NHV BOE Meeting - 06/24/2025

001Welcome to the Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 uh board meeting. I'd like to call to order um the meeting. North Hunt and Bor's Regional High School district board of education meeting on Tuesday, June 24, 2025 is now called to order. In accordance with the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act, NJSA 10- 104-6, adequate notice giving the time, date, location, and to the extent known, the agenda of this meeting was published by the Hunan County Democrat and the Star Ledger on January 9th, 2025. In addition, notice of this meeting has been posted on North Hunan High School and Boris High School provided to the municipal clerks of Betham Township, Califon Burrow, Town of Clinton, Clinton Township, Franklin Township, Glengardner Burrow, Hampton Burrow, Hybridge Burough, Lebanon Burough, Lebanon Township, Tootsesbury Township, and Union Township, as well as

002other interested parties and posted on the district website. Fire exits are located in the direction indicated. If alerted to fire, please move in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest smokefree exit. Restrooms are located through the doors behind the desk and to the right as indicated. At this time, please silence all cell phones. Roll call, please. Christina K here. Ryan Chapman here. Dr. Deany here. Nicole Galler here. Terra H. Beth Kron here. Rich Lordy here. Got to get it right. Bridget Mckis here. Cynthia Ray here. Kimberly Selena here. Daniel Spanton and Jessica Leop. Thank you. Can we rise for the flag, please? I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd like

003to call for a motion and second to approve agenda items 4.1. So move second. That was Beth and Christina. All in favor? Any or extensions? Any discussion on those? Is there any discussion on those minutes? Okay. Okay. At this time, um, we'd like to welcome, uh, Richard Bran, our director of curriculum, articulation, student achievement. He will be giving us a presentation on the 2023 24 school performance report. Well, good evening everyone. So, I'm here tonight to share with you uh the results of the New Jersey school performance report for the North Hunter and Vorhees uh district for the 232 24 school year. I know that we just finished the 2425 school year, but we recently received the 2324 report. So, we wanted to share some highlights from that report with you. So, uh the entire

004agenda or the entire presentation is linked in the agenda. Um but I'm just going to go over some of the highlights here. The New Jersey Department of Education releases these reports to meet federal reporting requirements and to help provide broad pictures of schools and districts in the state. I'll be presenting information from the district report, but reports are also available for each of the individual schools. You can find all of the schools and districts in the states, the reports for those uh reports for all of the schools and um districts at njschoolata.org. And there's a link on our website uh if you go to nhv.net, If you go to parents and community and then under you see academic information, there's the school performance reports and that will bring you to the state website where you

005could type in any school or district and get to their uh report. So the school performance reports include data points and narratives much of which uh we'll highlight in this presentation. So that's a list of some of the things that are included in those school performance reports. There are a few changes in the 2324 reports from the previous reports uh including additional chron including additional information about chronic absenteeism seal of bioliteracy information and expanded visual and performing arts participation information. So, as we move into the data points, I always want to preface it by saying what I do before every presentation is that the students who are part of the academy and or full-time vocational school district students are not included in this because they're part of the Hunter County vocational school district report. So,

006that's why you'll see that our enrollment here says 1924 students. We are actually we actually have around 2400 students in our district. So around 500 students that we have in our building every day and that we teach are not included in this report. Uh but you'll see here that uh you know our enrollment has slightly decreased over the last three years. Uh it's gone down about 145. But again that's just looking at our students not including any of the academy or full-time polytech students. So as we move into standardized testing here um the over the past three years. So on the left hand side, it doesn't have the heading, but the left hand side is the ELA information. So you could see a pretty uh nice increase in the last three years in proficiency for

007ELA. Uh about 20, you know, almost 20 percentage points proficient. That's looking at both the NJSLA, NJSLA, and the DLM. Um so you could see that information there. The statewide, the comparison to the state uhwide proficiency is down at the bottom. our proficiency rate and our participation rate in those assessments is listed. And then the math uh proficiency, there's a slight dip in 23 22 23 and then it went up. So we're at around 53% proficient. Um again for uh NJSLA does not include the NJGPA so it's only ninth grade math and we know many of our u higher achieving math students are taking their NJSLA uh assessments in um eighth grade or they're taking algebra in eighth grade anyway they'll be taking geometry or algebra 2 in high school. Sure. This slide is just

008really minor but um is this slide to be posted to the district website? Um, it's not the slide deck is not, but it's posted. It's attached to in the agenda. Okay. I'm just wondering from just visual standpoint some it should be used up. Yeah, there's some sort of overlaps and the year is 202 with the wraparound like along the chart. But I this the way that this uh template is created. You plug in the numbers and it automatically generates everything. and and I went back to it this morning because I was wondering why there's no heading on the lefth hand side and it would take so much manipulation I couldn't figure out how to do it but so it's the state gives you the template you put in your numbers and it it actually automatically

009adjusts the the uh scales and everything too so it was hard to adjust from their template but yes I agree that should be better there will be more that are even harder to see and I will apologize for those later Um so for graduation rates um let's see here. So uh there's information about how the uh graduation rates are calculated including the federal graduation rates. This slide in particular explains that federal graduation graduation rate calculations do not affect requirements to earn a diploma. It's just how they're reported um through the federal requirements. So this slide, slide 13 here, shows our four and fiveyear graduation rates. They're in that 95 to 98% range, which is well above the state averages. So you could see in green is our district graduation rates. And then in the the

010bottom row are the state graduation rates. So the state has been consistently in that 90 to 93. We've been in that 95 to 98% range. And then our federal graduation rates are shown here. Um, and they're at 95 and 96% which are both above the state rates. So again, the state rates are shown below and our rates are shown in green there. So now we'll move into attendance. So for attendance uh this shows uh the chronic absenteeism rate. So chronic absenteeism is defined as students who are absent 10% or more of the school days. that includes both excused and unexcused absences. So for the 2324 school year, 17.7% of our students were chronically absent. Um whereas the rate across the state for that year was 14.9%. So again in green our rates and the state

011rate is below that. Just a quick question on that. So this is asking the entire you're showing K through 12. So yes, it thank you for bringing that up. So the state rate is including K through 12. Okay. Because you know because I'm I'm just looking at the the individual schools. So for example, you know, Port has a higher amount of absences uh by percentage wise than the number that we're showing here. So um I just think it would be helpful to pull out just the the high school district. the the chronic abstet rate the green is ours but yes the state rate is K12 it's all students in the state oh I see okay yes yes okay but um but again so number is higher than that well this is our district right but

012I also think it's helpful in evaluating what's happening within schools to see you know by school what's happening yeah we're presenting the district information now but obviously we do a close look at the individual school reports 12. Yes. Do you have question? Can I can I add something else to another question? Because if this is comparing K to 12, there's not as many. I mean, maybe I'm making a general assumption, but I wouldn't think there would be as many K to 8 absences as there are in high school. Correct. So, you're not getting any data where it's strictly percentage for. So then this one is so this one shows by grade for us. So it shows the district by grade and the state by that grade. So you could see for example in our district

01310% of our students in grade nine were chronically absent. Um whereas 15% across the state were chronically absent. The 10th and 11th grades were very similar. You know our district to the state. And then where the where the difference really comes in is the seniors in our district. The state average 21% of the seniors across the state were chronically absent whereas 27% of our students see their senior year was chronically absent. So that's that's the information that is really most useful to us besides breaking it down by school you know to look at it that way. Yes. You said I just didn't catch what is the definition. So it's uh students who were absent 10% or more of the days that they should have been in school. So if they were in school for a

