001right here call the order this is to advise the general public that in compliance with the open Public's meetings act it'll look like Harbor reported education caused you close to the office of the Board of Education located at 307 Frog Pond Road Little Lake Harbor New Jersey and facts on January 18 2022 to the Asbury Park Press Atlantic Seacrest into the office of the municipal clerk of the lake harbor a meeting notice that fourth date and time and location of this meeting yeah deserver here Barry here this is Dr Snyder here we all teased Stanford the Pledge of Allegiance um all right and I recommend a motion to approve the following minutes can I have a motion can I have a second are there any questions seeing there's no questions Mr Green Mr Kill um
002yeah yes yes yes Dr Snyder yes uh moving on to board presentations we had the George J Mitchell School update up first excuse me I'd like to ask you a question when I'm Cable in motion uh for the agenda how do I when is the proper time to ask um I get to be removed before he approved the agenda is the approval of the agenda on here if you have I think it might be nice okay sure it's interesting I want to follow protocol foreign [Music] foreign [Music] great thanks for travels we have a we have three tanks in our school that are part of the head started program foreign [Music] but [Music] excellent job so Lucas and Gianna they practice so hard and I'm so proud of you tonight to do that in front
003of this big audience so I'd like to announce our student of the month for the George J Mitchell school for September we've been focusing on the character trait of friendship and caring through our student of the months were the children that showed this character trait throughout the month so in kindergarten Miss Lynn's class we have Orion baglet oh Ryan green Orion brings the spirit of friendship and caring for our classroom every day Orion is quick to help his friends with difficult assignments and always includes others during play time okay our next dude other month comes from Mrs Kelly's class and I go to John malvar foreign friendship being a treat for this month Emma displays those two qualities on a daily basis she is eager to lend a helping hand to anyone in need and
004at first to cheer someone up if they need cheering Emma was a huge has a huge heart and wants to make everyone feel good keep on shining bright Emma we are so proud of you foreign 's class Hunter is such a kind-hearted boy he is super empathetic whenever someone in a class is upset or in need of support Hunter is a light in this classroom and his kindness spreads throughout it Hunter represents these character traits because this is who he is his genuineness is what makes Hunter the perfect example of friendship and caring and we have one more second grader and this is beaton's class Eric lover Eric Eric is always willing to help in the classroom whether it is his teachers or his friends he loves an opportunity to be a helper great job
005okay and John belgarh caring you can always count on John to lend a helping hand and to make you laugh and smile he includes others in the classroom and at recess is a great listener and is always sharing we need to go John I'm so proud we're so proud of you okay you haven't been here no one's asked us for pictures one more ready congratulations okay Mr Jenny you're up with frog hunt from the Frog Pond school we have Logan Lawler come on Logan hello my name is [Music] to September has changed because the other first month of school was filled with events online free level summaries to review our expectations and pick up our foreign [Music] Foundation Street through our classroom the teachers and various classrooms that can be welcomes all the parents today
006successful back to school October is always an exciting month you're a foreign I think in your machine transition school pictures [Music] will be held on October 8th and Outdoors for place held from 9 30 to 10 7. I think Family Guy on channel 4. thank you all to to all of the parents and students and staff for making this a great start with the 2022 23rd School excellent job Logan all right we are going to start with our third grade September student of the month from Miss wycos class we have Thai thunder come on outside today is with great pleasure that I nominate ticonder as student of the month although we've only been in school for a month Kai has already shown what an amazing student he is he came in on the first day
007of school ready to embrace the start of a new school year Ty is not only hard-working and always puts forth his best effort but he is also a great friend to everyone in the classroom he's always willing to help a friend and his polite and respectful to both adults and peers Ty is a model third grader and I'm looking forward to an amazing school year with him in my class congratulations time foreign [Applause] [Music] to do her best in all subjects she is polite and considerate to her teachers and friends who is always willing to help others the Italian is kind to her peers and a positive role model congratulations and a job well done congratulations in fifth grade from his Bruno's class we have Samantha Horton come on Samantha Samantha has had a fantastic
008start to fifth grade Samantha is kind and considerate to everyone and is very helpful in our classroom she always puts forth her best effort and is willing to take on challenges I am very proud of both their academic efforts and her behavior in all areas of the school she's a great role model and I am thrilled to have her in my class way to go Samantha and keep up the great work foreign from the purple team we cannot think of a more deserving student for student of the month Patricia is an excellent role model for her peers she exhibits our school's three Behavior expectations of being safe respectful and responsible at all times and you can always helpful in the classroom ready to lend a hand complete and task that needs assistance choose hard-working diligent
009cooperative and always smiling she is really just a pleasure to have in our class es congratulations Patricia we are proud for you to represent our team for students thank you and from Ms Barris class we have Tyler Harwood Tyler come on up Tyler follows all of our classrooms and school rules Tyler runs our morning meetings and our daily calendar he is always offering to help adults and peers in the classroom I received the longest classmates of needing assistance he quickly offers help Tyler is a leader in our classroom congratulations to you Tyler thank you a really good picture [Music] all right okay we're moving on to the State Testing report and school level goals yes if any of the children would like to leave congratulations for all of your achievements and have a wonderful evening
010foreign thank you I guess okay moving on to the State Testing report and school level goals by Dr McAuley all right we are actually all going to take turns I'm going to start and then I'm going to hand over the light to the other administrators we're all going to take a part in this I am going to send this out to the board after we're done tonight there's a lot of information here we wanted to make sure that we explain this first as we go through it and then as I said we'll send this out to you if you have any additional questions please either call me or email them and you'll get your answers right away so as I said there's a lot of information on this we're going to give a summary of
011this in a few more slides this is an overview of the 2021-2022 State Testing you'll see the grades all the way to the left the total amount of students that tested those on level one not meeting expectations partially meaning approaching at level three and then meeting expectations and exceeding expectations you see the district overall and then the state comparison you don't have to add it up yet because there'll be a separate slider it'll give it all you all the totals this is the same thing for mathematics this slide is a comprehensive four or five is what we yeah what we're looking for yep correct and as I said I'm going to not only send this to the board but this will be posted on the district's website because it's a lot of information so this
012slide is nice because it breaks it down by subgroups you'll see all the way to the left the grade bands and then free reduced lunch 504s ell special ed gen Ed and then all students combined for the second block down you're only going to be looking at sixth grade so the band is six to eight but we only have sixth grade Incorporated I did put a note at the bottom only 10 of our special education students passed the state assessment and we have a 20 population of our students at our special education so obviously that has to be incorporated into our toggles this is mathematics same information different scores and in this case nine percent of special education students passed and it's 20 of our total population I wanted to show the board and our
013parents this slide there are many of these that we get from the state testing analysis and this is what we look at as a district we do it as an administrative team the teachers use this in their plcs and it's really helpful because it's by standard so this one is grade three English language arts and the grade dots or the district scores overall in that standard and then the state is the blue dots so we can see in certain standards we are a little bit below some more than others and those are going to be ones that we focus on all the way to the left those are the most difficult standards and then as you go to the right they get easier all the way to the right are the writing categories and you'll
014see that we do for we fall Below in those writing categories so once we identify the standard we can develop curriculum lessons and plan accordingly this is another sample for mathematics in fifth grade and you can see in some we are significantly lower whereas in others were higher so we may not need to focus so much in that standard and focus more time and energy into those that were falling below I want to talk a little bit about District's Factor group this was a thing years ago that we were assessed on it was on state reports although it's not publicized anymore we are still compared to our District's Factor group so in District Factor groups range from a to J A being the lowest socioeconomic J being the highest so little Lake Harbor for prospective
015purposes is paid other school districts that are a District's Factor P are Central Lakers Manchester and Ocean Gate Borough and I know we've done a lot of comparisons to our district with Galloway they're actually a little bit higher than us so we have seen those comparisons before but just a little bit of perspective this is the report that we get from Lincoln and all the way to the left you'll see a Continuum from 2015 through 2022 and you'll see District Factor group a all the way to the left and you can see there was like a slow growth from 15 all the way to 22. and then districts Factor Group B but I want you to visually say we're a district Factor group a and you can see how districts steadily went up and score
016but then dropped after covid but then look at District Factor group J so when we see State averages we are getting averaged in with District Factor group J so that really does help to put things into perspective now in overall language arts uh we were just discussing those students that scored a four or a five are meeting expectations and this is by grade level the overall percentage of those meeting expectations is listed there comparatively with the district's back to group similar to ours you can see were either very similar or a little bit higher a little bit lower in some cases and then there's the state average and if you remember from years past before covid the state average was over 50 percent in most cases and now makes other under 15 in most cases
017but you can see the comparative of other districts similar to ours same analysis with math some close some not close to our district Factor group and then the same comparison and we've talked about previously that math is one of our goals for the year and an area that we definitely know that we need to work on so what are our next steps we have been piloting math programs we have a math committee that was formed all of the teachers were surveyed that teach math which is just about all of them and the feedback that we got in the beginning of the school year was they don't care for the math program that we have right now when it changed it didn't change for the better and they think that it's a little too wordy for
018our population and really needs to focus more on computation and other things such as that so we formed a committee anyone that wanted to be on it was a part of it we have representation from vast grade levels we have our math coach we have our ASI teacher and then of course the administrative team so what we did was um we ordered some programs that we wanted to look at and the committee looked at them they are narrowing it down to two or three we have actually a training tomorrow on one of them and then ultimately the teachers and the math committee are going to select a program for next year we're hoping to do that by January so teachers that you want to can actually pilot that and we did have some teachers already
019that asked to Pilot some of these programs we sent a small group of teachers today to learning it to actually view one of the programs they're interested in in action and they got to see it they got to talk to teachers see what they like what they didn't like so that was really helpful for them we're going to continue to use Lincoln Abe's web to monitor internal progress of our students and look at what standards were strong in what ones we need to focus on we're going to put students through the inrs process if need be an individualized learning plans for them we have added a PSI teacher for this year to deliver more individual and small group instructions to students that are struggling we are going to start our after-school program in January two
020days a week so we're happy about that for our students that are at risk we are carefully monitoring attendance and we have some incentives because if the students are not in school we're obviously not teaching them we have a great deal of social emotional and mental health supports in place for our students we are personalizing learning to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all of our students and not just delivering a blanket curriculum and then of course we're putting in more supports with our Esser monies and the stabilization that we received recently in terms of special education Mrs benaro has um given this overview before but I just wanted to incorporate this slide she ordered a great deal of supports and curriculum for our special ed population to ensure that they are getting
021the different differentiated support that they need in the classroom and I just wanted to remind the board and the community ultimately this is our goal we know as District Factor Group B that a lot of our students are very needy they come with certain special needs that we need to provide to them and ultimately our goal as Educators is to deliver instruction that displays growth in progress for all of our students so wherever they come to us our job is to increase their achievement it may not look like District Factor group J but it has to be going in the upward upward motion so this is our ultimate goal to get back to where we were going in the past in 2019. and now I'm going to turn it over to Jackie to go over
022our access for else good evening everyone the access for else 2.0 test is given to all by El student English learning students it is given once a year for students in grades K through 12 so in our case all of our identified students are given this exam they also take the NJ SLA in addition to this so the access test assesses students in Board of skill areas listening speaking reading and writing based upon those skills they will also be given an oral language score A literacy score and a comprehension score and then using all of that data a an overall score is there are six fans that students can get and score from a one all the way up through a six we also administer the alternate access growth that is for students who are
023not only El students ESL students but also students who are classified and have significant cognitive abilities so this test is more appropriate um for those students without identification and you can see their scoring is slightly different last year we had 15 students take the test and here you can see how our students score so in kindergarten we have five students take the test three of them were on the entering level two on the expanding level in first grade we had two students one emerging and one developing in second grade we had one student fourth grade we had one student sixth grade we had two students and then we had four students take the alternate access for Alpha this is not a test though that you can compare one student to another because they are coming
