Mahwah Board of Education Meeting June 15 2022

001started in just a few moments if everyone please find a seat have additional seats uh i'm going to turn the mic over to our president thank you very much and thank you to monopoly meadows for allowing us to host this evening here it's a nice different little change for us all right this meeting of the mama board of education is open to members of the public to be physically present members of the public that attend will be asked to follow the same procedures as all other visitors to our schools those procedures can be found on the agenda page of our website additionally the board meeting will be live streamed for viewing purposes only anyone wishing to view the meeting may do so by assuming the webinar id is [Music] five 898.2828.959 and the required password

002is oh nine one one five five call to order mr blakey thank you uh for the board members we will be uh asking the mic here we only have handful of microphones um for this evening so we'll just be uh doing that as we go through mr kaufman here mr evanera mr dasilva here mr denise here mr gallow here mr kazamorsky dr mark here this is here thank you adequate notice of agenda of this meeting has been provided to bridgewood news and the record specifying that the mama board of education will meet on june 15th 2022 in the lenape meadows elementary school 160 ridge road mall in new jersey a copy was filed with the township clerk let's do our salute to the five mr popping place i pledge allegiance to the flag of the

003united states of america and to recall it for it to stand one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right i think i'm going to turn it over to dr fair for our retirees recognition good evening i want to thank the retirees who were able to be here this evening and we have nine uh that are here nine of our 19 retirees so i don't think there's ever been a year where we've had so many retirees um but we wanted to start because there's a lot to celebrate um we feel so fortunate to be able to honor our retirees this evening and showcasing our retirees we put together a video that serves as a farewell note to those who have given this district so much of their time so much of

004their care and so much of their heart in this video we will hear unprofessional or curricular accomplishments but what is clear and what occurred so naturally and going into buildings is that the greatest accomplishments of our retirees have demonstrated are the way that they made their colleagues and their students feel and while no video can truly capture their impact we believe it is certainly a start to properly honoring our retiree's work here at the center collectively over 400 years of service exists amongst our 19 retirees we cannot thank you enough for the students lives that you have touched we cannot thank you enough for the relationships that you have forged with your colleagues but we thank you anyway know that you have made an indelible mark here in malwa and your legacy remains far after

005you transitioned to and found joy in your retirement so before we push play i think the board members might want to just adjust their seats you might want to adjust the lights and i just wanted to provide some context in terms of how how these videos are compiled generally we go into buildings and we ask people quite randomly can you speak on behalf of your colleagues or we'll ask students can you speak about your teachers um i know i believe jasmine's here jasmine's on video hi jasmine right um so we have some students uh who also participate in this video to fit farewell and uh thank you to our retirees um but what's so great about this process is all of all of the insight and reflection from colleagues and students comes from a very

006organic place [Music] so [Music] retirees tonight is an opportunity for us to celebrate you looking at the group of educators that we have that are celebrating tonight collectively there is over 400 years of service across that team think about the amount of lives that you have changed for the better it is of course of this video you get a chance to sit back and reflect on the impact and the value that you would be able to bring to the maoli community please know that we truly appreciate all of you [Music] and also how much time she spends like testing laughs no one would like to develop a lot to move after school before school during lunch um [Music] thank you thank you so much it's it's been an honor for you i think my biggest

007she's like my best friend and she's helped me so much i think the one scenario i have on part was walking home from elementary school with my august and he asked me a question that i didn't know anything about what he asked me about i'm like huh i don't know and he said you know what i'm scared she loves everything and i started that thing that was cute you know she used to really listen when she was in school so i don't think that's the biggest thing is like in my house was always like i'll listen to it you know so i i i just you know that's just one of so much more of what i can say about it yeah but we all ever care and that is true my grown adult children

008went to this school um paul here and they want to talk to her on the phone about their you know it's a diagnosis or whatever even my mother will say to me yes and she's always ready so we will miss her tremendously she will be a huge loss to the school so and even all the kids they love her you know they call her doctor but yeah i am so so happy to get to speak on behalf of mrs stella cash she has been here about 25 years her mark lives all throughout our building you can see student artwork everywhere from our meal spotlight all the way to the back of the school not only does it live on the walls here but it also lives in the hearts of our students so you can

009see right next to me i have just some examples of student artwork from this year not only does mrs delantash take into account the art that she's bringing to our students and how can i get to know each one of my children um so we're so lucky to have her her heart is so big and not only does she do this for our kids [Music] but all of her colleagues and we're so grateful for everything that she's done [Applause] [Music] what book do you prefer for me the books that she chooses and when we do reload she always finds good books like right now yeah we read crashing [Music] she [Music] mercy is the complete package as an educator she served in a lot of different roles from team leader to teacher spanish teacher of

010ell adult esl classes and even most recently teaching life cycle classes teaching personal financial literacy she has a lot of great personal attributes as well she's kind she's always a professional she has a great sense of humor she cares deeply about her kids and she's very smart to demonstrate how smart she is she's an avid new york yankee fan [Music] students who is absolutely adores but also to many teachers she's that here to listen that you need someone to talk to um [Music] been an amazing advocate for our elm students and their families taking on the adult asl classes at night which has been an amazing addition to our community services that we provide and she's truly the best i wanna wish mercedes just an amazing retirement enjoy those great [Music] barbara is amazing and

011ever since i've been here the kids are always so happy to go see her and they're always so calm when they leave she just always has the right temperament in her classroom [Music] her personality would definitely be mysterious yeah she definitely has a very calming presence um the first thing that she said to me when i started here was that it will blink and it'll go by really fast and [Music] just edge another layer of feeling connected to one [Music] over the another of the past uh seven years i've been here at the district i've worked with ms cutino and her role as director of transportation um i can also say that i've learned a lot about transportation over those seven years from jones knowledge is a very unique and diverse uh township as far

012as our roadways and highways go joe's been instrumental and uh sheriff helping me to learn more about the transportation process joe i wish you um the best of luck in retirement with lots of health and happiness i already just wanted to say congratulations on your retirement i really miss having you around school i just want to thank you for you know one of the you know people in the department that really took me into their way when i first started here um especially since we caught a lot of content together really miss our candid conversations about like in sports and um just you know being able to you're always really good at seeing like the the good people and not taking things too seriously and making sure that um all of our students you know

013their mental health and their well-being was kind of like first priority and i think as a new teacher i got so wrapped up in making sure all my stuff was done correctly that um you really showed me uh easy way of doing that in the classroom um early on so i'm just happy around i know we still talk and chat all the time um [Music] um [Music] settings [Music] um [Music] um [Music] you are our mom bear we will miss you so so much we have come to count on you and rely on you for everything and i'm personally going to miss you so much your buffalo chicken dip your brownies and your smile you are such a unique person you are going to miss tremendously always always are so positive and optimistic and always

014put kids first we wish you the best in virginia and sociables for life have a wonderful wonderful retirement thank you all for your collective years of drew service worked for region one for 16 years a year longer than i did and he was absolutely the perfect employee and what i remember most about him as [Music] i mean what can i not say about joanne um [Music] and i've just seen her enthusiasm and when she's teaching i would be sure for so many reasons too she also supported the faculty in understanding face construction she ran cohorts for that she just has so much to offer and no one can ever she's really irreplaceable we want to congratulations [Music] it's been my privilege to work with you as a science teacher and teach chemistry with you and

015then in my time as an administrator in this building you have been the consummate professional you work um you're one of the last people you need here you always work on behalf of kids to provide the best science instruction for kids that's possible i really appreciate that as a science educator we [Music] um i have to tell you um you've done an outstanding job for us you've learned so much and it brought so much to our special education students you always were an advocate for special education students in science and making sure that they too would have science labs um and learning beyond all of your work as a special educator you always stepped up that they could bring great activities to kids even when we did the world challenge and we took kids away

016that summer that was just awesome and i really appreciate your leadership and your ability to always step in and help us [Music] um me um into the office and from leaving me and he taught me how to do the things i had to do and to overcome and hear about the answering the phone and um [Music] to make sure we were okay he was on vacation i'm gonna miss and i just wish you the best [Music] um [Music] um [Music] um [Music] um [Music] large powers our phenomenal preschool teacher and know that you're going to be dearly missed the influence you have preschool program is one that is going to last three years to come and wish you nothing but the best and retiring and i was a pleasure to get to work with you

017this you have year students with skills and strategies to accept your ability to read i hope that in this next chapter in your life happy retirement [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] um appreciation to give to you um you know i fought back tears uh and i'm not much of a crier but what's what's tough is that when i first started here 10 or 11 years ago there are people on that list that i thought would be here forever and the fact that you're you know you're retiring um is tough you made a big mark on this district each and every one of you so um we want to thank you so doctor and i are going to hand out um dr morty we're going to we're going to hang out uh some things let's let's invite

018deb mcguire school nurse from so each retiring we generally give out this this glass apple that looks really nice but what's also really great is our woodworking students along with mr crowe and mr amazon high school have actually created the stand in which the apple can sit so they've done that for our retirees as well bard decontage our teacher [Applause] um bill half [Applause] uh kelly mcclanahan [Music] i believe andrew ross son is in the audience there is [Music] thank you the teacher who gives two recesses caressing kaiser [Music] richter thank you joanne zamorsky [Applause] karen morgan [Music] and mercedes so [Music] uh congratulations again to all the retirees we're going to take a short 15-minute recess just to congratulate everyone ourselves all right we'll be back thank you okay everybody uh once again last

