Board of Education Meeting - Regular Session - August 24 2023

001all right good evening it's 6 32 p.m and I'd like to call the August 24th 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 board member Alyssa malaspina here board member Kali telesford here board member Arun vadlavani board member Courtney Wingfield here board president Caitlin with letter here board member Johanna Wright present thank you 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 and South Orange Township clerks and the editors of the

002news record Star Ledger and the Village Green this evening the board will have the honor of swearing in one of our newly elected student board Representatives Gwyneth Brown due to scheduling conflicts we will be holding an additional swearing-in ceremony for ASA Glassman at the September 28th board meeting also on the agenda for this evening are two district presentation reports the first on the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment and the second on the student safety data system with that I'd like oh I'm so sorry I forgot to do please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance sorry the United States government and to the Republic for which spans One Nation undergo individuals with liberty and substance for all thank you with that I'd like to make a motion to enter into executive session at 6 34 pm

003to discuss attorney-client matters Personnel hibs litigation status report and the black parents Workshop settlement the length of the executive session is estimated to be 60 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and proceed with business where formal action will be taken may I have a second thank you board member Eckert all in favor the vote appears to be unanimous we are now a journey to closed session thank you thank you I don't know okay hi everyone we are now back in regular session good evening and thank you for joining us tonight we will kick off the meeting with the swearing-in of CHS student Gwyneth Brown as our new student representative Gwyneth please join us up here for the swearing-in ceremony which will be done by our business administrator Mr Burnside thank

004you the crazy right hand I state your name I Gwyneth Brown do you solemnly swear do you solemnly swear that I was that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and the constitution of the state of New Jersey and then I'll bear truth faith and I and that I will bear truth faith and Allegiance and allegiance to the same and the government to the same under the government's established in the United States in the United States and this state and this state under the authority Authority Under the authority of the people so help me God I say your name I Gwyneth Brown do you solemnly swear do you solemnly swear did I possess the qualifications for the office that I possess the qualifications for the office a member of student

005representative of member of student representative to the to the board of education and that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully and partially impartially and and justly perform all of the duties perform all the duties of that office of that office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God congratulations thank you I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda and move up public speaks do I have a second okay thank you board member Gifford all in favor please raise your hand appears to be unanimous we'll start our first public speaks so let me read the board president's statement the school board meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public oftentimes it may appear to members of

006our audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote before a matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting the Administration has thoroughly reviewed the matter with the superintendent if the superintendent is satisfied that the matter is ready to be presented to the Board of Education it is then referred to the appropriate board committee the members of the board committee work with Administration and the superintendent to assure that the members fully understand the matter after the committee discusses the matter it is then shared with the other board members for consideration only then is it placed on the agenda for board discussion and action at a public meeting we will now begin our first hearing of individuals and delegates this evening thank you for

007coming in person and dialing in by phone the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education certainly respects that you'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 this evening 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 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

008please state your name and town of residence for the record okay first public speaks is from Andy Grossman I'm here for the second time I came on June 22nd at that time I came to talk about at that time I came to talk about how disgusted I was with the lack of communication and action on the part of Dr Taylor and his staff and the prior board chair who I reached out to with the troubles I was having my family and I uh with the school system and um I I expressed the requested to speak with the board uh have an opportunity to meet with that board individually or in whole and talk about the issues why I I think the board the superintendent was was derelict and rude uh in dealing with me and

009the very next day and then you know I'm told after I left I know after I left the board meeting Dr Taylor indicated that he did have information showing that he appropriately responded to me that he would forward it the Friday packets um I quickly heard back from you board chair whitlin whitlater and you kindly asked me to get the information to you I got the information to you all the emails tons and tons of emails outlying my efforts uh not successful to get uh board Dr Taylor to speak with me I to this day have never said a word to him nor he to me he's totally not honored that or even responded um I heard back from I I then after getting everything to you chair did not hear back for the entire

010summer I followed up about three or four times then I went to finally a week ago I contacted the secretary's office and the secretary's personal assistant took my call and ultimately you got back to me with an email and the email said that you that the board is not allowed to talk to me uh regrettably perhaps and that uh you could not share with me what the um superintendent handed you this and that would I have to have an Oprah request I reached out to to uh Mr Burnside and asked for him to call me no no response uh other than his secretary said that I could um put it in writing to him but nobody gets back to me I I was here complaining about a year and a half worth of lack of

011responsiveness from him and the prior board and I don't know if anybody else on the board other than you chair has seen what I submitted uh I don't I don't know what the chancellor uh the superintendent submitted on his behalf you invited me here again 30 minutes is not the time to do this 33 minutes at the time to talk to the board and I don't know I asked for the rules in regs as to uh why the board can't meet with me and none was given to me I don't know if I'll get it in terms of the Oprah but this is not fair I I've been polite and kind and and patient and it's just not fair I know my time is up and I know that there's complete silence here it's deafening

012I wish I lost my faith in in the board and the superintendent I wish that you guys could do something to disabuse me of the notion that you don't care you I shouldn't have to wait two months to be told I should not have to wait two months to be told that the board can't meet with me I looked across the the secretary was here the board chair was here the members were here Dr Taylor was here nobody could say to me at that meeting I just want to let you know Mr Grossman that um I just want to let you know that the board cannot meet with anybody sir sir your time is up I have to ask you to sit down sorry your time your time is up Sir can you please exit

013the public speaks I would like to hear from the board thank you thank you can I ask who you are okay but I was here I was here in the public speak section in June and to submit the information requested by the board and have silence is inappropriate and maybe as chair you should speak to to Mr Burnside you should get me my response to my over request and you're going to be with me thank you very much I appreciate thank you very much okay next up is Kate Athens hi my name is Kate Athens Maplewood I am the incoming president of the Montrose PTA and I am coming to you tonight in support of the proposed board goal for increased family engagement as a parent of a preschooler at Montrose for the past year

014I've been personally familiar with the community discussion surrounding the two reported incidents that took place this past year and the questions that many families still have around what happened I know you can't discuss anything about these incidents but it would be really helpful for the board and District to play a more intentional role in connecting with families by talking with us about how you keep our kids safe especially for students who might have different behavioral needs or those who are non-verbal in particular we understand that there's a chain of command that must be followed and I completely understand that Dr Taylor cannot personally address every issue that comes up and I also know personally as a former teacher and school administrator that there's just some things that you feel like you can't say publicly but

015we feel it would be helpful to have for example maybe like a town hall meeting or just a general meeting for Montrose and maybe also the other preschool sites where we could hear from everybody involved the principals the supervisor of preschool education the assistant superintendent of special services and the superintendent regarding how teachers and paraprofessionals are hired vetted and trained in addressing student Behavior as well as what supervision and Protocols are in place to keep our kids safe and then what steps are taken if an incident such as the ones that occurred occur I mean we don't know details about those incidents so I'm not speaking to those incidents in particular just generally when when an incident report happens or something like that um I want to say I've been really happy to have my

016child at Montrose It's a Wonderful Community with deep history in our towns and I also want to clarify that it's not that we don't think the district is doing these things but families need to know how the district is doing these things so that we feel confident in the program and the PTA is eager to partner and collaborate with everybody and making sure that we are providing the best education possible for our kids also in light of principal Samuels leave this fall we'd love to know who we can work with now at the school to address these questions and just start out the school year strong maybe providing like information sessions and things like that for families thank you for your time thank you so much um and before we conclude the public speaks you

017know I would just like to respond um I think as board members you know just one of the hardest things for us is that we cannot be involved in administrative matters um we would love to accept every meeting request with community members um but we legally are unable to do so um there are two methods in which community members can engage with the board and we absolutely encourage that it's attending our public meetings and utilizing public speaks it's also through email we always welcome emails that come in from community members to our Boe address it goes to all nine of us um so we would just encourage anyone who wants to share you know positive things concerns whatever it may be to please send the board an email or please attend these public meetings and

018share your story with us via public speaks I will turn it over to Dr Taylor in case he cares to respond to any of the public speaks this evening thank you so much I'm board president good evening everyone thank you for taking time uh to come out and uh participate in our open board public meeting for those who don't normally come to these meetings we do take copious notes both me and other team members and if I do have the information I try to respond right away on this on the spot so that we can all leave with the same information um regarding the statements made by Mr Grossman I can just say as I said on June 22nd that I think that my reputation and for responsiveness speaks for itself and I think that

019my reputation over the last four years of my Acumen for how I interact with members of our communities and our stakeholders also speaks for herself even when things are very heated um and uh I'll leave it at that I know that Mr Burnside in the business office have received the Oprah once and we'll process it as we do all Oprah requests um Miss Athens are you still here oh hi thank you um I hope that my statement at the last these board meetings are running together a little bit this summer um I believe I made a statement around this in July and I received a lot of positive feedback from the families on what I was able to share and we definitely would welcome opportunities to be able to have a more intimate setting we

020also understand as you've stated perfectly there are some things that we can't talk about and even if we really want to and um we don't want we're always careful that we hope to set the expectations for families that they don't come to a meeting expecting to hear a certain topic and leave disappointed so I'd be happy to work with you on planning that meeting we're also working on planning a meeting with the Marshall families later in October we know everyone's getting their last Bits Of Summer in so we welcome that and regarding um principal Samuels we can't really discuss Personnel but we do have an update plan to push out to the families of Montrose very soon awesome thank you those are all my responses Madam president thank you so much we will now look

021to approve our prior board meeting minutes so I'd like to make a motion to approve the July 27th board meeting minutes for both the executive session and the regular meeting do I have a second thank you board member Ecker all in favor please raise your hand okay the meeting minutes have been approved I will now turn it over to Dr Taylor for the superintendent update thank you very much hello again uh South Orange and Maplewood School District Community thank you for taking time out of your summer evening to join us for our August regular Board of Education meeting as you can imagine we are busily preparing for the start of the 23-24 school year we hear some pertinent updates this evening the board will be considering the approval of a revised District calendar that reflects

022that reflects the confirmed Columbia High School class of 24 graduation date the date is formally being moved from June 20th to June 19th after conversations with the venue to finalize that contract we are thrilled to share that our construction for this summer is moving forward on time and we will open all schools as planned for September the 7th thank you to Mr Burnside in the business office thank you to Mr gillio and the facilities team as well as our construction managers epic and our contractors thank you to all the teachers and admin who had to pack up their classrooms and offices to allow for this necessary work thank you to our board president for joining me in welcoming our newly hired Educators this week our principals and APS and supervisors joined us in expressing our

023excitement at the potential that these new South Orange and Maplewood School District family members are bringing to our schools in service of our students and Families thank you to our cabinet our SLT for the outstanding District admin team we called the dat dat professional development that occurred the first two days of this week feedback from our school leaders was unanimous they lauded the quality and relevance of this professional development thank you to Mr adidoing and his team in the HR department for their successful drop-in job fair last week a total of 73 job Seekers attended in a number of offers were made to Educators in critical areas such as mathematics and special education we are of course keeping the board updated through their personnel committee regarding the progress of our efforts to recruit highly qualified

024staff members we will now have two presentations for you the first will be our District's performance on the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment known as the NJ GPA and then we will have our customary New Jersey student safety data system ssds bi-annual report we will now shift to our cni leadership through Ms botner and Miss Correa [Applause] tonight and Dr Robles Dr Robles back from Spain too yes welcome back this is not working [Music] let's move that out of the way okay good evening everyone hello so we are going to give you the results of the NJ GPA and the access assessments that our students took last spring once once Keith's with us I see him too okay thank you Mr bonds so if you could go to the next slide Please Mr bonds we'll

025jump right in so um just a little bit of history about the NJ GPA in July on July 5th 2021 Governor Murphy uh asked the State Board of Education to create a an assessment to ensure that our students were ready for graduation um it in 2022 it was a field test and that information that we received from that was to help with like curricular updates and things like that but there could be some tweaking when when you're using a um a field test next cyclist so this assessment is administered to all students in grade 11. um it has two areas to show graduation Readiness it is an Ela and in mathematics um each are um each are reported separately the ELA component is aligned to grade 10 standards and the mathematics component is aligned to

