001okay good evening and welcome to the monday june 14 2021 meeting of the hillsborough township board of education in accordance with the state sunshine law of new jersey adequate notice of this meeting of the hillsborough township board of education was provided on june 10th to the hillsborough beacon and the courier news mr mahmoud may we have a roll call please emily mr gillette here mr kid here mr marini this is maroon it's his nurse mr oliver is the pulsar whereas the open public meetings act chapter 231 of the laws of 1975 provides the public body makes food may exclude the public from that portion of the meeting of which the public body discusses certain matters for which confidentiality is required is permitted in section 7b of the act resolved by the board of education of
002the township of hillsborough and the county of somerset and the state of new jersey as follows the matters to be discussed are the superintendent's evaluation and a personnel matter and a third walk-on with a vendor contract two the matters discussed in executive sessions shall be disclosed to the public when the need for confidentiality no longer exists may please have a motion in a second so move all in favor [Music] thank you [Music] okay [Music] recording in progress good evening and welcome back from executive session mr mahmoud may we please have a roll call sure this is gillette here mr kid here mr mourinho president this is maroon come on welcome here is mrs nurse here mr oliver president mr palcifer this is stats here and mr here here we have a quorum thank you um
003maybe now please rise for the pledge of pleasure religion [Music] thank you very much and i'd like to welcome our student representative ms vargava welcome hi i'm here [Music] i'd like to acknowledge the correspondence that was received is listed in item 5.1 and then turn it over to the superintendent for the public hearing good evening we have a uh lots of things tonight um before we move on to tonight's presentations and public hearing and in recognition of tonight being the last board of education meeting the school year on behalf of all board members i'd like to extend a sincere thank you to all students parents and staff who persevered during this school year although we are all weary and tired of hearing phrases like unchartered territory and unprecedented events that is exactly what the earth
004this year has been our persistence resiliency and determination has paid off and we're all able to enjoy a small sigh of relief as we come to the end of the school year as we move forward the june 28 board of education meeting will no longer be live streamed and all are welcome to join us here at aunt road intermediate school in person again thank you to the entire community we have a jam-packed meeting filled with both mandated items such as the public hearing about the american rescue plan and bittersweet and celebratory items such as the recognition of our retirees we will also share very very preliminary thoughts and plans for september 2021 and we'll end our presentation portion of of tonight with mr carrie who will be speaking about ela and math for the 21
00522 school year at on road i will then share some additional good news before finishing up the superintendent's report so let me start with a mandated presentation that obviously we're mandated to um to do tonight this is a public hearing and it's about the american rescue plan it's a plan for the safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of service i want to be very clear that this is a public hearing mandated by the federal government to the state this is not hillsborough's plan to come back to school this is a template provided by the state department because the federal as as a mandate from the federal government okay and there are certain things that we must talk about this evening that is part of this american rescue plan which has to be included in
006the sr3 the federal ester 3 grant to for us to apply for that okay that is the purpose of of this presentation so let me move this over the the american rescue planner arp does provide an additional 122 billion dollars in elementary and secondary school relief to states throughout the throughout the country it provides assistance in a safe reopening and sustaining a safe operations addressing the impacts of covid on our students and it provides guidance for school districts on allowable uses and the differences in the esser funds the allocation that hillsboro received so there was a i i looked at the allocation provided just through somerset county we have them all but i use that i use somerset county they range from 247 dollars to five point eight million dollars the allocation for hillsboro is
007one point one seven million dollars and we get that in two installments we're not the only ones who get into installments all districts get into installments the american rescue plan requires that each local education agency or lea that receives us or funds develop and make publicly available a plan for the safety safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services again they've provided this template but you're going to hear tonight i don't think is anything new this is something we're mandated to do get some public comment on before we can submit the grant the the questions in the template are included in the esser grant application that we have to submit the department of ed released this template that state that districts have to utilize and we're seeking public comment on this it does incorporate
008the federally required components of the safe return plans as outlined in the arp statute and federal regulations and i just want people to know that comment has we've already been getting some public comment from our board of education ad hoc reopening committee as well as uh union and association leadership so every district must hold the public hearing much like we do for the for the budget and tonight's public hearing will explain the framework meet the requirement of the grant and provide an avenue for public input does that mean that all the public has to provide that input now during this meeting no you send us you can send an email to mr madmoon myself and then we'll look at all of these and incorporate them as as appropriate so every district must hold a public
009hearing there are a myriad of allowable uses for this grant and the the feds tell us what those allowable uses are i wanted to include some here so that the community would have a greater level of understanding of what's an allowable use because there are many things that aren't allowable this is not an exhaustive list the list is pretty long this is not exhaustive some would not at all apply to hillsboro others would but some of the things that we are allowed to utilize the funds for include any activities authorized under other federal funds like the element every student succeeds act which is essa and the idea individuals with disabilities act any coordination of preparedness and response efforts with state local and public health departments or any other agency it will provide our principles with
010resources necessary to address the needs of individual schools and it provides some activities that we might want to utilize to address the unique needs of low-income students children with disabilities english learners racial and ethnic minorities students experience homelessness and foster care youth some other allowable uses it does allow us to purchase supplies to sanitize and clean facilities it does allow us to assist in planning and coordinating on how to provide meals to eligible students some mental health services and supports and implementing activities related to summer learning and after school programs it allows us to address some unfinished learning to have some facility repairs and improvements that enable the operation of schools to reduce the risk of virus transmission and other environmental health hazards it provides for inspection testing maintenance repair replacement of upgrade projects to
011include indoor air quality and other activities that are necessary to maintain the operation and continuity of service which is very very general something that we think might work it'll get kicked back to us because it's not going to work so there's a template that the feds gave the states and that the state forwarded to us and what we were tasked in doing is for each of the mitigation strategies that the state put out there we needed to indicate how hillsboro in this case but if you're in another district that district maintains the health and safety of students educators and other staff to the extent which it has adopted policies a description of any policies on and some of the safety recommendations for each of those eight things and i'm going to go through it with
012you to share with you what we have so far the second half of it is it talks about ensuring continuity of services so we have to describe how we're going to address the continuity of services and we have to do this all within a thousand characters and and one of these questions could be a dissertation in and of itself but literally we're like at 900 and something characters at this time this is all in draft form right now and of course get public comment we have to describe how we're how we sought public comment and how how we took the public comment into consideration and then how we plan to ensure that how we ensure that the plan is understandable and is in a uniform format so those are some things i'm going to try
013to quickly go through this evening the maintaining health and safety portion there's eight things and the first one is universal and correct wearing of masks i suspect that if another district in somerset county does does a present they have to do a public hearing it will be similar the answers that you hear will be very similar why do i know this because we talk and this is something that we talked about so while there might be some nuances that are different each district is different it's largely similar so how will we address universal and correct wearing of masks well we're going to continue to follow the cdc and njdoe and local health department guidelines we're going to continue to talk to our health and school physician we're going to uh talk about the correct wearing
014a masks including indoor and outdoor classroom gatherings during snacks if the governor says you don't have to wear masks anymore then we're going to follow that guidance so whatever guidance is put forth is the guidance that we will follow the we adopted policy 1648 mandated policy that we had to adopt which is the restart and recovery plan last september which requires and it's the policy is still in place that students and staff must wear face covering unless doing so would inhibit the individual's health that's always been the case in terms of physical distancing including cohorts and potting well again we'll continue to follow guidelines and receive additional guidance from school physician local department of health for physical distancing especially in those instances when masks cannot be worn or physical distancing is limited uh in september
015and throughout the year lunch pose the greatest challenge continues to pose the greatest challenge if we have to maintain six feet of space in terms of hand washing and respiratory etiquette again as per the requirements of the plan we will continue to provide hand sanitizing stations in every instructional space for classroom as well as offices and strategic locations throughout the hallways we continue to provide hand sanitizer and soap for students and staff to utilize as often as they'd like throughout the day and we'll continue to provide hand-washing and respiratory etiquette reminders how will we clean and maintain healthy facilities including improving ventilation we have invested in hvac repairs and upgrades as part of the district referendum majority of the hvac work district-wide will be completed this summer and ready for utilization for the for the
016fall we've invested in exhaust fans throughout the district for improved ventilation and we'll continue to install those throughout the summer as well we have been utilizing appropriate cleaning supplies vetted through our district environmental consultant for safety as well as the department of health etc to clean and protect against the outbreak we've also purchased and we were on the front side of this thanks to mr mahmoud multiple electrostatic sprayers to disinfect large spaces district facilities district school buses things like that and we do continue to use them contact tracing in combination with isolation quarantine our covet positives are significantly reduced i believe there was one today uh here at aunt road but they are significantly reduced our director special services dr radwan does oversee the nursing department our nurses are doing a tremendous job in contact
017tracing and we'll continue to coordinate our nurses in collaboration with our department of health and school physician to properly and appropriately coordinate contact tracing and require quarantine the contact tracing protocols are outlined in detail within the policy and obviously we are committed to judiciously supporting the contact racing team to ensure that all needs are met and students and staff remain healthy and safe we have been committed and will continue to be committed to closing a class a school or the entire district which knock on wood we haven't had to do uh once we were back we haven't had to do that if an outbreak occurs we do provide the covid dashboard outlining daily covey case counts for the district and we do provide that via school messenger and we updated daily on the district website
018we also email that to the community any diagnostic and screening tests through our sr2 funding this is for sr3 through our sr2 funding we have committed to purchasing individual test kits that will uh allow on-site testing within our district for staff members as per our policy we have been utilizing the 19 the covet 19 daily screening form for students and staff to track symptoms and travel or potential exposure and we'll continue to revise that and update it to align with whatever the guidelines are any efforts to provide vaccinations to educators other staff and students is eligible while we are open to becoming a vaccination site as part of the community awareness or or community service for educator staff and students we continue to resolve the logistics of operationalizing the plan at this time there's so
019many places that is becoming much easier to obtain a vaccination that we may or may not have to do this however we'll continue to research vaccination site hosting opportunities also as we receive information surrounding surplus vaccinations or any opportunities we get that out to staff and the community is if appropriate very quickly sometimes they come that day for something that afternoon so we make sure we try to get that out as quickly as possible in terms of appropriate accommodations for children with disabilities with respect to safety and health policies appropriate accommodations are discussed with the iep team and handled on an individual case-by-case basis those staff members assigned to work with children with disabilities have been provided additional ppe such as plexiglass barriers face shields gowns gloves as appropriate and necessary they they it is
020up to the staff member if he's here they choose to wear it but we do provide it and if requested they they are given whatever it is that they requested students who have difficulty wearing a face mask are encouraged via mask protocols to wear a mask for short periods of time expanding their tolerable time frame in small increments to increase stamina in terms of continuity of services we we needed to describe how we were going to ensure continuity of services including addressing students academic needs and social emotional mental health and other needs including health and food services all in a thousand characters so we will continue to use our benchmark and common assessments we have from the very beginning adjusted pacing guides to target unfinished learning and the emphasis on social emotional learning will focus
021on student and staff needs we'll continue to use our current rti which is a response to intervention model to ensure that the services the intervention services are provided to our most at-risk populations additional time for mental health support will be provided for all tiered levels with sr2 funds learning acceleration with us at with us or two will focus on small group one-on-one services in math and ela as well as ensemble experience for our music students why do why are we focusing on that because the state indicated you have to spend this percentage of money on this specific utilization that's the reason why we chose that we got that question from somebody and that that's the reason for that as for two funds i'm sorry sir three funds will be used to offer a summer 2022
022learning acceleration program to enhance any foundation skills as well as provide introductory pre-course and skill development to catapult student learning transportation will continue on a three-tier service following protocols and while food service logistics are being developed we can absolutely with hundred percent certainty ensure that all students will be regularly provided lunch how did we seek how are we seeking public comment on this particular mandate and how are we taking these public comments into into account so we'll draft this plan which is what we've done we'll review it with the ad hoc reopening committee of the board which we've done leaders of the hea and hpsa hillsborough education association and hillsborough principles and supervisors association which we've done and we'll revise it as necessary and appropriate a public hearing is scheduled for this evening and we'll