019call last call please for your continuing our live stream in new zealand all right here we go perhaps how about one more round of applause [Applause] um all right we're gonna have executive session at the end of the meeting um so at this point we will go to agenda questions um dr datora would like to make a statement before we get into agenda questions yes thank you um there is an agenda item that's specific to um our work with our equity in inclusivity and i just wanted to speak and share some information for the board to provide some more clarification it is important to take a couple moments to explain the process and how we got how we got to this moment in proposing an equity and inclusivity consulting the malwa admin team has been

020meeting with consultants to see if there was someone who would be able to come in and assess our current standing as it pertains to providing high quality opportunities for all of our students this process has occurred over the course of the past two years through our discussions and interviews with over 15 consultants we came to realize that there were a number of approaches that companies have taken with equity work and we wanted to make sure that we were picking the right consultant for malwa to assist our district in approaching these topics there were companies that had prepared a canned curriculum and professional development that would be implemented into a district no matter who they were as a district there were companies that thought breaking down the entire structure and starting over would be beneficial however

021we needed to find the right match and potential console that would be able to review our districts our district uniquely when we met with us too we were extremely happy with our process and product us two will be coming in to understand our school's community current reality free of assumptions so that recommendations forward are thoughtful and personalized to us us too is committed to hearing from all stakeholders on what their experiences are here in malawi which will include input from students staff parents and community members hearing from the stakeholders includes a number of opportunities to share one's perspective town walls surveys focus groups and an email that will be live to allow anyone to voice their opinions throughout the process what will next year entail in an overarching sense this upcoming school year will be

022a lot about introspection and reflection us too will engage our stakeholders to gather information through town halls surveys focus groups and audit the districts specific to curriculum policy protocols access and more and with this information provide a comprehensive report of the findings these findings will also include recommendations for us to consider at no point will us too be making changes or providing curriculum the district will make decisions on what is needed for using the audit information provided lastly with regards to communication and transparency i would like to share our focus on providing the community with information on this work after two years of interviewing consultants to find the right match not only have we explained that our goals have been driven by our strategic plan and that entire process we did not solely rely on

023families to attend the board meeting or tune into youtube to watch our peer doctorate presentation we specifically identified each slide of our introduction to the proposed consultant spoke to it in writing and shared this plan with our entire school district community in response we received several emails that posed several questions related to what this equity work could look like in our school district to clarify we clustered these questions into logistics and impact on the district dr fair and i will be going through a couple of questions and answers to provide more clarity for the board is this work solely focused on race no equity inclusivity work is focused on a spectrum of topics including socioeconomics ability gender sexual orientation national origin and qualities that often define one as unique or different how many years would

024our district be signing on for this contractual and what is the program's broader general plan for years beyond 22 and 23. the proposed contract is for one year however the expectation is that from this equity audit we believe in this one year that its findings will inform our decision for our steps forward there is opportunity to work with this consulting firm beyond this one year initial analysis we've received a question um how are you able to justify hiring this firm without seeing curriculum examples and providing them to parents for feedback does it feel like mild families are the priority here um a squared will never create curriculum for our schools to execute as our community as seen in many board agendas our teachers write and revised curriculum connected to standards our first year with a

025consultant is focused on reviewing what is already in place with one piece being curriculum and inclusive of all practices in our district policies and analysis of accessibility for students communication across the district and all of our work is measured through a lens to determine if we are achieving an equitable and inclusive learning environment for all students we receive the question um and we clustered these questions together because they were similar why does mahwah need an equity audit was malwa told we are lacking in this area by the state what do we hope to gain from an audit and what kind of suggestions can we expect from this company why do we need to go outside tomorrow and get a third party firm to find out what is needed in our schools currently no one in

026our district is considered an expert with regards to equity and inclusion it will be important to gain a sense of our achievements through the lens of an outside perspective for example internally we have made strides this school year we've reported on it several times and identifying that we need more opportunities to provide students who may not be college-bound with a post-secondary purpose we've done a lot of this work with regards to our strategic plan we've created partnerships with trade schools and are beginning that work but we know there's so much more that can be done to provide access and opportunity for all students and an external perspective can provide us with that with that out of luck this audit will provide our district with recommendation recommendations for further practice and we will be able to

027take those recommendations to adjust our work as needed this has not been the first time we sought a third party to review our current practices in fact we have our finances audited yearly along with a full review of the district's facilities we have also worked with several curriculum consultants in the past to assist in adjusting our curriculum accordingly if this company has made such an impact and has been in business for six years why does it only have 350 followers and likes this does not speak well to their impact we interviewed 16 consultants over the course of the last two years and regardless of the number of likes on our website or social media posts we believe us too is a strong fit for the district as evidence from their equity efforts in over 70

028districts around the country first let me say administration is not being transparent to parents by presenting this one board meeting with only board members allowed to ask questions and then calling for a vote at the next board meeting what is the rush are we trying to slip this but before parents have a chance to ask questions and realize our left indoctrination we are trying to push down on our children to speak to transparency to speak to the transparency aspect of this in question this is the first time that a consultant was presented to the board in this fashion and questions were answered specific to the work we did this understanding that this work was being discussed at the national level and we wanted the board and the community to know the scope of the work

029further the vote did not take place the meeting that the consultant was presented which allowed for questions to be answered between meetings there is no rush which is why our first year that this consultant will be information gathering in nature we will use this information from our equity audit to inform future decisions in the district also we are not trying to satisfy the parents as we were clear in our follow-up email to our community not only sharing the slides of our presentation but also providing context for each slide for our parents to review and our final question that we received related to logistics why do our teachers and admin need to be trained in this work don't they already know it no teacher or administrator is an expert in equity efforts so we do not

030expect them to already know this information our audit will assist us in identifying those gaps that need to be addressed the next cluster of questions is connected to essentially the potential impact on individuals in the district the first question is what value can this bring to our kids with our students as one of the key stakeholders in contributing their perspectives we believe that the power in our students giving their voice is impactful for the future of our programs the information that we receive from this audit is potentially poised to bring equity and inclusion for all students and the areas that we consider and ultimately deem to be immediate improvement school should be teaching our children curriculum math science and all other aspects um all other topics not those aspects these should be left for families

031at the home our obligations to the whole child our day-to-day work is rooted in social emotional work including peer matters relationship building and navigating their own individual personal development programs that assist our students in navigating school and the world remain important for this reason is this company looking to level the playing field by doing away with honors classes take away from teaching course subjects like math and science to teach social justice causes mawa has made it clear through its presentations on academics celebrating our academic ranking is rooted in rigorous educational programs we are not looking to do away with our honors or ap classes as a result of any audit social justice means treating everyone with respect this will not be a sole class that replaces anyone also there was there was a comment um

032and a question i heard megan who is the potential consultant we're proposing to the war this evening mentioned restorative justice a policy of far-left politics that now we want to introduce in schools and the consultant did use the phrase restorative justice and when we asked her to define justice she replied with ensuring that everyone is treated with respect restorative practices are being used particularly at our high school resort of justice empowers students to resolve conflicts on their own and in small groups with the idea to bring students together okay um prior to moving into the public section i just like to uh take a straw poll if i could with the show fans of how many people would like to speak this evening on agenda questions okay um so we are going to um i

033noticed about six seven hands so i'm going to continue as we normally would if we had a much larger group i wanted to perhaps be a little stricter with our time frame so let us keep in mind still that in our policy we limit questions to resolutions under your business on this agenda as a matter of fairness you are asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes if you are here representing a group please identify yourself the group and your position in the group if you are here as an individual please give us your name and address this section of public participation will be limited to 15 minutes please specify the resolution you are referring to in your question i need a motion to

034open the meeting mr dasilva second guys trigala all right our meeting is open to the public um please keep in mind when you're making your remarks as well that dr detour and dr fair have answered many of the questions already so if there's something additional please share with us but they have answered some of these questions already that you may have all right thank you hello um um just so you know i took the time personally to email every one of you with a lot on my click this past couple of weeks my mother passed was in the hospital i covered but i took the time to email it i'm glad that you answered a lot of those questions in formal meeting but nobody even really aside from maybe two people acknowledge that i even

035wrote them an email so it's kind of insulting because i really feel like my voice in mahwah has not heard and i'm speaking about the usq consulting thing and i know dr tor would like to say that they've been discussing this for two years and it's part of work and all of this other stuff but last time that the last board meet was the first time hiring an outside company for the purpose of dei came to the public and yes you like to say you're very transparent by sending an email out to parents with a link but there was never an opportunity for parents to give an opinion before this was a done deal actually as you're speaking about it tonight it already sounds like the vote is a yes so as a parent when