026Algebra 1 and geometry standards to pass either assessment subject you must receive I'm sorry uh can you change the slide um Mr bonds so um to pass the um or show preference proficiency for ELA and Mathematics you must score 725 in each area if our students or any student does not meet that minimum requirement they are able to retake that assessment in the summer or the fall there are other assessment tools that we can use that that has a designated cutoff score or we can create a portfolio appeal next slide please last spring our 11th graders took the assessment between March 13th and 17th and they received their results in July of 2023. uh students who did not meet the minimum requirement of 725 will have the opportunity to again take it in um the

027fall and that will be between October 10th and 16th um next slide please so these are the three Pathways that you can take if you have to show proficiency and and graduation Readiness one is obviously this this scoring is 725 in math and Ela on this NJ GPA the second way is the second pathway using substitute competency assessments and these are in the boxes it's very small but in the boxes those are the other assessments that can be used to show graduation Readiness and then again the Third Way third pathway is through and through portfolio good evening I'm going to talk about how our somsd students performed so here is just a general table with um the statistics of the students that are tested total number of 11th graders that were registered at the time

028were 453 417 of them were able to test 36 did not test for different reasons um here's a breakdown of the subgroups um for if you note from the state the number of students for reporting is a minimum of 10 as per suppression rules applied to student data to protect their confidentiality the test was take was a breakdown of ela had two 90-minute components as well as the mathematics so it's total testing of three hours for each component next slide please here's how we did in comparison to the state this year our students for ELA were at 93.8 passing rate we can clap for that as compared as compared to the state at 80.5 percent not graduation ready for ELA are 6.2 percent compared to the state that has 19.5 percent in mathematics we have

029a 69.8 percent um graduation ready as compared to the state at 55.0 um not graduation ready 30.2 percent and compared to the state at 45 percent the percentages may not equal to 100 due to rounding next slide oh perfect um so here just so you could understand the makeup of the test it's based on the New Jersey student learning standards and how an Ela it's broken up into a multiple sub claims as well as the mathematics so it's listed for you and the percentages that makes up the test so the complete pie is the whole test and these are the different components inside each content area next slide please how we did at somsd this is the measure of student proficiency for each subclaim so this data allows us to see where we could really

030direct the help to the students as we will hear later in intervention strategies but just to give you a representation of both graphically and numerically stated how our students performed in the ELA component uh blue being not yet ready or graduation ready all the way to above graduation ready which is the gray section next slide same for mathematics the different subclaim Performance Based how our students did in math you can see the different breakup and what it allows us to see how where we need to direct our focus and interventions next slide here's a comparison between how we did in 2023 and to how we did in 2022 just keep in mind that 2022 was a field test so things may have changed due to the state deciding on what how they wanted to change

031it but this is the data we have for now in ela last year we were 52.6 passing for ELA as compared to this year at 93.8 percent in math last year we were 70.3 as compared to now 69.8 percent some next slide some notable achievements I really want to highlight is in ela our students have demonstrated exceptional skills achieving a proficiency rate of 93.8 far surpassing the state average of 80.5 percent our 2023 on jpa scores have risen by an amount equivalent to 41.2 percentage points as compared to 2022 and in mathematics we also outperformed the state with 69.8 as compared to 55. next slide to zero in a little bit more here are the subgroups in terms of gender on the left you'll see the English language arts stats so here are male population

032our female population for uh Ela and then an art nine non-binary population as well and then in mathematics to see the comparison and numbers again are representative of percentages next slide our ethnicity and race in ela you have the breakdown of the Hispanic population Latino Asian black or African-American white or two or more races um here's our performance blue being graduation ready orange being not yet ready please note the populations with less than 10 Again were not represented in this chart due to confidentiality on the following slide where is a more of a light blue an orange this is how the in 2022 how the state demographics of the based on ethnicity and race how they did and compared to what we did now again this was a field test but this is all we

033have right now as New Jersey has not released the performance of the state in subgroups for 2023 so all we have right now is to just observe how we did in comparison to 2022. so this is a breakup of the state population representation for 2022. for ELA I just want to highlight our major populations and our schools represented right now our Hispanic and Latino and black or African-American ways so I would love for you to just see how great we did I really want to highlight that in comparison to the state it's definitely a notable achievement by us 88.9 and 84.7 as compared to the state at 26.1 and 20.2 the next slide represents the mathematics same idea and this chart it's our students and how they did um based on race and ethnicity and

034the following chart next page next slide is how the state did again in 2022 and you can see the different breakup there okay next slide again zeroing in our populations we outperform the state again a notable um achievement at 60 and 41.7 as compared to the state at 30.7 and 24.6 percent okay next slide our academic disadvantage Ela you have in 2023 are the population that is economic disadvantaged as compared to who are not and then again the state population for just economic disadvantage for ELA and again a notable difference we outperformed in the state comparisons as well here next slide [Music] same again for economic disadvantaged students in math we also outperform the state on both categories uh here it's a notable achievement next our subgroups for students with disabilities we have a little

035more data this year it seems like they gave us more information this year based on again last year was a field test so now they've released more who had an IEP those that did not have an IP and 504 as compared to last year they did not release the students that had IEP State data so we were not able to have that but they did release the 504 data so I was able to place that for you there next slide in mathematics they did represent the how many students with disabilities did take the math ask and the 504 so I was able to show you that difference and how we did as well there too thank you Zoila um so some intervention strategies that we're using um so CHS administrators have already determined which students

036missed the first pathway um and but who can still graduate since they have reached it through a second or third pathway and I just reached out to Mr Sanchez we have 71 students who passed through a second pathway um and we will continue to analyze summer act and SAT scores so that my number might even be lower when we start the school year off um the students who have missed the the the uh passing or graduation Readiness at this point they will have content resources we do have tutoring um we will be working with tutor.com things like that to to help and we also have um teachers available and ready to support them seniors who need a third pathway so if any of our seniors still are struggling in this area and are just not

037quite graduation ready yet they will be taking a course that focuses on the portfolio process and then we will be using the njsla 9nj GPA data within sharing it with our teachers to make sure that they have the information hey Keith we can do a few slides forward uh good evening so next slide please so I I just want to say that our ell students first first of all I'd like to say but I'm going to be using the term ell and the term ml ell is a former term that we were using to refer to English language learners but currently we're using MLS however the test is still called access for else so I don't want to get it confused when I talked about ell students and ml students which now the term that

038we should be using would be MLS multilingual Learners so the first thing that I wanted to do is to talk to you about what is access for else because our students also take the NJ GPA RL students or MLS but in addition to taking that test they also have to take access so they they they're tested in two different ways but access is always a language proficiency test what it does is determined for us where the students is at that point so we have an English language development level and we can see where our students are and based on that level then we can employee strategies to work with the students that year so as you can see the test is given to all students from kindergarten to 12th grade um it's it's given every

039year and it measures the language development of the students so we can know exactly where they are uh and they're tested is a language test it's not a Content test and it it measures their listening Reading Writing and speaking and although it is a language test and and not a context test it's still it's measuring some of that content a lot of the questions that a fourth grader would get would also be related to content that they're covering in their fourth day class or the same would be for 12th grade or ninth grade so there is content embedded however the grade or the score that they get is based on the language skills uh next slide please so these were some of the terms that I were I was using and I wanted to have

040a slide that would talk to that multilingual Learners are our ell students our students are eligible to receive Services the the language development is the process where a student begins and How It Ends becoming fluent in a language or native in a language the language proficiency is where the student is and that's what access does after we get the results from access we know where the language proficiency of the student at that point is based on the test that they took uh next slide please so here is a sample student report this is a report that we get at the end of June that I copy and that I sent to all our parents uh the report it sent in English and in their native language accompanied by a letter that is also in English

041and in their native language and it explains and it tells the parents where the students are at this point what they can do and this is information that we use also with teachers so teachers not only the ell teachers but the the the content Area Teachers can know well this is what an ELO student can do if the student is at a number two number three four and here you have the different levels you have the entrance so these are the students that come to us with practically no English so they're entering the language but we can provide strategies to the teachers to say well this is how you work with a student that is entering but is needs to learn the content and is a 12th grader which the content is a lot more

042complicated then you have emerging development expanded as you can see I put a 4.5 in between this is the the score that the state determines at a time when we can exit a student so exiting a student means that they no longer have to take an ell class or the language but they can be in a regular English class and doesn't mean that any supports have ended for them it's just that they're ready to be successful in a regular English class and and then you have bridging and expanding but at that point they're usually not anymore in a ell class in the English language class next slide so these are the the results for last year uh as you can see I mean this is not like njpa it's just really to see where they

043are and what information we can do to work with our students so we have a total of 120 students last year we tested all our students we have 55 students at Clinton 25 at Maplewood Middle uh 38 at Columbia and then 10 other schools we only have three ell schools we have Clinton Maplewood and Colombia so the other schools may be students that for any reason may have declined services and even if a student declines Services we still have to test the student it may be out of District placement so last year we had a student that is not in our district but we still have to test the student or even a student that might for whatever reason at that point being homeschooling and we took the opportunity to go to their home and

044still test the students so happy to report that we tested all our students uh the next block you have no sorry no you can remain in that slide sorry okay these are the students are exited so this means the number of students that achieve a 4.5 or higher last year and they were exited from the program parents get a letter with the scores and information letting them know that the student has been exited and does not need that English language class anymore and can be in a regular English class we have 11 students were exited at Clinton uh we have less than 10 students in the rest of the school so that's why the number is not there because we have to protect their privacy and other schools basically refers to the students that we

045talked about before and on the next one you have the the number of students are continuing so we have 93 students that will continue since then parents received a letter with the scores and they receive a translation in both languages describing that their students are continuing in the El program at any point at the beginning of the year or at the end of the year a parent can decide that they can decline services and they don't want Services anymore and if that's the case then we we grant that we grant that uh next slide please so here are some of the the results so you can see you know we don't we have less than 10 students in kindergarten and first grade so there are no nothing to report in there but if you look

046at the second grade that means that we have 12 students so you can see the distribution of where our students are we have eight percent our students are entering so they're at second grade but they're very basic knowledge of English uh but you have in that same second class or I mean we may have two classes of Ells for second period students that are at level two level three level four uh you might wonder well how is the student on level four that maybe that the result of the test and that student may have been exited now so that whoever though that 17 percent of second graders they achieve a poor 4.5 or higher and they were exited uh those are the results for fourth grade you can see also the distribution so you can

047see the different levels that we have in the same grade level next slide uh same thing four six seven eight as you can see only in seventh grade we have 11 and in the high school in 11 and 12th grade so those are the distribution of our students where they are as you can see we have 20 of our students in 11th grade at entering level which means that they are doing the work of an 11th grader but with very limited English so we really have to work hard with them to ensure not in the English class because that they get the support that they need but in their math class in their history class in other classes that we provide the systems that they need so they can do well in those classes and

048next slide so these are some of the the purposes of the of access and what we use with that so it helps us to monitor the progress of the students not just I mean we do that ourselves in the classroom but this gives us a screenshot of what how this date or how that test is measuring them it helps us make decisions about you know where they should be next year uh whether they should be exiting the program and then being in regular English language courses uh teachers use this course to meet with the students and set goals for the next year so we talked we look at the scores they sit with them this is where you are this is what you can do what are going to be our goals for next year

049so that we can together work together and improve um and and this is It's just public reporting so that we know where we are so you can see this is a very different kind of testing from the previous one that we shared information with and that was it thank you we can take questions thank you so much those presentations were wonderful we'll open up to the board for questions um board member Wakefield then board member male Espino thank you so much for the presentation um it's exciting to see the it's a relatively new assessment but it's exciting to see the progress even from the field test to the official one this year um I just wanted to raise up the issue of the math data because I think it's something that we've heard about before

050and something obviously that stuck out in the report in terms of an area of need in particular as you know we look at the overall performance of math data in comparison to how we're performing an Ela but then when we break it down further and look at the disparities in that data for our black and latinx students for our students with IPS and 504s and for economically disadvantaged students we're seeing um really really striking gaps in particular in math and I lift that up because as a board we've received um data from our uh Equity partner from Dr Fergus that specifically lifts up um the issue of our math curriculum in general as a something that our district needs to really re-examine and dig into in particular sites discrepancies in the rigor in the curriculum

