Board of Education Meeting - Public Session - July 27 2023

001foreign it's 6 41 p.m and I'd like to call the July 27th 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 present board member Regina Eckert here board member Bill Gifford board member Alyssa malspina board member kawi telesford here board member are ruined by the money board member Courtney Wingfield board president Caitlin whitlider board member Johanna Wright 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 in South Orange Township clerks and the editors of the news record Star Ledger and

002the Village Green this evening we will hear an intentional integration survey update from our superintendent the board requires that the district administers two experience surveys in January and May in order to Monitor and respond to students and families experience the survey data will be presented this evening should it um excuse me there's survey data that will be presented this evening should inform adjustments to District strategy and school supports while helping to Target professional development opportunities following that the board will have two board training sessions the first from our NJ SBA rep about roles and responsibilities of board members and the second will be from our board attorney a presentation on Robert's Rules of Order afterwards we'll have public speaks committee reports and the action portion of the meeting and then the final public speaks of

003the night with that I'd like to make a motion to enter into executive session at 6 42 pm to discuss attorney-client matters Personnel hibs litigation status report and the black parents Workshop settlement The District administration and board will be reviewing And discussing the recommendations made by Dr Fergus as part of the Sullivan work the length of the executive session is estimated to be 90 minutes after which or maybe less depending on part-time frame tonight 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 Regina Eckert all in favor okay the vote appears to be unanimous we are now joining to closed session thank you it's 43. okay thank you foreign but everyone gets settled good evening everyone and

004thank you for joining us tonight please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance stickers on the nation okay it's now time to approve the board meeting minutes I'd like to move to make a motion to approve the prior board meeting minutes from the executive session and special meeting minutes on June 19th 2023 and the executive session and regular meeting minutes on June 22nd and the executive session and special meeting minutes on June 27 2023. do I have a second second all in favor please raise your hand thank you the meeting minutes have been approved I will now turn it over to Dr Taylor for their superintendent update thank you madam president um I was informed uh recently that we lost a retired staff member um to an unexpected illness so I want to just ask the

005board for just a moment of silence to recognize the passing of Deborah Charles retired Marshall Elementary School teacher and long time South Orange residents thank you hello South Orange and Maplewood School District community thank you for joining us this evening we have many timely updates for you however before we begin please allow me to comment on the recent allegation of abuse at the Montrose extended school year or esy program please know that we sent our Montrose esy families and staff a detailed communication with as much information as we are able to share we also provided additional mental health support to assist as needed this summer I've also responded to a few parents personally who contacted me directly we truly understand this concern and certainly share the sadness expressed regarding any allegations of abuse but as

006I shared previously legal due process is mandatory in these circumstances it would be inappropriate for us to speak publicly specifically about this matter as it would threaten the legal confidentiality of both the family and contracted ESS paraprofessional the allegations were made the allegations that were made were immediately forwarded to the child's parent the South Orange Police Department and the New Jersey Division of Child Protection the police and state authorities are conducting their investigations and we are fully cooperating with them as a leader educator and father it can be frustrating for me sometimes not to be able to speak freely however until investigations are complete I simply do not have all the facts that I need to comment on the particular circumstance at Montrose what I can say publicly is that the contracted paraprofessional is on

007admin leave pending the outcome of the previously mentioned investigations as I stated in our letter to parents that was sent last week if allegations are substantiated we will not hesitate to do what is needed to protect our children to the current and Future Families of Montrose and all of our schools let me say that our Board of Education categorically prohibits abuse we again emphasize that we appreciate the concerns expressed for the safety of our students all parents have a right to be concerned when that safety is in question as a parent myself and also a former kindergarten teacher let me assure you that any instance of a child being mistreated goes against my professional and personal beliefs there is nothing in policy training or procedure that would suggest that it is ever appropriate to harm

008children in our trusted care this is not only a fact but also a warning to anyone that would do harm to our children to bolster our protections for students at Montrose we have and will reinforce professional development including Handle With Care and continue to ensure the presence of multiple trained adults in each classroom to be clear our efforts should not be construed as passing judgment on any current situation due process again will be afforded and the outcome of the state and local investigations will guide our actions rather our efforts are geared toward reassuring our community that our schools remain safe and secure learning environments lastly we will continue to work with our district leaders in our special services department curriculum instruction as well as ESS our power provider to provide professional development that includes best

009practices around mindfulness and cultural competency to do all we can to help those who work with our students to make correct decisions and take appropriate actions especially when they may be experiencing frustration before I proceed with our review of the results of our intentional integration experience survey here are a few more timely updates we have received the results of the Marshall Bolden unpairing beta tests that our Consultants the Alves group ran for us regarding Rising third grade placements you may recall that we sought this review to assist in informing our methodology for future 2024 2025 Rising Marshall and Bowden third graders we are reviewing their results and will have a separate planned Community conversation on this important work we are happy to share that families of our Rising incoming Pre-K students receive their placements on

010July 18th and all students in our 2023-24 intentional integration grades K first second sixth and seventh have also received their placements thank you to all those behind the scenes who work so diligently to make this happen for those who are curious as to why placements occur over the summer I have a few highlights for you this time allows for our PowerSchool data that's our student information system to be rolled to the next school year this allows us to thoughtfully review class sizes ftes full-time employees and physical space to prepare to receive and place new students for the upcoming school year our timeline is paced to allow for our team to thoroughly complete each task here are a few of the tasks our early enrollment in January and February is exclusively for our incoming kindergarten students

011once that deadline has passed we work with that information because it's our largest group of students that are placed each year those are kindergartners we then work on placing the rising sixth graders the fifth graders who are going to sixth grade in May as this is the next largest group they are also the group that will experience the largest change as you are aware going from multiple elementary schools to just to Middle Schools the following year we then use June and July to process families who either missed the kindergarten early registration deadline or who are new to our district and entering an intentional integration grade level from late spring through early summer we also conduct our preschool Lottery to identify those students who will be placed for the upcoming year all families who are part

012of our preschool Lottery are notified of either their placement determination or status between early and late summer prior to the start of our school year we of course continue to fill preschool vacancies student vacancies throughout the Academic Year with those students who remain on our Lottery wait lists until we have met our program capacity another important piece for those who've been in our district a while you know that we were very fortunate to receive a Pia expansion Grant to expand our preschool Services we recognize that many families May Wonder again why the preschool placement notification is released during the summer months we have to understand that our expansion of the preschool program heavily depends upon Partnerships with our local child care providers those folks who have been in our preschool system know that we have

013many preschool providers that we contract with to expand our preschool outside of Montrose Please be aware that providers who express interest and we do receive many who do who want to contract with the district they have to undergo a lengthy approval process that typically is finalized during the summer recess therefore the district's ability to move forward with placement determinations and notification to All Families from our Lottery is impacted by that time frame in other words we have to know what our slots are going to be with our partner sites before we can of course use that information to run our Lottery and place our students I believe we now have Dr Gilbert who's going to join us as we briefly review the results of our triple I stakeholder experience survey and Mr bonds we've shared

014that survey presentation with you for those who don't know Dr Gilbert is in Hawaii as you can see behind him there none of us are jealous of course even though he's in Hawaii and Dr Gilbert thank you for taking time from your vacation to join us and of course you know I'll jump in and out of the presentation as well Mr Barnes can you please share or am I sharing my own screen yeah I was actually gonna I'm sorry can you all hear me give me a thumbs up I can't tell if we can okay let me hear you thanks perfect perfect all right thank you Dr Taylor uh to Dr Taylor um our members of our board and all those who might be present uh it is my pleasure to present to you uh

015the results of our experience survey for round two and so I'm going to share my screen and let's see how this goes okay very good so um as you know we uh policy 5120 states that we will uh send out twice a month or twice uh twice a time two times uh during the next the next school year and experience survey we've sent it in January and we sent it in May uh throughout the entire implementation process and this survey uh will then be shared the results will be shared with you all and it will also help us inform any District strategies and things that we will do uh going forward it provides us some necessary information so that we can see how our families and how our uh students are experiencing their locations based

016on their placement uh from the triple I so we'll jump right in and talk about our family surveys um just so for your edification uh we had uh 411 families do our second survey which is 115 more than we had to do the survey in round one we attribute the growth of this survey of the responses to the survey uh to several factors first uh we removed the uh survey from PowerSchool and Gabe put it on Google forms and just based on the increase in the responses we see that perhaps the power school play of using it created some barriers for some of our families that would not that was not present when we did it through Google forms uh our families were provided of student identification number so no security of our surveys are

017very important and so we provided each family with the uh identity student identification numbers for their students so they had to put those into the Google survey which allow us to to cross check uh and and that was very helpful the survey was also translated and of course in our two top languages which is Spanish and creole we actually we didn't have any families uh submit for the Creole through the Creole survey but we did have a few families actually submit their responses through our Spanish survey and we think that these translations are going to be vitally important going forward so we can try to make sure we get all of our families uh a voice uh we launched the survey on May 30th but we actually kept it open longer than we did the

018last time so we actually kept it open a month which allowed I think more opportunities for families to engage uh in our survey um we also not had Dr Taylor send out a reminder robocall about halfway through of the administration of this particular survey and then we also myself and Miss Weibel were also available during each of our board memes between May 30th and June uh 30th with computers in the hallway for families who made one who were either coming to board meetings or wanted to come in uh to actually do it so one of the things this tells us is we're going to continue to as we do this survey going forward to provide opportunities for families to actually engage in the survey and then something else that we really talked about doing probably

019for next year is actually going out to different events that our schools are having when we're doing the survey to go where our families are to see if we can generate more responses but these factors that we put in place today I think helped us generate the 115 extra families that were able to provide us feedback and for this survey this is just a breakdown of it in a pie chart uh and as you can see again our families who identify as white are the largest percentage who responded at 67.2 percent this orange one that you see are families that identify as black uh that is significant for this particular survey in that last time we had just under five percent of our families who identified as black who responded that was up to 10

