001Notice to the designated newspapers the Asbury Park Press and the Manalepin patch the filing with the clerk of Manalepin Township and the clerk of English Town Borough. I'll do a roll call. Mr. Herber? Here. Mr. Green? Here. Mrs. Her? Here. Mr. Kane is absent. Mrs. Lucas is absent as of right now. Ms. Parisi? Here. Mr. Santoro is absent right now. Mr. Tosetti? Oh shoot, well he is here but okay and Dr. Wallace? Here. We have a quorum. I'll stand for the flag salute. I pledge of allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening everyone. Okay, well we will jump right into public comment. If anyone in the audience would like to come up to the
002podium, you have three minutes. Okay. In public comment I would just take a moment and introduce Eric Amato. Mr. Amato is on the agenda tonight to be our new security guard at Lafayette Mills. He is a resident of Manalepin and has been working as a substitute security guard in the district. He retired coming to us. Mr. Amato retired from the Bayonne Police Department as a captain. So he's on the agenda tonight for approval. Awesome. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you for being here and thank you for your service. Alright, we are going to close public comment and we're going to go into executive session. Can I have a motion and a second to move into executive? Mrs. Tosetti and Mrs. Parisi? Aye. We're also going to do a read-in for executive session. We're going
003to do an update on litigation 5756. Okay. Alright, motion to go back into open. Sabrina? Jamie? Alright, agenda item D, changes and revisions. Yes, I can do that. Resolution directing employee number 5758 to a fitness for duty examination pursuant to NJSA 18A colon 16-2. Whereas employee number 5758 is employed by the Manalepin English town regional board of education and whereas pursuant to NJSA 18A colon 16-2, the board may require an employee to undergo a medical examination when the employee evidence is deviation from the normal physical or mental health. And whereas based on the conduct documented to the board by the superintendent of schools and executive session on August 5th, 2025, the board deems it appropriate to direct the employee to submit to a medical examination pursuant to NJSA 18A colon 16-2. Now, therefore, be resolved
004upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools that pursuant to NJSA 18A colon 16-2, employee number 5758 is hereby directed and required to submit to a functional capacity examination to determine the employee's fitness for duty at the board's expense at Atlantic Kinematic. Oh, come on, guys. Somebody else do it for me. Atlantic Kinematic's located at Atlantic Physical Therapy Center 2512 Tilton Corner Road, Wall, New Jersey on August 11th, 2025. Thank you for that. Before it resolved that the superintendent is hereby authorized and directed to prepare and provide the employee with the appropriate written notice of the board's action, including the reasons for said examinations consistent with NJAC 6A colon 32-6.3. Okay, we're gonna have a motion and a second on that for the reading. Oh, just okay. So we'll just do it when we get
005back to the personnel. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Moving on. Item F. Can I have a motion and a second on administrative item F1, please? Jamie. Ryan. Any questions? Anyone? Okay. Mr. Ferber. Yes. Mr. Green. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Santoro. Yes. Mr. Tissetti. Yes. Dr. Wallace. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Business items one through nine. Can I have a motion and a second, please? Kelly. And Christine. Yes. Mrs. Herr. Yes. Mrs. Lucas. Yes. Mrs. Parisi. Yes. Mr. Santoro. Yes. Mr. Tissetti. Yes. But I'm abstaining on number seven, please. Dr. Wallace. Yes. And Mr. Ferber. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Business items one through nine. Can I have a motion and a second, please? Kelly. And Christine. Yes. Mr. Tissetti. Yes. Dr. Wallace. Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes.
006And Mr. Green. Yes. Motion passes. Can I have a motion and a second on personnel items I-1 through I-14? Yes. Mr. Ferber. Yes. And Mr. Green. Yes. Motion passes. Can I have a motion and a second on personnel items I-1 through I-14? I do have a question on number six, six J. So the music position. So we had two music teachers retire, okay. And I see all of this coding for like almost all of our schools. So what is going on in the music department as far as band and instrumental? Is this person going to be teaching general or instrumental? It says music, instrumental, vocal, and in five different schools. Sure. That's a great question. So over the last few years, as there have been retirements, we were able to take positions and actually abolish
007some of those positions to save money because we were able to have, for example, years ago at Milford Brook when the person retired, the instrumental teacher was actually able to teach general music and instrumental. So that became one position. Over time, the way they're shared is at multiple schools. So often if there is a position that needs to be covered for general ed, the instrumental teacher can also cover general ed and often they will for a period here or there and we also use them at the ELC. This person will be doing a .33 at the ELC and working on instrumental elsewhere. It's five different schools. Yeah. That can be typical. For our music teachers to travel to five different schools? It's four different schools. One rock is listed twice because one rock is listed
008as general music and instructional music and what they do is because we have a six-day cycle, they may be in one school the whole day on Monday, on day one, the next day. They're not traveling during the day a lot. Very rarely. Sometimes we do a half day, but they're not all day long driving to different schools. In our other music teachers, are they in multiple schools as well or are there teachers who are in one school? It depends. For the most part, many of our teachers travel amongst the school unless it's a situation, as I explained with Milford-Brook, where they're covering the entire music curriculum, which is all general ed and all instrumental. But we do have one of our instrumental teachers, particularly for strings who is at all five elementary schools. The other
009one that will be hired because we had the two is in a similar position. You're going to hire another one to fill up the other position. This is the second one, so the other one was already board approved. The two music teachers who retired, their bands, who takes over their bands? For example, the Steel Pans. Is that going to be the new teachers or do we have someone assigned for that? The other elementary school teacher who retired, his band, who's getting those? That's a great question. Those are extra ensembles, part of our honoraria. Those were posted and the music supervisor, who also works in collaboration with the district principals, interview and it will go to the best candidate. They can be brand new. They could be somebody already in the district. It's an honorarium. They