051and our math levels in particular in middle school so I realize there's a lot of onion layers that I'm peeling here but if we look at the outcome data which is what this is and map that back to the discrepancies in rigor in our course level there's a real correlation that's drawn from what even some of our younger students are experiencing through our current systems and structures that ultimately lead them to not experience as much success because we also know who is currently sitting in some of our lower levels in our math class so I lift that up just to make sure that we note that as a board but also to ask that you know tonight we're voting on one of our district goals is asking the superintendent to direct work to create a

052comprehensive diversity Equity inclusion plan this serves as sort of a road map or a North star for a lot of different bodies of work and I just ask that um the superintendent strongly consider having our math curriculum not just in terms of a Content but also in terms of the structure of how it's delivered organized and leveled to definitely be part of the consideration for that plan in particular as we look at this data absolutely I um completely agree with you that it is definitely an area that we need to be looking at I think one step that we did do for this year is that we have a new math program in K5 which is really exciting um it was it's long overdue and I think this this data definitely supports that but then

053there's beyond that right like we have to look beyond what our elementary schools are doing and building off of that and giving our kids opportunities to have some really strong math conversations meeting with different students with different perspectives and really um you know getting diving into that because that's when all when all of our kids hear different conversations about it it definitely helps and pushes their thinking so 100 we are on board with you and thinking of how we need to do that and definitely use it with our with our district goals as we've been kind of looking through them and thinking about action steps that is one area that we're looking at for sure you are uh I'm on a sort of piggyback on on what Courtney was saying um while I can't get

054into the iir part just making that clear after everybody here um I want to sort of Norm things for people a little so that they understand that those math scores meant that our students did a 750 which was the passing score was under 50 for math so that means that's and I know this is getting a little numbery now but 60s we have a good percentage of students that did not Pat could not even get to under 50 to pass when we're looking at the scoring which is concerning to me especially when we look at the amount of the students that didn't and the race and ethnicity of the students who did it um it we are I mean I'm happy to hear that a number have now come up with us you know have

055been able to pass and I personally do not believe in the graduation test I think it's I have so many things that I could go off for an hour on on how it's we shouldn't be doing this but these are the numbers we have in front of us and we have to face the reality that we have some issues and while I appreciate that we and I and I've said this to you before I appreciate that we are looking at it and and redoing our math curriculum for the elementary school we really need to look also at our high school and our middle school because these kids the numbers we haven't they haven't gotten better in my three years that I've been on this board they're about the same and I know from personal experience

056with my son who was in those lower level math classes that the rigor is not there and I have spoken to the like I was at board meetings speaking about it before I became on the board so we need to do as much possible to make that happen so um I'm happy to hear that but I I really urge you to continue to work not just on fixing the K through five which you're at but moving forward and my I guess that's more of a statement my question for you Dr Robles is I just saw the information um I didn't have a chance to look at it prior which is my fault but um we still have a large number of kids that aren't moving out of ell um yeah I and what are we

057I mean I know it's a process and it's you know some come in throughout the year and you know it's a process but how are we making sure that we are making it so that we get as many kids to move out and and to get to the levels where they need to be because you know it is a little concerning that from the 112 or something that took it only 93 or yeah I think that the numbers are a little misleading when you look at them because we cannot report our real numbers uh but I'm happy to you know if we get a chance to share those with you uh our students come at different levels so like we have about 10 new students that are coming and we're doing testing this Monday and

058Tuesday I I know for sure that a number of them are going to be at a level one because they've just arrived from the country so it usually takes about four to five years to get to that 4.5 so we do exit a number of students every year and they do very well but you know it takes is a process getting from because it's not just language and a lot of times we confuse that social language that the student speaks and student can speak English our focus is on content is on academic language and that's also a conversation sometimes I have to have with parents when I offer the services because they think oh but my child speaks English and I say yeah he does or she does or they don't they do but in

059reality we're not just teaching the language we're also teaching the content and we need to get in academically ready to be in second grade or third grade so every year we have the score of the students and then we have for the previous year and this year we work with the teacher we see we look at the progress and we say student had a 2.3 last year this year they have a three point so they have moved one level this is the expectation so that's that's good progress and then the teacher works with the student to see how to move to the next level but it is going to take four to five years but I have those numbers for you if you want to look at them no I I appreciate that I think

060that that is very helpful for me to understand that it is a four to five year process and I think for the community as a whole to understand that we're not looking at it to be like they come in and then they're ready to go right away which I understand personally because I see the students um a daily basis but for you know the outside public to understand that this is a process and and so while those numbers are still sort of high there you know other circumstances do this sometimes we have to consider some of the students that we get they have interrupted education so they were not although they come to us and they are placed in seventh grade or eighth grade maybe they did not go to school in their countries for

061two years so there's a lot of catching up that we have to do with them because they're not already in their math class or not ready in a lot of other classes and we have to start from the very beginning and you know that there's it's a long process Dr telesford then board member of aldamani then board member Duval Wilson yeah I guess just on the I guess the ell question um could we have some of that data in terms of looking I guess the transitions of students like where people are starting were they coming into just so we can get a sense of yes kind of like a visual of that data where it's moving sure so also please know that sometimes we have students that this is the first year that they take

062the test and we don't have a previews uh year and also students that it's a very transient population that they come and go a lot sorry I thought you had another question yeah my other question was just about the kind of looking at the math data um do we have an idea of I guess the overlap of because we actually looked at economically disadvantaged students then we also have had it broken down by race do we have a breakdown of where these groups are overlapping also in terms of looking at our levels how many of these students are in our academic classes versus our honors classes and then really you may have to take a look at the curriculum if we see that there's lots of overlap with let's say if it's 100 of the

063kids in the academic classes are not passion in this class then we really need to look at that curriculum again and say what are we doing about it sure rather than just one narrow View um yeah as I was actually working today with the math supervisor of the high school the mass stem and Science and we're really looking at doing work with the subclaims and really seeing because we do have individual information of each student and where they land on this on this chart obviously we gave you the whole you know as an overall but we are going to look at where they are like where is it reasoning that they're struggling with is it you know supporting content because we can narrow their instruction right and help support the classroom teachers where they are

064in those academic placements and we can give the teachers these profiles almost right of like where we could really support the student um in terms of the math content right so like we need more reasoning this maybe more modeling so that they can strengthen where they fall in that subclaim so we were talking about um how we're going to do that now that we're also soon we'll be presenting njsla scores to you um we also have data releasing from there that we we can work on correlating as well um for all grade levels not that test right there through um the high school so we have been working with the stem supervisor and the middle School supervisor we have had many conversations and we're really excited actually to dive in because we know the importance

065of mathematics in our district and and then also being able to use this to revise curriculum right take this information if it is so if it's a systemic problem that we're seeing we can go into curriculum move things around if we need to or really focus in on specific points and kind of beef up that area so between students itself but also looking at it from the curriculum point of view all right thank you sure so do we know how of the number of students who are not ready how many at the end of 11th grade how many of them become ready by the time they graduate from senior year like for example in math there are 35 who are not ready not at whatever not not ready to graduate so at the end of

066senior year what is the narrowing of the Gap from 35 does it become 20 or does it say 32 percent do we have a a feel for that sure I can help with that a little bit um so that's where your graduation rate that's the end of the four year or five year cohort it's a part of our separate njdoe report card comes in um as as in and um um shared the the students who even are not a part of this report have already begun to go other Pathways and and they're already successful right because they because there are other Pathways available p-s-a-t-s-a-t accuplacer all those different all those different things that are even before retaking this test so it's definitely a moving Target um and if you go on njdle and look at

067this cool report cards you'll see what our graduation rate cohort was for five year and four year I believe it's about 94 something like that um those are folks who all the kids who have made it and some for I think for them what we said before is that um many of the students who are in that six percent who didn't make it are students who have either transferred out right it's a record-keeping issue or they need that last summer school summer to make it to their graduation Etc that miss anything are we saying that this is a a pass field report for graduation I I didn't think that was no it's it's a well this test is one Pathway to your graduation requirements one but there are there are three exactly there are three

068different ways that you so this is one way that would meet the requirements for graduation another way would be um in one of the one of the pages or slides has a box with all the different other assessments that you could do could be SAT scores HCT scores slide six so if you're purely someone who's doing badly in this test is going to do terribly sat and PSAT maybe it was a bad day they could have bad testing I mean it I completely understand where you might be you might be if it does happen but no actually that I have a bigger concern now you see this is 35 that's a huge it's about 30. graduation rate is 92 so that's that's eight percent so and since then 70 more kids have satisfied those requirements

069through the other pathway and the other Pathways right in a portfolio right portfolio assessment is also a huge one that happens where the district can represent what the student success rate is um and submit it to the county and state for approval this report will be public correct I mean I don't oh yes yes it's not part of the attachment so I'm assuming it will be attachment it is in the um I believe it's well it's in your attachments I don't think it's in the public attachment yet okay okay thanks [Music] um many of my questions were answered but I still have two more and I agree with what my fellow colleagues have said here um just for my confirmation in the communities the on the slide we talk about Ela and Ela proficiency and

070that was 10th grade level Ela correct I think that's what I said on the slide for those standards yes I'm sorry 10th grade standards and then for algebra one and geometry would those be considered 10th grade level as well then you also have to remember some of our students take it in middle school right there is that exactly um so yeah I mean what was just striking for me was that we have 11th graders in the spring taking a test where they've been through these classes before might have even passed these classes already and are still struggling so I'm glad that we're digging into this data and I appreciate the sentiments that you agree at looking at math especially at the middle school level um where that's where they're really incorporating what they've learned the

071basics of what they've learned in elementary school and then building on it in middle school right so excited for that new math program in elementary school um but then also um backing up what um board member Dr quality said um when it comes to the ml data it would be nice over time for us to be able to see the trajectory of those students because those slides didn't have any comparisons I don't know if you say this is the first time you've done this but but there are no comparisons to sell as like well what happened before so if we can start having a template or a way that we can track this regularly to start seeing patterns and trends that would be helpful I think one thing um to our board VP second VP

072on the Ells that makes it different that the universe is not the same every year right it's one of the things that um that makes it more difficult to track and find trajectories and I can tell you that a student who can be an ell or ml could be having a lot of success but still in that program and so that makes it a little bit different but thank you for that for sure I think that um the idea of giving more detail to the cni committee and the board is a great idea uh thank you uh president for the letter um uh I'm going to sort of pin you back on um for them of black hamadi don't everybody fall out uh he asked about the actual number of not ready students I have

073that question as well also I would like the demographic breakdown of those numbers do you have those of the students in math yes I believe we have that yeah yeah we have that it's on Slide total is on slide number seven as the demographics economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities and what are we doing about our mathematics for our younger children we just we just adopted a brand new curriculum for a K-5 so they are it will be in uh it will be implemented this year and teachers have already had professional so for the students who are not graduation ready what are they what do they report cards look like um is there a discrepancy I do not have the report cards in front of me I mean we can take a look as a

074comparison for sure but I don't have that so how are you right now so how would those students be supported how are they being supported so they are one we are checking to see how they can if the other Pathways um will allow them for to meet the requirement that graduation requirement one is a portfolio so if there is an opportunity where students might not test well the portfolio would definitely be an opportunity for them to show what they know um and then the other areas they do have other assessments that they need to take such as acts and SATs and if they have met that requirement there is a number if they meet that requirement then they can pass using that Avenue if we still have a student that who is a senior and

075has not been able to pass the assessment we are putting we are helping them by supporting them in a portfolio class to pull together their work to show what they know um and then any other students we are having another assessment in the fall we also have tutoring.com where they are going to have opportunities to tutoring sessions daily 24 24 7. um there will also be support within the classroom in the school um there's conference period there's things like that for them to be able to get their supports and we are taking deep dives into individual students it's a very manageable number for us to really look at each student individually to find out what it is that they need and give them the interventions that they need because to just say that we're going

076to use one intervention or a few interventions not necessarily going to be successful for all of our students so we would much rather go in and zero in on each of these students individually this this entire report basically speaks to what's being done for the overaged and uh under credit students it's not good thank you any other board member of feedback on this I do want to say it was great to see from an Ela perspective that across all demographic groups we are significantly outpacing the state averages and as you look specifically at you know our black population 84.7 versus State average of graduation ready of two 20.2 percent um obviously we still have there's always room for improvement but um and we saw that on the math side but you know it's really good