020percent this time and so uh that that actually helped us get a larger number of those families involved this second round and then you see the other numbers uh there for you at the bottom of the screen I'm multi-racial families that dropped from I think last time they were about 12 response rate and their response were actually dropped to six percent uh this time and so that's definitely uh uh one of the factors I want to lift up as you look at this slide so just uh again to recap for you just some of the uh uh the things around the survey we want to kind of pull out so 115 extra participants for a total of 411 uh we were up we did see almost a double increase of the number of families who

021identify as black this round um we did also have a slight decrease in our latinx families uh that that participated and but even though we had the drop in our multi-racial family uh and our latinx the combined numbers of families of color who responded was actually up five percent for round two and so uh just a reminder uh we placed 1588 uh students from year one and year two of our uh triple I uh intentional integration and for research purposes we needed 307 for the survey to be researched sound and we have 411. so the data that we have we're pretty confident that we can use from round two to really talk talk about what are some things we need to do uh to help improve our experiences for our families and our students hey

022Dr Gilbert go ahead um before you shift off that slide just a reminder for those who are not here when we presented the first round um that you know based on um scholarly research you can see that the the number of folks that we have responding meets the the research-based um definition of a representative sample which is 307 of the 1588 but of course our goal is to have many more of our families responding absolutely so um and when we when we when we presented to round one on our survey you know one of the questions that the board had for us was what is the number response rate based on the placements of our students and so this slide actually speaks to the demographics of our students who have been placed in years one

023and two and then we take the five largest groups uh subgroups that's been placed through our triple live uh we see uh that of course our students who identify white are in the 55 range who've been placed but the number that I want to focus on is the little the red line that identifies our spam are families who identify as black uh as being the next highest group that we've placed in uh intentional integration from year one to year two that's been around 16 to 21 and so if we want to use that as our gauge on how what kind of what percentage of families especially from our families who identify eyes black to participate in this survey we're still not where we need to be if you remember that number was 10 percent uh

024and so uh that just gives us Room to Grow but this also kind of shows you why we really want to really make sure that all of our families are having uh being able to provide us uh some some information and some feedback hey Dr Gilbert before you go off that slide I just want to remind the board and the public who may not be aware that um part of our data committee conversation was around that right being able to show um excuse me Baseline data who how many if it was 100 response how would that look not because the the balance of the student demographics is not even across these these placements so to be able to compare slide seven and Slide Five as you have lets us know how far away we are

025from the you know utopian ideal response and as you shared um our response rate from families who um who are black uh was about 10 which is up but the overall percentage as you can see is kind of small for us to see here um again can you can you run down for us with that percentages of black families who've been playing please sure so yes sir so between round year one and year two we've placed between 16 to 21 of students who identify as black perfect thank you so I don't know if you all can see this slide so uh but what this is this is like a 3D slide to kind of show you the response rate of our schools uh you know our elementary schools have had the highest response rate of

026families to the survey for both rounds one and round two uh but none of the response rates in our schools eclipsed 30 percent of the school that has both in round one and two that have the highest family participation was Marshall Elementary School and the school that had the lowest participation rate in both rounds was self-boarding so this is something that as we look towards the surveys for this next coming round of triple I that's something we as a SLT and E team are really going to look at so that uh we can try to engage those families more and engage all of our families so that we can get our response rates uh up uh on this survey and I apologize for any noise you hear in the background uh just uh please bear

027with me so the next series of slides are we're going to get into some of the actual uh responses that were done these next three slides I want to illuminate for you uh one thing we did learn so the difference in round one we had a response of neutral that families and students could use when they were responding to the survey uh one of the things we did for round two we took that neutral response out for one to kind of see you know what kind of effects that have been able to say neutral would have on the response rates of individuals and it had a significant effect what we saw in round two was that without the neutral responses for our families uh the number of uh strongly agree and agree responses went up

028tremendously so that lets us know that that neutral response did have a real bearing on the results that we got the first time around and so in this particular Slide the question was the student body at my child's school is the verse and as you can see uh 62.4 percent agreed 23.7 strongly agreed we have to round you know 86 percent if you kind of put those numbers together and in round one it was around 62 but over 20 percent of the people have resp or 27 percent of the people in that round have responded with neutral and so this kind of shows you that that neutral response in round one did have a resounding effect on how people responded uh to the survey the first time on the question around my child's classroom is

029diverse we saw the same thing right so uh in round one uh the total of strongly agreed and agreed was around 58 this time it was 82 and 28 marked neutral in round one hey Dr Goodwood just to chime in um the team that was doing this review and we also engaged with our school leaders to assist us that was one of the biggest findings that we had is some of these questions just don't lend themselves to neutral if you believe that your kids class are diverse or you don't right and so forcing folks to choose positively or negatively as you can see really um shined a brighter light on this data thank you yep and uh in this slide it's hard for my child to be accepted at school uh again uh we saw

030that the this response rate for this particular question because and actually on the strongly agree and a grease place we really want to look at those because if you strongly agree or agree that it's hard for your child to be accepted at school then we really have to figure out what that issue is in round one it was 27 strongly agreed or agreed it was hard for their child to be accepted at school when we did this round of it it dropped down to like 12 so uh again we also looked at the neutral number to that as well and we saw that there was a large number of families who did Mark neutral on this one as well too and so we saw the effects of that so we could have put all of

031the slides up to show you the effects of that and so we but we wanted to do a comparison of the the rest of the rest of the way uh and so this particular slide in the next slide kind of gives you a side by side comparison of the rest of the items when it came to the family survey and I kind of highlighted some for you that uh we really want you to pay special attention to so you see the one that said there were tensions between students with different backgrounds that particular statement in round one 21 either strongly agreed or agreed with that particular uh statement it was down to 12 in round two right and so if we want to look at around a a high 90 percent rate on our positive

032uh statements so that means for round two getting that to under 10 is kind of like a goal we want to set but just to show you the significance of of the drop when we took out that neutral it went from 21 to 12 um Administration cares and understands about as staff understands and administration understands or cares our care and concern statements although the numbers did increase which is great they were affected by the neutrality response as you can see it would happen in round one versus round two but again really looking at above 90 percent of is we're kind of where we want to gauge ourselves a little bit uh that gives us room to growth but you do see the significant jump in responses from round one to round two on strongly agree

033and agree to those particular statements on this page uh I'll call your attention to Children see themselves reflected it was 57 percent in round one again a high number of neutral responses this time it was 88 and again it's highlighted because that is an area of an opportunity for us to really make sure we Elevate our curriculum so that everyone can see themselves reflected in that curriculum and then as a caregiver I feel engaged in the school it was at 54 in round one again strong neutral response at the end but it was at 79 percent uh this time around again highlighting it as an opportunity for us as a district to really come up with creative ways to engage our families so they can feel a part of the schools that they attend and

034in this slide here uh School staff will ensure we feel welcome Administration will ensure we feel welcome uh both of those the one about the administration was that 36 percent with a strong neutral response it jumped up to 72 percent for round two uh and so again highlight it because that's an area of growth that we really opportunity that we're going to take on the challenge of to get those numbers up the next time around and then the one about the families experiencing hardship 23 percent of the family said they strongly agreed or agreed with that statement down from just 26 percent in round one uh we want to acknowledge that you have 23 percent of the families who responded in this survey with that but that represents like 93 families and again I go

035back to the beginning where we really talked about we placed 1 588 students in two years with that and so we definitely are concerned with seeing over 20 percent of our families still saying that they've hardships that gives us an opportunity as a district to dig deeper into that data to see what the root cause of those hardships may be this again is a recap of some of the takeaways which I kind of talk through the neutral responses had an effect overall our families are not experiencing intentional integration in a in a in a negative way uh we want to see over 90 so if you looked at those slides that I gave you previously you can see we have a lot of opportunities to grow and we're going to take on those opportunities and

036those challenges to get these numbers up when we kind of do the survey the next time um that 88 around that culturally responsive of being able to see themselves in the curriculum you know it's a great opportunity to strengthen our curriculum so that we can see that number increase to over 90 percent if possible again highlighting our 23 percent of families who uh are feeling hardships we want to dig deep again like I said earlier and figure out what that's about and uh the other major area of growth is this family engagement we want to really work with our schools we're going to work with uh uh our district to really be very intentional about uplifting this family engagement piece making sure that all of our families feel like they are welcome they belong and

037are part of the South Orange and Maplewood School District so our students uh responses uh in round two we also made some adjustments uh to our students for our student survey as Dr Taylor talked about earlier we did meet with our uh Administration teams after round one they helped us dig into the data and some of the things that came up about the student survey was that uh it was not student friendly and so I met with both principals of our middle schools we went through the questions and we did a few things differently from central office standpoint to try to alleviate that concern we took out the neutral responses uh instead of emailing the survey to students like we did the first time we actually put a link we gave teachers a link that

038they could give to the students the day they administered the test that sent the students directly to the test uh the teachers the principals did make time during the school day for all the students to take uh the survey and then we had a couple of makeup days for maybe absences or stuff where we had the prince of bring students together who may have missed the uh the test and to take it and then um we gave the teachers guidance it's simple guidance it was just guidance to say that listen if a student if you see students struggling with a question or a word it's okay to pause and kind of talk through that particular statement so that everyone can kind of understand what the phrase was or where we were trying to get them

039to say and we even put a couple of more qualifiers on some of the questions like we did for the diversity question uh if for all those who remember for the diversity question we put like a little definition for diversity there and so uh for some of the questions for the student survey we added other little qualifier statements so that students to better understand where we wanted to go we were slightly down in our student surveys uh by like 12 students but we also want to say you know survey fatigue is is real we've done a lot of surveying of our families and our students this year and so we're actually monitoring that this you know this survey was given especially toward the end of this school year when schools are closing down getting ready

040for moving up ceremonies uh graduations and all these things and so really monitoring survey fatigue is something we really want to pay attention to so that uh our our respondents don't level off especially around our students foreign are going to be bar graphs to kind of show you the differences in the responses that we've got from our students on the survey and so uh so you can understand what those statements are uh the first group of statements uh statements three and statement four are the slides I want you to pay close attention to the statement three was it is hard for students like me to be accepted at this school and statement for their attentions in the school between students with different uh identities if we move to this next side you can see that

