001okay okay [Music] [Music] [Applause] questions all right good evening it's 6 34 p.m and I'd like to call the September 28th meeting of the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education to order Mr Burnside can you please take the Roll Call board member Nubia Duvall Wilson here board member Regina Eckert here board member Bill Gifford president board member Alyssa malaspina here board member Kali telesford here board member Arun pad lamani here board member Courtney Wingfield here board president Caitlin whitlider here board member Johanna Wright thank you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right so we are in for a real treat this evening we have a
002performance from the CHS acapella acapella singer and and Ensemble so we will get out of their way so we can hear their beautiful voices hi we are unaccompanied minors we are Columbia High School's mixed acapella group uh today we'll be singing soccer uh written by the Jonas Brothers with our soloist Paige provenzano [Applause] we go together better than birds of a feather you and me we change the weather I'm feeling heat in December when you're around me I've been dancing on top of cars and stumbling out of bars I follow you through the dark and getting up you're the medicine and the pain the tattoo inside my brain and baby you know it's obvious I'm a sucker for you say the word and I'll go anywhere blindly I'm a sucker for you yeah any road
003you take you know that you'll find me I'm a sucker for all the subliminal things no one knows about you about you and you're making my typical me break my typical rules it's true I'm a sucker for you don't complicate it cause I know you and me know everything about me I can't remember all of the nights I don't remember when you're around me I've been dancing on top of cars and stumbling out of bars to follow you through the dark Can't Get Enough you're the medicine and the pain the tattoo inside my brain and baby you know it's obvious I'm a sucker for you say the word and I'll go anywhere blindly I'm a sucker for you yeah any road you take you know that you'll find me I'm a sucker for all the
004supplemental things no one knows about you about you and you're making my typical me break my typical rules it's true I'm a sucker for all this subliminal things no one knows about you about you and you're making my typical me break my typical rules it's true I'm a sucker for you [Applause] [Music] okay awesome [Applause] thank you that was amazing I wish I could sing like that um okay so please take note that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following manner a written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board at 2 30 pm on January 6 2023 that said notice was sent via email to Maplewood in South Orange Township clerks and editors of the news record Star Ledger and the Village Green this evening the
005board will have the honor of swearing in our remaining newly elected student board representative ASA Glassman also on the agenda for this evening is a district presentation on equal opportunity schools the hibb self-assessment presentation will now be done on the October meeting with that I'd like to make a motion to enter into executive session at 6 40 pm to discuss attorney-client matters personnel hibs and litigation status report the link 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 may I have a second thank you board member miles Spina all in favor the vote appears to be unanimous we are now a journey to closed session thank you and good evening everyone and thank you
006for joining us for our back to school board meeting night we will kick off the meeting with the swearing-in of CHS student ASA Glassman as our new student representative ASA please join us up here for the swearing-in ceremony which will be done by Mr Burnside testing [Music] okay I state your name ASA Glassman do you solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and that I will bear true faith and that I will bear true faith and Allegiance and Allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments established in the United States and to the governments established in
007the United States and this state under the authority of the people and this day under the authority of the people so help me God so help me God I state your name ASA Glassman do solemnly swear do solemnly swear did I possess the qualifications that I possess the qualifications for the office of member of student representative for the office of member of student representative to the board of education to the board of education and that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully impartially impartially and justly and justly perform all the duties of that office perform all the duties of that office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God thank you congratulations congratulations Asa I'd like to now make a
008motion to approve the board meeting minutes for the August 1st 2023 special meeting and the executive session and regular meeting minutes for the August 24th 2023 meeting do I have a second thank you board member Ecker all in favor please raise your hand the meeting minutes have been approved I will now turn it over to Dr Taylor for two presentations thank you madam president and good evening to everyone oh sorry Dr Taylor student boy reps next I'm sorry yes oh so sorry yes refresh your ride yes yes thank you so much um I will now turn it over to our student s for their update is this on okay um hello everyone I feel that before I begin my report I should first introduce myself my name is Gwyneth Brown and I'm currently a junior
009at Columbia High School I moved to The District in fourth grade from Illinois where I attended South Mountain and following that Psalms I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the district and I feel extremely grateful to have this opportunity alongside my peer and friend ASA Glassman this being said ASA and I started our role this year welcoming teachers back into the building on the 6th of September we know how important teachers student relationships are and therefore we see immense value in ensuring our teachers feel welcome and appreciated this event occurring for the first time in person since 2019 is an indication that finally our district has streamed to normalcy in relation to the covet pandemic overall CHS has seen a smooth transition into the new school year the newly renovated Underhill Sports Complex has seen
010many spirited games and wins from our fall sports teams clubs have resumed meeting following the annual Club fair that took place in the beginning of the year and the increase in transparency communicated regarding drills construction and other complications has given students improved confidence in CHS Administration yet this year Columbia High School has seen many changes made through the new disciplinary measures implemented a new schedule in place as you may or may not know one thing that our predecessors Noah and Vanessa worked hard on was the Improvement of school safety this year many new measures have been taken to improve this ASA and I met with vice principal King this past week and discussed these changes among them are new ID card regulations which mandate the wearing of ID cards at all times and a new
011swipe in policy which will be fully running within the next week or so and will sync students entering the building into PowerSchool another positive change is to push to have teachers in the hall between periods welcoming students into their classrooms the goal is to minimize students in the Halls during classes and to improve student relationships with security this is being done by creating a more positive disciplinary environment as now all administrative Personnel are working to ensure students are where they need to be these changes have been very successful as already there is a notable decrease in students wandering the halls and leaving school during unauthorized class periods ASA and I mentioned to Mr King that while these changes are extremely beneficial the student body needs consistency for these regulations to be taken seriously and for
012them to continue to show positive results they need to be enforced especially because in the past the school has been arguably lenient regarding students whereabouts and the goal of increased community and positive interaction between students and authorities is extremely valuable to our education some of this year's changes have not come without challenges ASA and I conducted a study to gauge student opinion on the new schedule which made conference period 1 period 1 as opposed to period 9 in previous years while many students enjoy the additional sleep student athletes make up majority of the student body are suffering the consequences many athletes leave early from their ninth period class to attend sports games this has become a problem as now ninth period is an academic class instead of a free period or gym additionally this schedule
013does not solve the problem of conference period where students must choose between taking an additional class or having availability to meet with their teachers outside of their designated class time we gathered that around 75 percent of students prefer last year's schedule to this year for reasons such as that the Athletics mentioned above but also because it was more accommodating for students with extended time on assignments and tests who could no longer go after class and finish their work ASA and I will continue to update the board as the year progresses to see if the intended goals of reduced tardiness and traffic are living up to the expectations of administration when this new schedule was created this month ASA and I also met with principal Sanchez we addressed the option 2 program a program that allows
014students who exercise outside of school to have a study hall for one semester inside of gym and work to get the newly complex sign up changed to a more reasonable procedure we also discussed our goals for this year one of which is to improve knowledge on College visits and extracurricular opportunities we began planning a college fair which will take place in the spring and works at the administration to set up better emailing policies to inform students of college visits and opportunities as well as setting them a board outside the guidance office with a calendar and sign up information finally in our meeting with Dr Taylor ASA and I emphasized the importance of school counselors and began to discuss the ways we can improve the counseling process and support offered at CHS school counselors make a
015huge impact on our high school experience and have the power to Aid students who may not receive support at home so that they are taking full advantage of every opportunity CHS has to offer that is offered this month's board report but I would now like to address somsd student body in saying that ace and I are here to serve and support you we strongly encourage you to reach out to us and communicate your concerns so we can make SMSD a better place for every student thank you do we have any questions I I actually do thank you so much I'm sorry ASA I was in the bathroom when you were oh wait he has he been oh okay he was born in I'm like did he get the morning or not sorry um but I
016want to uh thank you guys for your detailed presentation um we have been hearing some information about um The Freshman Academy is there any way that you guys can look you know report back to us as to what's going on with it or how the uh freshmen are feeling about the pro yeah so already we actually included that within our survey but we got mixed results some freshmen think it's beneficial some aren't really sure from what I we've kind of been getting is that it hasn't necessarily started up yet so for next month we'll be able to get more of a gauge on you know what is actually happening within those classes and if it really is making a difference in um the transition between Middle School to high school which is what it's intended
017to do um so we'll definitely update you thank you so much that would be really helpful I appreciate that and just one other exciting thing to note so it just so happens that the timing to um look at our student representative policy um is now so we've tasked our student representatives to take a first stab at making some potential changes and looking at the language so they will be doing that work and we'll report back to the policy committee so thank you both and if you have any questions feel free to reach out about that I think that's it so Dr Taylor for the superintendent update thank you um and also for our for our board Representatives congratulations and thank you for being selected by your peers to represent them and it was great speaking
018with you um regarding freshman um academy one of the actions tonight is linked to what you just said so it'll be um it's great timing um before I begin um I know that sometimes in the board meeting we start moving around a lot so I wanted to just ask the board members you want to take one picture in our in our school gear before we get started that'll be good you want to come in the middle there okay all right great words [Music] that was interesting you better display one two three [Music] this is South Orange Middle School MLK for us to to capture that it's always great to have the board members represent schools physically with their gear on the on the first board meeting of the official school year we have two presentations
019for you this evening we're going to start with Dr Gilbert who's going to share with you um some important information that's annual reporting of our self-assessment for HIV per the legal statute Dr Gilbert the floor is yours good evening board Dr Taylor members of the board I'm here to walk you through the 2020 21-22 uh HIV grade assessment in October we will introduce the 2223 assessment that leads to the grades and then the the state will give us our grades and I'll come back before you for the 22-23 grades um you go to the next slide this slide gives you the statute uh the self-assessment is used by the district to determine you know how we feel like we are implementing the anti-bullying of uh Bill of Rights uh the school climate team is the
020group that's required to help complete our self-assessment and the information tonight as I said is good the assessment for 2122 you voted on the assessment last year but you have not seen the grades these are the grades for 21-22 in October you will vote on the 22-23 assessment and then in the spring we will show you the grades for 22-23. uh next slide please and also for the public not knowledge the grades are also posted on the access and Equity uh page on our website as well so the anti-bullying assessment uh we'll look at the following criteria our programs and approaches our training uh staff instruction and training programs uh deals with our Personnel uh the school level and reporting procedures and our reporting and then some some of these other factors that you see
021here each category is broken down in the indicators uh and through the 26 standards uh next slide please see this but you were able to see it when it gets on our website this is just a timeline to kind of show you how this process is going and and how it's to flow next slide please so here we go the scores you can go to the next slide so this is what uh you could get from three to zero to three are the scores exceeds get you a three zero you do not meet and then if you partially meet you can get a one and then you can get a two if all the requirements have been met the uh proficiency score that schools are looking for is at least a 52. so when you're
022looking at this and the highest you can get is a 78. so when you're looking at the scores 52 means we're proficient in everything 68 means that we've exceeded everything in all of our requirements next slide please so these are the scores from 2122 all schools as you will notice on this side are above 52 uh we have many schools in the 60 range and a few schools that are in the 70s with 73 uh being the highest score so uh with this slide tells you is that we are proficient in our HIV but of course you know with the less room to grow in some areas next slide please I think let me yeah let me tell sorry sorry wants to sir he wants to also be part of this presentation sorry about that
023uh this is uh I know the board always likes to see us gauge and and look at how we've been doing over the years that's what this particular slide shows you at the bottom you can see what our average over this uh four year uh span has been when it comes to our grades and as you can see that we are consistently proficient in our work and uh continue to um move forward next slide this is Columbia High School's breakdown if you all want to take a look at that this is the scoring rubric uh the total possible is on the left uh with the school kind of assessment assess themselves at is on the right as you can see there um the scores are you know the possible total versus what they can get
024there's not much variance or difference there this is Columbia High School next slide this is uh Maplewood Middle School give you some time to look at that hey Dr Gilbert while you're pausing there just for board members who who weren't on previous um conversations about this we've used these scores over the years to tailor our professional development for the abs's um if we hear that there's not enough PD happening or certain areas need support we've used that to invest and plan for the following years yep thank you sir next slide please this is uh Psalms South Orange Middle School and if there's a number that you all you know just feel free I just figured you all can see that next slide this is Clinton next slide this is Delia Bolden and as you can
025see across the board then one number that we're seeing a lot of the self-assessments not meeting the total maximums around uh this core staff instruction and training programs we've been over the since I've been since I've arrived in May 2022 that's one of the things we've been working on consistently is making sure we get those trainings or put them in the in in in some kind of area where we're constantly helping them uh train on their skills uh next slide please the other area in some of our uh schools you will also see when these grades came out was just around the support for our abs's in terms of investigating procedures uh some schools are we're performing better than others that's also another area that we're really going to be looking at next slide Montrose
026Montrose is interested in that uh they both have Montrose captains not only what happens inside of Montrose but also we have Pre-K sites that are not Montrose that are part of our Pre-K we have an ABS who also Services those schools as well and those scores are part of the Montrose assessment next slide please self-aboiding as inconsistent with the other schools you can see that score around the uh incident reporting procedures next slide please Alpha Mountain and the annex so we we do have to do uh separate reporting for not just the South Mountain the main campus but also the annex since there's a building we report the numbers are we have the self-assess and Report the numbers on that as well next slide please and here's Tuscan all right next slide so what does
027all of this mean what were we looking at you got to keep clicking so we can see the the things in the areas so we could respect we're doing an outstanding job where we could respect you're going to hear at an October presentation we'll be presenting to you and what our ABS go back there we go uh the average increase you know uh of our self-assessment is like 14 points over the last four years so we're seeing a steadily increase in our school actual grading that comes out so we are seeing some uh uh advances in that and then all schools again another Commendation all schools are reporting we are reporting or being scored as proficient in our practices uh when it comes to our HIV uh work next slide please but there are areas
028to grow and growing is something that uh I think we all if we reach a point to where you can't grow then you have to have some some concerns and so this slide talks about what are the areas of growth that you're going to see the things that we're really investing in to show to get better scores like I showed you 78 is the top score 52 is the proficient score you saw we got a good range of schools anywhere in between that mix really hovering around in the 60 70 range and so how can we help move those scores well first uh an investigation timelines really working on our working with our abs's to make sure we're meeting our investigative timelines providing them support and the skills necessary to complete efficient uh uh of
029Investigations so that we're on top of that our teachers staff professional development looking for those opportunities to really work with not only our abs's but with our staff around hivs so our ABS has just finished going through uh our director of access and Equity just moved our abs's through a real intensive training but we just finished doing that with our principals as well and our abs's are now being equipped to give that training to their staff so we should probably start seeing a lot more standardization and understanding around our HIV process all the way down and then student learning opportunities we are rolling out an official HIV curriculum uh this year uh where our students will be going through structured approved lessons that uh Point directly to kind of helping our students learn about hivs
030and the importance of not bullying and how we can support our students and so all of those things that we were putting in now we should start seeing some uh increases in our scores next slide please so here are the goals as we look for 23 22 20 20 23 24 we want to increase those professional learning opportunities we want to increase our student learning our school climate teams are getting some support uh Ms wavel will be supporting our school climate teams and she's already begun that work as our school climbing teams are essential to helping build the types of cultures and climates we need in our buildings and uh training and support for abs's we are supporting them along the way we're working with those abs's that need just a little more grooming and
031a little more support and uh we're hoping to start seeing uh like I say higher grading when it comes to our assessment and assessment from the state and our grades and I think that's it next slide yes the questions thank you Dr Gilbert um board members um I know that you're aware having been on the board for a while that this is always a tough topic we always are in trying to improve our reporting process and you're always pushing us to give more precise information and because we know this is a very important topic and I just want to commend um Dr Gilbert and Miss Weibel because they're bringing to fruition some of that job description when we redesign central office around placing the HIV under um cabinet members and removing it from our attorney
032so that our attorneys could be a part of an official review and not the investigators and so happy to take any questions that you may have on this report board member malice Mina then board member Duval Wilson um I want to thank you for your uh the information and I want to commend you for our um following through on some of the requests that the board has made uh over the years because for the I will be honest with you for the past three years we have struggled what that I've been on the board struggled to get um good detailed information and hibs done on time and and you know proper procedures followed and this is the first time in my three years that I'm actually feeling hopeful that that might occur um because it
033really while we as self-assess ourselves and we have to remember this is a self-assessment we're self-recessing ourselves good I haven't fully seen that coming to the board in fruition in the reports that we have seen come back to us we still have a long way to go in my opinion on how we are handling hibs and making sure that we are doing everything properly in regards to them so um I appreciate that you are um moving forward in a way that hopefully we can fix some of the issues we have thank you thanks for the report I just had one question um just jump just um echoing what Alyssa said about streamlining the process and improving it and systematizing it which has been an ongoing conversation this year um obviously there are some schools that
034are doing better than others which you've already noted but what I don't see in the goals is how the schools are sharing best practices together and not working in silos so how where does that fit into the goals where Clinton can share why they're so high and what are those best practices that can be um that can be duplicated in other schools right so um or you feel I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off okay thank you um so um as I shared earlier so our abs's have a beginning of the year training together right but then also throughout the the year monthly they they also have individual trains where we come in and we talk to them and that's where the opportunity lies to share not only best practices but they get
035updates and then that's how we also provide the supports and so there is an opportunity for them to share and also uh unders and streamline you know what's working and what's not working and that's we started that last year and then this year it's even better Miss Weibel brings them uh you know good examples they did scenarios this year they did scenarios and they will continue to do scenarios where they're seeing examples of what's happening and having an opportunity to talk about isn't an HIV is it not a HIV what are some of the things that you need to do one of the pieces of the process that we have streamlined is when the HIV reporting comes Ms wable gets it before it comes to me before I even give it to you on the
036board report where we're actually checking now everything that's being submitted and if we don't have what we need submitted unfortunately it goes back back so as long as we're in that 10-day window for our investigation they get the investigation done within 10 day 10 10 10 days we're good but we want to make sure that when the information comes you know we're not only making sure you're getting the accurate information but we're actually getting best practices on what to do and what not to do based on that and transferring that information to our abs's so they can support one another and so we can support them do the best we can all right go ahead board member about the money is this document going to be made public so the presentation is going to be
037made and our grades are already made plugged so the public can go to the access and Equity website and all of the grades from all of the years are on our website so they can see their report card and they can see what our grades are it's already made public for them and and next time you know for presentations like this maybe you can the can the board get a copy if you did when was this I'm sorry okay [Music] and Melanie okay that's fine so so yes okay okay that's even better so can we create a one-page or very similar to you know become a big fan of one Pages because we have everything in one place to look at similar to what we had for the settlement with the equity audit report is
038that we have this really one good slide which shows points across years you know 19 2019 20 20 21 22 and you could have just one column on the side that says what have you recommended for things that have gone not as well as last year because I know you mentioned that you know you do professional development you do you know some you have recommendations to improve okay so if the points have gone down so it went from 50 60 70 75 and now it's back to 60. okay obviously there's a recommendation so if you can put that recommendation on that page and make that public so then what happens now is everyone knows about it okay it's in one place one place to find it that would be very useful okay okay thanks just
039one thing board members thank you um for the feedback we're also trying to because this is an individual year over year self-assessment right we don't want to create pressure on folks to artificially inflate numbers to make their schools or themselves look great it's it's a working document that's all it's not a final outside view of their work so we're always just kind of careful to not unintentionally apply that kind of pressure to folks because people can make mistakes when that happens um I have a a request for the week weekly packages that we get can you maybe have some kind of a hierarchy in there which says what is important what is not because we have 50 line items in there and some of them are absolutely well they're all important yes but some of
040them are not as important as this one this particular document is because if I'm going down the thing some of them are press releases and so on so maybe you can have some kind of a force hierarchy which says this is important so we um everything can't be important no but I do want to say um the district it was uploaded into school boards it's a private attachment as part of our board meeting pack of all the documents that we have to review so it was there along with the weekly packet which I think was just an extra step that the district took to give us the information the weekly package was from last week not from this week so it was at it was done correctly don't get me wrong I mean all everything
041was done correctly but the problem is with whatever 25 line items you know this is just seems like a a very you know there's a place called whatever a bunch of documents but some of them are important some not as important so all I'm asking for is if you can Force rank them based on your expertise and that'd be good enough thanks um so um the other thing I just wanted to note is that I just wanted to thank your team Miss Weibel and yourself um many of us participate in the hip appeals and I think when we've come back with feedback um we've already heard you're on top of it I know this checklist that Miss weabel was talking about that you just addressed as well is something that she's been working on and