077to see on the ELA side that we're we're doing to celebrate yeah yeah so thank you Madam president if we're okay we can shift to the next presentation absolutely thank you so much thank you Miss Butner thank you Miss career Dr Robles we'll now have Dr Gilbert for the ssds [Music] good evening I think the last time I came before you were palm trees or something in the background that's not the case this evening uh good evening I'm Dr Kevin Gilbert the assistant superintendent of access and Equity to Dr Taylor members of the board Madam president I'm here today to present part one of our ssds ssdss report uh we will be bringing part two in October so the numbers that I'm giving you today only refer to the number of incidents that were reported

078from September to December when I come back in October I'm gonna do this uh January through June and give you the grand total of all the incidents for that year so just as you look at the data just remember we're looking at a short time period from September to October the first thing if you go to the next slide is to know that this data is mandated that they're re-reported it's a new it's a system that replaced a couple of old systems but it is the information that is given on the student safety data system and reports incidents in violence vandalism weapons substance abuse and HIV incidents that have occurred within the school and as I said before uh the data that you're going to see today is only going to cover from uh September

079to December of 20 of our 22-23 school year and the last time I presented to you was October of 2022 where I presented the entire ssds report from the previous year next slide you can't even see that writing this will be online so you can see it so I'm gonna go ahead and just I can tell you what it says uh the incident totals so the incidents that uh ssds ssds keeps up with our violence vandalism substance weapons HIV confirmed uh vandalism when you we talk about vandalism could include anything from Arson computer trespass damage to property false or public alarm theft or trespass and then violence includes assault fight kidnapping robbery extortion sexual assault contact threat to simple threat simple or criminal assault it's also important to know that when you look at the

080totals they may not add up because what could happen is you could have one you could have one incident or one situation that happens at the school and it covers several different incidents so you've got an incident that happens but it comes up several different categories so it's very possible that one individual could be found in violation of other offenses on there so when you look at the totals and the numbers and you go hmm that doesn't quite add up that is not unusual all right here we go the good stuff the data that is I don't this is this this heart this this report is hard for me because I'm Mr happy go lucky but this is actually talking about some things that you know I'm very happy go lucky but here we go

081uh ssds incident totals from September to December as you can see on this particular chart it shows you that the total number of incidents that we had for this year was about 37. it could also show you is that the the column all the way to my left it starts with Columbia High School uh Maplewood Middle Psalms uh Clinton Delia Bolden Marshall Seth Boyden South Mountain Tuscan uh then uh Montrose Montrose Early Childhood Center and then we also have to have reports for South Mountain Annex since it's his own building right and so those are what the schools are at the bottom but the total the backside to my to my right or to the right of the screen is a total number of uh incidents per uh recorded and again if you look on

082this report Columbia High School does show is having the highest number of incidents but I do also want to let people know Columbia High School also has the largest number of students so they have four times times the students of any of our elementary schools and they have double the size of our uh our Middle School populations and so it's not unusual to see large numbers of incidents because there's a large number of students there next slide this slide shows you the total four-year comparison for the September December reports uh whatever in 2019-20 there were 98 incidents reported in this first marking period but you can see for 22-23 that number is 31. what I also want to point out to you is when we look at this four-year comparison I pulled out a school

083year 2021 because of the covert year it's an outlier those numbers were really really small and that data is really not as reliable as we wanted to so that data is not present so our four-year Trend data that you're looking at here is 2018-19 2019-20 then we go to 20 21 22 and 22 23 and so in 2018 19 there were 98 incidents reported uh at the very I'm sorry in 20 2019-20 there were 98 incidents which is the high bar in this trend but this past year during this time period there are only 31 incidents next slide please so remember when I showed you go to the next slide so remember when I showed you that title of what is all included in the violence category so this this next slide is going to

084show you the number of reports of violence incidents which is a large number of categories I'm not going to grow through all those again but as you can see here in the trend the trend data you see we're seeing a downward Trend in terms of the number of incidents during this time period during this period of time that would have been considered in the violent incident category uh for 22-23 I think that number is 11 incidents that were reported the high in this four-year Trend occurred in 2019-20 where 27 of those incidents occurred and you can see until my to my left there between Clinton High School Columbia High School Maplewood Middle School and and our middle school that's where we see a lot of the incidents and the activities happening you can go to

085the next slide please the vandalism category uh there was not that many cases of vandalism vandalism reported and I don't know where the where the language is on that particular slide but in 2018 oh there we go in 2018 19 there were only three total cases uh and then in the last three years of the four-year uh span that we're using there were only two cases that were reported uh Columbia High School reported one case in in all in those three years in those three years while South Orange uh Middle School had the other case that was reported of vandalism next slide when it comes to the substance of abuse reports uh unfortunately those are all reported from our high school and this chart just shows you that that Trend the high of the reports

086happened in 2019-20 where there was 61 substance abuse incidents reported but we see a downward Trend happening where this past year during this time period they're only 12 work work uh were reported at that time and so we were seeing a decline of those type of incidents for this time period in terms of reporting happening uh for the substance next let's go ahead just one note of that again um as you emphasized in the beginning we're reporting on the first part right of last year but and if you're looking at the comparison those previous years are full years just just wanted to make sure we point that out okay so um on the weapons we don't have a lot of weapons incidents uh reported uh that this Market between September and December there was only

087one that was reported at our high school and as you can see the four-year Trend data there is showing that you know over the four years with the exception in 2018 19 and 2019-20 where there were two or more with three happening in 1920 we typically not seeing a lot of those incidents happening in our schools next slide please the confirmed hivs these are the hivs that after being investigated were concerned to be violations of our HIV uh uh policy and the HIV law uh it's for the period of reports for the period of September to December uh we saw a decline this year from what happened last year during this time and those numbers even though that chart is skyrocketing up there that gray is 17 incidents that will confirmed gives during this time

088in the 2012 school year but then the for last year there were 12 so a decrease of five were right there the next slide please this next graph shows you the alleged hivs now these are the ones where people reported them and they were investigated and but depending on what the investigator said they may not have been confirmed and as you can see there we went up last year in terms of this period in time of the number of alleged hibs that were reported which is 22 and we slightly went up to 24 this past year doing those during those months well you can see the diagram and kind of see the Trends on where the reports are we also want to highlight this one because next year you when you see this chart you

089may see these numbers go up because as you remember in April we adopted a policy where we took away principal determination so now when an HIV is reported it has to be investigated which that means is for this particular side our alleged HIV numbers will probably go up because that means we're investigating all of our hivs that are turned that are that have been reported so I just wanted to put that out there so when I sit down here next year y'all don't hit me with a lot of questions on why are these HIV allegations going up so uh the next slide this deals with other incidents that led to removal of you know that the report doesn't specify what those incidents were but I'll just call your attention to for this past school year

090there was only one during this time period that was reported the height the height the highest number during this time period occurred in 2019-20 where there were 11 during this time and then you also remember 2019-20 that first part of the year the covet shutdown happened around March so these numbers are pretty good for for this particular reporting period because school had not quite shut down yet in the 2019-20 school year when these numbers were reported I do want to say something about restraining seclusion uh you can keep clicking to the words come up um this is the first year so this year on ssds we do have to report those restraining seclusion numbers however when we put the presentation together they hadn't broken it down by periods so in October when I present to

091you I will be presenting to you with the numbers of reported restraining seclusion numbers were at that particular time but I do want you to know that we do have to report that to the state so here are the takeaways clearly Columbia High School had the largest number of incidents but I do talk to you about remembering putting that in context they also have the largest number of students in our district we did see decreases in the number of substance abuse incidents reported at our High School uh where the the we've had I think from went from 12 to 5 for this particular time period overall we are we saw a decrease in the number of reported incidents in the violence category and if you go back to that first slide that could be a

092number of things that can happen typically when people talk about when fights or where you will put fights fights would go into that particular incident category so that's where you would see those numbers uh just reporting that you know during the period of September through December for 22-23 we had a total of 11 of those incidents which was a decrease of uh a decrease of one from the previous year 16 from the year from 2019-20 and a decrease of nine from what would happen in 2018-19 we still have relatively low numbers when it comes to vandalism weapons and other incidents that are reported we saw a decrease in the number of HIV confirmed HIV beads for the period of 22-23 at this marking period when you compared it to last year but and we did

093see a slight increase though in the the number of alleged hivs but even if you look at those numbers though I still want to keep it in context to the number of our students in our student body and and relate those to to what's actually happening and then finally um Maplewood Middle School did see a decrease of six confirmed hibs during 21-22 and South Orange Middle School reported no HIV confirmed hivs for September to December uh for last year and then our elementary schools continue to have low numbers of incident reports and although we did see a slight number of hivs are up for this period or like two that's still relatively low compared to uh our student our student body so we're still watching those numbers and and I say that to say that

094this when we're talking about building our school cultures and climates we're looking at all of this data we take this data seriously even though those numbers are low we still want to figure out what we can do to keep them lower and wipe them out you know our our ultimate goal is we don't want these kind of incidents happening but they occur and so how do we keep them down and how do we make sure we create environments that uh create more belonging and stop some of these things from happening is always top of Mind especially for uh for uh carrying myself as we try to lead these efforts in the school district and with that I'll stand for any questions thank you so much Dr Gilbert we'll start with Dr talisford then board member

095Gifford I guess I have one question one comment do we have I guess a distribution or an idea of when most incidents occur so I'm aware that this is from say September to December um do we see more incidents early in the year than say when we look toward the end of the year um so uh the report doesn't give you the the actual time when they were actually reported they just when we had when the reporting times comes our secretaries at our schools will do a wonderful job encode the incidents as they come on the thing that would take us to actually go back and see incident reports and stuff we would have to comb through although I'm not saying it can't happen I'm just saying we'd have to comb through all that incident

096data to kind of figure out where that is so the trend data like I showed you here we're just taking it as a whole period of September to December and so leaving the numbers in there as we do this report is kind of and then just from uh the presentation standpoint is there a way that we can kind of normalize these numbers because we look at the high school yeah they have the much largest the largest population and the other schools are smaller so then it'll dwarf those numbers but it can be helpful if we kind of normalize them to the number of students in the school because then we can see trends like are they are they increasing or decreasing because that can be a concern like let's say in elementary school we've seen

097numbers go up we want to pay attention to what's going on there so we're in conversation about that one of the issues of actually putting actual School enrollments with those numbers is they are so low that we jeopard we we re we run the risk of I've actually inadvertly identifying what specific incidents we are talking about which then identifies which students were took in that which means we started violating those students rights and so we're trying to figure out how to exactly do that so that we can we can at least give you a clearer picture of that but we also got to pay attention and make sure we don't inadvertently uh out one of our students because everyone's familiar with what incidents happening at the school if that makes sense I guess I was

098thinking more along the lines of if you did a instance versus a number of perspect like as a percentage of the number of students oh so they'll just be a percent so you focus or like per 100 000 right okay thank you okay I was going to add that um during our conversation at the EC level we spoke about creating a board version of this document that's highly confidential that that way that we would be able to protect against outing students who may be um you know attached to things that happen in these reports I did just want to note one and by the way thank you so much Dr Gilbert I always appreciate the work you do um I did just want to know one observation that I saw it seemed that there was

099a discrepancy between the incidents whether it was Hib or violence uh with Maplewood Middle School and South Orange Middle School South Orange Middle School seems to be very low whereas Maplewood definitely had a significant number of more incidents and I just wanted to know is that something you guys are looking at and you know South Orange seems to be doing something a little bit better than Maplewood Middle School so I can say this Maplewood Middle School were ahead of you on the policy their Administration actually investigates all the HIV allegations that come so it was very rarely that if an allegation happened the print the administration just took the stance that if you filed a HIV we're just going to go through and investigate that was before the policy had even changed that could that

100could lead to one of the reasons why we see a lot of alleged hivs there uh at Maplewood Middle School just as I said we're always concerned with our hivs we know that uh we work very hard and heavy especially with our abs's and so that is concerning and what we do we're going to be putting a lot of things that we'll talk to you about in October that we're really working with our abs's and our school climate teams to really look at this data seriously and go in and really take some changes so I would say that to the end this answer to that question is that other than the fact that they do investigate all their hivs we where we are on top of the fact that we did see that large number

