001good evening everyone hi um this is a regular session of the board of education the board has already met an executive session and we saluted the flag there so at this point we're going to have a roll call mr mclaughlin mr salmon here miss schaefer here mrs gray mrs gray i'm sorry i didn't hear my name yes ms singh what'd you say ms singh here mrs white yes here miss flight here mr khanna here miss hira here mr marcarion here miss fox here mrs mccoon here madam president thank you i'm just going to read the statement of public notice this is a regular meeting of the board of education of bernard's township notice of the time and place of this meeting was provided and copies of that resolution were forwarded to the official newspapers as
002designated by the board of education and to the township clerk and a copy of the notice was posted on the bulletin board of the board of education offices for those members of the public who are unable to attend our meeting in person there are two live stream links of the meeting posted through the district website www.burnersboe.com the two links are both airing our meeting one is just a backup of the other in case there's technical difficulty we very much welcome input from the public there are two times during regular meetings that the public is invited to speak one time is early in the meeting before the board votes when you may speak about any item that is listed on tonight's agenda towards the end of the meeting there is another public forum to address any
003matter of public concern related to the schools when you approach the microphone please state your name and address each statement made by a participant shall be limited to three minutes duration no participant may speak more than once during a given public comment session in order to run efficient meetings and to allow maximum opportunity for members of the public to speak the board reserves the right to set a different time limit for individual comments and or set an overall time limit for the public comment portions of the agenda all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer no participant may address or question board members individually as a courtesy to those individuals unable to attend our meetings in person public comment may also be made remotely through zoom interested individuals shall navigate to the district webpage
004www.vernersboe.com and select board of education followed by public comment to review the specific instructions or click on the link in this agenda public comments made in person will be processed first then comments via zoom no public comments will be accepted before 7 pm or after the last item board forum of the agenda begins please understand that public comment portions of our agendas are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board or administration will respond to public comments to the extent possible any board responses to public comments will generally be addressed during board forum or during committee reports however all comments are considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others
005when speaking comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students and employees please also understand that the board will not be responsible for the content of comments made by members of the public members of the public are cautioned that they are speaking at their own risk and any personally directed statements they make may subject them to legal liability of the effect to the affected individual if it is necessary for the board to go into executive session at the end of the meeting we will provide an estimated length of time for the session and whether any action is anticipated to be taken upon returning to the public session okay we're up
006to our student representative gordon thank you ms mccann and good evening everyone with ridge firmly stepping foot into the fourth marking period everyone is working tirelessly to ensure that the year concludes on the highest note possible beyond the academics and the grades the warmer weather has invigorated the spirit of the student body pushing everyone to take on initiatives that positively impact our school the ridge class student governments have all embraced the exciting spirit of prom season even the classes who are not attending a prom this year while the classes of 2022 and 2023 are deep in their real prom preparations the classes of 2024 and 2025 have all started fundraisers for their future prompts which is crucial for offsetting some of the very high costs associated with hosting such an event the entire student government
007is ready to offer help and assistance as needed and the student body fully supports these efforts and wishes them success the ridge computer science club hosted its first ever ridge hackathon ridge hacks on saturday april 9th over 70 students from around the state competed in teams to solve coding challenges learn new programming techniques and contribute to the vibrant computer programming community that new jersey is known for ridge once again showed our ability to use our resources and knowledge to uplift not just ourselves but our entire community facilitating teamwork and learning beyond our student body ridge thanks all of the sponsors teachers club members and participants for a very successful hackathon and congratulates the club for organizing such an amazing day of events the ridge student government is pleased to report our progress on our outreach
008initiatives with other schools in our district as outlined in our previous communication with ms mckeon on wednesday april 13th the school-wide student government officers and advisors will visit the four elementary schools and william and middle school to speak with each student government and exchange information and experiences we hope that this will establish a precedent for increased collaboration between schools and more opportunities for students to learn about student life as they progress through each stage of their education here in bernards township in the shorter term i hope to include information from these schools in my reports to all of you and possibly give willing students a chance to share the information with you themselves as bridge enters the last lap of the year we have every reason to believe that this school year will conclude very
009positively and go down in the records as one of recovery resilience and growth thank you gordon that's really exciting that you're going to be meeting with the younger kids and we really look forward to hearing what they have to say in addition to your wonderful reports does anyone have any questions for gordon no thank you so much yeah thank you so much absolutely um we're what we're trying to do is we're trying to see if we can get some of the william and middle school students to actually come and speak here for with all of you because at the end of the day i don't go to william and ultimately they can share what's happening at william and the best so our hope is that there will be willing students who will come do exactly
010what i'm doing here and share what's going on at william so all of you can hear beyond just what happens at ridge thank you okay i don't have any comments tonight except for i want to welcome all the staff members who are sitting out there and a personal thank you to many of you who have had my children in the last couple years kind of a scary amount of you so thank you for putting up with them and the board is going to come down there to watch the presentation look at that this one working all right i'm not supposed to sit down in the team you're in the just for the let me beginning thank you all right welcome everyone um it's my great pleasure to be here tonight to talk to you about
011this this subject a very important subject for all of us and for the district i'm extremely proud to be here with this amazing team to share uh the information the presentation with you from from their perspective but also to represent like the breadth and the depth of the work that's gone involved gone into you know the past couple of years in keeping keeping school going so a lot of that work is is represented up here but also beyond so the team that we'll be presenting tonight at different points include mr marcarian mr miziak he's a supervisor of science and technology mr colmer supervisor of mathematics mr chris chris swanson teacher at william and middle school mr alex blinder director of i.t can't see back there melanie dewey teacher at william middle school stephanie rogerio teacher
012at oak street elementary school chris carey teacher at liberty corner elementary school jennifer caltenbach teacher of ridge high school and jeff stellitano teacher at ridge high school so i told them they could sit down after i made them be introduced and then they can come up when it's their turn you want to stand there the whole time thank you so our goal this evening is to provide you with a fairly high level overview of the district technology plan the district instructional technology plan but we'll highlight some of the key aspects in greater depth the full report with this powerpoint and an executive summary will be posted to the website in the morning so the district instructional technology plan for 2022 has been developed in the same format as the program evaluations we typically conduct on
013a five-year cycle of all of our programs so therefore it's going to include background information on the district's most from the distance most recent technology plan and other recent history that comes into play we'll outline our vision for instructional technology coming out of the pandemic and moving us into the future we'll outline the current status of our program or what we call the state of the state and then we will review the four goals we have set for the district the technology plan has been in development really for the past two years as we also simultaneously navigated the technology needs of students and staff throughout the pandemic the people on this slide teachers and administrators have participated in some way shape or form or had their hand in the work we've done for the past
014two years um you know off and on as as the needs changed so i wanted to recognize them here it's taken a lot of work over the last two years for us to maintain continuity of instruction working through several iterations of school sometimes changing daily the team here tonight has been working collaboratively this year on the finalization of this plan and our vision for the future they also assisted us in the needs in the implementation of the student device initiative and the planning that went into that for the students and the staff the last presentation of the district technology committee was in november of and a lot has happened since then so let's take a look at how we got to where we are today so i start back in november of 2011 at that
015time technology was growing rapidly in school districts and many had adopted some version of a one-to-one initiative sometimes only in certain grades or subjects but most schools were exploring how to effectively integrate technology into instruction the technology committee had been exploring a device initiative and considering whether or not a ratio of one device per student was the direction we wanted to take the recommendation and decision at that time 2011 was to adopt a byot or bring your own technology initiative the full presentation is linked here if anybody wants to read it tomorrow but this recommendation was made for a few primary reasons first the cost per device at that time was 500 for each chromebook making it a fairly cost prohibitive initiative at that time it was also felt you know by the committee at
016that time that students were able to provide themselves with the more robust device than we would ever be able to provide them so that was the model we went with for the next several years although we supplemented byot with district devices that were hap devices that were housed on chromebook carts these were used by teachers in their classes so that when they were using technology those students who did not have their own device could use a district device carts were also used when all students need to be on the scene needed to be on the same device in order to access a particular resource or take an assessment digitally the district devices were also used during state testing the chromebook carts were shared across all six buildings throughout the test window this meant we had
017to spread testing out over several weeks to accommodate the sharing and additionally while we were doing i'm sorry but during state testing chromebook carts were not available to teachers and students because they were being used for testing so the district technology committee continued to work on meeting the needs of students and staff and they prepared and adopted the most recent technology plan in june of 2016. in this plan the committee continued to advocate for the expansion of our chromebook fleet in order to meet the ever expanding needs of students and staff some of the realities of byot were limiting instructionally and did not provide our students with equitable access to technology for example the use of technology was dependent on either all students having a device of their own that they could use or the
018availability of a chromebook cart through the work of this comm that committee the district tech committee a tech steering committee was formed in 2016 and they formally investigated a one-to-one initiative again that committee consisting of teachers administrators and school board members visited other schools that had a one-to-one device plan to see it in action and they visited some of our classrooms to see demonstrations by teachers who were using technology to meaningfully enhance instruction at that time again the decision was made not to expand our fleet to a one student per device ratio but to maintain our byot practice while also maintaining our current fleet which at that time was approximately two devices two students for every one device in 2019 the district adopted the strategic plan this plan i think is noteworthy here for a
019few reasons when you read this strategic plan you will not find any specific goals or sub goals related to directly related to expanding our fleet of chromebooks and this i think is for a couple of reasons first of all the district had committed on two occasions to maintaining byot but the strategic plan which is the vision developed by the community in 2019 is the basis for the for our work for the next couple of years as we continue to implement the strategic plan in that way everything in this plan this plan tonight the technology plan needs to support what was outlined in the strategic plan as well i would also argue that while there is no explicit goal to expand our devices here each of the goals in the strategic plan relies on technology in
020some capacity technology is an integral part of the work we do both behind the scenes and with students in fact technology really permeates all of our lives and as such is fundamentally related to all of the work we do in march of 2020 everything changed we were thrust into pandemic teaching that we thought would be short-lived and temporary but which really has not even ended today not completely in truth we were not prepared we were not as prepared as districts who already had a one-to-one model we spent those early days and weeks distributing devices to those in need we were unable to distribute them to all students due to our two to one ratio so many students shared devices in the spring of 2020. this worked because we employed an asynchronous model of instruction but
021in truth we had really no other choice because every student didn't have their own device throughout 20 20 21 we increased our device fleet utilizing federal funding so that as we implemented hybrid but synchronous instruction we were able to provide more devices to students in need as we started to come out of pandemic teaching or so we thought the district set this goal to enhance the district's ability to respond to necessary school closures through the development of blended learning programs and an updated long-range technology plan and again utilizing federal funding we were able to make additional chromebook purchases that expanded our fleet to the current total of 4 900 chromebooks with a ratio of one device per student in grades 3 through 12 expanding access in grades k through 2 so that we have 15
022devices in each classroom as we implemented the device initiative throughout this current year we have continued to work as a committee to develop our plan of action and that is the plan we're presenting to you tonight so this technology plan supports our existing district mission and philosophy but it also builds upon it to embrace the positive aspects of what remote crisis teaching taught us believe it or not there were some good lessons it taught us the importance of being ready for an emergency for one it taught us the value of having staff and students develop the skills necessary to pivot if needed it taught us how instruction can be different in other positive ways as well for example it can provide students with opportunities to be more independent and creative when utilized appropriately our students
023are digital natives and that can be capital applies capitalized upon to move us fully into the 21st century this doesn't mean we want students on devices all day or every day but it does recognize that this is the world our students inhabit and our staff for that matter and if our instructional program does not resemble the world people live in then i would argue that we're not really preparing students to enter a world dominated by technology our plan supports our mission by providing students and teachers with fluid access to technology this is the important part in the previous model teachers and students had to use technology when they could sign up for it when they could sign up for a cart not when it fit the instruction or the needs of student learning we try
024to minimize the number of arbitrary decisions we make in education and using technology in class on the second tuesday of next month because that's when i was able to sign up a cart is an arbitrary constraint on teacher planning that does not allow them to maximize its use to best support student learning our vision is for this fluid access to be utilized to maximize student potential and lifelong learning through equity differentiation active engagement and learning and independence these things will help us prepare students to become contributing members of the 21st century society of digital citizens who embody these skills creativity collaboration critical thinking these are the skills the workforce is looking for and what colleges are looking for so we should be preparing students for that as well that last bullet is very important as
025well we don't want to lose sight of the role that empathy and responsibility has in the work we do we we can teach students how to utilize technology without forgetting about the importance of these traits and we can build them into the work students do we feel it's important to identify what this vision also means for teachers and for parents many teachers are highly skilled in this area already and if they weren't before the pandemic many are now many however will require will still require training and support in achieving the goals of this plan we are committed to working to identify appropriate training and pd opportunities professional development opportunities while also working to foster an appropriate infusion of technology into instruction this does not again doesn't mean we want students always using technology but it
