001Good evening everybody. Welcome. Um we met in exact session and so we have already done our flag salute. So I will start with a statement of the notice. This is a regular meeting of the board of education for attention. Notice of the time and place of the meeting is provided in Copies of that resolution were forwarded to the newspapers as designated by the court and the town clerk and a copy of the notice of the board. Those members of the public do not in person live on the district website www.burners.com. We very much welcome input from the public. There are two times during regular meetings of colleagues invited to speak. One time is early in the evening before the votes where you may speak about any item. Senate agenda. Towards the end of the meeting,
002there's another public forum to address any matter of public concern related to schools. When you approach the microphone, please state your name and address. Each statement made by participation shall be limited to 30 minutes duration. No participant public session. The first public comment session will be limited to 30 minutes and the second will be unlimited. In order to run official meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for the public members of the public to speak, the board reserves right to different individual comments overall time portion agenda. All statements shall be directed to the presiding officer address or question board members individually. Please understand that public comment portions of agendas are not structured as question answer sessions but offer the opportunity to share the thought with the board. The board administration will respond to public comments possible.
003Any board responses to public comments will generally be addressed during board form and reports. However, all comments are considered and be investigated and addressed as appropriate. Please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when speaking. Comments may not be abusive, obscene, threatening or development. Please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections. The board is not permitted to respond from public to comments by students and employees. Please also understand the board will not be responsible for content or comments made by members of the public. Members of the public are caution that they are speaking at their own risk and any personal directed statements they make may make them subject to legal liability to the infected individual. It is necessary for the board to go into exact session at the end
004of the meeting. We will provide an estimated time for the session and whether any action is anticipated to deal with the session. And just so you know, we will do our regular meeting and then we're going to go into the BT connect following. Um, can we get a roll call? Yes. Mr. Yes. Yes. We're now up to our student representative for us. All right. Hey. Hi everyone. My name is Ari Rock. I'm filling in for Joseph tonight because he has a track meet. I'm the student body treasurer of our school and I'm really excited to share what's been going on at Ridge High School. So, as we near the end of the school year, these past two weeks have been filled with exciting achievements, important announcements, and upcoming opportunities for all of our students. So,
005I'll begin with some student accomplishments. So we are incredibly proud to recognize the rich forensics speech and debate team who recently competed at the night talk events the national individual events tournament of champions. Every rich competitor advanced to elimination rounds and special congratulations to Ami Singh who placed fifth in the nation in impromptu speaking speaking as well um Adalia Cardamaro and Sim Wong who were semi- finalist placing ninth and 10th in the country. Our quarter finalist, Octo finalists also deserve a round of applause, which was just a major success for everyone there. We're also celebrating the cast and crew of Cinderella for an outstanding production. Their hard work and talent shown through and the entire rich community was impressed by the performance. Moving into student engagement and leadership opportunities. On May 20th, Rich will be
006hosting US Marine Sergeant Dowy for a presentation on the NROCC Marine Corps Scholarship alongside Rich Senior and 2025 scholarship recipient William Porzani. Students interested in any bridge for military are highly encouraged to attend and signups are available through the counseling department. Additionally, several Marine Corps Junior Awards, including the December Fideli's music award, Distinguished Athlete Award and Scholastic Excellence Award are open for a self nomination for students with the deadline being today, May 19th. Students can contact Miss Marview, our military liaison with any questions. Another leadership opportunity was the Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership Award presented by the West Point Society of New Jersey, which recognized juniors who exemplify character, service, and leadership. Applications were due today and we're excited to see which Ridge student will be honored. Now for a few important reminders of school events.
007This Wednesday, May 21st, Ridge will be celebrating culture day, an annual tradition where we honor the diverse cultures and heritages of all our students and staff. Everyone is encouraged to wear traditional clothing, place a pin on the world map in the atrium, and visit cultural displays hosted by rich clubs and students. Also on May 21st, our band spring concert will take place at 700 p.m. in the RHS pack, kicking off our spring performance season. Upcoming concerts also include the choir concert on June 4th in orchestra on June 11th. For students interested in performing arts, auditions for our top corral ensemble, a capella choir, will be held on June 9th. This is a very selective group and all students are welcome to try out. Meanwhile, we have Guys Night Out, which is our casual all male
008singing ensemble. Has been rehearsing every Monday evening and is open to students. So, that includes dads and the teachers and alumni. It's just a fun low commitment way to get involved with Bridge music regardless if you're a good singer or not. Um, turning now to student fundraisers and community support. The class of 2026 student government is hosting a Chipotle to donate fundraiser on Tuesday, May 21st from 4 to 8:00 p.m. at the Morris Road location. Um, and using the code, uh, people who go can donate half their money or 1/4 of the money to the senior celebration cost for the class. At the same time, the class of 2027 will be running a bake sale in the atrium on May 21st and 22nd, both before and after school. The support our veterans club is currently
009hosting a bake sale today and tomorrow, and a toilet toiletry drive through May 30th. All proceeds will benefit Veterans Affairs in honor of Memorial Day. and mark your calendars for May 31st when the Ridge High School ski team will be holding a clothing drive and car wash fundraiser from 10:00 a.m. to 1 pm to 1 pm rain or shine. We've also had some great environmental and artistic initiatives recently. Uh the green team continues its marker and pen recycling initiative. Students and teachers can drop out um dry out writing utensils in room 410. And through May 29th, rich student artwork is on display at the Great Swamp Environmental Education Center. The exhibit titled Bone Yard features ceramics, drawings, and photography created by rich students and is open to the public. As we wrap up the year,
010a few logistics, academic notes, students who need to make up uh AP exams or the NJSLA should check their school email regularly for instruction. Questions about sorry, questions about AP testing can go to Mr. Mizak and NJSLA questions can go to Mr. Grey. Um, enrollment is now open for the 2025 summer financial literacy course and students can sign up through June 6th. This is a great way to build life skills over the summer and get some credits out of the way. And finally, a quick reminder that schools will be closed on Friday, May 23rd for staff development, Monday, May 26th, and Tuesday, May 27th in observance of Memorial Day. Uh that concludes my report for Rich High School this uh last two weeks. Thank you again so much for your time and continued support of
011our students, staffs, and programs as we finish the school year as strong as possible. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Um, as always, you're welcome to stay, but if you have work to do, don't hesitate to to leave. Um, we are up to the superintendent report, and there are two items. Can I get a motion? Janice and Dave, do you want to speak? Sure. Um so the first is our bid report for May 19th. Uh the second item is the board's approval for a research project uh for a student at Cwell University working on their doctorate. Uh this project does not involve students. It involves survey uh staff members that provide the details to the board. This is an optional survey for the staff to uh participate in but it is not required.