101of of incidents that happened at Maplewood Middle School but even though they had a large number out of allegations the number of confirmed were not quite as as high as uh as some of the other spots right and I would just add a piece there um that one of the one of the important tasks that we take um is part of what both Dr Telus Ford and board member Gifford said is the normal normalization of the data because in 2019 of course covet happened but the year that we were back in person after being remote we shared many times in public that that was a very different school year that kids could come back from being away for a year and a half some of them and that they were skyrocketing across the state in

102all these categories and that we shared again last year when the school year started that it was on most unanimous across staff admin teaches everyone that kids came back more normal staff came back more normal after having that year of transition back in the back in schools after covert 19. and one other thing too on Maplewood Middle School I can say that last year one of the school culture and climate goals was decreasing the number of HIV allegations so that just shows you that we were looking at the data and having the conversation and really working with the school to figure out some positive proactive strategies to lower those numbers down board member right then board member Duvall Wilson then board member of the money then board member of alspina [Applause] hold on oh yeah

103thank you so much uh for your presentation um you know the violence is high at Maplewood Middle and at Columbia High School does every building report appropriately and how do we ensure as a district that items are reported appropriately right so we we're working with our secretaries daily on the proper making sure these numbers are accurate to this point we are confident that the numbers that they reported are what the incidents that have occurred we have we are going to this year do a recalibration of our training towards ssds making sure this to recalibrate everyone making sure they know how to get things encoded in the system making sure that uh we can identify any discrepancies uh we do check it we have to certify it as a district so when that what that means

104is the the schools reported then my office goes through and looks at him and tries to make sure everything looks you know I can supposed to before we certify it as a school district so human error happens we will acknowledge that but to our satisfaction right now we feel like those numbers are being uh reported accurately now I noticed that you had substance abuse for Colombia you know for the high school you know I the last time I left middle school we had a little problem we had a little problems in the middle school we didn't have anything reported here and my two uh believe it I'm getting excited now that we're not having any substance abuse issues in the middle schools and remember now that's this is that was one period so I I'm

105gonna go through and look at all the period two numbers to make sure you can boast about that when I come back in October but yes that is that is great news for us to know that during that reporter period there were no substance incidents reported on our middle school that's what we're talking about reporting things appropriately now let me ask you uh who is trained and restraint and seclusion you know this is vital to know when right of what's been happening in our district so that's uh that's that's that's a special services uh question uh all of our special Educators have to get that training or a certain groups of them depending on the students that they have I don't have that that would have to be a question for our assistant superintendent of

106special services who handles the Handle With Care and all of those things that there's I don't have that number for you we can place that in a Friday packet for you we do keep track of who participates in the Handle With Care training we can definitely do that yes not too many people um I had a substances question as well I mean I'm glad that we're at 12 for the 22 23 so far into the school year but last year was 17 so we're only five away from what it was last year for a full year so um I'm just curious one can you tell us what these substances are like is there a trend is it mostly vaping do you have that data for us on what I don't have that I could I

107can see if the high school has a breakdown of what those incidents that they were reported and I guess we can try to get that information to you um for for ssds they just have to report it as a substance and that's what we have here but that doesn't get specific on what those substances were perhaps in October when you come back we can talk dig a little bit more into that um because I'd like to know a little bit about what the school is doing in the high school and potentially in the Middle School to try to curb I mean we've heard anecdotally that from a reporting standpoint that students will go into a bathroom in the high school and somebody's doing something they're not supposed to but it's uh but it's unfounded they

108don't get in trouble so um so I'm concerned about that I would just like to know what are we doing to to to curb that what education who are we bringing in experts monitoring all the above um would be good to know good idea okay thank you we'll make sure we do that sorry board member of all the money you're next but just to piggyback off of um for remember Deval Wilson if we could also see the breakdown if any result in hospitalizations would be helpful too sorry okay Madam president I would just again remind folks that some of those numbers are so small they would be in the board base report not in the public discussion so a couple of things I mean the first thing is as uh Dr Taylor said it would

109be I think would be really really nice to see it normalized because I would actually argue that in most categories the middle schools have more incidences for 100 students than Columbia High School okay so if you plot that correctly you would see a spike from Maplewood building would be the highest Psalms would be number two when Colombia would be number three so that's number one so that would be nice to see in October the second is also kind of pointing out to what uh board member Gifford said is that why is MMS more than swams and I if if nothing changes I would argue that in two years when Aya kicks in they should be equally distributed that could be what would you would expect from a purely statistical point of view right because you

110know the demographics are identical the mix of you know all the SES are identical so therefore both schools should have similar kind of uh numbers coming out so that's number two and uh the third thing is do we have comparables as it can do we can we compare what we have against New Jersey averages or Essex County averages or or whatever or group I as we are called averages so that way we get to know what's happening right I mean for example if you see there are whatever two out of 100 incidences for substance abuse and New Jersey averages ten well we can say we're doing a good job but if it's two and two then we're obviously not doing a good job I wrote all that down we'll try to make sure we get

111that to you yep Courtney I think you're responding to Maroon yeah no okay so I wanted to build off of what um board members said and just offer maybe a qualitative idea to your quantitative one around the III matriculation and just sort of offer that the work you've been doing with the school leaders in particular around the climate and culture goals and a lot of the action plans I'm curious as you have two middle schools even though much of what exists is standard operating procedure in our our regulations School climates are very unique and individualized to schools based on the leaders based on the teaching stuff based on sort of just historical ways of being and I'm curious as you work with the two leaders and their teams as sort of best practices and Tall

112Trees surface around things that may be happening in one school and another and not to any way in infer that one is deficit and one is not but just as as you work with those leaders to be able to tease out things that they can share across those schools I would imagine that you know we may be able to see growth in both communities as a result of that kind of collaboration thank you yeah yeah absolutely and one of the things that a proactive approach that we're definitely taking this year is doing more work with our school culture and climate teams across the board and so that's that's what we hope to drive a lot of with the normalcy that you've been talking about is through consistent training uh Carey Weibel our director of access

113and Equity is going to be leading that and providing those direct support units to that and so we're hoping to see some of that consistency across the board one of the activities we did at that was going through the New Jersey tier system of support and having all the schools look at their tier one interventions and having a discussion so doing more things like that so we can see what schools have best practices and what's going on in our schools that others can borrow from and use so that we can get all of our schools you know moving in the same direction so absolutely thank you that was sort of what I was going to sort of ask for um and and that um I'm going to take a little different approach it always concerns

114me when I see Zero as a number and people wonder why because we want zero you know they think you want zero but we know that there is bullying occurring in all schools every no matter in elementary school middle school high school it's happening so when I'm not seeing an it any numbers it concerns me that the reporting is off um and so I'm one I want to highlight that because I want to make sure that we are really being consistent with reporting that we are making it clear to our principles and our administrators and our teachers that it is not a bad thing if you are reporting a hymn I would much rather we report them they become unfounded or founded then us not reporting incidents that or to try to keep the numbers

115down so when Arun you're saying that like the normalization like looking at other districts we have always had a history of being higher numbers than a lot of other districts in terms of our hibs our violence or all of that and parents sometimes freak out by those numbers but I've always seen that as a good thing because I believe that we are honestly reporting versus other districts which I personally have been in other districts where there are stuff that occurs that never get reported so I would rather our numbers be higher and honest than lower and not reported like they should be and when we're hearing um things from community members from other people that like when you were talking about the the drugs um that you know it's occurring I know it's occurring I

116teach in high school um then I'd rather see those numbers be higher because if we if we are reporting our drugs like we should be then we are getting our kids that are getting the help they need and so um I guess I I might ask to you is to make sure that we are making it clear to everybody that it is okay to report that it should be reported that this isn't a heart a bad thing that it's actually something that helps us to understand and make things better for everybody instead of trying to like Pitt schools against the other in terms of um you know how many incidents is if because I think we need to be honest more than anything so it in our in our trainings with our principals and with

117our ABS as we do talk about the importance of the anti-bullying law and why it was put into place just understanding also that when principal determination was was the practice it wasn't just the principle looking at the incident and going we're not going to call this a hill it was a discussion with the ABS the principal looking at all of the factors and making a decision on well there's this incident is this incident in line with what could be founded as hfl is it something we can deal with more as a code of conduct but even in dealing with a code of conduct even if an HIV is founded there's still opportunity to deal with it from the code of conduct so yes we're going to stress the importance of that law why it's important

118that we make sure we uh we we allow our students to have that opportunity to report those and we're going to investigate them fully and we are going to make sure we're going to double check and make sure our numbers are accurate and sound because if I'm going to present that to you I want to be able to sit here in confidence and let you know that this is what we which is what is going on in our schools too um there's never been a negative consequence for anybody who's reported right and I think that just two points of emphasis in response to some of the questions the first would be knowing that that a student is vaping or using substances knowing it versus an incident happening that is reportable of two different things right

119we're not um we're not naive enough to think that more kids than 17 have challenges with that we have the substance abuse counselors also in this in the high school to to assist with that um secondly just for the um the appearance of some of the charts where one Middle School looks much higher than the other if you look at the applicable numbers the difference like three four kids but the numbers are so small that the bars look much larger this is an FYI any other questions for Dr Gilbert thank you we appreciate you Madam president that concludes my report okay great thank you Dr Taylor um we will now move on to the business administration update with Mr Burnside thank you for our construction update tonight we've got I'll start with the Clinton Elementary

120School for the second stage um we're finishing the site grading and topsoil around the new edition the contractor is continuing to work on uh ventilator programming for the new classrooms the contractor is also installed is installing new signage or in the new classroom wing and final inspections are underway at the South Mountain Elementary School the existing building third and second floor have been turned over to us for final cleaning and Furniture setup they're completing flooring in the new edition they're testing the fire alarm system and final Paving is scheduled for August 30th at the South Mountain Annex the new addition has been turned over to us for the final cleaning and Furniture setup they're installing the main office floor they're cleaning the completed classrooms the parking lot Paving and striping is has been completed and

121the exterior ductwork is 90 90 complete for the Marshall school they completed the contractor completed the concrete slab on the grade poor for the new classroom Edition the structural steel delivery for the new classrooms is expected to be in the next week they've completed the majority of the asphalt shingle and synthetic slate shingle insulation on the roof and the completed south parking lot storm piping installation Belgium Block curb insulation and temporary parking lot asphalt pavement patch has been installed for Montrose that's still scheduled for next summer and for Columbia High School the abatement of the b-wing and the pool area is complete the contractor is setting temporary partitions in the first and third floor of the b-wing and the contractor has begun mobilizing the storage containers have been delivered to the job site and they

122it's right outside my office they put a really big trailer back there too this is very skillful driving by the tractor trailer and all schools will be ready for the start of school okay all right thank you Dr Taylor and Mr Burnside are there any questions for Mr Burnside board member right hello everybody's mentioned I haven't heard anything mentioned about the Pink Palace the Pink Palace South Orange Middle School we used to call it the Pink Palace back in the day we will have the bid opening for the South Orange Middle School on August 21st apartment I I just want to commend you all and make it very clear to the public because there were rumors out there that we will not have all our schools open on time that they will be open on

123time um but I want to make sure and or Dr Taylor maybe you can speak to this a little because I know that there are concerns by teachers and others who are dying to get into their buildings to get things started I get that having being an educator myself that we are working on we have plans in place to make sure that they will have ample time to to get done what they need to before the school starts sure if I'd be happy to um so um that's why I think in my remarks the teachers for all their hard work is and the and the admin who had to pack up classrooms and pack up offices prior to construction beginning and Miss Bodner um in her presentation spoke about the the big professional development for

124the new K-5 math program and so that's on the first uh day of reporting and so what we've done we've created an alternative date for those who had to pack their classrooms if they choose to take advantage of it and again as a as a former teacher myself you're chomping at the bit to get back to your room to be able to especially after a big move like that um and we're lucky that we've done this now for consecutive Summers and um we even helped our admin you know in the in the in the expectation that this first day of school may not look like other first days of school um but it should be of course far beyond acceptable but just to set everyone's expectations is for a good reason we're improving our buildings

