goal here is that when they go to college and also in the workplace they're better human beings and they treat one another with more kindness and compassion so that's the real goal but your example that you gave Sir that clearly could be HIV and we and there's been I know of two cases that we've actually been involved with uh that dealt with transgender students and use of restrooms that ultimately or HIV
135cases so that student could be subject to Legal penalties what's that thank you thank you that student could be subject to Legal penalties Witnesses do not we're at the end of the period please thank you any other questions on agenda items only that's my timer oh okay I was like wondering if your phone was ringing I thought it was Snoopy calling hello hi Natasha Jolly Berkeley Heights um not sure if there's so much of is an agenda question but you say you correct me if I'm wrong but one of the programs that was noted as part of you know helping students um you know uh kind of bridge that learning Gap was the uh beyond the school day program and I know Mr Nixon has um you know put out a flyer saying this is
136available to high school students um like in the fall going through the week of December 12th I was wondering is there something similar that happens for middle school students because I think this was only um for the high school and um and also in just the follow-up question to that is I know that Sr funds are being used to fund this program is there an updated um spreadsheet um I found in the district website there's one dated as of February 28th um that lists all the uses of the covid funds um you know including Esser is there an updated version so we could see how the funds will be applied thank you for the first question I want to say yes for all it's all all grades K-8 okay great and as far as the
137update to that question I will defer to Mr Scott if she wants to answer that at a future meeting there's no update date spreadsheet uh the second half of the spreadsheet does contain the projected uses for the funds and that does include some of the beyond the school day information on there any other question on agenda all right we'll jump right into it um minutes resolution a can I have a motion approve the regular meeting minutes from September 22nd 2022 and executive session minutes from September 22nd 2002. so move do I have a second second any discussion roll call please that's right this is akiri um I'll abstain from both uh Mr Chen truly yes to both Dr forever yes to both Mr Heinen yes Mrs Penna I'll abstain due to being absent at the
138last meeting Mrs Stanley yes Mr jaquilla yes uh appointments resolution a can I have a motion to amend the annual appointments as listed whenever first can I have a second second any discussion real cool oh sorry no I have a quick question too if two of us abstained did the minutes get passed yes yes five out of eight five five people voted yes okay yeah oh sorry question no real cool for the amended appointments Mrs zakiri yes Mr chantouli yes Dr forger yes Mr Heinen yes foreign yes Mrs Stanley yes Mr daquilla yes Administration can I have a motion to approve resolutions a through k for all board members so moved can I get a second second any discussion yeah um under H which is the uh Cusack it was a requirement and the instruction
139in program item 18 that you provide trend and data and we didn't get that so I'm going to know on this but if you want to just change the one to a zero like I would vote Yes uh and then under the uniform State memorandum of agreement uh what year is this from the one on the agenda is for 22.23 we approve it every year thank you okay is it is it any different than the one we've already approved for 2019. no 2019 they changed the code and so that is the reason from the website that I sent you for the 71-page document yeah that it says 2019 they changed the code in 2018 2019. okay so I would think we'd already we've already proved this not for 22 23. but it's the same document
140isn't it you have to approve an annual memorandum of agreement with the police department and now the Union County and the Union County prosecutor's office but you're saying it's exactly the same as what we've always approved you have to approve it every year it's an annual memorandum of agreement any other comments viewley I'm sorry one second just before people vote uh on K uh you have individual people that are listed here so you should you can vote Yes for everybody you should just say but I'm abstaining I'm voting for myself so for example Miss Penny should say I vote on yes on everything on k i abstain from voting on myself thank you very much I'm sorry did you have a comment side so just on the follow-up so um foreign if we did not
141provide the trend reports we are not changing the qsac score from one to zero we don't plan to you know as Dr Greer said we don't have Trends the last data was 2018 2019. so we'll still give ourselves the one yes we met with the state for three hours the other day the state said that the trend data is just the one year okay that's actually the trend data so because we don't have Trends um that's what they're accepting as the one point for Cusack okay thank you thank you Julie Robel Mrs zakiri um on a for first reading everything except 7510 uh second reading everything except three one four four um I'm abstaining from E and F I'm sorry three one four four yes okay uh say that again abstaining from enf E and
142F hold on a second just just clarify three one four four or three one four four point three one or both on the second read I just want to make sure because there's two well the agenda changed just hold on one second just three one four four yeah just three one four okay just want to clarify thank you you are you abstain from DNA from that mistake you know you're gonna sorry yes and um G did we get a copy of um of this in our attachments yes yes okay yes to everything else except on k i abstain from from myself thank you um Mr chanchuli yes and all except I extend abstain on myself for care doctor Forger uh yes on all of it except abstain on myself on K foreign [Music] thank you