012However, even to offer the opportunities that require Mr. Mr. Mr. Yes. Mr. Mr. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you everyone. Uh so I also need to provide an update uh for the board and the public with regarding uh our board of education member uh Miss Chipac. Unfortunately, Miss Chipac had to resign her position on the board uh for personal family reasons. So now um the public Please be advised of the opportunity to apply for the vacancy on the board of education. There will be a posting on the district website tomorrow uh where we will provide a link with instructions for how folks may apply uh for that vacancy. I will also advertise the vacancy uh in this week's SOS Express. We will ask individuals interested in the vacancy to apply by May 30th. uh and then
013at the June board of education meeting the board will conduct a process to uh select the candidate that would fill the remainder of Miss Jac's term for the current calendar year which will be through December 2025. After that uh anyone interested in filling that post would need to plan to run the next election. We are now on to public comment. We'll close this public comment on agenda items. Um with approval of minutes, may I get motion? M. Yes. Dr. Yes. Mr. Lard. Yes. Mr. Lee. Yes. Missado, yes. Mr. Shaw, yes. Mr. Yes. And Mr. Yes. Uh, we're up to annual approvals and appointments. May I have a motion? Correct. Robin, Miss White. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Yes. Yes. M. Yes, Mr. Shaw. Yes, Mr. Mr. That brings us to finance and there are items. May
014I have a motion, Dave? Robin, um, is there anything you want to explain? I know there's also a report. Yeah. So the first few items are ones and 6 through 10 are approvals. We'll get to 11, 12, and 13 minutes from the next couple are all. So just you know all the annual approvals are very [Music] increases and then student towards the end. And one last one. Um, sure. Um, we reported out to curriculum on how the New Jersey Department of Education passed legislation this last year creating the learning equity and academic recovery uh law and an office to implement that. So that's basically going to put requirements on districts for assessing for um early literacy and dyslexia with with increased assessments kindergarten, first, second, and third grade and some additional reporting requirements. So that'll
015be implemented in the school year 2526. Um so this is a grant offering that the department of education has made to support districts in meaning that um there are two um grants that were announced. One of them is for low lower income districts. The other one that we're applying for focus is funding for optimal comprehensive universal screeners for focus. Um so it's up to $10 per student in grades K through three to purchase universal screeners that would include early literacy identification and instruction. So we met on May 9th. Um the first item we discussed was the expected fund balance that will be available for the 26 27 school year. Just as a reminder for anyone put it on the other day that the fund balance is basically the difference between your actual and your share.
016next year. Um we should have a clear estimate of what will be available in August. Um initial projections suggest the fund balance will be lower than the current year indicating the actual revenues and expenditures are more closely than prior year. The two biggest drivers of this change are health insurance and interest and income which due to lower rates and smaller cash balances. The second item we discussed was um the possibility of purching a referendum for actually the 26 27th school year the administration would continue research in this option with the decision expected closer to October. Next item we discussed was there's been some interest from community members establishing a charitable charitable foundation. Mr. Marian has offered meet with the interested parties to discuss the necessary steps and considerations. The next item the committee discussed was
017subscription busing for students who live less than 2 miles from school and opt for bus transportation. The committee recommends increasing the subscription rate to $1,177 which will match the state's aid and road amount. The next item was facility rental rates. Um the committee has agreed there there's four buckets for it and we have agre agreed to no change for categories A and B 2% increase for C and D and then fac custodial charges will increase the committee review that current facilities and the last item was bidding for the food services we discussed bidding process. Uh four bids were received which included a minimum of 225,000 profit guarantees of the district registration evaluating the bids using scoring matrix present recommendation at the next meeting and I assume that correct uh no the committee will be interviewing
018each of the four companies next questions. Oh, sorry. Not really question for the public as far as Yeah. Um, so the Phil the the board charges four different rates for using facilities. A and B are um nonprofit and 75% of the participants are residents and nothing sharp. So there's no increase in that rate and that is consistent hel. So category C and D or are groups that are um a couple of characteristics of which there's multiple that qualify for profit charge feed and not 75% residents of attachment. So we've seen the rates that u small increase and the custodial um increase just because our increase your welcome. Miss White, yes. Yes. Mr. Lard. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Shaw. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Yes. Personnel. There are 21 items. Then I have a motion.