010are not built in. The only responsibility that comes with these positions is their actual concert for those schools. Ensembles are extra stipends. I thought the elementary band was part of the school. That is correct, but if it's an select ensemble, jazz and the Manalapans are all extra honorarias. There's no way to fix that, to have teachers going around to multiple, multiple schools. I just don't find that to be an effective strategy. I know cost-wise it is, but I just can't see having teachers run around to four different schools. That's actually when we started this. We started this when we started getting the S2 budget cuts. This is one of the reasons why we were able to stay operational. We did that with the world language program as well. I feel it is too much of
011a disruption to our music program. No, you don't think so? No. As Ms. Santora already explained, the reason we went to the six-day rotational schedule in 2018 was for one of this purpose, because she said they're not traveling necessarily three schools within a day. The most would be potentially two if it was a 0.5 position, such as the ELC, but otherwise they're assigned by a day, so A1 you might be at Wem Rockbrook. It's consistent, and they're actually in a routine. Thank you for the clarification. Yes, and we also do this with other specials as well. It's not just music. I know. World language doesn't. We have the two teachers. Two, right? Art does it. Art does it as well. And that's all because of the six-day rotation? Six-day rotation allowed for openings in their
012schedules, so versus having a teacher in a building not doing anything, we did this in order to maximize funds. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for personnel? No? Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Motion passes. Uh, no comment today. We did hold a referendum committee meeting yesterday. Sorry, I did not get the minutes out in time for today's meeting, but they will be forthcoming. I'm anticipating that Dr. Santora will have an update on the referendum, but I do want to stress that we did discuss the schedule, almost entirely about the schedule and how things are progressing, keeping an eye on the opening of school for September. So, you know, happy to report that things are on schedule, and we've been asking pointed
013questions about any issues that may arise for September, and really the entire team is unified in saying that we're making good progress, working well with the township, and anticipate opening school certainly on time, and while certain buildings may be impacted in certain ways, everyone should be walking into school on the first day of school, and that's something that we've been stressing for months, if not even, you know, before the referendum passed. It's really been on our radar. So we are at the halfway mark of the summer, and, you know, before we know it, kids are gonna be back in the building, and luckily our team has come together and is really working well. So thank you for that, and looking forward to the opening of school in about a month. Thanks. Speaking of the referendum
014that you brought it up, I noticed that Taylor Mills seems to be one of the schools that has like a later September finish, unlike some of the roofing stuff. How will that impact? I'll do it. You'll do it with your update? Okay, perfect. And if I don't, remind me. Okay, and then I'm just looking forward to going to the groundbreaking tomorrow, so exciting. I just wanna say that in reference to the referendum, that it's nice to see as I drive around the town all the work that's being done at all of the schools. The community should be very proud of themselves as I am, as a board member, of how we were able to come together and get this huge project done. Our buildings were in desperate need of repair, and it's just nice to
015see all the work getting done and the schools being fixed for our students to come back into in September. So I just wanna thank everyone. Yes, absolutely. Great pointing that out, Christine. It's very noticeable. And on that topic also, I wanted to just point out as I've seen a lot of people, a lot of chatter because of the tax bills that just went out from the township to all the residents. If you haven't opened yours yet, don't. But unfortunately, there was definitely a big increase. Everyone's feeling, pretty much I think everyone's feeling it. But there was some questions and I think uncertainty as to what is the cause of it. And I'm not gonna speak to what the cause of it is, but I will speak to what it is not. And it is not
016related to the school bond referendum as some people have speculated. So that tax impact has not actually occurred yet. That won't take effect till I believe next year. I think 26 is when it will, right? Yeah, so next year is when that will impact our taxes. And again, I'm just going around figures off the top of my head from an elephant residents an average of about $32 or so a month for English town residents. I believe it was about 23. So those are the numbers. It's not these thousands of dollars that a lot of people are feeling in their tax increases that they just got notified about. Okay, so just wanted to clarify that. Looking forward to the groundbreaking tomorrow. Really excited about that. And also just to the board, I'm gonna send out an
017email in the next day or two, asking everyone to please work on updating board goals for our August 19th meeting. If we can try to have that solidified and hopefully something that we can all hash out and put in place, because definitely do for an update there. And that's all I got. Oh, sorry, last one. I know there's an infrastructure improvement grant out there and there's a deadline of 831. I wonder if it was something that we have on our agenda that we're shooting for. It's related to, I believe, paying for updates to water filtration, filling stations. Jessica and Melissa have already completed that grant. Yes, we've already finalized that. We're just waiting for the state to get back to us and let us know where they are with the process. I should have figured
018you guys were on it, but I had to ask. Thank you. Okay, I would just like to follow up on what you had said. Is it my turn? I just didn't say. Please, go right ahead. What you had said, so on this business agenda, there was an item to take the interest from the bonds and use it to pay down the debt services. So I thank the board for approving that. That will help with the referendum debt. So we can only, and Jessica, Ronnie would be great to answer this and I don't wanna put you on the spot, but I believe I'm correct. Any interest we make, we can only keep the interest that's equal to the interest on the debt. So basically, if the debt service, which I believe is at 4%, we can
