001Meeting of the Sable Board of Education is now called to order. Please rise for the pledge to the flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Mr. Jan, roll call, please. here. >> here. >> Uh, Mr. Jenner, is there any uh uh you need to summarize executive session? Sorry. Okay. Any correspondence of note? >> Okay. I need a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting. >> So move. >> Second. >> Yes. >> I'm sorry. Battery. I think. Yes. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, did we miss you? >> Yes. >> Um, Hernandez. >> You missed >> Hernandez. >> Yes. Hernandez. I'm Hernandez. >> Hernandez. Hernandez. I thought we called you. I'm sorry.
002Okay, I got you. >> Why so close together? >> Oh jeez. >> Okay, and now to our favorite part of the evening, our student council representatives. Good evening, ladies. Morgan, you going to start us off? >> Good evening, board of education members and administrators. My name is Morgan Co, SWMHs student council board of education representative. I would like to begin with clubs and activities. Last week, many students were able to represent their sport and club during the annual activities fair. Students had the opportunity to sign up for over a hundred different extra extracurricular activities. Amanda Pagan, senior program coordinator at Rucker Business School, visited to speak with students from the Future Business Leaders of America, Distributive Education Club of America, and the Business Academy about the RBS preol enrichment program. She shared an overview of
003the program, highlighting how it allows high school juniors to earn college credit, explore business majors, and engage in campus life through enrichment sessions and mentorship. The broadcast media class produced and presented their first episode of the school year. They plan on airing an episode every Friday. Congratulations to Miss Sachar for being named teacher of the month for October. A few weeks ago, the high school senior parents and guardians attended the senior parent guardian college application kickoff presentation. The high school counselors presented a fall college application kickoff meeting to help parents navigate the college application process. The program was held before back to school night before the back to school night program. The high school counselors shared similar information in their senior presentations to all the English 12 classes. Next Wednesday evening, the counselors will be
004offering another evening for students and their parents and guardians. In this hands-on workshop, they can bring their Chromebooks and work on Navvian, their college applications, essays, bring all their questions, and any other facts on the application process. This 2-hour workshop will allow students to truly make headway with their applications. This past week, seniors still needing their graduation test took the NJ GPA. And on Saturday, almost 350 students took the PSAT test. Coming soon is the NJSLA and NJ GPA field test for all students in grades 9 through 11 and a handful of seniors. Moving on to sports, the football team defeated county rival Piscataway High School. Shawn Jackson rushed for over 200 yards and scored four touchdowns. They also extended their undefeated season to 70 after defeating Franklin High School last Friday. The cheer team
005had an amazing time cheering with the junior bombers cheer team during junior bomber night. The field hockey team improved their record on the season to 65 with their fifth and sixth consecutive wins over North Planefield and Piscatoaway high schools last week. The girls soccer team improved their season record to 8-6 after defeating Heightstown High School last week. The boys soccer team improved their record to 76 with a victory over Union and Yol High School. Congratulations to the following runners who meddled at the Thompson Park classmate. Bryce White, Angelia Lri, Morgan Coun, and Sophia Stanley. Furthermore, we congratulate the girls cross country team runner Angelia Lri for breaking the girls 5K school record with a time of 1853. The girls volleyball team beat New Brunswick, Highland Park, and South River high schools to improve their season
006record to 135. The girls tennis team earned their fourth and fifth wins of the season last week after defeating North Brunswick and Union High Schools. Thank you for your time and support. >> As always, I have questions. I have questions. Um, first of all, congratulations on the medal. Thank you. >> And please extend our congratulations to Angelia. That's fantastic. >> Um, isn't the big uh homecoming dance coming up? >> Yes, on Saturday. >> Are you going? >> Yes. >> Nice. >> Excellent. Very cool. It's on Saturday night. >> Yes. >> Right. Fantastic. And Mrs. Bloom, I think, will be at the homecoming. Actually, on Friday, right? >> Right. Friday's homecoming. Absolutely. It's on my calendar. >> Me, too. Are we inviting dance, too? >> Yes. And since Morgan mentioned the um the Piscataway game, I
007did want to mention something that happened during the Piscataway game um that some of you may have seen on social media and I just wanted to express my commendations to some people. So if you saw on social media, our four captains went out to the midfield to shake hands with Piscatoaway and their captains refused to shake hands with us. And I I just want to start by saying how proud I was of our student athletes and their response to that. Um, you know, I I think some of them might have said something to the effect of, well, we'll let our play show and so forth, but our our our student athletes handled that very awkward situation extremely well. Now, the officials should have thrown a flag on sportsmanlike conduct. They didn't do that. Um but
008again I am so proud of our student athletes and our coaches as well as their parents for working together to um raise such great people uh who responded very well to an extremely awkward situation. But I want to go beyond that and I want to commend the administration from Piscatoaway who the very next day of Monday I received a phone call from the superintendent apologizing for the behavior of those students. The principal of Piscatoaway High School contacted Mr. Gluski to do the same and the athletic director from Piscatoaway contacted Miss Badami to also do the same. And here's something that really made me proud too is I believe Miss Madami some of the football players. >> So here is a prime example of the importance of sports um where it's not just you know learning
009skills and techniques and game strategies. It's learning character and character was demonstrated by our students but in the aftermath of the incident character was demonstrated by their students. So I I send commendations out to our students and staff as well as the staff and students at Piscatoway. So thank you Morgan. Great job as always. >> And Morgan, what exactly was it that you got your medal for? Oh, I ran the Thompson Park class meet. I placed 10th out of 132 girls. >> Ow. >> Don't ever check. >> And you can't chase her in the pool either because she's just as fast. >> Okay. And now on to our middle school representative, Samantha. >> Good evening, Board of Education members and administrators. My name is Samantha Callahan. Serville Middle School student council board of education represents.
010With one month into the 2025 to 2026 school year, we have many events going on throughout Serville Middle School. The SMS PTO is looking for acts for the talent show in December. Please visit the SMS PTO website for more details. Thank you to everyone who attended the movie night earlier this month. The student council worked with the PTO and decorated the SMS campus with fall decor. They co-hosted the sixth grade fall social with the community service club last Friday. Over 165 students were in attendance and enjoyed the afternoon hanging out with friends and dancing to the music played by DJ Lamin. Student council is looking forward to the Veterans Day celebration in November and starting the food drive soon. The community service club will be meeting October 15th. They'll be starting the food drive this
011month with the student council. All donations will be to replenish. Also, please support the student wellness fundraiser. You are enough apparel to support wellness activities at SMS and Cable War Memorial High School. The SMS cors permission slips are being handed out at this time. If you are interested in joining, please return a permission slave middle school fall athletics. The SMS volleyball team is currently 3 to four. Coach Cina is proud of all the hard work they have put into the season. The girls volleyball team is energized and looking forward to adding to their winning streak. They have a game tomorrow against Herbert Hoover and at home and a game Thursday against Jamesburg, also at home. Come and cheer them on. The Saraveville Middle School field hockey team is having a great season between its two
012teams, blue and gray. Currently, the middle school program is looking forward to their home game tomorrow at Burough Hall that will honor six eighth grade players in one of their last home games. Overall, the team has seen immense growth from the beginning of the season and is very excited to finish their fall season strong with less than three weeks left. Although the girls soccer team had a tough start to the season, the team has truly turned things around. They are currently on a three-game winning streak. The players have shown incredible resilience and teamwork, and they can be prouder of their progress. They also have two active fundraisers to support the team, the double good popcorn sale and the team clothing order. We're excited to play our next game at home against birth and boy. Come
013out and cheer us on. The middle school boys soccer teams are both having successful seasons with the blue team at three to one with two ties and the gray team at 3 to2. The teams are looking forward to their end of season party to conclude their season with the date to be announced. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak on behalf of the students at Sarah Middle School. >> Yay. Great job, Sam. >> Thank you. >> Mrs. Bloom, I have a question or two. >> Absolutely. I would be surprised if >> first a statement. Is there any DJ in the world better than DJ Lamin? >> Oh, no. >> He is the absolute best. Um, and then I see on the agenda that some people are going to Camp Bernie. Are you getting
014excited about going to Camp Bernie? >> Yeah, >> it's a lot of fun. I actually I was I I've been to Camp Bernie countless times when I was in Edison. We would go to Camp Bernie every year beginning in 1995. >> And every year I was there, we went to Camp Bernie. So, it's a it's a very memorable place. But I know that our student council has a great time when they go there. So, I'm looking forward to hear your feedback on Camp Bernie. Have you ever been? >> So, I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback after you've gone there. >> Thank you. >> Great job, Sam. >> Thank you. >> Okay, time to go. >> Run away. >> Thank you, ladies. Outstanding as always. >> Morgan, slow down for goodness sakes. >> Yeah. >>
015Good night, ladies. Thank you. Good night, Mom. >> Okay. Um, I have no comments at this time. Mr. Smith, anything you'd like to say at this time? >> One quick one. Congrats to the Seville War Memorial High School girls soccer teams >> who ended their regular season on high notes today with both teams winning JV and varsity against JP Stevens. So, good note going into the GMC's. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. And now Dr. Lavy presentation. >> Thank you, Mrs. Bloom. And I think we're all queued up, I believe. Oh, here we go. So, every year at this time, we do what is called our state of the schools address. It's much like the state of the union or or the state of the state address that we have here in New Jersey. This is our
016time where we can give a brief look uh at the the successes and the things that we need to do better um from the previous year. Um but obviously we have a lot to uh talk about in terms of successes. But before I do, I want to make note of the incredible people that are here in our audience today. Um most of which make up our administrative team here in Sville. And there's absolutely nothing that could be done without these amazing leaders here. Um, everything that we're able to accomplish, we're accomplishing it through them. And we call them our A team for that very reason. They are amazing. They are awesome. Um, and um, again, the success we have is attributed to them and our extraordinary faculty and support staff. But it takes a great
017leader and they are all great leaders to go ahead and effectuate the changes that we've made last year as well as years prior to that to bring us to our current state of the school district. So with that being said, here's our state of the school's address. Individualize and differentiate is going to be our theme for this year. I'll talk a little bit more about that as I go through my presentation. The presentation is online if you're one of the millions of people that are viewing this right now at home uh nice and cozied up in front of your computer. So if you go on to our board of education meeting page uh you'll be able to pull down all of the presentations uh this evening which will ma be made up of my presentation,