042I know that in a forthcoming meeting all of the collective work that you've been doing which I know has been very labor intensive will be presented to the board into the community so I look forward to that but um I know it's been a lot of work so thank you so much you're welcome and we'll continue to improve our Friday package with feedback so thank you for that and maybe there's ways to highlight and we'll we're always working together to to give you what you need so thank you for that feedback and thank you Dr Gilbert and Miss Weibel thank you and Mr Barnes is there a way that you can show me how to get that link on my cell phone I would appreciate it thank you all right uh we have a visitor
043we have a virtual visitor um Miss Jessica lamb from EOS equal opportunity schools is here with us along with uh principal Sanchez hello miss Lamb how are you good evening everyone great I want to do a quick voice voice check and Mr bonds is going to share the presentation while miss Lamb and principal Sanchez give an update from equal opportunity schools which is a partner that we utilize and have presented on um biannually regarding recognizing and promoting AP opportunities to traditionally underrepresented students and so I'll give the floor to miss Lamb and principal Sanchez and we can share the presentation wonderful thank you appreciate that all right well good evening everyone thank you so much for allowing me and principal Sanchez sorry principal Sanchez I can't be there with you so we're gonna we facilitate
044virtually and in person tonight um I'm really excited to be here I have been working with the district and CHS in particular for the last two years so this will be the third school year we're going into um and every time I have gone to CHS I got to visit for the first time this past school year it was an absolutely fantastic experience um can't say enough about how much district and School staff had allowed me to visit classroom to be able to talk to students and staff and really get a sense of how do students feel about their classes and the opportunities they have to take Advanced courses and also their sense of belonging within a class and how that impacts if they choose to continue to take Advanced courses and what has also
045propelled them to take Advanced courses and so you're going to see a lot of this data throughout this presentation and I'm going to do my very best to break down some of the data points for you because there can't be some dense um data happening from all fronts so Frank do you want to say anything before we continue I just want to say it's been a pleasure working with equal opportunity schools and I thank us for working together and Jess has been an incredible partner and really has worked well uh interviewing our students too she's not only has helped us with our data and and worked with our counselors on how to use certain attributes of EOS but she also I think just as a compliment to you Jess had a great rapport with many
046of our students in our interview process that we did with our um our kiddos so thanks again Jess no problem all right we'll get started with the first slide so just to give a little overview of what this presentation will be I tend to talk fast so feel free to tell me if I need to slow down I will be monitoring that myself and using my teacher voice to project um we'll just be going through our partnership overview do you see what this past school year 2022 2023 looked like before I show you the semester grade report which is specifically the spring semester grade report from this past school year I'll show you what the student supports have looked like from some partner schools as well as what I have seen um can take place
047at CHS and has been taking place at CHS as well right and keep going and for anyone who's wondering what is equal opportunity schools we are organization based out of Seattle I actually live in New Orleans Louisiana myself but our goal is to make sure that all students just have equal opportunities and access to the most advanced High School course offerings so rather that is AP or IB dual credit honors vocational we want to make sure that students just feel that in their schools they have an open opportunity to take any advanced course that suits their interests and what they would like to do post-secondary all right we'll keep going one more time okay so this is just very Broad and I always like to start here by naming that so you have to take
048advanced classes in high school are best better prepared for their post-secondary Endeavors and I always tell people while that can include college that also can include post-secondary um Pathways that don't include College I always say if a student wants to go into the military there's nothing wrong with them taking an AP U.S history class or an AP chem class because that's something they're interested in so I always say that students who are able to take Advanced courses are just able to be better prepared for what they would like to do after high school and this is just some information um at EOS that we often talk to our partners about of just how important access and opportunity are to students so you see on the left this is a chart graph of the percentage of
049students with varying AP and non-ap experiences who earn a bachelor's degree within four years so you see if there's no access to like AP original enrollment courses you see that's about 11 and you see as we go further and further rather that's AP or dual enrollment that it keeps increasing to if students are able to even just take an AP course an exam that already increases 10 percent from the bottom and then if student is able to just take a b courses and exams with an average of a four or five on that exam itself see there's a 50 chance and you see how greatly that increases with every excess level that they have to dual enrollment or AP and you'll hear me say AP a lot because of what CHS offers but we work
050with schools that also have IB or ABN IB dual credit Etc and on the right you see students who are scoring just a two or Plus on an AP exam are nearly three times more likely to get a bachelor's degree in four years okay so just the exposure alone to an AP class really does have a huge impact on your ability to earn a college degree or probability and miss Lamb I just want to add that um something that Columbia High School had not done before 2021 or 2022 is we did not offer dual enrollment classes and so that's something that we instituted um just two years ago and so we wanted to make sure that that data was also part of this um as as part of what we collect and also as part
051of our um data that we that we also talk with our black parents Workshop settlement yes awesome thank you friend for adding that and that is true a few of our schools and I mentioned this to everyone that advanced courses period are incredibly important um I think the prevalence of AP is one because you see them in so many of our schools and dual enrollment or dual credit can look differently based off of your District or school but all of those classes are incredibly important to students having that access point foreign and to be very clear on what the data is we have not had updated information or data since the pandemic so this is coming from 2018 but I always want to make sure that people hear this in terms of college completion that
052there is a gap for Black and Hispanic latinx students in college completion so this from 25 to 29 year olds right now as of 20 I should say as of 2018 who had attained a bachelor's degree or higher and you see the proportions as you look across race and ethnicity and you see that Black and Hispanic adults have the largest gaps and this for 25 to 29 year olds who attained a bachelor's degree and it is including four-year rate and up to six year rate two as I get that question so it's even more important to think about if this is happening on such a systemic scale in society for adults we have to think about what is happening within K-12 that we can fix what we can control within our own School communities and
053our own districts to make sure that we are preparing specifically those groups and all of our students for college and post-secondary options all right so what did we accomplish let's go to the next slide so you can see some of this information um first huge part of what we do we can't do any of this work without surveying students and staff so we have a student survey that we have that goes out typically every fall is when we do it so it can I know you all just started school I think the last couple years it's tended to be around November to December and we also have a staff serving as well so the student survey we like asking students how do you feel about your classes do you feel like they're rigorous um if
054you've taken an AP class or dual enrollment what inspired you to take that class or if you have not what is your reasoning for not taking that class staff it's a little um different in terms we really like to ask staff how do they view rigor within the classes that they teach the classes they do not teach and how do they view students opportunities and abilities to enter classes whether they're Advanced courses and poor content as well so you see here 59 of students this past school year took the survey 81 of staff took the survey our goal typically is 80 to 90 percent and so I know that area growth for us this upcoming year is to make sure we get that number up into the 80s for students um and it's completely optional
055so if they're a student who doesn't want to take the survey or the staff they totally can do that and opt out um but we like having that 80 to 90 of knowing that we just have a strong majority of opinions and people being able to give their feedback keep it going so who are you identified so with that survey um what we're able to do with the staff responses is actually identify students who had not taken and this is specific to AP right now but who had not taken an AP course before but have an interest they also could name that they have had an interest in AP they have at least a 1.8 GPA I know some people like 1.8 1.8 GPA has been proven that if a student is able to take
056a advanced course of their lacking with that GPA they do have a high probability of passing that course so that's why it's 1.8 um having one of our learning mindsets or having a teacher recommendation and if even if you did not take the survey you would never be discluded from being identified and included in the list so you can have one of those four you can have all of them identified that's how we receive that list so there's 444 10th and 11th graders the reason why we have 10th and 11th grade because we know that those are rising Juniors and seniors and we know for that kind of second half of high school that's really defined for seniors where this is your last year of being able to take an advanced course before you're off
057and for juniors that gives you a good base of at least two years to be able to take a class um we also recognize that at quite a few of our schools there are ninth graders and 10th graders who are able to take AP but we standard and we have the data to include 9th and tenth but we tend to go with 11th and 12th or the rising 11th and 12th graders um to have that as like a baseline data point which resulted in 195 students who are enrolled and by that you're probably what students 195 students of color the district does not collect um socioeconomic status so you'll see in some of the slides I have you'll see students of color and low-income students and that is not included in the district because of
058that income um point is not there so let's go to some graphs to make it more visual for you so this is a part of the survey we asked students why were they participating in advanced high level courses and why were they not so we specifically asked with this question um students who had not been taking classes at CHS for dance straight up asked why what is what is that the top five reasons have been across the board of my other partner schools which are up and down the East Coast very similar in common too much work will be successful concerned about GPA not enough support available and not enough information provided when I look at this my teacher Brian automatically goes to these are all adult things that we can join together and figure
059out uh for quite a few students there sometimes is a stigma on Advanced course like it's too much work it's going to be too hard I won't be successful at this which goes into those top two concerned about GPA with some of the Insight cards I've seen from students there are students who have a 4.0 haven't taken Advanced course before and because their worry is that advanced course could potentially bring down my GPA for those initial top two points of too much work or won't be successful so they tend to shy away or could shy away not enough support available and not enough information provided is always something that I give a lot of nuance to because that is very personal to the students of why they feel that way um but I always talk
060to admin and counseling departments about that too of even if you feel that you go into every classroom and talk about the course offerings if you're a student who doesn't believe that you belong in those courses you don't feel like that's information for you or that's information that's specifically provided for you if I could just go ahead Frank I'm sorry if I could just add miss Lamb I thought which was very interesting when we had student um discussions and talks I tried to have Miss lamb in there with the students by themselves but as I would pop in and she would share with me um I thought was very interesting with the conversations when we had with us our students of color who sometimes for example said not enough information provided but sometimes would say
061you know our teachers do an incredible job have students who are taking the class who have just finished for example taking this level class go to the lower level like I'm just giving an example I'm not saying this was happening but let's say English literature to English language um just as an example U.S apus-2 to apus one some students said you know I felt like sometimes the students that were selected didn't look like me or were white students I I couldn't relate um and so that was something that we really thought that as Colombia we were doing a really good job of of our teachers selecting you know students to come in to speak to other students about what they're doing and I thought those interviews with Miss Lam did was was great for us
062to then give that feedback to our AP teachers to make sure that the students that we've selected that the students that we've chosen to talk to are aspiring AP students represented um other students another thing I would just say you know the too much work thing is I I get it many of us here on the Deus are parents we have the struggle I just had my daughter you know who's wrestling with that whole idea of taking AP Spanish versus Spanish five the the drop the drop deadline is this week in my school where my daughter lives and and we're going I'm Sorry Miss Lopez uh but we're going back and forth in in trying to to to make that decision um now again my daughter has a couple AP classes our goal here at
063Columbia is never to say we want a student to take the fourth fifth or sixth AP class what we're looking for is to is to ensure that students have the opportunity to take that first AP class as well that's that's what we want to do is we want to make sure students who may have five or six honors classes but don't want to take that that's too much work fear or I don't know if I'll be successful fear to get them to take that AP class that dual enrollment class and so we really do appreciate our work with EOS and talking with our counselors Ms Lamb mentioned something I think was in Pro really important she said the card and what EOS does is creates every student who completes that survey almost sounds like a
064baseball card if you will it has the students data it has the student's GPA and it also talks about who their trusted adult is and then specifically their answer to those questions and we give those to our counselors as we're making their schedules so as the student might just say I want to take these I mean I I feel weird saying just these four honors classes are just these honors classes that our counselors and or our trusted adult who might be other than the guidance counselor can then talk to that student to see if you want to take that AP class so I just wanted to interrupt there sorry miss Lamb no we're doing this together this is great yeah no I couldn't agree more um with everything that principles of Interest has said and
065you see on the right over here of just simply yeah the students who are in these classes right now some who I did get to talk to when I visited when I asked them like what what made you decide to enroll so you see the top five reasons there with the top being I plan to take it before starting High School also the fifth reason is it's just part of the school culture and I wanted to point those two out in tandem because I don't always see that that it's a part of school culture and I plan to say it before high school fitting into the top five so just want to shout out you know South Orange Maplewood because that is a great thing to see that the other three that you see in
066conversation with my parents or Guardian a meeting with my counselor a conversation with a friend you see how all of those are relationship based so when principal Sanchez is talking about trusted adults or their counselors can talk to them you see how important that is because that's the third reason that's the third most popular reason a conversation with a friend is huge I always say this to my partners like the students are currently taking Advanced courses should 100 be talking to the students who are currently not or might have some apprehensions about it like that's how we break down different stigmas and barriers that students might have regarding their courses um I know Frank had mentioned interviews that I had with students I know from my own experience I took APS history that confirmed for
067me that I want to be a history major I also was the only black student in the course so was that something that I like was hyper aware of yes and did I do very well in the class and on the AP exam yeah both of those are true both of them hold space together but it's very important when we're thinking about why students are taking classes and are not thinking of what is the representation that they've seen and what in their like minds are also considered like this person might be a AP student I don't know I am and for every time I've talked to a student one of my own students or talking at EOS I always mentioned what makes you think that what am I on your inside card you have all
068these mindsets which lets me know that this course that you're interested in I think you do really well because you're interested in it so I can keep trying to know this all day so let's go to the next slide so we can keep going um here's another great thing that EOS collects which is students who are not participating in higher level courses the specific barriers that exist so this from 11th and 12th grade historically underrepresented students of color who are not participating specifically to the barrier and so you see the yellow and the blue are separated if I race I'll explain why also because I get questions about that so the reason why why in Asian students for this specific chart for CHS are together is because those two groups are the highest participating groups
069of CHS with ap to make that clear so the other groups that you're seeing for students of color is what who are historically underrepresented which at CHS is black and latinx students just so that way you understand why those are differentiated so you see that the highest barrier is adult encouragement followed very closely behind the welcome barrier so don't encouragement and I say this to all of the teams that I talk to is like don't be upset if you feel like oh my gosh they don't think they're a student like adults in the school that we can't talk to because that's not necessarily the case dog encouragement can include anything regarding a student's own personal experience with encouragement and so what I always name is that's why the importance of those Insight cards where students
070are able to name who a trusted adult is or study skills adult is is really important and especially working in tandem with the counselors also I have seen inside cards where a student doesn't name any adult as a trusted adult or a study skills adult and I always make sure that if I see that on an inside card to bring that up to admin to say no I'm noticing the student hasn't put anyone and I think that's worth having a conversation about also at the welcome barrier that goes right into what we've mentioned which is I don't have my friends in those courses I don't really know the teachers in those courses I don't know if I feel like I belong in such a class so I'm good the benefits barrier that you see right
071here on the left um really speaks to not necessarily knowing the full breadth of if I take this class here are some really great things that can happen as a result maybe I now want to take this second AP class next year maybe that's my only because I take or that if I score like get a four on this exam I actually could test out in school from this class like this core class I have to take as a freshman general knowledge is just simply thinking I'm not really sure what AP exactly it's going to do for me or what honors is going to do for me or dual credit School access really speaks to the actual system of applying or registering or enrolling into a course so usually when students are saying the school
072access barrier they're just thinking it feels really opaque or am I feel a little overwhelming I'm not really sure what are the streams I need to go into to make this happen for me let's go to the next slide so this is the result of last year's work that I just need to shut off the district team they've worked with and the school team um and I'm going to try to zoom in myself so I can see the picture a little better to give you some context so the blue bars that you're seeing by race and ethnicity to your left here so you see right here this is a snapshot from really this point one year ago of who was enrolled in AP courses the green and this was taken at the end of the
073school year so this is a snapshot from June so the green is white is expected right now that we're in the fall we're going to get a new chart and new data that gives us the exact numbers and the exact percentages in the next month but coming from June this is kind of the before and after if you will of what this looks like so looking at each racial and ethnic group you can over here and you see that every group has had an increase and I want to specifically name that the two groups have the least amount of access at CHS last year in the year before which is the black and African-American students and Hispanic students you see that there is an increase respectively for each of them so we see here this
074is going from 36 to 44 for black African-American students and received for Hispanic latinx students we went from 53 to 57 percent so in totality the amount of students in color who are going to be or should be in classes at CHS this upcoming year and AP went up from 45 to 54 and specifically those numbers here this time last year is 181. this time right now should be 195 students Frank I don't know if you want to add anything to that but I want to give a pause there well I just want to say that I think that's attributed to our AP teachers who have really spoken to our students I think our partnership with you and our counselors work and I will say also that although we are having more students going into
075AP we are not seeing the rigor go down as a matter of fact um in 2023 we had 246 AP Scholars that's more than 20 or 30 more than we had the year before the average for AP Scholars was about 3.9 and now is an average of four so not only are we increasing our AP students we are also increasing our students um uh um average so and and and and the the ones that are doing really well in AP uh you know I have an AP teacher here I'm not going to say but uh we look at supervisors and administrators at our AP scores we we ask our teachers of course to go and look at the data College Board does an incredible um gives credible information to our teachers about what they score
076what their students scored and how they scored I was a former AP teacher and I would look into I taught AP government and AP European History and I would look at exactly what century my kids did better this year than last year multiple choice versus free response the teachers have that but there is no pressure from Administration on teachers about their scores you know looking at the exact number from one year to another what we really want is is that idea of welcoming students into the classroom and and I will say a that although we are proud extremely proud of the number of students that are that that are in our AP program and of course the results that they're getting we are also looking at our last week's uh our last month's um report
077from from Dr Fergus and and we we understand and we've already made uh some talks in The Faculty uh meetings to talk about um some of the student discussions about tokenism and some of the student results from from those specific surveys too but this is a whole picture um and I want to just say that you know we are proud of these numbers but we know we can still continue to increase the numbers by also increasing the environment as well for the students who are taking that that shot and that chance so I just want to say thank you miss Lamb to all of you um into like Frank's Point like rigor does not decrease at all when you have can you provide access providing access does not decrease rigor it actually increases it um
078as a teacher I've always said that a rigorous classroom when there's not a diverse array of lived narratives and experiences and learning styles is um and I think what this is showing is just how PHS let's keep going we've got a few more slides left I want to make sure this so this is also really showing what you just saw in the last slide but just simply for this fall um so these are the again the racial and ethnic um group breakdowns for the percentage of each group that are actually enrolled in AP okay so this was coming from June so there could be some variants um as course enrollments you know finish and I'm just like principal Sanchez mentioned of like Drop period Etc so the goal participation rate last year was 50 and
079so you see that for other five groups passed or surpassed 50 and the black African-American group was almost there at 44 that 13 that you're seeing in the gray means of 13 more students from that student group um have enrolled in the AP class that would have hit the 50 that's what's happening okay um this is a slide and data that I truly can spend a lot of time on but this is showing the top program courses for students of color by the just sheer number of students enrolled to the right the top right over here is from highest proportion the bottom left over here is for first time takers and the bottom right is showing for first-time takers who are only taking one course okay so there's some differentiation for each of those okay
080so having I won't voice over too much I think this is important to always see in terms of what are Trends what are we seeing um and where are there opportunities for growth and I just want to point out that um two years ago when we first found out or first heard about AP African-American studies it was a a program that just basically was coming out of Columbia University I think there were like 12 or 14 schools that we're going to be part of it I I called we call I had a couple other people call um to try to be part of that and it had just started and and we were closed out but um when there was another opportunity for this year to be in the pilot not only were we calling
081they called us College Board actually was very impressed with our numbers our growth and we are now a college board National Record recognition program award-winning district and they came to us because they specifically although we were knocking on their door they specifically wanted our district to be part of this um and so it's incredible and and I want to just thank the board for supporting this as well as Mr Whitaker for taking on this uh program it's it's you know it's and our students who are taking it without AP credit I just want to stress that that as because it's a pilot these students unfortunately will get from us of course we will do that we will give them AP credit for their GPA but they will not receive they will have to take a
082test but this is just a college board rule anytime they pilot an exam they do not give AP credit to to students but ours we have you know nearly 30 kids who want to be part of this and are taking it and we thank Mr Whitaker for doing that part of the training and um and we're really happy about piloting and again this is just because it's a pilot that's that's the reason so I just want to point that out thank you you and let's go to the next slide and this is just before you move forward Mrs Sanchez the piloting program is really wonderful of the African American studies but it certainly won't be a pilot in the South Orange Maplewood School District at Columbia High School we had a teacher who spoke here