143Mrs Penna yes to all except okay I'm staying for myself [Music] I'm sorry Mrs Stanley yes to all except for myself under k Mr Tequila yes thank you education resolution a through C I have a motion to approve that can I have a second yes any discussions Roku Mrs akiri uh yes to all Mr Chan truly yes to all Dr forger yes to all Mr Hyman yes to all Mrs Penna yes Mrs Stanley yes Mr Tequila yes uh Personnel can I have a motion to approve resolutions a through U for all ballad members and then resolutions v through X for Berkeley Heights board members only and I have a motion so moved and may I have a second second any discussion roll call please this is akiri yes Mr Chan truly yes to all Dr
144forger yes to all yes two items a through U H yes business can I have a motion to approve resolutions a through P or board members so moved may I have a second second any discussion [Music] on E Ada and this is item e and G did we can we see the report that is being submitted it's submitted electronically through software that goes to the state portal so that's how it's done can we not download this I have not traditionally done so um we can try I'm okay with approving it but I would like to see these reports that are being submitted to Department of Ed yeah if you could um tell me by when you can provide them then I'm fine I will look into it tomorrow thank you okay I was just going
145to double down on what Julie said before for Eminem to to thank the both pal and booster club for those donations that's obviously a great event important event and um couldn't happen without those funds so thanks yes thank you all right uh we'll call Julie Mrs akiri yes Mr chanchuli yes Dr forger yes Mr Hyman guest Hall Mrs Penna yes Mrs Stanley yeah yeah Mr daquilla yes Finance can I have a motion to approve resolutions a through G all board members reviewed the bills in the board office earlier this week in the business office and everything seems to be in order from my perspective so moved thank you Robert I have a second second any discussion roll call Mrs akiri I'll abstain from in item a for check number two zero six eight six nine
146and then abstaining from C yes to the rest yes Mr Tan Julie yes to all Dr forger I'm staying on check 206 869 yes to the rest of it Mr Hyman yes to all Mrs Penna yes to all Mrs Stanley yes Mr daquillo yes okay comments from the public rules still applying three minutes and when Snoopy starts playing okay good evening my name is Holly Berkeley Heights so I'm here today to speak on behalf of Berkeley Heights Pacha Chinese School uh we are a non-profit Educational Institute based in Berkeley Heights since 2016. our mission is to teach Chinese language and promote Chinese culture to the public and forced a multicultural Exchange we offer Chinese language classes from K to 9th grade AP Chinese classes to high school students we also offer English as second language
147at no cost to local residents who are in need and we offer culture classes in the past including chess arts and joins Chinese calligraphy goal yoga dance Mass enrichment and many other courses at very low tuition to our local community members excuse me I should get some water sitting there is two hours so Berkeley Heights huacha Chinese school has been renting Columbia Middle School facilities since its Inception our school administrative members and teachers are mostly volunteer based with minimum stipend some with no car no pay at all The Lion's Share of our operating cost is a rent we pay for to the school district well we appreciate the district decision to over five percent discount to us on the published rate for the school year of 2022 2023 this is dual cost we cannot afford
148as compared to other local non-profit organizations utilize local school facility in New Jersey our Ranch has been successfully High even before the rage increase by the school district the neighboring Township School District facility rental rates ranging from free to in watch out and New Providence to ten dollars in Chasm and 15 in Millburn per hour per classroom as a comparison Berkeley Heights School District current rate is 30 per hour per classroom the custodian charge by other districts ranging from 35 to 70 dollars per hour as a comparison we're charged 80 per hour so we request a wrench relief from the school district by email Dr Valley replied that she would be discussing the matters with the business office and get back to us asap not hearing back from the school district for two weeks I
149followed up again on October 12th the response I received from the school business office stated thank you thank you very much about thank you thank you stated yeah three minutes are up your time is up man okay should I finish or should I come back next I'll finish this you can come at the next meeting okay thank you thank you no this is where no at the next minute somebody else is done excuse me excuse me this is not a discussion this is not a discussion thank you no you can you can come up I'm also the president okay you can come up I will continue another three minutes okay please state your name from Berkeley Heights okay I just quote I never read this but I just submitted myself in all honesty if you
150you're you they have the room available I cannot imagine your group not jumping at the opportunity to utilize their facility members who are the medicines if you receive the email in such a fashion what do you think I'm sorry what is the question if you receive such a message from a section if you find any better place you just rent a room there are you willing to help willing to negotiate I just mentioned the attitude I'm not I'm not following I'm sorry I don't know what comments when he's finished I can answer okay yeah okay so so that's the that's the roughly just from the conversation bill I I don't want to go through all the details right so I just want to just a list of facts right so we are looking for just
151help I really want to negotiate to understand why it was rational why the race is very high from the bucket Heights right compared to rest the community our neighborhood okay right if you can give us the reasonable reason we accept it but you cannot give not give us a reason just say this ends okay [Music] so sorry so uh just to understand the facility use whenever anybody uses a public entity um the board has set rates and those rates are applied uniformly to outside entities that use the facility um just so you understand for a facility to be open we are legally mandated to have a custodian in that Facility Who has a black seal license that's required by law so we have to pay overtime to an employee to stay at the facility um