023solicit public comment either here or after the meeting via email subsequent to tonight's meeting we will review the public comment and we'll revise the plan to reflect public comment as appropriate if there's something that a member of the public suggests that is just not possible for us to do obviously we're not going to put that in the plan how will we ensure that the plan is an understandable and uniful uniform format well we're going to utilize the template provided by the department of ed to ensure that the plan is in a uniform format to the extent practicable we'll translate the plan into a language understood by parents or orally translated as necessary and if we need to provide an alternative format we'll do that that's sort of the public comment uh public hearing on the
024american rescue plan i know that when we when we put it out there for the on the agenda for the public it indicated the plan for safe return and i said to mr trujillo people are going to think this is a plan for us and that's not what it is although i am going to talk a little bit about that in in a couple minutes so that is that portion of the um of the presentation um shall i go are you going to open now to public comment now or in the future so yes for this portion only if somebody wants to ask a question or share something i'm happy to try to answer it okay so shall we start with first any questions or comments from the board yes um this is miss nurse
025please um i had the opportunity to learn a little bit about the sr2 and sr3 uh grants that are coming out and and what they can and cannot be used for and had a discussion with some people in the district about what the excel summer acceleration could have looked like would have looked like and why those decisions um that made that make sense that that we didn't have a summer program but i think in planning for the future as we move forward that with the um as our three funds that we do make a summer acceleration program for 2022 um a priority um yes i would like to see that be a priority as we continue to navigate through these times and meet the academic needs of all of our students thank you thank you
026ms nurse are there any other comments from the board see none then i will open it up to the public that is in the room with us tonight are there any i see none there on this okay then i will now go to the participants online and i'm not seeing any hands raised so i will now close public comments on the american rescue plan thank you and again if somebody thinks of something you feel free to send mr mahmoud and i an email and we'll see what we can do to incorporate that okay the next thing this evening that i'd like to to talk about and focus on is our retiree recognition which is bittersweet and celebratory now this is the first time that we are doing this um like this we always try to
027get people um here and celebrate in person so unfortunately we couldn't do that this year because we we've made these we've been making these plans for weeks now so things are changing so rapidly that it's hard to bring everybody back but this is our employee recognition our retiree recognition that we are going to go through today one of our favorite quotes of good teachers like a candle it consumes itself to light the way for others we are so proud to recognize our retirees their years of dedication and service include over 1200 years in hillsborough schools so at amsterdam elementary school leslie hewsing who's a second grade teacher and has been 21 years in hillsborough helena ludwig a custodian 20 years with us paula frender second grade teacher 25 years in hillsborough barbara vittanza grade 3
02831 years onton road jane biago media specialist 22 years with us mary lopaka grade 5 teacher 18 years rosanna mazzone secretary to mr carey and other principals 33 years in hillsborough deborah narotsky third grade teacher 31 years in hillsborough some of these teachers retired last year after we did the retiree uh recognition so that's why they're here now or they've retired throughout the year valerie newman school nurse for 28 years in hillsborough amy aussie our teacher of math 36 years in hillsborough ann marie pohulas art teacher 20 years in hillsborough nancy patrick grade 6 social studies and reach teacher 21 years with us megan stives special ed 26 years with us at the district level got kathy boskos curriculum secretary for 30 years and tracy ner our mathematics supervisor 29 years in hillsborough at ats
029claire westfall special education teacher for 26 years hillsborough high school karen binger 22 years in hillsborough principal vice principal catherine giorindola special education 17 years anna cleeses custodian for 15 years elsa olson media specialist 36 years elizabeth mcfarland special education social studies teacher 11 years with us deborah mendez instructional assistant for 26 years candy meyer chemistry teacher 18 years linda migliori teacher of health and phys ed for 36 years stephen molinaro health and phys ed teacher 33 years these are great pictures of people lynn mound art teacher 29 years edna wynn special education teacher 21 years michelle robertson 32 years in hillsboro as a chemistry teacher roderick smith 15 years as a math teacher janet tracy school psychologist 19 years maureen yaniskevich secretary to our counseling director of counseling 27 years in hillsborough [Music] robert
030weber 17 years chemistry teacher walter juan coop iii health and phys ed teacher 17 years with us at the middle school maureen chaperone instructional assistant 14 years joanne goetz math teacher for 31 years carla giaccaro computer support 35 years jan helen is koran our esl teacher 18 years linda hohn speech teacher 21 years william hunt social studies teacher grade seven 16 years dawn hicka cervelino reading specialist for 15 years deena kleiman math teacher 18 years michelle koslowski instructional assistant for 15 years and angelique tori math teacher 18 years sunny mead kathleen jacobs speech teacher 21 years debbie schreinkert 18 years as a special education teacher in transportation christine briskey 26 years as a bus driver triangle elementary school deborah kaufman 4th grade teacher for 28 years nancy mcdonald academic support grade 2 28 years sylvia
031k special education has been with us a year cynthia ortu 22 years as an instructional assistant woodfern nancy carroll school nurse 17 years in hillsborough victoria fryman second grade teacher for 26 years woods road donna hanel instructional assistant for 22 years jody howe 12 years as a principal at woods road margaret eureka instructional assistant 20 years elizabeth manning 18 years in hillsborough as an instructional assistant i have to say a lot of these people do not look like they are old enough to retire i'm just saying they don't look like they're old enough to retire in these pictures these are great pictures uh we want to thank you for your dedication love and commitment to our children we please enjoy your retirement journey and then this this next phase of your life i think that
032we need to to clap around the laws of everybody that's amazing amazing okay our next presentation if i may mrs trujillo is a little oh sorry is a little bit of information about what we are currently turning returning a successful september 2021. so what we wanted to do at this meeting was was present very very sort of a hot air balloon view of our initial thoughts and plans for september i'm going to try to be as clear as i can we are not we don't have logistics yet we continue to work through logistics but i am going to be as clear as i can on what our what our what we're doing we are planning for a typical opening i think mr gillette refers to it as a september 2019 opening as close to september
0332019 as we can that is what we are planning for are we planning for a full day yes are we planning for five days per week yes are we planning to serve lunches yes with consultation um actually we invited uh dr mandelbaum here to speak this evening uh one of the board members had requested it dr mandelbaum was not available tonight however he's open to coming again but when we spoke with him he also indicated that it might be a little premature for him to come tonight because things are going to he believes things are going to be changing so rapidly over the next several weeks that he said what i tell you tonight might change within a day now we know this to be the case because we'll get something i'll get an email
034from the county office and literally 23 minutes later i'll get another one that's totally opposite of what i just got 20 minutes earlier it's very frustrating for all of us so in consultation with our district physician he sort of indicated that we could safely plan so so we needed to figure out where do we put our focus we needed to say okay we know how to do a regular opening if it's a typical opening no social distancing we know how to do that honestly we know how to do an opening where we have to go all virtual we don't want to do that but we we know how to do that we've learned lessons and we'll continue to tweak that to make it better if we have to but if we still have six feet
035that's a challenge for us if we have three feet that's doable so in uh mrs trujillo and i spoke with dr amanda baum and he he believes and we agree that we could safely plan for three feet of social distancing total like all over we know we can do that in classrooms now we chose not to do that because of contact tracing issues but we know that for september as of today we can do that we can do three feet it's still six feet for lunches right now it is still six feet for lunches that's not doable if we have a hundred percent of students in so he indicated to us that he believes we can safely plan for three feet of social distancing we needed to provide the building administrators with a focus on
036what because if we're willy-dilly all over the place then we're not sure exactly which way to go so while we're going to plan for all inevitabilities we need to focus on one so he indicated that he thought it was we could safely plan for three feet so that's what we're doing the building administrators have been in the process of doing this for several weeks now while concurrently trying to close schools there are many nuances and logistics to moving forward and as i said the building-based administrators are always thinking about how best to arrange your master schedule that will accommodate our needs figuring out how to accommodate six feet is a whole another master schedule i mean a whole another massive schedule while we understand that it is human nature and attractive to compare districts we
037do it ourselves i'm on the phone with superintendents all the time mrs trujillo is on the phone with board presidents it often proves to be more frustrating than hopeful there are nine times out of ten nuances that may throw a wrench into any one district's plans we need to focus on what is best for our students and staff and this may not always be something similar to what others are putting forth it may be it absolutely may be but a possibility exists that it won't be so i want to make very clear are we planning for a typical opening yes are we planning for five days a week yes are we planning for full days yes with lunches yes that is what we were planning at three feet and and of course zero not zero
038feet but you know no social distance so moving forward things that we've already done and we'll continue to do we have a core committee made up of um union and association leadership ad hoc committee members of the board and administrators that's a court committee that will be present at every single meeting then we have ancillary committees based on grade bands now last summer when we had to pull a committee together basically the state said here's what you have to do do it and they told us late in the game how to what to do and how to do it we're sort of taking some of that control back and saying this is what is probably going to work better for us now throughout the year we started the board with the with the when in
039january we started the board ad hoc committee uh and we've met very consistently i've met we've met with leadership union leadership and and association leadership very consistently i get first of all i get input from parents all the time whether they see me out on the street they see me in schools or the emails while i know people are getting frustrated that i'm not responding to every email i do read every single email and i do take into consideration what uh the community shares with me mrs trio and i have made personal phone calls to people again while i prefer to make personal phone calls to everybody it's virtually impossible for us to do that uh however from the court committee who will be present at every meeting we will have grade band committees these
040grade bands will be kindergarten that's its own sort of entity a little bit different than other things grades one through four committee a grade five six committee and a grade 712 committee ancillary to that we have to take into consideration the directives from the cdc the governor's office and the doe most of the time they align sometimes they don't align which is why then in every correspondence we receive from the cdc or the njdoe it always says consult with your local department of health and your district physician which we will continue to do we will also consult with the executive county superintendent and again other superintendents throughout the county and the state these meetings have with the core committee we had an initial meeting we will continue these meetings weekly sometimes more than once a
041week throughout the summer additionally where does the community fit in this well as i said the emails we get the phone calls we receive but also we're planning some events what what i'm terming spring into summer events so be on the lookout for those things almost the way almost similar to what we did with the referendum my point is to sort of meet the community where they are so certainly make ourselves available but then also have specific time frames where we'll be available whether it's a place in the community i'd like to sort of show off our schools a little bit so if if we're on on if it's a little bit cooler day or we're on a field somewhere so that we're also sort of getting the feel of some of the improvements we've
042made i think that would be beneficial so those are some ways in which i'm hoping to garner some information from the community that maybe people don't feel comfortable in a different setting coming out to us that's some of the feedback i had that we had received during the referendum that i said you know what we could we could parlay this and leverage this into many of these things that we're trying to do so i'm asking everybody to be in on the lookout for them we're actually started planning those we're looking at schedules now now i want to also be clear that there is a continuum of options that that we have let me see if i can okay and our continuum of options are as follows at this time our ultimate goal as of today
043is in-person instruction for all no social distancing that is our ultimate goal that's what we want to get to so that's like down here to the right side of the continuum we know how to do that we do it as uh mr gillette keeps referring to from september 19 and all the time before that on the other side of the continuum of if there's a resurgence of kovid and the governor says closing schools like he did in september or last march and we have to go virtual now there's a smiley face there not because we want that but because we feel like we could do that we could do that decently will we make tweaks yes will we improve what we've done yes was it perfect no did we improve from last march to throughout
044the year yes we did so that's why that smiley was there please don't misinterpret that as that's what we want that's not what we want that just means that we feel comfortable doing that and then we've got in-person instruction for all six feet social distancing that's going to cause some challenges for us and then we have in-person instruction for all three feet of social distancing this is what we're working on now we believe that is absolutely 100 doable the principals the building administrators have been working on it all of our ancillary services have been working on that and we believe that that's doable i think it's important for the community to know what the continuum of options is you don't know what it is the governor has said no virtual instruction great but we still
045have six feet in there for lunches and three feet for social distancing in classrooms i will say it again three feet of social distancing we believe to be doable i'll know for certainty very soon six feet of social distancing in lunchrooms is quite a challenge and something we have to figure out if we can work through or not so again i want to reiterate what are we doing we are planning for a typical opening full days five days a week with lunches and our focus is going to be on three feet or a typical opening uh as i said we've been working on this for weeks it's obviously it's impossible to pull a plan out of thin air in a day or days this will take we've been working on it already we'll continue to
046work on it we'll continue to work on several plans moving forward as i said earlier we do need to focus on one specific plan with the district physicians knowledge and local health department we're looking at three feet that is where we are today i don't know if mrs trujillo you want to oh i know mr gillette has a question so i don't know if you want to open it up to board questions um would you prefer to wait till after you announce your call um yeah let's do it now and then come see mr chester in the comments i uh thank you i i'll make mine brave especially so on the second to last slide um you had the four um sort of the four possibilities and uh with the final one being um basically