083last week at the board meeting Mr Gaines who talked about him teaching African studies here for a number of years and also Columbia winning so many African-American national uh titles that they began to have all of the preliminaries for the state here in our school district and we won nationally four or five three or four times back to back so it won't be a pilot here no that's you're absolutely right I was just saying because it's a college board pilot that they want unfortunately well these students will not get the credit is all I was saying but thank you that's not what I heard thank you all right thank you um so just to show the student growth from so EOS actually worked with CHS back in the 2012-2013 school year so that's why you
084see it going the data going all the way back up to about over 10 years ago now um and so I wanted to show this to just illustrate the growth that you see for each student group and also name a point of growth as you see that for both Black and Hispanic latinx students while their numbers have grown tremendously respectively since 2012 2013 there's still a gap here if I'm looking at my student groups and so that is something that we need to pay special attention to and thinking about with student Outreach and student belonging in the classrooms what that looks like looks like if we can keep going to the next slide and this is just even making it more clear of just the two groups that have the least amount of access to
085see what the data has been since that 2012 13 school year and going into the course requests for this fall right next slide please so this is going to be the spring semester grade report um for new and experienced um AP students so you heard principal Sanchez give some information um regarding a summary of the grades and so I'm actually going to go to the next slide for the sake of time and to kind of give some more information here so what you're seeing is a few different columns here so the total a lot of the 12th grade students for each school year 21-22 you'll see over here then we have number of students passing one or more courses AP courses we're mentioning this is a percentage of students passing one or more course and
086the average course grade now this is coming from the district and wanted to make sure it's noted if a student's taking a class that's past fail this one they will not be included in this data also there is always usually a small number of students where there's not enrollment data immediately available when we get this data state which is why sometimes the numbers do not completely total out um so I just want to make sure that's clear but really The Columns to focus on I want to show you which is the percentages which breaks it down and the course grade averages that we saw so you see that's 92 percent for all 11th and 12th graders and then we have it segmented two for students of color who are first time takers and students of
087color who are experience takers which means they've taken an AP class previously and we see the same two for white and Asian students as well we see high percentage of passing one or more course and you see the course GPA as well and I know people are probably looking and saying I am also seeing that there are some differences here which there are and I often look at for first-time takers experience for GPA with ap um and the passing rate as well and just a note from our pass and fail is not included in this um but I always note this because often when we're talking about this it's often mentioned well what if the majority do not pass which I have heard people say before and that's not the case and more specifically there's
088another slide that we're going to go to if we can hit that next slide there we go this is showing by subject or greater area so the green and blue bars are showing like first time takers and experience takers by GPA by content so that way you can see a even more specific look of just straight up if you're a first time taker if you're an experience taker what some of the averages have been I just want to give some wait time so folks are able to see that oh thank you I appreciate it okay now I want to go to this next slide which is showing from 21 22 to 22 23 which is letter grade distribution for students of color so for first time takers you are going to see the blue bars
089illustrating it by the school year so for first time takers the light blue is for 21.22 this dark blue is for 22.23 who receives an a for this spring semester that we just had now the green bar you're probably wondering what is that this green bar is referencing the letter grade percentage for experience takers okay so this is for students of color who are experience takers who are in the green bars here and first-time takers are represented in these blue columns one thing to note is that if you're looking at the grade distribution which I often am looking at when talking about students entering Advanced courses you see that the vast majority have a a b or c that one thing I did know is that while the amount of students who have a d
090like went down one percentage I did want to take note of like this just because well that's a small number that's six percent like five grades roughly that is something that I just want to see and considering pandemic I know there's context I might not have school-wise but I just want to make sure that that is noted and just reflect as a whole and that this is one as I give you this course letter grade distribution um as well as gpas and Etc that it's really important I meant to name this a little earlier is that this is one part of looking at AP participation and belonging for students and I wanted to make sure it's considered that when we're looking at test scores and quizzes I haven't read the sound of my notes um
091the course grades aren't influenced by the culture and environment of schools and that Claude Steele who is a researcher education researcher they researched the stereotype threat and that students of color are uniquely influenced by racialized Dynamics and cues and how that really responds and ends up being that it can undermine performance by taking over valuable kind of energy when you're in such bases which is why the support systems that exist within a school and the education that resists that exists within a school um is incredibly important for students if we go to the next slide please so I want to go through this kind of quickly but this is just to show a couple of um incoming students from AP are just showing what they're interested in and also seeing that hey they had a
092staff recommendation here are their program interests here are all the mindsets that the student has here are some of the reported barriers and this is a great student who is going to be an AP now I'm going to keep it going this is a quote I'm gonna have to skip some of these for a sake of time but this is a quote from one student that we have from the survey who is a rising senior a senior right now um who was mentioning about their own ability regarding grades and how they felt okay and we're going to skip over a couple slides sorry everyone I just want to make sure it's the sake of time we can answer some questions for you just with this student I just you know it's it's great that we
093share this with our faculty and our staff members these interest cards not not only with their account not only with their counselors but when when you see a card like this and I I know this student this is a student that I you know probably would say hi to two or three times a week during lunch duty or what what have you during the day you read a card like this and you sit with the student then during lunch and you say hey what are you thinking about for next year were you thinking about hey what about this AP class and this student specifically AP music theory or something to that effect based on this interest card we had a great conversation and then to see that student take that class was just awesome just
094to see that that that magic happen um and that to someone you know and I love the idea that the trusted adults you see are two faculty members here you know I know they talk to them too but um that's just uh this ability of doing the surveys and then being able to have that at your at your at your fingertips um whether it's administrators or teachers really makes um some really special moments and the students just like light up when they they know you you know about them so I just want to thank you miss Lamb for that opportunity oh of course and I just want to we'll keep it going I think there's a couple more and I may have just get a couple of them I'm so sorry I'm gonna have to
095skip this Insight Card for time because I do want to make sure um this is also a rising senior or current senior um reason why I made sure these quotes were included is because it's optional students do not have to give a quote if they do not want to um and this is me as a teacher of a student is willing and wants to tell you how they feel or their words you need to listen and pay attention to them so I wanted to make sure those quotes were included but yeah and go right to this next slide just how to provide and what are we doing to provide support for first-time takers and so these are some and this is a non-exhaustive list there is more um of what is really important for students
096I am going to highlight a few of them one is making sure our students are involved like I know there are students right now who are board representatives and I always say students should always be at the Forefront of leading Outreach and being able to have their voices heard with this thinking about student mentors for first-time takers students need students who are really worried about Advanced courses need to be able to have the face time and the actual time to talk to students who have done it before a lot of the interviews I was doing with students I recall going into a I think it was usgo class and talking to a few students and asking them like you know how have you felt like what was your first like few months like and one
097student I think they're a senior this year had mentioned you know I just I was kind of going through it I was afraid to ask folks and I was like would you have would have made it like more fun for you in those first couple months because they're doing great um at the time they visit them they said if I was able to like talk to someone who'd just taken the class before made me feel better about that first Unix that first unit was really getting me that's crucial and that's incredibly important so that's what I'm talking about those student mentors those student-led study groups um I always said first time taker cohort convenience like making a big deal for students who are entering first time in an advanced course like have settings for them
098to talk and convene that builds up that like positive Association and also just a place where they can just talk freely um I always mentioned to schools just always looking at what is the draw policy what is is there an amount of affirmation that students and families get to have and take in terms of transparency and how it goes I always mention this too for first-time takers like being able to receive check in touch points within those first 60 days of school especially in conjunction with the drop policy I know that can look very different based off of the school or the district but it's so important that students are able to have those touch points um this is another which people have opinions about and that's okay it's thinking about homework readers and exam
099retake policies that has been something that's been proven to help students um and that is something that I always mention that people should always be able to have conversations about and the philosophy is behind it and keep going and this is regarding kind of EOS tools period and how they work in conjunction with what is happening already at the school so trusted all conversations you saw on the inside cards faculty can be named this past year I emailed faculty and let them know specifically you were named as a trusted adult you can log into Portal and see who those students are the ability for inside cars to be utilized by trusted adults faculty admin and by the counseling department is huge because that is a lot of information that you can receive that might take
100a lot longer to receive if it's not in an Insight Card for example there are students who put on their Insight cards like oh yeah like sign me up I'm interested in this class sign me up now some schools really do do that they're like yep we'll sign them up others might not do that but the guidance team can have a conversation with that so you're like hey I saw on your Insight Card that you said you were really interested in just being automatically signed up for econ is that still something you want to do do you want me to include anything or do I have a conversation with anyone before you do that or are you good and you see how that can help move the conversation along with students like I said student-led
101recruitment events whether that's like a showcase class visits student panels uh a really nice touch I've seen is family notification letters like mudding families no hey your students took the survey they're interested in taking this course here are some mindsets that were included in that we have some teacher recommendations like really hyping it up and making it like how much for that it is and the opportunity for students to do their thing and show out their intellectual curiosity in their content um and also this last one which has just been being able to hold like Outreach events for first-time students um returning students is huge I always believed as a teacher that families are immediately impactful in students choices and their mindsets and thoughts about tool and classes and so I believe it's really important
102that families have the transparency and all the opportunity to engage and ask questions so that was a little longer than I wanted to go because I know y'all have a meeting but I want to leave it here for any questions that you might have for principal Sanchez and myself and I would do my best to answer when I can and I might have to uh refer to you principal Sanchez if there are any questions thank you so much to you Jessica and to you principal Sanchez our first question will be from board member Wingfield then I saw Bournemouth Espino then Dr telesford and we'll see thank you so much Miss lamb for the presentation and also principal Sanchez um I just wanted to lift a couple of things up from the presentation um and then
103I have a question at the end um so principal Sanchez first and foremost I really appreciate that you interjected and mentioned that um the point about maintaining rigor as we continue to increase enrollment I think that um it's often suggested with initiatives like this where there's an effort to increase underrepresented students in enrollment in advanced courses that um that there is a potential to compromise the rigor or the Integrity of the courses the curriculum itself and I think that initiatives like this prove that that just isn't the case so I appreciate you drawing that that point um I also appreciate you mentioning and sort of crosswalking a little bit with the report that we all heard a couple weeks ago from Dr Fergus I think that that's a really important place for us to um
104to dig into at this point and our partnership with equal opportunity schools because I think that eos's mission around increasing access and enrollment is a really important one and it's also really important that the data showed us tonight that as we increase excuse me as we allocate intentional resources to our underrepresented students our black and latinx students and we create a program and partner with somebody like EOS that is very very unapologetically driven by that mission that we also saw enrollment for our white and Asian students increase as well and so as we are working to support a particular group we're not taking anything away from other groups in the process and I think that's something that I believe Dr Fergus mentioned um and it's important to note that this data proves that to be
105true um but I also appreciate you mentioning the the tokenism and other sort of uh anecdotes that Dr Fergus shared around lack of belonging um in our AP courses because I think that at this point in the partnership with EOS it's a really important piece to dig in on uh because as we continue to increase enrollment for black and latinx students we need to simultaneously ramp up our efforts to understand what they're experiencing from a social emotional standpoint in those classes and I think that many of the anecdotes that were shared in Dr fergus's report were extremely concerning because students are clearly feeling the pressure from initiatives like this to step up and take the challenge and are finding themselves oftentimes in those classes as one of only and often finding that to be a
106really less than positive experience and so a couple of things I wanted to ask about or sort of encourage us to dig into one is the really valuable data that we're Gathering from students in these student Insight cards around trusted adults because I think we've talked for years on this board about the importance of leveraging relationships as a a key indicator of Student Success and I know from my own personal professional work in New York City one of my job responsibilities for a number of years was to head up this partnership with New York City public schools and what we often found when we did we dug into these Insight cards in a massive way is that the the names of trusted adults were actually represented a very small pool and that those names repeated
107themselves over and over and over and over again and so while you may have a faculty of 500 staff members the number of names that showed up on those cards was actually very very small and so I don't have personal information about how that plays out for Columbia High School I saw that play out across about 110 schools in New York City but what I would encourage us to do is to look at that not only to see what how big is our pool of trusted adults but also who are those names that are showing up on these inside cards again and again and again and how can we create a a community of those teachers to come together of a forum a round table for those folks who show up again and again and
108again to share what exactly it is that they do intentionally um and where we need to start digging into where that's not happening because ultimately if we're sending our kids into classrooms with adults who either intentionally or not are not doing those things I think that we are having sort of one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake in terms of many of our efforts I I think the last thing miss Lamb I wanted to just posed to you as our partnership with EOS is maturing is I know that equal opportunity schools back in 2018 19 did a huge huge survey and body of work around um around student belonging and produce the report measuring what matters and I know that some of that showed up in the report at the very
109end as you talked about a couple of just policies and procedures that really help kids experience success but um and I'll send this to my board colleagues and for the public this is available publicly on the Equal Opportunity schools website but as you look at the five indicators of belonging some of them are a lot less technical in nature and so when we talk about what it means to cultivate classrooms that Center culturally relevant teaching that really Center the identities of the students in the classrooms not just the majority of students in the classrooms when we create classroom communities that are where students actually feel comfort asking questions where not only students are in a classroom where the teacher believes they can do well but their peers believe they can do well and then also
110classrooms where teachers are engaging students in really healthy and productive conversations about race those don't show up necessarily in regulations around retake policies right those are to me um bodies of work that I think our district and our high school could probably use some real support and so I think my question for you Jessica is where is eos and its ability to provide some professional development or to perhaps work with some of these trusted adults who are showing up again and again and again to leverage the wisdom and the skill that already exists at CHS to try to create a more coherent and cohesive experience across those AP classrooms so glad you mentioned that um one to answer your question of what you said about staff I completely agree um and I've seen examples of
111that I wanted to make sure I gave you all the data point that I know principal Sanchez you know the total amount of staff within the high school overall 103 staff members were named as trusted adults this past school year 200 um faculty members so 103 total um is what I saw on the cards themselves and I'm glad that you mentioned that because with phase two which is the phase that CHS is in there's actually four workshops that are included in phase two uh last year was hard because of our model with visits and this year I'll be visiting at least four times which is great so what will happen is there's actually four workshops that are directly connected to each of those different tenants that you named so talking about what a student-centered teaching
112what is called culturally relevant teaching looks like what is actually the not just the ethos behind student belonging and courses but what does that look like Beyond just having the student in the class itself because we know that that is not necessarily going to be correlating to student belonging so there's actually four of those workshops which is great because I'll be able to work with principal Sanchez When I visit in terms of if I get to do it by Department if I get to it by admin and then staff and we'll be able to figure that out but that's what I personally enjoy a lot about phase two is that usually phase one is we need to take the survey and kind of get our base down phase two is really about when you have
113students coming into your courses you have to make sure that you are creating the environment to actually allow that and it's not just simply them being there but what are the things at hand in terms of collaboration or student Voice or actually students being able to name and be in a space that feels good and rigorous to them and I just I'm sorry I remember Wingfield I just I just want to say that the the workshops you're describing I hope that all chhs teachers have the opportunity to participate not just AP teachers because the kind of classrooms that you're describing where students feel a sense of belonging feel encouraged to really take on challenges would I think especially connected to what Dr Fergus said would really benefit the experience that we hope to see for
114all students not just in AP classes absolutely and every Workshop or PD session we brought miss lamin or EOS was for the whole staff and that's really important because we have incoming AP teachers right but also um I want to thank also our senior leadership team and Dr Taylor you know uh specifically outside of EOS but it's going to be folded in to the COS we have an equity team that's being formed this year there's a specific things that we're going to be talking about um when we do our Equity walks to look at classrooms that are we'll have students as well as faculty members looking into best practices of of culturally responsive classrooms not just curriculum but the actual room and also just so you know the trusted adult uh data was used outside
115of AP so I I want to thank Mr carrig and and Rocio for working very hard in a sidebar that we hope that you will support for our freshman huddles so even our earliest students when we're looking at our teachers who will be part of the Freshman huddle who'll be part of these programs we the teachers volunteered we also use that data of trusted adults to to see who we want you know who would be best representative of that so a lot of this work is really Beyond AP it's about Columbia and it's about our student environment so I just wanted to point that out uh thank you for the thorough presentation um I appreciate it uh there was one thing that we had asked Dr Taylor from the cni committee that didn't seem to
116be in the presentation which was a accounting of how many children start AP in the school year but do not finish it um so that they might want to you know do they start out but then drop down and um I don't know we had actually reminded you about that and it still wasn't in there so um I'd like to know when we will be getting that information because I think that is important for us to understand yeah that's very important and also Dr Taylor Made Me aware of that so thank you Dr Taylor we have new data coming in the next month which is for the school year because we do know that between the end of school year going into the summer and with drop policy how that can change so I can
117answer your question two ways one for this year as like right now snapshot should be available in a few weeks where we actually do provide nutrition report um I remember speaking to Anthony director of guidance last year and what we're trying to work on is making sure that the date that the attrition report is actually ready actually reflects when the draw policy occurs from last year he noticed like we actually this is still a little behind and not a real snapshot of what it's like post drop policy and Etc so that's something we're working on for this year to make sure it's relevant now with the actual semester reports itself is harder to do honestly because there are students who are taking more than one course so it's multiple grades so the attrition report is
118actually the best way to do kind of a side-by-side comparison um I will also name that the guidance department is also has the most I would say updated information so that way along with the attrition report that we'll have available hopefully by the end of the month for sure of October but to kind of have that alongside with guidance to be able to cross-check and make sure that students from transferring in or transferring out and any draw policy can be accounted for great thank you so I'm we'll be looking for that soon yes I did make that request all right thank you again for the presentation um I guess I have questions like I looked at the many of the the top courses and I saw that most of those courses were at the humanities
119so I'm interested in understanding um what work um are we doing in the high school to increase the numbers of low-income low-income in students of color in the math and sciences so it unfortunately most AP courses are in the humanities right so I just want to point that out for social studies for example the um you know you you I think there's at least nine social studies courses as opposed to how many um math courses we offer so that's just one element but to to get to it um computer science is something that we're really focusing on um as a course to increase in our stem numbers in addition to that we are making some changes in our science program to have students feel more comfortable in joining the AP for example AP Chemistry we're
120asking students to actually a lot of times the students came back to us letting us know that they had no um experience in chemistry before that say they would take AP Chemistry and then they felt that their scores would be low and many high schools you would take chemistry honors first and then AP Chemistry so we kind of started that as an aspect to an idea of a track that if we changed some of the honors courses that go not that you have to take honors but some of the pathways before you take an AP right now we're also considering to to add AP pre-calculus it's a brand new course that college board is is offering it started this year we didn't sign up the first year we wanted to see what it looked like
121because AP Physics one was something that college board had offered about I would say 10 years ago and they would say it was in lieu of physics honors and the scores were were very low across the state of New Jersey and across the country so um right now our stem supervisor is looking at kind of like revamping the the ages that students take some of these science courses so predominantly it was biology then they would take physics and then they would take chemistry but it wasn't like physics first I think sometimes you might see some school districts do a physics first but no math we weren't offering that we were offering physics but with a math that they would really need to be like in um to take Algebra 2 and that might not be
122where they were when they came here so we noticed that a couple years ago when I got here and our new stem Supervisor has started that change this year so I think with that you'll start to see more AP science classes we're really pushing as you know last year we created a a not created but really in reinvigorated our career pathway for um TV and studio and video and our goal is to do the same with computer science this year so now we'll have four years of a computer science program students can take an intro course their first year or if they're very competent and can do it over the summer um they can go to AP Computer Science principles as a freshman or AP Computer Science a as a sophomore and then we have
123already a next class after that which will be cyber security so with we have that's one of the goals that we're doing um something I think that is important is that we've been blessed with a very uh supportive HR uh Department we've hired more teachers of color in the past two or three years at Columbia High School and as we do that we have more AP teachers of color our AP Computer Science is a great example of that incredible scores and not just of color but also gender is something that we focus on there as well so those are things that we look at but I do think that unfortunately when you see the extra numbers is because there's so much more Humanities courses that are offered by the college board so that's kind of