152we cannot negotiate individually with a group we have said things but we can take a look at what the facility rates are and and get back to you but um the business administrator and the superintendent they're not empowered to negotiate at all they have to follow what the board sets as the rate the board's at the rate the board sets the policy and these folks implement the board policy So based on your question um the board and you have a policy committee the board policy committee can take a look at this look at other rates in the area and then come back but they can't negotiate tonight or in the near future this takes a little bit of time man it's not a back and forth the public comment is finished I'm just explaining the
153question and what the answer is we do not negotiate over it the rates are established and they're applied uniformly for any group that wants to come in and use these schools so but we can take I I'm not the decision maker but the board thank you for your answer so this is some answer we're looking for something but the our question right the question is what's the operational right if you sell products right if you sell just 100 other people sell fifty dollars right you need to tell us right why you're just selling price is so high compared to the rest community right that's our question to the board to the admin why the our bucket Heights give such a high price to our residents compared to the other just the community we didn't get
154the answer so we do have a meeting set up with a finance committee to review this um I think it's October 31st 31st is on Halloween so we do have a meeting to discuss this so I don't want you to think we have let go of it but it is a meeting with the finance committee to discuss it um but like um Mr giacobi said we are bound by our policy so we will someone will be getting back to you after we have this meeting yeah Dr vadi thank you for your answer that's the something we are willing to hear right if you have some actions let us know like don't write to the letter like this way right thank you I much appreciate it okay thank you next month yes okay thank you thank
155you you can ma'am you can also submit your your report to the board if you have something in writing you're free to submit it to the business administrator if you want to do that or email mail to her tomorrow okay okay thank you any other comments from the public hi uh Ramya kasuri 86 Cromwell Court um I want to say a couple of things about legal fees because I know that that's been a topic of discussion uh it's not bad or wrong to discuss legal fees but if we do have a discussion about them we should be honest first let's talk about the attorney being present during Boe meetings FYI the township attorney is present at every single Town council meeting in addition the Boe and the Administration has been subject to several ethical and
156legal complaints given this atmosphere I don't blame anyone sitting up there for wanting an attorney present at meetings so thank you for being here second let's talk about the one complaint filed by a board member against Psy it is important to understand that you may expose the entire District to litigation when you're on the board and you publicly disparage District employees and the board even after several warnings to stop it is unfortunate that it had to come to this but I thank the other Boe members for taking steps to try to minimize this risk third let's talk about all of the other complaints that have been filed over the past two years every ethics complaint and every complaint filed with the Union County prosecutor's office costs us money to defend every single one that includes
157complaints that get dismissed my point here is that it's dishonest to complain about legal fees without considering the entire list of complaints you're a hypocrite if you criticize the six Boe members for using legal funds to file one complaint which was done to minimize our exposure to potential litigation and then ignore the costs of defending the numerous other complaints thank you any other comments from the public Natasha Jolly Berkeley Heights um so my question is with respect to um the timing of the approval of the district goals versus the approval of the budget um the 2023 uh 2022-23 budget was approved in April and the goals were just recently approved in September so the question I had was how can the budget be approved prior to the goals being set because then how do you
158know that the budget will have the right level of funding for the goals that you want to achieve um I reached out to the njsba field services rep Patty Reese just to kind of ask that question and she said that the goals adopted by the board in July August 22 that's for the calendar for us I think it was September we'll be part of the budget discussion for the 2023-24 school year so it would appear that the goals that should have been approved in September should have been more forward-looking to 23-24 so that the budget process could incorporate them into you know the budget planning for 2324. so that I guess my question is did we miss the mark somewhere or are our goals all of our district goals are related to our strategic plan
159that's a five-year strategic plan so we do incorporate all that in our decisions we have um multiple meetings to go over the Strategic plan and then and we have timelines and when we're going to hit certain goals so this all this is based on our strategic plan we we knew what would align with our budget when we did the goals so our goals for 22-23 were the ones we presented at the last meeting right but the budget was approved in April but our strategic plan was approved I don't know two years ago 2019. no agreed but every year the budget is set so and every year you have District goals so for that particular piece of the Strategic plan that's being implemented in 2223 how did you know you were going to have the right
160amount of funding if only in September did you agree with that piece of the Strategic plan was going to look like we take a look we take a look at our strategic plan all the time all of our goals come directly from our strategic plan so we know exactly we also have timelines like this year we're going to hit this it will say 2021 to 22 22 to 23. so we've already have that all mapped out so it's all been a part of our discussions moving forward but if I can just say Matt are we doing anything against no no you're doing it the the the goals and the boards I represent they generally adopt the goals they have a workshop in the summer July August depending on vacations and adopt their goals for the
