Board of Education Meeting - Public Session - October 18 2023

001good evening it's 6:30 p.m. and I'd like to call the October 18th meeting of the South Orange mwood Board of Education to order Mr carig can you please take the roll call Board member dval Wilson here board member eert here board member telis for board member V lamani here board member Wingfield board president Whit lter here board member Wright there is a quorum thank you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance for it stands one nation God withy and justice for [Applause] all okay we are very lucky tonight to have a special performance from the Maplewood Middle School vocal Ensemble thank you so much for coming and already taking Center Stage we love it um we're going to move on the other side so we can watch you thank you so [Applause] much [Music] I'll

002ride with the horses I'll s through the [Music] sea to the you come follow I'll take time to all I [Music] see I'll [Music] F home [Music] World choices are free at the end of the when all is complete [Applause] [Music] wonderly [Music] Dre forever all we know the world come together and that's [Music] where'll [Music] fly fly fly fly fly away fly away fly [Music] [Applause] away [Applause] yeah how's the car how's the family we're all good we're hanging in there thank you so much to the map one Middle School vocal Ensemble and thank you to all the families who came to support them too that was really beautiful we have okay please take note that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following manner a written notice was sent from

003the office of the secretary of the board at 1:00 p.m. on October 10th 2023 that s notice was sent via email to Maplewood and South Orange Township clerks and the editors of the news record Star Ledger and Village Green this evening we will have two presentations from the district the New Jersey student learning assessment presentation and the student safety data system presentation slh self assessment for the 2022 23 school year I'd like to also make a motion to adjust the agenda this evening when we return from executive session after the student representative update I'd like to move up resolution 4531 for Action followed by the board president update board president statement and then the first hearing of individuals and delegates to occur before the superintendence update and just for board member reference resolution 4531 is

004to approve Sports and extracurricular activities training do I have a second second thank you board member malis all in favor please raise your hand okay thank you that appears to be unanimous with that I'd like to make a motion to enter into executive session at 6:38 p.m. to discuss attorney client matters Personnel negotiations hibs and litigation status report the length of the executive session is estimated to be 60 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and proceed with business where formal action will be taken do I have a second thank you board member eert all in favor the vote appears to be unanimous so we are now adjourning to close session and we will see you in about an hour thank you you guys um but we're now back in regular

005session good evening everyone and thank you for joining us tonight I'd like to make a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for the special meeting on September 18 2023 and for the executive session and regular meeting minutes for the September 28th 2023 meeting do I have a second second all in favor please raise your hand the meeting minutes have been approved we made a motion earlier this evening to change the order of the agenda tonight we will kick off the meeting with the student rep update followed by the board taking action on resolution 4531 then the board president update board president statement and then we will have our first public speaks before the superintendent update and presentations to the board with that I will pass the mic to our student representative for um ASA

006glassman's first student rep update hi everyone SE since this is my first student report I'd like to begin by introducing myself to everyone my name is Asa glasman and I've been in the school district and lived in Maplewood for my entire life I went to elementary school at Clinton went to middle school at SS and now I'm currently a junior at Columbia this month Gwen and I have been working hard and meeting often in order to make sure that the school year gets off to a smooth start we have met with Mr King to get updates about how mandating the wearing of IDs is working and as it turns out there has been a huge uptick in the amount of students wearing IDs in the hallway he also told us that the number of students

007seeking out temporary IDs have greatly increased which shows students the IDS as something that they need daily at school which is a huge win for security we were also able to meet with Mr Sanchez where we talked a little bit about what freshman Academy was and what the curriculum looks like right now he told us that they are working on digital citizenship which is essentially learning about how to craft emails and be successful in the digital age and soon they will begin learning about hibs and what they are and how to prevent them we are hoping to meet with Miss Morrison sometime in the coming days to gain some more insight about Freshman Academy we also met with Dr Taylor yesterday and talked with him about possibly implementing days off during Passover as in previous

008years the holiday fell on spring break but now with spring break moved there are no allotted days off we also met with them regarding the proposed deling policy while the specific plan is not yet clear we emphasize the importance of students having a seat at the table when it comes to these kinds of decisions as it is our education that the policy would be impacting it is too soon to make full Judgment of student opinion as very few specifics are known amongst the student body we also definitely emphasize the importance of maintaining High academic standards in the high school at the meetings overall though things in the district seem to be running smoothly for students so far and it seems like all of the students are looking forward to a great school year and juniors

009and seniors are especially looking forward to the homecoming dance this [Applause] weekend and then um did either one of you want to do the recognitions for October before we okay so um it's in school I wouldn't be able um it's the first one thank you sorry okay okay the whole chart okay um congratulations to Columbia High School class of 2023 graduate Bonnie Don doni who earned a perfect score on the AP drawing exam she was one of only 308 test takers in the world to earn every point on the exam she submitted 15 original Works under a common theme as part of the exam Don donach chose the exam the theme of clowns some of her work can be seen on the district's Facebook Instagram and X accounts donach is now studying painting at the

010Pratt Institute in Brooklyn congratulations to the more than 50 Columbia High School students who have earned distinctions from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and the college boards National recognition program through high scores on the preliminary Scholastic aptitude test SL National Merit Scholarship qualifying test or psat/nmsqt um a Juni Zu baa earned a recognition as a National Merit Scholarship program semi-finalist and will continue in the competition for a National Merit Scholarship the following students are recognized as National Merit commended students for have demonstrating outstanding potential for academic succcess and exponential academic promise chimzi agba Ivy Bailey Molly biglow Xander Campbell singer Quenton Davis William dowy Aiden Ean leang Benjamin jertz Noah Goldstein Julie Harrison Isaac Hemstead Nigel who Molly Hurley Celeste itada noal arani Sabrina Manion August Pro CLA roie lyia Ryan Joseph Hannah strw arushi

011valdani Justin Wade Jeremiah Wier Wier Giani zacharelli the following students earn college board National recognition program awards for maintaining grade point averages of 3.5 or higher and performing outstandingly on the PSAT msqt psat1 or advanced placement exams National African-American recognition awards were received by chimzi agba promise Albert Kayla anet REM Remy Lon Banner dollia Brown Nora Brown I'm so sorry doton Alyssa leurs Sierra Manion Sabrina Manion innocence okoo Nadia Springer Whitney cabbage Jonathan cross penda fall Sophia Holm Kaia montaro National Hispanic recognition award was AA Friedland Celeste it nalada Molly Mendoza Elena reimus lla Sig Sig loss Skyler Smith Joseph a Juni zua Brody bonjo and Nadia Springer the national indigenous award was Brody bonjo the achiev foundation has awarded nearly 32,000 in Grants to the 28 District Ed Educators for a variety of educational

012purposes we thank executive director Eileen Collins ner board president Irene langlo and everyone at the achieve foundation for their continuing support of our District staff and students congratulations to the following achieve Foundation fall 2023 Grant Award winners Jennifer Easton Christian Lazi Alexander kuchi Richard catrona Peter Bower and Emily V tusin Elementary School was Amy pop Seth Boyen Elementary School was Rosemary Connell and Anna Cola suono Maplewood Middle School was Richard Rodriguez laurian sto Amy P puko Heather Verona a Avis Gibson Williams Dar gral and Lewis Brown South ore Middle School was Katie Harley Harley um Amy schwinder Julian Petro Suzanne fine kayn Diaz Julian Lee chai chi chang Samantha IR Michelle whitrock Anna Reyes Caitlyn Denny and Ashley [Applause] sacino good job are there any questions for our student Representatives before we move on okay

013thank you both very much so now I'd like to make a motion to approve resolution 4531 Sports and extracurricular activities training do I have a second second thank you board member melis whereas the South Orange Maplewood board of education is committed to providing safe extracurricular activities and offerings to school students and whereas the South Orange Maplewood board of education is aware of reporting on the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in athletic programs and extracurricular activities in major public institutions and whereas the South Orange Maplewood board of education has tasked the attorney and district with ongoing and proactive efforts to enhance the effectiveness of its policies and procedures in the area of Abuse Prevention and expansion of awareness and prevention initiatives including developing new and and more comprehensive training protocols training and protocols among staff

014regarding sexual harassment sexual violence and relationship violence now therefore resolve that the board approves the following all coaches and activities leads for SSD athletic and activities will hold a SSD email address and and SSD Administration will make sure any coach who is external to somsd has been assigned a district email address to use all coaches and activity leaders will use a consistent District designated application or applications to communicate with students electronically when communic using any application the communication must include an additional adult and any message to students by September 30 all coaches and activities leaders will have to complete Title 9 Athletics and Title 9 Basics virtual training through ssd's Title 9 University which is provided by institutional compliance Solutions which is ssd's Title 9 support partner by October 15 all coaches and activity leaders

015will complete the responsible adult virtual training that all staff and SSD have to complete by October 30 all coaches and activity leaders will complete sexual misconduct and sexual harassment trainings provided by safe schools the Board of Education requests that the superintendent takes take actions to apprise the school communities and specifically extracurricular participants of these protocols and protections thank you board member Deval Wilson do we have any comments from the board no okay seeing no further discussions oh go ahead Dr Taylor just very briefly um Madam president and board I know we have a lot of folks here for public speaks and we moved it up um I want to offer to give some updates to those folks so that they don't leave and miss our updates it'll probably be less than two minutes if that's

016amable to the [Music] board okay well yeah there there's a motion pending are there any other points of feedback um I actually um want to say that I think this is a long time coming and I'm happy to see that it is occurring and uh and you know hopefully it will lead to uh out safety for our students thank you seeing no further discussions I'd like to take the roll call Mr Cara can you please do so board member Malisa board member dval Wilson yes board member VOD lamman yes board member telesford are they they're not participating in the public no okay board member gford yes board me board president Whit litter yes okay board member Wingfield yes board member Wright yes board member eert yes motion passes thank you Dr Taylor did you want

017to say something before the board president update um sure I just want to again congratulate the board on the action that you just took and let you let the public know who may not know that this action has been a long time coming and the board has been um very impactful um asking for updates on our implementation and it and it has um been a I guess we'll call it U an arduous task but one that we take very take great pride in and we thank all involved including Rich porfido our ad and all the coaches who've been complying with the access and Equity requirements that you just read off um I can offer my brief update soon as you get done okay sorry all right um the board will convene for its first Fergus

018implementation committee on Monday October 30th the Fergus implementation committee is a committee of the whole meaning all board members are encouraged to participate and the meeting will be available to the public and will include one public speaks the board has asked Dr Taylor to present the district's vision of how and when it will Implement all 23 of fergus's recommendations which should include the sequence of the priorities of those 23 recommendations what will get done first why and when and how these priorities would overlap over the next three years the board would also like to see the funding commitments tied to each of these priorities over the next three years for example what are the budget implications for the 2024 25 school year based on what recommendations the district plans to implement first and lastly the

019board would like to know who within the district will be the responsible parties for ensuring that the 23 recommendations are being implemented and that we meet the designated timelines there will be monthly meetings between the district and the board via the Fergus implementation committee and there will be required quarterly meetings between the district Dr Fergus Justice Wallace black parents and the black parents Workshop management of implementation and the monitoring of compliance will be handled within the district so we look forward to a comprehend of presentation on October 30th this evening the superintendent presented to the board policy 57551 the district's access and Equity policy to the agenda for a first read I believe it's important for the community to understand that the majority of the board has advised against having this policy added to this

020evening's agenda for a first read we have expressed significant concerns about the lack of thoughtful planning behind this policy and it's my view that the board currently Lacks effici information to assess the unintended consequences of deling our schools on both our students and our Educators for a first reading of the access and Equity policy as with any District policy it is essential that the policy is close to fully developed this means that all stakeholders affected by the policy should be consulted and actively engaged during the policy review process many board members had called for the district to work directly with our Educators or students our administrators our associations and our district families prior to being put up for a first read board members had also asked for a comprehensive presentation from the district that included

021SD student data to both justify and explain the proposal to Del the schools prior to being put up for a first read it is extremely disappointing for the policy to be presented to the board for a first read without this essential work having been completed we've been told that the board should pass this policy as as is without fully understanding how deling would be implemented we've been told that the board doesn't have to buy in to this policy in its current form and that the district can proceed with adding it to the agenda for adoption regardless of whether we lack the necessary information to even support it and we've been told that a policy change of this magnitude does not require a Public Presentation before the board and the community before this policy first reading

022we do not accept those explanations a majority of the board believes that the community deserves answers to questions about how deling would work its implication for our students the timeline for implementation the anticipated benefits if they exist and the implications for us our teachers to be clear the board is emphatically committed to codifying Dr fergus's 23 recommendations into policy the board has Resolute and its desire to close the achievement Gap and to raise the bar for every student in the district through rigorous curriculum and comprehensive Support Services as was spelled out in Dr fergus's Equity audit report the board looks forward to understanding why the superintendent believes that this policy was ready for a first read despite a lack of detailed information and Community engagement and lastly I just want to add about transportation we

023want to recognize the families that are continuing to have trans Transportation challenges it is imperative that the district provides a reliable and Safe Transportation source for our district families a service that would function as the backbone of the intentional integration initiative the board is hopeful that the latest round of solutions being implemented by the transportation department and I believe some of those went to effect to today will achieve this goal but please know that the board will continue to Advocate on behalf of our district families for every single student to get to and from school safely and on time every single day and with that I'll turn it over to Dr Taylor for his words thank you madam [Applause] president so I I I have a a more broad update and multiple presentations for this

024evening but I'll couch those just for um this this particular topic and after public speaks ends we'll Circle back around just for time's sake So speaking of of A&E and as many are aware there's a first read of a proposed update to our access and Equity policy on our agenda this evening for those who are not familiar with the board's formal policy procedure a first read is not votable it's not a votable resolution or consideration it provides the board the public and other stakeholders with an opportunity to review and become familiar with a proposed policy with the first read the board and the public have an opportunity to share their thoughts on the proposed policy prior to first read a proposed policy has been discussed in multiple committee meeting meetings while the board members have

025different opinions on this update to our District's A&E policy the consensus agreed that the majority of the proposed policy update reflects our current vital work around this important topic as well as our future aspirations for a Northstar as was shared in our recent District goals some board members as you just heard Express concern regarding how the possible deleveling of schools will look how would it be rolled out there were also concerns about how this work competes with Dr Ferguson's report and recommendations connected to our BPW settlement similarly our board student reps and I met and they share concerns over what this could look like and the unintended consequences of acting with haste such as possibly um having courses lose rigor here are a few specific responses to to these concerns regarding this first read of

026the policy update that was just shared first a note of thanks and appreciation to our previous Board of Education who authored our current A&E policy acknowledging their effort in passing what was a transformative policy at the time that continues to impact us we still have high level candidates for vacancies that mentioned our commitment to equity ATT rting them to our district this type of work takes courage commitment and a willingness to partner and listen secondly for those who are not aware this topic was first discussed at our late summer board retreat where board members gford and telis for shared their personal experiences where they recall living within the levels of Columbia High School they now tell us of the life lessons their experiences taught them and their observations as teams through their now perspectives as

027adults serving on our Board of Education I also acknowledge the work of board members gford and Wingfield in working together to provide a catalyst for this important consideration and dialogue that our board members have been able to participate in I have expressed a number of times during our committee meetings that I'm proud to work in a district where these considerations are so passionately debated to be very clear as school leaders and career Educators our district cabinet and I do not view this as isolated work over the last several years we've been tasked with stepping Beyond just a simple review of data in fact many of who are in the audience today have watched as we have broken down our student achievement data via demographics and use risk ratio to continue to refine our review determining

028the likelihood of success of our students based on their self-reported characteristics we have of course shared this data with our district Educators continuing to focus on our daily decisions we know we have to be keenly aware of our own biases and how they can unintentionally impact student outcomes again to be very clear we do not view the work of reviewing academic segre ation and Dr Ferguson's recommendations via our settlement as competing priorities there are several recommendations and findings in his report that mention specifically the work that we are discussing if you go to our website and you will find type in crosswalk and you will find a crosswalk document that includes specific mentions of the following goals by Dr Fergus himself a Foster heterogeneous student collaboration in math instruction B ensure that low track students

029receive the highquality instruction that they need to become better math students C create a clear plan and timeline to identify High achieving students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher track math courses D revisit the choice policy for math selection verba please know that we do not Envision a plan that will be fully implemented for the 242 school year nor do we believe in lowering rigor or expectations or getting rid of AP courses as we have shown via our triple ey rollout our Columbia High School Humanities adoptions our new phonics program pilot our K University dual enrollment program that was a pilot to name a few we believe in a pilot approach and learning from it before of a before a wides scale adoption is considered we also believe in growing our initiatives and maintaining academic consistency

030for students we believe in offering job embeded professional development for our staff and in utilizing the natural breaks and grade spans for significant shifts in pedagogy this helps us to reduce the anxiety in student students and parents while moving forward meth methodically lastly while we are not formally presenting on this topic tonight we are happy to share our specific thoughts Beyond this brief update and build space for discussions of possibilities as these considerations proceed one of our board approved District goals speaks to the development of a holistic diversity equity and inclusion strategic plan to be developed over multiple years what we can share now is that there is again no intent for an immediate massive shift in design or offerings or programs for Columbia High School next year we of course will be sharing more

031on October the 30th before closing on this topic please note that the board approval is not required for shifts in pedagogy although the board does of course approve curriculum updates however this policy is still very important because AS school leaders when we need to make tough decisions or significant shifts policy adoption is key as it gives confidence to all involved our admin our teachers our parents prospective members of District Etc it helps them know that this is not a halfhazard or singular decision that it is indeed supported in the fabric of our district and is and is understood and accepted part of our beliefs and our tenants as a learning community in our view Dr virus's recommendations the A&E first read policy our work on curriculum development our triple I equal opportunity schools supporting students

032who have exceptionalities and their families providing students academic and social emotional support that they need to become the leaders that they have the potential to be they are all interdependent in other words we again do not see them as competing priorities we do not see this work through an either or lens we see we see them as both and the first leg in this journey is the work that has already occurred with our Middle School Math teachers and our district has already been shared and occurred with our Middle School Math teachers and our district admin team we look forward to sharing this with you on October 30th thank you Dr Taylor I'm going to pass over the mic to Nubia who will lead us in the rest of the meeting sorry sorry okay board president

033statement the school board meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public oftentimes it may appear to members of our audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote before a matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting the Administration has thoroughly reviewed the matter with the superintendent if the superintendent is satisfied that the matter is ready to be presented to the Board of Education it is then referred to the appropriate board committee the members of the board committee work with the administration and the superintendent to ensure that the members um fully understand the matter after the committee discusses the matter it is then shared with the other board members for consideration only then is it placed on

034the agenda for board discussion and action at a public meeting we will now begin our first hearing of individuals and delegates this evening thank you for coming in person and dialing in by phone this evening the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education certainly respects that you've taken the time out of your busy busy day to address the board at tonight's meeting we value public involvement in our school district and we are eager to hear what you have to say the board does have time limits by policy it will be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible this evening each individual will be given two minutes to speak please do your best to stay within the time afforded to you the first public comment period is usually limited to 1 hour and

035the second public comment period may be limited to 30 minutes all input shared with the board of education is taken very seriously and will inform future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and its committees we request that you please state your name and town of residence for the record okay Sean bkus yeah I said two minutes yeah I said it all right uh my name is Shan buckus and I'm speaking on two topics driven by The Chronic ineffectiveness stemming from our office of the superintendent and consistent poor governance of our school oversight board the first topic is deleveling of our academic classrooms I've spoken in the past in this form and voice strong support for our access and equity and integration programs I have also spoken against our superintendent's personal initiative to delevel

036our academics and I'm disappointed that our community needs to address it again I have skin in the game I have two children attending our Public Schools as well as a very recent graduate of Columbia High School I recognize that we need to focus on the shortfall of students not achieving their potential but we never focus on the students who are doing well but should be even performed more strongly our highly motivated students are consistently neglected by this forum these students want to attend honors and AP classes as they see fit with like-minded individuals regardless of their backgrounds eliminating honors classes and requiring tests for AP placement is significantly troubling for this cohort of students who have dreams to succeed you are coming at this from the wrong point of view a Viewpoint that these students

037outcomes do not suffer in a D- leled setting I have a different point of view a Viewpoint that asks what we can do as a district to make the outcomes of our highly motivated students better these talented students are overlooked by the mindset of our superintendent and frequently by members of our Board of Education we do not have a gifted and talented program we eliminated eth grade honors English despite the pleas have enrolled students at a past board meeting I was there in still find that in other related decisions troubling we all want better outcomes for our students but instilling mediocrity via d leled academic setting is not the solution why do we Overlook our overachievers my first askas is that we form a committee to revisit providing honors English in the eth grade and