041neither one of those responses were even near 50 response rate from our students and and the strongly the strongly agree I'm sorry we don't want to have 50 they were very high and strongly agreed and disagree we don't want them above 50 but they were too high uh we still need to pay attention to what they what they were for example in statement four it was over 45 rate of agree strongly agree and it's David three uh it was a little bit over 20 percent hey Dr Gilbert yes I'm just gonna just pause one second because I know that everyone can't see your graph as clearly as I can can you just walk us through through the graph um the different parts of it left to right top to bottom just so everyone can be

042able to follow police sure every sure sorry about that so I'll go back to this slide so statement one was our student body is the verse statement two was my classroom is very diverse statement three is it is hard for our students like me to be accepted at this school statement four there are tensions in school between students with different backgrounds and identities and statement five is I feel connected to at least one adult in the school so we look at the response rate for statement one uh over or ninety percent of the students during round two agreed or disagree I mean agreed and strongly agreed or agreed with uh the statement of that their student body was diverse statement two over eighty percent of the students either strongly agreed or agreed that their classroom

043was very diverse on statement three uh which was the one about it is hard for students like me to be accepted at this school we saw that erupt around 20 a little bit above 20 percent of the student strongly agreed or disagreed with or strongly agreed or agreed with that statement that is of concern to us we don't want over 20 percent of our students feeling like that about the school that they're in statement four their attentions in school between students with different backgrounds and identities uh we had over 40 percent of the students who agreed or strongly agreed with that particular statement we got to figure out why that's so high 40 of the students feeling like there are different tensions in their school with students from different backgrounds is is of concern and

044then statement five I feel connected to at least one adult at this school uh we had over seven near 80 percent of the students in round two uh uh strongly agree or agree with that statement and then you can see through the bar graph by taking out the neutral response the increase in the responses that we got from those students was that helpful Dr Taylor yeah that's that's great and we'll put this presentation again on our website where we always do um and just for those who can't see us clearly the statement number one from the bottom going towards statement number five on the top and the different colors represent the different rounds of surveying from the winter and the spring thank you sir all right and I'll just do the same thing for the

045next couple of slides as well so here are the uh statement questions again uh for statement six seven eight nine and ten uh statement six I'm sorry statement six which is I believe staff at this school cares about me we can see that uh about 75 76 percent of the students in round two uh strongly agree to agree with that statement statement seven I believe administration at this school cares about me uh we had just under 60 percent who strongly agreed or agreed with that statement uh statement eight staff at this school understands my culture and background uh we had about the same amount from statement six we had around 74 75 percent of the students who strongly agreed or agreed with that statement nine administration at this school understands my culture and background uh

046we begin a little bit under 50 but you know we had about 45 percent of students uh respond to that and then staff at this school encourages students to learn about people from different races ethnicities and culture uh I'm going the wrong way I apologize uh statement 10 we had over 80 percent of the staff uh who who looked at who looked at that and so I went the wrong way on the slots I apologize about that but you can see statements 10 9 8 7 6 with statement six being at the bottom and statement 10 going at the top and then the last group of statements uh statements 11 12 13 14 15 16 and 17. uh statement 11 administration at this school encourages students to learn about people from different races ethnicities and

047cultures uh you can see you had over 80 percent of the students in statement 11 strongly agree uh or agree with that statement uh I see myself my diversity reflected in my lessons statement 12 we had around almost 70 percent of our students strongly agree or agree with that segment 13 I am including lots of activities at my school about over a little bit over 80 percent of our students I'm treated with as much respect as other students a little bit over 70 percent strongly agreed and agreed with that uh School staff reaches out to my family ensure that they feel welcome and value uh a little bit over 60 percent strongly agreed or agreed with that uh Administration reaches out to my family a little bit around 60 agree with that and then 17

048I feel proud to be a part of this school uh a little bit over 70 percent agree with that uh if I could Dr Taylor I just want to go back to the ones that I highlighted for the board and for the community to see these are the ones that we see opportunities to grow in we want to dig in to see why we had a large number of students who responded that they thought it was hard for students like them to be accepted and that they felt like there were tensions in school between students or different backgrounds and identities we're going to work to see what those look like and what we can do to change those numbers um I believe staff at the school cares about me I believe administration at this school

049cares about me even though those numbers were well over 50 to 60 percent they still leave us opportunities to grow there we want to take to take that opportunity to work with those and shift up get those numbers built up as big as we can again the questions around understanding culture are some other opportunities for us and then seeing yourself reflected in the diversity uh is also an opportunity for us as a district to really increase our curriculum to increase that number and then again the family engagement pieces where our students even though they were um you know above 60 and 70 in some of the responses still gives us an opportunity to grow and try to get those numbers up to as close to 90 and over 90 as we can and so just

050to take the key takeaways again and neutral responses did have an effect overall our students were not experiencing triple I negatively uh uh are enhancing our care and understanding of our students strengthening our curriculum to see so that students could see themselves reflected and digging deeper into those responses that I highlighted earlier are some key takeaways and uh I will stand for questions and also I appreciate your patience with the noise and uh some of the technical difficulties that went through this but that is the presentation on the responses Dr Taylor I will turn it back over to you and I'll stop sharing my screen I believe here thank you Dr Gilbert and thank you for taking time away from your vacation a much deserved vacation to to be with us this evening and we

051couldn't hear any background you sounded great to us you look even better with that view behind you whatever that is there um a couple couple of quick things before we go to board questions I want to highlight um I know we talked about the other surveys that occur and MJ sky this is a reminder for everyone in our partnership with Rutgers is is a very significant climate and culture survey and we work with the principals on the timing of those surveys for the high school and middle school so we're just trying to cut this data against that data which goes to all three stakeholder groups um to see if there are Trends across these sixth graders here versus the Middle School overall responses are there any questions for Dr Gilbert and myself come on uh

052Dr Taylor uh and Dr Gilbert thank you so much for putting that together and taking time out of your vacation I'm only going to speak for myself but that actually made the presentation just so much better looking at your background I think we're looking at a storm back here I'm not really sure um my main I have one question and then just a couple of comments um can we do a further breakdown of the data to show the responses by race in school I know that was something that I had requested from the last survey because I think that should help us better understand the impact of placements and each individual question and kind of like what recommendations and what future potential improvements will will happen um just to make sure I understand a breakdown

053per question on I'm sorry the race in the school per question not just the overall correct correct yeah I think it was helpful like I think even the first graph was a breakdown of survey respondents by race but then further breaking that down so in particular maybe it's not every single one but um you know I see myself reflected in you know in the lessons yeah we have the data in our Excel sheets so we'll keep on slicing it great thank you um and then I think you know some of the key takeaways Dr Gilbert that you highlighted in terms of digging a little deeper into hardships I would love to to see if that includes Transportation new start and end times while I know the new start end times obviously were separate from the

054III that could have potential impact on families based on their placements right um as I'm sure you know we've heard from families those 9 A.M meetings now become pretty challenging right so that just for the timing that was not this was before that announcement right but what we can do we can update the new president the new survey to include a little more Nuance as far as the narrative portion so that way someone can they can tell us about that yeah and and you know however you choose to do it it was more of just kind of for a future as you you know mentioned you're going to dig deeper into the hardships portion of it and my last um I guess it is actually a question is more of just is there a timeline

055in place to start to actually formulate like recommendations and action plans to address the areas of growth that were highlighted in there yes um so now right this is the time and we have um we spend the summer time of course planning for the fall that includes our dat meetings District admin teams that's where we last year we developed our um climate and culture plans with the data from the previous surveys so similarly uh we'll do that and we'll also use as an activity like we did for the previous round for the admin to dig into this data um and I think you know next year it'll be even more voluminous because more kids will be in triple I sixth and seventh grade is it 2500 or more you know families so um and we'll

056have a head start on visiting with the ptas and hsas to to get more computers in front of parents who maybe are not as aware or as able to participate for sure thank you thank you okay board member teleport yeah thanks next my quick question is I see that there is I guess a substantial increase in some participation of some underrepresented groups um do we know what strategies that we used um I guess helped increase that and if not um can we integrate some sort of feedback into the surveys to I guess ask questions of did you do a previous survey um if you had haven't um what made you do the survey this time so that we can I guess find ways to continue to improve on surveys yes um Dr Gilbert texted on

057just a little bit but if we were to if I had to give just my opinion of what I think gave us the bump it was probably using the Google form instead of Power School um and thanks to great folks on our team who figured out for us to be able to still keep our security because having secure accurate data is just so important in this work and that was one of the reasons why we had an Empower school for our for our first launch but being able to use student ID numbers and push those out as a form of protecting our security and the validity of the of the data was really helpful for us um I think that the um we gave some thought around larger steps like for example um perhaps working

058with our ptas and hsas they have a meeting just about this right and have folks come out to that meeting and maybe have the meeting in a different language and have folks right there you know with the computers on hand those type of you know as Dr Gilbert mentioned multiple times more Outreach and so that's that's definitely in our plans money foreign so now that we have data from like two different surveys can we ensure that we put this data into a longitudinal kind of a database slash whatever spreadsheet or whatever it is so that way we have all the data available and then maybe after two years when we run reports we can see exactly what's happening over time as in participation is increasing decreasing and all the different things right yes you actually

059just read my mind I just gave approval to put this on our triple light micro site the access and Equity Tab and also where the board meeting presentations are so they are going to be stored on our websites so you know I'm not asking to publish it I'm I mean it's good to publish it too of course but I'm saying compile it in a way where all data is available in one snapshot okay so like survey one Whatever question one two three four five six survey one answer survey two answers so that way when we run this report again like you know whatever three years from now we have everything in one place and we can actually make some decisions saying it worked it did not work at all thank you for the recommendation you

060know part of our recent data committee meeting we were talking with a third party about some data management software and this um gives me great questions to speak with them about if we end up engaging with them and also of course our own internal team um around how we maintain our data for future use so thank you for that recommendation I have a question um so thank you this was great um the survey the first survey that we sent out had a comment section did this survey have a comment section as well and what is the plan to I know that's a lot of data but what is the plan to evaluate analyze and then at some point share that data with us so um perfectly stated it's a it becomes a granular review and