019only keep 4% of the interest. The rest goes back to the government or somewhere. And then that 4% we get back, we can use to pay down the taxes, which you just voted on, so thank you. I think that'll be a help for taxpayers. The other thing we did find out, Friday around seven o'clock, that we were approved for the tax incentive program. We had already approved that in May. We were waiting on the letter. The letter finally came. We'll be putting out postings for those positions and to move forward with our curricular purchases. Right now, it'll be three teaching staff members. We currently had already hired two because then we desperately needed them. So we'll be putting a posting for the third teaching staff member, a mental health clinician coaching position, someone that's a
020part-time coach, part-time working with children. That'll be on the next agenda. Ms. Pipchinski will send you a summary of what that looks like and a job description, another BCBA and another guidance counselor for MEMS. So all those postings will be coming out. The mental health clinician will wait till after you guys approve the job description at the next agenda. Groundbreaking is tomorrow. We are so excited. It's at 10 o'clock at MEMS. We have about 60 people who have RSVPs that they will be in attendance. So it'll be a nice big crowd. We can't wait. The soil's ready for us to put our shovels in. The shovels will be there. Our hard hats will be there. So very excited for that. As far as the referendum, the paving is almost done. We probably have about another
021week or so. At Pinebrook, the stairs will be installed soon, but the railing will probably be the last week in August. So when you go to Pinebrook for anything, we may not be able to use the back entrances yet. We may still have to use the front entrance. Roofing, Wemrock, Brook and MEMS are making good progress. Wemrock is estimated to be totally complete around 823. MEMS around 816. Please accept for the cap sheet, which will be done 9-9. So basically they put the roof down, and anyone that knows roofing can correct me when I'm wrong, but they put the roof down and then there's a cap sheet that goes on top. The roof, when they put it down, is all waterproof and what have you. The cap sheet's just a white sheet that goes on
022top to keep it all together and make it look nice. So they expect the cap sheet to go until 8-9. That's not really a big deal. They just have to glue it on. MEMS also has the concern with the big RTU units that were gonna be in the gym. Nope, we're not getting that. That's HVAC, I'll get there. That's roofing. Okay, roofing at Clark Mills and Taylor Mills. They're a little behind the other schools, which you noticed. The estimate for Clark Mills is to be complete around 8-27 and we should have Taylor Mills to be done by the start of school except for the cap sheet. That's where we're at with Taylor. They're working, they were completing the one job and then going on to the other job versus working both jobs simultaneously. They had
023started the project a little later in the summer. Then they had the whole 100 degree days, but everyone's going to be working weekends and if necessary, double shifts to make sure that it is done for the start of school. All the dates for the roofing projects that we discussed presume that there is no loss due to weather and it's also presumed that they're working on Saturdays. HVAC, Milford Brook and Clark Mills are moving right along. Milford is now in startup and testing and Clark Mills will be there soon. I wanna say personally, and I think Ms. Pipchinski will share my sentiment, I am so happy for Milford Brook. For many of you who don't know, Milford Brook is a late school, so they get out much later than our other students and their gym did
024not have any air conditioning at all. There was many, many times, and luckily it hasn't been in the last few years and then we got the window units, but there was many times where we, in some instances, closed Milford Brook for a half day because we couldn't keep them open due to the heat. It's really hard to say that you have four elementary schools that are getting a full day of school and one that can't be there for a full day because it's too hot. The fact that Milford Brook is done and we never have to go through that again and they can have a similar experience as to all of our other schools is just like cry worthy. I'm so happy for them and so glad we were able to do that and Clark
025Mills, they'll be running their test soon as well. Pinebrook and MEMS, Pinebrook units were delayed from the manufacturer. However, they worked extra hard to get everything up and running and they don't see it affecting the completion date, but I will tell you, if you go into Milford Brook, you're like, oh, it looks like a school. If you go into Clark Mills, you're like, oh, it looks like it's becoming a school. If you go into Pinebrook right now, gives you a little panic attack, okay? But we're getting there and it's gonna be, they promised that we're gonna be fine and I know that they put extra men on to try to speed this along with extra electricians. So we're getting there. There's also, at Pinebrook and MEMS, a delay in the rooftop units. For Pinebrook, it's
026the rooftop units that do the music rooms for MEMS. It's the rooftop unit that does their gym. I think I shared this at last time. They are ripping everything out. So until those rooftop units come and they're installed, those rooms will not be operational because we have to get fresh air flow in. However, the rooftop units were not supposed to be delivered to August 30th. There's been some birds flying around. They're saying it looks like it may be sooner. Even if it's sooner, it still takes two to three weeks after they arrive to actually get them in. They also have to get the steel structure that holds them up. There was some back and forth with that, so we have to reorder those. But we're hoping for MEMS and those rooms in Pinebrook to be
027good to go by October. Because Dr. Fiorello is here, I will thank him for being very flexible. As you know, you call him up and you're like, hey, you wouldn't have your gyms. He's like, not a problem, got it. So I thank you for that and I also wanted to do a really big shout out for our physical plan director, our maintenance supervisor, our custodial supervisors, and all of our custodians, our maintenance team and our grounds team. I mean, they have been working around the clock to get things done for this referendum and get the buildings ready. And for them, this is really hard because they're used to being able to clean their buildings. And right now, they can't. So, and like what happened at Milford, the contractors finished a room, the custodial crew followed
028right up and completed that room and they're following in sync with them. So it's very time consuming. If you look at MEMS, they usually don't have a summer program. They have one of the biggest buildings to clean and get ready. They have a summer program. So now they can't begin cleaning their building, those classrooms that were being used until next week. Any building where the roofs were open may have to be re-cleaned. So that adds extra pressure and they're just getting it done. And then on top of that, you say to MEMS, oh, by the way, you're also gonna have a groundbreaking ceremony. Hope you have time to help set that up and get that going. And they're like, no problem, we got this. So thank you to all of our physical plant facilities people.