038a significantly stronger offering of academically challenging programs for our students we need to move beyond the politically easy implementation of deling and instill strongly ership focused on ensuring that all of our students needs are met I want us to go the other way I want all of our students to win my second ask is that the board forms an independent panel of experts who include teachers parents students and outside experts containing multiple points of view to examine any additional changes to our curriculum proposed during Dr Taylor's hopefully limited tenure as our superintendent sorry to interrupt you but we're at time do you do you have just another sentence I have like 30 seconds more don't we need more than just Dr Ferguson's point of view relying on this type of decision- making process is not

039suboptimal my last topic is the renewal of Dr Taylor's contract next spring renewal is not what our district needs we need a thoughtful strong operator with the proven track record the shortfall in our superintendent management track record are well documented to deserve action I'm sorry I not to be rude but we have to we have to move on and we actually have five pages and I want to make sure that everybody that signed up end it with this thank you my third ask is that we run a vote of no confidence in Dr Taylor's leadership at your next board meeting next person is Margaret pickron good evening thank you for having me my name is Margaret pickron and I'm a resident of Maplewood my husband and I have two wonderful children a seventh grader at

040SS and a second grader at Marshall to begin I want to express my unequivocal support for the intentional intentional integration initiative and the recommendations Dr Fergus developed for our district to meet the mandates of the settlement with the BPW but I'm here tonight to implore the board to not hastily adopt a policy to delev our schools and thank you for taking that off the agenda tonight I ask this not because the conversation about deling doesn't have a place in this District it does and research shows that deling can greatly impact student achievement however I am dismayed by the manner in which this policy came to first read a policy of this magnitude cannot be taken lightly it requires significant research planning and engagement with key stakeholders tens and dozens of them are here truly none

041of this has happened instead the one sentence long policy was SL Wily couched in the proposed revisions to the access and Equity measure which was released to the public just 2 days ago our district is facing a tidal wave of change at this moment from the integration plan to rectifying Decades of harm from the teachers College Ela curriculum which undoubtedly has contributed to our District's shameful achievement gaps in addition we are facing a capital crisis with buildings that are quite literally falling apart and need an additional $200 million to repair beyond the lrfp which is in process and requires close oversight I beg you all to please please take some time to do the work at hand show this community what this board and administration are capable of do it wisely and deafly Implement large

042scale changes uh and Implement these large scale changes before you pass a deling policy that at present has no backbone Dr Fergus wrote in a response to the Village Green that overall Mar I just want you to know you're at time is a complicated process and one that will likely take significant time to FasTrack the adoption of a deling policy at this moment is simply irresponsible thank you for time this evening Rosio Rosio Lopez hello can I have the same two minutes that Dr Taylor got because I think they were like pretty good um okay just a joke this is my nature so you know that's how I am my name is Rosio Lopez I'm the president of SAA and I'm here today because we are tired we are tired right yes and we are

043tired of you not knowing the truth we are tired to be the last ones to be told about things we are tired to know about things from the students instead of from our leaders supposedly and so you know Dr tell you might meet with them about this policy but you haven't talked to me about it yet and you know you haven't even shown me the policy I had to see it you know through the attachment which is kind of crazy knowing that we have more than you know almost 700 stakeholders and we are the ones that carry over the district um so Maya so you know he the heart and soul of this District you know why because like it or not you all live even the students live but we are the only ones

044that stayed so we are the most invested people in the whole District so things work so talking about that being a good leader is being a servant have you been a servant of the district right now have you talked to all of us I don't think that has happened and I've already ofline and saying that you talk to the stakeholders if you talk to two teachers that doesn't mean talking to us that's going to the people that that you know they're going to say what you want to hear and what is homogeneous homogeneous doesn't mean putting everybody in the same room it all depends how you decide hom homogeneous means homogeneous could be by level homogeneous could be by the the disabilities so there are many things that homogeneous can mean so in that regard

045and app already um I believe in the leveling in the future but we're not ready now we're not even close to ready it's a crazy idea you know we're coming from coid and we're barely making it for the students every day trying to teach and differentiate extraction already inside of our classes now the Freshman Academy so you know the people have not gotten paid yet and you signed this the sidebar agreement last month thank you thank you Shar Lincoln my name is Shir Lincoln and I am the vice president of SAA at the end of the school year teachers pack up loose items in their rooms put things in shelves and drawers and leave them for the summer with expectation that their classrooms will be cleaned and left pretty much the way they left it

046in June this year I returned to my classroom to find it completely in a disarray so un packed up all my belongings 26 years worth of teaching materials there were over 85 boxes many meaningful personal items I used for instruction were broken and thrown into boxes with no care at all I was given no warning that this might occur nor was I given an explanation the Monumental task of unpacking my entire classroom left me in shock but what I discovered next was even more shocking while unpacking and cleaning the coat room I noticed a huge hole in my wall upon my request the district tested the classroom and found what I suspected asbestos I should not be the one to do the job of the district yes if I hadn't done the work and this

047work was not completed my students would have been put at risk asbest is no one's friend but especially a cancer survivor like me there are many teachers who are now questioning the air quality of their own rooms since the district has failed to adequately allay our fears my students had to begin their school year in the library while my room was being tested I understand that times are tough economically I understand that our buildings are old to need modernizing and cleaning and that this costs money but I am frustrated when I see monies the district spends on outside agencies who obviously aren't supervised by either their own or South Orange neighborwood it is difficult enough to teach effectively when our rooms are clean just imagine if you had to think if it was ASB bestus

048free if teachers are shown such disrespect and lack of consideration how is South Orange mwood going to attract the quality teachers at needs I implore you to stop being Pennywise and pound foolish when it comes to maintaining the district's buildings our children and our teachers deserve to work in Clean safe environments the expense of good and efficient Building Maintenance is nominal in comparison to the Health and Welfare of the children and adults who spend a good portion of their lives in these buildings it is my hope that the board will investigate the effectiveness of its facilities Supervision in hopes of preventing this from happening again the lives of every person who breathes air and our buildings deserve to do it in a safe [Music] environment yoland Yolanda Fleming yoland [Music] Fleming oh gosh all right

049hello my name is yolan Fleming and I a proud product South Orange resident and faculty member of this district for the past four years I've served as a 9 through 12 school counselor and I loved my role in assisting all of my students prepare for their future goals this time of year is mostly about college application season and although all School counsel are tasked with balancing their time among all of their grade level responsibilities our freshmen usually get the short end of the stick when I received the notification that I was reassigned to serve as one of the Freshman counselors I knew that as a team player I was determined to make this position work and yet I also knew how much I would miss the letter writing and scholarship searching two of my favorite

050senior tasks that I've normally done well I completely support the launch of the Freshman Academy as it is one of our approved District goals there are some concerns that I would like to share with you tonight first where's the curriculum freshman counselors were told in August that a social emotional learning curriculum named wayfinder would be used for the Freshman Academy to facilitate the twice weekly period cougar huddle that freshmen are mandated to attend as of today the wayfinder program has still not been provided second large group supervision counselors are not administrators we're not disciplinarians we should not be in charge of leading large groups of students we have found ourselves in that position where we have been responsible for supervising large group Gatherings of ninth grade students that numbered anywhere from 250 to 500 stud

051students without consistent administrative support for example field day was held last Wednesday morning during the administration of the PSAT half of the students were assigned to be with physical education teachers for an activity in the main gym and the other half were assigned to be with the two two freshman counselors for in activity in the auditorium the two freshman counselors were approximately 107 with 175 students at a time with no administrative support for the majority of the time third freshman counselors to serve as a disciplinarian almost done the Freshman counselors have found themselves in situations where they are press to serve as disciplinarians which is in direct conflict with our role as school counselors this conflict gives pause to students who may not choose to seek out assistance in sensitive situations for fear that they

052might get in trouble our freshman deserve the support they were promised and they should have had a better start to this very critical first year of high school Jessie Jesse Heim Jesse Jessie Jesse Heim Jessie hi uh my name is Jesse hin I'm a fifth grade teacher as Seth voyen and a SOA member I'm here to speak about the implementation of our new excellent elementary math curriculum Eureka squared a major issue that confuses staff as well as the developers we are bringing in is that our access to certain features of this new program are being blocked by the district these features allow slides to be push to student Chromebooks quizzes and tests to be taken and graded online and records and groups to be created using the online scores we're talking instant in-depth data telling

053us which content standards our students are proficient in and where they need to grow also complex assessment scoring that gives more weight to questions that show partial proficiency allowing students who still have room for growth to celebrate their achievements an extremely complicated and tedious grading system to do by hand all of these features are modern and bring our curriculum to the 21st century the district's reasoning for blocking these features so that we can focus on student reasoning that student performance has plummeted since we started using computers for Learning and that slideshows are not good for student engagement we're told that these decisions are made to increase student achievement but a major roadblock when it comes to standardized testing is unfamiliarity with taking computerized assessments all Math teachers agree that mat should be worked out with

054pencil and paper however wouldn't it be best practice to teach our students how to properly utilize scrap paper which they could turn in for us to analyze While submitting their answers online after all that's how they're assessed for njsla and the benchmark assessments we use major grow growth points we need to focus on according to our administrators we're also told that it's our professional responsibility as teachers to score assessments compile data and create instructional groups by hand of course we're able to do this effectively as we have done in the past but why are we being forced to paint a wall with a little brush when there's a roller available how can we truly assess the merits of this program if we are not using key components stop editing curriculums before we've had the chance

055to try it the way they were meant to be used stop blocking us from using 21st century technology that allows us to use our Limited time more effectively and also increases student achievement thank you thank you Dallas are you are you D okay great I'm Dallas and she's Julie so we're right in order I love how you guys know what order you're in this [Laughter] great good evening my name is Dallas Duffy and I am teacher of mathematics at mwood Middle School I'm also proud to work as the Soma secretary in my 18 years as a math teacher at MMS I have taught every course from math intervention previously called project ahead to The Accelerated geometry course in my current role I offer intervention support and extension of the curriculum in every Math course at

056MMS I'm here tonight to speak about the possible deleveling of courses in the district first of all if the plan is to Del were any teachers involved in the conversation the wealth of institutional knowledge and knowledge of the curriculum that teachers possess is invaluable we are the ones with the experience the ones who know the curriculum its successes and challenges the ones who are in it every day working with the students and we have great ideas but for some reason we are left out of the decision-making process we know what works for our students and what we need to make them more successful my next Point speaks to deling itself I have had numerous informal conversations with my colleagues about the courses in middle school we have not discussed d Ling as a department not

057one teacher that I have spoken to has said that deling the courses at the middle school is the answer in these conversations with colleagues we discuss possible ways to restructure the acceleration program the idea of including an extension math class for all students and what we feel would be the most appropriate courses at the middle school level we care deeply about the courses that are offered one of the most important questions is that if this policy is accepted when are we going to offer Algebra 1 if it is not offer offed until 9th grade then the only way to accelerate if the only way to accelerate is through AP classes then the earliest any student could take an AP math classes their junior year AP Statistics and that would only be if they doubled up

058on Geometry and Algebra 2 their sophomore year how many students would be able to reach calculus by the end of their High School career on the other hand if algebra is mandated in eth grade or even seventh grade what about the students who thrive in grade level and pre-algebra courses in those important developmental years this is an extremely complicated and important conversation a as mentioned this plan for deleveling affects the math courses at CHS hi I am Julie scrii and I am currently a math teacher at CHS I have taught in the district for 13 years and started at MMS before transferring to the high school I have taught everything from sixth grade math to AP Statistics in my informal conversation with CHS Math teachers not one of them has stated that Ding will help

059our students thrive in math as a department we have not formly discuss the topic as well at the high school we are trying to expand our AP programs it does not make sense to delev the prerequisite classes instead of deleveling the focus should be on providing support to the students who are taking all the courses at CHS including honors and AP courses these supports can include after school and summer Support classes a conference period where neither students nor teachers are scheduled for classes and supplemental courses to remediate skills we should take this opportunity to re-evaluate our middle school and high school math offerings accelerated courses and paths to calculus and find a way to make all the courses accessible to our students ensuring that every course contains a balance of foundational skills rigorous tasks and

060challenges if differentiation is the goal through deleveling the leveled classes that are currently run are differentiated all students in all courses need cognitive challenges they need an enrich curriculum that meets them where they are and helps them learn and grow it was hard for both of us to limit our comments here to only a few minutes this is a very complex topic that requires discussion collaboration and planning exactly the same for everyone does not seem like a box we should try to cram ourselves into this is actually contradictory to what SSD stands for thank you Joyce lesli see can you hear me yeah hi I'm Dr Joyce Leslie and this is my 19th year teaching mathematics at CHS and I want to speak to you about two important issues like Miss Duffy and Miss griac

061I have taught a wide range of math classes from low to high at CHS I was very supportive of the amount of deling we did when we didn't we stopped having five levels and we went to basically two but I want to tell you about my discret math class currently one of the courses I teach is discret mathematics and that attracts a wide range of students who choose not to go onto calculus or not to take pre-calculus some of the students even take discret math after they take calculus because they're choosing not to take another AP class they want a more relaxed mathematics class so last year we tried combining we deleveled we tried combining our honors and our AC discret math class we so I had one class with had which had skills fragile

062students and regular AC students and regular honors students and it didn't work it didn't work well mostly for the skills fragile students in fact my co- teer um Mr Keegan who's no longer with us here he's teaching in another District we discussed this issue with guidance we had a big meeting with all the guidance counselors and we all agreed looking at what was happening that we would best serve our students if we separated the honors section and the E and the college level section discret math is a project-based class where students get to explore math and justify their own Solutions it can be very very engaging and when I have separate classes I can reach most of these kids and bring them forward but when I saw how dismayed some of the students were it

063you know in the company of students who are going so much faster I realized that this was not going to work we need to focus on the needs of our students particularly those in mathematics who really need a small class and a dedicated teacher leveling does not mean tracking leveling is about meeting needs the needs of students where they are leveling is not about permanent placement on a low level thank you hey Lis Luis Hernandez all right good evening my name is l Hernandez Spanish teacher at Columbia High School I'm here tonight to seek the answers I haven't received from my supervisor and or the administration I want to clarify the scope of the uh later the latest letter to sta from Dr H Taylor in regard to the Halloween practice in the school premises

064I am con it brings me a great concern about the current decorations I in my classro do I have to take down cultural items related to the muos day of the death which simplify simply symbolize Mexican and Central American cultures due to their aexs and mil Heritage do I have to take down pictures that exhibited churches in Hispanic American countries which represent their European Heritage due to the Spanish colonization and more Dr Taylor's communic communication emphasizes in the no Customs must be warned during the school hours should I refrain myself from using hats ponches and other artifacts that at times I were to represent the Jewish Heritage in the Colombia cof region after the expulsion of the Sephardic Community from Spain in 1492 it is a particularly sensible topic for me since my family descend

065from that region and from those Jewish families number two South Orange and maple School District openly speaks about equality and promotes itself as a defender of diversity in school grounds but this is not necessarily reflected in the practice I represent a minority a minority who doesn't have representation throughout the community to give you an example a few years ago I successfully founded the national Spanish Honor Society over 30 students were inducted activities were done to contribute in National organizations and to and to the school body the owner Society helped students to pollu nationally and so on as important as prestigious as the owner Society can be stiping hav't been approved after years of application this board unfortunately is expecting that teachers or advisers that represent minority groups Hispanics and in Asians in particular work with

066no payment while keeping these National organizations alive in the school grounds this is if you allow me simply outrageous the national Spanish owner society and the national Chinese owner Society must be recognized by the board of and stien show be approved to bring the best benefits to our students families and for the minorities in this school district thank you Heather Heather meig [Applause] he okay good evening my name is Heather mtiga I am a second grade teacher at Marshall school this is my 20th year teaching and 13th year in the district I'm speaking tonight to bring attention to several issues isues within the special education department in our district my class is labeled as an inclusion class which means some of my students are entitled to inclass support from a special education teacher up until

067last week that position was vacant which means that my students were not getting the supports they needed and deserved there are three other in-class support positions that are vacant this means oh no I lost my spot this means that students who have IEP a legally binding document are not receiving the support that their teachers parents and members of the child study team have all agreed that they need not only do we have trouble recruiting new teachers for these positions we have trouble keeping supervisors in the special education department in the past five years there have been three assistant superintendents of special services the department has no institutional memory there are no clear cut protocols for placing a student in a particular setting or for phasing out or eliminating Services when a student has made substantial

068growth this makes decisions like whether to give a student significant supports such as resource room evidence-based reading or even an outof District placement much more difficult because instead of a rule supported by data and growth our factors come into play like staff availability or what we think parents will agree to our district pays millions of dollars to out of District placements and lawyers who are trying to justify our placement decisions to families our district would be better served by strong leadership who can Implement and consistently use guidelines for placement in special education setting and the types of services students can receive our district is touting the banner of equity and inclusion but the way we distribute special education supports is anything but equitable hello my name is Emily mamra and I'm also a teacher at

069Marshall Elementary School and I'm also speaking about the issues in the department of special services I've been directly impacted by the issue of Outsourcing in our district especially when it comes to par professionals when par professionals are hired by an outside agency there is lesson of investment in their place at your school and with the particular children they serve while the majority of the Paras in my building are amazing and truly committed to helping the students they work with one of the major issues comes when there's a substitute in case of an absence because you never know what is walking through your door will you get someone who is clearly experienced with children and uses strategies to engage that student or will you have someone who sits on their phone in the corner for the

070entire day it is not clear what training our power professionals have received and what the understood expectations are for them to do as a classroom teacher we are evaluated on how effectively we use a power professional in our classroom but where do we turn when someone needs more support or if you have an issue if our power professionals were employed by the district we could control their training and expectations for their roles we would be able to recruit and keep the Amazing Power professionals who serve our neediest students another issue pling special services is the lack of department meetings department meetings are scheduled monthly but there has not been a department meeting led by a supervisor in over a year these meetings would be an ideal time to share expectations present new research and partner

071with peers in the your building this lack of leadership leaves teachers working in small groups within their own building and in the case of their own special class these teachers are working with students who need the most support yet they do not receive the same support from this Administration thank you Claire Claire [Applause] Sinclair okay one of our teach was skipped um for curriculum I don't know if you saw her name Lisa did you one of our teachers was skipped on the list I believe Lisa Rosenberg uh I don't have her oh Lisa oh sorry so many people are coming up to at a time that I thought that she was already so she'll be after you okay thank you hi my name is CLA Sinclair and I along with two other tuskin SOA building

072WPS I'm here to share some of our staff's continued concerns it is a pervasive feeling that our opinions are not sought listened to or respected there are so many initiatives and decisions made that have zero input from staff yet we are the ones who are expected to implement and make them successful we often find out about things at the same time as the community and are not given opportunities to ask questions discuss or reflect on how things are going because we feel our voices are not being heard and our students needs are therefore not always being met we are here tonight to share some of the concerns our students with special needs are our most vulnerable Learners and as a staff we try very hard to advocate for the resources and staff our students need

073unfortunately in spite of this advocacy in planning for this school year for the second year in a row at tusin we are under staffed and do not have enough special Educators both of these years staff members have brought up the need for an additional special educator far in advance and both years our concerns were not addressed starting in mid-spring 2023 teachers advocated for the need of an additional inclusion class based on IEP numbers however it wasn't until the end of August this year that the position was finally approved and posted at that late date the candidate pool was very limited however a great candidate was found and a position was offered but the district could not match the salary a charter school had offered and the candidate turned it down this position has still not

074been filled we are very aware of achievement gaps that exist in this district and feel that these gaps have grown since Co we plan our lessons with as much differentiation as possible and small group indiv individualized instruction however we are not receiving the support we need to meet our students needs we do not have any academic intervention tier two or three supports for math in K through 5 and in ela these supports only exist in grades K through 2 our students deserve more hi my name is Lisa Rosenberg and I'm also a Tuscan teacher and a Soma building W aside from supporting our students social and emotional well-being and growth our most important job as teachers is to provide our students with an enriching and engaging curriculum education sorry delivering this type of instruction begins

075with teachers having the appropriate curriculum and the resources with which to deliver the curriculum without them it's more difficult to differentiate and accommodate all abilities and to provide opportunities for our students to get handson with their learning at the elementary level there are many concerns around the social studies curriculum and resources provided among those concerns are the following many units many of the social studies units posted in Atlas have absolutely no lessons or are linked to empty documents books books listed as resources for teaching have not been provided Ed to the teachers textbooks listed as the primary resource for both teachers and students are outdated for example the thir grade textbook communities was published nearly 20 years ago or they no longer align with the majority of the or the curriculum content for example the