026does mean we feel it's our responsibility to help our students become responsible users of technology and develop great appropriate skills that will navigate help them navigate this ever-changing world similarly we believe it's important to partner with parents in making the most meaningful use of technology mr blinder thank you miss fox good evening let's take a look at the i.t staffing so at the district level we have four it members we have student information system manager takes care of genesis we have a network administrator and we have two systems administrators at the high school level we have a high school technician and then we have a i.t specialist taking care of the high school students supporting students and staff at the middle school we have one it specialist and at the four elementary schools we have
027two it technicians so they're shared we have a technician taking care of liberty corner and oak street and then we have another technician taking care of mount prospect and cedar hill our district operational systems include genesis student information system we have frontline and schoolfi we use that in human resources we have cdk that's used by our business office financial software google suite is used by our teachers and staff and students and school messenger is relatively new we use that for emergency notifications and communication on the right side we have hardware listed so we support 4 900 student chromebooks every teacher is issued a windows device so we support lenovo windows devices we have eight supplemental chromebook carts we have eight computer labs 204 document cameras as well as 331 yeti microphones those were added in
028response to the pandemic and remote learning just in the last two years we have the laser printers we have classroom projectors in every classroom and we provide interactive pens to the teachers we have over 48 of district approved apps for education and supplemental supplies such as hdmi cables and usb cables total over 7000 pieces of different hardware that we support as a department as far as software we have purchased and free instructional software so this is not business software this is specifically software that's used by instruction on the left side as an example discovery education service that's an example of a purchase software on the right side we have free software such as clever google classroom for example and quiz and now to mr miziak thank you mr blinder and good evening everyone as mr
029blinder just said i am mr missy ack i'm the district science and technology supervisor the committee reviewed other districts from somerset county as well as comparable districts from around the state a total of 28 districts were reviewed at length and there are some key takeaways that impacted all the recommendations and goals for this committee the commonality across most of the districts that we explored produced the following chromebooks were the prevailing platform that we found in districts implementing a one-to-one district-owned student device initiative in some cases districts that had previously used another platform back when the steering committee had done its research have since switched over to a chromebook model touch screens were an apparent driving force at the lower grade bands in device selection you'll see that with touch book touch screen chromebooks as well
030as the use of ipads for some districts the microsoft off surface excuse me is also a touchscreen capable device one of the big ones was that districts abandoned their bring your own technology or byot initiatives upon implementation of a district-owned one-to-one device initiative and most of the districts explored some type of classroom management software to support their district-owned devices i now want to hand things back over to mr blinder who will introduce our goals at length thank you so we have four goals to talk about this evening our goal number one is to meet the operational and instructional needs of the district while maximizing resources including budget and personnel in order to increase efficiencies and improve student outcomes so year one we would like to upgrade our wireless infrastructure which means replacing access points right
031now they're end of life and so we need to start replacing them in the summer of 2022. end of life means that the vendor will no longer provide support and security updates so it's really important that we replace them we would like to replace teachers devices this specific model tp13 and the other model yoga 260 they're older devices that should be replaced our vendor our server vendor dell recently notified us that the servers that we are using will soon be end of life as well so we have to replace the servers and we're looking at year two at the server replacement project we want to take a look at the district printing plan and consider opportunities to become increasingly green and the microsoft operating system right now we use windows 10 so in the next
032few years starting probably with year two and year three we would like to upgrade teachers and desktop devices to windows 11 to make sure that we're on a currently supported platform and last but not least we would like to hire an i.t specialist in the i.t department and that position will focus on supporting district technology integration and security so if you can't tell by the transition back and forth mr blinder does the infrastructure side of our technology whereas i have the instructional component and the classroom support so stemming from this the committee has a few recommendations for policy updates and procedural goals that impact the instructional component in sticking with the keywords that ms fox noted earlier we want to continue to provide fluid access to enhance instruction in ways previously unobtainable in a lack
033of a one-to-one environment the elimination of byo2 at ridge is a high priority for the committee the research the committee uncovered other districts that implemented a one-to-one owned device could excuse me cited multiple reasons in support of the need to eliminate their byot practice those reasons included privately owned devices posing a greater network security risk and more easily bypassing firewalls and other safeguards students could install games and apps on the private devices which could be disruptive to the instructional process and school operations districts have very limited control to prevent or mitigate these types of prohibited misuse additionally there is an exponentially greater logistical burden that accompanies a byot policy district staff cannot service or troubleshoot personal devices and it is impossible to make sure that private devices are updated to current operating systems and that
034resources purchased by the district will function properly on such a device variation in the types of private device platforms also create learning inequities for students that in turn create access burdens for the district exploring the device needs at k2 is also a consideration and we're looking at possibility of increasing the k2 fleet these devices will continue to remain in the classroom barring the activation of any type of emergency plan as was noted a few slides back most of the one-to-one districts that were utilizing district-owned devices have implemented some type of classroom management system district teachers who have worked on this committee for the past several months will be speaking more about this need later in this presentation now the transition to goal 2 i'd like to introduce our math supervisor mr grant colmer thank you
035mr miziac it's my pleasure to be here tonight uh presenting the next two goals i get the fun goals that's focused on curriculum and instruction no offense to goal one or goal four no problem um so with the implementation of the student device initiative and the ever increasing prevalence of technology within our lives uh this goal centers around how uh technology pertains to the curriculum instructional practices within the the classroom setting so the goal is to build a digitally rich learning experience for students that focuses on a robust culture of appropriate technology use and the goal strengthens the importance of our students being technologically and digitally literate it also coincides with the updated 2020 new jersey student learning standards for computer systems and design thinking which require districts to think about how to import implement
036these important goals and concepts infused throughout this district and within our program it's also recognized that the building of a robust culture of technology use should also align with our efforts in promoting a healthy balance of social and emotional needs of our students and staff this includes an integration of appropriate components of wellness and empathy throughout the curriculum particularly as it relates to the integration of technology so the following recommendations have been made to support this goal the first is the development of a btsd technology instruction scope and sequence this scope and sequence will provide a framework for how what who and when the necessary technology skills are infused throughout the different grade levels k through 12. we've already started a detailed process of the scope and sequence throughout our k through five and an
037example of one grade level is shown on the next slide so the team is still developing and looking forward to continuing this work at the secondary levels in the future so one of the outcomes of these of the scope and sequence though is the standardization of the digital literacy and citizen modules or lessons which we are part of the development process and ongoing throughout the district whether it be in let's say a student generated education classroom uh or within the quest special k through five or morning meetings with william annan or grade level meetings within ridge high school these modules or lessons are set to reinforce the responsible use policy highlight social emotional aspects of digital learning and also understand the importance of a student's digital footprint the goal then aims to standardize the development
038and implementation to the extent possible these modules provide throughout the district it also may include developing consistent common language or cohesive messaging as it pertains to a responsible use policy so just one example of the scope and sequence this is of grade two and on the left are just some of the specific technology skills students should be practicing maintaining or developing at a particular grade level some of these skills are addressing specific new jersey student learning standards while others are addressing specific technology skills which are previously taught in either the technology special k5 are now infused into the quest special or the general education classroom so as you can see maybe if you're way far in the back some of those skills include like chromebook care or how to be a good digital citizen keyboarding
039some internet basics uh how to interface with our student learning management system like seesaw or google classroom in the upper grades you know logins is particularly uh uh troublesome for our younger learners and so we we want to teach some of these skills within and fuse them within the classroom so the scope and sequence aims to delineate just what skills are being developed maintained or mastered at each grade level who is the primary responsible party for the direct instruction of those skills and examples of how these skills can where it is appropriate infuse within the educational setting so for example these eight subsets will skills that are shown are common throughout k through two at least in our young learners here however highlighted in bold as you can see probably on the digital citizenship are
040the new concepts students will be introduced at each grade level so while everything is not bolded our skills that are either maintained from previous grade levels and this provides clarity in helping all interested parties understand where students have been and the new learnings which are specific to a particular grade level the development is still ongoing but we have started the conversations with grade level teams at k5 and we're looking forward to tackling in 6-12 in the future but the nature of the cycle or elective courses within the secondary level presents some challenges to overcome that's more complex though there's a tremendous amount of work that's already been put into this and i would be remiss if i didn't think those that were involved in the process so with all the instructional shifts that we hope
041to implement the third goal centers around all the supports we can put into place to assist teachers and students in bringing the technology vision to life that is goal number three and it states to provide appropriate teacher training to support the meaningful integration of technology into the instruction the committee uh has made a number of recommendations to look at at various mechanisms we have provided teachers for training to uh as uh and opportunities to provide this training such as staff colleges or new teacher orientation but when they are most meaningful and needed going beyond just the training of teachers how to use various types of technology the committee supports and you can see up here it's called the samar model and that is to infuse technology within the classroom setting and we've already begun the
042work to introduce this model to classroom teachers the goal is to empower teachers to make solid instructional decisions about when and how to integrate technology and not just for the sake of using technology the model also promotes a way to find perhaps the best fit for technology by considering either supplanting supplementing augmenting modifying or redefining lessons within the classroom s-a-y-m-r samar right depending on what the goal the learning goals of a particular lesson substitution might be the most effective approach but also as teachers and students become more comfortable with technology skills they will be able to integrate in increasingly sophisticated ways so this work developing teacher and student skills and providing rich curriculum we support the vision of this plan the committee also feels though that teachers in the district would greatly benefit if we
043were to increase the number of instructional coaches we have throughout the district and not only would more teachers benefit from the tremendous amount of work that those coaches do already but we believe some more targeted job responsibilities around providing technology support by at least one of the coaches supports this vision and finally much can be done to ensure that staff are aware of all the accessibility features available in many of the programs the district has invested in and that they are providing to the students who need them so a couple of examples such as text to speech or speaks speech to text are some really important ones that we can already infuse within our classroom and we want to make sure all teachers can access or implement these resources in the classroom in order to
044help our students who need them the most and so with that i will turn it back over to miss fox to explain goal number four thank you mr colmer our fourth and final goal is focused on the important work of communication and collaboration the implementation of any changes in our curriculum and our pedagogy including the implementation of the student device initiative requires us to be reflective and thoughtful about what's working and what's not working we will seek the input of the teachers the students and the community as we implement the plan period on appear periodically throughout the uh three years of the plan and that feedback can be used in a number of ways primarily leading to professional training or curriculum work another area of focus was in making sure we are properly communicating all
045of the resources and tools that are available for teachers students and parents this work began last summer with this committee with the implementation of the btsd staff resources hub and the parent student technology center these communication hubs will provide updated tutorials and troubleshooting help for all stakeholders and through this plan we commit to maintaining these hubs while also educating parents students and staff about using them parents and students can find this technology help center on the district website on the front front page bottom left and on each building's website and it'll take you to this page pictured here at the bottom finally our plans to upgrade the district website began pre-pandemic when put on hold during the pandemic we plan to launch the updated website later this year and the goal is to make it
046easier to navigate and help and continually upgrade the content so that people can find the resources that we provide so mr miziak reviewed several components of goal one including the implementation of the student device initiative as part of the work that began when the board approved the one-to-one initiative in june of 2021 this committee was integral in working out the many details that needed to be in place at the beginning of the school year for example the need for having chargers available updating the responsible use policies developing digital citizenship modules for students across all grades this committee was indispensable to us in making this come together in such a short amount of time the committee also recommended the investigation and implementation of classroom management software even before the pandemic but especially coming through the pandemic
047and into a one-to-one student device environment the teachers on the committee and beyond have strongly urged us to support their request to supplement all of the resources we have acquired and put in place in order to provide our students with an engaging 21st century learning experience with the tool that will help them to better manage the classroom environment and make the most of the instructional time that they have the committee began investigating different softwares that provide a variety of different features that we may or may not want to take advantage of i have a team of teachers here tonight already introduced to talk to you about where this recommendation is coming from and our hope as a district for how it will help us build upon the vision set out in this plan consider the
048wii's instruction benefits from the integration of technology in their examples some of them listed here on the screen and listen to the ways the teachers describe how the classroom management software will support their ability to fully utilize these tools and support student learning we're going to start and begin with mr swanson science teacher at william and middle school thank you miss fox uh hello again glad to be back as ms fox mentioned before i am chris swanson i'm a sixth grade science teacher at william and i've been here before it was almost exactly three years ago that i had the honor of speaking to the board and at that time i was just talking about the fun and exciting things that we were doing in sixth grade science i talked about using the design process
049to build solar cars i talked about using augmented reality to bring characters into a potions lab and make a potions lab come to life and i wrapped up by modeling how near pod enabled teachers to engage every student and provide the shy introverted middle schoolers a voice in our class 15 minutes that was it spoke about how teachers and all the things we were doing to make using digital instructions and technology come to life a year later pandemic hits everything changes as an organization we evolve new ways to deliver instruction and engage students all of us teachers support staff administration the board put in hundreds of hours and we found innovative ways to bring our classrooms and bring learning into the lockdown homes of our community now let's put aside some of the challenges that