014full year, that's 18 or more absences regardless of excused or unexcused. Correct. Yes, you're welcome. That 18 number that somehow So the chronic absentee isn't an attendance slide. There's some redundancy or actually pace maybe. I don't know that any clear to add that 18 number possibly. I don't know. Well, it it's only 18 if they were there for the full year. So they could still be chronically absent if they were only there for a full year. So it it does say uh in this chronic absenteeism part slide 15, it's defined as being absent for 10% of the more days enrolled during the school year. Yeah. So it depends. It's easier to know it's repetition. Yeah. Again, this is the Yeah, this is the states uh template and we plug in our numbers. But, you know,

015that doesn't mean we couldn't modify it. There's the Yeah, I thought I saw that there's options for the template if you wanted to make it yours, but there were variances there. Yeah, we took out all the information. It didn't apply to a a high school district. You know, there were a lot of things that didn't apply to a high school high school district. So, we talked about the grades. Um this is these are the two slides that are most difficult to see. Um so in slide 18 um it shows the teacher and student demographics across the state. So statewide 38% of the students for example are white while 82% of the teachers are white. So the state includes a message on this slide at the top saying um that indicating that teacher diversity improves outcomes

016for all students. So, one of the things that they think is important to look at is how our student population compares to our teacher population. So, in slide 19, it shows, you know, again, it's even more. You can't read the stuff at the end at all. And obviously, the the performance the school performance reports themselves have the breakdown by the numbers. Um, but 82% of our students are white while 98% of our teachers are white. So in slide 20, it shows data about college and career readiness for our district compared to the entire state. So couple of highlights. 85% of our seniors took the SAT uh while in high school and 70% of our juniors and seniors took one or more AP courses. So you can see that's well above the state averages. You know,

017the percentage of 12th graders who took the SAT in high school whereas we're 85%. It's around 63% across the state. Um the percentage of juniors and seniors enrolled in one or more AP courses, 70% in our district, 36% across the state. So we're about double uh the state numbers there. I have a question about um the industry valued credentials. So um are students doing that on their own? Are we supporting them with that? That that's like um certifications for a certain industry, organization. That's mostly through the college. Okay. And which is a good question because they wouldn't have to be shared time students because otherwise they wouldn't be counting in this. So those are the students who are in a part-time program. Yes. Yes. So if you were to look at this for the Hunter

018County Vocational School District, I think you would see a lot more, but many of them are our students. So yeah. Okay. So moving into visual and performing arts with slide 21. Um 64 and a half% of our students were enrolled in arts course during the 2324 school year. That's compared to 51% of high school students across the state. And you can see most of those students are in a uh visual arts course. So this slide 22 uh shows student safety information. There's 3.33 incidents occurring during the 2324 school year per 100 students in the district and again we're taking about 500 students out. Um so that is higher than the number of incidents across the state at 2.35 per 100 students enrolled. And then this shows the student supports and services. So again these ratios

019will be wildly off because we took 500 students out because of themies and the polytech programs. Um but you could see um the rate the various ratios you know teach students to teachers students to administrators etc. Um students to safety specialists those kinds of things. I don't understand. So we we remove 500 no we don't but that's what the state those are the official numbers from the state. Okay. So we didn't adjust the ratios. It was already done. It's already done for us. Yes. Yes. But really our for example our social worker is like 2400 to one. Um you know our teachers might be like 15 to1 or whatever 14 to1 whatever it might be. Quick question. Uh the visual and performing arts side. Yes. I honestly have no idea. Is is dance and drama

020not a course that courses that are offered here? So we do offer a drama course. We put together that uh curriculum a few years ago. It has not run since we put it together. Um I will say that we are required by the state to have courses have a curriculum for dance and drama. Um most schools do not have them just because of the difficulty in finding people to teach it and for students to take it. So we do have on the books dance and drama curricula. Um but we nobody can enroll it. We don't have we do not offer dance. Um we have offered drama just not enough students have signed up for it for the run. So it's in the course catalog. It is I unless we pulled it out recently. We may

021have pulled it out. I don't remember seeing drama but that was around right during co I think is when we put that course together but it never ran in that time. So we may have pulled it from the course. I would say for both percentages zero it has not offered. I agree with you. Yeah. Have we offered a dance? We have never offered dance program. It would take a great deal of money to put together a dance studio and a lot of work to find a dance teacher. Is there no gym space? Is that why? I know I used to work in a school that implemented a dance program and they built a whole studio for that program. Um, which was a great expense, but um, yeah, I mean it it to do it right,

022you kind of need more than a gym. you need. Uh I just remember my sister being a dance major and the the kinds of things in a dance studio. Um but no, we have never offered a dance program. They have a full-time program at Somerset County Vocational School District. Okay. So we have two or three years. I think that you can go to that. Okay. But it might be an interesting to get a sense of whether a drama program would be that students would be open to it now that we're past co I think we've seen um both the boards and nor that the theater programs that they actually have correct are really participated and people enjoy it. It'd be interesting just to see whether they'll be interested in having it. Yeah. kids in that

023place. And I know that the people who had that certification or one of the people who had that certification has since retired. So that's another issue too. Yes. When was the last time a survey was out to see if the students wanted to be in in drama. Uh Mike, do you remember when we last offered that course? Two years ago. Two years ago. And they just didn't sign up, right? Have you seen the numbers for the theater programs going up? Uh the theater numbers are are good. It's just hard to fit it into your schedule is what it comes down to. It's the same thing that you know that band has and and all the music programs. It's it's hard to fit it into your schedule. I mean, we'd love to offer it. It would

024be great to offer it to our students. So, we could certainly reach out to students and see if it's something that we should put back on the book. Yeah, it could be done similar to the way some of the programs are. school, you're still getting credit for it, right? For those students that um so the one another slide that the state has here are just different ways that people can get involved in the schools and I listed some of the ways that uh people can get involved in our schools. For example, the parent advisory committees, booster clubs, de foundations, music association, theater association, PTSA, PTSO, climate service as well. I know that we asked questions throughout, but were there any other questions that you had about this presentation? Go ahead. Just the ways to engage

025in our schools. Is that an exhaustive list? Not necessarily. No, there just some highlights. to reach out. Sure. Sure. Absolutely. Sure. In the very beginning, it's slide number nine with all the math and ELA scores. Yes. Can you just remind us what DLM is? We know NJ SLA. So DM is the dynamic learning map. So that's for some of our students with severe learning disabilities. Okay. and that we never have enough students um who take that test to publicly report the results. So um I think the threshold is you need to have 10 students take the assessment in order to present the results and we've always been just under that. But that's what that assessment is. Okay. So is that integrated into it's still integrated into we just don't report the results though. Yes. Yes.

026So um I I think something would be I guess I have two questions. first is could we get this data broken out by school? It's Yeah, it's in school performance reports. Okay. Okay. Because I think that when you combine obviously the number changes if one school is skewed higher versus another. Um my other question is so in light of this information um where we as a what as as a board can we do to help with an increase in some of these numbers um compared to other schools in the state? So Ben then Ben you know one of the things that I didn't report because there's no um district summitive score but there are summitive scores for each individual school. So just to give you a comparison um North and Vorhees had almost exactly the

027same summitive score and they are by by far the highest summitive scores in the county. So you know when I say that uh so Northan was a 65.2 two that's out of 100 vorhees were 65.5 um the other schools the other high schools in Hunter County were between 30 and 50 so you know we're well you know much higher than that um the one thing that I'll throw out there before answering your question about what what how you can help support us is that the countymies is looked at as its own school that obviously we teach all of those classes except for the one their summitive score was a So if you were to add those students into ours, it would be even higher obviously. Um but in looking at the things that we're looking

028at uh that we're doing, you know, obviously one of the things that that we're always looking to do is try to get students the best education possible as far as um looking at class size and things like that. So that's always the ask is to look at our class size. And you know, we do our best to keep it um you know, obviously we keep it between 15 and 30, but in some of those tested subject areas, we try we still between 15 and 30, but try to keep it, you know, maybe between 15 and 25, you know, in that range. Um but that other than that, I mean, I think that we um have what we need. We we have the support and we're doing what we can to, you know, get great results.

