001Sunshine Law statement. All requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act have been met for this meeting of the board of education of the Bureau of Oridel. Notice of this meeting was filed with the record and town news and all persons requesting such notice. Mrs. Norian, would you read the mission statement? Certainly. The Oridel Public School District is dedicated to the ongoing pursuit of educational excellence through comprehensive innovative curriculum and instruction. The district is committed to providing opportunities for social, emotional, and academic discovery to foster curiosity, courage, and character. Our goal is to prepare our students to become lifelong learners who are self-directed and resilient, productive, responsible citizens. Thank you. Roll call on the roll. Mr. Delgreco here. Mr. Dariion here. Mrs. Downey here. Mrs. Moran here. Mr. Nutland here. Mrs. Walter here. Mr. Walsh here.
002Mrs. Norian here. Mrs. Nichols. Here. At this time, we will open to the public for agenda items only. Mr. Darren is the green. Oh, sorry. This is this always happens. Excuse me for that. Uh 150 Oxford Circle, Ordell. My name is Katarina Saviano. Um I just want to talk about policy 1120. So Board of Education recently released an updated version of its board of education meetings policy file code 1120. And the document continues to use language of transparency, community involvement, and parent input. The policy describes board meetings as a primary means of sharing information with community members and inviting their comments and suggestions. However, the new version removes a clause. The amount of time for public discussion may be adjusted at the meeting at the discretion of the board. On its face, this clause may
003appear neutral, perhaps even flexible, but in practice, it grants the board unilateral authority to restrict or extend public comment based solely on its discretion without any stated criteria or accountability. The inclusion of this language creates ambigu ambiguity. Is the intent to foster more conversation or too limited? Without open dialogue, the public is left to guess. That ambiguity is dangerous. It can open the door to misinterpretation. Some may believe the board is looking to limit public discourse, while others may see it as a mechanism to allow more time. But without explanation or conversations with the community, the real intent will remain unclear. And when clarity is missing, mistrust fills the void. Just weeks ago, parents asked for more transparency, more meaningful dialogue during a public meeting. Instead of receiving clarity or collaboration, they're met with responses
004from board members suggesting that these meetings are largely ceremonial, that decisions are already made behind closed doors, and public input is not meant to influence the outcomes. That admission alone undermines the credibility of the policy and the purpose of public meetings. Here's the core issue. The board asks for parental engagement, but does not want it. We attend meetings, write emails, advocate for our children. What's missing is engagement, a format that allows for two-way conversation, responsiveness, and shared decision-making. You cannot ask for engagement and then build systems that prevent it. The current meeting format is fundamentally not designed for open dialogue. Until that changes, engagement will remain out of reach. misinterpretation of board's actions, which we want to prevent, will continue to grow. If the board truly wants to serve the community, which I know many
005of you do, and honor its roles in public education, it must go beyond service level policy. It must build a structure that invites collaboration, not just attendance. A system that values voices, not just manages them. Because trust is not built through silence or ceremony. It's built through conversation, transparency, and action. Until then, parents are simply asked to be invited to this room and will continue to be asked out of the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Not seeing anyone else. We will move forward. I just have two remarks. One is uh your financial disclosures are due. So if you haven't completed them, please speak with Mr. Ayapelli. And the other thing is I don't know if everyone got the email from Burn County School Boards. The meeting in May is to recognize uh school board members
006significant um years and our own Mrs. Walker is going to be recognized for 15 years at the May Bergen County dinner. So if anyone can attend, I will not be able to unfortunately. that um if you want to attend, please let please have Mr. Aell sign you up. Good. Um and now we'll move to the superintendent's report. Good evening. I always find the school performance report to be a little irksome because we're talking about last year and I feel like we've talked about last year a lot. However, it takes the state this much time to get all the data from the previous year from course roster reports that get sent in to test scores to attendance data. And the performance report is actually federally mandated because it is part of funding and we have to
007show that we are monitoring ourselves. So a lot of this data is new. However, the reason I thought it was very important to share it with you today is when NJ.com or the patch put those scores up and rank all the districts. This is actually where it comes from. So, as I said, the NJ DOE is mandated to have some form of assessment for all schools to make sure that all schools and all students are having their needs met and are moving forward. The school performance report is done both at a district level and a school level. However, I'm going to keep our presentation today to the school level because that's where all the real data is. And for us, the district report mirrors a lot of the school report. Those categories on the right
008are the major car categories you're going to find in the school performance report. I'm not going to speak about all of them thoroughly today because we would be here for a really long time. So, for example, I'm not going to expand on per pupil expenditures. You will see that we spend over $16,000 per student. However, there are things that aren't included in that. So that's teacher salaries. So if you have school A and school B and they both have 10 teachers, but school A's teachers are farther on the guide, that's going to skew that data. If you were a school that put a lot of money into a large equipment purchase the previous year, smartboards, that's actually not going to be in there. So there's so many different variables. I don't think it's the best