036i'm sending you my child i don't feel included you want to talk about di diversity out of inclusion well i don't feel included in mawa i don't feel included in any of these communities i feel like my point of view is not represented so if you want to look at dei why don't you have a consultant company come in and look at what we do here and bring to the table to make work because it's not representing all of malwa and i think that to spend 45 thousand dollars on a company that we don't even know if we need this assessment is just poor planning and poor judgment at this time after the pandemic that we had and all the learning loss our kids had i know i mentioned it enough but i'm going to

037say it again tonight my daughter was robbed of math time i'm a math major i was a teacher male time they're not getting math anywhere else for school and they lost a lot of math last year so when some teachers are taking away nap time for standalone videos on xfel dei or whatever else you want to call it and teaching standalone lessons that at the end have social justice pictures which in picture handcuffs lgbtq things but yet there's no pictures of anti-abortion things and my daughter said to me because i didn't even know there was an anti-abortion picture isn't it funny mommy in this slide there's no baby feet i said what's the baby stick you know the anti-abortion side so when you're in companies or when you pick videos to show our kids and

038you want to talk about social justice it's going to represent everybody at the table not just one side and you better represent everybody at the table not just one side thank you if i could just respond um along the lines of the response we've talked about our locations on a number of different topics and you've been given a lot of opportunities to share your opinion now i understand that we disagree on a number of things and i'm respectful of that but along the lines of communication from not only the building level from teachers administrators central office and board members there's been a number of times that we've communicated with you i'm glad that the word replied to acknowledge your comment um and just so you're aware i'm glad you acknowledged that a number of your

039questions were in uh this proposal i don't want to get too much into the leads along the lines of what's being taught in schools but the video which you're referencing was specific to perspective and when you're talking about perspective we talked about math and how math thinkers are able to navigate different problems the teachers efforts which i recall were to allow the students to understand it's okay to have different perspectives so when you look at when you start to talk about things in isolation i just want to get perspective on exactly what the purpose of those moments are the math teachers are teaching a ton of content throughout this entire year and all of our teachers have done a wonderful job in doing all that they can to make sure that they're delivering instruction and

040again we can disagree and i respect that but i just want to make sure that along the lines of your comment all the things that you're you're stating there needs to be information that's given on the other side minutes are taken away from math time i think it's different than talking about sel or dei and this is what scares me when a company is coming in now and we're gonna take away from instructional time if this is being done in you know uh advisory or health or what have you but we're robbing our kids of instructional time for other things that are not instruction kids are not getting math instruction anywhere else but math class kids do get lessons about perspective taking and inclusiveness from their families from their homes from their church so just

041think about that when teachers take away teaching time from very important subjects like math for example our ap scores went down this year don't you think that has something to do with the choices we made to rob our kids of school last year when they weren't in school full-time i just i just want to address um um the language i specifically used in the introduction was that we were proposing this to the board this evening so in no way is this a done deal we are authentically proposing this to the board and in doing so um we felt like the best way to propose it would be to clarify any of those questions that we received um also you know you you're mentioning um dei and sel and in no way are we going to

042be taking away from curriculum or classroom time or classroom time what you learn i hope from the retiree video is the whole child is very important the relationship building is very important and that's just part of being a really good people my child has no relationship she feels like she's not i'm good you you're doing this so much that you're causing the opposite effect of what you want to achieve and it scares me now to bring in a consultant because i see what's happening with seo in the district and it's become like beating a dead horse and frankly i think we need to examine what we're doing in malwa because you're losing the forest from the trees and especially after what happened to our kids over the past two years the fact that we're holding

043ourselves accountable to a plan and now you know an outside entry to come in and pay for what maybe our district goals need to change in light of what happened and our children had to change over the past three years miss peter thank you very much i think you've had an ample amount of time thank you hi there my name is here in town i'm a parent of a first grader at george washington could you just say your last name again david thank you my comments are in reference to new business the hiring of outside consultants us to incorporate it to both conduct and equity audits performing our future equity work in the district unquote has anyone here paused to consider what findings and recommendations might be returned to us we really don't have to

044use our imagination that we have only to look at other school districts around the country who've employed such consultants and what they have done new york city public schools august 2019 a panel finds that students enrolled in the city's gifted and talented schools and programs are not racially diverse enough and that they are therefore structurally racist the proposal eliminate them the consultants have a euphemism for this it's called detractor howard county maryland public schools september 2019 outside consultants find that there is not equitable distribution of impoverished students at schools across the region their recommendation bus students to schools other than their neighborhood school in order to even things out so i ask you are you willing to set up an exchange program with other new jersey districts to bus students help or into law in

045order to achieve socioeconomic balance chicago public schools december 2021 boys and girls restrooms promote a binary gender conforming environment that is not welcoming to all the solution a requirement for multi-stalled restrooms to be quote open to users of any gender identity or expression unquote so i ask you are you willing to mix boys and girls at the same restrooms here in malawa these are the kind of boilerplate recommendations that diversity inclusion and equity consultants are doling out all over this country enriching themselves in the process after voting to spend 45 000 on us too when presented with a written report of their findings and recommendations and offered help i wonder what is the minimum you will feel obligated to adopt in order to justify the value and wisdom of your investment [Applause] i have become

046board of education meetings from time to time since early summer 2020 i have heard precious little in this forum over two years about reading writing and arithmetic what i have heard is excuses as to why mala public schools could not open for full-time in-person instruction until month 18 when every private school around here had it figured out by month six i've heard an explanation for why our ap scores were lower last year than just didn't cold water since the scores are normalized to occur and recently i've heard a fair amount about gender identity instruction for second graders as well as the incorporation of social and racial justices of the curriculum i want you and i need you to execute well your core mission which is the academic instruction of my children i do not interrupt

047you for one moment um can we keep it to the agenda item versus comment which is more towards the end so this is related to agenda [Music] consultants are expressingly qualified to talk to my seven-year-old about matters of what he thinks about his gender or how he should view the innate worth and ability of other people in light of their superficial differences it seems to me that male public schools is nowadays focused on distracting the heated social history of development which are out of its lane and has de-prioritized the main thing the only thing that's rightfully innocent by public contract so i will leave you with one idea mahwah's strategic plan for 2020 to 2025 was determined in the months preceding hogan 19 which none of us was able to predict covet 19 amounted to

048a disruption in the education of our children the magnitude of which this country has never before seen the circumstantial facts of law public schools market legally reopening and lower ap scores suggests that it may have faltered in its core mission of academic construction perhaps it will be clearly now as you stated to exercise some introspection and have the courage and leadership to press the pause button on this five-year plan that was created without foreign of a massive unforeseen setback to your core mission course correction is never easy but the moment is calling for it if you're determined to spend forty five thousand dollars on a consultant hire one to elucidate the myriad ways that academic construction has suffered for the past two years to quantify the magnitude of the student's loss of learning and to

049propose recommendations on how all public schools can refocus on the basics and do them well that would be the ultimate way to serve our children equitably and to honor their parents and equal [Applause] [Music] the strategic plan and the value that's set forth within it number one us taking on this work is not of this or that um this is work that's gonna be done in conjunction with the instructions being taking place secondly just because we have a strategic plan that highlights specific goals doesn't take away what good instruction is what good instruction is understanding what your students who you should know your students are in class what their proficiency levels are and differentiating accordingly so when you're speaking about any sort of student who struggle or feel like they're behind that's good teaching that

050you don't need to plan for that and speak to you about what the academics are if you stay in your sequel talk about what we're doing with the strategic plan in hopefully about 20 minutes but i really want the community to understand the work that we're doing with the strategic plan [Music] the is that we put forth and created is something that allows us to stand out that doesn't mean we forgot what good teaching is so every single teacher whether they're here being honored to retire or they're in the classroom plan for tomorrow are understanding what the kids are in front of them and they're making sure that they're building them from where they are so please understand that whether it's our strategic plan or our work with dei we're never gonna lose sight of

051that so i think we all can agree that coding through a curveball and won't be what we were and what we are and i'm not going to sit up here and go back and forth along the lines of our reentry plan it's not the time but what i can tell you is i give a bunch of teachers 500 employees that are working their butts off to make sure that our kids are getting the best education and that's not because of dei that's not because of the strategic plan that's why they were hired to just do their work dei institute's plan elevates what we're currently doing to allow our kids to get something even more special [Music] that we've received because we've received a lot of emails but we had one parent who shared that mawa

052schools need to be inclusive and all students need to feel safe seen and valued we can do that and we can do the curriculum i believe that both lanes exist here thank you [Music] good evening i'm josh barnstein i lived sorry and i teach educational leadership down there so i teach the teachers who are on their way up to become our school leaders and uh i want to give some perspective from that and from uh the previous part of my life where i was also a school board member um could leaders today need to know how to do that right good teachers need to know how to do that these are part of the state and national standards for being good educational professionals so i want to support a lot in helping that growth to

053continue i think one of the questions was don't folks know this only you know we do a pretty good job at fairly and uh i don't know too much [Music] right so the work continues um i also want to say that having been a member of the school board when they went from a rhetorical commitment to equity to a real uh real commitment to it and actually doing the work i was on the board right about the olive right now and the board's goal at that time was we will eliminate class race disability and gender as predictors of school succeed level of success or are you trying to eliminate the differences when it comes to class race and gender and disability and the boy was like no we're not doing it we're not guaranteeing their