029I mean, I even look at descending schools and just to to let you know like how much those summitive scores vary. They go anywhere between a 24 and a 74. So, you know, there's a lot of of a range there. Um, and that was just the middle schools, but yeah, if this um the co colleges are becoming more and more competitive for students to get into. Sure. Um, and so where we can assist them to be, you know, I know we look at Hunter County a lot, but they're being compared against a lot of students in the state of New Jersey, right? And so I think it becomes important for us to maybe even evaluate what other districts outside of county are doing to to better prepare their Yeah. And one of the things that

030we look at a lot is um comparing us to what used to be the state hasn't done it since the year 2000 but the DFG the district factor grouping. So they used to rate all schools on an A through J scale with A being the poorest J being the wealthiest and we were an I district. So when things like this come out we do look at the what used to be considered the I districts just to get a better sense of of how we're performing in relation to them. And we perform you know pretty well in relation to those districts. Okay. Mhm. So having this information um although they know in your leadership what's the next step of what you'll do with this information we've so before this is published in vehicle to the public

031um we get um embargoed reports before that and then before that we put together our our narrative. So it's it's I think it's in November that we write all the narratives. So there are a lot if you go to the school performance report at the end there are all these narratives as well but um during that time when we get the embargoed results we go through it to find out is there anything that we're reporting incorrectly and you know every year you catch one more thing that gets is is reported incorrectly and one of the things that we're mostly focused on now is the chronic absenteeism. So, we're pretty um convinced that our chronic absenteeism is going to go down significantly next year because of the fact that we if a student is on a

032field trip, we're marking them absent, but they're doing a school related event. So, I know we've talked a lot about things like that in our committee. Um but we just look through all the data, make sure that everything is being reported correctly and address those areas where it's not being reported correctly. So, that's a big part of it is just is everything being reported correctly? And then once we do that, then we can get into the specific details of what we can do to make our programs even better. Y sort of as we go forward with the strategic plan and we're trying to look at student performance. Um I do think it would be helpful sort of building on Beth's point and I think a little bit of what Angela shared always the ability to

033see one building and the other building. But I do think, you know, we are ills served by the academy students not counting in a lot of the state level reporting because it paints a picture of our students um who are performing a little bit lower in ELA and math despite the fact that we are educating those academy students in ELA and math. I realize the state will always try to sort them out differently, but I think it would be useful for us to see, you know, the bu north building, the Vorhees building and the same data if we were to include the academy kids. I think that gives a more accurate picture of the global performance of of our kids despite the fact that the state doesn't report it or see it that and and

034next month we'll be recording the NJGPA results and we could very easily show because we have those results so we know them so we can certainly I realize there's an asterisk element I think it gives us a more accurate picture and then I think the other point you touched upon it a little bit in going back to the K8s and sort of how they're doing on on their assessments and it's sort of a a mixed bag that we inherit and then we sort of work with have you um been able to to see where districts who might be comparably sized and comparably socioeconomically situated that when they are a K12 system what they tend to do in terms of performance indicators. I know we put a lot of energy into articulation, but obviously it's sort

035of it's it is it's articulation and sort of uh hoping that it sort of works in terms of the kids coming to into into our buildings versus a district level control over a curriculum all the way through. I would be curious to find out if comparably sized K12 systems see a little bit of a better performance because they sort of have that curricular uh control all the way through where we sort of only get into that in the transition. Yeah. In many many of those districts I used to work in two of K two pretty large uh K12 districts. Many of them have as you know like a K5 supervisor and then a 612 supervisor. So it it helps to um you know for each subject area. So it helps to uh keep everybody informed

036throughout the K12 district. So yeah, there are definitely some districts there are certain there are about six or seven um two high school regional high school districts that I regularly compare ourselves to. But you also want to look at districts that are K12 like Paripony and things like that that uh you know have a different uh way of going about it because they are K12. So I guess I'm mostly curious if there's a dividend that is realized by virtue of an articulated K12 curriculum versus us articulating but then really only having control starting with grade N. Yeah. Absolutely. Sounds like it could be kind of anecdotal, right? Well, because you're never going to find the right comparison. But maybe we can make it part of the regionalization to ask for the regionalization study is to

037look for those dividends if they're there. Yeah, they're there or or or that there's not. Right. Right. But if they find three school districts to compare to, I think we need to make sure we don't put too much emphasis on the results because, you know, it's not statistically of the But I think if we could get the regionalization study to take that as an angle because I mean I think we've been we've been talking about it from a financial perspective but this is really why we want yes to you know the purpose of our performance and talking about sharing and other results um including subgroups and that too as a way of you know what our subgroups are, how are they performing um and just to make sure that we're we are looking at all

038and those are all included in the actual report. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah that's what you know again this is just to give the highlights to get you a taste of it and to dig deeper into those obviously we do that at the building level and and look at all those specific results it's it's a pretty thorough I think it's like 30 some pages and maybe 40 some pages um so our teams do go through that line by line you know looking at what we can do to be better yes so back to the proficiency rates so it it it's clear that the proficiency proficiency rates on ELA is significantly outpacing or improving math. Yes. Do you know why that is? Yes. Um so for the most part um the if we were a K12 district

039those numbers would be very different uh because the students in 9th grade if if they already took algebra one they're interested in geometry um the results for geometry across the state are around 70% per per uh algebra one the results across the state are around 25% profession that's all students taking algebra one across the state and a student in seventh or eighth. So, our results have been, you know, around 30% or so for algebra 1. And considering that the majority of the our higher performing math students already took that assessment in seventh and eighth grade, it brings those numbers down even lower. Um, if we were to include the algebra one results for students in our district who took it in eighth grade, it would obviously be much much higher. Um, but that's that's the

040reason for it. They don't. So, our students do take the NJ GPA in their junior year. That is not included in these results for some reason. It's just the NJSLA results and it's just in grade nine. Do you have a different benchmark than comparing it to state proficiency or is that the bar that you look at? Meaning like do you have a target that you want to be at? Like math is at 52.8%. Do you have a target that you want to be at or do you just compare it to the statewide? When you first get the results, the only thing that we know are our results and the state results. That I understand. Yeah. And then uh usually around January or so, they'll release all of the results for all of the districts. So

041then at that point, we take a deep dive into all of them. So we look at, you know, obviously the 108 county schools, we look at those uh that used to be designated as the IDFG groups. There are certain other schools that we look at and we perform pretty favorably to those um schools but we don't get that in a time where it's really actionable. It's just reacting to what we see from the other schools. I guess my question would you say coming into the school year do you have say like a target like hey we want to get we want to be 60% 70% proficient forget what the state proficiency is you guys set your own internal goal proficiency for it's I would love for it to be 100% that's our goal you know

042but you try to be a little bit better than the year before you know that's the goal is to improve and to improve there isn't a set like our goal is to get seven Is that 80%? Our our our goal is to teach the students math in this case, you know, and if they have a thorough understanding of the math that they're learning, they'll perform well on these assessments. Um, but our goal is to teach them as well as we can to move on to the next grade and to be successful in that next course. Um, you you just want to you want to improve a little bit each year, the best that you can, but knowing that there's a lot of things outside of your control with this. And some students we see it