161that school year the 22 23 school year similar to them the one thing you should understand about the budget is the budget in New Jersey school budgets they're especially when you have a November election they can only increase by two percent so you basically know what your budget is and you know it can only increase by two percent um so the budget is not really what drives the goals you you already have your funding set and that funding only Grows by two percent a year if you have for example I'm dealing with the district right now that's looking to build a new high school they are they're setting up a whole separate committee doing studies Etc on that looking to do a high school in three years and so that's part of their strategic plan
162because it's a burgeoning population and that's when you go for Bond referendums Etc but the actual budget that you have um this year I don't know what your budget went up I can't speak to it but you know you're you're capped at two a two percent tax levy cap unless you're using we had some waiversity you had waivers you know but that that's the uh you don't have a lot of room in your budget that you're gonna all of a sudden say you know we're gonna build a new building with our new budget that's not how it works but the goals most districts adopt the goals in the summer for that school year the 22-23 they're not adopting goals that summer for a following school and the reason that is is that the the board
163members when they're elected they're serving that for that school year um if they're adopting goals a year in advance there might be different board members that get elected to the board they might have very different goals so that's why it's got to be coterminous with the board that is serving for that school year and as you know the with the shift of the election it used to be that the elections were um in April and Boards would seat in July and then they'd go to the June 30th now with the shift to November elections boards now get seated in January reorganized in January and so the the the election doesn't line up with the school year but the majority of the board will be there for the 22-23 school year goals that's where they set
164them this year in each year they set new goals so that is that is appropriate and that's what's done across the state I don't know New Jersey school boards I don't know uh you know what the context was but that's what I would advise my clients all right thank you thank you all right moving on to new business is there any new business to come before the board tonight from board members yeah no one came up so we're moving into new business okay go ahead talked to jarian Camptown Drive uh just a couple questions and I know I have to get through them all um I was listening earlier uh because I couldn't get here at the start but uh we heard tonight that there was a question about geometry and only 45 proficiency uh
165even though we're meeting the state standards um it just seemed a little bit alarming that half the student population are not meeting it do we have a remedial plan um if so when can we get those plans and that would be really for all the grades and areas I mean I think the percentage is one thing but looking at that deficiency number is another um I understand we might feel good but there's an opportunity and I'd just like to know how we're going to address that uh second is the Oprah records that are being posted on the website um I wanted to request to see uh if we would also see the date that each request was submitted uh and received and the date it was responded to I know some districts also publish a
166response so if we're really trying to be transparent about this I'm hoping that you could do all three of these um lastly or actually I have two more things real quick um wanted to bring up the last meeting uh I was watching I was not able to be here I was out of town and frankly a totally disgusting display of absolute pure dysfunction and what we witnessed um I was appalled the Pam was allowed to continue and couldn't respect being told not to I was utterly disappointed to hear that the president of our board who still has three months to serve throw in the towel um I hope you reconsider that statement perhaps even want to apologize for the people you're supposed to and elected to represent and serve um and then really I think
167uh the last point that I had is the key to reducing legal fees is a more ethical board and not using board attorneys to do something you're supposed to do on your own I think that's a very poignant point that we can all agreed on hopefully thank you they answered that question about geometry about when we'll have a remedial plan available to us okay sorry I didn't miss that do we what was the answer so you don't have an idea of a timeline that you can just say it was already answered the question was already answered on the open records Julie if you want to comment on that no I don't okay and for the rest of it thank you very much for your comments thank you foreign now moving on to new business Jordan
168sorry all good um uh as I mentioned earlier we in uh Athletics committee the concept of homecoming came up and I thought I would just raise it tonight to see if uh and again I the definition of homecoming I think is I'm not coming to the table with any sort of I think we should do just that um and seemed intrigued by it uh I won't speak for Mr Nixon um whether he's intrigued or not and I think this would probably be a 2023-24 school year concept but I wanted to see if any other board members had a thought on it uh Dr Farley had a thought on it uh and then I guess the other question would be if there is Intrigue what do we do what's the next step does this live with
169a booster club is this live with Athletics um you know homecoming when I grew up in Scotch Plains did not involve a dance but I've heard Rumblings of that's what other districts do so I guess we could Define it how we would want if we wanted to do it I think we could probably put together a parent committee it does take a lot of volunteers to get homecoming and you know and talk to the administration I do think I remember and who knows if I dreamed this that we did have homecoming years prior to me and I'm looking at you did we Mr Nixon nope no homecoming no prior to you even yeah before 2012. so we would just need to put together some type of committee oh Mr Hopkins 2005. so maybe it's something