019Dave, there's no report. We just met on Friday. Okay. Welcome. Miss White. Yes. Yes. Mr. Yes. M. Yes. Miss. Yes. Mr. Shaw. Yes. Mr. Ter. Yes. Mr. Yes. Um, we're up to policy. There are two items. Can we get a roll call or motion m and Mike? 200 report. Uh so we had the policy meeting on uh May 8th and uh we discussed uh you know uh class size 2312. Uh we're leading as is class size or guidelines by the district. They're not set in stone um for acceptable use of computer network computers. Uh we students we make provision students may not use personal devices at any time during the school day. First bell to last bell. Exceptions to this rule may only occur in individuals or schoolwide circumstances, direct discretion, direction of the school
020administration offer student discipline, code of conduct, uh cell phone, smartwatch, and similar non-board issue technology items. Uh students are permitted to bring such devices to school. However, these items must remain off and in students backpack during school day. In the event of an emergency, the parent should call the main office. Uh the district sponsored overnight co-curricular trip. Uh on the changes we said if going to the overnight more details need to be submitted in advance. Any proposed district sponsored overnight co-curricular trip must be recommended by the superintendent of schools to the board of ed the board of education must approve all district sponsored overnight uh co-curricular trips before the date of the trip. uh for the AI acceptable use of uh generative artificial intelligence. We're still working on it and revising it. Uh teacher students
021actively engaged to determine when a AI can be used for assignments. AI being used will be vetted in advanced by district need to be approved to determine if AI is vetted. Learn platform can be requested with AI platforms to see if it is credible. teacher wants to use AI um not just for AI it needs to be approved by the learning platform and we also for the eligibility for P511 eligibility of resident non-resident students we revised it's going to be starting in July 2025 and for the only other revision was academic integrity we revised it um to change the name from plagiarism to academic integrity and that's pretty much our board. So, do we have any comments or questions that might rather? Yes. Dr. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Yes. Mr. Mr. Shaw. Yes. Mr. Mr.
022Yes. curriculum in there as curriculum met on May 2nd. Um Kathy Stler discussed the new Spanish textbooks that we talked about, AP Spanish textbook renewal and heritage Spanish speaker textbook approval. Uh the AP text recommendations updated version of the currently approved textbook Spanish program. Uh would like to update this textbook for a variety of reasons, but overall it's better aligned to the AP text. Uh there's discussion regarding costs of 2year versus six-year licenses for the online supplemental resources. uh the heritage speaker Spanish textbook. There are approximately 15 students testing into this course. These are native Spanish speakers who can use reinforcement of their reading and writing skills. Two-year license is recommended here as the district sees how discussion items we talked about. Scroll down. Uh Bridge High School summer meeting uh the final four student
023selected titles. Um, and these are all on the summer reading website that is linked in the moment. The measure by Earl Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, the Burdenburg, excuse me, Gordon Burgers by Sarah Miller and David and Goliath by Malvin Blackwell. There was some discussion of the reading titles and summaries and books are also linked. The summer reading website will launch on May 20th. So, scheduled for launch tomorrow. Okay. literature circle and read allowed titles for the sixth grade in language arts. Uh waiting on the text special textbooks from the vendors for review. There was discussion around the five titles. Copies will be available in the board of education office when they are received. Uh one book in the uh live different. It's about a new girl. It's meant to be a read aloud
024in class as opposed to the other titles which are independent literature circle readings. Uh these are for the fall. Next item discussed was school day PSATs. This is previously discussed in terms of current difficulties with the Saturday administration of the test. Administration is recommending bill 4. The date would be 10:22 which would be delayed opening for students not taking the test. Price will remain the same as last year. Total cost is $40. There is no cost to the district. Traditionally, the number of students taking the PSAT is around 4,500 students and this is for 10 through 11th grade. Makeups can be held anytime in October while with the past Saturday administration of the tax series. So, only choice to make a place. It does give students more options. Uh during the late opening, staff will
025not be not proctoring or participate in professional development. The pack will be available for students not taking the test when you arrive at school. The administration is also looking into the possibility of extra help options as well for these students to be able to take advantage of while the others are testing. talk about the district AI plan tools. Uh the draft version of the plan back from AI for education is still undergoing full review and we're currently piloting multiple AI tools. Dual enrollment course update finalizes improved courses with RBCC. This will be communicated to students and families in early June and students will be able to register for the course and submit the change in course request form in order to take the dual enrollment courses in the fall. We talked about goart goard excuse
026me recommending moving forward it's cost reduction and a security platform tutoring programs stepping a lot le discussion around the staff run after school intervention program paid for by grand it's been a successful program I expanded over the years 60 kids between rand for help this year very successive very few students refer to special services in light of uncertainty grant money and our budgetary challenges discussion is added to the pay program. We also discussed the tutor.com program district has been trial running also paid for by grant. This is a live online tutoring program that is very well regarded. This was targeted to struggling students. The district still has some extra hours on the contract. So this will now be open to all lambs and bridge students starting 5:00 just the district will monitor utilization to see
027if it's worth continuing this next year. There's several different options to continue. in one single most favorable is $3,500 a year with unlimited access for lambs and bridge high school including an AI tool and feedback on SAT ACT practice tests and tutor this is for all lambs and bridge high school students grand funding for both these programs is still unknown we had a discussion about budget uh budgetary uh reductions scheduling on scheduling KP 5 16 they're all working on scheduling the challenge has been the art schedules at each high There have been more requests for hard sections. There are spots available. There was discussion on when and how to prioritize student choice upper classman previously choice elected so on and so forth. Discussion about middle school music schedule scheduling and there's also discussion regarding some