043they just click through it and and don't care. So we try to you know the teachers work very hard to explain to students how important this is for us to evaluate our programs but you know the school year is over and we don't have the results for the NJSLA now. So we can't use it to inform our instruction. Right. I think what Brandon said mentioned before if we drill down a little bit deeper like statewide proficiency is great. I kind of like to know how like which we do. Yeah. Like kind summarize it in there just to I'm Yeah, I think it would be a little bit easier for us to kind of have to present this information. All that we know is ours, right? I understand. So later on and it might be something

044that we can include in the you know for example when we're presenting the NJGPA results next month we could give a followup. I think we did this in committee though about how you know once all that information came out we we went over in committee how those scores compared to the other schools that we're comparing ourselves to. That's typically how we handle it. These results at that point also help you try and prepare and change or update the common assessments as well. year. So then is there any recording factor or any substantial factor comparing the common assessments compared to state assessments every year of what's working and what's not? So yeah, we get what's called there's two things. Uh one we do we do get a report that's called a standards report and what it

045shows is how our students did compared and it breaks it down by school and it shows statewide on each standard. it rates it from the most difficult to the easiest and what we do is pinpoint the standards that we struggled in. Um especially the ones that we were below the state average or or if two schools were different um identify those standards as something to focus on and that's what you know they look at in those in those inservice days. Um the other thing that we do is a correlation report. When we get the um NJSLA results, we'll do a correlation study between the uh common assessments and the NJSLA and see which ones correlate the best. You know, what we've seen so far is that uh geometry, especially honors geometry, especially all the honors

046courses, there's a pretty strong correlation and the correlations drop off a little bit as you go down in levels. Um but but we try to use those to inform the the revisions that we do to those assessments as well. And not just the common assessments, but all of the assessments because we really do want students to have an accurate understanding of how they're doing in the course in relation to the standards. When they get these results, they should not be a surprise to them because the information that we've been providing throughout the year should be similar to them. And then is there professional help geared to the um dips so to speak and what the students are struggling with for the teachers to help them get up above or higher in those areas? Yeah, when

047we identify those standards that we didn't perform as well as we would like to or if one school performed much higher than the other. That's what we gear those professional development days towards. You know, they get together and especially if it's the case with one school is significantly higher than the other for particular standard. we get those teachers together so they can talk about what they've done to, you know, how they taught that standard so that we can hopefully bring that to the other school as well. If I could, and I realize I'm perhaps jumping a little bit ahead to the curriculum report, but you sort of brought up something in that report about how yes, you do see a trend that the different academic honors versus CP versus uh uh lower performing students, how

048they are tending to perform on assessments. But you also were able to highlight the fact that you're able to observe that the students who are struggling are in fact even spending less time on individual items which might be an avenue for a line of thinking and instruction there that I don't know at that point if you're dealing with capacity if you're dealing with um the ability of students to just sort of sustain focus uh and persevere through challenging tasks. that might be in some ways a little bit different than just the the straight skill itself. So that might open up some interesting avenues. Yeah. And you talked about that students perform better on paper. They definitely do. They prefer reading on paper. They prefer doing work on paper. And all of the assessments are computerized.

049And we definitely saw a dip when we moved to computer assessments. Any other questions? One more. Sure. So, this is kind of more like not not so in your opinion, has there been a change or a shift in the way Matt is being taught? Because I'm going to give you my own opinion. I was going to ask the same question. My son just finished third grade and he comes home and I went home and I can't understand for the for the life of me the way the hell they want their teaching. Right? So then here's the problem that I wrote and this is just third grade. I show him the way that I was taught how to do it, which for me is a lot easier. But then he's like, "Well, that's not the way

050the teacher wants it done." So then I confuse the hell out of him by doing it what I think is the easy way versus I can't understand what the hell that way is. And then his brain is so maybe I don't know. Has there like you said, has there been a shift in the methods and it's not taking? Uh I I believe so. My kids just finished fourth and fifth grade. So I sympathize. Um, and I went to school I went into college as a math major and some of it I still don't understand what they're doing in fourth or fifth grade. Um, however, most of those changes were at the elementary level. I think the higher the the higher you go into grades, the more it looks like it used to look. Um, it's

051more of a conceptual thing at the elementary and into middle school. Just trying to conceptualize math more than doing the, you know, 7* 6 equal, you know, the memorization. It's trying to conceptualize what things are like to lead into those higher maths. Um, but yeah, th those I think if you were to see a high school math class, it would be more like what you were what you experienced. And obviously things have changed a little bit certainly, but um those changes are more so at the elementary into early middle school. that could be a possibility of having concerns by the time they get up here to take the algebra because it might be not working properly for their minds that adhere to it so to speak. like is there a way that we could possibly

052gear some of the math back to way it was kind of taught but still stay within the NJL like into the guidelines maybe do like a test to kind of figure out you know our we do have a math teacher coach who works with the mostly with the eighth grade students but all the middle schools and we do we do have a lot of conversations about things like that with the math department um but the reality is that they're using they're using textbooks and one of the things that and they're going to teach like the textbook teaches for the most part. So, one of the things that we're trying to do is get people more on the same page with the textbooks that they use to teach that content throughout the different grades. And I

053and I think that there's been some good movement, you know, as people are ready to adopt a new textbook, they want to find out what the other Sunday schools are using and get feedback from them. So, if we have a consistent approach, then we can adjust accordingly. It's when we have all, you know, all over the place that it's hard to adjust. Um but yeah, we're definitely having those conversations. Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like I sort of remember another point that you brought up that um when you look at our sending districts, the number of kids, the percentage of kids in each of those districts who are actually taking algebra by grade 8. Um there's there's a wide variety everywhere from 20% upwards to like 60% I sort of recall

054which kind of tells us that there is well there's just obviously some vast differences in programs how kids are being sort of promoted or identified and some schools are 60% of their kids are coming to us having already taken algebra 1 other districts it's only 20%. And again, I realize our hands are somewhat tied because it's not a K12 curriculum and we can't dictate to those programs. We can have the conversations that you're having. I don't know. And and I'd have to imagine the sending districts themselves are aware of some of those discrepancies. Whether or not that spurs conversation, action, and change, I don't know if that makes sense. So, I I share that information with you. when when we get all of the results from the NJSLA, I I com I look at all

055those numbers and what percent and everything and I share that with the superintendents of the sending districts so we can have those conversations and it has led to a lot of conversations especially, you know, with the curriculum uh uh supervisors of those districts and different things that we can do to uh work together to get more students in those more challenging classes. So yeah, I think it's important too to add to that is because from experience I can tell you that when my kids both my oldest when he came through middle school, it was not made clear the impact of going into an algebra 1 class versus into geometry. the impact it has on the overall the math classes and the prerequisites that you have to have in order to take the classes that you

056want. So there definitely is some sort of discrepancy in why any other questions. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. I think I can quickly provide more specifics about that question. So the last time we offered it in our course selections was 23.4. We had three students from select to take it and zero from north. So that's kind of what happened that went away for children. Well, is it possible to offer a minimum? What is it? And and is there a way to just question on that? Is there a way to communicate to parents that you've added classes to the curriculum that are new from prior years because the parents may not even know and suggest it to their kids. Um again, it comes down to a lot of communication between the