170we do need to revisit and see if there's parent and student interest in getting home coming back up back up and running thank you Robert yes we've had conversations here and there I think at the board meeting as well as in the policy committee about possibly changing the configuration of some committees and I think the uh policy committee wanted to get the board input going forward currently we've got the uh Personnel committee merged with the communications committee and we'd like I think the consensus is we'd like more time and and um Devotion to Communications and right now it's a little bit difficult because the Personnel side of the Personnel communication committee is is busy um we were thinking of possibly uh moving the communications committee rather than creating a new Communications committee moving it with
171technology committee because the technology committee is not that active I'm not even sure if they've met this calendar year perhaps once um so that committee definitely has the time to be merged with something active and important as communication committee moreover I think there's a natural Synergy between Communications and technology in this day and age uh obviously we're using technology more and more to communicate in a number of ways everyone is aware of that so I think it it's a natural um switch to me I and we'd like to the policy committee would like everyone's input on that uh going forward switching up the Committees because as you know they're all listed in our policies and thank you to uh our wonderful board secretary who came up with the idea uh we were noodling on that
172and we couldn't figure out exactly where to place the communications committee and Julie helped us see that that might be a good option [Music] okay Matt if the need to have a mole prominent Communications committee we felt that this is something we need to work on so that's where the discussion came from was having a communication committee where we can work on Communications we also felt that technology was kind of hand in hand with that and that's where the discussion came sort of merging the two so that's definitely something worth considering moving forward just understand that your board the board reorganizes first in January of course so if you want to do this it's in your bylaws the Committees it's under the Pres powers of the president they appoint the different committees my suggestion would
173be for the policy committee if the board doesn't object have the amended bylaw your November meeting adopted at your discover meeting so that you have this communication slash technology Committee in place for your reorganization in January because you can't do it you can't introduce a policy in this calendar year you want to do it prior to the January reward okay okay Robert are you uh able to talk about that 130 issue we had said we were going to do it last meeting yes are we are we done with this topic how do we just wanted to yes before we close out so is there any objections not to look and amend the policy to create the communication technology as part of an amendment so do we still you use the technology part of the committee
174like have we met as we have not met because it's just it's again from a purpose standpoint of what is the committee going to be we haven't had a need to come to the technology hasn't come to as a question so but we have in the past you know years past I mean technology not updating technology not a lot of important that we actually keep that part of it because moving forward we may need to look at updating technology as well [Music] um seems okay to me okay anybody else Robert you said you know something but Tom I'd let the time go first and go back to Robin doing business yes yeah we'll change the policy in this calendar year and so this would be in place for January correct yep all right I think
175we uh need to issue an RFP uh for the architect board attorney and auditor as best I can tell it has been about six years since we've done that and I think it's the best practice to do at RFP from time to time this does not indicate any dissatisfaction with who we have now I have made up a questionnaire so that we can solicit rfps for Port attorney um and that would lessen the burden on staff especially I think we know who might have to do this so I would like to have an rfps for the architect board attorney and auditor yeah we did discuss at the beginning of the year that we would look to start doing one per year and start at our rotation so we're already coming through now well I I
176was thinking just can we just get the rfps out and then we'll one per year so you're not going to go here you don't want to do all three I wouldn't recommend it you talk about a lot of changes and everything I would recommend you go on a three-year rotation so you go you know architect lawyer uh yeah the plan uh I was planning to do the auditor this year okay absolutely and then because we are um there's certain issues going with uh toward us wanting to move forward with the referendum we do have sunk costs with the current architect that we would have to you know pay again so we have had discussions about that not being the most prudent course right since they've done a lot of background work and we can utilize
177that anyone else coming in would have to get their own engineers and prove all that out again um so that was one of the issues that was discussed recently okay so following up on what Dr forreger said if he I think we just heard Matt say that if we want to be prepared for the reor committee we need to set the like you know have a bylaw passed for splitting the Committees so if you want to have an RFP which we have not done in over many years for board attorney which I asked in January so why can't we do it now be prepared I would not my recommendation I could be overwhelmed was to do it in time to have a change at the next fiscal year if you do it in January you're
178doing mid fiscal year I don't know if that's something you want to do but I wouldn't recommend it I'm just like how will we do it in January because on January at the riog meeting we have to vote on who the board attorney is so we do it as part of the fiscal you change as of July 1 of the new budget year you're in your mid budget year I don't think I'm again this is my opinion I'm not saying what to do but I think the process is once we do the RFP we can interview and we can see who all apply and then the board can interview who the board Council should be so you told us initially that it was we will discuss it later this is a negotiations here so now