125we're investing the community's funds well and monitoring it well and so maybe it takes a few weeks or even a month or so for folks to be where they are normally at on the first day of school um and we're here to support them and that's part of Mr burnside's presentation is that we have facilities folks all in those buildings cleaning them up and the um contractors also had an obligation to return them to us in a certain way so I'm definitely continuing to communicate that and thanking everyone for their patience for this great investment in our buildings remember Eckert so this question is for Mr Burnside thank you for all the updates um is there anything that you want to share in terms of updates on transportation for the community and I apologize if

126newbie you were going to cover something in your fft readout but I just didn't hear anything mentioned as we're a couple weeks out so as everybody may or may and I know we do have a interim transportation coordinator right now Mr Jerry Ford he's working diligently to finish up all of our routes um we're looking to Target some kind of communication to go out possibly next Tuesday but please don't hold me to that we're we're a little short staffed there but that's our Target I could share a couple things yeah yeah we also share previously um that we were shifting our transportation pieces into Power School right previously um years families had to print out PDFs of stuff and they received stuff in the mail we're just trying to make it much more efficient and

127Mr Burnside is correct it is a it is a challenge you know we we increase Transportation by 1.5 million dollars and have an intern person in place and of course the business office is supporting that that person and the board is um is slated to hire additional support um for that office and um one thing that we sent out to families way early in the summer was just reminding them that there's an expanded Transportation offering significantly invested in by the board and the Border School estimate and we pushed that out multiple times and we're also putting it in our back to school messaging and putting it in our district guide book for families it's reminding them again and again that you know this is a service that's available for you we've also pushed out our

128Columbia High School shuttle information and parents have responded to that and we're in the middle of pushing out that information as well those bus passes Etc thank you so much and I think I said in Prior board meeting but having the transportation form via electronic submission instead of hard copy was a game changer so thanks for making it so easy for families to do that um okay okay so that concludes the business administrator update we will now move on to the board president update so one more time I just wanted to offer up congratulations again to Gwyneth Brown on her appointment as the student representative for the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education we look forward to working closely with you and with asset to make a positive impact in the lives of our students

129thank you so much for volunteering for this role and I just wanted to flag to the community that the board and the district are looking to schedule a special meeting on September 17th with Dr Fergus to present the equity audit report that he conducted as part of the settlement with black parents Workshop we are waiting for confirmation from Dr Fergus at the September 17th date will work for him once we receive that we will notice the meeting publicly last year we held a back to school themed board meeting meaning board members showed up wearing School merch to represent all nine of our incredible schools so we want to keep this tradition alive this year and as such the board will host another back to school themed board meeting on Thursday September 28th so we will

130all be proudly representing our various schools and we want to encourage Community involvement as well so please folks who intend to come to our next board meeting please wear your favorite SMSD Merchant as a result of some of the board's recent discussion discussions during the board self Retreat our board meetings will now incorporate a quick board member shout out session for board members to acknowledge the hard work and efforts of our fellow board colleagues so I'll be making a motion to do that later because I forgot to add it to the agenda so just wanted to flag that um and then lastly the board would like to wish all of our district families a successful start to the 2023-24 school year for our new District families we are sending you a very warm welcome to

131the district and we hope this school year will be the best year yet for you and for your students so with that we will now be moving on to committee reports so we will start if we just want to go around the horn we'll start with board member Eckert with personnel and then we'll move this way to everybody thank you the Personnel commit committee met on Tuesday August 15th board members write what letter and I were in attendance board member Wingfield was absent we kicked off the meeting reviewing Personnel recommendations Mr Burnside joined the meeting to discuss the resentment of assistant ba of the assistant ba retirement as well as a salary increase requested to bring her back he provided an overview of his recruitment Recruitment and interview process and the team involves looking to

132fill the role he reviewed options as to where the funding for the requested 10 increase would come from it was originally proposed to come out of the Pre-K grant funding for a fiscal specialist position Mr Burnside confirmed it would not affect the budget the committee asked if any research was done on salary comps for the same position in districts of similar size and budget which you ended up seeing in your Friday packet we also discussed the two transportation coordinator positions up for appointment on the resolution as we had just recently approved an interim Mr Burnside clarified that we are not increasing the staff there but the goal is to have the interim train both of them before he finishes up his contract which will likely have to be extended to a certain point in order

133to get these two up to speed the last highlight from the Personnel resolution is the appointment that I want to talk about is a appointment of Miss Becca Dell as a middle school math teacher the committee was really happy to see that she was able to get the appropriate certification to move into this role and for those of you who follow and attend the meetings has spoken during public speaks about this role the committee then oh no no no I have a little bit more sorry the committee then reviewed two policies that will be up for first read at our September meeting no issues with the recommended changes um during old business we covered the following topics Dr Taylor led a brief discussion around the 2023-2024 district goal that impacts Personnel diversity equity and inclusion

134inclusion and strategic plan which will span multiple years I just wanted to raise the point of expanding retention efforts whether that means updating exit interview forms the process having focus groups for teachers of color and diversity in our strategic plan which we will hopefully see in the action plans once the district developed them we also Revisited the theater Auditorium manager position that many community members have been advocating for in recent board meetings we are investing money to fix Seth boyden's Auditorium and going out for bids to fix Psalms and both the personnel and fft committees agree that we should have a designated person to oversee the maintenance and work at performances the district has agreed to research other districts with comparable positions and come back with information to help determine if this should be a

135stipend or a part-time full-time position Mr adedoyan closed out the meeting with an update about the job fair that was hosted at Montrose on Thursday August 17th since our committee meeting he provided a memo to Dr Taylor Dr Gilbert and myself with some highlights which I also believe was just recently released with Village Green so apologies if this is repetitive um but a total of 73 candidates had attended the job there showcasing a decent number of candidates interested this late in the summer eight job offers were extended on the spot and all eight candidates accepted the contingent offer pending the successful completion of their background checks and reference reviews our third party vendor ESS played a significant role in the event they actively engaged with 20 candidates and at the moment at that time had

136extended job offers to seven individuals the presence of the Somaya leadership also added a unique Dimension to the event they had their own job table and distributed so many good giveaways while greeting prospective candidates I personally wanted to shout out tunde adidoyan Monique Durant Shaney Grant Richardson Tom Giglio Diego Diaz and Aramaic for supporting the operational and asked and logistical aspects of this event it came together really really really quickly during the summer when many people are on their well-deserved vacations and to hear the success that came out of it is just something that should be commended and called out and our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday August 19th at 6 30 pm any questions Melissa it's more of a a shout out to a staff member who will be leaving us and one

137that will be joining us um I had the pleasure of working with Mr Jennings uh for a number of years he had been at the middle school for a long long time and um I am sad to see him go but um I am happy to see the replacement um that is coming in I will say that Dr Smalls was my vice principal this year at Union High School oh I'm not am I not allowed to say that sorry um I I will just say that we're you know I'm I'm I didn't mean to be quiet but um I you're getting a great person um and uh I think that is about all I can say I'm sorry I messed that up I didn't mean to any other things okay I don't think so right

138so we will move on to oh um I don't know we'll move on to the committee report out for finance facilities and Technology is this thing on yeah okay on August 16th board members whitlider Dr Telus Ford and I met with the fft committee board members Gifford and balamani were absent hopefully enjoying their travels um so we were visited by our demographer Dr Gripp from statistical forecasting and they gave a presentation on the very robust demography report that we were given in the spring the report incorporates in District seats not out of District placements because New Jersey smart data does not include out of District placements and their tracking so I will highlight some of the um the the main topics the main facts from that Day in 2020 2021 we almost we lost almost

139600 students which is high compared to other districts they work with but typical during covid because as we know many people moved and then we did stabilize this year for their 2023-2020 to 2023 enrollment um looking at enrollment by race white students have been stable black students have been declining and Asian and Hispanic students have been increasing and four and five years the most declines so this is in the future right and four and five years the most the most declines are going to be in the high school they project in four years we'll have 112 less students and in five years 133 less and they said that this could be the ripple effect from the Coba departures that we had early on here in the 20s we asked how this Compares with other districts

140they have evaluated with similar demographics as ours he said this has been the biggest impact he has seen the biggest declines in general in New Jersey are in Hudson Bergen Mercer counties the biggest gain was in Ocean County people wanting to go down south he said they do not have demographically asked they do not have demographic data of the individual student loss they suggest we have a sense of who left over the two-year period by grade and race along with analyzing if those students were also free reduced lunch status um in their opinion we had an increased pattern well not in their opinion statistically we had an increasing pattern of people wanting to come to Soma and um from their analysis things have changed and at some point they believed that we will return to

141our pre-covered growth construction you heard all the updates from Mr Burnside I will add that we discuss the elevators at South Mountain perhaps there was an update on that after my reading you can mention but they're just an electricity issue with the elevators we discussed um the district checking with special services and the principal to check on incoming students who might be impacted by needing elevator access in the fall because our state inspections take time and it might the elevator might not be ready in time for school to start so they will make sure that any students and staff will not be impacted by that also we asked about the switch gears you might remember a couple of months ago we were worried about South Mountain big schools switchgear is not coming in time and

142if that were to happen we were going to incur costs of seventy two thousand dollars a month for backup generator costs and the switch gears came so great news we don't have to worry about that and they have been placed so we're all good you'll notice on our resolutions we have change orders for the roof work at South Mountain for twelve thousand dollars and for flooring and drywall for 8 900. we also discussed goals we reviewed the district goals that are related to ffp which you'll also see tonight um that included you know the first one was the language facility plan of course and filling Financial Financial gaps to complete our middle school projects as we have a deficit two was reviewing our special services costs and data and three are our multi-year diversity equity

143and inclusion plan which will Inc which will include per pupil allocation as we aim to evaluate how spending looks from an equity standpoint across schools we then discussed transfinder the district will be slowly transitioning to transfinder in place of versatrans which is what we've always used to calculate distances between homes and schools for transportation eligibility transfinder is a more accurate system and we also will save money over time switching over to this system this will not be officially launched this school year it'll be it'll officially launch 24-25 school year and in the meantime it'll be used along with versus Trends to observe any differences or discrepancies in how distances have been calculated we of course asked about any change in distance and how that could affect families if versus trans is saying that you get

144a bus but then now transponder is saying something different and so that will be monitored and the district confirmed it would bring in the Division of Weights and measures from the state to do the measurement for the final number to make that fair um we reviewed all policies and made no suggested changes to the second um and first reads and then we also reviewed new policies electronic surveillance of school buildings and on-school grounds um that's 7441 7510 was use of school facilities and then 7522 School District provided technology devices to staff um we discussed the budget and the district is reviewing the 2015 District budget analysis from our former ba and um using it to make it applicable for our district needs this year when it comes to our budget analysis moving forward and that

145would be something that the board would get hopefully by December to help us look ahead we discussed transportation and hazardous routes Roots will have dry runs before school as they always do and just echoing what Dr Taylor Mr Burnside said you know we are getting plenty of applications for transportation the district has done a really good job of informing the parent community on this and so just a reminder that when you are um if it's October or November and you need transportation and you want to put in your form for that you can this is a rolling basis and so if someone did not get their transportation application in by August whatever that's okay also we discussed the option to purchase insurance for technology students who are borrowing technology from the district and we discuss

146creating a student-focused policy 7523 for school district provided technology devices to students which you'll see on our first read tonight we have a similar version of this but that's for staff and I would um like to oh well thank you to the district for bringing this to our attention that we should be thinking of a policy for our students as well and lastly we discussed in new business Aftercare and the upcoming Safety and Security presentation so for aftercare we discussed you know some of the capacity issues that have um that have had been taking place with YMCA and their anticipation of having 100 more seats which is great um remember Eckerd had brought to our attention um other districts that provide more than one option such as Millburn and we appreciate that Dr Taylor said

147that he would look into what other districts are doing specifically Millburn when it comes to additional options but also being very cautious in the way that we do that because we take it very seriously the type of Aftercare that we partner with the entity that we partner with they take that very seriously and then Safety and Security presentation as we mentioned earlier will be coming this fall date TBD they will send out a survey to collect questions in advance from the public like they've done in the past Federal audit is still not done and we adjourned at 9 40 and the next meeting will be September 20th questions the uh the demographer's report is that something that we will make public is that something that's a documentary published or not I don't think that there's