047normal as normal can be like we were in 2019 and um look as as infection rates continue to fall if we're not in the pandemic anymore i think that's perfectly reasonable to expect that if if our goal isn't zero transmission at all times we were fortunate this year to not have to how's your transmission in our schools with everyone back i think it's only reasonable to expect that there could be transmission from one child to another the goal is the way i see it the goal is to stop outbreaks stop outbreaks i mean if you if your goal is no one ever comes to school sick ever and never affects anyone else then i think you'll never have school because we've had school for 200 years and kids always come in uh sick even though
048they're supposed to stay home and they get someone else sick but we we need to prevent the outbreak and i think there are ways you can do that even with lunch even with kids sitting next to each other at lunch you just um keep kids together keep always keep the same kids together they're you know as much as you can look they'll be mixing the kids will be essentially mixing outside of school way more than in school once this um uh pandemic is is pretty much over i mean i can see already in this summer they're gonna mix all summer um so i think if we if we set our goals to to um to absolutely prevent any outbreak and and actually i think the state and the has the definition of outbreak right because
049they they even track school outbreaks um right uh and it means more than this many people are uh like more than three or four or people something uh i think it's completely doable i think and um and i really expect it i and i expect us to be all the way at that at that fourth one in september i really do that's all i have to say about that thank you ms nurse i um and listening to everything everything makes sense um but i'm hoping that i can encourage the district to think and instead of the three feet situation being the priority maybe being the first priority um because i think that this plan and developing this plan has been started weeks ago and hopefully we have some creative suggestions for that but we have
050an entire summer and i really do think that we should in this summer know what to do and how we're going to handle six feet distancing if if that happens you know worst case scenario because we cannot go another year with saying that we can't accommodate that and i think maybe that's when we need to reach out and collaborate with other districts that may have found solutions for that because i think that saying for another year that that we can't handle that is not going to work for our district so although i know that you're all working very hard on figuring out what to do with three feet we also once that plan is solidified and every principal feels comfortable with that we really need to focus on what to do if six feet lunges
051still stays in place because the answer can't be we can't accommodate that thank you so one thing i want to share is that there are some districts who are attempting to do six feet with lunches i will tell you that the way that it's described is not something that i would want to see certainly my children and if i don't want my children to be a part of it i wouldn't want the children of hillsborough to be a part of it wherein students are literally throughout the school in hallways staring at a wall they cannot look right or left and teachers are sort of policing the hallways that's that are they getting it done yes they are i don't know is that the way that that we want our students to have lunch i'm not
052sure it is i know for me i would be uncomfortable with that as a mom as a parent as a superintendent i'm certainly uncomfortable with that nevertheless these are these are things that we are considering now there are other districts are doing differently and and maybe it's working for them but again those are those nuances that that i was talking about earlier sometimes in some situations different schools can do that the depending upon the school and the grade band it becomes much more difficult to do that but those are all things that the building administrators and and we will be discussing and continue to discuss certainly throughout throughout the summer thank you doctor and china are there any other questions from board members mr gillette um are any of the art lisa dr tunis i'm
053sorry um edd um are are any of the schools that have having lunch in the hallway are they at 100 capacity uh not a total 100 percent but closer than we are certainly okay of course okay so but i mean still they could be at 80 and what would they do what would they do without a 100 so that's my right second i i just don't i just don't you know children sitting three feet or even two feet apart in the classroom or two and a half feet or they're gonna you know get closer than that for sure um what's the difference if they take the if they're doing that and they take their mask off to eat i mean if there's if there's a student at school uh with kovid and they're getting close
054to somebody for enough time to pass it to that person then i don't i don't know if it matters if their masks on masks offer anything like i've said this for well over a year now the staying home with symptoms mitigates like 99 and a half percent of it and we're we're struggling now and putting kids on in the hallway floors to staring at a wall to have lunch for that extra half percent which you're probably not going to get anyway we're not doing that they're not doing that the district would do that to get that extra little tiny bit when when you know it that doesn't make sense to me hopefully this will all be these will be moot questions because somebody somewhere at some point will declare this pandemic over hopefully and and
055again mr gillette as indicated right now it is it that the cdc did did recommend three feet in class three feet in classrooms however it's still very clear that it's six feet in rooms and that's sort of a non-starter for many many districts that's what everybody is sort of saying you know that needs to change and that needs to change now and to your point we know that people are going to restaurants and there's not six feet we know this maybe maybe some of us have experienced that even uh but schools are under a different order right now and that's we're all sort of waiting for for that but and trying to move forward with planning for sure my stats and then down the line i'm sorry mr kid i'm sorry i couldn't hear you
056i thought miss nurse had her hand up before either i or miss stats oh you oh you're good all right all right uh i was actually just asking if there's any update from the state uh or from the state from any state departments around the uh all of the all in person still had certain uh caveats in terms of groups that could still qualify for virtual is there any updates on the conditions for that sure at this time i know that the governor started with no virtual then he sort of rolled that back a little bit to there might be a medical condition but had didn't define what that was and so now it's just sort of there all right miss stats uh i think some members of the public have suggested um the use
057of tents can you address the uh feasibility of that dr antoonis sure and and i'm invite mr mahmoud to jump in if if i misspeak or or don't have a thorough answer so yes there there there are there that that has come up and when we looked into that it was indicated that in order to actually utilize tent space as instructional space it also needs to have electricity and uh heat and air cooling systems ventilation systems and honestly to get permitting to do that is is almost not only cost prohibitive but a space prohibited in in some cases that that makes it reasonable to do that is that is that fairness moment yeah i think that you certainly cover that that is a challenge for us if we were to pursue that seems simple enough
058and it seems very practical unfortunately the rules that come behind that if it's a form of an instructional space as dr tunis would require all those all those installations and that would be cost prohibitive and also probably not doable with the timing that we have to get all those permits um just to follow up what if it were just to be used for uh lunch as opposed to an instructional space right i know that i believe so i know that we have some outdoor spaces that some of the schools utilize um and then on top of that we also want to remember the safety aspect of all of this but is that is that accurate yeah that is we'd have to look into that as a one space and see what the what that looks
059like for you something that could fit [Music] mr pulsar and then miss nurse and then mr kid uh the two points uh one going back to the question of uh allowing or the state or the district aligned parents who want their children to be continuing virtual i know in the course of uh this discussion we've had about uh allowing the students to take their mass off on on hot days uh and what impact that has uh we received emails from parents who were very much against that and wanted to keep their children home so i i suspect that there when we get to september depending on how much better things have gotten there will still be parents in the district who wish to keep their children at home until you know i'm not sure what
060their metric will be but would still want to keep their children home dude um you know we've talked about not being virtual but if parents are still wanting to be virtual is that do we have a feel for that's going to be an option or are they forced to go the formal homeschooling route or as of right now they will be forced to go the homeschooling route because it's not up to us it's up to the department of end and the governor's office whether okay virtual we will account for them okay yeah i just wanted because we did get those emails this week about parents wanting to keep their children home because of mass being allowed off the other point i wanted to make and this is something to follow on to the stats uh
061question about tents um i think it's important that the public think about this and certainly we will think about this um we have to have solutions that work all the time they can't be solutions that work when things are okay uh specifically tense i know a teacher in another district and they have gone to tents for lunch and it turns out that was okay until it was 90 and human the tent really gave me no relief and then the next day it was rainy and very windy uh and the kids were outside the tent and they felt that that was not a good place them to be so while we talk about things like tents we say well of course there's room we can put a tent out we put the tent over the kids
062and they can space out but we have these solutions it has to work every day and so things like tents don't work every day so while those sound great for maybe ninety percent of the time what do you do the ten percent when the conditions are not okay for kids to be eating in the tent or in december if we're still there and we're making kids eat outside under a tent in their winter coats and trying to eat and their hands are cold and you know so while these things sound like good ideas the public needs to understand that any solution we come up with has to work every day under any of the bad conditions we might be in so a lot of these ideas which are very good on the surface you find
063out that if we implement them and also you know permits for the tents and how much it cost um my understanding was this district spent uh over half a million dollars for a couple months this year uh so what would it cost us to do for half a year and where does that money come from and certainly look at the money we've gotten from the federal aid on this that's not going to cover things like that so while these are good ideas and principles and the good brainstorming it has to be an idea that works every day in every condition otherwise how do we handle those bad days so i think that's something we have to all take into account thank you mr pulse from this nurse i agree with what mr paulsford just said
064about needing to have something that works all of the time or having a contingency for the ten percent of the time that it that it might not work however to um [Music] talk about putting kids facing the walls as like an only option for lunch worries me a little bit because we have a lot of people who can collaborate and talk about um what can be done and other solutions you know so i think it's very important that we stay collaborative that it's not just administrators collaborating every summer that the hea is involved that groups of teachers are coming in and discussing like you said in the ancillary committees but um we need to keep brainstorming because even if we start with three feet distance or zero feet distance we do not know what the
065future holds right we could have to pivot back at any time when this all started we all thought that we were going to be i didn't think we were going anywhere actually i have to tell you and then we thought it was going to be for two weeks and here we are 17 months later um so if we have to figure out six feet i just look around in the cafeteria and i think about how the cafeterias are set up with cafeteria tables and you have all this perimeter around that's not being utilized so if it means having to purchase desks or move tables into classrooms and desks into the cafeterias we need to be ready to do that at six feet so waiting until the end of august to try to think of a
066plan if we need it is not going to work because we're going to need the funds we're going to need to purchase and it cannot wait to the last minute so there are hopefully there are solutions this group of very intelligent people who work in this district you know i have faith in them but we need to prepare ourselves so we can have everything we need if the time comes this is why i hesitate to sometimes say things because i don't want that out there i am not recommending that we have students sitting facing i oh i just wanted to actually ask a question in regards to the uh in regards to the permits you were talking about in regards to uh tents being considered instructional facilities where do the where does the requirement for
067those permits come from is it from a state level is that from like a local municipality level do you know because i'm just curious in terms of the level of negotiation we could have of can we have it so that the requirements of these permits for these students that have these problems could be have those students be within an internal in building uh space with those with though that meets those standards while other students that don't that don't need those requirements at the same level can still allow for the administration of wire launch and then also it just comes into a question of the ethical uh of the ethics of really having different lunch standards for different students which is another issue but i just wanted to add another option to the table you want
068to respond to that mr obama about whose rules are for her um stuff mahmoud and dr antonis i also had trouble hearing you through the mic so i'm not sure okay what mr mummy says without still looking okay unless it's my headphones stephanie would look into that further it's not coming through i think we're hearing doctors so i just want to say if you haven't if you if you're putting a tent up um and i think this i'm pretty sure this statement for more than just an event then it becomes a it becomes like a permanent structure not only electricity and stuff but also maybe like fire suppression sprinklers everything it becomes a quasi-permanent structure so that's where the permitting that's where the permitting comes from if it's for an event the temper is a
069temporary structure but i don't think something like and this goes to what chris said if you're going to build this tent structure it has to be the solution it's going to work every day then it's going to require sprinklers and um you know so that means that has to come in too right it's going to require everything um even if it is for lunch it's going to be used all the time so i i that that's for the customer as far as i i know mr puzzler i was actually going to say basically the same thing yeah i mean at the end of the day it's i i think the terms you use are correct uh mr gillette the difference between temporary permanent it's one thing to say we're having a family fun day on
070saturday and we put a tent up that's very different from a tent being an official part of our lunch program and being there if not permanent for three or six months three or six months as far as the i'm sure the buildings department and any kind of health and safety inspection or anything else like that that becomes a semi-permanent structure which has other requirements that go much beyond having a family fun day or something like that where it's a one day event or a weekend and and right and and frankly to from my perspective it should be i mean if we're gonna say that this is where these kids spend every day at lunch or if we do class or anything else i wouldn't be happy with not making sure that we have electricity water
071available in some fashion i mean these people are going to be there for a while students and staff and so all those things health and safety things that we normally go through a building inspection i would want that to be there if our plan is to do that for an extended period of time so i that's where it comes from and i also personally i think we should do that if we were to go down that path thank you thank you mr pulse for miss maroon yeah no i i share the same as what chris and greg were saying my my concern too is where would this structure be would it be out in the open so my first concern becomes security um when we're doing shelter in place or we're doing you know our