024to us with a different um language ability some students come to us not speaking a word in English so you might be a sixth grade student scoring a one on and entering and that might be appropriate for somebody coming in with zero English abilities we would expect them now so it's not a test where I can say you know I can compare how they do from year to year but not to other students because they all have different language abilities I just said one how many ell students are there last year there were 15. this year uh we I think I'm not I don't oversee the program but I believe we're up to I would say at least 17 or 19. at this point in time we also have some students who are monitored which
025means that we need to keep an eye on them this test and other sources of data may show that they no longer need as intensive ESL services so they're put on a monitoring status they um and we need to monitor them because sometimes without the support they're not able to function in the classroom as successfully so we need to be able to grab them back in and give them those support a way of leaving thank you so do they if a student registers they would come through you first or that's how it would be fun for me but I mean were they like with the idea be identified and is that what is student registers um a variety of Staff members are informed of the new registration part of that registration process is for them
026to identify what languages are being predominantly spoken at home so we are able to identify potential ESL students right upon registration once that registration is taken by Kim or someone else in the administrative offices where the registrations take place then we meaning in most cases came on I think she's here today our ASL teacher will screen those students she often has conversations with the parents before the student need to start school brings them in meets with them to get an informal initial assessment of them and then should do other assessments on that on that term and their love for me most students do need some support if you know language if the English language is not their number one language at home if you're getting more and more now that are coming to us without
027knowing any English whatsoever most of our Spanish-speaking students we're getting a lot of students from Honduras and Nicaragua you 've heard about all that in the news we also have I believe one Chinese student I I'm I don't know between the technology program so you can correct me out there if I'm wrong um but we're also getting more Ukrainian students as well I believe you have at least three students one student that are monitoring it's been interesting it's a challenge but I gotta say our staff and our students are just absolutely amazing and embracing these students here and um foreign [Music] we have our science population which comes with multiple dialects from all the different countries and we do have Chinese speaking students as well but you know right here right now all right anything
028else about this right now we as of last week we had 17 projected to turn 19 once to two other siblings arrived from um 18. 19 20 24.4 and I want to say at least eight or ten of them are actually newcomers new to the country that are non-english speaking happens at the ECC that is something that we should be definitely doing but is that something that the state overseas maybe Dr Flinders sorry I keep pulling more people in okay so yes we have a lot more ell students in the preschool program this year um however that doesn't mean that they will end up being 100 uh falling under Katie Munn typically they are a dual language household however we as Katie said we are adding more and more families that are one language in
029the household and those children actually all of the children need assistance but some of the children will get classes when they get into the k6 program in the preschool program we are working on an immersion experience for the students so all if you fit into the preschool classroom any of the questions you would see that all of the materials and the centers and everything are labeled with pictures and the language and then in our ell classrooms we add the multiple languages that are in those rooms so then for example sampling blocks they'll see a picture of blocks they'll see the word blocks in English they'll see in Spanish and then we do have a couple other languages and some of the classes so we'll hopefully like with children younger they're more of a sponge so
030hopefully they pick it up it's amazing two years ago we had a child coming in um one of I think a sandwich from Pakistan and he spoke not a single word he's doing really well he's speaking a lot in English um you know was able to participate in all of the activities throughout the day so it's really exciting to see how how much the children learn thank you so I'm here to talk about the George J Mitchell building goals so we felt that what we really wanted to do is take our district goals that we set use that as an umbrella for our building goals we just kind of narrow them down a little bit more so our first school focuses on SEL we know the importance right now that social and emotional learning and
031especially teaching our children is social and emotional learning competencies so our first goal is to build a school community that Ventures the whole child and supports the social emotional well-being of our students so we took that we really broke it down into four objectives we did this with our skip committee so we really wanted to focus on developing authentic family Partnerships covid cats families away from schooling and we know the importance of that Family School child connection so how do we go about developing those authentic family Partnerships we wanted to effectively use our morning meeting time to focus on the SEL competencies and to build in our character education again we were looking to incorporate three whose five SEL competencies into our lesson plans and what we do all day long with our children and
032to effectively use our strategies to build those trusting teacher-student relationships so to do that we really broke it down into our action items on what we're looking to accomplish throughout the year we're looking at really collecting our data using our attendance data using our Behavior data doing our surveys from families as well as our staff members focusing some of our offers our staff PD and opportunities on you know understanding those adverse childhood experiences and how that impacts learning again really taking a look at the social emotional learning competencies and how do we really tie that into our lesson plan and understanding the Neuroscience of trauma and brain development and using that research to help Drive what we're doing within our classrooms um the next part of that is putting in place some of those trauma-informed
033practices so that we encourage students to problem solve for themselves to learn to manage their emotions and to really get feedback on Behavior that's discreet and specific and we're looking at forming our resiliency tree our resiliency team that will probably happen November and then looking really focusing for and this is something that I've been trying to do is really focusing on two-way communication with families this stuff and really with what's happening in our building so one of the things I've heard back from families that I met in the summer was more communication so we've been sending out monthly newsletters to our parents that have had meet and greets with our parents we've been help holding informational nights to help our parents understand new apps that we're using and what we're using um as far as
034like encores and how to maneuver that looking at sending those positive messages home so many of our staff members use dojo in their constant communication with the parents posting what we're doing on our Facebook page our website um and sending out for me weekly staff newsletters so that we're all on a cohesive page and our second goal is focusing on the math goal again continue to build the capacity for teachers to provide the effective instruction and math and understanding how to support students to increase their proficiency again how do we do that within our building what tangible steps should we take again students will use number lines and number cents during daily math calendar activities talking about money fractions all during that math calendar time that's a great time to Spiral Review so that we're
035constantly revisiting the skills that are learned you know creating equations using that math vocabulary and then having a word wall That's displayed in our classrooms and to do that we're looking again at how do we use like how do we effectively use our time so we looked at adding 15 more minutes into our math block time where can we take that from and how do we really use that as that Review Time some you know RTI time and really helping our kids get their math skills and again classroom environment increasing that using our word while practicing our fluencies using number lines and then we're going to be taking a look at our math aimsex scores to help develop what types of interventions specific interventions that we need to put in place for our students so
036that's what's happening goal wise at the Mitchell School good evening everyone um as Amy already said Amy came aboard in July and we met a lot over the summer time to make sure we were all on the same page and we wanted to have similar goals but tailor them specifically to our building so our first goal as well was an SEO goal and with the focus on attendance the reason for that being a goal here's a few bullets right here as far as social emotional skills are crucial for children obviously to be successful in school we always analyze our Behavior data from our course IRS data and from our CST we look at our chronic absenteeism data which is something that has been a big Focus especially over the last few years with kobit and
037we also looked at our him reports and it's absolutely used data some of the things that we've put in place this year or continue our PBIS program is continuing full force it's helping very successful it also leads to monthly rewards where we continually recognize students whether it's at events in the multi-purpose room or we recognize them on our morning news reports things like that effectively using morning meeting we worked with Ms dinero to bring in a positive action program which we're piloting with all of our 4-3 teachers so we are rolling that out in November which we're really looking forward to one of the additions that we had last year was bringing on rvds which are registered Behavior technicians they've worked with any students that either have been I well they work with our special
038ed population but also our gen Ed population when we have students with behavior issues they are referred to the rvts and they put in Behavior action plans for those students and they're very responsive and it's been a huge help the teachers into our building disabled board last year and again with absenteeism and chronic absenteeism being a focus bi-weekly we run reports we take notes on all of our students and we reach out to families and bring the families on board in the process to make sure that they're coming to school that's the most important part and our second goal being mathematics again you've seen some of the reports that Dr Murphy shared one of the slides that she shared with you with the item analysis is something that we use with the coach and the
039teachers during our plcs we will analyze the standards in years past we've even used plcs to develop short forms of Assessments based on those standards if we saw that we were lacking in a certain standard teachers would come together they would create assessments based on that so they can see how teachers or their students are doing and it would make adjustments using that so we have been using our plcs to do some of that we also have had some training already one of the programs I was mentioned earlier trans math it was a foundational program that we brought in for basic skills a couple of years ago we've extended that program to all of our resource students as well and there was extensive training at the beginning of the year for all the resource teachers
040on that program and we've been collaborating with the math coach Dr McCauley they've been analyzing our programs that we're using across grade levels so we're taking a look at that as well this year and um you know we've also had our Consultants scheduled to come in and help the teachers with our current programs all right okay so for preschool we're also working on math goals and we are planning to focus on increasing the effectiveness of our math lessons the use of our classroom materials and enrich discussions of math concepts for Effective instruction and student achievement and this is really coming from our eckers data Ecker stands for Early Childhood environment rating scale the three means that it's a third edition the eckers is an internationally used assessment in early childhood programming it's also used by
041the state to look at the quality of preschool programming and in addition to that it's used by the National Institute of early Early Education research so that being said it's a comprehensive assessment tool and it measures the environmental Provisions making sure that the leg out of the room is appropriate the materials are appropriate it also looks at the quality of the teacher of child interactions there are three items in the anchors that point to math specifically and they are math and daily events those are things like um are the teachers using that um Concepts vocabulary and word all throughout the day so for example I was in a classroom the other day and they were reading the gingerbread man and the teacher was talking about how many characters were were after the gingerbread man and
042they used some number sense to talk about the story rather than just reading the story and enjoying the fact that the gingerbread and was running around so the other item is understanding written numbers how are children understanding the code which is numbers and the value that matches them and then the third item is math materials and activities and that really is making sure that we have a wide variety of materials in the class should look at anything from numbers to measuring comparing patterns and so on and then what lessons are being implemented Passions so if you look at the numbers in those parentheses they're the scores of our 2122 efforts assessment and the range of our scores were three to six I'm sorry 4.6 was our aggregate score for item 23 our range was from
043three to six our aggregate score for understand 5 and the range was two to six and the math materials gives us a 4.2 and we're going to use two to seven just so that you have an understanding of what those scores mean the scores run anywhere from one to a seven one to two is considered um inadequate three and four is considered minimal quality five to six is good quality and seven is considered um excellent product those scores are a little bit low for our program as an aside piece of information the state did come out last year to start looking at quote-unquote the mature districts and that would be the districts that have had the preschool funding for a while and the programs have been in place and math was also identified as one
044of the lower achieving scores our scores in particular are a little higher across the state in the in our program but math in itself across the state was below for 21.22 so what are we going to do about it we are going to first make sure that I have classrooms that are full of appropriate materials so that the teachers have anything made so we'll be doing an inventory of our materials we're also going to be looking at professional development through our teaching strategies professional development subscription which is now called the Quorum we're also going to be working on math Focus articulation meetings and having some individual meetings with our teachers using our Fidelity Tool and then students will be getting weekly small group math lessons again I'm sorry our second golf is um we're recognizing
045that you know the district wants to reduce chronic absenteeism so in order for us to support that goal across the district the preschool plan is to be proactive and what we're looking at doing is trying to avoid some of that chronic absenteeism through developing positive relationships with the families supporting the family so that they understand how important school is and then also developing strong connections between the Family itself and school so what our plan is is we're using the information from attendance Works uh their webinar series they had three webinars throughout August September and October and that information will get TurnKey to the staff most of that information really points to how important it is to develop positive relationships so that when a student is absent for a couple first you notice that they're absent
046secondly you call their family and they're willing to talk about what happened did you miss the bus it's very mom sick do you not have somebody picked up at the end of the day what are all those little things that happen that contribute to the fact that a student is absent because it's not only just sickness or illness so we're also tracking our absentee data and reaching out to parents and Guardians we're also supporting the home and school transition so for example as you may recall we had home visits back in August we've also had a lot of bus transition visits where parents are saying that their children are having a hard time getting on the bus so one of our Specialists will go out to the bus stop talk to the parent help the