009um way to look at expenditures. There are many other reports on the NJDOE website that I do believe gets that done better. I'm not going to go into the narrative which is kind of our summary. What are we proud of? However, I really want to talk about accountability and I'm going to overview some of the other areas. I'm going to start just by looking at our student demographics. um Ordell public school we we keep hearing is is growing and growing but the truth is we eb and flow because while we are a large school we are a small district. So as a result one cohort that's large or one cohort that's small will significantly impact our overall data number. So we know that we will lose 135 sixth graders in June. However, at the current
010time, we only have 90 kindergarteners coming in. So, we're going to see a net change next year downward. I did also include some of the enrollment trends by student group. Um, you will notice that we are increasing, for example, students in foster care. One of the numbers that I'm specifically always looking at is multilingual learners because an increase in multilingual learners will because of state mandates require an increase in ESL teachers. However, you'll see that that number is really staying pretty much the same. And I also always look at student with disabilities. We know that the state wants to see us between that 12 and 14% um number. And next year actually is our special education kind of QAC. So they will come in next year just to look at our special education data. We
011also then look at um our staff numbers. I always say that when this when the papers do that report about the median salary. Well, what's going to play into that median salary? So you'll notice that 70% of our staff have been here for four or more years. This table went a little bit longer. You will see that 11 I think we had 10 staff members who are within year one or year two in the building. And then you'll see the same for our admin data. This is one of the areas that I am incredibly proud of our administrators for because 8.2 this is our chronic absenteeism. So chronic absenteeism is defined as a student who is absent 18 or more days during a school year. That does not matter if you are sick. It's not
012saying that it's 18 vacation days. It's 18 days out. The only thing that doesn't count in that is like take your child to work day and I think some religious exemptions. So what you'll notice is that is the area we made really impressive growth in an 8.2% chronic absenteeism in 2223 was something that we were not happy with. If you're not in school, you can't learn. And we really last year increased our structures for sending letters home when students met um certain levels of absenteeism following up. And we actually started doing um attendance plans with parents for any students who we were concerned about their absenteeism rate. And that's something that we really do need to continue doing because if any one specific subgroup of our school meets 10%, we have to document a corrective
013action plan for that group. And the good news is we do not have any groups. Our student disabilities is getting high, but we have no groups over 10% currently showing a chronic absenteeism rate of 18 or more absences. And this is just one more way to look at that data. You know, absenteeism is considered part of also like college and career readiness. Like we don't have as many factors to evaluate students for future success as middle schools and high schools do. So absenteeism is really important for here. What are the routines that you are putting in place now that are going to continue in middle school and high school? Although I know the middle schools and high schools are also really looking at absenteeism because if you read in the paper right after COVID absenteeism
014um increased. So you can see some of those trends. You know, we're always going to see um our prek actually doesn't count in our overall number because it is only um a preschool program with disabilities. So it doesn't count in our overall number. That is where we are the highest in absenteeism kindergarten. And we did so show some numbers in sixth grade last year that I'm not seeing in sixth grade this year. Um again you're also looking at what are the overall trends. So overall we're seeing students who are absent seven um percent or less. And again, it's always really important to remember that when we talk about absenteeism, we're not just talking about unexcused absences. We are talking about all absences. Um, that can be bereavement, that can be sick days, that can be
015vacation. Yes, if a student goes on vacation, that counts as a as a day. I'm going to move now from absenteeism to academic achievement. And this is going to be three years of the data that we've talked a lot about. This is the NJSLA data in language arts and in mathematics for 2021-223 and 2324. And when I look at this data, I see yeah, we're a little peak, a little valley, but it's really stable data. When you see on the bottom here, I lost my cursor. Met goal. The state's goal for all districts is 80%. Met target means how are you moving towards that goal of 80% proficiency. Um the state sets yearly targets for you to move towards it. So we're meeting our goal in language arts. We're meeting our targets in mathematics. To
016look at that data in additional way, these are the three years of data for each of the individual grades in language arts on top and in math on bottom. And again, I don't want to spend a ton of time on academic achievement because I've done two other presentations on NJSLA data. However, what I don't get to do when I do the NJSLA performance report is student growth. So, we know that every student in grades four, five, and six gets a student growth percentile. And I spoke about this during QAC, but I'm going to go over it again. We're going to pretend right now that Mrs. Moran, Mrs. Walker, Mr. Delgreco, Mrs. Downey, and Mr. Ayapelli are all in fourth grade this year. Last year, when they were in third grade, they all scored a 275