018Miss Gman's presentation on um student assessment results and Mr. Glock's presentation, Mr. Glock Malloyy's presentation on our HIV ratings. Okay. Um so again we'll we will begin by me talking about our major accomplishments last year. We'll talk about our CUSAC results. We'll talk about um the goals that we achieved as well as again Miss Gman will go over our NJSLA and our SAT results. We'll talk about the budget development calendar for next year. And then of course Mr. Mr. Glock Malloy will give us our 2024 2025 final HIV self- assessment ratings. Again, an overview is to provide the school community with the current level of our thoroughess and efficiency of our educational programs, services, and our business operation. So, here are some of our major accomplishments. Uh, in terms of facilities, except for the transform
019and new switch gear that's going to be installed at the Sllover School and the HVAC in the locker rooms at the middle school, which was an oversight, all I'm proud to tell you that at this time, all of our facilities improvement referendum projects across the district have been completed. And yes, thank you. And they are in the punchless phase. Um, and I like the word punch list for many reasons. Um, all kidding aside, it's been it's been a long three years. And I have to say, um, again, I talked about our A team, their extraordinary leadership. Without their leadership, we wouldn't have gotten through this. And I know that in speaking to some of our principles during the construction phase, um, if they were able to be with me in person, they probably would have
020done harm to me. Um, but um, you know, we we had to have some conversations on the phone where I just relax. The building's going to get put together. I promise we're going to get there. And of course, our parents, too. We can't thank our parents enough for their patience and our staff members for their patience and understanding. As you know, when you go through any type of major construction, there's going to be dust. There's going to be garbage. Uh, Mrs. Bloom's pet peeve, things laying around and so forth. They're going to be strangers in your building. Although I got to give our security team kudos for the fact that um you know we were we were pretty darn good about making sure that everybody was checked in rece you know received a visitor badge
021and so forth and Mr. Colemanburgger made sure of that as well. But you got a lot of moving parts and again um I'm so proud to tell you that that that we've gotten through it and and again we we've given him kudos throughout this but I got to I got to give another shout out to Mr. Coleman'sburgger. Um, in in projects like this, um, you actually have to hire, you know, some firm to do the project management. We didn't have to do that. We had Jimmy Coleman'sburgger, and nobody has Jimmy Coleman'sburgger, but because we did, we were able to get through this through his leadership. So, big hand for Jimmy Colemanburgger. And and of course, you know, who's who's you know, who's taking care of everything else while Jimmy's at work, you know, with nine
022million different vendors and contractors, and that's Kenny Saddowski, sending Kenny Saddowski keeping the the ship afloat during all that, too. So it was a combined effort by our board first of all for believing in the projects um for our community for going out and believing in the project and demonstrating that by voting for it and then for everyone involved exercising their flexibility and their patience and their understanding through the three years of construction. So again major accomplishment for us and again you know we're sitting in here right now and the air conditioning's on. We were here in the summer in this school with the air conditioning on. Um and and some of our schools didn't have air conditioning throughout throughout most of September, but in the spring when things start to warm up, we're not
023going to notice it because we'll be in um a climate controlled environment where our students and our staff deserve to be. So, okay, some of the other accomplishments, we expanded the parking and improved the ingress and egress system at the Eisenhower School. If you haven't been over the Eisenhower School, get over there and check it out. And Mr. Mr. Rabino has done an amazing job again with leading that project with Mr. Kleman'sburgger, but also making sure that the safety procedures are in line with the new ingress and egress um uh system that that he actually created. So, kudos to Mr. Rabbino um for the work that he did with that. We also refurbished the student uh bathrooms and the staff bathrooms in the main office at the middle school. We installed a new electric sign
024at the high school as well as the two light poles that were knocked down two years ago. I think was it two years ago, Mr. Gilleski? >> Two years ago in that accident. Um, but with progress things happen slowly sometimes, but we got that and it does make a difference for our students, especially now before we turn the clocks back where it's pretty dark at 6:30. Between 6:30 and 7:15, it's still pretty dark. So, if any of our our students are parking over at Kennedy Park and happen to walk across, it's now lit up for them because of those those two poles being put back up. Uh, and we nearly can finish constructing the new esports lab in the media center. And once we get the greenhouse, which has been promised to be delivered to
025us month after month, and hopefully November is the the successful month, uh, we'll have that installed as well for our students to enjoy uh, at the high school. So moving on to our next one, it's our more of our our student achievement. So again, we continue to um give accolades to our our students in our AP courses and of course our teachers that teach them. Students in the high school AP courses continue to demonstrate extraordinary results. And you could see this through an increase in the average score um which is now, believe it or not, a 3.4. A a passing score is a three. And our average has risen to 3.4, four, which is a testament to our our teachers and our students. Um, and six classes scored an average of four points or higher,
026which I think is extraordinary. And that again gives credence to why we go ahead and we've made a commitment as a board of education here in Savville to pay for that test because that not only that test that all of those students take not only helps them gain credits. In fact, a math teacher at the high school just told us that her child is graduating a semester earlier than expected because the college that he attends accepted all of his AP courses because he passed all those AP tests. Think about that. And think about what a semester costs for a parent. Now, so most colleges, it's close to 60 $50 to $60,000 a year. So that's $25,000 for a semester that now you don't have to go and pay for that. And that's because of those
027AP courses that um we're making sure that our students are taking if they're eligible, but more importantly, they're taking those tests and they're passing those tests, which then goes to them getting credit for those classes uh when they go to college. So again, we're so happy about that. And there were five classes, five classes out of those AP classes in which every single student passed, which again is nothing less than extraordinary. And of course, we continue to get more 11th graders through um the the New Jersey high school graduation requirements by passing their initial NJPA test, New Jersey graduation performance assessment. 91% and again, it's 1% more than last year, but that 1% matters. And 91% of our kids pass that test in English language arts and and that's well above the state average. and
02866% as compared to um 61% the previous year passed it in mathematics and that too believe it or not is well above the state average too. So we're very happy u and we're very pleased with those results. However, we continue to want to see those percentages go up. I'd love to see that English language arts percentage increase even as if it's 1% more. And of course, we're we're continuing to push hard for that um percentage of students passing the graduation performance assessment for mathematics. Get that above 70% at some point or another. Um and then our our students across the district demonstrated progress as evidenced by their performance on the New Jersey state learning assessment. Um in fact, I give the grades there where we saw progress and you can see that significant number of
029grades where we we saw progress in both language arts and mathematics. So again, uh uh I send out my commendations to all of our faculty and support staff in all of our buildings for being able to effectuate such progress for our students as measured by state assessments. And we know too, and I got to preface this, you know, I I know that there's been some newspaper articles that have come out that are critical of of of our district or or or the performance of our students, but you can't measure student performance just based upon a state standardized assessment. Okay, there are me, it's just one piece of the puzzle. There are other factors that we look at like um graduation percentages, um the colleges that our students attend, the awards that our students achieve, um
030and and and the great learning that goes on inside of our classrooms, and again, it's a testament to our incredible faculty, support staff, and our administration. So, those are some of our major accomplishments. That leads us to our theme this year and that is to individualize and differentiate. Um we've made a we've made strides. We've made progress but we still have a lot more to do. We are no way in a place where we can just be complacent. Um we still have a lot more to do in terms of improving student achievement. And I don't think there's a member of this board that disagrees with that. So while we are making progress and that progress is slow and steady which is what you want because if it wasn't slow if it wasn't if it was
031large jumps it could be considered an anomaly. All right but we still have a lot of work to do and we feel that in order to accomplish that we need to harness a strategy like small groupoup instruction at all levels. Now, our elementary schools do a great job of leveraging small groupoup instruction to individualize and differentiate based upon our learners needs. We want to see that same approach being utilized in the middle school and then in the high school. Utilizing opportunities where teachers can get kids into small groups where they can individualize and differentiate that instruction to better meet their needs. So, that is our theme for this year. Um, as you know, and you probably heard through our professional development, we have hired a consultant that is going to begin working with us on
032a multi-year effort to go ahead and work with our teachers um to find opportunities within their lessons to again utilize group instruction to individualize and differentiate. So our QAC um last year we were measured well the the the the state evaluated us on the thoroughess and the efficiency of our education services that we provide the community. As you all know the statute says that we have to have a thorough and efficient educational program. So in order to do that the state has adopted this measurement. It's a qualitative measurement called the qualitative single accountability continuum and basically it is a portfolio-based assessment of what we do. Um we are required to first self-rate ourselves in five different components that are listed on the screen or on your packets and then the department of education in the
033county level comes out and we are to provide them with a portfolio of evidence. So they'll ask for indicators, evidence indicators of okay, you get you rated yourself as this, where's your evidence for that? And we have to provide them with the evidence for that. So we provided our initial self assessment which we presented to the board of education back in November of 2024 and then the county came out in the spring and they did their portfolio assessment of us and here are our final ratings. So for an instruction and program we received an 81%. And an 80% or more is passing for each domain. So in instruction and program we received an 80%. With regard to the portfolio we met every requirement. We were able to provide evidence that we were doing everything required
034within that domain. Where we lost points was because of our student assessment results. Um, however, our student reessment results were at a satisfactory level to get us to the 81% that we needed to get to pass. Fiscal management, we lost points in one area and that is because we did have several cases of what are called confirmed purchases or confirmed orders. And our administrative team knows what those are. Um, and we we do our best to eliminate those. And a confirmed order is any time that we pay for something in which we did not submit a purchase order first beforehand. So you cannot pay for something that you did not approve the board of education approve and submit a purchase order for. And we did have I think two or three occasions where we had
035confirmed orders and we self-reported this. So we we lost four points in that particular area. governance. We received 93%. Um, we had one report that they claim we didn't submit on time. Um, we didn't even know about it. When the county came out, they were satisfied. They give us 100%. But Trenton overturned that because they said that we didn't submit a new report that we didn't even know about. So, and it it's that's the hypocrisy sometimes that we deal with with the Department of Education. Um, if you're not aware, the the um the information software system that they use to gather information for school district, formerly known as NJ Smart, has been changed to what's called NJ Sled. And if you talk to Eric and Eileen Giovenco, they'll tell you it is a flipping mess.