076fourth grade textbook is called New Jersey and the fourth grade no longer focuses on New Jersey but rather on early human civilizations in the TR transatlantic world the Transat slave trade and colonization of the Americas through the Revolutionary War in addition many classrooms no longer have teachers guides or a full class set of textbooks or other resources listed in Atlas for example the nrom map kits I have four Globes this big um we have not been asked what we need to implement the curriculum nor have we been provided with an opportunity to order needed Hands-On materials such as maps cloes and other Prim AR resources while we appreciate receiving extra digital resources last year through new newella when teachers have asked for more Hands-On and current resources such as sub subscription-based magazines like time for

077kids and scholastic news they have consistently been told the district will not pay for them teachers need professional development lessons new and updated resources in order to provide the Quality Social Studies education our students deserve thank you for your time toi [Applause] hunt hi my name is tily hunt I'm also a tusin teacher and building rep uh the most basic thing our students and staff deserve when they come to school AG day is a safe and clean learning environment so far this year tuskin has not had consistent custodial crew and we have many concerns about our building's cleanliness classrooms and hallways have been left filthy overnight garbage cans are not consistently emptied floors are not swept let alone mocked carpets are not vacuumed and desktops are not cleaned our K to 5 students snack in

078these classrooms and Floors need to be swept and mopped every day there are so many germs and illnesses going around and our surfaces such as student desks need to be santiz sanitized and cleaned daily um us teachers we have been putting in work orders reporting concerns to our building admin adding them to spreadsheets taking pictures and we continue to report it everywhere we can without much change in addition we have some serious health and safety concerns which are not being addressed in a timely manner or taken as seriously as they should there is a section of the roof over one stairwell which has been leaking since 2021 causing the ceiling to crumble and fall fall and for it to rain into the stairwell on the top Landing where a student or staff could easily go

079flying down the stairs um the wet floor sign and the buckets that are there are really not enough two weeks ago one of our staff actually slipped and fell on the landing which is something we've been fearing would happen to a student or staff member for a long time we also have ongoing concerns about the possibility of mold in that ceiling what we're breathing in there is extreme water damage to that wall ceiling which we've captured in photos and videos and submitted to Administration over the last 2 years during this time the roof at tusin was replaced over this part of the building during the construction that we had um and it was not fixed the area has been painted over several times you see the new layers of paint and then you see the

080new water stains builds to just want to let you know you're at time May if there's anything thank Jen Jen [Applause] skates good evening hi my name is Jennifer skates and I teach second grade inclusion at Marshall School I've been an educator in the South Orange and Maplewood school district for 17 years years I love second grade and I especially love teaching second grade inclusion I'm coming to realize that there's a lot about my job that is out of my control not out of control but out of my control for example last year was extremely difficult due to the fact that I had no co- teer for the first four months of school the numbers were quite predictable and it was common knowledge that another inclusion section would need to be added however the special

081education department did not begin looking for my code teer until one month month before school began it's pretty well known that it's difficult to fill an open teaching position in late August let alone find a quality candidate but out of my control so I showed up and worked harder than ever how is this year going I'm happy to report that I have a co-teacher to start the year with but I was tasked with learning a new math curriculum the first week of school out of my control so what do I do I attempt to learn this new math curriculum to give my all to my students so now I'm in my classroom with my 212 graders teaching the new math curriculum except they can't exactly hear me because I'm competing with the construction happening inches

082away from my window every single day I point to the board to show them the next problem but my board is shaking from the construction outside I'm not sure if you've ever taught a math lesson to a group of seven-year-olds but it's pretty darn tricky on a regular day out of my control also out of my control is how filthy our school building is each and every single single day it just gets worse every year we've put in work orders you've heard so anyone that's telling you they're not aware they're lying so aside from the mud and general filth all over the floor there's been an infestation of ants just last week I dismissed a crying student who had ants all over her backpack and coat because there's hundreds of ants in my classroom all

083the time and I've put in all the you know reports I I filled them out my principal has showed me Hera emails that she has sent to the central office everyone's aware nothing's done my question is who is in control who is responsible for making sure that our students have a clean classroom every day who's responsible for making sure special education students have a special education teacher to instruct them who's responsible for making sure teachers are prepared and supported to teach this new curriculum who is in charge yeah in charge thank you patri hi my name is Patrice massong I'm the professional rights and responsibilities committee chair for SAA as part of my role I attend monthly meetings with the district leadership team to discuss possible issues within the district within the last two years

084you could probably guess that many of those issues have surrounded Construction we've been told that the administration is learning from prior years so that everything can run smoothly in the future this year construction began on Marshall school at the end of last school year my co- teer and I were told that we would have to pack up our room for the summer it took a couple of weeks for us to pack up the over 130 boxes of items in our classroom we were not permitted to re-enter the school until August 30th a day when early professional development was also provided to allow more time in the school when it reopened on September 5th we were permitted to be in the school from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on August 30th and 31st and then allowed

085in our classroom on September 5th and 6th with convocations scheduled for the morning of September 6th that allowed three days to unpack our over 100 boxes and set up our classrooms as my co- teer and I entered our classroom on August 31st we realized that little cleaning had been done as the custodians were subject to the same limitations and restrictions to access our classroom before reshelving even one book all shelves had to be cleaned we also had to clean ours and the students desks and chairs locate missing students desks and chairs and our misplaced rug I worked from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on August 31st 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on September 5th and 11:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. on September 6th to um to have our room look like a classroom that students

086could use the remaining boxes were placed at the side of the room and unpacked after school hours as time permitted in what other professional job would you expect to work over 20 unpaid hours to prepare your space so that you can do your job we we are one of the lucky ones at least we were given advanced notice that we would have to pack many teachers in our building were told that they would not need to pack up but returned to school on the first day to find everything in their room packed up broken and or missing instead of learning from past mistakes the district just repeated the same ones time and time again that's it Le Leia van [Applause] dornic good evening my name is Leah van dorick I'm a teacher at Seth Boyen

087resident of Maplewood and parent of four children that have either graduated or are current students in this District every month from September to June on the 15th staff receive a paycheck for any extra compensation we are owed from the previous month usually for overtime or payment for loss of preparation periods or insufficient unpacking time our pay stubs don't include a detailed breakdown of what we were paid for just as extra comp we then have to email the payroll supervisor and hope to get a response this makes it very challenging to know if our pay is even accurate soon we're coming up to November where we're closed for a week we will inevitably receive an email that all extra comp will be paid at the end of the month rather than the 15th as payroll does

088not have enough time to process and pay us money that we have earned and need every year in Spring of 2022 after over a year of negotiations we were told we would receive retroactive pay that summer to match our negotiated salaries then we were told that oh it wouldn't be done by then after all because payroll couldn't process it in time only after Union leadership intervened were we paid by the agreed upon date finally as teachers we are not paid during the summer we all commiserate that it is unnecessarily difficult to calculate and move money around in hopes of making it to September 15 without going into the red despite asking multiple times the district refuses to offer us a 12mon salary option I was wondering why do we have all these payroll issues because

089apparently the payroll for our district of around a thousand employees is done by hand in 2023 why aren't we investing in training our payroll department out of 21st century system that will allow them to do their jobs well maybe we're Outsourcing the payroll department next I don't know tell us what we're being paid for pay us on time and offer us the opportunity to have our salary paid over the course of 12 months you've thank you you have told us what we pay so you know that we barely make it enough to get by as it is so please stop making it difficult thank Sarah Sarah benady sorry I should be prepared but I'm not um I'm Sarah Bady I'm from dilia balen and I'm here to talk about the current state of our transportation

090in our district the issue is impacting parents students teachers and staff and putting students In Harm's Way students are missing instructional time as well as their entire special periods and sometimes they're being late to school with over 90 minutes of time older students are feeling embarrassed as they walk to their classes late and younger students are having accidents on the restroom which is causing A disruption to the start of our day as well because of all this the office staff is having a hard time keeping track of attendance with busloads of children arriving after the state mandated time for attendance to be submitted it's impacting the school's ability to make it impacting a student's ability to make it to after school commitments on time as well because they're getting home so late from school parents

091are late to work due to students not being picked up on time and also there's no communication between parents and the transportation system as well there used to be communication between Transportation informing parents when a bus would be late and there um and if there was a problem with any buses this is no longer happening this is causing the school parents and teachers left in the dark with children sometimes not us not knowing their whereabouts and it's causing it to be a very dangerous situation the bus drivers do not have accurate or up-to-date lists of students and the bus company is not aware of our district calendar there's been times where we have early dismissal days and we are telling the bus drivers when they need to come back to our school students do not

092know their bus drivers because there's not consistent bus drivers each day as well as well well as bus drivers not knowing consistent bus routes for students as well not having a physical application for bus services is not Equitable as most of the need for a bus comes from our English language Learners and special education students the application is on power school which many families are not able to actually properly access we want the best for our students and this situation is setting them up for a day of frustration and failure Jo Martinez look at the presentation I send you while he's talking okay check your email while he's talking I send you a presentation you see a power Imes you got with link well he okay J Martinez Maplewood resident two suns in District proud

09310e SOA member SOA action committee chair hopefully these words Spotlight every moldy crack and and leaky pipe that occupy the buildings of this District that at everyone listening is filled with much anger disgust and frustration as I am because then perhaps effective oversight will occur let's talk about the management of our school grounds and Facilities providing our children with the most secure safest and healthist learning environment has proven to be an epic failure shotty Patchwork Band-Aid over Bullet Hole sty finishes and sheer negligence is evident in literally every single School building in this District enough is enough appalling and unacceptable are just two adjectives out of many that describe the conditions of our schools and what's more the directorial follow-through and time it takes to have such amateur work delegated is atrocious Grace was given

094long ago however that expiration date is long past delinquent at this juncture disregard and incompetence can only explain the foul stench of excuses that corrode the corridors and learning spaces where we teach and our students learn spare us the Sham about long-term plans that that there's no money who holds who accountable when armies of ants March into students backpacks and garbage containers are a solution to Leaky pipes and brown toilet water soaked ceiling tiles who holds accountability for soiled and stained decade old carpets that still line our classrooms are exposed as best as that decorate our classroom walls School dude maintenance you say give us a break teachers are nauseous over the black hole that is school duded maintenance where critical maintenance requests rot a classroom 30 days without a PA system this this year

095with three work orders sitting in a queuing system since September 11th does not and should not represent the phase the phrase timely fashion the individuals who should be supervising and overseeing these daily weekly and monthly walkthroughs are straight up failing spewing the same old tired recycled lame flaccid dribble for excuses as to why this takes time and there are insufficient funds we are sick and tired of the dog and pony show find us adults who aren't going to roll the rotten egg down the road or toss Third Rate reasons around and hold them down until they set off into the sunset onto the next comfy and cozy position in the next school district and when you do be sure not to site this District as an achievement within your managerial capacity thank [Applause] you Lori

096fam [Applause] Lori Fam thank you you made me go after you that's mean uh good evening my name is Lori F and I'm a teacher at Columbia High School I'm treasurer of SAA Sam leaon to the achieve board and a 20-year resident of Maplewood because samya doesn't hire a PR firm I'm here tonight to tell you a few things about us first of saa's 676 active members 127 or almost 20% are residents of South Orange or Maplewood but those 20% also have family and friends who live in Soma as well as children who attend s SMSD schools extending their reach into our community there are many other members with ties to our community but moved away due to the high taxes Ando rents that are difficult on a teacher's salary second through nj's Pride program

097we are a large contributor to achieve the Educational Foundation here in Maplewood South Orange in fact we were the lead sponsor for achieves annual newad 5K for the third year in a row through achieves teacher grants and Ricki scholarships our dedicated and creative teachers bring enrichment to SSD students that is not possible through the District budget we are a partner to achieve and fulfilling its mission in addition we are Financial contributors to the cougar boo boosters mapso Freedom School the annual Shakespeare Festival the South Mountain YMC ad Duck Race as well as Midnight Madness through the sea scholarship fund we raise money each year to provide scholarships to CHS seniors uh product placement visit the kicks and sticks website to check out the SAA store every purchase benefits our scholarship fund to conclude SAA is

098maintenance Personnel secretaries it Specialists athletic trainers child study teams social workers counselors Librarians nurses and teachers but we are also neighbors friends families voters taxpayers parents grads and most importantly part of the S Community isn't it time that central office give SAA a real seat at the table thank you for your time I don't see [Applause] him Tony mizi okay let's see actually before I start because I this has been quite incredible uh I'd like to take 10 seconds to thank you as a parent in this District all you teachers for doing what you've been doing thank you for holding it together all right Keith you get started um first of all how about that map Wood Middle School choir that was unbelievable there's nothing nothing like children singing together nothing like it I I

099do want to tell you I hope you all realize that under this deling policy that you are proposing this evening that choir would be abolished that is a leveled Choir in the Middle School it's important for you to know and ironic that you had them as guest this morning this afternoon um pretty ironic look why are teachers here about all this for the first time if there was ever any doubt that the leader of this district is not communicating with them that doubt is gone in my mind now this is educational malpractice everybody this policy educational malpractice counter to what we heard from board members a couple weeks ago this policy is nowhere near fully baked nowhere near for instance the one embedded small line about deling the entire District uses is No Child Left

100Behind language like core instructional programs that's been gone for 10 years 10 years it's every student succeeds act now since 2015 well-rounded education that includes every subject which means every subject in the core would be cut into one level in this entire District that's unacceptable in my opinion that the educational leader this District didn't know enough to point out things like this before presenting it to the Boe but if you included the actual educator sitting behind me right now they would have pointed that out to you look I'm a pretty calm guy Dr tayor you said in your report a lot and absolutely nothing at the same time you offered nothing except for we'll get on this we promise we don't like to offer plans until sometime down the road how's that been working out

101for this District everybody how's that been working out that is not good enough and I actually believe that the people proposing this policy have no idea how to actually do the work 2 minutes is not long enough please tear it up go back to the drawing board try this one again thank you Danielle Danielle Kyo hello my name is Danielle CYO and I'm a French and Spanish teacher at Colombia High School what I would like to address with the board toight tonight is the subject of stiens for Club sponsors the reason is that there are many interest clubs at Colombia high school and yet the National Honor Society cannot be sponsored or renumerated if if uh we do it I'd like to be you know a sponsor of the French Honor Society I can't do

102it because I have also been a sponsor for the OV club for three years for eight years I've been a sponsor for the Multicultural club which in which we do a black history month we do work with uh Miss Banner to do a multicultural night event for the community for our students for our stakeholders I've gone to the mun Municipal Court building and done dense performances with my students I've done I've worked with Mark I've worked with achieve I've worked with so many many people in the community and my students they go on Saturdays and Sundays to rehearse and yet we still I'm giving my time and there there is a proliferation of clubs at the school and that shows the dedication of teachers towards students but when is the board going to do something

103for us who are giving our time also and properly Ren numerate us when we are giving to this community and we're giving so much I think you know you should readdress it there are some interest clubs but there are also clubs that meet for one hour and yet they get renumerated do their sponsors do and clubs that meet all the time and they are doing a lot of things for the students and yet they are not renumerated miss Banner you have the floor about the same thing a couple seconds your time is up and you weren't on the list so 10 seconds so I've been sending emails for the past eight years I run two clubs here the ladies of leadership and the men with purpose we have about 67 students in the club yet

104for the past eight years I've been receiving the runaround about how there's no funds to support these students of color some of these students are even here now in the middle of the night instead of being home but yet we keep on receiving emails over and over and over again about equity and support in the needs of our students of color yet when a teacher of color is trying to do that we don't receive any support so please I ask that finally that these clubs these interest Club get some sort of interest from the board thank Sha Sha sacka Gable good evening I'm Shaya saket Gable currently a Maplewood resident parent to two CHS students and a former member of Soma thank you for the necessary reminder Soma that a large part of Soma includes

105our neighbors all of our teachers deserve to be included in these critical conversations and of course how their basic needs met for healthy workplaces I want to raise a concern regarding ing the access and Equity policy specifically the deleveling provision to start I want to acknowledge the thought shared by board member gford when proposing this policy I know this is something that impacted him personally and thinking back to my own CHS experience with the five leveled system I sympathize I want to also acknowledge the circumstances surrounding this conversation as we've heard repeatedly there remain outcome gaps between students in our academic and honors classes I think we can agree something is broken the hopeful part is we have potential Solutions Dr Fergus gave the district 23 recommendations and spotlighted the need to raise the level

106of rigor in academic classes let's start there let's provide phenomenal academic experiences for students who thankfully have the option to select these courses but who are no less curious or capable let's provide academic level instruction that is not watered down but covers all the appropriate standards taught by teachers who are encouraged encouraging and supportive to all students Shoring up the academic level classes will require a great deal of attention examining curriculum and professional learning I'm also concerned about the impact this could have on students receiving special education services we want to see as many students as possible accessing an appropriate education in an integrated mainstream setting teachers have shared concern over how they can effectively differentiate instruction across such an even wider array of students without support teachers deserve a seat at the table for

107any major instructional changes in short administrators are concerned teachers are concerned parents are concerned students are concerned let's go back to the drawing board Sarah [Applause] Connelly Julie Madden hi I'm Julie Madden I'm a resident of South Orange I have two boys in the public schools a first grader at Marshall and a fifth grader at Balden I'm here probably just as a representative of many parents who are experiencing stress and students experiencing stress because of the bus situation I had a wonderful experience with the buses with my son going from our house in South Orange to Balden for third and fourth grade this year has been very different I know you've heard from me I appreciate your responses Dr Taylor but it really we need a solution his bus is the green bus that goes

108from Montrose to Balden they've been on time four days this year out of the entire school year it's just unacceptable I appreciate hearing from a Bolden teacher talking about the disruption to the classroom I got a call once he wasn't there because attendance probably was taken before he arrived you can imagine the concern and panic I felt I understand this is a difficult topic getting to school shouldn't be hard I really ask for more communication and a solution so the kids can get to school on time thank you s S I called you for public speaks would you like to come up yep Sarah Connelly thank you sorry it's okay um Sarah Connelly South Orange um Dr Taylor I wanted to talk briefly about Transportation um last year when the parents were dealing with um

109our own transportation issues and we were standing before judge Courtney um I had a conversation with the school district dist lawyer and I said to her I don't understand why Dr Taylor's lying to us I don't understand why Mr Burnside is lying to us um I don't understand how Tammy Tage is lying to us and she looked at me without hesitation and said they're not lying to you Sarah they're simply incompetent and I actually laughed but she didn't and what we've seen this year is just a continuation these families are struggling as early or as most recently as today you had a situation where parents were notified that their bus would be coming early except the email was sent to the wrong set of parents so you had over 20 students standing outside at 7:15

110waiting for a bus that never showed up and these are Elementary age students so I'm Wonder wondering here at what point do you acknowledge that you're not able to do this for us that you are hurting our children they deserve more and transportation is one of many issues that this district is dealing with right now and it's one of many issues in which you're not doing what we need you to do and I ask you to take that into consideration because I'm not sure you're a good fit for this District anymore thank you Amber Teague two more left here in person Hi everyone thanks I'm amra Teague um from awood um earlier tonight you passed what sounded like a really Common Sense policy um and and yet you had mentioned how long it took to

111get that done a lot of work it was a long time coming yet it seems super common sense why would that take so long so I'm curious is how one sentence around deling and a policy that sounds like it's only been kicking around for a few weeks is going to go to First vote I mean like that just doesn't or first read rather I mean it just doesn't make any sense several superintendant ago Osborne did a real deling right another teacher mentioned we went from five to two levels effectively if you don't count AP and still I think the data shows that our achievement Gap continues to persist so is it leveling was leveling the issue did we do any work to analyze why no change when you're trying to change a percentage you can

112do two things you can decrease the numerator in this case kids that are not achieving the level that we would hope that they would achieve or you can increase the denominator and so deling sounds like would allow you to increase the denominator and therefore reduce the percentage and maybe it looks like you've done something to reduce the achievement Gap but you haven't you've just manipulated the math what you have to do is decrease the numerator so figure out what is going on deling maybe it's the right thing but it's going to take time it's going to take input from the amazing teachers here from the students who benefit from having options and all the families in our district thank you so [Music] much last last in Person Public speaks is Jeffrey Bennett I agree with