017on the NJSLA language arts. When they went to fourth grade the next year and they got their score, it's going to compare them. Maybe Mrs. Moran scored higher than all of them. So her student growth percentile is going to be 100%. Maybe Mr. Ayapelli scored the lowest out of all of them. So now his comparison student growth percentile score is not going to be 100%. So every student in grades four, five, and six has one of those scores in language arts and it has one of those scores in math. Everyone's score for all the students in grades four, five, and six at Ordell public school are lined up. Whoever's in the middle, whoever's our median, that becomes our school. So our 70 in language arts is quite high because that's saying that our middle student
018scored higher than 70% of other middle students around. and you'll see a growth this year in our score in mathematics. I actually believe that student growth percentiles are one of the better things the state has come up with because it doesn't just focus on who passes a test, who doesn't pass a test. It has us look at who's growing more and why are they growing more. The this performance report also lets us look at growth based on how did you score and your grade level. The grade level is pretty self-explanatory. So in fourth grade, our median student growth percentile is a 73 in language arts. We go down a little bit in fifth grade and we go back up in sixth grade. Now, when we look to the left at the performance levels, again, I'm
019always looking for the the things that we not only need to grow, but what else can we say? Look at how well we're doing. And this along with that absenteeism is something that we should be incredibly proud of. We are showing the most growth with students who were scoring the weakest the year before, which means we're filling holes. They're growing. So to say that our students that scored a level two in third, fourth or fifth grade, even third, fourth or fifth grade, they have a student growth percentile of 83. That means they are showing more growth than anyone else and they're the ones that need to grow the most. We can look at that for mathematics as well. And again, you're going to see that our growth just like our achievement is not as high
020in mathematics as it is in language arts. The world may be talking about reading or at a public school needs to talk about math. So this is the big page. This is our accountability. So this is the sum the summation of the entire school performance report. In many ways, this is the number the paper uses. This is where that 96.9 which makes us the 67th highest scoring school of over 2,000 schools in the state of New Jersey. um comes from. And again, when you look at it, it shows exactly what we've been saying in the data shows. We are scoring more points in language arts, whether it's language arts proficiency or language arts growth, than we are in math. Although, because the whole state's not scoring incredibly well in math, our indicator score, we're still
021scoring higher than a lot of places. Our absenteeism score going down significantly helped our overall score as well. And I will say when you look at those those things on the patch or on nj.com, the indicators, the factors are a little different when you're a middle school or a high school. So you actually have to go into the school performance report which you can see everyone's to actually look at their accountability what in their accountability mattered. So for some places growth doesn't come in I feel like it might be high school but there might be another metric instead. It could be um algebra testing and I know graduation rates with high school factor in a lot. So the final thoughts when I look at this and again this is data I've had in different forms
022for a while. This is just the state has now officially put them up and we do not just have an obligation of sharing that data with you. But I also have an obligation of emailing it to parents which I will do um before the break. And when I look at it, here's what I see. We need to continue to really monitor attendance because we're doing a really good job making sure kids are in school and helping their parents understand how important it is that they are in school. You can't learn if you're not in school. We're showing some really nice growth in with our multilingual learners. So, um, these three numbers, this should be a decimal point here, are three years of proficiency. So, this year, 62.1% of our students that are multilingual learners scored
023as the anticipated, the expected growth that the state would like to see them make. That's a really significant growth from two years ago. I mean, it's about 18 percentage points. Our ELA performance continues to show high levels of proficiency and growth. And our most struggling students are showing really positive levels of growth. And that was in language arts and in mathematics. And again, what we have been saying why we are rewriting our curriculum, why we are spending the money on bringing in an outside math consultant. When we hired our administrators, we this summer we specifically hired two administrators whose strength is mathematics because we knew this is the area we need to grow. in September as we've been using the new math program in grades four and five this year. Um in September um we
024will continue that in kindergarten through third grade. We will follow the same protocol of having parent nights so they can get used to the new materials and our staff so our kindergarten first, second and third grade teachers will begin having some professional development on that in May. One of the pieces I will share with families is all these other places that they can go to learn more about the school performance report. Before I give the rest of my report, are there any questions specifically about the school performance report? Mrs. Walker, uh, thank you, Miss Bosio. very informative and I like the way you've increased that absenteeism that I remember you talking about that a couple of years ago and how important it was. So um I appreciate it and see the significance in the numbers.