179we are asking you this the negotiations are done we just signed them great job so can we not do the RFP right now for board attorney architect and Auditors again I don't recommend doing three rfps it's a tremendous amount of work and a certain amount of change in it so I don't recommend it again it's my recommendation but it's the full board you guys make a decision I think we did actually talk about doing it on a staggered basis back in January when this first came up for board discussion um and I did actually understand that certain people wanted to look at the auditor um more closely that position of course everything's you know no issue but I think they there was some preference a strong preference to do that one first and if you
180put and correct if my world from a timing standpoint you just were to start the RFP Tomorrow there's no way we have the timing from advertisement and everything by the end of the year I'm a TimeWise you're listening you have this first off you have to put the RFP together committee together to review the materials that people have submitted and then do interviews and so forth and then have a ranking system set up and you know weighted um and and all that documentation so I mean it's on my certainly on my list if you've been in my office it's um high priority on my whiteboard um to start with the auditor I'm just being realistic I don't think you can get it done between now and the end of the year I'm not saying no
181I'm just saying realistically I'm actually waiting for him to finish the audit you know I don't know right but I'm just saying even what I'm saying and in general any RFP right now it's not going to be done by January 1. I'm looking at just my own experience I'll just say one thing I you can do whatever you guys want I'm not advocating one or the other generally um I've seen it done more in uh on the fiscal year basis and the reason being is is that you have November elections boards change so you can't you really just like an outgoing board can't bind a future board the board who's sitting come January should be the ones that make decisions on you know the auto because like the auditor works for the board the auditor
182is the person that opens up the hood and makes sure that Julie's in her office is doing a good job so that's my experiences I I because I do a lot of rfps responding to rfps and generally what you see in the RFP cycle the RFP world right now it's very very heavy in the municipal and County world because they run on a calendar year in the school world at higher ed it's on a fiscal year so you'll see rfps for all these different positions generally in the school World running on the fiscal year they usually come out in um like April usually in April and then they would do the interviews in in May June depending on people's things April early May that's just my experience and you guys you can make your decision
183how much how much time do you think it would take to put together an RFP uh safer auditor and and then I'm just trying to figure out the amount of time involved here you see put together an RFP you issue it then what do we do we we have to have it come in and get interviews or what it's up to the board it's up to the board um you know as Julie said there's got to be a ranking system um whenever you're doing Professional Services you don't have to go with the lowest price because you could have some kid who just graduated from Seton Hall law school saying I'll do it for fifty dollars an hour they don't know anything about it anything man I need his name now exactly so um uh usually
184you have a ranking system um on it I I think that the actual issuance of an RFP is not that difficult when you when you put one out um but it's got to be out for for the uh statutory time period for it to be a fair and open process it's got to be published for at least 10 days it's got to be out there in the public you have to have people come in you have to set an opening um so yeah but I'm just telling you that we represent a number of public entities most School Board attorneys most School Board Auditors they're looking in the spring for the July 1. that's just that's just the way it works because you are a fiscal year body um and you know when they changed the
185election they didn't change you guys to calendar year so you know call me crazy but that would have been a little bit easier by the way the state health benefits that people are participate in a lot of districts uh they're on a county and not a fiscal year so it makes no sense in the state of New Jersey that schools operate a fiscal year but a lot of the things they do are counter your basis sometime we might shoot for them getting this out by what April 1 and then come January 1st yeah you can chat um you can Champion that course but no I mean I won't be I'm trying to understand I mean this no I'm just being realistic from a standpoint of um knowing and being involved with public bids myself in
186a previous life it's just starting now you're just not going to get the change and it's Matt says is that something you want to change now when they're new well you're going to have a new board and then I'm buying that export so I'm just wondering is okay so we can you're saying we can wait until the new board and then by say April 1 issue the RFP yeah get the responses and make the get it all done and get a new one in place possibly by July one yeah because your your budget year runs July into June 30th so that's generally so generally you know let's say you're audit your auditor fees are on a fiscal basis yeah so if you have your auditor fees if you change Auditors right now you might have
187spent half the money or more than half the money on one auditor you might not even have enough funds in that budget line item budget to to pay for a new auditor the other thing too is the audit just so you know like because your fiscal year the audits operate under fiscal they don't operate a calendar year so changing an auditor at the beginning of a calendar year it's very difficult for a school district because you're you've got somebody they're doing audits right now yeah they're in the middle of your audience I just I'm just trying to understand what's going on here so we don't get into a situation where we say January went up too bad you missed your window or something no that's what I'm saying you would want to do it in