029They have been absolutely amazing and just getting it done. So that's what I have to say. Awesome, thank you for the updates. Okay, so good evening and thank you. As you all know, as our board, I did send you the presentation prior to, to give you the opportunity to look through. For the most part, nothing here is a few things. Most of it is not brand new to you. Most of this has been shared throughout the course of the last few months as things were happening. So you should have at least a familiarization with some of the topics, if not many of them. But first and foremost, the purpose that I'm here today is to give you the curriculum updates, primarily to discuss anything that was revised. Those drafts will be on the next agenda
030for approval and adoption. You do have the opportunity to review them, to see exactly what is being changed or updated, in addition to just the summary I will give you and Dr. Santora in her newsletter, which will go out to parents, I believe tomorrow as part of her letter, also gives this presentation out to parents. So that will be linked there and we will put it on the website as well. So why do we have to do curriculum revisions every single year? Well, some years we have a lot more than others and as you may recall, last year we wound up having to revise everything because the English language arts standards were updated. That was not the case this year. This year there are many, many less revisions and some of the reasons we need
031to continue making revisions are we get better, we improve, we might have an update to a pacing guide, to an assessment, to a resource and we want to make sure that the curriculum represents that. Other reasons we have to update in support is because these are the blueprints for our teachers and lastly, for compliance. Sometimes there is a mandate where we need to make sure that we update something to fulfill whatever that requirement is. You've heard of this revision process before but just to give a quick summary, what do we do, how do we revise? We have committees, we have teachers who are part of the process, they give input. This time around, we did not need to update every single curriculum guide, it was very limited. So there were times where it was the
032teachers and other times that it was the supervisor and or myself. However, I am always vetting every guide. The supervisors read through every change, they approve it if a teacher made it and then I go through and I approve it and if needed, I also make additional updates. The next step as mentioned already is at the next meeting, we will ask for adoption of those curriculum guides and then they're disseminated out to the public through Atlas, which is on our district website. So just to give you a quick summary of what was updated, English language arts, there were just a few grades updated this year. Grade three, we updated the pacing guide to align with changes that came from last year. Whenever we live a new curriculum guide, sometimes we need to make adjustments of
033what we actually needed to update or evaluate. In this case, the pacing guides were updated to reflect phonics, morphology, sentence composition, reading foundations and cursive. We want to make sure that's also included. Grades four, five and seven also have the addition of novels that were piloted last year. I do list all the novels, so you're welcome to look those up in case you have any questions about them, but those were already piloted last year so we know how to implement them and the teachers have collaborated to know how to move forward. In mathematics, we added vocabulary lists to every single unit for every single grade and in the areas of advanced math for pre-algebra 6B and for algebra, which are at sixth grade and seventh grade, we updated the rigor with the pacing guides because
034they are advanced classes. We wanted to make sure that was reflected in how we are implementing the curriculum and there was a new unit added. Health, this is one of those areas where we need to make sure we are fulfilling a mandate. So there is a mandate that we have to teach grief for students in grades eight through 12. Well, we only are a K-8 district, therefore one unit in one health guide was impacted. The six, eight curriculum guide had a couple of objectives and suggested activities related to grief added. That's a requirement, it impacts no other grade and as for technology, we added an objective related to digital citizenship, which aligns with what we were doing and in relation to AI, artificial intelligence. A lot is happening in English language arts, which is why
035you probably have noticed that there are a lot more slides related to that. There were new laws enacted last year, chapter 52 and chapter 53, which really promoted literacy at the primary grades. Anything that we are doing this year has to make sure we're in compliance and the good news for you is we already were. There was one small tweak, which I'll explain in a moment. Beginning this year, we need to make sure that grade three students receive a universal literacy screening at least twice a year. We also have to make sure that within 30 days of the assessments being given at grades K-3, that parents receive the score results already in progress. We do this already, we utilize the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills called the Dibbles, you may know that assessment.
036We have been implementing that for quite some time through K-5, so we actually already are in compliance. The only new changes is that we have to make sure grade three is assessed twice a year. Beforehand, we were only assessing certain populations of students in grade three. If a student was below benchmark, then they got the Dibbles. Now we have to assess all third grade students twice a year. Grades K-1 and 2 will continue being assessed three times a year. You might ask, why not do three times a year for grade three? Grade three is very assessment heavy. They're getting a cursive assessment, they're taking the NJSLA, they're also doing the DRA-3. We don't want to over-assess. If we feel we're missing data, we'll reevaluate, but for now we're sticking to two times a year. Grades
037four and five will continue being Dibbled, as we say, and that will only be for students not at benchmark. We're happy we received funding to help support this. Funding for Optimal Comprehensive Universal Screeners, the FOCUS grant, we received that as $17,660. You already approved it, so thank you. And that is going to utilize an instructional literacy consultant who can help create resources and help our coaches to further evolve to support staff, and it will be used to help pay for the literacy screener that we were paying for through local funds. We're allowed to use this funding for that purpose. You may recall last year we piloted two phonics programs, Wilson Foundations and 95% groups. The teachers did like it, but our analysis of the data showed there was no vast difference or improvement, and in
038some cases there was a slight decline, so we're keeping with what we were doing with Project Read. Even though Project Read has been discontinued, we have enough resources, and those instructional strategies are not intellectual property. Therefore, we can continue, and we will create our own resources to help support that. We don't wanna use funding for something that did not have a benefit. I never like to say something is a failure. We learned a lot through that pilot, and there were actually some supplemental resources not owned by Wilson or 95% that we can continue purchasing using some of that grant money that will help with multi-sensory modality learning. There are these cool gel boards. We bought those because that's something we learned was a great tool. So all new information, it was still helpful. Next year,
039we are implementing a comprehension pilot because our resources are dated. The middle school anthology actually is over a certain number of years old on our other program with reading and writing workshop. We're actually sticking with writing, but the reading workshop is now reaching the five-year mark where we need to evaluate what we are utilizing. We are piloting at the K-6 schools, so Pine Brook has included arts and letters. We have vetted these resources. We did actually invite the board back in April and May. If you wanted to come see the resources, you were welcome to. You're still welcome to do that if you would like to. But the reason we're going with this, it's not a textbook. However, it's an interactive, engaging reader that builds background knowledge, and we're finding that that is, through our
040data analysis, exactly what is missing. The students are lacking the background to understand what they're reading. This program infuses that, and it gives us more support with non-fiction text. We love pilots because it allows us to evaluate how we in Menalapin want to implement something as well. So this will be implemented for grades K through six, and then there will be another program, which I'll share on the next slide, for grades six to eight. You might say I already said six. Six is piloting both, because we want to see for that transition year what is best. I do list on the sidebar. For anybody who's interested, all the texts are provided. You're welcome to look through that list if you have questions. There's a link on the next slide, similarly. And what I like with
041these two companies is if there's something we don't like within a text, they will offer us solutions or other texts, which is really helpful. At the middle school levels, the other resource being piloted is My Perspectives by Savvis Pearson, which is what we use for mathematics and vision. Again, within the second bullet, there's a link to optional books. We don't have to use all of their books. We may decide we only want to use two or three of them, but they provide us a list. And what I love, again, as mentioned, we're trying to achieve a certain goal. We know where our resources are dated. We do need to update. We need to find resources that match what our students need. We have found that this is that for now. We'll have more data to