025Um my question is the um multilingual learners um what do you attribute the growth there too? had it. Why? You know, sometimes it's really being able to consistently implement instruction and we are making more deliberate decisions about when to push in that instruction into the classroom and when to pull that um instruction out of the classroom. We've also increased opportunities to meet with parents. And the other piece that I like to say, I mean again it's cause it's causal. I can't prove it, but we used our ESSER funding the past two summers to bring our multilingual learners to explorations. Um, we scholarshiped them to come because we felt that just speaking English over the summer, whether it be in an academic course or whether it be in model magic, would help keep their English skills
026up. So, that was something we definitely targeted um with the ESRE funding. Great. Thank you. Mr. Walsh, talking about Jamie and and Peter and how they did in third, fourth grade, do you ever trace the teachers that taught them in third grade, taught them in fourth grade? Uh actually every teacher also gets a student growth percentile. Okay. So we can see um which teachers are consistently making strong growth. Uh the state again this is where I think the state was really thoughtful. They do it in two different ways. So you get a student growth percentile for your class that year but let's be honest some kids are going to be more struggling learners. So they also give you a student growth percentile over three years and your evaluation score if you are teaching fourth, fifth
027or sixth language arts and mathematics, what gets reported to the state includes your student growth percentile score. So suppose the teachers that you're talking about uh wind up with Peter's score, what's done with that? Do they get back for red remediation? It really would depend on whether it's a trend because Peter might have had a lot going on that year and Peter might not have grown tremendously that year. So, we're going to look at the trend of the data, which isn't just what we do with um school with student growth percentiles, but it's also what we do with our link data. Our reports from Linkit don't just tell us about students, they tell us about overall class growth as well. And not just for that one year, but um longitudinally as well. Well, all five
028of them tried. Peter didn't do as well as Jamie. But what about the other three? Well, when you go into the teachers that had those students, they could they could have been in the same class. Some of them, we absolutely know that again because if they were all in the same class, their teachers growth score is going to be low because their scores are going to be lined up. The teacher score is the middle for that class. So, the other piece that I mentioned, you know, Peter's not coming to school over there. um we have added attendance to link it so we can see if there's low academic growth we can compare it and see if attendance is also an issue and we can see um when we pull up a student's link profile we
029can also see over time is this a constant trend for Peter or is this something specific for this year and that is really the biggest benefit of Lincoln as a platform. When we first bought Linkit as a platform, it was just to give a test to predict how students would do on another test. Now, it's a data locker. It scores. It keeps track of all of our data. So, we can look at students over time and see their growth and also look at their teachers to see their growth as well. Good question. What systems do you feel that are put in place to show the performance, the increase, I guess, the growth? Is it the win periods? Is it just extra attention in a classroom, homework? Um, I think it's the win period because tier
030those students that are at level two are probably definitely in tier three interventions. And we also, again, when we talk about ESSER funding, those are students who did get whether before school or after school. I think you just approved before school programming. Those are often some of those students. Um, where we need to grow as a district is students in that are scoring at level three who one day are having a good day and one day aren't having a great day. And what are we doing to identify them and um remediate for them? Okay. Okay, so I'm going to move on past that and just comment that last week was an exceptionally busy week at OPS. We did have the Wizards game. Um, I scored two points. I want to cl I told Peter I
031scor Peter, clone claps. Um, I scored my two points. I texted Peter and he said that's one basket. It's a way to be supportive. Um, but it was a really great um event. Many of you were there. Uh we had I think the Wizards found it entertaining about 18 staff members playing in the game which is a huge number from the first year when we couldn't find enough staff members who were willing to play and we had to bring in the Ordinal Police Department to play with us instead. We also had the sixth grade spring fling um on Friday which we saw come back to the MPR for a probably the first time in maybe six, seven years. I think the kids had a great time. I really commend the parents for remembering that this