050we did really have during the zoom and remote environment let me focus on some of the positive things digitizing teachers digitized instructions in ways that we found have allowed our students to become so much better organized as a tech person i was so excited to see so many of our teachers accept a lot of those platforms we saw earlier near pod go formative screencastify to make your own videos parlay addition that led that students were able to be provided with greater access to enhanced enhanced teacher lessons bolstered with teacher creative videos and interactive simulations so many teachers are now realizing the benefits of digital lessons and i believe we really made some great progress however there were some significant difficulties with digital learning and some bad student habits that arose out of the remote environment
051one of the biggest challenges is the struggle to direct focused attention think of when we were in school white boards chalkboards right teachers writing on the board and they would have something important they'd be like look over here or my favorite this is going to be on the test to get our attention well getting students to stop look and listen is much harder in the digital world because the digital world comes with many more distractions let's be candid we know throughout the pandemic students were present on zoom but many were watching netflix watching tick tocks on their phones or even playing games on background browser tabs teachers are still trying to mitigate the patterns that students fell into during visual learning unfortunately social distractions that became prevalent during the remote instruction environment are sabotaging the
052successes that we all gained as we come out of the pandemic instead of going away those bad student habits have blossomed students have become very comfortable with social distractions in our classes whether instruction is going on or not coming back to the classroom we believe that a teacher's presence would be enough to cease this behavior we had believed that if a teacher needed to spend one-on-one time with a struggling student they did not have to worry that other students would immediately open up a non-academic tab on their chromebook instead we are seeing a comfort and a proliferation of social distractions in the classroom beyond what we thought possible students are bragging about their ability to hide their distractions a couple swift keystrokes minute the teacher comes near students it's okay to bring up homework in
053another teacher's class and even spend time focused on non-related topics even those students who are trying to stay on task are distracted by others such that they are missing key instruction and they are losing academic engagement the need for distraction limiting software in our current environment is paramount there are many services available schools and our research mr miziak just pointed out almost all districts with one-to-one initiatives invested in a service that enables schools to limit distractions these services allow teachers to focus attention on delivering instruction and working with struggling students without the fear that another student is going to entertain their peers with some silly game it allows students to stay focused and they help them stop digital distraction these are good young people who picked up some bad distraction habits during remote learning these
054young people need our help to give up these habits distraction limiting software is our means to help them do so the purpose of these services is to help students from harming their own learning and impeding their own growth due to our proliferation of social distractions let me pivot and show you a quick video made by mrs sharp mr sharp is a computer's teacher she works in a computer's lab these are dedicated desktops they're all hardwired no chromebooks in this video i want you to just watch it's only a quick one but see how miss sharp uses a software called a engagement software called insight and how she uses it to differentiate instruction in real time and to get immediate feedback and focus attention on the points she wants to get across is no sound wait
055a minute mute on mute try it out oh good hold on how fun is this [Music] and which [Music] website the opportunity to send [Music] the use of computer labs as well as keep them on track let's pivot to the high school i think mr stellantano miss caldermack thank you you're welcome so it's not uncommon in the high school when we're introducing a new topic to have some brief notes at least initially right i mean that part is actually still something that has stayed the same but what sort of change is that sometimes students now prefer to take notes on their computer or sometimes a student actually has an iep that requires them to actually requires me to allow them essentially to do those notes on the computer which is something that we didn't have
056before that technology allows right it's one of the amazing things technology allows where if somebody has trouble reading their own handwriting for example the technology will provide for that and allow the type notes the trouble we have from the teaching perspective is that as soon as i allow that iep student who deserves that to have the type notes i don't have any control i don't want to isolate that student so then the rest of the class i sort of need to give that option as well and once the rest of the class has that option as i'm at the front sort of going between videos and demonstrations some of the slides and trying to teach the abstract concepts that come with chemistry and forensic science that i teach essentially i cannot keep an eye i
057can't see what they're what they're doing from behind their laptop so sort of imagine the perspective of being at the at the front of the room trying to switch between these various software and show these different things and you can't see like the then the kids you just see the back of their laptops and you're like hoping and praying like i hope they're they're doing what they should be doing type thing so even just from the note-taking perspective this is affecting them usually as well like for example in chemistry after we've done the initial introduction to material i'll go through and we'll use a software called webassign or other teachers also use a software called go formative these are amazing software that provide instantaneous feedback that we couldn't otherwise do essentially so 24 students in
058a classroom could have 24 different mistakes they're making and the software will tell them direct feedback of the hint you may want to fix this a little bit something that wouldn't be possible essentially in our in our regular teaching but again the the trouble also becomes with our the tools at our current disposal i have no control over what else happens on the computer pretty much so i'll go over i'll be walking around the room helping students as they're working in groups on the software that's giving them that feedback and they still do need help and and so i'll go to one group and that group will like quickly close out of the other tabs they have open before i can even see and then i'll help them with what they need and then i'll
059walk over to somebody else and then the same thing will sort of repeat as i walk as i walk away from the first group they're back on wordle or whatever the latest craze is essentially so that's part of the trouble that we're having thanks jeff good evening so i'm also a science teacher and jeff and i kind of teach opposite ends of the population in science and we are all seeing the same issues with students that they just can't they've just picked up such bad habits over the course of covid um so just today for example i'm just trying to give a very short notes intro and i have ap students and i could see by the lights flashing when you're taking notes the lights don't flash in your face i've been doing this for
06024 years i know this so i just walked over and shut his computer and i said you need to get a piece of paper out but with classroom management software we wouldn't have to do that and we can start to retrain them out of these bad habits because it's not just certain populations or certain classes that have picked up these bad habits it's pervasive in all levels and all classes and it's i kind of expected it at the beginning of the year i was kind of hoping it would get better by almost may and if anything it's gotten worse and no matter what i have done over the course of this year no matter how many times i've walked up and shut a computer and gently try to redirect they're not unlearning these bad habits
061and so i think as a staff you know we are all asking for some help in trying to retrain the students out of these bad habits because what we can do as individuals we're one person in a classroom some of us have 35 students we can't be everywhere um one of the things i don't like to have my students in rows and that's kind of a thing a lot of our classrooms are moving towards i give my students a lot of flexibility in their seating and a lot of times i say okay go sit at the lab tables and that means that even if i were to stand behind them i can't see their computers because there is no behind them there is no behind the rose i don't want to take away that flexible
062seating option i like that i like that flexible i call it controlled chaos you know when they're all kind of working and i know they're working and when it was on paper that's the only thing on the desk but i don't want to go back to paper for everything because it really is more efficient on the computer and the kids there are resources on the computer that i want them to be able to use but i also need to be able to control it and so to have this this technology would help us in all classes on all levels from elementary up to the high school to be able to do this more effectively and more efficiently another benefit of the software is the ability to get accurate data from these online tools as jeff
063mentioned whether in the form of a summative assessment or a formative assessment practice or test for those of you in non-education instant accurate feedback tells the teacher what the students are struggling with and what we need to work with before moving forward but this is only good if it truly reflects what the student knows and not what their friends know and so by having these kind of classroom management softwares it will help us to get that data more accurately because we know that when they're taking whether it's practice or a test it's theirs they didn't go online they didn't get a chat from their friend we know it's theirs and even if it's just practice i want to know it's their information i want to know what they know and that will help us get
064better data from them as well and that's another benefit of this tool that we're looking forward to being able to use okay and we're up to elementary classrooms good evening i'm stephanie ruggierio i work at oak street school and this is chris carey he works at liberty corner okay so technology in the elementary classrooms as we all know elementary students are energetic active and enthusiastic in order to address the needs of every student teachers often employ the workshop model or break students into small groups and teach different things at the same time in this fifth grade class these students are independently reading at the same time these other students are engaged in collaborative research they're working together and discussing pre-selected websites from their google classroom in order to conduct this research here's some more kids
065doing their research now other students have already completed their research and they've moved on to the next phase which is now independently typing their fact-based historical fiction diary narratives um they're using their research notes to indent independently craft these narratives now during the workshop model this could all be happening while a teacher is meeting with a small group and we have to be monitoring the small group we have to be monitoring individual students and so therefore a classroom management software would really help this teacher while the teacher is sitting with that small group they can quick take a quick glance at the screen checking to see how the students are doing back at their seats making sure that they're on task and checking in to see how they're doing uh in terms of their progress
066on the assignment and if they have any questions this could be used in many many different ways so first the teacher could see what's happening on student computers in real time and if a student is off task it can be addressed directly in the moment another way classroom management software could be helpful is by allowing the teacher to limit the number of tabs the student has open at once fifth graders often need multiple tabs to complete a task but multitasking effectively is hard and a skill that needs to be explicitly taught a teacher can limit the students to say three tabs google classroom the research website and the google doc page the students drafting in the student does not need 15 tabs open the classroom management software could limit the number of tabs to help
067the student multitask effectively without being distracted by too much going on at once the other thing this classroom management software could do for younger elementary students is to limit to one tab or activity teachers in the younger grades could lock the screen to the task at hand and students would only be able to engage in that activity for example during a center a teacher could teach guided reading while knowing that the students that are at their center are at on a chromebook and engaged in that assigned activity another way classroom management software could support teachers and students is with digital citizenship as we know we live in a world based on technology it is everywhere students unknowingly are creating their own digital footprints they're learning at school at home and everywhere the decisions they make
068online don't get erased therefore we have to teach them how to make these good decisions online in a safe and nurturing way directly within our classrooms while they're still young and learning so that they grow up knowing how to be responsible and respectful in a digital world classroom management software will allow us to assist students as responsible digital citizens just as we assist them in our physical classrooms by making sure they are staying on task and utilizing technology in efficient appropriate ways we can better address the needs of our students both in academic and social and emotional learning realms thank you very much mrs dupuis thank you i promise we're almost done i'm the last teacher speaking tonight as ms fox said before my name is melanie dupuis i teach sixth grade social studies at
069william middle school since i am the final teacher speaking here tonight i want to take the opportunity to thank the board of education and our administrative team for having teachers here tonight to provide that firsthand classroom authentic experience to all the community and the board of ed members i think it's important to hear directly from those stakeholders i also want to thank the board of education as we saw the timeline of previous investments it is a huge investment that we've spent in these technology programs in professional development and training and hardware and software and teachers have really especially since a pandemic but even before have really jumped on board and have spent the last decade augmenting and improving our classroom instruction and really transforming the types of activities and lessons we can do for our
070students so i thank the board of ed for that investment i think our colleagues my colleagues tonight have really painted a very clear picture that we need an additional tool in our arsenal so that we can fully capitalize on that investment it's money it's time it's training and professional development and i don't want to see teachers get frustrated and give up on programs that we spend so much time working on because of the difficulties managing what students have on their computers at any given time as we emerge from the pandemic in this new one-to-one environment our staff teach differently and our children learn differently myself i am a completely different teacher today than i was three years ago you walk into our classrooms i'm running four different screens i have students on zoom i'm projecting
071something i'm running software i'm standing behind students among students walking through them managing different things all at the same time while tracking data plans and behavior management plans it is incredibly difficult to manage all of those things so while i'm managing all of those different platforms i also need to simultaneously be seeing what's on 25 different screens and like miss colton back and said i can see reflections off of glasses i can see reflections off of screens even when i ask students close your computers we're not using them then temptation to open up the computer like i can't see them trying to type something underneath it's incredibly addicting i understand it i have children myself and children thrive on structure and guard rails and in a you know the 21st century it is more important
072than ever to provide a safe learning environment with these proper structures and guardrails in place to maximize the short time we have each day with our students to promote a safe learning environment so hearing from all my colleagues at the elementary the middle and the secondary level here is all of the goals i think we can obtain by you know embracing this additional tool in our arsenal it will promote academic integrity and allow us to use additional assessment software it will promote small group instruction differentiation and conferencing i want to kind of dispel the notion that by utilizing the software that means the teacher now sits in the front of the room looking at 30 screens and doesn't move it actually promotes more small group work and one-to-one instruction because now i know as the
073teacher in the classroom that while i'm providing multiple activities at the same time i know exactly what my students are working on free of distractions it also like i said promotes a safe learning environment that minimizes distractions and we do not teach adults we teach children who need appropriate guardrails it also provides authentic data so that we can monitor adjust instruction on the fly be that literally in that class period we can change what we're doing or take the data later and completely revamp a unit based on the data we're receiving it also affords the teacher quite a lot of flexibility in designing instruction like i said i have colleagues right now coming to me hesitant to use certain programs because of the inability to minimize distractions and like my friend chris watson said all
074we want to do is encourage and promote and teach your colleagues to embrace a lot of these software and platforms we've developed so i have up on the screen i wrote it's a 21st century tool for the 21st century classroom and i hate using such a cliche but it is born out of experience that we've had over the last two years and what you're seeing in the last hour is a blueprint behind the vision for the technology use in the district and i think this is part of that vision to make all of that software possible so i just want to close by encouraging you to continue inviting teachers to board of ed presentations we're always you know happy to come and participate so on behalf of myself and my colleagues thank you for having