061so those are some of the things they will be doing with our school principals who are principals of these schools we don't want to it doesn't serve us to keep the data from them so um we'll use them as part of this work to not just review it but to actualize through you know it through the work that we're doing um and we won't make that I don't think that I have to speak to our team but I'm not sure we can put that narrative response on our website it might be too personal for some folks right but we'll use it with our admin team for our planning and to also measure our growth right to see I always talk about the triple I survey that we did before we launched and that you know

062we sent we had 5 000 folks who read it and we got nine questions right just a number of questions also is feedback um for how thorough we're moving forward with this work Dr Gilbert anything else to add no no I concur with you I think that this review of this data is also ongoing and we will you can use it all to kind of map out a road map for how we you know meet the needs that the some of the information brought before us so I don't have anything to add one more thing more of a statement I guess in a question but I'd like to see if there's a way that the takeaways from both surveys can be tied to District goals um might as well since we've got to track them

063anyway so I and some of them I said oh that could be cni you know when it comes to like cultural responsiveness or even the empathy with students maybe that is tied to sel our SEO goes which I'm assuming will still have an ongoing SEO goal for for the following year or for the upcoming school year so just wanted to share that thank you for that recommendation thank you Dr Gilbert enjoy the rest of your vacation thank you all Madam vice president that concludes our presentation we now have Mr Burnside for the ba report right now we're going to do the construction update and I'm going to start with the phase two at the Clinton Elementary School um this one's really starting to wrap up if you will um the scheduled date of completion is

064August 1st and the final site work is underway right now they're making some final connections to the existing building and they're installing the new floor in the cafeteria at the South Mountain Elementary School there's a demo work going on for the main office walls they're installing new convector units and the associated piping they're continuing the site work for the curb sidewalks and Grading they're continuing the fire alarm rough-in they're continuing the electrical rough-in and the ex existing building and the data and security rough-in is doing is being installed right now at the annexed the HVAC demolition is complete and they're installed installing convector units they have set the rooftop units on the roof and they're beginning the exterior ductwork they completed the gym ceiling lights and diffusers and they're also installing the new entrance vestibule

065at the Underhill Sports Complex they're adjusting the PA system and that should wrap that up by July 30th at Marshall and Montrose Marshall is really moving right along um they've got the majority of the footing and the foundation walls installed they're beginning the underground plumbing in the next two weeks and they're continuing continuing with the asphalt shingle installation and beginning the synthetic shape slate shingles insulation they're continuing with the submittal review process and they're also continuing with the asbestos abatement which brings us to the high school and that's all that's going on right now is the asbestos abatement but that's expected to be complete by August 26th and as far as the audit it's still ongoing yeah thank you okay thank you Mr Burnside I will now read the board president update so as part

066of the 2022-23 board of Ed's goals the board will have continued education on important topics tonight Charlene Peterson our njsba rep will conduct a 20-minute training on roles and responsibilities with the board afterwards our board lawyer Patrick Carrick will conduct a 15-minute training on Robert's Rules of Order the board will be meeting on August 1st as a special meeting to conduct the board self-evaluation and to work on collaboration with the district to develop the 2023-24 somsd district goals and that concludes the board president's update so Charlene please come on up thank you if you can you just put it in power so that I can just go oh he's in okay well I just wanted to again you know reiterate and thank the board for taking the time to have training because it really was

067a commitment that the board made um so earlier in the year we we started out the year doing ethics training then it came back and helped the board with training on the superintendent's evaluation process so kind of all of that important work that the board does so we're kind of continuing that training tonight with um talking about board roles oh sorry talking about board roles and you know there is just more and more evidence that you know boards that continue to you know do more work in improving their governance work are able to make a positive impact on student achievement so it's really important that we take the time to really focus on our work because as you see so much of kind of our time and our work is really about the work of

068the district and so we really sometimes kind of have to take the time to talk about our work and look at our work um so we're going to talk about roles tonight and then it was mentioned that next week then we're going to continue that work by the board is in the process of completing a board self-evaluation so we'll look at that when we come back next week and also the goals so again this is just going to be a brief overview um so really just wanted to start out as we talk about our work really um understanding kind of where our responsibility comes from or why we're here um you know recognizing the importance of local control and how that you know how we are able to represent the the interests of our public

069the interests of our community um recognizing that the our Authority first comes from the state um then the state legislator gives it to the State Board of Ed and then the State Board of Ed then you know gives it to us as the local representatives and we exercise that through our policies as a policy making body um you know recognizing and you know we saw the the work you were doing tonight about the importance of your students and recognizing that that's the focus of our work as well as the board making sure that that does Drive our work and you know we have to say that it's more than just having good intentions or more than it's just talking about it it really has to be um the motivator of our work and then as

070boards recognizing that we are the representatives of the community we have to make sure that the aspirations and the interests of our community um you know are being fulfilled in the work that we're doing so you know all of our work is really based on um you know starting from our responsibilities as an elected public official and there's too many times where we you know sometimes think about ourselves or talk about ourselves as volunteers instead of understanding that we there's really a you know a major difference in being an elected public official and the responsibilities that come along with that and so we are held responsible to holding the respect and the confidence of the people that elected us and making sure that in carrying out that work that we're not violating that public trust

071but then we're even held to an even higher standard of making sure that we're not even leaving a justifiable impression perhaps among the public that that trust is being violated so that's the standard that we are coming into this work doing so then as we look at our work and how our work is really different from that of management under the administration you know kind of even looking at the definition of the word governance recognizing it says to steer a ship so recognizing if you think about your work then is kind of helping set that direction versus actually kind of sitting in the boat right doing the doing the steering or the work and really we're just kind of going to look at different ways to kind of carry out that that same thought again

072as a board we look at the big picture where strategic thinkers we're looking at out into the future and making sure then that we are you know moving in a direction or you know have a vision for where we'd like the school district to go so we think about our work then as looking at it through a telescope versus being um you know involved in the day-to-day kind of work of the district which we would say is the work of the administration and looking through through a microscope so you know and sometimes it comes down to if we say okay if we could just kind of categorize our work of the difference between our work and just a couple words from the board's perspective if we think about our work from the perspective of the

073what think about the outcomes what is it that we want to see happen what is it that we want for our students what is it that needs to be accomplished to help carry out the aspirations of our community and then stay away from We're recognize then it's the work of the administration would be the how so we're going to help determine the what and then the administration will carry out the hot you know the how of what we have helped determine as the what and we're really going to you know Define or delve into that next week when we talk about the goal setting because when we're doing the goal setting we really are setting that direction for for the year establishing those priorities and then again turning over to the administration to say okay

074here you go we've talked about what it is that needs to be accomplished and now we're going to leave it up to your expertise to um determine the how so this again in terms of further looking at that you know I know that we've talked in the past about the book The governance core and I know that some of you have it and you know have used it as a resource in your work um but one of the ways that they in that book help us describe or think about our roles is thinking about the difference in our roles of um being on the dance floor and kind of what that perspective looks like when you're on the dance floor of actually doing the dancing you kind of have to know the steps you have

075to kind of know where your partner is know where everyone else is on the floor versus what if you're standing up from the balcony and looking down what a difference in perspective that is so you're not actually on the floor doing the dance doing the moves but you're able from looking down on the balcony you're able to see Trends you're able to establish patterns you're able to kind of get a sense of what happens when things speed up and slow down so that's really kind of an analogy then for us to think about our work then from the the balcony perspective and so saying that when we are in the balcony we can see that big picture we can be focused on the future we can understand and connect with what's important to our community

076so that then is where we really have to make sure that we are staying because if we're not doing it we're the only ones whose job that is so if we're not doing it then it's not happening right because this is what our job is um as opposed to the administration then like I said being on the dance floor where the day-to-day work is done so that really is a challenge and you know they say as a board that we have to discipline ourselves and that really is the case right because they say as board members typically your doers you're typically used to you know wanting to look at the solution as opposed to staying focused on the outcome what are your expectations what are you hoping is going to be accomplished instead of focusing

077on the solution so again just kind of challenge how we would do our thinking so as you think about asking questions at the board table as you think about when you have situations before you how would you assess those situations stow and so instead of saying well like what are the steps accomplishing thinking about how you're going to solve the situation or solve the problem keep your thinking where it is in the board's role of saying how is this going to impact this long-term strategic thought what impact is this going to have on our students how is this going to impact the organizational and fiscal health of the district so as you're assessing situations as you're thinking about things that come before you don't think about well how can I fix this how you know

078how can I change this instead stay up on the ends what is it that we're trying to accomplish what is that very end expectation that we want and then Administration I'm not going to tell you how to get to that you give me I'm going to tell you what we need to see what that end or what that expectation is and then I'm going to leave it up to you I'm not going to tell you what reports I want want information I want this is the outcome now I'm going to leave it up to you to tell me how you're going to accomplish that outcome and I'm going to hold you accountable for that through the evaluation process so that's really how we know when we are staying you know performing our role as board

079members so you know as we say okay well then if that's the case how do we do our work then so our work is essentially we know that we are a policy making body and this board I know takes its policy role very seriously I A lot of times use your policies as examples for other boards to look at um so we know then that that is the guidance that we give to our Administration to so that they can run the district um we talked about the planning and the importance of setting those goals the you know the planning and the budget but kind of looking at that long-term perspective then we know then that we have to um you know hold the superintendent accountable through the evaluation process and the board is also holding

080itself accountable by doing the board self evaluation that we'll be reviewing and then the importance of communication or you know hearing from our community what's important to them so we know then that we do our work as a board team right that we are one body and so we look at our Effectiveness through that through that the lens of that body versus recognizing that as an individual I essentially have no more rights than any other member of the public the way I make a difference is by helping make this a stronger team what can I provide to this team to make this team be focused on student achievement to be doing what's in the best interest of the students and how can we come together as a group to make the best decisions we can

081for our students so recognizing that as an individual that's not how I make a difference how I make a difference is in my contribution to this team so we know then that we you know we kind of start out as a challenge right in looking at that because we we run as individuals you know we say we don't get to pick our team right this is our team as as we look around the board table and know that we succeed by the team succeeding and if the board fails we fail right we we work together as a team and it's a choice that we have to make um you know we can see the difference when we see boards that each kind of have their own priorities and are going in different directions versus saying

