001for check check check one two check check good have a good night looks nice check good check one two check one two check one two check check one two check one [Music] two thank you don't forget to use your micophone tonight because have an audience so they [Music] leave all right good evening everyone welcome to the rington Township Board of Education this meeting is being held in compliance with the open public meetings act and is open to the media in Public Notices were duly posted and the meeting was advertised in the Hun County Democrat and Courier News formal action may be taken can I get a roll call please M Ben I'm here M FY here here M men here Mr Peach here M borski here Ryan here wolf here here example here we can
002all rise for the to flag United States of America the stands Nation God indivisible liy and justice for all first yes thought he was going first all right so um we're gonna start off talking about the board goals so in the September meeting um we had met with uh Judith Judith Wilson who was our um consultant to go through our board retreat and from that we had gotten um some feedback on things that we can work on as a board uh we were going to go through it tonight with Wen Thorton our field service rep for School New Jersey school boards um but she congratulations to Glen she has been promoted and she was not available to come until January so um so I'm taking stab at it um so you can see in your
003yellow envelope there's a packet from board goals so on here the first document is the proposed goals for this year um and they are in the same format as what we did last year with quen of having Focus goals along with continued goals or Evergreen goals and then for reference there's the goals um from 2122 in the back um so take a minute to look over it in the 23 24 goals um the items in blue are items that I changed for okay so um so the first one that I have for fcus goal is just an update from um the rtea contract settling an agreement to this year settle an agreement with the rtaa before the end of the school year as a new goal for that one um I think that's pretty self-explanatory
004um goal number two improve the use of data to monitor progress and drive decision- making uh examples of this that we gave last month were School level goals the data conversation guide attendance at extra academic office offerings such as clubs homework rooms I ready running records njsla retention recruitment or HR data hi records and code of conduct infractions mental health survey and climate survey and lastly and we don't have to include the examples in the goals if you don't want to but I just wanted to capture everything that we had talked about last week and the last one was provide and share opportunities for board training and professional development um and then I'll just go on the number four the continued goals um another uh item we had was to focus on closing the loop
005on communicating the end results of some of our efforts and um the rest of them stayed the same and we can we can discuss those two if we want to remove any of the longer term goals so open up to you all for thoughts Camille and I um we both collaborated on this over the weekend too just that way um the the goals that you put together here this was based off of the those self assess those surveys that we did for that um yes okay so the board the each member each board member filled out the survey and there was a couple of areas in the back like we had a lot of strengths and there was a couple of areas of focus focus areas so I use those to work on the goals
006which was something we talked about last month I'll just add a comment I'm pleased to see the addition in number four I think that was a good Sol there so support that thank you is everyone good with that okay my only comment I realized I wasn't here last month my only comment is I just I don't see enough of an emphasis on just you know academic Excellence or academic achievement just in light ESP the math scores we're going to hear more about tonight um right so number seven is more like our what we can do as board members the academic achievement is more of a district goal and that's in the presentation tonight from drar okay so number seven is the um create the supports and structures for a Sharp clear focus on academic achievement
007I.E remove barriers that take away from educ ation while continuing the integration of social emotional learning across the curriculum and providing Equitable access to mental health supports as needed for our students and staff I'll throw out there number six um which is to continue to upgrade and refine Safety and Security measures to ensure student and staff safety uh just wondering how everyone feels about that it's always something that we talk about in finance facility if we actually need to keep this as a goal so keep it I would advocate for keeping it okay all right so we've got six and seven it sounds like four is okay with the addition of focusing on closing the loop um for the public number four is continue to improve communication and expand Community engagement with all stakeholders our
008our efforts will focus we'll continue our focus on transparency broadening our efforts beyond our locality highlighting and celebrating District accomplishments with an E emphasis on our sustainability greeding initiatives and developing collaborations with our local government and entities focus on closing the loop and communicating the end results all right so number five then set budget parameters that effectively plann for enrollment growth maintain the depth breadth and quality of the educational and co-curricular program that are both sustainable and fiscally accountable to the community evaluating and assessing our redistricting plan to accommodate shifts in student population so we're good with all the Evergreen all right keep my backwards trajectory going number three which is a focus goal provide and share opportunities for board training and professional development okay um and then number two improve the use of data
009to monitor progress and drive decision making do we want to keep these examples in here okay yeah it's good to have the example and just in general I like the approach of having focused goals and then continued goals I mean who's ever going to say no to not having Safety and Security goal so it just makes sense um so when we changed that a year ago I think that just doing that in general moving in that direction is is really to yeah I agree we should have as well okay and then um settle an agreement with the RT rtaa before the end of the school year should be care um so any sounds like everybody's good with them any additions anything else that you want to see do we are you viewing them all as
010equal weight or if they in priority order because if they were in priority order I would consider the creation support and structures to Sharp clear academic achievements we could move that up in the continued goals to similar to the way it was last year okay did I move it yeah last year it was three it was the first on the goals I don't know oh you know why it's I don't know I don't know why that happened but okay so and then we have communication second budget and then so really it's just seven should be four and the rest correct my opinion are they which is make sense but are they in order of importance I didn't look at it like that maybe they are sure I don't think so but just when you're if
011you're gonna read them are you gonna zone out by the end I don't care I don't necessarily I I won't say order of importantance but just rather priority like where do we need to focus energy time Etc as a board okay all right so um we'll get these finalized and Jason will help me get them uploaded all right short sweet thanks everybody Larry could you bring us the um student assessment presentation thank you yes you want to explain what to do of course yeah um so this evening uh the leadership team is here uh our central office curricular staff as well as our School principles are going to talk about several pieces of data with you tonight not only our njsla Administration from last spring um but in addition to that we're also going to
012look at our I ready student achievement data some writing benchmarks um the curriculum supervisors are going to give uh an overview of districtwide data and something that we really enjoyed last year was hearing from each building principal in areas that are going to be Focus areas for each building over the course of the Year this year each principal has also put together um a brief report about last year's Focus area and what they noticed in the njsla or I ready data um for this year but um as way of introduction uh I included in your yellow folder the data conversation guide that the district created last year um and this is a guide that's widely used across the district um by teaching staff members administrative staff members myself and can be used uh with you
013here tonight uh you're going to see a lot of data and the data conversation guide is really for you to monitor your own thinking about what you're seeing as each one of the principles and supervisors presents our student achievement data um and the prompts are really questions and they're questions for you to consider for you to think about and with this should help you do like it helps us as uh administrators and teachers is have a clear focused conversation about what we notice in student achievement data um so it prompts you with some questions some things that you notice um some things that you don't notice right things that you can't tell from the data like what does the data not show you right which is more information that we might want to gather and
014then there's a two column chart that asks for assets and challenges what are the things that we know we're doing really well and what are the things that challenge The District in terms of achievement and next steps and action plans so the administrators and the teachers do this as an exercise to collaborate to discuss student achievement and then ultimately create goals administrative goals uh each teacher has a professional development plan they also have sgo goals student growth objective goals um and this is what we use our data conversation guide for um funny it's not to similar I was talking to miss pouch um last week when we had Graham Fletcher one of our um presenters during our in service days this is not as similar to what we ask our students to do in mathematics
015tasks right we have something called preact tasks where we ask them to describe what they notice about how numbers are working what are you wondering about how numbers are working how let you go about solving this problem um with these numbers so this actually we kind of made the connection it transcends not only students using it but also or excuse me our staff using it in terms of our student achievement data but our kids are actually using it when they look at Ma problems as well so this is for you each one of you have a copy in your folder Feel Free as uh you see the presentation tonight feel free to track some of your thinking on this graphic organizer and this might help you organize some of the questions that you might have
016for us it might organize um some of your own thinking wrapped around student achievement data so that's for you and without further Ado I'd like to turn it over to Dr Brown to talk about language arts we have many wonderful things to celebrate tonight we'll start with third grade and a little bit of housekeeping the structure of these charts will be the same through language arts and then math they can be slightly difficult to read they're in a Continuum like a gradiation of purple so it's hard to tell one from the other especially as you get to the left with the lighter colors so on the left hand side or the low scores the very lightest purple the one that did not yet meet expectations and then as you move to the right you get
017through the partially net approached net and then exceeded expectations so we're looking to always hover in that very dark deep almost black purple and then the kind of lavender color which is where we consistently are throughout the whole presentation the numbers on the bottom are connected to the colors but they're not necessarily under the color that they belong to they are in line with the key underneath with the one two three four and five so if you have any questions as I'm going through just stop me and I can connect you to the correct level and the correct color and the correct number so third grade scores we are at a 64% meeing and exceeding rate which is good for us this is an improvement from last year and a solid 20% percentage points higher
018than the speak in fourth grade the students are continuing to grow they've reached a 75% meeting an exceeding rate this year and they have the added benefit of rate it's not working I can see it but I can't it doesn't is that is that just the way it is or is that pointer oh Dr ground well I just want to make sure do you have the microphone on the Green Dot just check I don't think it so we'll do without it you a point to something no thank you like really long hands with the finger stick want so we should be very proud of fourth grade and they're 26% in the exceeding expectations range which this means to me as I interpret this is that they're doing a really nice job serving the need of
019the students that need the most help and the students that are coming in already on great level and just need to grow from where they are fifth grade they're continuing to grow they're growing their scores year and they' reached to 75% 77% meeting an exceeding expectations theyve held on to that nice section of EX exceeding expectations as well as they take away from those did not meet areas on the left and then sixth grade they are up substantially from last year they're a solid 20% points above the state at a 70% meeting and exceeding expectations seventh grade is holding steady with a similar number at 75% meaning and exceeding and they've got of the best exceeding expectation rates in the district this year at 32% of their students exceeding expectations on this particular assessment and
020eighth grade at a 69% meeting and exceeding they they worked very hard this year and this is a substantial increase from their scores from last year they are also well above the state average now I won't stop for questions here because most of your questions are answered when we go to La to two M scores and then after we do this then I'll stop for questions if you have any so this is where it gets even better so the red arrows are where our scores were prepandemic and if you look at each grade level and these are our students as different groups of them move through each grade level so we're really assessing more our instruction our curriculum how it's implemented because each of these bars represents a different group of students and every group
