001Evening everyone. It's 6:33 p.m. and I'd like to call the July 23rd board of ed retreat meeting of the South Orange board of education to order. Mr. Moody, can you please take roll call? Yes, I will. Uh, board member Jeff Bennett, board member Dear J Brown here. Board member Elizabeth Callahan here. Board President Nia Duval Wilson here. Board member Regina Eckert here. Board member Bill Gford. Board member Ben Mo Kapadia here. Uh board member Will Meyer here. Board member Shaina Saka Gable here. All right. Thank you. Great. Let's stand for the pledge of allegiance. Please take notice that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following manner. That written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board at 1:50 p.m. on July 8th, 2025. That said notice was
002sent via email to the Maplewood and South Township clerks and the editors of the news record, Star Ledger, Tap into Soma, and the Village Green. Now I'll say my president's update followed by president's statement and hearing of delegations but I don't think we have any today. Um so as I've mentioned to stakeholders and the community members in many conversations the board does not stop its important work during the summer. Quite the contrary. Tonight we have our retreat to review our board self-evaluation which will support the creation of board goals for the upcoming school year with the help of our NGSBA rep Gan Clearary who's here tonight. Yay. Thank you Jean. In addition, we will work with our superintendent to plan the district goals. In our second retreat on August 19th, we aim to finalize both
003sets of goals as well as begin the important process of creating a five-year strategic plan with our superintendent. We thank our rep gene for returning in August to facilitate that process, which will also incorporate future info sessions internally with our district and externally with our community and key stakeholders. In this year's board self-evaluation, we received an average board score of 2.95, a great step towards getting closer to a 3.0 average that well functional boards hope to attain. During my personal time on the board, this is the highest score the board has ever received, and I'm proud of the work we have done this year to attain it. In the evaluation, members highlighted a notable shift towards professionalism in meetings, collaboration behind the scenes, and clarity in both internal operations and public engagement, pointing to improved
004tone at meetings, increased use of data, and stronger alignment across committees. At the same time, there are always opportunities or grows as we like to call them, to strengthen our governance. Suggestions were made to prioritize more training, improve the consistency and context of data use, further enhance internal communication, and broaden community engagement efforts. There's also a call to deepen our focus on closing the achievement gap and tracking and tracking underrepresented areas like prek to ensure greater governance oversight. Oversight and creativity and budget planning will also was also a recurring theme that will be very important in the years ahead. Before I move on, I want to make another really important announcement tonight. We want to wish a very big happy birthday to members Shaina Sacki Gable and Will Meyer who have it's their birthday month.
005Birthday. There'll be extra goodies for us tonight. We won't starve. Um and so for the board president's statement, the school board meeting is uh actually I don't even know if I have to read this for a retreat now that I think about it. But do I have to read them? I don't think so. I'm going to skip that. Yeah. and just go to hearing of individuals which online we have none. Is there nothing there? Okay, great. So, with that said, we're going to start our retreat. Um, so we're going to be moving to the side tables for our retreat as we always do. Um, before I do that, I will announce our future meetings and then adjourn so that our district staff can go home and those who are here in the audience will have
006the fun uh ability to continue to listen to us. Um, so here we go. Future meetings. The board of education will meet in public session on Thursday, July 24th, 2025, which is tomorrow, at 6:30 p.m. where action will be taken. I now motion to adjurnn. Mr. Moody, I would now like to motion make a motion to adjurnn this meeting on July 23rd at 6:38 p.m. May I have a second? Thank you. Board member second gable. All in favor? Great. Motion has passed. Meeting is adjourned.