082you know what when when we sit down and we set those goals and we say that that's our priority for the year we're all in agreement that that's what we're going to focus our work on that's the the boat we're going to row this year and the only way that we can really move that boat forward is if we are all working together with those established priorities and making a conscious choice to do that um so again just kind of in summary of those roles saying you know our four functions were policy planning oversight and appraisal and communication respecting the difference between the what which is our role and then the how which is that of the administration the importance of us working together as a team in the importance of communication um so just

083you know as we say Okay recognizing that you know we do need to work together with our superintendent to make sure then that that we are working together as a team so kind of how do those roles kind of fit together then so from the board's perspective we have to you know recognize the superintendent as our chief consultant in you know when we pass our resolutions it's usually saying a pond recommendation of the superintendent right because that's who is our you know our chief consultant here recognizing that the the superintendent is the community's educational leader right your community should be looking to your superintendent to be um you know leading the community in what's best educationally for them um making sure that we don't confuse our policy role with that of running the schools and

084no surprises and that should happen both ways right from the board's perspective you know things that we are asked to vote on should be things that have been discussed in committee or that we've given been given information about because we're responsible for casting an informed vote um if we're not in the schools we need to depend on the superintendent to keep us informed about what's going on if we are developing the policies and the superintendent is the implementer of those policies um and then you know making sure again that um because of the chain of command um you know we are not talking to the staff directly so would recognize that that communication would funnel through the superintendent so as we look at then about okay how can we do that work effectively again recognizing

085that that it's kind of that tendency to get distracted or like what what can pull us away from our work and kind of you know make us consider going into the realm of administration work is making sure that we don't get involved in that day-to-day operation of the district recognizing that as a board we have one employee in just just one employee is ours and that's the superintendent and everyone else in the district works for the superintendent so we have to think about our Focus through that recognizing that that is our one employee if if we start getting involved or thinking about those something that we want to get involved in and recognize that that's already the job of a staff member that's a pretty good clue to us that that's not our work then

086um making sure that we don't go outside of that chain of command of going through the superintendent and then recognizing that as individual board members we don't direct the work of the superintendent right that the super the work of the superintendent is directed by the work of the board majority so as an individual you have the right to bring something up to the board for board consideration and then if a majority of your fellow board members agree with you then that is what directs the work of the superintendent not me asking for something as an individual board member that I want just because I think it's important what does the team think what does the board majority think as a member of that team I have the right to bring it before the team convince

087the team why I might think that this is something of value to the board but at the end of the day recognize that the the group that truly makes that decision and gives that direction is the board majority so kind of in summary as we're looking at our roles of making sure then from the board's perspective that we are that governing body staying you know in that area of our work representing our community and how important that is um recognizing that you know the superintendent is the kind of the leader of the the district and that together we can make a difference advancing student achievement so that really is kind of you know what embodies our work I ended it with a few um kind of governance scenarios but I think because of the way

088we are in time I think like if we have time when we meet together next week so I'll just kind of leave these as food for thought because some of this will come out as part of that work and then if anyone has any questions um like I said if we have time we can get into it then so I just kind of wanted to say thank you again for the the board's continued interest in keeping up with this training because part of is making sure that as a group you know I have other boards saying well like why is it important that we do that and to say well you know you need to have shared learning experiences have common language have common thoughts about how things should work and then you know we

089see that you know there's professional development in all other aspects of the school district here so it's important as a board that we set an example that it's important to us too that we continue our learning and we do the best that we can um to learn our work for the benefit of our students so just wanted to say thank you for taking this time I know you've got more things to do and we will be coming together again next week right to really roll our sleeves up and do some work about setting goals so just wanted to thank everyone so I don't know if there's any questions from the Board Room no thank you so much everyone okay thank you okay Patrick you're up thank you so I can use this do you want

090them I you know what the night's great all right as Keith's putting that up I'll just say um that was a fantastic presentation and I agree with everything she said thank you uh so this is actually perfect timing for this presentation because it comes on the heels of the board governance presentation um this is a subpart of a much bigger presentation that I've given in the past that talks specifically about Robert's Rules of Order and so it's it's limited in scope in that it deals specifically with how you run these meetings and why you run it the way you do because the reality is most people have never wasted their time reading Robert's Rules of Order it is a thick book with a lot of stereo like instructions that is difficult to get through so

091what this is going to do is focus on 20 of that book which is going to solve 80 to 90 percent of the issues that come up during meetings and so you'll recognize a lot of the stuff that I'm going to go through here just to start briefly so um a brief history of order where did the book come from why does it exist so it's the most widely used Manual of parliamentary procedure in the United States it came in 1876 not surprisingly from a U.S army officer the US Army is known very well for order it adapted the rules and practice of Congress to the needs of non-legislative societies Congress does not use Robert's Rules of orders it uses the house manual which is very much like Robert's Rules of Order it gets changed

092though by political parties when they go to change the rules it is now in its 12th edition which was released on September 1st 2020. I did check to make sure that is accurate and it is still accurate the changes are modest at this point in terms of how they've evolved so anytime a new one comes out there's not a whole lot that is changing it's just an opportunity to sell some more books and make the lawyers check into it to see what what is the new thing out of the 300 ages so why does it exist the purpose of the book is to enable Assemblies of any size with due regard for every member's opinion to arrive at the general will on the maximum number of questions of varying complexity in a momentum amount of

093time and under all kinds of internal climate ranging from Total Harmony to hardened or impassioned division of opinion so I've done these highlights and the reason I've highlighted them is because they are almost always what is so pertinent to Boards of education so number one with due regard for every member's opinion what this is in action is when emotion is made and it is seconded and debate starts we go around the room that is how due regard is given to every person's opinion one by one people go around the room with the opportunity to comment to question to say what they want to say about the pending motion so what's the second part well at the end of the day what matters is the general will depending on whether that's a majority vote a majority

094of the full membership to thirds three-fourths depending on what's at issue most of the time it's a majority but but what ultimately matters is the general will because that's part of order what's ultimately going to be passed is what the majority decides so any one member can't control it it is the majority um on the maximum number of questions of varying complexity so that part I haven't highlighted but what that is that's the efficiency part and believe it or not as much as board meetings might seem out of control at times reality is that in a matter of a few hours about 12 times a year maybe a little bit more you guys are running what is essentially a corporation with 160 million dollar budget and so if you think about it you absolutely get

095a ton done in a short amount of time at every one of these meetings whether it runs from 6 30 to 12 or 6 30 to 1 or 6 30 to 9 or even shorter so that's the part about in a minimum amount of time it lets you get through things very quick and this is a nine member board think about organizations that are much larger in nature a la Congress which has to have all these other additional opinions that's why they do have a different manual that they operate under but you could have Boards of varying sizes and so ultimately you have to figure out a way to get through all of the agenda in an efficient way and that's what Robert's Rules of Order does under all kinds of internal climate so of

096course boards love this part because it describes most sports usually most boards are not nine zero boards seven zero boards five zero boards they have differing opinions um they have different thoughts on policy decisions and what the outcome of any policy that they're approving is going to be and so sometimes those are very passionate opinions um sometimes people are hard in our positions and aren't going to compromise at all on things and so what Robert's Rules of Order is is there to do is to say all right everybody's going to get to say their piece on a motion to convince others to vote in some way or the other to amend a motion or do things like that but at the end of the day we're going to arrive back to the general will um

097so what does the book address fundamental principles and everyone's going to recognize this one question at a time one person speaking at a time hopefully one vote and one vote and a vote being limited to the members that are present the book addresses the rights the majority of the minority especially a strong minority that is greater than one-third that's mentioned because there are a number of votes in the book that require two-thirds majority some require a three-fourths uh three-fourths for example with this board of education would be the calling of an emergency meeting of individual members so what are the rights of an individual member to speak to make motions to call for a point of order point of privilege when does that stuff arise of absentees what does that mean we actually have new

098policies that are evolving that weren't there in the 1800s when Robert's Rules was first written because now we have people participating remotely and voting remotely and we're starting to develop our own rules about that kind of stuff when can they participate in executive session in this board they can most of my boards they actually cannot so there's all kinds of different different ways they approach these and then all of these together because they actually Clash at times uh just going to touch upon the hierarchy because this occasionally comes up so Robert's Rules is is a manual okay it is not law it is not an ordinance it is not um something that the state has adopted it's essentially a manual that guides you you have adopted that as your guidelines for parliamentary procedure but reality

099is that federal law exists above all then state law then your local laws from your Township municipality then you look to your Charter Constitution or Articles of Incorporation then your bylaws and then Robert's Rules and actually this is even better slide right here although it's really tiny for this that shows when custom or standing rules actually become involved and ultimately what this means is this there are times that Robert's Rules will actually conflict with your bylaws and so what the question is is who who supersedes it's your bylaws um this has come up with one of my other boards in terms of the domination and voting for the President and Vice President which of course at the reorg meeting Robert's Rules has its own way of doing that that board had a different way of

100doing that and it actually came up during a meeting and we had to go to the chart to show them that the bylaws are what governed so uh just briefly in terms of how it would work in a perfect world um the first member Rises raises their hand addresses the chair Madam chairperson um asking for the chairperson to now recognize them so the chairperson then says board members so and so and now at that time that board member has the floor and the board member can do what is appropriate at that time so if it's to make a motion uh they can do that if it's to make a speech at that time comment on emotion that's what they would do at that time one of the things that we would highlight is that when

101the maker of emotion is entitled to speak first in debate that's something that's often people just learn when they hear this presentation um all debate comments and statements are directed to the chair or president uh this does come up at times because there is impassion debate and we have to remember at the end of the day that everybody public speakers and board members alike are supposed to direct all comments to the chair because at the end of the day what they're debating are policy see outcomes and not individual or personal issues if any person refuses to obey the order of the board directing them to restore order or directing or the order uh of the chair the chair should take necessary measures to see that order is in force which should be guided by a

102judicious appraisal of the situation which means that we just don't want a lot of people walking out of here in handcuffs uh emotion is a formal proposal by a member to do something so this is what the board does every month they make a motion to approve certain agenda items they're the basis of group decision making and again this is a procedure and an order that is followed per the book so that we can get things done quickly in an orderly fashion generally emotions should be phrased in a way to take action and express opinion so make a motion to approve as opposed to make a motion to not approve uh the motion process is pretty simple they ask for the chair to be to recognize them the chair does recognize them they make the