075us and i get to pass it to mr marcarian i believe to speak about policy very excited to do so [Applause] i guess that's a tough act to follow right yeah so just so that you guys know uh as teachers and in the spirit of life long learning as we've gone through this technology uh fun in the last couple years of the pandemic i too have been learning right and i learned that it is a problem to have so many tabs open on a screen so i solved this problem by learning how to hide all those tabs into sub tabs so that i would have fewer tabs on my screen then i ran into the problem of where i had too many of these tabs that held all my sub tabs so i just got
076two more screens spread them all out problem solved so in all seriousness i do um i do want to thank you guys uh for being here tonight obviously for the for the benefit of the board and for the public but um also i know from so many zoom calls that we've had over the last couple years largely the calls that i spent with the administrative team and miss fox looking at all the troubleshooting and the problem solving that that you guys contributed to over the last couple years and i know that a lot of you here were key players in so much of the work that went into finding creative ways to help our students when they had to be home and we didn't have schools open so i really mean that sincerely thank you
077for all the extra time you put in i know a lot of that just volunteer time working with the staff together and working with the administrative team and really partnering to help solve problems and and troubleshoot and come up with some things that that would help our students and obviously you know we learn to take the bad with the good sometimes and uh reminds me of something somebody once told me i don't know where it comes from maybe you guys know but to air is human and to really screw up recall requires a computer so uh here we are uh as i'm on yet another screen today but um i just wanted to kind of uh give a little bit of background on policy just because policy is everyone's favorite topic but but in in
078earnest we do have several policies and just for the benefit of the the viewing public i wanted to to draw uh some attention to some of these policies because we uh we try to force uh everyone to be aware of them over the summer with sign offs things that we do through the genesis parent portal uh and as you saw on some of the slides earlier we have a little meetings with the students uh to try to help them be aware of their responsibilities so i put some links in here just to help you uh have some reference points and encourage you to to take a look uh at some of what you've signed off on if you've never read through it i think the theme that you will you'll see when you look at
079these policies is a theme of wanting to do right by the students wanting to protect the students really thinking a lot about internet safety for the students and generally speaking that's what all this is about it's about taking care of school property taking care of the students and trying to to be protective for them as they are utilizing the technology so i just wanted to point out a couple of things that are kind of highlights to policy 2361 that really supports the responsible use policy for our students on computers uh and and so i excerpted a few pieces directly from that policy and regulation so you could see a little bit of what i mean uh and and one aspect of this is this piece of monitoring that i think you you heard a lot
080about with the with the students here uh excuse me with the teachers here and this isn't about um trying to play gotcha in any sense of the word or even to uh you know be invasive in any way at all it's really about as was described here a classroom management tool that would really go a long way to help the staff in managing what's going on during the school day in the classrooms to be able to manage what the students are accessing and trying to really help keep the students more focused and not distracted the second bullet point is actually one of the things that the policy calls out for the students to to not do right to not engage in things that don't advance the educational purpose for which computer networks and computers are
081provided right so we don't wanna the goal is not to provide the technology so that the students can be distracted right the goal is to provide the technology to enhance the instructional process uh other things inappropriate online behavior inappropriate interaction with other individuals on social networking sites and in chat rooms right we didn't we didn't get chromebooks so the kids could chat between each other you know uh from room 200 to room 400 right that that's not the goal and i think you're you're hearing the staff kind of report out that as much as they want to use the tools to enhance the experience for the kids they want to add some some guide rails that would help them do that the machines are not there for students to use in a way that's disruptive
082to the school environment obviously or involves stealing one another's data or uh you know violating uh practices of academic integrity uh or or logging in as another student and using their work right so that's why you saw me uh sharing the plagiarism policy in the previous slide so i think that the students uh and families have the opportunity to be aware of these things we try to put them uh these policies in front of people on an annual basis i wanted to highlight a few of the things uh that are in these and and just kind of encourage people to take a little bit more time on their own if you're interested in looking at these things so with that in mind and consistent with that policy i think what we're hearing tonight is is
083kind of a plea from the staff could we have another tool that would help us with our classroom experience and that's really what this is about everything that's being discussed here is about what's going on with our students in the classroom right during the school day so um you know what we're really looking for some support for our teachers to manage their classroom environments a little bit better and so we want to try to do some things this spring in at least a couple of classrooms but if not more if we have enough staff that are willing to try some things with the students but we wanted to emphasize that that management and monitoring through this classroom software model is really for during the school day uh it's for when the students are in our
084buildings right in our classrooms using our ip address so it's a very local thing uh and and they have to be logged into to their district account using their google account teachers who are implementing classroom management and monitoring programs would advise families and students uh when they roll them out to use them in their classrooms so we know we have the technology to easily communicate with families uh if if a teacher is looking to to practice using some of this software in our classroom so i wanted to end with a public service announcement many families may have received a letter associated with last year's data security issue that we had so i wanted to make sure that people were aware that the press release that i sent out for that issue is on the district
085web page this is a link in the presentation but it's front and center under under recent news on our webpage and i also wanted you to be assured that we have been working hard since that incident occurred here are some samples of the kinds of things that we are doing and have done since we had this issue last year one of the things that we're working on most recently involves two-factor authentication with our students at ridge high school so we're trying to get that going with them and at the very bottom of this slide you'll see a link that shares a little bit about what this issue has been like in school districts in particular over the last couple of years uh that's that link is from new jersey school boards association and talks about
086this problem that's happened uh in dozens and dozens of school districts across the state of new jersey and i do want to also emphasize that uh the data security press release does include a call center for people to utilize if they have any questions about any mailings that they received with regard to this issue from last year um you know and i know that that's a frustrating thing um something that happens last year i get a i get a notice about a year later why is that uh and i wanted to explain a little bit about that process that i lived that alex blinder and i kind of lived together as we met with countless different help resources if you will that come through the district's school insurance policy when you have an incident like
087this they kind of team you up they help you out with attorneys and all the individuals that respond to this type of an attack and they help you through the process and and one of the things we learned is that the process of going through your data is a very long and time consuming process and it just takes a really long time to drill down to the point where you could actually say to somebody you as an individual may have had this piece x of data compromised in some way and and being able to identify that on a per person basis per piece of data takes a really long time and that's why uh the letters finally came out almost a year later on an individual basis so i want to clarify that question uh
088and finally i wanted to kind of pitch again uh the bt connect meeting that miss fox mentioned a little earlier tonight uh that is going to be on may 19 technology and education we know that this has been an intense process over the last few years intensified even more this year as we rolled out one-to-one with the benefit of some federal funding that helped us make that happen so we really look forward to getting feedback from families about how things are going and and getting direct feedback from our students as well so i want to thank everybody for their work tonight i really appreciate our staff for coming out our administrative team for supporting the presentation tonight and with that i will take any board member questions i have a couple in a couple of
089different areas i think some comments um i think this is great this is a great presentation i can understand the need for it for sure um i wanted to see when we're developing curriculum and we're developing the skills have we checked with not only colleges but organizations like chubb where it might not be a four-year degree program on what skills they're looking for coming out of high school or what would be useful when we're developing curriculum so that that's one and then i know we rely heavily on google drive and google in in the uh the school district but 70 percent of most organizations in the u.s at least run off microsoft platforms now understanding that that could be very expensive but some considerations should be put into the curriculum development around the operating systems
090that are used by most you know 70 of the organizations so that was two in the the um curriculum um i think this one might be for alex um have we create have we started to explore how to use um technology to create work efficiencies so as we're sitting there and we're thinking about the increased administrative load that the teachers have as well as the administrative load that the administrators has where maybe we're not able to fill positions have we started to look at some creative use in technology to be able to help that and then the final question i noticed that we're replacing chromebooks and lenovo have we looked into or are we currently participating in kind of a leasing situation where you know every two years these these uh tools get replaced through
091a lease right so that we're not constantly owning technology maintaining it and maybe we have a program related to that to alleviate some of the burden so those are my questions i'll take a couple um the first question about like what resources we're using when we're devising our curriculum we use a plethora of resources and you'll find some of them quite a few of them mentioned in the plan if you want to take a look um one of the biggest things we look at is iste you have to tell me what that stands for again international society for technology and education so a lot of kind of the work that is that we put into this is based you know on the goals and the curriculum and the skills from that that was one question
092you had i had another answer for one of your questions not well so for example alex i think you can speak more about this but some of the efficiencies that we're realizing sure a lot of those software's up there do do those things one of them would be clever you know clever was actually a sort of a free software it is free to us as a district not to the vendors but um that helps us to manage all of the resources more efficiently you know by single rostering single sign-on so we're always exploring those kinds of things i'm sure you can speak to more we're also re-evaluating creating new workflows and new processes to improve you know to improve efficiencies so we do that all the time as far as the budget and purchasing computers
093and lease purchase i will definitely talk to mr mclaughlin i know years ago it used to be popular to purchase computers and do a lease purchase back in the days computers were very expensive and so it was almost necessary to go out and do a lease purchase but these days the prices have come down and we're able to uh you know purchase them and and keep them for many many years the other thing is we're going to take a look at federal grants and what kind of money is available to supplement the purchases so that could help as well thank you did we miss any oh i don't think we can hear you i don't think we can hear you no [Laughter] here we had a five-year capital lease for a million dollars worth of
094technology that we just paid off in the last last year the the we paid off a million dollar five-year capital lease just last year uh however uh beginning last year with the influx of federal funds we had this s that's going to be one time and we had an opportunity there to purchase and procure as we have done through some of the grants that were out there as well as the emergency connectivity fund everything that we purchased in the last two years has really been with federal one-time funds and it made sense to do it because those funds are not going to be there on our current basis so we don't want to use them for recurrent types of services and it gives us a jump start these you know we may need to look
095at how we're going to phase in replenishment of that massive fleet that we've built up with these one-time funds but that probably won't start until you get into the budget year after next and if you phase it properly it should be manageable either with some short-term capital lease although the money you know value of money is going to be much higher now if you take a look at what what's going on obviously with inflation and interest rates but it'll be manageable thank you thank you i don't really have a question but i just want to thank everyone who came tonight and presented we as much as you enjoy being here we really appreciate hearing from you and we appreciate just you know seeing all of our wonderful staff in action for us the way they
096are for our students so thank you yeah i'd like to echo that uh gordon is definitely the highlight of my board meetings but teachers also so students and teachers are really where board meetings are at i think these days that was a fantastic presentation um i had two quick questions mr stellatano brought up students with iep so i noticed that one of the goals is to basically push out chromebooks as the the device of choice for the district um assuming that if there's some software that does not fit on a chromebook or something like that does not work with a chromebook then we would work with the student um for their iep or something sure right okay so it wouldn't be that everybody has to use a chromebook regardless right okay and then the other
097thing was in the trial um that you all want to do in the spring um are i'm assuming that's going to somewhat sometimes some of it's going to be at the high school which is byot now and we're not planning on replacing byot until next year so is that going to be run just on chromebooks to simulate what it would look like next year rather than running on like you know macs and microsoft's devices this year just a thought it's a it's a certainly something to talk about it depends on i think mr miziac can address that a little bit it depends on some of the way we set up the restrictions just make sure the kids know that it wasn't my idea was your idea to tell them not to use their macbooks okay
098all right certainly so um i think it's on so right now we we do have every student at bridge has been issued a district chromebook and we have still allowed them to bring in a personally owned device theoretically they should be bringing their chromebook every day that's the required piece of technology because the policies as they're written right now give the teacher the discretion so if you walk into to miss colton backer or mr stalton's room who are teachers at bridge they actually have discretion over hey guys today we're pushing something out that must use the chromebook one of the hurdles we're running into right now is truthfully a kid doesn't want to carry the extra weight and when they're looking at macbook and chromebook they come in with macbook they come in the miss
099kaltenbach's classroom and like nah i didn't bring my chromebook so ms kaltenback has to make this decision on the fly do i allow the kid to use the macbook even though that is now running softwares i didn't intend or do i send the student to the library having the missed class time to borrow a loan or device that then has to be returned and causing this logistical nightmare this is one of those logistical things i brought up with earlier in the presentation so relative to your question about the pilot because that policy says the teachers have discretion if a teacher's participating in the pilot they would give advanced notice and say you're going to need your chromebook and you're going to need it every day you might as well leave the macbook at home because
100you're not going to be able to use it and that is in alignment with that responsible use policy that we have right now i just fired a lot at you did i did i ultimately circumvent to that question thank you excellent thank you mr maziak yeah i also wanted to say thank you it was a really great presentation um it kind of answered some of the questions that other parents and myself had brought up when we first started talking about this um because people say well aren't we already blocking sites we don't want the kids to be allowed to go on you know aren't there already controls at school but listening to some of my child's teachers tonight i know that he's doing his homework in other classes because he's not doing it at home
101so even if they're only on google classroom and school sponsored sites they may not be paying attention to what you want them to be paying attention they've got other things open so i think it was really great hearing it firsthand from you guys um of what some of what you're dealing with in the classroom because i think a lot of um you know parents are thinking you know the kids are good kids they're not doing i mean they're not all doing bad things at school most of them aren't but they are distracted and they're doing other stuff um they're multitasking all the time and we know personally speaking we can't really concentrate that well when we're doing that so thank you just to add to that i also want to say i think you were