021of students is different so if you look at the red arrow that's our prepandemic score fourth fifth six and seven are now back to either the same or better than they were prepandemic so for these grade levels to recover from something that disrupted in two years is really very impressive and is a huge credit to our teaching staff and the amount of effort on the part of the students to close close those gaps that UR when school was disrupted and we had to do things differently than nor if you look across this chart from third all the way to eth grade every single grade level has made progress and has improved their score from last year so even grade levels are back where they were before have made substantial growth if looking at eighth grade
022there's a substantial difference between last year's scores and this year's scores as is third grade so they are well on their way to being back to our prepandemic r now this one is the same group of students as they move through the grade levels so looking at our third graders into fourth grade and our fourth grade um I'm sorry in our seventh grade into eighth grade the two book ends there um the let me go back in this might the third grade going into fourth grade and then the sixth grade into seventh grade those groups of students as they move through the grade levels they showed really substantial growth there's a really big difference between last year scores and this year's scores which is wonderful to see now fourth and fifth grade and then seventh
023and eighth grade they are also showing nice incremental growth so we know that they're getting these students to where they need to be year after year and then fifth grade to 63 they took a slight step back you're only talking about three percentage points there that's nothing to be concerned about and that particular group is the one that transitions into the middle school and certain groups of students adjust to those expectations of the Middle School different than others this particular group had a little bit more of difficulty trying to adjust to those expectations but three percentage points is not something to be concerned about we'll watch them into next year when we have their seventh gr Sports to ensure that they're gring now we don't have prepandemic scores on this particular slide because for most
024of these groups of students there aren't any there in that those Gap years where we didn't test so looking back to our current to our eighth grade they were at a 71% pre pandemic so they have fully recovered and our seventh grade scores when they took the assessment last which is the last group that we had they were also at 71% so they also have recovered so looking at both longitudinally across fre levels and then across Co Awards in almost every single instance we have recovered in our back to where we were before which is a really nice place to start this particular year because now we can start to move forward and grow I really wish we could have seen because we put some really nice programs in place what would have happened if
025we could have just Blended in and moved through with those programs without the disruption but we're ready to start that now do you have any questions before I move into sub operations excellent so there is more good news so here are our proficiencies by subpopulation of race and at the bottom are the percentages of Readington students that fall into each one of these populations the smaller the population the more difficult it is to interpret the data because a student or two could make a very large percentage Point difference but looking across this this graph every single one of our subpopulations have made growth this past year during on this particular assessment our profic proficiency by gender is also moving forward nicely both males and females made the exact same seven percentage Point growth from our
026last assessment the males are back to where they were pre pandemic and our females are very very CL proficiency by program so we have our economically disadvantaged students on the left under freom reduced lunch heading there's a slight dip there I did investigate this it's not tracking back to any particular grade level building group of any kind so we'll continue to investigate this and see if we can put some plans in place to help these particular groups of students our economically disadvantaged group is growing in population from year to year that can affect these numbers also the idea that these number these groups of students don't always see the scene students can move in and out of this program and so we may not be assessing the same group of students this year that we
027did last year and that may account for the differences but we'll continue to try to put some programs in place to assist that our Section 504 students are doing very well which means to me our teachers are doing an excellent job differentiating instruction and accommodating their needs in the classroom our e our elll population unfortunately no one passed this year but it's not a cause for panic you can look back to 2016 and 17 where this happened previously these groups of students are only in the program for a limited amount of time and the whole point is for them to graduate and then not be counted in this group anymore so last the past year with that 37% passage rate we had a lot of students that had been in the district for a while
028they were just about to graduate out of the program they were really well set to take this assessment last year we had all of a lot of those students graduate out of the program now they're only being counted as part of the J Ed population they're not being counted in this elll population as well and then we had quite a few Port of Entry students who came in not speaking any English at all some in some not even in the beginning of the year but more into the late fall early winter so they just didn't have the exposure to the English language to be able to handle an assessment like this one on their own and we're not allowed to give them a language art Arts assessment in Spanish they had to take it in
029English they just weren't ready yet and I think they're going to be ready this year so we'll see a difference in that number I hope when this comes around again special ed rates are are holding steady and our gen Ed rates are back to where they were pre pandemic with 82% of our gen population passing the assessment which is a really nice place to be and that means that our program that we put together the layers of it and the depth are working for our students any questions Howes students fall into the e I want to say around 30 but I would need c 30 30 anything else overall so we have Jenna 82% did they did it show anywhere overall what our percentage was of passing you mean overall for the district yes that's
030mostly our gened scores because gened would include our economically disadvantaged our Section 504 our ell students and all the students without any accommodations or services at all okay thank you so where you would get like an overall percentage it's not here by District but like overall percentages would be more in the gr level like that is 8th grade every single child in that gr that's including lenic special our El population everybody thank you so you're asking good questions maybe if you're looking at your data conversation guide you've noticed some assets some challenges some things that the data is not telling you that maybe you want the administration to investigate in terms of how we're moving forward with certain things just want to bring you back to that that's thank you sorry Stacy that's okay so
031now we're moving into the reading the I reading diagnostic which is really very valuable to us the students take this three times a year so we get the information more in real time it's more of a formative assessment where we could use this data to shift our instruction and then give the students what they need so on your left you have a progress to annual typical growth in blue and that's a median number they'll put all of our students together from the lowest of the highest score and then right there in that middle student is the score that we use here it's usually more ACC than a street average you are looking for a student to make one year's worth of growth in the school year which makes sense that would put them at 100%
032growth that's typical if you get over 100% it means not only did you make your one year's growth but you also closed gaps that students had of things they didn't Master before the district as a whole is sitting at 168% growth this year they not only made the growth they needed they made almost another half a year more than half a year GR in addition to and then on the left you have the actual placement of students and you can see that like the the red is our two grade levels below and three grade levels below and you can see how very small those numbers are then here's the actual numbers for each individual grade level K to you don't want to try and make a straight comparison to the njsla scores because this is
033just read and njsla would include both reading and writing so it would shift the the numbers a little bit but these are pretty well in line with our younger grade levels K through four showing very very few students who are two or more grade levels below the grade that they're in and then moving forward we've got proficiencies that are close to what they were on the njsl quick question the eighth grade yes is that the the you might have just said this um does that include like the algebra one students or it's just the eth grade this is just language art so this is different from Mass this includes everybody jumped ahead it's really that is a very tricky thing to manage and I am so glad that I don't have to do that yes
034there is a fairly strong downward Trend by great is that something to be expected or is there any yes that is an excellent question you should put that under data compation so K through two is basically straight decoding we just want them to understand their letters and sounds and be able to read the words once they hit third grade now you've shifted from learning to read to reading to learn and so now you're not focused so much on decoding anymore now you're focused on reading with automaticity just like you drive a car and you're not thinking about it or you walk or you breathe and you're not even thinking about it and you're just pulling out the information that's texts get substantially longer now we're not looking at like 12 page decodables with two lines
035of text we're looking at 500 page novels trying to hold that much information in your head from the beginning to the end of a book is very different so the expectations of what we want them to do in A3 for example is very very different from what they expect them they expect them to do in kindergarten students that don't have strong decoding skills when they get to like late Elementary early middle school when they don't have fluency which is why we have such a strong focus on fluency here they can't keep up and this that's where it all starts to fall apart so if any of those students get snuck by with a fluency rate that's not really great it shows up here not in second grade when we're talking about it so these numbers
036have risen as we've spent more time on foundational skills and we've layered on to our programs we use the Jennifer sarabell books to fill in decoding gaps fluency gaps we went back to kindergarten and we had Nicole May of anano add to our phonics program for even like more robust chronological awareness activities for those kids that need things just a little bit longer maybe a little bit more the trouble with literacy is that the program I put together for one student isn't going to work for every single student everybody needs something different no one ever argues with the need for phonics but and need for found skills like fluency and vocabulary but the amount that every child needs is going to be different so that's where we need the teachers to be as wonderful as
037they are and make those professional decisions decide that this child may need to hear at one time this child is will you to he at 10 and so we have decodables in the classrooms and decodables in the book room so that we can give them the materials they need to do that we have our interventionists to come in and supplement even more for those students that need to hear it 10 times but at the same time when we're looking at our students that exceed expectations we don't want them to he at 10 times because they already got it the first time and we will damage their Lev of reading if we make them go over the same thing over and over and over again when they got it and then you end up with behavioral
038problems so teachers really are doing a lot of magic in the classroom to walk that line with giving everybody what they need it's a very difficult balance to to find thank you sure I'm sorry just so I can understand these percentages also include the students that are within those other programs yes this would be absolutely everybody like njsla we have the subgroups where we kind of we can separate them out and see which on and our gen Ed population wouldn't include like the special ed population but here this is every child in the district in that grade level completely unseparated so if you're looking for a straight up District number this is anything else you can see we have really fantastic teachers so writing benchmarks again we can't compare these numbers to I ready we
039can't compare them to njsla because this is just strictly writing so kindergarten scores this is set up the same way as the njsla charts where the um the students with most most need are on the left in red and the students um that are ex excelling the most are in the green on the right and then the percentages of passing are on the bottom the kindergarten the kindergarten numbers with the narrative writing first that always comes first in the year informational in the middle and then the opinion argument is usually at the end that's the most difficult of the three genres to write in these numbers are to be expected in kindergarten they did really well in information writing in the beginning and then narrative is the first thing that they've ever written as of
040you know five-year-old so we expect to see growth as we move through the year and these are the places that we see transfers so all those phonic skills from the phonics units of study we're looking for them to come out when they do the writing here and in first grade they've got really consistent scores and they ended on a high in opinion writing at 91% meeting exceeding second grade showed some nice consistent growth over the year they struggled a little bit with informational writing but they were able to apply the skills they learned informational writing to the opinion writing piece and they end of the year at 84% meeing and exceeding expectations the skills that they learn in narrative transfer over into information and an opinion and the skills they they learn in information will