103motion another member seconds the motion the chair States the motion what it is to approve items a through C A through D whatever it may be the members then debate and they go through why they should approve these why they should not approve these or call attention to any matters that they want to call attention to once that's done the chair asks for a vote either it's a Voice vote which is all in favor or a roll call where each member states their position on the motion the chair the secretary then announces the results of the vote and everybody's probably looking at this going yes this does happen at every single meeting we didn't even know we were complying with Robert's Rules oh sorry so you have different types of motions main motion is the

104one where you're going to do something that's the approve the item subsidiary emotions are the type that relate to the main motion so we make these all the time motion to amend is one of them uh there's a few others that are out there privileged motions are another type of motion privileged motions are a motion to adjourn a motion to recess um a point of personal privilege because someone could say I can't hear and that is actually a privileged motion to allow them to hear it could be because the air conditioning's too loud uh incidental motions are related to the main motion but they don't change the substance of it so what could that be that could be a question as to whether the motion is to do something illegal it could also be a

105motion to ask for a verification of the vote after a Voice vote because the person is not so sure that the eyes have it um and then motions that bring a matter again before the assembly those are the Motions to renew the Motions to reconsider which I'll touch upon as well so again main motions used to introduce the new ideas Madam president I move that Mr chair I move too that's how you phrase them that's how you start them the subsidiary emotions the Motions who amend the motion to postpone or postpone indefinitely also the motion to table is a subsidiary emotion the motion to refer to a committee and then the motion to limit or extend debate privileged motions again you can make a motion to adjourn at any time I don't recommend it you

106do have business to take care of but it actually does take precedence you can also make a motion to recess at any time and that becomes a privileged motion that you must vote on um and then the privileged motions uh it's too hot in here the fans are too loud the chair decides those motions incidental emotions these are to appeal a ruling of the chair if the chair says oh no we're going to do this they can appeal that that's an incidental motion division of a question is to split emotion into two questions again it doesn't change the substance of it it would just change it incidentally so this comes up from time to time about when you can reconsider something or uh and reconsideration is actually broken down into two things reconsider which we'll

107get to later is about bringing it up at the same meeting to change the vote a motion to renew is really only to change the original substance of it so this body exists for a year from one reorg to the next during the course of that year it's going to take actions and so those actions they become binding and they become permanent unless something happens at a later time to renew something so by way of example something is made tonight but two months from now circumstances have changed and we they want to change that outcome in some way you have to do a motion to renew and it has to change or alter what would go on and as a as an attorney recommending how you would do it we would actually refer back to

108the original motion in the new one to explain how we're changing it and what we're changing so that it's abundantly clear to everybody what you're actually doing otherwise you can get confusing it could also get misleading because if you made a motion in June to do one thing and in October to do another that conflicts with it well now the question is did you change what you did in June did you repeal it so you would want to be 100 clear in October we're repealing the previously adopted motion and this is what we're doing now the motion to amend everyone pretty much knows this once a motion is pending you make a motion to amend the substance of it it should be germane to the original motion so if the motion is to approve the

109bills list there shouldn't be another motion out there to do something totally unrelated to the bills list uh and if that were to occur the chair would rightfully say something like it's not germane to the original motion and deny it from happening um they could also ask the entire board whether or not it is germane to the original motion and have it voted upon and that would be an incidental motion on a motion to amend which is amending an original motion a lot of motions right there the motion to reconsider this is one that is done when during the same meeting the board wants to change its mind uh number two kind of explains it best and it's really far from me right now it's to do a correction permit a correction of hasty ill-advised

110or erroneous action of the board to take into account new information or a change situation that is developed it has to be made by a person who voted with the prevailing side so if they want to change the outcome that's when they have to do it it must be seconded it is debatable but not amendable uh this is the cheat sheet that is used by me uh and many others just so you know when emotion is requires a second when it is amendable or debatable um when it takes precedence it's sideways so we'd have to turn this at some point in a future presentation but basically what's important about this is it's also in the hierarchy of motions and so what it means is this the Motions that are listed on there you can only

111generally interrupt the motion that is pending by something that's higher up on the list things that are lower on the list a good parliamentaritarian was a good parliamentarian would say you can't do that and I would now like to move to adjourn the presentation uh yes so your word president statement yep and then you're hearing okay the school board meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public oftentimes it may appear to members of our audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote before 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

112of Education it is then referred to the appropriate board committee the members of the board committee work with the 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 board members for consideration only then is it placed on the agenda for the board discussion and action at a public meeting we will now begin our first hearing of the individuals and delegates this evening thank you for coming in person and dialing in by phone this evening the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education certainly respects that you've taken the time out of your busy day to address the board tonight we value public involvement in our school district and we are eager to hear what you have to say the board does

113have 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 usually limited to one hour and the second public comment period may be limited to 30 minutes all inputs shared with the board of education has 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 so let's see Paul Adam no okay at Tiana okay I'm going to look at the online there are people online waiting so we have Allison bechdel Mr bonds do you have

114Allison yeah hello Allison hi can you hear me yes we can thank you okay um um Alison back at all from Maplewood I am a teacher in the district once again I am here I've been at a few board meetings lately I just wanted to um update you regarding my status I though both Stephen Carberry and I wanted nothing more than to continue with our positions it's been quite clear that that's not going to happen as such in one of the June board meetings I believe is the first of the two board meetings in June um the one in which the vote regarding our reassignments went to a revote I requested that we at least be considered for positions more aligned with our experience in my case a middle school math position it was my

115understanding that that was agreed upon so at the advice of Miss Durant from the personnel office I signed up for I paid for and I took the uh the middle school math practice exam which is a requisite for the certification needed for that position as soon as I could I was informed immediately after taking the exam it's one of those testing places that flashes your past score on the screen but the official scores will not be released until August 4th which is after this board meeting I've been in um pretty regular communication with both Dr Taylor and Mr uh adidoyan um and I've let them know that I passed I let them know the official scores will not reach them until August 4th but knowing that I passed I asked Dr Taylor if he would

116hold the the middle school math physician for me and he replied I quote I cannot guarantee that we can hold the vacancy until August 4th but if you decide to take the exam and complete the requirements to become highly qualified for comfortable sharing that you would be the preferred candidate if no other final recommendations for Mad Men have been received um it was kind of a roundabout reply in my opinion but anyway I'm not sure whether quote other final recommendations from admin have been received or not but I'd like to ask the board that you look into that prior to approving resolution 4482 tonight thank you that's all thank you Allison okay next we have Shannon cuddle that Community member is not all on not online Okay um the final person here is Heather kugelmas

117foreign member is not online okay thank you so then that would conclude public speaks Dr Taylor did you have anything you want to share thank you um I would normally reply to our public speaks but because this is one of our employees speaking about their employment with us I think it's inappropriate for me to respond but as was noted Mr out of doing our HR director and myself are aware of of her and her circumstances and I'll just leave it there for her confidentiality as an employee of the district that concludes my responses okay thank you Dr Taylor we are now going to transition to our committee report readouts so um first will be Dr Telus Ford for special services committee thank you great so special services met on July 12th um I was present

118along with board member Eckert and board member Wright um the first thing we discussed was orientation for students entering the Middle School in high school just to ensure that students have transitions that are smooth for special education students we also discussed a follow-up of the Montrose incidents as well as the investigation and next steps um the next thing we discussed was the esy startup the excited school year um we're glad to hear that from last year it's improved a lot and many parents are actually happy with that um and then we just discussed some of the data that we're going to be looking at is still ongoing in terms of um collection and then we'll be discussing that in a future meeting our next meeting will be on September 13 2023 um and that's all

119for next month great thank you um board member Gifford for policy okay uh the policy committee met on July 11th at 6 30 with myself and board members malispina and Dr Telus Ford present um we have a uh for we have one policy up for second reading and adoption that's 8600.1 hazardous routes and we have 32 policies up for first read and um I think everybody can find that on the website I don't think that's worth reading out um for new business uh we discussed policy 2419 school threat assessment teams um this was a policy alert from Strauss Esme it's the Safety and Security director has been attending trainings for this and made the district aware that a policy would be coming soon the committee was concerned with using sros within the policy and asked

120if it could be removed from the policy we sent this inquiry to Strauss Esme for review to see if we can remove remove safe schools Resources officer once feedback has been received from them the policy will be for for ready for first read after that um we also received a uh a policy guide a video update from Strauss Esme the committee reviewed the video to educate themselves on the current status of the law and the need for this policy and we adjourned at 7 53 PM in the next meeting will be on August 14th at 6 30 and that is all sorry I forgot to ask if there were any questions after so excited let's move right along here um but before I ask about policy did you have did anyone have any questions for

121Dr teleport no okay questions for board member Bill Gifford Just One update to his update um that we did receive information that it was allowable to remove the sros from that policy and that policy is up for first read tonight it is 24 19. board member valmani was there any discussion on changing the bylaws to move the public speaks to be much earlier in the cycle of the entire session that we have uh sorry yeah so that was um we did speak about that and I believe Dr Taylor did you want to speak on that real quick thank you yes um so in that in our committee meeting we spoke about surveying um some of our surrounding school districts in our County to ask about where their public speaks is and how if they have

122more than one public speaks Etc and I put those results in your last Friday package so there's information there for us to consider at the next committee meeting so my follow-up question would be is that can we kind of resolve it one way or the other because you know I mean clearly I mean there were a bunch of people who are coming here for public speaks and they all left so you know I think we should give them an opportunity to come do that so maybe in the next policy committee Could you actually work on the policy because you're the only one who can work on that but it doesn't fall into any other committee so you can do that that'll be great thanks just to share with you the push and pull with that

123um that we spoke about was that I've experienced that shift in other places and there's always a positive and negative to the work that we do and for some folks when you move your public speaks before your presentations they're disappointed because they want to see the presentations and give you feedback on it I've seen that experience as well just to let you know that regardless of what is decided it's it's never a perfect placement because there's so much Dynamic work that happens here but we'll definitely discuss it in our committee meetings but that was some of the that was one of the reasons why we wanted to survey others to see where they have in place see there's a best practice or um a preponderance of of um of design out there in in the