102very clear with what you were looking to do and what you are not looking to do and i think that was the biggest misconception a number of people were concerned that you wanted to monitor what their children were doing all times of day and night at home on weekends at 2 am at you know 6 a.m and you're very clear that this is to take place in school on a school device during school hours during class and that it is to keep our kids on track on task engaged learning not watching netflix not watching hulu not playing computer games not chatting with their friends in another class and i think i hope it's put to rest the worries that parents had that that you know we want to know what's going on 24 7 with
103their children because that's not the reality of this and this presentation was explicitly clear about what you want to do so thank you very much i'd also like to say thank you um i just want to also emphasize that we started with the very slippery slide that this is about the educational technology plan and you know we kind of tacked this public service announcement on the end but the information that the teachers were talking about the the software that they're looking for the support that they're looking for the guard rails as somebody used which i loved is technology that's affecting the education of the students it's not necessarily related to this cyber security issue so these are two sort of different pieces of it and i just want to make sure there is no you
104know panacea to solve every single issue of a problematic computing um whether it's students or outsiders but that these are two different issues these the software that we're talking about for in in classroom monitoring is not going to solve outside bad actors coming in is that that's correct correct just under the umbrella of the it department right and the entire technology plan absolutely thank you anybody else okay thanks everybody yes okay at this point we're up to the superintendent's report there's one item would someone like to make a motion for the item this is gray and mr salmon um did you have anything no okay so we'll just have a roll call for that item mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes mrs gray yes ms singh yes mrs white yes ms light yes
105mr khanna yes miss hira yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you okay at this time we're up to public public comment on agenda items if you have any comments or questions please come up and tell us your name and address you can sign in after you speak the sign in clipboard is right there by the microphone good evening my name is stella perna 105 tuxor terrace i have a couple of questions this software that you were speaking about tonight the classroom management software are we voting on it tonight is that is that the intention of this can you raise the mic up or get closer to it please yes once again i'm trying to understand are we voting tonight on the classroom management software this evening is that the intent i have a suggestion
106because that's what i do how about no technology what a concept no technology in elementary school go back to pencil and paper and chalk and chalkboards you would eliminate a lot of the problems in this district my vote is no for this classroom management software um there are there are ways to get around it um software tools don't always fit every situation we should be reluctant to use more technology inappropriate behavior will not be mitigated with more technology i'm telling you right now i think this is a huge mistake this policy in regulation 236 oh i read it but you had to sign it in order to get access to genesis i made sure i signed it with my name and i added the phrase under duress because there's no choice i have no choice
107to say i don't agree with this policy or policies i should say the data breach from last spring parents should have been instructed and i know we were told that there was a breach but they should have been instructed to fortify their passwords for data points that were breached that's a responsible approach we were just told there was a breach we didn't know any of the details i realized that there are reasons why we can't discuss details but the we should have said to parents look at your passwords make sure they're strong here are examples because a year later things may have happened and parents would have been caught off guard and that's all i have to say thank you is there anyone else here for public comment do we have anybody on zoom no
108okay no one else for public comment on agenda items i will close public comment um in terms of the presentation and the question about piloting softwares in classrooms during school this spring i think we'll probably discuss that a little bit at board forum there's not a formal vote going on tonight on anything so we can have a discussion about that in a little while board forum okay we're up to approval of minutes there's one item that someone like to make a motion for that mrs gray and mr khanna um could we have a roll call please mr mclaughlin mr seven yes and shaffer yes for the executive and regular session but i'm gonna abstain on bt connect i was not present and have not had a chance to review this is gray yes ms singh
109yes this is white yes ms light yes connor yes ms hiro yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you okay we're up to the finance committee there are two items would someone like to make a motion for them mr salmon and this light um was there anything for finance no we're meeting next thursday and um i think that there's two items on the agenda one is the standing item the disbursements and the second item is um the long-awaited uh sailing team so um with with i don't know if anyone's here from that group but um we're happy i think to be able to put that on the agenda tonight yeah it sounds really fun i was talking to someone the other day who did sailing um on the sailing team um does anyone have any
110questions okay can we have a roll call please mr mclaughlin mr salmon yes ms schaefer yes mrs gray yes ms singh yes this is white yes light yes mr connor yes miss hiro yes mrs mccoon yes madam president thank you mr cello i see that you're here um did you want to share anything about the sailing team because we're curious as far as like what's [Music] depends on the happening maria um dr uh phil leopold who's really been the one to spearhead this is city in the back uh and uh he's taking on he's gonna be one of the volunteer coaches as well and maybe dr leopold would like to share a few words better than i can on this subject okay thank you hi everyone i'm philip leopold 50 peachtree road and uh i
111just like to thank everybody for their uh support mr shellow dr lazvik mr markarian mr uh mclaughlin uh it's been a long road to get to this point uh but we now feel that we are in a very good position in terms of having a terrific coach he's a town resident stu conway who has been sailing since 1965 he's been sailing everything from 14 foot to 40 foot sailboats he's circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat but he will not be in a sailboat he will be in the coach boat but that's okay because he has traveled the great loop in a 43-foot trawler which means he has gone through the saint lawrence seaway through the great lakes down the mississippi river around the caribbean and up the east coast our kids could not be in
112better hands for their training we have tremendous group of sailors we have over the course of the fall and the spring six students and their parents who have stuck with us and are prepared to sail they have purchased all of their equipment they have done all of their training thanks to mrs dupuis for supervising uh their swimming tests they've passed their swimming tests uh we are um have are now working with the rare yacht club love to thank the folks of the rare yacht club who have been very welcoming we were originally planning to be at the manhattan yacht club but because of mr conway's association with the rare yacht club and because they were so excited to have a high school sailing team sailing out of their facility in perth amboy we changed venues
113and it is a beautiful facility the parents were down with the kids just to take a look the other day we can't wait to get in the boats and we're very happy to have your support in getting the kids in the boats as soon as possible so i think this is going to be a great thing for the students this year and for the students going forward and thanks again for all of your support and again if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer them does anyone have any questions no just just a comment i've actually personally sailed in sailboat races at the rare and yacht club and i think that they're going to actually very much enjoy themselves so kudos thank you for coming out [Applause] okay we're up to the personnel
114committee personnel met on friday the minutes just went out earlier this today but i'm going to report do the public version of the report and if anybody has any questions obviously just contact me one of the topics discussed was uh class size miss fox provided the committee with an update on class sizes and sections um to view um some in view of our declining enrollment the committee expressed its desire to keep core subjects relative class size relatively small for the time being for electives at wams and ridge there are some classes with less than 10 students but in most cases it's intentional due to curriculum for example american sign language requires line of sight dance requires more space obviously woodworking requires machine space and close oversight or there are annual fluctuations in some classes due
115to variable interest in world languages and or class drops in other subjects there is no planned change to the variety of elective course offerings at either wams or ridge another topic discussed was the future genius summer program future genius teaching positions will be posted so that teachers can begin the training process a student sign up will be sent out to parents the district will try to set up electronic payment from enrollment and that's for this this coming summer and that is all of it thank you and just to clarify about the future genius it's for middle school right kristin for those of us who have middle schoolers that haven't figured out what to do with them for the summer we can look for the flyer any other questions or comments okay um okay we're up
116to the policy committee i'll formally report out at the next meeting okay thank you um we're up to curriculum same thing i'll be reporting out at the next meeting and wellness wellness will be meeting on april 28th does anyone have any liaison committee reports yes somerset county ed services commission met um there it is on wednesday currently they have 127 students that's full and their elementary program is fully enrolled there's a waiting list and they cannot find staff which is a special education specific staff to open new sections so they are kind of full at this point they are seeing more physical mental and emotional issues um with with their population of students primarily related to pandemic and pandemic related learning a tour was given to county directors of their career center the career center
117is a combined building trades program so they have a auto mechanics shop and a machine shop as well as a kind of like a smaller version of a shoprite that are built on there for the students to use um uh a question was asked about so somerset county ed services commission traditionally provides transportation services to districts for their general education and special education needs a question was asked whether the state law revising the cdl license requirement taking away the mechanical component of the test had any impact on the number of bus drivers potential bus drivers coming into the profession and they said no um so uh that was it they meet again i think in another month or so hey thank you any questions any other liaison reports okay so at this time we're up
118to public comment on non-agenda items please state your name and address and then you can sign in afterwards on the clipboard good evening i'm frank klaus i live at 18 owens court in basking ridge was very happy to hear about the declining class sizes thank you for that i was very thankful for the teachers for coming out this evening and for everything that they do and coming out tonight and talking if we think about it and maybe this is obvious to everyone but social media websites apps their whole purpose the way they make more money is to grab our attention and keep it and take it and take it from our students they make billions of dollars doing this and they're spending billions of dollars perfecting their cl their craft and that's kind of what
119we're up against so i am all about monitoring and helping our students focus on learning at least while they're in the classroom um during the year of virtual learning my daughter in the fourth grade learned a huge amount her teacher was absolutely incredible so um i want to thank the teachers for all that they do and thank mr green for all that he does um a lot of time was spent selling this idea of monitoring tonight so i want to ask the one question that wasn't covered so how much does this thing cost if anything i'm just just curious similarly on the sailing fantastic love sailing i roll a lot and i sail a lot it's a great way to learn physics and to learn about going green i'm just curious are we buying any
120boats how are they getting to where they are going to be sailing how much does that cost and about how many students does that cover thank you very much good evening my name is amanda hughes and i'm 434 lions road in basking ridge i just wanted to take a moment to say something that probably could have been an email but i think needs to be said out loud i wanted to take a moment to publicly thank and recognize mr michael fackelman mrs martha harvey and the cast and crew of the spring musical matilda due to the nature of the musical this year mrs harvey included some younger students from our schools so 11 elementary and middle school students auditioned and were selected to participate in the high school musical including my daughter i just wanted
121to say thank you to all involved for creating such an opportunity for the younger students in our town this was the perfect balance of difficult yet possible as the kids learned music and dances alongside much older students while the chance to perform on the big stage under the big lights was memorable and meaningful what i would really like to highlight is the amazing relationship built between the little kids and the big kids and they don't stay little in a demeaning way that was their title in the script at the very first practice after the very first practice all i heard from the littles was how nice everybody was and how it's so fun the high school students went out of their way to welcome the young children acting as positive role models and modeling what
122it means to be cool under pressure all the while they were building relationships and teaching the children so much more than just being on stage i watched high school students voluntarily help younger students with their homework play games backstage and generally welcome to the drama club community and this is truly what the little kids will remember and hold on to even now weeks after the performance high school students are yelling hello to my daughter in the grocery store i also watch student directors answer questions and help with and have just as much if not more patience than that of an elementary school teacher i've also had the opportunity to watch other programs in our town such as tomorrow's teachers and the big sibling program and i love seeing our high school students have a positive
123impact on the children in our community while i know that not every musical lends itself to having a love 11 little kids swinging their jackets around on stage i would hope that programs such as this can continue in our town and i thank you for support for programs such as this maybe in the future other clubs or organizations would welcome some younger visitors to give them something to look forward to when they get to ridge and to go a little bit off script i will also thank the sailing team and look forward to maybe they could take the younger students sailing too as i did four years of college sailing i know that that is an awesome program and i'm really thankful and i almost fell off my chair when i heard it was coming
124but i'm thankful that it is coming to basking ridge so thank you [Applause] is there anyone else here in person for public comment good evening keith molinari 27 franklin drive um ladies and gentlemen the board um it's great to hear about the sailing team and how well matilda went i think that's wonderful um what i want to talk about a little bit um different tone unfortunately um just full disclosure i am running for the board this fall and i have some questions and some comments regarding the recent equity audit presentation a question i have the forty thousand dollars for the audit came from a federal grant now was this grant specifically for this audit or were the funds able to be allocated to other initiatives even with the grant covering the initial cost this audit
125is not free there's opportunity costs involved for the time spent on implementing this as opposed to other curriculum and learning endeavors it's also apparent that the district would incur costs to implement the inevitable recommendations which the presenters stated would be over a three to five year time frame that being said now this initial money is spent i do hope it goes well but given the lack of quantitative metrics involved with this i do believe this is a solution in search of a problem as far as us2 the vendor administrating survey goes i do hope you as a board have vetted them extremely well because from the presentation i picked out several comments that were disturbing these mainly came in response to community questions as the main presentation was high level and somewhat big here are
126some things that jumped out to me as potential red flags when asked if crt is included in the answer the answer it was included the answer was not specifically that should have been a complete negative as there are current board members who clearly distanced themselves from crt at the league of women voters debate in 2021 the presenter corrected a question from a community member member about minority representation stating we don't say minority we say marginalized community a few moments later the presenter said they avoid judgment statements i would say that proceeding from the premise that if you're a minority you are marginalized is a judgment statement and speaks to the company's outlook when asked whether they'd be looking into white privilege the presenter stated that it was a great concept and something that would definitely
127be looking into as well as all types of privilege what are the other types of privilege i watched a ted talk the presenter gave a few years ago where she listened some male privilege heterosexual privilege christian privilege i don't see how proceeding from this type of worldview can do any be anything other than divisive when asked about what kind of solutions are typically recommended the presenter talked about encouraging affinity groups the district already has clubs and groups based on interest culture language etc however the way this was phrased really made me wonder if it would just serve to further divide students a final question and a final ask parents to expect specific answers to address their concerns given the vagueness of the consent of the consultant's answers can parents see the survey questions before they