054kids that have the same amount of success and we're not trying to make differences amongst kids what we're doing is we are breaking the link between your identity and your success right one should not depict the other and so i want to applaud again support the board of doing this work and again recognize that as far as i can tell nothing's being said and anybody it could still be [Music] again the democracy's happening right here in front of us [Applause] [Music] thank you um hi my name is tracy michelle i live in 163 indian hollow court first as volunteers for what you do with the volunteers who are here thank you because i've sat on many boards not a board of education but volunteering is a gift to every community no matter what the rest

055of the community thinks about it you're here and you're devoting time away from your family so thank you for that as i understood it and i hope i understood it right when we're looking at this consultant that we have standards which are given to us which are done by our state legislature and then we have curriculum which is what you're bringing in a consultant to help us form and then that you vote upon so i people need to understand that if you're upset with the standards that have been delivered they need to look down to trenton at chapter 32 the vote that was taken and how that was voted on by their legislators if i happen to spend my lunch hour dividing that out amongst the political parties and i'm sure you can imagine how

056that is happy to share with it when i'm not using my three minutes but also i think it's important and i hope the board will consider that um sorry gotta get classes here senator kristen corado and senator anthony bucco have introduced the parents bill of rights act which is now in committee down in treatment and i hope that if that's passed prior to your going forward or passing or voting on this curriculum that you'll consider that comes into consideration i think what i've heard from people is they have a lot of concern that they don't get to see it until it's passed and that is the legislation hopefully new legislation will pat will change that i hope if it does come about that he will consider that before but again i thank you for that

057and i certainly do vote according to the standards that i would like my niece my nephew the children of our community to value and i thank you for and for incorporating your curriculum and your wisdom in that when you have to look at those standards thank you um just a reminder um please um agenda item that you're speaking to since to make sure that we're thinking it's all one thing that perhaps people have something else to speak on as well just a reminder thank you continue hello my name is mike barcelo last name he is in bravo a r s has been sierra e e-l-l-a i live in the far dale section of manola how are you good thank you i'd like to address the dpi issue and i appreciate the comments that my fellow

058citizens have made for the record my kids have never needed a hand up or a handout my children know they have to work twice as hard twice as hard to be where your kids will be when they graduate so allow me to give you a little bit of background so that you can understand my perspective you may be able to already see my perspective but i need you to understand thank you i'm proud to be an american and i believe diversity is our strength diversity is what makes america great there's a reason we're the best country in the world that's because we look different we have different religious beliefs we have different sexual orientations whatever you want to call it that's why we're number one there's no one race that's responsible for america being here

059i am the great grandson of a man born a slave after slavery my family experienced jim crow and after jim crow who was school segregation the gentle lady spoke about her daughter's voice not being hurt for generations my family's voice wasn't hurt from jim crow and school segregation it went to racially motivated housing redlining and now is the proud voice and understand these things have a cumulative impact on many families like mine some of your children have attended the february fireside chats that my mother and i give every few years in february i read a book called ruby bridges do you guys know who ruby bridges was um unfortunately we have to keep the decorum this way if you don't mind so the book ruby bridges is about a little black girl who attended a

060segregated school in the 1960s and it gives an excellent depiction of the adversity that ruby faced and then in the second half of the fireside chat my mother my 86 year old silver-haired american mom talks about her life you know you guys know what it was like picking cotton in the cotton fields her father a victim of the jim crow south attending a segregated school where her voice definitely was not heard having to ride the back of the bus only because she was an african-american it was painfully apparent to me of the need for this dei initiative when after one of the fireside chats a staff member approached my mom and said people really had to ride the back of the bus yes when slavery's only four generations ago for me it's not that long

061ago another example that indicated the dire need for dei training was when during a mahwah library book read one of my daughter's teachers read a book about here's how people around the world greet each other and they showed a little white guy in france he said bonjour and they showed a little white kid in america hello then they showed a little black kid in america what's up what's up and that is an example of your voice not being heard that is why we need this you can understand my horror you can see my passion i spoke to the library director he immediately removed the book the teacher did not even know why she was wrong and the negative impact that had on my daughter who i believe was a seven year old girl at the

062time america is great because of its promise to one day allow everyone everyone to fulfill their potential as happening productive citizens as such i'm not only proud to be an american but i'm proud to be the third generation of my family to have served in the united states army either in or during a war going all the way back to world war ii i have every right to be here just as much as some of you true american patriots know what sacrifice is and that power and position should solely be used for uplifting those around us not for personal agendas or hiding the truth hiring us too to perform this great work furthers the america agenda of us all not just the few or the one this means that we have to embrace jewish kids

063and muslim kids just like christian kids it means we have to embrace gay kids and trans kids just like straight kids it means kids of all colors including black brown yellow and of course white i believe the true american patriots see it the same way lastly where i attended college we have an honor code that indicates that we don't lie cheat steal or tolerate those who do and that basically we do what we say and we demonstrate leadership through example so for the record not only do i support the board in moving forward with the proposed dei work but i'm prepared as a middle-class hard-working american citizen i am prepared that if there's a budget shortfall i will personally commit ten thousand dollars to fund this effort so for those who complain about our tax

064dollars not being able to pay enough i will personally commit ten thousand dollars is this thing working then you heard [Applause] thank you hi do you think danielle ryan 22 would review terrorists yeah thank you just a question i don't know if i misheard uh it's about 18k did you say that the u.s too it's done seven districts around the country thank you anyone else i didn't want to speak but i can't not okay i can't hear you at all we need a step stool for the next time i think you know i think that that kind of goes into the difference between equality you know everything was equal i would never have a voice not a microphone [Music] um saddens me that anyone would have an objection to 45 000 going to an assessment

065to tell us how we're doing with equity i didn't hear anything about changing your curriculum or taking away math um i did hear something about children's voices not being heard and maybe the audit would show that and maybe that would actually help so unless we're afraid of something i would i applaud you for doing work because what you're doing in my mind is and saying what could i do better and that's not easy so i think 45 000 is uh furthermore actually i was doing some research and the school districts that actually do something and are more equitable and their school scores are less of a gap actually those schools uh overall are higher scoring and so when you raise the students into more of an equitable situation actually you're a high performer is an

066advanced math which my daughter will never be um so um i think that if people really understand really take the time to do a little research on that you'll understand that actually it benefits everyone um we're talking about equity so thank you for doing that [Music] my husband's going to kill me [Applause] hi janine janssen 129 i want to express my support for the consultant this is the staff that's following the plan that was heard commented on the proposal i have heard said that parents would have a voice we all have a voice the kids would be heard this is an investment in the future of our children and as someone who does diversity active inclusion in broken america it is extremely difficult and it's hard to do this we have to do things differently

067we have to signal that everyone's important and to identify who needs more we need to study we need individuals looking at things differently and i really value how we found about that because it's like this transparency how we do this in transparent is of the utmost importance and what i've heard is that we need to be doing them to meet the standards and we will continue to allow them you know how we do this will identify where we're lacking skills to meet the standards where potentially our girls are not getting mad help where we can get them into fields that are less accessible so we all win with this we have diversity in the teachers and the staff and the students and they feel welcome they feel that they belong they will prosper they will

068overachieve and it will come so i really urge everyone to think about how we go about this how we go about responsibly this is important because it represents everyone it's not just some it's all and think about the respect you're giving to your kids your kids their friends their future friends and what that looks like and who your neighbors are as someone who has a visible difference and my privileges have changed throughout my life i think very highly of the supports of ipad to get to where i am so i think this is a great step in the right direction and i thank you for all of your golfers [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i came here to voice my concerns with the district i think it's very terrible and very indicative of what's going on

069in our community in our schools when people come up here and set up a opinion or comment about the numbers and what we're discussing it's more about changing people for having opinion different than theirs so i want you to think about that miss i made very clear to each person to please direct it toward the podium and to me unfortunately sometimes people do turn their [Music] hi my name is i am a [Music] new resident we moved in three years ago and then covered it and i've been to a couple of meetings and now i'm happy to speak i support 100 that an equity consultant is needed i have personal experience recently from this year my son has experienced and uh i want to share with everyone okay because if a consultant is coming they

070will see the records and maybe see that people should know that we don't live in a bubble the world is everlasting and changing and being more diverse we do not live in a bubble our children will be exposed to a diversity of children both from a nationality perspective from race creed gender [Music] sexual orientation so my son is in middle school he has been called a cotton paper he has been called a border jumper we are american citizens i'm puerto rican born an american citizen my husband has bought a mollen and received his citizenship during the reagan era of the amnesty we have been american citizens since our children been born so my son didn't even know what those comments meant and didn't even know he was supposed to be offended by them until we

071got away that he was called back and had to take action another thing that recently happened on this bus a friend of this who's a girl said that she likes girls and during spring break she made him kiss a girl he is good friends with her but other kids asked him if he knew about this and in our household we accept all people one of my best friends is gay and they visit us all the time her partner and their kids have visited us every year until folded and he didn't know that if he told other people that this girl might like girls then she would be discriminated against and the poor girl got bullied and it turned into another issue so this is not something that has been resolved or ever will be resolved