047child transition sometimes they ride the bus with the child and then we ultimately feed that support we're also super excited now that copen has passed us that we're getting back to all of our other supports that we've done for families our owls program our individual at night workshops such as next week when doing toy living we're also having coming back to doing our parent book club I mentioned the homelessness already and then we will also be doing and then ultimately we're looking for maintaining our frequent and effective communication between the parents the the staff myself and the our ecac activities and events Early Childhood advisory Council also helps support building that that deep connection between the families and the school resource there out at the community center and we're doing that so lots of good
048things happening foreign yes I'll start backwards for the students I'm Mr Jenny for the students that have Behavior action plans are those okay sorry um it's like my students in the classroom I know where you normally stand um do they normally have come under the umbrella of a 504 plan or is it completely separate it depends on the situation but there are some students that are already but what I was referring to is there are referrals from the classroom we can have our rbts quickly go into the classroom a couple of times for teachers teacher to interview thank you and then I have one question for Dr Flynn so do you see with absenteeism because I I think I I guess I'm a little more gaming when it comes to preschool but I um or
049question it do you see it more with um half days like do parents are living less likely do you see any trends where students are absent in more uncertain times than others or are you seeing that parents are more willing to take them out for a week to go on vacation is that the issue or things like that something like that I think ultimately families work weekends so a Tuesday family day where you know student might be because that's your own time so I think although we really try to express and express how important daily attendance attendances certainly understand that a family needs to you know so it's really a little bit of everything sometimes it's transportation sometimes like I said it's the end of the day that's a problem they can't get someone at
050the bus stop so it's easier to keep up on it today sometimes it's illness you know we all know that preschoolers share their jobs and sometimes the first experience that they're having with large groups of people is coming into our preschool program so that first year the first semester they do tend to pick up a few more of those illnesses although I would like to think custom so um second year please often letting those coats and stomach bugs so it really is a wide variety of reasons making sure that they feel connected to the teacher is somebody in the school so that they can talk to us about Fargo I just had two questions one for Mr Denning regarding the pilot the positive behavior program is that going to take the place of the PBI
051or is that no positive action is actually meant to be done during morning meetings so all the homerooms do morning meetings throughout the day it's usually a short lesson or already do so it's a it's a curriculum based program was looking into and we approached our fourth grade team and they were looking forward to piloting it I believe there's 20 20 primary lessons that we want them to implement throughout the course of the entire year so they can use it to supplement more unique that they've already did is that related to the SEL offenses yes thank you and then one for Dr McCauley the singularization aid that you mentioned I know we're spending a lot on counselors but how is that going toward math goals I know we couldn't afford an extra teacher with that
052it's a little over 300 000 for the stabilization we need an extra teacher for some reason that the lower class sizes but the stabilization is not all going towards math oh so none of it is it's just it's mainly the counselors right well no you're hiring an extra vehicle okay thank you um I I just have some questions so since the standard numbers changed and I we used to be one through four are we changing the number of Standards on our report cards so it hasn't changed when you saw the 1819 the last year that we tested it was the same as it is that you saw in front of you okay it was one through five so do we see though a mimic between the standards that our students are achieving on their report
053cards and that percentage and the percentage that we're seeing receiving those same scores on standardized State Testing has anyone looked at that so we've looked at the correlation between our report card scores so we have that in that respect and do we have any information on it or not that I could speak to right now we have done an analysis okay um because that's something I would like to know because that someone provides some value to the report cards if we're seeing the same percentage of students I see a three but it's not really a three because it's a four or achieving uh grade level on a report card and we're seeing that same um score on a report on the state test then there's value in it but if it's different but now I
054there's not much difference in getting a letter grade versus parents be spree and then my other question is are we going to follow the teachers that are piloting those programs the new programs to see how they do on state assessments this year yes anyone else have any other questions moving on to the report of the superintendent uh first and foremost I'd like to thank the curriculum writers I know our health and PE curriculum is on there again this month I just want to say thank you to Amy English is there I know I'm going to say it wrong belief uh Tracy Moyer Elise when she was here Tracy Williams Rachel Harper and Kelly pritch thank you for all your work on that we held our parent health and PE night on October 12th I know
055last month when the curriculum was voted down it was requested that we have an opt-in which we're not allowed to do so we enhanced our opt out form it's very clear it's itemized it was reviewed at the parent night it'll be sent out numerous times to families they have that opportunity before May and we held the health and PE parent night on October 12th at six o'clock in the evening at the request of the board and we had about 12 to 14 parents there teachers came to help in supports an Administration was there and it was an overview of the curriculum and then a q a session I am going to be holding sit with the soup October 19th it is virtual it's a zoom at one o'clock if you want to attend that for
056any reason just say hello talk about the district questions concerns just email me and I will send you the link as I stated earlier the math committee has been hard at work I just want to thank Dora and Liz for really helping me out a lot with that you know we've been contacting companies together run scheduling all of these meetings and also scheduling the vendors to come in and show us all of their materials so thanks for all your help with that strategic planning happens at Pinelands we had a great turnout But ultimately these students are going to be going there so if any of you want to attend that I'd love to have you there it's December excuse me the next one is November the 15th at five o'clock at Pinelands High School uh
057Happy Birthday Robert just wanted to let everyone know it was your birthday and um I guess the next thing I have is a couple things regarding the health and PE curriculum I've put in front of everyone tonight Mr Mueller who is our County Superintendent sent an email today basically saying that I'll just read it verbatim it's only one sentence Melissa please keep in mind that if you have you have a legal obligation that your District must adopt curriculum that complies with our standards so in terms of keeping some standards in there reducing standards he was very clear that the standards that are set forth by the state of New Jersey are the ones that have to be adopted and implemented into our curriculum um the other thing was I just had wanted to follow up
058I know Mrs erber who's on the curriculum committee sent in an email last night I didn't get it until this morning and read through it and I just have some concerns that I want to address with the board first it really wasn't like a factual email it was more an opinion based email and I just worried that it may be a violation of the open Public's meeting act and I know our attorneys here this evening if perhaps he could shed some light on that it just it's concerning to me that we're not supposed to be doing boards business in that facet and I think that that's really what it turned into so uh good evening everyone um yeah I did have a conversation with Dr Coley earlier today just to express some concerns obviously I
059don't want to try and silence any order and expressing your opinion on any matter especially what you told me about that said important for this occur on the old Republicans act in public where they can when there are matters that can be discussed in public and the general rule is absent and exception it should be discussed in public so after the exception regarding a child or a specific staff member even then the board should not be having those discussions online but rather in the executive session called at the time tell me what you're referring to first of all but what's my understanding that with the conversation with Dr McCoy that there was a communication expressing opinions and discussions that arose out of a discussion among board members that would be willing to be shared ahead
060of time my concern there is when you're just pushing out information let's say it's an agenda is going out to all the board members did you because I don't know what you're talking about I did have an opportunity to know a question it apparently was sent to all the board members correct so if they do not reply yes but uh so I just pushed out information so that's not out loud then obviously when I was going back to that and maybe I could answer your questions before yeah what I was going to say which was the problem that if it's just the push out of information regarding agenda or the or something along those lines and of course we find in service all importance I represent dozens of course throughout the state have done something
061dozens of years please make sure you just tell everyone do not reply at all here's the agenda do not reply have any questions go to the supermarket but when you're expressing here's something that's going to be coming up and here's my opinion or my thoughts on the subject that's a little different that's not information at that time that could be characterized as discussion and in that perspective the Supreme Court has said in a very unified voice particularly in the case known as McGovern versus Rutgers uh subscribe anyway um those discussions it's not just action of the board discussions of the board are supposed to occur in open unless they are one of those exceptions now I give you an idea whether the means Act is called the sun certain Act is the idea that Sunshine
062is the best disaffective that is things that occur in the life that are less likely to have any type of compromising effect later on whether that is a violation or not is for somebody else to decide but my concern would be when you start to express opinions and what if you're going to be bringing up you have perhaps fear of the idea of just pushing out information and actually continues in the discussion so you're operating attorney right do you tell me whether I've committed a violation or not because I pushed out information to them to at the courtesy to give them the courtesy of knowing what was going to happen tonight that's why I did that we don't have a work session as per protocol which we should as a board of a whole we
063do not have time to to collaborate and and do that in our executive which we should we should have more time and we're that's why we're moving to a board of committees so what is your charge here if you're our attorney why didn't you you say anything about this earlier well the email wasn't sent to me it wasn't sent to me until now and oh not now until earlier today and it prepared for me and I want to make sure that it was some bad information I want to make sure that my understanding was as up today as possible now I you know there was no discussion on that email there was no discussion I don't know that but more importantly the public doesn't know that that's the idea behind that the idea that is
064if you send something out telling people what you think where the the public has the right to have the confidence that they don't get calling that no one did have a discussion offline with regards to Nana That was supposed to be successful I'm not saying board members can't discuss things you can right you can and you do I'm sure you do everybody does right I mean it's just it is what it is I'm going to see each other you might have a telephone call of course most of the cell phone calls are supposed to go to the superintendent other than that code of ethics but that's a discussion for a different board meeting along the short of it though is that when something says this is what was discussed this is what I'm going to
065be discussing it does raise flags that at a minimum there is an appearance that that discussion was cut is it not normal protocol Mr donio to share committee minutes with the other board members um it is I can tell you that it is generally considered to be for those boards that operate the Committees it's minutes are not necessarily shared in the majority of the boards that I work with of reports are provided at the meeting such as a state he did this we did this we did this we did this so it would be like okay negotiations can be met we discussed matters of a confidential nature We are continuing to do our negotiations what happened other districts and specific bright I refer to an opinion I just pushed out information for the benefit of
066this board well again it was sufficient for Dr McCully to contact me to put Dr uh for you to look at it and you know that include all of me to express more concerns again this is my opinion you ask 10 attorneys you get 20 opinions so uh you know I'm not saying I do believe however having litigated open public health violations and having pathetic open public news ad violations and on a matter of you know very heightened concerned to uh preface the discussion with here are the discussion points I'm going to be discussing could be problematic it could be seen as having engaged in a conversation that the public was not recruiting it's all the time so to say that here is what we're going to be discussing is a violation okay again I've
067already answered that question I think three or four times it depends on how you say it depends on here's how we're going to be discussing and we feel the following and we believe this and we that is much different than here is what is going to be on YouTube I think those are two different things one second is there any reason that she can't read whatever it was that she said now so this way there's full disclosure to the public who would like to I don't have the internet I have a copy of what I'm proposing tonight yes well also the notes the curriculum committee notes I think that had most of the information there that was the committee's opinion that was the committee's notes you're by setting that out with your opinion on it
068the committee's opinions your having discussions and you're doing board business with not being at the board table this is committee notes committee notes are allowed to have opinions they're allowed to State what you discussed in the committee well I don't know why the surprise attack on me tonight so I I actually got this today because last night that she sent and I got this today that's why I sent it okay so they know what we've been going through we've been meeting from March to May to August to October here and then I recorded a couple of those meetings for your benefit for the sports benefit so most people it just was recently where we weren't invited to those meetings so I do have a couple concerns with the um the motion that you want to
069put forth as well as the notes so I just want to clear some things up in one of the lines it says much public testimony in descent so we have had multiple parent meetings at the request of the board and at this point in time we have 14 students that have requested to opt out of those particular standards that's one percent of our student population so where is like where's much public testimony we haven't heard any of this I don't know what you're trying to say because people showed up at the meetings and there was no one in support of what the curriculum wants what you want to pass but they're all worth of descent of it and that's what that means much right all 14 of them that came but there are also almost
