Board of Education Meeting - Public Session - February 23 2023

001good evening it's 6 p.m and I'd like to call the February 23rd meeting of the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education to order Mr Burnside roll call please board member Nubia Duvall Wilson present board member Regina Acker present board member Bill Gifford board member Alyssa malaspina president Ford board member Arun vaidelamani yeah board member Courtney Wingfield there's Mr telesford president Caitlin what letter here thank you please take note that adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following matter a written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board at 12 p.m on February 16 2023 that said notice was sent via email to Maplewood and South Orange Township clerks and the editors of the news record Star Ledger and the Village Green I wanted to call your attention to

002the agenda for this evening and when we expect to be back in public the board will be adjourning to Executive session in a few minutes and will return at 7 pm for a special performance by the South Mountain School course you will then adjourn again to go back into the executive session until around 7 45. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn to Executive session this evening whereas while the senator Bayern M bear opened public meetings Act njsa 10 semicolon 4-6 at requires all meetings of the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education to be held in public njsa 10 semicolon 4-12 B sets forth nine types of matters that may lawfully be discussed in executive session without the public being permitted to attend and whereas the board has determined that one issue is permitted

003by njsa 10 semicolon 412b to be discussed without the public in attendance and shall be discussed during an executive session to be held on Thursday February 23rd 2023 at 6 pm and whereas the nine exceptions to open the public meeting set forth in njsa 10 semicolon 2 4B are listed below and next to each exception as a box which will be marked when the issues to be privately discussed fall within that exception and after each exception is a space where additional information that will disclose as much information about the discussion as possible without undermining the purpose of the exception shall be written any matter Wish by express provision of federal law state statute or rule of Court shall be rendered confidential or excluded from public discussion the nature of the matter described as specifically as

004possible without undermining the need for confidentiality is attorney-client privilege hip reporting Hib appeal whereas the length of the executive session is estimated to be 60 minutes after which the public meeting of the board shall reconvene and immediately adjourn now therefore be resolved that the South Orange Maplewood Board of Education will go into executive session for the above stated reasons only and be it further resolved that the board hereby declares that its discussions of the affirmation aforementioned subjects will be made public at a time when the Public's interest is just in disclosure is greater than any privacy or governmental Interest being protected from disclosure may I have a second five second five second thank you board member malice Bina all in favor aye the vote appears to be unanimous and we are now adjourning to closed

005session thank you foreign we are now back in regular session for a short period of time please note as mentioned before we will be adjourning again shortly to go back to closed session but we wanted to kick off this evening with a very special performance from the South Mountain School chorus the board expects to return around 7 45 pm thank you all for joining us tonight please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance all right we are ready for the stars of the show Mr Mason always calls you the superstars right let's please come on up and thank you for giving us some of your evening we can't wait to partake of your talents foreign [Music] fine line again foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I never got to stop us [Music] [Applause] enough [Music] I'm talking it's

006my favorite stuff [Music] [Applause] questions thank you guys [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do your kids like singing my condo my daughter home early in the shower literally yeah let's please give it up for the incredible performance in the South Mountain School chorus great job guys thank you for sharing your beautiful voices with all of us so with that I'd like to make a motion to go back into closed session do I have a second second all in favor aye the vote appears to be unanimous we are now a journey to closed session and we'll be back around 7 45. thank you so much no way I know all right [Applause] foreign this is heard we're so happy you're here tonight thank you Miriam thank you so now we are going to turn it

007over to a student board representative Noah morose for the important board recognitions thank you and good evening everybody so as we do every month we're going to start with the submitted student and staff recognitions so the first one goes to the Columbia High School girls track team for being named the 2023 SEC Conference in Essex County tournament champions the CHS yeah the Cougars grow the Cougars girls track team ended their phenomenal season on Sunday January 30th with their SEC Conference in Essex County Tournament champion win go cougars the next one goes out to CHS student uh students Joshua apostolico Jared Jackson and Ross Perlman congratulations to CHS students Joshua postalico and Jared Jackson whose film tardy won best screenplay at the Ramapo College film festival congratulations to congratulations to CHS student Ross Perlman who won

008best fiction film for his film uh obligatory parasite at the Ramapo College film festival this is the third year that Columbia High School has won this award and Ross's second win in two years [Applause] congratulations to CHS senior boys basketball player Jalen Robinson who scored his a thousand his a thousandth career point for the Cougars on February 15th against Hillsdale High School Jalen will be furthering his athletic career at the New Jersey Institute of Technology at the division one level foreign goes out to some Psalm students John slogan Kendall Waite Sophia Amador Mayan livne Kiara Frost Idris Bay Ellison Yusuf assadi and zidane as well as some staff member uh Denia abarumi and parent leaders Amanda Burns and Soraya shalfarouche we want to thank the families students and staff who offered advocacy for more diverse

009holiday recognition in our district calendar thanks in part to your voices on tonight's agenda the board will be considering the formal edition of Eid Alfred to our current District calendar so yeah next one goes [Applause] we have won staff recognition for the month and that goes to CHS teacher Cindy malotra who I had my freshman year amazing teacher uh the National Council of teachers of English recognized a 2022 edition of Guild script as Superior in its recognizing excellent art and literary magazines award the realm program publicly recognizes excellent excellent literary and magazines produced by students with the support of their teachers realm is designed to encourage all schools to develop literary magazines to celebrate the art and craft of writing and that is it for our student and staff recognitions thank you Noah so I'd

010like to make a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for the January 5th reorganization meeting the executive session and regular session meeting minutes for the January 26th meeting and the executive session and special meeting minutes for the January 31st meeting do I have a second second thank you board member Ecker all in favor appears to be unanimous Mr Burnside up next on the agenda is the student representative update Noah please proceed thank you and good evening again so I want to use my time tonight to talk about transparency and that's transparency with our student body and faculty Vanessa prevalon and I have come to this horseshoe table in the past speaking about various student concerns but increasingly in the last year these concerns have evolved around security and student discipline we've been lucky enough

011to have such a receptive superintendent principal executive committee but so far in the 2022-2023 school year it feels like these concerns over security have only increased from members of the student body and faculty alike it seems like nearly every week a new video of a fight surfaces or a code yellow is called after speaking with Dr Taylor the executive committee and principal Sanchez of Columbia High School we understand the efforts are being made to limit our code yellows and student fights and for that we are grateful however the problem lays in the transparency over these issues deserve to know what's going on in their school students deserve to know why a code yellow is called or what's being done to limit student fights or even just seeing that administrators know that these are present issues

012that affect students and staff we also need to put into context the world around us into consideration just last week we witnessed the most recent mass shooting in Michigan State a university that multiple alumni of our school district currently attend students that I sat next to just last year with such threats present in consideration with our District's own current issues transparency with our students and staff is a necessary piece in strengthening our district even more detailed emails sent immediately after incidents and outlining preventative steps or even just going on the announcements over the loudspeaker are very small steps that would go a long way in beginning a process of increased transparency across our district I want to personally thank our executive board Dr Taylor and Mr Sanchez for again taking quite literally hours out of

013your month uh in February to talk about this issue with both Vanessa and I so thank you but I want to highlight another more positive topic that came up um in Vanessa's meeting with Mr Sanchez this month it's no secret that we lose many talented students in our towns to private schools schools that boast admissions to selective colleges competitive Athletics or additional counseling resources I was so happy to get to speak Mr Sanchez about his plans to level the playing field equally for our amazing students right here in our district some plans even include having a dedicated counselor to just focused on helping with college admissions and scholarships similar to those that charge upwards of 350 dollars per hour in the private sector or abundant at local private schools our winter Athletics are also winding

014up whether both our girls and boys basketball teams tipping off tonight at 7 pm in their state quarterfinals games and our fencing team getting ready for the individual state tournament I also want to briefly touch on the Columbia High School Model United Nations team and our most recent success at the ivy league Model United Nations conference this past past month we took home three Awards and competed at the highest level against schools from all over the world and one last thing I just want to remind everybody here in the crowd um and our board as well to go purchase uh your tickets for chs's upcoming musical something rotten the musical usually sells out quickly every single year and both the cast and crew work incredibly hard staying at the school until 11 or 12 a.m

015and they work extremely hard to put on an outstanding show and you can purchase your tickets at CHS musicals.com let's wrap it up Vanessa and I harp so much on our school district security and transparency because we care we see how much our District offers and the potential that we have I know that every single one of you here at this table cares and I know that every single Community member and faculty member here tonight cares and I just want us to have the best of our students and faculty in our district and that concludes this month's student representative report um if there's no questions here I'd be happy to answer any questions that we have here um if you're not here and watching online you can feel free to email either Vanessa or I

016via our board emails found on the district's website thank you [Applause] any questions for Noah okay all right okay thank you so now I will turn it over to Dr Taylor for the superintendent's update thank you always a hard act to follow Noah um and always a pleasure to meet with you monthly and one thing that I share with Noah is how influential the position of board student rep is um his predecessor helped us to activate our student emails and to use them as another stakeholder group for pushing out information so that's what it came to my mind immediately with this concern is using those emails to push out the same or very similar Communications that already go to parents around code yellows just again for transparency sake so thank you for bringing that to

017our attention Noah hello somsd Community thank you for joining us this evening as you can see from our agenda we have a very full meeting planned for tonight before we begin our presentations Rocio I'd like to acknowledge the efforts of principal Hutchinson and the Delia Bowden staff as well as our SLT and all who contributed to the ribbon cutting and formal renaming of the Delia Bowden Elementary School we also offer a very special thank you to the CHS archive committee who helped to not only bring the great Delia Bolden to our attention but we're also instrumental in connecting us to the family members of Delia Bowden who were present the day of the ribbon cutting and ceremony the members of the CHS archive committee are Cal petrallia and Wessel Hannah Hannah Edelman Andra marks and

018Susan Newberry thank you for all of your work happy 100th anniversary to our very own Marshall Elementary [Applause] you don't look a day over 30 right you don't look at thank you to principal horn and her team for alerting us to the 100 year anniversary of Marshall please be sure to check out principal Horn's video for more information on this momentous occasion which was celebrated last week on the 100th day of school foreign the video is on our YouTube page and on Marshall's page of our website be aware that our recently approved new District directors have officially started please be sure to review our previous newsletters that highlighted our new directors of cni human resources and access inequity lastly Please be aware that we have heard from stakeholders with concerns over the language update for

019policy 8420 that is up for first reading this evening Please be aware that our district is an Exemplar in this area and we're ahead of the Curve the governor signed into law the practices that we previously launched we often get policy updates from our Strauss s May policy service they ensure that as laws are updated our policies follow now that the aforementioned drill process is a part of law per all the statutes in the policy they must be complied with and are complied with regardless whether they are specifically spelled out in our policies however please note that part of the policy amendment process includes a first and second read requirement so that our stakeholders both internal and external can review and give us feedback also please be aware that mental health supports and announcements that

020a drill is happening in real time when drills begin and informing Guardians afterwards that a drill took place are still now and in the future a part of our safety drills in accordance with law also and to address concerns over mental and emotional support for students point three in our proposed amended policy provides that the security drills are paired with trauma-informed approaches to address any student inquiries concerns or concerns which may arise as a result of a school security drill we will now have a brief presentation from miss Ann Bodner our assistant suit for cni followed by Mr Burnside who will introduce our Auditors for their annual audit update after which I will present an exciting review of our intentional integration initiative Mrs Bodner the floor is yours [Applause] foreign I am just going to

021put it share from my computer because I can't see that far away so I'm back again I know you you uh enjoyed last month so much so I'm back again um but tonight truly will be very quick um it's kind of an extension from last month last month we did review njsla um uh testing scores and data we talked a lot about the interventions that we are using in the district this year um and then um this year this presentation is really looking at the start strong which is a very close uh tight snippet of um of our students day in um or year I guess in the district so this one will be very short and very quick it will be on the district website and the recording will also be there so start

022strong overview you move so the start strong was administered in the fall of 2022 they are assessments produced information to be used as standard based complement to existing resources used by Educators in their classrooms to evaluate the needs of students so this data is used in our classrooms for Stu for teachers to really understand where the students are right at the beginning of the year as they come in the assessments did not replace local standard-based benchmark assessments our district already has in place so like our teachers College reading assessments are star Renaissance math and reading these are all that we use at the beginning of the school year to get a benchmark but this was also another piece that the state gives us to use the purpose of an analysis of this data is to

023understand the level of support that students require for current this year's grade level support designed specifically to inform instruction going forward okay so they're looking at mostly last year's standards and but with one caveat and it's very this is very important to know because it does change the look of the data for our math students middle school students taking High School courses algebra algebra 1 geometry or Algebra 2 were administered the start strong assessment for that course okay so um this comes straight from the Department of Education the njdoe which strongly discouraged districts from comparing any individual student school districts start strong data to any state-level data for start strong or to any njsla data they really want it to be a snippet and a moment in the school year in the beginning of the

024year for teachers to really look at and use it as one another way to inform their instruction with all of our local assessments that we use so who is who was tested and based on which standards you can see on the left hand column are the current grade levels and then the standards grades level on the right hand side again um please note that the middle school high school middle school students taking High School courses um or administer the start strong assessment for that course these are the three levels of support for our um start strong one is strong support may be needed to some support may be needed and three less support may be needed so what did we learn about the information that we were given and generally speaking the results have been

025pretty consistent with what we know and what we have um every student was impacted and this this assessment came last was mandatory last year to see the effects of how the pandemic um that the pandemic had on our students in learning um so we know that the pandemic did impact our students but not every student was impacted in the same way assessment data serves to help teachers plan for instruction and Target the individual needs of our students classroom teachers have used the data reports to identify standards that requires emphasis or reteaching as well as individual students who need more intensive remediation so this information was sent to the schools as we approach the mid-year point the next round of benchmarks assessments are taking place currently and just finishing up our new round of star Renaissance

026our new TC scores and providing teachers with data on student progress since the beginning of the year and they will inform the instructional planning for the second half of the year and I I kind of talked a little bit about how we use our data to inform our instruction last month so these are the numbers we're getting a little bit into the data now these are the numbers of students tested by grade level and by subject there may be some discrepancies because there are some exemptions to some of our ell students when they for an Ela when they first come in I think the um the cutoff date is July 1st if they come in after July 1st then they are exempt from the Eli's but it looks like many are pretty much the same

027foreign and here's our math our high school math level uh students that were tested numbers now we'll get into district-wide across the board by grade level by subject and uh uh support level fifth grade again this is going to be all on the website for you to really review sixth grade is sixth grade science is is really focusing in on third fourth and fifth grade science standards our seventh grade ELA and math eighth ninth you'll notice once we get into the high school or math is we'll be in a separate slide and ninth grade science does look at this this Middle School standards 10th grade ELA and 12th grade science Algebra 1 remember please remember that this is all our middle school and our um high school students who are currently in algebra 1. algebra

028two and geometry again this could include our 8th grade students at the middle school or it does include who are taking geometry I did put in there I know there was a request less time to have specific information on special education again we looked at it from a um a grade level our ninth grade 10th just Ela right now 12th science and our maths again middle school and high school I then broke down by uh ethnicity again this is a lot of information um we'll be going very quickly but it it'll be on the website for you to dive into a little bit deeper okay sixth grade has a lot of information because they have three subjects 10th is just ell Eli Ela 12th science Algebra 1 Algebra 2 geometry and the final area that

029we really looked at with data was looking at our buildings itself as a snapshot Delia Bolden Clinton Seth South Mountain Tuscan MMS it's a little bit cut off on the bottom I think just from the projection Psalms CHS and our high school level math all three on one slide so that is the data that I wanted to share with about start strong um I am not going last month I really went in deep about the interventions that we're putting in place um but I put this graphic in again because I do want to remind you that we are definitely taking this different approach this year of layering on all the all the interventions that we can to make sure that we are hitting students who are struggling from all different angles and making sure that

030all of their needs are met because it's not just one thing that's going to work there's a very long in-depth conversation presentation on that from last month's njsla if anybody you know wants to go back and watch the video again and it really uh and there's longer more explanation for each one of these different interventions that overlap so and that's what I have for you tonight thank you Miss Bodner and just to to reiterate a few months ago as we were planning these latest presentations we really wanted to do a crosswalk between njsla and start strong and as Ms Bodner shared one of the first directions that we received from the state was not to do that because this this lacks context and it's meant to be a snapshot in time um data point that

031the state probably also uses across districts for their own data purposes which one to reiterate that board members you've already given Ms Bodner questions through the cni chair are there any follow-up questions we'll remember about them only so obviously thanks a lot for putting this together it's a lot of data uh one comment and a question right I mean for some reason I mean we do pretty I mean the numbers don't look very good for Science and I don't understand why I mean I'm sure there are reasons why but so that's my only comment I'll leave you with that the more important question is that though we cannot compare this against njsla we can definitely compare start strong against the previous thought strong although there are snapshots sometimes so can we do a year on

032year comparison to see whether we're doing better they actually the state does say to not make any of those kind of comparisons and it does get a little bit tricky especially when you get into the middle school and high school math because they're kind of moved around and it's not the same um same students and all of those different things so it does get a little bit hairy I think um again I think this is information that we really do need to see in a snapshot I think there's a lot of other data that we can provide that will give you more in-depth information and and I know there were a lot of questions about data from Dr Telus Ford which we have I've been working with um the administration team and having conversations about

033digging really deep into that information and using some of your questions as our guides because they were great questions right that we should really be thinking about and that we we do in our um and what also made me feel good is that there are some of the things that we do do right but it also expanded our thoughts and um so we appreciate that but that will be coming um and I will share with you that information um once we get it together we were waiting for Q2 to come out and and now that we have that we can really begin to start diving deep and doing those comparisons and looking at progress because also beginning of the year for some can be difficult and we wanted to show the progress into so you'll

034be getting a report on that shortly and as soon as we but I have all the teams so supervisors and building admins working on those types of things and I think that data might tell a better story than even making those comparisons with start strong start strong can be administered in an hour right and even our njsla is a little bit more in depth and it's open-ended these are very much just um I I don't even believe there's any open-ended questions on this assessment it's like real quick put an answer in and and move on so it's information and we use it um and I think we we use it with all the other pieces to do look at it in a silo would be kind of a difficult way to really understand that child

035who's sitting in front of you board member malistina hi yes um we we did speak about this in cni so I just wanted everybody to realize that um I guess I mine is more two comments I think uh the first being that I need people need to understand those math scores because it it gets confusing yes because those kids haven't really seen geometry but yet there took the geometry exam so when you see like the 75 failure rate you're like oh but which I get but it's just because those kids have never they're in the class but they really hadn't started geometry but we're testing them on it so I I want that to sort of be I'm glad you said that because that's what I was trying when I said it a few times

036about that remember our middle school kids are included in this and they have not seen anything like this at all so that you're right that math data might look real wonky but it's because they haven't had the experience with it right so I I wanted to just make that clear thank you so that they understood so we you know while we do have issues in in general but um so I guess my other is coming back to I know this is a snapshot I haven't ministered this test I know that it's like seven questions and it's like kids are done in 10 minutes I so the the data is always questionable to me but we're seeing we're still seeing the same continued Trends over again that we have been seeing with multiple different data so

037I'm starting to get concerned that while we are doing multi-layered interventions they might not we we they might not be working as well as we would hope they were and I want us to continue to look at ways that we can support our kids and that when we get stuff like this data which while it's not you know the best data can be raised that red flag and be like oh we might need to pull that kid for a little extra support or let's look at that with the grades and I I want I'm hoping that that occurs more because we are still seeing a lot of kids struggle and it's not changing uh really so we're gonna need I I'm I'm I I hear what you're saying 100 I can tell you that one

038of the main reasons why I applied for this job and wanted to be a part of this is because I wanted there to be change right that was my focus that was my the thing that I felt that we needed to do some things differently and we are starting with this approach to intervention it's different than what we've done in the past and it is currently where are we in February right so we've been working on this since I mean I just came into this position so we we are working on it now I do believe that this will help immensely and I do and I can tell you that we've had a lot of conversations at different levels and building levels about things that we want to do for next year and expand on

039the work that we're doing we can't keep doing things differently expecting a different keep doing things the same way expecting a different result and that's how I have run my everything that I have done in in this District um and I'm bringing that to this um to to central office and I truly believe that we have a team sitting behind me that feels the same way who really want to make some changes and some difference so um I I complete I hear you I hear you a hundred percent but I can tell you that you have a team that's committed to making sure that our students are taken care of and we're giving them everything that they can and we will not continue to do things that aren't working board member Deval Wilson thank you

040for the presentation and thank you for that statement about being committed because um that's important and we're glad that you are um I just wanted to make a statement and reiterate a question of mine you know I I there's intervention but there's also looking at current curriculums and as you said you're committed to looking at things um one of my questions was about the trends of what um students might be lacking when it comes to math and Ela if there are foundations that they are just missing and um that's important to me because I want to know that if they're if they're not getting that foundation in elementary school or middle school um so I know that sounds like you're still finding tracking the math and figuring that out which is totally understandable look forward