057parents and the school district. I think Rich had a had mentioned that Somerset offers. Yes. Yeah. Right. But I was just saying is that something that we our kids can use, but it's both you said it's the program. Is it is it a full-time program or a halftime program? Somerset is a full time. Some is fulltime program. So a lot of times our students will opt if they want to do a dance class and we tell them Somerset is an option. They don't want to leave their high school and go to somewhere else and leave all their friends. if they're really serious about dance, we have students take advantage of it. And unfortunately, it's not a program here. I know. Yeah. But again, we'll do a better job of communicating those courses and make sure

058that um everybody knows about students and parents and then we'll see whether or not we get more students that want to take it. Again, if we get enough students to take it, we work. Just keeping everyone informed. Yeah. Thank you, Rich. Um we'll move on to the chief school administrators report um report on harassment, intimidation, bullying. Thank you, Kim. Before I get into some of those um fun things, let me talk about some highlights that we have. Uh first of all, I do want to mention we had our graduation ceremonies on June 12th, class 2025. We had great weather. Got a little warm near the end of North, but you know, no rain and that's always a blessing. So, um we're thankful for that. North Hunter who graduated 376 seniors or he's graduated 243. Uh

059we wish all of them the best in their future endeavors. Uh we thank you for all the board members who attended and those that wanted to attend if you had a chance to see it online. I think it's still posted. You know, you might want to look at some highlights and it's great. I know we had some more board members graduates and so congratulations to all of you as well that had support on that field. So I do want to send a congratulations to Charlie Hopka. Charlie is a North Hunter music teacher. who has has been named a finalist for the Master Music Teacher Award for the New Jersey Music Educators Association. Um, just being a finalist is a pretty good um remarkable honor for for Charlie and we're very proud of him. So, we'll

060keep you um you know in the know of how far he advances in that process. So, I believe they said it's November that we get that um start now. On June 3rd, the cast and crew of Fiddler on the Roof, 40 High School's um most recent production this past spring, performed at the Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Awards Ceremony. Um they received nine overall nominations, which is really incredible. Um this is the first time in at least the last 40 years, I was told, uh that 40 students have been invited to showcase their talents at the Paper Mill um no playhouse. Just to get there as an as an honor. Then they had nine nominations for awards. Um, and you know, it's basically like a a Tony's award type production if you can imagine that.

061That's what they use this as. And Mr. Andrew Frink, um, musical director at Boris High School, won the best music director overall. So very incredible as well. Yes. Uh, and then on Monday, June 2nd, students and staff from the North Hunter Theater Theater Organization were nominated for best lighting and best production set design at the 2025 Bergen Pack High School Musical Awards. So, another award ceremony. We're really killing it in um our theater program. So, that that goes right with some of our classes. So, um, we definitely have the interest in it. It's whether or not the students can fit in their schedule, um, and and combine it as an academic portion of their day. Uh, and then I do want to mention we have our STEM camps and our Spanish immers immersion camps that

062are coming up soon, um, for all of our incoming freshmen. And, um, they all of our incoming freshmen are invited to participate as well as our current students. And, um, drama camp will also be taking place shortly after that. These are camps that are run at North Hunter, but they are districtwide camps and we do try to encourage our upcoming mentors to attend as well. So, Rich, I'd be curious like given the success that our students are having in drama in competition, like if we were to ask those kids like why, you know, what is potentially standing between them and the opportunity for drama courses here? I'd be curious what they would share. That's a great idea. we can ask them directly. Um, yeah. And then we can get that answer. I was also thinking

063that the theater program is so good that they might want to just stick with that because they seem to have so much success in it that that they're just looking at it more of that way that that's what is in their mind and foresight because everyone's going to the plays. There's a lot of recognition on it. There's a lot of other things that they can get out of it. So maybe they're not even thinking drama in lie of the theater would be a great idea to kind of ask them. Yeah, I I have a lot of things that I could probably tell you probably reasons, but instead of speculating, I think, yeah, let's ask the kids and find out why. So, yeah. Yep. All right. Um, moving on with the rest of the agenda, we

064have our report on harassment, intimidation, and bullying. Um, since our last meeting, we had three cases uh reported, one at Bordeauy's, two at North. All three of them were unbounded. Um, so we have no founded cases this month. And then we do need a call for a motion and a second for second cases that were reported in last. I have I have Brian and Nicole. All in favor? Any nays or abstensions? Thank you. And then monthly reports are there for your questions. Rich, I got a question. You said I just want to make sure I'm understanding. You said on the cases all were unfounded, correct? Am I reading this wrong? The document. So the document that's on here is the ones that you are Oh, that's you. So those are the ones you last the

065one on the agenda, but it's for your vote on them next month. Okay. Moving forward, uh, school board president's report, uh, annual goal setting and regular meeting has been moved. It's Monday, July 21st, 6:00 p.m. here in the district office. Also, deadline to submit nominating petitions for school board vacancies to the county clerk's office is July 28th. Deadline is 400 p.m. At this time, we will have opportunity for our public to comment. During this portion of the meeting, the public is invited to address the board of education with comments. You are requested to sign the register provided and to state your name, municipality of residents, group affiliation if applicable, and direct your comments to the school board president. While all comments will be considered by the board of education, a response may be forthcoming if

066and when appropriate. Individual school board members may not respond to the speakers at the time of their appearance. The public comment act will alleg non-defamatory and maintain a level of appropriate for a public meeting where students may be present and in the audience Good evening, Harlon Edinger, longtime hybrid president and taxpayer. I get it. Elections have consequences. Board members who campaigned on so-called parental rights are now in the majority. You have the votes, so replacing the district's longtime general counsel was a foregone conclusion. That's why the subtrafuge and dissembling is so egregious. It was obvious where the majority was going from the moment we moved to replace the Kignno firm as the district's count general counsel. I can only surmise that the Kgno firm advised against taking Let's Talk About It off the library shelves,

067but I suspect that replacing the firm is payback for that advice. Although you took great pains not to say so out loud, I surmise that you went shopping for lawyers who will support policy changes that make it easier to ban books and to eliminate protections for students who are not or who are not perceived as cisgendered heterosexuals. Despite the lengthy obfiscations and refusal to answer the questions posed by other board members seeking to know why the ad hoc committee chose the law firms it did. It seems obvious to me the DE Francesco firm doesn't have a track record in education but it is a longtime Republican party scholar. No surprise that you're rewarding them with the role of general counsel. Skank Price does have a respected education practice, but I think he chose them because

068uh Mark Zinnmer, a partner in the firm, has advised districts about that abolished uh policy 5756, the transgender student policy, and because he represents districts that are in litigation with the New Jersey Attorney General over attempts by those districts to require parental notification. Giovi also represents a district that rescended policy 5756 and is in litigation with the AG over attempts by that district to require parental notification. Jacobe also has a reputation for opposing Oprah requests at Huntington Central. Again, I surmise that you went with him as your Oprah attorney because you've been embarrassed by having your machinations revealed through Oprah disclosure. Right. So that's what Dr. table. That's why it's been pulled and they're going to speak to that. We want to make sure. So, where are we going? 9 11.1 through 9.14. Correct. There's

069a motion on the table. There's discussion. Is there any other discussion? Nothing. All in favor? Any uh moving on uh curriculum, instruction, and technology. Can you please um committee report? Uh so the curriculum committee met last week on the 18th house. There were a few items that were complicit discussion. One of them was attendance. Um, and kind of speaking back to some of what Rich Bone was sharing, you know, there's a deeper look at some of the abnormalities and sort of the recognition that there's always these standout dates um that are either affiliated with something like prom or AP exams or 20 park trip or even in this case a district makeup day. Um, and so that uh makes it a little bit trickier, but as we clean up that information, we're better able to