113um almost everything I've heard tonight so I'm going to actually skip to some things which I don't think have come up yet um a lot of people here have criticized ding in the new A&E policy um I also oppose that but I also want to draw the Public's attention to the provision to hire multiple Dei coaches um we don't know how many Dei coaches or how much they would cost would be hired but it does say school-based Dei coaches so it does imply many several Dei coaches presumably at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars I don't know how board members can defend that when you guys know how tight the budget is and you know how little discretionary spending power we have if you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on additional Dei

114coaches you're going to have to cut somewhere else and when I walked in tonight and I saw 15 vacancies in special education listed in the hallway to the board of ed meeting I don't know how you can justify putting more resources into Dei coaches and not special ed um I originally wanted to talk about the transfer policy that you guys are going to be having a first read on um thank you very much for finally working on this and for implementing weightless transfers and I assume like for like transfers but I also urge you to copy the real Berkeley model and adopt something called an extraordinary circumstances transfer process which would hopefully be a rare process but available available to families in the most acute hardship perhaps from a totally inflexible work schedule and or

115a lack of a car where going to one particular school is absolutely necessary for them um I know that some of you might oppose this on the ground that some families might abuse it but which is worse deny 10 valid transfer requests to prevent a single invalid one from going through or to allow one invalid request in order to accommodate 10 valid ones I think it's better to risk allowing some invalid transfers to help people who really do need help um I also urge you to consider what our policy is for one a family moves Within Som it's possible that a family might move to a neighborhood where they're the only child going to that school in that case the child might be a little isolated and would be very hard to bus and as

116we've seen this year when you have an isolated child it doesn't just affect that child it affects every child they share the bus route which could be dozens of kids and when a bus with dozens of kids is late to school it affects the whole school which is hundreds of kids and I'll respect the time thank you thank you so we just have a a handful of online public speaks and I want to see if they are still on Georgia Warren waspers that Community member is not online okay Dion winter that Community member is not online Heather Harrington Heather can you are you on you're muted me not me we can't if you're talking we can't hear you can you speak up oh we lost her okay um let's see if the next person is

117on while she tries to get her Tech together Melanie Gyer hi this is Melanie can you hear me melie hi trying to turn on my camera um my name is Melanie Huffer Gyer and I'm Maple Melanie can you speak up please thank you is this better yes my name is Melanie haer Gyer and I'm Maplewood resident have two children at CHS and I want to Echo Tony mazaki and thank all the teachers who have come out tonight as a district parent it's super helpful to hear your perspective and experience I'm logging in to speak about the proposed access and Equity policy I'm speaking as an emissions officer to speak up it's just a little hard to hear you Melanie sorry you might have to yell I'm logging in to speak about the proposed access and

118Equity policy I'm speaking as an admissions officer in higher education with over 20 years of experience there are many stakeholders that need to be consulted and considering removing honors level courses at the high school one of those stakeholders is the guidance office I do hope that the guidance team is given a time and space to consider the implications of removing honors courses at the high school for anyone who has experienced process in recent years whether through their own child or through another student you know that it is a tough landscape competition permission to college is steep and this is true not just for the most of these schools but across the board there's a steep competition for a wide range of schools including large State schools and schools traditionally perceived as less competitive finding our

119students the opportunity to enroll in honors courses will put our students at a disadvantage in the college application process for a variety of reasons I believe the greatest impact will be for students in the heart of the class our High Flyers those who take more than 8 AP classes will be able to show that they challenge themelves but for those students who take less than the most rigorous AP schedule or be challenged through honors courses we will be depriving them of that opportunity compared to students from other schools who do have honors courses some may say that our school profile will address this and a missions counselor is going to review a student who has honors courses and one who does not differently School profile not withstanding talk tonight about questioning the leadership of this

120District and that I would say that not Consulting uh the guidance office and thinking about this of removing honors forces would add to that as well so much thank you Melanie we're at [Music] time um next up is Kristen buano I know why I'm looking Keith that community member is not online um did Heather Harrington ever come back on just want to double check unfortunately not okay so then two more um oh Sean was already here and then Shannon cuddle can you hear me yes hi good evening uh I'm going to be really brief um so uh I just want to uh again extend as I've done before the October is anti-bullying awareness month and that is important uh throughout the state of New Jersey and for everyone um I also want to implore that

121folks uh be able to give written testimony to the anti-bullying task force for the state of New Jersey we've extended the deadline uh you can now submit written testimony through November 15th at abtf at doe. nj.gov if you have any comments or feedback uh we especially want to hear from stakeholders and students and family members and Educators um as we're looking at um trying to make determinations in our report that is due to the governor and the legislative office by the end of the year on potential recommendations um I also again want to uh end a thank you uh to South Orange Maplewood uh and Dr Taylor uh for submitting uh feedback as well and also want to uh again um also uh reinvite SAA please to give uh feedback as well we really would

122love to hear from you um and all your members as well uh for the task force for feedback on the anti-bullying task force um and really quickly I just want to pinpoint that it's the Scholastic book fairs recently came out and said under book Banning um that there is an optin and opt out for diverse books for schools that want to hold Scholastic Book Fairs this year I would really employ uh a South Orange and mwood School District make sure that we opt in for the diverse book collection and speak out for the meing that we need diverse books and that we um support band books and diverse voices in our community thank you so much thank you I think that was right okay that concludes public speaks Dr Taylor do you care to respond

123I'll be brief because of the hour and we still have two presentations yeah I know to come right um those both of those are statutory and time sensitive so we have to do both of those presentations do they have to be right now or can they be before the 30th before the 30th 30th um like on the 30th meeting oh could it be the thir well that meeting I don't know I'm just trying to understand um so both of these presentations um the time requirements I think are before November 1st or something like that no worries we can we can verify it but I just you know again being being time sensitive we'll make them quick so I we we received about 30 um public speaks this evening um normally again our attorney advises that

124I shouldn't respond on on on um on the evening of receiving these public speaks but I do my best to try and give real time responses when we can um so I'm going to start from the beginning of my notes and I'll keep on going here [Music] um I don't recall Sean's last name B bulus thank you um thank you Sean for Sean for coming um Mr bulk has cited a couple of points that he's spoken out against uh the previous D leveling in that conversation and we thank you for coming to share your view um on this uh first draft of this policy update Miss Pilgrim Pilgrim I think it was Margaret okay um thank you for bringing uh your concerns to our attention regarding I think it was described as a tital wave

125of change with us shifting from TC and that TC could be at the core of some of the um different outcomes that we seen between demographic groups a lot of the comments around access and Equity I think I covered in my opening statements so I won't go through and repeat that but I'll just again reaffirm that um this is the beginning of a conversation a greater one um and much of the feedback that we received around middle school math was informed by the by the conversations that our stem supervisor had with Middle School teachers they really centered on reimagining math I know that words matter and using the word deleveling can be um upsetting for some folks um but in those conversations of renaming and or reenvisioning math thinking about middle school math thinking about

126the order of middle school math thinking about the curriculum development of it all that is in the work um that we are reviewing and be sharing more of on October 30th uh there were concerns around facilities and around school dude not being a viable option for teachers to upload or staff members to upload concerns around facilities um thank you for bringing that to this venue because I hadn't heard that as a concern and I'm happy to follow up with the with the folks who are responsible for that and physically look at school du myself to see what the delays are um there was a comment around the possibility of bringing par professionals and the the cost of PA professionals uh into District um I think that we've shared this a number of times um that

127the cost of it would require us to have significant layoffs that paying an additional um well budgeting an additional 30 to $40,000 per person for the benefits that they will be due legally um it just couldn't be done without having a very significant layoff which is why most of the districts that I'm familiar with um also Ed that methodology even though it's not our preference and it began um gosh I believe almost 11 years ago or so when there was a change um that came from I believe uh that was Governor Christie who who shifted that funding uh for school districts I didn't quite get the details of the gentleman who was sharing about the Aztec costumes and not being able to wear them so if we have his name I can definitely follow up

128and have the appropriate folks follow up around that conversation and there were a couple of conversations around stiens um Chinese and Spanish Honor Society as well as um the support Club that um for black girls at Columbia High School but please know that adding any stiens to our contracts is is a negotiable piece um both the um organization sua and the board and myself and our attorneys who work together have to agree um on that and we have to determine um if that if that what the cost or the payment for that club will be because it will have to be have to fit with the rest that are similar and so um I've responded to those requests I know we just launched formally a stip in for our National Honor Society so I'm I'm

129happy to hear that there's more interest from the other honor societies to be a formal partner uh represented in our contracts the vacancies in special education and inclusion classes um and some of the challenges around those vacancies have been discussed repeatedly in our Personnel um board committees and we've also of course um taken outside the box approaches to try and fill those vacancies which is a a shortage that um many are experiencing across the country in that realm but we haven't given up we're still recruiting we're still visiting fairs we had our own Fair we're um still following uh still following up on those vacancies and not closing them out um there was a comment around special education specifically and guidance documents about from that department and I'm not familiar with that concern and I

130welcome to receive uh more conversation on that perhaps during our next District Sam meeting which we had uh earlier last week the f is a followup for those concerned about um the building um cleanliness please know that uh Mr Burnside and also Mr gilo have follow followed up personally with Aramark um about not only the quality of their work but the ratio of staff to building size because building size is now growing so we should have more staff that's um part of that ratio of size to staff assignment there was a comment about not looking for special ed teachers until close to the end of summer and please know that as students are enrolling um we're always looking at those ratios and when we have to create new classes we create new vacancies that match

131those match those classes that might be the scenario that was discussed regarding um the the construction projects and the packing up of classrooms and all those things um the process that we use is what we have used the last few years but there were when there are complications um construction managers they anticipate the space that they're going to be using and we those are the classrooms that we ask teachers to to pack but when um they open up the building and they're looking at what they throughout the summer they they have to sometimes expand that it doesn't happen a lot but when it does happen we totally understand um how it can be very upsetting especially if they're not careful and thoughtful and taking care of those things they have to pack up we also

132have to weigh that against having teachers pack up when they don't need to having um more folks doing that work that's not necessary so um this was the first summer um that we had I think a significant issue with the construction company having to do more rooms than they anticipated thank you for sharing the um the pictures and the concerns around facility conditions we'll definitely share that and follow up with that and if you have if you have specific room assignments or building placements it'll make it easier and quicker for us to go and review that and report back we've given a number of updates on Transportation so I won't do that at this time we're targeting those updates to the families that are directly impacted those are all my comments at this time Madam

133vice president okay great so next it's presentations right yes it is I will and we had set a time limit 15 minutes per um and we'll hold all questions until the end uh do you want me to give construction updates in absence of Mr Burnside or will we just forego those yeah yeah that' be great great um for those interested in our construction updates U Mr Burnside is away at confence confence so here are a few um the most comprehensive updates the schools that are still under construction Underhill Sports Complex the PA system will be replaced by the district and the contractor will be charged for his portion of the work all other work at Underhill is complete um Marshall School structural still installation is Complete Masonry uh wall installation has begun um we will

134begin installing roof drains next week and electricians are working the second shift which means the evening inside the building uh mantro School the majority of work is scheduled for summer of 24 a Columbia demolition in the bwing is completed a rough in of electrical and piping for the new b-wing science labs is underway demolition in the pool area has begun this week and for SS and Maplewood Middle School a kickoff off kick a kickoff meeting will be scheduled in the next week once the contract is issued so I'm going to introduce our presentations um Keith we're going to start with uh Dr Dr Gilbert and miss weor okay good evening uh Dr Taylor board uh Madam Vice chair uh I'm Dr Kevin Gilbert I'm the assistant superintendent of access and equity hi I'm Carrie Weeble

135director of access and Equity so we're going to going to start our um presentations with we have to do the second part of our ssds uh report to you and then we're going to roll right into the Hib presentation and we're going to try to not keep stay before you too long so as a reminder next slide uh we are uh mandated by code next slide to present to you twice the ssds data that uh we received you received the first report on August 24th which covered uh September 2022 to December 2022 and today we will go over January 2023 to June 2023 and totals so I'll give you an update on the totals this next slide again just reminds you of the various categories that are captured in ssds next slide please these are

136the totals for period two incidents so these are the in the number of incidents to for the Public's edification we will have the complete presentation uh available for you online so you can actually go through and dissect this but you can see for period two uh we had a total of uh 49 incidents uh between all the schools 29 came under the violence category none under the vandalism eight for substances no weapons uh 14 hivs convered five other incidents that led to removal and 14 alleged hivs next slide for the total in August I gave you period one this is period two the total for 2223 was 86 total incidents and then at the bottom you can see what each category uh numbers showed us next slide please just a real quick analysis this slide

137shows you that most incidents did occur in our district at our high school level um and we talked about that the last time but if you go to the next slide please the request was the request was that we normalize the data which basically means we will look at it if all the schools had the same size where the number of our incidents occurred and still when we normalize the data most of those incidents still occurred in the high school next Slide the next couple of slides will be tree maps and these tree Maps actually give us a visualization of what the size of those incidents were and and where they were uh you can see where the majority and you we see that term violence that's the term that ssds used but for the

138Public's knowledge that includes like fights and things like that that happen in our school next slide there we go uh again this is another version of the tree map that shows the uh different incident types next slide please and then the next two slides are also tree Maps but they're broken down by incidents by the types of schools and this is important for us because this gives us a visualization of as we try to build School culture and climate what are some of the areas that we need to work on inside of our schools and so this visualization gives us an idea of what are those incidents that we have to uh uh work on and this is divided out by our school levels next slide please another tree map with the same kind of

139visualization next slide so just a couple of slides to show you the analysis for the year so here we go we talked about this earlier about most this is our Hib analysis just as with the incidents that we reported we see that most of our hibs again have occurred with our within our High School uh if you go to the next slide and this map also and you this is good gives you both the alleged and the confirmed so blue are the confirmed hibs orange are the alleged this is a normalized map where we use that normalizing formula uh to kind of see if all schools were equal what that looked like uh even though it still shows that most of the incidents are still remain at the high school you can see for our

140elementary Levels by normalizing it the visualization of It kind of pops out to you but if you go to the next slide as we compare across School levels we see that the there are less occurrence of hibs in our elementary schools and so this slide helps us kind of look at that and next slide so just a couple of slides on the data Trends uh these these this slide shows you the number of incidents per period and then the Top Line shows you the trend data over the number of years and remember we started with our um 20 make sure I get this right our our 2018 2019 data and we go all the way to 2223 you can go to the next slide because it's the the same slide but remember we're not using

141uh the uh 20 the 20 the 2021 data the 2021 data is our outlier and this map gives you a good visualization to show you what the trend has been over the five the five year trend of our school year so all right next slide I think that's the last what this one also shows the average comparison of our uh incident totals and that's that presentation so we can take questions now or we can go through the second presentation and then take questions on both of them Dr Taylor how much now okay okay well I Mye this part of presentation is done so if you want to turn it over to questions for those eight minutes I'm I'm I'm ready to stand for questions I forgot I'm so used to Caitlyn doing this I'm like

142what am I supposed to do are there any questions anyone question yes Father Theon thank you and then Regina so I mean I actually have a question more than a comment more than a question I'm very happy to see wellth thought out grafts and uh present present ation of data that is more understandable I I love the rectangular tree graphs and you know that's that's very good and also two things that we had asked for last time were both in here one was a longitudinal view since 2018 to now and the second one was normalizing and saying if all schools were equal which one is worse I mean in theory it could be with middle school that was but it didn't happen that way but thank you for putting in the extra effort thank you

143um I think actually Dr telesford asked us at the last one but um have we have we thought to to break this down by month so that's not how it's reported that's not how it's it's not reported to the state so we only they we only get the report through the periods that's how the the data that's how the data we we pull it down from so um so we we don't collect it at all by month we don't have that internal I understand if it's reported to the state so when our our schools reported but they reported at different marking periods they don't report it monthly so that we we collect the data and then during that particular period it's sent and it transfers over to the district so um got it I can't

144I don't know if we can get the monthly data report but we will definitely go back and try to I know you asked about I know you asked about it the last time and I was n able to do it but I can we can we can we can we can still we can still we can push it and see where we can find it so I would just share I think it's a portal that is that that the that the uh incidents are placed into and the portal spits out this information so it's not broken up by time for my understanding but maybe there's a Time Mark in the portal or you would probably have to do it by hand to go back through those monthly hivs that you get and those type of

145things yeah um and and also remember that we put our our suspensions and those type of things on on the website as well by month so there's there's couple it's stored in a couple different places go on call thanks I guess also have a comment on that like if we look at the actual school year and look at the number of incidents they're actually not as many so I'm not sure if we'd get as much value out of looking at it from month to month Maybe by quarter but um I think by period one period two it really does like give you a nice it's a fair point it's fair and maybe month by month wouldn't be but looking at it by quarter could help potentially but it it's a fair point right okay looks

146like no more questions okay thank you another 15 yeah because we have to do the next presentation right I'll put you back thank you all right so the next presentation is the hi uh self assessment and this one has to be done because I think there's a resolution that they're voting voting on today on on this particular presentation so um the Hib there we go you can go to the next slide so this is the self assessment for determining grade so our schools make a self assessment on how they feel like we've done with our hi work and then the state gives us a grade grade on it eventually uh that data includes um any information that happened information based on the 22 23 school year so looking at that our climate teams get together

147they work with our abss and we talk about you know where we where we made the mark and where are some areas of approve Improvement next uh slide please these are the areas that we self assess ourselves on um programs approaches training uh other things on here include uh how we would deal with our Hib P personnel and then our reporting are just among and each category is broken down with indicators and can BR a total of 26 for each category next slide please this again is the monthly trajectory on what happened so again you all are looking at what our self assessment is uh we'll get a report at sometime after January uh from the board and from the state on what our actual grade is and then we'll be before you again in

148May uh talking about what our grading or what our self assessment grade was next slide so here are the self self assessment scores again this is the rubric that I talked about 52 is what we're looking for in terms of uh if you meet proficiency we should get a number 50 you should see a 52 there the highest score schools can receive is 78 and zero does not meet requirements three means exceed requirements and a two meets here are the self assessment grades for 2223 we balanced them off with the final grades that came out in 2122 for our schools again this presentation will be made available online if you want to go in and look at a lot of individual reports it'll be there for you uh next slide and as we look backwards

149to from 289 2018 to 2019 to the present uh this is what our scoring if you see 2023 what our assessment self assessment is and we broke it down from the average and at the bottom you can see what the average scores were for our different schools with all of our schools combin next slide now I'm going to turn it over to miss wble to talk about some of the improvements that we're going to be making and and some other things okay can you hit can you do all of them thank you okay so uh a few great things um it's good to I always like to start off with what we saw that was positive um so all of our schools um seeded expectations so 52 or above all schools met are exeeded um

150around HIV and suicide the trainings and the week of respect all schools score themselves exceeds expectations so they all got a three on that which is awesome um and everyone was above the required 52 next slide so we did Identify some areas that need Improvement so the first area is increasing learning opportunities uh specifically for staff in the area of school climate bullying prevention and social emotional learning uh the second is to examine and update student learning opportunities in the area of bullying and social emotional learning the third one is school support for climate teams so that they get more professional development so that they can be supported in their work as well as expanding training for and support for abss as well as the administrators we did break these into four separate goals so

151goal one um we are providing uh anti-bullying specialist training so in September so they're getting three days of training this year three full days uh in September they've already received the three trainings that sorry uh the supporting positive School climate um and looking at data we've started but we're going to continue that in the winter uh we're also going to look at patterns um so some of this is started some of it's continuing administrators received all of the following special um training in September so what their role is in HIV understanding the new policy updates in 2022 considerations for special populations including students with disabilities students uh multilingual Learners um and students with 504s as well as what to do and how to support students after the HIV we're also we coordinated with the Parenting

152Center so we've already done a family HIV night but we also are going to plan on doing one for 6 through 12 because that was only for K through five we developed professional learning for all staff which are anti-bullying Specialists and administrators are going to lead um instead of what was done previously either through video um or a larger session we think that having a more personal session will really help our teachers understand the the process in a different way um and providing support for teachers in the area of social emotional learning next slide so our second goal is updating student learning opportunities so we are inter you all have on your spots uh the new curriculum for anti-bullying it was written and created by the New Jersey bar Foundation who does a tremendous amount

153of training around bullying um and they're updated they're providing updates now yearly so it's a great way to continue with that um so we're working with our teachers and our anti-bullying Specialists over the next few months to roll that out we're integrating social emotional learning classes in the middle school and high school we're examining existing social emotional practices in K5 which is continuing our work last year when we picked a framework which is Castle um and using Castle framework to determine possible implementation of sea l so the three best practices are to input direct instruction integrate it into instructional practice every day and integrate it into the curriculum so we're looking for ways that we can do that in K5 specifically goal three is supporting climate teams so developing and implementing climate team training every