041to those results absolutely um I thought it was interesting that from the ELA standpoint um reading and writing stamina was one of the issues and um you know once you're in fourth grade that will continue to be an issue and you kind of see this decline for some of those uh students especially especially black students and so um from the research I've done I I've read that reading reading and writing stamina um correlates to orthographic mapping which I know we've talked about um and cni but I think it's important for you know the community to also know that orthographic mapping is what happens in our brains and it enables us to learn how to sound out words and if you're not getting that that means you're you're not getting it because you didn't get enough

042phonics and so um I know that we need to rely on science more these days when it comes to to our Yoli curriculum and if we're relying too much on the queuing method then you're not going to have orthographic mapping um so probably when we do our readouts we'll talk a little bit more about what we discussed in cni and having a more candid conversation with the community about what that Ela curriculum looks like because I know that we are now more focused on math but I am a little concerned about you know not just intervention but also really taking a good look at the current curriculum right and if it is substantial for the needs of these students who have missed quite a bit of instruction over the past couple of years and that

043will be an ongoing trend thank you um yeah thank you for for your comment I I yes we are really looking in on math and it's really kind of about time at the K5 level um but that doesn't mean we're going to ignore anything um I have Dr beam folks who is very committed to making sure that our students are given what they uh she's the ELA supervisor committed in making sure that we're meeting all the needs of our students um so we will continue to move forward one of the nice things about Atlas too that helps us is we can now that it's online we can now run reports to see our standards and see where we might be struggling in certain areas and then look at our curriculum to see to match up

044those standards to see how many times we might be meeting and connecting to those standards and then maybe shifting some things around if we need to or come back to it to a standard that we need to so there's a lot of in the last few years there's been a lot of additions to being able to really understand the curriculum and its impact with standards and how how it helps our students I've already had conversations with Dr Bean folks about sending out information more information on our Eli program I know that you you've talked to we've got you and I have had a few conversations about it and I'm definitely hearing you and wanting to make sure that we're as transparent as possible and making sure that the community truly understands that we are not

045a One-Shot Stop Shop we really do layer on different programs to especially in the ELA area because we know it's not going to be effective for all students so we supplement with many many different resources yes TC is our main resource but again we we it's not going to meet the needs of all students and we recognize that and Dr beam folks came in I actually was the one who interviewed and hired her because she felt that way because we can't do that it will never work for everyone so we will be sending some things out from the cni office to to the community so that they can get a better sense of what our Ela program is um really you know and we can have talks we're going to be having some curriculum information

046nights and family fun nights for yes for our um Community to come and participate in so we're trying our best to make sure that you as a community know what we do and why we do it and how you can also support your students at your children at home so we're getting there we're going to keep working on it okay any more questions well thank you so much Miss partner we really appreciate it thank you [Applause] we will now have Mr Burnside who will introduce our auditors good evening tonight from pkf O'Connor Davies we have Andy hadulic and Robert Provost and they'll be here to uh well virtually to give the annual audit report thank you the floor is yours thank you uh good evening uh board members uh pleasure to be here my name

047is Andy hajjalik um and with me this evening is uh another partner in The Firm Rob Provost and Rob has been the lead partner on this job this year so uh I will turn the proceedings over to Rob uh for a brief review on the uh annual order for the year ended the June 30th 2022. thank you very much all right thank you man so I guess I'll start first with um you know why we're here tonight as historically the deadline has always been December 5th um you know that has been changed to March 17th 2023 for this year uh the reason for that is you know we're kind of at the mercy of getting information from the state and uh that information just came out a few weeks ago so you know the extended

048the deadline once again from December 5 to March 17th and I got to assume probably going forward we're probably going to look at a deadline of somewhere in February and you know the old deadline is probably going to go away if you might guess and um you know we're certainly going to meet that uh we should be issuing within a couple weeks so we'll definitely make Appliance with that new deadline this year um you know the order process itself is probably it's a pretty voluminous one you know it's probably a month month and a half at least by the time we go in we do our planning um and we do a lot of testing we test internal controls we test compliance you know with tested balances you know I gotta say the district really

049really has a sound internal control environment you know and they did a really really nice job in the finance office and you know because it is such a grueling process I mean our audit report is anywhere probably 180 200 Pages it's a pretty big report uh don't worry we're definitely not going over all that tonight what we would like to do is maybe just school over some of the highlights and we decided to go over to budgetary comparison schedule um and just AMR now it's just AMR is kind of like the findings kind of the results of the entire audit so if I can I would like to uh share my screen if I can figure this out here we go so basically this this to see one I mean like I said the the

050report is extremely voluminous 180 or so pages but really these 10 pages that's pretty much everything that's significant to the district I mean until the revenues expenditures that's where a lot of the operational decisions that will be made um and you can see what's on the screen now they don't have a lot of different types of Revenue sources even though they are significant I mean most of the revenue comes from a tax levy and a state aid and the reason I highlighted these I'm so sorry to interrupt you would you mind just zooming in a bit more it's really hard thank you so much would you like to zoom more is that okay sure thank you yeah we're in a big room and it's hard to see thank you I understand so and the reason

051I I highlighted 166 million is interesting because the expenditures were almost the same exact number and I think that really speaks volumes for a school district that you know with increasing health benefit costs increasing Transportation costs increasing tuition costs you know General salary increases you know all those costs are kind of you know hard to maintain so the fact that we feel the district really maintains you know conservative spending practices I mean really really I think puts a district in a pretty nice position I'm just going to kind of scroll down to the end as I'm going down you can even see here's all the expansion lines you know and this will report to is available on the state once we do issue so apologize I'm going kind of quickly scrolling through this you know

052if you see that the tuition's up almost 10 million dollars this year salaries are definitely increased and you can't even just see the the volume of expenditures I mean it seems to go on and on and on but I really just wanted to get to and you can see this 166 million it's almost right in line with the revenue you know so I kind of put the ending fund balance somewhat in line with last year so and like I said there's a lot of school districts out there too that are it's a struggle out there you know I mean like I said health benefits especially with the state there's a lot of increases in expenditure so you know we feel that the school district really really maintained a healthy uh fund balance for this year

053and I try to just throw up some of the prior numbers down here to kind of show you the changes that had occurred so basically these first two line items are just reserved so you know school districts school districts in Jersey they're allowed to you know Reserve funds into Capital maintenance reserve for future projects that the school district might have and those are pretty healthy balances that they have and you know this increase that the 1.6 million dollars that's actually up here that was actually just a decision that District made we closed out some really really old projects that there's money left in so we're actually able to you know increase this balance by 1.6 million then again those are just old old projects I had some you know funds remaining in there so we

054moved it over to this Reserve balance to kind of just increased it everything else was fairly in line I think which is pretty impressive overall and you know the ending balance down here just 7.5 million that's basically your four percent that the state allows you to maintain and now four percent was almost uh I guess uh coveted relief there's always two percent and unfortunately it's going back to two percent next year but this is pretty much you know available on designated funds where even though all these up here are also significant they do have restrictions on you know what you can use it for so again the refill the school district really really maintained a nice healthy position actually I think I got 39 million dollars of fund balance 7.5 is you know unrestricted and

055uh I was gonna jump to AMR uh unless Andy you want to add anything on on the C1 here okay so I'm gonna jump to you more again we do a lot of testing so the AMR is basically guidance from State you know they mandate we we go through and test certain items you know going through different tuition and claims and purchases Etc uh you know we feel as if we're we like to do things outside of that box you know we we do a deep dive in internal controls we test compliance we um and I'll do a whole separate single audit that's also required so you're really pleased to say that we don't have any formal findings at all to report and in fact also we actually give two opinions we give an opinion

056on the financial statements an opinion on single audit and they're both unmodified and those are the best opinions the school district can receive so you know and we we take pride into a nice thorough audit so I think the school district should be proud of that opinion and again the only thing we had at the end was one little other suggestion to management but when you go through there's we had no comments at all again I'm going to scroll through this quickly I'm sorry I'm just trying to get to their suggestion but so these are basically all the audit areas that the state's gonna okay you have to go through and test all these items which we do and we always put little you know all these things we have no no findings whatsoever we

057go through payroll you know purchasing Etc and it said and we test a lot I mean we go through probably a few hundred vouchers we test most of the revenue so you know I think that really speaks huge volumes to districts they do a really really nice job that we really come across anything at all to report I said the only thing that you know we thought we may mention just you know it's just something light on a capital asset records where you know when there's certain assets that were acquired is sometimes it's just difficult to you know kind of Trace back to the funding source but again that's not even uh my finding or anything that would even require corrective action that's just another suggestion that we would have for the district but overall

058I got no findings a nice clean opinion and you know we feel that the district has a really really nice healthy uh fund balance when you know end of the day is that you know I was trying to keep it sort of brief because you know these reports are huge so I was just trying to kind of go over some of the highlights especially since we know you have a full agenda tonight but we'll certainly take uh any questions you have at all or uh Andy if you want anything on this as well and certainly uh uh afterwards if there's any questions uh you know feel free to email us or call us with any questions uh later on after the meeting I'm always happy to respond to uh inquiries website as well the full

059audit probably within a couple weeks or so we do have a question here from board member valimani oh and this should be a very simple answer but if you were giving out a grade for our school's uh finances and bookkeeping what would you give it uh I'll give you guys a no I mean like I said I think we do a whole heck of a lot of testing especially came out and it seemed like it was everybody we can't hear you well oh I'm sorry can you hear me now yeah yeah okay so yeah I I think you guys have a clear eye I mean like I said the volume that we test we go through hundreds of vouchers you know we go through all these different grants I mean we do a lot a

060lot of testing and uh yeah like I said I think you guys are really really solid shape I think uh you know Eric and his Finance team does a really excellent job in the finance office uh we do other testing too we try to test activity at outside schools to do a lot of different types of things and I mean I think you guys really really perform well [Music] board member Mal Espina uh this is for your um Mr Burnside I just want to make sure that we are going to be getting a copy of this in the near future yes I think it's worth mentioning that you're not voting on anything tonight this was just a budget presentation great thank you and as soon as they do finalize the audit they'll bind one or

061digitally send it to me and I'll pass it on I a binded copy the offer but uh too this this was uh you know in draft form for us um only only because the deadline you know was was so far out and we're obviously trying to you know get this to this meeting so you guys can move on with your budget process Etc um but yeah no we'll certainly get you the final copy uh ASAP as soon as we have it you'll have it and it's certainly worth mentioning that this is a team effort and I can't do it by myself that's for sure so this really uh is a reflection on the entire business office couldn't do it without them thank you thank you to our visitors um and thank you Mr Burnside and

062Mr gurcio and the business office as well as all of our school leaders and all the folks who help us to spend our our funds every year who follow those procurement protocols that are in place to have you know firm results like this thank you so much to our board members I bounced down to the auditor because I know that we'll be on intentional integration for a while so um Mr bonds if you're ready you can uh share my my screen here thanks Andy thanks Robert thank you thank you guys while Mr bonds is doing his magic I'll introduce our Consultants who've been with us for a few for a few years now uh Miss McArdle and Mr owls they're joining us and they'll be a part of our q a at the end so

063good evening again to uh Nancy and Michael I would just like to state that I'm accused from the discussion portion of this thank you for letting us know all right good evening everyone I'm so excited to share with you what's becoming our annual uh tradition of checking in for um our generational initiative the the intentional integration initiative am I controlling Mr bonds you are okay great thank you so just a brief agenda and the board members have seen this presentation they've given very thoughtful questions that have also informed uh some of the updates that are here um but it's it's pretty long I'm not going to stay on on any of these pieces too long to make sure that we can get to what I think is the most anticipated portions of our presentation so

064we're going to as always level set and go back and kind of talk through our journey um from previous presentations and previous reviews Etc and they were going to talk about our current school year and look at that data for example kindergarten year over year first grade uh it's the first time that first graders would have been a part of III as well as the Middle School comparison along with the plan for Marshall and bolden's unpairing next please so again just recapping our journey in March 2019 um the somsd 2020 integration plan was postponed to allow for more time for planning and I joined the district a few months later and you can see here all the different things that we did to collect information to engage the community and the latest two things that

065we're just highlighting um is that last year March we did this we did a similar report and we're a month ahead of schedule and also last March as we did in previous years I meet with multiple Realtors to talk about what they should be telling people who are prospective home buyers next please so here are just some quick summaries of events that have occurred for those who might not recall we had of course the equity uh Symposium that kind of launched this work we brought in experts from various universities including Dr Fergus and others next there's probably more than a thousand folks who were in that Auditorium it was jam-packed at CHS and we not only had presentations we also had some interaction after the presentations please next [Music] here again are those folks who

066participated we also shared and want to emphasize that this was something that we shared almost three years ago and the in the New Jersey school um litigation around segregation is still moving forward and still in the courts and we've been asked to present this information at other places in New Jersey in response to this pending litigation next please um more information here about integration integration in schools and legal cases and one thing that was said that was shocking to me in the beginning of this research is that at this time uh this group ranked New Jersey as the sixth most segregated state for school systems in the nation still talking about some highlights from that first Symposium you can please continue to push through we then had a follow-up in February of 2020 we took

067our show on the road to different schools next slide please we took the presentation uh that we just shared the the huge Symposium and we gathered all of our elementary teachers um and we were at Psalms and we played the video of that uh Symposium and we also talked a lot about some of the data that we had around disparities of enrollment of students of color in our highest level academic coursework and our then School business administrator also presented on the planning of our construction next please some of the data that we shared again this is years ago data just again helping everyone to really visualize um the segregation that was occurring and the impact of it uh in our elementary schools this again is another representation this is calculus AP enrollment Through The Years

068based on demographics this is a summary of that event with our teachers and Elementary administrators and again many shared it was the first time they'd ever seen that information and they also we're really able to bring to us and our ba at the time some you know on the ground information around the construction plans from their perspective another Community Town Hall so the we we had one in January we had one for our teaching staff at the elementary school level and this was another Outreach to the community next slide please we again shared more targeted information about our review of literature and we synthesize the feedback that we received from our parents continue please and we also shared this was a very timely publication from Harvard all about integration and some of the information that

069they found [Music] we don't even know where that place is in that first bullet do we right it was at the then Jefferson Elementary School now Bolden [Music] Full House in the auditorium next slide please we also provided an online obligation sorry opportunity for parents to give us feedback to kind of impact our work and keep a running record of their concerns we then took all of the research that we had done and we also looked at the feedback from families and we worked with our board to develop a framework a framework for the board to consider and then covid-19 impacted all of our lives and we did not let that stop the work that we were doing so even though we had received more than 3 000 views of our videos and our webinars

070we continue to push forward with this initiative so this was our first foray into the digital webinar domain and we had more than 3 000 views of this webinar and it was just you know really inspiring to have our community uh view this work next please again we we shared our findings we talked about our framework we talked about construction and our methodology and and what we were suggesting that was that was presented during that webinar next slide and so one of the here are some of the highlights um that were a part of what we were suggesting and what we were finding that would really fit the work that we were doing and um everyone's very familiar with this now this design was to start um with an algorithm that had been proven other

071places and modify it for our needs and then uh start with the pilot and review the results of that pilot and then to consider middle school if the pilot was successful that was April 2020. again I'm just sharing research and and one of the things that we found and that our Consultants confirmed of course was um that race um is challengeable um in court if you use it as a determinant factor for placement which is why we do not though the initial algorithmic design from somewhere else Berkeley California did next so though we had 3 000 views we only received 16 questions back and we took those questions we were very happy that some folks were so thoughtful and they're informing those questions that help us to get that parental perspective on top of the

072Outreach that we had done before next please [Music] hear those um this is though these those 16 questions were synthesized down to 11 because some of them of course were similar and you can see here you know I won't um insult you by reading to you but some of the concerns that were shared next slide please and one of the um as we again did this research and looked at scholarly work um this one stood out to us and we shared it it was from the century foundation around parental support for integration but also understanding that the more choice that was given a research documented the less diverse schools became next slide please and so here are some of the other events that we did and we already talked about them we can Breeze through

073it we did a virtual q a with our incoming kindergarten families we met with Realtors multiple times next slide if you want to go back to you know a year ago it's still available on our intentional integration microsite you can watch the board meeting and watch you know the the presentation of the first year of data next slide please next slide and so this is our micro site if you go to our website you go down to the bottom the large buttons are there and one says intentional integration you click that it takes you to this micro site and this is how it looked uh yesterday next slide please and you can click on there you can find presentations you can find different data points and memos and all the things that we share we're

074trying to be as transparent as possible next slide please this is how it looks today we've uploaded the year two report and it's available right on the front page of the micro site next slide please and this is the presentation that we're doing it's available as well it will be available as well when we conclude this presentation so one thing that was different that I want to emphasize that impacted the students who are in school right now we we added a tool to our registration software for parents to self-report important information around their social economic status from their perspective otherwise we do use census data and so this helps us to be even more finite and direct with this work that we're doing next slide so year two review kindergartners and this is again a

075lot of information I want to go through it quickly [Music] so we know of course that this year was the second year of our intentional integration for our kindergartners um and you'll see if you want more information on this is very easily accessible um it we did our process identically to the previous school year that's what this is saying and it's also sharing the number of students who were placed via our algorithm as you see on the bottom there 484. very important information again to try and make this process as family friendly as possible some of the feedback that we got when we were first designing this process were concerns around siblings being in school together if possible and so this is showing you a comparison between a comparison of the number of students who

076were placed via sibling preference or priority it's also showing you the demographics social economically within that group next slide please one important piece here we talk about variance a lot part of the original adoption of the intentional integration by this board of education was an agreed upon variance understanding that life happens and sometimes the numbers might not be perfect but there was a lot there was an allowed upon plus or minus five percent variance when you're looking at the socioeconomic status of the group compared to the overall School next slide please and this represents download that these numbers are super small but it's just showing a comparison between the SCS of our year one and the SES of year two for our kindergarteners and how um I'm sorry one more go back please just for

077one second and it's showing you how the variance is consistently within the five percent allowance created and approved by the Board of Education next slide super important information again we said that we don't use race to assign students we have to always emphasize that we do not what we do monitor the impact through the racial lens to it to see if we have if we have any unintended consequences or outcomes from the work that we're doing and that bold you see in the middle there is that um the ratio and ethnic integration remain fairly consistent and constant from the previous year next slide please what you see on on this slide again is is a double-sided slide comparing year one to year two I mean what you'll see is um again that we are still

078within our variance when it comes to uh the five percent piece that we're shooting for and it speaks for itself next slide so I ideally all students could attend a high quality diverse School very close to their home and we understand that but we know that the nature of what we are dealing with and addressing is neighborhood segregation that is then leading to historical school-based segregation so we again try to place students to their closest school but it's not always possible next slide some really important information here but I'm just going to focus in on the highlighted portion that notably the sheriff students attending their furthest School their fifth closest school again Elementary it drops significantly from 12 percent to seven percent and the decline was particularly large for students whose families fall into the

079low SES category from 25 to 13 a very significant change next slide please this just lays out um on top there you have our current school year on the bottom you have our previous school year the First Column is your close is the students who are assigned to their closest school second closest so on and so forth next slide please again talking about distance to school we of course monitor that and focusing in on the highlighted portion here at the average distance for black students Rose from 1.43 to 1.5 miles from their school that they were assigned to but it most importantly fell for low SCS black students while Rising for medium and high SES students on a whole the travel distance for black students did remain higher than other racial ethnic groups and we

080want to make sure that we're transparent about that next slide please it's important information for folks to know what the average distance is for students who were assigned via intentional integration and so again if you look at the purple information versus the red the left versus the right you'll see that [Music] um the distance from school has dropped for this year as compared to last year's kindergartners next slide please again a different way to see the same information you can push to the next slide again breaking this down and chunking it into students who live less than one mile less than two miles and less than three miles now looking at first graders these are students who were kindergartners obviously for our pilot year and now they are first graders as we would expect this

081is an already established cohort cohort um and so we're just monitoring those students and also looking at looking at students who are new to our district who are joining us in this already established cohort um and so one thing just to point out and highlight is like most of our um grade levels as we go up um the the class sizes increased a little bit based on board policy and so the number of classrooms decline by one at the schools that are highlighted there nevertheless with the work that we did um the variances uh changed somewhat over two years but we were still within line with our five percent variance next slide please and so on the left we're showing you the data from our kindergarteners per school and on the right we're showing you

082I'm sorry first grade on the left and comparing them against themselves as kindergarteners on the right next slide please next slide again showing that the demographics of the first graders compared to themselves has not changed almost at all very very small changes as should be expected now for our sixth graders from that March 21st Board of Education meeting presentation just to reset and level set where we were um the board and the administration reviewed the possibilities of using triple I to support an equitable distribution of our rise of our then Rising sixth graders to support our long our long-term goal and the results of our beta tests of the then current fifth graders to the then current sixth graders using our algorithm showed a lot of promise that it would bring had the potential to