128are revealed to the students and not concomitably this could fur could assure appropriate permissions and perhaps a deeper level of participation and my final ask just taking in regard everything i said is that when the board does look at this process and the results that come in please look at them with a critical eye thank you is there anyone else here that wants to make public comment yes cody smith 36 where i look drive a couple of things i didn't watch the live presentation as i was out of town but i did catch up on the replay i thought it was interesting that miss fukurelli if i'm pronouncing her name right said in the last she mentioned a more recent survey that she did and it was 800 pages she mentioned that the recommendations that
129she might come up with would take three to five years to implement she said she's had a hundred percent client retention so if we think this is going to be a forty thousand dollar survey and then we're done uh think again you're smart enough to know this is what consultants do they do stage one and then they immediately start selling stage two stage three stage four so um that's uh concerning um she said she's not looking at the curriculum um she mentioned that mar i had marginalized but that was covered lgbtq she said yes but you're not looking at the curriculum um i haven't got done vetting her yet but there's a number of things out there with her on the internet um and uh some of the other presentations that she's done in webinars
130um gender and sex are not the same understanding lgbtq issues in the classroom and a whole host of things along those same lines so i kind of wonder where we're going uh and and dovetailing into that i don't like that word but detailing into that you may have seen over the weekend that there were a number of things that broke about the new uh training coming up i think it's the comprehensive health and physical education that's supposed to be implemented in the fall uh governor murphy refused to answer some of the questions when some of the lesson plans were there about what our kids in second grade will be taught there's more out there today on fifth grade i was taking a look at this there's a 66-page document out there outlining what is supposed
131to be taught under this uh curriculum even for the eighth graders it's quite troubling at least i found it troubling i wouldn't stand up here and read you some of the things that it suggested that we teach our children in public school but i i think this since we're doing this whole consultant report we really need to understand what we're going to do in the fall regarding this mandatory training and not just the high level stuff but what are the detail lesson plans that we're going to be giving the kids and this in the second fifth eighth and twelfth grade milestones to comply with this new law thank you is there anyone else here in person hi um jennifer dorward sent alonzo 22 cherry lean thanks for being here we've been in the district for
132about two years i have two fifth graders in the school system and since we moved here i've been looking at the curriculum and trying to navigate the website and i found it very difficult um specifically i'm interested in some of the details behind the higher level curriculum items that i can't see on the website about two weeks ago i was interested in fifth grade some of the fifth grade health topics and um i specifically one of the units is called blood and hiv and so i emailed the teacher to ask you know could you please tell me what the details are going to be taught in the classroom behind the high level unit description and she did respond to me but just said that she didn't think they'd get to that unit they'd run out
133of time and there were two other units that they planned to get to called growing up and those crazy mixed up emotions and i asked okay can you give me details behind those um i didn't hear back from the teacher so i waited a few days and then emailed the principal and she did get back to me um but just copied and pasted what's on the curriculum website which is the high level outline so i replied and said this is good um you know thank you but can you please share the details behind what's going to be taught she said she'd work on it i haven't heard back yet and um you know these are 10 and 11 year old kids who are going to be taught things about sex edu sex education just this
134as was mentioned a moment ago specifically some of the things that are at least in the state curriculum are you know what puts you at risk of con contracting stds and hiv what are the symptoms of pregnancy and i think that there are a number of others which again i don't know that i want to state them but i think for 10 and 11 year olds parents need to have transparency into what is going to be told to their children for two reasons one so that they can be prepared when they know it's going to happen they could prepare their kids maybe they're not emotionally or physically ready for that kind of discussion and two after they have if if they have that instruction that the parents can address it with their kids when they
135come home so i really think in general we could use a better level of transparency but the details and the lesson plans behind the high-level curriculum items that are on the website in addition just the second comment with regard to the diversity and equity inclusion presentation i asked a question similar to what was asked and i haven't gotten an answer so we would like to know how the children are going to receive the survey what is the content of the questions that will be given to the children and can we opt out thank you good evening my name is chila chipok 264 libericonia road dear board members i shared the sentiment of many other residents who do feel their voices are not being heard there is a very simple solution why doesn't the board starts
136every meeting with a new first agenda item as addressing all questions and concerns from the previous meeting that could not or were not answered that time i do understand that questions might ask for further analysis and research and you might not know all the answers to them on the spot this is why we would kindly ask you to allocate the time and answer them at the beginning of the following meeting thank you very much for your consideration hi cindy wong carriageway just thank you everybody for the presentation today i think it was helpful to just better understand the future of the education and the strategy our district is looking to undertake i had some questions with respect to just digesting the presentation and you guys a lot of the teachers and staff mentioned bad habits
137and you know trying to mitigate some of these bad habits amongst the students and i'm just wondering um i haven't been a parent very long but whenever i when i grew up if a parent if a child had a bad habit or weren't doing what they were supposed to do you'd remove it um it's very interesting we're trying to take an approach to kind of control this but i don't know what you guys are going through i don't know what staff we're going through i don't know how teachers are you know are going through in in this environment teaching children so with that um it was very clear in the presentation you know what the intent is you know what you guys want to do with it and what you don't plan to do it
138with it but what i wasn't really clear about was why and the data behind why um kind of like some questions i had are you know how often are devices being used in a classroom that would require um a broad rollout of classroom management system and um is the majority of the students you know that where we need classroom management system is it the majority of the class that you know we need to better monitor or is it a minority if it isn't if it is a minority what is the cost of that is it a subscription is it a a license and is it just a blanket fee that will be applied to all devices regardless of whether or not you're using it um and then if it is on the majority of the
139the children would it just be better not to have the technology in front of them um and then and another question is is it really effective to remove to to to have even classroom management technology when wandering eyes can just look around anywhere else valid question i sleep in class i've slept in class all my life like but it is the case right um and then separately you know with you having classroom management technology the teachers will have to monitor that and manage that during class as we saw in the presentation there's technology issues there's delays right um how how will that be you know addressed live when you're in classes in session and then separately how will teachers be able to differentiate children who are actually a distraction versus children who actually need help
140you guys really focused on oh is the child on task is the child on task right what if the child just doesn't get it how are you guys going to be able to really evaluate children who need help versus the children who are being distracted and then sorry okay and then i just wanted to also say like mr salmon highlighted there are more social and emotional issues amongst children because of pandemic related learning are we continuing to go towards pandemic related learning with electronic devices and keep this monitoring software and then my last question is are the companies of this classroom management the ones that um were highlighted in a senate letter such as goguardian bark gaggle securely or any other companies thanks still aperno 105 tucks for terrace not an agenda item but something
141that's been on my mind can you explain why the masks required stickers are still on all the doors it's very confusing i've had people ask me are mess required are we removing them or do we plan to bring back masks in the fall is there anyone else here for in-person comments now is there anyone on zoom this fox no okay at this point i'll close public comment there's a lot of different questions um why don't we leave the once about um classroom management software for our discussion does that make sense and then you guys can chime in on the parts you know what i mean of that do you want to um take any of the other ones that are sure um so a gentleman asked about uh the cost i guess we'll talk about
142that uh at the end but it i do know that from what we've looked at we're talking in the neighborhood of twenty to thirty thousand dollars a year depending on uh which particular classroom management software you go with uh in terms of what we would like to do this spring um you know not surprisingly these these vendors allow you to try the software at no cost when you're when you're testing things out so i don't anticipate there'd be any cost for trying any of these different products this spring the sailing club cost question came up in terms of purchasing votes the district is not purchasing any votes the the policy that the board of ed has for starting new athletic programs essentially requires that for the first few years uh the the families involved in
143starting the program are footing the bill uh and as i understand it there's been an agreement worked out with the location where the selling's going to occur allowing them to use boats that uh are already owned by the club as far as transportation is concerned uh parents will be handling that themselves and as i understood it we have what sounds to be six students to start that sailing team there was a question about the equity audit and could federal funds that were earmarked for that project have been spent elsewhere yes they could be spent elsewhere yeah there was a few people that asked about the survey we're working on getting information specifically about the survey how we will advertise the survey uh how we will present information if we can i did send an email
144this morning on that very subject trying to get a little bit more detail to review the exact survey and hold it against board policy we do have board policy that defines what types of surveys individuals have to have consent in order to complete so we are working on that as soon as we have that information i certainly hope to be able to get it out this week so i know a few people have asked the question about will we be able to see the survey in advance will we have the opportunity to opt out if we don't want our child to take the survey so i'm working on that and as soon as i have that information i'll get it out to folks there were some questions about a physical education curriculum and getting more
145details about physical education curriculum whether it's existing current year curriculum or curriculum that may be coming in september of 22. uh i can say that i appreciate the uh the question that uh one parent raised about following the chain of command and i do appreciate your efforts to do that in talking to the teacher about your questions about what's being taught and then the principle um so what i'd like you to do is if you would send me a an email directly so i could follow up on that i'd appreciate that between myself and miss fox i'm sure we can get you the information that you're looking for there with respect to future curriculum and what uh changes to the health and physical education curriculum that are scheduled to come for september ms fox will
146speak to that momentarily oh yeah the last comment uh i thank miss purner for that with with regard to the mask signs those i agree with you those should come down i i realized after walking in to the door that i always used to get into the board office that for the last i don't know month or more i haven't been wearing a mask and work and walking right by that sign every day i literally just took it down last week so thanks for that reminder and i'll talk to the staff about taking the signs down uh there's no plans that uh that i know of for the fall that's for sure and i certainly hope we we don't get back to the point where we have to bring that mandate back miss fox so
147about the health and phys ed standards um and the changes i would say a couple things um the state of new jersey updated the standards in several content areas um health and phys ed being one of them the others are social studies science visual and performing arts i think i'm missing one and so the work will be done on all of those areas for the 2020 standards right they were delayed they gave us some more time to implement them this fall so the way we would normally work on those kinds of changes is like we've started the work now we've started to form the committees that will do the curriculum writing over the summer or we will in the in the near future once the budget is passed and we are as administrative team reviewing
148the standards beginning to do some of the planning for the summer but that work will take place in the summer once we do develop the curriculum that is in line with those standards and i believe mr smith referenced a 66-page document that sounds like it might be those standards that's what you would want to look at if it is we would certainly make that public we would make it public in a couple of ways certainly it's presented to the board of education and report it out in curriculum but certainly with a topic like this we'll we'll take greater efforts to present the changes to you so that it's clear what they are before anything is implemented in any classroom and i would you know just assure you that we're not going to do anything that
149wouldn't be in line with community standards or community input so as to your point about the website being easily navigated for the health curriculum i think in particular with fifth grade i'll certainly take a look at that and make sure that it has you know the information that you're looking for keep in mind that the curriculum posted on the website is a limited it's not the teacher's lesson plans it gives you the scope and sequence the core essential questions the enduring understandings and the standards but it's not the lesson plans of the teacher so for that i would you know what you did was the correct thing is to ask the teacher about what was uh some more information about what was going to be taught and so you know like mr marcarion said we
150would want to help you continue that dialogue and that's really where you would get some more of the details because you know what your concerns are would become what that dialogue would need to be about anything else okay thank you um i think most of the other stuff was about the um classroom software questions um so i think at this point we're gonna move to board forum and i guess we'll talk about that first because i know that audience members are interested in that before we talk about board governance so um i guess going back to the list of questions about the software you answered a couple of them about the cost um in terms of my understanding i mean as to start a board conversation of what the what the um recommendations in the
151presentation were to try out you know a couple of softwares in specific classrooms this spring with teachers that are interested in trying that and my understanding is that it would only be monitoring students on devices at school and it would be linked to the ip address of the building so it would be while they're in the building at school um so i just wanted to make sure that that's clear to people because i think that does you know alleviate some of the concerns people had about worrying about whether there's monitoring going on outside of the building other times of day on other devices at home and stuff like that so i don't know if anyone wants to just jump in um on this i feel you know listening to all the reasoning behind you know
152the teachers and why they're interested in having some types of guardrails as i guess you guys were putting it for the students totally makes sense to me so i'm definitely you know open to trying some of that out and seeing how it works i don't know how other people feel um i agree with what you just said mrs mckeon and i would just add that i think this is a pivotal time and we have to support our educators being the parent of an educator who's in a classroom every day with 10th 11th and 12th graders i hear it more than i care to that they're distracted they she said to me the other day if i could have anything mom it would be those pouches that stop the phones from working in the classroom because
153i can't take it anymore and this is a 29 year old who literally said to me right when the kids came back from the pandemic oh it's fine if they have their phones now she's losing her mind the teachers need our support they need our understanding for the challenges in the classroom and um and i do think our students need our help with getting back to what they knew before um we kind of had controlled chaos at home and um and i hope that we can at least get through this trial and see how things go and um you know identify something that will work and you know allow us the kind of flexibility and controls that we would be looking for so that there's a comfortable ease of use for the community as well
154suzanne yeah i was reflecting on the fact that during the pandemic i was monitored well sort of monitoring you know two students and trying to keep them from drifting off and i can't you know on to computer games versus are you really in class right now or are you playing a game it's we you know i couldn't keep at least one of them from doing that um i can only imagine the difficulty of doing this times 20 25 and i i think if we can find something that helps support the teachers with keeping those guard rails on putting it back let's focus let's keep this time here i can't imagine something that would be more useful i know there's going to be limitations as i said nothing's perfect but i'm definitely in support of trying