148a reason why we cannot we'll just verify what the attorneys to be sure and make it available yeah I think that during our meeting we spoke about the need for the public to be able to see and access that as well okay thanks and also I'm sorry we talked about Public Presentation yes not in fft but this week and then also sending that report to Dr Fergus which um Dr Taylor did sorry so are we going to have a Public Presentation by that uh we actually have been trying to but this is we've had so many presentations that we didn't want to delay any further so we went to the committee first and if there's space and there's will for the board to have our demographer come back we're more than willing to do so

149yeah schedule has been very difficult any other questions I can offer one more update on the Safety and Security yeah that'd be great thank you um so we have reviewed our presentation and we're ready we have our survey ready to go which is trying to get the two well the three Chiefs now the two police Chiefs and fire chief all on the same schedule so we can have it so we're working on it and planning for it and we're um shooting for Labor Day week or the week after we'll be reaching out very shortly when everyone is confirmed thank you um I guess it's me um actually I want to start with something first and I'm not sure exactly where this goes so I'm just going to put it here um in the past we

150have done the um readouts like we have done a after um there was a newsletter that was sent out and I know we haven't done that since we were without somebody is that something Dr Taylor that we are going to be starting again yeah so Mr Brubaker and I have been talking about that because of of the number of um press releases that we're doing and attraction that we're getting with the that's been our Focus where we are revisiting the newsletter uh format and we'll keep the board abreast of it in terms of like for the board meetings right okay right if so um I guess I'm asking that these readouts go into them because sometimes stuff gets missed so I don't know where that went but I'm I didn't know if that was new

151business or whatever um okay so on August 17th uh Courtney Newby and I were intended we're in attendance of the meeting board member Eckert was absent in taking a much needed vacation at a place that looked amazing uh we started off by discussing the sea uh the cni board goals this year's I recuse myself from the discussion for uh the first goal related to the triple I we also discussed the K3 magnetic reading phonics pilot program that is starting in September uh Dr Bean folks will be finding more information at our next meeting about it we are excited also um that we are one of the schools that will be piloting the AP African-American history class which is being taught by Mr Whitaker who has a degree in both history and English so that should

152make class even more amazing um we also have two books for up for adoption tonight both related to theater um we got an update on the Esser funding spending um which we needed to have spent by September we right now have a balance of 20.97 in to the supplies uh we are trying to get it to zero and we are planning to have that even if we need to spend it on paper clips we are the cheat and is determined to get it to zero so uh we're really happy about that um most of the money that was spent uh in the present year was related to our summer school classes and so we're happy to hear that we were able to keep the expanded summer school programs with arrestor funds um we spoke about

153the hip curriculum for the district um which piggybacks on what we discussed tonight and we're happy to hear that the district has chosen one which will be used by all the schools across the district and the Hib coordinators at each school we'll get training on it at the start of the year um this will make for more consistency throughout and making sure that everybody is getting the same uh information uh we also learned that the district has chosen a GNT screening tool and that they spent a lot of time this summer sort of thinking about how we are going to be doing doing uh gifted and talented in the future and they are hoping to in start implementing it around January of this year in our old business section we talked about the dance programs

154specifically around scheduling of the class there was discussion about where the class would fall during the day and it was confirmed that the class will be meeting during periods one and two which makes it so that students will not have to choose between that class and another academic class which I personally believe is good uh we are also we also talked some about the new schedule at CHS specifically as it relates to the Athletics and special education students because we have heard some concerns around that um we got an update on oh sorry just to clarify some misconceptions out there related to the schedule the schedule is not a board decision but it's a decision of this of CHS and the central office administration and we did ask that they reach out to parents about

155why they believe that this is the best schedule for their students and I think that that has occurred um we also got an update on some of the specific data and when it will be presented uh we were excited to hear that the mapso Freedom School um is playing a role again in the new teacher orientation program I know that there's something that they had wanted to be a part of and uh we hope that collaboration continues throughout the year it is something they want so take this also as my maps of Freedom School report also um I'm Gonna Leave You guys with some really exciting news um it was something that was very much talked about in the spring the journalism curriculum is up for approval tonight and if passed it will continue to

156be a full year class and it can be used towards graduation requirements which was something that a lot of people were concerned about um this is something that many students parents alumni requested happen um the spring and I thank the administration for working hard to make sure that it did happen this means that the quirks can be used towards a graduation requirement like it did previously so that Juniors and seniors can take it for credit um and if a student would now like to take the class and they didn't register because it wasn't a graduation requirement in the spring when they were looking to register they can reach out there to their counselor to request admission to the class so I think that is some great news related to that and that concludes my report

157for the month yes so are you saying that the special dance situation has been uh cleared and the schedules and the kids can uh get you know I am saying that it is being moved to period one and two is when they will be having it and so yes um some of the emails that we got from parents were uh related to having to choose between an academic class and not and by having it period one and two that alleviates that concern is that right that I didn't understand it that way thank you um more just comments and just um was really great meeting that we had and I'm really it was nice to see the enthusiasm from our SLT and and Dr Taylor with our pilot program for magnetic reading for ELA and um

158also the I don't did you mention you read up the rapid growth the grant foundational skills not mentioned that but that yes that's a good one um I'll just read it because anyway the teachers K through third grade ELA teachers will be participating in the New Jersey rapid Grant on foundational skills in Reading program right yes um and so it and so anyway this has been something that we've talked a lot about um when it comes to ELA and and training and this this new curriculum so I'm just excited with the momentum that we've had um also just recognizing that so many other states are Banning AP African-American history and so I'm just so happy that this District continues to make that a priority and thank you to the district and to TJ Whitaker for

159stepping up and teaching it appreciate that and I would like would like say that we are one of the few in the state of New Jersey who is doing this as a pilot and moving forward hopefully all school districts in the state will be uh doing so and keeping it I think it's less than 30 districts in the state out of the 450 high schools press releases on the way [Laughter] for the nation y'all talking about the state let's talk yeah talk here that is true for the nation but my goodness oh thank you very much I'll remember okay uh board member devolves and so yeah sorry I just had brain fog when I was trying to um remember Kevin Bond's name so I just wanted to say thank you for all the work that

160you did um or excuse me Keith I'm so bad with names so thank you Keith for um all the work that you did on the insurance program for the district and for putting forward that policy and um just appreciate all that you've done and I'll remember your name next time I would like to Second I'd like to second that because that is something that is greatly needed within our district is having that insurance program uh uh having that address program within our schools so that our kids um we're not insuring all the costs related to uh Chromebook repairs thank you Keith um moving on we are moving on to board members Gifford Gifford you forgot my name no uh it's 10 o'clock no um no and I did just want to say that's awesome board

161member Mal Espina about the uh keeping journalism of you know a yearly course instead of an you know an elective as someone who took that course almost 20 years ago that's great to hear that um I'm Gonna Keep mine short and sweet uh the policy committee convened on August 16th I was actually absent and so board member malaspina chaired the committee in my place with board members Dr Telus Ford in prison whittler uh present um tonight we have 32 policies up for first read and adoption and 11 policies up for first read it is worth noting um that the religion in schools policy we actually did retain a lot of the language that you know some of the community was concerned we were not going to keep with the Strauss Sesame update so we appreciate

162appreciate that feedback and we did keep it I did want to commend all the Committees for ensuring policies were reviewed and discussed so that we could move such a significant number of policies forward tonight this momentum will ensure we are well positioned for a Cusack review and and that is all unless anyone has questions did you guys have nothing we were going to have a data committee um this past Tuesday however we were going to focus on data plans based on our district goals so at the request of Dr he said it would be better for us to move that to next month so we're going to just have our committee meeting next month then great thank you so much very good um I made Miss Wright very happy okay so we uh with that

163we're concluding committee report out so I would like to make a motion to add board member shout outs to tonight's agenda do I have a second all in favor um so going forward we'll make sure that this is included on the agenda board member van lamani was not at the force yourself Retreat so he's like what's happening right now um [Laughter] so I just wanted to start off by thanking yes all of the board members for stepping up and stepping in to conduct board business this summer our schedules have all been really crazy so all of you in some form have helped me continue to move the boardwork forward and I just really appreciate all of your support so thank you so much and I will turn over if there's anyone else don't feel obligated

164but if you have a board member shout out this is the time all right I'd like to shout out board member um Dr teleport so I might Jackie keeps getting hooked on my hooks um but remember Dr Taylor sport hi um thank you for pitching in for fft you know it is summer is really busy and I think it was like the perfect meeting for you to be in because of the demographic report I was like yes ask your questions um so just really appreciate that and it was kind of last minute too and also you know we we met up which was fun we talked about in our board retreat that you and I hadn't had a chance to to hang out in person outside of the board when we've had phone calls before

165and we made it happen and hopefully that can just be a continual a trend for the board when we can you know to to to have face time with one another in between meetings okay that concludes on the board member shout out oh sorry Johanna I didn't see your hand um board member right come on now you saw my hand no I want to shout out the entire board you guys spent a lot of time a lot of thankless hours working trying to make the best decisions for the district whether we do or not the fact that you're here doing it uh it means a lot so shouting all y'all out tonight you got me lit right now okay all right uh so we'll now move on to the action portion of the meeting so

166I'll hand the meeting over to Dr Taylor to lead us through that thank you I don't get to have a boy's shout out uh okay sorry go ahead Dr Taylor go go go I want to give it I don't want to get it right all right we gotta move we gotta move thank you all right um board members this evening you have resolutions four four nine one through four five oh two are there any requests to sever yes I'd like to sever sorry I'm trying to find it um where is that sorry um there's multiple we can come back to you I don't know four four nine one okay um line four four nine one J I think it is 4491j confirm for yes uh oh wait wait I just want to make sure I'm

167right okay line two do we have to go down to the line or should we stay J is fine okay Jets J well I don't want all Jay okay yeah I I mean I I yield to our attorney sure while he's researching we can take anything okay four five zero zero confirmed any others I don't know we can't hear you yes thank you for the Personnel resolution for one of the um uh retirement dates it's listed as September 2024. it is correct okay yes that's correct thank you number two is fine okay so J2 J2 thank you 4491j2 confirmed so and then four five zero zero and four five zero zero also confirmed any others seen not hearing none uh board members we present for your consideration resolutions four four nine one through four five

168oh two with the exception being 4491 J2 and 4500 do I have a second we are now open for discussion a board member Deval Wilson has a question so I just had two questions one was 4494w that's the resolution for uh um that we received 44.94 W apply and accept NJ high impact tutoring Grant funds yeah so just I just wanted to know what how is that being hated what how will that how will those funds be used so that's a brand new one we just found out about right after the fft meeting yeah so we were scrambling to get it on there we actually had to call the state to get it put on our software anyways this is just to apply and accept um we don't have a plan yet okay okay this

169one but we're very thankful for the money oh yeah we're gonna get this yes yes definitely we need the money okay so maybe that's something we can just talk about at fft and then the next question sorry everyone it's just the um 4494 oh did you have Arun did you want to ask about that item or something else okay so yeah so the last question asked was 4494 V that's the 34 376 supplementary services to vocational students 4494b 4494v the supplementary got it yeah supplementary services to vocational students so of course my ears perked or my eyes got why am I so vocational and I was like oh Bill's probably going to want to ask about this too so just curious what what that is how will that be used as well sure um I

170believe it's a pass-through account am I correct Mr Burnside the I'm sorry which one is that uh four four four nine four B that's the board of education's monthly certification you don't mean that one right no V is in valleys thirty four thousand got 176 supplementaries okay so the Perkins Grant yeah the Perkins Grant um is is the state's grant that go towards Career Tech education um districts normally get a pretty small amount compared to the County vocational schools and we apply those funds to our TV and broadcasting program at the high school born member of malestina I will if you remember I just want to add a little more to this um we discussed the possibility of using some of the funding of the Perkins Grant if we got it to um uh use

171for woodworking type of programming that um we had gotten a presentation about right in I don't want to go into too much stuff but remember that but so that that was also part of the okay right looking into two different things because the the CTE is really high school driven and um if we are to be able to engage with um the Woodshop program it'll be middle school and a different bucket of money okay most likely Esser funds okay all right thanks for clarifying that was all my Michael with the Perkins Grant I I can remember as a a teacher and as a board member that we had to pay money back because we misspent the funds we didn't spend the money correctly so let's be really really careful yeah I I would just share