042share with you at the conclusion of the pilot, but it will help us to ensure that our students are getting what they need. Our goal is to never get rid of what we did in the past. It's always to build upon what we've done and to do better. We will continue doing writing in a separate block at the elementary level for 40 minutes using the writing program that we have in place, reading if we go with arts and letters, and at least for the pilot, it fits our 60-minute block. So scheduling is as it will continue. It's just using different resources. Social studies, there's a lot happening there as well. The family engagement events that you learned about last summer where we welcomed back the community and we were working on different cultural events to
043assimilate our children in learning about one another's cultures went really well. They were well received by parents and staff. We are continuing with that. Mrs. Marsala will work with the teachers if any changes or revisions or updates need to be made. She's setting up committees. She's also sending out surveys, which have been very helpful. We've had a lot of professional development, which I'll share with you momentarily, but you may recall we did have presentations at MEMS back in June for third generation New York 3GNY where somebody came to speak about their family member being a Holocaust survivor. That aligns with district goals, the comprehensive equity plan, as well as state mandates, and it was just very moving for our children to hear. We intend on continuing that again and having a presenter in, I believe,
044was it October or end of September? Okay, perfect. So that will align with the anti-bullying week in New Jersey schools, where that presenter will be back again. It also aligns with something special that is happening, which you've already been made aware of. Mrs. Marsala is collaborating with the Foundation for MERS on hosting the Hate End Now Cattle Car Exhibit. That would be for our eighth grade MEMS students in October. It's an immersive traveling exhibit designed to raise awareness of the Holocaust, to combat anti-Semitism, and to confront forms of hate. It's an actual cattle car from the Holocaust that immerses visitors in what that experience was like so as to learn how to have more empathy for others. We're also working on revolutionary schools, the celebration of Revolution 250, 250 years since the Revolutionary War, and
045America 250, which will follow next year. Information will be going out to the community on Friday, so look for that. Lots of PD. We have staff attending this week now, the Amistad Summer Institute. They get to stay in a dorm all free. It was, I think, if anything, maybe $50, but this experience where they're integrating African American history and learning about things they can put into the curriculum with our approval. Asian American Pacific Islander, we've sent staff to that. The stories, we, Mrs. Marsala and myself, attended back in the spring, the Leading with Knowledge Consortium at Keene University. It was on Holocaust and genocide studies. We actually signed up for a consortium with them where we are able to get free professional development through the resources there, and that's again through Keene. And again, everything
046is in alignment with district goals and with what we have been working on with ensuring that we are promoting anti-hate and anti-bullying preventative strategies through the curricular resources that we have at all Alliance. Science, we continue to update our benchmarks, utilize data to increase student achievement, and to provide more professional development. I do list some of the really important PD sessions staff have attended, or will be. We always get excited every year. We have our district vision. You'll get your T-shirts soon. As soon as they arrive, you will get one, and I'm sure the community will begin to see. Learning Today, Leading Tomorrow displayed all over our school and throughout our different hallways as we are wearing them to show collaboration with one another and that our goals remain the same. At our keynote, which
047is September 2nd, Opening Day, we have a presentation on artificial intelligence. It is being presented by Dr. Derek Tranchina from MOSH, Mometh Ocean Educational Services Commission. He will be presenting on AI, our beliefs, the challenges, the obstacles, and how we move forward. You're welcome to attend. I'll let you know that information as it gets closer. I'm also sharing with your model school's focus. This is something we've been doing for, oh my, 10 years now. And we do continue implementing and building. We are focusing once again on high-effect instructional strategies. What is a high-effect instructional strategy? It's a teaching approach or intervention that has an effect size of .40 or higher. The effect size is a statistical measure that quantifies something and how it's impacted. Basically, anything higher than that, .40, which is they call the
048hinge point, is really good. That's what we're looking for. So as you'll see, the different strategies we're training our staff on or reminding them about, they all have a high effect size beyond that. Our goal is always to use our faculty meetings for professional development to help our staff progress. Nurtured heart, you're aware of this. We are continuing. We're now in year four. It's hard to believe. Time seems to go so quickly. This provides you just some background on what we're doing this year in regards to professional development and what our focus is. Once again, this year's focus is on giving hands-on strategies to staff. Jill Legato will be training staff at faculty meetings at least twice this year, if not more. She will, again, be giving real-life hands-on strategies so staff can use them
049with students. If you've ever attended any of Jill's trainings for parents or the community, that's what she works with as well with parents, and we will continue those practices. This actually will give us some more data. I know we always ask, do we have data on this? The implementation that we're doing with the, where is it? There is this form for positive actions that will be implemented that will actually give us some information that we can quantify for you. Hit, I'm gonna conclude as we get to this. High-impact tutoring. We hope for funding once again. Rumor has it that may be coming out. We really hope so. We had almost $500,000 for this over the last two years. I do have some data to share with you because I think it's important to look at
050the effectiveness of a program. This screen just gives you some background of how we implemented it. There were some basic requirements. We had to target third and fourth grade. However, per the grant, we were allowed to do any grade. We selected grades two through eight because grades K, one and K and one are still learning the foundational skills, so we did stick to that. It had to be small group. It should not exceed, should not have exceeded a group size of four. We tried to keep it anywhere from one to four. There were some groups that were one-on-one based on the needs of the student. Most groups tended to have hovered around three to four, and we needed to have a minimum weekly meeting of at least twice a week. Obviously, if somebody could only
051attend once, we never turned them away because one time was more than nothing. The criteria depended upon the building, but we did ask for multiple measures, and we did put an emphasis on special education students, students at risk, multilingual learners, students who were struggling, who did not get any intervention support. We tried to look at anybody who was in what we call the bubble. This is what makes me excited as we start to look at the numbers. We had 268 students. Over the last two years, some carried over and repeated, some were new, some were only in it last year who were in ELA, English Language Arts, and we had another 225 who received support in mathematics. But this is the slide I love. When you look at the English Language Arts data and you
052look at what I have at the bottom in blue, the percentage of participants who maintained or made growth so they stayed the same or did better was 78.36% of the students who were in the HIP program. I would love to say 100% if we can strive to do better, but that is exceptional. 78% of the students stayed the same or did better. And for mathematics, it was just around 81%. And I have it broken down if you needed to see more specific information. You can see it's decreased by two levels, decreased by one level, maintained the same, increased one level, increased two. I actually had to report this data to the state as well. And of course, I always like to conclude with who are the curriculum supervisors? What does our department look like? Everybody
053is here enlisted. Should you ever have a question, you can contact a supervisor or myself. We are very happy to help in any way we can, even if it's just to provide clarity on something. Okay. And my contact information is there. Any questions? I know there's always a lot here. I have a statement and then I have a question. So I just wanna touch back with the project read. I think it's a wise decision. I used that program when I was in borough and it's amazing to see at that time I was doing pullout resource for grades three to five. And we exclusively use that program and the gains the children made was phenomenal. So I still have it in my closet at school. So I think it's a great decision. It's a great program.