041transfer over into opinion and argument so once one genre is done it doesn't mean that it's over there's supp to pull these skills throughout the year and they do which is why see scores like this were they're a little lower in the beginning of the year when they haven't had as much instruction and a little higher at the end after they had now fourth grade they started at 67% with their narrative and went to 86 with their writing and then they dipped a little bit an opinion and argument in fourth grade they will be starting to shift from an opinion into an argument which is much more difficult so now they have have to support their opinion with text evidence which is like a whole new thing that they're throwing in there then once they
042get to fifth grade you can see how they start to master these skills they started out at an 80% and then ended with an 89 at the argument genre in sixth grade they had a whole new set of expectations again so now they moveed through their narrative they're improving in their information to 78% now when they get to sixth grade they're looking at counterarguments thesis statements not just text evidence but the strongest text evidence so now they've got a whole new round of new learning that they've been exposed to here but then as they go to seventh grade you can see as they start to master this they've got a 96% meaning and exceeding and information and then an 89% at an argument rating and then they continue to grow through E3 where the end
043of the year at a 94% meaning were exceeding expectations in that argument piece so those most students writing wise are very very prepared to go on to school do you have any questions then I will hand you over to miss pouch for now good evening everyone I'm Sarah pouch I'm the supervisor of math science technology health and PE um but tonight I'll just just be presenting Math and Science scores for you um we'll begin as Ela did with our overall results by grade level again looking for students to be in the meeting or exceeding range looking at third grade we had a very successful year with 73% of our students meeting were exceeding the expectations this is up um three percentage points from last year as well as significantly outperforming the state looking at fourth
044grade we had another very successful year at 71% of the students meeting or exceeding the expectations this was a larger jump of 10% increase from last year um as well as um uh being almost 30% higher than the state as well and having a very large students in the meeting with only a few students in that approaching or partially or not yet range in fifth grade we have a 56% meeing or exceeding rate um this is pretty consistent with last year it's 1% different um or excuse me 1% higher um but it is 16% higher than the state performance and one of the things of note for that 34 Five band is we do look into and go very you know into the details of the assessments and see what domains and what subject areas
045um we're exceeding in or might need some reinforcement in and four third fourth and fifth grade fractions was always something that we circled back to um when we looked at the questions those were the areas where um we didn't outperform the statement and we wanted to really look at that information and we looked at the instruction that we provided with our new math program we looked at the sequencing of that and we helped the teachers um with the assistance of the math coach to really focus in on those standards and I was thrilled to see that when I looked at the evidence statements from these three grade levels there was usually two or three fraction questions that we could have shown Improvement on at each grade level and looking at these results um this was
046the first time we had one fraction standard over the course of all three grade levels so that was a huge amount of improvement and it really showed um you know the hard work and dedication that the students and the teachers are putting into um gaining this information and showing such a a huge achievement as that so that was very exciting to see as we move into sixth grade we have a 54% um meeting or exceeding rate um and in this in this instance where we looked at um how the state did on individual questions compared to how our district did there was only one evidence statement where we scored below the state on so that um this is a 14% increase from last year's score and um we really it was interesting to see that
047when we looked down to each individual question there was really only one question that we scored um below the state on so the students are um making great games there with an increase from our sixth grade performance last year seventh grade is at 44% meing or exceeding and this is also an increase from last year at 4% and this is where we need to start keeping track of which students are taking the test and which students are not um roughly the top 10% of students are not taking the seventh grade assessment they're taking an algebra 1 assessment as our honors students our Advanced seventh grade math students are taking this assessment but they haven't seen these seventh grade standards for over a year so they're being assessed on um content that we're obviously hoping that
048they have retained but it's not the most recent information or standards that they um have been working on during the course of the year when we look at eighth grade we are up to um 26% meeting or exceeding and that what is an increase from 18% last year um another thing that was um of interest is that um the state is performing at 18% meeting or exceeding those standards and that didn't change theyve the state performed at 18% last year and they continued to um score at 18% this year whereas we have seen um a a increase of 8% um so that we're up to our 26% which is slightly below where we left off uh pre pandemic so every grade level with the exception of eighth grade just um a few percentages short um
049has shown an increase from last year and um the eth grade again the all there are 60% of our eth graders are taking this assessment the other 40% of our eighth graders are taking algebra one or Al for two um so we're looking at a at a fraction of the entire population when I take into account all eighth graders regardless of what class they were taking were at a 47% passing rate because I know I guess the numbers don't line up so the zero applies to to the five we didn't we didn't have any students in the exceeding range and that's something that Mr Charleston and I um obviously no disra way and um is something that we're looking to address this year when we look at Algebra 1 the state has a 35% meeting
050um or exceeding rate um whereas our district is at 85% this is a combination of our seventh and eighth graders and the state is a combination of seventh eighth graders and high school students um so even high school students are wrapped into that State uh percentage and um it was interesting to again that in this area the state showed no improvement they were at 35% passing last year and they remain at 35% um we've we've improved our scores by 12% um having having come back from the pandemic and in Algebra 2 this is a a much smaller group these are uh students taking honors math as eighth graders and they're taking an Algebra 2 High School level course as uh eighth graders we have an 81% meeting or exceeding whereas the state is at 54
051and this is slightly down from last year however it Trends with our scores from algebra one from last year so the same students who um didn't necessarily succeed or meet meet or exceed the expectations for Algebra 1 continued to have that struggle as Alor 2 students um and the percentage can also be deceiving because we're looking at such a small total so one student can have a have a great impact on the source I'll do the same and jump into the longitudinal um because that might answer some questions preemptively um when we look at the longitudinal scores again this is looking at grade one grade level but different students every year so this is where we're looking for Trends in our curriculum and our program um and how we're implementing the standards because it's a
052different different students each year the red arrow indicates again where we had that two-year break where we did not take the assessment um during the pandemic and we can see that um the students are doing an excellent job and we have compared to last year's um the second one bar over from the right where we came back back uh to take the assessment again after two years you can see that some grade levels have significant jumps as uh fourth grade and sixth grade do and other grade levels have smaller increments but all every grade level had made an impr an improvement from last year's performance and we're also seeing that some of those grade levels such as fourth grade is um almost back to where they were uh pre pandemic or when we started keeping
053keeping records for the njsla um when we look at uh Algebra 1 that would again be all of our algebra one students and then at the end they kind of give that cumulative district grades three through five b to and we can see that we've made improvements um across the board and in some of them just to give you a point of reference when there's a difference of 5% that's probably a total of about seven students um seventh grade is a much larger group so that doesn't quite hold true for them but the rest of the grade levels are all holding true um at about the same total so to kind of give you a point of reference for a point difference of two or three% we're looking at you know five to seven students
054again taking a look at our uh cohorts so that we look at the same students over time and we can see that that um last year's fourth graders compared to their fourth to their third grade scores have stayed very consistent and we hope to see that Trend follow them throughout their career through middle school so they stay at that nice high 71% when we look at uh fourth to fifth grade we see a slight drop of about 3% but again that would be roughly be four or five students looking at our sixth graders and how they compare compared to their performance in fifth grade they've remained very consistent and looking at our seventh graders compared to how they performed as sixth graders there was a significant increase of 11% um and again our sth graders
055uh and how they performed as eighth graders there was a nice increase there as well then we start looking at much smaller groups so looking at our grade level six to algebra one that's that group of honors students which is roughly um 30 students because they don't take the seventh grade or the eighth grade assessment they take the sixth grade assessment as sixth graders and then start taking algebra one as seventh graders the next bar over where it's grade seven to Algebra 1 those would be our advanced math students where they took seventh grade math and then didn't take the eighth grade assessment because they moved into a high school level algebra course and we can see that um both of those cohorts have have remained um very consistent and again when we look at
056all of the grades across the board we are seeing that upward Trend which we're very happy um to have accomplished questions I had a question on these slides this one and the one before it there's no Algebra 2 is that because algebra one Algebra 2 kind of gets conf yes um this the short answer is yes um they uh we would in house we can track from algebra one to Algebra 2 um when I contacted um blinket who usually gathers a lot of this data for us they said that our numbers were so small it wasn't significant and it's was significant to me so um so we we did take I did go back and take a look and that's where the statement of the students having passed out alra one transferring over to a
057lower score on the students passing Algebra 2 that's where we would we would see that Trend where um we had a lower number of students passing algebra one last year and then that translated into our a lower number of algebra two students passing this this past school year yes um would you go back to the prior screen for grade why is grade eight like why is the performance so I mean it's very very troubl so great these these scores you can see are um we've we've been working on this for quite a while we were on a nice steady upward trajectory prior to the pandemic we did take a step back um we're also again remember looking that grade eight we're only looking at 60% of our student population so and looking at seventh grade
058and sixth grade and fifth grade if we were to pull out the top performing 40% their numbers would look very different as well um and it is obviously something we would love to see improve um again but Mr Charleston and I have met we've talked about what supports we can put in place for students what supports we can put in place for teachers and um really really focusing on that and seeing how we can grow those numbers because we're almost back to where we were pre pandemic um and yes we would all like to see those numbers increase all right and then we'll move in into our subpopulation so the first um way that we're asked to break down the numbers is by uh proficiency by race and uh we report this out at a
059district level because if we report it out at any one grade level the numbers would be so small it would be identifying two students um so we're taking a look to see to make sure sure that that far bar on the right the darkest blue is constantly going up and in all but one of our subpopulations we are seeing that um the other thing to keep in mind again is that as this is districtwide and as students graduate outward one bar to the next is not the same grp the students um but again seeing that upward trajectory is always um very exciting to see and we were we were pleased to see that as well looking at gender we are at almost an even 5050 split across the district um looking at our male and
060female population and we can see that um both uh there's a 7% difference between the male and female populations um which is a national trend for um mathematics we tend to see male students performing um a bit higher and I was glad to see here that it is it is relatively close and years prior it was almost exactly the same and we would of course love to see that um to see that return when we look at programs such as economically disadvantaged 504s elll special ed and then gen uh gen Ed uh the Gen Ed um bars would include everyone but special ed so some of these some of the um you know the students who have a 504 have been pulled out into their own subcategory but they're also incorporated into the Gen Ed
061piece so gen Ed and special ed are separated out here you can see that we do have um some some data for elll students where Ela did not um within the meeting and exceeding and that's simply because the elll students are allowed to take the assessment in Spanish um and and they they offer many of the other languages for the directions to be read allowed to them in their Lang language but not to take the test in their native language so hopefully the state will catch up with that um but at the moment all that's available is taking the mathematics assessment in Spanish um so we did have um 6% of our elll population passing the mathematics um State assessment which was which was very good to see and um uh the all the other