0701700 students in this District so if you times that by two and that's I mean the parents had to come out to the meeting if they don't agree with it so you're saying the minority that came out is not valid they are but they can opt out so that's my point they could they have the opportunity to opt out of it well I'm not gonna I'm gonna just since we're on the discussion at the moment anyway I years ago and I'm old it used to be there was a video you had to sign the paper in order for your child to watch the video but you had to sign it if you didn't sign it your kid was not allowed to watch it I really just don't understand and I have been asking and and
071that has been my request and he's some type of formal document about not seeing it listed on any of these agendas and I have been requesting since May we understand you're requesting that and we've given the same answer that we can't have an opt-in we can have an opt out of those standards and that opt out was still not included in with he opt out letter that was presented at both parent meetings is going home to families it's not part of the curriculum it's a separate letter that lists those standards that is the statute by the state of New Jersey you have to have it opt out we extended that to list each one of the standards that are taught in May parents can sign it they check off yes I've read this these are
072the ones I want to opt out of they send it back it's just as simple as sending in a form that says I can watch the video or I can't okay with for the benefit of you at Dr McAuley and the public I'll read our last minute's notes the parent meeting two of us came handed that meeting two members of the curriculum committee attended this meeting and we did not hear one parent in favor of the new curriculum and related standards specifically we heard the following comments and questions did not want sexual reproduction discussed and caded too parents question why this material is being taught at these young ages parents stayed as they were against teaching about transgenderism and sexual orientation parents did not want parenting and pregnancy taught grades three through five parents asked
073about the opt out policy and what students would be taught and placed the new curriculum there was not one parent that spoke in favor of the new material being presented this evening respectfully Laura Herbert chair do you want to read the rest of the notes starting on October 9th absolutely so and I respectfully disagree with some of those points like we had some of our teachers there as well that the parents questioned it but they weren't saying they were against it they were questioning why was this lowered in grade levels why was this time since raining now in fifth grade but no one there was saying they were opposite they were opposed to it okay I'll read the curriculum committee notes from October 9th four o'clock Pam Laura Howard Berry meeting to discuss the extreme
074vulgar and inappropriate material and the new proposed curriculum and for help in PE 22-23 school year um the committee the problematic standards were reviewed genital names and pictures in K2 masturbation intercourse human reproduction range of ways pregnancy can occur differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity demonstrate ways to promote dignity and respect for all people including of all genders excuse me this is what we wrote the committee is committed to children from the agent appropriate and medically inaccurate subject matter we intend no offense to the lgbtq community however we feel that the proposed new curriculum is not based in science and should not be taught until such a time as it is children should not be able to decide what gender they are and change their name this is not legal and School Employees and
075administration will be liable for these fictitious documents at the point in which parents ask for school records by accepting this curriculum content that speaks to changing one's gender as a minor child it is the equivalent of blatant irresponsible and illegal behavior on the part of the professional community and schools and no other institution with this practice be acceptable so we just and we named other standards differentiate between gender identity gender expression and sexual orientation develop a plan for the school to promote dignity and respect for people of all genders um dot dot dot this is not medically accurate information to find vaginal oral and anal sex and committee agrees that this material is Extreme and not age-appropriate for curriculum in grades 82 3-5 and 6 through 8 grade bands the committee would like to hear
076from parents on October 12th this is before that meeting and presentation and we'll decide afterwards whether to present a resolution to the board for a vote and I would like to do that tonight I would like to make a motion to table the curriculum for tonight until such a time and then I'll bring the resolution up for a vote tonight too I think we have the votes to do that so chin on the top part of that first three standards genitals names and pictures in K2 masturbation intercourse human reproduction could you tell me where in the curriculum that's found as you notice in new resolution I took that out because you removed masturbation it was in the um at first when we went to the curriculum committee a meeting if we have to discuss all
077this I was told it wouldn't be removed it would just be in parentheses and we would not do it so that's why we left we had that in there initially um the general names the other night you said that you were just going to call them genitals and no pictures okay that's why that's not named in the resolution and the Intercourse is in fact in in the curriculum you talk to the teacher the other right and what they explained to you with intercourse it's all based they're explaining it through plants and reproduction I mean I feel bad for these teachers because they said they basically would refer to talking to the parents at home but they're favor from removing uncomfortable and sensitive material that should not be discussed with people with children in cages well
078I disagree we had some of the teachers actually at that meeting and they were very articulate explained they've been teaching this material for over 20 years okay I'd like to hear from the board members so okay and we're finishing this discussion first so certain things that the curriculum committee the parents the board we're not comfortable with were all removed so as you just listed certain things so with everything so what wasn't removed well I can write I can read the resolution uh we're at the little egg toward the Arbor Board of Education intends not to adopt certain curriculum set forth by the New Jersey student learning standards covered under the Comprehensive Health and phys Ed 2020 which can be found here it's linked right there whereas should we allow the proposed state curriculum to move
079forward the impact it would have in classrooms would allow the school district to demonstrate and discuss topics inclusive of sexual activity such as oral sex anal sex and topics such as sexual orientation and gender identity with children at various ages age grade levels whereas the curriculum set forth is Extreme and agent appropriate and was adopted by the State Board of Education and whereas the Little Egg Harbor Board of Ed strives to protect all children from age and appropriate material and information that is not evident space or rooted in science whereas the commissioner of education has encouraged all local education agencies to prioritize the values of their own School community and recognize the importance of a parent's voice in their child's education and whereas the look like Board of Ed has heard much public testimony in
080dissent of the state recommended curriculum and has recorded many parental concerns and noted much apprehension about the aforementioned topics therefore be resolved if the little Lake Harbor board of education is responsive to this public testimony and shall not adopt the curriculum to set forth concerning the above pension topics and may I say other words are doing this as well so that that first paragraph where it says I'm sorry the second one down the whereas and then list of sexual activity and so forth where is that listed in our curriculum the sexual activity speaks to the standard itself first grades six through eight and by having a resolution we will make sure that it's never added into the music that's what resolutions are for they're permanent so I have to say that none of this is
081in our curriculum and just maybe to verify with Mr donio if a board were to pass such resolution which would I understand another attorney in your firm recommended against doing this but if abort did approve this and the word changed put the new board um go back and teach the standards that are required by the state of New Jersey so I think the first question was I think yeah I read that email so I think the question was who was the attorney who's aelco from my office who I responded but getting into this uh he didn't respond negatively she didn't say I couldn't put the resolution she said that it was legal to do so no that's actually not what she said because I was talking on the email but that's okay unfortunately my internet's
082not working what she said is she could not recommend that you do so and she's what she said what she said also was as the attorneys for the Board of Education we believe that projecting the standards versus developing the curriculum which incorporates your community-based ideas with regards to content material and instructional materials and how it's taught which is within your Authority but rejecting the standards which the commissioner of Education despite perhaps what you went through the governor said uh Commissioner of Education to the commissioner's office has said it very clearly these are the sneakers it did so it was recent guidance after the governor spoke on this subject the rejecting those standards actually could subject the Board of Education to some type of negative consequence including but not limited to either a corrective action plan
083loss of points of Cusack putting you into a lower fear of Performing the school district for the withholders they need and in fact it is my boyfriend I I believe in life dozens of years of doing this in dozens of districts when the commissioner of Education says you are not following a provision of the law that I say eligible Vision you need to provide it's most likely going to be a what's going to happen is a referral to the office of fiscal accountability and compliance of fact they act as the what I would call the Inspector General arm of the commissioner of Education and they come in and they meet with the administration of the board and they say we have a report of x either you're doing X then you shouldn't or you're not
084going to be next and you should and can you please provide us with all the documents that can either support or refute that and then they make a recommendation and then that process is referred to the commissioner if there's a dispute to the office administrative wall what and and okay excuse me excuse me I have to interrupt you um and we have mentioned that the motion was legal to do and that it was accurately written she also mentioned that delineated some consequences that thus far no board has suffered so you don't need to go on and on okay scare tactic I'm sorry your attorney so yes and and as your attorney I have to I have to listen however you adopt whatever you adopt is a cricket is not my decision nor is it to
085go on with Ford action here well again I will I will complete the thoughts that I had which was it is a long-term process which could consume a number of not only financial resources can alter would result in the withholding of financial aid and can ultimately also lead to a extended of human resource staff including the staff who are affected by it so that being said well Amy said I think she actually said it was legal she says the resolution was written in a way most resolutions are written and let's just so we're clear any policy any resolution report of education is only permanent during the life of that Board of Education things about constantly on the floor have policies that exist now that did exist last year and you have policies next year that
086held exist now it's just the nature of important afforded education exists from a reorganization reorganization summing up what is I think the intent was annoying and I know that we had talked about this was well we're not saying you can't we're not saying we're saying you should not or at the middle you should not adopt a resolution which is specifically rejecting the standards but rather reflects the community's idea of how those standards would be hit tonight so can I ask you then what's happening to schools that are doing opt-ins and schools that like Stafford that are doing it as a take home so I believe I believe that given um the political fortunes it will be very much a conversation at the at the Department of Education post November what I mean by that is
087I don't think anything's happening now but our state's not changing our governor is not changing our commissioner is not changing and it will very much depend on how much they wish to take action this regard I found a very telling if somebody does this like I said that when the governor said oh hold on you know I'm gonna I'm gonna tell the part of execution go back and clarify and then the Board of Education I mean part of this Keisha's clarification was there's no need to clarify this is what we're saying the standards are how you implement it what instructional materials you use that's up to you but as far as what the standards are they've already been common they already went to a period of comment they were adopted and they will be there
088until they're re-looked at in the cycle of letters that are looked at that could change I don't have a magic at all uh you know crystal ball we should add that the commissioner already also said that she would not choose some of these lessons for her own children foreign s have to return that back with either yes my child May participate or so if it was written that way that would be an opt-in opt out we did ask the county this to you know forget verification from them and they would consider that an opt-in or an opt-out but we are going to ensure that all of the permissions likes come back so or the Ops outs if they don't we could follow up with the homeroom teacher can follow up to make sure it comes
089back and or The Gazette teacher and or an administrator but we made this very clear to parents the first sign basically says that they're aware of the new personal health lessons and that alone we want to make sure that they're aware of it so we just didn't know if that was not both on it right we were talking you could not do that and going up in school and it goes back to the parents hands and they make the decision if they want to have you not or that is an option is that a possibility so as I think Mr Dona was saying we are required to teach the standards those standards are being taught by certified teachers nowhere did the state of New Jersey say you could off you can send this home as
090a takeoff assignment so we are required to teach those standards in our Curriculum by certified teachers I just don't understand why when I had asked previously so that when parents sign on the on course they could check a box before they end trust me this is the one thing that parents would be very interested in their kids schedule who had what teacher they have they would have had to look at it on some form and whether they chose to read it like you Apple things before you striving something okay check the box that know they were they were opting out or they agreed to it by doing so before they got it and this way we would definitely ensure without a shadow of a doubt that every parent was aware and that is my major
091major concern is that these someone's going to get slicks under the rug and that's my concern that's my only my makeup so before Elisa left she told you that she was she already contacted on course to see if they could do something like that so when parents log in a pop-up will come up and it'll just basically say I am aware of the new personal health lessons for which my child will receive instruction in this school year and then it can direct them to if they want to fill the form out to opt out of it so she has contacted them and we're waiting to hear back if they're able to do that in our software but unfortunately at this point sadly I'm going to say there's a good percentage of parents that do not
092look at report perks online well if they're that concerned about the standards then they should be looking for the form to fill out so we're going to email it out as a PDF as an attachment and we're going to do that through Blackboard just like we sent all of our notifications we're going to do that multiple times so prior to May which literally these lessons will be taught over two weeks so prior to May we're going to ensure that all students have received this numerous times and that we can even send it out with report cards at the second trimester so they get the report cards go get this as a backup so it'll be sent out numerous times to ensure that all families had an opportunity to fill it out put it close to