083bring even more balance to our middle schools next slide and on that next day so on that next slide you see that the board voted to support the expansion of triple I to sixth grade and here are the results next slide please we're going to look at um school by school side by side to see that the result was that our middle schools are even more are now more similar than the result from our elementary schools which is just super exciting they're highly integrated now these sixth grade cohorts at Maplewood Middle and Psalms in terms of their racial ethnic ethnic composition as well as their social economic status tiers you just hold there for one second Mr bonds if you're looking at the Top Line Maplewood Middle School SCS tears next line Psalms SCS tears

084district-wide total and the variance which means their difference away from their total School population they're almost identical next line next slide please similar information for ethnicities again we monitor next slide as you could imagine the large majority of our students 87 percent of our sixth graders were assigned to their closest school including the 79 percent of those who were assigned by the algorithm um the distance to school was 1.1 mile for the pre-assigned students at 1.23 miles for those assigned by the algorithm and again the pre-assign students are the those who have sibling preference those will be in place due to their special need designation Etc and you can see here that um it didn't differ much when you were comparing the average distances um using social economic status and race as your lens next

085slide please next slide just for context we did share again what the previous year's sixth graders and the rising fifth graders look like when you compare that data with the beta test versus what was really happening with those sixth graders so just to remind everyone next slide please that Top This is again from the previous presentation the top group that's our beta test looking at what would have happened if we used intentional integration with those Rising fifth graders the bottom was the actual um was the actual sixth graders who were with us last year and how their data looked next slide same information but cut based on ethnicity and race again the top is the beta test what we predicted would happen if the board supported the intentional integration for sixth grade and the bottom

086is what was in existence um with those sixth graders as you can see there's a significant difference that we thought would occur and we've shown has occurred next slide so as as part of our policy on intentional integration we have of course a commitment um to check in and see how our parents are experiencing this important work and this is the policy and this is the statement in that policy next slide so let's start with our families um we value the feedback from our stakeholders so here are the steps that we took uh to communicate this opportunity for feedback with parents and families and guardians of our kindergartners first graders and sixth graders principals sent out customized messages to all those applicable parents um the survey was uploaded to and available in PowerSchool and the

087survey was translated into Spanish and creole our PTA and H and HSA leaders were contacted I sent out a personalized robocall to all those families and we also sent reminder emails from central office and extended the deadline here are the demographics of those who responded on the left you have the name of each school on the rights you have the racial designation and on the bottom you have the total that last diagonal square of 296 was the total number of parents who responded to the survey when you look at the note on the bottom we placed 1516 students through intentional integration and of those 296 families responded to our survey opportunities and we have we of course try to connect to scholarly research and we used a formula to to determine what a representative sample

088would be in doing high level research and that would be 307. so these are all the results of each question that we ask our families I we I don't have time to go through all those but I'll flash them down one by one and of course it'll be available on our website and we're going to work with um our team and our our data committee um to create a singular presentation of analysis of the survey results too much information for just a single presentation so the first question uh is the basic collection of the race and ethnicity of the person completing the survey next slide is the race and ethnicity of the child of the person who's completing the survey next question is the gender of the person completing the survey and the gender of

089the child is next grade of the child or children attending school in these grades what school they attend which is an interesting slide of course the student body at the child school is very diverse what are your thoughts on that and parents responded my child's classroom is very diverse parents responded it's hard for my children to be accepted at this school [Music] pants responses there are tensions in school between students with different backgrounds my children have been able to feel connected to at least one adult at this school I believe staff at this school cares about my child I believe admin at this school care about my child or children staff at this school understand my child's culture and background admin at this school understand my child's culture and background staff at the school encourage

090students to learn about people from different races administration at the school encourage students to learn about people from different backgrounds my child sees themselves reflected in their lessons meaning their diversity my child is receiving the proper supports to achieve grade level benchmarks foreign as a caregiver I feel very engaged with the school when I am at school I feel I am treated with as much respect as other families School staff reach out to my family to ensure we feel welcomed and valued School admin reaches out to my family to ensure we feel welcomed and valued my family has experienced hardships as a result of my child's placement as a caregiver I feel proud to belong to this school community [Music] next we were just very excited to engage with our sixth graders to learn more

091about their experience I really want to thank and and just emphasize thanks for our sixth grade leaders the principals and assistant principals and of course the teachers who built time in their day for our sixth graders to complete this important survey the survey was actually emailed to our sixth grade students via their District email which again goes back to our discussion with our board rep about how we can again push out information to our students we consulted multiple times with our middle school principals both before and during the survey period we did a robo call again to the applicable Families Our middle school principals made time with their teachers for kids to complete this and of the 488 sixth grade students as of last Friday 443 gave their responses which is where this data was

092collected and then over the weekend we had 12 more kids who completed it so gave us a very high response rate which of course is possible when you have a a collective of great folks who were working on this at our schools we thank them for their assistance next slide please so because we're dealing with the Google versus the PowerSchool piece we don't have the questions um as detailed on here but you can see there's a quick summary on the left hand side there next slide please uh what was the race and ethnicity if so if students chose to this is an optional question so you can see of the 443 426 chose to answer this gender similarly it was an optional question you can see we got next slide please we had almost an

093even split between Maplewood Middle and um South Orange the next question was about the student's perspective of their student body is it diverse right and and so one of the recommendations from our board was let's Define diverse and that was a great recommendation and we did it and it was oh I think we know who made the recommendation um similarly my classroom is diverse next slide please it is hard for students like me to be accepted in this school next slide there are tensions in school between students with different backgrounds and identities I feel connected to at least one adult at this school [Music] I believe staff at this school care about me I believe administration at school at this school care about me staff at this school understands my culture and background administration at

094this school understands my culture and background I see my diversity reflected in my lessons I am included in lots of activities at my school I am treated with as much respect as other students School staff reaches out to my family to ensure they feel welcomed and valued I feel proud to be a part of this school and again we'll do a separate analysis of that because I know that there's some interests obviously in this feedback and so now we'll talk about the Marshall Bolden unpairing next slide so again just to level set a year ago 11 months ago this is what was shared a Bowden had not yet been renamed but we made sure that we renamed it for the slides that we're showing this evening um and so we talked about um really an

095important piece that prior to my arrival in District the board voted to design each Elementary School to take on a K-5 grade span it was very important to give direction to our architects at that time next slide so these were again important considerations that I shared 11 months ago what is the least disruptive yet most effective way of transitioning Marshall and Bolden to K-5 schools what about the furniture for schools for that expansion is it covered by our construction costs and we confirm that it is not what is more favorable a singular shift after Bolden is completed perhaps a lottery versus an annual gradual shift for Marshall organically growing keeping some students that would normally go to Bolton Etc and are there other ways to do this here are recent steps taken next slide so

096we've held multiple meetings with the subcommittee that includes the principals and assistant principals of both buildings it also includes some may as president and today samaya's assistant I'm sorry uh vice president um we have of course multiple SLT members who have contributed to this work and considerations and trying to make sure that we're peeling back the onion for those unintended consequences um and just trying to look at every possibility to be thoughtful next slide so the first consideration that we reviewed in our process was the re was to reconstitute both buildings that means to create K-5 grade spans for both buildings um beginning next year and what would that mean that would mean reassigning staff and students to create those K-5 teams in both schools and there are positives of this plan um the most

097obvious one it brings closure to this goal quickly and it's a one-time singular transition the downside that our committee thought about this plan is that it's a large logistical process with a very short time to complete there's a significant staff reassignment that would be most likely necessary Furniture curricular movement would be a major undertaking to go to create k-5s in spaces that are now K2 and three fives and all that would have to happen while our building and grounds teams would be heavily engaged this summer with managing our construction that's already planned and approved we would have students moving from school buildings and we would have staff members moving from where they are comfortable and familiar with in a short time period and one of the pieces that was really significant that was brought up

098by the school-based leaders was Marshall's bathroom facilities that they are not yet appropriate for big kids for fourth and fifth graders consideration number two to grow both buildings via the second and third graders for this fall and how would you do that you would allow Marshall to keep half of the rising third graders that they would normally roll forward to Bolden and allow Bolden to enroll half of the rising second graders and third graders for Marshall this would result in Marshall becoming a k through third grade school next year and Bolden will become a second through fifth grade school again in year One what are the positives of this plan the student transition would be in some cases more organic as rising third graders already traditionally go somewhere else mostly to Mark took to Bolden

099less staff would need to be shifted less concerns about student bathrooms less immediate need for furniture or curricular shifting where the downsides of this of this plan they're specialized multi-age programming that's in Marshall that would be impacted there's also a traditional looping thing that is designed in Marshall that would also be impacted by this plan and parents in those two categories have already been assured that they again as they enter would be in those um classes with those instructors for a particular time period Rising second graders please remember they were placed by intentional integration so dividing them could significantly threaten their already established social economic equity and year two would be more challenging if this plan went forward this is year one year two would be more challenging because now you're adding a first grade

100to Bolden and those students would have to be moved from their previous kindergarten assignment which could be a significant change for our youngest Learners and their families this plan would would also not include kindergarten seats at Bolton until year three and that was a key ask for our board and our district goals our third consideration grow both buildings via kindergarten and our third grades beginning next year allow allow Marshall to keep half of their Rising third graders that they would normally roll to Bolden allow Bolden to enroll half of the rising kindergartner slots that would normally be assigned to Marshall resulting in Marshall becoming a K3 in the fall and Bolden would become a k and three through fifth in year one year two and year three the plan would allow both schools to grow

101organically and Marshall's bathrooms can be improved to accommodate the older students the positives the student transition would be in some cases more organic as we spoke about before there's of course less staff that would need to be shifted less concerns about restrooms less immediate need for furniture and shifting of curriculum though it will come in subsequent years Marshall's multi-h program could be thoughtfully transitioned Marshall's looping classes similarly and that would mean that if it's a great program and we're growing to school we could consider growing the program or expanding the program in other places and we can be more thoughtful about that work Rising second graders who are placed with triple I would remain intact and maintain their already established SCS equity next slide please with any plan there's always going to be concerns and

102considerations the number one concern of course is special at programming being thoughtful about that design and and those seats um furniture and classroom assignments for The Bold and kindergartners working to establish where that's going to be and where the furniture will come from it'll be new purchases Etc all those operational pieces um future furniture for the larger Marshall students as they're growing and matriculating the process for staff transition both principals noted that there are staff members who've expressed interest in teaching different Grace bands and so how do you make that happen how do you review that there's probably contract driven timelines with our contract with Samaya so to make sure that we carefully review that and try to have this all established and finalized before our last days of school so we can also provide

103training uh before teachers leave and letters of transition as well the curricular transition we've of course been working with it to make sure that whatever's customarily there for these grade levels is there for these new classes and to again finalize the number of seats available for the new grades and so here's the final summation of the design um again not to repeat it what I just said but you can see for yourself maybe in a more visually pleasing manner um what the design would be and the expected date of completion and the outcome of the grade span expansion next slide please this is a very important uh note um Boden students will be enrolled per our current triple I methodology for kindergarten so that of course means that the algorithm will follow its design sibling

104preference SCS parental education proximity all those things but that asterisk is Big right because we also want to identify which Rising third graders also have siblings who will be rising kindergarteners so we can thoughtfully look at the sibling placement and sibling preference that's why we of course survey all incoming families uh to to determine if they already have siblings in our school district next slide please next slide so just a brief summary we have shared A Brief Review of our journey for the last four years of the generational goal of establishing systems that result in our student populations being assigned in an intentional fashion that results in our schools reflecting our communities demographics is well underway we've shared the success and momentum of year two of student placement this update includes the success of the

105first year of our sixth grade placements through triple I as well as the launching of our parental guardian and student surveys as designed a triple I methodology is allowing our students to organically matriculate balancing the demographics of our school without removing them and reassigning them as evidence by our first grade student data next slide we're very proud to share that so far this work has resulted in 1516 students attending school and grade levels K one and six that reflect our communities diversity as we have shared um research confirms that all students benefit greatly from results such as these next year the grade levels that will be impacted by triple I will be K 1 2 6 and 7 which is approximately 2500 students and finally the SCS outcomes for year two continue to fall within

106the board's approved five percent variance again reiterating while race is not a placement Factor monitoring of this important data point has as predicted resulted in our schools achieving more balanced demographics that reflect the diversity of our community so next slide some really important information um our kindergarten registration is already concluded and you can see there are timeline that's available on our website next slide please again reiterating our enrollment and registration dates next slide where to find this information if you are a parent who's joining us and now we will have a q a from our board if they have any questions on this presentation and also with our Consultants Michael Alves and Nancy McArdle yeah to our board president feel free [Music] board member Gifford yeah I wanted to ask you know uh sorry sorry

107you know given how low the response rate from our black parents how much does this data actually tell us and what can we do to improve that response rate also I'm wondering um if we can see the the breakup of the responses based on race you know do I feel welcome am I connected to this school I think it would be really interesting to see those questions those answers based on race yeah we'll have a we'll have as I shared um a presentation that focuses in on the survey results and so it'll it'll it'll go very deep into how how the information Cascades um Mr owls and Miss McArdle didn't help us with that that was our own internal piece uh with the help of many team members including uh Dr Gilbert and Mr bonds

108or Dr telesford board member of Adam Lamont okay board member athamani and then Dr tellersford so can we get a step-by-step description of the intentional integration algorithm and publish it on our website because the community's trust in the algorithm will increase if they see all the steps I mean of course they're welcome to advocate for changes but it should be open source and it should be transparent yes and so um to our visitors the question and what the request was could we um put loudly and proudly the step-by-step of the algorithm how it happens and and on our website we will work with you all to do that I know we already have it in a few of our um notes inside of our um micro site but we'll make it um large for everyone

109to be able to see if they're interested in that in kind of piggyback off that question I guess some people are advocating changing the model looking at how we play students and I guess looking at the methodology or the outline you talked about how there were comparisons to other models is there a way that we can I guess compare how those other models perform compared to the variance models that we have right now and then kind of just another like a question that backs up on that is um Delia Bolden will be adding kindergarten how will that impact I guess the distance that students travel because that is a concern that some people do have but since Daily building will be added in there'll be definitely a shorter distance that students are traveling thank you

110um so when we were doing our research um we did look at many different models um and we did look at even models that were very that were in the state of New Jersey right we looked very close we looked very far and um what we found was a lot of inconsistency especially after many years of being in place um for various reasons right because of their design because of um I don't I don't want to judge other school districts but that was my perspective right and I think that one thing that with Mr owls and and Miss McArdle they do this work all over the country and um one thing that they've commented to us about not to put words in their mouth was you know how Innovative this is and how sustainable it

111seems to be for the first couple of years and so I'll let them give any responses that they would like on that and the before they do the comment around Delia Bowden we're so excited about that and it's the reason I believe that the board made that a part of our district goals is that it does add a space uh in our community where there currently isn't one for kindergarteners and so that should make our distance to the closest school even smaller moving forward um Miss McArdle Mr owls anything to add please I'm sorry you're muted muted yep we hear you now thank you oh okay all right I just want to again um provide the context for what we have done here that essentially we have designed this is a new um student method

112of signing students to school based on their home address we have similar programs elsewhere and but what this is is an alternative to having to realign School attendance boundaries again if you are going to be committed to assigning students based on where they live and and so this is a very Innovative model and of course we've been so deliberately working collaboratively with beta testing year one now year two that the results that you're looking at on the socio-economic variances uh I just really superb I mean you can compare this to other school districts and also it's achieving I think a very significant amount of having to avoid racial and ethnic isolation in schools and so it's all being done again we're a priority trying to assign children to the school nearest their home where there's

113an available seat for their SCS tier so what you have here is a living Innovation that over the first two years is certainly I think helping to achieve the board's integration goals [Music] thank you so first I just want to thank Dr Taylor Dr Gilbert all those involved in putting together the survey so I'm just going to start with just the survey comment and then I'll ask a question um you know I appreciate that a deeper analysis will be done in survey results we've had access to this you know I raised a lot of the concerns that board member Giver brought up especially seeing you know kind of the breakdown by Race by school Etc I think a deeper analysis needs to be done and and I think to that point what other avenues are

114we considering when thinking about this survey for May to extend our reach so that we are trying to gain a better population of a survey respondents and would also like to see there were I believe some open-ended responses where they could provide additional feedback um so I would love to see see that and kind of discuss that in that um so related to the algorithm I'm just curious why do we use linear distance for proximity and not Road distance Nancy I'm sorry we do use we do use travel distance we use Road distance we do not use linear distance you you do okay I believe there was uh there's a bit of conflicted information that has been out there based on the company that the vendor that we are using um and again I I

115myself am not an effective member of the triple I but uh a lot of comparisons that have been done based on the door-to-door versus like curb to curb and kind of the distance that are that's going so I I appreciate that clarification I think there was a lot of confusion around that no it's possible that our very beginning beta test we used um uh you know linear distance but whenever since we started actually implementing the algorithm we've used travel distance and the um the company that we use is called here Technologies they're the world leader in in this type of work they in um are used by Garmin you may know does a lot of GPS work they're used by Amazon they really are the world's leader in this type of um travel and uh

116transportation planning so that's the the data that we use with here Technologies is the the method and then we use the Census Bureau geocoding um utilities to attach the actual location of each student to their address and then use the technology from here Technologies algorithm to calculate the distance it is true that I believe that we're going from the Census Bureau I believe calculates the location from the center line of the street you know directly in front of the street address which may not be you know a couple feet from the front door there's you know some slight differences possible depending on what the transportation company uses but but that's what we use is really um approved methods from the Census Bureau and from this transportation technology company [Music] thank you so much just to

117answer the first question and I apologize I didn't answer this for um board member Gifford as well um so we are of course aware of the differences in the demographics of those parents who responded um and that's of course why we did so much Outreach um using all those different um layers and so in my most recent meeting with our PTA president's Council we had a conversation about this as well and they thought that we had really done a lot of Outreach but we're still trying to look beyond that right how can we improve um we have to protect the authenticity of the survey which is why we use PowerSchool to hold the survey and also to encourage those who may not be in power school we try to put so much in there because

118we need parents to engage with it and so we're kind of giving thought to maybe the bigger question is not how do you get more folks to do the survey how do you get more folks to be engaged with power school because there's so much Rich information there about their kids so um that was just a brief answer oh uh foreign so this is a question for Dr Taylor I mean I understand that the current currently everything is handled by the Consultants I mean they handle the algorithm and so on when are we planning to bring this in-house the implementation of the algorithm in-house is this a software package is it well documented manual process who will take it over in enough respect I think that having a third party who's led the country in

119this support us for a nominal fee is a great way for us to have checks and balances and such an important you know as I always say generational undertaking um I think that even when our even when all of our K to a grades have been through the integration methodology I would still keep them on as a consultant to support us and verify in case we get challenges legally on this because that's what happens right we do across the country there there are challenges and I know that if you asked our Consultants how the length of some of their relationships other districts have taken that same stance um for Mr owls and Richmond Carter we're not trying to fire you but can you tell us uh the link to some of your engagements with school

120districts yeah I can remember I began working in student assignment in 1975 I was the state director for desegregation for the state of Massachusetts and uh then in 1981 I uh helped invent what's called control Choice which is a way of students being assigned to school based on choice but subject at that time to racial ethnic desegregation and because of the Supreme Court over outlawed my plan in Seattle Washington in 2007 after successfully working for more than 20 years we now of course have been pioneering the socioeconomic integration so anyway in terms of people that we work with like in Cambridge now in fact I just today got cambridge's um kindergarten um what they call their Lottery applicants so I'll be we'll be assigning Cambridge White Plains other districts uh as far as districts wanting

121to kind of um do this themselves uh that that's something that we can collaborate together over time but again the life of the Innovations are clearly it is as you're getting close every year you'll you'll make an important adjustments and you're doing that within a context of our experience which is very very broad-based and so a superintendent mentions what's important that uh well we're still working here and we're assisting you our plan from the very beginning has always been to collaborate with District people so that eventually they can I guess Implement um the uh the plan you know not on their own because I think what's important is the again the oversight and especially from the recognized experts it's the big advantage to the district but clearly I think that over time what's happened what

122happens is we develop a more closer collaboration with it or whoever else in the district so with with Keith bonds who has been excellent but that that would be our aim to be able to keep making adjustments over time uh certainly holding scrutinizing uh the the what we call the algorithm uh which uh for the results to make sure that they're consistent with board priorities and then to do that in such a way that the school district obviously becomes the local experts in the Enterprise board member Gifford yeah I'm not sure if this is a question for you Dr Taylor or um or our experts here um you know so are we delivering the results to the the schools of concern like say we have 40 Seth Boyden parents right do we deliver that sir