062populations are on upward Trend as well any other questions for the State Testing I have a question same one as every year um H have we been able to work in central on how well our students are prepared when they get to the high school yes when I um at the articulation meetings in fact I was just talking to the um High School's math supervisor today and we set up our first articulation meeting and that was the first thing I asked when are we going to see how our students did as freshman um and we've seen consistently that our um and and the best I can do is ask are we performing any differently than any of the other sending districts is there anything having our students Stand Out compared to another group either as
063a positive or A negative you know what do I need to know and for the last several years it has always been the same response is that um when we look at when students take the course that has been recommended for them they're very successful we had a handful of students who had to move down from the course they were in but then when we back when we tracked it back they had registered for a course higher than what was recommended for them um for instance they may have signed up for an honors class instead of a CP class or a stem class that was recommended for them and they struggled and decided to move back into a different course so that's the trend that I've been seeing is that when the students register for
064the course that our teachers recommend them for they do very well and they're performing as as the other as the other sing districts are when students are registering for courses above and beyond they struggle and then it appears that they're moving down but they're moving back to where they were suggested to be and of course we'll look to see if that Trend Remains the Same this year okay just on are being able to compare our our scores with with the other districts they feeding into the high school as soon as they post them for us like it's all this all public information yes okay yes so um as uh and according all the new not new but with the qac rules and all that they have to have their presentations posted by November 15th so
065we start poking around on the other District's websites to see when they're testing presentations ours will be posted tomorrow okay do we do any have report internally about how we compare just be curious oh yes internally yes absolutely we last year we gathered the information from the other sending districts to see how how we compared um by grade level as as well as the district as a whole okay yeah i' like do we get to see that or um would like to see that okay we can I mean we'll certainly um bring it to to edtech or whatever however I think I believe last year it went to edtech as well um it's it they're not fancy color charts but we usually do make a table thank you our other uh piece of information that
066we use to guide instruction is um our diagnostic results um we had wonderful success um in our typical growth as Dr Brown had said it remains true for math we're looking for students to make 100% of their typical growth within their grade level meaning that they've met their grade level expectations anything over 100% means that they haven't just met a great level's worth of expectations they've closed gaps so looking at growth where a student might still be struggling if they're over that 100% they're closing those gaps and they're gaining um to where they need to be the nice thing with the diagnostic as well is that there is no cealing so that students who are performing well and exceeding can continue to have that recorded and shown and they'll be able to um have the
067material that they need to succeed when we look at the placement dist distribution we have 72% um in in the green which would be um students performing within their grade level expectations and a and a very small number of students uh performing two or more grade levels below when we break it down and look at each individual grade we can see that we have nice high percentages across the board um it this is a probably a closer comparison to njsl unlike the reading scores because the I is only reading whereas the state test is reading and writing combined um this is math and this is every student in The District in that grade level regardless of what class they took so we're not pulling seventh grade and eighth grade Advanced and honors math students out
068this this is the grade level as a whole um and we can see that we are having um nice upward Trends and these are also improvements from where we were last year with um the green or the meting or exceeding growing and the red which is the areas of concerns where students are below grade level is getting smaller as we go any other questions about math before we touch on science so we have our fifth graders and eighth graders taking the state assessment for science the state was at a 27% um proficient or Advanced because now we're not talking about meeting or exceeding the state changes the terminology they change the color and we have four levels instead of five um so what we're looking for in science is we're looking for proficient or Advanced
069proficient um and our fifth graders are at 59% in the proficient or Advanced proficient range interesting both the state and our district remain the same as last as last year the state remained at 27% and we remained at 49% um we only took this assessment once other uh we took it um last year which remained the same and prior to that we had taken it one time two years before it was a pilot year so we don't have a whole lot of trending data to see how we're doing um at this point you know consistent seems good um and we would of course like to see how can we make um those scores grow and improve but we are significantly outperforming the state when we look at 8th grade we can see that the state
070is at a 16% passing rate and our district is at a 32% um proficient or Advanced proficient this is a 133% increase for our eighth graders from last year so it was great to see um that Improvement where and again as in some of the other areas the state remained the same the state was at 16% last year and they remain at 16% this year it is a new assessment there's it had a very rough roll out with with the being very disjointed and um I believe you know the state as well as our district is looking at how are we how can we improve this and what what flaws might there be in the assessment if we're getting percentages like this um one of the things we're doing again within the district is looking
071at how the state wants students learning science using a phenomenon based um material and thought process and we're looking at what what other programs what materials can we provide to the teachers that they can give to the students to help guide them to what the state is looking for in this assessment there it is very very heavy on reading so students who are struggling in ela would also then struggle in a sci this this particular Science assessment the way it's structured right now that would conclude Math and Science and list there any other comments or questions just a quick one if if you're an elll student you can't take science in your language Spanish only okay thank you you the directions can be read in other languages but we only have Assessments in um science
072or excuse me Spanish thank you okay thank you very much and I will turn things over to this beagle and she will go over some of our alternative assessments so you know I'm coming up and you know we're going to take a little bit of a break here last year we did shake your Willies out I am gonna honor my friend Anthony who's not here tonight and we are I'm going to invite you all to stand up and we're going to do a little mindful all right what we're going to do is you're going to put your hands out you're going to take your one finger and you're going to put it by your thumb and what you're going to do is you're going to breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out someone better
073be videotaping this bre in we're on camera breathe out Breathe In Breathe Out pause and sit down she GNA say namaste I really don't what what were we gonna say I thought you were gonna say namaste yeah I really wanted to do I actually had another song but I couldn't get it up that one that my granddaughter had if anyone has little kids um the uh the free song does anyone know that oh next year on my J all right DM so DM is our our our alternative assessment for our children who are um most cognitively impaired it is for more uh 1% of the students in the district so I'm just going to put this chart up as you can see it is um 13 um children in the district have taken our language
074arts and maths but what I want to do is just talk a little bit about what the dynamic learning MTH is it is an alternative State assessment for our children who are uh not um not being taught by the district curriculum and it is for our most significantly intellectually disabled children um the children are assessed in math language arts and then science in grades um five and eight just as if they were in the General de uh the children are assessed on essential elements that are taken from the um the state curriculum and then they are assessed on uh skills um the assal reports that the teachers receive are then uh the skills that are identified in there are then used to generate IEP goals for our for our children the children when they have
075um when they are assessed they are put into four different performance categories um emerging approaching at Target and advanced what I have um shown you up here are the children who are at are at Target and are approaching the children who are not um at those levels th those are where we are looking at the skills and then those are then identified as goals into children's IEPs the 13 children that are that were assessed this year in language arts and math and then are three that were assessed in science those also include one of our out of District students any questions do we need another M um so I am going to be presenting for um Anthony T Anthony has taken over our multilanguage um Learners this year and we're working together so there's been
076a shift in terms of talking about our elll English language learners to the terminology of using multilingual perers um so that is going to be something that we're going to be working on this year just changing over that um over that language what Anthony wanted me to share with you is just a little bit of background about our our multilingual Learners I know that both Sarah and Stacy talked about um with their assessments about giving the um the in Spanish but Spanish is just one of our languages that our children are coming in as you can see we have we have we have a variety of different language and this is only a smidgen of the different languages that our children are coming in with that are um uh identified as multi- language multilingual Learners
077the other um piece that Anthony wanted me to share with you is just about the years in um in uh the program um what uh Stacy and or Dr Brown and Mrs pouch have talked about um regarding our children that are being assessed in and literacy and math in terms of where they are in the program as you can see we have um children that are in our program less than five years um one year 15 of our children so when you're I'm going to present next about where they are with your access learning you're are going to see that we are going to have effect to show you we're going to have many of our children on the excess learning that are just at the entering emerging developing and expanding component of of of
078performance and that is because most of our children are at the very early entry level of our um of our program and our children on the access which is given at the end of the year and it is given to to access their language development there are four areas that they are accessed or they they are assessed in and as you can see it is Reading Writing listening and and speaking and then and then each of those components are at percentage um so one of the things that we're very excited about is the sheltered uh English instruction um initiative that we are we're moving forward with this year where we are having teachers at our Three Bridges at our white house and our Hollen Brook School trained in terms of how to work with um
079our multi language Ling multilanguage Learners um in the classroom so that the children in the classrooms are getting a a separate class of just teaching language but then those teachers that are going through the program also are instructed in terms of how to teach children that are multilingual Learners um so we are really excited to see the um uh how these children are performing both um Mr tum and and I as far as our uh administrative goals that this is one of the areas this is one of our goals we're going to be using data to take a look at how our children are making progress through this program so we're really excited that is something that Anthony put a Post-It here very you know interested to see how our multilanguage Learners grow as we
080roll out this this program so we're very excited about it any questions thank you very much who am I turning it over to interventions yeah thank you so we always want our students to improve no matter what level they're at we're always shooting for them to do a little bit better so we have these current interventions in place we're continuing to use the data conversation tool that we developed last year we are analyzing the evidence statements from njsla which breaks this information down even further so we can look at it by specific standard and see exactly which standard students excelled at or are an opportunity for growth and then address those particular needs we have administrative goals for the entire administrative teams that are that that are based on data for the grade levels our
081professional development is specifically tailored to address any areas of concern or areas of opportunity that we know in our data scores and we have um a literacy coach we have literacy coaches K8 in District for both math and literacy and then at RMS we have a separate literacy consultant from ruers that comes in a couple times a month to work with them additionally we have I ready training that the middle school has used this year to increase the quality of our data analysis and introduce them to the tools that allow individualized instruction and then we're using multiple measures to identify students for intervention and tutoring program so there's no gatekeeping score looking at a variety of data sets to see who would best be um placed in those programs and then we have YMCA academic