124uh in the surrounding districts yes board member Eckard Dr Taylor this is more of a question for you um although it's related to policy so policy 5120 which is uh related to Student Assignment we as you had communicated to the public we are considering an SCS transfer wait list um I know that uh Dr talisford thank you so much I know you had brought up some concerns around how that would work with the variants and I just has there been a response from the elves group on their recommendation and how we can potentially proceed not yet but I sent them a follow-up today as I shared earlier we've been really focused on meeting our July 30th deadline and along with the beta test and just to share with the public kind of the concern that

125we wanted to make sure that we answer because part of the policy speaks to not interfering or harming the purpose of the triple I piece in the policy and one unintended possible consequence that Dr Cutlass 4 pointed out was if there's a SCS waiting list and that person has a space that they can go to what happens to the numbers where they were are those numbers shifted now and now are are the placements out of social economic status um balance and if so you know what are the what's the additional language that you can add to the policy to say okay as long as are we willing to say as a board and as a district something to the effect of what what moving against Triple I purpose was and being more specific so that's

126what we're waiting on and I um gave them a reminder today thank you okay if there are no more questions than board member Eckard Personnel update please Personnel committee the Personnel committee met on Tuesday July 18th board member malaspina who was filling in for board president whitlider and I were intended in attendance board members Wright and Wingfield and Dr Taylor were absent um we kicked off the meeting reviewing Personnel recommendations one that I just wanted to highlight um that we will be voting on this evening um the recent resignation of our transportation coordinator effective 83123 at a recent previous board meeting we have hired an interim who has already started and will be with us for a few months the interim will open up the school year and assist in training and hiring a replacement

127to take on that role we then moved on to job openings And discussing vacancies we received updates on administrative roles the assistant VA position as you know due to a retirement the candidate pool has been a little bit light Mr Burnside will likely post for an interim and report in the future for new applicants to apply sorry not repo report repost um there was also a related discussion around hiring to fill special education teacher vacancies which unfortunately remains a big issue we had a brief discussion about exploring other creative ideas to attract more candidates the district confirmed that they notify all staff of each vacancy via email schools posts the vacancy announcement in an area where all staff can see then it's all hands on deck but it's obviously something that we're going to have

128to tackle over the next couple weeks heading into the school year um we talked about a couple of data requests that came in from board members the first one was a current status of all the vacancies open positions by type location number of days open at the request of a few board members this will now be provided on a monthly basis so we can better Monitor and along those lines Mr adedoin touched on a new process for interviewing candidates and holding administrators accountable to that new process which includes proper screening diverse candidates and diverse hiring committees we also had a brief discussion around staff that has left the district in the past I think four to five years uh Mr edoin shared a detailed Report with the requested information um we didn't do a deep

129dive on the call as it was a lot to go through thank you Mr addedoyan but I do intend to review further especially as we go into um consideration for our 23-24 district goals for those on the committee it's in the shared folder and for the rest of the board I'm happy to share the file with anyone interested in viewing as well during new business we covered the following topics we had a discussion around potentially naming one to do additional anti-billing specialists at CHS if the budget allows for it we had about 70 cases during the 22-23 school year which is a heavy workload for one ABS to handle Ms Weibel our new I guess not new anymore but our director of access and Equity has worked with hibs in previous roles and will be

130also helping to provide oversight and to support the ABS we closed out the meeting having a brief discussion around District goal setting for the 23-24 school year we talked about a focus on recruiting teachers of color more intentional Partnerships with hvcus and putting an equal emphasis on retention as those two obviously go hand in hand as important as it is to get the staff in-house we also need to be sure that we are retaining them and that was the end of our meeting our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday August 15th at 6 30 PM any questions so thank you for putting together the report on all the vacancies that we have in the district you know until this number by type and you know like the Aging report that gives you time there now

131the question I have is is that public information and is that something that can be posted on our website I'm going to refer to Dr Taylor um so we post our vacancies publicly we have them on our website um so what you have is probably um the result of processing that so you can see more longitudinally um there probably aren't intended for the public there are work papers but our our vacancies are on our website under the HR tab for anyone of course who wants to apply and we of course post them right on this wall here with the yellow slips out in the hallway so I'm not saying it's not public information it's just been a process for you um per the request of the chair so that it could be more easily followed

132actually that's exactly why I'm asking you to be public because if it if the board finds it easy to read that you know one report I'm sure the public will also find it very easy to read that one yeah well what we can do um I don't have any strong objections to to sharing it let's just check with our solicitor to have him review it to make sure there isn't anything um within the Personnel realm that should not be shared and if he sees that he can always redact that and we can share the resulting information I wouldn't have a objection to that okay so I'm going to be reading um our first VP Mouse Venus cni readout and my own fft so um bear with me here hold on okay so I'm reading this

133from One River melispina's standpoint so the I is not me I'm not going to change the I Courtney and I were in attendance at the meeting and we started out by discussing summer school enrollment and you should all have access to the data in this policy in the shared policy folder um although if you don't let me know since some of these programs are being funded through Esser funds I asked that the district start making sure we are messaging to parents that some of these programs may not be available next year um Miss Bodner is going to work with Paul to make sure they have a plan in place to communicate any changes a number of our sots and principals will be attending a DEA Dei conference this week which I actually think was last

134week yeah um to develop strategies and plans to ensure we can move forward in our Equity work in this in the district we have three books up for adoption our country's God indecent and four black boys there are no changes to any of the cni policies up for first and second read they're ready to go an old business we got an update on the phonics curriculum pilot and are expecting to learn more about what program they choose in August along with an update on what Hib curriculum we have chosen we also got an update on the dance program we talked about the maple wood shop and learned that the administration has spoken with the owner and is looking at ways to try to fit it into the district curriculum a new business we discussed the

135GPA scale um and how it is determined we did have a discussion um on some of the concerns from Samaya has brought up and we're told the administration is planning to meet with them we had discussed a desire to make sure that we clearly articulate the GPA scale process to everyone in simple non-educational language we asked to hold on we asked the administration to provide us with School grading systems that are similar to ours since at the present moment R seems to be an outlier the administration is going to look into it and provide us with more information we discussed the CHS handbook to make sure that is updated on the website currently we have an outdated version We want to make sure that everyone has access to the correct information [Music] we discuss questions

136from board members on the on an ell resolution and questions about Spanish at the middle schools both of which you can read in the minutes um and that's it hold on I'm just making sure and that's it okay so for oh any questions on that I mean I don't think I can answer them since I wasn't there okay thank you um I did hold a meeting uh with the representatives of the Maplewood shop and we had a delightful conversation um where you know we're going to be meeting with the larger SLT team just to figure out the best way for us to Pilot um because there are some operational concerns right as the who the what the win kind of thing and they have a lot of experience on different ways of implementation which was

137refreshing it's not a one fit all type of approach and so I'll keep the board posted and see and I posted on that no I just wanted to thank you Dr Taylor because I know I kind of threw that at you and um you know I heard from Mike and he's very pleased about the conversations that he had and you know when I was running for the board it was really important to me that we took the initiative seriously to bring you know wood shop and those trades back in house and I I think this would be an exciting opportunity so many schools have worked with Mike to do it and uh I mean he's in town so I would love if we could do it organically here and I know it's not as easy

138as that but the fact that you're engaging him and taking it seriously I mean I really appreciate that so thank you so much yeah I mean it's exciting um learning more about it before I sat with him I was just envisioning you know middle schoolers were saws is always a interesting thing to think about right but we we had a chance to talk about it and it makes it's happening on it's happening in 180 places so you know it's it's nothing it's not a new off-the-shelf type of thing and it is local and we love supporting local successful initiatives so we'll keep in touch okay great so see we met on when Wednesday July 19th at 6 30 PM board member ruin balamani and myself are present where president Caitlin and board member Bill Gifford

139were not in attendance we discussed the Middle School bids and the new scope for the middle schools so um this new scope completes all work for MMS Maplewood Middle School and it only includes an electrical upgrade for Psalms futuresoms work will need financial support um all items all MMS items and the Psalms electrical upgrade will be part of a rebid in the third week of August and the bids will be due September on the 21st and awarded by the next board meeting in September uh next year we'll find money for Psalms we hope um change orders we have South Mountain Annex and big school change orders of ninety thousand dollars and that is to replace the damaged plaster that was found when old ventilators were removed um they uncovered old plaster walls it had a

140lot of damage so that was a 90 000 change order that needs to happen auditoriums were getting competitive bids from um Barbizon lighting company to get quotes on lighting and rigging for auditoriums to compare with the previous Co-op bid and um Seth boyden's Auditorium uh construction is um and process the contractor has started the groundwork supplies are being delivered and what's the remainder of the com of the equipment comes they will get started so that's great there were no changes to any of the fft policies upper first and second read um we discussed the 23-24 school year budget and discuss having it updated by December 2023 so that the board can anticipate all budget deadlines clearly for the following year for our FEMA reimbursement we discovered we discussed that the 2.9 Million reimbursement goes to

141our fund balance for the following year and again just want to say thank you and kudos to the administration for all their hard work putting the paperwork together to get this much needed reimbursement we discussed Oprah Oprah request fees um the administration shared that we're now getting an extremely large number of Oprah requests more than ever before and it's becoming expensive so most will most likely continue to be free but they are a criteria to calculate for some of these very high like three digit fees what that criteria would be and we agreed for the administration to continue to to investigate that and then also we discussed having a template on the website so that people are putting in their open requests correctly because sometimes they're not and that takes extra time we discussed a

142fft committee goals one of which is to understand our legal bills more so I know it's a lot of work thank you to the administration for starting this and um one thing that we're happy about is that this goal for the first time will be able to see our special education legal fees pulled out for the 2022-23 school year so it just helps with our analysis we spoke about transportation we received an update on our bids and we're happy to say that we came in at 112 000 for buses and so we had originally budgeted for 130 so that excess money 122. oh sorry 122. thank you 122 not 1 30 and so the excess money will be used for um the new routes as we're bidding the Hazardous routes after we pass policy tonight