028positions possibly being reconstituted due to potential retirements. And our next meeting will be on juices. Does anybody have any questions for Okay. that and there's a report of that as well. again on April 24th and we trends part one which under schools building administrators presented their character education, social, emotional and community building programs and activities based on the castle confidence data collected um from panorama surveys over the past year determine the specific focus for each school's character education efforts. School principles noted that the additional support provided by two shared guidance counselors has made a significant difference in improving school culture and climate. Detailed information regarding each student initiative is available wellness committee meeting minutes on the BOE website. We also had an update on a bridge phone free off and away pilot program. Dr. Lazik
029shared that both teaching staff and students seem to have responded favorably to the pilot. Dr. Lazik noted that there have been no HIV incidents involving social media since the phone pilot program began. Dr. recommendation is to continue the pilot through the rest of the year, continuing into effect during the 2526 school year. The next promise committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 22nd. The agenda will focus on mental health trends at William Academy and Rich High School. The committee will also review districtwide data at the May 22nd meeting. Links to all presentations, including those from the elementary schools, will be included in May. Anybody have any questions for Janice? Facilities operations. There's no report, right? Any less municipal Alliance. Uh just a reminder, uh Sunday, June 1st, 2015, uh race. A lot of fun. So,
030please come out, run the 5K. Please be [Music] um I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Okay. So, uh I was just kind of uh looking around and in light of the number of folks here, uh we we have planned a a little presentation of the draft strategic plan which um I will be doing with slides here momentarily. Um, we had planned to kind of do our usual thing with groups around tables, but given the, uh, intimate setting, uh, I think perhaps we'll go through the slide deck and ask people to share their feedback just during public comment. You guys, I think that sounds reasonable given the numbers. Yeah. Okay. So, we'll do it that way. Um, and with that, I would just ask board members to go up here. Sean is actually going
031to grab the hard copies of the strategic plan draft that we have on the tables back there. He's going to bring them up to you guys so you don't have to get up and give you a hard copy. Uh and then you can follow along while I'm showing slides. Board members already have a copy. [Music] Go. That's a nice [Music] Oh, no. Anybody over here? One more. Okay. So, everybody has a hard copy, right? Small groups copy. Um I'll just navigate through a little bit easier, but um so I wanted to start just by um you know highlighting um the fact that this is a draft. So I'm looking for folks feedback tonight. Um we had a strategic plan. Um, if you want to flip through to um, page three, I just want to start
032by acknowledging the fact that when we work on these documents, we do quite a bit with a lot of different folks and really at the core are our staff, our board members, and our families providing input. So, I just wanted to take a minute and and let you know that I'd appreciate it if you signed in because the fact that you came tonight with the intention of looking at this and giving some feedback. We all really appreciate that, meaning myself, the board, the staff. So, um I know we have a few staff members that came to give some input. I appreciate you guys coming and we have some parents and I really appreciate you guys coming as well because at the end of the day, everybody's input's important. We really appreciate it. So, I always
033try to put some acknowledgements at the beginning of the strategic plan. If you signed in, I will have your name. I will include it if you're not already listed somewhere on those few pages of acknowledging staff members, uh, parents, board members, um, and even students that might have contributed to help us come up with our content for the strategic plan. So um just as a little bit of background we um we want to include of course our mission statement and our belief statement but in terms of the the sequence of events. If you take a look on page six I tried to give a little bit of the history of what's gone on to get us to the point where we have this graph. Okay. And for starters, we began in the spring of 2024
034with a thought exchange. And that was really a broad statement where we asked people, hey, what do you think we're doing well? What do you think we could do better with? And and so that was kind of nice because it allowed us to have a a clean slate to hear what people thought. And when we use the thought exchange software, we tried that as a new way of allowing people to not necessarily have to repeat the same thought, but if they read something that they agreed with, they give it kind of a rating like, hey, that's a really good thought, or no, I don't really agree with that. And what's nice about that is it sort of gives you a sentiment of where the majority of agreement might fall. So, we use the software to
035help us identify some areas that people seem most interested in. Following that, at the end of 2024 in the fall, we ran another uh thought exchange survey this time. And in that one, folks were able to give us more feedback and they were able to give us some ratings about all the different types of programs that we brought. For example, what do you think about the food service? What do you think about the transportation? Right? What do you think about the new school start times? Right? So, we were able to collect information that way as well. and get feedback on the last strategic plan which was through 2024. Okay. So once we had that we we took a look at um running some specific thought exchanges on four strengths. We used the first two surveys
036and our old strategic plan and we came up with the strengths that you see listed at the bottom of page six and going on to page seven. Okay. And you'll see that not surprisingly, people have certain areas where they would like to see us focus. We're a public school district. People care about education here. So, academics and our academic program is obviously an area of major focus. In addition to that, people want their kids probably to get a great education in a place that they're happy, right? that they're engaged, that they have connections with staff and other kids. So that became the second strand. Our third strand was to recognize that a great program for our students also involves staff that are happy and engaged too, right? So staff wellness, their professional development, knowing that
037they matter and they're really important to the process is a big key and that's another one of our strengths. Finally, you have all of the stuff that kind of goes on behind the scenes that um where's Mr. Bo? Right, the puppet master with the food service, the transportation, right? Managing the budget, right? Trying to be operationally efficient, right? Running the facilities team, right? Working with Mr. bevers on all of our IT infrastructure, all of those things that go on behind the scenes so that what happens in the classroom can happen, right? So, not surprisingly, the public, which is a very smart public, they recognize what's important for a good school. So, those things kind of come through in the two surveys that we did and therefore there we agree should be our areas of focus