082programs after school as well that are open to our students that meet the criteria but then also students across the district as an enrichment opportunity the biggest challenge we have with those last two is that just because we invited a student and they meet the criteria does not mean that they accept our invitation these invitations are all voluntary and some students accept them and they Excel and they they phase out out of our program and we have met their needs and they continue on with their class and some students determine that this really isn't for them and their families choose not to accept our invitation so we're continuing to work with the principles um and within the administrative team at the board office to come up with new ideas as to how to get more
083people to accept invitations for these programs because the students who do participate do show growth and that's reflected in the scores that we showed you the do you have any questions question that what time of day is that offered is that more after school or can it be during the day we try multiple things so we have intervention that is during the day so that's our most accepted program um especially in the elementary buildings it we have them here and then we can serve them anything else we have to have their parents either come drop them off or pick them up we've tried after school busing we've tried doing before school programs we tried after school programs we tried virtual programs we've tried um inperson programs and we still have a a fairly large population
084of of people that choose not to accept our invitation which has been the most successful I don't know about most successful I can only speak for most attended most attended for me at least in literacy the most attended one is the virtual um let's Hera after school and then our Intervention Program in school especially K5 is very well attended once they go to the middle school that kind of interfer with their en course and that's one of the most wonderful things about the middle school is their ability to make choices and so the students and their families and they still back to take an encore rather than um taking an intervention course or maybe if they're they they qualify for both math and language arts then they can't take an encore at all so they'll
085pick only one so we've adjusted that program and Mr Charleston has assisted in building something new over at the middle school and he's LED that that we have an opportunity to have inclass support at the middle school and then an opportunity for pull out if you qualify so before it was either or but Mr charlon has put a new initiative in place where you can get both so at least then nothing else we can see them while they're in the classroom the trick with that is as students get um as they enter throughout the year then how to get them in those classes where there there already is an interventionist set but we're still continuing to BL through we're talking to other districts and seeing what everyone else is doing but they're all doing things
086very similar to ours thank you Dr Brown I'll just add to that and say that this week we started our after school YMCA academic programs um grades K through five um virtually all classes are full we reserve 25 seats for students um almost every classes up to 25 students after school those YMCA programs there was one I think the Holland Brook fourth grade I think the writing after school and Rich course at the YMCA was the least popular and that one's not running but we found huge success and very very good attendance in our AER School YMCA Club programs that have an academic Focus that's why we've done it again this fall and repeat again this spring too just a question on the interventions and I'm not sure Dr BR if you can answer this
087or maybe it's Dr Hart um which of the interventions do we have built into our regular budget and what is tied to like Federal Co relief funds I think we can both through this but I'll I'll say that the literacy consultant RMS that we had last year this year is Esser funds correct Dr Brown uh the YMCA academic programs are also Esser funds um that are built in with Esser but we have we we may look for innovative ways to keep that going after s expires and Dr Brown's latera after or latera virtual um literacy tutoring program is also built into the Esser Grant did I miss anything no everything else that our literacy Co our literacy coach is the K in charge of anything else then we'll move on to building areas of focus
088and I want to off Dr thank you hi thank you for having so I will begin with a little look back in time um a year ago when we planned and analyzed the data um I was happy to see that there were no major areas of deficiency at White House school but we chose challenge areas anyway in mathematics we focused on measurement and data analysis and when we look to the scores this year or the evidence statements we see that we have shown Improvement so we're proud of that in language arts reading and you heard a little bit about this from Dr Brown earlier in informational text last year and this year continues to be a challenge for our students so I'll talk to you a little bit more about that with regard to this
089year's plan um giving you a little bit of background on when we built the action steps we've been doing a lot at White House school it's our fourth consecutive year where we've devoted some faculty meeting time to looking at the data analyzing it we've um embraced supervis supervisors and coaches have attended some of our data days as well as Dr Hart so we're continuing that initiative this year it's also our second year and you heard about the data conversation guide the second year in a row that we're using that because it was the Bel two summers ago we routinely look at I ready data and cpts and on dataday and um at Three Bridges Kristen and I have for several years um written joint sgos or student growth goals with our teachers in grades one
090through three to focus on the I ready results so we're going to continue with that when we delve deeper into the White House School challenge areas this year well before I say that the good news was students showed a lot of strength in the area of um and literature analysis when they had to to Del deeper into characters Where The Challenge came again was informational text so we have when we looked at the evidence statements we're finding that they're having trouble when they have to syn synthesize or take two multiple sources and compare them and bring the information together so coaches and administrators met Nicole Marano has been wonderful she's already been meeting with third grade teachers and compiling sample problems and bringing resources to teachers so they can use it with their children so
091they'll be given more opportunities at an earlier time this year to compare multiple text texts on the same topic so we think we're in pretty good shape um it's they're in third grade but what we're practicing with them are lifelong skills that will help a lifelong learner and a researcher they're reading comparing reflecting contrasting and Mathematics similarly um jod rck has been working with us and she's already we were excited in math because their area of strength as you heard from this couch was fractions which was like wow that's amazing because that's usually difficult so we think that the area of challenge will not that it would be an easy fix but it's going to we will be able to Target it they were having more trouble with inverse operations with multiplication and division which
092will will have an easier time intervening and to bring to boost them in that area so it was if you have to have a a good problem it was a nice one to have so we've already begun the work and we're going to continue throughout the year and cpts and faculty ratings to keep data at the Forefront of our discussion any question good evening let's see I'm not sure what button to press thank you well that that kind of defines this evening I'm Kathy sori and I am here replacing or no not I am representing representing Dr please that I could not do um as this demonstrated our entire report this evening was a collaborative approach from Miss Dr Brown and Dr V they offered me their insights their expertise and definitely their dedication to
093student learning and what you're going to see today is really that collaboration um the ELA um data analysis determined that the most powerful instructional Focus for ELA in grade three was compare contrast and reflect on two non-fiction texts with the same Focus the professional practice that took place at Three Bridges school was at the third grade teachers and the literacy coach worked throughout the school year identifying the appropriate non-fiction texts for this specific instruction teachers also employed additional flash drafts in order to have students reflect on their reading with their through their writing the results through that hard work students were able to demonstrate a 10% Point gain for this nonfiction standard on a similar difficulty level which outperformed the state the mathematics data displayed in instructional Poll for third grade centered around modeling reasoning
094and involving multistep problem our professional practice was for second grade teachers to participate in staff development in order to secure students um understandings in numbers and operations on the end of the year I 96% of our second grade students demonstrated a secure understanding of numbers and operations this impressive feat supported students going into third grade for a strong maatic Foundation the third grade teachers also focused their I ready instruction on numbers reasoning and um the multi problem step problems New Jersey SLA offered seven questions in modeling and reasoning and uh three Brig School outperform the state in five of those seven questions so taking a look at our newest data uh our professional practice was for the entire staff to be involved in the review of the um assessment for New Jersey students learning assessment
095because we're a team and that communication strengthens all the way through the school I already results were reviewed by teachers and their coaches staff development and coaching sessions had focused on strategy groups strategy groups for our students strategy groups allows for detailed focused instruction right on the cusps of students understandings and their independence so once we can make those strategy groups of mathematics as well as language arts we really can focus on detailed instruction in ela Three Bridges school and performance state in every area in order to enhance our students comprehension teachers will challenge students to deepen their understanding of the author's message through the analysis of mood character inter interactions and me we collaborate very well in this District very very well you're on it and I'm demonstrating why I could never replace Dr
096um but I did write the words in this you did you're doing great all right TBS students demonstrated high performance across all domains the teachers will continue to focus on modeling and reasoning multi-step um problems one of the things that I found was amazing um Miss patch has heard this a number of times is that the state puts out sample problems and you can go on and take a look at the sample problems and I did and I show them to my husband which he was a mathematics person and I said this is just amazing well what's amazing about it is that we can take those sample problems between the teachers and the coaches they can embed that into their instruction throughout the school year it not only gives the students opportunities to really experience
097learn enhance but they're doing it they have to respond in a digital way which will be difficult for me um they will Sol and document their thinking digitally I ready assessment showed that one of the greatest areas for growth was geometry and mouch had explained to me that geometry is closer towards the end of the year that unit of study the teachers and the coaches are again going to weave some of the geometry teaching throughout the school year and we will be at the top for game when it comes time for the assessment thank you if you have any questions please ask my friends so um I think I go to you yes even okay so uh when I looked at data last year one of the interests I had was how does H Brook
098students compare to the state average we and as you've seen all tonight we should do better I we should have ready the district do better but I W focus in on what they call evidence statements and I was looking for errors where Maybe didn't do much better and in math I identified six areas and in language arts I identified three so this became my focus uh I should say this is fourth grade I focused on uh working with the experts in our building both the coaches that helped me out tremendously and work with the teachers or supervisors who helped explain a lot of the data I was looking at the because was I know the surface of what data is telling me these guys really can explain to me what the questions are asking how
099the questions are set up so I focused in on six areas and then Dr har tell that we sat down we discussed it we said well let's see how we do year from now on these areas that we focus that we were way too close for comfort in my opinion to where the states were and on the next slide I will show you the results of that because I like numbers um the evidence statements as you can see are on the left and then the scores our the state scores our scores that was last year then the state scores and our scores that's this year but the col we really want to focus on is the change and what I wanted to show you was not just how we changed but how the state changed
100because if the state went up 50 points and we went up 30 points and I only showed you us going up 30 points you might say that's fantastic and then you found out wait a minute the state 50 not so good so in the last column all the way on the right the State numbers are in parentheses so on that one evidence statement question the state went up 14 points but we went up 40 the next two say and a and unfortunately Miss pouch had to explain this to me that we don't get every question every year so on the next two questions it's a little frustrating but we don't have evidence this year because our students weren't asked these questions but on the last three they were the state uh went up zero we
101went up three the state went down seven we went up three and then the state went up six and we went up 19 but that seems really wonderful and it is Ian it's better let me explain to you why we went down 19 but I have to caution you this is one year's worth of data and data you usually want to look up to three to five year Trends to see how we're going which is why a lot of the graphs you saw tonight did show you over time so this is a very good start and I was very intrigued by this gets a little more frustrated when we go to the next one this is La so we didn't have two of the three questions that I focused it of course not so the
102one we did the state went up one and we went up 18 so yay for us but it was very frustrating that we did a lot of work in this area and we don't have results to look at so fingers crossed a year from now we'll be able to have these questions again because they're going to continue teaching and focusing in on these areas like they did this year and hopefully L results to look at next year I also want to just back up for a second uh up in that little paragraph at top the overall average score for the state was seven uh excuse me for us last year was 757 and we went up to 764 as an average NJ SLA score and in ela went from a 766 to a 770 in