124that produces that slam yeah I would also add to what you were your question and an answer to that is I went back to look at the courses that had the highest proportion and the most popular and on the most basic level typically yes Humanities do offer more sections but also I there are I've seen the stat recently of just black latinx students are grossly underestimally underestimated in terms of going into the math and sciences and there's many studies that go into why um one big thing is just and I think Frank you're talking about how you're kind of trying to rectify in terms of courses and kind of their sequences is often math sometimes science as well but math in particular um if there has been tracking if there's been anything in middle school
125that kind of can section students off by math can have Gravely um not really great results for black and latinx students um because it just becomes much more difficult to get into an advanced math course if it's had such a rigid structure which I have seen at many other schools and have had to have conversations about you can't tell me that black and latinx students don't like math and that's the reason why they're not in there because we know that's not the case so interesting thing about CHS is that for the Sciences so AP Bio AP Chemistry AP environmental science and AP Physics one um two out of those four classes so the AP Chemistry and environmental science are two of the five courses that have the highest proportion of students of color both of
126them are 45 AP Bio is right underneath that was 43 the lowest for the Sciences currently is AP Physics 1 algebra based at 30 percent now with math and computer science so science there is there is a representation that is not translating right now to math and computer science so the highest um representation of students of color in math in computer science currently is AP stats at 32 percent the lowest is AP Calculus a b with 19 AP Calculus BC AP Computer Science a and AP Computer Science principles are all in the 20 respect to weight 23 27 and 26 so I think that what you're saying principal Sanchez I keep saying Frankie and principal Sanchez um is important in terms of thinking of how curriculum and structuring and that goes also into outside the
127high school into the entire District of looking how that's been because that is something that historically happened in many districts which then of course is the reason why you're seeing a lot less representation of black latinx students in math and computer science so I'm glad CHS is not having that in Sciences but in math and computer science that's incredibly important especially considering if students want to get into fields that are heavy math and sciences and you're going to college that's a lot of other core contents that you have to take on to get to school and the financial implications I can have for students as well absolutely with computer science doc tell us where I just want you to know we we work with soms um our our computer our robotics team we want them
128to to actually work at the high school so we we offer them our lab so um and specifically they have a Girls Club as well like a specifically girls team and that's something we really want to push so that those students feel comfortable at Columbia High School they come back to Columbia High School and we push that part of our curriculum too so it's it's been a very fruitful partnership with Psalms yeah board member Duvall Wilson okay hi thanks for this great presentation so I want to know um if the supports that are listed on slides 29 and 30 which of those if not all of those are being implemented in the school or plan to be implemented in the school and one of the things I'm zeroing in most on is the Family Outreach
129and supports as we just saw that a quarter of students are inspired to take AP because of their communication with their families and 55 percent of students said that they did not take an AP class because of adult supports it was not delineated between teachers and staff and parents but we could assume that parents are part of that 55 reasoning so I'd like to know which of the items on those slides or things that the district is doing and or plans to do in the future thank you yeah so I have uh those slides in front of me they're not on there but I just want you to know the trusted adult conversations are happening how we use our survey lists is that the slide we're talking about right is is happening as well student-led
130recruitment events happen every year as well the family notification letter signed by trusted adults we have not done yet and the specifically on the next slide where it says student receiving a check-in is is happening next week so that's for something new that we're doing specifically this year um we don't have um summer camp we we've done for the past two years based on student interest so just that's the first bullet right on the next slide some classes though this year didn't run just because we didn't have enough students but we did offer it for free and so we think uh curriculum and instruction for that we do have when it says AP honor stool student ambassadors we have something we call AP core where we have students kind of running a um what's it
131called a study groups Miss Hicks facilitates that student mentors for first time takers one of the things that we really pushed for this year this is happening is that we have um Miss Hicks supervising as you know she's one of our Mac counselors but she's also this year now running National Honor Society and so the National Honor Society meetings were just held for the first time last week and these are the things that they're talking about and to get service hours specifically student-led study groups again we we mentioned this one of the things that I was mentioning before when we talked about having more uh teachers of color teaching AP classes what we then see too is what we really want to encourage is more Tas uh Sparta I mean smart excuse me I was
132just thinking my daughter has it she's a TA this year it's something I've never seen before before coming here but my daughter has one she's a TA as well Columbia High School has a real Rich tradition of Tas teacher assistants so a teacher so a student has taken AP US History to their senior and they're instead of going to study hall they're going to help one of their their former teachers as a TA and and what that does is I don't know if any of our students here have had classes with Tas our student reps ASA or Gwen can kind of talk about that it it really I when I observe classes I love it it's to see that type of um relationship and it would be very helpful if we see more students of
133color as Tas and I think that's where Miss Hicks has been very important in leading that so yes we have student-led study groups I just want to point that out uh first time taker cohort convenings we have not had that yet we have looked at our drop policy and yes we have made changes to our drop policy and then student receiving a check-in touch Point within the first 60 days we're actually doing at the first 30 days so I just wanted to point that we have not done a homework or redo exam retake policy we also want to add um so I'll be visiting at least four times this year so one of the things that I will be doing while I'm there um is continuing to talk to staff and students and see like
134what are the systems that we currently have what can actually be done and with your specifically the family um letters EOS we actually do have templates that schools can customize to their liking to help take the lift off if there's a kind of a sense of oh my goodness I need to create this ladder and et cetera we do have templates so that way it's easier um for admin and staff to use them uh just one quick thank you for that that was great and then specific first time taker Family Outreach event that was the only one you missed because I was keeping track so just curious is that yeah that was on the second page no we have not had a a specific family specific first-time Family Outreach event yeah yeah but I think
135that sounds yeah we can definitely work on that and do that thank you Partners who have done similar work and know some other PDS where schools have done that where they've always been gracious in Sharing what that's look like their financial Logistics to make that happen yeah and just so uh we did do that with students though last year we had um uh panels and we made available students to come uh in the black box theater to talk to students about AP Club but we didn't do it with parents ready to have where was this held black spot the black box theater yes oh I thought the school was closed okay yeah no during during the school year during the school during the school day actually I just have one quick question and then um
136because I haven't had to ask questions um so side 20 has showed the percentage of 11th and 12th grade students of color and low-income students who passed one or more courses decreased from the 2021-2020 school year from uh the percentage in 2021-22 to 22-23 do you have any insight as to why we saw a decline amongst and it was for both the first time takers and the experienced takers um inside 20 I believe what what year was the oh it's slide 22 for seeing the percentage Oh no you're fine just yeah that's the percentage of students passing one or more I'm saying what year was the the high 2020 21 22 for first time takers students of color and low-income students it was 92 percent in 21 22 and then it was 77 in 22.23.
137can I chime in okay I think I heard the answer from out there as well I think that the number of takers grew significantly is that what because in parentheses there are the right yeah I I could look into that too if because what we do if we look at the AP score specifically sometimes the they're um their statistics or data might be that they'll tell us how many uh students have two tests how many students have three tests and so what I have seen sometimes in different years is if we see the percentage of students going from two tests to three let's just say on average right two tests to three tests the the score might go down because obviously they still have two weeks to have let's say three tests as opposed to
138two they're still 14 days to study right and so what you might see is a decrease in that so although what you're saying is we see a decrease of passing what we don't see is how many times is it does it say that you're taking one test one or more one or more so I would have to do is I just have to look in the the College Board data that that might be revealed in there what we do see by the way too just Nationwide um the the peak of test scores was 2020 um and perhaps because students took it at home that year I don't know uh but you know in obviously in May of 2020 um students were not in school and they and college board tried to make a hybrid exam
139um if you could imagine um tests when they make a college board test it takes like a three-year process of field questions and things like that that go into it they had to create a test that year that only went to two-thirds of the curriculum um and so they were kind of doing it you know flying the plane landing what's it called Landing the plane as they're building the plane or whatever it is um and so that was the year of the highest test scores probably in the last decade so um we'll we always take 2020 and yeah that's what I'm saying yeah 21. so I have to just look into that Madam president we'll get the answer to that for you and put in an upcoming Friday packet thank you for that question no
140thank you so much and what's the slide number again slide number two um 22 right now yeah 22. you're okay and the only thing I was gonna add is um it has been interesting because I see this for every partner school and District I have um and what I have seen for quite a few for 21 22 22 23 is still this where I've asked them personally I was like I only have like my inferences I can give versus School context and if people have continued to name that that year um with coven and just kind of trying to get things back to their kind of feeling of being on track can look a little different so I don't want to put anything out there of that but um it's been interesting to hear different
141schools and how they've had to look at that data I would just say um just one quick glance at it in that second row for a number of students passing one or more course um the number of first-time takers definitely went up significantly that might impact why the percentage of those of those passing went down because of course as we wanted we expanded the universe but we'll give it more of a look as well thank you okay one more question and then um okay well let's let uh board member about the money if you have a question and then okay all right so I did have a question about the the programs that the the school is using but I guess you did get that list can we have I guess some participation rates not
142like right now but is that something that you can start recording so that we can understand how many students are actually participating in those programs and I guess what can we do to if numbers are lower see how well we're doing with those programs yes so things like student mentors and the check-ins how many students are participating in those programs so my questions about the uh the student cards that you have for you know for display here you have a couple of cards that are for the students so my question is do you have one for every student who in the high school every student that participated in the survey we saw like 59 of students took the survey right so there's a significant portion of students who did not take the survey um an
143Insight Card can be generated now the difference that you will see though is that if a student didn't take the survey what you'll only see is what was really generated by The District's providing data so for example a star reading score or GPA or if they had a teacher recommendation even if they didn't take the survey like that can appear however all the other information of like if they had if they took the survey I trusted it at all or if they didn't list and trusted at all or their course interest isn't present so everyone who takes the survey you get an Insight Card and that's populated and if you did not take the survey you can still get a card generated for you it's just not going to contain all of that information because
144you know so so I I guess my recommendation would do sorry my other thing is it did not take the survey at all and like it was because a parent did not want them to that will never be generated as an Insight Card just to the caveat to add so I I mean I would assume that our goal is to have a hundred percent of the kids have a card because I mean this is a great card because in one snapshot you can yeah I mean without even knowing who these people are and by reading this card I can say who is more inclined towards one you know whatever stem Humanities you know want to take AP don't want to take AP trust Etc so I think this is a this would be very desirable
145for every student to have one but I don't know how to do that that's a different problem I mean that's where you know the experts come in but it would be fantastic to have one for every student not just people entering you know uh they wanting to take AP and only 59 uh obviously there are you know if parents say don't take it you know that's a different thing I I I I would assume that would be a good uh goal to kind of strive for no absolutely it's it's about you know we we have to balance instructional time and what we try to do is we do find this to be very valuable um unfortunately I believe that whatever week we set aside for it uh there was an issue I don't remember what
146it was uh but we we like to do it um in a class like everybody in English class does this today right and that's and that's the goal um and so this year we we plan to um do it in a specific class we we worry about survey fatigue and that's why we've said hey we're only doing two surveys a year it is eos and then our sky or NJ sky or our our climate and and culture survey at the end and that's and that's important for us so yes um and I will say to to miss Lamb's Point um those students who had you know very high test scores and who met a certain criteria even though they didn't do the survey but they demonstrated AP uh potential that's what we call it right
147AP potential uh they we we still use that data provided we just didn't know what their where um their hurdles were that the card provides okay thank you both so much we really appreciate your time miss Lamb and thank you so much principal Sanchez have a good night bye thank you all appreciate it thank you thank you thank you very much oh go ahead nope no worries I have one more presentation just joking um just joking no thank you board members for your for your um for your patience we know it's a very important topic um and next we have um that concludes my report we have Mr Burnside we may have a few business administrators reports good evening I'll start off with the construction update um for the South Mountain Elementary and South Mountain
148Annex schools uh the contractor is completing the punch list and the new boiler at the South Mountain Elementary school is going to start up tomorrow and then the new boiler for the annex is scheduled to start up on October 13th at the Marshall School the steel has been erected and they're currently installing a second floor decking and roof deck the masonry wall installation has begun and they will begin installing roof drains next week I have Montrose that's still scheduled for summer of 2024 and at the Columbia High School the demolition in the b-wing is completed the rough-in of electrical and piping for the new b-wing science labs is underway and the demolition in the pool area has begun this week and tonight we have the award for the Maplewood Middle School and South Orange Middle
149School Construction and that's going to be for Bennett Construction Company that's all I have remember Eckert um thank you Mr Burnside um I just had a couple of questions regarding Transportation because you didn't cover any of that I'm just curious when the board can expect to see a capacity report that includes how many buses the cheered routes breakdown of students on each bus total number of routes I know that obviously it's a moving Target as you have made many many improvements although I know there are still a couple that still need ironing out but I just think knowing when we'll get that would be helpful and then um I think one thing that I would just love to understand not for tonight but for the future is you know we did you all did so
150much work going to the board of school estimates to get um you know the funds to to increase Transportation I would just like to understand how we plan to track and attribute Transportation costs based on III School assignments just so that we can better understand the financial impact of transporting students as part of the initiative I know as I understand it we are now also transporting students that aren't part of III but the assumptions made on their the grades that they're in could help kind of parse all of that out I just think that would be important for the board and also the community to see at some point so and Dr Taylor you feel free to disagree I think October 15th would probably be the best day to start taking that snapshot in time
151and start looking at the capacity reports as you know we're still adding children every day and I think hopefully by then it'll settle down what was the number you said you're at now yeah we're right now at 487 extra students put things in perspective that's an entire school where nobody walks that's a lot of kids to transport and yeah yeah I would just add for the Triple lie question um so part of part of when I saw that question part of my thought process is that usually the hours group generates their end of year report early spring where it has so so much so much specific data around kids distance and all those things that would help us to give you a better answer than we probably could with just the data that we have
152currently we can give you an estimate based on where we are now but a check-in in the spring when that report is complete or requested that report is done earlier they they hold the report because they're still adding kids all year long now and I appreciate that I think that would be more of like a longer term solution I wouldn't obviously expect it tonight tomorrow there's so much going on with it but I think because I know that data is going to be coming from many different sources right elves group has a ton of that um and then you know thinking about how we triangulate the data from PowerSchool versus trans you know I'm certainly not the expert in that but I think as we can as II continues we continue to add more students
153and also continue to transport more students I think it was like to really understand the financial implications of what you know Senate where we're sending students and you know how much money we are also asking our taxpayers to to 100 I I think that's a great a great planning tool especially when we're year over year right we keep on pushing kids out the 12th grade and whoever they're backfilled with will be possibly new will not possibly they'll be triple light students who may require Transportation so we're definitely it's definitely a good idea um and I just want to say adding on to that thank you Regina I agree um we should have a way to track that in-house so that we're not depending on our outside Consultants who who knows how long we'll have them
154I don't know um also I'm just curious you said Bennett construction is um being awarded MMS or or middle school I'm just curious did that come in at budget under budget how are we doing on the budget so the base bid was 20 million 967 thousand dollars and the budget Target number was 21 million three hundred fifty thousand so it was under by 383 thousand dollars which allowed us to award the alternate for five hundred thousand board member right um yeah in regard to Transportation has me all twisted because if we still had our bus drivers and our bus fleet we probably wouldn't be experiencing the lateness that we're experiencing every day nothing has really changed in terms of what we're doing to transport our students but the thing that's curious to me is when
155you brought up the fact about um uh the financial uh implications um I was wondering how our Board of school estimate even got involved in our busing situation because it's an expense item not a capital item and I'm also trying to figure out between um Rocio and the superintendent who said I was told that that the the the the teachers union negotiated the dismissal of the bus drivers and you said that it was it was not but I know that the the drivers are an expense item so here we are making bad decisions bad mistakes and I'm totally confused I left the board I came back and I'm looking at this and uh the financial implications the series and look we're paying a whole lot for this failure because that's what it is and I
156can't under these children listening to the parents talk about their children first experience on buses first experience in the school it's a terrible thing I'm just totally confused especially numbing the situation of buses and what's happening in the country that we would get rid of a perfectly good Fleet of buses and excellent drivers who have driven us for years and decades without a hint of a problem and if they were they were taken care of this is egregious and we're sitting here like it's nothing the house is on fire and we're asking if we smell smoke and I'm tired of making that analogy we have to do something more to keep our number eight oh okay um border I don't know who raising in first board remember about the money and then and I need
157to seriously push back against this this diatribe okay I mean this is we are transporting 500 odd children more than what we did last year this is a success story this is not a failure story yes there are a couple of bus routes that are not doing well and we've added new bus routes I don't understand you cannot have it's like saying you know what we've added a brand new high school and on first day everything is working fine it's not going to happen that's I mean let's be realistic about what's happening here it is not like we have infinite number of people sitting analysts sitting out there building spreadsheets in the transportation department it's like one person why don't we increase that you know maybe we should allocate some more money and hire three
158more people there let's do that so you know you got to admit when the when there's a success it's fantastic we should applaud that there are 500 more kids getting buzzing now than they did last year and hiccups sure I'm not denying that there are there are Becomes Of course guaranteed there are buses that have never gone on time for the last 10 days and we should fix that but saying that the whole thing is a failure is like that's I mean that's just ridiculous I need to push back a little over and uh there has been a a very it's very upsetting to hear how things have gone and we all understand that things take time and nobody is expecting for the first day to be that all children are there but for it
159to be now day 20 what do we have to 15 17 20 and we still have buses that are not getting there on time getting there to and from on time is and parents work being you know and losing we're losing children you know like we've lost a few children um let's be honest here this is not gone as as well as we should and we need to acknowledge that and and and apologize for the mistakes and we need to hold the administration accountable for what has occurred and as I've mentioned I believe that we need to moving forward we know that transportation is going to be a problem every year at the beginning of the year we're going to get a lot of phone calls to only have three there are three staff members
160not one in transportation but only have three trans staff members when we know that this is an issue we need to make sure the administration should be putting more people down there on a daily basis until we until the rush happens we do that for registration we need to start doing it for transportation and it's got to be a whole a whole a hands on deck approach because right now this isn't good I don't know how anyone could sit up here and say that this is good this has not been good and um and I and I think we owe an apology to the people who have suffered I mean I relied on the bus with my child for years and years and years and I couldn't if this was the situation that was happening
161I wouldn't have been able to work in our own District I would have been late every day for school because of it so I I do think we need to make sure that we are doing better and hold we don't I think people need to realize one other thing one other point I want to make the Board of Ed doesn't control busing we don't control like who makes the roots we don't control who a lot of the parts of it and I'm not saying we're not owning it I'm I'm owning it but what I'm saying is we don't control that that is on the administration we're not making routes we're not doing that we're not involved in the honest to God day-to-day operation but what we can do and what we should be doing and
162what I will say that I I commend us for doing is being as honest as we can with the people about what's going on and pushing back against the administration when it is failed and I will say that I appreciate that you know president Whit letter and other members have really pushed back so I I just want to draw too much attention but at the same time this is not an appropriate forum for some of those comments that were made particularly about the administration there's a separate forum for that an executive session and so I'd ask everybody to not go into that area going forward for the rest of the meeting it's just not appropriate to have a discussion like that out here if we want to talk about Personnel there's an easy Pathway to
163go about doing that but this is not the area to do it in right and I would I always wanted to make the point that we cannot make any sort of qualified statements about bus routes unless we're looking at total number of bus routes how many of them are on time how many of them are late and then we can say something about that um if you're just if we're going to look at one or two and then say that's what is success or failure then we're missing the we're missing the forest for the trees and then what we as a board should be doing is when the administration puts up um people for I guess appointments to help out with Transportation then we should be in support of them um that is probably what
164we as a board owned and when we don't support the administration when they're trying to do that then we own any sort of hiccups that we see with the transportation um questions for Mr Burnside not statements from board members but um my question for Mr Burnside so one thing that we discussed in fft was regarding the transportation department scheduling time with the bus drivers to make sure that they're acquainted with our staff that they understand what the standard of expectations are I know that that meeting was not able to occur prior to the start of the school year can you confirm that we do now have a meeting on the books for our bus drivers to meet with the transportation department no I can't confirm that I don't think it's been scheduled yet okay um