038going forward. So the next thing we did was we said, "Okay, given these four strands, we'll do one more round to see if anybody wants to zero in on some more specific thoughts." So we set up four more exchanges, specifically asking about those four areas just to kind of give people another bite of the apple in case they hadn't already gotten their ideas across with some of the other surveys. So we had kind of three bites at the apple. Tell us what's important. Tell us what's important. Tell us what's important. Okay. And and you get a lot of common themes. You can imagine if you ask three times, you get less and less response by the third time. But you do see uh some commonalities there. Okay. So, taking all of that, we said, okay,
039now let's talk with anybody that wants to talk in person. We tried some uh virtual meetings which we set up in the first week of April. We had a Google Meet session one day for the first strand, the second strand, the third strand, the fourth strand. And we offered opportunities for people to give us some feedback there, thanking the team standing behind you there. They each led one of those Google meets. Sean has been leading the uh staff wellness and professional development. Chris has been handling the academics. Jim, the operations, and I worked with uh Stephanie Smith to run the session about uh student wellness. So more data gatherings, right? Trying to identify what everyone's priorities were getting us to uh our strength, which I kind of uh explained a little bit on page eight
040with just a simple kind of explanation. Well, what are these four strands? Can you elaborate a little bit? And they're pretty self-explanatory. And I think you'd see that on page eight. Now what I think is worth noting is some context, right? Those four strands, I think they make sense. They're not too hard to define, but going forward, we have context and history in our district that I think is relevant as we think about where we're headed over the next five years. So, I tried to think of as many of those things as I could and kind of bullet them so that people could think about, hey, what's been going on recently that has some bearing on where we are going forward, right? So, I tried to list as many of those things as I could.
041Talk about mention the fact that the last strategic plan um had the hiccup of the pandemic involved in it. We've had new research and new information coming to us in the last five years that did that we didn't have when we did the last strategic plan specifically things related to technology smartphones the impact of those things um now we have more technological growth artificial intelligence and I say GI because I can't say the word generate without messing it up so generative artificial intelligence Right? We've got that on happening now and you know going forward, right? Um the inflation that the country has seen in the last few years, our enrollment trend, where it's declined, how it's leveled off. Um federal aid, what's the picture going on there? We're still we're still kind of hashing that
042out. Is there going to be any changes to that? the reductions that we made for next year's budget in terms of our staffing. Uh what's going on with affordable housing? Still some questions being answered there. When might we see any change related to enrollment as it might be connected to affordable housing? Um the fact that the district's long-term debt will be paid off in the 203031 school year. Our recent facility audit that uh Mr. Wall had done for the district identifying dare I even say 30 million or more in work. Right. The bottom line is it's a really big district. It has a lot of old buildings and it's expensive to try to keep up with everything that's going on. Uh our capital and maintenance reserves, how we uh hope to use that to help
043address some of that $30 million. uh what's going on recently with our investment in school security. Obviously, school security has been a huge thing over the last several years uh and districts have been investing more and more in maintaining safe schools and having the staff to do it, but that comes at a cost. Um and finally, as I mentioned earlier, are we going to see any changes at the federal level that could affect this? All right, so I think that's some of the context. I'm sure you can think of other context that uh comes to mind, but that's some of it. Okay. So, where do we stand in terms of the different strands um and and what what is our focus going to be based on the feedback that we have? Okay. Well, obviously this
044is our work, right? This is a neverending process whether a district has a strategic plan or not. and certainly hope that they're constantly working on reflecting on their academic programs and trying to make them strong, right? Looking at their outcomes and saying, "How can we make things better?" Right? And we're no different. These are some of the things that we have identified as activities that are probably already happening in some stage or another or we anticipate wanting to work on that over the next five years. Okay. So I'll just pause for a minute and let everybody take a minute to read and think because remember what we'll do as we wrap up later in the meeting is we'll ask you to share your thoughts. So take a minute for the first So as we work
045on academics obviously we we like to have feedback feedback loops on how things are going, right? We like to have some data that we're able to look at. We try to have annual reports that we do cyclally to try to show folks how things are going, right? We look at grade distribution, right? Local assessment and report cards, right? We look at standardized test results. We look at the postsecary report. We look at SAT scores and ACT scores, right? We look at the state testing regimen. We look at math scores. we look at screening screener scores. So, we have a lot of data that we're able to use to reflect on academic programs and it's also really helpful in our response to intervention plans because when we're working with individual kids, you want to be able
046to see data about individual students and are they responding to any intervention that you are applying to try to help them grow and progress. Right? So, it's important as we think about our academic programs, what is our data loop? How good is our data loop? Can we get any better at looking at our data? That's something that we've been putting a lot of energy into. I have to really thank Kristen. She's been doing a lot of work this school year looking at various ways with her um supervisors. I know Grant's been really helpful uh and and looking at is there any better way to organize some of the data that we are already collecting so that we can analyze it more easily. So, we're looking at some softwares um to help us do that. We
047started to do that even with some of our uh SEAL survey data and we started to give surveys over the last year and a half uh using panorama so that we could organize student feedback on wellness and how things are going in the culture and climate sense. So collecting the data not only on the academics but also on sort of more of the softer skills and experiences that the kids are having in the district is another um big issue for us that connects really to that second goal. Um so I'll give you a minute to take a look at those uh things that we've been working on with student wellness and safety. And they start on page uh 13. One one of the things that I really liked when I was looking at some of
048the data and by the way I forgot to mention um when we we get the final plan posted you might have noticed it's probably hard to see where I put together the timeline um starting on page six. I know some of you don't have the color printouts, but you can see where it says click here. Uh all of those are hyperlinks so that if you're interested, you could actually drill into um the data that we got out of the surveys and the exchanges just if you were curious like why what are they talking about, right? That data I linked it right here so you can jump if you want to look at some of those thought exchange results. Um and every every single one of those thought exchange sur I I hyperl in there you're