032is a sixth grade dance and doesn't need to look like a wedding. Um it was age appropriate. Kids had fun and it went off um without a hitch. And that was Friday night. Saturday the administrative team split up. Some of us went to the Bergen County job fair to represent the district. We do have some job openings next year. Going to the job fair is a little bit like an Oriel homecoming. Uh we have a lot of staff members, former staff members and a lot of parents that are hiring across Bergen County. I think I walk around the room and go, "Hi, how are you?" We could have an Oral meeting, but we met a lot of great teachers who there was one in particular. He was waiting for us because you get your table
033gets a number like this guy was like, "I wanted to meet you because you're Oidel." And I was like, "Well, that's really nice." So, um, our next step will be posting for our exact positions that are open next year. The other half of the administrative team went to state finals for Odyssey of the Mind where, as I shared on social media, we are incredibly excited to be able to say that we are once again state champions in uh, our specific problem. And again, if you haven't been around Odyssey for a really long time, you don't understand what an accomplishment that is. We sent four fifth graders and one sixth grader. I don't think there are any fourth. No, sorry. Four fifth graders and one sixth grader to compete in the middle school division because we
034had a sixth grader. So, they were competing against sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. And they did a great job. Um, we are incredibly proud of them. And they will be I'm sure there will be lollipops in our future. and they will be off to Michigan in May. Next week, while the build while we'll have no students in the building, there will be a lot going on. We will be transitioning to our new website. We will be releasing our Schaefer summer explorations brochure and registration information and we will begin some needed work on the basketball court. And that concludes my report. Thank you, Mr. Aelli. Yes. I just wanted to let you know that the budget as presented uh was approved by the county on Friday and the next time we'll be doing a budget hearing.
035The public hearing will be May 7th. That concludes my report. Thank you. We'll move to minutes. We have review of March 26th. Any questions or comments, please email Mr. Aelli. We have approval of February 12th. Do I have a motion? I move that the meeting of February 12th. We didn't do February 12th already. We're in April. We'll leave it. I'm just wondering if that's okay. Any questions? Call the question on the role. Mr. Del Greco. Yes, Mr. Dariion. Yes, Mrs. Downey. Yes, Mrs. Moran. Yes, Mr. Nutland. Yes, Mrs. Walker. Yes, Mr. Walsh. Yes, Mrs. Norian. Yes. Mrs. Nichols? Yes. I think um this was actually March, so can you put them both on for the next meeting? Um, administrative items. Mrs. Norian, would you take that? Uh, yes. I'd like to uh make a motion
036um to approve A1 A2. There should be a line down there, right? Yes, there should be a line. Yeah. Second by Mr. Walsh. Any questions? Call a question. On the roll. Mr. Delg Greco. Yes. Mr. Dariion. Yes. Mrs. Downey. Yes, Mrs. Moran. Yes, Mr. Nutland. Yes, Mrs. Walker. Yes, Mr. Walsh. Yes, Mrs. Norian. Yes, Mrs. Nichols. Yes. Uh, buildings and grounds. Mr. Darian. No, it's Mr. Delco. Oh, Mr. Delg Greco. Sorry. No worries. Um, I meant to say that. It's all good. Uh, we have not had a buildings and grounds meeting. I think our focus has been on finance. But in the um agenda here, I'd like to bring up B1, which is the use of school facilities. Do I have a second? Second by Mr. Walsh. Any questions? I have a quick question. I
037just don't remember. Um custodial overtime fee. Do we normally charge that to the Boy Scouts since we have custodians here from 6:00 till 10 on Friday nights? Is that a Friday night we're doing that? It says April 25th, blue and gold dinner 425, which is a Friday night. If it's a Friday night, now that we'll take that off. So, we'll approve it. Just someone can check that's correct or not. Any other questions? Call the question on the roll. Mr. Delg Greco. Yes, Mr. Dariion. Uh, yes, Mrs. Downey. Yes, Mrs. Moran. Yes, Mr. Nutland. Yes, Mrs. Walker. Yes, Mr. Walsh. Yes, Mrs. Norian. Yes, Mrs. Nichols. Yes. Curriculum, Mrs. Norian. Uh, I have nothing further to report um at this point. Uh, finance, Mr. Varian uh yes we um the subcommittee has not met since our
038last board meeting so I have nothing to report from that perspective uh our public meeting Mr. Mr. Pell, you said was May 7th. May 7th. Okay. One, two, about a month from now, right? Okay. And uh so for the agenda, I have uh items D1 through D6 to introduce. I'll second by Mr. Walsh. Any questions? This is our final payment for the fans. We're done. This is just proving the final contract sum. So, we haven't made the final payment yet. They have a couple of outstanding documents on the closeout. This is just to show that we have what the original contract was. We had that small change order and the 20,000 allowance wasn't used. So, that goes back into capital reserve. Okay. Perfect. Any other questions? Call the question. [Applause] Mr. Delgrea. Yes. Mr. Darien.