165and then the second question I have is uh guarding the status of the federal audit so we're still getting requests for more documentation I believe it was just last Thursday I just sent four more documents it's still in process are there any more questions for Mr Burnside okay seeing no further questions um we will now move on to the board president update so the board would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations once more to ASA Glassman on being sworn in as a student representative for the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education we're excited to collaborate closely with both ASA and Gwyneth to create a meaningful and positive impact in the lives of our students so thank you both for being here I know it's late so if you do have to leave at any point
166feel free to to do so um this month our schools are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month a time to recognize and appreciate the rich culture and traditions of the Hispanic Community the South Orange and Maplewood school district has witnessed a growth in our Hispanic student population over the past several years which is truly exciting the board is fully committed to supporting the needs of this community through our policy initiatives the board is encouraged by the work of the district's access and Equity team and recognizing that our diverse Community should be celebrated each day and not just within a designated month this team has developed resources that help our Educators bring culture stories and perspective divs into the classroom throughout the year so thank you for that next week is National band Book Week a week that
167raises awareness about the importance of intellectual freedom and the right to access diverse literary materials this evening the board will vote on adopting a resolution that reaffirms the board and District's commitment to upholding every student's right to read this resolution aligns with the advocacy efforts of the New Jersey School Board Association to enshine every student's right to read and our official policies through the delegate assembly we wholeheartedly understand the ongoing delays in our bus services and we share the frustration that both families and students are experiencing the board has encouraged the district to provide urgent And Timely Communications to parents regarding Solutions and for Swift resolutions of the issues the district sent out an email today that the transportation department will look through the week will work through the weekend to make the needed adjustments
168to the affected routes the board is committed to ensuring that all students arrive and depart from school on time and we are hopeful that the forthcoming changes will achieve this outcome this evening the board with the exception of board member malisvena due to her conflict will vote on establishing a Fergus implementation committee during our special board meeting on September 18th we received Dr fergus's final recommendations from his Equity audit report totaling 23 initiatives that the district must Implement by August 2026. this represents a significant undertaking and the board is committed to taking the initial steps towards accountability for this important work the Fergus implementation committee composed of the entire board will play a crucial role in overseeing The District's adherence to the BPW settlement during the three-year monitoring phase Dr fergus's recommendations serve as the
169foundation for Building Systems Support structures and behavioral changes that should have improved the learning experiences and academic outcomes of our students of color and over time helped to narrow the achievement Gap that has persisted within the district for far too long this will be a collective effort that will take the full engagement of every stakeholder in the district and it starts at the top with the board I hope that the board will vote in unanimously to support the formation of this committee please allow me now to read the board president's statement for the record 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
170a 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 Administration and the superintendent to assure that members fully understand the matter after the committee discusses the matter is it is then shared with the other board members for consideration only then is it placed on the agenda for board discussion and action at a public meeting you will now begin our first hearing of individuals and delegates this evening thank you for coming in person and dialing in by phone the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education certainly respects
171they've taken the time out of your 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 and it will be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible each individual will be given three minutes to speak please do your best to stay within the time afforded to you the first public comment period is limited to one hour and the second public comment period is limited to 30 minutes all inputs share 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
172the record thank you so Rocio Lopez hello uh hello how are you uh Rocio Lopez so mayor president AP Spanish teacher and many other things right um I'm here today for I wasn't going to talk about Transportation but I might after what I hear because I gotta say if the board members were told that we negotiated that I think somebody's lying and if not they wouldn't be you know a case in perk that went all the way to perk and all the documents that are there but hey I don't know what they tell you that's you know I can only tell you what I know uh so Maya will never negotiate any of their members out I want to say that clearly and if I need to show my t-shirt I still have the hope
173that we're going to bring back our transportation because it's a mess it's a mess you're losing kids everywhere but it's freaking out kids even having accidents in the in the buses because they're too long I mean the kind of things I heard is horrible and you know the worst part I cannot call anybody to see what's going on how can we help we have pride so many people has Pride and you're taking us for granted you all are taking us for granted and I'm going to tell you why and this is what I was coming to talk like a week two weeks ago Dr Fergus came here to make a presentation and when I came into the room they told me I couldn't sit down in those chairs because they were reserved look how I
174feel I'm about to tear I come to every board meeting I represent the the largest stakeholder that are with the kids and I didn't have a seat research for Somaya I saw the president of Oscar and you talk about access and equity I don't know who made that decision but I was not invited by central office I was invited actually by James Davies that told me we're gonna have this and I say don't worry you know I go to Every board meeting and you know I'm not lying I'm here every board meeting except when I'm in Spain even in my way to Spain I stopped here so that's what I'm gonna say stop listening to the people that are telling you Outsource bring cheaper things that are not working the schools are beautiful we're giving
175all these things is not true things are not true stop drinking the Kool-Aid we are the people one-on-one with the kids every time we are the ones that tell you the truth where they have ones that suffer with the kids when we're missing something we are the ones that clean our classrooms when they're dirty and we take pride of it and when you don't know many of the deals and the issues that are happening in the district is because we're taking them over and we're fixing it what is the only thing that has been working when you walk in a room and the teacher is teaching that said walk out and you see that nothing else works the way it's supposed to work so I don't want to get upset but what happened two weeks
176ago it's embarrassing so may I was the only people that was not invited for something so important and the disparity where Educators we're Educators for God's sake we're educators thank you Rocio why Patterson it's like why period conversion okay Tara abedin shine I don't know how to work is it on okay um I'm Tara abenshine I'm a Clinton mom we're new to the school we have a kid in kindergarten as well as a first a kid who's in his first year at Montrose so a Pre-K student we live near Montrose but we are roughly two miles away from Clinton so we're a busing family which we are very grateful for both my husband and I work and my husband is disabled so the sort of household structure cannot flourish without a reliable morning routine we're
177on the gray bus route and are the fourth stop among I don't know I want to guess 15 to 20 stops I don't I don't know that for sure today was the 15th day of school so in theory we've had 15 days of school 15 bus rides home and 15 bus rides to school one of those of those 15 trips not a single one have the kids arrived on time and to hear you say that that's a success is disgusting my kid they're arriving 20 minutes late at a minimum and some days this Tuesday included over they were in over an hour late to school this does not affect just bussing kids teachers are holding instruction while they wait for the buses to arrive therefore making this a problem for all kids we know the
178start of school is an adjustment we know this takes a bit for the bus to become reliable but we're three weeks in there's no positive trend indicating a potential end in sight one instance I'd like to share this happened last week my child was dropped off on an entirely different road than where his bus stop is we couldn't see where the bus was going we didn't know he was dropped off the only reason I knew was because I got a call from someone to tell me that my kid was home the bus had never arrived I was with another adult we had to chase the bus down to get to the other child that should have gotten off the bus with my kid not a success I also want to call out that this is
179the same day that the bus was seemingly lost children were on the bus for 90 minutes parents towards the end of the route had no idea where their kids were we have no way to contact the driver in an emergency the driver has no way to contact us in an emergency nor the aid that rides the bus and because the bus had departed Clinton the school was not responsible and can give us an update it was really scary and quite frankly dangerous not a success we have had two mornings where the bus hasn't shown up at all leaving families to scramble to get their kids to school families are busy I mean many of you are parents you know how it works you know how crazy the morning routines are like I said we need
180structure to flourish and you're taking that away from us for you to say this is a success it's just disgusting you're hurting Families Our Lives exist outside of the seemingly endless bus drama so my requests are as follows we need clear communication how can families be made aware of delays how we can't keep standing at bus stops for over 30 minutes in the morning and again in the evening my husband is disabled we just can't do this we need more efficient and timely routes get the buses to school safely and on time I grew up on a bus it wasn't a problem I don't understand so my question to you today is what is actually needed in order to get our kids to school safely and on time that's it thank you thank you the
181next person up is Jeffrey Bennett I had a prepared speech but I'd also like to address the board members as whose or have displayed a lot of indifference to the problems that people are going through first board members have been criticizing superintendents for the 12 years I've been observing this board I'm including criticizing superintendents for things that are totally beyond their control so if you say that a superintendent's conduct is unacceptable in something or that he should apologize it's par for the course and it's happened before um we do have problems with buses being late those are very significant they're unacceptable but there are also problems which aren't exactly lateness but it should also be addressed like some kids are on buses for literally an hour each morning and afternoon um some kids are picked
182up at 7am that's not acceptable um you also have kids who are just below the distance threshold who aren't bust at all and their parents might be under a lot of stress um there are also messes here which are directly related to the transportation department for instance like we have a lot of reports of bus drivers not being given routes my route has been on time this year but we did have one day with us up and the bus was 20 minutes late because the bus driver wasn't given a route um there's also no communication that's also a direct Transportation problem we've been told that you know almost 500 more kids are riding buses this year um as if that's overwhelming but we should bear in mind that last year the buses had over 500
183empty seats and we've added 11 at least 11 new buses which is the capacity for over a thousand students um there are cars it's causes here which are underlying like we do have a hard job versatrans does make Roots like it's all over their website that they can make Roots but sometimes they have a problem because the roots they can make have to be very inefficient because of how the triple I assigned students presentations on the trip alive have always emphasized the home to school distance which is important but what also matters in terms of busing is not how far kids are from their school but how far they are from each other I.E kids going to the same school think about it it's easier to Bus kids who are two to three miles from
184a school but clustered near each other like the old Marshall Bolden process um then it is kids who might only be a mile and a half away but who are north south east and west from the school hence Roots must be long and kids are only a mile and a half from a school might end up with four miles of bus riding which can take an hour um it also matters isn't just the rioters but how many stops there are and when kids are at low density but going to the same school you can't consolidate stops and you're forced to have a lot of stops and might just have a single child on the triple I placements also create a tremendous number of Transportation dyads since you every school has kids going there from every
185single neighborhood using last year's kindergarten placement data I could see that it's 20 possible dyads of the five schools we had kids traveling 19 of them hence you have to do things like Montrose and West Maple and kids who are going to Clinton are on the same bus even though Montrose and Western Maplewood are not near each other we would have even more Transportation diets this year now that Bolden has a kindergarten in this the Board of Ed has made its share of mistakes you guys Outsource the rest of our transportation department which is what other large Suburban districts don't do they have a mixture of in-district and outsourced Transportation also I don't think the board did due diligence with Pre-K busing and there may be very large resources going to that we've been told
186that the district added 11 buses but we don't know how many of those are for K5 um I think that Boe should do some due diligence on that um I also think that the board has allowed the superintendent to blame this on bus touring which is not really fair because the schools that start at 758 are also late it's also not really fair to blame this on a new bus company because Bel Air buses which we've used for a few years are also often late um anyway in looking at the underlying cause of the busing difficult so I ask you to look at our triple I placement pattern see if you can reduce the number of dyads thank you Jeffrey thank you so much the next person that we have up is Sarah knishfisky foreign
187evski and I live in South Orange I'm a first generation immigrant and so is my husband we love the Soma Community I grew up in a working middle class neighborhood and one of the few ESL was called ESL back then kids in my school and the only one who spoke my first language I did not speak in school for my first year and was held back a year in first grade however I formed many strong friendships that carried over from my neighborhood to my bus to my school slowly my anxieties melted away in the school of Fab and the social fabric allowed me to become confident and overcome my fear of speaking English I loved my growing up experience and I would not change a thing I was a shy kid what if I had
188been assigned to school that was nowhere that where no one was from my neighborhood and put on a bus with kids I did not know and that bus was unreliable and stressful and my parents weren't able to drive me to school would I have formed those bonds would I have overcome my fear of speaking my immigrant immigrant parents working long hours would not have complained and I could have ended up on a different track unfortunately stories like these happen in Soma with many different types of families but they're underreported by the people who are most affected we moved to Soma a year ago a place known for its strong community that tackles inequality head-on which really resonated with us today we heard about some amazing strides being taken in Columbia High School with passionate teachers
189and education administrators to help students of all backgrounds feel welcome part of a community and encouraged which results in them excelling academically through the III our daughter Hannah was placed into Clinton We Adore Clinton's teachers staff and families however Hannah is the only first grader in our neighborhood to go to Clinton she has no commuting friends in her grade no school friends in our neighborhood and we her parents have no backup carpool no neighbors to check in with about first grade questions this year a year later we were fortunate to receive a bus however the bus has been unreliable and takes 45 to 90 minutes it's scheduled to pick us up between either 7 13 or 7 23 we don't even know what time meanwhile the school across the street which also is our bus
190stop Marshall starts at 8 45. perhaps this early bus boarding start time is preferable to some families but our family has two younger kids at home at this time a later work day and as a result of this has trouble making it to the bus by 7 23 or 7 13. for a 758 school start time on behalf of the Soma Community for all backgrounds we as parents have compiled two requests for Dr Taylor and the Boe better communication as you work through this and better in a better commuting situation for the com for first for the communication part that if a bus is going to be more than five minutes late an administrator emails families within 15 minutes to let us know that the bus is late a weekly and second a weekly Transportation
191report listing reported issues and how they're being addressed um two shorter more efficient bus routes the traffic will continue to get worse as the II continues so um first review the Clinton and gray purple bus routes and change or recombine the routes accordingly and the parents can do this if you guys don't have the staff to do it um an option to transfer to the nearest school and um if in place of bus placement or for like for like transfers most people probably won't choose to transfer but if a few people transfer it will lighten the bus load and make routes more efficient and last kids living near each other micro neighborhoods all going to the same school this simplifies bus routes keeps community and makes backup carpools possible thank you thank you very much
192that concludes in-person public speaks we'll now move on to Virtual public speaks and the first person listed is Vanessa Sneed that Community member is not online okay the next person is Christine Vada Community member is not online Shannon cuddle foreign we can hear you hi um thank you um I was having Tech issues thank you Keith bonds for your support um so uh thank you to uh with the Board of Education tonight and for a hearing accepting the report of HIV um so my comments tonight are brief but they're also uh with Dr Albert uh giving his remarks I'm just so glad I had the opportunity to um speak to our district last month and also in my capacity of the chair of the New Jersey anti-bullying task force um I do want to just
193to highlight a few things one uh which is the anti-bullying task force for New Jersey is holding a hearing public hearing for folks on October 4th that is going to be in person at the in Trenton at the New Jersey doe main office building and also on October 5th which is virtual folks can sign up for both you need to register by October second it is vitally important that folks are able to give their story of self explicitly talking about students and other community members and stakeholders that are impacted by the bullying recent updates of the AVR implementation from 2019 and 2022 so I really want to highlight that and for us as a district I also want to be able to highlight that within our district that we are going into October which is
194bullying Awareness Month the first week of October is mandated as we can respect in all school districts in the state of New Jersey are mandated to have activities for week of respect but also within that regard is the fact that we need is mandated under law that all school districts are supposed to have anti-bullying training not just for our staff and abs and other admin but also for students and that um encourage us to consider that and I know that came up in the report tonight and I just want to say that that is not a one-time thing this has been required since the law has been implemented and I also want to say that if folks have want to give anti-bullying testimony stories of self to the state task force so you can give
195that to the abtf 2023 at doe.nj.gov if you need to email that to us as well and I know and I thank the uh school district and Dr Taylor from being out of Outreach and uh thank you thank you very much Shannon Caitlin as you as um board president to ensuring that we get the information out to students and families about the upcoming hearings and that's important so thank you thank you so much next up we have Liz Callahan can you hear me yes great hi there my name is Liz Callahan I'm a resident of Maplewood parent of two kids in our district and I wish I could be there tonight in person but unfortunately I am a little bit under the weather so it's been a week and a half since the presentation by
196Dr Fergus regarding his latest report and I know I've been reflecting on the results and recommendation and in my role as a candidate for the Board of Education speaking with community members about its findings as I've said in the past it really is a privilege to live in this active and involved community that expresses so much concern in terms of equity and educational Excellence for all and there are a lot of folks in our community who truly want to see something done to meaningfully change these trends so I'm pleased and encouraged to see the work that is taking place on tonight's agenda with regard to the black parents Workshop settlement and the more important context being that it puts us on a path to address the opportunity and outcome gaps that are endemic in our
197district especially for black and brown and Hispanic students the creation of this committee devoted to focusing on compliance with the settlement is a useful start and I'm here tonight if not virtually so we encourage you to take advantage of this moment to make the most impactful change you can as soon as you can we know with regard to this settlement that we have had a three-year Runway to achieve it however we also know that we have Decades of disparity and equity in our review rear view mirror but in our present we have an active public conversation right now about these findings and the road forward we know that we shouldn't be surprised by them but they are still shocking simply by virtue of being again reminded of the way our school system keeps producing these
198results it seems increasingly likely that myself and my running mates Shayna and will will have the opportunity to join many of you on the board in January and if that comes to pass we look forward to joining with you in this critical work to collaborate and ensure we have thoughtful intentional work being done that will generate the systemic and sustainable changes that facilitate the long-term results we all desperately want to see but right now you have a strong public mandate to take dramatic and meaningful steps to address these systemic challenges and we encourage you to seize the moment thank you thank you Liz and feel better thank you up next we have principal Irby Hill good evening um I was originally I am Lynn Irby Hill principal of South Orange Maplewood at South Orange Maplewood
199South Orange middle school and the president of ASCA I was originally coming to the board meeting tonight to speak on the Fergus report um but I will save that for next month however I do have to speak on Transportation whoever it was that said that transportation is a success uh is completely out of touch with reality and I want to thank my colleague Rocio for speaking about um transportation and the parents I have asked my principals to email me whenever they are Transportation issues I get them daily we have Elementary School students who are not being picked up from their school until 4 18 in the afternoon almost an hour after their school has let out students are coming to school late sometimes 30 minutes 45 minutes they are missing instruction and I have to
200ask you who is on these buses some of our most fragile children we have transportation issues I have homeless children who have not attended school because Transportation has not been provided for them and it is almost October 1st how dare you say that transportation is a success thank you okay thank you uh principal Irby Hill next up we have sudarshan Pani good evening can you hear me yes we can thank you I would uh join my fellow appearance in in commenting on the transportation issue I had the opportunity to speak at the board meeting 10 days ago I'm the father of two children at Clinton Elementary School I live in Maplewood uh just shy of two miles away from the school um 10 days ago we had a conversation about the the fact that bus
201that a bus has not arrived at our bus has not arrived at Clinton Elementary School on time yet uh in in his response to us Dr Taylor mentioned that the first 10 days are the busiest time of the year for our transportation department I would like to point out to Dr Taylor and to the rest of the board that we are well beyond the first 10 days of school and yet we still have not reached school on time with any of uh any of the kids on the gray route um I won't I won't belabor the point but I will mention that the idea that transportation is a success uh as mentioned by the principal just now uh is a fallacy we are still waiting for buses to come on time we are still waiting
202for communication about when buses are late and uh as mentioned as by many of my my fellow parents here uh we are still waiting for more efficient routing um I know there are many endemic problems to to transportation we cannot fix all of them but communication would go a long way and at least letting us know that someone is listening and that someone is addressing the issues thank you thank you very much um did anyone else log on Mr Vons Vanessa Christie or Christine I know that can remember is still not present okay thank you so much so that concludes our first public speaks Dr Taylor do you care to respond thank you madam president I definitely will respond and for those who don't normally attend these meetings um though I'm advised not to respond
203to public speaks we always try to do so so that everyone leads with the same information um but I'll go back a little bit further than public speaks to some of the comments that were made um after Mr Burnside shared updates on transportation to also allow us to all leave with the same information so please um give me just a moment as I go through my notes the um there was a comment made about the about so Maya and myself having some type of deal to not have to dismiss our transportation department and I will confirm what the board president shared that is not true um I will also um you didn't say it oh I said boyfriend I'm sorry so mayor president I apologize I apologize um for those who have mentioned um transportation
204or the communication of what's happening with Transportation I hope that you received our update that was sent today that followed up on the update that was sent um last week and also if you didn't get an update I would strongly um suggest you email me directly because it means that your email is not reflected in PowerSchool what okay all right we also shared um with the with the board and others um those Communications that were going out based on the updates that we have today around collapsing routes and adding uh buses to a few routes to have had consistent challenges I'm going through here there were a couple of very specific concerns around the gray route and the purple route and those are two of the four routes that were communicated with today um if
205you did not receive those emails um I'm not allowed to talk back and forth with you but if you hang out when I get done I'll definitely come back and talk to you um the um we're happy to share with you what those updates were thank you former board member cuddle um for for your thanks on partnering with your appointment um and Trenton supporting bullying legislation anti-bullying legislation there was also a comment made around apologizing to families who've been negatively impacted um by Transportation or this this new version of transportation and and I definitely think that I've done that um but I don't believe in offering excuses I believe in finding Solutions that's what we've been working on I hope that today's updates for those who are impacted um we customize those Communications as we