155some things jen i apologize if i forget to call you sometimes because nick leans forward and then i can't see you but okay i was looking to see are you down there okay kirsten yeah um i just want to make sure you know some of the the guidelines that you guys put out with restricting to ip addresses and and the time and the hours is encouraging um you know i just think about you know things like us if we're coming in during school hours does it affect our comm computers so i think that we before we go through and really pilot this program we need to think about the objections of the community and make sure that we're protecting against some of those objections or at least evaluating the risk to the community to make
156sure that it's acceptable um for that so i think that you know discussion needs to be had related to that and i think if we do move forward with this i we would probably have to revise some of our policies um just to make sure that you know everybody's above board in the use of the technology and there's you know some there's uh abuse prevention we're all above board with our use of technology i'm talking about just making sure that everybody is following rules and including the kids sorry including the kids too so there's there's a lot of ways to consider that i would assume that whatever classrooms were piloting the software would be notified the parents would know and if they want to make sure that only the district chromebook as ever in the
157building you know or anything like that like then they would know that i mean that would obviously already be the case at the middle school but for the high school if someone at the high school was piloting it the parents would understand that if their student you know i mean was bringing a personal device they would be notified of that um jen um a couple things one part of the presentation outlined already the policies i believe that are in place that have to do with technology so they exist doesn't mean that you might not need to look at it but they certainly exist that's number one number two the teachers are asking for this it's the teachers who we entrust our children to i think we need to listen to what they're asking us for
158and technology is not going away and it's funny because a couple weeks ago at a board meeting we had parents talking about the colleges our kids get into and how to get them into ivy leagues and this what they're going to learn when they're in college well guess what they're using technology at college you can't take technology away and expect they're going to excel when they get to the next level it's just unrealistic doesn't mean that kids are in front of their device the entire day that they are in school but there are valuable lessons that are taking place in every single subject at every single subject and grade level and teachers are are equipped to be able to do all those things that you want them still doing they're still differentiating for the kids
159they're still identifying the students that who have extra needs it doesn't negate any of that it just allows them while they're doing all of that to make sure that every other student is actually doing what they're supposed to be doing and certainly as a parent that's what i want the teachers doing when my kid is in their classroom um i i also agree with um with what you just said jen because i think that technology is pretty much an obvious um tool that most professions use and so i think it is it's creating good habits uh now and maybe retroactively trying to fix some of these habits i also think that kids do really well in routine and structure and i feel like we might have to teach them a little bit again with some
160of these bad habits that they've they've opened up to you know with the pandemic i don't think it's a bad thing i think it's a learning process for all of us um you know we we realized as pare i realized as a parent that i wasn't able to really stop the distraction from happening when we were doing virtual learning so as you said suzanne i'm sure the teachers struggle way more because they have to do this every day in and out with multiple students so for that reason i do think that going back and trying to fix some of these problems is very valuable and just to teach them proper etiquette with technology for the real world that they will inevitably be in so suzanne yeah just building on that too things take practice anything
161that is you know we're teaching the students is to practice time management this is technology use if they don't practice it now if we take it away from them completely as someone suggested they get to college they're not going to either they're going to go crazy with it or you know they're not gonna know what to do with it and i would also challenge whoever the comment was that we should take it completely out of the elementary schools look at some of the stuff that's being done in the the elementary schools they're not just sitting on the computer and doing all of that they're doing all kinds of wonderful creative projects and hands-on art and learning and reading and things like that is not all just technology but we don't want to take away a
162tool that enhances the education that the teachers are using and i know i'm going to botch the name of it grant but your chart that shows the um different levels of using technology yeah so like the the first level is just replacing like so instead of typing on a you know writing on a paper you type the same thing so yeah so that's like the use of technology that sometimes it's convenient certainly you know to use technology instead of a paper and pencil but it doesn't really add anything but like when i see some of the stuff and interestingly during the last while my older kids have been back and forth during the pandemic at home watching their younger siblings you know do their classes at ridge and wham's online and they took those all
163the same classes with lots of the same teachers and they're like blown away by all the cool stuff and like not that the classes weren't good back when they took them but like they're able to do stuff that they couldn't do without the technology right they're learning stuff at a different level and you know it's definitely a different level of learning so i wouldn't want to take it away obviously i don't make it in front of a screen all day long so i know that the teachers aren't doing that but it's a mixture of different activities but i think that the value added overall is is very high so oh dinesh i'm just going to say is right i mean technology is just ingrained in in what we do every single day so it's not
164just not just in school i'm sure they're using it at home as well right so it's not that we can take it away from from that aspect as well i think one thing we also want to make sure is as we said right we want to help our teachers along that aspect right distraction is easy we are trying to do that at home as well so being and reinforcing it in school i think it's just a double edge kind of like we really need to focus on that one for the kids so i think we just i think it's just important yeah you might have a lot of parents wanting to get access to the software to keep only one tab open at home too jen well i just want to mention and back to
165that you know when we had our last we meet you know monthly or every month um with the parent um advisory board with mr marcarion and ms fox and principals and um and when the um this came up with the discussion the um pto presidents were all very much supportive of having something in fact a number of parents were like could we get this at home too so this notion that um the community does not want this is not correct i'm not saying everybody wants it but i just want to make it very clear that there is a great deal of support from the parents that they would like the teachers to have the tools that they need to keep the kids engaged in in the classroom tim um i think what goody has said
166and dinesh did too like i would echo those comments like that when we when the when covet came we we swung the the learning paradigm pendulum all the way to the other end and it was complete wild west kids were at home and they had no guard rails right so it's it's a tool like you were saying to bring it back um to kind of push it more towards the center of not fully analog learning but something more like what it looked like and maybe it's something temporary that'll just readjust the kids and kind of get them to understand okay now i'm in school and you know this is how i have to behave in school one of the comments during public comment was was you know all about monitoring and it doesn't do anything
167else but i think the the software that we were looking at are some of the examples in the video and what mr swanson was saying was that there's another there's other components to software that which one that i really liked or seized on was like the real time feedback so when they roll out a lesson plan they can do like a kahoot or a quizlet or something like that and get real-time feedback from the kids and see you know did all the kids get it did none of the kids get it did something get lost in translation are there a few kids that need help with a certain thing and by using software in real time you can diagnose maybe some um like lesson-based issues or learning based issues so i really like that aspect
168of it too which is not just you know making sure the kids aren't opening 50 tabs it's really about reinforcing the learning environment and what the teacher is trying to do on top of kind of getting them to focus so i fully support this initiative and you know uh obviously subject to the pilot to see how everything rolls out but um i think it's a good idea to give the teachers it's the same thing that parents do with screen time limits or app timers it's the same exact thing you're just trying to bring the kids back to having some focus on kind of like real life okay um just on the the same point that tim was making something that i heard from i think one of the administrators at one point um about some
169of the other tools or aspects to this tool uh how much time it could save if you expect a group of students to come in and there's 20 or 25 students walking in the room and you want them all to get set up on a particular website or page or whatever it is if you're waiting for them to do that and unpacking on with this tool you can now get everyone on the same page at the same time that saves valuable instruction time and and i i think we just want to remember that there's the staff know what they're asking for and they know how they can use it to provide a better education for our students and certainly we have to and i want to not to be redundant but just agree that with
170the other board members you've mentioned we have to be mindful of how it works where it works when it works but i think we need to understand and respect that the educators are the ones doing the due diligence on the advantages that it will provide in terms of education to our students suzanne oh jen i can actually see you now because you raise your hand um i also think you know a word that comes to mind is trust we send our kids to school five days a week for hours on end we need to trust that the people that our children are with all day long have their best interests i trust that they have come forward and said that there is a need there is a problem this is a solution these are the
171reasons we need it this is why we need it we need to give the teachers our trust in what they do with our kids during the day i also like the idea that this might help support differentiation and differentiation of education so where students can work in small groups they can work with a teacher to get extra help and the teacher isn't worrying about what's going on on the next computer over you know that that it actually will enhance the opportunities because otherwise this could you know is getting so out of control that the temptation would be let's close the computers everybody get out a piece of paper and let's do uh you know the same thing for everybody it we're liable to lose all of the the major wonderful enhancements of the education rather
172than you know if if we let it keep going so okay so i don't see anybody else raising their hand so go ahead karen i just have an unrelated item but it was part of public comment um mrs chipak brought up the question about could we answer could we add an agenda item and i just wanted to share the conversation you and i had i had suggested to mrs mccune that we consider looking at the questions that come up here at public comment on monday nights and try to put you know one way clear answers on the board of education facebook page so that if the public heard a question asked here and the answer couldn't be provided real time that there was sort of one warehouse to find out the answer so i just
173wanted to throw it out to the whole board yeah i mean we've talked about several different ideas over time you know that's one idea or just having some kind of faq place where um questions and answers can be posted so that if someone's already asked the question you know what i mean and someone's already written a response to them or answered it we have it there so we we can definitely talk about the best way to manage that um okay so i think hearing what all the board members had to say it sounds like people are supportive of piloting um software's um if you know parents are notified and they know what's going on this spring and then we'll hear how it went okay okay so um for board forum um i have board governance
174um listed on there because various board members are you know interested in having a board discussion about how we operate as a board and how we might be able to um improve how we operate as a board so i made printouts which i actually don't know why i did it at home i should have nicked over them but i did my own printer so i'm going to pass them out it's like a packet that has several board policies and the code of ethics on the front i think there's enough of them so um i'm going and put my glasses back on so i'll wait till everyone has them they're kind of just for reference for our discussion but is there enough so i guess you know one of the conversations that that people are interested
175in having is how we work through the committee system to get information and bring issues um forward to the board so um i think the second page is um the policy on board member authority which talks about it's kind of based on the code of ethics it talks about um the fact that a board member does not possess individually the authority and powers that reside in the board of education no board member by virtue of his or her office shall exercise any administrative responsibility with respect of the operation of the school district or as an individual command the services of any school district employee so it talks about other stuff below but um the first part is kind of relevant to the fact that it can be really frustrating as a board member um trying
176to you know have the patience to work through the committee system and through the board because we don't meet like every day right we can only do stuff as a board when we're all together making a decision because we have to have all nine people um in order to make a decision and that's why we do it at public meetings so um i don't know if anyone else wants to chime in on it but i know you know ms light you've been upset thinking that i'm withholding information with from you between board meetings and i just wanted to put it out there that you know we work through the committee system and board members all need to have access to information because we work as a full board so usually when there's requests for information
177they usually either get discussed at a meeting like tonight when we talked about the um presentation and what we want to do moving forward but also um you know sometimes go through committee first and then get brought to the full board so it's not an instantaneous you know any process because people need time to get to the next meeting so i don't know um if anyone wants to chime in well i also think that um we have to be mindful of what our role is and for instance i may share the curriculum committee but that doesn't mean that i can send an email to miss fox and say i need you to provide the following information for me that's just not how it works i can say to her some people you know somebody has
178asked for us to discuss this at comm curriculum and she can put it on the curriculum agenda and then when we meet we can discuss as a group and then whatever comes out of that i would report back but as an individual board member she doesn't work for me she she works in the district and simply sitting on the board doesn't give me the authority to to make a request like that so i think we have to be mindful of that i mean i think you know the main issue is that we we have to you know allow the administration to run the district so if you look in the um code of ethics there's a couple different sections that says i will carry out my responsibility not to administer the schools but together with
179my fellow board members see that they are well run i will recognize that authority rest with the board of education um so that to me that means that um we're kind of hands off you know in terms of like doing the actual running of the school district obviously we get reports all the time we get updates at meetings about what's going on like we got one tonight about all the work that this committee of many staff members has been doing um regarding technology but i don't feel like it's our place to like tell them how to do that committee or you know tell them what recommendations to make because we're not the people that are running the district and we're not the teachers so i don't know well robin to that i would also say
180in terms of that each time we do ask for something it takes them away from what they're actually supposed to be doing so to put a request in all the teachers here all the administrators here who are working on this presentation for night if we go to them and say i need x y and z well then they have to stop what they're actually supposed to be doing so you know there's a time and place for that and there's a system in place for that and and that's part of the reason for that and i mean i think the administrators in our district are always willing to answer questions um and they're very open and transparent about what goes on in the district but i think we have to go through the proper channels to
181get our answers so um you know i'd ask um that that we do that and um and ms light i just i'm gonna ask you like do you really feel that we're withholding information from you i have been told when i started on the board that if i had questions to go through the committee system which is what i've been doing and since i've been on the board i've gotten pushback to ask why i need the information what is my motive for it what am i trying to find and as i mentioned to you in my email to you everybody absorbs and learns different information and gains different things based on their their experience their way of learning things so that is what i'm doing i'm trying to get the information in a way that
182my mind can process which i mentioned to you is kind of the definition of equity so i've followed the procedures i'm getting a lot of pushback from the information that i want i had a lovely conversation with karen earlier to discuss some of the financial information that i want and i'm going to be waiting until we approve the minutes and i see how everything is actually responded back and how everything is broken out from that perspective so i think that and this seems to be an overall problem within the community the way by which things are communicated particularly how you communicated back to me saying we'll wait until we have this meeting until i have a chance to meet with you i think that you shooting back and going outside the committee was inappropriate so