103comparison fifth grade where I did not focus on anything we went up 1 point in1 and down 1 point in1 I just don't remember which as much so that was our results and we talk to Heart soon and we're going to see where we go this year and I believe I'm turn over to our very how many of you are Yankees fans nobody nobody Mets fans all right thank you I was gonna ask Larry to play answer Sandman to get us up because we are the closer of this presentation um this has been a wonderful presentation our colleagues are absolutely tremendous the research dedication expertise that they've shown you tonight are really Second To None um Miss pouch Dr Brown Miss beagle our our coaches Dr Hart our fellow administrators have done a tremendous job
104and um they really helped to dig deep into this data um when it comes to the middle school there's some areas to really look back upon and be especially proud of but there's some areas that we really need to focus in on just a little bit more um so last year in math um our challenge area when it came to IR ready when we were looking at all three Diagnostics was uh geometry we did go up in Geometry um in I ready and then through njsla as Miss pouch expertly stated we did go up in every single um grade in exceeding expectations in particular I want to shout out our sixth grade one of 14 percentage points um so math will be a huge through all areas of focus just like you talked about board
105goals right this is our big area of focus this year map um in language arts uh the challenge area was in theme we saw that particularly in looking at the prior data of njsla um we really key in on that we really hone in specifically on seventh grade um so the cohort in ela it was the largest increase year over year with students exceeding expectations went from 58% sixth grade to 75% in seventh grade I would say that we our Focus uh and the teachers dedication and craft really helped our students in this um and theme went up 10% from 2022 to 2023 it is not a critical area of focus you'll see a little bit later on um just as Dr D Ro talked about informational text a issue focus on in the younger
106grades it's something that we want to focus on as well in the Middle School um and overall which is really something I think having a kid myself in middle school now scores went up are they where we want them to be no I want them to be higher I want kids to do well and be well and Achieve well but this is the biggest cowork this is the coort that had went through the most amount of school disruption at the most critical time and age our students now they would have been when they were in that year of disruption that first year they were in second third and fourth grade they are now in sixth seventh and eighth grade so they are now in the Middle School um so we're seeing those uh exceeding expectations
107levels return back to pre pandemic levels and I'm looking toward us moving past those levels pre pandemic I will also turn over to Dr Moss who's here as well and I can't do this work without Dr Moss um so he'll talk about some of the things that we've done for a whole school review this year thank you Mr Charleston good evening Dr Hart Mr B board members Jonathan bosson middle school vice principal want to talk about a couple things we're doing in regards to whole school review so we took a look at the start of the Year njsla data as a whole school focus and we went into admin cpts for this and um I can remember this quote that Mr Charleston said that even though um talking with all staff they might not be
108directly related to that specific piece of data all staff and all teachers are connected to that data so we want all parties to feel ownership and a part of that conversation and we thought that was a great way to kind of kick off the year um and just talking about the importance of data as we go through the year um we have a concentration on strategy groups and and uh small groups and our I ready information gives us that for our staff to help them with that as Dr Brown talked about we have our new intervention model and she talked briefly about the combination of both a pushin model and a pullout model for specific students and that helps our students um as talked about previously tonight um if there's concerns about especially the Middle
109School our great offerings of encour uh students being pulled out of those things for intervention that now we ensure that they're able to have all those opportunities um and still support uh students with the intervention model we have sheltered English instruction training for our teachers at RMS um and our teachers that are trained do then turn Kia to other staff members um we provide instructional rounds for peer-to-peer modeling our teachers sign up to go and observe other staff members uh we feel that teachers should always be like lifelong Learners and continue to see other staff members of of different content um and show their specific Specialties on questioning uh and other specific strategies and like Dr Moss was saying that's something that we really believe at the middle school in that we have so many
110different disciplines in content areas but we all take an approach that we these are all of our students these are all of our numbers and we all have a collective hand the work of John Hattie talks about the one of the biggest things that raises student achievement and that's Collective teacher efficacy meaning the effectiveness and the ability of your teachers to reach students so we truly believe that um and that every every teacher has that um um that ability to reach those students so in language arts this year uh we'll be focusing again on with our literacy consultant and our Ela coach uh with cpts uh during cpts uh about conferring and strategy grouping and we're going to be addressing some things uh that we're seeing walkthroughs those Concepts that directly impact informational text those
111textto text connections and and really going through that um math is a bigger area of focus for us um specifically eighth grade math as we've sort of seen before um so we're looking at fractions and integer operations as to key areas to focus in on um we offer some we've offered some extra math help during lunch and during academic support which is uh the time right after after lunch we do offer their I ready learning paths with students a couple times a week dig in a little bit through I ready um and that will help their teachers in terms of addressing their individual learning path needs in the classroom we've arranged some co- teing focus and opportunities for um some during structured prep times that teachers have uh common planning time together to meet and
112for co-planning um this is also something that we want to uh connect our special education teachers who teach pull out math classes to be connected um with our math department to have uh some shared common language um and again our focus is on eighth grade math this year specifically on evidence statements so we'll be doing some evidence statement analysis with our eighth grade teachers um and incorporating some resources weekly um and our 6A math coach is going to be working with all staff on I specifically our e8th grade math teachers um individual conferencing uh with students for goal setting one of the other things that we're doing this year we we do have the new implementation model for intervention we are doing some different implementation models of our standardized assessments as well too which is
113a little bit different um last year we did I ready uh we had specific diagnostic days if you have students at the middle school you know now we're doing it for math and language arts um and we're doing some different implementations for njsla too to sort of spread that out because it is a lot of assessing and testing uh and for those of you who have middle school students we want to motivate students to do well during these assessments as you know as well so it's a true valid assessment for these students um so we try to it's also about motivation inclusion and belonging in our school to make sure the students feel like they want to do and prepare and be their best when they have a chance to take these assessment so I
114appreciate it thank you you have any questions all right thank Youk I'll ask the board while the administrators are here are there any other concluding final questions or anything like that for the administration before we move on to our meeting I just want make yes please I just want to make a comment that I remember last year this presentation which I think it's an excellent presentation it's extremely comprehensive and last year the results were good but this year it's really a testament to how hard everyone was working and making good use of like the es for money that you talked about but also the commitment is is very obvious and and I just really appreciate uh seeing these kinds of results because I think to me what's most impressive is is the amount of time
115since coid in like one year making that kind of growth is really exceptional so it's quite obvious uh that people are working very hard ministrators all the way down to the teachers and um and yeah and I also appreciate the um just looking at the data clearly that you're seeing where the areas of growth need to happen so you're not you know you're not sugar coating anything but you're working hard at things and it's just um it's just really nice to see it's very uh it's admirable what's going on in this District honestly so I just want to thank everyone thank you I second that Camille you said it way better than me I was gonna say the same thing thanks can I just say [Laughter] didto so you and I see I I see
116a lot of data Comfort they filled out the data conversation guide just because they know it all too well um I'll just clude by saying um it's clear uh that there's no shortage of work to be done in the district in terms of academic achievement right and you've got a dedicated leadership team who presented to you tonight that are 100% invested in the success of every single St here at the district um they are to be commended for their hard work for the presentation tonight and making it as comprehensive as it is and I'm very proud um of the work that they've done as a team and I have to say that as much as there's always work to be done there is a lot of cause for celebration with the data that you saw
117tonight you know coming coming back from a Once In aunde global pandemic and the disruption of instruction we knew it was going to be no easy task but we are well and I mean well on our way to improving the academic achievement of our students in the district so I'm very proud of the work that we've done as a team I want to thank my colleagues for being here tonight um I know that it's been uh we started early but it's still a late night um um so thank you for being here don't forget we're orange tomorrow and it's a district Jeans day too so wear your jeans that includes us too Jason you too I know I don't know seen um thank you for all of your work um very much appreciated um you
118are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting uh but feel free if you'd like to uh took part um but thank you for being here I conclude my superintendent's report thank you Dr uh we are now open to the public limited to action items on the agenda hi I'm hindle I have two children both at RMS um and one that's long graduated on the agenda tonight is the retirement of Paul Nigro principal of Hollen school at the end of the school year this took me completely by surprise but I have a few comments that I'd like to share all three of my sons attended Hollenberg School my oldest 10 and nine years ago and my younger two just over the last three years during all of their time at the school I felt
119that Mr Nigro was an excellent principal who created an environment that gave his teachers the latitude they needed to do what they do best and to support them in their efforts to be amazing on a daily basis in my personal experience with any inquiries I directed at Mr Nigro he was always responsive and supportive and I appreciated his availability to address any and all of my concerns and my questions Mr Nigro thank you for your years of service and support to our school district and our students academic environment enjoy your final year with us you will be missed and I wish you all the best in your retirement thank you any other questions or comments Mrs wolf anything online nothing in the chat thank you all right moving on to correspondents we had um two
120emails uh JL regarding a topic on the agenda and from km immediate request moving on to board action um can I get a motion to adopt administrative reports 1.01 through 1.03 so move that second Carolyn any questions or comments you first yeah I said a quick comment on the drill reports on the box evacuation drills I see some of the same Trends report after report for the last time so just wanted to ask or comment if the district is looking into different training or reminders related to bus evacuation drills um so I think for the past three years we've had feedback on bus evacuation drills um we have spoken to Administration and um staff in charge of that and we' actually had multiple um reviews of uh the data that's before you um so we'll
121Circle back again and perhaps put more concrete um things to make sure that um better processes are handled move forward thank you I'll just mention that um I put agenda item 1.02 District goals it's basically I want to draw your attention to it because it's the same presentation from last time the only thing that I added was as we continue to await final word About Preschool I added a slide just to mention that should we get the preschool funding I I feel strongly that that should be an area of focus for the district and the administrative team so when it comes to goals and goals upon which you evaluate the superintendent's performance by the end of the year that I think it's appropriate if it's okay with you we mentioned this last time that preschool
122be one of those areas that you would look into for um a district hold and for evaluation for the end of the school year so I just wanted to mention that we talked about it I just wanted to put it out there that it was on there as a possibility as we get final word that's it all right um can I get a roll call please is better yes is f yes yes M venser yes Mr Peach M borski yes M Ryan Yes M yes yes yes pass moving on to approval of am minutes can I get a motion to adopt 2.01 so move B second Carolyn any questions or comments on the meeting minutes I just had one very very minor thing it was Mr home instead of Mr B I wasn't going to