072intruder drills what what's going to happen if we're in these open spaces are they going to be hidden are they going to be in a courtyard because i think that i mean i i don't want to assume that that could ever happen that would be absolutely terrible but you know we plan for these things and and you never know and i think that's that's probably one of my concerns as well too this is security absolutely thank you ms maroon are there any other questions or comments from the board thank you for seeing them then i'll turn it back over to you dr anthony for the rest of you okay so the next portion the final presentation for this evening before i finish up my superintendent's report is in ela and mathematics at otton road for
073the 21-22 school year what i'd like you to consider in anticipation of mr kerry's presentation is that this particular presentation is addressing the removal of advanced classes for sixth grade math and ela eliminating math and ela classes the advanced classes for ela math for sixth grade arose from a programmatic sgo of the aris administrators and district supervisors ela and math supervisors based upon their findings in their sgo for their sgo the district moved forward with eliminating advanced math and ela classes in sixth grade the findings of the sgo were such that labeling students at such a young age because there's the overall success for all students the intersection of the growth mindset social and emotional health and best practice for differentiate instruction optimizes student growth during this formative sixth grade year one misconception that became
074apparent during conversations with parents is misconception that our advanced courses are accelerated courses advanced classes in math and ula are not accelerated classes acceleration for math begins in seventh grade for those students who take algebra 1 and acceleration for ela begins in high school with honors and ap courses this is something that we're looking at for sixth grade only we're not looking to make any elimination at all this was this i i don't know where this came from for any other grade levels another misconception that we want to address is that we are not eliminating academic skills instruction asi we are restructuring our intervention schedule and services to be a true response to intervention model but this is going to take some time and is not something that will be in place for arrest for
075the 21 22 school year having said that invite mr kerry to uh to begin his presentation and i will certainly manage the slides for you mr carrie and um you can go from there can you hear me okay uh dr chairs i'll say at first i i love this successful september slide show but i did notice that the students had a jet pack and i will go on the record and say no jetpacks at autumn road if we do this so thank you okay so um thank you again for the opportunity so doctor if you can advance it to the first slide and i just wanted to reiterate uh we did a a live livestream presentation uh about six weeks ago and what i wanted to outline was that what we see here is for
076mathematics and both english language arts ela what we have is currently two levels we have a well i'm presenting two levels right now so you can see it math six math six advanced as well as the same thing on the literacy side what the the plan is is that for next year we will have one level those two levels will collapse into one that will no longer as dr antoine's indicated be an advanced level just wanted to kind of reiterate give the context of that uh next slide please dr antonis so again to add to the context what's going to drive us next year and in the years ahead it's a multi-dimensional focus and i want to speak to these uh five dimensions with you briefly um each of them thinking as a slice of
077a pie um so again these are to certainly guide us direct us and remind us what's essential moving forward for the sake and success of our students so next slide dr antonis so the first dimension a is the organization benefit that we're getting from this change the shift aligns with the current ela and mathematic offerings in grade five d leveling or detracting provides continuity and predictability for everyone in the autonomous community remember it's only a two year school this will also better allow us to balance class sizes and provide more individualized instruction in mixed ability groups which is already taking place in our fifth grade classes so again what you see in yellow is for grade five that will be mirrored in grade six uh next slide doctor in tunis so dimension b uh this
078focuses on the research the reason why i picked that picture with the flowers is that that represents our students blooming and the goal here is to give our students a chance to bloom through this model now the research does not support that high performing students will be negatively impacted by by being placed in a mixed ability class d leveling supports higher levels of learning for all students without negatively impacting any students under these circumstances all students are challenged to continue to grow based on their individual needs students can be challenged to self-direct and learn to excel independently which are highly valued skills which will support their future success students previously labeled as lower performing historically have not moved out of their track as one would expect therefore this tracking system creates a system where students
079are only expected to perform to a certain level and not beyond that additionally teaching to one performance level forces educators to make broad judgments about students in terms of how smart they are or they rather they are rather than that they could achieve with the right supports and differentiation when classes are de-leveled all students are challenged to continue to grow and reach their greater more individualized academic growth uh next slide dr antunas the next dimension is i want to speak about is that the leveling is already happening and it's working well in grade five prior to my arrival at auto road 12 years ago they actually de-leveled the fifth grade as well there was an advanced level in grade five and before that and it's been working very well and i wanted to speak that
080we have this road map so there's these questions about where we're going but we have this this beacon we know where it works and we have a roadmap to get there for success um which how this works lessons assignments and assessments can and will be differentiated to meet the needs of each student assessments will use market instruction learners who master the content quickly will be challenged and have enrichment opportunities as well as the opportunity to listen to their peers of different abilities and hear their thinking as dr antonis mentioned i just want to reinforce and underscore that this is important that what we presently have in grade six right now with that advanced level is not accelerated in its design as a result shifting away from an advanced level does not alter the content students
081will be exposed to and it will not impact where they will end up at the end of the school year both the readers and writers workshop literacy and guided math or math workshop already philosophies that autonomous subscribes to and currently practices supervisors building administrators and teachers will continue to work collaboratively to support these instructional approaches in their professional learning communities department meetings and in-service learning opportunities next slide dr antonis another dimension i want to speak to is the growth mindset this is a philosophy that we promote and supported alton road for several years and at the heart of it is the phrase the power of yet this phrase was coined by carol dweck in her book mindset the power of yet teaches students that they can that they can learn their learning takes time and
082effort that results come from from hard work and that giving up isn't an option uh in fact i remember very vividly an example where i was walking down a hallway and i was doing something in the hallway and i said i can't do that a student stopped me and said yet mr terry yet you can't do it yet so we want to make sure that we encompass that we live out what we're trying to do here is another dimension in terms of this growth mindset if we believe it we need to carry this through um next slide dr antennas uh the next area or the the final area that i wanted to speak to the final dimension is the social emotional learning and you can see there's maslow's hierarchy needs as an example growing up
083as a 10 11 and 12 year old today is drastically different from 20 years ago or even 10 years ago initiatives such as burrow safe at the district level and our win time at alton road were adopted to combat the levels of childhood stress and anxiety that our students continue to face k-12 these stressors impact our students self-concept self-confidence and self-esteem at this delicate age at this delicate stage at alton road it is essential that we prioritize our student journey towards self-actualization as noted in mazela's pyramid the leveling creates a safe space for students to thrive or another way that i like to think about is that success will breed more success uh taking a cue from our district's mission statement i pulled it out i'm not sure uh if i don't look at it
084too often but it's good to do that periodically it says children are the messengers we send to a time where we will never see into a future we cannot adequately describe thus it is the mission of hillsborough township public schools and all the students that all students achieve the new jersey learning standards by providing an education adapted to the times and i underline that piece adapted to the times to the capacity and to the condition of each child so that all children may maximize their potential and become contributing members of society doctor onto this next slide please so i wanted to summarize these dimensions how one individually you could probably poke some holes in it but when you look at them collectively this supports this plan in looking at the meeting the needs and the
085success of our students in this time that we're in as again the times are changing applying each of these dimensions reinforces how the shift to d level is not only a wise course of action but long overdue as already mentioned ongoing support professional development and monitoring our progress will serve to focus our efforts and to help us to remain on the cutting edge with regard to developmentally appropriate instruction for example we have just wrapped up an eight-week professional development growth session by working with instructional strategy specialists from a company called innovative design education to help further our understanding of differentiated instruction at the same time as i mentioned as i read out the hillsborough mission i also it's important for us to remember the autumn road has a mission statement as well and i want
086to read it very briefly at alton road intermediate school our goal is to provide a smooth transition between childhood and adolescence this is our last chance before they get a little too big for us within our safe and compassionate environment we encourage our students to develop a respect for themselves and others together through our words and actions we motivate both our students and ourselves to attain personal and educational growth in partnership with their families we will foster our students development as they continue to mature into responsible contributing members of society um last slide dr antonis so just as a sort of a recap as presented in an earlier meeting with the board of education committee it was a smaller meeting we outlined the overarching goal of this plan to better meet the needs of our
087students and it was a two-pronged approach that would be necessary as noted earlier as noted primarily in this presentation this first phase the leveling math and literacy is slated to start in september the plan to implement phase two is slated for the 2022-23 school year and pressure in preparation for that to take place for the coming year we will dedicate substantial time to organize and prepare to carry out the response to intervention program also known as rti uh that's already in place in each of the six elementary schools in the district as you're likely aware rti is a problem-solving practice that is systematic in nature and which supports struggling learners by strengthening skills and knowledge deficiencies the overarching focus is to provide the necessary interventions so students can get on the path to more consistent
088levels of success rti will serve as the bookend to ensure that the success of our students in literacy and math and and so each and every student is well prepared for middle school and beyond and that's who i am [Music] thank you very much mr carrie are there any questions from the board about mr carrie's presentation okay so we'll start with ms nurse and miss stats then mr kid uh mr kerry thank you uh very much for taking the time tonight and discussing and and several things that you presented on it makes sense to me i think the most being when you talked about the journey from childhood to adolescence um really stuck stuck out and actually being a a school that only has two grades and having both of those grades um mirror each
089other makes a lot of sense the only question i have particularly to eris and the research is um we use de-leveling de-tracking um and i think i know where phase two is going i'm actually an intervention specialist that's very helpful in understanding everything um because we're not really de-leveling fully right next year because we still have the kids that what is the class call that needs support currently asi but there is like a sixth grade asi class correct at a fifth grade asi so are you is the second phase then going to be where all fifth and sixth grade students are in the same math class and then they're receiving intervention as needed for specific skill gaps is that is that where we're looking toward yeah yes indeed that that's you hit it right on
090the head uh it's important though this is not a uh we're not losing staff we're rededicating our asi teachers and we're gonna be dedicating the current the coming year to uh getting a better understanding of rti uh learning a little bit more of what's happening at the elementary schools and then yeah yes the plan is potentially that we will have a a pool of students in a class that uh there may be some students who just need that little extra support in a particular skill or perhaps a a piece of knowledge instead of dedicating them to an asi class for the entire year which may not necessarily be best fitting for them we pull them out when we need to as you know they might be a tier two approach and perhaps a more intensive
091tier three approach that the idea is to give them what they need provide those strengths strengthen those areas that they need and then continue to have them on the trajectory for success great just a follow-up to that is there a third phase or is this this is like a two-phase uh approach and we're once we've gotten through phase two we are fully implemented the way you see if there's a third is it if there's a third phase doctor insurance will be reading my name next year's retirement and uh no i'm just kidding uh not at plans right now but you know the lovely thing about education is that you never it's never perfected i think we'll continue to refine continue to build and continue to address uh areas that we need to focus in on
092professional development but i think that will continue going forward thank you so much thank you miss stats [Music] uh thank you mr carrie for your presentation um uh i'm i'm glad mr ms nurse uh clarified about asi um because that's definitely uh leveling and tracking students the lower performing students as you said um they off the lower performing students don't often move out of their track um but uh there was some uh research that was shared i believe by dr feltry that um as described to us at least in the education committee um there uh the way this plan is going to be carried out within the classroom is still a form of tracking um if you're gonna if you're gonna have groups of students formed based on their ability and uh and be assessed
093differently according to their performance ability etc that is still a form of tr of tracking um as opposed to having heterogeneous groups those are homogeneous groups so it's almost like having um instead of you know three different levels of classes they're all going to be in the same class and uh that now it's up to the teachers to provide those different levels but it's still still tracking and i'm also concerned this sort of overlaps with the fact that we were told that teachers were not part of this decision um um and that's at least as far as what i've been told from new jersey school boards that teachers should be part of the decision-making process when it comes to curriculum especially curricular changes um but i do i love that idea of the power of
094yet i do believe in that and and with courses that i've taken i there was the term learned helplessness that sometimes happens especially with our lower performing students and it's uh you know i guess it's sort of like the big million effect too and that i i appreciate you trying to address that but i do worry about whether or not it truly is addressing it um and that's putting a lot on the teachers without them having been part of the decision making process oh thanks thank you mr stats i'll just speak to it briefly um again what we're what we're going to do obviously is we go forward and next year then of course the year ahead one of the key parts is that we're going to continue to monitor what we're doing and looking
095at the results it would be wonderful if we could fast forward three to five years from now and take a look at the the results of what this may bring to the high school and that's that's what we're anticipating getting those changes into the high school getting more students to the more advanced levels and looking at that in graduation time um it's it's a shame we can't fast forward but we fully believe in that and as you said you know the power of yet we want to keep the sky's the limit for students i think we can all think of an example in our own life where someone may have given us encouraging word and completely changed our our course i can think of myself in many examples and a lot of times what we're