206did last week directly for them and again for those who did not receive that update please let us know we utilize regarding communicating directly to specific buses and routes we use School Messenger to Target and customize those messages just for those kids on those buses as we shared I believe at our at last week's Safety and Security Forum we shared that we're adding kids every day eight to twelve kids um up to as we shared close to 500 new writers so as that's happening those New Riders have to be added into school Messenger to also um finalize who receives those updates and that's a process that's ongoing Mr Ben are you still here hi good to see you um so to Mr Bennett's um comments regarding um aligning students um within neighborhoods to um minimize
207the distance between them that is the opposite of what our integration work requires um the the neighborhood School model is the model that led to us having segregated elementary schools um but your your feedback is most certainly acknowledged um just going through my notes Here one second regarding the um the Outsourcing of busting just as a a point of reference for folks um Outsourcing the majority of our transportation needs was not something that was new um when we did have our own Fleet it was only for a small portion of our transportation needs we've um had outsourced um companies as long as I've been here that predated me as well foreign to principal Irby Hill um as always my door is open for you to share the information that you've collected uh principles also of
208course email me directly and we also have check-ins with those who work in the transportation department but I welcome more information that helps us to do better and perform at a higher clip and of course um hold ourselves and our vendor accountable a couple of the comments that I receive directly are from folks who should have received our communication today from school messenger so I will make sure that for those who who left these um who gave us messages tonight we'll send you those messages directly to ensure you have the latest information that was sent out today that specifies the changes that are occurring for your routes there was a comment um that Mr Bennett shared I wanted to respond to regarding bus capacity and that adding buses and lack of capacity should not um
209if I wrote down correctly here um there should be kind of a null impact and what I would share and I think what we shared previously is capacity we understand folks who see buses that are not full and want those buses to P to be full as we do and we estimate um the number of buses that we need based on the population and all the calculations that we do with that but you know it is it does equal more capacity usually equals more stops and more stops equals longer routes and longer routes are some of the concerns that we've heard from so just sharing that that there is a definite uh connection there um regarding the appearance of indifference I'm not sure if that was directed towards me or not I hope that anyone
210who has sent me an email can let you know that I respond directly to that and that I respond as efficiently as I can myself I don't have people who email on my behalf and address every single person individually regarding their concerns whether it be on Transportation or anything else and I hope that my record reflects that Madam president those are all my responses thank you Dr Taylor you will now move on to committee reports so we'll start with Regina and we'll just go around the horn Regina we'll start with personnel thank you the Personnel committee met on Tuesday September 19th board members Wingfield Whit letter and I were in attendance board member right was absent we kicked off the meeting reviewing Personnel resolution 4506 just a couple of things I just wanted to highlight
211we discuss special services department coverage with one of the supervisors resigning and how this will affect the department with other staff on leave Dr Taylor alerted the board of a plan for coverage for Montrose that it would be forthcoming we will actually be voting on this during the action portion of tonight's meeting we also discussed special education vacancies and how principals are working creatively with HR and coverage until these positions are filled at the moment second in the secondary schools six period classes are being assigned to help with the load and administration confirmed they are keeping a close eye on it and exploring additional ways to fill these openings Administration also gave an update on the interim transportation coordinator that they are looking to extend the contract which was initially a three-month contract for a
212longer period of time in order to get the two new assistants up to speed we reviewed three policies that will be up for first read at our October meeting no issues with the recommended changes but I did want to point out for policy 4281 inappropriate staff conduct the board would like to add something where staff can report inappropriate conduct anonymously and it was agreed that this change should be made as part of the regulation during old business we focused on teacher retention I had asked about some strategies that the district is employing or are in the pipeline towards teacher retention Mr adedoine mentioned a few ideas he had discussed with Dr Gilbert that included incentivizing signing bonuses a different type of mentoring program that targets incoming teachers and requires a one to four year commitment
213different kinds of affinity groups where we will tackle what we are doing well and what we need to improve upon and opened up the discussion about the possibility of allowing staff to have their children attend our schools Dr Taylor did mention saying competitive with the upcoming contract negotiations will also be important in that vein I did ask that we continue to oh I'm sorry grabbing people is the dollar keeping people as a culture is what we discussed and in that vein I ask that we continue to discuss these Affinity groups and how this could be a good space for teachers um to to have a place where they feel heard during new business we cover Dr Gilbert covered sexual misconduct and harassment training he reviewed the steps taken and timeline for all coaches to complete
214Title IX training by October 15th which was originally to be completed before the school year he provided a ton of details on the challenges that they came across over the summer that ultimately pushed back the timeline the board did ask if in the future we can get this done before the school year starts obviously there are um a bunch of nuances as coaches are hired at different times of the year but Dr Gilbert did confirm that that was the intention and remains to be moving forward Miss Weibel also joined as a special guest to go over some questions that a board member had regarding the Dating Violence policy all the details can be found in the meeting minutes and the board requested that the district provide a brief presentation in an upcoming board meeting so
215that the communities were all aware of all the hard work that has gone into the implementation of this policy so at this point we're looking at likely in November when all all staff have been trained in terms of action items and next steps we are I've asked that we continue this discussion around Affinity groups for teachers and staff Anonymous ways to air concerns for students and staff and that is it our next meeting is scheduled for Monday October 9th at 6 30 pm any questions a couple of uh meetings back you had a really nice report put out by the district which you shared internally about a number of vacancies you know the the thing is that something you plan to publish quarterly or is it like a month yes I actually had gotten it
216I was just making a few tweaks to it so that it's just easier to digest yes I will send it out um by the end of the week okay thanks a lot fft okay on September 20th 2023 board members what letter Gifford about the money myself met for fft we had a special guest Mr Jerry Ford our transportation coordinator attend as well to prepare for the meeting with Mr Ford I created a spreadsheet to give him questions in advance and roots from parent complaints that were an issue which at the time included five buses and I just want to say thank you to board members who contributed to that document helped have a very good conversation with him with Mr Ford we discussed bus routes that were delayed why they were delayed how they were
217going to be rectified immediately and and be communicated to parents we also emphasize how important it was to communicate to parents in real time about the challenges and solutions and process we asked if buses can have GPS and they do have GPS capabilities so the district will look into implementing that we discussed versatrans we discussed that versatrans does not take into account traffic like Google Maps or Waze which is a challenge we discussed making sure drivers have root instructions which they are given um so we um but when there are Subs sometimes there are some confusions there we've discussed the importance of being able to communicate to drivers in real time to get answers sooner sometimes we have to go through a dispatch to get um bus response especially when it's a sub um and
218to board president's question earlier to Mr barnside about setting up a face-to-face we discussed a face-to-face meeting and that was your idea thank you so much for thinking of that with the drivers to nurture our relationship with them um we learned that when buses are chronically late the district charge is the bus company and bus companies have 48 hours to action change requests from the district we also asked forced Transportation stats and for the district to provide us a spreadsheet that explains data and financials of our buses so that we understand what we have left from our Bose funds we want to track spending for transportation as well as ridership data at the time of the meeting we were using 11 buses out of the 12 projected to be needed as for hazardous Roots we
219plan to update our hazardous Roots policy in November with any new routes as new traffic patterns can create hazardous routes per the policy these routes can be evaluated by a formal complaint from a student's caregiver Sloane Street and Third Avenue is an example of this the current construction and that intersection has created hazardous conditions and that site will exist we were told for the next two or three years we discussed suggesting a carpool or group walk group walking app for parents who are below the mile Mark and want to and and are not eligible for transportation and want to connect with other families to work together to get kids to school other districts across the country purchase this type of app for their caregiver community and we asked the district to look into this even
220if they are just suggesting a vetted app for parents to use and not purchasing it outright for for parents and caregivers we also had a conversation about crossing guards and the importance of working with the two towns to inform them of school time changes many weeks in advance and discuss walking routes so that they can ensure they are so that the towns can ensure they're supporting our student Walkers properly um I'm in I'm on the municipal Partnerships committee with uh board president and I share that as a result of our Partnerships call before the fft meeting we discuss the importance of the Two Towns having a meeting with the transportation department and the district to um to discuss walking routes they the two towns have been really wonderful in partnering with us and wanting to
221streamline the crossing guards process as much as possible especially for next year some good key learnings for us so just to wrap up we also discussed our preliminary Rod Grant and how that could impact Improvement projects for the district which the rod Grant only approved the replacement of our roofs which is great we're going to get some new roofs but those those items are not part of our long range facility plan we cannot use the rod grant for that we discussed scheduling a meeting in November with the Border School estimate to review the district's financials and needs for a long-range facility plan and as everyone knows our district goal is by December one we would have done the analysis to understand the financial impact and where we could find any extra funds that meeting is
222currently set for November 28th so thank you to the district for scheduling that we discussed Auditorium bids to compare with our Co-op bids so more on that soon change orders for longer facility plan which weren't too weren't too crazy and then uh we discussed adding repair replacement payment terms to the students electronic warranty I don't have the official policy number in front of me but it's the policy that we're pushing through tonight about students using um Electronics from the school and we decided that instead of putting a mandate on what happens if parents do not pay for any repair replacement in the policy that would be that those payment terms would be put in the form that parents would need to use when they are um agreeing to the terms of receiving electronic devices because
223we put in the policy they might miss it we want to make sure that parents understand the payment terms when they're receiving electronic devices for their students if they choose to not do the warranty the warranty is about 25 per student for the year and then finally we discussed our concerns about the fight at the recent Irvington Columbia High School football game and that we want to know what else security can do in the future to curb situations like this I think that'll be a topic that we'll need to add on to fft again because we Dr Taylor had to split his time a little bit um this month and I think he needs to be part of that conversation and we just had that security meeting which I know will inform a lot of
224that discussion any questions I was just thinking that's a question or a comment maybe it should go to our our ba but in talking about the buses right um are we charging them for lateness you know when they don't show up on time is there any type of compensatory damages or whatever because they're they're not arriving but we can collect that money and do something with it I don't know I just thinking about it yeah so we don't really collect money we just penalize them um we've given them until the end of next week and then after that we're going to start invoking the penalties thanks two things one is I'm not sure if you spoke about subscription busing I don't know if there is any update on that I I don't know if you
225talked about right I forget because we've talked about it many times yeah well it's going to be next it's the next month's meeting because we'll have the woman from Bella I forgot Sussex County Co-op is going to show up next meeting so there'll be more on that soon I just sent her an email this week uh earlier this week to invite her to the October 10th yeah perfect thank you and uh while we are preparing for the board of school estimates I just wanted to confirm that with tonight's bid that we've accepted which has been accepted or whatever I mean bits have come in and we like it so the only thing that is pending would be the entire South Orange Middle School package right I believe if you uh if I remember correctly not
226you um the award tonight includes the electrical upgrade for Psalms and nothing else correct what I mean by that is tonight's bid includes all of Maplewood Middle School and only the electrical portion of Psalms whereas if you want to go ahead with the project for rest of Psalms we have to raise money from Board of school estimates yes that is correct I apologize if I wasn't clear there okay my turn um on September 28th the productive meeting was held with Courtney Regina myself and we were privileged to have Johanna join us as a special guest this was due to nubia's during the concurrent fft meeting uh the overview is that the meeting was extensive and intense yet all participants unanimously agreed that it stood out as one of the most effective every intendee had the
227opportunity to contribute constructively and share their insights respectfully we talked about the k-3 magnet reading phonics program Dr Bean folks delivered an insightful presentation on this initiative the board has expressed the desire for this presentation to be disseminated with the Border broader public and it now has been so thank you for doing that um we got a GNT update we received an update date on the forthcoming screening tool set to be introduced in January this non-verbal tool is geared to support twice exceptional students assessments will be carried out for students all students in first fourth seventh grade and new students and also upon recommendation from parents or teachers students who qualify will be given a gifted action plan like we are currently doing uh book adoption tonight's agenda includes numerous books up for adoption and
228it's encouraging to witness the variety of topics including lgbtq plus themed ones up for adoption field trip resolution that we have tonight it is pittable to clarify that the field trip resolution outlines potential destinations and not confirmed trips so there's like a gazillion listed we're not going on all of them even though I want to um we're currently standardizing our field trip process drawing from feedback received from parents last year Dr Taylor I know you were working on a report to the committee when you know uh love to know when you're we are going to have that by maybe hopefully the next meeting uh policy updates policies were upper person second read were reviewed there were no amendments were necessary no changes were made we did receive the failure data from the third and fourth
229marking period from Columbia High School which I shared with all the board members the numbers to continue to be sobering and reinforce the data that we heard from Dr Fergus that are Black and Hispanic and special ed students are failing at disportion at rates than our white students option two required changes um I know that some pan I guess the case the students spoke about it earlier and we have heard from some parents these revisions were made to align our practices with the state's option two requirements this rectification was necessary due to us not following the state regulations regarding logging hours um AP micro economics course the administrative registration concedes that earlier communication would have been beneficial and apologizes for the lateness of the alert the board spoke about the need to approve the communication
230in the future elementary math curriculum updates were shared about the curriculums roll out and related professional development schedule IRS update the Friday packet was supposed to contain the revised guide complete with new standardized poor arms and notable changes being affected this year I'm hoping that we were supposed to get in last Friday's packet I'm hoping it's coming in this Friday's packet uh the Freshman Academy which is also known as I guess cougar cuddle or is it huddle I don't know um the board was very excited about this program especially the supports that were going to be put in place to help not only our freshmen but also other students who are struggling we were told the program was going to be five days a week have an SEL component have curriculum with study skills and
231other supports built in but due to an issue we cannot support a five-day a week program a sidebar agreement with the Union is up for vote tonight and if it passes it will allow for students to work with teachers two days a week at the present moment students in New York are in the auditorium two days a week doing team building activities and until an agreement can be reached we also learned that there is no set curriculum for the program in that quote next year we will be expanding this program and working with our teachers and at that time we will evaluate the need for a formal curriculum due to the lateness of the night and the surprise of this information we didn't have a chance to fully discuss this but we plan to in
232the near future I did speak with a few students this weekend who stated that they think the idea is good but at least so far it has been entirely disorganized and counterproductive um the Fergus report and the access and Equity policy discussion the majority of our session was dedicated to the report's findings and Courtney's proposal regarding access and Equity policy the conversation was honest uh thoughtful emotional at times and we all left feeling like we needed all board members to have an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings on the important work we have ahead of us given the significance of the report's recommendations I am putting forth a proposal that in the near future we have a special working meeting no action will be taken of the board where we hear from the administration
233on how they plan to implement the findings I am hopeful that we will get some solid responses to the report findings the hope is that the entire board works collaboratively with the administration to craft a policy or maybe more than one policy that will support their implementation plans the work is too important for all voices to not be included in this process uh we talk often about the need to break the committee silos and a meeting like I'm proposing can be the first step in the process I will say that the idea is supported by our Municipal Partners specifically Village president column who talked about it during the municipal partnership meeting um I would like to do a straw poll now together uh interest in the idea of having a meeting specifically on the topic
234of like a a specific like on um just dealing with the Fergus report and getting the administration's recommendations can this be table till new business I think this is exactly how you um [Music] yeah so normally you don't do a straw poll in public but you also don't have any action pending because there's no motion behind it so what I gather you're doing right now is talking about whether you want to have another meeting and if the room feels like you want to have another meeting then you would call upon the board president to schedule another meeting okay and then I'm calling upon the board president to schedule another meeting if the board has the will to do so sorry I'm just wanted to clarify so you're saying have another meeting but we're about to
235vote on having a meeting a committee of the whole yeah maybe it can be done it could be done during the committee of poll could we just get when we get to the action portion that will be when we could discuss and we vote on that and then I guess depending on how that vote goes could be a new business topic that works for me I you know at the point when this was being written we weren't there so happy to wait till till then one Ela program um that's a good question and do you have the answer to that um the district piloting more than one well she's the oh yeah I I'm just asking because she's in Georgia cni can I not or Dr Taylor should I ask you is the but she's
236not she's the cherubs you know it um curriculum instructions I guess that question is are we piloting more than one program and are should we be pile anymore oh thank you are we piloting more than one Ela program at this time or do we intend to um and is it something that we should be doing if we're not um I think should is a it's probably a question that's subjective but I'll allow Miss Bodner to come and be able to respond to your questions thank you thank you thank you thank you for the phonics program or in general the phonics program what is this new Ela curriculum oh thank you so I don't know why I can um the new Ela curriculum I believe we're looking at magnetic right yeah that's that's the phonics program
237so are we looking to Pilot so Dr beam folks brought together if you actually if you watch her video because it explains the whole process of how she came up with this particular program she brought a team of Any teacher who wanted to in the district together to they really looked at every program out there they had criteria of what they were looking for to make sure that everything in mostly that everything was included in this so that they didn't have to pull from different programs they did a thorough thorough thorough search of many many different programs we brought in experts to come in and talk to our staff and staff and um along with Dr Bean folks I believe Ms Carrera was there I was in at the meetings they um all unanimously picked
238this program to Pilot so we're piloting that and it seems to be growing as teachers are finding more out more about it they're asking to be a part of it so you know it's growing that's good oh board member Duvall Wilson I had a question in um for whoever um it seems like they're they're I'm curious how um teachers are being informed on how to communicate this process um because I'm happy to hear that more teachers are volunteering that's great but there are of course a pool of teachers who are not K to three and so um you know I did receive some feedback from some from some community members just saying it seemed like during back to school night at least from my school South Mountain that maybe there was just a little bit
239of confusion like okay some are getting it some are not some are still getting TC and I'm just curious and maybe you don't have an answer tonight but I think that we might need to arm our teachers with a little bit more um messaging on this process and so that it doesn't alarm parents if some students are getting in some are not I made the note thank you concludes my committee report oh sorry I thought nobody I just want to say I hope the boiler is on next time no um um no so uh the policy committee convened on September 7th at 6 30 PM board member malaspina and myself were present uh tonight we have 14 policies up for a second read and adoption and 11 policies up for first read and the public
240can find the list of those um on the website I don't think it's necessary to name every single one but they are listed on the website um on new business we discussed policy 7490 animals on school property this was request a requested review by the Personnel committee chair this change would allow District administration to speak on behalf of the superintendent when an animal is on school grounds excluding support service animals and this will be put up for first read we uh we also discussed invoice support for the proposed book Banning resolution we are voting on tonight which was [ __ ] we switched the name to right to read because it writes the the yeah no no no um yes yes the right to read uh resolution the opposite of banning books uh we're we're voting on
241that tonight which was shared by board member malice Spina Dr Taylor and Dr Gilbert support the proposed resolution lastly we discussed the draft policy 5755.1 access and Equity a revision of the original access and Equity policy proposed by board member Wingfield and myself this draft policy serves to expand upon the existing 5755 access and equity which is rich in spirit but we feel lacks the teeth necessary to arrive at the equity outcomes the district desires this draft policy intends to provide a road map to do just that I'd also like to add that many pieces of the policy are direct recommendations from the Fergus report the revised draft policy outlines key Equity framed expectations within the domains of academics culture and climate and personnel some key pillars of 57551 are as follows provide Affinity spaces
242for students of color across all School levels for academic social and emotional mentoring and support build School cultures that intentionally focus on fostering empathy developing relationships and upholding dignity for everyone in our schools offices and Community ensure a high quality and coherent inrs process to provide strategic academic support and intervention with ongoing monitoring and reporting of data including the demographic data of referrals to the child study team provide an academically integrated non-leveled rigorous core instructional program K-12 with opportunities to accelerate through advanced placement courses create a clear plan and timeline to identify High achieving students from underrepresented backgrounds for enrollment and advanced placement courses ensure rigorous and alignment of curriculum K-12 to ensure all students receive the appropriate preparation to access and succeed in AP courses in high school provide access and support in engaging
243with Dynamic rigorous coursework for all students in order to maximize student learning while focusing on a growth mindset and lastly offering continuous professional development that supports differentiated instruction while addressing educational Equity cultural proficiency anti-bias anti-racome anti-racism culturally responsive pedagogy disability acceptance as well as addressing homophobia transphobia and sexism for the entire staff to provide some background to the public this policy came out of our board retreat in early August when we were discussing what we wanted our board's Legacy to be when it comes to access and Equity at that point the board had received the Fergus report and its recommendations and were grappling with our responsibility as a board to act on them Dr Telus Ford and myself shared our personal experiences as students at high at Columbia High School and the inequities we saw
244firsthand especially as are related to academics racial segregation at the end of The Retreat board member Wingfield and I agreed to meet that month and discuss next steps what ensued from that was a revised draft of our access and Equity policy that built on the important efforts of previous boards everyone on the board has had the opportunity to review the policy and provide feedback and discuss it either in committee or with myself or Courtney we have reviewed the policy and made a number of revisions based on feedback we received from our board attorney and superintendent Taylor we reviewed this draft policy in our policy committee this month and sent the policy to cni for discussion as the policy will return to the policy committee next week it is my intention in partnership with Dr Taylor