154school has been trained except for one which I'm doing Friday um this training included our families uh who are on the climate team as well as teachers and administrators uh we also wrote a climate team manual um which was completed and provided to The Climate team members and provided climate team training specifically for our abss because they run the climate team they're the head of it as per the state law um and we worked with climate teams to examine um those three things and then fourth next slide please um so this is more about examining expanding training so the abss are getting training on climate but they're also getting training um on specifically their role so we did already equity in HIV investigations understanding substantial disruption strengthening the investigation process and best practices and interviews

155uh over the next few months we're going to do new guidance 2324 a lot of HIV does not come from the law it actually comes from case studies so keeping ABS is up with the case studies is really important and then uh we created the climate manual which we said uh administrators received all of the Hib in the following uh training in the following next slide and one more so we had a week of respect the first week in Octo in October uh next slide and these are I'm not going to read all of these to you but these are all the highlights um for our schools did some amazing and fun things they integrated anti-bullying lessons um and just really talked about you know implementing kindness and respecting others and so there were a

156lot of great fun activities but these are just some highlights in the actual presentation there's a slide on every school and some additional highlights of what each school did next slide and just a reminder to all of our public if there's any concerns our anti-bullying Specialists um are listed here as well as on every school uh District website um and they can always um put in a concern on our website if they think someone is being bullied that's [Applause] it uh are there any questions from the board members yeah go on I just wanted to say thank you so much and it's really exciting to see the goal number four of just the ABS training I know we've had a lot of conversations on that so thank you to you both for all your hard

157work on this thank you thank you I just have one thing to say but go on Elissa I was going to uh commend them on keeping it short I know there was a lot that went into that and uh to to do so uh in 15 minutes actually you had five minutes left on this one so you guys like you guys got back a lot of time listen we can do short you say it's short we give you short you know great appreciate it we pleas and I appreciate all the work I know it's been a lot of hard work and effort has been put into this it is something that the board um has pushed for and we appreciate the work that has gone into trying to to make this entire process better for

158everybody and that's it I I just I know I'm going to keep it short too I just want to say Echo everything that my colleagues have said but also I do want to to state not to not in on on a high note but I was very surprised to see chs's score go down by 23% and so I would hope that when we come back here next year we see that number go up through all these amazing efforts that you're going to put into place thank you thank you absolutely thank you all right we good thank you so much great job thank you next we have our cni leadership and Bodner assistant sup and zo karea director of cni who was share njsla data hello good evening very evening we are going to do this

159so there is a presentation for you and for the public online that shows is probably about hundred something slides with tons of data um and comparisons and things like that but we just decided to pull as much as we could but we're going to go through data fast and talk about interventions a little bit more in depth so I'm going to turn it over I have to use reading classes okay next slide okay so the njsla overview um the njsla student learning assessment njsla are Statewide assessments that our students uh take they show progress in our student learning standards in English language arts math and science so oh thank you um in ela our third grade through 9th grade is tested um our math is third grade um up through um our into our high

160schools um up through geometry and finally in science's 5ifth 8th and 11th grades so we're going to dive into Ela first next slide next one I think you to hold it a little bit yeah okay that doesn't count against my time just kidding okay um technical difficulties so I'm going to start I did a lot of digging because I know that we all appreciate the good data so bear with me um these are the number of students that tested in 2022 um compared to 2023 and the difference of students actually tested at each grade level slide in this slide you'll see our comparison of SSD with the state of New Jersey SSD is in red and New Jersey is in blue and this is how we formed rounded to the nearest de a fraction decimal

161point okay slide um here are the grades breakdown from 2002 to 20 2023 of our what year-over-year and you can see 2022 is in blue and 2023 is in red and the change difference um and this is particularly on to ELA so I'm proud to say that we have been on the upward Trend in the last year next slide please I decided to go a little bit de deeper and go into pre-co and I PST the 2019 as we did not test in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic so the last test we had was 2019 um so you can see the comparison of all three bars here and how we did in ela in that 2019 and then the last two years that were postco as you can see in ela we're in

162upward Trends here I want to just compare how we did in the last three years to how the state did in the last three years so you could have kind of like a gauge on how we did in terms of the you know against the state so I I think we did pretty well in that comparison and here in ela is the breakdown of every level so you know that it's uh scored on a uh five levels and the breakdown is right on top for your reference so this is every single grade and how we did particularly in each level and then um it gives a brief description on whether we went up in in uh levels four and five which is what we want to see we want to see a plus there and

163in changes in one and two which we want to see negatives because that means that we have more people pass classing next slide and here is a breakdown for you um on each school and grade so this is grade level three and each of our elementary schools same idea five levels and how each level how they performed at each level next slide grade four same exact concept and how each school did next slide grade five next slide and then this is our middle schools sixth seventh and eighth grade again same idea just a breakdown of of every performance level for your reference next slide and of course grade level 9 in ela that's our high school next slide okay so here I want to get a little cut off I try to squeeze it as

164much as possible for you for your reference this is our subgroup demographics based on race and ethnicity in 200222 and 2023 so through here we are noticing that there's some points that we really need to look at some demographics some groups right that we have to we have been paying um noticing and just wanted to make make sure that when we get into our intervention slides I let let you know that we really looked at so many factors that can be affecting these um bars and I want to just make sure that you that you know we really focus on who in our demographics really needs that extra support and who the ones that are doing well what are they doing well right so we want to see what are we doing well well how

165can we grow from that next slide and here are the other subgroups uh based on gender um based on economically disadvantaged our students with disabilities with 504s or I p and our multilingual Learners if you do not see a bar it's probably because well most likely it's because there was not enough students to rep that we can represent to the were suppression laws next slide highlights we'll talk a little bit about highlights and notable achievements um third through nth graders achieved higher scores than those in the state all grades demonstrated higher passing percentages in comparison to scores from Spring of 2022 between grades three through five students scores surpass passing percentages before the coid era schools scores in grades 6 through 9 demonstrated an upward Trend following the coid pandemic between grades three and nine

166students who achieved performance level five exceeding expectations exceeded the state's average for students in the corresponding categories and one other thing that I just want to mention too is I also believe some of the the you know what I'm going to let you go and we'll talk about that at the end but I want to remember to all right next slide okay this is our mathematics breakdown next slide okay same idea I did the same thing for math um so you have every you know how many students tested in 2022 as compared to 2023 in all our grade levels notice there's no ninth grade because at that point it's either Algebra 1 geometry or Algebra 2 um based on the course that they're in next slide so again the comparison against the state um for

167each grade level and as you can see you know in elementary school we seem to have an upward Trend we're doing rather well but still need to continue to improve and then in other grades more the upper grades we're focusing our attention to see what what interventions we can do and we will be talking about that later on in the presentation next slide okay here's our 2022 2023 comparison again a year-over-year for your reference next slide and again I did the same thing for that longitudinal data of pre-co and postco and how we performed in mathematics prior to the pandemic thank you next slide and again I wanted to show the comparison of how MSD has done in the last three years as compared to the New Jersey in the last 3 years next slide

168and once again the breakdown of every level for performance levels at every grade level from one through five um just in terms of grades go ahead next and then again I show you specifically um each school for the performance levels you can skip slide four go ahead slide so it's grade five go ahead grade sixth seventh and eth which is our Middle School next slide Algebra 1 next slide geometry and Algebra 2 next slide and again I wanted to show you um in terms of race and ethnicity the breakdown of both 2022 and where we stood compared to 2023 and again a focus that we had really just diving into that data um and we'll talk again like I said um in an intervention slide go ahead next slide and our subgroups in mathematics um

169same thing gender um economic disadvantage students with disabilities and multilingual Learners next slide okay so some of the notable achievements in math third through fifth graders achieved higher scores than those from the state of New Jersey third through seventh graders demonstrated higher passing percentages in comparison to scores from Spring of 2022 third through seventh graders scores surpass the passing percentage from before the coid era okay and the last one is our njsla now I just wanted to point out here that we have four levels of performance here so there is no fifth one there's only out of four next slide so again the number of students that were tested next slide and how is SSD performed compared to the state and our 11th graders really um showed huge Improvement next slide um our year to

170over-year again in 2022 in blue and 2023 in red next slide our post and preo again just wanted to give you that extra data so for your reference next slide and again how did SSD do compared to the state in the last three years um next slide and again the breakdown of every per performance level for your reference for grades 5 8 and 11 which are the only grades at test science next slide here's a breakdown of grade five for every single school next slide here's grade eight the two middle schools and grade 11 which is our high school next slide and again the race and ethnicity breakdown for both school years for your reference next slide and our other sub um subgroups as well next slide okay so our notable achievements for sence 5ifth

171eth and 11th graders achieved higher scores than those from the state of New Jersey 11th graders Dem demonstrated higher passing percentages in comparison to the scores from the spring of 2022 and pre-co error slide please okay so we're bring back the graphic that we started from last year and talking about the whole child the SSD child and to truly see real growth and intervention working we need to layer on the supports so we have five different areas that we show supports in cultural and climate intervention and referral student opportunities instruction and programming slide here in the next few slides we're talking about the things that we have continued from last year that had we know are work working and then added beyond that so some notable things that I just wanted to bring up is

172that we have starting our um culture responsive curriculum audit for all uh we will be phasing it out over the proc of process of two years but we'll be focusing on um Ela and math first we've been using the Ruckers Equity audit report and student surveying um Equity coaching plan for administrators and teachers with the expansion of of seal work at the school level and again there are many other things that we are doing um but these are some highlights slide okay our inrs and referral services intervention and referral is a team of Professionals of teachers and school building um administrators and support staff who come together to create action plans for to address um a range of student learning Behavior Social and Health Pro problems that might be happening they create a plan to

173use to uh individually support a student at this point in time the revised man inrs manual and accompany accompanying documents have been meticulously crafted and distributed to all schools every inrs lead including building assistant principles and director of counseling has undergone comprehensive training and our and in our updated methodologies and protocols um during that training We performed a fishball demonstration of an actual intervention so that every single lead um as AP or director of guidance could see exactly how an intervention meeting should look and what and how fast they move along and keep um making sure that we also are reaching out to parents there is a unified understanding emphasized across all Communications that inrs process serves as a preventative measure to circumvent the special need for special education classification wherever feasible and I just

174want to mention as part of this inter new intervention protocol call we are as the reference of referrals come in I have colle connected a spreadsheet that collects the data immediately breing breaking out the subgroups so we know from the first referrals who's being referred and we could draw attention to it if needed so we all and everyone in SLT has access to these building documents and we can look at at uh data in real time and see where some problems are practices might be happening throw in our coaches to go and work with certain teachers if need be and also um planning for professional development to see where some our of our weaknesses are okay uh student opportunities so there are many student opportunities that we have um in place one that I really

175want to highlight today is that we have grades 3 through 12 access to 247 tutoring Services through tutor.com and I really do hope that um our families are taking advantage of this because it is an incredible service and it can can be done at any point in time during the day night um they have thousands of tutors ready to go many of our students have already started using it which is really incredible and leveling the playing field for all of our students um we have a AP core which is um some of our students some of our students who are um in minority achievement community in our Max uh Scholars or um students of color who have chosen to uh take AP classes this is a group that comes together they create study skills teachers

176go and do some work okay one minute I'm I'm throwing it through um and then we have group and individual counseling sessions instruction so we have um cross level visits we've been doing a lot of cross articulation between six fifth grade and sixth grade and uh eth grade and Ninth Grade we have our new math um instructional program and our pilot for phonics um again there's plenty of other things um instructional programming We are continuing to look at our humanities classes between scence social studies and Ela in the 9th grade and looking to expand them we have our Max Scholars and cugar Academy CHS Intervention which we are looking at and really changing it up this year because we knew that it needed a lot of support to support our students who are struggling unfortunately

177we don't have time to do Dynamic learning Maps but you it's in your packets please do look please do look this is a very important population Dynamic learning Maps because it's the end part we had 15 minutes on there we kept looking okay questions thank you so much any questions Aron yes uh two things first is I'm not familiar with what is the Fishbowl so what we do is what we ended up doing is actually the team at Clinton a lot of the people the inrs team a lot of the people who who are on the team and continue to be on the team was from the team that I created when I was an assistant principal there zoa came in and a few new Fresh Faces but we asked them to come and we

178asked one of our teachers to come to talk about um one of the students who was actually struggling and they watched an in all the assistant principles and people who lead in the intervention they watched the intervention happening in real time and then were able to ask questions afterwards and and get a little bit more understanding but they saw what a really effective inrs looks like and I just want to point out that we were referenced by Dr Fergus as being uh that should be Rec replicated by various schools so if you look it up he said it and I said let's do it then because they are a phenomenal team and I think they really appreciated it because anyone who was not quite sure got a real understanding of what it should look like

179and we will be monitoring we'll be going in and helping and supporting not so much we want to be a support we don't want to come in and looking as we're modering but we really want to help them to be really effective and our assistant principles are very interested in this work so it was a very exciting meeting we were very revived yes yeah just go we'll just go all the way down okay so I was looking at the the scores or at least for the the test scores for the algebra algebra 2 and geometry I notic that you give the the it's based it's not based on grade but based on the first time they've taken that course correct are we able to get a breakdown of um the grade levels that um students

180are taking who took what when they took it do you mean yeah yeah I mean we definitely can I mean it would we would have to go go into pan but yeah no I mean honestly what I what I specifically did as an add-on um I love data I'm a big data person so um I create a a course profiles kind of thing so every teacher the the administrator is going to give them who's sitting in their class right now and how they did in each domain of the mathematics so this way this can drive their instruction and their lesson planning right so they'll know right away right in front of their face how each student did particularly in each each domain of either math Ela or science yeah yes second question I had was

181um I also looked at the kind of the the achievement Gap I guess people compare the the the scores of black and white students and I noticed that um at least at the three four and five at least in ela it seems as though there is a gap but it's stable and then it tends to drift more when you're in Middle School um in math it's kind of similar but you see this more dramatic shift in the Middle School um is that something that the your staff will be looking more at that we have been really looking at every every data point that we could um looking at standards looking at curriculum understanding that making sure that all of our standards are being taught within the the school year how we do our acceleration where

182the our teachers are expected to teach two years of of standards in one year how we can make that a little bit more like what can we do to make it more accessible to all of our kids um these are all things that we are researching we we we dig we find something more and you know we we start to see a different thing come up and change our way of thinking all of these different things so we're in this actively in the research process one of the really good things that we've one piece of data that I think and that everyone has access to in the district teachers administrators everything is what zoa was talking about she she created I mean she's she is data person for sure but she created spreadsheets for everyone

183that showed one their previous class and their current class so it compared it let it it broke it all down by every single standard what standards are they not getting and they're not getting enough of so it helps us with curriculum um uh revisions so we know where we might need to go in and do a little bit more but it also Compares classroom grades to the what their scor scoring so we can see like okay they might getting a here but why AR why isn't it why isn't into our testing scores so we're really starting to pull back the layers and understand what's going on our our uh Miss Paro our super us our stem supervisor stem Supervisor has been working with the math department in the middle school and the high school significantly

184this year at all department meetings she's been pulling them together to kind of get an understanding of what they're seeing and so that when we can bring all of these pieces together to really understand what's happening and and create plans that are going to help our students over the course that it's going to take a long time you know we know five years has changed but we have it might be 10 years you know we there's things that have to come in place and responsibilities that we have to take to make sure that we're doing this anything any change I did reach out to each building I mean we've been talking with the administration I want to be able to but you know time is a thing but um I want to meet with the

185Math teachers of the middle school and high school I do realize how hard they they're working they're really working hard um so our ELA teachers and all our teachers so I want to hear from them I want to know what resources they need right but everything takes a little time you know Gathering every teacher of a department we might have to wait for a PLC meeting right but we the the intention is there I'm trying to provide them all the data that they can start looking at so when we have those PLC meetings if that's possible then we can continue the conversation so um yeah we're really try we're starting this like we are really hard and digging deep and pulling back the layers to understand what's going on the other I mean I spent

186a long time for each school so please review the data but you know just so you you could use it as a reference Alysa you want Oh Bill did you want to no okay I'm going to keep it short um I appreciate the work and all the uh data that was given to us uh but it was 100 pages and I was giving it on Monday night and I'm going to say I had less than 48 hours to review it all so I can't provide too much for you um in terms of my really looking in depth into it um and moving forward I would hope as we have asked many times that we do get this information to come through committee cni committee and other committees before this happens so that we can really

187dive into the data the data that I looked at and what I saw doesn't surprise me it's been the same for years and years and years here so nothing's really changed um but I would hope moving forward that we could make sure that we really get to see you did a great job on the data but I need to be able to digest it in a more man I think what's promising is seeing that that there was since in the last four years that Dr Bean folks has been here she has been working on improving the ELA um programs and everything that we're doing and we're in year four and we're really seeing an that that change and that her work has been to find the best programs the best for phonics the best for

188spelling the best for vocabulary and bringing it together to make a cohesive program and now we are actually seeing results and that's and that's exactly I mean in ela for sure and that's what we plan on doing with math is to dig deep and and find those pieces that we need to do to put it together whatever that may be uh I don't know if the board's done to to that yeah that's fine go for it and then I know we have other board members that just just one quick small addition I try to stay out of the presentations because our folks are so great what they're doing um I would only push back on the comment that nothing has really changed because I think one of the keys that we tried to highlight here

189is that the big concern about Co and and its long-term impact that in many of our grades we are surpassing our preco outputs testing is not everything we know that there it's it's a singular part of the whole child but that is a point that we're very proud of and I want to just emphasize that couple thank you thank you so much for the presentation um so it's great to see the new uh intervention and referral services manual just a couple questions about that um I had questions about the training but I saw that in the presentation will the manual be emailed to fames and will it also be made available online that includes the full Bank of services and I ask this because sometimes parents might notice a challenge even if an educator doesn't

190and so if they know okay I can go online and find what steps I can take and what services my child could have I think that that would be really helpful so is that something you guys intend one of our plans is to make a a family or a parent um brochure and put it up I think it's a lot of edu speak in the manual because it the the audience is for educators and administrators but that is in our plan is to to create something so that parents know that this is something that they can bring if they're worried about something that's going on with their child they can bring it to the team it does not have to be a School employee to do that and that's near and dear to my heart

191as a mother of a special needs child often at Clinton I knew that parents didn't know the difference between inrs 504 and IEP so that's something definitely the works we just started together a few months ago so please know that there's a lot in the works we I'm very excited about the work I'm very passionate about the work with Miss Bodner so it's coming absolutely yeah that's great cuz when I go to other public school districts they have that 100% they need that they deserve that it's your right um and then one of the things regarding the math scores it started in third grade where we saw a study decline from grade three through grade 8th grade8 and math in particular um with black students who met are exceeded expectations so with this new revised

192inrs process how will the district measure the efficacy of meeting the needs of students earlier on in their education so that because the decline is pretty big between if you look at third grade to fifth grade or eighth grade sorry but it's steady over that time so what will we be doing to look at that there's there's going to be multi measures right because we're going to look at n SLA now we have kind of like what the classroom profiles are we're bringing in a a a screening tool for multiple different grades as we've shared in cni that can kind of give us another gauge of where this how the student thinks and how they process information we're also going to look at what teachers talk about as the referrals come in and and I'm

193looking at those graphs and I'm seeing if there's a high referral in a particular class particular grade particular teacher we're going in what's going on how can we help what do you need from us what's the support that you're looking for so there's multiple measures it's not a one-time answer a one thing answer but please know that yes we're looking yeah and our hope is to bring like create profiles of our our students so that we can take all the information and all the pieces to kind of layer it up and look at it as a whole rather than just looking at a piece and a piece and a piece and a piece because this this data that we gave you is nothing if we don't have the other pieces too like the information of

194how they're doing in class itself and their report card grades and and um our what is it the the Nary um like all of these things give us information about a student but I think more so what's powerful than anything is the information and data that we're getting from inrs because it can help us with with building goals academically what's going behaviorally what's going on what are the things that we at each individual school maybe even at a grade level what are the things that we need to do so it breaks it down so much like well oh we're seeing that some of our kids are really struggling with um phonic different like um pheic awareness so we know that that might be something in that school particularly that we need to make sure that

195we get more um intervent more support at that school and for the teachers we can bring coaches in they can do professional development in that sense yep I'm bringing the co instructional coaches are very involved with me we're we're talking all the time in terms of how you know how can we support the teachers tell us because at the end of the day the teachers are right they are the ones in the classroom right so let us know you know so we can come through and they keep everything confidential but they are a gauge of giving us what's out there the major pulse yeah okay sorry I have two more questions one for you guys and one for Dr Taylor so regarding tutor.com are you able to capture how many students are participating based on