183karen had a conversation with me she gave me the answers that i needed i'm fine i don't expect information immediately i understand it takes a while to get through all the systems and all the people and that it does take it away from what they're doing but if i'm expected to do my job as a board member i have to get the information that i need to be able to vote on something for the good of the community and that's what i'm doing okay because when you asked for the information on thursday i told you that we weren't taking any action on the budget and you seem to need the information before the weekend and i never said that i needed it before the information i did say that i would like that information so
184that i can start reviewing it before we have to vote on the budget in may and that it was going to take me some time to do so so i think you are misrepresenting what i just communicated with you okay well this seems to be a chronic um continuous kind of conversation so i just want the board to be aware of it because as far as i know i haven't been withholding any information and i've been trying to answer questions as they come in um that was the i did chime in on the email that was written to the committee chair and i apologize for that but you have not reached out to me for any information for about anything else so then to for you to say that i'm withholding information is a little
185bit unusual to me i did not direct that at you as i mentioned to you i reached out to the committee chair and then you said that i was i was withholding that all of us are withholding information from you i'd like to see where i said all of us anything else for board forum i i really don't think this conversation can end this way i hate to say it i think that there has been so much that's been going on you use the word transparency all the time and yet i i don't think it's transparent to the community what's been going on behind the scenes and to be honest it's incredibly frustrated you haven't reached out to me once to ask a single curriculum question so this idea that you know you're you're going
186through the proper channels i i i don't know what to say because it's just it i sat here at a board meeting a few weeks ago and you asked a question that you had never brought to me so i i think we have to be honest and say that you know no you're not you're not following the protocols and the policies and the rules that board members are supposed to are supposed to follow and that's that's just a fact and we all have different scenarios that we could go through of what's happened in the past few weeks from responding to emails appropriately mr marcarin has told us numerous times don't reply all and that's something that you've done and there's a reason because there's a governance rule that talks about we can't all except in
187an open public meeting we can't do something like that so you know right don't respond on behalf of the board don't make postings on on behalf of the board you know use you often say i represent the community the reality is you don't represent the community you represent some people in the community but there's some people in the community that are just as frustrated with the discussions and you know we take an oath when we get on this board that we are going to abide by the policies abide by the rules follow the protocols we don't get to pick and choose well i don't like this rule i'm not going to follow it i don't agree with this one i'm not going to follow it we took an oath so i guess i don't understand
188why you know you challenge robin about something when you in fact have continually not follow the protocols and policies that are in place and you sit on the policy committee you sit on the very committee that just put policy together a few weeks ago and voted on the policy and then violated the very policy that you wrote so i just don't i don't understand why all this continues to go on it's just it's damaging to the district it's damaging to the board it makes it very difficult to work together can can i go back to something that you had actually said earlier on the question that i asked in the curriculum committee because typically i don't have a lot of questions on the curriculum committee because the information is just it's not what i would
189need to ask questions about so which question did i ask you asked a question about the math placement the accelerated math and that was in response to another question no it wasn't you asked a question on your own that had you looked at the minutes and and sent it to me i could have reached out to miss fox i could have reached out to mr colmer i could have gotten you the answer but one of the things that we also learned in training is that there shouldn't be a first time asking something in a meeting from board member to board member that it's one thing if you want to then ask it again because there might be people in the audience who want to know but the whole purpose in asking beforehand is because just
190like you asked that question maybe there's somebody sitting out there who wants to know the answer to that question but you didn't do what you're supposed to do according to committees and allow me to get the answer so in a little bit of ways it's like you're you're blindsiding people when you do that so we're going to have to agree to disagree because that question was in relation to something that you had said during made comments on during the session so if i was unprepared for that question i apologize and i did not mean to not surprise you with that but that's also easy to say now there's a lot of times it's it's a misunderstanding i didn't mean to do that and i think it's a problem if people don't have trust that that's
191really what your intention is i mean we have to work together we have to work together i agree with you and you know have you reached out to anyone at all since you've made comments that are disparaging about every single one of us i don't think so i would say that your use of public email and public social media about things that you have said to me online that i have not brought up to the board that have been sent to me anonymously through mail at my home well i would be happy for you to share that because i don't talk on on social media i don't i just never listen i will be very very happy to send you this go ahead and again that is has nothing to do it's a great deflection
192it's a great deflection from what we're trying to talk about which is how we are supposed to carry on when we're sitting at this time we're trying to talk about the way the board operates we have a policy here on answering emails and today you answered an email and didn't check with the curriculum director about a curriculum-based email and you said you don't have questions about curriculum but in your response you said you have lots and lots of questions about curriculum and you offered to research it for a member of the public who then fired off of response with a lot of other upsetting stuff in it you didn't reach out to to you know kristin or jen as the curriculum chair you just answered an email and copied chris you answered the question without
193knowing anything about what you were answering instead of getting the proper information from the school district and so then you didn't copy the whole board so now you've sent an email out to the public with misinformation or questions that puts doubt in people's mind as if we don't know this stuff which you didn't even check with anyone right that's what we're talking about i can i've responded back to an email that was sent directly to me i copied you i copied jennifer i copied kristin and it was with a link to the currently website for curriculum but that's not the protocol and we've reviewed this in training the protocol is if we as an individual receive an email from anybody in the community parent student there is a you forward it to the board president
194the board vice president mr marcarian i just had to do this a week ago when when um jake perry reached out to me for a question for the newspaper i can't just respond on my own i i follow the protocol they then said this is what you can say we construct it together and then the entire email train was sent out to everybody and you sat there a few weeks ago when i questioned you and said i know the rules but you don't know the rules if you're saying that this is how you handled it we do not respond individually unless we've been given the green light if it's business if someone wrote to you and said oh i saw the play last night and your kid was amazing in it and it was to
195your board a video email there's no harm in saying oh thank you that was at the play it was so fun but if they're asking a specific question about board business or school district business that you know we want to get the correct facts to people we don't want to give them misinformation that could you know cause trouble so we do fact check before we send things out to the community and we do cc the whole board when we send things out from representing ourselves as a board member answering questions about the school district so i think that's what jen is trying to say well it's about you know for your word that you like to use transparency for transparency the entire board needs to know about conversations that are taking place this is a
196conversation that took place everybody should have known about it karen i just want to jump in and say something about this idea of who we represent because it's really really really troubling to me that everyone sitting up here is wouldn't say i represent the whole community this idea that we have constituents is troubling to me we represent this the children who attend our school district and it's our responsibility to do everything that we can to have their voices be heard and i don't mean literally i mean that's the purpose here we don't have constituents we have a school district filled with children and we have parents who obviously are vested stakeholders but we're here to try to do the best that we can do for the students being educated in bernard's township school district it's
197not about political affiliation it's not about like specific philosophical ideas it's about how we're here to have a healthy discussion on topics that are concerning to this community we we i've been here for a little more than eight years listening and well forever listening to public comment or contributing to public comment but it's good to bring up whatever's on your mind it's good to express your concerns but at the end of the day the nine people who are elected by the community are to work together to filter and and by that i don't mean eliminate just process that information that came through however the channels that they came through emails public comments presentations and then do at what we collectively think is best for our students in berners township and i'm troubled i'm just really
198troubled by the idea that any of us would say that we're not here representing all of the community well i i just had to put this out there because i'm not i'm not comfortable that things are going on behind the scenes that the full board is not aware of because we are a body of nine people and i think that everyone needs to be included in any email exchanges that involve board business we can't have conversations outside of a board meeting we can be cc'd on a factual answer to something we can't have conversations that's why we have open public meetings because it's the law that we conduct business at an open public meeting so we're not supposed to be having side conversations and the fact that various email threads got started with um not
199the full board knowing about it makes me super uncomfortable which is why i'm bringing this up i just want to piggyback on that and say that i appreciate it i don't know how it happened today but i appreciated that that thread was shared because there were some very disparaging comments about uh well about eight of us and that was pretty upsetting and so i appreciated that it was brought to the attention of all of us because we would otherwise not have known and the fact that you responded to that email with the disparaging comments kind of enforces the fact that you felt that that was an appropriate comment for that person to make that's how it felt to me i just think we have to be mindful that there are rules and policies for a
200reason and we all need to abide by them you know i just it it's troubling to think that you know people are looking for workarounds and that they don't think that it's important enough to fi you know we i take that oath very seriously we we pledged an oath that we would follow you know the codes of ethics and governance and we need to do it regardless of our personal feelings and we all have personal feelings we all have personal feelings about education about curriculum about you know budget about seo we all have personal feelings but when we sit up here those personal feelings have to get put aside because we have to work together and they're going to be times that we vote on something and the majority might vote for something that you
201know one of us personally doesn't like isn't happy with but as a board one of the things it also says is once the board votes on that it is our job regardless of you know how it goes to support the board decision and i don't think that that's always happening i think the first page b i was gonna say two but b which is the i'll make decisions for all children i mean we are here to work with the entire district and making decisions for our entire district and i think one of the things that i hear consistently is this feeling you know from from public that we're not being transparent we're not we're not listening well we are listening we sit here lots and lots do a lot of listening but we have to
202make decisions for the entire district and that doesn't always go the way that some people want it's not we don't always agree but we're listening we just you know not it's not not listening if it doesn't go the way you want it to go it's listening but we have to make decisions for everyone and i think to go to that point we have to think about all the different students in the district and work within that so we are not representing specific constituents we are not representing you know specific things we are here to work with the entire district that is that is our charge i just i think it's just for my own um knowledge and maybe clarification since we're addressing the email just with respect to this email would board forum be an
203appropriate place to discuss it or perhaps the question may be rephrased in a general way like would that be an appropriate forum to have a dialogue a question about curriculum today well in general like somebody from the community had a question or a concern yeah i think i mean the question original question in the email thread was about health curriculum which kristen spoke to before about the fact that we have not put in any new stuff you know for the 2020 standards that we are going to be doing the curriculum writing um this spring and summer and that we will be getting regular updates about what's going to be happening and the community will be getting updates so that would have been the answer that kristen would have sent to that email had she gotten
204a chance to answer it but then if a board member has further questions they could address it at board forum correct right or they could ask if the curriculum committee is going to be discussing that at an upcoming meeting because maybe it's on the agenda for next month and we would have got a big report on it you know what i mean so there's various ways for a question or an issue to get addressed depending on whether it's a simple answer right i mean you get put on the agenda the reason that you would take it to the curriculum committee is that number one other board members might not know about it but number two is that kristin or whoever else is ministering the committee at the time would would could bring in somebody to
205speak to that issue right so like if for example you have kind of this offline conversation with kristin or whoever about one specific thing the whole board doesn't have the purview of that didn't know that you responded to the public that way and doesn't doesn't have the information of what the response was so if they get a similar question and they go through kristin then she might say well i had this conversation with ruchiko or whoever so i think it's for consistency and communication purposes and for consistency in the information that's shared amongst the board so that not one board member feels like they're not getting something or they are they're hearing it from it's going through the curriculum committee then it's going two minutes then it's being dispersed amongst the board so everybody has
206the same information there's no sideline conversation there's no you know one-off responses to the public without kind of vetting that information with with the administration to make sure it's correct and to make sure it's up to date um i think that's that's my biggest issue saying something publicly where you're you're either missing information don't have the information or are um you know are just wrong so like that that's a that's a problem like i think if you're if you're doing something like that you need to kind of step back and rely on the training of go back that's the administration maybe it goes to the committee maybe it goes to the committee chair maybe it doesn't go through committee and it's a very easy answer but if not just double check with the administration to
207make sure that you are responding in the proper way with the proper information and not just giving something that's wrong or misinforming the public that's not the point yeah i mean i think all of these policies are really speaking to the same thing i mean two things one is the authority of board members and why we should be making the decisions you know for the educational welfare of children etc and that there's nine of us when we make decisions so that's why we work through the system that we work and we do it at public meetings i think the um policies attached in the back about media relations and public relations and board member use of email and stuff is all kind of related to the fact that we want to make sure that everyone
208has the same facts and that the facts are accurate and that whether it's the public or the the media or board members getting information we want to make sure that it's factual and it's consistent so um otherwise it just causes lots of communication misunderstandings communication problems and chaos basically so does anyone else have anything for board forum yeah is anybody going to respond to that email to let this individual know that we're not exactly how they i'm sure they don't have to draft a response to that thank you you have a motion for adjournment say one thing and totally something else because um i think it's important i just want to thank mr marcarion because he was really instrumental and i'm sure mr fox and mr dr lazavec in making it happen that our kids
209could take the sats on wednesday because i don't if you don't have juniors uh you know it was it was a real problem that it was cancelled and i know people may not know how hard you guys work behind the scenes to make this happen for our kids [Applause] thank you mrs white it's because i didn't have someone taking it i forgot what week it was it's wednesday everybody's really quiet what's happening yes okay does someone want to make a motion for adjournment um tim and karen is all in favor