054So I'm glad to hear that we're still using that. Thank you. And again, the strategies can carry over regardless of whatever resource you're using. Now, I did have a question with the decreased two levels and decreased one level. And you probably can't answer this specifically on the spot, but it's just something that I'm curious about. Like I understand some kids don't test well and all that kind of stuff. So there's always gonna be a little bit of that going on. But do we have any data that would show is it a kid that maybe only came that once a week? Is it a kid that maybe, are we gonna these kids that decreased one or two levels, will they be, if they're not already getting RTI services or an IEP, is this something we're gonna
055use to maybe identify these kids? Like maybe they need some additional supports or evaluations? We can always, so what I do is I do an overview for the district and then I send it back to the schools. At our admin retreat next week, we actually ask them for their own takeaways. So that's something we'll make sure we discuss. Now what? We have this information. I did use link it C as our end point for this. So I'd actually be quite curious to see what the NJSLA looks like. And that's not forever grade, of course. And some students take the dynamic learning maps assessment. So it's not always consistent, but I will do another reevaluation of this based on the NJSLA results as well. It's very comprehensive because you have to do it kid by kid.
056But I will make sure our building administrators are working in collaboration with their interventionists. Now we have criteria for intervention. So it might be something different. I'd like to say if we do have hit again, that we'd be able to continue that support. But yes, I can see who came, how often. I do have that data. We actually asked the buildings to track that for every single student. Yeah, because the reason I'm asking is this is like extra support outside of their school day. So they're getting this extra support and they're still going behind a level or two can be a little concerning if they were there regularly and they did it. Now, if there's someone who came like once here, once there, or maybe it's an indicator that they need additional supports. I'm just
057curious what more we're gonna do with those children identified and. Knowing, having spent a lot of time on this, knowing some of those students who went down. I also know that some of them may have been in specialized programming already. So they're very, so not always. More often than not, that was the case, whether it was an intervention status they already have. It could have been some of our multilingual learners. And the start point wasn't always the same because the way the state asked to evaluate this, it's from whenever they started in the program. So if I am child A and I started last year, I used link at A from two years ago as the start point. And the end point was this year's link at C. However, if I started this year, it
058was link at A this year. So there were some differences in that start point as well. Based on what the state told me we had to use. So just to clarify, if I started in third grade and now I was in fourth grade this year and in the program, I might have actually went up at the end of third grade but then decreased at fourth grade but we're basing it from the third to the fourth. Okay, that makes a little bit more sense. And it was different kid to kid depending on their start date. Okay, perfect. It was not an easy report to do. Well, thank you for the clarification. You're welcome, anything else? Jodi, I have a quick one. Just regards to the pilot programs. How is, is there any methodology in choosing the
059teams that it's applied to? Okay, that's a great question. So actually Mr. Abel sends it out to all district staff in those grade levels. And then we are very strategic in where we placed it because we wanna spread it out across the different schools. We wanna make sure there's representation for each grade. We also know if somebody piloted something the year before, we don't necessarily want them to pilot something again. We try to make sure that there's special education represented as well so that we're looking at all different student performance related to the resource being utilized. And are those resources exclusively used or are they able to be coupled with something from project read or? Everything we do is a little bit of this, a little bit. I'd love to say there's a resource that
060has it all, but such a thing does not exist. And if somebody said it does, I'd be very wary of that program. We kind of go a la carte to make sure that we're using the best of everything. Gotcha, I was just trying to figure out if there was a way to get a metric on the actual benefit from it, if it was exclusive, but had a high call. For the comprehension piece, because project read is primarily going to be the phonics and the morphology and writing, which is separate. For teaching of comprehension, we will have fulfilled fidelity with this. That will help us to make very clear decisions based on the analysis and data that we can ascertain from the use of the program. So for that specific piece, because everything does something different,
061this is for comprehension. We're hoping, I'll put it out there, we're really hoping that if all goes well with this pilot, because it has that non-fiction background building knowledge component that down the line, I can actually get rid of some programs that are very costly to also save money as well. There are some online tools we use that cost over $100,000 that may no longer be needed because of this. So we're trying to be strategic for student performance and for budget. And that's just based on the non-fiction portion of the program? For the non-fiction, because this infuses and integrates non-fiction as a precursor to what they're reading with fiction. So when you have an understanding about, let's say there's a story, I'm making this one up, it's not something in here, but let's say it's
062about dolphins. If you're reading a fiction story about a child who goes off, goes dolphin exploring, you might get a non-fiction article or text all about that to help teach what that really means so children can understand what they're reading in the fiction because there's a real life component behind it. Thank you. So we're excited. Actually David had the opportunity to view everything and he sat in on some of the decision making when we were really looking to move forward. So I thank him for that and his input. You're welcome to come see the resources as well. Anything else? Kelly. I just have a question in regards. I know in years past, there was a gifted and talented program which we no longer have. And it seems as if there is a lot of focus
063on tutoring and extra help other than the enrichment program that we have. Do we have something in place? Well, I want to clarify, we absolutely have a gifted and talented program. It is required by law. It's our academically talented program. It just looks different. Many years ago, there was a three-part component. I know that I was the supervisor of academically talented at the time. It was self-contained classrooms that capped out at 25 students and took a very small percentage of students across the district. Then there was a cluster classroom program and then there was an enrichment component. Over time, that has expanded to provide more equitable opportunities into our enrichment program. And then as you get to the middle school grades, there's with distinction and there's advanced math. That is the gifted and talented program
064and it meets every single component of the law. Nicole, I don't know if you wanted to add anything. No, when we made the modifications, we actually now are incorporating more students than we had been with the other program. It just looks different. And it's not this pull out only certain children only in grades three through five. It can go to all grade levels. But I think the other thing that we talk about too is we have the enrichment program for the top 10% in each school. In addition to that, we now have the competitions at each school, which we never had in the past, and any student can participate in the competitions. So before, a lot of these competitions were only done by those children that were in the self-contained class at Lafayette Mills. It
065was a very, very, very small number that could even participate. And now it doesn't matter if you're in Richmond or not, if you're interested in participating, you can. So we have opened more avenues for more children to be able to participate. And Richmond is great, as Dr. Santor explained, because we work in cycles. So you're not in it once, and you're just then, there, and nobody else can get in. We work off basically what we call our own semesters. So you might be in it one semester, you may not make it the next semester, but next year you have the opportunity to try again and make it based off the multiple criteria. Just so you all know, and Dr. Singer, not Doctor, Ms. Singer is already aware. I'm totally messing that one up. Ms. Singer
066is aware. At some point in the fall, I believe, or winter, she will be doing a presentation on the gifted and talented, academically talented program, because it's been some time, and the board has changed. The community has changed since she last presented. We are working on an audit as well. So she'll be able to talk about everything with you. That's already in the works. And we do, as Dr. Santor said, the criteria is top 10% based on the measures for each school, because each school looks different. And that is how we make sure that there are more experiences for different children, except when we get to middle school. That criteria is set for a very specific purpose, because you have to have those foundations in order to excel and move at a very fast pace.