188January start the whole process absolutely the new board in January yeah all right I'm sorry another question so the new board can do they have to approve these vendors for the entire year or can we just say we are only doing this till June because we are planning to do the fiscal year so you're you're okay just see just you guys know no I'm saying the approval in January my question is because this January when I asked can we do can we look at other alternate attorneys and Architects we were told we are doing it for our entire year we are in a negotiation year we can do this now you're saying it's too late in the year because yeah just let me finish my question so it's too late in the year we might
189not get enough bids and we might not have a conclusive answers and I agree that there's going to be a new board so when the new board does the riog meeting can they only approve these vendors for the fiscal year because we are going to do an RFP can we say instead of the calendar year we're going to only approve them till June or July the new board can do whatever they choose to do okay it says we only do six months you can do six months if they want to do just one for six months that's up to the new board they absolutely can do that and the other thing you have to remember is in the area of of um it's a little bit more difficult with uh architects because if you have
190them drawing up plans that's copyrighted material so if you fire architect you don't get their plans I mean that's that's that they do yes they stay professionals they're a professional thing so you gotta be uh in terms of a lawyer lawyers under the rules of professional conduct Etc boards can change lawyers you know I could get reappointed January 1st on February 1st the new board could say you know what we don't like Gia Kobe we're changing that's their their prerogative and all and all the lawyer contracts say that you can that can be canceled anytime lawyers and Auditors I think it would be easier Architects are going to be very very careful because there was I've been involved in litigation where somebody thought that they could just get rid of an architect and keep the
191plans and they said oh no you don't get to use our plans go out and hire an architect and end up costing the it wasn't a board it was a municipality cost a lot of money that came with regard to the architect we've already spent money I thought on yeah I I I'm just talking in generality sir because I I know isn't this right we've already Yes spent money on do they have any copyright material um whatever if you're coming in as a different architect you're going to want you're not going to rely on whatever they've done you're going to want to do your own due diligence right you're going to have your own Engineers come in and your own you know rewrite you're just you're gonna find yourself multiple times for the same work
192and no two architects agree that they're that their plan to write so you're gonna get a whole new set of plans oh yeah okay Robert you had another yeah I was just gonna move are we done with this I hope um I just want to report out on something as a follow-up a resident had a question regarding uh particularly legal use of attorneys particularly with respect to tracking and a log that keeps coming up as a question this I just want to interject it's policy zero one seven four Legal Services that's correct the question keeps coming up over and over again about the log the log the log and other similar questions um they're in policy zero one seven four it does state that a log would be kept and there are other similar requirements
193basically around managing guard rails for the use of legal counsel ostensively I'm inferring it's because of costs the reason I infer that is the sentence leading up to that qualifies it and says school districts with legal costs that exceed 130 percent of the Statewide average per student amount should establish the procedures outlined in one through four below if not established provide evidence of procedures would not result in the reduction of costs so those items one through four that people keep asking over and over again about including the legal log and the tracking and all that it doesn't apply to our district the question is the threshold question would be what are our legal costs State based on a Statewide average per student amount and in specifically do they exceed 130 percent so I would defer
194to the business administrator on that so they do not if you go uh on the internet to the taxpayer guide to educational spending the year uh fiscal year ending 2022 so the 21-22 school year data is available uh it is indicator indicator 8A that you want to take a look at the state average for the 1920 school year the actual cost that you're looking at for Legal Services is forty four dollars the Berkeley Heights Public Schools actual cost was forty dollars the 130 percent threshold of forty four dollars is 57.20 so we do not come anywhere near the 130 threshold that would require us to do items one through four you're also saying it's below the average it's below 100 percent means below the average obviously yeah below average below average and certainly not anywhere
195approaching the 130 percent uh indicator 8A for the 2021 2020 2021 school year the actual State average was 45 dollars Berkeley Heights public schools had 33 dollars as their actual number the 130 percent threshold would have been 58.50 again nowhere near that um the most of current available information would be just a budgetary estimate for the 2122 school year the state tends to publish the taxpayer guide to educational spending it keeps getting later and later probably maybe January we'll get an actual number but currently the budgetary number that the state came up with as a state average for 2122 is 48 in our budget for the 2122 school year we we had 36 dollars so the 130 threshold would be 62.40 we just have to wait till the next um taxpayer guide to spending comes
196out and then we can reevaluate those numbers but we do not meet uh even 100 of the state average let alone pass the threshold okay so I have a quick follow-up question so this is our policy and as policy committee we are amending a lot of policies and reviewing them so in light of full transparency can we not amend the policy that we will maintain a log irrespective of not maintain not meeting a 130 percent we can amend our own policy it's state law that that's in code the 130 percent it was promulgated as a part of the accountability regulations that passed um I want to say in 2007 or eight it's right in the code title six yeah I understand I'm just saying that the state says you have to maintain a log if