036Not only that, as Morgan in her presentation talked to you about, they are changing the state assessment once again and now it's going to be an assessment that is adaptive, meaning the questions are not going to be the same for all the students. The complexity of the questions are going to change, but they decided to un roll this out now. As they're changing NJ Smart to NJ Sled, they're rolling out this. They're forcing school districts to field test this now in the fall. It's a but the point is this is it's hypocritical that they hold districts to a certain level for this, but they can do something differently on their end. Um but we did lose seven points uh because of a report that they said um we were supposed to submit. We never did.
037We never got noticed. As soon as we got noticed that this was a report that was due, it was submitted immediately, but we still lost the points for that. In operations, we got 100% and in personnel, we received 100%. So, obviously, we received a passing grade. Um, we are determined a thorough and efficient school district. Um, because in every single domain, we scored 80% or higher. All right. So, some other accomplishments. I'm not going to go through these. Board of Education members, you know these. You've gone through them with my board goals. um this is this is what you evaluate me on. But I'm proud to say, and you can see this in all the red there, um that in terms of our finance goals, there were some that are considered not applicable because of
038we maybe we have litigation out there and we couldn't do them. Um or maybe because we didn't get, for instance, that last one, um we we didn't do get a lease with the Our Lady of Victory School. So, those were not applicable, but we achieved all of our finance goals. and facilities again much in the same way. um everything that we could achieve we achieved but again um maybe we had litigation that stopped us from achieving those goals as well as uh again we didn't we never signed a lease agreement OB so we couldn't refurbish it information and technology uh again some the same degree we achieved virtually every single goal that we set out to accomplish in uh information technology and operations and operations includes security as well. And again, you'll see NA next
039to OOLV. Well, again, we didn't sign the lease agreement, so we couldn't do that. Um, and so forth. And in terms of student achievement, um, this is where again, it's an example of we've made progress, but there's still much work to be done in terms of the progress of our students. So um you can see there for that first for the first set of goals which with regard to literacy um we did we did achieve that first goal um actually the second goal but we did not achieve the first goal and then when it came to mathematics we achieve we achieved the first goal but not the second goal. However, some of the the strategies that we went ahead and implemented to achieve our goals, we were able to meet and those included either purchasing
040programs and resources and tools for our teachers or training them on them. Um, one of the things that you can see that we did not meet the goal on and it's a continued goal because this is something we're striving to do. We consider ourselves a very inclusive school district for our students with disabilities and it's always our goal to try to get the maximum percentage of students with disabilities into what's called the least restrictive environment. In this particular case, it's what's called in-class resource center where there are two teachers teaching general education students integrated with children with disabilities. And um we wanted to increase that to 45% and we fell just short of that at 41.37%. But we met all of the other goals um within that. And then in terms of culture and climate
041um we didn't achieve one of those goals and that was on um average daily attendance and chronic absenteeism. We're working real hard on that since the pandemic. It's been a very difficult endeavor uh for for us. We do have some kids that true do struggle with some mental health issues that sometimes uh interferes with their ability to get into school. Um, and we have others that have, I think, after the pandemic, learned um, some um, bad habits with regard to coming to school on a regular basis. That's probably the most delicate way I can put it. However, our our principles are continuing to work hard with our central administration to convince our parents to get our students into school on a regular basis. And last year, um, we did go ahead and file, I believe,
042close to 15 truency complaints. And believe it or not, one of those truency complaints resulted in, um, a serious consequence, um, for for a parent. Um, so we are serious about getting kids into school. Um, if if you if you go down to Municipal Court and spend any time on a Thursday, you'll see me there. I'm there almost every Thursday um with one or more of our principles um because we're we're we're not going to sit back and let students not come to school. It's a it's it's a statutory requirement. In New Jersey, like every other state, attendance is compulsory and you have to come to school. Uh and we're very serious about that and it's a goal that we're going to continue to work hard on at all of our schools improving daily attendance
043in our schools and um lowering the amount of students that are chronically absent and that's students that are out more than 15 days. Correct Mr. Gloy? So uh it's a continued work in progress. Now, when it came to the the violent student behaviors, I put there it's this there's a discrepancy with the data because if you look at the school data that that Eric talks about when he does his reports to you, that school data in terms of violence includes threats and that's where it became misleading. When we go ahead and dig deeper into our our data, we we really look at as school violence is physical misconduct, um fighting or assaults. And there was a 50% almost a 50% decrease in that in our schools thanks to the hard work of our faculty and
044administration. However, but the school safety data doesn't reflect that. our our school district data reflects that we met that goal, but our school safety data doesn't because it includes threats as well. Um, so that's where I put there that there's this discrepancy with the data. So you could look at it using our school data as being achieved, but if you're looking at the school safety data that Eric reports, you could also say there was not a Okay, so that brings us on to um our goals for this upcoming school year. And um you know I'm not going to go through all of them with you. You can take a look at them. But as you can see obviously the transportation complex is big on that. Finishing that transportation complex. Also the carport panel uh project
045at the high school is is big too. Um we want to refurbish the stadium at War Memorial High School. It's called the War Memorial Stadium as you know. We want to refurbish that. Um and the other thing too and this is pretty complicated and and Ken will attest to it. you know, now we have to go through the process of fiscally closing out all these projects from the referendum and that can be quite tedious and hard. So, that's one of our goals as well. In terms of facilities, as you guys know, they mirror in many ways our finance, but some things that that are not in finance that um are are in um facilities. Obviously, we want to um complete and close out all the punch lists for the referendum projects, but you guys, you
046know, were gracious enough to approve this in the budget. We want to install emergency generators at three schools this year. That's the middle school, upper elementary school, and the high school. Um we initially wanted to do it for all of the schools, but we learned that it's going to cost too much money to do it all the schools. So, we're going to just those. So, that's on the goals for facilities this year. And we initially talked about buying electrical sign for all of the schools, but we had talked about that we didn't have enough money when it includes the wiring. So now it's just those schools, including the middle school as well, that are on that. So we want to accomplish that, too. And you'll see on the agenda that there's a motion to approve
047um the purchasing of the signs. And last at the on the last agenda, you approved the motion for the electrical for all the signs. So we're almost there for that. And then we do want to um work on the garage, the bus garage. Um not only refurbishing it, but putting a trailer there once hopefully we get the transportation complex um up and running. And that's it. And actually one of those is re No, it's not. The the high school stadium is also on there too. And then information and technology. Um you can see there the esports lab is a big part of that. We want to continue securing um what are called our MDF rooms. That's where some of our servers are. So obviously to protect from any type of cyber espionage. We want to
048make sure that those rooms are are secured. U we want to harness some software that we have to help us with um reducing behaviors as well as increasing student attendance and decreasing chronic absenteeism. And that's the software that I mentioned, the MTSS software and the encourse multiple measure software and the creation of attendance and student discipline teams at at our schools. Um, we also want to install a secondary weapons detection software and Eric is really close. He's working with Ken on that and I would expect that in November we're going to be asking you to approve a motion to purchase that particular software. Um, so that we're we're on our way to that as well. As well as some advanced metal detectors. Uh, I know I received a couple emails from parents this week, especially
049when it rains. Um, sometimes a line builds because people want to drive their kids in and so forth. Um, in terms of getting bags checks through. So, we we we are looking at potentially purchasing some really advanced technology where kids can keep their backpacks on and walk through the metal detectors. Um, so we're we're close to that as well. So, that's on our goals list. And then we do want to restructure our uh safety and security department. We're one step into that already. U several back in the summer, you uh appointed Mr. Sprag as our new director of security. So, now we're we're working on potentially hiring a supervisor um for evening security. So, we're we're one step into that as well. Here are student achievement goals. Um, I'll I'll let you take a look
050at those, but again, we want to continue to work on um increasing our student assessment results in mathematics and language arts in targeted area grade level areas. And here are some of the programs and resources and strategies that we want to go ahead and effectuate this school year in order to again raise those student assessment results. And as you can see again, it's one goal that we're going to continue to stay with. We are going back to trying to get um 45% of our students with disabilities into that um least restricted environment. It's a goal that Dave and I are committed to keeping as a goal until we flip and achieve it. Right. >> It's a perennial goal. All right. And then in culture and climate, again, we want to leverage those attendance and student
051discipline teams to to reduce student uh you know, chronic student absenteeism as well as behavioral infractions, particularly those of a violent nature. And uh we just purchased, thank you to the board of education for purchasing that frontline professional learning management software. Um we want to go ahead and coordinate full and effective implementation of that software. And um Miss Bert and Dr. Dr. Aguil are working hard together with our administrators to go ahead and do that. In fact, um you know, they have already presented different activities for our teachers and I think we're progressing quite well already with that. >> Yes. >> Good. So, those are our goals for this upcoming school year. The next thing I just want to bring to your attention is the budget development calendar. This is the calendar of activities that