067Okay, anything else you wanted to add with that? I think that was perfect. Do you have any more questions? Okay. Okay, then I'm good, unless there's something else, but you can email me. Thank you. I will add one other item. So to my letter to the community, to parents is going out tomorrow. In my letter, there will be a link to a newsletter, and in the newsletter is a link to this presentation. So all parents will have easy access to this presentation. I'd now like to welcome Dr. Fiorillo, who will be talking about our need for a dance team. I'm not gonna dance. All right, I'm gonna be a little bit brief. I will start off with just a quick story to kind of establish how this came to be. In August of 2022, before
068I even met the student, I received an email over the summer saying, I really like memes to have a dance team. And kids are great with ideas. They always come up with ideas and things like that. Sometimes they don't anticipate what that means. Maybe they're not understanding the follow through. So I responded back and said, I'm really glad to hear you're excited. I said, but you know, it's gonna be a big change. This is in 2022, so I believe at the time we were just coming back to school every day. I said, so I just need you to concentrate on getting comfortable in the fall. I said, but if you're still interested, tell your homeroom teacher to come, you're gonna come see me in the end of September, beginning of October. And sure enough, she
069did. We had a conversation about what was good about it. Girl's name was Ashley. And I was honest with her. I said, listen, I've worked at high schools. I actually built a dance studio, one high school, as a supervisor, I didn't do it myself. I said, but I don't understand what this looks like at the middle school level. I said, so that's your first task. You have to show me at the middle school level. About a month and a half later, she sent me an email, and it's a list of a whole bunch of schools in Monmouth County, and they have middle school dance teams. So I started re-entourist, okay, this is what it looks like. Call her back down. Now I need to know if there's interest. Again, if you know anything about kids,
070if you ask them about something new, there's always interest. 300 kids will tell you they'll show up. They might not actually, but they'll tell you. But sure enough, she comes with a list of about 40 names. I said, okay, and this is maybe February. I said, now we need to find out who in the building can do it. I said, I have some ideas from what I know. Go talk to these people. She talks to the teachers, comes back, she's got an advisor. This is the end of the year, so I said, all right, we'll run it as a volunteer program next year. So I did skip ahead a little bit. There are some numbers here. I'll actually come back to this slide. So we end up with 21 students who try out. 15 end
071up making the team. They begin dancing. They perform at basketball games. They perform at the pep rally. We actually ended up bringing on a second advisor who volunteered her time, Miss Watson, Miss Buxbaum. Miss Buxbaum had a lot of experience with building a program, I guess, at the high school level. Dance is a fall sport, coincides with football. She's actually the varsity coach at Homedale. So between her and Miss Watson, they were able to get a program going. We had a group of students. And then I started to get a little bit nervous. I said, all right, and this is why we usually ask to volunteer and run a program for more than one year. Again, because when there's something new, sometimes it's catchy, but what's gonna continue? So we ended up with 35 tryouts
072this year. 27, sorry, 35 physicals were turned in specific to dance. 27 attended tryouts, 20 made the team. We adjusted. One of the things we had to work out in the first year, so this was the 23, 24 school year, was how can this supplement what we're already doing and not take from it? So I was coaching at the high school level when lacrosse started to become a big sport in Monmouth County. And one of the fears of coaches, both boys and girls, was, oh my God, what's gonna happen? I'm gonna lose my program. Well, yes, a few kids from soccer or whatever went over and played lacrosse, but soccer didn't disappear, football didn't disappear. It just became another outlet. What we had to work out is an outlet. How can this supplement what's going
073on with our established cheerleading program and not replace that? So even though the girls end up dancing, sometimes with the cheerleaders, sometimes they alternate only at home games. They don't travel. We didn't end up using them in the winter pep rally, became the spring pep rally, became their thing. That way the cheerleaders still at the winter pep rally is their thing, and we're able to run too. And what it does, now I'm gonna work my way backwards here, is it gives us another opportunity to allow a different outlet for students to not only be involved in teamwork, but it gives them a creative and artistic outlet. I'm just discovering this now because my own daughter is into cheerleading, but sometimes when they're competitive cheerleaders, and this might be something that's happening in some other sports,
074they don't always go to school cheer. Sometimes they end up doing dance. Sometimes they end up doing gymnastics, or sort of an overlap there. So we ended up having another outlet for students who maybe didn't wanna do cheerleading, but wanted to participate. It's been awesome at the games. If you've been to the basketball games in the last two years, you might've seen their performances. It's been awesome at the pep rallies. It's been a really, really nice thing. And I've said this before when I've talked about new activities. At this level, we very often, the more hooks we can get for students so that they find an attachment when they're not necessarily maybe seeing, oh, I need to do good here because of my future. And maybe some of the experiences they have in elementary school
075where I just wanna do what my teacher tells me or my mom tells me. They're experimenting. They're not mature. So any positive hook, any positive experience we can find for the school is a good one. Here's our 23-24 team, our inaugural team. Here's last year's team. So what I'm asking, after two years of piloting it as a volunteer program, I would like to move forward. I reasonably believe we're gonna have similar if not more interest in the future. We do have currently an unused stipend. The year before I started as principal, MEMS did not participate in the history day. As time went on, we had decreased interest. It hasn't been filled in some time. I'm proposing using that stipend. And approximately, this is a discussion, approximately maybe $600 more to move it comparable to some