096trying to do here again it's two years it's a quick time and we don't want to limit students we want to give them opportunities and we feel this is a great opportunity to do that and i just have one other question it it came up because of concerns in a couple of retirements within the math area it is still going forward that you will be detracting in math this coming year i will defer i'll just look over doctor in tunis dr falcon i believe that's that's what i fully intend to i'll say that because just about a week and a half ago we did share the the levels for literacy and math for both for fifth and sixth grade well for our sixth graders currently and that did not include the advanced math and advanced
097literacy thank you mr carrie miss that's anything further okay mr kid did you have a question uh well i had a quick quiet can you hear me i had a quick question regarding class sizes just in terms of logistics will this have any effect on class sizes for the sixth grade grader will it even have a positive effect considering that you don't have to have that separate group and you can average things out more across all groups in terms of class sizes no thank you very much we anticipate that it'll help us balancing class sizes keeping those class sizes more consistent in any mat in any schedule that you have you're going to have some range of class sizes because at all children do select the world language so bringing into consideration a world language
098we are still offering reach reach is going to continue from the fourth grade into fifth and sixth and beyond so there are students are going to have reach but it's one less aspect in the schedule that you would have to specialize in so it does give us some opportunity to maintain more reasonable or consistent class sizes thank you mr carrie so i see um mr marini nurse and mr gillette so can i start with mr marini and then mr gillette and then return to his nurse okay um so it seems like the the effort of um the individual assessments is probably a labor-intensive process to go throughout the year um if we in the worst case scenario have to go to a hybrid model i know this year getting the full curriculum in was a
099difficult task with the remote students would we still continue to do this in the case of of that situation sorry i just if you could just rephrase that i just want to make sure i understand it so the case that we were all virtual for example and i know that it's a struggle to get the full curriculum in within in that situation will we still continue with this detracting in that case i i plan to i think for consistency's sake you know we have to make sure that we uh follow through with this as mentioned a little bit earlier the curriculum itself is is essentially the same exactly the same for both the advanced level now and the on level students right now so at the end of june they're all ending at the same
100point and i really give the teachers a shout out they they got through a substantial amount of curriculum this year compared to other years with all the challenges with the shorter days so um i fully intend to and i believe we can do it really well it just feels like a lot if you had all of those kind of layered on top of each other that would be an extremely difficult scenario for those teachers thank you mr marine thank you mr carrie mr gillette and then this nurse yeah mom thank you mr curry i i my question might be more for um doctor and tunas maybe i don't know uh so parents and others that have spoken to me about this um look they're not so concerned about what happens in sixth grade at aris
101um but they want to know what else what else what else is going to happen i mean they read every day about another big school district across the country eliminating all their advanced programs all throughout their middle schools and high schools all their advanced math and science because not enough of certain groups of people were were qualifying for those programs to just eliminate them uh so that's one um thing that people have asked me another thing is people ask me what role does the board play in this there's a lot of little things happen uh from you know from eliminating class rank to to this to a school like uh in a district like asbrite park they started something called 64th floor have you heard of diabetes on 64 floor is 65 is passing 64
102is failing nobody gets lower than the 64 even if they don't turn in their paper it's a 64. boy they're their graduation rates and everything went went right up everybody's passing now um is it i mean are we is we already started that a little bit here with uh with our homework and things have done i mean so parents want to know not necessarily where this leads and if through their elected representatives they have any say in it so that's my question and or comment let me just affirm that we are not eliminating advanced classes at seventh grade seventh through twelfth grade at all we're not we're not doing that so i and i tried to address that in the point when uh points to consider an anticipation of mr kerry speaking i addressed it
103then as well i'm i'm not sure whether where that where that came from but with with all due respect not this year and maybe not next year but we didn't eliminate class rank this like at the high school like this we eliminated that a few years ago sometimes it's a few years in between things i think that was like 16 years ago mr i gillard i was here i remember i remember it uh that was a discussion on the night i was just i was just i was i was just a high schooler myself back then i think but you see what but but yes i believe you when you say when that's not going to happen this year or next year but people want to know that's what people are concerned about now of
104course if i had a crystal ball i'd be rich right but no that's not something that i don't believe any any public school district could do where we're mandated to have certain courses then we have those courses so that's not something that we would that we would consider i also believe the reason they provided was the fact that it was that these courses aren't accelerated in nature at the high school you have students who are going to be uh you know going into advanced programs in honors programs and colleges and participating in research and you have other students who go down the perfectly valid path of going to trade school or specializing in their individual [Music] methods of employment i think the purpose is that the in this case the the separated classes aren't really
105serve aren't really serving a logistical purpose that they should be or an actual practical application a applicative purpose towards the education of the individual students and the ideas to have as many people succeed in the advanced programs of the middle school and the high school through the administration of this change is that correct so can i can i just say that i believe that somebody said at some point that one of the goals of the the tracking was equity who said that who wrote that was it mr carrie i i don't want to i um i'm not sure where that where that came up sometimes that could be an uh that could be something that comes out of that but that ought not be the reason why why why the primary reason why you move
106forward with things like that so i'm not sure where that came from it wasn't a letter it was stated in a letter i'm not sure the parents or teachers but it was stated but it might have been just miscommunication i forget who sent it it was stated in a letter with all due respect that that is has been a stated goal from some administration in this district uh so that could and with all respect to mr kidd that could drive a lot of things happening in the next few years with classes at the high school uh with ap classes with other classes of course it could so it depends what your goals are you i think mr kid outlined some good goals of having kids um take the classes they need to go into their
107programs of study in college that they want to go to that's a that's a good goal that's a goal we've had i don't know that that's always going to be the goal within the next few years i don't know if that's going to be the goal and i and i think that um these are some of the concerns parents have talked about with me privately so i just wanted to make sure that they're out there thank you mr gillette are there mr kid i see on his stats i think he forgot about me ms nurse yes um i just i i my thoughts were along the same as mr gillette's and i i think it's just important to reiterate i i i personally feel the same like the concern was i'm glad i understand now
108why it's happening in fifth and sixth grade but i am concerned about what's going to potentially happen down the road through seven through twelve and he said it's not happening but but i do have to say this is where i think transparency is so important we were late to the game as a whole to the board in terms of what was happening in fifth and sixth grade so i think you know first we heard about it through a committee meeting excuse me a committee report and then all of a sudden two weeks later it was already happening so we a lot of us didn't understand where that process was because we we had no idea what was happening and whoever was i i don't know but that's i think that's why where a lot of
109this is coming from and the questions now i don't want to sit here in two years and all of a sudden it's been made that there's gonna be no honors classes anywhere just because of i think we just need to and i wanted to reiterate that because i think that's the guiding point and what why people might be talking to mr gillette why he he raised that point is it just happened so quickly in our eyes and you might have been in the planning stages for a very long time and it sounds like great research and in the end um i understand why the decision was made but i was confused for a long time until you came um and then i'm not putting it on you mr kerry at all i think just as
110as a district this is so important why communication and open communication having public forums is so important so we can hear what's going on people can express their thoughts and then we can move on as necessary thank you very much miss nurse ms stats and yes [Music] um yeah i i am disappointed also in how this was rolled out um obviously we can't change what has already happened but hopefully we can learn from this and uh not have a repeat and whatever future kinds of similar uh activities take place um i also think something i i believe mr carrie you said it in in your live stream presentation this this was a grades 5 through 12 endeavor i don't know if that still is the case but that does bring to mind the points that
111uh uh mr gillette made but also that um i i may if this was uh just a a plan that was uh created by you and your staff or a broader part of our district um i would hope so if it is a grades 5 through 12 endeavor even if it was if it is just a grade 6 endeavor because of its far-reaching consequences um i do think more people should should have been involved and if they were um i have not been i'm not aware of that or i missed it um um i think that's all i have to say thank you miss stats mr kid oh i was just going to say that from my understanding of what mr carrie had said in regards to um it being a 5-12 endeavor it was
112that it was uh effective monitoring of performance through grades 7 through 12 to see this the impact of the changes of grades five and six because we want to see if perhaps the ditra or the the tracking and differentiation of non-accelerated classes making the application of the accelerated class at these levels more efficient and more equitable more more uh equitable and applicable and truly representative of all students abilities is that correct absolutely you hit a big big part of that and the other part of the presentation regarding the the um [Music] the five to twelve pathways as i called it was that we wanted to make sure that we we officially and nature our parents understood that this change in grade six will not impact where their child could potentially land in grade 12. that
113this change here it's not like the butterfly effect we do a little something here and it's going to impact them down to grade 12. it's a good butterfly effect but it wouldn't negatively impact their opportunity to reach those advanced levels and honors level classes in grade 12. hopefully that helps a little bit more thank you mr carrick for that clarification mr oliver mr oliver then mr marini so you know i'm going to echo a lot of sentiments from from this evening my only question is mr gillette was it 16 years ago or 60 years ago that you grabbed knobs kidding um obviously there's a lot of concern from some board members that this has already been implemented i know ata leadership spoke to us a couple of weeks ago or a month ago that there
114was no collaboration with the teachers when this was implemented what my biggest concern is we have a couple of steamed educators on the on the desks who have some concerns with this um you know i moved into hillsboro 37 years ago and the main reason was we you know we had different classes for different people and and now it seems like we're you know at the sixth grade level it seems like it's just all one class for everyone it reminds me of you know the t-ball games where everybody bats nobody keeps score like you know we're different i don't want to make people the same like i want i like the accelerated classes i like the you know the remedial classes or you know however we phrase them but i like that individualized attention i
115like children who could excel to be able to excel with kids at that same level and you know again there's a study done somewhere that says at the fifth grade level that doesn't work but at the sixth grade level it does is the study going to come out next year that says well the sixth grade level that doesn't work but at the eighth grade level it works like where are we going with this and again this is a done deal but we didn't really have a lot of time to discuss it it just kind of happened so you know when you have that many board members that have some questions or some issues about it and it's a done deal i have some concerns about it and again we've heard those concerns from not only
116parents but we've heard that from from some of the teachers in the aga leadership so i still have some real reservations about this i i i'm hoping it's not a done deal i hope there's still something we could do to you know to either put this on hold until we have some more information or some collaboration from from more people can i can i just add to that you gave a good sports analogy i have a little quote here i took some notes and it says i'm reading it in my experience as a coach i've noticed that athlete's performance and body language instantly changes when there's when they are put into the lower group they watch the other groups to see who who's in them and they look to see where their friends are and
117they watch the a group players over their shoulders they are no longer focused on the sport they are surrounded by others who may not be the best athletes on the quarter field and the quality of play doesn't push them to to improve so i just wanted to kind of give that some context of in a sports analogy why we're doing what we're doing yeah and and i respect that mr carrie but i'm going to tell you the same analogy and and i'll you know i'll use golf as an analogy except 23 years as a member you'll see someone who maybe has a horrific round of golf in the tournament and very typically two of their playing partners will have that same horrific round of golf because they'll get caught into that negative energy that frustration
118and then you'll you'll get someone who over achieves because he happens to be playing with tiger woods that particular that particular day because he gets sucked into that energy and and that determination and that prowess that that you know so you know we can sit and debate that but i think both sides of of the you know spectrum really hold i think you you know you will play down to that level but i think you'll also play up to that higher level to to try to achieve to be better so there's a lot of studies that tell us a lot of different things absolutely [Music] thank you mr oliver are there any other comments from the board mr mourinho [Music] so a couple meetings ago i never mentioned that these came out of goals what
119are they called sogs s stos um do we get access to what those are um to look at so that we could see these things coming up yeah that's part of um that's part of the valuation and the evaluation of the of the administration as of the administrator so in this in this scenario we would only know that this is going on and planning if they come to the board and present this goal now the sgos could it could be any multitude of things and it usually for building administration for all administrators it's usually a programmatic goal of some sort is there sometimes it'll go through committee sometimes it won't it depends what it is they they run the gamut i mean i i guess just just food for thought it may be a good
120idea for some level of these goals that have district-wide impact to be presented as kind of a standard practice like kind of like this one maybe earlier on in the process just so we know that these are coming because that could that could solve this question of these things went through a year of effort before we knew that it was happening thank you mr murray and i think um did you have another i just wanted to say to mr carrie i i really want to reiterate how thankful at least i think a lot of us are here um i think a lot of what we're talking about is much bigger than with what you decided what you were trying to do i think we're more talking about the way it happened and rolled out as