052will take place to obtain board of education, administration, faculty, and support staff as well as community involvement in the development of our 2026 2026 uh 27 budget. As you can see, it starts with this actual meeting and then it progresses from uh December 5th, which will be our first uh date that all of our principles have to get in their budgetary data into systems 3000. We'll have our first presentation by Mr. Cidadino and food services on December 19th. and we'll go ahead and present to you board of education members a balanced preliminary budget like we did last year with the previous year's revenue with the current year's revenue I should say a balanced budget while we await to know our new revenue for that school year and then of course if we cut things we
053can add them back in as we go but before we do that you'll have a chance to hear from our building principles our directors about what their budgetary wants and needs are that That way when if we are lucky and fortunate enough to add things back into the budget, you can go ahead back and look at some of the things that they talked about that they need and we can go ahead and put those back in. And of course, um, we'll have to get preliminary approval of the tentative budget on March 18th. And that's obviously after this the the the the state of the state address and where the governor allocates the funding that that that we're going to get per school district. The let the children lead not uh meeting. I always put it
054on this. Mark your calendars. Best board of education meeting of the year takes place on April 14th. Mrs. Clice, Mr. Tola, make sure you note that on your calendars. And then of course, we're going to hold our budget hearing on April 28th of 2026. And that's it for my portion of the state of the schools. I'm going to turn it over to um Miss Grossman so she can go over our NJSLA results and our SAT results. And while they get that up, I'm gonna walk >> ask you one question before we move forward. >> Go ahead. >> What happened with OV? I thought uh the Bishop Chetio was amiable to us moving in there. And >> we Miss Burns worked with Miss Hill >> to see if there was a way in which we could
055have our cake and eat it too by leasing OV with the Cheesequake School. Remember, we have a 10-year agreement for the Cheesequake School that we really can't break unless we lose funding. So, we're committed for another five years for the Cheesequake School. And as you know, the state department of education went ahead and changed the square footage requirements. So now the cheesequake rooms are sufficient and we don't need to go to OV. So Miss Burns did sit down with Miss Hill to see if we could fiscally using the preschool expansion aid that we have operate both schools. And with the concessions that we'd have to make in order to do that, it was just too much. Um, so as of right now, um, we're we're we're not going to pursue a lease agreement with OOV
056and I know that's probably gonna upset my friend Bishop Czechio, but >> yes. Well, I don't know if you knew, but he's moving to New Orleans, so I thought maybe that had >> Oh, so then he won't be too upset then. >> He's been reassigned or asked to be reassigned. I'm thinking sure, he wants to go to Marty Gro. >> You think it had anything to do with us not getting? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I think that was the entire reason >> he was getting tired of the phone calls. is a very very nice man and um I I wish I wish I would have had the opportunity to meet him before we got into negotiations with other people from the dascese that didn't end well >> um because I think had he been involved
057from the beginning it would probably be a different story however I'm not sure how that would have worked out because the state turned around and relented um or I guess um not relented is not the word I want to trade um they went ahead and conceded the uh room sizes which we are very pleased with. So, thank you. >> Right now, it's just cheesecake. >> Can I ask you one question, Dr. Lobby, and you can tell me to wait for Miss Grossman's presentation? >> Yes. >> If you choose not to answer these on student achievement, and maybe it's just I'm misunderstanding how it's worded. It says 57% of students in grades 6 through nine meeting or exceeding expectations is measured on the 2025 New Jersey uh NJSLA assessment. ELA 2023 2024 cohort baseline is 51
058a.5%. So that means 2023 24 that's what we scored 51.5% of the students meeting requirement or exceeding. >> So the the cohort means that it's the same group of students tracked over several years. So the increase is the students demonstrated proficiency at a higher rate as they traveled up grade-wise. >> Okay. So if we wanted 57% of the students to meet or exceed and we got 54.6, how is that meeting a requirement? >> So when our goals, I believe I'd have to go back to Rick's page. Sorry. So our our district goals were related on our district goals were not related to cohort. They were related to the um combined group of students for the grade level. >> So it it is I know it gets confusing when you start to track. So I believe
059that the goals that Dr. Labby was referring to were multiple grades combined together. >> So we talking about my our first goal for this this >> No under student achievement right after in information technology and operations goals. >> These are goals for this year though. >> Yeah, this is goal goals. >> So So okay, so you're talking about the 60% of students in grades three through nine. >> No, right now you have it's on what is it? The >> one, two, three, four. It's that page. >> It's that page. students. >> Yes. Students. Students. >> Yeah. >> Right. And below it, it says 60% of the students in grades three through nine. >> No. 57% of the students in grades six through nine. >> So mine's mine's different. You you sure it wasn't the the
060the goals from last year? >> It says 56% of the students in grade five meter are exceeding. And then the next line 57% >> the 57%. >> So it's 57% our goal this year. >> So that means that our goal is for 57% of the students to meet it. The baseline means that the year prior it was 54.6. I mean it's 51.5 and it was met and that's where I'm confused is that's Okay, >> we're okay. I'm not sure it very clearly. >> I'm not sure what presentation you have >> because that's >> this is >> Yeah, but it's not. >> So here it says 2425. He was reviewing the goals. That's why it says met. >> So 20 So it's 2425 you're looking at and not 25. >> I believe that's the page that
061he's looking at >> because on my slide that I have and maybe maybe the wrong slides were put into your back. >> Maybe just looking at different things. I know what I'm saying to you is it's for the 25 25 26 school year. >> Okay. Okay. For the >> So our goal this year coming year is going to be 57. >> So hold on. Are you talking about the 25 2026 school year >> or are you talking about last year's goals? >> I believe he's talking about la last year's goal and whether >> that's where I'm wrong because I asked is it this year's goals or >> this year's goals are different. >> It was 2425 goal results. So that was our achievement goals. Okay. >> Yes. >> All right. >> So that's the baseline
062was here. So we met it because >> So then what is that 57%. >> So this was for last year's goals. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Did she Did she clarify that? >> Yes, she did. >> So go ahead and clear that clarify that for everybody because I thought we were talking about this year's goals. That's why I'm looking at >> I'm sorry. I should have. >> So go ahead clarify that, Miss Gman. >> I'll turn the mic on. Sorry. So, um, he's looking at the 2425 achievement goals and under student achievement, it says that this identifies that the goal was 54 57% of the students in grades 6 through 9 meeting or exceeding expectations as measured on the 25 um, New Jersey student learning assessment and it has the baseline from 2324. So, I
063think that was the year prior. >> Okay. >> So, um, we met it with a 54.6, six, but I'd have to pull up and see what the cohort was the year before >> and and that just that could be a mistake too on my behalf in terms of being met and not being met. Okay. >> But I I again So are you okay with the goal for this upcoming school year? >> I am very okay with the goal for this year. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying. >> All right. So let me pass this over. >> Good evening everyone. You'll be very happy to know that this is the LA last data presentation for the 2425 school year. I feel like we've been talking about performance data since July. Um this evening's
064portion is going to be discussing the NJSLA, ELA, mathematics, science. Um and I have a little bit of data related to College Board, SAT, and ACT. So, we're going to start off with what you have probably seen reference to. Um, when the Department of Education evaluates a district in their performance, they look at the entirety of all of our math and all of our English language arts. So according to the state results, 54% of our students met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 39% met or exceeded in mathematics. The caution that I wanted to share with everyone though is we have a tracking system in math. So when you look at the way that they calculate it, looking at averages, um it doesn't take into consideration that our eighth grade students take one of three
065tests, our seventh grade, they take one of two tests, our 9th grade, they take one of three tests. So when they look at the averages, they calculate the um for example, they'll look at our math 8 average and the percentile. We'll get into it and I'll I'll show you it laid out on the chart, but they look at what our math 8 percentile was, what our algebra for that eighth grade group, and then the kids that took geometry for that eighth grade group, and they average them all together. But the fact of the matter is when you have a tracking system, the percentage of students that we've identified as not being ready for algebra, your math 8 score is going to be significantly lower because it only represents an identified population. And I'll get more
066into that in a minute, but this is what you see when you look at the state district numbers. Sorry, I'm multi-clicking. Um the department of education establishes the subgroups that we must report on annually. On these on this slide you are going to see the percentile for the performance bands or the levels according to the state. So the state looks at the NJSLA results and identifies students as not meeting partially meeting approaching meeting and exceeding standards for these subjects. So on this chart we see that they break it down by gender to begin with and then they begin to look at other demographics and programs. So on this slide we have our um disagregated g data related to gender and then our economically disadvantaged students and as Dr. Labby and I have been speaking about
067our number for economically disadvantaged has significantly increased over the last couple of years. And education research indicates that students that are economically disadvantaged usually need more academic support in meeting grade level standards. So that's why the state identifies that. This would be our um data that's reported by free and reduced lunch. Oh, I would love that. Mrs. Bird is kindly going to click for me. So, I have one last thing to open. On the next slide, we have our um ethnicity. Perfect. Uh we have the ethnicity groups. Ethnicity groups are self-reported by families in Syville. Uh during enrollment in Encourse, they are asked to identify their ethnic groups. They can choose one or they can choose two or more. And the state breaks it down by this. This is not something that is validated by
068the district. It is self-reported by families. So when we look at it, according to Encourse that just the other day I ran the report um uh Serville's population um for this year 53.4% white, 28.2% Hispanic, 21.7% black African-American, 16.9% Asian. And the reason that doesn't add up into 100 is because people choose more than two sometimes. So, in looking at our ethnicity groups and we look at our ELA and math performance and again the color bands starting from the left um all the way to the right on the left hand side we have the not meeting standards. The next grouping is going to be our partially in the center we have the approaching then our fourth category is meeting standards and all the way to the right the darker the purple we have exceeding standards.