172that um from my experience um though that number that funding number is small compared to our general budget the amount of oversight is just tremendous right you look around and you have 10 people around the table managing thirty five thousand dollars it's a little there's a lot of not and not exaggerating right there's a lot of fine um a lot of fine print when it comes to and so again I agree that it's it it's a lot to manage for sure so just confirming that for resolution 4499 which is amending this school year calendar the only change is the confirmation of the graduation date correct yeah that is confirmed I mean that's the only date that's the only difference in this the only difference is the 20th versus the 19th because at the time of

173the previous publication the venue had not finalized our confirmation okay that is the only change only change okay thanks [Music] ready to close discussion and move on to roll column yep board member miles Pina uh yes I just want to make sure there's nothing I'm conflicted on in here I don't think I am okay I just wanted to make sure none of the policies okay sorry board members of all Wilson yes board member valamani yes board member telesford yes board member Gifford yes board president with letter yes board member Wingfield yes board member right yes board member Acker yes motions passed thank you Mr Burnside um the first severed item 4491 J2 do I have a second thank you we are not open for discussion for resolution 4491j2 Personnel matters so we can't really discuss

174that so much but yeah okay board member van Damani as we've done in the past I just want to remind everyone that voting on certain personal resolutions voting no has got implications far beyond what we think they are going to be so voting no on this one can potentially mean that either we don't hire someone or we fire someone it could be either one that person is not going to be in here so I want to remind everyone I just want to make sure that nothing nothing wrong with what I said that that is it and I'm not going beyond that and and I'm staying there and I want to remind everyone one more time before you complain that oh I didn't understand what happened and I voted no and take a revote that's what's

175going to happen yeah oh yeah we're ready for the vote word president with letter no board member right no board member malspina no board member of idle money yes board member tell us yes board member Deval Wilson yes board member Gifford no board member Wingfield yes board member Ecker yes motion passed board members your final severed resolution and we also have hand carries for you is 4500 which is uh your District goals I believe um board member Eckert has a suggestion yeah so just for the community um just for a clarification um 4500 District goals for the 20 23 20 24 school year we had discussed and I'd proposed an exec that we eliminate sub goal B regarding the final plans for unpairing of Marshall bowl and third graders this will be happening regardless which

176is actually a reason we eliminated some of the other goals during our Retreat so just to read into the record what I had proposed and we had agreed upon um second sub goal formalizing a checks and balances process during the student assign I'm sorry hold on one second I'm reading the wrong paper formalizing a checks and balances process to ensure that all students receive a placement during the student assignment phase and the second for that for the intentional integration initiative surveys establishing a template to present the data and Analysis for survey results so that the report out to both the board and the community is clear concise and consistent and provides a framework to inform any adjustments the district may need to make in regards to student assignment PD for teachers and staff and a

177more culturally culturally responsive curriculum Madam president um I have no objection to the replacement that board member Eckard read into the record I would open the open the floor for any other board members who have comments before we accept that as part of this 4500 resolution can I just does a board member of adlamani what no I'm not going to be talking about that just for talking about the district goals I I understand that but I'm not I can talk about the other District roles right we're talking about this okay we're talking about then I can't discuss that sorry clarification we're talking only about the change you're going to make right now does anyone have any feedback the board member actor just right okay no but I do have comments on them okay about the

178not about the feedback is fine I have no problem with that board member I'm trying to see clarification from our legal team slash Administration as to can I vote for part of this or can I I mean because the other board goals I'm not conflicted on uh but I would be conflicted on a and E I think right so I guess the question is District goals 4 500 is not broken out with letters or numbers and if there's a conflict within any of those okay so I just won't vote for the whole thing they're typically approved all at once they're not usually approved one two three okay I just wanted to make sure so that I wasn't doing anything wrong perfect so I specifically want to point out the the board for facilities where we

179talk about the superintendent should use you know exhaustive search of all possible funding opportunities for the gap for the Maplewood I'm sorry for the Middle School bits and I just want to point out that it's a big amount we this is non it's a non-trivial amount it's not something that we can easily pull from the budget I just want everyone to be aware that you know we're talking about a range of somewhere between 12 15 million dollars and while the work is happening I would also like to point out that we should follow the template from last time we went to the board of school estimates and plan for a meeting somewhere sometime in Fall so that way you can go to them present our case and then come back with more details and then

180go for a final approval sometime in spring so that should be our timetable going forward excellent that type of reasoning will be a part of the action plan portion yeah I just want to clarify because yeah if for for whatever reason I mean or maybe I'm panicking a little bit more than everyone else is that that big number is is a big number I mean we need a lot of time to plan to raise 50 million dollars so I I think it's it's worth spending enough time to figure out how we're going to do it and have a plan a project Planet so that we can do it and um in the fft meeting our partners from epic kind of talk to us through the timeline and that's why there's specific dates in the goal

181as well to help yes and also I'm sorry in no way am I pointing out that F50 team 10 is your why I'm on the fft committee and I wasn't but I just want to point out publicly that you know this is what we should be doing and you know I'm sure we'll follow that up yeah I appreciate that I think um one other board shout out should be that Arun has been very um helpful with contributing his his thought leadership to this and I do appreciate that a lot um and I do also want to share that we have a municipal Partnerships committee that I'm also on with board member with letter and we've been meeting consistently almost I think we've only missed one month since since um February or March and um so

182we have a very good relationship with the two townships to leadership and um um that will contribute greatly to this process so yeah that's all I want to say okay any other questions comments on District goals resolution four five zero four five zero zero okay we'll close discussion and kick it over to Mr Burnside board member Deval Wilson yes board member Eckert yes board member malspina oh sorry board president with letter yes board member Gifford yes board member Wingfield yes board member right yes board member valamani yes board member telesford yes Ocean passes I think oh a board President we have um two hand carries we'll bring around the first now and then the second thank you Miss Parkside all right what's the number on that one four five oh three yeah all right for

183your first hand carry uh four five oh three for consideration do I have a second second we are now open for discussion and um resolution 4503 is a hip appeal and again board members affirming um as it's written I think once Mr Burnside sits down I think we'll close discussion on this and then we'll go to the role thank you for 503 word president with a letter yes board member valimani yes board member Gifford yes board member Eckert yes board member telesford yes board member right board member valspina yes board member Deval Wilson yes board member Wingfield yes motion passes yeah board members the final resolution in this section in this evening is four five zero four do I have a second 4504 which is to approve a confidential settlement agreement do I have any

184questions or comments I don't know if I I just says sorry I know I don't know [Music] I know it's very I don't know what's happening sorry about that sorry about that all right well we will move okay Mr Burnside can you please take the role on resolution four five zero four thank you board member Acker yes for president whitlider yes board member miles Pina yes board member Gifford yes board member right board member Duvall Wilson yes board member telesford yes board member Wingfield yes board member valimani yes motion passes that concludes your resolutions Madam president thank you so much and I do want to do a shout out Dr Taylor um I thought that the district goal setting process this year was really great and I just want to thank you and your admin

185team for coming to the table with your priorities and working with all of us so that I'm proud of the goals that we have for this upcoming year and I'm also proud of the board for the goals that we established for ourselves as well thank you yeah team effort team effort so that concludes the action portion of the meeting we're now going to um turn to our second hearing of individuals and delegates so again I'd like to begin by thanking you for coming in person this evening dialing in by phone the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education certainly respects that you'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

186the board does have time limits by policy and it will be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible this evening each individual will be given three minutes to speak please do your best to stay within the time afforded to you thank you so much all inputs shared with the board of education is taken very seriously and will inform future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and its committees we request that you please state your name and town of residence for the record we have one final public speaks Mr Andy Grossman thank you for the second bite of the Apple I just want to say that the first time I was here I kept within the three minutes today I finished initially what I had to say even though I

187was more frustrated than when I came to begin the first time within three minutes and then I looked out and I just saw dear eyes I saw no emotions I said nothing and that's why I went on a little further I think that this Board needs to exactly re-examine how they deal with the public when the members of the staff when the folks gave the presentations on testing and safety a majority of you folks asked questions there was an iterative process you went back and forth that's the way we learn that's the way we do it in school in our classrooms if we just had our teachers talking and no response or vice versa it would not be good it's got to be an iterative back and forth process this three minutes is not where

188it can happen that's why I asked to meet with the board I only learned after two months can't do that so if I can't speak here iteratively with you back and forth have a discussion and I can't do it outside of of this meeting what's going on lastly when when uh the board minutes come out the board minutes say public speaks these following people talked Andy Grove Andrew Grossman was here doesn't even in the in the board minutes that memorialize the meeting does it even say what Andy Grossman came to say positive negative or neutral so the as far as I I'm aware you could say that the public input is important you could read that same passage uh twice you know before each session but I gave information to you chair and and you

189asked me for follow-up backup documentation to my to my presentation last time I gave it to you two months ago I don't know who among the board members here has seen it whether it's been distributed to anybody only you've seen I don't know and I and certainly nobody has come to me and said this is important something is uh there are issues here you've raised that are important nothing it's I I've got no feedback and the same thing happened when I gave documentation to uh various staff members as I escalated up to Dr Taylor I gave in writing things and and I gave it to um your predecessor the board chair never heard back so how can I have confidence that if I'm bringing matters to your attention I haven't even mentioned in these in

190these two uh forums the three public speak sessions this being the third what the issues are but they're contained in in what I sent you I don't know who's seen it um uh you know I would I would also say that um well that's it I I I would just like to to have you guys understand I've got no feedback in two years of speaking to people I'd appreciate if somebody would contact me and let me know what I think you're doing what you're bringing to my attention is important not just administratively for Dr Taylor but for the board itself how we operate um the board chair forgive me I I promise not to be more than 35 seconds the board the chair of the rules excuse me uh rules committee I think um mentioned

191something I in my piece I talk about rule 9130 in the piece you know the the among the documents that I sent to you chair was how Dr Taylor completely ignored uh policy 9130 I filed a complaint nothing was done months and months I was told I had to wait for the policy to be reconfigured it was reconfigured in the end Dr Taylor basically blew me off I re told him that you're not you're you're not responsive and you're not following 9130 and previously another policy regarding the 504 plan was not following each other somebody must rejected thank you very much Mr Grossman Republic session who needs to have more weight Christian has to be appreciation thank you very much we we do appreciate your feedback thank you okay I think we'll move on to

192the new business oh sorry okay uh Miss Rocio Lopez and some other things but just to let you know that I love I mean I like the goals a lot that you have put for the year but I want to put emphasis that retaining staff or teacher should be for everyone not only diverse we have a big problem today we have the new staff orientation and we saw 55 people so mayor and we know there are more to come because every day you know we see resignations so I would like you to think twice maybe adding into those goals you know staff or teacher retention as a whole of course of course having more and more diverse staff is something that we need and I really appreciate the effort but we can you know afford

193to lose more Educators we're never going to go forward if every time we have somebody trained and learn the culture of the district they live and if they use us as a pretty much a step to go to another District so I would really appreciate if you can think about that and maybe add it as another goal you know retaining and hiring the right people but also you know making sure that they're trained and they don't leave us no matter who the educator is if he's a good educator we want to hear thank you thank you Miss Lopez think we're good then so we will finish with the new business portion of the meeting just a reminder new business is the time when board members can bring forth topics that are of such urgency that

194they must be dealt with in that meeting and not the next meeting so I will look to my board of colleagues does anyone have any new business that they wanted to bring to the table this evening okay seeing none will close new business and now I would like to make the following motion the Board of Education will meet in public session on Thursday September 28 2023 at 6 30 PM in the district meeting room 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey immediately following the opening of public session the board will move 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 discussion to be announced at a later

195date immediately following the closed session the board of educational meet in public session estimated to be 7 30 PM in the district meeting room um action will be taken and please don't forget to next meeting to wear your favorite school merch may I have a second all in favor that appears to be unanimous Mr Burnside I would now like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting on Thursday August 24th at 10 39 PM may I have a second [Music] favor meeting is adjourned thank you everyone and enjoy the rest of your summer and we'll see you in a few weeks