049curious about. Sorry, I forgot to mention that. But one of the things I really liked when looking at that data was um you know the value that people put in connectedness and relationships and it was really great to see because of the technological world we're in. It's really nice to see that people value the experience of being together um as human beings and interacting like this and having a conversation. So, um, you know, looking for ways to connect kids to teachers, to connect kids, uh, to programs and schools to give them that sense of wellness because they're together. They're doing something that's related to their school and it gives them another reason to want to go to school, right? I mean, we probably can all remember something about school that drew us to wanting to
050go. Um, thank God for soccer. I don't know if my son ever would have finished high school if it wasn't for that. So, everybody needs something, right? Um all right so uh that I think was a really great uh area where I'm looking forward to working on that piece. Um the third strand is mostly related to professional development and some of the areas where we see um the biggest need. And obviously as things change that kind of directs a lot of where we're trying to uh develop with the staff and create time to help them with what's new and confronting them nonstop. Uh and when it comes to technology, that can be a big challenge to try to keep up. uh and you know they're often doing a lot of work of their own to
051their credit to try to keep up. Uh so one of our objectives no surprise is to try to figure out what's the best scenario with regard to AI for everyone staff students and parents and do some work with the staff in that area. Mr. Side has a bunch of ideas for working on the staff college program to try to make it more efficient as well. Okay, finally we get to uh the last topic which there's been a lot of uh discussion obviously in the last several months because when you think about your facilities and your operations running your budget is certainly not lost uh on folks in this area and so that's why I was one of the reasons why I was trying to put some of those contextual ual aspects into this document so
052people can kind of understand some of what's going on that might affect us financially. And we've certainly seen the impact of what's going on around the country around the state of New Jersey when it comes to our operations and funding our operations in particular. So I wanted to kind of highlight in here as Jim and I put together some bullets for what we want to focus on uh in certainly the near future. um some ways that we can help try to uh maximize efficiency, right? The constant reviewing to try to find the ways to be as efficient as possible. So using zerobased budgeting, that's not a new thing. Zero based budgeting is not a new thing, but it really forces you to try to look every year for what you need in your budget. Looking
053at alternative sources of funding, that's not new either. Uh although one of the topics that's come up in in the in the last few months is parent fundraising. People have asked questions about that. I've gotten emails about that. Apparently, there's a group of folks that are wondering if they can't start up an education foundation to help provide resources. What kinds of resources can they provide? Should they provide? Um, and if uh they do get organized, I've offered to meet with them. I know the board would be interested in talking to them if somebody wants to get a foundation started. So, we would certainly work with them on that. But then you have to kind of figure out, you know, what's an appropriate use of those resources to get the foundation get started. Um the other
054piece here is what's called separate proposals. Um you may have heard of this, but essentially it's like a referendum as it relates to funding for school budgets and the tax base. Um the way taxes fund um public schools in New Jersey obviously is one of the main sources, right? You have federal aid, you have state aid, you have some grants, and in many uh many districts, a large portion of the budget is focused. It's funed by local property taxes. And raising those property taxes can obviously provide more funding, but guess what that means? I never particularly popular. So, um you know, that's something that we looked at and I know there are questions if we wanted to consider that, how does that work? So, um, the law has changed significantly, not only going back to
055201011 when many school districts started to get away from the annual school budget election that many of you might remember back in the April election days, right? But the law has also changed since then. Even in the last couple years, there's been some other changes about, well, if you do want to vote, have more taxes, if you choose to do that, how does that work? that's changed a lot in the last couple years. So, we're researching exactly how that works, looking at examples of other districts just to advise and make sure the public and the board is aware of that if that's something that uh comes up in the future that they want to consider. We've got a lot of state approved rod grants that we need to follow up on. Those are connected to
056our long range facility plan. So, we have to make sure we keep our long range facility plan up to date. Um, we started triple tiering buses right this year. So, we want to kind of revisit that. Are there any further efficiencies that we could squeeze a little bit of savings out of there? I I mean, I'm thrilled with the way that that it has saved a ton of money. Um, you know, I have to I really have to thank Jim and and really everybody for being willing to to give this a go and and adjust their lives a little bit and make it work. And and honestly, it's really worked, but It's a tribute to everybody for for making it work, right? We all adjusted. I say we all, all of you, the teachers, everybody
057adjusted. We got the buses to work. It was a little bumpy the first, you know, month or two getting everybody into that routine, but honestly, it's really been great. I have to thank everybody for making that work cuz that was a big help for our budget. And really, it takes money every year that we're using compared to what we learn. So, um, that's like a huge kudos to to the whole school community for making that. Um, but we'll see if there's any way to tighten it up. Um, miscellaneous revenue, tuition revenue. Um, looking at our programs, are there any places we can get a little bit more revenue there? Um, you know, Mr. Roll has been doing a great job with our, uh, maintenance staff. I think um a lot of our folks that are
058in our buildings every day have noticed and given us a lot of feedback that by starting to transition to um maintenance staff doing repairs around on the buildings that are direct employees of the board um we have been able to start specializing hiring um people that are qualified plumbers, painters, things like that to get things done more efficiently and and cheaper than bringing in outside vendors. So, that's been great and he's been um getting that team fully staffed effective July 1st to have all in-house maintenance staff. Uh and I think that's going to be a big win going forward and helping us with our budget and also just having better results on a day-to-day basis and more timely. You know, you don't have to necessarily wait for a vendor to come in and do something.