069So, in looking at this, one of the things that stands out is that our Hispanic and Latino students are uh performing at about 10% lower for English language arts than other ethnic groups. But that's something that when we talk about our multilingual population, these are students that are coming to district and they're maybe here a year, they're maybe here six months, and then they're being given a grade level English language arts assessment where they have to read literature, they have to read non-fiction text, they have to read four pieces of text and then write an argument essay based on it. So really when we look at our multilingual um learner population and because Spanish is our largest number, we kind of see that when we look at the ethnic grouping. Um when we look at
070uh math, we can see that our Asian and our white students are outperforming the other groups um reported for the NJSLA stu. Uh the state also looks at students that are identified for specific programs. So students that are identified as um students with disabilities having a 504 requiring accommodations or belonging to the multilingual learner grouping where they receive ESL services. So on this slide that you can see um the performance for ELA and mathematics. You know we again we've spoken about multilingual learners and kind of anticipating that they're going to struggle. That proves true for all three of these groups. So we as a district have identified that there are students with disabilities when we evaluate them one of them is that they are having difficulty meeting the academic standard. So when we look at
071students that are receiving services in these three areas we can anticipate seeing lower levels of proficiency. But that's why we put into place and when we get down to the action steps you'll see the programs that we do have to support them. The state actually uh even with CUAC as Dr. Labby was talking about it. The state has moved into a growth model. So where districts used to be evaluated by your cut proficiency score, now they're looking to see how are your students growing? Um what is the growth percentile for your district compared to other similar districts. So that's where they are starting to recognize that, you know, having a student that starts out as not meeting any standard and moves up to approaching standards is a significant increase. So, that's something that we keep
072in mind. And looking at our former um multilingual learners, so students that received ESL services, but then they were able to demonstrate enough proficiency on the WEDA access test. We talked about that one over the summer. um when they're able to kind of um no longer receive explicit ESL instruction, but maybe just support after, we see that, you know, it was um 51% of our students that were former MLS go on to meet or exceed. So sometimes it's a matter of time as well. Um and I think that that speaks to the quality of our our ESL program. We move into our mathematics. So as I said in the beginning overall we have 39% that are meeting or exceeding but if we begin to look at the different grade levels and this chart shows you
073grade 3 4 5 6 7 8 on the right hand side I know the code that for the state whatever it's algebra 1 um algebra 2 and geometry I don't know why they shorten it um but when we start to look at that we can see that different grade levels um are performing at much higher than a 39% right So we have um 56% in grade three. We have 46 for grade four. We have um 44 for grade five. You know, we move into it. When we start to get into the upper grade levels, seventh grade, 8th grade, and then algebra 1, algebra 2, and geometry, that's when our tracking begins to, for lack of a better word, skew our performance data because they are combining all of that together. Even though when we look
074at our eighth grade class, we have eighth graders taking one of the three tests. So we have our algebra um this could be seventh graders that are in advanced class, it could be eighth graders that are in the at grade level, or it could be nth graders that are in the remedial algebra class. So all of those get averaged together. So it's important to know that our tracking kind of impacts the way that things present each um present themselves statistically. The next slide is going to show you our um ELA and again it's broken down by grade. Um the tracking for ELA doesn't necessarily change topics. It looks at the text level and the expectation when it comes to writing, but the standards are all basically the same skills. When you look at the New
075Jersey student learning standards, it's just that they deepen in their complexity. So when we look at our um range for grade levels, you know, they are going anywhere from 48% meeting to 59% meeting and exceeding. We also when we look at our NJSLA data and I work with the content area supervisors um and I thank them all for coming tonight as well as our building administrators and again thank you all for being here. Um we look at how did we compare to last year and how do we compare to the state. So the comparative data on the slide that is in front of you shows you um exactly you know what we found when we were digging a little deeper into it. So any of the scores that are indicated in the 2025 column if
076they are in bold type that means we exceeded the state for that content and that grade level. And if it is italicized it means that it was district growth from last year. So if you look at math, you'll see that um grade three and algebra 2 uh you know they are bold and italicized which means that not only did we demonstrate growth from our performance last year but we also outperformed the state. When we look at the algebra 2 that kind of speaks to the other end of what I was saying about the tracking. So the students that are in ninth grade um that take algebra 2 are the adv most advanced level of mathematics that we have um at the district for 9th graders. So I believe um there were 25 students that took
077the test and 24 out of 25 passed the test. So when we look at the data we have to look at how many students does that represent as well. Um as Dr. Labby indicated our English language arts performance was a little bit um higher than our math performance for last year. So if we look at grades three, four and five, we can see that they are all bold. We exceeded the state state performance and then three and four are also italicized. And then grade nine also exceeded the state. The ones that um did not um outperform from last year are are pretty close percentage-wise to what we had last year. Um I know that this comes up uh usually each year. This is a favorite of Dr. Labby's questions for me. Um so I broke
078down the algebra according to the grade levels. So if we look at algebra 1, there were 25 students who took the test. That is our highest level of math for grade seven. Um those 24 out of 25 of those students uh passed the algebra 1 exam as seventh graders. There are districts that don't offer it for seventh graders. So if districts don't offer algebra 1 to seventh graders, that means that their top level math students are going to take that as an eighth grade student. So our seventh graders are being compared to other districts eighth graders that don't necessarily follow the same course sequence. So um algebra 1 7th grade 96% algebra 1 8th grade was 57% um and algebra 1 9th grade was only 8% of our students. So a lot of the times
079the algebra one in grade nine this is considered a um kind of just at just below grade level. I was looking for Dr. Maharan. I know she's back there. Um a lot of our algebra 1 students are students that were struggling in 8th grade. They were in math 8 and now they have to take it or they struggled to the point in algebra 1 and 8th grade where we suggested that they retake the course again. It is also where a lot of our ESL students are placed into that algebra 1 course because they're coming from other countries that don't have the math backgrounds that we need. So, it does represent a large number of students that we consider that one an interventional level for the high school. Geometry, we have our advanced level students, the
080ones that took algebra 1 in grade seven, they're now going to go into geometry in grade 8. and we had 100% of those 25 students pass the geometry exam. When we get into geometry in grade nine, um 167 students took that and about 33% of the students passed that exam. Obviously, a large part of my job working with the supervisors is looking at data and deciding what are we going to do. So while the conversations um do include root causes I am and our department is very solutionoriented. So we look at why do we think that this is happening but then more so we look at what interventions are we going to take. So on the next slide you'll see that we have very specific action steps that we are going to be taking to
081increase student performance in English language arts and mathematics. in English. We um are implementing some um professional development related to foundational literacy with our grade K through three students. Uh we also had to implement a literacy screener for the first time. So um for the love of literacy, we have partnered and that's been on uh earlier last month's agenda. Yes. So our partnership with um Dr. Dr. Ken Coun who is um uh a notable expertise in the state of New Jersey. In fact, the New Jersey Department of Education goes to him when they need uh him to run trainings. So we are fortunate enough to partner with him to work with our K to3 staff in looking at the data that we are collecting with the implementation of the Dibbles 8th edition MClass assessment that
082all of our students are right in the middle of being assessed with and using that data so that we can use flexible grouping and use um differentiated solid instruction to for foster growth for all of our students. Um that's the new screener that I just mentioned. We are running our math and our language artsmies uh once again this year using title one and local funding depending on the programs. So we havemies that are running K through 11 in English language arts. We have a new curriculum that is being um written and implemented at the middle school using Study Sync. We've talked about that before. We found that study syncs resources really allowed our teachers to have um materials and assessments that are aligned to the New Jersey student learning standards and the New Jersey student
083learning assessment but have it at varying levels of need by skills so that the teachers are able to go into this resource and pull the materials they need. We are also implementing age of learning which is a digital tool at UEES for the first time this year. um that is uh again assesses student ability and kind of at their level fosters growth both down and up. We are looking at a new ESL series um text to be working with our English language arts um learners and we are going to be forming an ESL advisory community outreach so that we can support our multilingual learner families as well. For math, we are looking at um new programming for K through six. We are meeting with several um vendors and programs to look at um possibilities for
084a math program. We've had Envision for 12 to I think it's 12 or 13 years now. So, we're looking at you know does it meet the needs? Our our demographics have changed. The assessments have changed. The curriculum has changed um for the state. So, we're looking to see what math tools are best going to meet our needs. We are also providing professional development with New Jersey teachertoteer for our uh teachers in grades three through eight for mathematics um flexible grouping differentiating the instru instruction assessing student needs formatively on the spot all of those decisions. Uh Mr. Nast has spoken about the adoption of math 180 which is um crucial to identifying the students that are really struggling um with our students with disabilities population. We are going to be running ourmies K through 11. We
085are going to be starting some bilingual mathmies which is very exciting. You should see some information coming out um shortly about that where we are trying to support our multilingual learners with their math skills in um their primary languages. We are using a new screener momentum which is going to help us identify students that are at need faster. And we have success maker which is a digital component that aligns to Envision Maker that is skill reinforcement that is going to be used with fidelity for grades three through eight. our next slide. And um I'm not sure why, but the New Jersey Department of Education really does not provide a lot of data when it comes to the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment for Science. We only assess our students three times, grade 5, grade 8,
086and grade 11. So there's a three-year retention of skills that is expected of our students in our science. So, if you think about your high school science, you're expected to retain what you learned in biology, chemistry, and physics- environmental science before you take your 11th grade exam. Um, our results were uh a little bit disappointing this year. We had seen a little bit of a bump up last year, but if you look at the state results, 31%, 19%, and 30%. Part of the problem with the science exam is we really don't have state buyin for this at this point yet. So, um it is something that we are struggling to support with, but we have a very clear action plan. Um with uh Carolyn Okconor as our supervisor, um the next three slides break down,