123call him out on that whatever you want to call yourself um we don't need to make a motion to that do we I'll reflect it in the revised minut thank you uh can I get a roll call please M vman yes M Fury yes M mener abstain Mr Peach obain Mr borski yes Mr Ryan yes Mr yes yes example yes passes moving on to financing facilities can I get a motion to adopt 3.01 through 3.14 so move bet second Carolyn and we have a committee report we do the finance committee met on Wednesday September 27th and the first topic to talked about was the health insurance Lou delapena and uh Jennifer jila from Brown and Brown benefits advisers were here they introduced themselves and explain that they will work hard to provide us options for
124the health plans um by February of 2024 and more information to follow the next Topic in involved the 2324 capital projects it was an update the RMS roof a HVAC system we received a rod Grant Award of $220,000 uh this a state money that was awarded awarded over the next will be awarded over the next several years to offset this cost as far as the ele bathrooms the rod Grant was rejected regarding the uh Three Bridges School boiler uh unep and the SSP Architects which is still in progress and these documents are now being reviewed um in terms of the solar on November 2nd uh there will be a discussion following the green committee evaluation and many maintenance project projects have been completed regarding IT projects all district phones have been enhanced with a new
125backend platform to improve security uh switch upgrades and improved security cameras will be done over the next few months next topic involved the 2425 Capital project which in is the RMS main office uh this there's a construction map and a plan of action we're currently in the design phase of this project and there'll be more information to follow next topic included security Radio Service by by First Responders uh and the township of Readington we continuing our relationship with the town to coordinate security measures also classroom phones will be available uh in in the designated safe space in each room and visual signage signs will be installed inside and outside of buildings throughout the district the type of the signs and the locations will be determined next we talked about refuse recycling in the town and
126the township of rington we will continue to have a conversation with the township to discuss possible options regarding refuse and recycling collection we may or may not coordinate these services and will'll have more information to follow next topic was the green coordinator position in the S Pen you know we talked about the job description and related job descriptions currently we have no green coordinator for the district the stipend is $4,000 annually we are reconsidering whether or not to change this amount and if this position is a school-based position to be for staff instead of a district-wide position of one staff we also want to review the job description and possibly make some adjustments next topic was uh the semi program 23 2223 results semi stands for a special education Medicaid initiative this is a mandatory
127program that we must participate in based on our number of eligible students we currently have a corrective action plan in place to increase our Revenue to meet the state determined threshold next topics uh included the art had a busy meeting the architect fee proposal the architect fee for uh the rmf's office is $285,000 before moving forward we need to better understand this fee structure we will follow up and ask for a detailed explanation of this fee next topic was the it Grant and Chromebooks we received uh 6 over a little over $68,000 we will receive this grant money to offset the cost of Chromebooks that we purchased a year ago uh we have then talked about supply chain assistance Aid a little over $33,000 this money will go towards our food service program including better
128food Quality Service um the next topic was the preschool education Aid update we applied for funding of about $1.6 million uh inclusive of three provider Partnerships in year one and we're still waiting to hear from the state uh we then talk about Legal Services proposal update the board will interview two or three firms uh tonight near future more information to follow and then we planned our next meeting for November 2nd at 9:00 am. thank you Dr SEL any questions or comments on the uh committee report or the action items I had a question for the legal services and I know we're interviewing two firms tonight how many apply more than that app do you have it yeah okay um I think we had either six or seven um responses and um we went through them
129at a series of levels um first based on the actual written submissions um and proposals sent then at an administrative level and uh this evening is at the board level um it was six yes that's what I have written down but we had inquiries from several others who also did not submit proposals so six six subed formal propos okay um so you you and Dr Hart just you decide to eliminate um so we had uh Stacy beagle director of fful services Dr hard and I went through the proposals uh collaboratively um sty Department probably handles about 40% of the bills that come through uh due to the nature of her special ed um students population uh Dr hard and I share the remainder um and we all sign up sign off on the legal bills
130um so so therefore you know our interaction with the attorneys are the greatest in the district um so we reviewed them based on our prior history of understanding of the firms themselves that we've worked with um their submissions and other evaluative criteria thank you we used the rubric to evaluate each one that's here right thank you any other questions or comments M I just had um a question about 3.10 which is the amended coordinated transportation service from SDC I just didn't know what that what that means it was to um strike sections on public transportation and athletic field trips and Charters so is there any impact to US based on the removal of those sections do we rely on them for that Somerset County ESC um has basically disbanded their transportation department um that was
131reflective of the trouble of um the difficulty in hiring drivers so they made that decision to U basically not provide those Services any longer and they sold most of their Fleet at public auction which we bid on but were not successful um because they Vehicles were pretty much brand new um but we could have got them on a discount uh given the long need times so the amendment that they're putting forth is required by the county we have to submit four count copies to the county office and they're basically revoking those Services um to any District they provided them to it doesn't impact us greatly because we had shifted away from Somerset County um to Hunter County for when we had uh supports needing for transportation but internally we've done a lot for Recruitment and
132um between that and Branchburg all of our routes are pretty much covered between uh inhouse except for a handful that it makes more sense to actually have it outsourced in partnered with other districts to save money so there's no real impact of this uh this was kind of like a backup option we board approved for the past couple years in case um we get a student mov into the district and we need a transportation route for special needs thank you any other questions or comments all right can I get a roll call please M yes m f yes M Menor yes Mr Beach yes M psky yes M Ryan Yes m w yes Dr yes yes moving on to education technology can I get a motion to adop 4.01 through 4.07 so move that second
133we have a committee report yes we do um the edtech committee met on October 11th um I'm just getting C okay sorry saying the buttons weren't pushed or something um edtech met on October 11th the first item that we discussed was the fall teacher Academy catalog Mrs kle gave an update on the fall teacher Academy there are 21 sessions facilitated by teaching staff and administrators the professional development sessions are aligned to the Strategic plan uh one difference this year is that staff members will receive one to one excused absence Flex time on halfday teacher in service days in February and May for every hour of teacher Academy attendance um next we talked about uh updates to the professional development plan and mentoring plans uh with new standards Mrs scle also um updated us uh there
134were I guess State uh standards new state standards ah had to be met so those two plans were updated accordingly um there were no substantive changes uh since these were recently approved uh the changes were simply formatted formatting on the professional development plan and frequency of Mentor meetings on the mentoring plan as per no state requirements um next we talked about the njsla results which we saw the presentation here tonight um um I just did a quick synopsis students have shown tremendous growth in ela Math and Science outperforming the state average in every grade level uh these results also show that student performance has returned to pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and science in all grades and most grades in math um Dynamic learning maap grades and multilingual Learners also show tremendous Improvement um
135the multilingual learner cohort which has students cycle in and out has seen a lot of flux over the past s years so those results are not fully reliable uh next we discuss curricular revisions uh sections of 9.4 standards uh which included career Readiness have been updated in many many of those curriculum documents that you all see um to comply with qac I'm not going to go into everyone because it is literally almost every curriculum document had changes of addition addition of 9.4 standards um while we were discussing curricular revisions we had a board member question the book George by Alex Gino which is an optional book in the sixth grade ELA curriculum uh administrators responded that George has been in the curriculum since 2017 parents were notified in the beginning of the year that this
136book is available as an optional read and they could opt out if they don't want their child reading it the notification letter is posted on the weekly Genesis uh several parents have asked to preview the book which they did and a book challenge would need to be submitted to remove the this book from the curriculum um lastly we talked about the assessment calendar and na uh Dr Hart notified the committee that our district was selected to take the national assessment of educational progress this is for fourth grade this year in math and English language arts only a handful of students will be asked to participate the state will administer the test sometime between January 29th and March 8th the assessment calendar will be updated to reflect this additional assessment um and then we set our
137next meeting for November 28th at 8:30 thank you Mrs F any questions or comments on the report or the action items I did have one thing that I wanted to um on the uh 4.04 which is the screenagers um motion to apply for an accept the Grant from the Readington toship home and School Association in the amount of $950 to be used for the screeners film I just just wanted to say I thought that was such a lovely evening um this board put together the um why am I blanking on the name what's it called resolution resolution that's it I was say proposal on it's a resolution in August um that just basically and this was brought you know up by several board members and we felt it was a priority um to really discuss
138and to encourage good cell phone or social media use um and so I just thought it was such a lovely evening we had a lot of representation with the administrators you know we always would hope to have more turn out from parents but those who came I thought it was really lovely and I just wanted to thank the administration for putting that together so thank you and HSA for supporting it yeah thank you we we've had two um like districtwide parent evening education events one was the welcome of families back in August and then this one um and while we hope for more attendance they're actually they're kind of gradually getting better attended or more well attended as we repeat some of these events it shows that there's some interest from our parent community and
139some of the things that we have to share so that's really nice thanks it was nice name any um just being that we're voting on that curriculum I think um and that book George was prior to probably anybody was sitting on the board when it was approved um the the struggle with that book for me is the age appropriateness it's about a 10-year-old child that is wanting to transition a 10-year-old boy that wants to transition to a girl and he's pre pubescent and we're having our students that are 9 10 11 and 12 year olds read that book and I just think they're impressionable and I don't think students at that age should be questioning their bodies so I don't know how familiar anybody else on this board is with that book but it is
140part of the curriculum for sixth grade so just a question you mentioned 9 10 11 and 12 year olds but it's the sixth grade book correct sixth grade and it's an optional book and it is available in a four parade classroom which I think I mentioned during the meeting yeah I'm just going to add that um I don't have a problem with the book but it is optional I think that's I think that's a good thing a parent is asked if they want their child to read it or not and if we continue to just like diminish you know the opportunities for kids I think that's going down sler slope that's a bad idea any other just one thing to weigh in um that the English language arts curriculum was approved by this entire board
141back in May of this year recently this year and it comes up every May meeting um and so you know this is not the first time that we're seeing this and obviously this book has been in the curriculum since 2017 so I just wanted to add that in there that um this was not a new addition to this the changes in the curriculum in our meeting were for the 9.4 standard for career Readiness but as a new board member it's my first time reviewing all curriculum and just as a clarifying question parents do have the opportunity to opt out of the book if they so choose okay it was in the um the letter that went out to parents in the beginning of the school year and the book's name was specifically listed thank you
142generally I the administration I think Dr Brown updated that the committee that it's a pretty popular book it's something that we've received a lot of I think she used the word compliments on rather than complaints or concern um to stick with the alliteration of the CW um so it's been it's been a a popular book it's been in our curriculum since um I'm not aware and Dr Brown I you may not have this data I'm not aware of any parents that opted out of three this year thank you um three this year have made that choice to have their children not read the book um you know walk through a sixth grade classroom you know kids read it they tend to like it um you know it's a it's a popular book among our students