121a district so please take to take that to heart and know that we i think that you've done a phenomenal job putting everything together being able to come and talk us through it has been very helpful for me but it is the bigger district view that a lot of us are talking about and the process part is what we're supposed to care about right so yeah i think in this we should understand how we fix the broken process yes it's more the communication realm and moving us forward as a district and not any quite great things that you're trying to do for our students um miss mr mourinho ms nurse thank you very much for those those comments we appreciate that we we also and i think the administration has acknowledged that the rollout if
122going back in time might have been been done differently so so thank you for that and i wanted to see no other comments from the board i too would like to thank mr carrie for his presentation and also as i remember meeting mr carrick for the first time probably seven years ago when my daughter was entering fifth grade and mr kerry you did show the ted talk and i think you showed it each year to the incoming fifth graders the ted talk about the growth mindset where and i forget his name i watched it recently where he talks about josh waitzkin the chess player who was so grateful for losing his first or he he lost a major chess tournament and he said that that freed him to think that it was okay that he
123it was okay to lose and that he was he couldn't do it yet he was going to be able to grow into that and i believe was it that he kickboxing i can't remember exactly but he went on to do it it was kickback he went on to do a completely different sport and that was just very freeing for him and that ted talk really was the first time i heard that growth mindset and was very eye-opening and an educational process for me myself and i think that that is what your it's kind of almost like the evolution of that presentation that you've been giving every year to the fifth grade parents so thank you um thank you very much yes i can go ahead okay so last thursday june 10th we proudly celebrated 93
124seniors as they were awarded over a hundred thousand dollars in locally sponsored and school sponsored scholarships the recipients were led into the ceremony by senior adam gottlieb who was appointed to west point united states military academy thank you to our community sponsors for continuing to support this program each year families and community members can view the ceremony in the hillsborough township public schools youtube channel congratulations to fifth grader yashvi sharma who came in third place on her essay saluting engineering's role in meeting and defeating challenges presented by covid19 yashvi submitted her essay in the 2021 engineer girl writing competition sponsored by the national academy of engineering engineer girl is designed for girls in elementary through high school and offers information about various engineering fields and careers the 2021 engineering girl writing contest was sponsored by
125chevron corporation and the kenan institute for engineering technology and science great work yafi finally new jersey school boards association recommends that all boards of education take time to engage in board professional development typically referred to as a board retreat while a public meeting that will be noticed this retreat allows the board to discuss issues surrounding boardmanship the role of the board and discussion and development of goals for the new year and no action is taken at this meeting typically an off-site location is secured at no cost to the taxpayer or the board i'd like to say that again typically an off-site location is secured at no cost to the taxpayer or the board this year's board retreat will take place next wednesday june 23rd from 6 p.m to 9 p.m at the ac hotel by
126mario at no cost to the public or the board mrs trujillo superintendent's report two hours later thank you thank you very much dr anthony so now i'd like to turn it over to i believe there is a committee report for two committee reports from his staff [Music] uh thank you mr trujillo um there was a meeting on wednesday june 2nd of the somerset county educational services commission it was largely an organization meeting um that addressed a variety of things from uh hiring of uh professional services to various esc programs um and they also discuss summer school for you know the extended school year and there's continued collaboration with the vote votec and franklin middle school and there will be a new program for ages 18 to 21. and uh next week on june 22nd they
127will have the graduation for the seniors and i look forward to attending that and for the municipal alliance we met friday june 11th there were several reports on the many programs and support services throughout the school year for our students um and uh one outstanding issue is that there has been concern for our young adults after they graduate from high school and to serve them there will be a virtual stress reduction program for adults ages 18 to 24 years old uh that will be uh offered in the fall it'll last eight weeks and information will be shared with our seniors and the community at large thank you miss trio thank you then i'd like to move forward with the approval of the executive session i can have a first and a second [Music] um all
128in favor [Music] a second to approve the public minutes so moved second thank you mr mourinho thank you mr kid all in favor aye aye aye aye aye sorry any i lost my train of thought any opposed none and then any abstentions mr passover abstain thank you um i need to abstain too and i meant to say abstain for the last one as well thank you miss murray no problem both healthy guys all right thanks yeah i didn't get the mute button fast enough so now i'd like to open it up to comments from the board and the public and i'm going to go to the public first if that's okay and i'll read the the statement we very much welcome input from the public during board meetings there will be two 30-minute periods of
129time the meeting will be open for public comment for members of the public are invited to comment which they may do so via zoom in person if they are attending in person or by written comments sent by letter or email during the first public comment period members of the public make comments about items that are listed on tonight's agenda before the board votes if time remains in this public comment period members of the public make comments on any school or school district issue that a member of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the district as per biola167 before you state your question or comment you will be asked to provide your name and address please understand that our public forums are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather
130are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board in instances where the board believes that there is misunderstanding or inaccuracy the board president or superintendent will address the comments there may be times when a member of the public makes a comment or asks a question about personnel or hiring decisions kindly note that the open public meetings act and the privacy rights of public employees encompassed there and do not permit the board to discuss personal issues in public session so with that i'd like to open it up to comments from people in the room miss salinger let me see oh i don't think i have the ability if mr mahmoud or doctor and chinese if you could promote ms salinger yes i can do that uh presentation hold on one second no problem sander
131you should be on amy any minute now good perfect okay thanks um amy salinger i am a sixth grade teacher at autonomous school i teach math i'm also the ata gender um but as a sixth grade math teacher i've listened in on a lot of the conversations at the board meetings i've certainly been involved in some of the um the details that mr kerry discussed and i remained mostly silent at these board meetings but now that everything is out and the presentation was made i just wanted to share some of my comments and thoughts um and i i know i don't just speak for myself but but many of my colleagues in regards to equity because that came up quite a bit that was absolutely mentioned as a main reason for doing what we were
132doing um in regards to the presentation when mr kerry discussed dimension b which was the research um i think it would have been nice to see some of the cited sources we talked about what the research says but there was nothing cited i understand we can't see details of their seo however there no details of the seo findings were ever shared with us as rationale for the changes that were made like no way not even any kind of generalizations about the outcomes of those stus um when it comes to lower levels you know just put that in quotes we will still have that in asi and in the presentation mr kerry mentioned how you know once students are there there's not a lot of opportunity for movement we still have that level though moving forward
133and as far as opportunity to move i've been teaching in this district for 22 years every year i've had students move up students move down students stay the same so there's always an opportunity to move i understand we don't have an accelerated program in sixth grade but we do have an advanced program it wasn't rich it was enhanced they they had different common assessments that we gave we had different activities that we did with them than any other classes so it was definitely a different course it was it's not the same course even though it's not accelerated it's definitely different it's still unclear moving forward um what assessments are going to look like we don't know if we're giving leveled assessments it was sort of mentioned but never no details have been mentioned yet especially
134when it comes to screening students for algebra because now we've gone from no placements in fifth grade you could be in advance in sixth grade so now you have an opportunity to level and then the first time you accelerate is seventh grade now we're going from no level at all and the first time you could level you might also accelerate so that almost be like jumping two levels um going back to the equity issue you know a simple solution that i have suggested for years was to screen all six graders for algebra we never did that we only screened advanced students um so one way to have offered more opportunity would have been to screen everybody like they do in seventh grade um so those are just some of my comments there all of that
135being said um i think it's important that everybody knows that everybody wants what's best for the students the the teachers the parents the staff everybody as a staff we will do our best as we always do but we have many many questions in regards to the logistics still and what this will actually look like in september thank you thank you miss salinger for your comments are there any other comments from people in the room mr goody let me uh take care of that anyway i'm putting you on and amy i'm just about to take you off okay you should be on henry in a few seconds thank you um henry goodhue hillsborough association first and foremost i just want to thank the administration for the presentation of our retirees tonight and extend our gratitude to
136their frankly centuries of service um and they're going to be irreplaceable um you know we welcome the new members obviously but these are folks who gave uh just countless years to our students and helped shape hillsboro in ways uh that defy explanation so i just want to thank them on behalf of the association as well for their service i would also just like to discuss briefly um the university of florida has an educational leadership program one of the associate professors there is christopher redding and he's done research on change within buildings uh within schools and how there can be pushback on that based off of how it's done and whether or not something is worthwhile doesn't change how we should go about doing it and unfortunately we exist in a universe of unfunded mandates where
137we're often trying to justify being told to do something as opposed to looking at why we should do it and we had an opportunity here to actually work with staff work with the community and justify the why as well as share the how and i think that we missed that opportunity um and i think that that miss stats raised a good point of where in the presentation did it note about the discussion of where staff was with this um and and that question still hasn't fully been answered so i think in fairness to the members that we represent i do need to reiterate that and i also i mean i understand we can't share sgo you know sgo's specific to someone's evaluation but when a teacher does an sgo that could impact their classroom or
138change how they're approaching to something they share that data with the principals or with their supervisors and they talk about how that data impacts their decisions and makes the case for why they should do it so while i understand again we can't necessarily say here's someone's sgo here's here's the rating that they got on that nor should we we should talk about the data that got us there and engage in that collaborative process of decision making that leads especially when we have the opportunity to do that because it's a rarity that we have that opportunity and i don't think we should squander those chances thank you thank you mr good for you are there any other comments from people in the room seeing none then i will see none then i will go into the
139zoom online room and um didier hymn is i will now promote you to panelists [Music] can you hear me yes beautiful uh your video is not on if you would like to turn your video on my camera my phone broke like no worries no worries i i'll get a new phone soon i promise uh ddr jimenez um uh gemini drive in hillsborough new jersey um i am coming here as uh not only myself but as the leader for our revolution hillsboro uh most people know we're here to make sure that we have a lot more involvement in the local government that includes border bed to have more community members know about it to get more engaged because when we have a rich pool of feedback from a lot of folks who make better decisions now
140we're disappointed about the decision that the virtual access will be taken away we need to encourage more folks to care about these meetings uh what's the burden on the border bed with having virtual assets um what we're saying is that sure you could view these meetings that last about two to three hours and you have to drive all the way to see them but that takes privilege most parents don't have that privilege most have two to three jobs and if you don't have uh two to three jobs you have the responsibility of taking care of two or three kids and manage other responsibilities like transportation how to get there and yeah on top of that we have folk storage siebel who take about an hour to get out of their home uh and they can't
141just get out and and come to these uh meetings uh and folks with a low immune system kova is not over yet you know i can't know they were learning a lot of broadcasting these uh meetings in our revolution we see a lot of folks watch even those who don't have any kids people participate uh and you know both of uh ads are very famous for saying or just a stereotype of uh stereotype saying where are the parents they're not here at the meeting uh but in reality that sounds pretty tone deaf to the actual reality of how our of how folks need all these privileges to be able to attend these meetings in first i'm using this virtually right now and literally five minutes ago i was cleaning the kitchen while i was listening
142to the meeting and learning more about what's happening in my local port of ed uh and i like to do it with other aspects of local government so please i urge the board to please change your mind make it available make it a thing um i urge every single one of you to learn the big lesson from kobe 19 we always have the power to make these meetings accessible uh and the moral more of the community that we bring in uh we're gonna be a healthy community and um at the end of the day it's just a morally right thing to do thank you mr eminence i see miss lento i will promote you to panelists miss lanza whenever you're ready i am sorry i am here i'm trying to turn my camera on [Music]
143um i'm sorry oh hold on one second i have it okay all right good evening all right so good evening uh everyone i would like to start out by saying thank you to doctor antunis and mrs trujillo for reaching out to me after the last board meeting i appreciate you listening to my ideas and for having an open conversation with me about the obstacles we are currently facing in our district i am very happy to hear that we are planning for a full-time return to school um program in september at this point though and this was discussed at length tonight um we the cdc and governor murphy obviously we have the six feet guideline that that is standing in our way right now as far as lunches um again which is a huge topic tonight
144so at six feet students are um required to you know wear a wear mask so i'm sorry at three feet so we addressed that but my concern is still lunches and i know we've talked about this a lot but um as we said tonight doctor in tunis like agree you agree i think the board agrees we all discussed this that it does pose a problem in bringing our children back full time we are planning for a full-time return but if our children cannot eat at school this will result in a half-day schedule for september this can absolutely not happen again i have posed the idea of eating in classrooms and utilizing tents um without electricity i'm not really sure where this information is coming from plenty of districts all around us are using tents for