093you pull it if I heard it correctly I'm not sure if we do not participate in the curriculum that we could potentially not receive funds not not individuals but what I was trying to advise the Board of Education was there is communication from an art of Education it's a good point out it has not occurred yet we don't know whether it will occur but it has communication has been that it is going to occur school districts are specifically reject the new standards that's a curriculum yeah curriculum is yours how you deliver it the instructional materials you use the resources you use that's yours these are the standards of the State Board you say we're not going to follow these that they are going to take action against those Boards of education and that could result
094in my belief is initially would be just do this we're telling you because we know how much of a hot button is but for those who are absolutely concentrate and refused I would not be surprised if part of Education to use the enforcement mechanism of the office of fiscal accountability for points so then essentially they are making is not yeah and and it's it's along the lines of a lot of other things that's part of education does it and again don't think this is an endorsement or or what have you I'm just saying when standards are adopted the boards of Education said you refuse to talk to the standards or infinite them I should say no matter how we choose to implement them I do have concerns of course elections as far as what they're
095going to set down as ramifications my years of experience I'm sorry to keep saying that well here's the experiences has taught me very few things happen before election day yes but for the fact that this suit was supposed to have been adopted by the end of September that's the problem the infraction to the extent occurred and the penalty that could be enforced because it starts to snowball that's again that's what the port does is up to the board I'm just saying as you as the lawyer who says you know for you know almost like a physician first Do no harm okay lawyers don't generally recommend taking very aggressive steps especially when it comes against the state of New Jersey so I have learned that so there's there's you can't beat the state I think I
096would like to see something with encourse or something first before I I just I other districts have done it I I it's a possibility out there I just want something where parents are aware and that it's in writing somewhere that that is what has to be followed before this is taught and then I would like to also know what our students going to be taught who are opting out I remember apartment when they first started and people didn't want the perfect things sometimes the kids were major leader for things like what what are they going to be taught if they're not going to be taught the standards so those are the things that I would like and what we like to to vote on whether or not to table this until the next meeting I
097would like to make a motion to table it but I also would like to make a motion to accept the resolution the table it's the only thing is they just lay on the table foreign that was the whole purpose of letting the information out so we could put it on the objective okay all right anything else does anyone need a break I'm freezing also okay uh moving on to Residence Forum agenda items only the Board of Education recognizes the value of public comments on educational issues it's not on our yeah can I ask a question no uh I just want to make sure he's writing his name down yeah can I just finish my thing the board requests that um the public respect three-minute timeline when commenting on agenda items decided into policy zero one
098six seven several public comment will occur later in the meeting can you state your name and your address marks and 35 over crash five I'm speaking as a taxpayer and lifelong president of the Line Carbon not as the teacher I am seeking to uh 18f on the policies and procedures to help curriculum I attended the health curriculum presentation last week and just wanted to take a moment to thank Dr makuli the curricular department and especially the health and physical education department or all of their hard work compared to curriculum only a few families were president and I feel most of their concerns were addressed for the updates made since the August meeting I urge the board to remember that a vocal minority does not seek the numbers are you may feel like since you have
099only heard the opposing opinions on this on this that people are not in sport however these meetings worker able to express their concerns and get answers it could then be surmised that the majority of it is not present are not concerned you may say that you have heard negative opinions outside of these meetings but I would challenge you to think how you place yourself amongst people with other perspectives I could say I only have heard positive things if I only spoke to like-minded people like myself however I made it a point to seek out each time you're able to find common ground and see each other's views and then walk away that no matter what all Guardians still have a voice through the auction however if you vote this curriculum down or change it in
100any further way you are silencing those paintings and Guardians that agree with these state standard band-aided standards that are taking away verbals your rights do not overpower everyone else's I implore you to please think of what is best for our entire community and our district not just your personal beliefs and the small vocal minority [Music] so I'm here and I come to our community and my concern is that the seat does give us standards that we have to follow but we can deliver it in a way that our teachers feel comfortable they sit and spend all these hours writing the curriculum I feel like it's very um disrespectful to our teachers that you don't have enough confidence in them that they are going to deliver the standards in a way that is appropriate for our
101children to learn and to I do I you work on the inside I know how many hours I've put into this and it's so disheartened to witness all these hours that are put into something and then if you voted down when it's Escape mandated it's not optional we can't just decide what we want to teach our kids could you imagine if there was No statement needs and you just decided you wanted to teach whatever you wanted like that would be a majorly crazy world so there has to be some kind of guideline some sort of State mandate okay sometimes things are a little bit extreme but we have amazing teachers here in Little Egg Harbor that's been amazing amount of time and energy operating curriculum that is going to be taught to our children at
102the program and you have to have the confidence in our staff that they are going to do that they have to look at these kids every day they're not going to be inappropriate they're not you have to have confidence in your staff in your admin in your team and I sit here at every meeting and I don't feel that there is a team here I feel that there is a huge line and I'm so disheartened I've lived here forever it's a little like Harvard I work here there are so many of us that are just here forever and I hate to see my nephew or my you know my family just to be torn in the middle of Chaos yes there's this there's skate Landings do I agree with what you said Miss Herber with
103all of the harsh orders that I feel like you like you made it seem inappropriate but I don't feel that that's the way that our teachers are going to teach that you have to have confidence in them they are amazing and I wish you would see that I've just been taking a minute to make a statement I had most of the time to ask about what Miss Herbert did but I would have liked to have seen a sample one of those questionable lessons and I think those are the things for me that would put me at ease also but again I am I was looking for an opt-in opt out but I have seen other districts do and that it would be a game changer for me I just want I think it's very easy
104for a parent to miss it for you know forget something get busy with life I I I just that is my concern and that's that is my issue with it um you know I I am that's about all I have to say about it the sample lessons were shown at the curriculum committee meeting Mrs ever was there and the up in is not available as for the state and as we stated when a teacher when a parent logs into their child's report card online we can have the Four pocket you said that but we haven't I've been asking since May and and that's how long it's been taken for Elisa to contact the company and get an answer from them so we haven't been spent with that I was terrible okay sorry I guess I
105mean I have been asking so I if you if you've heard every meeting every meeting I might spend my same request I just don't want to take up the Public's time but if we're going to do a back and forth here with all due respect to the testimony thus far this isn't about teachers and may I say that we did remove a teacher for inappropriate uh this past year uh inappropriateness in the classroom but it's not about teachers it's not about other opinions it's about protecting children from inappropriate material okay what the attorney went over earlier is exactly 100 percent we're doing this for 25 years I've had friends who were the county superintendent is the lows of the financing I'm not famous but I also understand that there's an Administration here who takes care
106and there's a base is ready just talking is good about what's good what's bad but I want to make sure that everyone understands that if you are not in compliance with the state of New Jersey and I've been through the process I just want to make sure everyone [Music] please be sure to sign it good evening my name is Joe Becker foreign Capital limit on what was actually presented to you correct you don't want to see exclusive materials that proposed to our children in that regard I have two children in our family school system I have three of my four children or teachers for teachers I don't know the heart of the rest of you but apparently you're bonded I don't know where you come from but apparently you've got a strong opinion I also
107could draw an exception because a last-minute one said if he has ten attorneys within 20 opinions help me to hold you out of content but the fact is an appropriate stand in the price of this war I will make my extreme uh disagree with the discussion that's going on I believe that the material is a program but that's something my opinion also a question some of the tactics we take at the last hour um first off I'd like to say that everyone teachers and parents do have to understand that this is a problem and when I hear teachers making comments rather they want to leave when parents have problems I have a problem with that and it makes me want to dig deeper into the curriculum that you have I don't have a problem with
108certain things being taught and things tolerance in the world and everyone should be held I have a problem with the things I feel you are hiding in the curriculum I watched I've read I did everything you told me to do and again I have a problem with the videos that you don't have I have a problem with the things that you put in one sentence there that is not going to be discussed I have a problem with the things that I fear you're hiding from the parents school is the only place that a parent is not allowed to go to see what their children are doing and I understand for safety two reasons but you're saying that you have a curriculum but we don't have access to the curriculum you're saying that you have an
109idea for parent for kids that opt out for parents want to opt out for their kids but you don't know what that is you're telling me that company we're supposed to have this approved by September but yet it's not approved and we have so many to opt out they're saying that the money will be depleted if we don't do this but what if all the parents opt out is the money still gone or are you trying to force us often yes okay um can I just address things so in terms of the curriculum as we I'm sorry as we discussed at the parent evening it is all online as soon as it's approved it's going to be online you can see everything we're not hiding it we're not adding videos after the fact we're not
110adding resources after the fact you have to understand this is literally we're talking about two hours of instruction so in May as our gym teacher explained that evening it's it's taught over two weeks so health class is about 48 minutes a period so that's two periods we're talking two hours so those students that opt out depending on how many it is right now it's 14 we will just find an alternate activity for them we're talking about less than two hours so um everything will be available online you can see all the resources they are not adding videos they are not adding resources everything's there and I'll turn it over to Mr donating for the second piece yeah and not to be clear I want to thank the previous speaker for call me wise that doesn't
111happen at most important education means so um what I was trying to articulate was with the Board of Education failed to enact something that the department that's something I think the Department of Education says you're not supposed to there are consequences for that board were a majority if not all the students to follow the parents right of the conscious act and opt out of her curriculum provided before it did not compromise by having an up in person stopped out because just follow the process I believe there would be looking supposed to to be an articulation of the community of parents said with this we don't want this and that fright has been embedded in the parasite conscious act uh in titanium today which is the New Jersey law regarding education for a year pretty much
112for since it actually applies to family life and health and it applies to all aspects of Health it actually it's just not the health where we talked about social and emotional or [Music] I don't want to learn that that option has existed for years and it does not actually have the same effect as the Board of Education Mr donio um Miss Roth has asked me to read something under her behalf is that okay it is not just an item cheating you know there's something she's a comfortable readings no it's related to the to an agenda item so I do have a question it's just you know with regards to that I believe it's the same thing that you emailed to the entire board but Laura was fooled it for what she emailed to the entire
113board how is that different I just want some clarification because it's fine if they're both wrong but one can't be wrong and one can't be right so I can let Mr jonio read it and then we can pause on this but I believe that this was a response to how the board finds that's okay for her to send that no I mean perhaps it's not Mr Johnny if you read it and you can see it first but we'll hold off on that good evening Gina Frasco 63 Vincent Court and I'm also speaking on number 18 policies and procedures F the health and PE curriculum this item was voted down on September 20th and is now being tabled I'm assuming um I don't know what the vote's going to be so I am going to assume
114that you're either voting it down or tabling it tonight I do know that the teachers and administrators who are part of the committee to work on this particular health and PE curriculum did so with great care and sensitivity taking in all of the concerns of the families and the community Curriculum maps were developed which gave families a transparent guide and clear order to know exactly when specific standards are being taught so families can opt their child out of these lessons if they so choose the committee also explored the act of consent provision to make sure each family is aware of their option to opt out these extra measures ensure that parents had many opportunities to have their concerns addressed and families can still opt out of parts of the curriculum and specific lessons Mrs erber
115you mentioned that certain standards contradict science several times so when you do get to this motion on the agenda I'd like to hear the science that you continue to speak about because we are all anxiously awaiting your insights on how this science contradicts the standards and as a member of the medical community science is not your opinion as a taxpayer I am concerned that this if this board does not support this curricular motion tonight again there will be Financial penalties for not following these State mandates and a good chance look like will be penalized through the Cusack process and not be deemed a high performing School this year if this occurs the board will only be able to blame themselves not the staff not the administration this board will need to wear this so Dr
116Snyder with your leadership I am hoping that you make sure that this gets approved tonight because we understand the ramification that's been very clear of how this is going to impact this District financially and with our high standings thank you um I'm just curious as to how you're aware of The Curriculum maps and the details I went to the meetings I went to the meetings I went to Curriculum maps where I had the meeting yeah and the Nebraska you sign into me okay thank you my name is Samantha Moore 45 Southgate Drive apology number 18 at hello my name is Samantha Moore and what you are saying about the healthier curriculum is incorrect and not true as someone who is in the LGBT plus community it is purple you're being not inclusive for everyone inclusion