123those survey results specifically to to those schools so that they can see you know what parents are are thinking and also you know what do they do with this information how does it inform you know uh practices going forward just this is our first time doing it and we just close it on Friday right so they they haven't moved anywhere yet um but we did in our district admin team meeting which is you know all the district admin together that was today and I shared with them that we will be sharing this with the community today and have follow-ups with them okay I just want to say I'm one thank you I know this is a lot of work um I'm happy to see that the schools are more balanced that's really wonderful I also

124appreciated um the way that the withdrawal withdrawal data was set up um whereas you were telling us when students were being withdrawn but also giving us a percentage of uh like the bulk of those students actually were placed in their neighborhood schools so most likely it wasn't because of the integration initiative that they were withdrawing which is good to hear with that said I am concerned with the middle school because out of those uh I think it was 33 withdrawals almost 50 were black and we know that we are losing black students in the high school so I would like to continue to track um the loss in the Middle School when it comes to students of color especially black students anecdotally we hear that black students are leaving because they don't feel like they'll

125be served in our high school and so um this is something that could be a red flag and something that I think we need to continue to track thank you if I could add a footnote to the issue of withdrawals again we hold uh we have been scrutinizing the model based upon best practices uh that go on in the field of schooly segregation have been involved in many uh court cases I've have broad experience with voluntary plans and the issue withdrawals is always comes up years ago they called it white flight you know they cool to segregation drives white people from the district or now they're claiming it will drive you're wealthy and so forth so what's important as students withdraw up think of a draw for many reasons in Rockford Illinois which was a

126desegregation federal case uh people were alleging white white so we looked at the withdrawals there and the irony there was that most of the vast majority probably 80 90 percent has received their first choice School so anyway what we strongly recommend that the district add to their power school program would be reason for withdrawal so again his parents are going to withdraw the child uh and they have different ways School District finds that out hopefully the parents notified the school district the school that you also record the reason and that's important some districts do that very well and uh so I think to answer the question would be exactly why people have left for whatever reason could be jobs could be the who knows but it's important to document that that's just a suggestion that

127other districts have have used to be able to document not only students who so-called withdrawal but why they have moved out of the community or maybe they transfer it to a non-public school whatever but it's important that you get the information that's a that's a strong recommendation would make board member Eckert as I was reviewing the recommendations made in the year one report for implementation in the current 2022 to 23 school year um you know the third recommendation was to develop a wait list for those students who did not get assigned to their nearest school and would be interested in being reassigned if a seat became available for a student of their SCS tier at the nearest school we currently don't do that I understand that's at this moment not in the plans I would

128love to hear your experience working with school districts that have implemented that and if that changed the you know how how that changed the SCS balance throughout you know the schools based on what the algorithm had put out yeah I can answer that Nancy can also um also fill in anything I leave out um the idea of waitlist began in 1981 first control Choice plan in Cambridge Massachusetts and from the very beginning working with focus groups and others we were designing the plan very clearly uh wait list became important because in Cambridge there were some parents who had one First Choice you know out of 14 schools that had one school that was it it depends on some parents are very strong on Choice plans and and so in making the transition to the residential

129base nearest school the concept of a wait list makes sense students who did not get their first choice School nearest school rather the nearest school they could we could request to be put on a wait list and so if a seat became oh and and that their nearest school which they did not get assigned to and it would be always subject to SES so the waitlist transfer would be that an available seat for their SES tier has become available in their original the nearest in their nearest school and so that is something that that can be implemented uh that the district can review that again we work collaboratively and we can share you know again how this could be done here uh and and uh slmsd in South Orange there's no reason why it's implementable

130it's a question of whether or not the board and superintendent Staff feel that this is something of it that's beneficial I think it is because clearly you always want children to attend the school nearest their home if it helps integration and that that and it could also help in terms of any transportation issues around that but it's a solid recommendation that is implementable thank you board member valimani so I I mean this is a question for the you know for the experts out here is that I believe that there are advantages when children on a given block go to the same school if possible it promotes you know cooperation between neighbors Logistics can be shared you make lifelong friends so on so can we not use a clustering algorithm to ensure that we don't break

131up kids on the same block from going to three different schools Nancy uh so to some extent you have to remember that kids are going to schools for a number of different reasons um and in fact it's interesting that when we look at kids that are going because of sibling priority about a third of them are not going to their closest school so kids are going because of their sibling priority they're going because of perhaps ell or other types of assignments and then other children are placed on based on the algorithm in terms of clustering that is something one of our recommendations had to do with um is as feasible working as closely as possible with the transportation planners at um at the district and that's something that could happen at this point it's really

132a matter of how much time we would have to make that kind of uh make those kind of um uh decisions together with the transportation issues because I think it really has to do with um well what some of it has to do with school busing and I know that's a question in flux um and also uh it is something that we could look at it would be something that we'd have to talk about with the district because any time that we ever be making an exception for example this child might ordinarily be sent to another school based on the algorithm itself but we wanted to keep this cluster of kids on the same block uh together that would be I think a policy question having to do with adapting the algorithm but it could

133be done and certainly in conjunction with the transportation people at the district and my only footnote to that again anytime you have a good suggestion come up I've dealt with this many many times and especially all kinds of school boards where you're also engaged remember everything should be beta tested so clearly that may be a an attractive idea uh that and as we work collaboratively we were then determine what the parameters might be but then you'd also of course conduct beta testing and you could analyze the results so then the board could be making a truly informed decision now I like to how to pride ourselves on this because of all the student assignment Consultants who probably haven't been around we're the only ones that have been doing that for years um really uh it's

134it's makes sense uh that because otherwise you know people have all kinds of ideas but the bottom line is can you simulate what the results could could be okay what if and we have data you can do that because we have data and now we're going into our third year of this so we have some plenty of databases from the past that Keith has that we can see well what if we uh soon we could come out with what the that priority would be cluster assignments or whatever you want to call it what would it what would have been the effect on that uh last year so as you certainly want to encourage people to be thinking about other ways to fine-tune and make adjustments and perhaps even improve and make it even better just

135remember everything needs to be subject to Beta Testing that way there then you'll know exactly whether or not it's truly a a workable uh idea Dr telesford I guess there's a question both for the administration also for our experts um there is I guess talk of how low SE students have I guess a longer distance of travel and also to some of the black students and I want to know is this a function of the geography of the community and their distance to schools and could changing I guess how we play students and however we go about changing that could that affect the distance that students are traveling and could that be a I guess an area of concern so I think that one of the things that we're most proud of with this report

136is that that has improved right that overall the students are going to close to schools that are closer to where they live and with the establishment of Bolden becoming a k um destination it'll improve even more and I think that just like when we talk about other data around under representation and things like that that trying to research the reason for um that would probably be a deeper dive for all of us but I can tell you that we were so pleased to see that significant reduction for the students who were the lowest socioeconomic status in that in this data who fell into that category um anything else to add Mr owls Miss McArdle well Nancy definitely go ahead and answer yeah and I think we spelled this out in the report um if you

137know this when we talked about that particular issue and our our science is at least a just a good part of it has to do with the really small um capacity at Seth Boyden I think this year we had 50 52 seats available a lot of those students are those seats are held for kids with siblings there I think it was about 40 percent of the seats were for when for kids with siblings and a good chunk of them are low SES students a good chunk of them are also black students and so because there's a limited capacity there close to where a lot of these students are more clustered um there's limited capacity so where do those students go well they could go to their next closest schools which is generally Tuscan or Clinton

138but those schools are able for the most part to fill their low SES seats with students that live fairly close to them um that are you know maybe their closest students that's their closest school and that then leaves Marshall which has a huge capacity to absorb students and South Mountain which also has a fairly large capacity and doesn't have that many low SES kids around it so it needs to draw lower SES kids to um you know to fill out that tier and that's why you are kind of left with the situation with some students who live in that Seth Borden area generally lower SES students I think disproportionately black students who are going longer distances and I I think that's a the reason a really big part of the reason is because of the

139small capacity at Seth Boyden and certainly helpfully as was mentioned having Julia Bolden having seats available as well may help alleviate that to some extent also because of our construction that Seth Boyden last year that the seats were reduced there'll be larger seats moving into next year all right sorry last question all right I was going to say your last question so I this is for Dr Taylor about the Bolden barcelon pairing is that I'm not sure if I can fully support the idea of splitting upgrades because we should one of our goals should be to keep the grades together because you know splitting them up will break existing cohorts friends as you can see my theme is about you know not breaking up for people who go to the same school and also you

140know Girl Scouts Boy Scouts sports teams they'll all be split up I mean at the end of it we're talking about 100 kids and we split it into 50 50. it makes no sense so I think our goal should be to ensure that they are either fully in Marshall or fully involved it doesn't matter where they are that's okay it's okay to actually move them as long as they are together yeah so we talked about that in our subcommittee right because again looking at the the challenges and the um things that we liked in each of these considerations and we talked about that specifically and one thing that the school-based administrators who've been there for years and seen the transition from Marshall to both and that is a natural transition that those students in those

141families um from their perspective expect that transition right that's a part of what the Marshall Bolden um pairing has been for so many years that there's a natural um expectation that parents have for that transition I think splitting um from our discussion in our committee was a natural way an organic way for us to grow both spaces as those students matriculate keeping the tradition of Marshall going to Bolden while also making sure that there's space for them to be received and for us to naturally grow so that that was our our committee's consensus on that and there were some thoughts again I I could talk all day about that one of the concerns on the other side right was having a k35 school do the kindergarteners or their teachers feel you know isolated right but

142that and that's why with 75 approximately maybe more or less students that gives you you know a nice cohort of teachers who will also be kindergarten teachers um so all of that was was thought through and I think of that you know again as I shared last year there's dozens of ways to do this but of the three top considerations we feel that where we are now um answers the question as best as it can be answered for our context sorry my only comment to that is that I would rather have the concerns of children put above that of inconveniencing teachers because you know because I clearly splitting the above is not I mean sorry I'll let that be but you know okay all right um so I think we'll close discussion on this I

143just wanted to make a statement I mean we talked about this and I feel like we talk a lot now so I'm more quiet these days um but one thing that we discuss is obviously the low um low turnout rate for the survey and the lack of diversity in the respondents it was great to see the Middle School survey and how you know majority of people responded so I think if we know that the traditional 21st century ways unfortunately of sending an email or a text or robocall aren't working I think coming up with ideas like thinking outside the box for example when it's you know Guardian teacher conference night having it become part of the program because I know we do that in December so bump up the experience survey so in December when

144teachers are sitting down with with parents um you know we're going to have our meeting and then take five minutes here's a computer log into PowerSchool like things like that while we have them physically in the schools we can help to get them to advocate for their their students because that to me is the only piece missing on paper you know this year looks so much better than last year and that's really wonderful but we're missing that qualitative piece to know what the student experiences for our students of color thank you and um pre-covet literally I believe we had parent-teacher conferences scheduled for the day that we shut down for covet and that was our plan for PowerSchool I worked with the stakeholder groups with the PTA we were setting up laptops in the hallway

145because the power the challenge for for many of our families who were looking to get feedback from is not them logging into PowerSchool they have never engaged with PowerSchool right so it's it's it's it's it's level setting our expectations and building in the support needed and so um to me it's it's it's not is larger than the survey right and we work with our ptas and hsas and we talk about this all the time because they really see PowerSchool as a as a symptom of other things right that disengagement need for support some things like that um so thank you for that suggestion and we we had plans for that and I'm telling you we were crushed when we couldn't do it because of the shutdown so thank you for that suggestion and we'll continue

146to work on it well thank you so much I think that includes the superintendent's update right conclude I have one no I'm just joking I'm just joking I promise um next we will have Mr burnside's brief update on Transportation yes thank you Nancy thank you so much thank you thank you [Applause] so this is going to be a transportation slash budget slash construction a kind of update so uh as we uh have our ongoing route analysis by our transportation engineer for hazardous routes we uh we we did learn that we should have a complete draft form report at the end of the month by the beginning of March um we're in the process of scheduling a uh Mr Burnside sorry could you could you please or speak louder it's hard start from the top okay

147okay um so as we uh are working with our transport Transportation engineer for the Hazardous route analysis um we learned that we should have a complete draft form report by the beginning of March at the end of it or or as early as the end of February um we're in the process of scheduling a board of school estimate meeting sometime in March to get approval on a budget for the distance the board is requesting after the board of school estimate meeting in March the action then goes to the policy and fft committee to review and amend policy 8600 on March 16th just a reminder we're going to have a preliminary budget adoption meeting the budget is then sent to the county ba for review and approval and on March 30th the board will have a

148first read of the revised policy of 8600 which was which will most likely be voted on in April or May and on April 27th that's the public budget hearing and it'll be held and the board will vote to approve and adopt the final budget uh next up is going to be a update on Maplewood Middle School repairs in the lower gym this is all governed by our insurance company the ceiling and the gym needs to be removed we did have the ceiling tested and it did test positive for asbestos so that means there's going to be abatement required because of all the positive results for the best asbestos the job has been slowed down drastically until the abatement procedure can be followed under the recommendation of the insurance adjuster we have met with one remediation

149company in our scheduling scheduling a meeting with a second company there is some good news here for the media center the old flooring has been removed The Vapor Barrier has been installed new plywood subflooring has been installed carpet was completed installation on Wednesday February 22nd right now we're completely cleaning the room for February 23rd 24th and 25th the complete cleaning of the HVAC and filter changes is scheduled for tomorrow indoor air quality testing is scheduled for Monday the 27th weather permitted permitting or Tuesday the 28th as a back update it takes a day or two to get the results so the anti anticipated opening of the media center is Friday March 3rd at the latest and um oh I'm sorry we're expecting to get the the results of the indoor air quality test no later

150than uh March 3rd um Monday the 6th is the latest that the media center will be turned back over and open to the school um so the construction update for each School Seth Boyden we're continuing with the HVAC and uh building management system control wiring and programming we're continuing with the basketball court installation weather pending um we're completing the uh the entrance canopy work uh the gymnasium ceiling repair is completed so that's some good news and the upper genetic HVAC equipment installation is still ongoing at the Tuscan School we're continuing with the PA adjustments we're continuing with the HVAC building management system we're control we're continuing with the plate the pave to play field area weather pending and we're continuing the punch lists Corrections Delia Bolden uh the contractor is working on punch list items

151that's pretty much done it's going to wrap up very quickly I had Clinton for the phase two of that project where they are the HVAC is continuing to uh piping the layout in a new area they're completing repairs in the auditorium as well the electrician worked inside the building on miscellaneous items masonry contractor continued the CMU block on the first and second floor and stair towers of the addition the masonry contractor also continued exterior wall on roof level the electrical contractor is working with the Masons and the carpenter is working on a parapet wood blocking around the perimeter and roofing installation is underway at South Mountain Elementary School the contractor continues to work on submittals for review and approval the electrical rough is still ongoing they're still doing the HVAC duct work in existing classrooms

152they're continuing the curtain wall installation and install glazing they're doing some painting fire suppression pipe testing continuing gas feed to the rooftop HVAC units hanging steel fire doors elevator and casework is to be delivered this what is to be delivered this week at the annex the contractor is continuing to work on the submittals for review and approval there their continuing installation of bathroom floor and wall tile drainage work HVAC piping and ductwork constructed retaining walls for trash enclosure framing for the soffit and the Transformer Transformer is set is to be set by PSEG this week Underhill Paving is going to be completed in the spring and that'll wrap that project up uh Marshall and Montrose so we're going to award that at the March 16th meeting where the the attorney needs extra time to review

153the the bids as there's a lot of money at stake and we do have some some bidders that are contesting other bidders paperwork so we're just going to make sure we get it right and um we'll push that we're pushing that back to uh the next meeting for South Orange middle school and maple School Maplewood Middle School bids um those were the advertisements were pushed back from February 13th to March 6th because we got the pla agreement in place so that's going to be a huge savings as far as uh getting good contractors and to work on the projects and the Columbia High School the bid advertisement is scheduled to go out on February 27th did I miss anything okay good job does anyone have any questions for Mr Burnside okay thank you so much

154yes okay so now we're moving on to the board president's update good evening and thank you all for joining us tonight I would like to reiterate to the community that the South Orange Maplewood board of education is fully committed to the continued Evolution and success of the intentional integration initiative we have taken important steps towards this effort that I wanted to share with you this evening the district released the first intentional integration experience survey to District families last month the board was afforded the opportunity to provide feedback around the questions being asked of our district families and as a board we were able to make some District approved amendments adding questions specifically around diversity within the classroom school-based supports and overall student achievement thank you to the community members who submitted their experience survey on

155behalf of their students as well as the sixth graders who responded to the survey at on their own at school your meaningful responses have been aggregated and shared with the board for analysis and will support our Collective work to build upon the integration program going forward there will be another experienced survey sent to families later this year the board and District are working furiously to design a transportation policy for the 2023-24 school year the board believes that a robust Transportation program serves as the backbone of the intentional integration initiative and as such we are working to create a policy that would support our district students and their families additionally our board committees are prioritizing the intentional integration initiative during the agenda asset setting process and through the work that we do we want every child

156to have the same academic experience in South Orange Maplewood across all of our schools the board wants to collect and analyze data to ensure that we have parity across our schools when it comes to the allocation of financial resources to each school teacher tenure in our schools diversity of Faculty student access to interventions and referral services teacher access and engagement with instructional coaches student programming Etc we want to make sure that the learning needs of all of our students are being met at every school in our district and through continued collaboration with the district we can make that happen the board is equally as focused on the academic needs of our elementary and middle school students as we are on our high school students we want all of our students to thrive and the board

157will make sure that we are collecting data that tells the story about a child's entire journey in our district likewise I look forward to the board addressing the persistent achievement Gap in our upper grades many things have been attempted to narrow and hopefully eliminate the Gap and the start strong data shows that there is much work to be done as we proceed it is vital that the board continually evaluate the intentional integration rollout especially as it relates to the experience of students in the classroom and school we welcome the input of all the members of our community including and especially parents students are diverse citizens and educational professionals just a few housekeeping items the board of education is governed by Robert swells of order and during last year's board goal discussion we talked about how

158we'd like to see board growth and the understanding and implementation of our parliamentary procedure according to Robert's Rules of Order the board president acts as the chief parliamentarian of the board and as such I'm bettering myself in Robert's Rules of Order and the rules which will govern our meetings and as I grown my knowledge of the rules I'm going to become more insistent on following them and complying with our bylaws in our meetings if we follow Robert's Rules it will make our board meetings more efficient collegial and productive following Robert's Rules of Order will also help us to manage the time of our meetings better separately I want to express that I believe this board could treat each other better during our meetings and following parliamentary procedure will require that earlier this week former board

159member Bergen resigned from the Board of Education effective immediately we want to thank board member Bergen for her service to the South Orange and Maplewood Community over the last two years and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors Susan should rest assured that the board's commitment to the intentional integration initiative is steadfast and we will not weaken in her absence in her departure statement Susan expressed a concern that Deep Pockets are determined to undo our work here I feel she badly underestimates our community we are incredibly fortunate to live in two very special communities whose commitment to the values of equity and Justice are deep and unwavering making our school stronger fairer and more and more just has been a multi-decade effort and that effort will continue please note public notice has

160gone out to all South Orange and Maplewood residents who are interested in applying for the board vacancy to fill the vacant position through January 2024. we encourage all interested candidates to apply with a letter of interest and resume to the district by March 21st at 5 pm and a big thank you to Dr Taylor who put it on the calendar officially today the board of school estimate meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday March 28th and that concludes the board president's update but now please allow me to read the board president's statement the school board meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public oftentimes it may appear to members of our audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases a unanimous vote

161before a matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting the Administration has thoroughly reviewed the matter with the superintendent of schools if the superintendent of schools is satisfied that the matter is ready to be presented to the Board of Education it is then referred to the appropriate board committee the members of the board committee work with Administration and the superintendent to assure that the members fully understand the matter after the committee discusses the matter it is then shared with the other board members for consideration only then is it placed on the agenda for board discussion and action at a public meeting so we will now begin our first hearing of individuals and delegates this evening and I'd like to begin by thanking you for coming in person sticking it out with us and

162dialing 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 at tonight's meeting we value public involvement in our school district and we are eager to hear what you have to say the board does have time limits by policy and it will be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible this evening each individual will be given I just want to confirm sorry because we have 13 people for uh [Music] 14 okay and then we have one two three four five six so okay so that should be an hour so each person will be given three minutes to speak please do your best to stay within the time afforded to you the first public

163comment 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 is taken very seriously and will inform future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and its committees we request that you please state your name and town of residence for the record so I think there's probably Jennifer Rozelle from Maplewood oh okay hi I'm Jennifer Rozelle from Maplewood Maplewood Middle School is badly in need of repairs here's a quick recap on the major events so far this year October 18 2022 the ceiling of room 142 was damaged and students were relocated repairs were quick and students were back in their classroom in a few days October 21st room 19 was damaged so much repair work was needed