245to move the policy to first read in the effort to allow the public to review and engage around the substance of the policy from their community members teachers students Administration and the board will all have the opportunity to weigh in on the merits of the policy the Fergus report confirmed what we already knew we have so much work to do with that said nothing changes if nothing changes I look forward to the spirit of debate we are sure to have as this conversation needs to take place the meeting adjourned at 7 14 pm and that is my readout questions are there any questions for the policy chair board member Ecker sorry that was just that was just a lot so I'm just trying to understand what what the timeline is so you're it's gonna go
246back to policy for your October meeting or you're putting it up and then it will be up for first read in October so it will be up for discussion in the committee and the only way the public gets to see it is by putting it up for a first read no got it okay so in October is what your time is what you're saying is the timeline for the October meeting yeah um okay it never went back to cni yeah okay sorry um yeah I mean this is exactly what I said in cni so I'm just going to pretty much just say it verbatim um the bulk of the policy revisions frankly I'm quite I'm fine with um I do have really a big concern about the insertion of non-leveling this would be one of
247the biggest and most Monumental policy changes in recent history and it's not something that can be fixed easily fixed if not properly implemented we have yet to see data that shows why we think this is the best course of action for our district we need to engage with all stakeholders that means the community teachers and building Administration and it feels like this is the opposite of the new policy process in which we said that for a policy to go up for first read it should be mostly fully baked and so if we're putting it up for first read for then the community to give us feedback for teachers to give us feedback that just feels like all the work that was done with that policy process is just kind of thrown out the door like
248to comment um board member malice Vina sorry that's okay um I am in agreement uh with Miss Eckert and I made those comments too at the meeting I really believe we have the opportunity now to do things correctly with the process for far too long our district has done pilot had it's been driven by policy and then the administration is having to then make whatever the board says work and that hasn't worked it didn't work with IB it didn't work with the first access and Equity policy it hasn't worked with in the last like 20 years almost every new initiative that has come has come from board driven and then the administration tries to figure it out and implementation doesn't work that is why I proposed in this meeting doing the process differently having a
249meeting where the administration comes to us and shows us what they want their recommendations their thoughts on how we are going to make this work how we are going to take those policy you know the the recommendations and put them into action using the data using information and then we as a board work collaboratively with the district to come up with policies this is being done I believe the opposite way than it should be and we need to to really hear from the administration hear from and when I'm talking about the administration I'm not only talking about just SLT I'm talking about Administration who has talked to the teachers you know the gut really gotten a hold of everybody and then comes to us with recommendations and then we do a policy this is putting
250the cart before the horse in my opinion and I just don't think that we should be dictating this at the present moment they need to come to us with what their thoughts are and then we work together collaboratively with them that's how the process should be done and I believe that we need to do it right this time it's too important not to I find that statement kind of ironic considering this board passed a policy on Transportation where we change the mileage and then we have the implementation of that so we're talking about the administration should come to us for what we should do but now we're saying for Access and Equity oh no we need to do something different at no point has anyone discussed who is the most affected by this which is
251our which are our students we should be focused on student outcomes that's what this board is here that's where our policy should be focused on focusing on the teachers the parents the community all sorts of feedback we already got our feedback we got our information we got the data we had the Fergus report and this is information that has we've experienced this for decades so it's not as though this is new no one was shocked by any of this I wasn't shocked by this I saw my whole life so we know what needs to happen we know what needs to change this policy is fully baked I gave my feedback I gave extensive comments and extensive edits I think many board members had the opportunity to do that so to say that we haven't had
252a chance to talk about this or go through this we did it was actually discussed in C and I and yes it's now coming back to policy so yes it is the right time for our our committee to discuss this this this policy so I think saying that we need to slow down pump our brakes we set policy we can talk about implementation and I think the most important thing is we have an enthusiastic Administration Behind these changes so I think that we should be moving forward and not just trying to figure out ways to stop board member Deval Wilson I know we could go on and on on about this we all have the same goal at the end of the day I think for me my main question tonight because it's 11 15
253is I'm just trying to understand process because I know for fft when I've had edits to policies it goes back to policy and then the next month it comes back to fft and that's how it's been for months so I'm just trying to understand why that step is being skipped I think that sets a an inappropriate precedence for just not being strict with ourselves when it comes to policy and process and so my suggestion is yes take it back to policy and then do the timeline the way we all agreed we were going to do the timeline 60 days or whatnot then after it goes to policy it needs to go back to cni why would we skip that step I don't understand board member Wingfield there were no edits that came out of cni
254there was feedback about the Merit and the belief about whether or not we should have this policy but there was no feedback out of cni so wait let me finish so the policy has been sent back to the policy committee for further review and I think at this point I'm not really sure why we're so terrified of having this conversation in public in October because all we're asking we're not asking for folks to vote in October we're asking for us to be able to share the policy with the community and for the community I had to have an opportunity to voice their feedback an opportunity for us to engage further with Dr Taylor around the data that he shared with all of us around this policy just before the board meeting which I'm sure we
255haven't had a chance to dig into and we're asking for an open and transparent conversation with each other and with the public around a policy that you've all had multiple multiple opportunities to read and to provide feedback on but feedback is not the same thing as saying I don't like this well I think I think that's where there's a a confusion because I requested edits and I wasn't at cni so that I wasn't there to speak for myself but I passed along edits and requests to have certain things spelled out more when it came to leveling and I would like to see those adjustments made and if for whatever reason my request for changes and additional language because I think that part of the policy looked buried to me and look like it needed more
256legs it needed more language it needed more support and so if that wasn't clear from my feedback in writing I apologize I'm happy to have another phone call um with with Bill or you pass on more of my thinking that's in my head um because I do have some requests but I but my requests are based on enhancements not so much removal just enhancements and so that's why I'm concerned about it's skipping cni because I would like to see that in there and and have the opportunity to also discuss that with the team to see if you might not agree with my changes but I think that we need to follow the process that's all I'm trying to say I would I'd like to comment and see and I share share on this we left
257cni with the discussion that you and I would meet we haven't had a chance that was on me because I did not pass on the opportunity Courtney I was sick last week and I have been busy all week I am planning to meet with you Courtney you can I don't know I can't um but what I'm going to say is I have not had the opportunity to put my edits into into this because I was told last minute that I was able to put edits into it also in the cni meeting we never discussed moving it forward we never said that we were okay with this that's not true that is true you're not telling the truth all right guys guys guys guys okay you're not telling us all right everyone this is like we
258said for board members who have not had the chance to speak if there's other board members I do have some comments to make but I just I usually try to be the last person to speak so does anyone else on the board member right okay so we're talking about the leveling which we um worked on for this District um some time ago and it was certainly um really well researched in terms of what we needed for our district but the bottom line is that there are some reasons that um I will give you uh that I also shared in cni and thank you guys for inviting me I never get invited and if I was invited to see and I was so excited to to join them and so uh number one for de-leveling key
259points money needs to be invested in professional development for teachers administrators faculty you need administrative meetings conferences professional development days number two you need a revision of curriculum in conjunction with experienced teachers and best teacher practices number three you need training and differentiating instruction four you need to upgrade materials and technology and classrooms at five and this is the one that sticks with me that concerns me is that de-leveling should take place in phases to avoid what we call Planned failure and I'm going to repeat that planned failure and number six benchmarks and assessments for each phase seven Community forums explaining the D leveling process is very important uh eight surveys and interviews teachers students administrators and parents all stakeholders must be involved as we involve them not too long ago and I think that
260Mr Gaines spoke about that when he was here and the last thing is and this is mandatory that data and de-leveling resources must be reviewed by all administrators and supervisors for Effective implementation now this isn't going to take place overnight so it's it takes time so it's a a long process when you put these things in place then you can begin to do things for us we have a situation of children in crisis right now we're on life support So as we're sitting here with I call this a distraction so as we're sitting here with this distraction we've already received information from Dr Ferguson what we need to put in place in order to move our children forward I don't know why we're not looking at that but I shouldn't be looking at it as
261a board member anyway that's not for the admit that's up to the administration and staff the professionals uh and so I this to me is a distraction and we won't will be another six years kicking something down the road to make sure that things are straight for kids just to say that we've done something and I haven't seen anything that we've put into policy for the most part that we've been able to implement and and another thing is we have to be forced to do what is right and here we are going on another side of the block rather than doing what we have laid in front of us from Dr Fergus let's give him that respect that's a professional leave this up to the staff and and and doctor um Taylor to make sure
262that these things are implemented uh and implemented correctly the leveling right now is going to take us a few years and we've already been there and done that you know so that's that's just how I feel um Dr talisford right now we're talking about just a policy change so we can change policy and then take our time with implementation and do all the things that we say is required but it starts from the top or from the board setting that setting that precedent saying look we need to move forward in this direction and then really make sure and hold the administration accountable for that implementation but to ask that we must have the implementation all set up before we change the policy seems backwards actually we set the policy and then ensure that that implementation
263goes goes smoothly by holding the administration accountable for that [Music] so sorry I'm just going to speak on a couple of things here first the board sets policy in consultation with the district and with the stakeholders who are impacted by the policy this board we as a board for nine months have sat through a gauntlet of accusations about this policy process the way in which we were conducting this process and the revisions that were involved many board members sat here and said that we should be thoughtful that we shouldn't rush creating policy that the things that we do should be intentional and I agree with all of that this will be one of the most transformative policies that we will ever pass as a board and to your point bill this is a legacy but
264the fact that we're trying to do this you never once even in your readout use the word d level like let's just address the fact that this is something that people use a lot of Ed you speak instead of being transparent about what we're trying to do and what I have concerns with is not only the the process that we followed because the district has not played a role in any of this they have not come with their proposal with their intention of how they think they can accomplish this I can read a list which I would love for you guys to be able to answer the 15 questions that I've sent that were all questions that when I talked to the council about that these are questions as a board if we're making a
265responsible decision we should have answers to so I'm happy to I think build they were sent to you that aside everyone in this District can look at the access and Equity policy and say it's not enough and I'm sitting here today just upset at the fact that we were given it's not even here's Dr fergus's recommendations this was a mandate 23 things that we have to accomplish in a three-year period we hired this man because we were sued but we spent a hundred thousand dollars to hire a national expert to tell us how we can close the achievement Gap and it starts with building a foundation that Foundation includes 23 items not once does he mention D leveling at this point in time and in my opinion I think he might think that's a phase
266two conversation we are not doing the bare minimum to support our students I want to go through here one of his recommendations which I want to call attention to Dr Fergus in 2021 came to the district and said there's inconsistencies in the way that we're that we're operating our academic support services that contribute to the patterns of academic segregation and disproportionate patterns in special education Dr Fergus recommended the Improvement of the academic support services at the elementary schools occur and now he's saying within the next two years because he told us to do it in 2021 he came back to tell us to do it in 2023 and he said if we don't do this the tiered supports that he's also requiring that we do will not work efficiently and this is critical work to
267support integration I just I think we're in a position right now where board members are dictating what the priorities of the district should be and in this case it's not even the board and frankly it's not the district we have an outside party with a Justice who is monitoring how we Implement these recommendations and if we don't do it we're back in court if we don't do it we don't have the supports in place to help our students of color so while I respect that people did the work to create a policy it did not engage stakeholders have we talked to the teachers about the additional requirements for professional development that would be required so that every teacher can walk into a classroom and provide differentiated instruction next year it's we have to recognize as
268a district where we are and these are goals that we can have in Phase One and phase two we have Dr Taylor putting together a Dei plan for the next five years for the board to think that we are in any sort of position to do this right now when we have 23 recommendations mandated recommendations glaring at us that we are legally required to implement in the next three years three years is going to go by like that and the first thing that we should be asking right now is is follow-up to the presentation what is the district's Vision we have no idea what the priorities are going to be of those 23 recommendations where where they intend to focus on how they're going to do it we don't write the regulations but we we
269should understand what the regulation the premise of these regulations will be as it relates to anything that we do so that as a board we are informed and we have we feel comfortable with making a decision and we're sitting here right now with no information and with a lot of board members telling the district how things should get done the district has not sent the proposal about how they're incorporating Fergus recommendations and how they intend to accomplish this work which will take not only a year to plan but likely years to do well and at the end of the day I care about the kids and that's why I'm really upset about this because if we don't implement this well this harms the educational experience of our kids so why not take the time to
270do this well and to do it right and in my opinion the statement of priorities is Dr fergus's report that does not include language about d-leveling at this point in time and so that's that's all I have to say I just can't even believe that this is where we are right now after all of this and getting to a point where we're finally able to start complying with the BPW settlement we're now using this for lack of better terms as a distraction to the real work that needs to get done right now in our district foreign I think we definitely didn't read the same report and we absolutely didn't see the same presentation because if you re-watch what Dr Fergus said at the end of his presentation he said unambiguously that heterogeneous groupings for student
271learning is what is best homogeneous groupings of students I.E leveling is what is easiest for adults and he challenged each and every one of us sitting in this board that we would have to stop centering the comfort of adults over the needs of students you cannot tell me one single piece of educational research or evidence that points to leveling as a sound practice that supports students at either level furthermore our leveling in this district is a farce our access and Equity policy back in 2018 removed the ability for us to place students in any classroom honors AP or otherwise based on any academic measure that those students have produced so my child's sitting in eighth grade right now could get straight D's on his report card for every year of his middle school experience could
272have data showing that he is severely under grade level in reading and in mathematics and as a parent I have the right at the end of his middle school experience to log into PowerSchool and sign him up for every honors class there is that is my right so teachers are already differentiating instruction every single day in our honors courses and in all of the courses at CHS because there are kids currently sitting in all of those courses of incredibly varied ability levels and performance levels so this is a sham that adults are trying to protect that adults who have elected some of us here on this board have told you not to touch and so for you to clutch pearls and somehow claim that this is about what's best for students that is what's shameful
273so I invite you to stop hiding behind process because process was followed at every step of the way and instead I would invite you to be open and transparent and allow the community to read this document which is not a leveling policy but a seven page document that actually codifies much of the work that is already in progress in this district and secondly takes many of Dr fergus's recommendations which I believe that you care deeply about and puts them into policy so that they are not only subject to a monitoring agreement are not only subject to a board's will or a superintendent's will but are that policy that must maintain itself over time and stop hiding behind whatever fear you have of the the community actually reading this document and having a chance to have
274it say I just want to say if you could point to the settlement term because settlement term 3A and the all of the recommendations are listed in school boards in the resolution it says Foster heterogeneous heterogeneous student collaboration and math instruction in elementary and middle school math courses equip Educators to create opportunities for students of different abilities backgrounds and learning styles to collaborate and work together on math tasks that's the only location where he even uses the word heterogeneous and talks about so if if it's a recommendation you know yeah I'm a little bit heated Courtney because for two years that I've been on this board we have not been compliant now we have a framework that was given to us by an expert to say this is what needs to get done right now
275here are the priorities and what you're proposing takes so much time and effort that we're not going to even be able to touch this and in three years from now I know you won't be on the board and I likely won't be either it's going to be another board's problem but that's three extra years where we don't have system in place these systems in place to help our kids it's not about a legacy for the board it's about making sure that our kids are given the resources that they need to succeed in this district and for you to think that this is a priority in Trump's everything that this man and his team at Rutgers University put together that's actually astounding so art so this boards believe that their viewpoint on what a priorities should
276be should override someone who we had legally required to come in and do this work and provide a statement of priorities that we are mandated to accomplish that takes less of a precedence in your mind I would invite you to have a conversation with Dr Fergus I'm sure you can ask him what he believes about the presence of leveling in particular when it comes to racial disparities and academic outcomes please please please reach out to him reach out to him and have that conversation but people need to understand the way the settlement reads we there's recommendations that were made by Dr Fergus the district had to approve those recommendations Dr uh BPW had to approve the recommendations those two things happen and now as a board those recommendations were sent to Justice Wallace and we
277are in the monitoring phase document I'm familiar with the process the recommendations and the monitoring agreement is the floor it's not the seal for the work and the obligation that we have as a district to address these issues and yes those recommendations are in the policy that the public should have a chance to read but they are the floor they are not the ceiling and they are not the end-all be-all of what we must do as a district to address these issues so as I said I knew this was going to be a spirited debate and it sure is um but you know I just want to say that I'm I'm open to having a special meeting that speaks to all this you know I spoke to Patrick and he even shared that if he
278were a parent in this District he would want to hear from Dr Taylor what this looks like you know how this would even occur how would we roll it out um and and I'm totally in agreement with that you know I would love to see a presentation and I would love to you know uh hear from Somaya but I will say you know we keep going back to Dr Fergus whose recommendations we hold to a golden standard but I just I know I sent this email to the board already so they're very aware of these um quotes but I again we're all talking about Dr fergus's recommendations but when I asked him about leveling's effects on our student population these three quotes these are his these are his quotes and I want the public to
279to hear this again because not everybody had the time to to watch the whole presentation grouping students by ability is easier for the adults but the reality is it's not good for the kids having heterogeneous grouping in classrooms is going to be a lift for the adults but it's not what our kids need for their learning exposure last we have to really consider and recognize that the improvements we have to do in terms of integration for this society that we promised ourselves 75 years ago that we wanted to create that we need to do that work for them rather than the Comforts of adults and you know this is getting very passionate um I I understand that but you know this issue is what politicized me I sit down in those classes and we're talking
280about you know oh you know that this it could be planned failure what we're doing right now is planned failure [Music] and we're having a discussion like we can discuss this until the end of the world nothing is changing in the classroom right now and that's my concern we can sit up here and talk about de-leveling all you want I taught differentiated instruction my entire career so I know it I train okay for our teachers here or in any other District to try and and come in within the next year two years to do the leveling it ain't happening and everybody needs to know that folk it ain't happening but what will happen is we follow what we need to do or maybe we don't know how to implement what we need to implement for
281our children since we haven't done it in four years let's be clear we need to move on we don't need another project for a project another meeting for a meeting we need to deal with our children that's what we ought to be discussing here and that is not that's for the administration what are you going to do we all know what the problems are how do you deal with it do you have the bandwidth that should be the question I'm done oh and by the way I was talking about um board Legacy right to be dock it get this down L Dash 7026-91 docket number the South Orange Maplewood School District was found guilty of seven counts of discrimination and 11 culpable charges so we know we discriminate against children and so we put these
282things off all the time we have to do the work I don't like sitting here discussing the leveling when we've already been through this it's not going to help our children right now you can't continue to to to to educate like it's 1990 like it's 1960. we're in 2023 children are learning differently all the time our teachers are trying their best to do the things that they can do all of this comes back on them are we bringing them into the conversation that we bring the teachers into the conversation about the Freshman program no we didn't it failed now we're bringing them in and now we're about to do something else so we're always putting that cart before the horse we need to to to effectuate effective change and it's not coming with de-leveling that's
283so long ago okay and we know because we've been waiting before everybody else did it when we had a blue ribbon in this District we tried everything to make things right and we thought so that you are the doctor that you are today let's keep waiting then we work because that's what we've been doing well like we we've been waiting you said okay let's keep pushing it off I'm speaking we've always kicked the can down the road we kicked the can down the road and we was kicking kicking the can down the road and then the question is when listening to this conversation what my biggest fear of creating this Committee of the whole is that we Silo the work that we're doing by saying nope that's too big that's too wide we need to
284only focus on settlement things when the action the actual work of equity is much wider and broader and should be part of the conversation at all times D leveling is not one of Dr fergus's recommendations but that should not be the only focus of this board this board should be focused on helping like helping as many students as possible and the idea that we say well we can't have de-leveling I was here in 2018 when we actually de-leveled or we cut down the number of levels and I remember you you missed board member right when you said you actually voted against it basically because you said they'll say they de-level but they're still going to stick your kids in this place and these other kids in another place yes and so are we going to