117is something special that everyone has to do and this country was raised on being ableist and as someone who is Big disabled and has been through this District where they haven't done so this is what what you're doing to turn down this health curriculum is hurting others please be inclusive and read my shirt it's so obligated to be inclusive and be kind to everyone thank you I just want to verify that I can speak to a potential um agenda items that I've already brought up this time or 28 to the end I want I'm I want to speak in regards to the resolutions that is potentially going to be on this agenda to be voted out well she already discussed it so she can speak I'm terrible businesses feel free thank you my address is
118here so while she's signing and I also want to say to the board what we could do for the if the opt-in is a into the opt out is a major concern we can not only have it available in off course we will mail one home to everyone's house so everyone has one for myself I want it somewhere written that it it must be filed followed and that's just just that what what must be followed that from here's fourth in that in order to teach this curriculum there must be a form that is given to parents returned from parents sadly someone's in charge of tracking it unless we're doing it on encores um something like that so legally we're required to have an opt-out form we do and if the question is do all parents
119have it and have access to what we know about it we'll send it in multiple formats Blackboard Messenger on course it'll pop up and we'll literally send one to everyone's house you have to I would think you would have to I but before I had been asking I've literally been asking for this since May and we're not teaching until next night so there was been plenty to get this together excuse me I I appreciate that you feel that there's plenty of time but there's also plenty of time for it to be forgotten about or something to happen and then it's not in place I've heard multiple things we can't have an opt out we can't have an opt-in we can't do a take home and then other places are doing it so it does present
120some questions I am not saying not to be inclusive I had when uh Mr baranata was here was it 2020 what was that revision on curriculum 2020 2021 specific um I read through all of that because I wanted it to be inclusive of everyone those with disabilities those are disabilities that might not be visible women women are a minority inclusive of every single group so that's not the issue here the issue is here is I want parents to make sure that they're aware that is the issue that is part of the you should know because in listening to this resolution that you were potentially going to be voting death on like that's why I have a question I believe I heard Ms erber mention that uh in her resolution about not supporting and excluding um
121during the student learning standard 2.1.8 SSH dot two develop a plan for the school to promote dignity and respect for people of all genders gender identity or expression and sexual orientations in the school Community my breath that wasn't part of your that's not in the resolution though it's not 2.18 ssh2s and the resolution is exactly I thought so from the resolution a different um something that hasn't been mentioned yet yeah there's not a there's a revised copy here so someone gave yeah the resolution went out from someone so Dr Coley did you provide people with a resolution so yes the resolution was shared with the Advent team that was distributed to the the other employees in the district who qualifies as admin exactly just to be clear I think Mr Dania needs to answer it
122was shared with the people that were the Agnes team that worked on this curriculum and yes they needed to have a heads up because they have been working on this curriculum well I I don't know exactly what occurred and I don't like her but I will address that I'm going to give you the lawyer's answer pets right in the past oftentimes the Board of Education will appropriately communicate to the superintendent a question without maybe something that's going to come up on the agenda something that they've heard about in the community and what have you and then it would be incumbent upon the superintendent to reach out to maybe the building level principle or a guides counselor or something along those lines so that they can be prepared to fully adequately I can't stand on a
123hard and fast move what is appropriate to share with your Administration was not appropriate to share the administration well these the most important thing is for a report an education to reach out to Administration to ask questions before a board of education but I don't know what happened here so I can't tell you exactly what happened I just want to interject with one more thing and I'm sorry um I know that you most recently gave a presentation with New Jersey school boards regarding trust and I will say that this is not the way to gain Trust of your board members I believe and I don't know what Laura's intent was but I think she was trying to be forthcoming expressed to you and let you know where she was coming from and then for you
124to share with people without her knowledge in my opinion that was not appropriate everybody beyond that because of the comments that had been made because that standard has been brought up several times as the anti-bullying coordinator I'm concerned about that because if we are not promoting dignity respect for all people and we are purposely not including others by excluding them from our curriculum or from speaking of I have concern of that for that in regards to a possible violations and possible complaints issued with the division of civil rights with through the New Jersey attorney general's office because race color national bird and religion gender gender identity and expression and sexual orientation are protected classes in the state of New Jersey and if we are excluding them from our curriculum I have concerns about that you
125know I am here to advocate for all of our students I respect all of your opinions I have political opinions I have religious opinions and beliefs I respect everybody's here but as a public school employee I need to advocate for all of our students so when I hear conversations by our Board of Education about excluding certain others and not including all that becomes a concern for me because part of my role is to facilitate the school safety and climate teams where we look at our hip data and our investigation and we need to address those so you know if we are at school and not including acceptance for all that could potentially be to be a I don't want to see legal ramifications or excluding groups of students in our district and that's all my
126concern is and quite honestly and I'm speaking as an administrator who I feel like I know our staff I know our students and I can tell you that staff have come up to me feeling that they are starting to believe that this is now becoming a hostile work environment that they are not feeling accepted and welcomed and that may or may not be your intention but I am going to tell you that that is the feeling that we are hearing from a lot of Staff members so I I just want you to be cognizant of that because you have a very powerful role here and that is the impression that is going out and that is the field in our schools right now I can tell you that and I'm not lying I think anybody
127some of you know me for quite some time some of you don't um but I feel that people know me as a person of Integrity that I represent our staff and our students and I really hope that you really think about some of the options and things that you're saying because it is affecting the staff and it is ultimately known to be affecting the student if we don't pass a health curriculum that includes all anyone else hi any English health and physical education teacher here at the district I can't tell you when I tried this job um eight hours since I just want to clarify something because like I said we spent days on days on days trying to make this curriculum as conservative as he can he provided links to read aloud books because
128our old video used to be only in schools we'd have to close a parent night you'd have to pre-do it we selected videos that were on YouTube and accessible to everyone the good thing about this is there is an opt out if you're not comfortable with one of the lesson or week two of the lesson you can opt out we did week one with the puberty which everyone should know because we do have third grade we're creating their periods this second week is the more controversial stuff that we're all talking about tonight two separate things so the parents have the option after asking admin with what was concerned in the resolution she was is standard 2.18 ssh-9 in the curriculum because she couldn't find it because it was supposed to be omitted in this new
129resolution and I said no it is not that was defined vaginal oral enable sex that is not in our great form and that is why she had to come to us and say I can't find it in here I don't know why it's being mentioned anything that was questionable in the six through eight we pushed to Highlands to help our parents and if you notice it's second grade and fifth grade he was by the end of second grade can you push it to the very last moment we can teach it in many even we pushed it to the end of the school year the end of fifth grade and push it to the end of fifth grade in may just we we paid as much time as we could the 678 he pushed it off
13073. so those there was three that are in by the end of the eighth grade and that's why Dr conclusive I can't find this and if we're dealing what am I missing 2.18 SSH one two and nine are not in our curriculum they are not in our curriculum I wrote the curriculum I said hours raising the curriculum it is not fair anything that was by the end of grade 8 is at the end of grade eight not the second not third fourth fifth fourth sixth I just asked you there is the Ops out if you want if you don't want your child's you've just opt out it's two weeks but puberty and then the more controversial stuff which I can assure you are preparing me as conservative as we can with this and you can
131look from the resources that are on the curriculum division in when it gets approved will be on the website it was literally just until recently that we had the option for the opt out and I so I just want to clear that and secondly questions are just concerned that just recently literally the when did um Elisa said the opt-out form for the past month every year we always send something home to the parents of course we have been asking and that's what I'm just saying but the discussion is is concerned and I don't think that a discussion should be considered negatively it's asking questions and not guys are teachers knowledge is power and we're just trying to like it's not only that we're trying to make a decision for our child we're trying to make
132a decision for hundreds of children that are not ours it's understandable and we just want to make sure that they're protected and that every parent of their of and their children is are aware that's that's the community and I keep hearing the science base it's not science-based it's not science-based but genitals are scientists a penis and vagina are science-based but those are like taboo terms also you know we even went for the second grade just saying generals and not mean a penis or a vagina because but that is science-based just like this is an arm and this is a nose it's science-based for that particular standard yet we even just said we're going to talk about it as genitals anything under bathing suits agenda and you know we're we're trying you know but it's a
133two-way street uh years for parents to opt out I know you said that you can't opt in way that we can have a box that says we have reviewed uh so-and-so standards and then have knocked out not a pocket so that's what the form says so the form basically says zip top I've reviewed all the standards and then they check it and if they're okay with it they could just send it back if they want to opt out even they just check the boxes okay I just can't understand why um that everybody hands on the phone every student in hand in the form so and like I said we're going to through Blackboard with the email so you can just download it as a PDF fill it out send it back in you can email
134it back in we're going to send them home in a mailer and then when they log into their report cards we'll make sure that either the form comes up or it directs them to where the form could be found I have a good session too parent teacher conference that's a good way to get a whole bunch I don't know what the intended three is it's got to be a good that's a good way to you know have them come sign in course all the time I get that and are great yeah we can we'll mail one home to make sure it goes to the home we can send them home with the child too at school and send them multiple ways to make sure that he gets home can you give me can you say
135your name thank you so much anyone else has a history for you I use enlist I hear you keep saying use Uncle she's on course we use it for other forms as well if you log in right now and try to figure out which key I could publish a photo of there are about 125 Blanks on the mission don't use Encore social media if that means your reason for voting notes on your own push at just no it's not the deal I can assure you if you had been here since May I have asked for the seats I've said the same thing and my logic is in many school districts did it because parents always wanted to know who's did you and they would have done it and we would not be asking this question
136right now it would be better so just don't hold too hard onto one topic for yourself that's all I ask I don't need an answer I just wanted to share that thought thank you I appreciate it sir Department of support I own a home in New Orleans after area after Hurricane Katrina he survived hurricane Blues and destructed by a wounded the community protection system and the administration at that time holds in the city and the state did not take appropriate action to protect the community we all suffer the gospel my home was under nine feet of water because Administration did not take appropriate action they could have moved the people out of New Orleans up to July University and allowed them to stay inside the stadium consequences comes about failure community they went outside foreign
137Pond Elementary and Georgia Elementary where I began teaching in the Little Egg Harbor School District we have six ESL students in our program this year we have had continuous growth with the population of our English language Learners having new families register almost every week since the start of this school year and after the arrival of an additional new family last week we are projected to now have about 19 ESL students in our program it has been exciting to welcome these families from various countries such as Nicaragua Honduras and Ukraine many of our ESL students are experiencing schooling in the United States for the first time this year here with us in Little Egg Harbor our schools have embraced these new students with broadly learned and we have all truly come together to help provide the
138best educational experiences for all of them as they work hard through things the English language on top of adapting to a new culture and way of living after unfortunately many of them have arrived to us after going through dramatic experiences with the increase of our ESL population High alone and currently unable to provide the necessary services for these students as there is not enough time to my day to meet their individual needs at this time I would like to thank you for allowing your little life part of the school district to employ an additional full-time ESL teacher to help better service some of our most vulnerable students and also assist the staff with how they can incorporate ESL learning strategies into their classrooms to publicly students to be successful with their education while they are
139part of our district I know that myself and many others are greatly looking forward to the continued success and growth of our ESL program thank you anyone else before I move on moving on to board work session um a couple things I'll start with mine and then if anyone else has any updates one of our board goals was to develop board committees and Howard and Laura and I kind of went in by default since there was only two of them agreed to be on policy committee um Ted I did not forget that we have agreed to be on these buildings committee and I think I wrote coward into that one also slightly but um with that regard Laura and I have a plan to do a tour of the buildings October 28th I don't know
140if you can join us to discuss the potential the overcrowding question and the occupancy I believe that's your area of expertise so we're going to we would love to use your knowledge if you're available around 1 30 on a Friday okay all right sounds good we can take a third one Thirty um all right so uh first thing that I'd like to talk about is I did receive um Miss Frasca at the last Board of Ed meeting she had asked me some questions regarding homework and about math and math is something that I hold dear to my heart because I teach chemistry and Mathis science is something that I enjoy and I know that Miss Frasca is not necessarily a math and science person as she has stated before um but I still like to