164that Mr Kessler's 8th grade geometry classes were permanently relocated to the library over the winter break a large leak caused major water damage to the lower gym and the library Mr Kessler's geometry classes were moved to the cafeteria January 6 we learned that the lower gym will be closed for the rest of the school year the physical education team adjusted curriculum in order to use only the upper gym the library remains closed though opening soon repairs are underway and it's been over seven weeks so far the library media specialist remains displaced as to hit the classes he teaches the evening of January 25th it was raining the stage roof leaked during the orchestra performance and they had to move chairs around so the musicians wouldn't get dripped on on January 26th there was no heat

165in the gym the freezing temperatures created unacceptable working conditions for an eight-hour day for the teachers PE classes that day were moved to the auditorium after school clubs that take place in the auditorium were canceled PE classes had to be moved again that day as the auditorium was needed for the band concert that night luckily it didn't rain and today just today there was a leak in a stairwell that forced staff to escort kids outside to avoid the mess I'm not here just to complain okay maybe a little I'm giving you this recap to emphasize how bad it is our students and staff are left wondering what's going to break next to retain good teachers and staff working conditions matter to help all of our children reach their maximum potential the school facility matters I'm

166with the MMS facility advocacy working group we sent you a letter that we hope you'll read forgive us if there are questions in there that you think have obvious answers you see we feel like we're in the dark our community of students parents teachers and staff need clearer communication about what's being done to fix our school and when it's being done there are needed repairs that have been kicked down the road for a long time we know about the long-range facilities plan and have studied the district website but is is there funding to tackle these current facility issues in terms of the LFR lrfp we are also in the dark about what is happening and when we know there's a bid out for asbestos we know that we're getting a new roof in 2024 and

167hopefully it won't rain again before then but that's all we know we'd like to work in partnership with you to create a clearer more transparent line of communication and to advocate for more funds to be sent our way for repairs for our building can you help us hope you can thank you thank you Jennifer [Applause] next up we have Jennifer Malone hi good evening Dr Taylor and members of the Board of Education my name is Jennifer Malone as Architects my husband and I moved to Maplewood not only for its diverse wonderful Community but also for its beautiful and historic architecture we have two boys a sixth grader and an eighth grader at Maplewood Middle School I've had the pleasure of volunteering at the Tuscan PTA the MMS HSA program by nine years in various capacities

168such as event planning fundraising pandemic response teams and now as co-president of the MMS HSA I am deeply invested as in our community as are all of you we are anxiously awaiting the start of the lrfp construction work at MMS in the past five years we have seen further deterioration of the facility since the survey was released in 2018 cremating more scopes of work to be addressed for example the auditorium was used as a cafeteria during the pandemic and now many seats are stained and broken the interior finishes of the school have been damaged from the multiple roof leaks over the years and as you're aware we've had a number of incidents as Jennifer outlined at MMS this year which resulted in displaced classes and lost instructional time in my profession we are all grappling

169with the longer lead times for securing contractors securing materials and the significant increase in cost industry-wide I can only imagine the impact these issues will have had and will continue to have on the lrfp plans moving forward it stands to reason that the thinking the planning and the budgeting may need to be Revisited since this project was first imagined in 2018. in the minutes from the January Finance meeting it states that the district is 3 million over budget and and there's optimism that money could be saved on the high school and middle school projects I do believe a three million dollar savings could be realized if scope were to be cut however from our observations at MMS we need to add scope so perhaps we need to think of new ways we can Finance work

170in a fiscally responsible way a group of parents have come together at MMS to try to understand the scope the plans the costs and the timeline we appreciate the state of our facility as a result of decades-long deferred maintenance we spent the last month researching what has been publicly published to date and we came away with a lot of questions for instance it is considered best practice to prioritize the building envelope work first Roofing waterproofing Etc to ensure dry space for the installation of HVAC and interior finish work however when we look at the plans to date it looks like we're doing the HVAC and the interior work first and the roof to follow while there may be a very good reasons for this phasing that Trump's best practice we're here to learn more about

171how and why the district is implementing this work in this order we hope you read our letter consider our questions and respond thank you and good night thank you Jennifer now we have up Malia Herman good evening my name is Malia Herman and I'm from Maplewood I am also a Maplewood Middle parent I have a seventh grader there and so I want to say I completely agree what my two fellow MMS moms have said I've been to the school several times and um you need some work tonight however I am here speaking to you on behalf of CPAC the special education parent advisory committee first we want to thank Susan Bergen for her service to this community we wish her well in her new position we also want to thank Miss Bergen for her comments

172in the Village Green where she asked the board to select someone to fill her vacancy who has a background or experience in special education we Echo the sentiment and we feel it's important for the board to have this voice among others represented tonight I want to speak on the proposed energy drill policy 8420 several years ago the board worked with stakeholders to create a wonderful policy that went a long way to preserve the mental health of our staff and children that should be Paramount in any policy this board adopts we understand that the drill policy must be updated to conform to New State legislation that's fine what we're asking is that you not lose the parts that made our policy the gold standard specifically staff and students will be informed that the active shooter bomb

173threat or lockdown is a drill and not a real event while the drill is occurring number two care for students during this drill must be prioritized including making sure students aren't caught in hallways or bathrooms once a lockdown begins and planning for how to care for students forced to exit the building during inclement weather although it hasn't been so bad this winter right um number three as specified in state law a parent should be notified that the drill took place um three years ago we heard students students speak about how they became severely dehydrated due to a fear of having to use the bathroom during the school day because they didn't want to get stuck in there during the drill we also are aware of parents of special needs children who have spoken out about

174how these drills are especially hard on student students who have high anxiety autism or other disabilities where noise sensitivity and sensory overload can be an issue these are real concerns sadly these drills are necessary due to real dangers but they must be conducted in a way that does not cause harm to our children thank you for your time and consideration thank you Malia next up we have will Meyer hi good evening it is still evening right uh wilmier South Orange I'm speaking to you tonight both personally and in my role uh as vice president of policy initiatives for CPAC I concur with the comments made by my CPAC a colleague Miss Herman and I'm here both to address proposed policy 8420 and more generally the way that policy is being made as you well know

175the board receives proposed policy changes from our vendor Strauss Esme which gives us frequent updates to keep our District's policy in line with changes to state law but our district also has a long tradition of using its policy-making role to craft policies that are responsive to the needs and concerns of our community specifically especially in areas where we want to provide our students with more protections and with state law and the default Strauss Esme version might provide one example is with regard to the security drills in policy 8420 another is the protections that were recently put in place for our students receiving support through intervention referral services in policy 2217. in the minutes to the January 2023 policy committee there was discussion about moving away from making quote major edits to policies that relate to

176state laws and that policies with local changes come up for review the language that was previously added by our board not be carried forward it's been additionally suggested that revised policies no longer be presented to the board and the public with Redline formatting that shows what's being added and removed uh there's no question obviously our policies need to be in accordance with applicable laws and should be reviewed by Council but we believe it's really important to recognize the substantial and thoughtful policy work that pass boards have contributed uh and the efforts that many community members have exerted in influencing that outcome uh and not abandon those policies without careful consideration and good cause we encourage the board to continue working transparently and seeking input from stakeholders in the community including the parents of students with

177disabilities to ensure that our District's policies continue to reflect the priorities of the community thank you thank you Bo next person up is Kathy greenstone hello everyone I'm Kathy greenstone from South Orange um I'm here tonight to thank Dr Taylor and the current board for following through on the Delia Bolden Elementary School renaming with the official ceremony held last week it was so wonderful that the family members of Delia Bolden were able to attend and be recognized at the ceremony however I do want to mention a few people who made the renaming possible who were not recognized name them and thank them here for the record uh first Raya Beck and Dr Janu sting were the first voices to publicly call for the renaming of the school and explain its importance to our entire Community

178Sally unsworth backed that up with strong support for the renaming as a descendant of Thomas Jefferson without their advocacy the name change may never have happened so thank you for the many hours of work you poured into this effort Raya Jan and Sally in 2021 the board voted unanimously in support of renaming the school board president Thayer Joshua and Marie Maney Shannon cuddle Aaron Siders Courtney Wingfield and Chris Saban were recognized in person at the ceremony Susan Bergen and Joanna Wright who also voted in favor were not mentioned at the ceremony so I thank them now the teachers and staff of Delia Bolden were instrumental in teaching the students about the reason for the change and in guiding them through the proposed names thank you teachers for this lesson in Civic engagement then in 2022

179when Delia Bolden was finally selected as honorary board president Dyer Joshua erinsiders Dr quawi telesford Arun vadalamani a Courtney Wingfield all voted in favor of the new name Arun badlamani was not mentioned at the ceremony so I thank him for his vote now finally everyone who spoke in favor of the renaming who signed the original petition put forth by Rhea and Jan or spoke to your kids or your neighbors about the importance of making this one small change deserves our thanks to I look forward to our next steps in the district and just to follow up on what will Meyer said about uh redlined policy being released to the public so that we can see what changes are being considered um I want to just mention that policy 7740 regarding school security was released as

180a white document with a few highlights it does not indicate this line which has been added that that line is new and I would like to read the line to you now the board May approve the employment of school resource officers school security officers and or a law enforcement officers in situations Which special risks are involved that's conflicting with what we've had previously and also is vague in terms of what constitutes a special risk thank you [Music] thank you Kathy next up is Jennifer Warren hi I'm Jennifer Warren I'm a Maplewood resident and I'm here uh once again to speak about bussing thank you so much for uh you know giving busing back to a very few of us who um applied for the emergent relief uh however there are still so many more people

181who need busing and I'm here with a good friend of mine tonight who um you know lives between a lot of hazardous intersections by Third and Valley and who when we were informed that courtesy busing was ending last July figured that she would keep hers because Google Maps says she's two or 2.1 miles away from school but she's only 1.9 and she's lost courtesy bussing and um you know still I am just so confused why busing was taken away from anyone um and now that my kids have a bus which is amazing thank you for that I'm seeing that the bus is almost empty there's maybe eight students on it it's it's a long bus I I believe you could probably reinstate busing for anyone who lost busing um and of course in addition to

182that I I hope that at the transportation meeting we are talking about bussing anyone who's over a mile um in future years including the people who have had bussing we should not be left out of this conversation moving forward for future years I'm so thankful that we got it this year but I'm you know upset for my friends who could not fill out the paperwork in time and attend the meeting that I had to take a day off of work for it just isn't fair um and it it excluded so many people who have lost bussing and our buses are nearly empty at least the bus is going to Southpoint in they're nearly empty and in addition to that just one other comment related to bussing is I now have a bus stop it's about

183a mile away from my house and it's right by the intersection of Jefferson Avenue Maplewood Ave which this week had two very serious car accidents you know I got busing reinstated because of hazardous roots to Seth Boyd there have been two car accidents at the intersection by my bus stop a mile away just this past week so um I have contacted uh Tammy Talmage about having a new bus stop I'm fairly certain the bus passes my block on its way to Seth Boyden um and you know it's not a change that can be made so that's just another thing I wanted to mention but really my biggest point is everyone who lost bussing should have bussing anyone who's over a mile in the integration plan should also have busing moving forward thank you thank you

184Jennifer and Last Supper in-person public speaks is Jeffrey Bennett thank you I also wanted to talk about bossing and the triple i a little bit I'm also one of the persons who recently regained a bus because I'm at a disemplacement but under two miles and I can confirm what Jennifer Warren just said which is that the buses have very very few kids on it my son's bus has four tests 14 kids on it not counting him and it arrives very punctually and very early at its bus stop in the morning and the afternoon so I know it gets to Bolton very early in the morning and I know it gets to Marshall very early in the afternoon to take the Marshall kids home um so we were very lucky to be able to pursue busing

185like this past fall and winter but you know not everyone could and there are a lot more people who are in hardship um conversely there are a lot of people who actually um are at long distance too but they are manageable like they're managing like their long distance placements so you shouldn't assume that necessarily there'll be like 250 kids more riding buses if you opened up eligibility for buses to like everyone over 1.5 miles for the rest of the school year um I also wanted to talk a little bit about the triple I um you know there's a lot of good news here um it's one to say about next year um I don't think that something very important about the Marshall Bolden unpairing is how many sections of kindergartens will be at um bulletin

186next year there will be two sections will be three seconds will be four sections um it doesn't just affect Odin and Marshall which we all realize but it also would affect Tuscan too because like the western part of tuscan's proximity Zone will become now part of golden and the southern part of South mountains proximity Zone will now become part of golden too if you want to I reduce the socioeconomic disparities in distance you have to look at the not just how many classes are at Clinton and Seth Boyden and Bolden but also South Mountain too you know South Mountain like its proximity zone is only two percent at low SES and the district's average is 30 SES so South Mountain has to draw in a very large number of low SES students and you know

187having so many you know having very large grades at South Mountain pulls in a lot of kids from other areas including like Southern neighborhood and South Orange um I guess that's about all thank you very much thank you Jeffrey so now we're going to go to public comments um through WebEx we'll start with Jeff Parvin hello hi Jeff we can hear you you have three minutes thanks so much my name is Jeff Parkin of Maplewood I'm a 17-year resident of South Orange and Maplewood with two children currently in the school district first and foremost I'm a parent my volunteers working on the set building at South Orange middle school and currently in my second year volunteering at the Columbia High School with their Musical second to their secondary to those I hold the uh the

188credentials of a terminal master's degree through the University of California Irvine and Theatrical stage management and design and I'm a 20-year veteran of Broadway and National Authority Productions I currently work in the manufacturing side of theatrical technology I'm speaking today to voice my uh full support and the district's need to engage a full-time position responsible for the operation and maintenance of the district's prized auditoriums with specific oversight and uh the various theatrical Technologies held within each performance while volunteering my time at um I support the students work in the specific musical Productions it's a true privilege to work with them my unique background and understanding of the industry standards and best practices for institutional performance spaces leads me to conclude that the spaces I've been in do not appear to be in receipt of regular

189and consider consistent maintenance for a number of years at this point while I am volunteering I do need to maintain my focus on the student and their work however the theater spaces function 365 days a year and are subject to the forces of deterioration during that entire time as is a common phrase in my industry gravity does not take a day off a manager and a steward of the spaces would be able to identify and supervise potential and perform uh potentially perform some of the maintenance that would ensure the facilities that are currently in place reach their maximum longevity and value and any future and much needed improvements to the various spaces would be maximized and those Investments would be vetted as appropriate to purpose and to protect for the future such a position would

190also be able to inform and advise and best use and needs of those Investments to best serve the students in the population there uh especially with those of the extraordinary efforts of the students that on stage and backstage additionally this position could bring some step towards equity for all of the schools in the districts as I'm keenly aware that the expertise displayed by my volunteer colleagues is truly special and it's unfair to assume that those are easily repeatable across a diverse and valued programming for each of the schools I thank you for your time and I appreciate the consideration I'd be more than happy to Avail myself to the board Administration or any other interested parties for further matter unfurther matters related to this in the future thanks very much thank you Jeff next up

191is Bethany Pettigrew Bethany Pettigrew Keith [Music] thank you hi can you hear me yes we can hear you sorry you have three minutes okay great hi I'm Bethany Pettigrew from Maplewood um I have worked on the Columbia High School Musical for the last 23 years um as a choreographer and recently for the last 10 years as a co-director I'm here today to advocate for a theater manager that could oversee not only the Columbia High School theater space but also the other uh spaces theater spaces in our district um ideally this person could be uh experienced in theater rigging live systems sound design lighting design currently we don't actually have a theater program in our district or at Columbia High School my team our creative team sort of acts as a theater Department with our Old

192School Musical but in essence we are truly just an activity or a club and we are self-funded for the most part and we um are able to carry on year after year with the proceeds from the year before but we really do need help with maintaining the space and making sure that our students are getting the most that they can get out of our programs um my colleagues and I won't be able to direct these programs forever and we need to make sure that we've got um structures in place to make sure that we can keep our programs alive after we are no longer able to continue um uh that's basically the essence of what I believe I've been through many different administrations and I've seen many different athletic directors that have been our bosses

193and I have lots and lots of insight and information so if anyone has any questions about any of it I'm happy to meet with anybody to let you know how much we care about the program when we care about the school and we hope that you can consider a request thank you very much thank you Bethany next up we have Lillian Harris hi good evening my name is Lillian Harris I live in South Orange I have a few comments and questions I would like to know if the district is planning to enhance Transportation this year it's not too late to ensure buses run closer to Max Capacity you can provide relief to many more families and you know by doing this you'll ensure that resources are not wasted while the district Works to find a

194global solution for the next school year as far as the Marshall unpairing some of the options presented result in a lot of change for um such young people but young children I hope the board will choose the least disruptive option and um to better engage with constituents I ask that the board please consider hosting more forums or town hall style meetings so we can interact with you and discuss important topics in a more interactive way given the demands on your time board members can alternate hosting forums we really need to engage with you in a different way I heard somewhere I'm not sure if this is accurate but that bi-weekly meetings are being considered I'm not sure if that's going to address the Gap in engagement I really think the issue is the Forum there's

195many times where you know I send an email and it goes to no man's land no one replies besides the auto response um it would be nice to get a received so I know that somebody at least read it um also I wanted to know if there's any opportunities for community members um to volunteer on Boe subcommittees volunteers could test assumptions collect data provide feedback if there's an issue or concerns about confidentiality they can always sign an NDA um and then separately I would like to know if the board plans to invest in executive leadership and management training Beyond what's mandated I think it's a good investment and um just wanted to just say that it would be a good investment if you all can invest in that so thank you for your time have

196a good night thank you thank you Lillian next up is Tony mazaki can you hear me yes you have three minutes very very good uh Tony mazaki Maplewood um speaking this evening because it's all School Musical season where our schools put on what I believe for the pride and joy of this District in terms of community building through the Arts that is the epitome of everything I think we hold dear here in this District our neighbors are going to gather in our Auditorium spaces that need serious attention in many cases and that we have and enjoy spectacular events that highlight so many of our students in so many ways these award-winning programs that we like to brag about every chance we get are one of the reasons why our community wants to move here in

197the first place I've heard it noted that over half of our citizens in our two towns make a living in the creative Industries so this is clearly what we value here what the community may not be aware of is that most aspects of every musical K-12 including directing stage hands set design lighting you know sound are run largely by volunteers our district has minimal skin in the game financially and Personnel wise for these amazing Productions and this is not sustainable nor is it wholly appropriate so while there are many things that we can designate as needs as far as the musicals and our spaces are concerned the proposal that I and my neighbor sent to you all in advance is what we believe can serve as like the glue that binds many of the aspects

198of our performance spaces together which then can remedy issues of physical space production management health and safety and maintenance since our auditoriums are falling into terrible disrepair and even pedagogical opportunities for our students this District Auditorium and production manager idea right now volunteers are the only ones ensuring that our auditoriums operate for most of our outward facing events as I've told the administration this is not the fault of I.T it's a bandwidth issue it cannot fall on the shoulders of passionate parents alone we believe the least the district could offer at this time is this staff position which several districts have and that we actually had until it was cut a few years ago the board just approved almost one million dollars in capital expenditures recently to address South Orange middle school and South Boyd's

199auditoriums CHS auditoriums is starting to look rough already after a million dollar renovation recently you need someone to supervise these professional spaces and assist our volunteers who are filling in the Gap now an auditorium and production manager could quickly be a self-funded position if we get back to renting our great performance spaces Again by the way let's not forget you know the educational opportunity we're missing by not teaching all of our students how to work on all these aspects of our Productions so I believe strongly in in Partnerships between the school and community members in enhancing educational opportunities for our students but we have no balance here can you imagine if the volunteers discontinued their work next year these lights in some cases wouldn't even come on so you have a lot of tough decisions

200to make this fiscal year uh this one's easy but please be sure to thank our volunteers like Jeff Bethany and everyone else when you see him at the show starting this weekend and uh thanks for considering this ask thank you Tony next up we have Max weisenfeld good evening my name is Max weisenfeld and tonight I'm speaking to you in my capacity as a community volunteer I'm a Maplewood resident of over 30 years and the parent of two Psalms graduates in 2012 and 2015. for the last 17 years I've helped manage set construction for the all school musicals first at MMS then at Columbia I'm here tonight to ask the board to consider reinstating a full-time district-wide Auditorium manager trained specifically in Stage Theater technology last year the students built a set for Newsies that

201won the paper mill Playhouse Rising Star Award beating out over 100 other New Jersey high schools to win the state's highest honor when I began working on set construction the district had a person specifically responsible for the technical operation of the theaters and auditoriums operating the lights the Flies training and supervising the student set Crews and providing technical support for all the activities both school and community that happened in these spaces activities like the all school musicals special dance Martin Luther King Day events Black History Month events band and Orchestra and chorus concerts assemblies and in-school performances Shakespeare week and many more by 2012 this position had been outsourced and by 2015 it was completely gone there is no one doing this work now no one maintaining the district's investment in sophisticated and expensive equipment