039Yes. Mrs. Downey. Yes. Mrs. Moran. Yes. Mr. Nutan. Yes. Mrs. Walker. Yes. Mr. Walsh. Yes. Mrs. Norian. Yes. Mrs. Nichols. Yes. Delegate report. Mr. Walsh. I have nothing to report. There's not a meeting scheduled. Okay. Personnel. Mrs. Walker. Um. Yes. Thank you. Um, we had we haven't had a meeting, but we have discussed prior to with the last meeting we had, and it continues with our negotiations with staff. So, that's an ongoing process. And with that, I'd like to present F1. I'll second it. Any questions? Call the question on the roll. Mr. Delg Greco. Yes. Mr. Dariion. Yes. Mrs. Downey. Yes. Mrs. Moran. Yes. Mr. Nutland. Yes. Mrs. Walker. Yes. Mr. Walsh. Yes. Mrs. Norian. Yes. Mrs. Nichols. Yes. Policy. Mr. Nutland. Yes. Hi. Um we met on March 26th uh and we discussed uh
040some policies. We discussed uh 1120 uh and making sure that um we are in compliance with uh with the policy with um board meetings. We discussed uh 3280 which is um um gifts and grants coming into the school and how um how we should look into possibly having like a form or uh having things filled out prior to having anything placed on the agenda. Uh and we discussed 4138 which was um talking about tutoring and the role the teachers have in tutoring and having students um or potential students of students that you currently have. Um we also talked about visitor policy um chaperoning um um and usage of school. That concludes that report. Um, I will uh pull up uh G1. So, if you have any question on the policies are on for first reading,
041just email uh Mr. Nutland and the policy committee and the superintendent. They'll be on for final vote next meeting. Uh public relations, Mrs. Downey, I have nothing to report. At this time, we'll open to the public. Is the green light on? Okay, just push the button. Hi, Casey Zimber from uh Beachwood Road. Um, I know this has been discussed before, but it would be really, really helpful if we could potentially get some kind of Zoom meeting for parents who are finding it really difficult to make it at this 7:30 time. Um, I had to rally pretty hard uh today to get here. And I just think it would be um an even playing field for all of the um families and uh town members who are interested in in coming but can't necessarily get here.
042Um so by providing a zoom uh private zoom um meet link for the particular the meetings um with a live comment reel. So being able to make live comments. So having parents be able to speak before and after the meetings, public commenting um via the internet um or Zoom, Google Meet, whatever it is that you want to use. Um right now there is a bill that's going to be um hopefully passed soon that um will require districts to do this and towns like um T-C um Fairfield and Monontlair are already doing this. So, if we could just kind of look into this again and um maybe see where we lay and ask our lawyers, it would just be very very helpful for extremely working hard parents like myself. Thanks. Thank you. Moving to old or
043new business. Anybody have any old or new business? Old business or new? I have an old business. I'd like to apologize to uh the members of the Odyssey to mind and to Oriel public school for not being able to make the regional and the state finals. I'm glad they did well. Uh hopefully I get better and I will not make this statement next year. We're happy to have you back. Thank you. And you can do Odyssey next year. Any other older new business? Mrs. Walker. Um and and to agree with Dorothy and the whole board. Welcome back, John. We missed you. Um, I just wanted to say um and piggyback on what Miss Bosio said about the um Wizards game last Thursday night. It was a wonderful event. Everybody was smiling. Uh the PTA is
044just a treasure to work with. They really helped the Rotary to sell the tickets and it was a great team effort. So, and having all of those team members from the staff, and in fact, I even said that to Miss Bosio that night. I said, "It's so nice to have all of the staff there. Not all, but what did you say? 18 of them there and participating, laughing, and having a good time. So, it was uh worth every penny. And those that um came, I'm sure, agreed. So, hopefully in two years it can be done again. Any other older new business, Mr. Nutland? Just very quickly, um, you know, congratulations to the Odyssey of Mind working in a school that there's a vast difference between a fourth grader and a sixth grader. And to think
045that our fourth graders with a sixth grader are competing so well um, against their, you know, middle school counterparts is uh, pretty remarkable. So kudos to them and and go get them. Mr. Darren, do you have any Okay. Any other older new business? Mr. Del, the website you gonna go live, I guess, during the spring break. Is a lot of the content, because I've noticed on the version that we have now, I guess some of the content is like old or static. Are you going to be reviewing all the content one more time just to make sure everything's kind of current? That's exactly what we're doing right now. We've been in this really horrible limbo spot because when they archived everything over that was all the way back in January. So for example, say policies