087um this is the only thing that they provide for us are these three PDFs. So for grade 11 science, we have our performance levels and then they break it down the same groups that I showed you for language arts and mathematics, but they only share it with the the PDF that's downloadable. And then grade eight and we have grade five. So when we talked about action steps for science, we talk about course realignment. So we um changed things around. You might remember from last year when we asked for board approval that we moved biology to grade nine for 90% of our students. Uh chemistry is grade 10 and then 11th is where we're really going to focus on physics. So we kind of realized that the physics 9 that we were implementing prior was not
088being successful in helping our students with the retention. There were things that they needed foundationally that weren't helping them get to those advanced science concepts for grade 11. So we have that course alignment for this year. We um we have a new course biological life sciences for grade 10. So students that are struggling to um maybe they need an interventional um science course in grade nine uh identified by our eighth grade. A lot of this is multilingual learners. It's our um students with disabilities or 504s. So, we developed a biology course that was going to be much more approachable for our grade 10 students so that they are prepared in time for grade 11 um the science assessment. We have a new text series that we asked you um at the last meeting to bring
089in chemistry and environmental science. So, we have some new materials that have been updated for the next generation science standards which is what the state is moving towards for the New Jersey student learning standards. Um, we are currently revising our biology curriculum and we are going to continue to offer an after-school academy at the middle school for science and some professional development for flexible grouping and differentiation at the middle school level with a new consultant, Jenna Lee Consulting. The next two slides are uh to share some of our SAT um data and ACT. It really these are outside vendor tests. We don't administer them. So we're kind of given uh a limited amount of data, but I think it's important um when Dr. Labby spoke about not using just the state test to measure the
090efficacy of our program. Um I think that it shows in things like this. So when we look at what College Board shared with us for the class of 2025, so the students that just graduated, 223 students took the SAT um and are included in this reportable data. Right? So that's about 50% of the students that that took it as um for the class of 2025. our um English reading and writing mean score and math mean score uh they show that our students are meeting the benchmark and if you look in the bottom left hand corner it shows you the benchmark is 480 our students our mean score was 542 and for math it's 530 and our mean score was 532 so the college board performance our students are meeting the benchmarks when they take the
091SAT they are fully prepared for that. Right? So, if they are meeting the benchmark in math as a senior, when you look at that being 50% of our students, you can see how the correlation doesn't always it isn't always supported with our um NJSLA data. And I think that there's a couple of different things that come into play for that. One being that scores are high stakes for T uh districts, but not necessarily students. um we still struggle with buyin with kids and families per se that don't feel that the test matters. Um I I think that that's been communicated by some of our counselors and our um teachers over the years when students come in and say, "But my mom said the test doesn't matter." >> And both high stakes tests basically evidence what
092you're saying, Miss Grossman. If you look at the difference between our NJSLA scores and our NJ GPA and SAT scores is a huge difference. And it's because the high stakes involved. >> I mean, we double the percentage between if you look at our ninth grade scores for math and then you look at the 11th grade scores. I would love to say that our 10th grade teachers are miracle workers and they absolutely are. But the point that changes for the NJGPA that isn't there for a freshman in high school is motivation because the students it is very clearly understood that you need to pass that test to graduate with your diploma. So because we we see 91% of our students in grade 11 are achieving English language arts, but yet we see a far lower number
093when they're in nth grade. I'd love to say that the growth was there, but the fact of the matter is the motivation changed. The last slide that I'm sharing with you guys this evening is our AT ACT student results. I don't know why because I preferred it when I was a student and a teacher, but the ACT is never taken as much as the SAT is. Um, I think it's because I like to write and our students that are good in science and like to write usually like to take the ACT. So, the composite score for our district was 25.7. In English, we had a 24.4, math 25.7, and then they break it down into the other categories as well. What this data shows is that our students that take the ACT are compete or
094they are scoring in the competitive level according to the ACT. So, anything higher than a 24, they're considered the top 25th percentile and they're considered competitive by colleges. >> Is is the writing score differently? >> It is. It's just the essay and actually um did I put it down here? Um they are going to eliminate science and they're going to be changing their writing for next year. So, the ACT is actually changing too. These are the last years that it's scored this way. So is the is the composite for writing what what would why is that score very different than the other scores? >> Um it's actually not an an equally balanced logarithm. So their composite scores is based on norms and it's based on the kids that take it for that. What most colleges
095look at is the English and the math. All right, that concludes my presentation for this evening. >> Questions for Miss Gman. >> Thank you, Miss Bert. >> So, one question, Miss Mman, because if I didn't ask you a question, it would not be me. >> That's okay, Mr. Smith. >> So, we are doing lots of development to improve our math in our K through eight students, which I think is fantastic. Mhm. >> And we saw a nice increase in the NJ GPA for math. 5% from year to year, 66 61 to 66%. >> Mhm. >> 66% is still pretty >> not good. >> It is. >> Do we feel the math program because I don't see any changes for 9 through 12 in math. Do we feel the math program we have in place? So
096when we >> here we'll have another 5% god willing increase to 71% of students passing or >> so when we talk about the changes in the action steps when it gets to um se grade seven and grade 8 we're really looking at algebra and we're looking at geometry. So the changes that we implement for algebra and geometry will actually go from grade 8 through the high school. So it's not like we kind of don't when we make a change to algebra we change it in both buildings other than the the high level track. So um we when we look at materials and we look at tools we bring those in. We do havemies um for our 9 10 and 11th grade students that are related to math and we have um interventional teachers we have
097basic skills teachers that work with those students for math and English at the high school as well. So when we look at programming for that level, we're looking at the content for math, not the grade level, but we we definitely have a a lot of programming that we've brought. We've actually, I think it was two years ago, we dedicated local funds to running because we historically have not used title one funding for the high school, although they qualified for the first time um last year and this year. So, we do look at just the course content, >> but but I do want to point out that the state mean score for mathematics last year on the 2025 NJPA was a 58%. >> No, I know we're we're doing we're doing good, but just >> 66
098is we're certainly not pleased with. We wanted to be 71 >> just because the state store score stinks worse than us. >> So, I I'm going to >> 8% better. >> No, I know. So, we're doing better than pathetic. >> The state in English language arts is 80%. Yeah. >> And we're at 91%. >> Yeah. No, we're doing great. Seems ELA seem we seem to be doing very >> We need to continue to make >> leaps and more, you know, steady progress with the math. We'd love to see us above 70%. >> And I'm not a teacher and I don't pretend to be one. I don't play one on television. >> Um >> why do we see such a big disparity you know even in the um um in the lower grade scores where we
099do so much better in ELA than we do in mathematics. >> So my um I'm going to keep this one short. Um Dr. Dr. Maharana and I actually have experience, we've worked with the state in test development and I will tell you that one of the things that I am excited about is the change in the NJSLA for the spring because I've been in this industry for 33 years and math assessment has always been problematic right across the state actually across the country when you look at numbers. I think that the environment of a highstakes test where students who are of varying levels and confidence levels for mathematics sit down and take a timed test and the NJSLA is critical thinking problem solutionbased. Mhm. >> So, a lot of times if you know I I
100I do really well on math assessments if you hands me um a packet of problems and say solve these. But when the entire test is literacy based and reading and looking at using the transfer of skills in problem solving, New Jersey students struggle. And I think that they've worked on the math test for several years now. And even though they're changing English for the spring, the impetus was to change the math assessment. So the new assessment that's coming in in the spring, which is adaptive, the reason they made that decision was so that we could get a more accurate read on students that aren't ready for the higher level concepts, so that we could give them more problems that are accessible and approachable. So I'm actually hoping the new test is going to be a
101clearer picture of what kids can do in this state. So you think with what we are teaching our kids in our in our schools in Sarville, but in the greater state of New Jersey will align better with this new new assessment. >> We we're definitely reflective in our practice and we look at our curriculum and we look at our materials and we make sure that they're aligned to the New Jersey student learning. But I I I hate to blame it on that because it sounds like I'm looking for the blame, but I think the assessment has been the problem for a while. >> Yes, we do. I mean, we see our kids graduating and going to Ivy League schools into top colleges, so they're we're doing something right. >> When you look at the number
102of kids that are in advanced level placement courses at the high school and compare it to the number of look when you look at the number of 11th graders that are in honors, >> AP level courses, and then we only have 66% that are performing >> that it's it's not there's not a direct correlation. There's a problem, right? So we do look at how we can support them because um our my my team's goal is to support the students in being able to demonstrate proficiency. It doesn't mean we don't think they're proficient. It means that they're right not they're not able to demonstrate it right now. So where what are those steps? And we've started to bring things into the classroom to help them do that. So I hope that answered >> it does if
103I can just add a little bit of flavor to the conversation. So you would >> Did he just call me flavorless? He did. >> No, I did not. I just want to add a little flavor to this conversation by saying that when you think about mathematics, >> do you think it's pretty universal in terms of >> whatever country you're from, we're we're all learning the same mathematics, right? Would wouldn't you agree mathematics it's really internationally based? >> Yes. >> I don't think anybody would disagree with that. But this assessment is so problembased that our students that speak English as a second language struggle more on the math assessments than they do on the English language arts assessments. >> Well, I think that's what Miss Grossman was saying. There's so much literacy. >> That's what I
104want that's but that's the flavor that I'm adding to that because mathematics should be universal. I mean, people across the world, we're learning the same mathematics concepts. We're we're learning the same quantitative measures. We're learning the same algebraic measures. Um, but why is it that our kids that that come to, you know, our country and speak English as a second language, come from a different country, aren't able to demonstrate their proficiency with mathematics on our assessments. And it's for the exact same reason that she just explained. And I think you really see it when you look at our English as a second lang our students that speak English as a second language their results on mathematics as compared to their results on the English language arts test >> and and I want to add because
105I don't know if I highlighted it but when we were talking about the um programs the last number that I looked at in encourse because it fluctuates minuteto minute um 18% of our students are identified as students with disabilities or having 504s and 6% are identified as being ESL eligible right at the high school. So when you add those together and you look at 24%, you know, 76% we've already identified they're going to struggle on this test because that's kind of how we identify them is that they're not at the grade level standard. So when you look at 66% compared to the 77 76% of students that we haven't identified as needing help and you do have districts in the state of New Jersey that have far lower percentages of students with disabilities and multilingual