202no one recruiting teaching training and counseling the over 50 members of the high school set crew and the dozens more in the middle schools where there was once an educator teaching and training and managing student participation we now have one very understipended Club advisor and a half dozen parent volunteers as a team we're very proud of our work and we're very proud of our theater space the Columbia High School auditorium is the best theater in the towns every year we graduate students who go on to have professional careers in theater technology but most of us are tied specifically to the CHS Law School Musical who's taking care of all the other programs what about the programs in the elementary schools the middle schools and what happens to our institutional knowledge when we volunteers move on

203for all these reasons to protect and maintain to teach and train to support the students and faculty and what has what is one of the most broadly creative school districts in the state I implore you to spend a little and gain a lot by reinstating the position of a full-time district-wide Auditorium manager thank you thank you Max next up we have Mark Madeline hey Mark you have three minutes okay thank you um yeah kind of a common theme amongst the last few speakers um you know my name is Mark Matalan I'm a Maplewood resident of 25 years um like Max a parent of two children um who are educated in the district and graduated in 2012 and 2015 from CHS along with Max the two of us have been working since 2006 with students in

204the district on sets for school musicals again at both MMS and CHS for the last seven years I've worked directly with Bethany who spoke earlier as the lead set builder for the CHS musical directly supervising the construction of the sets I'm also speaking today in support of hiring a full-time District Auditorium manager trained in Stage Theater technology as the others have said this is a vital need for our district I've been working in these auditoriums for the past 17 years and I have an intimate knowledge of how important it is to have a qualified Steward to oversee these spaces someone that will be able to consistently evaluate the physical condition of these spaces and of the Technical Systems within them someone who can identify when maintenance repair or Replacements are needed and can then ensure

205that whatever financial investments the board makes are well cared for these auditoriums are tremendously valuable assets for our schools and for our communities they are places where numerous events and programs are and should be held obviously the school musicals are a significant user of these spaces but there are a myriad of other creative arts musical literary and cultural programs as well as fundraising events that should be able to use these spaces to their fullest potential in addition there are certainly potential as Tony mentioned for renting some of these spaces to outside entities which could generate revenue for the district with someone in a position to oversee and properly manage these spaces we can ensure that only qualified people would be allowed to operate our Technical Systems many many years ago I was on stageco in

206high school and those of us in my school that were trained on using the Tactical Systems were hired by the entities renting our Auditorium and this was organized through a technical manager this is a great opportunity to show our students the skills they are learning in these auditoriums can lead to career opportunities someone who has been working for many years with the students in these schools I've seen the incredible pride and sense of accomplishment they have when they're able to create these amazing sets put on these superb performances and display the talents they have to their whole Community we owe it to them to have someone consistently managing and caring for these spaces so that all the students that come through our school system in the future have the same assets available to them to

207show us what they can all accomplish thank you for your time thank you Mark next public speaks is from Miami Lawson I don't see that Community member present okay this person a jurgis Mossad and Beth Kissinger okay perfect oh that's right okay thank you thank you Dr Taylor the next person is Amy Simon that Community member is not online that's an email that was sent to Dr Taylor okay thank you Mr bonds the next public speaks is from Susan Bergen can you hear me now yes we can Susan okay hi hi um I miss you all so much I signed on because I wanted to say uh two quick things related to the meeting tonight um first I asked the district to publish the February cni committee failed to have a presentation on the website

208so parents don't need to open it and just to clarify I'm not referring to the presentation from tonight's meeting parents have a right to see the CHS failed data When selecting courses for next year which is happening right now given this data my advice to parents is to refuse to register for any academic level courses no matter how your student is doing sign up for honors courses I say that because over half of students and academic levels and some grades are failing more than half the academic levels are so broken that no student should take them the CHS crisis May ruin younger grades but the district still has a moral imperative to educate secondary students whose careers have been academic careers have been derailed by institutional failures second thing I want to say is to

209give some context about the formation of an executive committee or EC in years past the sport had an executive officer but no EC in fact last year two members of the current EC advocated to abolish the second vice president and executive board stating that the executive board was damaging and prevented the participation of the full board in decision making this year those same members formed an EC and this is an important change that shouldn't be made without recognizing a few things first having an EC is a departure from passport practice it's a significant undefined and unrestrained expansion of power of the executive officers the EC does not have a mission and meets weekly with a superintendent EC agendas overlap with existing standing committees and should include the full board in addition this EC is an

210ad hoc committee under your bylaws that means that it does not dissolve at the end of the year and it continues in perpetuity creating an EC should not be done without thoughtful discussion in a defined Mission it should not be an ad hoc committee and needs to have a defined purpose that doesn't encroach on the work of other committees or cover substantive matters that deserve the attention of the entire board the current EC's approach has usurped power from the entire board and also drifted well into the operations of the district which puts the entire board at risk thank you Susan next up we have Shannon cuddle hi y'all can you hear me we can hear you Shannon hey hey good evening I I know it's late um so um first I just want to um

211uh thank you all and uh also say that in this late evening it's 11 12 p.m just do a time stamp right now um that uh just um for future reference um it's been the previous board practice um that we do a student uh public speaks first and um just giving late hours or notices just want to encourage us to continue that practice of best practices that if we have students um that want to do public speaks um seeing how this is the first one right now at this late hour that we would Elevate them first perhaps um even uh ahead of we have done this in the past of um other practices uh or commitments so just wanna uh support that so I just wanted to in my uh effort to try to do

212best practices I hope you all know I'm all about sharing resources and information and I've really done that in Earnest um so uh with board policies there's a lot of discussion but I also wanted to raise up affirmative action on the 2260 policy uh And in regards and just ask if the uh the new director of access and Equity carry wobble or Dr Kevin Gilbert the assistant soup were involved in the conversation it's best practices right to get make sure that we get input ahead of board policies even if they they go to committee right so they go to committee and our practices have been that we do research and information and then they get uplifted through the board president and the executive committee to referral to first read not just to put the boilerplate

213but I also want to really raise that with then that structure that the language in there is a problem in a couple different areas and not just here but in other policy so the affirmative action policy removes the affirmative action officer that's a concern um also because since there's a new njac 6a7 man uh policy for equity and equality and equity in education that's being considered on the board of education on the state level which would require best to be in place and also our commitment to gender affirming language and all of our policies by tonight by the way have not been gone through their gender affirming language commitment and also wanted to concern that the policy for affirmative action does not adhere to policy 5756 or trans non-baroni student policy and two two four

214two two our health and physical education policy that supports trans students so make sure we go back and uh we affirm the the student policies um that we've made a commitment to our LGBT non-uh Plus student commitment for students staff and families and we're affirming them as we look at these additional new languages I know this is a new thing I'm sorry I know I'm over but um Shannon thank you so much we we do have a few more speakers on and your three minutes is up thank you so much for logging on and staying up this late to to talk with us tonight thank you and I hope you continue your commitment to LGBT next up on public speaks is James McGregor hi can you hear me we can hear you okay hi James

215McGregor South Orange um I'm gonna speak about Transportation I know it's late and my comments Echo um some of the earlier speakers so I will keep them brief um first I want to thank the board for its decision at the last meeting around Transportation it was a step in the right direction on this issue for the district I want to encourage you now to expand that Transportation opportunity to as many students as possible my child has been riding the white bus to Delia Bolden for the last two weeks per full-size School Bus typically has seven or eight riders for each trip in the morning or afternoon that means that another 40 or so students could be riding that bus to and from Bolden it was heartening to hear transportation for 2023 to 2024 mentioned several

216times during tonight's meeting but please don't wait until next year to figure all this out please utilize the excess bus capacity that exists today to help as many students and families as possible thank you James the next public speaks is from Vanessa Lana hello can you hear me we can hear you thank you thank you for listening at this late hour my name is Vanessa Liana I'm a Maplewood resident and parent of an 8th grader at Maplewood Middle School as mentioned earlier a group of MMS parents sent you a letter that we hope you'll read we trust that you have the answers to many of these questions about the facilities and we look forward to your response we made an effort to find these answers prior to submitting the letter and we were unsuccessful so

217we come to you the communication request we respectfully ask for timely and regular updates about the district's efforts to fix the MMS School building we acknowledge that the district has provided information in the form of letters from Principal Dr Grinnell updates on the district website during during Board of Education meetings and during Dr Taylor and Mr burnside's q a sessions with the PTA and HSA presidents Council meetings we truly appreciate this however at times these communications fall short and they often occur in response to requests for information from the community after an incident has occurred we are requesting more proactive in more proactive communication at the January Board of Education meeting Mr Burnside provided some really helpful updates as he did tonight and so we hope that we we hope that you will be providing

218more regular updates along these lines uh perhaps this information can be made readily available and easily accessible to members of the community who are unable to attend board meetings or sift through hours of video recordings to find this information we would also welcome the opportunity to start to start a dialogue with you about some ideas we have for how to do that um I I heard another speaker earlier Miss Lillian Harris had some good suggestions about town halls and maybe public participation at um in the subcommittees ultimately we we know that we are working towards the same goals to ensure that every student at MMS and in the district has the best possible educational experience that Learners reach their full potential and teachers maximize their instructional time in healthy and safe conditions to that end

219we look forward to partnering with partnering with you to help create a transparent flow of communication thank you again thank you Vanessa the next person up for public speaks is Jeremy Katz hello can you hear me we can hear you okay great so uh my name is Jeremy Katz I am a Maplewood resident uh I we have two daughters one is a six-year-old at Clinton Elementary the other is four years old and is in preschool uh noticed that your unpairing plan for Marshall and Bolden does not address the students who could have been assigned to Bolden as the nearest school had it been a K-5 School as it will be going forward after the unpairing is is completed uh there are numerous families who are similarly impacted by the III rollout prior to Bolden being

220K-5 and as board member vadlamani alluded to earlier there are several families on our block with kids the same age who were all scattered to various schools throughout the district because Bolden was unavailable at the time of the III placement algorithm despite all of us living literally one block from Bolden so for our family this is going to be an ongoing issue for a combined nine years if you include our younger daughter's forthcoming K-5 experience and because Bolden was not available when our daughter was placed by the algorithm it appears we are permanently blocked from potentially attending Bolden forevermore this is inequitable and I strongly urge the board and Dr Taylor to consider those impacted families as part of the unpairing plan thank you Jeremy and our last public speaks for the first individual hearings

221of delegates is Ben vital you are able to hear me okay yes I can hear you I have three comments first I'd like to thank Dr Taylor for a nice job on the integration initiative and a really nice job on tonight's report and thank the board for supporting him in that work um second comment is briefly just on bussing Echo the remarks of some others and add a little bit of additional color I would like the district to consider the Urgent environmental problem of global warming and also traffic safety I live near Marshall School far too many students are transported to and from school and private cars and the car is often only carrying one student this is not sustainable neither literally literally nor figuratively as you've heard I support the integration initiative in the

2221960s integration was referred to as busing but the situation is different in 2023 there wasn't a climate emergency in 1960 but now there is we need comprehensive busing ideally using electric school buses bought or at least with federal or state money but that's a problem for the future whatever it takes we need um including you know modest tax increases which I think the board of school estimate is willing to consider um we really need buses uh finally the the bulk of my remarks tonight will be about the revisions to board policy 8420 concerning security drills in our most recent revision to that policy we made important improvements that put students first drills should be announced in advance I realize that the board is constrained by the requirements of state law 18a 41-1 as recently amended

223by New Jersey State Senate Bill s 3727 3726 from Senator Weinberg um early drafts of that bill contained an important provision to require advance notice of grills as parents and students that was removed before passage unfortunately however the district is free to require Advance announcements I'd like to note that New Jersey is an extreme outlier in this area of security drills we have one per month which is more security drills than almost any other state combined with fire drills that's 20 drills per year at one point the state of Kansas raised its number of grills to 16. without they consider that unworkable and so they backed off to nine we've got 20. the gun safety advocacy group every town for gun safety Advocates that students not be involved in security drills at all they should

224be these drills should be left to teachers and staff and sometimes limited to tabletop exercise there is no evidence that student participation in these drills has any good effects and there's lots of published evidence that there's bad effects on students Mental Health every town group goes on to say that if districts or states do wrong-headedly insist on requiring people to participate that they be given advance notice they have a number of other good suggestions and I propose that our district adopt all of them to the fullest extent Allowed by law I also call On The Board District and members of our community to Lobby the state to change the law and stop requiring student participation thank you thank you Ben and that concludes our public speaks Dr Taylor do you care to respond yes I

225I promise to be brief um but I will go quickly thank you to all the parents from Maplewood Middle School who shared their advocacy around their buildings conditions we have received your requests and I did respond to it and Mr Burnside and Mr Giglio and other key team members are working with us to develop the response and they will be coming fairly soon um just going quickly I think both the board president and myself have responded around the 8420 and our commitment to fulfill our previous design on all the pieces that the governor has adopted that we're a part of our of our um I want to say launching before it became law um for those who are writing about the transportation settlement um that is still ongoing litigation so I'm not able to comment

226on it but of course we acknowledge your concerns and your advocacy thank you for the compliments regarding our work um on the intentional integration development thus far it's a team effort there are so many people who contribute to this work throughout the year not just in preparing for a presentation there was a question around how many sections of kindergarten do we expect to be involved in I believe the number we used in our presentation was 75 students if you look at our um or policy on on classroom size I believe it nails down our kindergartens to a Max of 18. so we can do that math to figure out um what the approximate sections would be thank you to former board member mazaki and all who shared their um advocacy for a position dedicated to

227maintaining our um auditoriums for the Arts I would I would say that I disagree when with the statement that we have little to no skin in the game when it comes to the Arts the board just approved over a million dollars of investments in multiple auditoriums with more on the horizon I think that that qualifies as a significant investment and in our previous two budgets we approved additional uh music teachers to help our students recover from those experiences lost during the pandemic um thank you regarding the updated Communications on construction and and um the repairs of Maplewood Middle Mr Burnside um I think folks have noticed that we've increased the updates that are coming live here and we'll also be included in the newsletters that are pushed out as a reflection of these meetings that

228concludes my responses thank you Dr Taylor we will now transition to our committee reports board member Eckert could you lead us this evening with an update from the Personnel committee I will also try to make this brief because I want to go to bed as much as everybody else in the audience does so the Personnel committee meeting met on Monday February 13th former board member Bergen and board president whitlider were in attendance along with myself the committee chair board member Wingfield was unable to attend the new Director of Human Resources Mr edoyan was briefly introduced at the beginning of the meeting he left subsequently after a brief wave to everybody as his first official day wasn't until the day after we reviewed Personnel agenda items that we can't discuss here in public session but we'll

229be up for vote later this evening or morning some board members expressed concern about some resignations from staff specifically those that have been employed for less than a year the district confirmed that exit interviews have still been conducted in the absence of an HR director we reviewed current vacancies and some board members requested more details into how long positions have been open in what departments at what schools this goes back to the conversation we had at the January Personnel meeting regarding more data as it relates to Personnel at the moment we don't seem to have much data readily available to help inform both short and long-term Personnel strategy around recruitment retention and attrition we had we had further conversations regarding some of the public speaks comments made at the January board meeting related to Personnel

230some board members had requested data around the aspiring administrators Academy including how many faculty members are currently enrolled how many have applied for roles in the district since its Inception some board members also requested data related to all faculty members in the past two years specifically that have been have also applied for positions in District and how many of them were hired for the positions they were applied for we hope to review this at our next committee meeting we closed out the meeting revisiting the discussion around committee objectives we obviously want to tie in our objectives to support a current District goal that said there is no specific District goal this year regarding personnel as there has been in years past we certainly don't want to distract the district as they continue their work towards

231their current goals some members some board members did Express that teacher attention should be a top priority and we will continue to have follow-up conversations to nail down these committee objectives that's all I have for personnel thank you board member Eckert does anyone have any questions for our Personnel committee chair okay so now I'll move on to board member Gifford to do a policy policy update I just realized I need some water I'm sorry all right the policy committee met February 7th with myself Dr Telus Ford and board member malisbina in attendance former board member Bergen was absent policies for second read adoption all of these policies up per second read have no additional changes from the first read and are ready for adoption policy is on for first reading we have 14 policies up

232for first read this month I want to thank everyone in the community who has reached out to us already with some comments about some of our first read policies we will take your comments and thoughts into consideration and bring them back to the appropriate committees for review and possible approval we do we do two reads of our policies so that the public staff and students can provide comments and feedback prior to the second I'm now going to give a brief readout regarding the changes that have been made board members and community members feel free to email me with any questions or wordings suggestions 2 260 affirmative action this policy is being updated to incorporate changes to the law and we added gender inclusive language and language to make sure our gender non-conforming students have access

233to the facilities of their choosing uh 3321 acceptable use of computer networks computers and Resources by teaching staff members this policy was updated to meter the student policy which we recently passed 5440 honoring student achievement we added language to this policy to recognize that student achievement is more than just getting good grades we are excited to announce that we have finally worked out all the the issues with the National Honor Society and have the advisor job description up for approval tonight 5512 harassment intimidation and bullying there were changes to the state's Hib law so we needed to update our policy so we are in compliance um 5701 plagiarism um Alyssa is actually going to speak to this but it is ready for first read uh five five one six use of electronic communications and recording

234devices this policy has gone through major revisions to reflect the fact that our students have have easy access to electronic communications and recording devices we customize the policy to how the schools are currently dealing with the devices thanks to the input from the administration in elementary and middle schools the devices need to be completely turned off and stored either in their backpack or Lockers in high school we have given students more flexibility but it should be stated that we do not allow any students to take video or audio recordings of any student or staff member without their permission and they can face disciplinary action because of it the video recording of student fights is not appropriate and students May face disciplinary action according to our code of conduct seven four uh 74 40 School District

235security this was updated due to recommended changes from Strauss Esme we did not put we we did put in language to address the issues we have been having with students and staff members propping open doors and the policy they can now face disciplinary action for doing so 8420 emergency and crisis situations we we recognize the Public's concerns regarding the version of policy 8420 that is up for first read this evening this is a revised version provided by our vendor that complies with a recent change to the related law the board will be reviewing this version as well as the current version of the policy for discussion but will not be voting on the new version tonight the current policy will still be in effect while we work on Gathering district and board input on revising

236the policy so that it includes the new legal mandates after the revised version of the policy is approved by the board Dr Taylor and Mr Valles the district security and safety director will ensure that staff and administrators are trained in the requirements of the new policy and law I do just want to underscore there is nothing changing in terms of how we do our procedures now related to our drills we have always stated this is a drill when the drill is occurring and we will continue to do so the new state law requires us to let parents know when a drill occurred and we are already doing that and so that is not changing there is also currently language in the new policy which talks about providing appropriate mental and emotional supports for students we're

237already doing that and will continue to do so it's worth noting these laws have recently been updated to catch up to our District's policy and that is due to the advocacy from many parents in this community the following policies have been updated to reflect suggestions from Strauss Esme o152 board officers 0161 call a German en cancellation 0162 notice of board meeting 242 2423 bilingual and ESL education 2425 emergency virtual remote instruction 8140 student enrollment 8330 Student Records 5200 attendance 57 10 student grievances lastly Miss budine and myself also discussed Strauss Esme recommendation and adopted the new policy process that reviews Strauss Esme version as is and eliminates the current process of redlining which has been very cumbersome to our staff a case in point is actually the 8420 emergency and crisis situation policy the state

238law regarding School drills was updated in January 22 and we are only now as a district updating this policy in February 23. we must improve our policy process and that is my aim as the new policy chair with that said all Strauss s May policy recommendations are highly scrutinized and modifications will always be made when necessary to meet the particular needs of our district additionally to to recognize and memorialize previous board's work the Strauss s May version will all always be presented along with existing versions of policies when they go for committee review and that is all Madam president [Music] thank you board member Gifford does anyone have questions for the policy committee chair board member badlamani I mean I find it extremely concerning that such a huge change would be made to how policies

239are handled within the first week of you know getting onto at the very first meeting of the new board it's extremely concerning because because of those changes we are we have all these problems so like problem number one we don't know what the changes are problem number two you say we scrutinize everything that comes from Strauss Esme and put it back in clearly that's not true because in in our thing we were very clear our community was very clear that we do not want resource officers and that language has been put back in to the through the into the uh the policy problem number three we have these so let me give you policies that are up first read I have no idea how which committee they're going to I mean you you claim that

2407440 and 8420 can pay fft I mean but the minutes don't reflect that the only one that came to fft was A330 so you know it's quite possible that you know this is the first time it's happening and you know the mistakes happen fine whatever it is but if this is the new part the new way we're going to handle policy I have a serious problem with the policy committee because this is impacting not just one policy but across the board and on top of that I mean I'm I've been you know I got an email well whatever that's private so I will not bring that up but anyway that's I have serious concerns so hopefully you will you know fix them as we go along and take care of that um Dr Taylor do