143um and we will have two bus companies first student as well as Bel Air that'll be supporting us next year and we discuss lease of computer insurance plan um that we are actively looking for an option for parents to opt in for a low one-time annual fee um to have the option for their child's lease computer to have for example unlimited repair Unlimited Repairs or replacement if it's stolen um so we discussed that the fact that you know there will still be the option if those parents who do not want to opt into the insurance they don't have to but um we hope that they do and so that uh is not final yet but they are working on it and it is not something at the time they said it's not something that the

144board would need to vote on but they will be giving us an update shortly on what they decide they hope to have it finalized by September and then last we discussed District goals and focused on the fact that longwork facility plan will continue to be an ongoing goal um so we discussed that for the next two years what that looks like and the sub goals that are needed to continue to push it Forward specifically for the middle schools and for Columbia High School and ritzer Fields um and we had no new business and we adjourned at 8 43 pm which was amazing it's not a question but more of a comment yeah in the sense that I want to bring attention everyone's how many of you fftg already mentioned this but I want to bring

145attention to the fact that we do not have enough money to finish all our long-range facilities plan projects as we have we wanted to do that and especially this is for the middle schools and we already talked about this in the previous meeting in the public meeting that you'll be shot by about 12 million dollars and what the project managers and The Architects have recommended is that we focus on using the existing money to do the common electrical stuff which takes a long cycle to do and then spend all the money in finishing what is happening at Maplewood Middle School so what will happen is by the end of the time they're putting out bids and we use up all the money all work will be done except South Orange middle school and we will

146need to go out and appropriate whatever raise more money raise more funds to the tune of anywhere between you know whatever 11 12 million upwards to 15 million dollars I think it was 17 million or something I I don't have the real number where you're guessing right now but that's the number we're looking at and and that this is not money that we can pull out of the budget anytime soon this is too big to be done right so I just want everyone to focus on that and I know we don't have answers right now we don't even know where we're going to get that from but that is a shortfall so we need to as a community we need to discuss and figure out what our next step should be but at least one

147thing good is that we won't leave both the ice both the middle schools halfway through Maplewood Middle School will be completed so the bids will go out probably this month I I I'll leave that too so sometime I do end of in middle of August right so that's where we are and um the bid schedule which I mentioned earlier on but it's just too many dates that is in the recap so for any community members that want to be reminded of what that bid schedule is it's in the recap on the web District website um portion of the meeting and I'm going to hand it over to Dr Taylor thank you thank you madam chair and uh good evening again board members I present to you for your consideration resolutions four four eight two three

148four four eight nine do I have a second foreign any um comments discussion anyone I would just make a note um to our chair and the board that there was concerns or discussions around our admin um our aspiring admin Academy and there are two candidates on this who have come through that successfully that we're very proud of that's great thank you for sharing that okay so if there are no okay okay bottle money yeah I'm saying go forward yes discussion yeah Regina Regina second it she just didn't have her mic on so two things right um I guess we're basically approving all of them everything that's actionable today is in this one one vote and which is great so there are two things one here so first is everyone should pay attention to the policy

1498x100.1 so with the passing of this policy would have completed a complete overhaul of our transportation policy which will be implemented in the upcoming year right and this process took almost a year of almost a full year to go through the cycle and I want to thank the business office for helping out with the analysis and navigating the complexities involved and everyone should know that transportation is now available for all elementary age kids greater than 1.25 miles but of course like in previous years the parents still need to apply for uh transportation and also very important with this particular passing of 8600.1 is that we've done the Hazardous routes after a very long time and and we must publicly thank our F50 chairs for kind of pushing that through and doing a lot of good

150work and making sure that it is completed exhaustively I mean some would say overly generous but that's okay we're rather are on the side of you know having a couple of extra uh you know hazardous routes and under Counting and if there was one policy that deserved a standing ovation then this is one so thanks and and the second one is you should pay attention to four four eight six I mean it sounds like a very mundane everyday thing where we are adopting books but you should note that as many school districts around the country are Banning books we are actively going and adopting books that talk about very difficult subjects I mean I I was not aware of these books I just looked at them and then all three of them are actually talking

151about things that most people don't want to talk about and I think we should leave the book adoption business with the Educators and the students as opposed to interfering with that so I I really do applaud uh the cni committee for helping put these books I would just Echo that um congratulations to our fft chair and our business administrator and all who were involved with you know putting this final piece of the puzzle to expanding something to you know just hundreds of families and folks receive the the guidance on applying for those uh for that transportation and it's still on our website for those who needed an Empower school and I also Echo the book adoption work of our cni team um these are tremendous books I look forward we were talking about during our

152meeting that we would have a race to read them in the cni committee so very happy thanks I'll also just add um thanks for all all the comments thus far and just that we appreciate a lot of these um first Suite policies have um received feedback from the community then we listened to them and we incorporated them um 2270 for example uh and so I'm just excited that um we're pushing these through I know it's a lot all at once but we're pushing it through and I know it's also a big goal of the policy committee to be able to get ourselves at a place where we don't feel like we're a quote unquote behind so I mean it's a team effort um and I know um we've had a lot of ups and downs

153but we've got here and I'm happy to say that um that I think we're in a really good place so that's it Okay so anything else nope all right so then yep Mr Burnside can you please um call the roll on voting four four eight two through four four eight nine board member record yes board member Deval Wilson yes board member Gifford yes board member telesford yes board member valimani yes motion passes thank you madam chair and board oh you do have one hand carried is coming around to you now that was discussed in exec absolutely yes board members I present to you 4490 do I have a second Regina seconds second all right this can't be discussed in public so Madam Madam chair whenever you're ready for Mr Burnside please let us know okay

154yes Mr Burnside please do a roll call board member record yes board member lamani yes board member Gifford yes board member Duvall Wilson yes board member Telford yes motion passes that concludes our actionable items Madam chair okay great so this would we would now begin public speaks again do we have any any we were informed that board member cuddle was able to get on after having technical difficulties okay so there's no one else who signed up we'll just double check so nope Mr Burnside said no one so let's have Shannon cuddle come on please please can you hear me oh yes Shannon hi hi everyone um hold on I'm just trying to get to my other window here uh yeah sorry so thank you everyone happy summer um I hope everyone is staying cool um

155during the time we're in right now um but I uh so thank you for tonight um and thank you all for uh allowing space for this evening I I want to be able to First congratulate you on continuing your proactive educational credits with njsba and Charlene Charlene's a great resource um thank you Charlene for coming tonight um and uh in our commitment our multi-year commitment for dual education for the Board of Education uh for our certification um is great because that isn't so important for all of us as well as our individual opportunities for education um as well um I just wanted to just take a moment and say I also want to say I appreciated the presentation that included the student surveys tonight as well I also wanted to just flag if I may

156for all of us to consider the as it has been said before um that though the student the student survey that we conducted as a district is a great attempt we are not part of the CDC youth risk behavior survey system I would love one day if we were and we're not but that most recent survey did show and I would would really ask all of our board members to look at that recent data it was actually even just released last week um with enhanced data around anti-bullying work um that our students actually are suffering at larger levels and also looking at the glsen national student safe schools data collection the New Jersey stat snapshot also shows that our students are actually suffering at a larger rates and say in New Jersey where they more

157than 40 percent of students cannot find a safe and supportive staff member and also would like to tell our board members to also please reference the recent May 2023 Trevor Project survey as well with surveys lgbtq plus students Mental Health Data as you reference and think about the future I also wanted to take a moment to look at some of our policies I'm so glad we're looking at multiple policies but what a few policies I I just wanted a flag policy 2260 which within good mention and good heart mentions all gender but also mentions whenever possible for including a non-gender specific restroom all gender restroom that is not our practice so please go back to our five seven five six trans student policy um and also within the state guidelines for best practices for transgender

158non-binary students our commitment is to always have an all gender restroom all gender facility for all students and families so please when you were looking at these policies please cross reference and please also be mindful of language because it doesn't look like the current policy even however will intended uh when two two six zero that the current our current transgender non-strument policy and the current state guidelines of 5756 policy were referenced I also just want to also pause to say that the curriculum policy with 2200 tonight mentions Family Life Education I have to say I have to pause about that because Family Life Education is a conservative hey Shannon thank you so much um your time is up do you want to just is there any less yes just the Family Life Education is concerning

159because it's actually an anti-section education and anti-lgbt talking point and would like us to revisit that talking point as added language because it's not within our previous policy thank you so much I'm sorry for going over thank you um let me just say isn't it Dr Taylor anything you wanted to respond with I was having a little bit of a hard time hearing um Shannon cuddle's comments I will only ask that they possibly email them so I could follow along a little closer especially around the possible survey data that's out there that can help us with our work so I'll reach out okay great thank you we are now moving to the new business portion of the meeting just a reminder that new business is a time when board members can bring forth topics that

160are of such urgency that they must be dealt with in that meeting and not at the next meeting which would afford board members Apple tie ample time for review new business topics brought by the board will be done with board action in mind and motions should be brought forward by the board member requesting a topic for a new business with that being said does anyone have any new business tonight yeah okay great so I'm now going to close new business thank you and now I will uh I'd like to make the following motion um yeah you're not sit back down Bill's ready to go um the Board of Education will hold a public board retreat on Tuesday August 1st 2023 at 6 pm at 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey and immediately adjourn do you

161go into a board retreat in person and utilizing an online video conference platform to discuss the board self-evaluation um and District goals action will not be taken the Board of Education will meet in public session on Thursday August 24th 2023 at 6 30 PM in the district meeting room immediately following the opening of public session the board will go into 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 excuse me legal negotiations and other matters that arise and require a discussion to be announced at a later date immediately following the closed session the Board of Education will meet in public session estimated to be 7 30 PM in the district room 55 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey in

162person utilizing an online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals the community can view the meeting by following the steps which will be listed on the agenda if there are members of the community who would like to attend the meeting in person please note that mask and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance received the local Doh and the CDC action will be taken may I have a second all in favor that appears to be unanimous like to adjourn Mr Burnside I would now like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting on Thursday July 27 at 10 13 pm may I have a second Gina says yes all in favor all right meeting adjourned thank you everyone have a great time tonight whatever you decide to do