106learners. >> And I think it's important to note too 91 and 66 is not our graduation percentage of kids out of high school. That we do have a lot of alternative paths for them to get their diploma. >> Yeah. Um could I ask you a question? >> Sure. Um, it looks like grade eight, okay, is really the lowest performing. So, why are are you guys planning on taking that grade and figuring out why they're so under everybody else >> for math? >> Yeah. So, the math 8 course is students that we have assessed as being not ready for a full algebra course. So, they are taking a pre-alggebra course. That's a curriculum that we revised last year that we're working with them on. So that's only about 50% of the eighth grade students are taking
107math 8. The rest of the students are taking geometry or taking algebra 1. So the math the kids that take the NJSLA math 8 we've already identified as needing support. So that does include the students with disabilities for the most part. Um it does include most of our multilingual learners that are coming in. We do have a high entry rate for the middle school for some um demographic phenomenon. Our our numbers at the middle school for multilingual learners are much higher on on our entry level than other um grade levels. So that really is um the group of students taking that test we've already identified as needing support in doing that. The difference between the math 8 test and the algebra 1 test is not very different. So when the state says, "Well, this is
108a a grade 8 math test." It really is more algebra and does expose them to some other topics that because they're in math 8, they haven't been exposed to. So we have been looking at materials that's going to support them better. >> All right. Just seems like eighth grade hard. >> If I can ask you a question. I know I've asked this question in the student achievement committee meeting. We didn't we didn't have data then. Just wondering if something's changed. So we have the comparative aggregate data to to the state. Do we have any aggregate or disagregated data for the subgroups and specifically like can can we compare Hispanic or multi- language learners or economically disadvantaged students? >> They don't. Um and I've always wondered that myself when they um break down the disagregated gad
109we do not get a state percentage for the subgroups. Um, and I I think it's probably because it's so different for each district, but we really only get the um 100%, you know, the entire population state average. They don't provide it, unfortunately. >> Do we do do we have an idea of what, you know, statewide how what percentage of students are economically disadvantaged or multi- language learners? >> I don't know off the top of my head. I will I'll look into it and see if I'm able to determine that. I think that we are in we are I mean as as you guys know and it was said earlier we're at the 40% mark right now in terms of students that are living in economically disadvantaged households >> which has changed by 20% since about
11010 years ago. >> Um we were we were close around 19% 20% back in 2014 I believe. So it's changed dramatically and that's the other problem too is there's been a big shift in the demographics here. um just the multilingual learners has changed by three-fold since 2014. And you might say, well, you know, what's the big deal? Well, I mean, it it's a big deal because it it's it's we have to go ahead and work with our staff to better support their needs. Um you can see on the the agenda we're constantly sending you out for specific training. What's the training again? SCOP >> SCOP training to help our teachers better support, you know, with with with sheltered language learning strategies on how to support our students that are multilingual learners. But when you change
111that dramatically over this period of time, getting to all those teachers and and helping them, um, it's it's it's not as easy as you think. >> When I came here in 2016, we had 83 ESL students in grades K through 12. We are close to 400. Yeah, I'm looking at Mrs. Capra, the supervisor. So that that shows you how much we've increased. >> Where do we rank though in the state with regard to socioeconomically disadvantaged as well as multilingual learners? I couldn't I couldn't tell you exactly, Mr. Fernandez, but I I would think that um as we're approaching the 50% mark in socio economically disadvantaged um we've got to probably be on the the greater side in terms of you know districts. >> Yeah. And and I believe so that's one of the reasons why
112I brought that point up just just doing a quick Google search and we know that that can never be wrong. Okay. So don't quote me but I think we are specific stat statistically significantly higher. Um I would say the average might be closer to 30%. higher than the average. I definitely in both regards we're higher than the average. Where how much higher I'm not sure. >> Right. So when so when we look at our numbers and again I'm not I'm preaching the choir here but when we look at our numbers um and we only have the aggregate uh num numbers for the state I think that's something that the audience and and the public needs to keep in mind because it's completely different to to compare a district with 41% disadvantage to a district has
1135% economically disadvantaged. All right. I I can say that when the state looks at district factor group, the DFG, where you're kind of aligned to districts that are similar to us economically, there are eight categories and, you know, starting with, you know, the wealthiest. We're five down. So, we're we're definitely in the bottom 50% of of it economically for the state. A this all this information is available on a state website where if a parent wanted to go and look at a comparable town, North Brunswick or Old Bridge or something, >> Denellan, Middle Sex, Old Bridge, South Planefields, all their DFGs. >> Yeah. But a parent could go on a website and as much as people love to go on Facebook in this town and complain about our test scores, >> Yeah. they can do
114five minutes of research and see that we're actually performing better than a lot of districts in the same economic group we are >> and and that came up during the student achievement committee about you know looking at which districts are we comparing to um you know the town that I live in as much as I would like to compare it with towns that are next to me you know it's it's not the same you know and it's not the research related to um economically disadvantaged often you know it comes down to things and I I share too much at these meetings but you know I was first generation college but a lot of times economically disadvantaged is who at home went to college or is able to support them or has the you know isn't
115working shifts or doing things like that so there are a lot of root causes related to why we look at economically disadvantaged is it 100% accurate no you could have an honors AP student that comes from you know economically disadvantaged family but the research is there because of the patterns and the state identifies it. >> So, when we're looking at all this time, we're looking at all these charts and these numbers, but according to your report, uh it's not an accurate assessment of Seerville students for parents that are listening and parents that are concerned about test scores. If they do go and they look and we and they do look up that test number, the number the state of the state of New Jersey numbers for Seerville compared to other districts in New Jersey. And
116it is concerning, very very concerning when we look at those numbers, but from what you've described, those numbers are not accurate an accurate picture of how our students in our schools here are actually doing. that they're actually doing better than what the state numbers actually reflect because they are um only looking at a whole group of students but not taking into consideration um you know uh the specific uh demographic of students >> I I you're absolutely correct >> yeah you're absolutely correct and the way that I look at it or that I've approached it for all of these years is it's one piece of data obviously I spend a lot of time digging into this and planning and what are we going to look at and we reflect but then there are other factors that
117come in and we do have to look at those other things. >> So I would venture to say I think I would uh say that really parents could probably care less about what that state number is. What they want to know is how are our kids doing here? And you know, uh, you know, are they learning math and language arts well enough that they're going to graduate, that they're going to be eligible for whatever path they choose out of high school, whether it be college or whether it be the military or whatever that path is that they choose, that they're going to be equipped by by our faculty here in our several schools to reach those goals. And and for me personally, uh, running for board of education, those state numbers were one of my
118main concerns. But it is very revealing to me to hear the the detailed reports that that is not actually a picture of how our students are doing. >> I cannot thank you enough for that comment because I think my goal in this position is to open up the transparency and to have the conversations and to talk about it because it breaks my heart when I see sound bites outside that say, "Oh my gosh, has terrible schools." And I'm like, "No, no, I >> that's what they're saying when they look up that replay." I have worked in other districts. I have lived in other districts. I have sent my child to a school in another district. And I will tell you right now that Seerville and the people that are sitting in those seats and make
119sure of it and the ones that are sitting in these, this district cares. It has a comprehensive student centered approach to education that keeps me coming to work every day. >> And that's I think that's where we look at it. We Yes. look at the number and say, could we do better? >> But just don't think of it as being our students and our school districts are terrible. And I get emotional, so I'll stop. >> And and you know, Carrie, you you really hit it on the head in the sense that our our jobs as leaders of this school district are to promote the best outcomes possible for these kids when they leave us. And our kids are achieving great outcomes when they graduate from the school district, whether it's going directly into the workforce
120or going into the college that they selected. And you know, one of the things that I I know no one reads talk soup, but there's a committee at the high school, the where are they now? If you ever have a chance when it comes out, they work so hard to go ahead and look up graduates and find out what they're doing. Read it. It's amazing some of the outcomes of our graduates and it speaks volumes about what you just said. >> You know, you can't define a school district based upon state standardized testing scores, particularly ones that have no impact on the kids. They're not high stakes. These kids don't like taking the NJSLA. Their parents don't like the NJSLA. Um but when you go ahead and you see that the outcomes that our graduates
121are achieving, it makes you realize uh what incredible faculty, staff members, administrators, board of education members we have that are are working together to promote those outcomes. Mhm. >> So, if there's a way to for parents to be able to go to uh the Seville district website and to access how our kids are actually doing in an understandable format, uh that you know that I think would be very helpful for parents who are concerned to see how each grade level is doing you know uh not with the state testing but with our own in-house you know how are they doing grade-wise at the end of the year what was the average grade you know You know, I love that idea at each grade level. >> I'm going to make I'm going to take that on.
122I want I want my curriculum and instruction page to reflect more than just state. So, I am going to start sharing some of that good news and those wonderful things. I like that idea. Thank you. >> Parents would have a a a factual true picture, you know, of how each grade level is doing, you know, in obviously the math and the language arts are the primary concerns, but also in the sciences and such because as Dr. Labby said, you know, we do want to prepare our kids for after high school, whatever that may be. And even looking at the AP scores, you know, AP classes are extremely difficult is a very heavy load for students that choose to do that. And to know that our students are performing as well as they are is not
123reflected in those state numbers. So I do think that would be that would be wonderful if parents could see, okay, let me not look at that state number. When I go to our Seville website, this is actually the scores that our kids are are achieving by the end of the year with our in-house testing. >> I like that. I could highlight. >> It's important to look at the big picture. >> Yes. >> Not just one piece of these. >> I just want to add too that um I've been on the board what this is what how many years we here five. Five years. So I have seen um the transition from the old to the new. Okay. And the new would be you ladies. Okay. >> Does Babone just call me old? >> No. No.