143book male and female um so that's just a little bit of information and thank you for having our our our information our data had a question how how often do we we review and approve like new books because I can only remember one time since I've been on the board and I always hear this book's been approved back back then like how often when new books come up so the board approves textbooks according to our policy so anything that's considered the primary resource for instructional materials that comes in front of the book the board so the book George for example is a primary instructional material because it's an our book room it's in the curriculum that's something that you would approve you would approve any all textbook so that's as often as they come up
144as often as Dr Brown or the librarian or anybody in the language arts department identifies a new book that's going to be considered a primary resource is as as often as the board would approve that book so if Dr Brown found a new book that she wants to include in the eighth grade curriculum tomorrow we vote on it next meeting yeah I mean it just seems like was ever approving that book in the first instance has a lot of power because then every year after that and know it's you can't get it out without without a book CH that's my only comment in this instance that was the Board of Education in 2017 yes because it's a textbook okay I just want to make sure you're aware of that just a question in 2017 it
145was approved for sixth grade that's correct that was the resolution okay it is available at how fourth grade I can't speak to that it might be classroom libraries are a totally different world um they are curated by the professional staff HSA donates books they bring books from home you know people donate books to teachers all the time keeping track of classroom libraries is almost an impossible thing for administration to do that's really our professional staff that Cate their own libraries worth of books um and there's a lot of different pieces of literature in there um but I can look into that I can't verify that I don't know if Dr Brown can but because in that case it would be very difficult for a parent to opt out sure um if we can move on
146unless there's a motion on the table I think Mrs betterman you had another comment I did but it wasn't related to that so if you want to finish this first okay my question really easy um I was just wanting for that na how are the students selected like do does the testing agency request a certain selection of students how does I'm just curious how does that work so from what I understand they they come in and na EP are like Soup To Nuts they come in they bring all of the testing materials they bring any laptop computers everything like that they come in and sort of set up shop um to do their assessment I believe Sarah I don't want to put you on the spot I want to say randomized but I I don't
147I'm not entirely sure about how they go about selecting their sample of students they just said roughly 50 students would be selected that's all so they may ask us to pull the cross-section when they get here or they may put we they they they tell us who the random students are okay thanks any other questions or comments all right can I get a roll call please this better yes M Fury yes M meno yes Mr Peach um no on 4.07 yes on the remainder M borski yes M Ryan no 4.07 yes to else yes yes yes pass moving on to first now can I get a motion to adopt 5.01 through 5.13 so move back second Carol and we have a committee report we did uh so the committee met on September 15th and we
148discussed uh sta updates the preschool expansion and Personnel if funded the human capital analytics and recruitment software uh other Personnel matters and um agenda items including retirements and other Personnel matters regular Personnel matters next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday November 1st thank you Mrs korski easiest minutes ever everything is confidential can't say much St sweet any questions or comments on the extensive minutes or the action items all right uh can I get a vot call please M Ben yes M yes M mener yes Mr Peach yes M borski yes is Ryan Yes is Wolf yes dral yes yes moving on to communication can I get a motion to adopt 6.01 through 6.04 so move second and we have committee report yes the committee met on October 12th at 4 pm we discuss the district currently
149utilizes stra Esme to provide suggested updates to policy that align with the NJ doe updates to statutes and codes some of these updates include changes in gender pronouns from his and her to their a Committee Member raised concerns that these changes are substantive and it's not administrative and the committee discussed options for handling the desire to minimize risk maintain consistency with the doe and to not increase the burden excessively on the superintendent who provides recommendations on policy updates to the committee was expressed the majority of the Committee Member came committee members came together to agree that the use of nouns in place of pronouns can be done as much as practical and one Committee Member advocated that his her pronoun should remain in policy as it does today all agreed that the review of this
150language and any pronoun references can be shared between the superintendent and the policy committee as future policies are updated the committee also reviewed policies in anticipation of a doe announcement on the preschool funding if the district receives a state preschool funding then the committee will suggest to abolish policy 2471 integrated preschool as preschool will be integrated by definition in the same way all the all the districts K through a classes are integrated the committee reviewed policy 5112 entrance age and the entrance age was revised to be age three by October 1st of preschool year this aligns with the requirement to be age five October 1st of a kindergarten year the committee also reviewed a sample policy for preschool programs which describes providing a highquality preschool program curriculum consisting of state approved developmentally appropriate experiences and
151enrollment procedures for this year if funded the district would propose to enroll age eligible students using a lottery BAS system until such time that the district is able to serve all age eligible general education students eligible preschool students with disabilities will be admitted into the appropriate program based on their individualized education plans and will not be subject to the lottery the district May develop a priority order to enrolling students in the general education preschool program including students who are eligible for free and reduced lentas students who are currently enrolled in a preschool program at a school or approved provider location and students who will attain the age of four years old onor before October 1st the committee made suggestions to update verbiage to include confirmation that enrolling in preschool in the district would be making
152a commitment to a full day program Dr Hart reviewed the communication plan utilizing email blast social media posts and lawn signs should the funding be received the committee also reviewed sample calendars from hun Central Delaware Township and flamington raron as well as different iterations of a Readington school calendar having received an email from a parent in the district inquiring about the observation of juneth the committee wished to explore adding another holiday to the calendar with input from the administration and staff it was decided not to make any changes to the school calendar at this time not all federal holidays are currently observed in the district and in certain iterations of the calendar adding another holiday would put the graduation date to the following Monday in June with this year's school calendar students will be off
153for the summer on the Friday juneth is observed in New Jersey the committee also discussed a valuable learning opportunity for students in school revolving around the juneth holiday due to the Readington going on to Communications due to the Readington news suspending publication the district continued to explore different options to reach the community currently Readington is reaching approximately 40% of the town's citizens via email as their students and parents ideas were discussed to find the most effective and cost-effective ways to reach the balance of the Town citizens ideas include utilizing a PR consultant to provide guidance collaboration on a bulletin with the township targeted postcard flyers on our own and utilizing the White House community board on Facebook the committee discussed advocacy continuing to advocate for pensions and other teacher retention strategies and coordinating with Central
154and sending districts the committee also discussed legislation signed on July 3rd 2023 revising njsa 18a col 30-1 and njsa 18a 30-4 expanded the allowable use of sick time for School Employees policy 3212 for teaching staff members and policy 4212 for support staff members have been revised to reference the revised statutes and the new policy and regulation guides the committee will abolish policy and regulation 3432 and 4432 sick leave and replace with the new policy that aligns with statute agenda items would have been preschool policies if applicable and then policy 3212 4212 and the abolishment of policy 3432 and 4432 our next meeting is scheduled for Monday November 27th at 4M thank you Mrs wolf any questions or comments on the report or the action items I have a quick question regarding the communication what do
155we what were we spending like monthly and you might not know the answer to this and I need it right now or anything but what were we spending on Readington news what was our budget for communication and what is it now about them so if we were going to run an article in the reading to news they would accept our articles depending on a up to a limit you know two two articles a month for free so that was free of charge but if we wanted to put an ad in the Readington news there were certain cost structures associated with the size of the ad that we were going to use um Jason I don't I don't know if you have this information but what's our overall like newspaper advertising budget for postings and you
156know Readington news hun Democrat Courier News everything else yeah our our total um advertisement budget for newspapers is around 12 grand um we historically have not spent a lot of money out of rington news um but we started scaling that up um when the township it was known that the township was no longer going to be taking out a full ad um and to support them we decided to to do that um so that started being a couple thousand dollars but still a fraction of the RO Bud okay thank you any other questions comments all right can I go call please M better yes m yes M venson yes Mr Beach yes M yes M ran yes M yes yes Z yes all right um any unfinished business no all right I'm moving on a
157new business we have green committee minutes we do everybody met this time even the green committee um we had our first meeting of the year on Tuesday September 26 we talked about the Strategic focuses that we're going to have for the 2324 school year so what we did was over the summer board members and administration met and we reviewed input we received from the green committee provided at our June meeting last year uh we Consolidated the input into several Focus areas for this year including the following uh continued focus on Energy Efficiency and the solar Expansion Project using nature and outdoor activities for health and wellness as well as learning about the environment updating policies to create long-term focus and themes related to these items uh continuing to pursue sustainable Jersey certification and use of
158their resources and then an optional item we have is to explore possibilities for food waste reduction um as we understand there may be some things that come up throughout the year that might help us move forward with that team members provided their ideas on resources available through the township that could assist the district with action steps on these Focus areas that I just mentioned um such as the use of open space trails and there is a new digital environmental resource inventory that the environmental commission worked on and recently received an award for as well so the action plan is under development by District administration to further Define um how we're going to implement the various Focus areas so then we talked about pillar one which is to reduce environmental impact and costs the solar array
159Expansion Project is moving along um the goal is construction beginning in June 2024 board members of the committee have reviewed competitive contract specifications and the next step is to draft a request for proposals capital projects with sustainability Focus were reviewed with the Green Team and those include um some of the ones we reviewed last month a White House School outdoor Gardens staff Lounge updates related to Wellness RMS water bottle filling stations and the RMS and Holland Brook School LED lighting upgrades a grant submission was completed for two electric buses with two EV charging stations it's expected we will hear the grant decision in November for that um we talked about pillar three which is providing environmental we're just laughing at now right we keep trying we do we try and we we recycle our ideas
160each time right for you yeah capitalize on what we've already done yes okay sorry so pillar three uh Environmental Education there are some upcoming events celebrating the three bridges biosil project including a presentation at the ruers environmental stewardship Summit in October and recognition at our November 14th Board of Education meeting um we talked about some grants and resources available including sustainable Jersey grants and EV charger grants or rebates which both have November deadlines as well as the options to use HSA mini grants and njaa grants which have ongoing deadlines that can be um submitted throughout the year we also discussed a new business um Mrs Freeman gave some updates on her Salem Oak that she and her students are growing um and we got ideas from the committee related to stewardship and farm to school
161food opportunities the next Green committee meeting will be Thursday November 30th at 3:30 p.m. thank you Mrs betterman any questions on the green minutes any other new business from the board all right we are now open to the public anything on or off the agenda is there anything in the chat Mrs W nothing in the chat I'll save it for next all right um can I get a motion to adjourn to Executive session in accordance with the Sunshine Law to interview attorneys for approximately 90 minutes at which time the board expects to return a public session where action will not be taken the matters discussed will be made public if and when the circumstances requiring confidentiality no longer exists however it is not presently known when such circumstances will exist can I get that motion
162move Carol and can I get a roll call please better yes yes yes speech yesi Yes Ryan yes yeah yes yes 825 you guys want a five minute break yes okay so 8:30