141address some of those points in that first of all and some of the questions with regard to the number of the different types of demographics of our district and just I like to get too personal but I have five children and I would say I've always said I had it um I had one that went through the district that was in the LEAP program that was gifted and talented I had one that did BSI one that had an IEP one that was special ed one that was average I've been through Reading recovery I've kind of seen the spectrum of all the resources that our district has and they're wonderful um are there nights that I teach night classes my husband works shift work so I get that parents there are some nights at my 85
142year old mother is with my kids and trying to help with homework so I do understand the struggles with it but I think we have to look at the bigger picture here and looking at those um bath scores which I would have liked to have had that information in advance which I had requested but um I was told that I would receive it after the meeting um what do we want to do our our math scores are low they were not ideal prior to covid I know that the math committee was developed and their goal their first thing was to go to was a huge curriculum and I think that we go to change curriculum a lot um how many I remember Trail I go back as far as Trailblazers how many have we had
143since Trailblazers and into math was supposedly the next follow the curriculum of go math so that could be considered one or two heavy okay that's it on Amazon as many as I thought but with that said with the opposition with homework a new curriculum is a lot of work for a teacher and I respect that because the first time I ever teach a course it's twice as much work because you're restarting everything from the you know the beginning um and the only negative the same way that you all say to us the only negative feedback that you hear is from those 14 individuals that were there well the only negative feedback that I received from Dr McCully was from Administration I didn't hear any input from teachers stating that they were opposed to instituting math
144homework for math students the math coach even said yes to homework um so as for the groups which you had mentioned in some ways it can be considered offensive to say that economically challenged individuals are not capable of completing homework um homework is devised properly it should benefit everyone um I know that we had discussed a possibility of online homework I think it was actually Mr DeWitt who introduced to me many many years ago to Khan Academy Khan Academy is wonderful you don't have to grade it you can just apply the skills um and they do it but when we're thinking about this problem with math we keep trying to approach the problem in the same way just think about I don't really like to parallel park but imagine trying to curl on the parking
145car and you're trying to back it in and you keep trying to cut it in the same way are you ever gonna get in that spot we have to try a different approach I tell it to students last students don't like chemistry I don't understand why but I don't like it you have to approach it differently to get a different result you can't keep approaching it the same way and expect the same results um um so one of my things is what if we had increased time for math every day and I was happy to see that George Mitchell is doing that that's definitely a good positive um to have and also to use our standard Banks report cards that's another thing that's time consuming for teachers I can't imagine making sure that every question
146is linked to a standard I'm sure that Math teachers very much know what skills especially the elementary level that students need to know and so I think one of mraska's last question was did I find any research well yes I did find a Journal article article about the importance of math homework um what president okay sorry about that so according to Epstein students can increase their speed in Mastery objectives demonstrate masteries of skills retaining skills review work and study for tests in a 2010 study determined that teachers should assign adequately difficult tasks to improve students motivation effort and challenging but well-structured tasks to Foster student performance for educators to design high quality homework that is beneficial to students academic achievement while recognizing their potential concerns as well sure miss kraska feels I answered the question
147thoroughly homework should also be designed to match students zone of proximal development of where they can improve it can also with homework feedback increases increase the student motivation teachers should routinely review homework and provide critical feedback benefits of homework increased when homework is checked and corrected in the classroom so reviewing it the next day doing it so that's part of the math skills and if we're sending I think it was 16 was the number of sixth grade that was proficient that are going to be going into the middle school and that are going to be expected to do not work necessarily independently but I think what seventh grade is on to algebra one now and that's the level that they're going to be expected to complete um improving student parent relations in elementary schools could
148lead to a positive impact in future grades as students progress to Junior and high schools where parents tend to reduce their Guidance with student homework so if it starts if we start a habit younger it will grow with them so I do think that there are benefits to homework I'm not saying you have an hour of math homework I'm saying 10 to 15 minutes of homework to see that students can retain what they've learned improve their skills increase math period time in the classroom I think those are all beneficial things and I think to say that I think that our at-risk population and demographics those are the ones that I am concerned about those are the ones that I want to see get the most gains now so that they have them with them to
149take with them in the future and I think that's where we can gain the benefits and I think it's important to see the big picture of it all right so that was my thing on the homework policy um the shared service policy policy committee met and I do think that we have found some discrepancies with some of the um policies especially with regards to the ESL policy so I think we either need to make sure that ensure that that is um resolved with Tuckerton Elementary and also too to make sure who is in charge exactly of reviewing those policies make sure that the language is correct Ian talking about the share services in charge of reviewing those to make sure that they're created correctly so they would go through the business office and as I
150said um the ESL shared service was in place for years past but now that this month can't fit it into her schedule she hasn't been going there and we haven't charged them and when she was going there she was doing this before school started on her own time um without any of the other committees like to speak yeah I have a couple of draft policies here I'd like to look over and change a couple of the policies um foreign that that one's about second one is some word changes and field trips to uh make sure that we reduce our liability for you know nobody being at home for transporting children throwing a field trip and making sure that proper approvals are given are these draft policies yes this is just a draft yes to look
151over into disgusting he would want to go ahead I think they would have to go for a first read on the next agenda these um the field trip one looks like it will be a revision so that would only need one reading the other one would need two ratings because it's new social Gathering that would be a revisions by any other committees I want to point out though that the our board policy says that committees are supposed to consist of three members one of which is you know but then that would be four so right now the curriculum committee is Lara pan and Mr Barry it's supposed to be late podcast right now why did you never know yes I actually just noticed it honestly I just read it recently because all the conveys are
152started but you would just either either excuse me advise that policy so you don't have to be on the wall or you would keep it and then you'd have to be a member of anybody be looking forward to a draft revision on that one maybe on every single week you could have it where there's three members and then you are the fourth the fact that we have report right yeah you could replace someone if you needed to put you before I was having a Trouble game with for curriculum committee I think I've spoken to the concerns and without any needing any harm or disrespect to any one Community I do move to table to help a curricular for tonight I'd like to make a motion to table that oh second well yeah just for a
153Robin feels aboard his purposes you would normally move the table when it came before the board of education so when you got to that item it's about the four of the body that's what we would need to tell that section of that now that's that section okay okay so first of the second is nothing okay um one more thing that I would just like to discuss that was brought up at the last meeting was regard to the occupancy with regards to frog ponds and I just want to let the public know what the board's approach is to addressing this we did receive some updated or come and see data since 2000 2013 or 15. um as I tell my students I closed my eyes and I see tables I don't think everybody sees that but
154um so 2013 I think you're at 801 students in Frog Pond which was much higher than we are now so I think we first need to go in and look at the schools see what things look like and then see what the root of the change was and the increase I know that we took on students from Bass River I know we're having increased enrollments we're definitely having increased ESL students so I think there's a lot of different reasons so I think we're going to go around and see the buildings see what the use of classroom spaces for resource rooms the classroom usage in George Mitchell and along with looking at dismissal times and things like that so just to get a better understanding um before we move forward and hopefully Mr field can also
155help us with that as well to give an Insight from a building perspective and so that's because apparently we're not at what was the correct term we're not at uh that we're not yeah in violational fire code terms of popular ly correct correct okay so I just want to um because and also too the board was just made aware of it last meeting and um along with the public so that was our first knowledge of it and since then we have been emailing back and forth to find a time that you would be allowed to uh tour the building that they were granted um October 28th that's all I have uh Mr Green would you like to I'm guessing continue with the rest on that yes thank you Dr sire um just a quick update
156yesterday we finished the field work or the auditor Extinction field work with the annual Financial audit it was a smooth smooth audit the smoother than I've ever had they do come into the office and asked for an enormous amount of documents they poured through everything and they expressed to me that there was they had no concerns so they'll be writing a writing the final report and it'll be uh presented to the board I guess seated in December or January uh we have a transportation update last week it was brought to my attention that the Pinelands Regional School District will no longer be offering um transportation services to the Little Egg Harbor School District which is a little shocking but that's that's what came came across my desk so um so I met with the transportation
157director yesterday and we've been over some of the items that are going to be given up given to our district to be responsible for and some of the items that they're going to keep we went through the items and um basically uh I'll myself and another employee will be taking up taking up some of the uh tasks and um we're looking into possibly having a consultant come in and do some of the other heavy lifting so that it's not a full-time employee and it's not a burden financially for the district but all items are going to be addressed and we we certainly do have a good working relationship with everybody in Highlands especially the transportation department so we suspect that it's going to be a nice transition and we're going to be able to handle
158that here probably without any issue so does that mean Nick talarico yeah OPC so I don't know what we're going to oversee our own they're going to sit oversee just a few items but primarily it's going to be regarding I guess where's the line drawn the line is drawn where uh I could just name a few items um the routing is going to be done by our district the drtrs report which is a which is a state report uh that quantifies how much State able to received based on the number of students who transport that will be done here in our district day-to-day phone calls addressing any issues that come up on a daily basis will be handled here we're going to have to pick a transportation software we'll be transportation software that's going to
159have to as early day by the administration uh there's going to be evacuation drills they're going to have to take place I'll be handling that in conjunction with the principles of vehicle maintenance that's going to have to be coordinated [Music] oversight of the drivers it's also going to be in my department we do but they're still there's still an incredible amount of management that has to have to happen there's there's there's a few other things we know why this decision was well I mean because I think it's just too much for one Department to handle originally it was it was only violence the pilots was only handling violence and when they took out Little Egg Harbor it's literally like doubling the amount of work two separate for example the drdrs report one has to be
160done for pylons one has to be done for little leg so for one person to be doing that it's incredible how does that impact the budget is it uh not in a major way the the biggest expense is going to be the transportation software and a consultant to come in and do some of the heavy lifting such as the routing resulting grounds around also to perform the DRS report for us [Music] I think that's basically it those are going to be a major attacks questions regarding there okay just a reminder uh the board meeting for November has changed the date has changed it's going to be on November 15th public session will start at 6 30. the executive session will start at six o'clock and uh just as a reminder to the board that the
161previous week the administration office is closed so there's not going to be a lot of things on the agenda we're going to have to push the agenda out the last week of October because there's not going to be any staff in the office to address a lot of the items I just wanted to give the board an update on one so the date has been changed advertised November 15th at 6 30 in the public section any other board members all right moving on to finance recommend a motion to approve Finance items a through l so they have a motion are there any questions just a question on the bills list Mr Hand the new counselor that we've hired and for 450 so is that just for his presentation the other night he didn't charge for
162his presentation he's actually done some work in the districts already and he was on the vendor list he's on their benefits um I I was at that presentation I just wondered how much he's going to service the family says is for students or you seem to be more of a family counselor is that how's that Pages as her funds it's Esser funds he's going to do things from assisting with 504s to doing certain types of evaluations he can meet with families he has a long list of things you can provide he's here two full days a month but he can split that up into half days if you think it's 75 an hour can I just ask one question um we have a lot of students coming from Galloway is it usual for us to
163have them out of town so they're they're placed here by the division okay any other questions Mr Kell yes reserver yes Mrs yes Mr Barry yes Ms zelezna Ms Sandler yeah Dr Snyder yes motion candles um moving on the number 12 facilities recommend a motion to approve facilities items A and B can have a motion can I have a second second are there any questions Admiral call vote Mr Kell yes yes Mrs Roth Mr Berry yes ler Dr Snyder yes uh there are no new technology items at this time uh is there any new business at this time if not moving on to informational items sorry that's close to people here and that's what we were told in the executive so it's going to be under a new business unnamed person um foreign okay moving