046like policies for first reading. I had to put them on the old website and the new website and right now we're making sure that that's happened and checking every link and truthfully it's that and and that trial and error thing. So there was something on the on the front page that then turned out they couldn't put a folder there. So then taking all of that down and putting it in another spot. So, we will go live next week and I also have a marketing call with them next week to talk about how to um help parents know about the app portion of it and the benefits of the app. The app is great. There's one thing I'm not sure I I went through the website real quick and everything. What I find really valuable on
047the current website is the ability to take the Google Google calendar and export it. So, we'll still be able to do that as well, right? Perfect. That's like a lifesaver. Thank you, Mr. Darion. Uh yeah. So um you know tonight there was a comment about um you know virtual participation through Zoom or other means to board meetings. I'm just curious how many other districts uh are are doing that currently. I I know that we've looked at this many times in the past. we've had, you know, numbers, uh, you know, in the past, but, um, yeah, I'd be curious to see what they are currently. Um, just as a comment, you know, we were one of the first districts to use Zoom. Um, you know, we had the audience participation up on the screen. Uh, brought
048their audio broadcasted over the loudspeakers. Um, you know, I used to run the the laptop here on the desk. You know, it's kind of, you know, it's distracting. It takes away some of your participation throughout the agenda when you're worried about, you know, making sure the participants are muted or showing and displaying correctly. Um, but you know, it was nice to have, you know, additional visibility. Um but I think you know as far as I know like mayor and council meetings and and our meeting is is broadcasted live and and uh you can also you know watch it whenever you want on YouTube and um so there is visibility. It's just you know to participate is um is not so easy when you can't make the meeting. Um so if we can find out just
049how many I would just be curious to see kind of in the ballpark you know how many other schools are doing it. Um and then the other aspect is you know the sunshine law right so you know the sunshine law basically is the the sun you know disinfects right through transparency um and and one of the issues you have when people are participating behind a laptop screen is you know they there's a lot of things that could be going on behind them that you don't see. Um, and there's a lot of things also that you can't control and that gets brought into the meeting and we have no authority over it. Whereas if someone was here, you know, it's very easy to control the the what's going on in the public setting. So, you know,
050there's those complications and if and if Trenton decides to pass this law, you know, to mandate that we all must do this, then um I would, you know, getting back to the number, you know, what would be the impact of that? I'd like to know. Bergen County presidents um have a email um group and it was one of the questions that was just asked probably a few weeks ago. We don't have the results yet. We're waiting for them. Hopefully, they're going to give them to us. The majority, I will tell you, do not allow any public comment. Very few. It I was surprised to find out how many districts actually do not um You mean Zoom record or um stream Thank you. stream their meetings live. So, if I get those results, I will review
051them. But I was surprised to see that. Any other older new business? Miss Miss Maran, Miss Bosios, you said you were going to follow up with an email to parents on the report because I I saw one that River Edge did and I think it's really great to share our wins and also talk about places where we could grow. Um, there's a state template, but I will reach out to Dr. Bernice and see what he sent out to Riveridge. Any other old or new business? We do need to go into a close session for student and personnel issues. So, someone would like to make a motion. I'll make a motion that we go into close session. Second by Mr. Dariion. Roll call. On the roll. Mr. Delg Greco. Yes. Mr. Darian. Yes. Mrs. Downey. Yes.
052Mrs. Moran. Yes. Mr. Nutler. Yes, Mrs. Walker. Yes, Mr. Walsh. Yes, Mrs. Norian. Yes, Mrs. Nichols. Yes, we will not be taking any action coming out to take any action. Thank you for coming to our meeting.