072and i think that children are going to be exposed to different race creeds gender sexual orientation and they can learn how to handle it properly through our school system first before they get out into the real world as adults and other ramifications that happen i'm all for this equity consultant and i think it's important work the state has guidelines that we must meet and this equity consultant will help us to make sure we're meeting those diagrams and continue with maws and efforts to be one of the best school systems there's out there so i'm fully supported [Applause] my name is lou lotito i live right here in town um listen we don't have a perfect world it hasn't been perfect you people were in school it wasn't perfect i was the school wasn't perfect but

073i grew up here been in the sound of 50 years and there were issues with diversity inclusion equity from back then people living up in you know great some of them will be my best friends even when i was in high school but stop calling them jackson white whatever it may be we're still there a lot of this hasn't done what you just said i'm sorry looking forward um at home now listen i'm gonna bring in a group five thousand gentlemen said pay ten thousand that's great um forty five thousand taxpayer money money is that where it's coming from so many people forty five thousand dollars to drop the bucket but i'm paying five dollars a gallon of gas my grocery bills are going up and now you're telling me more money out of my

074pocket i worry about that and i'm sure middle class america is concerned about that so i know a lot of the issues are about money and we're saying forty five thousand forty five thousand well i've been in this gym i'm gonna swim five years coach my kids here my coaches at the high school a freshman team practice here and guess what that was broken down the bumpers around the back door and they're still broken you can't fix that this door's the same those balls have been stuck up there over five years we can't take some of that forty five thousand just school security has anything to talk about school security just had a shooting shootings keep going on has that been brought up again i don't know i haven't been here mr goddard a lot

075of stuff going on school sports and everything else so if i'm out a little bit i apologize but you know those are concerns that i have maybe other people have so i don't know sure um [Music] so uh mr bleacher on a number of occasions have taught has talked about a number of projects that they're doing throughout this this district i'm not going to do chapter in reverse actually mr grievo will be talking about the strategic planning but i understand your question and concern i just want to tell you that the money that's going to be put forth if the vote is a guess and we don't know then that money is going his budget for that it's not going to be taken from any other program that again it's not a disc or that

076this is going to be something that we're going to be utilizing our curriculum line for in order to make sure that we're enhancing the experience of our students so all the things you're talking about um that falls into facilities and maybe doing a ton of different projects to make sure that our that our facilities are up to date and something we can be proud of okay that's great one last thing 19 teachers retired that's what it was how many 19 19. great job my kids had someone fantastic awesome instead of the apple how about giving them a little cash on the side that would've been good thank you mr latino [Music] all right um a motion to close your meeting to the public mr gizmarski seconded by mr coplan all right now we have dr

077datora superintendents reporter or strategic we have a screen the strategic planning is going to be exciting all right i'll tell you about it later when we started to talk started the night off we started to celebrate the teachers um i want to continue that theme of celebration start to talk about the strategic plan i'm very grateful for the administrators that are here um and also the staff that we work with across the district the reason why we're at this point of our strategic plans because of the work of those people they've worked extremely hard in their buildings and throughout the district to make sure that we're putting forth a product that can be proud of just to go backwards before you go forward anybody in the audience who doesn't know about our strategic plan two

078years ago we brought together a community to talk about what our community values what are the things that we should be proud of and what are the things that we should really focus on during those conversations we created identify the needs and create goals aligned to those things that really drive our focus to make sure that anything that we're doing is is really working towards our ultimate goals back in january our team be a very comprehensive um possibly more comprehensive than anything needed um at the board meeting about what we have done here today our goal tonight is not to get too granular but really spotlight the overarching efforts of ours of our administrators and our teachers to get us to where we need to be so as we all know we talked about it

079here during our during our public comment our district faced a lot of obstacles over the past two years it's my hope over the next 10 minutes that you'll be able to see not only we're going to overcome those obstacles and be able to provide a quality education to our students but we're able to build programs and create new programs so our students are able to afford it an opportunity to have high-level education [Music] the next couple slides will be broken up in four specific frames those four frames are curriculum instruction social emotional learning community connections and facilities so what i'm going to do and dr rodino is here um she's unable to present right now we have a little bit of a appendix this year this weekend so she's here for support i'm gonna be

080her standing pitch hitter i didn't give too much information she's my partner i just she's here [Music] [Applause] who reads slides so let me start to spotlight two things and then we'll get into more detail with the others year over year our goal is to make sure that our curriculum is updated as you can see up on the screen last year we updated 120 courses this summer i believe we're updating 75 courses those updates are a couple of different things number one we want to make sure that we're providing high quality curriculum number two we want to make sure that we're lying to the state standards as we all know the state standards change and they're often on a five-year cycle professional boundary when we jump down to the third bullet professional development is point

081of pride here in malawi over the past 11 years it's really developed into something that other districts are are trying to itch their lag into our professional development is not only given by outside consultants it's not only given by our administrators at team meetings or department meetings but what we're really excited about is during our professional moment days we lean on the experts from within and the teachers are able to provide professional moments to their colleagues not only that but our teachers are able to have voice and choices into what they want to learn and what they need for their individual classroom and we thank the teachers because so many teachers volunteer our efforts to put forth really high quality professional development day so we thank them for that something i want to really focus

082you know is to think globally and connect outside the four walls that's something that was really a loud voice had our strategic plan needs it's something that we're constantly focused on we want to understand and we want to create opportunities for our students to look outside of the school for learning opportunities not just to learn but to teach and what i mean by that is and at the the first bullet i'm going to think globally talk about language bodies our high school foreign language department was able to come down to our middle school and work with them on a number of different things they talk about fluency they talk about the culture and it really created an enhanced experience for our students and understanding what is next also our major exactly zoomed in with classes

083from china and what a great learning experience not only learning the language but you're seeing what this culture is all about they also do with with schools across the country around the pro bridge uh family was able to identify some students that were able to go to each of our elementary schools during engineering and to see those students feel empowered to work with our kids our k-3 kids so we can work on different problem-based learning and understanding what is engineering and design to see what that process really entails to see what structure really feels like and how do you persevere through those challenges was a really special moment for us authentic learning and relationships that's another piece that i really want to talk to you about now mr cleo on a yearly basis gets up

084and he presents this screen and there are close to 100 different colleges up there what we are missing with that screen is what are we doing and how do we support the students who are not going through those colleges we're extremely proud of the connection that we made with eastwood college um and within tech we know that we have students in our district that their passion um and where their focus is with the trades and we need to understand and we need to do a better job of connecting them with those learning opportunities so that relationship is something that that we are extremely excited about another piece with the high school took on was our big meeting another piece that our high school took on was our sums our summer internships externships and jobs got

085shadowing that's a massive undertaking the high school team was able to put into practice for this summer externships and job shadowing for our students with the expectation of next year being internships for our seniors when you talk about what separates us from other districts that's a very special opportunity for our kids not only to understand what's out there but to continue to build their resume and their transcript and make them the most marketable for wherever they go moving forward so these are just some of the things that we wanted to talk about if you look up on the screen you'll see pictures of our arts department you'll see pictures of the jk innovation lab which is a major point of pride for us of giving our students access to high-level learning opportunities and how we're

086creating these problem-based learning situations you see k-3 with kids doing coding all these things you're talking about what are we doing this year these are some of the examples of what we're doing this year not just teaching reading writing and science and social studies but we're teaching very unique learning opportunities to push our kids forward to understand what do you do with all this information how do you navigate challenges how do you work with the kid next to you so these are things that we want to just spotlight for this specific framework as the person responsible for the department that takes care of the emotional well-being of our students in my opinion there's always an opportunity to address social emotional learning i can't tell you the volume of risk assessments we're doing on a regular

087basis because of the therapeutic needs of our students and building the capacity of our students social model learning is what's going to be the foundation for them to be the productive members of our entire community so i stand by and i fully support all of the very unique efforts that take place within our district all six buildings take the approach of social emotional learning very differently yet under the premise that the whole child is the priority so what you see on the screen is basically the district's initiatives and then i'll highlight some individual facility and building initiatives that have taken place transition years have become crucial to our students years in which they leave the nest of their elementary program move on to jk and from the nurturing of jk on to the joys and

088experiences of our middle school program and ultimately on to our high school and we have found that when we provide our students early on removing the fear of the unknown the transition to the next year's school is more successful for them and our principals and our teachers have done an outstanding job in creating a range of engaging experiences so students anticipate with excitement the change from one school to the next we have a mindfulness cohort training cohort training 3 today over 200 members have been trained in mindfulness our parent academy and wellness series has been directed specifically at the health and wellness of our parent population but what speaks volumes as dr tuttoro has shared is professional development and through professional development we have called our own sel coaches who are leading and guiding their

089colleagues to work the initiative throughout our school day so how does it get to be so unique well george washington addresses sel through dance parties and tapping tuesdays happen to be on the phone with the principal who was a little winded she said sorry just ran from a dance party we've had activities in gw like color our world with kindness and essential in one of my beliefs is peer-to-peer connections and gw seriously took that by creating relationships between their k2 students and their 3-1 students around the curriculum content of reading lenape meadows has steadfast to their morning meetings even if it needed to be in two separate environments as you walked in the scene you might have seen one of their themed jars connected to learner behavior and they've even devoted a section of their