196school grade level and demographic how long what kind of support how long they've been on we can W the teachers have the ability to watch the session right they can look at the Whiteboard and see exactly what's going on they also one of the good things that I did not real realiz was happening until we actually got it in but I think it's a major plus is a tutor can write an email to us saying you might want the teacher just to go over this again and that so if they feel like they're not really grasping it or they're spending an enormous amount of time trying to um you know to tutor a a a student on a specific topic they will send an email and it goes to the principal who gives it to

197the to the um teacher and say Hey you might want to look you might want to go over this again this and it gives them the whole conversation back and forth that you can hear it audio or anything that you need so it's really it really is an amazing tool what they give us y okay great yeah it would be great to see how many students are doing it and if more communication has go out going up so it's exciting and and it's been steadily going up I think back to school night one of the things we did ask for teachers to do is talk about it um we gave a video um to show teachers how to teach the kids to get on um so and if anybody i' I've had a parent or

198two reach out to me and I've I've walked them through it um and I've asked principales to ask the teacher to walk through it with their students to make sure that they go away so we're we're trying to be really proactive and help them because it's it's really is an incredible resource okay thank you so much and then my final question is regarding the in inrs manual and like the accompanying documentation will that be sent to Dr Fergus to take a look at and make sure as far as compliance goes for the settlement that's one of the 23 recommendations will he be reviewing that as part of this upcoming quarterly meeting so the um part of the quarterly monitoring meeting is US showing things to him um I sent a few emails to our Council

199last couple days just getting more information on when is the quarterly meeting what counts as the quarterly meeting towards the settlement language um and we also are putting this in your Friday packet as well so you will have have it to view I have no objection to sending it to him my question um are really about the timing right normalizing the timing of when are quarterly meetings when do they start is it part of the summer scheduling as well and we talked about the December and January reporting out we Consolidated those into January and it's now part of your um annual agenda that's posted on the website today so um soon as I get those responses back from David and Patrick We're very comfortable to move forward I think that's all the questions yes okay

200great thank you so much you great job thank you thank you Dr okay we are now uh going to transition to our committee report outs first is going to be board member eert for personnel and then myself and cni policy and then special service and data by qua thanks the Personnel committee met on Monday October 9th board members Whit letter wght and I were in attendance board member Wingfield was absent our meeting was brief so I'll keep it short as usual we kicked off the meeting reviewing Personnel resolutions um just a few highlights uh a board member had asked about staff Replacements Mr adido discuss the challenges around some of the staff replacement positions uh as many of them aren't a full year um we did discuss the mantro principal retirement um thanks for many

201years of service um but at the moment there are really no updates as to filling the position Dr Taylor has mentioned that he is in communication with Asa and will come up with a plan that causes the least disruption um if you recall at our last board meeting we had approved U Mr Leroy Johnson to be the interim principal splitting his time between his normal position as supervisor of preschool education um we did not really get around to to discussing the vacancies report as it was only sent a few hours prior to the meeting um Mr adido has been traveling for some conferences so um totally totally understand so we're going to take a bit of a deeper dive at the next committee meeting we also discussed um a more improved format so that it'll

202be easier to chart Trends and easier to recognize where to focus attention on uh Aron and quawi I think you'd be happy to hear that and maybe we could also kind of cross have cross discussion in the data committee as to how we can create some sort of template to to make it easier moving forward we table the discussion around teacher retention to our next meeting Administration is still working on some more concrete details that they can share with the committee and we closed out discussing the auditorium manager position which has the support from both fft and Personnel given the financial investments we are making in our equipment and auditoriums the district will work on a job description that will likely be ready for review at the November meeting our next meeting is scheduled for

203Tuesday November 21st any questions just a quick comment I mean I appreciate that you have looked at the position of an auditorium manager because it was very clear to us but we were talking about this in fft that if you're going to spend so so much money literally millions of dollars on our Auditorium like you know the lighting and everything else it makes sense to bring in a professional even if it is part-time to make sure that our investment lasts longer as opposed to leaving it open-ended and every five years kind of replacing the equipment thanks agreed and that's what the district also said was they were just going to also evaluate and research whether it's part-time full-time whatever it may be so we'll see what they come up with at our next meeting thank

204you okay for fft um on October 10th 2023 the fft committee met and all board members were present for transportation Janine burns from Sussex Co-op visited to review the subscription Transportation process and Survey best practices we discuss keeping it simple with yes no interest in the service and adding a school school attendance um grade and neighborhood to track Trends if we were to send this survey out it would cost $1,300 per student per year to transport them in the district if it were um not to be subsidized free and red students would be able to ride for free I noted that if we were going to provide subscription Transportation then our buses needed to be on time consistently which brought us on to our next topic of our bus contracts board members shared some of

205the chaotic situations hourong Wait Times missing students bus drivers getting lost and not having Maps parents chasing after buses buses being chronically late these items were not previously known to Janine and she said if the district wants to impose penalties to the buses they have to have a process of reporting these ongoing issues to Sussex to support support the claims next steps District to deliver updates regularly to Su regularly to Sussex when there are major bus issues improve on alerts to the district when there is a delay or substitute which can be communicated to parents in real time Janine will discuss with all parties to get it straightened out suss want Sussex wants to get ongoing updates from the district on the issues with our buses and will facilitate a meeting with all stakeholders to

206discuss service improvements additionally we ask CBA to provide stats on Transportation cost ridership overall especially for kindergarten placements and how the uh II is impacting Transportation costs as the year2 Alves report suggested they speak with the district's transportation department to align and this has not taken place as of yet District confirmed they will do so long range facility plan and Border School estimate uh we discussed the deficit the total remaining costs currently add up to 28 m738 710 which includes cushion and soft cost and a 10 excuse me 2-year escalation God not 10 um so yeah 2-year escalation the cost in um the costs include South Orange Middle School Columbia High School guidance Suite Columbia High School classroom alterations and ritzer field I questioned again why the SS balance keeps going up because in July

207we were told the costs for SS would be around 10 million plus and we needed an itemized list of this bid which we just received this week um the Psalms pairs include Ada upgrades security upgrades doors and hardware creation of a staff room stair finish upgrades HVAC and electrical upgrades for Board of school estimate we discussed what additional measures were being taken by the district to fund long range facility plan to support the district goal of exhausting all measures by December 1 at the time of the meeting New Jersey assembly woman Mila ji the New Jersey Department of Ed commissioner um Angelica alen McMillan and County Superintendent Joseph Zara had all received letters from the superintendent asking for financial support we asked about the current long dra facility plan but budget balance to understand the

208remaining funds of what have not been used from the allocated CHS budget um at the time they were closing out projects and looking at averages and under payment so um I just sent the board that information today um and we will also send it to the board of school estimate um leaders uh uh I'm not going to go through everything that we discussed because I know we are short on time I do want to mention the rod grants that were discussed um we receiv received $3,475 108 from the state which can only be used for school roofs the local share of the district has to contribute is a little bit more than $5 million in order to get that $3 million um I know I know a commun a Community member today spoke about um

209leaking in some of the schools and I was it tusin I if it was was tux yeah so um although long although long range facility plan included some minimal um roof work those were for priority schools and the secondary schools did not receive um roof work through the long-range facility plan and those schools were Clinton Dilo Balden Seth Ven tusin and South Mountain Annex so through the rod Grant we could get those roofs fixed we asked how those roofs were looking and they will need replacement in the next 3 to 5 years so we had decided in fft that it would make it would make the most sense to to move forward with this and we would have to use um money from our where is it am I missing my place here capital capital

210funds um and we do have money in the capital funds account um but that's where it would have to be taken from so that'll be something that the board will have to approve uh for policies as you've already seen we have updated 86.1 hazardous routes to include Sloan and Third Street um because of the current situation with with construction and then finally I'll just share that we reviewed our legal bill um analysis that RBA has done I know it's taken a lot of work and I do appreciate we appreciate um them taking the time to do it and we have seen our legal fees increase from this school year uh $586,000 versus or excuse me that was from the 2022 23 school year versus 361 $1,231 in the 20 2122 school year um so we

211discussed the the increase and further we've asked for further investigation digging into the general Council fees increase and types of cases that are happening especially with related as it relates to um special ed related cases and we also asked for settlement numbers to be put into consideration because that wasn't in this chart um and also I forgot to send an email but I will be sending out a email to the team to see if you have any additional questions I'm going to send the the chart yeah yeah yeah thank you madam chair I can share the transportation numbers that we talked about with the municipal leaders today if you would like for me to yeah yeah that would be great thank you okay very brief um the as of today the number of new new

212this year prek through fifth grade in District Riders between 1.25 and 2 miles is now 4 90 kids these are 490 students who would not have qualified previously um last year we had a total prek through five uh 449 students being transported our new number this year is 900 and 56 prek through five so that number is more than doubled last year's number um last year we had 22 total buses this year we have 34 buses in service obviously a 12 bus increase um we had 136 routes this year there were 92 routes for students prek through 12 last year um the route for those who don't know a route is the equivalent of a bus oneway trip right so so if you divide it in half basically so just quick updates to numbers to

213date thank you questions can you send that to the board I just I tried to get I I I I will I just to say it for the public I will definitely send it to you thank you yeah and I just commenting on your your report out um I'm really happy to hear that you're the district is finally going to look into I I think it was one of the year 2 elves recommendations to put somebody in their group in touch with Transportation before assignment goes assignments go out I mean I think if there's any year that we have seen that it's so important that we start to look at that and and if it happens before assignment goes out then we're not going to have all of these issues but I think I just

214have to say I'm just what what still continues to go on with transportation is really troubling to me I mean we've we've heard the numbers that we've more than doubled the students that were transporting and and I'm not saying it's an easy feat but the fact that students are still getting to school anywhere between 15 to minutes late to two hours late it's just at this point we a month into over a month into school and it's just it's it it's unacceptable to me and it I'm sorry I'm just very it it's very troubling to me because it all not only affects those students but it affects the students that are in the classroom it affects the teachers and it's simply it's simply just unfair so what I try to think about is how what

215are the things that we control we don't control the buses we don't own them we don't control the bus drivers there is a shortage in my mind that's going to be happening in perpetuity so as we think about how we handle the assignments and how the elves group who we are paying them them as consultants can help us and and kind of Drive some of those you know follow through with some of those recommendations I I just want to stress how important I think that really is as we think about I mean it's October already we're going to start this registration process in January so I think it's really important that we make it a top priority hi I am have a quick question uh did I had asked for a list of the fines

216that we had assigned to the buses um because Dr Taylor had stated in emails sent out to parents that we were going we would be finding the bus drivers I never got a list um of that uh is that something that we have done I'm not this year though so far right um I know that we've finded in the past I don't have a list for this year um we'll make a request of Mr Burnside to see what has been done if any and we'll we'll share with the board I believe was in the list of Friday date Friday package that was shared you shared the you shared the contract yeah you shared the contract one of the things yeah so as as far as the last meeting it seemed like there hadn't been any

217so it seems that there sorry I just wanted to add and I was going to go oh here's my Transportation notes um basically when we asked about the contract and the language and the contract because the contract itself did not have language about finding the bus companies however they said that it was in the the bid itself um and that there's penalty Clauses that are related to bid specifications so the bid specifications call for penalties for unlicensed drivers equipment that they promise that they don't have cameras aren't working GPS doesn't work those are what they would call significant penalties that would require recourse it's the last thing you want to do as far as um penalties of withholding pay because then we run the risk risk that the driver's not going to come at all

218so she cautioned on that and so I just wanted to make sure that that's sort of like the last quiver I appreciate that I you getting back to me on that but I also think like you've lost kids you deserve to be penalized I'm sorry I have no I have no like like we have to start doing something and to hear that it is October now and we haven't done anything just reiterates my concerns about this situation and about us continuing to call it a success it is not it's a success it will never be a success until we get all of our students to school on time safely every day and we're not at their point yet yeah to to your point that is why one of the next steps is to first try

219to bring everyone together and to have a conversation to to try to um avoid having to go that route and I appreciate that um Janine had mentioned it and I reiterated to Janine that we had already asked for that in September and that the ba and um the superintendent had confirmed that they would make that happen so um it is a Next Step it'll be on every upcoming fft agenda to be discussed until it happens and then we'll have a recap of that meeting um but yeah I mean I think that's one of the most important things is that we try to continue to Foster relationship with the companies and the bus drivers because we just don't have it and um that's a priority just a quick response I want to just thank the board

220president for your recollection that was a long meeting but um talking about the severity of things that are in the bid for finding include like having buses that don't meet regulations having unlicensed drivers all those things are definitely accurate and I'm I'm sharing the update that just G with the full board qua you had your hand raised okay thank you all right so that oh y thanks so I just want to amplify a couple of things that you mentioned I think that was very good it may have gotten lost in the long you know it was a big meeting so number one is subscriptions I mean the reason why we're looking at that and we have a number for it and and all that is at least in my view it is extremely important to

221have it in our back pocket because I mean who knows what's going to happen a year down the line where we may not have the budget to bus everyone else and at least that way we will have a subscription based system ready in place and and just to kind of caveat that with you know I know you give a dollar number but that also includes that anyone who is on free or reduced lunge won't have to pay that so that's that's part of that's baked into the number so just want to clarify that and the second thing is the the long range facilities plan amount I mean it is a big amount and you know it should scare it scares me it should scare all of us but it's like some 20 odd million dollars

222and the good thing is that we're meeting the board of school estimates I mean as in the president and the fft chair will be part of that meeting on November 28th I believe and that's that's an important meeting where we can walk up there and talk to our Municipal Municipal partners and see what can be done you know that's that's great but the municipal Partners have nothing to do with helping us with expense items even though they did uh I don't know how legal that was in giving us money for transportation and we're in trouble now because we got rid of our bus drivers and we got rid of our buses that's and we're not going to get better until we get someone who knows exactly what they're doing because that was it was the

223drivers who did the Hazardous routes and things like that and would go around and look at things and who knew knew our children knew their families and so we did that so now until we get back to the point where we get somebody in transportation who knows exactly what they're doing we're going to continue to experience these horrible horrendous situations for these babies I'm just so glad that I don't have any children sitting waiting for those buses I don't know where I I'm I'm I'm I'm just so upset because this all could have been avoided you know and it's not and it's not getting better every day I'm waiting I'm looking at emails oh there going to be some improvement there's going to be some improvement and when this woman sat here and talked about

224the situation and the stress you know and I understand it I'm I'm out trying to help people who can't get to work and stuff this is the most ridiculous thing ever getting to school on time we're missing our children are missing their education and we're sitting here making excuses I said before the house is on fire and we're saying do you smell the smoke I can't say it enough get some experience in here and get these babies to school on time somebody do something aside from talk sick of the rhetoric do something yeah I guess my question is we always talk about these outsourc drivers what percentage of our drivers were in District prior to our Outsourcing all of our Our Roots then secondly what is the cost and is that something that was explored

225what was the cost to have everyone in house because those are significant questions yes so is that something that was explored yes the the year that we decided to um end courtesy Transportation because it it was asked and never responded to I'm still asking what is the difference and what we' spending for transportation now as vers to what we would have beens been spending had we kept our drivers and our Fleet well no but that's not my my question cuz from what I understood most of our fleet was not was already outsourced we had a we had we had a some our children we had our own drivers get most of our athletic and school trips and and things of that nature not school buses but it was we didn't have these issues at all

226so based on the my recollection from the fft meetings from last year 80% of our bus buses service was already outsourced about 6 S 8 years back this is not a recent thing that happened the only bus service that we had in house was our special education which we outsourced last year so let's clarify this and put this out there I mean you know I'm not judging one way or the other but but talking about having our own Fleet of buses and our own drivers hasn't happened in 8 years so you know it's not something that happened over the last two years we only had trouble when we outsourced how about that I um I mean eight years is a long time I mean the only person who was on the board 8 years back

227was you maybe you should have done something yeah I want to be mindful completely find an inappropriate and she did speak out against it eight years ago and we'll continue I I also speak Mr you know everything yeah let's try to be I don't care try to not put each other down um and I know we need to move on um but the last thing I will say is um I just want to wrap this up and say that to Regina's reiteration of my of my readout um the integration does pose some challenges and I think that getting more stakeholders involved with when it comes to our placement analysis making sure that we are staying in the 5% variance while also looking at where our children are coming from and how they're being transported um

228there will be a lot of key learnings this year and so I'm glad that the district has agreed to have both parties come together um so now we'll have um Alis and cni thank you sure hi uh the cni committee convened on October 11th with full attendance from all committee members the meeting covered several significant updates and discussions I'll try to keep it as brief as I can but it was so long I had to can add a number of things District goal update the committee received an update on the district gold specifically the anti-bullying Specialists receiving training on Stu on the the um hi practices which we were discussed tonight the rnrs manual we discussed um that it's now mandatory and they did some trainings with uh the assistant principales and the People Who

229oversee it um we do have an approval for a resolution for TC training up for tonight uh the a resolution up for approval centers on the teachers College training this marks the final year of a three-year contract with TC focusing on providing training for non 10e teachers on specific TC content still in use the intention is to transition away from TC in the future although contractual obligations prevented immediate termination uh policy updates policies slated for second read were deemed ready for approval with no proposed changes however some of the first read policies raised questions that required cor verification before proceeding notably the committee spent considerable time discussing the access and Equity policy the majority of the committee Regina Nubia and myself did not believe that it was ready for first read concerns were raised about

230unincorporated changes including the definition of non-level and rigor additionally additionally a requested presentation on the detailed implementation of deling and relevant data has not been provided to the board the committee was supposed to hear a presentation given to the policy committee about the district's vision for math but the administration felt that they needed more time to add more information and it was not ready for us to see despite the majority of the cni Committees uh not supporting moving it to the first read it ultimately was Dr Taylor's decision as to if he wanted to put it up for first read and he chose to do so Freshman Academy scheduling discussions also Rev sorry around the Freshman Academy scheduling revealing that it will only take place Tuesdays and Fridays this differed from the initial plan of

231five days a week communication by the uh communicated by the administration during the Spring and early summer to the community in board the administration stated that quote they were caught off guard with the need for a sidebar agreement and were under the impression that they would have enough teachers to make it work prior to school starting the goal is to transition from to a 5-day a week Freshman Academy schedule next year concerns were brought to the board's attention this weekend about the availability of teachers for sophomores to seniors during the first period conference time which the administration led the board to believe would be accessible 5 days a week this is the first the board heard about these issues and the committee pledges to investigate this further during our next meeting seventh grade financial literacy

232curriculum teachers Express concerns that the seventh grade financial literacy curriculum as they are set to teach in the second half of the school year has not they haven't received any curriculum or any training it was noted that the administration is actively working on addressing this issue canas turn in times the committee spoke briefly about the fact that the default setting on turning in assignments on CA C this sorry is 11:59 p.m. and while that may be appropriate for high school students it may not be appropriate for middle school students the administration stated that if parents had concerns they should reach out to the building principles credit re recovery report the committee is still waiting the the credit recovery report and anticipates receiving in the near future njsla uh presentation it was not ready for the

233committee to review prior and was told that they would have it to by Monday information from tonight's public speaks there is a lot that H that we learned tonight from the teachers and the public tonight that is in contradiction to what the board has been told including uh continued issues with the Freshman Academy issues with the new math curriculum Math teachers views on deling support no uh acade no academic supports in the math grades 3 through five resources not being provided to teachers like outdated textbooks and social studies and also special education issues including the lack of department meetings and the lack of Staff which I hope that will we they will be discussed in the special education committee but please know that you are heard and I personally we will will be adding all

234of these items to the next agenda for discussion and we'll report out at the next board meeting the conversation that was had I appreciate you letting us know these issues I do have one more aside from something that was brought up tonight which is the Scholastic Book Fairs I have personally already spoken out about this new optin for diverse book policy and I will continue to advocate for this change this to change along with many of my fellow school librarians I am urging the school district to follow our right to read resolution that was recently passed along with policy 2530 to make sure we have diverse books at all of our book pairs I'm also adding this to the agenda for our meeting to see if there are other options for Book Fairs including working

235with words or other independent book stores which could personalize our B book selection more our next meeting is November 13th questions no oh yes um sorry it's okay um I'm extremely worried about the chronic absenteeism at CHS and I'm OB set that this topic was not addressed in the last cni committee meeting this month because it was made available to the board by the scheduled committee meeting date for discussion this month when we talk about CHS being in crisis last year in the 2022 23 school year CHS had a total of 678 students who received an NC or a no credit Mark which means for a full course year a student had 18 cumulative absences in the school year over 18 over 18 sorry 67 students that represents over a third of our total student