070sort of separate the signal from noise in terms of uh attendance um explorations or concerns because while globally we have a higher than average percent of students attending on a daily basis when compared to the state average, you've seen that we have some of these higher uh percentages of chronic absenteeism which is really um targets a smaller population of students who are chronically absent and uh would enable the district to better target that. Um so for example, one of the points that keeps coming up is that policy change um that doesn't make it as easy for parents to sort of uh just submit a note as opposed to having a kid go see a doctor. Um the hope is that that will clean up or better target some of the more chronic absenteeism. Um the

071next item we looked at was the district PD plan which had a number of items in it around uh looking at student engagement in the classroom. Uh a topic that came up was accountability and the committee talked about that a little bit and realized the word ownership was really what we were aspiring for like where do students feel ownership um as they engage with classroom But you know it's happening like you get on the board you get left out left out you know I think that's it. Any other discussion? With that being said, can I have a motion and a second to approve agenda items 10.1 through 10.4? Who's it's a race? It was Cynthia. Well, it was Beth and Cynthia. So, yeah. All in favor? I. Any knees or abstensions? Thank you. Moving on

072to policy and school security um committee report. Yes. So, uh the policy and school security committee met on June 16th. Um everybody was in present. Um we discussed uh where we we we talked about ran over the uh second approval for the entire manual for today. But there was a few discussions that we had reviewed regulation 1330 in regards to the costs associated with custodial overtime and other fees associated with outside groups using our facilities. We decided to update the hourly rates now based on the current pay rates and revisit the policy and regulation at a later date to decide if the facility rental should be adjusted. We also use the term facility instead of building to be more inclusive of all areas that can be rented. We also confirmed that our insurance company as

073whether we are asking for outside groups or enough liability insurance coverage to utilize those. Um conclusions were to move all policies regulations to the full board for approval as second reading with a minor changes of mentioned above. It was a short meeting. Any questions? Nicole, what's um so now that we are sort of doing the the mass adoption before the end of the school year and the contract runs out with stress assessment and we start July with um school boards. um what is the the plan going forward in terms of um sort of that level by level series um review. So we're I think as a collectively as a board as a committee we're going to kind of pick and choose certain ones that we might have to go through any changes. We're going to

074compare it to law compare it to what maybe stress may well I don't think we're going to compare it to stress estimate but any kind of new uh policies that come up that may be kind of in the forefront. Um, some of them were about administration, some of them were about like some of the grounds things. We've made a couple changes like to some of the uh power of professionals and some stuff like that in advance. So, probably go revisit those to make sure that we're within our limits and with our uh cost limits. And so, that was kind of the plan that we were kind of trying to figure out what we were going to do going forward once we adopt the entire manual. So, other other than those sort of very focused um

075things that speak to contracts, costs, and things that are specific to our district, is there uh is there a plan to once the the entire set is adopted to sort of revisit each series once again or Well, I guess it more so if there's any changes, it will come from school boards. So we would address those obviously if there's any kind of language changes or any kind of law changes and then we would try to basically go through and figure out if there was a couple policies that we wanted to discuss or that Rich felt that was really specific to our district that needed to be addressed. So prioritize in the way that administration feel that we should go through. Where do you feel the next um after the adoption where are you going to

076focus next? What section? I don't think we've had that discussion and we've been direct we've been led by Dr. Burjac's uh as we said we Rich had uh noted um two or three policies specifically we wanted to get on board for the start of school so med there was um I think it was in uh the par professional um so it was it was specific in that but other than that no we had not and I would take direction from administration on that rich as far as the I know that there's a policy that's controversial that keeps coming up about our transgender students. Um, is that on the agenda to be reviewed this summer before we go back to school? Uh, it's not on the agenda right now. Is it possible to add that as

077a policy item agenda? Um, because I know that that directly impacts our students and our constituents are very concerned about it. That's up to the policy chair, but we can review any policy. Sure. everyone um my goal Brian has actually started a spreadsheet that as we went through this process um a lot of little language changes that we didn't want to get into the minutia of for this large scale adoption um and that would be my plan is to go through that list look at those little language changes and make sure that those are um updated to what we think it should be um we can also review whole policies if we wanted to if there's one that one in particular though um regarding uh or it directly impacts a majority not a majority a

078population of our students and I think it's important that we take a look at that um and address any changes that might need to be addressed before we enter the school year if anyone has any questions about that please forward your questions to the policy chair copy myself and Dr. Bjax, so we're aware and of course I think we had also talked about the fact that some of the whether it was the library materials or the course materials that we were going to have to align it with the right to read. Don't know exactly what it's called, but make sure that it was consistent with what the the law has. So, you know, I think we're going to maybe just double check that with school boards to make sure that what they provided to us

079is consistent with that legislation as well. We did ask about that and that was something they said was consistent at this point, but they're continuing to evaluate it based on that law's okay. Adoption and so there might be a revision to that that's going to come out soon. Okay. And you could send it email just let us if there's any questions. Yeah. Any other discussion? Okay. Can I have a motion and a second to approve agenda item 11.1? Second reading of policies. Second. All in favor? I. Any nays or abstensions? I get that. Okay. Sorry. Okay. I'd like to move forward for f finance, facilities, and transportation committee report. Uh Dan, please. Uh we met on June 16th at 6:30. Everybody was in attendance. Uh this is a long list. I'm I'm not going to

080go item by item because a lot of these are many of these are just kind of year-end renewals. Um but if you have any questions on anything specific, but I am going to highlight some of these as as I go down. Um, one of them was the application for agreement with the New Jersey Cash Management Fund that Christina brought up earlier. I think that we kind of discussed it then, but that this gives us the opportunity to participate in that program and get some higher um interest rates. Um, so that right now we're just approving approving the agreement so that we have the opportunity to do that if if needed. And what Doug was saying in the meeting was that that's something that changes kind of annually. So sometimes it's it's better than Citizens Bank

081and sometimes Citizens Bank is better. So it it we would have the option to kind of go back and forth if as needed. Um items 123 and 124 are just the uh approvals to participate in that school re regionalization efficiency program that we had um we've discussed previously. Um I I am I I don't think you reported on this full list at the meeting, right? So So one of the first one 12 three is for us to be the lead agency with the one that we've discussed. Um and we have I believe Clinton Township Franklin. Yeah, it's Clinton Township, Franklin High. Um that so that's that's for the study we've been discussing. The second one down to confuse us. um a little bit here is Bloomsberry has been um going through the process of becoming

082part of our regional district. We need to pass this resolution for their final step so that we will be we're going to be the lead agency in our K12 visualization study, but we're going to be the partner agency in having Bloomsberry join our district. So that's why there's two different ones with two different roles, but they're completely two separate. Nice thoughts. And what is very strictly for high school I mean the high school students just the high school students coming in. Yeah. It allows them to participate in this program for free without having to pay to do the study. They've beneficial for they've actually already done the study. I was surprised they even had to do this again. But so they have but they have to they have to reauthorize it in order for next

083step. It's again not a typical bureaucratic kind of thing procedure. Um went down uh 12 12 and 123. This is just the renewal of Ponttonian as our food service manager, but I did want to point out that there were some rate changes on the cafeteria and meal pricing. I just wanted to point that out. Um uh 15 and again correct me if I'm wrong. 15 and 16 is this is for 100 and health correct. That's correct. So these were two RPS that we decided to do. Um one was for mental health wraparound services and the other is for school position services. Uh we put that out there and Hunter and Health came back with a very favorable proposal for both of them. They have expanded their mental health um capacity and behavioral health and healthcare