090faculty to seo [Music] their faculty rooms have sel items that are there to assist their faculty betsy ross through sel celebrated flag day with their mama police department they created kindness rocks for the outdoor classroom and creative interventions character assembly came forward for betsy ross very unique yet specific to each of the buildings jk had students who created seo videos that were shown prior to the state assessments they were designed to have the students get ready calm and prepared for their assessments and joyce kilmer welcomed back their annual play in which all students who were interested were invited to participate and found a role within that theatrical production and boy it was quite a production we also had an opportunity for any student to create the playbill for that play and all of those playbills

091were publicized within the schools remember ridge has founded their guidance department unique ways of addressing social skills and groups for specific students as well as inviting every and any student to see their guidance counselor at any time they have monthly advisory that they have held onto and tweaked and addressed and finessed to what our community needs it to be and ultimately their sel coaches the same staff that benefited from that professional development had a presentation for their hso mawa high school has utilized gratitude jars and students have created posters that you're free to see throughout the district in fact they're simple located in central office and ultimately the freshman advisory another historical commitment that has found its way to address and tweak what it has to offer to our students specific to their most current

092needs and on the screen before you are just two very clear examples of what i've described for you our third frame is focused on community connections uh you'll see here with our goal statement we focus on real world experiences for our students guiding new families in our district engaging local experts and opportunities to support our district's diverse families so what you're going to hear about from this frame is there is definitely overlap with social emotional learning and our curriculum instruction frames um which which makes a lot of sense so here we talked we've talked a lot about the thunderbird partnership program because we have a lot of pride in our thunder partnership program it's only launched for a year and um it's i think really transformed instruction in this district and we're really excited i

093know that uh mid-year we gave an update specifically on the partnership program i just wanted to highlight a few things that are either recent or coming up tomorrow chris wragge is speaking to our broadcast journalism classes uh we had a milwaukee graduate rob larson who does stats for the chicago white sox he spoke to our statistics class at omaha high school um i know that dr torreira slash about our work towards internships externships and job shadowing that's something that we're really excited about we know that there's potential to do even more we've looked closely at providing students with a range of post-secondary purpose i keep using that phrase because i think when a student has a purpose they have a place they can really do something regardless of who that kid is um we're looking

094to find more opportunities to connect with our esl or ell families i know that we've talked a lot about the adult esl program or um for our families that's been really exciting hope we know that there's more we've made a family a new family packing so any family that comes into the district we've been sending out a package to them uh to give them you know swag and welcome them to the district more formally but we know that there's there's also a lot more that we can do with that and you know it mentions the adult esl classes that's really a huge uh point of pride for us and if you've ever sat in on those classes um it's it's incredible just to see how our parents really benefited from our program also we have

095the leo club which is highlighted here which has focused on a volunteer fair that occurred during lunch recently some of those organizations that were there [Music] so students have the opportunity to again extend themselves beyond the classroom walls and potentially um volunteer for any of those organizations they have that opportunity to sign them very much so that's just the beginning um i think it's those are just a few highlights but we're really excited uh good evening i'm going to be speaking about the facilities section of this treatment plan uh again i'm not going to read the goal statement for facilities this evening it's on our website to choose a plan portion of our website well facilities when i hear this as a work industry plan for me it is all about being proactive about planning

096and working with our infrastructure whether it's our physical infrastructure or technology infrastructure to support many of the things that have mentioned have been mentioned already in this slideshow highlighting some of the we have accomplished in 2122 under facilities district-wide uh we have continued our planning and being proactive with creating living forecasting models that we can use for some of those infrastructure areas such as roofing hvac referred to as the league forecast because they're continually evolving revolving based on events that happen based on the justices that we may need to make whether it's budgetary or for other purposes constantly revolver but having that baseline that we can follow that we can reference throughout the year something that really benefits us being proactive for years going forward on the last one i also wanted to highlight and

097mention as well is the installation of the upgraded wi-fi access points another thing that was accomplished at the end of the summer of 2021 that infrastructure upgrade itself has allowed us to do some of the things that we spoke about earlier uh dr toro i mentioned about zoo meetings with um other participants not only here in model but other states even other countries having that has allowed the ability to have that successfully and reliably throughout all throughout the entire industry i'm just going to touch base on a couple items at the elementary schools and secondly on the secondary schools uh all of our elementary schools they have a steamer makerspace outdoor workspace and we're working and planning on having one shortly within the next couple years from the planning stages and talking about it and

098all the schools and hvac as i mentioned before infrastructure hvac having a um a working hba system a good experience is reliable that is being proactively repaired or renovated before there is this at any point of failure helps to maintain that healthy environment and a good learning environment for all of our students uh just in 2122 we have our working at joyce kilmer school in the 300 link to update the hvac systems there and we're also in the planning stages for hba system updates at brown harmony at betsy ross and george washington schools and at the secondary level um high school we have our grandstand and track that we have discussed at a couple of our board meetings uh the grandstand project is currently out for a bit we hope to be awarding that this

099summer for work being done next year the malwa high school media center that's been a great example of phasing work over a couple of years we first start with a upgrade to the window system on the front of the building where the media center is and what to do with some carpeting and hook shelves within that and just recently this year some of the sitting areas and the seating throughout the district we've been able to renovate and reuse and also repurpose some of that furniture as well uh some of them have been moved over around ridge media center to help them evolve and improve and update their their space the last side which is to discuss on is the um again storefront and operable windows align with creating a healthy and prime environment for learning

100in the classroom and we have the student laptops all ended with that um again at the bramble ridge and that past reloads we provide that one-to-one initiative one-to-one technology experience for our students we have laptops that are involved with released and we've been able to work with our technology department vendor to really select a device that's uh we've been able to procure and get this year in preparation for deployment for next year for our staff and students at the middle schools high school and also staff at the elementary schools and just to highlight these two photos that we have here on the left is a photo of a movie night done at four mile high school at the field the football field and then on the right hand performance of the undercover middle school [Music]

101just to close out a couple things um as we said in the beginning throughout it's really important that the district is aware of all the work that we're doing and where we're going with it it's important that everyone walks alongside of us so we do have on our district home page um all the information from the start to where we currently are right now you'll be able to see all the meetings that took place and information to create the plan you'll see the plan you'll also see a website that we created to show progress monitoring over the next five years that being said it's my hope over the past couple slides you were able to understand and really witness the work that's being done not just in curriculum not just an sel not just in

102community connections and not just in facilities as i said while i was on the days tremendous work is happening even with all the obstacles that we've had to overcome this year i'm extremely proud of this work i'm extremely grateful for the people who are sitting in front of me here of the administrative team and i'm also grateful for all the teachers who have done so much work and have walked alongside of us when we come to them with an idea and ask them to step outside of their comfort zone they do that and the kids benefit so all of this stuff it's my hope that it showcased why milo is so special where we were where we are and where we're going so thank you for the time [Applause] all right i know you guys

103have heard a lot from me and i apologize but i have one more uh piece to head to my superintendent um i've received some inquiries recently regarding their recent health and health and physical education standards mandated by the state and whether the district has any discretion and whether or not to implement those standards please be advised that the district has absolutely no discretion in deciding whether to implement the state mandated standards the language used in the applicable new jersey code and statute regarding implementation of the student learning standards is mandatory language not permissive language in fact new jersey code requires boards of education to continuously modify its curriculum and instruction based on any modification to the state standards the district could face serious ramifications for refusing to comply with the state mandated standards for example

104there is a law that allows for withholding of state funds to districts who do not obey the law or the rules or directions set forth by the state board of education or the commission of education additionally there's something called the new jersey quality single accountability continuum also known as cusag which the state used to evaluate the performance of the districts refusal to comply with the new standards would would likely significantly impair the district's ability to score well on cusack or score could lead to increased oversight from the state particularly as it pertains to the implementation of the state standards in the district's curriculum and instruction finally one of my responsibilities is to ensure that the district is following all mandates set forth by the state willfully refusing to execute the standards set forth by the

105department of education could jeopardize my certification in some the district is required to implement the state mandated standards while i encourage community members to always contact us with any questions or concerns you will be best served contacting the department of education the governor's office or your local legislators should you have any objections to the state standards that's all i have and before we continue if i may have you know it's getting leaked if we can offer to dismiss the administrators and allow them to go home that's your job [Applause] okay um thank you dr tutturo now we move on to mr bleacher's report okay uh thank you very much um first of all i'd like to take a moment and thank uh some of the technology staff that we have here ever went into multipurpose

106uh for tonight so i wanted to take a moment and thank that um at their last meeting i was asked by mr gallow to provide a brief update on some summer projects that we have going on throughout the district i've prepared a summary for all [Music] which we are going to be renovating to improve a space for a small office as well uh in addition to maintaining some of the copy services that are in that room and we also have i mentioned it a little bit during this plan update we have a window restore front renovation work that's going to be occurring in the call the newer wing section of betsy ross over the summer to upgrade some of the optimal windows and make their service and ability to operate better for the staff at