285keep are we gonna I'm just gonna say okay well look what happened again and then say okay well we don't want to D level anymore let's not have this conversation we need to actually start moving forward in that direction we didn't go far enough and we have to keep we have to finish the job and so I I think it's very important the last thing that I'll say is that because the question that was raised to Dr Fergus was around d-level and he shared his opinion the fact that he is supportive of that and did it right right into the recommendations would lead anyone to believe that he doesn't think we can do it successfully unless these other 23 things that we are legally required to do happen because otherwise he could have easily had
286written it in as one of the recommendations and that's where I want to leave it we're going to move on to the action portion of the meeting you're absolutely grasping Caitlyn so I mean listen I I I'm not by far any by means any by any means an expert in cni but one thing I'm seeing is that it definitely is an overlap between the spirit of what Dr Fergus said they may not be exactly in the language that he put forward in recommendations and the spirit in which bill is using his experience to talk very passionately I mean this is I I just wrote him an email saying that I am very well impressed the wrong word because I'm not impressed I'm very touched by the no no that's that's it I'm not judging her
287no I'm not judging you yes I'm not I'm not judging you by saying you are impressive but I was very yeah I was moved exactly I was very moved by your very personal experience and how you are getting behind this so I think it is and also one one step back I think the process is fine it went to the committee committee looked at it it wanted to the policy committee and therefore it's very eligible for streets so as far as the process is concerned you cannot say process didn't work yeah whether what so I think I am in agreement that let's bring It Forward let's put it out there I'm just like we've had visceral reaction there's gonna be a visceral reaction from the public from Community there are lots of people who believe
288it's a good thing lots of people who believe it's a bad thing that's okay so I think it's okay to bring it up there and get feedback and use certainly that's what we've done and I do agree that listen policy comes before implementation I mean we can put the policy out there and it's first it we are not proposing something that is out of values with our community we're putting something in there that actually is can be discussed and if the community comes back with a very large good reason saying that no this is not something we should pick up right now maybe we should not be focusing on that it's fine I just want to put on the record that I had certain changes that I asked for and I don't know if they
289were made so I just need policy to communicate on that and it can be a conversation later but I just don't feel comfortable there were a number of things some of the things in the policy we we have they're mentioned in other policies that I want us to link to I mean it's a seven page document like it's going to need a couple of look overs and what I'm just trying to say is I'm realizing that the sentiment is that there were no changes and I'm and that's I want it on the record that that's not true I had sent requests I don't think that those requests were discussed in cni because there was a lot of other things discussed and that's my concern is that I think a lot of my requests were valid
290and I think it should be taken into account and go on and go to policy to review so that it can go back to us so we can look at it together so I'm just asking if we can talk about that more offline thank you and we would and we would discuss that those and we no no and I think that we should talk offline I think we should talk before the policy committee meeting but those could definitely be incorporated and you you could be you know anybody that wants to come to that committee meeting could come to it to you know contribute no I'm inviting you Mama you're not allowed okay well I think I think the missing link is I'm sorry you're right yeah so anyway we can table that and hopefully we
291can get some next steps okay so let's move on to the action portion of the meeting I'll turn it over to Dr Taylor sorry I have to get my committee read out oh sorry I'm so sorry that took sorry about that I apologize all right so the dating technology committee met on September 19th at 5 30 PM it was attended by myself board member valmani and board member wingfeld um our topics of discussion included the ssds data review we want to discuss ways to standardize and make the presentation clear as well as having the goal of creating sort of a template so that the district can create basically a five-year overview that we can look at with every time we get the ssds data like presentation we know what we're getting and then we can
292look at those Trends and discuss those Trends um the next thing we discussed was transportation in particular we were looking at discussing I guess the idea of a database looking at addresses across town and looking at ways that we can use something like variance because we have these different software packages that we are piloting where we have one that we use versatrans we're also piloting another software package and we also have the county coming in to do measures if uh if a household demands it or requests it and we can actually compare these values and then get a variant to see how accurate is our software and if we need to make any changes but there are still some discussion about whether what what else can go into this database and whether it is still
293necessary um the next thing we discussed was Data reports around District goals so we kind of discussed which district goals would we have would require District data reports including special uh our goal and special services student achievement and access and Equity so um that was just the meeting that we had any questions all right and our special services meeting was held on the 27th at 6 30 PM oh that was such a like a boring committee meeting I mean nobody fought nobody walked away nobody is abusing anyone everyone agrees you're doing great that's great work yeah I will so maybe maybe all the good work is really happening in this community yes it was a very efficient meeting and then we had another efficient meeting yesterday special services was held yesterday in the 27th at
2946 30 PM intended by myself board member Eckerd and board member right um so the first thing we discussed was the referral process so we want to basically have uh data reports that come to special services so that we can see demographic info the referral process timeline who is assortion referral and also cross-checking that data with PowerSchool so we can identify disparities um the next thing we discussed was coverage in special education and basically whom should parents contact so we discussed basically the department ensuring that there's more proactive communication as well as the coverage done by um Mr Johnson Miss Tommy Miss Ellis and Mr Mullen um after that we discussed special education teacher vacancies um I know that Personnel is following up on this but for special education or special service if you want
295to make sure that we are given updates during each meeting on the current vacancies and we'll also just follow up on the vacancies and coverage at um that this that the schools are doing and then finally we discussed some issues with Transportation just to make sure that students are getting assistance they need particularly for district placements and then yes and we were a very efficient meeting and we had a very spirited discussion [Laughter] do we have any questions for Dr tillisford about social services work okay I know I know you support it but I think that you didn't support the current program as it was going to be implemented and I agreed with your with your assessment so we will now move on to the action portion of the meeting all right good evening everyone
296um there were laughs it's still Thursday eight more minutes right yeah right so um a couple of I received no requests to sever any item just confirming that if you have any requests this ever um board member of all the money um I'd like to sever four five one nine four five one nine any other requests to sever to approve the revised Boe ad hoc committees for the 2023 calendar year is four five one nine oh I actually and it's three four five two zero sorry four five two zero um board members if you refresh your screen um the the hand carriers have been added I believe to your agendas just double checking that all right sorry um Patrick can Alyssa vote on four five two zero not four five two zero four five sorry
297include APW settlement implementation yeah but we are updating the negotiations committee so can I vote on that part can you splue yeah okay okay so I just wanna that's fine so again board members please refresh your your agenda today just to be sure we're on the same page the requests confirming um four five one nine revised board ad hoc committees is severed there was also a request to sever four five two zero the sidebar agreement am I incorrect now so we're just severing four five one nine no other requests just confirming all right board members I put before you for your consideration resolutions four five zero six through four five two zero excluding four five one nine which is severed do I have a second second foreign okay we're now open for discussion on those
298aforementioned resolutions uh born member malispina I would like to just point out 4518 and um I appreciate everybody's uh support so far that I have gotten on this uh resolution I think it's very important that we pass a resolution especially with um October next week being ban Book Week talking about how we as South Orange Maplewood School District believe in the right to read and that the freedom to select reading materials for oneself is a fundamental Cornerstone of democracy um it mirrors what just occurred in the Essex County and um I know that West Orange and other districts are looking to do something so I I think it is a really powerful resolution for us to support so I appreciate the support on that I just want to say I appreciate you putting that together
299I can't wait to support it thank you that's our question okay we will then go ahead and and take action on these resolutions board member winkfield yes board member valimani yes board member Deval Wilson yes board member right yeah board member telesford yes board member Mouse Pina board member Acker yes board member Gifford yes board president what letter yes motions passed thank you board members um we do have hand carries but before we get to those we present to you four five one nine do I have a second second okay we are not open for discussion for resolution 4519 which is to approve the revised Boe ad hoc committees just as a reminder um as previously mentioned it would be introducing a Fergus implementation committee that would be a committee of the whole obviously not
300with board member malice Mina and then also it would be updating the negotiations committee also confirming that the negotiations chair will be board member Wingfield through the rest of this year uh board member valimani so the idea of having a committee that looks after the implementation of the settlement is a good idea there's nothing wrong with that it's a very good idea but the problem I have with this resolution and the way it's set up is that it's meeting monthly as a special committee this is like saying that I'm tracking Sun Sports and I won't take measurements every day it does not make sense this is a long-term process where if you measure very frequently you get incorrect measurements so I think the the smallest amount of time you should spend on meeting is maybe
301a quarter if not six months and if you don't forget I mean we are already having two updates from the superintendent in June in January and July on this exact same thing so in my opinion I mean we're just wasting our time by having a committee and now a committee of the whole and you know everyone's going to sit together for an hour two hours and listen to updates every month where they may not be really any updates so yes unless you're saying that let's get together you know two minutes walk away that's different so my problem is not with the intent of the committee but the weight is structured so I would be extremely I would be happy to vote for this if you made it a quarter even that is debatable but yes
302I'll take a compromise I'll take a quarter I'll be happy to vote for it but we're meeting him twice a year anyway the district's gonna show up January and July the reason why it's structured as a special committee is because it has a specific objective with a specific timeline so according to our bylaws it is it meets the definition of what a special committee would be versus what's defined by an ad hoc committee which I believe engages like community members and you know et cetera et cetera so that's why it's spelled out as a special committee and my personal viewpoint on the Cadence of meeting is that right now I think it's so important we meet monthly because of all the things we just discussed we don't know what the district's vision is and how
303we're going to implement and how we're going to do it over the three years and I think it's better for us to be a little bit more Hands-On to have that understanding especially as Justice Wallace will receive his first presentation as will we in January um that we have a hand on all of this if we feel more comfortable and the timelines are being met then I think it is a good idea to scale back but in the immediate short-term I think it's necessary to have the monthly meetings Dr telesford and then board member Deval Wilson I guess one of the concerns I had with this committee is that I feel as though there's going to be replicated work a lot of the recommendations are things that fall under different umbrellas for instance some of
304it is cni some of it is Personnel so you could have an update within those within those committees and then you're going to have another update in the the committee of the whole so are we just repeating things over again and so then my question is how are we what what would be the difference between work that's done for say cni and then the work that's done in the committee of the whole what would be different what update would you have in cni that you would not have in this Committee of the whole is there something that'd be overlapping or non-overlapping the way I see it and I mean we haven't I think this person we've actually been able to talk about it um together as a team but the way I see it is
305cni cni and there's like a laundry list of things that they have to talk about every month same with fft you know jokingly we do normally meet until like 10 o'clock 11 o'clock at night this is a meeting where that document that the district created that has everything lined up in columns with what was in the settlement what Dr Burke has recommended what we have already done what we haven't and how the district's going to move forward that is our agenda and that document is like three or four pages long um also I just looking at the liaise looking at our committee chart right now the way this chart is written sorry let me back up my suggestion is let's see how this goes we've got October November December right January we got a vote
306on this again we might decide hey you know what let's make this quarterly we will have data and experience to inform right now we don't really know what we don't know so my suggestion is let's vote on this we all want to move forward and do it do what's right and realize that we'll have a chance in three four months in January to reevaluate yeah I'm just saying that I don't think my question was quite answered though because my point was that by having a monthly Cadence you're going to have some work that's going to have to overlap because you're going to have some sort of change in curriculum that is called for by the by the by the recommendations how do you not cover that in cni and then not cover it within the
307committee so I think yes if we have a monthly Cadence there's going to be overlap now maybe there might maybe there may not be overlap in this very early portion because it's about discussing implementation and having these other goals in mind but if let's just say you were going to do this for three years there's going to be overlap and there's going to be this redundancy that I think that we should be mindful of there's overlap in all of our committees you know for example we talking Personnel about Staffing shortages for special education classrooms but then in Special Services you guys drill on that and from a different angle um fft you know this is going to impact fft and the amount that we have to allocate from a budget perspective having this as a
308monthly meeting Keeps Us top of Mind anyone who's a chair who come attends this meeting is bringing that back and making sure that this is a standing agenda item where are we on settlement term I will say that a bullet you know two um and so I think the idea of all of our committees is that we overlap and that we don't function as silos in my opinion this is an opportunity for us because frankly what we've been doing is not enough like getting a quick five-minute recap in our closed session meetings has not been substantial in making sure that we're moving the needle on the work and so with the amount of work that has to get done in a three-year period having this oversight look as a board we're limited on what we
309can control this is something that we can control to have this extra layer of oversight to the nubia's point let's do it for a few months if it doesn't work we can revisit it um but I don't see why there's this hesitancy to move forward on it and if you feel that way I think at this point to vote but I guess I want to make the point that when I do see those redundancies that is a problem so I did see us having special education like talking about special education vacancies while also there are other topics related to Personnel that I didn't think were appropriate for the committee and because they were overlapping so yes I do think that is a problem when we do have that type of overlap because it's redundant we
310have to remember that we're having the administration come in and having them do the same thing over and over again they have we want them to do the work and just talking to us is not part of that work necessarily so we should try and really make sure they are focused on implementation board member right you know I I'm just thinking maybe had we done this before we wouldn't be sitting here now we we tried to vote on the same thing earlier on and it didn't pass I can remember that the um the president of the village trust he's asking should we form have you formed what do you think about forming a committee with this it is the perfect thing to do we kept our eyes off of this for three years trusting I
311don't trust so this committee is very important for me I've seen too much I know too much and we need this oversight that's it it's not hurting anyone and if you don't want to attend the meeting you don't have to right okay don't need to and you know voted no before you can vote Nova game can we get to this because I want to go home uh Mr Burnside can you take role on this I mean we need to discuss this till we come to a reasonable conclusion about what's happening we're not sitting here and worrying about I need to go home and I need to get out early and all that I mean that's just disrespectful to all of us we're all here no I am done with this country no excuse me okay
312guys listen everything is spelled out in the document it's the first time actually that anyone who's proposed a committee has put something together to outline what it is and what the intention what the objective is and what the timeline is it's all there for everyone to see no one has reached out with feedback other than to say that they were not interested in informing a committee at this point we're going to move that is absolutely not correct hang on hang on hang on I got to reply back to this I said Mr Burnside detailed response to everything you said and I said exactly the same thing what I said wrong the committee makes sense the committee no the committee makes sense so don't say they've got no feedback I mean I gave detailed feedback like
313and the second problem I have which I've again told you in feedback is that the name of the committee makes no sense Heaven call it the equity report committee I mean we are not forming committees around one person no person is bigger than the board I mean the district and the students that's our number one thing so maybe you want to call it improved students committee I mean they call it whatever else you want what is Dr Fergus committee I mean it makes no sense to have that name so you know I mean think think through the law think through all the problems that are there in what you've just put together in this resolution the name is wrong the Cadence is wrong right and and you're just well duplicating yes I mean yes but
314my two my two points were very simple the name is wrong the kid is wrong okay thank you for your opinion may we please call the roll on this thank you board member valimani no board member right yeah board members of all Wilson yes board member Mouse Pina sorry president with letter yes board member hacker yes board member Wingfield yes board member telesford yes board member Gifford yes motion passes thank you coming around on your hand carries oh great okay I forgot about that thank you Dr Taylor hi board members again you have two hand carries we'll do the one at a time uh the first hand carry is resolution four five two one HIV appeal do I have a second we can't discuss because it's a hip appeal so we'll just go to vote
315for president will let her yes board member valamani yes board member right yes board member tell usford yes board member Gifford yes board member Duval Wilson yes board member Mouse Pina yes board member Wingfield yes board member Eckard yes motion passes the second hand carry resolution 4522 approve special counsel we'll go to vote do I have a second sorry all right I think we just go to vote right Mr Burnside Board number five the money yes for president with letter yes board member Wingfield yes board member Gifford yes board member of mouse Pina yes board member Duvall Wilson yes board member Eckert yes board member talisford yes board member right motion passes okay that now concludes the action portion of the meeting we're moving on to the second hearing of individuals and delegates um I
316just want to see if we have anyone who please sign it up please there's no one there and I don't oh okay we've got the Lone Survivor we got Jeffrey Bennett [Music] um I'm um I've come to speak about issues with middle school placement and transportation and suggest ways that the Board of Ed and administration can make improvements um like with the elementary schools placement in middle school is a unilateral decision by the district without any parental input and it's totally random which children are assigned to the more distant School although there is a skew where low income kids are more likely to place be placed in the distant School the Assumption behind sixth grade placement is that all families want the closer School hence that's where lottery winners are assigned however like with the
317elementary schools I think this assumption is flawed there are many families in Soma who live over 2.0 miles from one middle school but are still fairly distant but below 2.0 miles from the other middle school for some of these children going to the more distant Middle School might actually be preferred since it comes with a bus whereas if they went to the closer Middle School they might still have to walk or be driven up to 1.99 miles um there are additional problems if a family gets a tough placement for elementary school there is no guarantee that they won't also get a tough placement again for middle school because elementary and middle school placement are totally independent is it fair that if a family has an elementary school that they didn't prefer that they also get
318a non-preferred middle school too there is also a problem with sibling placement which hasn't come up if your children are in grades that are three years apart so you have children in grade 8 in grade five your younger child would go through the triple eye Lottery again might be placed at the other Middle School some families might be glad this happened if the older child's placement was bad for them but other families would be disappointed since they would lose the connection they had with that Middle School if the family has three kids or four kids space three grades apart they would go through the Triple A Lottery again and again and again there's also a need for additional Transportation support the administration of Michael Alves Alves have emphasized that 85 percent of middle school kids
319go to the closer school which is important but it does have a downside because the 15 of kids who go to the more distant school will not have may not have any neighbors who go to the same school if they're almost two miles from the school they would not realistically be able they may not be able to find an easy carpool it would be easy Hardware range some of the solutions here are the same as for the elementary schools we should at least ask families what their preference or need is most kids are going to want the closer school but not all will we should have a waitlist transfer process many kids who sign up for grade six don't enroll let kids who didn't get their first preference or need take spots from on enrolled
320to make it Equitable have the weightless transfer process be automatic like Cambridge and Montclair we could also have a process like Montclair Harris where unused bus seats are given to kids just under the threshold if they use existing bus stops Don't Force kids to have to watch half empty buses pass them by we should also have Elite Boston Middle School up for middle school after school activities and tutoring even more important they are in elementary school and sometimes the lack of a late bus might hinder their ability to participate in that and I see my times up thank you very much um I think that's it for in-person public speaks so right okay um so that includes our public speaks Dr Taylor did you want to respond or just that I always appreciate the feedback
321um uh the um I think that the notion that students can't have friends outside their neighborhood is something that I don't agree with um the fact that I think that we have to as a as a board and as a community when we created the triple I and took it around and talked to everyone and we addressed those top five or five maybe even 10 concerns from families including thousands of people who responded to surveys about it um the most important thing that parents told us was that if they had siblings they wanted them to be together that that would be a hardship to have kids in the same grade span apart they also spoke about you know the importance of phasing it through which is why we do the triple I beginning in kindergarten
322at sixth grade I think that you know there can always be things that individual families would want or prefer but we try to look at the entire scope of the triple I and the impact of it and the reason why we're doing it and even when we have to say no to families we also share with them the things that benefit them from the triple I mean we stand by them and they're research based but I always appreciate when you share the thoughtful feedback and ideas they don't go on deaf ears we can talk afterwards we can talk afterwards no problem okay thank you very much we're now moving on to the new business portion of the meeting does anyone have new business for this evening um Dr telesford and then uh board member melisbina
323I just have a comment for us as a board we really should have more decorum we can have very spirited discussion but we should never get personal attack each other laugh at each other snort or chortle at each other when anything is happening in here that's what makes this a strong body is that we have respect for each other so I just want to really make sure that you know we need to be respect each other be respectful to each other we can disagree but then be respectful in our disagreements yep I agree with you um board member Mouse Spina um I'd like to move back I guess we're going to discuss good new business I don't know if it's uh well I'm making a motion that we have a special meeting related to the
324report and everything or is it better that we just do it at the next committee yeah yeah okay forget it I'll think about it yeah I'm sorry all right okay forget it all right seeing none closing new business um with that I'd like to make the following motion the Board of Education will meet in public session on Tuesday October 17 2023 at 6 30 PM in the district meeting room 525 Academy Street immediately following the opening of public session the board moved to go into a closed session in the superintendent's office as well as using an online video conference platform to discuss Personnel matters within the attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and require discussions to be announced at a later date immediately following the closed session the board of
325educational meet and public session estimated to be 7 30 PM in the district meeting room in 525. um in person utilizing online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals the community can view the meeting by following the steps which will be listed on the agenda um may I have a second all in favor that appears to be unanimous so Mr Burnside I would now like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting on Friday September 29th at 12 30 a.m oh sorry 12 20 a.m may I have a second all in favor meeting is adjourned thank you and save travels home everything