076of the other stipends that meet as frequently to petition to have a posting and honorarium for MEMS Dan's team. So that is my general overview. That is my rationale. Any questions in regards to Dan's team and what exactly I might be asking? Yes, I do have a question. So I'm trying to understand the difference between the cheer and the dance. It sounds like they're similar or they overlap, or are they gonna be totally separate? They're gonna be run totally separate. They both have similarity in that their performance is going to be at the games, at the venue. The routines are very different. And while I'm not the expert in this, the skills to bear are different. So the cheerleading routine is different and uses different skills than the dance routine and the dancers. Are they
077gonna be participating in dance competitions, not cheer competitions, or no competitions at all? As of now, we're not competing in any competitions. That's the one thing. Most of the middle school teams, there isn't a league per se for competitions. So it's for internal events. All right, thank you. Dr. Fiorella and I discussed that today too because we were trying to work out what the payment should be for the honoraria. And cheerleading is one cost that is paid for the honoraria. This would not be as much because of the fact that there wouldn't be competitions and the level of practice would be different, right? Yes, that's correct. I'm proposing about a $2,900 a year stipend, individual split if we end up with two, but not. That is roughly 2,200 from the existing unused history day. So
078I'd really be petitioning for an extra $600 a year. That would be for the cost of staffing up for paying the teachers. We've had a group that's volunteered the last two years but to make it a full-fledged honoraria. So anytime we brought a new honorarium, see honorariums are in the teacher contract, okay? But the board can add a honorarium at any time. If the board chooses to add an honorarium, we add it. And then at the next negotiations, we just say the teachers don't forget we added this honorarium, it now goes into your contract. In this specific, what we've tried to do and we've continued to do is children should have an interest, the teacher has an interest, you say, okay, you can run with it for a year or two if you volunteer and
079then come back with us with data showing that there was an interest, that it worked well depending on what it was. So when it first came to Mike a few years ago, Dr. Fiorello, he said, we got this interest, so Ms. Pichesky and I said, well, see exactly what he did, see if you can do it. Now that it's been successful for two years, now we go to the board and say, are you willing to fund this? And then if you say yes, we will have it on the next agenda. If you say yes, he will move forward with funding it and then the next time we negotiate with the teachers, we will add it to the contract and we'll remove the National History Day because we're not doing that one anymore. How we hand?
080Right now, if you go back, the uniform has been the T-shirt and then black leggings, the leggings they provide. The T-shirts, I actually think the girls all bought last year, but that's a nominal cost we could probably absorb with our budget. There's not an equipment cost that goes along with it and we've been able to work out thanks to Mr. Sincada because the winter is our busiest season because we can't go outside to practice, so it's spaces at a premium. But we've been able to work out space so that facility isn't an issue. Great. Yeah, I mean, personally, I love it. I love the idea. I'm glad to see just more new things being brought to our district and I applaud the student who helped bring this to the table and get this off the
081ground. So kudos to that student and great job, Dr. Fiorello, in trying to bring this forward, thank you. I would like to see them, though, like the way we have the bands perform at our board meetings. Perhaps we can showcase the dance team next time. I think they would love that. Yeah, that would be nice to see. That's a great idea, Ms. Parisi, thank you. Put that on your calendar. No, I just want to add, too, I think I'm always a big proponent of the arts and I know dance is a little bit of sport and a little bit of art mixed. I know you would probably not guess it, but I was a cheerleader and a dance team girl myself my whole career, yes, believe it or not. So I think it's really nice
082that we have this opportunity for the kids, especially if they aren't looking to do the cheer portion, but they are more involved in that dance aspect. It gives them that outlet, like you were talking about it, gives them that ability to feel that teamwork and camaraderie with the rest of the people on the team and be able to support their school and be involved if they're not looking to do the traditional, yay at the cheering. So I think it's a great opportunity and again, hats off to the student who approached you and kept at you, so. I just want to say thank you to you and your staff, right? Last year, I think it was, or maybe the year before you came to us with the e-sports and that this new generation is different than
083some of the generations that we grew up with and they find interest in different things. But I think that as educators forward to education, our job is to find these kids something that they can do outside of school hours that makes them a complete person. So I appreciate this effort and I'm waiting to see what the next idea comes from them. Thank you, I have a couple, but I'll leave it with the e-sports, which I think is, it might even be going into year three. I don't know, it's hard because they've volunteered too. It's still now, if you go on a Tuesday and Thursday is probably the most crowded honorarium after school with kids who go in there. And a few of them have gotten into the competitions. They go remote and we compete against
084other schools. A few just want to compete against their friends and they even have a few days where they all turn off all the devices and play board games. But it is a ton of kids there all day and it's nice to see that it didn't just become a new thing. It was crowded when it was new and it was still crowded the last meeting of last year. So thank you guys for supporting. Jesse, thank you for mentioning that and I will add to that. We also started the seventh grade girls softball team, correct, based on a request from students and then the peer leadership too, correct? So I think in the last four years we've continued to listen to our students and what they're interested in and then giving them the outlets they're asking
085for. So thank you for bringing that up. I mean, as a history teacher, it does hurt that the history day is going away, but I mean. I might have something to replace, don't worry. And also if you're coming to seventh grade orientation, you'll get a chance to see the peer leaders because they run the student portion. Thank you all. Great, thank you to our presenters and that is a wrap. Can I have a motion to adjourn, please? Jamie, thank you. Second, Jane, Ryan. All in favor? Aye.