107george washington school we're going to be adding some upper cabinets and some of the classrooms to add some additional storage space as well some new countertops and some classrooms the same windows storefront project that's going to be happening at betsy ross it's also going to be occurring at george washington to address a couple issues it's a little bit more extensive at george washington where we're also going to be replacing some storefront systems that still have an older style single-pane glass in some of the windows um taking that out making a double pane blast will improve the efficiency of the room and uh last part of that project again at george washington is going to add a second means of egress out of the courtyard right now there's only one door that allows you in and

108out of that courtyard uh this project will include a second door second being to be dressed and access to that area atlanta middle school something that already occurred was a little curvier in spring recess we were able to power wash the exterior of the building um remove some staining that had developed and occurred over the years and there's going to be a planned upgrade of the fire alarm system as well one of the great benefits about this upgrade is going to be here at lnp as well as our joyous film school this will now put the um we'll have a consistent fire alarm system at all six first schools uh view had a few different systems serviced by executive offenders this will give some consistency and continuity for service and ability to maintain the system

109uh in the entire district same system in all six schools also at joyce kilmer i dismissed the firearm system but jumping over there we're also going to be doing some tourist film as well at around portraits middle school we have some um classrooms that are carpeted removing that carpet taking it out and going down the line of tile again for maintenance purposes much easier to maintain and there's going to be a demolition of a softball field that's no longer being utilized we're going to have that taken out across soccer fields that are outside of frankfort middle school between the ridge and the town of library and again uh the same store for a window project that's happening at best russia george washington there's also some sections of rambo ridge that's uh having their windows serviced

110and changed out as well as some panels that we've created over the years as well last but not least high school um again as i mentioned earlier to mention that one more time we have some new furniture that was brought into the media center uh some paving over mama high school as well the main entrance drop off pick up lanes for buses and for families will be repaved and we have a roof replacement project that has been ongoing for some time that's going to be entering a new phase we're going to be finishing up the area that we've already started as well as one another area that's going to be used for um to be resurfaced and lastly the grandstands that's a bit that we currently have out right now those kids are expecting them

111in at the end of the month that we hope to award in the summer and district-wide um of course at all our schools all our classrooms uh our custodial team goes into every classroom removes all the furniture they detail the floors they detail the room and put everything back in preparation for students returning in september that's my reporting season thank you very very much mr blaker um for the update um now we move on to our assistant superintendent dr fair give a report this year i don't have an official report i just wanted to thank our tech team um parts for this evening um harrison victor and fabian and you guys are great i'm serious we appreciate you so much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] um president's report all right i have a few things um so

112first of all i just want to say um again a special thanks to our retirees and congratulations and best wishes to them i really think it's important with teaching and with teachers and administrators etc that you never underestimate the difference you need and the lives you touch and many of you have touched many lives including my own children who had several of the retirees through their years in this district so again best wishes um congratulations to our graduating seniors who are enjoying all the end-of-year senior events and then it's a movie night looks like a new event perhaps that's exciting and that they can do so again in person with parents and friends and teachers cheering them on this was evident last night at the senior awards um we have a very talented and well-rounded

113group of students in the class of 2022. um they've been successful academically in sports music theater many other activities while displaying a strong sense of character and thunderbird spirit so enjoy this last week um seniors until graduation and cherish this really special time together um also congrats and best wishes to our eighth graders at rambo ridge who will be moving on to mall high school for the high school of their choice um a few other things i don't know on our back now our twitter feed if you notice that mall high school ranked 43 out of 424 new jersey schools in u.s news and world report so again malwa continues to rise in the standings so thank you for everyone who contributes to that um another piece that was on there was about future problem

114solvers looks like they went to their international competition um in umass this is courtney corella and they took fourth place um the students were mason anton ryan stanford arnold tendelker and natalie morgan there was also an honors community problem solving and they actually had a project stack that they presented this was regarding the cleanup of items that have been dumped up at stack hill we actually heard it during construction curriculum about this project stack and it was a very impressive group of kids and they actually placed second out of 19 competitors at the 2022 international conference also i think this was at umass at the same time um congratulations to senior max kaplan for qualifying competing in the state tennis championships um and congratulations special to george calhannis i hope i'm saying that right he

115is our new jersey state champion in javelin um he threw for feet um and he's also meddled in 400 meters and the 4 by 400 meter relay so congratulations um and then the girls we had sienna cannonberg and zoe merriman also meddling on the state level so a tremendous year this year for track and field as well um lastly i just want to mention about our administrative team they were actually highlighted in the educational viewpoints magazine regarding the thunderbird partnership program making more meaning of connects and this article was in the paper with and the authors are dr duterte dr fair miss rizzo and dr vivino so again congratulations to them and getting malwa out there and malwa's name and our wonderful programming out there thank you very much that's all i have um word

116committee reports miss chicago thank you i have two quick ones uh considering the time and dr morgan took most of my community relationship but um father's day is this sunday so if you haven't got that time your card feel free to run out and grab that before sunday um my second report is on the transportation committee we had our second meeting this morning with mr bleaker and i want to thank ms katino for joining us and we were able to speak with her for her retirement and i felt i hoped the rest of the thing felt but it was extremely valuable to kind of pick her brain a little bit she's been here for a long time and has a lot of institutional knowledge so it's definitely very very helpful committee so mr greek thank

117you for organizing that and i'm looking forward to continuing our work throughout the summer so thank you [Music] briefly for uh facilities i want to thank kyle for putting that report together um in addition to these items we also have some larger projects hvc stuff coming down the line um and i'd like to hear a little bit more about how the grandstand project bid is going um but then i want to thank mike for the strategic plan update i've been a big fan of doing strategic planning since i've been here um there are so many moving parts in our district and this and the plan presentation really showcased how in every school and every classroom there is movement forward on helping and providing new opportunities for learning for our students and it's it's it's something

118that collectively um it's sort of like a massive thing for us it's it's a demonstration that we can undertake ambitious goals we have the capability we have the experience we know how to get experience if we have to get it and we have the wherewithal to take on big challenges on behalf of our students and our faculty it should be really i'm just overwhelmed by the amount of positivity in our district and um i congratulate the entire team um on making this work for us um the other thing i did want to mention is the council of president dave may back in people asked us to meet to discuss the relationship that we have with the township sports program vs funding for janitorial services that occur off hours on weekends so we had a very

119productive meeting uh the first week in june and we had a very open exchange of views and i know that there is going to be some brain power dedicated to coming to a memorable solution probably in the next two months or so i would say um but thank you so much for everybody i mean the retirees left they left the legacy for reported years of experience but we've been hiring dennis's votes tennis's efforts have been we've been hiring back killing those people but it's the people who remain that still embrace the new people and it's a remarkable thing to see when we have our barbecue on the 24th which i'm excited to also attend will be great just on senior night what i was really astounded by was the scholar ethnic relationship there were so

120many kids who had perfect sat scores perfect ect scores who were also excellent soccer players or athletes on our track and field facilities it was a remarkable night it was great in person again and um again thank you to everyone in the district and his questions high school makes that all happen sorry for the lengthy report we had so much good news today i was hoping as well so moved on from committee reports so are there any other board member comments this evening okay um all right business i need a motion mr kuzmarski in a second mr gallo on the minutes from our last meeting mr fleeker mr coppola yes miss dabanero [Music] mr de silva and today mr denise mr gallow yes mr good morning dr park yes mr cohen yes and dr morgan

121yeah and just to repeat this uh since we do have to share microphones uh remember the board members for the minutes um everybody voted in the affirmative with the exception of the mr disillusion thank you mr bleaker uh let's move into new business other i'm going to take a to jj i'm going um any discussions all right mr blaker mr coppola yes or no but i'm staying on beach mr mr dasilva yes mr denise mr yes except i abstain on 18a checks number 107048 and 107 147. mr kismarsky uh yeah so all i have to abstain on gg the sro while i am very supportive of this program thank you dr park yes mrs cohen and dr morty yes and once again to repeat that for um the purpose of anybody who is watching this

122online uh for 18 a through jha everyone on the board voted in the affirmative uh with the exception of mr kappa who abstained on 18h mr gallo who abstained on two checks with 18 a and mr bismarck stayed on 18 jha they voted the infirmity for all other planets mr green mars thank you mr bleaker the consultant contract um [Music] and do i have a motion mr kasmersky ii mr da silva and mr bleaker back to you [Music] mr cobble i want to thank all the residents who reached out to us i've spoken to some people i've read all your emails i've done my homework and i also yes and again i appreciate all the public input into this process mr kizmarski i'm a guest but i also would like to thank the public as

123well as administration for being very uh open and he's positive and back the back and forth this is very helpful um dr parker yes mrs cohen yes dr morgan yes do you want to say something linda i just wanted to say that i watch the news every night and every night on the news it's reported that an asian person has been attacked a gay or trans person has been attacked a person has been attacked for his or her religious beliefs disabled mentally disabled and mentally disturbed people are being attacked homeless people are being attacked and even old people are being attacked simply from who they are so i welcome this audit i think that it's important for us to teach tolerance now more so than heather so i vote yes uh once again for the