236body at CHS and this number by the way took into account students who completed in School Credit Recovery activities it didn't include students who took summer school hopefully that 670 has since come down but that 678 number when you break it down further by demographic 55% of those students were black students which is disproportionately high to the total number of blacks to the total number of black students we have in the district so I'm extremely upset that we're in October we don't know what the plan is to address this so I'd really like the district to tell the board how we're going to address chronic absenteeism in the high school in this 2023 24 school year thank you okay uh the policy committee met October 3rd at 6:30 with President wher board members Malisa telis

237Ford and myself present we have 10 policies up for first read and 11 policies up for second reading adoption we were given a presentation by Administration reframing math the path to calculus a method to support all Student Success the presentation was done by the stem supervisor in support of proposed policy 57551 access and Equity the purpose of the presentation was to share that other districts throughout New Jersey are do uh are doing regarding math program what methods are being remedied for students in secondary schools to succeed in their studies um with that said the bulk of the committee meeting was spent discussing policy 57551 uh EXs and equity which is up for first read tonight tonight there was feedback and concern about specific language in the policy that highlights academic integration some board members suggested

238that it be removed until additional data be provided to the board it was decided that the policy be presented for first read for feedback from the board and Community stakeholders lastly in new business we discuss policy 5120 assignment of students in policy uh in policy 5124 internal transfer both of which were updated to incorporate guidance from the alvas group and the board attorney uh the committee adjourned at 9:18 and that is it if anyone has questions so I I see that I mean I don't know if you want to talk about this now or while we're voting but uh the 54602 has been abolished and which probably may be fine but has is it because New Jersey state has phased out the program or is it any other reason yeah ask okay and uh in

2395102 this is the one that has uh the intentional integration and so there is language in there that talks about as recommended by our consultant the Alis group we want to change it can we have the data or recommendation that they actually provided so that before the second reads so that we can take that and kind of incorporate that into our decision making so that we can do it that next time yeah I agree I actually again I don't know this might not be the right Forum uh forum for but I I do want to talk a little bit more about that policy as well I mean it definitely is there as a recommendation but what we've seen here is not I don't think what has been envisioned so we I think we should talk

240more about it but we definitely have that yes for our communities haven't met this month yet but for this so they're going to be meeting later in the month okay Dr Taylor um we're ready for the action portion of the meeting thank you madam VP um board members we have uh several resolutions for you that will be in the hand carry portion um you've already voted on 4531 so your general consideration will be 4523 through 4532 minus 4531 that you've already taken action on once that is done we will move to the hand carry portion oh sorry um can we sever 4529 I thought we didn't have a hand carry also 529 severed are there any other requests also I don't think we have a oh oh that hand carry we have a few hand

241carries including the Seth boy and Grand for trees and those things yeah okay sorry they'll come around shortly I'm confused the hand carry is separate that's not part of what you that is correct right now what's severed is 4529 and you've already voted on 4531 do I have a second second no other request for severing just confirming who said second I think I said second Oh either one it's fine thank you for diligently taking the notes yeah thank you so we are now open for discussion on those on on 4523 through 4532 minus 4529 and 4531 salot okay Aron yes so I guess this is a good time to bring up uh five actually 5102 is for first reads or second reads I'm sorry my a little confused give me a second if it's for

242first reads then you know my my previous comment stands I don't have anything more to say abolish all the policies polies we're we severed it we'll discuss it in in a minute so right now right now we're discussing 4523 through 4532 excluding 45229 and policies we'll talk about policies after so that's all the other stuff so any any comments on any of the other things no okay then let can you please take the roll call board president Whit lter yes board member Wright board member mpina yes board member VOD lanii yes board member telesford yes board member dval Wilson yes board member gford yes board member Wingfield yes board member akert yes motions passed the severed resolution is 4529 okay open for discussion we need a second oh sorry second y second second so we're

243now open for discussion who would like to go Aron you had raised your hand earlier oh sorry I guess I'm confused are we discussing policies now the policies up for second read because that's what we're taking action on all policies can be discussed we have first reads that people have feedback on in questions so you want to ask a question or comment right I'm just I'm just confused since we not taking action on them why because there there's still policies to discuss for example a Ru City had some feedback on the weight lless policy so that can be discussed at this time just as always when we have a first read okay I guess I'll start with the I guess the weight list policy um I know the ales group had some reservations about actually

244enacting anything because they were afraid that it was going to unravel all the work we've done on the triple I so um I'm wondering if this policy is ready to go or should we have some more consultation on this so when for those who were um maybe weren't there when I gave the recap um their concern was really a large roll out of this consideration um and that when the board and I discussed what their original recommendation was I think there was a consensus that that was too large of an undertaking so I think there was an agreement on both the 's group and also the board to take a smaller Approach at this consideration with the pilot approach as I mentioned um earlier in my comments um and uh we have plans to work

245with them on the development of this for future presentations of where we are um I think that one of the biggest questions when you're doing this work is opt in or opt out right because it makes it much much larger when you have you know the former um and that's also their concern they expressed that they want to make sure that whatever we came up with with their expertise that we would be sure that we wouldn't be unraveling the work that you know we and they are very proud of uh Regina I know you want thank you yeah I appreciate all the meetings and discussions that you've had with the ales group I mean it was a year to recommendation and I think because I've seen the back and forth I mean I highly disagree

246about the notion that it would unravel I mean if you look at all of the other districts that they work with they all have an optin weightless transfer option which is what I personally but I think I've got some support here um is what I had asked about in March of 2023 um I think I do think it does deserve a little bit more conversation cuz while I I I recognize they say like a pilot program I I mean I don't necessarily feel the need to Define that NE in the policy but rather you know we are going to implement this for the 2024 25 school year which actually if you look at some of the models like Cambridge that would mean actually putting together a plan starting now because the registration period starts in

247January as the assignments are being all of that stuff and and you know figuring out what are the the windows in which the assignment goes out you have a period in which you are able to opt in to get on a waight list for your next school so um I just I don't agree that it's it's a pilot per se um and you know I I think what I would like to do is I would like to talk more about the last line that was put in about um you know an equitable unbiased proposal that it does doesn't undermine the intent of I I mean listen we all agree that we're we're all in support of the II um every single District that the El groups work with I mean we have a little bit

248different methodology of our assignment but we're all there um so because this obviously came up quickly based on their last recommendation I don't believe it's went even went through policy yet so I think that would be like the next you know the next step in which in discussion in committee but I personally don't agree with calling it a pilot program this is what we are going to roll out for the 24 25 school year sure and I can share with you why why I wrote that in there from our conversations it wasn't to undermine that process um it was to not put such a specific guideline in there because we're going to work through what it's going to be right some some of the previous language that we were batting around and policy had a

249lot of specified steps in the process and we're still in that development stage like what you just said when do you do the what's the window for notifications is there more than one window for notifications elll and and special services spaces staying you know out of this availability all those different things were things that we're working through with them um I just wanted to make sure that the board knew that what we writing down in here isn't the Final Destination and part of their recommendation was after a year of implementation let's finalize it because we can learn from that um from that first year of working through the Kinks and things that were expected and also the beta tests that we'll run before um we get to next year as well meaning similar to what

250we did with the unpairing of Marshall and Balden what would have happened if we had done this last year right if we did it for the entering kindergarteners what would have been the unintended consequences would there have been any consequences right because part of what the I think part of the part of the learning in our discussions I think that weightless equaling transfer aren't really the same thing right that in their models from my understanding the weight list is automatic right if you're not you're Clos to school and a spot opens and you're the random number you get the offer you say no you never get the offer again and it goes to the next number and that's what versus a parent expressing that they would prefer to be at their Clos to school and

251putting their name into consideration so I think that that is that was kind of the rup between how they normally do this and what we believe is most appropriate for what for what we're hearing from our parents but again I'm open to more discussions um and the one of my updates that I was going to to share this evening before we got too long um is that we've set a a uh date for the next town hall with the Marshall Bolden um second graders I've been working with the leaders over there so the rising third graders for next year and uh the AL group has agreed to support us with that work too to share what their beta test showed to share the comparison between the beta test and what we actually did last year

252remember we did a little bit different because we included parent choice because that was not an integration grade now it is an integration grade they've already been through the algorithm so we're we're in constant conversation with them about this work and um I can also invite them to an upcoming policy committee to talk more about this particular policy as we're working through it and whatever recommendations um that come from the board of course will be considered okay thanks I know that quae had his hand raised and then I I Kaylin hasn't spoken yet I wanted to say something and then a r thank you I guess my question is um since this is only a first read of course um and we don't really have a a full implementation plan are we are you are

253you suggesting that we should just wait until for adoption until we actually have a full implementation Plan before we uh adopt the policy fully or is it something that we can adopt the policy and then we still work through the implementation and still make adjustments and changes so I I believe that there's a commitment from the board I think for that for us to to to do what we can to best fit this process that's a part of other integration plans that aren't quite like ours but have the same set some of the same goals and I'm committed to you know doing that and that's why the language was a little bit more vague just to allow space um for the outcome of all the work that we're doing and make sure that part of

254what part of the concern I think also with the ow group and I'm paraphrasing they've been involved with lots of lawsuits around this stuff right so they understand um the need for us to be Rock Solid when it comes to student placement methodology and so um I'm comfortable with the way it reads I'm also open to more feedback and I think that um the ow group is very excited to support us as we move towards that Journey thank you uh Caitlyn uh my my my comment was uh the word undermine um the last sentence the last of the board of course expects an equitable unbiased proposal that after review and testing does not undermine the intent of II I think that's a very subjective word and I think we should be a bit more intentional

255the the protocol is that we have a 5% variance and I think that that is the language that should be in here so that there's no confusion what we can do is crosswalk that section to the policy that has the variant in it and so thank you for that recommendation yeah you're welcome than um all right Kay one final thing is sorry did the Alves group I mean they have all the data right so when we got the Alves report uded withdrawal data through the end of December of 2022 and at that time just in the kindergarten year two placement there were 27 withdrawals 63% of those withdrawals were students who were not white which was a very high percentage can't they just look at what happened last year that's not I guarantee what's going

256to happen going forward but run an exercise of how they would have managed I don't know how many ended up with students ended up withdrawing after December but we know 27 withdrew in the first half of last year of running an exercise to make sure that they could do this and keep within the variances like they have all the data so why can't they do that exercise well I think that there's a leap to say that those students who withdrew withdrew because they could not transfer that that would be a leap but what I would also say is transferring has an impact on the destination and also where you left and so part of their analysis is what activates that space that opens up and from their perspective and conversations with me it would be

257under enrolled spaces right so let's say we expected 22 kindergarteners in classroom a but at the whatever Mark say the Mark is October 15th we check in and that classroom is under enrolled that creates the space for a weight lless transfer because that space is not being held for elll or special services yeah and so then they would do an analysis with us on looking at the equity results of the schools as they are and the grade levels as they are what happens when that student is considered for that move does it change the variance outside of the 5% allowance in either space and so that would happen for every allowable destination spot I cannot speak on the policy but I can speak on the fact that um I think because I can't vote on

258this policy do we need to separ this it's first read so you're not voting on yes it's okay so I'm okay with off I just want to make sure I'm legally okay here I don't want to get in any trouble I mean it's weird because it's okay okay uh AR I thought you wanted to yeah okay your District protocol or your board protocol to this point has been to not take a vote on first read policies so your the minutes don't record and I've looked at back at July they don't record votes on first read so what will what will go in the minutes is just the vote as it pertains to the second read policies um so that's where it is for tonight so you you are not taking a vote on that policy

259so couple of comments on you know on this whole process is that in theory I have nothing against this having a weight list and having this process of having an like for like swap I mean at least to me it kind of makes sense but there are a lot of people who I've talked to who think this is going to unravel the I there are okay I mean you know you can't discount them so I think that language in there just kind of affirms to them that that is what our intent is so you can change that but I I know many many people who just do do not accept the fact that if you have a weight list it it'll do something to the algorithm so so that's my kind of feedback to you

260is not necessarily kind of blowing that data I mean that language away but maybe modifying it to kind of do that right so that's that's one uh the second thing is I do like Caitlyn's idea I mean there's nothing stopping us from taking last year's data and instead of worrying about people have applied for it just assume that anyone everybody wants to go to the nearest school and do a swap and see how many people would have been swapped know I I I don't know how the number is I mean I I just based on my gut feeling I can't imagine it to be a lot because if 25 30 people perent of the people are always going to a way School know how many will do I don't know but but it's I think

261that's a very easy exercise to do with last year's data and with the with the cavat that you know anybody who could have gone to the nearest school would have gone to the near school and see if those swaps would work so I think part of what we what we talked about was the the beta tests for last year's data would first depend on the design of what we're looking at right maybe even multiple designs comparing the outcomes and so what you're describing is if every student who was not at their close to school let's just take around guess 70% just say that number and so 70% of kids who are not at that Clos to school that's just a guesstimate um for this exercise then each of those 70 students 70 each of the

26270% of the placement placement is about 450 kids or so so you're talking about what maybe 300 and some odd 380 somewhere in there who would receive random numbers and then when the analysis was complete and there was a a a destination available it would go to the the applicable student whose closest school that is right because that Universe of 380 kids they have different closest schools so they're they aren't all buying for the same school and so all those things um I think are are generally described how they have done this in the past and I think that what we discussed before with that that was not what we thought would address the concern that we're dealing with which is a couple of dozen maybe families who have generally expressed concern or requests or

263makes their life easier to live somewhere else so um I think that the beta tests can include those different designs um and I'm we we we are aligned to work on it and share our findings anything else um I had a comment about um the other policy 5124 internal student transfers um article D mentions hardships and I think that um I personally think that it's inappropriate to have this in here still um hardships do not include hardship does not include Child Care needs Transportation work hours and peer group placement and I think we've already seen seen from some of our challenges of transportation that parents getting to work is a major hardship our taxes are high here and I think it's a slap in the face to our to our families to tell them that

264we think them getting to work is not reason for their child to be able to get to school if that is an issue for them so my suggestion is to just take that last sentence out and keep it with whether the applicant has family hardship needs which shall be reviewed on a case-by Case basis and leave it at that I'm just to Second so that is the that that is the language that was already there and I'm comfortable with um sending that to policy for consideration for sure thank you yes but if I guess if you change that language then who decides what is hardship Case by case basis but then that introduces the ability to bias so is don't think it's the board's role to tell parents that getting to work is not a

265hardship and and and I think and it's a hard stop I think it's just a hard stop otherwise then you would need to add into here what are all the hardships because at this point it looks like we're not giving anyone any other than maybe a parent no longer being alive to be able to get their child to school well so with that said I think it needs to be removed and I'm happy to discuss adding in hardships but not tell telling people what is not a hardship just a note that if we're talking about uh one onee um that falls under the Seth Boyen piece the former demonstration methodology right that was the other thing that we looked at and we realized that shouldn't be in here anymore right it's it's it's it's aging

266out right there are still kids who were who are at Seth board and who are placed via that methodology but it will age out and so we can talk more about that and policy as well great thank you any other policies uh Regina yes I want to talk about uh 55751 access and Equity um I just I feel compared to share uh honestly the same feedback I've shared for the past four weeks in the past two cni committee meetings and the last board meeting so apologies for repeating myself at this point and it is midnight uh or past midnight but hey maybe fourth times a charm um I absolutely do not support this policy revision this policy proposal would be one of the biggest and most Monumental policy revisions in our district in recent history

267and it's not something that can be easily fixed if it's not properly implemented we still need to see a detailed plan as to how the district envisions this will all work where's the data that shows that previous dling efforts in our district have actually improved student outcomes why aren't we focusing on building a stronger Foundation at the elementary level where it all begins second we are still in the middle of implementing the II and are still experiencing major issues with Transportation it's not a success the long range facilities plan a new elementary math curriculum and and to that point I think we heard there's actually a lot of issues with it right now piloting a new K through3 Ela curriculum and now the Fergus Rec recommendations we just recently had to extend our settlement agreement

268for 3 years because the work wasn't completed in the original time frame and Dr Taylor you said it right after that meeting we have a lot of work to do last we don't have any stakeholder feedback teachers building Administration students the community none of this has happened at this point unless of course you call public speaks tonight Community engagement and stakeholder feedback I personally don't consider that this policy feels like it's being bulldozed through disregarding a policy process that was just recently revised a few months ago a process in which a policy going up for first read should mostly be fully baked and have at a minimum majority Buy in but I think we've heard that out of coming out of committee a number of folks didn't support it but we don't have that we

269don't have a detailed plan data to support this or the financial resources board members questions are still unanswered as I understand it I think I believe that we we the board teachers students the community we need actually we deserve more information and transparency this is not a policy that can simply be revised over the course of a few weeks I mean we just started talking about a weight list transfer policy that I started the conversation March of 2023 and it's mid October that's seven months later huge initiatives like this take time and need to be implemented with intention and as my fellow board member Johanna said at the last board meeting this this is a distraction from all of the work that we need to get done I think we can all agree that our

270students deserve better than this that's off I see Bill and and Alyssa yes thank you okay um um my intent to put the a the access and Equity policy forward to first read as policy chair was to butress our Equity efforts and provide a blueprint to arrive at a place where all of our students students are held to a high standard deling for myself and other board members is a strategy we wanted to revisit I also think it's important to note while pieces of the policy draw from the Fergus recommendations this policy is not meant to be the answer to Dr fergus's recommendation that work starts on October 30th with the Fergus implementation committee I recognize this was not one of Dr Ferguson's recommendations but that doesn't mean we can investigate it as a solution

271for our district I agree with Dr Ferguson's statement to the Village Green that detracking is a complicated process that one and one that will take likely take significant time in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park Illinois for example a district that has that has had success with deleveling pitched the idea to the community for three years before implementing it I also agree with Dr fergus's statement what we need to be mindful of and not to be too worried about is that having heterogeneous groupings in class in classrooms is going to be a lift for the adults but it is that it is what kids need for their learning exposure meaning that which some of us have suffered through in terms of being segregated academically we want to do better for our kids so they don't

272get limited exposure points of having that type of academic segregation this effort is not about lowering the bar it's about raising it for everyone that is also why the policy maintains AP courses that said like my f fellow board members and many in the community I also want us to seriously engage all stakeholders to make sure a plan like this is well thought out and prepared for to be properly implemented on a personal note I have had several conversations with Educators leading up to this meeting arrang of views and experience shared with me do give me pause for instance we see the achievement Gap really begin to emerge in the third grade where classes are not leveled there's a serious argument that if we can't tackle this issue how can we expect these students to

273compete on an equal footing in a deleveled environment essentially if we can't do ABC how do we get to XYZ and that's it Alissa thank you um I appreciate some of your comments bill um especially around uh concerns related to uh the implementation and also the need for stakeholder discussion I think that that is I have made my points clear I talked about most of them in the cni readout I'm not going to go over it again I'm just going to say we are putting the cart before the horse we need to start to really think about this make sure we are doing it correct L I have grave concerns about a number of issues that I have stated over and over again and I do not believe and will continue to not believe that

274the process hasn't been followed right and that we need more information before moving something like this for for forward sorry it's 12:30 almost Arun and then Kaitlin are you sure okay I think the missing piece all of this is that a lot of the feedback over the last two months has come from board members and so Dr Taylor you put this on the agenda this evening can you please speak to the board about why you put it on the agenda and why you believe it's ready for first read because one of the questions I asked in the policy committee which I would still like to get answered is I'm a sixth grade student I'm going into Middle School what does my educational experience look like in the classroom and what is the experience for the

275teachers yes so I know that there was a a real urge urgent want to um limit the presentations for this evening and so when I offered to give our presentation tonight understandably so it was it was suggested that it wait until the 30th and so I'll be ready willing and able to answer anything on that topic that evening I think what I've shared at the beginning and the statement that I read is the extent of what I'm able to share at this time so sir just really quick because the 30th is not a presentation to talk about deleveling that's the Fergus implementation committee where we're talking about recommendations from what I was told cuz you and I didn't have this conversation but you were looking to create a presentation around your vision which completely supportive

276of but the point is we put this up for you put this up for first read and we didn't have a presentation prior which was a request by almost every board member here to see see the data because as was told by our attorney and in this policy process best practices is that this is completely vetted in every facet before it gets to first read and the idea is that when it's at first read it's almost ready for second read there would be minor changes because if you make significant changes then it goes back up for first read again which we try to avoid so my point is why do you think I I just really want to know you brought this to the board why do you think it's ready for the board to