145lunches not for instruction i do believe that is a different type of permit they've been able to figure this out so even if we do need a tent at this point if we need a permit for that tent i don't understand why we haven't pursued that option yet we're in june so our district has known for months supposedly that we need a permit and we have not looked into that yet um so again what is our plan i guess what i'm asking to house our students on school grounds for lunches um i think at this point i agree with miss nurse completely we need to stop hoping for the best and planning for the worst so we are fully prepared for any scenario that comes our way in september um we need to keep exploring
146every option in avenue possible i asked the board and dr tunis to seriously consider all of these different options to return our children to full-day instruction given the current not anticipated the current cdc guidelines of six feet without a mask thank you thank you are there any other comments from people online [Music] um ms mailer miss mailer whenever you're ready um i think hi good evening um anna mailer 11 hunt club road i'm here again with a few of my middle school students so our comments are not directed on action items so i just wanted to check if this would be an okay time for us to speak or do we need to wait please go ahead i know it's late for the students yes they've been learning flat this evening thank you so much
147um so again good evening dr enthusiast dr peltry this is trujillo and the members of the board as you may recall this is my third time speaking to you as a member not only of the hillsborough community on the https staff and a member of borough cares which is our hillsborough coalition for anti-racist and equitable schools i spoke back in january about racial healing dr trubilsky read a letter that evening from borough cares asking that the board bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to review and advance a comprehensive plan for our district to focus on racial equity in educational programs and services and the letter outlined eight recommendations to promote greater inclusivity and racial equity when developing goals and budgets for the year again in march i spoke to again actively encourage the board
148to promote equity and belonging as district goals and i introduced several students at that meeting who are members of our hms cares group they spoke up about some painful personal experiences in which they were the targets of harassment based on race religion ethnicity while in our district and i know that they spoke from the heart their words were authentic and powerful and resonated with many who heard them speak so i'm here again this evening and i want to quote the cultural anthropologist margaret mead never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed is the only thing that ever has so this evening i'm here with several more students so we can highlight the work of this small group of thoughtful committed students they were going to share some of
149the ways in which they have taken action to combat racism and injustice that they have their peers and experiences and i'm going to summarize and then turn it over to them but we have had weekly conversations about social justice and racism and current events and personal stories including several joint meetings with the hillsborough high school student diversity initiative our students participated in national day of racial healing which led to the creation of a hallway of healing in our hms commons and this month that's been updated to include june is lgbtq pride month the students attended kane university diversity council student leadership conference they presented and discussed uh on bypoc representations in the media at a borough cares meeting they created a brochure educational materials and interactive activities for the recent hope for tomorrow mental health
150fair they developed and piloted a children's project involving presentations on diversity and microaggressions for elementary students in grades one through four they've created a fundraiser for uniff that will take place this coming saturday and created a culminating podcast capturing the year in review in the words of one of our eighth graders eighth grader sanji nevada who spoke with me back in march she says i'm genuinely proud of our club for having achieved so much in just our first year we have come so far establishing a safe place for open discussion about anti-racism and personal stories i love this love and i'm so grateful for the connections and awareness it has granted me these young adults have made an incredible impact on the lives of so many in just one short year in a few minutes
151you'll hear from one of our members divya takar she is responsible for spearheading two of the projects that we accomplished this year the children's project and the podcast and i'm proud to say that this impact will expand as i along with three teacher advisors of the club mrs caroline dolly this is tsunami and mr ian evans we are presenting a session about the club at the new jersey state equity conference on august 3rd we chose the star wars team and have titled our presentation how to empower students become jedi masters jedi standing for justice equity diversity and inclusion we have even gotten the blessing of luke skyworker himself as mark hamill responded to a tweet from mrs dolly about our planned presentation we hope some of you will be able to attend that august 3rd
152i cannot be more proud of our jedi masters in hms cares they inspire me every day and once again their faces stories and efforts to tackle and dismantle racism i hope will inspire you to action as well um if i could have uh priscilla desai you can be promoted to panelists i will turn it over to persia and two other fellow jedi masters thank you thank you miss mailer so priscilla desai i promoted and then who else uh divya takar and vanilla cuda pali thank you thank you miss naylor [Music] i'm christian visai and i live on 62 fisher drive dear dr antunes and all members of the hillsborough township board of education i'm christopher and i'm a student from hillsborough middle school as well as an active participant in hms cares this evening i'm
153joined by two other students from hillsborough middle school and hms cares hms cares is a group created this year we discuss topics like racial injustices unconscious biases systematic racism and stereotypes hms cares is student-led coalition which has participated in multiple projects including the hope for tomorrow mental health fair not only do we create and provide resource resources for people to help their mental health we provided resources to educate people on major issues like microaggressions this pamphlet was printed and distributed to many people at the mental health fair the pamphlet provided resources like children's books teen movies that educate children and teens on race diversity and microaggressions at an age-appropriate level the pamphlet also provided details on how to cope when faced with the microaggression as well as effect on individuals mental health additionally we provided
154resources for parents to educate their parent to educate their children on diversity and microaggressions moreover we were able to make valuable connections with teachers and other educators amongst the district our connections helped us lead and create bigger projects one including the children's presentation as ms miller stated earlier the connections helped us educate many people as well as the younger generations additionally with our activities at the fair we had set up like cornhole we were able to interact with many people in a safe and educational way not only do we create brochures but we also had a trifold that also educated people and provided even more resources essentially through our time at the fair we were able to create many valuable experiences and educate many people furthermore we were able to meet and discuss with people
155from the student diversity initiative at hillsborough high school and were able to hold a valuable discussion this discussion further further sparked more ideas and students who are part of hms cares which led to the creation of the hms cares podcast vivian tucker is responsible for spearheading the two projects that hms cares has accomplished this year the children project and the hms podcast could you please raise the attacker to panelists maybe you're already amazed whenever you're ready hi uh can you hear me yes all right dear doctor in tunis dr felter and all the members of the hillsborough township board of education my name is divya talker and i live on seven hegemon clothes i'm a student at the hillsborough middle school and an active member in the club hms cares hillsborough's middle school's collision for
156anti-racist and equitable schools like miss mailer and prisha desai mentioned in may i have decided to take on a project the children's project in which students from hillsboro from hms cares facilitate presentations on various topics such as microaggressions stereotypes and diversities to students at an elementary school we worked closely with the principal of hillsborough elementary school ms eckstein on a pilot in which we presented to one class per grade level we have successfully presented to the following classes mrs des pasquales first grade class miss miss strata second grade class mrs berderno's third grade class and miss meddleton's fourth grade class through our presentations we have collected massive amount of data to prove why this project was successful our project has had a big impact on elementary school students miss de pasquale wrote stated when i
157told the students we would have a lesson on diversity not one of them could tell me what diversity meant at the end of the lesson before we ended the presentation i asked who could tell the presenters what diversity meant and every hand went up not only that but they were able to give concrete examples of diversity naming their religion their hair color etc another teacher ms berdarno wrote i believe that it is a good reminder that you need to be aware of others and their feelings it is allow me to have a following discussion discussion with them with the students that sometimes our reaction to something that is new or different can hurt others without intending to when asked about uh what a microaggression is a student in ms mastrata's class wrote when someone says
158something hurtful to another person but they don't realize it's hurtful this directly shows that students at an elementary school level ages 6 to 10 are capable of understanding these topics whether it's diversity or microaggressions as we progress as a community we should take the time to teach our children about topics like diversity and microaggressions to make our community a place for everyone ms meddleton also expressed this by writing i think my students learned a lot from the presentations and would benefit from having multiple presentations like this throughout the throughout the year to reinforce the concepts the teachers had positive feedback to give us on how it was like with working with hms cares mr squally wrote the students were very thorough and very organized it was a clear it was clear that they were passionate
159about this project and eager to make this a successful lesson in addition miss broderno wrote i would like to congratulate you for a job well done i believe that you are one step closer to bringing awareness to racial differences you did it in a way that was age-appropriate which was not an easy task the teachers were asked to rate the presenters if they were prepared and organized in which all the teachers rated it a five out of five we at hms cares have taken on a project that was not easy we have taken action on our own to start to make a difference in our community we asked today for the board of education to add teachings of diversity microaggressions and stereotypes into the elementary school curriculum by adding these teachings into the curriculum we
160can truly make a change step by step feel free to contact me with questions comments etc at talkerd https.us thank you can you please promote vanilla codepoly to panelist whenever you're ready uh can you hear me yes okay perfect um good evening my name is vanilla kotapuli and i live on 36 lucas drive i am a current proud member member of hms cares and i want to start off by explaining why we started the podcast at hms cares um debia who just spoke saw students from the podcast club in the high school and it triggered something in her she wanted to do something similar like what they were doing since she saw others spreading awareness about this issue likewise if the board of education takes action more people will want to make a difference moving
161on we are spreading awareness in our community if more people talk about the current issues in the community more people tend to do something about it we should strike more awareness starting with people around us and tell them that fixing the problem starts with us and the people around us giving people a boost of confidence and inspiration can make a difference in how much of a difference they make also something small like listening to an episode can strike a conversation even something small like people talking about it can spark something in them that makes them want to do something about it they start to care because they can tell that it's a pertinent issue even having discussions about it makes a difference in the long run this also fires up ideas in others mind others
162minds this can also help people come together and come up with new ideas that can help the community become a better place when people come together to solve problems it makes a bigger difference than what multiple people come together with their own ideas and try to execute them lastly i am the editor of the hms cares podcast and i choose to edit these episodes because i feel like people needed to be pleased with what they were listening to they should feel like the episode has order and speakers know what they're talking about that gives them confidence that they can also make a difference also we have a quote from one of the advisors from our group [Music] we are so very proud of this group of students and have learned so much from them we
163have watched an amazement that a club that began began as an adult-led discussion group became a powerful student-led group of activists their passion commitment to make our community a more just and equitable place is so heartening it truly gives us hope to know that these young people will be leading the way to a better future for all thank you thank you very much for speaking tonight at the board of education meeting ms mailer thank you for having us um and i want to say i will be sending copies of the brochure that they created to all of you interoffice and um we will be sending you information on how to listen to the first two episodes and one more to come of uh their podcast that they created so be on the lookout to you're
164gonna hear from these students well into the future but this will be a little teaser thank you so much for having us thank you very much for speaking tonight at the board of education and mr mahmoud if i may ask if there were actually let me go back to the zoom room and to see if there are any other attendees who wish to speak seeing none then i will ask mr mahmoud if there were any correspondence that we received uh yes mr hill we did receive one uh and it was for mr albanese that he would like it read in public and we have mr lapierre all set to read that public comment if you are okay with that yes thank you very much mr moomoo and thank you mr lapira for reading the public
165comments into the record okay sure so before we read this i have to preface it by stating that can you hear me okay i have to preface it by stating that this is a letter from mr albanese obviously doesn't necessarily reflect the views of the board or the administration or or the reader quite frankly um so with that preface um if so we're required to read it into the record um for the three minute period so if um saint giuliana will do the timing then i will start reading okay very good so letter reads this district for a long time was the district everyone wanted to send their children to but not anymore the blue ribbon or gold standard has been taken away the district and its administration have destroyed the education of our children
166and it starts with superintendent the transparency or lack of is draining you continue to put out vague messages and you seem to have no plan many parents including i are tired of hearing checking with the township health official and the cdc and everyone else you check with is terrible in making decisions for our children and they deserve better your mission statement the hillsborough township public school district is committed to providing a superior education for all students so they will lead us successfully and responsibly into the future is that your true mission statement if so you as the superintendent have not lived lived up to the same uh the letter goes on to say last month you talked about a long weekend memorial day weekend not once in your statement did you identify that holiday or
167what it means i can tell you that it means it is the day we reflect on those who died to protect our rights as citizens of this country i have folded flags for some of those individuals having to present a flag to a five-year-old boy who lost his dad in afghanistan a young wife who was only married one month whose husband had been killed in iraq but maybe we just needed a long weekend because everyone needs that verbatim you have made our children suffer educationally emotionally and socially you have taken their ability to learn and make friends all because you want to follow guidelines not laws you were afraid to step out and be a leader once again proving you did not deserve this position a guideline is a statement by which to determine a