059Uh so, that's been excellent. And then obviously trying to leverage shared services whenever possible. So um that's kind of the the framework. It's a framework. There's there's lots of details that can be filled in. Um but that's kind of where I see us heading in in our emphasis what I would recommend at least. And um as far as next steps, obviously I want to hear feedback from the board, what people think, and we want to kind of hone in, right? We'll refine this, get this document finalized, and then use that um larger five-year context to zero in on some specific goals um as district goals. Right? You have the the large context of sort of a long range outlook of initiatives that you work on. Then you sort of have the more immediate what what's
060the focus for next year and we want to make sure that the district goals support achieving this long-term vision. So want to zero in on some goals. We usually get those worked out you know between now and September. So goals. So with that we could have board members come up. share your thoughts and then we will open it up for public. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks for being flexible since we need a big crowd thing. Hopefully this was good and everybody got a souvenir, a hard copy of the dress. Come on. [Music] Okay. Um, I'm going to start by saying if there's any board members who want to give any feedback. When we were just sitting there, Jen pointed to one of the items on which was it? Uh, strand two. I circle. It says
061implement more smartphone friendly communication systems for students, parents, and staff. Now, I I understand what you're talking about, but when I first saw it, I was like, "Wait, we just got rid of the phones. Why are you just talking about I think what you're talking about and you can correct me is making certain things that you send out be able to be read on your phone. I thought the same thing when I was reading it. I'm like, "Oh, I got to rewrite that." Anybody else? I'll just start I'll just start with a general comment that I thought the course are absolutely worth it. um starting with the academic program obviously that's what schools are and focusing on schools and each level right each level because we want to make our strong students even stronger our
062good average students uh stronger and our struggling students as much help as we can get so I thought that strand would be the number one strand whether it was intentional or not makes absolutely perfect sense the second strand of student wellness and safety. I I think obviously paramount, right? The their wellness, their safety is is as important. Our staff development, our teachers, we always talk about it, but I'm glad it's focused here and facilities operations along with the finances and the challenges we have. So, I thought the four strands were captured perfectly and um whoever thought of it, Nick, you and others, kudos to you guys. Anyone else? Yeah, I think um so you know it's sort of start. Okay. Um, we'll do the, you know, it's not agenda public, but start with if you
063have comments related to the signings all the way back and the microphone is right up here by the the slide. Hello. I'll sign in after. Um, Stacey Moni said friendly drive. Um, thank you for holding this meeting. I participated in the second strand uh parent group on wellness and one of the things I recall us talking about was commending Dr. for Lasc and all of you and anybody involved in getting rid of the cell phones in the high school. I feel like that was a huge step in the way of wellness. Um but in reading this, it just sounds well, thank you, Miss White, because I was thinking the same thing about the one that talks about smartphone friendly, but it does sound a little vague like and I'm assuming the the portion on smartphones
064is the third bullet point on clear policies. I was just wondering if you can elaborate on sort of the vague wording around that. I feel like it was pretty and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like in the surveys I've read um it's been very clear people want cell phones gone in the high school. That said, in the middle and elementary uh schools, I know there's an initiative wait to wait to hate, you know, like those are really important things as well. I mean, personally, I'd like to see it a little bit harder worded because I feel like wellness relates so um much to the cell phone use and our limitation of it is important. But thank you for all your work on that. Um oh, one other comment. I see that the measurement of
065progress is around doing surveys and some of the surveys I've read are great. Like I love the thought exchanges. I really feel like you get a great sense from people. you can see the full gamut, but you're always going to have this way and then that way. You'll never please everybody, I guess. Um, and I'm sure everybody knows that, but I guess be aware of overuse of survey as a means to measure wellness because you're not getting everything. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Small. Uh, hi Claus. First, I'd like to compliment the process in this and the way that you were open to and had mult chances to engage in the way that it was done. It was well supported by technology was was very open to uh getting input. I'm very impressed with the
066comment on the overall process. My um one request or kind of little addition I like to to see in this um reflects on actually the strength and the foundation of the school because when I read through this it's very much the little things on the edges that we're working on. Um I guess because so much stuff is going really well and I'm interested in uh smarter which you talked about the um the trends about put it so well. What is a great student at our district compared to New Jersey? For a average student, or a struggling student, I see that we're doing great things for all of them. You know, is stuff going in the right direction? Are we trending the right way? Our class size is trending in the right way. Um, you know,
067I kind of I've got my first kid going into high school. When I started the league and found out that like to be the top 10% of the class, like 50 kids are taking all AP and all honors and getting all straight A's. Every one of them would have been the valadictorian when I went to school here. Like holy smokes, right? That kind of gets into the wellness and sort of what's going on. Um but understanding a little bit of that and and seeing some of that foundation which you guys use to kind of make sure that we're still on track. Um I think would be great to make that available. Um you know the onepage summaries etc. It's fantastic but seeing a little bit more those statistics. Um, I think they're going to tell