241you care to comment specifically about like some of the recommended changes that really we're just a district driven um and I know Strauss Esme is actually conducting an analysis to show how many policies were actually not in compliance with so that we can start that's why we have 14 up for first read this evening but if you could just kind of provide some of that reasoning I think that would be really helpful sure um so I think that the the committee chair and I I know in our previous I believe Friday packet we shared um the review and discussion that occurred after we as a district admin had a meeting with Strauss Esme um and Strauss that's may definitely Express very significant concern uh with our methodology for um changing and adjusting and redlining the

242policies that they share with us because as a of course they are lawyers who work on this for a living and we pay for their services and some of the changes are so significant they were suggesting that they review the changes that we make to the documents that they give us originally creating a cycle that again significantly slows us down and it stops us from being able to hold them accountable to the policies that they create based on changes to the law additionally one thing that I think has been shared a few times is that the shifting of policies is very very time consuming for District staff we of course are all hard workers and you can see from today just with the voluminous um you know artifacts that we create and and are happy

243to share but just the time that it takes for key staff members to be involved with the redlining of of um of policies is is concerning um and additionally I think that that one of the one of the things that we think has been helpful is having straps s may come to our committee meetings to talk about that and talk about the significance of even small changes um I know that [Music] um but there are customizations that we know are needed right that that reflect our values and we can continue to do that but I think that the you know that the Capstone of this concern is also that we are responsible for these policies right we are legally responsible for them and um in Jake Cusack which is the review of our school district

244by our County Executive superintendent is going to entail a a very detailed review of our policies and I know in the past in this district and others when that time rapidly approaches and we should expect that next year we've seen districts that adopt 200 policies at a board meeting because we're behind right because we're so thoughtful and we care so much about what we're doing it slows down the expected Pipeline and so prior to my arrival there was an audit done on our policies um to determine the work that needed to be done and I think they were in the middle of that again just to make sure that I mean it's this is what our governance is supposed to do supposed to provide policies that direct our Educators and our and our parents and

245and keep us in line with what we're legally obligated for so again it's a tough conversation I think that the the happy medium of providing the previous Doc and the proposed shift from Strauss Sesame um we talked about in committee that there are digital ways for you to see the differences between those two documents as a personal reviewer of those documents without us having to go through um the heavy redlining of those documents I know that that is probably less transparent than our current process but I don't think that that is sustainable um so um I'm happy to hear recommendations around the way to digitally review the two documents to compare them um for board members on an individual basis um I think if that would be a more reasonable approach and and also put

246us at less give us less exposure as a district Dr telesford I'll just say that during our first policy meeting we did discuss the whole process of redlining and I still and all the board member Bergen strongly support the idea of redlining because it shows the values of our community and keeping that as a part of our process I just wanted to make that comment yeah I I agree it's a it's a tough conversation and one thing that we also talked about was developing perhaps a system of holding the previous pieces right so that you preserve the work of previous boards but it's just you know if if you if I think for those who were involved with the discussion was drought's resume and their shock and awe and what we do with our policy

247process um they had never seen that before right like they they were we were basically in some cases um threatening what they had given us what we paid them to give us and that was kind of an eye-opening moment for me but I think that you know again it's a tough call but uh we have to be in compliance so I I think we have a basic Department member about the money thanks so I think there's a basic problem here between I think we're confusing qualitative changes versus quantitative changes yes agreed that we need to have do as many quantitative changes as possible but Frankly Speaking I don't care what Sprout system it takes as far as I'm concerned they're just a vendor they are a vendor no different than PowerSchool or whatever it is

248it is our job the board's job to write policy if we are Outsourcing that then you know we might as well everything else that is the core job and the only job that we are held responsible for so we need to make sure that everything in there is correct and it is done correctly and if you're worrying about you know technology and helping us to track stuff I mean that's a solved problem we do this all the time in corporations we have a Word document open up tracking that's right automatic redlining you don't need these complex scenarios to do it so instead of coming out to the board and asking for Solutions on how to solve the real problem which is we're going very slowly you've gotten rid of the most important thing that's happening

249in the policy board member malispina um I have to push back a little here because we are not experts we cannot write policy on school safety we don't know those laws we don't know all of that that is why we have companies that come in here to help us that is why we are doing we have those things because there is we should not be doing those type of things because that's what leads us to getting into trouble that is why we have companies that are made up of lawyers that help us write these policies it is not our job and it's not our legal responsibility Miss fabrays you're a attorney have you ever seen a district that has not used a company and it's written all of their own policies yeah some small districts

250do write their own policies but they do also enlist help from they'll look at other districts and model policies and the citations are at the very end where the law cited they'll consult their own board attorney I've customized policies even that Strauss esmi or New Jersey school boards have developed because you want to match your unique communities you know interests and whatnot so I do agree that it's very helpful to use those vendors because it saves a lot of time and it is very time consuming but I think that you know while they recommend all these recommended changes as the law evolves or changes the board members through the policy committee should be reviewing those changes now again you're not going to go through them with the same intensity that Strauss Esme is right you're

251going to defer to them a lot but you are going to review them because ultimately you have to vote to approve them so there's going to be some oversight in the policy committee but I do agree that Strauss Esme and New Jersey school boards very very helpful because there's a huge volume of policies and so I think it really goes hand in hand thank you um I would like to also state that we're not just doing this like in just making it up I mean we're we're looking at the Strauss as neighbors and we're going we see both versions and then we make the the changes based on that it is not that we're nobody has said that in any of these discussions that we are going to completely get rid of stuff that previous

252boards have done nowhere in any of the discussions in policy Committee in anywhere else was that stated and so I want to clear up that misconception now some changes might be made in the policy that is being questioned it's being made because we are the gold standard the law that wasn't there when it was written is now there that incorporates all of what we wrote into that policy so there's the need isn't as great for that to occur but no one has stated that we will be removing we will not look at the past work that boards have done we understand that I think everybody in the policy committee understood that and every conversation we have had has not said that we would do that so ironically wrote that misconception because I think some board

253members have it and I don't I want to make sure that we're okay on that and sorry due to the hour and I wasn't gonna Robert Rules of Order we're supposed to limit our responses to two responses per topic So to avoid a lot of the back and forth like let's make sure that when we were speaking that it's something that we really want to convey and that we're not getting into these back and forth debates that are taking us in a circle so I want to make sure everyone's voices are heard but um let's limit the amount of time so so sorry board member of adlamani thank you you're out of order no you've already spoken twice so the doctor tell us for did you want to speak again yes I just want to

254say that yes we can look to Strauss Esme to provide us with information but then we can craft the policy edit it and then we consult our board attorney so we don't have to really rely on Strauss esment to really give us things they can provide us with a framework but it really is all going to be our work and then working with our border attorney to make sure our policy is completely compliant says are there any other I am asking for closed discussion on this topic and move I'm making a motion because I wasn't enforcing at the whole meeting I remember found the money this is the last speak on this so I I'm surprised that somebody who fought so much for you know having open discussion and squelching of a conversation is doing

255that perfect like now remember about the money this is then I'll let you give it back to you I've read the Robert's Rules too yeah there's nothing yes as long as people follow the order in which they do it because the discussion can continue for as long as you want till somebody says hey let's stop discussion and you take a vote so therefore telling me that only you get one or whatever one attempt to two attempts is not sufficient remember about the money it's an important topic it's an important enough topic to spend time on if you remember there's no personal attacks if you please confine your remarks to the topic of discussion and proceed with that I said what you mentioned was not correct in my opinion okay yeah I I disagree I'd like

256to move to close discussion before okay so um can I just finish one more time can I even give a rebuttal about all the wrong things that you has been brought up no okay think about it if if what we're doing is right in the policy how did we manage to get uh what what policy is this seven four four zero to include uh resource officers how did we include eight four two zero not having words like so this is what we did in the previous policy I'm not saying I mean I wasn't there but somebody read it before me is that care for students should drills must be prioritize it include it etc etc etc including but not limited to students with IEP and 504 plans this is language that we put in show

257that we care a little bit more than what the boilerplate says and that language is gone law enforcement Personnel will be present for at least one school security drill you know etc etc and maybe advisable that language is gone I mean I like efficiency listen don't get me wrong I mean I work in you know super efficient places but this is silly we're trying to get rid of our values our values for efficiency yes so there are multiple there are multiple innovative ways to solve this problem my problem is that nobody reached out to the board to get those Solutions in and they're like oh let's just throw it away and let's use starts as well it doesn't make sense thank you for your feedback is there anyone else on the board who has questions

258for board member Gifford okay so we will now turn it over to Second BP Deval Wilson to go through the fft meeting minutes okay on February 15th the fft committee met along with myself but members Bill Gifford badamani and president Caitlin whitlitter were in attendance um we had our 2021 2022 audit review and update which we all experience so I'm not going to go into it for transportation we want to remind the public that we're working hard on our Board of school estimate presentation thank you to the administration for all the work that they've done on it so that we can present our budget requests with concise details to back up to back it up for funds needed to provide more transportation for students in the district as such we had a very long constructive

259conversation with Janine Burns who's from Sussex County cooperative which helps us work with best companies to provide us with transportation we reviewed the following the Consumer Price Index on bus costs which is 5.68 for the school year 2324 if Belair decides to extend their annual contract with us this is the rate we will receive Belair is the main transportation company that we use and there's no limit to the number of years we can renew with one bus company the bidding process was explained and in March is when we'll learn if the Bel Air contract is renewed the process for assigning bus AIDS was also discussed in their costs subscription Transportation was discussed as we know the board of school estimate wanted us to investigate this more and now we have an understanding of costs timelines

260and best practices for managing at in-house versus letting Sussex County cooperative manners to process we also discussed the latest update on bus and Driver shortages and learn that there's a surplus of buses but driver shortages and the time it takes to train a new driver or what create current challenges for the budget um 2022-23 budget we discussed that we have to pull out 4.3 million dollars to cover costs for the rest of this year and that transfer will take place after April 1st the line items that have impacted um are 2022-23 budget include aids paraprofessionals for 504s and IEPs transportation out of District placements and driven by litigation and health insurance for the upcoming uh 23 24 school year budget we discussed that we need four million additional dollars and we do not have it

261this is an issue that we take very seriously and we've asked the district to evaluate this further as we also have covered relief funds that are unused and can still be accessed in 2023 and 24. we are waiting an analysis of our school year of our school year 2324 budget and we want to have a full analysis of the carryover funds on the essr funds cares act the sr2 fund and ARP act American Rescue plan so those are the grants we'd like to have an analysis on and we'll be discussing um bringing this issue to the board school lesson potentially we approved our two committee goals which align with the fft's district goals so I'm appreciate that we received this handy review from a middle school HSA Community because our one of our goals is

262to review repairs and enhancements that remain for the high school and middle schools that are not part of the long-range facility plan to see what are critical issues that we could potentially budget for or find grants for in the 23-24 school year so again thank you to the MMS HSA for giving us their concerns and we will take them into consideration our second goal is to take a deep dive of legal bills to look at Trends and create a year-over-year legal spending Trend analysis which we hope can further support how to cut down on costs and put money towards additional fft needs lastly we did we discussed the auditorium's position we understand the community's concerns thank you to everyone who spoke about it tonight and public speaks we discussed the idea of having a designated

263employee to handle this for the district more research will be done on the issue to come up with a final decision thank you so much does anyone have any questions for our um her fft committee chair board member valimani so I support fft chairs point about looking into the essr funds to see what we can do with that because I mean maybe it's already allocated maybe it's earmarked but it clearly is an outlier where a huge chunk of it is sitting out there maybe so we should look at that and see how we can use that that's number one and the second thing is you know back on the uh the audit that we had uh sorry the the audit presentation we had I mean the the last point in the in the in the

264in the minute should be giving us a good thing is that the FED government is coming to you know coming to audit us um whatever and we have about a bunch of audits that happen all through the year and that should actually give us more confidence that our books are being run quite well because you know we go through so many Audits and things are still going well so I just want to point that out and you know again comment the business office sorry I just have a like a six hour debate for a class tomorrow so I'll just wonder if I could oh yeah please go home thank you thank you have a good night we could join you you're the best Noah thank you are you oh it's my turn I'm sorry okay

265um MVP malaspina sorry I'm a little tired um the com the cni committee met on February 9th at 6 30. it was a long and an in-depth in-depth meeting myself Regina and Nubia were there along with Dr Taylor Dr Gilbert Miss Bodner and Miss budine were also in attendance um we had a Humanities class overview presentation from Mr Preston and Dr Bean folks about the humanities classes which is doing a great job supporting our ninth graders as they enter the high school the classes are two periods and composed of a history teacher an English teacher a special ed teacher who all worked together with the students we currently have 54 students in the program and we're looking at ways to expand it in the future we had an opportunity to quickly uh view the CHS

266first marking period pass failed data we have shared the data with the rest of the board and we developed a list of questions and we received some feedback and we are waiting some more from the administration I will Echo the sentiment of um board member well export member um Susan Bergen that the data is rather concerning and we will soon be getting Quarter Two information and My Hope like hers was that we can look forward to towards finding a way to make it public um Miss budine taught to us about the district's uh suicide threat assessment standard operating procedures say that five times um and how we use the Columbia screener as our model the staff invo the staff is involved in making a threat that sorry the staff that is involved in making threat

267assessments have been trained on the new procedures and we plan on training more staff and administrators shortly cni reviewed several policies that are on the agenda for first read we talked a lot about our plagiarism policy especially in with the new AI technologies that are becoming available the new um AI the new language impacts acknowledges the impact of the new and emerging Technologies particularly ar-based large language models like Google l m l a MDA and open I AIS chat GPT on the issue of plagiarism the language encourages teachers in the district to adapt to and embrace the use of Advanced Technologies while encouraging while recognizing that they can be they can bring both productivity benefits and pedacological challenges the language offers two options for educators regarding the use of AI in their courses with specific

268guidance provided for each option overall the language reflects an awareness of the ongoing evolution of technology and the impact on education and we have I can thank chat GPT for writing that little synopsis for us I want to thank so mea for bringing some concerns about the star Renaissance test to our attention while the committee understands and agrees with many of the concerns about formative assessments they are also an essential tool in helping us to identify students who need more support the administration will be talking with the company about the issues with the test questions that were brought to our attention and we look forward to the district looking at other potential options we also spoke about the district's phonics curriculum which we brought up again tonight and we have asked the administration to put

269together either a curriculum night or a possible Town Hall event around our reading curriculum in the elementary schools I it we're we're on our way there and we should have more information soon about that but it it will be coming I left the meeting at 8 50 p.m and Nubia took over the Marshall Jefferson unpairing discussion but there's nothing to add because we have talked it all through tonight and that concludes my readout any questions yes Dr talisford um I guess how much discussion do we have on the CHS pass fail data at the meeting we did not have a chance to have very much discussions about it and we're waiting for a quarter two all right um I noticed that at least in the data committee there was the cni will be looking at

270a lot of raw data do you think that it will be better to at least have some sort of discussions about analyzes on some of that data ahead of time so that you can have I guess more in-depth conversations during cni as opposed to just looking at the raw data where you're just looking at a bunch of numbers and percentages I think that's a discussion we can you and I can have a offline because I I I'm not disagreeing with you but it's 12 at night at night and I don't think I'm fully understanding what you're asking me but I I think we I just want to understand more where you're coming from I'm just saying that um I've seen I guess when we discuss some of the data that cni is looking at they

271were going to get raw data and you're going to be looking at Raw data okay but then that may not be the best form to look at it because then you may not be able to ask certain questions because they will you will always have can we look at it this way can we look at it this way but then once you get it that way there's another question that's right after that and you won't get to that question because you're only looking at the raw form and you have that first question I get a little more what you're saying and I'd love to talk to you about like examples of showing some examples so that we can have a discussion on the best way to look at it I'm I'm fully in agreement that

272we have to work on how we look at the data so if there is a way that you can help I'm let's talk about it but I don't think we need to do it right not right now but I'm just asking yeah no I I appreciate your your your thoughts and let's talk about it and figure out how we can do it okay I did go to grad school okay um I have a question about the suicide threat assessment standard operating procedure no well in that topic and I'm not sure if we in the previous board talked about it a lot but at some time back we talked about getting Gaggle in-house and we agreed you know whatever we at least talked about it and then it just disappeared so it may have happened in

273the previous board I mean I'm not sure because I know till recently I never played much so has that been decided to not be implemented it has not a Dr Taylor maybe you can answer that yeah um so I think our last update on that and I believe I I let our student reps share that that we wanted to have a a more involved conversation with more stakeholders before we made that type of adoption and we wanted to make it for the if we were to move forward with it to start the year with the conversation not have it in mid-year and so we've we've tabled that until we approached the late spring and summer time to have more involved conversations about it we're also seeking advice from our solicitor about it because there's there's

274certain notifications that that you should give people when you give them devices if those devices have instruments such as Gaggle on it that's the best practice and we wouldn't want to do that midstream any other questions for the cni committee chair okay right so now I'll move on to I know the ad hoc committee is convened and I wasn't sure if you guys had anything prepared to read out I'll start with you Dr telesford if you could share the data and Technology meeting minutes that would to be great yes the data and Technology committee met oh sorry this is the wrong documents apologize um here we go we met on February 6th at 6 um a board member of valamani and myself along with the SLT met um remember winkfield could not attend but that's

275just due to the time we discussed the mission of the committee um I guess the main mission of the committee is kind of what I sent in that email to the board we want to focus more on analytics and Analysis so that the other committees can have more in-depth discussions so that we're not asking very basic questions about how the data is presented to us so we want to make the one of the goals of that committee is to kind of do that rudimentary I guess data massaging to make sure that when it goes out to the different committees they can just ask the straight questions that will get to the heart of the matter um and that's kind of like the the main goal um and then we talked about I guess a few

276things for instance we talked about the past scale report um how they had q1 and Q2 and how q1 they had the raw data going to cni and the Q2 was not ready but that will be ready next month apparently um then we also talked about um cougar academies and Humanities um again that was just more raw data so there's lots of I guess things that we're getting lots of data coming in and we're going to start looking at that um look at start strong we start discussing start strong and also the beginning of the the integration initiative um survey data um we did mention that whole idea of um how do we increase response rates and also one of the things I was interested in looking at can we start to map this across

277the district to start looking at you know are there areas in the in in our geography where we're not we're getting more or less responses and then can we focus on those communities um we had a brief discussion about the Bolden Marshall on pairing and we've had a full discussion about that and then we also talked about um Dr Ferguson's artifact collection one of the things I guess a goal I have for this year is that we bring in a consultant and we learn a lot from them and we should start to learn some of their practices and I think one of the things that we can learn from Dr Fergus is looking at patterns in our school district to see are we seeing any sort of inequities and then we can start doing that

278ourselves and doing our own self-assessment so that's one of the things that we want to have is have Dr Fergus come to one of our data committees so you can start to talk in depth about some of those things our next data committee will be on March 14th and that's all I have for now thank you Dr telesford does anyone have any questions the data and Technology committee chair okay all right so now we're going to move on to uh board member Eckert again for the special services readout it's the last one I promise if anybody is even still awake anymore the special services ad hoc committee held their first meeting of the year on Thursday February 16th Dr telesford and now former board member Bergen we're in attendance along with myself the committee chair

279we we actually spent a good portion of the meeting um dedicated to miss budine's presentation on special education and related Services while former board member Bergen was on the committee last year Dr telesford and I are new to the committee super beneficial to get an understanding on special education and the codes and the mandates that we work with we spent a few minutes just discussing the purpose of the special ad hoc committee which focuses on the following and I'm just kind of saying this as an FYI for for myself I thought it was really informative um but also for those those out there long-term strategic planning including working with Dr telesford on data analysis some over more focusing on the overarching issues versus the day-to-day components obviously we're not duplicating cpac's work we keep teaching

280and learning issues related to special education to the cni committee and of course to bring attention to important items we closed out the meeting discussing potential committee objectives for this year and at a high level what are some general issues we need to address such as paraprofessionals a growth in expenditures in this department and appropriately planning for this in our budget and what additional Staffing may be needed moving forward that's of course not to say there aren't other very important issues we need to and will address with input from this committee our newly reinstated CPAC liaison and the continued advocacy efforts of CPAC and our community on that note I wanted to call out that during the action portion of this meeting this morning we will be officially voting on The CPAC liaison which Dr

281telesford has raised his hand to fill that role we'll also be voting on Dr telesford actually taking over as chair of the special services committee after a conversation you know a conversation with board member um sorry board president what letter um you know understanding that both the liaison and committee chair roles play such a big part in setting the agenda for committee meetings and communicating out to the rest of the board We Believe having one person take both roles will help with continuity and would best serve our special education community all that to say I will still be playing a very active role attending CPAC chats you know as I can and just um you know still being very involved but we're super excited about that update and that is all I have thank you