277review and to push through um I understand your followup my previous answer is my answer okay Aron so as we're adding more detail to this policy and a couple of things that I want to see personally and this is my kind of a view of I definitely want to see a guarantee that the students can study calculus in high school that's like to me that's the most basic requirement because we have to address student excellence and all students who want to study for engineering stem Finance or any other quantitative field must do calculus in high school that means that if you want to do calculus in high school even assuming 12th grade you need to do pre-algebra in 7th grade algebra 1 in 8th grade geometry in 9th grade algebra 2 in 10th Grade pre

278pre-calculus in 11th grade and calculus in 12th grade so these are already pre-required classes that you cannot deviate from so we need to make sure that that is available to everyone and also allow for individual acceleration of kids who have a natural aptitude or are willing to work harder that's number one the second point which is actually as important as the first point is that our community has a huge number of art students know we have people who are you know dance Majors music Majors you know whatever Fine Arts all of that stuff who really don't care about calculus and let's be realistic not because they don't have the aptitude or but they just focused on other things so therefore we need to have a a path for them to follow which does not have

279calculus so that basically means that they would probably I'm guessing would do algebra one nth grade geometry in 10th Grade yes and Algebra 2 in 11th grade and that's it no no pre calculus no math in fact we heard from a teacher that many people take discret math because they don't want to do calculus so so these are kind of the two things that I really want to see in there now I mean how we kind of massage it and put it in there is fine I of the looking at the policy document I mean about 80% of it is just common sense I mean I I have no problems with that know I just it reads like yes it's long and it's got many definitions and ased you speak which I you know I'm

280not exactly the expert on but it sounds okay so this is probably the one that is most I guess evokes raw emotions in people so we need to make sure that it gets start Alyssa did you something I agree um I also want to point out that I um my son was one of those children who took who was not passionate about math so he didn't take a 12th grade math and he struggled in math so he would need a a a lower level like I'm not there's just kids that need that that I was one of those kids where we can't I just don't believe in the ability to not have something like that available to our students and also my child was a child that knew that he wanted to go into sports

281media in South Orange Maplewood we don't have any APS in those in that area we had honors we had honors Sports journalism we had honors journalism classes we have honors TV production classes but if you get rid of those then my child who is succeeding really incredibly at Ithaca College thanks to what happened here might not have gotten into Ithaca because he would have had a at a had a transcript that had no honors on it and I don't I just we have to think about these consequences when we start to do this there are consequences to removing honors levels courses that's what the school districts are looking for that's what the colleges are looking for they want to know what they've taken and to do something like that especially for children that might not

282be math or science or is is problematic so I really yet again state that we really need to think about these consequences and get a good written document in place before we move this forward and I do think the community and teachers have spoken greatly about the fact that there needs to be some changes you said something you so I mean I mean yes I gave a big statement about what should what I'm looking for but that does not mean that I'm going to take against all the stuff that is in there I mean a lot of if it makes sense okay I mean I just wanted to point out the deling part and I I don't think anyone is talking about taking away courses or at least not from what I have heard I

283mean no no one's taking away any particular course that people want to follow I mean they if anyway I leave it Al that go on C and then I'll have something to say I guess the point here is that this is a first read and we don't have a full implementation plan yet you know this seems to be a pattern we do follow follow we have a first re policy we get input we make sure that it is fully prepared if we're going to fully adopt this and there that's that um I I disagree with that because this is on the same level as our intentional integration initiative which had a host of stakeholders involved and community community forums before there was a policy so I I do beg to differ there and I would

284say that the leveling is on the same level as that type of magnitude of a change for our district I don't want to reiterate I I agree with what my fellow Regina Kayla Alissa I mean bill I appreciate that you've even said that you are now getting some pause when it comes to thinking about pushing this forward because you've started to speak with teachers and I hope that our superintendent and other administrators do that as well um because I haven't heard that that's happened yet um what I will say just to add um another perspective so I'm not reiterating what I already agree with that has been said against this policy it's that we have an A an access and Equity District goal and I just can't fathom fulfilling this District goal with this policy

285in four to six weeks we should be working on this policy in tandem with all of the other things that are in this goal which discusses intentional integration supports Recruitment and Retention restorative justice culture and climate school-based funding Plans deleveling cost money we haven't even discussed that in fft mostly because we're too busy discussing that we don't have any money for a long- range facility plan but with that said I just can't imagine that in two in four to six weeks we think we can have an access and Equity policy before even achieving our access and Equity goal of a strategic Plan before the end of next school year or by the end of next school year or this school year rather and so in my mind I see that this policy would actually be

286more appropriate to be a first read um like maybe we're looking at it in the summer after we' finished that one-year plan and seing what needs to be done and also had more months looking at our do our our Fergus Dr Fergus recommendations so that everything dovetails together and I'm not saying that the other items on this seven-page document are not things that I agree or disagree with I think those things are lovely but it's based on two board members opinions of what needs to happen and not the full District fulfilling their goal from an access and Equity perspective and that is another issue that I have with this policy being a first read tonight yeah um I think everybody knows how I feel about this policy um being involved and looking at this you

287know when you were back in high school um uh Mr gford it was the thing everybody was trying to find some way you know to help our students who weren't succeeding we found that this was not the way in which to do it uh and I think I don't know if you guys was were in the district at that time uh but I'm just fine trying to wrap my head around the fact that you know how do you come up with a conclusion that it wasn't worthy of a discussion with the board with the administration right with the teachers um uh how did you come to the conclusion that all of those constituencies uh weren't worthy of input Dr Taylor I I I I'm I'm just trying and and the bottom line is we don't

288need this right now it's a distraction I'll say it until I I I leave this earth it is a distraction to keep us from doing the things that we need to do for our students uh Dr Fergus has let us know what it is that we need to do and who are we to tell him that he's wrong and we need you to look at something else because that's what we're doing and I I'm sitting here and I'm watching this white privilege up close uh when this black man comes and tells us what we need to do to help these students who has the degrees and and and all the expertise necessary to get things done and we're going to sit here and question him we're going to question his authority when we haven't done

289a damn thing to get things moving in four years four years and I say to you Bill and I say to you Dr Tellis Ford that uh it was teachers like myself and like the teachers who you saw in this room who made sure that you got a thorough and efficient education because we fought for you uh we fought for for everyone here as you know and hearing these teachers tonight was really uh distressing and to know that they're not involved in this because they would have to deliver uh this um this uh this uh curriculum which we don't have you know and that's the biggest thing with this is curriculum and and we don't have um a curriculum writing team that I've seen that has the bandwidth you know to get this done nor

290do we have the experienced staff to get this done nor Administration so what we're looking at here is you know uh uh billly what's that I can't think of the guy's name he had a song that says nothing from nothing leaves nothing and that's what we have nothing we have nothing in front of us except words beautiful words we always have them but no implementation there's no action in the plan in terms of what we're going to do I think we need to just dissolve this so we can get to the business of educating our children the way they should be educated and involve our staff and everybody else is involved especially our stakeholders not taxpayers and as I said this does not come cheaply we're spending a lot of money uh for this and

291I and and if I can go back to um Mr vladat when he talked about the the buses and things um you need to know that uh I have always advocated for bus drivers and I was told by the superintendent and by the the board attorney that I could not vote or talk or discuss buses because it was a negotiations item that was part of SOA however we know that that is not true so I have always advocated to keep the bus drivers then and now even though I didn't have a voice my voice was raised when I said I don't have a vote but if I did I would keep our drivers because it's too important to our babies our children the little ones and so we have all the people in the room

292to tell if I'm if if this is not true and if if if if you're saying um um Rosio that that this was not a part of negotiations or it was a part of negotiations some look somebody's lying I'm trying to be the lie detector that's all Miss right I was also silenced in that too and not allowed to talk Kaitlyn so so you know I think that there's board consensus that this policy is just not ready for a first read so with that I'd like to amend resolution 4529 and strike policy 57551 access and Equity from the resolution do I have a second second okay if you're in favor please raise your hand yes okay sorrya did you have something you wanted to say qua was there something you wanted my hand raised sorry

293I did not see your hand raised go on ahead well that pass that will be sorry hang on right made a motion to do something we need to have a discussion on the motion you can't just randomly say make a motion put your hands up let's pass that's not how it works so let's do it right I mean you you don't need to be so scared that you know that's fine it happened very quickly but I I also want quawi to give it have a chance to say what he wanted to say because I didn't notice his hand I just one second I had a motion by the board president to amend 4529 to remove it's I think it's 557 5.1 and the there were three seconds so I'm just GNA does anyone want to

294not actually a thing we're taking action on and then the amendment is now before the board and so it's it's comments and questions on the amendment sorry I so I do do not see 57551 as part of that resolution I don't understand it's first reads it cannot be part of a resolution you cannot vote on stuff that is not in a resolution so I'm I'm very confused what you're trying to do we're making up rules yeah so it it is though and and the reason I say it is even though I know that your minutes don't ultimately reflect it it's in the agenda it's listed as a first read under that motion and so so being stricken the effect of this motion will be that it's not getting past first read but we don't vote

295for first read so I don't even understand how we can strike something that you can't vote on but but then then all of your policies should just go straight to Second read which you can't do because it violates bylaw so I can read it to you no no no I've read the I actually read it while we were sitting out there but I so the I'm looking at the resolution 4529 which is what we referring to Nowhere In This resolution do I see 57551 last one last one number 10 all the way at the bottom am I looking at the right thing yes if you see it it's below Bridge year pilot program and then above that is 5124 45 298k no no no resolution what resolution are you trying to pass or vote for

296your the resolution that was pending was 4529 a2k that's what I'm looking at I mean I something's changing behind me so on the agenda that I have that I'm looking at the printed out one it's got second read a through K and then it's got first read 1 through 10 okay I don't see the attachment in the attachment doesn't say that when you go to the attachments page if you look at if you look at our agenda it's right there okay I believe you I'm looking at if you say that's that's fine okay so what you're saying is that first reads are part of the resolution and we want to yank that out and not vote for it is that's what we're saying exactly you're your says that the board has to approve policies in

297consecutive meetings to pass a policy and so in my mind and again I'm not the attorney that gave you the advice that you don't have to vote on first reads I don't understand how there's no possibility to prevent a first read from moving on that's inconsistent with my understanding of the plain reading of your bylaw and so the action here that I understand is essentially to make this not get past first read I do think the board is empowered to vote on something like that so clarification is that starting now are we suggesting that every first reads go goes through a a vote so we we would have that discussion I've had a discussion like that with the board president about making it but again not just springing it on you just going through the

298process to go and explain that to the policy committee that I that the way I read your bylaw it says it has to be approved and I don't know how you approve things without voting on it no no no the bylaw says the board presents the draft to the superintendent and who pres presents the draft to the board back again after his changes as first reads that's what it says so so and there is no action to be taken bylaw 131 says bylaws policies and regulations may be adopted and revised at any meeting of the board provided the pro proposed adoption or revision has been approved at a previous meeting of the board yes so how do you prove things without voting on them is the question in my mind we've never done that so

299I mean you and again I'm only been here six months now um so so what I understand is that there's a board consensus that to not move this forward past first read that's why this motion is being made right now and and just to finalize things qu was there anything else you wanted to say because you didn't um I I think it's kind of pointless now but it's up to you um if if this then why are we moving forward 5120 or the I'm sorry the 5120 that one's not ready it's identical there's no dis between 512 things I mean we've discussed edits on that and we all kind of seem to have a consensus on those edits and the rle is when those when they're edits they're made we should I think we should

300just wait until we have a full implementation Plan before we move it forward for first read so a fair motion to make if you want to make to motion to amend however there is a motion to amend pending so once that motion to amend is resolved certainly you're free to make another motion to amend that's fine make the motion okay so we do we need to vote so the motion right now pending is to amend this to eliminate first read number 10 from uh 4529 yes okay thank you can we vote on thank you can we do we need to vote Yes it would be all in favor it's Voice vote all in favor I any Nays abstentions this is for so the motion to amend passes so 55751 is not part of 4529 anymore

301it's it's an amend it's not a vote on the so now four so that passes it's not part of it 4529 is still pending it just doesn't have 5575 which will mean it it's going to go back to policy committee are we ready to move on to vote on 4529 we have to vote on the everything yeah yes you want to make a motion yeah I'll make a motion to amend 45529 to I guess strike 5120 and 5124 okay is there a second okay questions comments on the motion actually the only comment I have is instead of having this convoluted way of voting for every first reads which seems a little backward I mean we should look into I mean obviously there'll be changes involved we should look into having a committee recommending something coming

302out or not I I again I don't know I mean that are there are pluses and minuses on both sides you know the committee is filled with a bunch of you know radicals then nothing comes out of the committee so there is some advantage in having it in at the whole board level but I think we need to weigh one versus the other I mean we we have whatever 301 reads right now we're not going to sit and vote on every one of them yeah to that point actually 5124 and 5120 were never given to committee they was just given to us directly from Dr Taylor and this was the first night that we all got to give our feedback and I think it was good feedback that was given but I'm just letting you

303know that this wasn't given to cni and it wasn't given to well then go to cni I I don't don't understand I mean we have a process you need to ask that sh one no no hang on hang on but there's one comment I would make about throwing it all on Dr Taylor vote just vote we just vote he is not the board we are the board I can talk I don't care how late it is it's important we are the board we make policies we pick and choose what goes forward so no we don't clearly we don't well Dr Taylor spoken up and taken the power back I speak up time a anyway the point is we we now have asked to amend it to take it out so we need to vote on

304if it's going to be taken out or not we it cannot be first reads it never is a first read just like just like our access and Equity was a first read because Dr Taylor put it in he put it in I mean he's the last word so with that said it needs to be voted on you severed it are you suggesting that he has so much power over the board that didn't you just St but that's why we have an act see you see that's why the a policy was on here in the first place because he put it on okay Patrick can you clarify that Dr Taylor can put something on the agend or sorry the superintendent can put something on the agenda without board consensus or approval so you're because that's essentially

305what you the law provides the superintendent makes recommendations to the board for approval so the superintendent makes the agenda in collaboration with the board president but the superintendent has the say to put it on there without the agreement of the board president so that's what happened so with that said can we vote now please thank you this is the motion to strike board policy 5120 and 5124 hold on oh is it 5124 to they ask for both yes yeah I don't like I don't want to complicate this but when was five was 5124 part of your application it was not it was 5120 correct yes for both you want both let's just do both just do both just do both yeah seven and eight all in favor nay n no abstentions motion does not pass

306you still have 4529 pending oh yeah the rest of 4529 ready to move that yes we're going to do a roll call on this one board member Deval Wilson yes board member eert yes board member mpina yes board member whiter yes board member gford yes board member Winfield yes board member Wright board member VOD Lani yes board member telesford yes question passes quick um question from believe it or not lyanna and Cassandra stay up watching these meetings until the very end because they're making notes on the agenda because we never had a policy struck before for Action does it reflect on as a strike through or is it just removed from the action it's it's just going to be it's it doesn't get past first read yeah it's it's going to go back to policy

307committee now okay it cannot advance to a future agenda as a second read That's the effect of this was okay thank you board members we do have have we finally voted on the agenda I mean the resolution we good okay we have hand carries that I'll bring around for you one at a time ready yeah board members your first hand carries 4534 do we have a second second okay this is uh hi appeal 4468 meaning we cannot have discussion on it so let's just have the vote 44 this is have appeal 44 yes resolution 4534 yes sorry board president Whit lter yes board member vman yes board member Guilford board member gford yes board member eert yes board member telesford no we're so yes board member right board member malus board member Deval Wilson yes

308board member Wingfield yes motion passes um this is asir getting somewhere I ask you I can did you pass out all three or the just got a little loopy huh all right uh board members um the secondhand carry 4533 do we have a second discussion I guess you can't discuss discuss no okay let's just vote board member AER yes board member board president whitler yes board member mpina yes board member gford yes board member Wright board member Daval Wilson oh that's me yes board member telesford yes board member Winfield yes board member VOD lamani yes motion passes what is this one know anymore what is this one no one's online oh tree Grand oh your tree Grant Bill you can read it into record if you want bill but it's also really late bill just

309so you know Dr T just clarifying there are only three hand carries yeah what the other no the other one we stru who stru it in close yeah so L the discussion in executive session yeah Jesus Christ I know it was yesterday Aron I get it okay so resolution 4535 Bill do you want to Bill do it you don't have to bill or just say or just say right no I did just want to really quick this is H the resolution of support from the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education authorizing the trees for schools Grant application and just some background the uh the Seth Boyen PTA successfully applied and was awarded this grant um so really cheers to the the parents but uh where is planting trees on oh God no no it's too

310long no they did it you guys are great yay you guys are great and we're done or we have to vote oh sorry all in favor yes any names exensions mushroom okay um that conclud the action portion of the meeting um we will now begin our second hearing of individuals and delegates this evening no one signed up no Ros here you're the only you're the only one so thank you you got three minutes oh thank you um I want to thank you for not passing the policy as it is uh I just look at the translation of a say that we say in Spanish and this is what it says in English don't bite off more than you can chew and uh that's exactly where we were like when we're talking about not getting the

311kids on time to school in transportation and we're thinking about deleveling at the same time or when we're talking about classes that are falling apart or curriculums that need update I mean we first need to do the things that we need to do to have the normal things that any school should have and also we need to make sure that we work on the base of the kids so of course the leveling in the long run in a perfect world right if we will be in a perfect not these issues I would say yeah let's go for it but there are so many things that need to happen first so I want to thank you all for that and hopefully you know first there is a plan that is you know measurable that we can

312see and go towards it and then we get the policy we are afraid already as so many people of things that happen like let's pass this and then we become reactive let's be proactive so thank you for that that that's the first thing I wanted to say uh the second thing is I heard something about the Freshman Academy so I had to comment on that thank you um I heard that all a sudden we had to do a sidebar with SAA at the end that we we didn't know wait let me explain what happened last year at the end of the school year I was approached by Administration in Columbia High School about this Freshman Academy when I was approached uh they told us that the teachers doing this Freshman Academy they were going to

313do all five days right at one period every day so the only thing I told them well if you know if they have five classes and one of them is Freshman Academy as soon as you give them PD you trade them you know you help them that is contractual people can have five classes right even if they wanted to give a six class as well they could do it but when it come August all the sudden I get a phone call and I get the information that now we're going to do Freshman Academy two days a week according to what my teachers were told is because the parents didn't want to have Freshman Academy five days a week that it was too much that's what I'm being told okay so the truth of the matter

314is when something is not in the contract it's negotiable and what they wanted to do was something that is not negotiable and anybody should know that any administrator at that level should know that if you want to put teachers two days a week instead of a Duty you need to know that you need to negotiate that it's just the way it works so please please whenever you have a question let me know I'll explain you what happened I have no fear telling you you know and if I mess up I'll take it if I do something wrong I'll take it I'm human but I can tell you this time I was the one pushing for the Freshman Academy sending the sidebar back to Patrick Quake I was the one doing things during the weekend so

315this will happen thank you and have a good night everyone thank you we're so tired I'm sorry but I had to say app it we just want a motion to okay yeah I have to read this um just um so now is new business we are now moving to the new business portion of the meeting um does anyone have any new business reminder that this is for emergencies no no okay great seeing as not I'm going to now close new business business um oh God this is so long okay I just have to read the future meetings um with that I'd like to make the following motion the Board of Education will hold a public Fergus imp implementation committee meeting on Monday October 30th 2023 at 6:30 p.m. in the district meeting room 525 Academy

316Street Maplewood New Jersey in person as well as online as well as using online video conference platform the community can view the meeting by following the steps which will be listed on the agenda if there are members of the community who would like to attend the meeting in person please note that masks and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance received from the local do and the CDC action will not be taken a meeting of the board of school estimate will be held on Tuesday November 28th 2023 at 6 pm at the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education administration building 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey for the purpose of discussing funding for the remaining projects in the district's long range facility plan action may be taken the Board of Education will meet

317in public session on Thursday November 30th 2023 at 6:30 p.m. in the district meeting room mely following the opening of public session the board will move to go into close session in the superintendent's office 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey as well as using an online video conferencing platform to discuss Personnel matters Personnel matters within the attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and require discussion I know to be announced at a later date immediately following the closed session the Board of Education will meet in public session is estimated to be 7 :30 p.m. in the district meeting room 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey in person utilizing online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals the community can view the meeting by following the session was listed on

318the agenda if there are members of the community who would like to attend in person please note that mass and social this is a lot to say I really have to say all this you can just say may all right may I have a second all in favor appears to be anonymous adjourn what no no no it's just a committee okay and we are juring Wednesday October Thursday October 19th at 1255 thank you there's October 19th [Music] 12:55 okay all right you