068a good story. Um, and anywhere that there might be a bump in the road, I think that'll help folks. Anyone else? Hi Barbara Gary6. My comment I mean I think the strategic plan was well done as well but mine is along for teacher wellness and staff wellness. I recently became aware of a policy where um a club or team has to be within district for three years before we pay that individual working for the team or the activity a sip. Maybe it's unfair to expect teachers after a long day at school to then go after school and spend two to three hours coaching a team being in an activity for no pay. We can't expect them to do that and we need to find money in the budget for teachers not to be volunteered with
069our district. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Gary. Hi, Karen Cooper Mayflower Drive. Um, I also want to say I I want to echo that I think that this was done beautifully and I really love what you did here. Great. I'd love to continue in the future years. Um I want to highlight I think it's two things. Um the first one would be on strand two student wellness the review programming to ensure that instruction and executive functioning self-awareness self-management social awareness respon um relationship skills and anchor responsible decision making is in place. I think that is so important. Love that bullet. Um being on the PEC and the CPAC board, having a kid in special education in um special education and in study skills. Um I I can tell you how ex like fantastic that program
070is. I want it to even grow and be even more. Um and I think that all kids should have it. I know it's a option in sixth grade cycles and I know that cycles and whams have been cut and if we could possibly put that in so that all the kids could cycle through and get this executive functioning um it would just be really great and it leads me to my next point which is more of a concerning point. Strand one, academic programming improve student outcomes by ali aligning opportunities for students that match their needs, which is varied learning styles. I I that is very varied and I want to know if the twice exceptional student is in that category because I don't see that as a category in itself. I think we have a
071lot of 2E kids in this develop in this district. um struggling learners, middle learners, and advanced learners. So, I just with this being said and and highlighted, which is so important, um I just want to know how we're going to do that by cutting a supervisor out of special education and putting double the work on the now one's supervisor. So, I'm concerned around that because I think that that's that this bullet is extremely important. Um, so that's a two-part comment. Um, one is are we going to be looking into the twice exceptional kids that are in this district? There's tons of them. There's so many of them. And how are we going to honor them and meet them where they're at? And how are we going to do that with one supervisor? Thank you. Thank
072you, Mr. Are they any other public comments? Mr. Mer, do you want to address any? Okay. Well, uh, this was a draft, so I get a chance to come back with some other thoughts, uh, before we get this completely finalized. Um just looking at a couple of the notes. Obviously the um the smartphone friendly comment was about really the um the way that messaging goes out right now. It doesn't really lend itself well to reading on a smartphone and so many parents are getting messaging that way. Even like the SOS Express kind of hard to read on a smartphone. So trying to look at the way we push out information and seeing if there's a better way um to receive it. I really had parents more in mind than anyone else. Although, you know, a
073lot of our kids do get messaging on smartphones as well um for readability. Um it wasn't designed to say I want kids on smartphones more um because I don't. Um the study skills we are doing for all of the sixth graders in cycle class. Um you know we see it too as something that holds a lot of value for kids. So I think we can look to see if there's other ways to try to uh provide more of that. Um I I thought the comment Mr. Claus about like what are I almost heard as well can you share what the strengths are more. Um so I I appreciated that because I think it's nice to share the news as well. Um, so I could try to think about that in terms of how we present
074information to um, share the foundation of what goes on as really great. I I also think it would be a very positive story. Um, forgive me for always trying to be the fixer of what I see as let's work more on this, but you're right, there's a lot of positive things to celebrate. Um, uh, Mrs. exterior comment about the board's policy. It is a it is a policy design um I think to try to establish that something is is going to be used by the kids over time um before we decide to start paying for something. Although I know there have been times where um if something becomes a priority and the board wants to offer compensation they can. Um so we have some seen some things happen that way as well. um the challenge
075of identifying and meeting needs of twice exceptional students. I all I can say is yes that is a challenge um for us regardless of how many special education supervisors we may or may not have. I think that is a challenge. Um, the only other thing I I wanted to mention since my mic's on is um some good news. Speaking of good news, um while we can't yet share the details, um I think it's wonderful news that the board has reached a memorandum of agreement um with the uh teachers association, the Barers Township Education Association on a new 5-year contract. That's awesome news. um we have to hammer out um some more um fineries before we're totally there, but when we are, we'll certainly circle back and share more with the public. But for now, we
076can certainly share that. Does anyone have anything else, Robin? Um I just had a couple thoughts when people were talking about data. Um, I feel like when I was first on the board, we would have these long presentations of data at board meetings. Some of them are long. Um, and I feel like there's so much more data now and it's kind of buried in committee reports and it's in attachments and sometimes it's linked in the board of event agenda. Um, and there's so much more of it and it's so much easier to analyze than it was back in the day. And so I feel like um, people are almost on the one hand they have overload of data. They don't have time to look at it all but then they want to see the data.
077So I I do recognize the challenge of like finding it when you want it. Like you have a specific question and you want to know. Um I think there's also been kind of a trend, you know, away from putting too much emphasis on test scores, you know, with the whole thing testing. So people got very turned off of like too much focus on testing, too much focus on SAT scores, grades and stuff and the student stress involved in that. But then on the other hand, you do need data to measure progress and achievement. So it's kind of a weird thing. I feel like we don't look at the data at public meetings as much, but we have it. So, if anyone's looking for specific data, reach out and direct you to where it is. There's
078tons of it. Anyone else? Okay. I have a motion to journ. Yes. Thank you all for coming.