084itself came back with a better proposal for um school positions. So we're going to move to have health be our school physicians for both schools um and then health in behavioral health will actually uh provide our wraparound service for for our mental health program. And they also let us know that they're ready to to they are they actually in their um in their RFB they were the only one who did it. Um they actually name the conditions they already have that they're going to place here. So they're ready to start day one. Uh 127 some thousand cheaper than what we actually paid last year. Uh 127 is awarding the contract to redo the roof for the new board office to the mall roofing. Uh the bids came this bid came in at 115,000. Uh since

085at the meeting we were still waiting for the attorney to approve that everything was everything was in there. Um so we are that is the case. So we are approving that. Um this uh price came in well under budget um uh with other another bidder at 120,000. So we know it's a that's a that's a really good price. So um we're getting a good good deal on that on that project. Um and I'm going to jump to the boards. Um, oh, just to, uh, items we discussed, um, need to talk about, um, which came up last meeting about, uh, Oprah requests. Um, just letting everyone here know that the policy going forward would be that if there's a request that uh is specific or has a member that's as part of that request, they would

086just be notified that it's it's being done and and um information regarding them would be part of that. So, they're just being just being informed. It as far as Can I ask a question about that? Mhm. As far as over requests go, um it what are the rules or what is the law um on how we respond? What information we give? What participation is there by the person who's being who the information is being asked about? Just curious as far as what what participation do we have as a board member or input do we have as a board member to influence what is provided back to the public? you don't well as a custodian of records is that uh the role is is to obtain all the records that currently exist and and if that

087means addressing a board member to say do you have any in this day and age because it's all electronic for the most part we can just I can go to uh G and say hey give me all of the the emails and I'm able to obtain it that way but if I needed to I would I would talk to individuals and and ask them to provide me with the information but other than that it's just simply a collection of existing documents to provide uh to hopefully meet and and every not everyone but most over requests I vet through the attorney simply because of and if it's a marketing one say hey give me a list of all your employees I I send it to the attorney say hey do I have to do this and

088if I if by law I do then I will but uh otherwise um I want the I want the attorney to let me know if we're in compliance Yes. And we always do that. Correct. I'm sorry. That's always been done before. As far as I know, unless it's a very easy over request, like they're asking for a document that you know is available. So the BA office, the BA's office prepares the response. Yes. The school board administrator, board secretary is is still correct. And then the notification of the board member, is that now just a courtesy or that's how that's going to be? Yeah, it's a courtesy and that's where I think your original question was is what like if somebody was um opening information about you, we would let you know that they were

089operating this information so you're aware, but you don't have the ability to tell us I don't want you to provide XYZ, right? So there's no but it was just a courtesy and it it's just a courtesy so they not surprised that a board meeting. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um uh another discussion we had were uh advertising is going to go out for sinkho repair. Um that's that's happening until we're back with the school. Um I don't know if that's happened yet or not. The report Yes. The advertisements went out. Yeah. Um and then the bids for that are supposed to be scheduled for July July. Correct. Hopefully to have it in front of the boards at the next meeting. Okay. Um and and Doug, I don't know if there's an item on here. I don't have

090a lot of information, but you you were giving a kind of a a heads up about the structural changes in the healthcare um program. Um, correct. Insurance pool. I don't know if you if you have anything. I I'll just quickly say that um what's happening uh at the state level for public employees, not school employees, is that they're going to phase out the healthcare program and shift it over to private entities. This board of education has been in uh the shift, which is a u a non-staterun uh pool, and you've been doing very well with that, as well as with your your prescriptions. So, you're not in practice. I just wanted to to be aware because there was rumblings that the school employee health program may also go the way of the Dota and I

091believe that is it. Anybody has any questions? Yes. Yeah. I had a question on the theian price list. Yes. So it it looks like 90% of the food items they increase by like 10 cents. Do we have anything from them that indicates whether they're tied into that for the entire school year or do they have the ability to increase prices again given the economies and everything? They're usually tied in for the year. They ask for that at the beginning of the year and then they try to live by that as they go to the board. Okay. If there's a real issue, I'm sure they'll come back and Okay, that sounds good. Rich, um, do you know the approximate ballpark the amount the amount of servings per day servings in our cafeteria? Yeah. No idea. Meaning

092how many students use the cafeteria? I was just reading over the contract and it says that we guarantee a minimum of 174 servings per day. I was just curious what the what what kind of what we're actually serving per day. I'm sure we're well over 100. I I I assumed, but I didn't want to assume. So, um they eat at all different like they serve breakfast, they serve a lunch, sort of car throughout the day. They So, they're going way above 174. Yeah. I Okay. In the end, our food services um program um the the manager there does a great job. When I'm at student advisory committees each year, um she's usually there at least at one of them, if not at more than one. Um asking the students what they what they like, what

093they don't like, what they'd like to see. you know, a lot of student feedback, a lot of student voice in regards to what the cafeteria uh provides. And they do that because they want to sell things, right? But it's also because they want our kids to, you know, feel comfortable using the services. So, and where does the price list get published? Is it is that on the website? It's actually it's on the it's touch. No, no, no. For for parents and students. Yeah. I don't know if we do publish that anywhere. I think that's just that's on our board agenda approving those prices and then they're published at school. We might want to look into that like just get that information out there. So here's the 2025 2026 cafeteria school uh food pricing and whether

094that's an email or newsletter whatever is a communication or we could probably just post it list it on the website, can't we? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, do that too. But I'm just not sure how much hits like if you're not looking like you know what I'm saying? Somebody's got to go digging for it as opposed to setting it or getting it to them or just put it under the students, isn't there? There's a ton. We'll look into communication. There's got to be a better way. Yeah. Yeah. It's different than again an elementary setting where you're everyone's buying the same lunch and you know this it's a lot of out of stuff. They have their lunch price, but as far as how many kids are actually buying just the school lunch, it's a lot different

095than kids that are buying a sandwich, a bag of chips. No, I understand. This list would be enough in my mind. Just the list that's on the agenda. Let's just get it out there. I think that also means your parents understand the different methods of payment. Um I I the when you have the on that whatever that special one is pay school. Yeah. Um oh the online payment. Yes. There's a a pretty significant search charge to fund it. You're saying to fund it. To fund it. Yeah. I've ran up to that. Yeah. Yeah. So So what would you like? Just as part of any communication regarding the school lunch program would be to also add talking to identifying the online the online payment and the search charges what every time you load it every time

096you load it electronic search electronically if you're using like a credit card to fund like an ATM versus a bank account right I mean I is there any other I'm not I don't have any children you can do a bank account and then is there any other way to fund it can a student come in and say I want to put on my I don't know how it is Here I can bring it. You could do a check, paper check or uni touch, but I don't know if that's charge. But well, if you debit from your bank account, it's the same as a check, but it shouldn't be a search charge for that. As a banker, I'm wondering how much they're searching you for electronic processing. Yeah, they are. They're doing it. But they they're

097it's also illegal in the state of New Jersey to search charge on debit cards. That's good enough. So, they shouldn't be doing that. If we're using our debit card on that portal, there should be no search charge and they're in violation of visa policies. This is what I do for a living. Yeah. Let him know. Yeah. What what the system is that we currently use because if it's our portal or if it's our portal and we're managing it, then who's doing our merchant services? That's who we should be. I believe we're managing. I don't think Tony. Yeah, but we we have to have a processor that sits behind us that processes those payments for us and we need to look at who that processor is and what they're charging. I can certainly but if we're