282do you have any questions board member found the bonding so I mean you know given that all of us are at some level elected people and you know politicians at heart I must commend you for give very willingly giving up your chairmanship of the special educate committee special education committee because obviously everyone feels that they can make a big difference and they want to be more in control but it's it's it's it's very nice to see that you recognize that you know the the liaison and the committee chair should be one and the same so thanks I just also want to say that to clarify that doesn't um that doesn't mean that it's not important to me you know it doesn't show my it doesn't show my disinterest or non-commitment to it but thinking about

283the board as a whole I think I think we got we can all agree it'll be more effective that way I was just just also wanted to clarify for the two the two last standing members but everybody of course Dr talisford I just want to know we know that you have a very full plate so it's not a matter of your commitment so it's just a matter of you want to sleep too [Laughter] okay so I think we've now finished our committee reports and we're ready for the action portion of the meeting and I'm gonna hand it over oh okay oh is very actionable yeah very actionable so I'm going to hand over the meeting to Dr Taylor to lead us through through the action portion all right thank you to our board president and

284thank you for the Lively conversation and feedback board members you have the following resolutions uh that uh that await your action I present to you for consideration um I do not receive any requests to sever okay correct we presented the board for consideration 44 10 through 44 24. do I have a second second oh hi um okay so appears to be no did I say all in favor okay okay we're a noun discussion for the above mentioned items sorry folks so [Music] another time all right does this include the calendar change no yes yes it's 44 10 through 44 24 all of your actionable items you have two hand carries pending as well okay so then a quick comment I mean I'm I'm glad that we're adding uh Eid as a holiday in the calendar

285I mean I know we've said it multiple times but it's also also good to see that you know we are recognizing that there are more people joining the community who have different holidays than what were happening previously thanks hey can I remember a mouthpie now two things one I agree with you I'm very happy with that change and I want to give a shout out I know some of the students were here tonight and due to the late hour did not get to speak um I saw Caleb salmon who was here he did a lot of the work on bringing this to pass and advocating and we really appreciate it and we appreciate the parents who also came forward to discuss that so I didn't want to let that go because I did see some

286children here and I want to give them the recognition they deserve um the other is a question that I'm about parliamentary procedure maybe um we there is a request that we received from the map so Freedom School to also have a liaison I don't know if we want to add that right now or can we so to this what we already have here the committee structure or do we do that later I will yield to our solicitor but my thought would be that to amend a resolution that's already typed and written and advertised would be a challenge there's another group that the board would want to consider or that is being discussed to be considered another liaison group similar to CPAC can we just make a motion to him sorry um perhaps after you have

287already closed out these actions that would be the cleanest way to consider it perhaps um Okay so so the process would be we would take action on the resolutions that we're currently voting for and then we can take it you know okay thank you but you could just after we take action then a board member could make a motion pardon I'd recommend that it happens in new business okay thank you thank you okay discussion's over see no further questions or comments so we'll close discussion Mr Burnside can you please call the role on resolutions uh uh four four one zero through four four two four member Duvall Wilson yes board member ackert yes board member Gifford yes board member miles Pina yes board member telesford yes board member valmani yes board president with letter yes

288motion passes board members you have two hand carries and our solicitors recommending that we do the resolutions one at a time coming to you right now well thank you board members we present for your consideration resolution four four two five um HIV appeal number 235-202 underscore CHS underscore zero nine two nine two thousand twenty two is there a second Mr Burns oh sorry we can't discuss in public so here we go to Mr Burnside yep Mr Burnside if you could take the role please for resolution 4425 support president with letter yes board member valamani yes board member talisford yes board member of Alice Pina yes board member Gifford yes board member Eckert yes board member Deval Wilson yes motion passes hello again board members we present to you again for hand carry 442 two six

289s-o-m-e-a grievance and again we are not able to discuss this in public do I have a second second Mr Burnside can you please call a roll for resolution 4426 board member Deval Wilson yes board member Acker yes board member Gifford oh no board member dallasford yes board member valamani yes board president with a letter yes motion passes please know for the record that I am accused from voting on this that concludes that faction portion of the meeting so now we will begin our second hearing of individuals and delegates this evening and I'd like to begin by thanking you for coming in person and dialing in my 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 at tonight's meeting

290we value public involvement in our school district and we are eager to hear what you have to say the board does have time limits by policy and it won't 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 is taken very seriously and will inform future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and its committees we request that you please state your name and town of residence for the record we do have two um audio public comments so we'll

291start with Shannon cuddle [Music] hi all can you hear me this morning yes we hear you hi uh so sorry I was told my um Mike might not have been clear so uh you know I I I don't want to be you know carrying up at the end of the night here uh I've been here so like thank you all and uh with the new ones welcome to breaking it in um so uh with all due respect uh just to kind of encapulate my comments before I'm not going to go back into that but as far as 2260 and tying it to policy 5756 which are trans and non-binary student policy and 2422 health and physical education which also incorporates our students uh trans and lgbtq plus and non-binary student policy that's important so as

292you are looking forward right this is I'm all about taking teachable moments and providing resources and I will follow up to all of you in email um with what I've said and links um I just don't want to bother your inboxes ahead of time but in my effort I've always wanted to do make sure you all have the best things ahead I do want to just again make sure we have a clear understanding that all of our policies and best practices have gone to gender neutral language so as we're looking to all of our policies um they even as could come from stress as made to look at that but also as we're looking at this formative action as we're looking at anything that we're looking towards the lens of tying into policies we're already

293supporting lgbtq plus students and families and all students and the importance of doing that is including the language again is because in our dual commitment of making sure that that's embedded because what we do now as board members in our policy whether we in in making sure that folks staff and school Personnel families and students understand the policy with regulations and codes by specific understanding of where they can link to to learn more it also means when we add inclusive language we repeatedly do that to ensure that we are keeping with our commitment because those that come after us need to understand where we come before us so again I'm just trying to assure because I wasn't sure my uh Mike came across clear before because I was told it was a little bit spotty

294that the importance of having that language and changing again it's not gender non-conforming it's non-binary it's not just male and female it's transgender non-binary and students of sexual orientation gender identity as a whole and that language is inclusive we've made that a commitment so thank you for that and moving forward and always here as a resource so thank you so much for that commitment and I will share those resources for you and have a good morning and a good night thank you Shannon and our last audio public speaks is from Dennis Kearney hi this is Dennis Carney from Maplewood New Jersey um I'm joining tonight to express my gratitude to board member Bob lamani for so forcefully stating what seems obvious to those of us watching tonight's meeting of course policy changes should be presented

295to the public with changes tracked for transparency and of course there's software to do that in a way that's efficient and not labor intensive of course it's the the role of the board to ensure that the district's policies reflect the values of the constituents constituents that elected you and of course you should carry forward the carefully crafted policy language that reflects those values and of course you should ensure that you're not accidentally including language that adds the ability to hire school resource officers in a way that lacks accountability and contradicts the campaign Promises of so many of you I'm fully confident that the policy committee can achieve its objectives without acting as a rubber stamp of approval on boilerplate policies put forth by a disinterested third-party vendor and we all look forward to seeing improvements

296in this process at Future meetings thank you for your time back oh and we have one more in-person public speaks from you could say yeah come on Malia Herman it's a little face there you go okay okay it's on uh Malia Hermann from Maplewood I just wanted to say quickly um thank you Mr Gifford for your explanation of the policy that you're working on um and thank you also um to Mr Dr tells Ford for stepping forward to be our liaison we look forward to working with you and also as chair of the special services committee and Miss Eckerd thank you for your service we will miss you and um the presentation that you mentioned that Miss buddine gave you is really really informative as you mentioned and it would be wonderful if the entire

297committee were able to do that so thank you all and um hopefully we'll be talking soon thank you so much and so that concludes our last public speaks Dr Taylor do you want a comment yeah just briefly um I I just wanted to point out that language in that in that policy around sros says may it says that the board may do that it doesn't say that the board will do that it just speaks about the opportunity for the board or any board has the legal authority to do so and they can be removed if the borso chooses to okay so now we are moving on to new business um does anyone have any new business if a board member Gifford no I swear this will be quick so uh we received a letter from

298a map so Freedom School requesting a liaison so I'd like to make a motion to do so do I have a second Mr Burnside oh sorry I keep forgetting I'm so sorry uh can we have discussion on this please and uh board member of adlamani so I mean I have no no idea what maps of Freedom School was till I looked it up on the website right now and it seems worthy it seems nice but it seems like a startup as compared to all the other Worthy organizations who have liaison I mean yes we should look at the work they do but we should also look at how much work they do you go to their website it is Bare Bones they give no examples of what's Happening they have no Financial reports I don't

299know how much money they make or give out they have none of those things available then same thing if you go to CPAC it's filled with all this information you go to achieve it's fill out all this information CPAC even translates it for other people so all I'm trying to point out is that just just because an organization is worthy there are many of them does not mean we need to have a liaison for that if it's big if it's worthy and it's big fantastic let's do that this is you know I mean very worthy don't get me wrong I'm sure they do very good work but they're like you know three four people I don't even see the finances anywhere maybe they put out maybe I don't know to a hundred thousand dollars or

300ten thousand dollars we're talking about achieve that is doing much larger and see if I get so much larger so that so my view is that we should not be having liaison to definitely not to uh to maps of Freedom School Dr telesford I just think this this motion is I guess too quick because we only got this email today and then it's dated from 2018 to Elizabeth Baker so it wasn't even a current like letter to the board so and when you go to the website or their Facebook page I was just looking at that some of their events are from 2022 last year and so I guess I feel as though we need more discussion and more time to really fully consider this idea of creating a liaison position for this [Music] so

301I'm just hearing about this today but my just feedback is if this isn't it's not an organization that's well known I would recommend giving me some time because Juan remember you are attributing the school district's name to this organization by creating liaison so you really want to make sure you know what this organization is embedded in and I mean unless there's some urgency my recommendation would be take your time do your homework because you are affiliating the school district and its reputation with an organization so food for thought but remember also you also want to be careful of whether or not there's any ties That might not be within the same interest of this organization so food for thought but unless there's some urgency my recommendation is really do your research and have a full

302discussion with the entire board even bring in members of administration maybe they might have some more knowledge too about the organization reach out to community members I would fully vet this before you attach the school district to it and you want to go to oh this is actually a very well-known organization I you know I I'm sorry that you're not familiar with them they actually used to do professional development for year one uh teachers for the district so they were trusted enough to give professional development for our new teachers a few years ago so I I they give a lot of you know access and Equity training um they they've been a real advocate for our students and I I I I I've done my homework the community is very aware of their work they're

303they're an established non-profit it's it's really a no-brainer a board member Deval Wilson well one I was gonna ask Bill to just talk a little bit more for those that were unaware which you've done and if there's anything else that you think you should add go for it but what I was going to say is I've heard of them um I think the fact that there are most at-risk students at the high school are black students and this organization was created by Educators Columbia alumni as well as parents and students I think that um I don't hear a lot of solutions Concrete Solutions right now about how we're helping our black students I'm not saying that it hasn't been discussed in the past years before I've been on the board behind closed doors but from

304a public-facing standpoint um I think we do need to start taking action and if there's an opportunity on the table and if there's a group of students and parents and families and Educators that are saying hey we think we can make a difference we think being able to be more connected to the board is going to help our black students turning our back on that I think is a huge disservice to this community and by dragging our feet having more conversations I don't really know if that's the best interest of our black students and maybe this is maybe it could be a knee-jerk reaction to some but if but if but if there is Outreach and interest in being a liaison or having a liaison for them I think that we should honor that remember

305malistina then remember Eckert I um had the opportunity to visit them recently and invited all board members to attend a meeting and I will say it was powerful it was relevant it it was right after um it it what I highly recommend that you come to one of the Saturday schools they run Saturday schools for the children not only in our our school district but also for other children that want to come from other towns that talk about racial issues talk about how we can work together as a community to to change things to make things better I was blown away by the conversations that I experienced they do they do PD and development for teachers I have been part of a book study at one point when I was an educator uh before I

306was on the board um that they ran which was incredible about um policing and how we do policing in our in our district not in our district in in America um they also do uh or they do PD for like not professional development I can't even talk anymore they do trainings for students they run amazing trainings for students um and it's not only just there are black it's majority black students but there are but there are opportunities for all students to be involved in the conversations and be there and be part of these conversations that need to be had in our society and this is a group that is doing that and that is doing it in our school buildings so to say that we are not they they've given PD and we are giving

307up our school buildings so to have a liaison I just think that they want and they've been asking for since 2018 is not something that should be even a question I I don't understand how we're even questioning this board member Eckert I just I just want to say I I don't actually think it's a knee-jerk reaction the last board meeting I think it was board member Gifford did bring it up yeah honestly I don't remember why we decided to table it at this point but it's not a new drug reaction um I'm not going to repeat everything that board member Paul Wilson and board member of malspina said but I mean I you know especially if we have somebody that's going to step up to do it um I I don't know why we need

308to like discuss it at length um that's that's really all I have to say Dr telesford I wouldn't really say that it's a matter of having a discussion at length as much as I think for every organization that we do have a liaison to we have had at least a board presentation so that we can actually at least to the board enter the public see the type of work that they're doing um we can talk about the work that they're doing but I think it's really important for them to for us to as a community see that because we are going to be attaching ourselves to it it's not a matter of saying I want to say no but it's more like we should see more so that we can share that with the community

309[Music] board member Brad lamani so again I want to just reiterate that we should not confuse worthy with how much impact they have I'm just looking at the website I mean I well first of all the first they failed the first test not everyone knows about them well maybe I'm uneducated so let's throw that away every other big organization we have they're breaking down our doors to come here and present to us and tell them all the good things they can do for our students and our teachers and everyone else you know CPAC is here every day every meeting they hear they come out and make the president comes out all the time to make presentations a chief Foundation is here all the time they're making presentations so now I have never seen these people

310before so I don't even know who they are so yeah maybe they're worthy maybe they're fantastic maybe they spend 10 million dollars on students every year great they're not my two thumbs up but having never seen them or heard from them or even their website talk anything about from SD there's zero words that says South Orange Maplewood School District zero on the entire website they talk about yes they talk about all these you know good programs that they have for Youth Development and sure maybe they do it for Essex County great so maybe a six County Commissioner should be you know having layers on them I don't see any reason why South Orange Maplewood School District should have a liaison with them if they are not serving us so why don't we have them we

311can we can okay please I mean I don't understand when can you please uh okay right out of order out of order yeah thank you let me finish so so let's have them over let's have their CEO come over whoever that is which is not obvious on the website maybe they've done multiple elections they've been multiple generations of CEOs like cpacas like I know for like three generations of them so they are credible so let's find out if these guys are credible or not and then we'll vote for it that's I mean I'm not I have nothing against having layers on to a worthy organization my problem is that they just at least based on the website they seem like a small startup a small startup so and then and just going by anecdotes I

312mean maybe you know nothing has happened in the last five years just going by anecdotes I mean you know a board member malice Pina has not been a teacher here for a while and she herself said it was before the board hold on a second um board member that's you're out of order we're not supposed to reference each other's names so if you wanna you can say you can reference I'm just repeating what you're saying I think at this time this isn't a constructive conversation so you can shut me down when she herself said it's just two minutes back she said that she has worked with them in professional development while she was in the district before on the board I'm just pointing out she's been on the board for like three years now so

313we haven't had anything to do with them for a long time so anyway I'm not going to belabor the point they don't seem worthy enough right now they don't come and present we're happy to we'll all sit down we'll all have an opportunity to listen to them we'll have uh you know many of people who come out and talk in public speaks in support of them hopefully maybe 20 people will show up and say oh this is the best organization ever you guys are silly not to have liaison and I'll be like sure my fault let's no one cycle where in February called the month for March I don't see why you would not do that so therefore I would want to pass a motion to table this discussion okay so um board member Deval

314Wilson please I just want to say one thing as someone who is a publicist and has worked for non-profits we cannot judge what a non-profit does on their website because they're too busy doing the work yeah yeah okay so look you know what no no but I'm just saying like they're too busy doing the work so I hope that no one ever judges a non-profit based on outdated content or maybe their Facebook page didn't have the latest and greatest because I can tell you for one that actually is a sign that they're in the field they're busy and they also probably don't have enough resources or people to update that website and update their Facebook page regularly so that's all I just want to say you know I get it that you don't know a

315lot about them and maybe other people don't but they are based here in Maplewood they are they're called mapso they are supporting our our students here that Mr Burnside can you take a roll call I I had to always I didn't hear you make the motion I'm sorry okay so I I'm making a motion to table this discussion till we have a formal presentation from there officers and hear from the public about you know all the good work they do one member of Adam only wants to make a motion to table for until we can have a formal presentation do I have a second for this a second okay so at this point do we want to discuss this or are we good to vote we vote okay Mr Burnside could you please take roll

316call thank you table it board president with a letter this is the motion to table so just correct okay no board member valimani yes board member telesford yes board member Mouse Pina no board member Gifford no board member Acker no board member Deval Wilson no motion doesn't pass can I does that mean we were going to vote now or do we have to make a motion okay so now we'll call it the question the motion to vote for the map so particular discussion plus platform [Music] no we already have no discussion okay discussion I thought the discussion ended and that's when we moved to move to the table yeah discussion on the first item ended and then we moved to table no no we're voting it so is the discussion on a new item or

317is it on a continuation no no is the discussion on a new topic for the original motion or is it a continuation of the comment that you had made before okay I mean you can pose reasonable time limits on the discussion so this is a problem this is this is my problem here the biggest problem here it seems to me like this is a problem with you know when kids play you know baseball is like my baseball so I'm the captain so you got your you got your toys I want my toys too that's what it sounds like oh you gotta achieve um maybe seat back and therefore now I want Maps or school and you know there's nothing wrong with all of these organizations I'm sure they're very very good my only point is

318we don't know who these people are let's call them in and talk to them and figure out and then we do that so of course you can vote I mean yeah we see what the word is going to be but use use be sensible that's all sorry this is getting ugly isn't it okay so now could I amend the motion to also include the nominee or do we do a separately to nominate Bill Gifford as the liaison for the map so Freedom School can I do that in one or how I would create two emotions one and establish the liaison and the second would be to a point okay great so let's um go to roll call for the motion to add the meso Freedom School liaison role board member Deval Wilson yes board member

319Ecker yes board member Gifford yes board member miles Pina yes board member telesford no board member no board president with letter yes motion passes and so now I'd like to make a motion to nominate Bill Gifford to serve as the mapso leads Freedom School liaison do I have a second okay now it's open for discussion a board member of adlamani not entirely sure if you need to make a motion because the president has a right to appoint anyone to the chair or a liaison that's that's part of the bylaws so again I don't know the clarification you don't I I don't think we need to have a vote and take of what saying can somebody be a chair or can somebody be not that's the right of the president so but um I think we

320do have to vote on the assignments which is why we have to wait for the CPAC vote because we approved the liaison but then we didn't put your liaison in this instance isn't formally recognized by bylaw you've just created it today I think just for prudency have a bylaw that designates who the liaison would be Okay so okay so Bill Gifford is the map so Freedom School liaison yeah okay great thank you thank you Bill does anyone else have any new business this evening no just a reminder to change the time for the next meeting yes okay thank you can all right so oh dude can we not close go into closed session that's what I was just going to ask yeah I can't I can't make any legal decisions at one in the morning

321I'm sorry so with that I'd like to make the following motion the Board of Education will meet in a special public session on Thursday March 16 2023 at 6 PM in the district meeting room 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey in person utilizing an online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals immediately following the public session the Board of Education will move to go into a closed session in the superintendent's office 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey as well as using an online video conference platform to discuss personal matters within the attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and require discussion to be announced at a later date the community can view the meeting by following this upstairs will be listed on the agenda if there are members of

322the community who would like to attend the meeting in person please note that masks and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance received from the local Doh and the CDC action will be taken the Board of Education will meet in public session on Thursday March 30th 2023 at 6 30 PM in the district meeting room 525 Academy Street immediately fall sorry um the board will move to go into a closed session in the superintendent's office 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey as well as using an online video conference platform to discuss Personnel matters within the attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and require discussion to be announced at a later date immediately following the closed session the Board of Education will mean public session estimated to be 7

32330 PM in the district meeting room 525 Academy Street Maplewood New Jersey in person utilizing an online video conference platform which will include hearings 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 masks and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance received from the local Doh and the CDC action will be taken may I have a second second thank you board member Duvall Wilson all in favor that appears to be unanimous Mr Burnside so now I'd like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting on Friday February 24th at 12 57 A.M may I have a second all in favor meeting is adjourned thank

324you everyone have a wonderful