124record for agenda 18k uh [Music] [Applause] thank you very much um we're gonna now take a new business [Music] mr cowan yes and i also want to welcome our new staff member mr bismarck yes dr parker yes mr cohen dr morgan all right thank you very much um all right we're going to move into public questions or comment um can i again take a straw poll how many people would like to come to the microphone to give us a public comment or question okay um all right so public participation in board meetings is in accordance with biola 0-167 at this time members of the public may ask questions or make a comment on educational issues or school matters of community interest as a matter of fairness you're asked to limit your questions to no more

125than one and your remarks to no longer than three minutes if you are here representing a group please identify yourself the group in your position in the group if you're here as an individual please give us your name and address before you begin i need a motion to open the meeting to the public mr gala second by mr dasilva hi i [Music] you all for being am there i know especially these last two years it hasn't been easy i'm going to see a nice smile on that for a minute um i know that wasn't easy for some of you and we just really appreciate the district moving forward on this it's really wonderful so excited to see my steps thank you thank you very much miss halley hi megan casella i just want to follow

126to say thank you too i feel a lot more i don't have the word for it but um it feels really good to have a district to come together and support diversity and to send my kids to a school where we're going to look at that and hopefully move forward with this thank you so much thank you miss castella all right um i didn't see anyone oh i'm sorry oh miss ryan i'm sorry i didn't see that you were coming daniel bryan meetings um so last meeting i wasn't here i had a family matter and upon watching the video afterwards i was completely shocked furious the list could go on so the superintendent had mentioned that this is the law that this health mandates with the law um on the may 4th meeting which i

127was at um sue i don't i don't know her last name so she also comes with a lot of names she had mentioned that you can go against um the standards or definitely have opt-outs etc um and quote it was said that standards are state law we do not have a choice but to comply with the standards she then i just did some research she comes back at the last meeting on the 25th may 25th which wasn't here and the president you say and even today even though you're saying it's the law what you're really saying is there's consequences to pushing back um other districts are having some workarounds and things like that but at the last meeting the 25th president you say you're choosing the mawa school district is choosing to follow those standards

128um so again there's there's ramifications maybe for saying for standing up against it but there is options and that's what i came here today to talk about because i was really upset i i come to all these meetings my kids aren't in the schools i desperately want them in school i come here i say that we sometimes are there's we use words to to kind of spin what we're saying towards me and i go back and i have to spend my time rewatching meetings all i do is rewatch board meetings to to be able to say exactly how it was said because i want i want it to be truthful and i have it on my phone i don't want to come by to to be able to actually play exactly what we said and

129before you chime in i just would like to mention what really just blew my mind that i was very shocked what and i knew that it was finally she she caught something she found proof because superintendent advice um i'm sorry if i don't know your titles properly advice everybody you guys didn't say a peep and you always say you always talk you always have an engagement and you sat there quietly and um mr kusmarsky you tried to throw out a lifeline because it was it was hard to watch it was just to try to to try to figure out like how to stop it you wouldn't allow um mr kaplan to speak or you didn't want him to speak and you said no he did and eventually you do let him speak but it was

130outrageous to me that like that it was to me it was a lie it gets caught and then like she shooed away and like i said i spend a lot of time re-watching i i don't want to misspeak and it's painful that i'm i feel like i'm wasting my time because it's not anything you say everything's so transparent but it's not it feels like we're being manipulated or being made thought like i come here like i i feel like it's being spun back like you're overthinking this you're looking for problems i'm not looking for problems but to be what seems to be lied to it really was painful to see and i was shocked that nobody see nobody else seemed to jump on that that there was misinformation okay um so there's some things that

131i want to talk about first of all um the reason why we did not jump in is because the i i didn't know what the question was going on there was a lot that was said and i'm not i don't want to talk about another person i'll just tell you why i sat and didn't respond i think it's extremely important for the community to get a straightforward answer which i gave you guys today but what i gathered and how i gathered that straightforward answer is talking our attorney who knows educational law and speaking to the count who talks about and teaches us about curriculum and implementation so in order for me to prepare that straightforward answer that's what i did things like lies and spinning and manipulation is the opposite of what this community needs

132and i can tell you and look you dead behind nothing i've ever said that's a lie or manipulated or small so in order for me to deliver a straightforward answer i want to prepare because i know that this is a question that's going to be asked over and over again along the lines of the states the state ball that's what i share today along the lines of standards and mr copper brought that up with the last movie the difference between standards and curriculum the standards are the expectations that are going to be covered how we cover it is our curriculum we are at liberty to identify what are our teaching opportunities how the lessons are going to go the materials we're going to utilize to adhere to those standards i also shared a previous meeting

133dr cabino is going to get up in august which we don't do at any other standard and present to the community the new curriculum during that time she'll talk about the grade level gains that the standards adhere to from k through two from three through five and talk about the big ticket items that the community has talked about is concerned about again never do we do that with curriculum but my commitment to transparency is that we're gonna do that in august during that time we'll talk about standards and we'll also talk about how our curriculum is going to adhere to those standards meaning how we're going to teach it also we're going to inform the community that there is an opt-out there is an opt-out call parents and i completely respect any decision my parents

134made have the right to say i don't want my child to take part in this they'll know that their child is taking part in it because our bishop is going to be sending letters to the parents prior to the unity being delivered meaning before michael has to go into this class and learn this content mrs detour is going to be getting a letter saying that your son is going to be going into this class here's the content that's going to be covered here's the person you ask questions to and here's our opt-out policy all of which are very transparent forward all of which we don't have to do but i feel it's important for our community to do because i want the eyes wide open on any material that we're going to cover that might

135cause concern to anybody who lives in this issue so lies manipulation and spinning are the opposite of what i've i've done since i've been in the scene i understand people disagree with things that i'm saying which i respect but at no point have i ever changed what i'm saying have a fear of a disagreement i just wanted to address because you indicated that there was something um that i as the president did as well and i just wanted to clarify that during public comment during agenda questions um it's in the purview of the chair person who's myself to have comments directly towards me and the engagement is between myself and the person at the microphone um i wasn't trying in any way to shut mr kaufman down or suggesting that there was anything you shouldn't

136share uh mr coplan jumped in and board members do jump in occasionally um at that point i didn't think that there was further clarification that was necessary but you're correct i did allow mr hoffland uh to provide some further clarification because he thought it would be helpful at that point um so again there was nothing that we were trying to hide or pass off or i was trying to shut any other board member down from speaking i think we give ample opportunity for board members to also join in and speak but in technicalities i as the chairperson comments [Music] to come closer because i wanted you to see where i came from which is directly over there so when the agenda questions earlier became public uh became open to the public and people to speak

137um um when she spoke um she spoke about something that's not a popular opinion um i'm not here to say my opinion on that matter but um i come here and i voice wildly unpopular opinions so i know it's difficult to come up here to speak when when you know part of the room is against you or what have you um but when she spoke passionately then other people were able to come up and speak and although we mentioned we did stop them from from looking at her but as i sat there right there behind her um i mean you let it happen several times and maybe you could just make it more known that people aren't you're not supposed to be directing your comments towards anybody in the audience because the eyes that she

138got was horrifying like i i don't blame her for leaving that was very disrespectful and i know people have different opinions and that's great and then i'm happy that they share theirs because i think that what you guys are doing um bringing in somebody you're just gonna learn it's not i don't see a problem with that um but [Music] and perhaps this venue made it a little more conducive because i don't know that it's happened as often probably at the board meetings but again this is a little larger than me but thank you very much hi i um i have two kids in the district um and i i want to thank you i want to thank you for uh for your votes today because on our dei moving forward i really like sort of

139the shape of the five-year plan process it's very transparent i've felt like i've had a lot of opportunity for input and to ask questions along the way when we were looking to buy a house there were three different people living in malwa who told me it might be very difficult at the high school level uh because of the amount of bullying i've heard a lot of things about you know i don't know can you afford a different school district can you go to more environments maybe you know maybe rant maybe ramsay is better um and i know that we're not the top performing school district in the area but i think we have a shot at it i think we could be and i'm really excited that we're going to be doing whatever is in

140our power to really look at ourselves and make sure that we're not just paying lip service but we're really doing the work i'm really excited i hope um that as a parent in the district i can help do the work in whatever way that you all need help and then i have a completely unrelated question that does have to do with the five year plan um curriculum wise there was a know change i lost track that had to do with library access in order to make room for some of the speed typing drills and other things some of the technology related things that are also under the purview of library and are included in library education and i was wondering if i could just put it back on your radar that especially at the elementary

141level i think that library time that includes book choice weekly i think it's really beneficial to students feeling like they have a state they have to say they have a choice it's one of the few places in their sort of week-to-week experience where they do get to make the choice so i just wanted to put that back up on the radar in case that's something that can be addressed in the coming year thank you mr okay um motion to close the meeting to the public mr kuzmarsky and mr cohn thank you um we are going to recess to executive session and we will be adjourning thank you all for coming out this evening thank you