098not in compliance and we're being overcharged on rates for processing credit cards when a lot of our fees process through credit cards. Yeah, that's a good point. checks. You your check is you could use a check, you know, with your but an a debit, which is the other option, which is the same numbers that are on usually in most cases that are on the bottom of your check or a debit card. Neither one of those methods should be searchcharged at all because the there's a minimal fee for a debits and we don't s there's no search charge available for a debits technically and then there should be no legal search charge allowed on debit cards as well. That's a good catch. We check Yeah, definitely check that. Yeah, it's typical how that can even use

099they don't do they discrimination. So when you load money on there, so they don't take cash. They have the school system they can pay, right? Pay central, whatever it is. Is there any other methods? You bring check in. No, no. At the cafe, at the at the point of sale, so you either have the only other thing is to charge it and then we do have students that charge the meal because they don't have money that day or they their account is um right below the limit. They don't it's they don't deny the student food, but then we have go into the negative. I know that really only one method is what you're saying. Yeah. Cuz if they don't accept cash, you have to use your student ID to pay for it, but that has

100to be loaded behind the scenes electronically or by somebody walking you with a check. Correct. Yes. And not very many people walk around checks. Good point. Any other questions? I I do too. um 12.3 the regionalization is this is a um ask for a grant correct so when I was reading through it it seemed like the state would offset the cost so is this something where the state would pay for the entire study it's my understanding they pay for the entire study okay so there wouldn't be any cost there are some exceptions that like we wanted to use our own private firm to do it private firm was charging more than a state allows that's not the case but we we're going to plan on using one of these state provided um firms. Okay. Um

101one that has been helpless so thus far is from university. So and that was okay thank you. Um and then 12.14 can you elaborate on this membership and there's no cost here as well the NJ stride membership. Yeah. So NJ Strat is consortium that we um belong to it um is the um I always forget the acronym but it's it's basically recruitment in diversity in diversity diverse educators. Um so that what they focus on is making sure that um as being part of this consortium we are saying that we as a district are open to um all um first candidates um for our positions and then we also get access to a job fair each year uh where they advertise our positions that we have participate. It's a virtual job fair um and then that

102is the advantage that we get and we've had a few candidates over the years that can come from without this we're still open to diverse candidates. Yes. Right. What this does is it it sends a message to those diverse candidates that we are part of a consortium that promotes this and that we are open to um hiring everybody. So it's it's it's a way to giving a message. It's just a message out there. Yeah. And a recruitment tool. Um we want people from around the state to know that we are we would like people to apply for our jobs, you know, not just from Hunter County, but all around the state. And that's the other thing that it does. It gives us a statewide presence for that instead of just focusing on our local kind

103of Mhm. So, is there areas that you would not be able to put a job on if you were do they have exclusive areas where you can post jobs if you're a Stride member? Uh, no. They don't have an actual job board. They use NJ school jobs which we also use. Okay. So, you couldn't there's not they said differently you wouldn't be excluded anywhere if you like there's no advantage. No, it it again outside of having the the it's no advantage to say that we are part of this consortium. We believe in the purpose of it and the mission of it and that we are supporting it by being understood. Any other sorry I was going to say any other questions? Sorry. Does any training come with that um for like admin um to help

104them with that line of vision? So being part of consortium we get a um we get like a message board um a lot of time it's it's more of an email kind of thing. You'll get the email saying somebody somebody posted this to the board. Um and then so we you do get some forms some ideas that people are doing. Um and and an opportunity to ask any questions that you might have as well. We also use um New Jersey school boards for that. Um that's it's the PAAA personal administrators association. We get that as part of our membership to MJ school boards. I got another question. So when applicants apply, is there a section where you know where they found the job from? Meaning like would they say hey stride or I found this

105affiliation with stride? So unless it's through the job fair if it's a job fair then job fair. So, so do you know if anyone's ever been found because of this? Yeah. Yes. Yes. That's good. Yeah. So, people have said, "I found you because you're Well, we hired them through job fair. So, that's how I know they found us through that. That's at that job fair sponsor job fair. Correct. Got it. Okay. Asking now. We're good. We're We're good. Mhm. Okay. Um, all in favor? I Oh, I'm sorry. We need a motion and and a second. Sorry. So move, Christina. I need a second. Cynthia Reyes. Sorry. All in favor? I. Any nays or abstensions? I vote no to 1214. 12:14. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Good. Good. Thank you. You're very welcome. Uh moving forward to

106um community relations and student affairs. Um we did not meet so we do not have a report out. Uh the delegates reports um we don't have anything for delegate but is there anything else? So, it's summer recess for Hunter County. Uh, moving forward to the personnel committee report. Uh, Miss uh, Kagno. Okay. We personnel committee met on June 18th at 6:30 and all were in attendance except for Tara Pitts. Um, we went over the regular personnel agenda. We also had additional discussion session which was a working session on two job descriptions. We had the remaining ESP job descriptions. Um one was for hall monitor, one was for special education and we we have the red strikethroughs. I want to make it clear though for this time around um Dr. Verdex had a original job description

107compared to the New Jersey schoolboard job description and utilize the New Jersey schoolboard job description as the template. So, anything that is changed from the New Jersey schoolboard job description is either red texted if it's something that was added or it's read crossed out if something was omitted because we wanted did not want that wording. So you'll see that when you go into the Google drive. Um we also discussed the the way this aligns with one of our policies. It's policy which was mentioned just earlier today um which is the paraprofessional policy. So this led us to compare those two because the qualifications within that policy needed to align with our job description for these positions. So um that was brought up by the policy community report out see if there's anything else. Um, so

108the next piece or next steps with job descriptions is we want to attend to this right away for hiring purposes. So we're going to move back to looking at our organizational chart and moving from top down with job descriptions that needs to be updated. So that's our next steps. Probably trying to accomplish two job descriptions per meeting. Any questions? And that's with administrative input. You know, Rich has been guiding us with adding certain uh job descriptions as needed as we go into the new school year. So, you may see ones come before ahead of it. So, so it wasn't clear when you did the comparison with policy, did you find something we need to address in policy to match the job description? So, there was, but it was previously fixed. So the the the substitute

109certificate forever had been 60 credits or more. Um okay, that that's the one. It it then got lowered down to 30. Um but because of the fact that they we're changing it, we we just have it saying um must be New Jersey school substitute eligible or professional certification. And you can see generic and you don't have to keep and you couldn't see those. They were we the the red line so you can see what was changed the verbiage that is it. Any questions for Christina? Uh, can I have a motion and a second for to adopt resolution 0624252 for an executive session to discuss matters reflected in the attached resolution. The board expects to be in exact session for approximately 1 hour and upon return to public session action will be taken. All in favor

110or no need a motion to second one. So move anybody. Don't all rush at once. All in favor? I I. Any nays or abstensions? Great. motion second to reconvene public session. So moved. Second. Nicole and Beth. All in favor? Any nays or abstensions? Um I need a motion and a second to approve agenda items um 18.1. We will be deferring 18.2 to July. So it's only 18.1. I need a motion and a second. Dan, uh Dan and Beth [Music] any Yeah. Any discussion? with the roll call. Any discussion? Roll call up. Christina Ko. Yes. Brian Chapman. Yes. Dr. Dean. Yes. Nicole Gallow. Yes. Cold. Here. I mean, yes. That too. She's not here. Yes. It's too hot in here. Yes. Well, she's on. She's on the side with Yes. Jessica Dato. Yes. Don't worry. I

111was lord eye at the last meeting. How? Lord. Lordy. Lordy. Lord. Yeah, you were. Yes. Okay. Moving on to old and new business. Okay. I seeing none. Can I have a motion and a second to adjurnn? Motion second. So that was Nicole Gallo and Angela Deini. All in favor? Any names or extensions? Thank you everyone.