197you meet 130 I'm saying we are amending a lot of policies based on the community needs so all I'm saying is we just want checks and balances the whole idea of having this policy is we want to make sure who's reaching out for legal counsel and who is designated we amended this policy early this year so why can't we take it up and you know based on the feedback from Community look at changing that we we didn't amend this part of the policy this is I'm just saying could we could we discuss this at the policy committee about maintaining a log so we have checks and balances on who's communicating and who's reaching out for legal counsel we can definitely review it right I don't know what you mean about checks and balances because another
198part of the policy I guess I would point to is sort of a guard rail or check and balance already in place is that there are only a limited number of people who are designated as contact persons for legal counsel so if there's some idea that anyone can just call at any time any board member any member of the business office that's not true we do have those guard rails in place because it's limited to the superintendent uh or their designee board president or his designee or the business administrator so to me those are already guard rails we've got the financial guard rails that be nowhere near 130 percent actually not even 100 meaning not even average cost less than average cost we've got the additional guard rails in place in terms of scope of
199individuals who are narrowly authorized to contact Council that automatically reduces costs I don't see the need I understand there's been criticism in the public I don't know that that's the best way to the best thing to do is to change policy based on criticism rather than the numbers the metrics the dollars the scope of individuals being very limited I I'm I don't know I'm not that reactive I don't like to be that way for policy that's not how we do policy that's not how I have ever done it yeah I didn't know we were going to talk about this particular thing tonight but I did do uh my own numbers uh yes State average uh for budgetary was 48 I think what 130 percent as I recall gets you to uh the 64. but then
200uh now our budgetary you said was 36 but actually I like to look at it as you know we keep we kept raising it you kept raising the ceiling we're now up to 160. so that not thirty six thousand dollars this is 36 for a student so if you took the um we just finished I I have a different view of the numbers that's the one I wanted to go through unfortunately I don't have the sheet with me so I'm just going to do this some memory and we can check it later if you want but um State average I think you know 48 and then you get to 64 with 130 percent now as far road is our budget well yeah the initially adopted budget was 36 dollars a student but then when we
201kept increasing it we got up to 160 000 and divide that by 2500 and it puts you over the 64. so but you don't know what the state average is going to be because maybe everybody had to increase their budget this year and the state average is going to end up being 60 we don't know that yet so I understand the math that you've done yeah because based on our budget increasing but that doesn't mean that the rest of the 600 districts in New Jersey their budgets didn't increase as well so that this budgetary number of 48 is an estimate for the 48 the 48 was for the the most recently completed year right 2122 budgetary number means they took everybody's budget yeah on that line and they made an estimate and yes we increased
202hours right but I think I'm pretty sure I was doing I wish I had the numbers here we could you know go back to this next time if you want but uh I'm pretty sure that I took uh the state whatever the state whatever our budget number was and I and I looked at it got up to 160 000 divided by 2500. it came out to a little more than sixty four dollars which was basically more than by a few cents the 130 but that's not how this that's that's not how this works well so we need to clarify repeated the legal services until the state releases a new actual number well okay the problem here is the state law and the policy are not all that clear as to how you compute all of
203this all right yes I can do a computation that gets us just a little bit above so I mean there is a policy and you've are you certain that they are dividing kind of that raw number by the raw numbers Julie I'll tell you what I think the best if I not try to do this by memory we're not trying to fight this out in public but I'd like to do is just send you oh Psy has something here but Tom let me say this is something to say that you go back to policy right yes in terms of policy I would say there may need to be some clarification as to exactly how Alyssa is computed because there is you know there's an initial budget number that we adopt and then it it can
204change as you raise your limit and so the policy maybe should be a little more detailed I would just like to say that this number is brought up twice throughout the year by the county office in the state it is brought up during our mid-year budget review when we evaluate the number and then also in the budget software so when I get into the budget software this year and we put in our revised uh fiscal year 22 numbers that is when it will either trigger and I will get an edit warning or an edit error that we have exceeded the 130 so that is when we will know for certain what the number is uh but that won't be until you know well maybe March we'll know that in March let me ask this then
205that you get me some information on exactly how they compute it and then maybe we'll look at whether that should be part of the policy okay but uh I mean it's just on I'm uncomfortable with the whole policy I mean I'm not I'm comfortable with that aspect of it that it's not so clear as how it's computed you know I like Clarity on computations talk to the state oh I'm sure they'd like to hear from me oh we'll see them next week won't we yes right yeah as well okay anything else if not I would say can I have a motion to adjourn please may you have a second I'm surprised at the hesitation uh comments uh all in favor any opposed any abstains thank you see you in November [Music]