164on okay moving on to informational items the following items are being presented for the informational purposes um Mr Cole facilities manager moving on to 16 recommended motion to approve personal items a through h can I have a motion can I have a second are there any questions oh I do have a question on uh Staffing number seven this SEL coordinator just what is that ACL coordinator do foreign [Music] I'm just going to make one statement for B1 um I'm not going to just it's nothing against the teacher nothing else but I received a lot of different information about the number of ESL students we actually have tonight I've heard 17 to 19 I've heard in the 20s and I've heard a lot of different things regarding um what the word compliance out of compliance I'm
165not going to not vote for it just because I don't want to risk children that need it but I do question whether or not I have been given all the correct information regarding it and that's all I'm going to say with that um are there any other questions if not can we have um a roll call vote Mr Kell yes Ms erber yes Mrs Roth yes Mr Barry yes Mr lesno yes is Simon yes Dr Snyder yes motion carries moving on to number 17 Hib recommend a motion to improve harassment intimidation and building items presented And discussing executive session can I have a lotion do we have a second are there any questions that have a little cold vote Mr Kell yes Ms Arbor yes Mrs Roth yes Mr Barry Ms Lesnar yes assembler Dr
166Snyder yes Dr Carris we got to number 18 policies and procedures recommended motion to approve policies and procedures items a through H can I have a motion a second person is attracted to say that yeah the second doesn't matter is when you make the first step saying I wish this body to approve this the second just means I wish this body to consider this item first stance on the half okay can I have a lotion can I have a second welcome all right are there any questions is where I would move to table item 18f the first and a second whether to take over 18f and yes would be able to lay it on the table which means it gets put to the side plus bonobo would say they'll keep them in motion is everyone
167clear on what we're doing it's been a long night so that's why I just want to make sure everyone lay it on the table right back so yes means it's we're not voting on it tonight I know means we want to include it so then I guess I'm asking for a whole photo for that on the table on the table okay Mr Kelly MS erber Mrs Roth Mr Barry yes Miss samler Dr Snyder is that scene an option uh staying I think is an option I understand so the vote is is three yeses three no's and one of them Upstate notes what I'm saying which means that it does not carry a tie vote uh he said it dies so don't you go back to the other one again so now you go back to
16818a through H include include yeah any uh unless there any questions including F excuse me we voted to table it okay foreign yes on all except for 18f this is Roth yeah Mr Berry yes this summer yeah Dr Snyder um Yes except for f I'm going to abstain just because I would like the wording to change to include it all right okay so that means that all resolutions pass except for f because I've got four five minutes oh you are I'm sorry Dr Snyder I thought I understood so it uh motion passes the outcome okay it moves on to 19 informational items the following items are being presented for informational purposes um enrollment attendance reports fire drill and help offices reports we've gone to number 20 public comment the floor is now open to members
169of the public the Board of Education recognizes the value of public comment on educational the board requests that each statement made by a participant is limited to three minutes as cited in policy number zero one six seven there is a sign-in sheet located on the podium please sign in before you speak Gina Fresca um first of all I never said I was not a math and science person I actually taught math and science so I don't know where you heard that um at the meeting that we arrived together um I'm hoping that you give me more than three minutes as I did for you when I was fourth president um haven't gaveled anyone tonight so I appreciate that and I'm sure everyone else appreciates that as well I just want to begin by saying this
170board meeting was very ineffective you should really start to think about how you can be an effective board because because this was a very very sad State of Affairs tonight and I'm sure many people agree with me before I begin I must start by saying that nobody tells me to come up here Dr McCully is not aware of what I'm going to say when I say it I am not a puppet I say what I feel and I make it very clear as to my feelings and also just my educational background and how this board is creating up people in this District I have been involved in this community for too long to sit down without addressing you and your continued effort to dismantle this amazing School District countless staff and community members have come
171to me and thanked me for speaking on their behalf because they are afraid to address this board you have carelessly put this year's budget into a deficit your decisions to break shared services will begin to impact teachers salaries and the funds that go toward programs and instruction to increase student if you are taking funds away from students and they're you know just a piggyback on the whole transportation thing you aren't paying Pinelands to for that service so you're not looking you're no longer getting that service this board has a total disregard for state standards and thinks it can make its own rules and laws you are a board member a board member doesn't have constituents you are here to represent the best interest of students not your Facebook hate groups your decisions don't even support
172your own goals your goal is social emotional learning and you talk at length about suicide prevention yet in the next breath you've publicly targeted a group by voting down a curriculum that attempts to protect this very type of bullying did you know that lgbtq youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers did you know that 45 of lgbtq Youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year and that's from the Trevor Project I am deeply concerned for my nieces the other students the staff the families and the taxpayers that will be impacted by your continued core decisions it looks like you want to go back to school to be an administrator because it looks like you're running this District you want to figure out how to use space in
173the classrooms and what where resource rooms go those are the principles decisions I don't even know why those conversations are being hacked and your research that you cited I know that you attempted to answer my questions about the math homework you didn't answer any of the questions and Epstein 2010 I'm looking at John Hattie's research that cites that there is zero effect and using homework for Primary students excuse me I realize you do not want me to gavel you but I have always been polite to you and every night if you come up here you tag me personally and I'm not quite sure what the reason is for but my interest is the best of these students to help them out of course it doesn't show by your decisions and you are the leader of
174this board Dr Snyder and you did not stand up tonight for these students and I'm highly disappointed you are the Swing Vote and you could have made this place a better school and you chose not to and by the way my sister texted me during the meeting she's auditing out of math homework have a good night would anyone else like to speak um okay moving on to board Forum what anyone like to say anything yes I would like to make a motion anybody else wants to speak first to make a motion to pass the resolution to vote on the resolution tonight so we can protect children nothing against any community of people or teachers we worked hard as well on this and and did a lot of research and this is what we found this
175this uh material is inappropriate for children and we want to protect the children of this District election yes I'll second it discussion foreign yes Mrs Roth no Mr Barry yes Ms lesnock yes Ms Sandler Dr Snyder I'm not even sure I'm looking at the correct one so I'm going to have to say no before no's would anyone like any add anything else yes I would I'm highly disappointed in you Dr McCauley for sharing information that was shared with the board with the general Administration or public is inappropriate and I trusted you with that information and I just think so I'm actually going to respond to that so those were committee notes that you shared and as one of the phys Ed teachers said Miss trussellino who does HIV that directly affects not only them but
176our curriculum and you listed standards in there that I don't have expertise in that's what the teachers do and those are the people that built that curriculum over hours and hours and hours so of course I would consult with them and nowhere in any of your committee notes wasn't marked as confidential and at one point Elise and I were part of that committee so I did not think that that's something that would not be shared as Mr donio stated earlier it wasn't something like an agenda and agendas are shared with the public resolution was shared resolution which was Private can I ask how many people you'd shared it with so I shared it with Miss trezolino um the other directors and the uh Amy English the one on the PE committee and nowhere as I
177said was that marked as confidential nor did it seem confidential and I had to consult with the experts on that that work here and that built all of that curriculum unfortunately we haven't had a good poor as Dr McCauley reported on in the New Jersey school boards Association at the county that I went to she did not report on this board she reported only on pilots and what I learned from that going to that meeting was that other superintendents do advise their boards that do talk to their boards and work together with their boards at a work session and we were never offered that even as new board members this board never operated properly it still does not uproot properly because we don't discuss things as a whole fortunately we don't have that opportunity so
178that's why we form committees and now perhaps we will get more communication going so once again to clarify New Jersey school boards asked me directly to speak on behalf of Pinelands it wasn't like I reached out to them and said hey can I speak for you tonight and that's what I did and I was not even aware that you were going because you had to RSVP for the event and I wasn't aware you were going to be there if I knew you were going to be there I could have Incorporated some little like Harvard things as well our I RSVP today that there are trainings that are available through the school boards Association and you can learn a lot by going to those County meetings just as I learned from another superintendent the way to
179facilitate good board relations and legislative updates are there one of the legislative updates I learned is that the school-based use Services may be going away next year after year of the state plans to implement a whole bunch of different hubs it'll service more kids in their opinion 1.4 million school kids in New Jersey so that's going to be up for legislation now so it really does behoove us to go to those campus unfortunately we've been here for 10 months since we really haven't and offered a chance to work well with our Administration thank you anyone else may I read my email yes I sent this to the board after last month's meeting in which they voted down instructions at night to the board I am deeply troubled by your votes tonight and your inability to
180accept lgbtq instruction as an apparent of a member of that Community I am appalled that you refuse to acknowledge their place in a civil society you are doing a disservice to the students of leh who identify as such they need affirmation and acceptance from all branches of their school family Administration teachers peers not discriminatory practices that admonish them and force them to hide or suppress their true selves parents also need to be supportive of their lgbtq children if Parental support is lacking where else are these children going to be appreciated and accepted for who they are in their school if they're not accepted at school we will have a mental health crisis on our hands that far exceeds that which covet has presented prevented excuse me presented us by not acknowledging their identities they will
181feel invalidated and less of themselves also teaching acceptance of not only the lgbtq community but all people regardless of their differences is not going to indoctrinate them or make them suddenly switch identities the world as a whole needs more empathy if we start teaching empathy at a young age we will breed a generation of leaders not dividers continuing to deny these students will have consequences for the rest of their lives apologize to Ted and Lisa as you were absent last month letter that's higher board nothing against her letter whatsoever I appreciate your honesty and effective is that different that's giving her if that letter had been sent to me I wouldn't raise very similar concerns with regards to Communications particular position foreign uh just a couple things uh one I Dr McCully I do feel
182that you could have handled the resolution better and that you could have said to Laura and this is how communication can be better you could have said to Laura listen I I don't see where some of these are I'm going to reach out to some other people and that's how the situation could have been handled better and that's what I'm trying to say is that things can be handled better and there have been things that have not been handled with some of us as board members that I think that our perspective has to be taken into account and not just something like this shared um I I mean I would love to see how many people it was forwarded to via email uh just as you always want things in advance perhaps not getting it
183it is your job to give me things that I have requested it's you're choosing not to give me data that the school district has to to analyze before the meeting I am not quite sure what that is that asking in advance is allowing you to make an appropriate decision and answer a question or have a formulated questions this is a position where you should be a critical thinker and you should be asking questions I'm looking at that data and you have tables of all different things that demolition impossible for me to formulate a question and process it in the amount of time that that slide is up there I had asked for it in advance and you refused I'm not quite sure the reason to refuse it other than that to exhibit power over it
184I'm not quite sure really what the reason is um that's your choice that was your choice to not give me the data to look at it in advance I'm willing to take time out of my own life to look at it and try to help students of little like I'm concerned about the math scores I'm interested in it you know I I don't take notes and I don't put other people down for trying to find a solution to our math course problems that's what I'm trying to do and so to have someone put down I mean we're trying the same way that everyone wants to be accepted this is how we're acting as adults putting someone else down for trying to do me research and then you're not liking their research or not we're trying
185we should be trying a different way if we've tried the same way and it's not working then we have to try something different and I'm just making suggestions so I'm thinking and we this is the behavior we want to show our children that okay it's okay to get out publicly and speak and demonish people um at a board meeting someone who's serving giving up their time tying with their family time to do many other things and to serve that that's that's what we're saying is acceptable um just a couple other things um one thing I forgot to do last Board of Ed meeting that I felt really terrible about I wanted to thank um and on a positive note Linda Devoe I know had done a big fundraiser with um offering haircuts for kids for
186back to school backpacks and things like that um and I think that that was very wonderful I also know that I believe Retro Fitness also did something where they hadn't been for school supplies if I forgot anyone I'm really very sorry um speak from personal school supplies definitely went up this year so that was a very big help to a lot of families and especially haircuts if you have more than one shot um also to the New Jersey school boards Association conference is coming up next week that we are all registered for that conference if you can find any time in your schedule to attend it's Monday Tuesday and Wednesday I believe um I'm going to try and attend um I have for free schedule apps in the afternoon on Monday so I'm going to
187try to attend some conferences on Monday if you attend anything please give us your feedback on it and what you learned because you could all use that information does anyone have anything else if not uh thank everyone for all of their presentations tonight I know this is very late hour also I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween and I look forward to I'm sure I'll open parties and some fun our next meeting is Tuesday November 15th can have a motion to attend you can have a second second all in favor any opposed