168course of action not a law and is controllable by the administration in which you decided to make permanent when you could have made a better made decisions for the benefit of the community and our children the letter goes on to say critical race theory is a communist propaganda which does not belong in our school i have served with many people over the years black white yellow brown orange purple pink and the letter goes on but that's the that's the extent of it and again it does not reflect necessarily the viewpoints of the board or the administration or the reader i just want to remind people of that thank you thank you mr lepiro seeing no further public comments i will now close public comments and then turn it to the board for any comments before
169we vote on the action agenda with stats uh first i'd like to thank the uh the ms mailer and the students from hms cares for their uh commentary they continue to blow me away how well spoken they are for such a young age um and for sharing their their own experiences but also to uh by their positive action in response to that um and i forgot to say this earlier sorry about uh bringing up the tracking again but i'm also concerned that this uh significant change is happening um during and on the heels of a very difficult year so that's another reason why i think at least it should be put on hold um and i also think i because of maybe how maybe somebody else reading the letter or mr albany's if he had
170read it or whatever just if it's okay if we can have the rest of that letter read because i think there are times we have let people go beyond the three minutes so i believe it's not that much longer i respectfully ask to have the remainder of it read mr lapira sorry to if you would thank you that's fine yeah okay so um i was at um okay i do not see colors and neither do our children if you bring this into our school you are the racists there is no place for it here we as a community should be teaching our children that we are americans not a race we must stand together and be proud of being [Music] police officers are not bad a few bad apples spoil the bunch just like all
171teachers are not bad the same rule applies why on earth would someone denounce they are white if you bring this program into our school system i promise you i will fight you to the supreme court of new jersey i will make sure that this is something that will never be allowed in our schools how is it that a teacher and other teachers can wear black lives matter t-shirts to school how is that acceptable in an elementary school when these children are influenced by what they see in here this is not acceptable in a school setting the goal of this administration should only be the educational aspect of america and not communist or socialist propaganda and i will fight this curriculum tooth and nail to make sure that happens uh the letter goes on to say
172unmask our children now it has been stated over and over the last month the masks do not help this virus is smaller than any mask fabric that would be able to stop it remove the masks if something bad were to happen to one of our children due to the mask constraint this district would lose millions last week i went to pick up my son at school i walked into the school and observed two teachers less than two feet away from each other while you make our children sit six feet away and maintain a six feet distance when i went into the office i observed several employees without their masks on the vice principal walked through the office saw me and immediately put his mask on the hypocrisy in this school system is ludicrous next september
173i along with much of the community expect the school to be open full days with no masks and you need to make that decision and not rely on someone else telling you what to do make the right decision now and finally the letter concludes i will remind you again our children and teachers are the stakeholders and the taxpayers are the pillars of the community and that is the full letter written by mr albanese thank you mr lapierra is there any other comment from the board before we vote seeing none then i will turn it over to dr anthony's for the action agenda thank you mrs trio the superintendent recommends that the board of education approve the education agenda as follows 11.1 1110 motion to approve professional development the future of the explanation to improve your
174minority development motion to approve professional development in preparation for science curriculum writing 2021 rbcc concurrent moment motion to approve affiliation agreements with oklahoma university should [Music] 22. thank you dr entinas may have a motion in a second still moved thank you thank you mrs any discussion is there any discussion seeing none mr memory girly mr gillette yes mr kid yes mr marini yes mrs maroon yes is his nurse yes mr oliver yes it's the pulsar yes mrs staff yes and miss trujillo yes motion passed the superintendent recommends that the board of education approve the human resources agenda as follows hold on to your seats 12-1 to 12 24. motion to approve retirements and resignations i'd like to point out um uh donna hennell's retirement and william retirement thank you for your service [Music] i think
175it's probably picking up either from gene or mr mahmoud's mic also i think that's when you guys turn yours off she comes through clear but i think it's getting picked up by two mics okay motion to revise temporary technician assignment motion to approve contract change 2021-2022 motion to approve transfer change in assignment motion to approve leaves of absence motion to approve appointments for 2020 2021 motion to approve appointments 2021 2021-2022 motion to approve mentor 2020 2021 and student teachers 2122 motion to approve the renewal of custodial and maintenance staff 2021-2022 motion to approve renewal of transportation staff 2021 2022 motion to approve renewal of tenured hpsa staff 2021-2022 motion to approve renewal of unaffiliated staff 2021-2022 motion to approve renewal of tenured unaffiliated administrators 2021-2022 motion to approve summer work 2021 motion to approve revised
176summer enrichment program 2021 motion to approve summer transportation hours 2021 motion to approve 2021 summer athletic camp coaches motion to approve extended school year program 2021 motion to approve extra coverage a motion to prove an administrator salary change and motion to approve policies and regulations for second reading as listed thank you doctor nismay have a motion in a second so moved thank you thank you miss nurse is there any discussion mr oliver so i i had two questions the salary change is was that scheduled or is that just was that something that's being adjusted as that's for graduate coursework i believe okay and then the other the point i wanted to make with the with the coach appointments for the summer that is not being funded by the school industry that's uh by the parents
177i know we've had some criticisms from some of the parents with certain coaches and programs we continue to look into that with putin's evaluations but this is something that it's fully funded my understanding from the parents and [Music] did you have a question or comment no okay seeing none if we could have a roll call please mr member lily uh mr gillette yes mr kid yes mr marini yes mrs maroon yeah mrs nurse yes mr oliver yes mr pulcifer yes mrs that yes and mr hill yes motion passes [Music] superintendent recommends that the board of education approve the operations agenda as follows 13.1 to 13.4 motion to approve the monthly financial statement motion to approve resolution for capital reserve under maintenance reserve transfer motion to accept donations as listed and we thank everybody for those
178donations and motion to approve bylaw of zero one four five for second reading thank you doctor and tunas may have a motion in a second so moved thank you mr chilette thank you mr oliver is there any discussion [Music] seeing none if mr mahmoud if you can have a roll call please absolutely mr gillette yes mr kid yes mr marini yes mrs maroon yeah it's his nurse yes it's the oliver yes it's the pulse of her yes it's his stats yes and mrs trujillo yes motion pass thank you very much and now it's time for our second comments period from the board in public i will start with the public and then go to the board so are there any comments miss salinger i will promote each panelist here whenever you're ready okay thanks amy
179salinger sixth grade teacher dot android school hth edger i just wanted to follow up on um something that ms stath said in her comments and that's something that i've meant to bring up before but then the timer goes off but i just you know she mentioned something about you know coming off the heels of this unusual school year that we've taught in and that is a point that many of my colleagues brought up during these meetings especially for math we we just implemented a brand new curriculum this year we have not been able to go through that curriculum in a normal school year yet so you know another year would have been nice to acclimated ourselves to that before big change the idea of piloting was suggested maybe just try it with one team but
180i just wanted to bring that up again because that's when you had mentioned that it made me think of that point that had been discussed um at our level but obviously not you know what's going through is going through but i appreciate the opportunity to make some comments thank you thank you ms salinger are there any other comments from people in the group seeing them that i'll go to the online participants and to ask if there are any comments from from those people seeing none then i will close public comments and turn it over to the board for any comments before we close the meeting ms nurse then miss stats nursery we did right now thank you in a couple of thoughts in hearing miss salinger speak and some of the other board members and
181about tracking specifically and if giving the gift of time of another year to i didn't realize that the sixth grade teachers were were dealing with learning a new curriculum and to then ask them to make this big change when they're not even sure what the you know they didn't get through the entire curriculum i feel that you know we we said that phase one is definitely happening but if we need to take a step back and give the gift of time to have a successful change i i really think that the administration should uh think about that as well um and just two comments that the public had made that i thought would really be worth exploring more um the gentleman who talked about keeping the board meetings virtual as a way to keep them
182accessible to our public i think was a very good point and something that we might need to consider um and also i believe it was mrs lento um who talked about like if we need to to get permits and whatnot to that maybe it's something that we need to look into to see if this tents are different if it's just for lunches and to if we need permits and it's not too expensive to have them in case we need them rather than not to have them at all um i think oh um someone also wrote to us within these past two weeks about voting and trying to get that out of the schools which um i feel is a great idea especially when we're talking about the safety of our students i know it's still
183happening in in other districts as well but if we have the ability to push for that from the council i really think that it's something that we should try to prioritize um to do so to keep our school safe thank you thank you ms nurse miss stats and then mr oliver um since this is our last board meeting before the end of the school year um i mean even i have uh probably addressed what in the big scheme of things especially this year are pretty petty on my part and i just want to applaud everyone uh the superintendent with her amazing leadership not only during the compendent but the that cyber attack um all the administration every single group that i'm going to mention had to deal with doing something that they had never done
184before and they did it well uh all the administration from the district level to board to to building level administration to all the staff all the teachers uh custodians secretaries instructional aides i'm probably leaving people out but everyone had to do something they never had to do before um to the parents my goodness um uh my son is uh out of the house he's been out the house for a while i can't imagine what you the the the challenges you had to deal with and uh you know uh about uh following through with the code screening and and uh you know all the challenges of virtual learning and um but most importantly i'm really impressed with our students again having to deal with something that never had to deal with before and they didn't have
185any guidance from any of us having to deal with that as students or anybody as students before um and uh they really rose to the challenge and i'm grateful to all those groups for for getting through an awful awful year thank you mr stats mr oliver so mr gillette affectionately calls this story time with john so this is going to be quick tonight greg because i know the dog's waiting to be walked um mr triolo asks a lot of the board members for quotes to read at graduation and um just you know to be repetitive my you know one of my favorite quotes is henry ford's when he says if you think you can and you think you can you're right so it's a pretty powerful statement and to mrs statt's point our our students
186our staff our administration did a phenomenal job this year it was a real challenge but one of the amazing and beautiful things about hillsboro is how the community comes together and they work together we we announced a retirement with a lot of teachers tonight um one of our long-standing police officers in town retired last week to start a new chapter rick evans who's been a very very good friend and i know a lot of the administrators received emails from from rick um you know the kids lost so much and i'd be remiss if if i didn't bring up um we didn't know if we were going to have a prom we didn't know if we're going to have a graduation we didn't know if we're going to have student awards and the students and the
187parents went together they banded together and they had um you know this alternative prom that they did they called it raider rally they had it on friday evening um before memorial day and the community got behind it the businesses got behind it these kids were treated to a fireworks presentation that was just second to none and individuals like sean lepany not mayor lepany shawn o'hare who was a graduate of the high school great football player super bowl ring the junior raiders um local radon company jen lebron dug deep in their pockets to pay for this fireworks celebration because they saw that these kids missed so much and we were still able to have a regular prom for him you know dr binger was still able to orchestrate something that the students were able to dance
188um they're going to have a graduation but the one one thing that the students learned and i think the parents learned again going back to henry ford's comment if you think you can or you think you can't right change starts with that person with that individual and you know my dear dear friend p p onto you so he's telling me if you don't want to make a difference shut up you don't have a voice and and i took a ride on the on the beyond the memorial bypass saturday morning as it opened 50 years in the making and it cut off quite a quite a bit of time it was fun but but i was able to communicate with pete for just a short trip and and say you know here i am pete i'm
189i'm trying i'm sitting here trying but but the point of the story is our students are trying our teachers are trying um there's a tradition and congratulations to all our our graduating seniors especially you know mr kid because he saw something he said i i want to i want to get involved i want to make a change and he ran for office and he was elected and he sits here on this dais with us um there's a tradition amongst the seniors where they they go to a park and they sign their yearbooks and they but the school wasn't behind it but they went to the student council and they changed it they got it to happen they're gonna have that event so you know to that point um [Music] you know mr goodyear mrs salinger
190you bring up we dropped the ball we missed we missed an opportunity um this might be the right thing to do but we don't know if it's the right thing to do so uh i hope it's not over um you know we've had some eloquent words from some of our teachers here this evening i hope we could revisit this i hope we could we could look to it but you know again i just want to i want everyone to remember this is a great community and and we we all band together to make a difference so let's not lose sight of that um you might you might get said no two three four five times you just need that one yes to keep moving forward so congratulations to all the graduating seniors congratulations to all
191the teachers congratulations to the administration you made it through one heck of a year and and i think it's only going to get better as we continue to work together and we collaborate so thank everyone i thank everyone for their efforts and greg gingo walk the dog now thank you mr oliver very well said are there any other comments from the board [Music] seeing none then we actually need to return to executive session to finish the conversation that we started at the top of this meeting so we there will be no action when we return so if i could have a motion and a second to return to executive session moved second thank you mr palsport thank you mr kid all in favor aye any opposed all right so we are we are going into
192executive session we will not return because there will be no further action taken tonight so thank you thank you thank you