124You I'm the new old man. >> I'm not going with old. >> I'm not talking about age. >> But David's older than me. >> I'm not talking about age. I'm talking about positions. Okay. So, um, as people retired, Dr. Labby is the one who brought in people who are going to improve the scores, who are paying attention to the curriculum. And that would be Miss Gman, right? Am I getting your name right? >> Because I always mess up. Um, so that would be somebody like Miss Gman. Also, um, you know, we do have a lot of people coming to our district for our great program that Mr. Nast is in charge of. So, let's stop pretending that Seyville is not a destination for special needs children. People come, they rent here, they move into town
125specifically for that. So, yes, we do have a larger population, but that's only because we're doing a great job. Not because, oh, we have crappy numbers. Oh, say those schools stink. It's because we're better schools and that's why people want to bring their kids here. So people from the public have to realize that you're not going We had COVID where kids weren't even, you know, they were home, you know, parents trying to juggle their job, trying to keep the kid, we had a lot of stuff going on here. So I think that with the improvements that this team has made, people that Dr. Labby has put in place, um, things that Mr. Nast has been, uh, publicly recognized for, okay, we c we can't forget those things. So, you know, you could bash it, you
126can complain, but the truth is we are doing a good job. The board of ed is doing a good job voting these programs into place and these policies. And I just want to say you really did improve things and we're lucky to have you. >> Thank you, Eileen. >> Thank you so much. >> Any other questions or comments? >> So, now to the most riveting part of our presentation tonight. Oh, >> the quickest. >> Glock Malloy is going to share with you. Oh, and I said final, but these are are preliminary >> preliminary >> 2024 2025 HIV ratings. And I'm hearing some grumblings in the audience, Mr. Glocky. So, if you could go fast, I'm sure that particularly people at the high school and preschool would appreciate that. >> I certainly could. And and next
127year, I want to go before Miss Gman. >> Knew you were going to say that. I knew it. >> Um, as Dr. Lebby said, this is our preliminary HIV self- assessment numbers. And back at the end of last school year, we saw our student safety dating data numbers which were referenced earlier tonight. That's really our hard numbers. That's the information that indicates what has happened in a school year. The HIV self assessment um is a required part of our state submission requirements in which our principles and their anti-bullying specialists take a look at how they feel that our harassment, intimidation, and bullying programs are doing compared to what is required under the anti-bullying bill of rights. Um they complete the self assessment um following tonight's meeting. We will submit this to the department of ed
128and then later in the spring we'll actually get um confirming or contrasting numbers back from the state as far as how did our self assessment line up. So this again is dealing with our 2425 school year. So, it really doesn't reflect what's going on right now, but it gives us a picture um in combination with our student safety data numbers on what exactly is going on with our HIV programs within our school year that had just completed and it gives an outlook of what our principles and their staffs are looking to do going forward into the next school year. Um so, within that criteria, we have uh a number of categories that are part of the HIV self- assessment. eight specific categories from our programs, our trainings, um instructional programs for staff, our curriculum and
129instruction integration, um HIV personnel which includes both school and district level um staff, how we report, how we investigate, and that all gets um compiled into a a matrix that the principles score from 0 to three within each category. Um of note, two is the meets requirements. you're meeting everything the state is requiring for you and a three in any of those categories, you are exceeding what the state is looking for you to do in any of those categories, which puts the maximum score at 78 points if you exceeded in every category that the state is looking for you to to assess within your HIV scoring. So, taking a look at our actual numbers, which is the core of our presentation tonight, um you can see our scores in each of those categories that were
130referenced. I also have them down there in smaller font um for each of our schools within the district as well as the district overall average for our HIV self- assessment scores. Again, these are just self- assessments by our principles and their anti-bullying teams. Um this will get submitted to the DOE after tonight's meeting and we will get our final scores back um come the springtime usually. I do have a comparison. We've been collecting this data since the onset of the anti-bullying bill of rights and actually it's getting to the point where I think I have to start cycling off some of those earlier datas. Uh but what you do see there is that from the early years when the anti-bullying bill of rights and the HIV programs were brand new, our scores were significantly lower
131than they are as we've moved through the years. As we've gotten into the the postcoid years and are more aligned with current times, our numbers have stabilized. um we have scores that have increased steadily over the last decade and they've pretty much stabilized the last u few years where you only see a variation of a point or two up or down in any given school. Um and that's really what you would expect to see as our programs have stabilized, our trainings have stabilized. we we know what the requirements are from the state and the state hasn't really made any substantial changes um to what is expected for us under the anti-bullying bill of rights or HIV programs. Um the last metric in this report which really aligns more with our student safety data numbers but
132this is a requirement of the HIV self- assessment report as well is where we look at our preliminary threshold determinations versus our investigation. Um, so state law under the HIV program does allow building principles when they receive a potential report of harassment, intimidation or bullying, they can run a threshold assessment, which basically states that if everything that is reported is assumed to be true, would it meet baseline criteria for an HIV or perhaps it's code of conduct or um some other remediation that we need to look at? Um, under that criteria, if the baseline for HIV is not met, um, a building principal can deny the HIV investigation and pursue investigations through other means such as code of conduct and they submit that to the superintendent. Um, Dr. Lavyby reviews those cases along with me
133and we determine does that comply with the HIV statute. Um and at that point we can either accept uh the rejection from the principal's level or it can be rejected back to the school for an investigation. The other avenue is that the investigation is done outright. There is no threshold determination or a threshold determination was done and it was determined that an investigation needed to be completed. Um at which point a full investigation is done and then those are reported both at every board meeting. Our HIV reports are in the board agenda as well as in our student safety data numbers u both at the mid year and at the end of the year of the school year. And that is the completion of our HIV self- assessment report for the moment until it comes
134back in the spring. >> Oaf questions for questions for Mr. Glock Malloy. >> I'm just looking at the number for the high school preliminary threshold determination was zero but the investigation determination was 46. So I'm I'm I'm I know that I'm not looking at this right. The preliminary is is that it determines whether uh it meets that standard to move forward. >> So what we invest it's actually a great question. What we usually see with the preliminary thresholds is at our younger grade levels where students are still feeling out you know what is bullying versus what is um you know somebody tripped in the hallway because they simply tripped or a bag got knocked down. So you see with our elementary principles, they often do the preliminary assessment to indicate what is being reported. Is
135this something that is even in the HIV pathway? By the time you get to the high school, the students that are reporting HIV or the parents that are reporting HIV, they know what is going on at that point. They know that this is not accidental or this is not um a misunderstanding that this is usually something that needs to be investigated by the school. So at the high school level, you very rarely see them do a preliminary determination. It's usually what is reported is fully investigated and then it may be determined to be HIV or not at that point, but there's not really a need when you're dealing with 14 to 18 year olds to do a preliminary determination because at that point the students, they know if they're reporting HIV, they know, look, something
136happened to me today and I I need further investigation. Now, it may not end up being HI under the law. again could be code of conduct or something else. This is just simply saying the methodology of how we get into the HIV. Are we thresholding it to see does it meet the criteria or are we just going direct into investigation. >> So my my misunderstanding was that everything always goes through the preliminary before it gets investigation. Okay. Thank you. >> It does not have to. And that's really where the student safety data numbers tell you the better story because that tells you what was founded to be an HIV versus what isn't. And that's also in the monthly report. >> And as Mr. Moyes said earlier the the threshold is really for if you take
137everything that's told to you and you assume it to be a fact that it happened. If those facts don't equal into HIV, that's when you can say, you know what, this is not HIV. Um and and to his point, some of the things that we'll get at the elementary school are something like um on the bus, Sally looks at me, you know, very, you know, strangely, things like that where, okay, even if Sally really was looking at you strangely, that doesn't mean that's HIV. Um and again, it's about education. It's about knowing what is HIV. But as they progress through the upper elementary school into the middle school and into the high school, they're fully aware of what would constitute HIV and what doesn't. >> I think the other part really is too that this
138is just one small part of our overall data system. Um just because something isn't HIV doesn't mean that it's dropped at that point. And and very often than not, something that isn't HIV could be a code of conduct violation or or some other uh method that we have to remediate and work with our students in those situations. HIV is very specific criteria set forward in state law. And that is really what the principles are looking at with the thresholds. Again, somebody's looking at me. Well, at the elementary level, that may just be, you know, happen stance because of where you were sitting on the bus. where at the high school level there's probably a little bit more to that at that point. >> And also the last thing too in terms of the HIV or
139the anti-bullying um bill of rights which I believe was in 2012 mean the threshold is relatively new. The threshold was implemented I think 3 to five years ago. >> Uh I have to look up the specific >> but it's relatively new in comparison of how long that anti-bullying bill of rights has been around. So, um, it also could be a comfortability to with our administrators in terms of utilizing that. >> Thank you for elaborating. I appreciate it. >> Any other questions? >> I have Oh, >> sorry. Why is the middle school self-reporting a score that's three or four points lower than every other school? >> Mr. Norberger and I just had this conversation the other night. >> I figured I'd call Mr. Norberger out in this. where where the drop off from points really comes
140is programs that meet the criteria for the HIV um trainings and aotment programs. Um the middle school has a lot of other things going on. So the programs don't always match up specifically what the state's looking at. So we actually just talked when we're compiling these numbers about can we look at what we can do to take some of the programs we are and add to them or adjust them slightly so that they meet the HIV criteria that really becomes where it is just a data collection. Um I can assure you that what is the change in our numbers um from our actual reports and our findings have again with our discipline data has changed drastically at the middle school for the better. Um what we really need to look at is what do we
141need to do with the specific programs we're running to get them to hit those criteria for this report. >> Okay. >> So that makes sense. >> Good question because we saw that when we're putting that together and we had actually just been starting to discuss that. >> Thank you. >> Because of the state law and their strict criteria what constitutes HIV. Okay. I um see like even today some woman on Facebook that's Seville parent anonymously went on and said you know the things that her son he's only in kindergarten what he's been suffering what should I do who should I go with and I mean within minutes there's so many comments about don't go to nobody they don't care they don't do anything what do we really if if something if kids are not really
142committing an HIV because it doesn't meet the state criteria but it but it there's something going on what do are we doing in general with the kids to teach them how to behave with one another? Like just saying, "Oh, be kind." I mean, that's the big thing. Be kind. Be kind does not tell you nothing. Just says be kind. It doesn't like what do we do for the kids at the younger ages so that they don't become bullies because you know there is bullying going on. Even though it don't meet HIV, there's still bullying going on. there still kids every single day come to our schools and come don't want to come and they're sad and and they are treated poorly by other students. So what do we do to teach these kids not specifically
143oh you pick on him but don't pick on anybody. Do we have those programs? >> So many of those programs um everything from recessbased programs to social emotional growth programs. We uh worked with Silus last year which was a role playinging program. It's integrated into the curriculum. that's integrated into um as you get up in the grade levels, the sports and athletics. It is at pretty much every level from the moment those students get on the bus um with some of the trainings that our transportation program has done to the moment they leave and every piece in between. Um there is no part of the school day where a staff member isn't working with their population of students um to develop their social emotional growth and to work on uh resolving conflicts. It doesn't mean
144that they don't exist. Um and I would say when something does occur in the school environment, teacher, principal, guidance counselor are probably those first level steps. Um because if they don't know that something's going on, it's a lot harder for them to make those adjustments and to work with that student to try to identify what is are they having a conflict with the person sitting next to them. And maybe it's something as simple as moving a seat on the bus or moving a seat in the classroom or maybe it's something more. Maybe there is something that needs to be investigated or met with a counselor or they're struggling with any number of things. it could be part of uh language acquisition or they're stressed for a test or something else. So I would say if
145there is something that is bothering any individual student as they come home teacher guidance counselor and principal first level u and I I can add on that I mean just because >> I want to send everybody to Dr. L. Just because someone's not determined to have committed um an act of HIV, it doesn't mean they did not commit an act that violates our code of conduct, >> right? >> And that's hard for parents to understand, too. So, it may not be HIV, but it might be inappropriate behavior. So, in accordance with our code of conduct, we go ahead and we address the conduct with, you know, some form of corrective action. Now, we can't tell the parent what we do in that particular case because we can't violate a parent's or a child's right to
146privacy, but we go ahead and provide corrective action for the child that commits a violation of the code of conduct. The other thing that it's it's frustrating for parents is this. We can't go ahead and provide corrective action to a student unless we can substantiate what is being alleged occurred. And that's a problem too because parents will say my my child is coming home and saying that this is happening. So our our principles will go ahead and conduct an investigation and those investigations can include witness testimony. They can include video surveillance. I mean we have surveillance on the buses now. We have surveillance in our corridors outside of our schools. So, we try to incorporate all those things to substantiate something happened. And if we can't do that, we can't go ahead and apply corrective
147action because we would not have just cause. There's no substantiation for it. We have to have what's called reasonable suspicion that it occurred. But it sometimes it turns into a he said, she said. And if we can't get more evidence to go ahead and substantiate what occurred, we can't do much in terms of corrective action through the code of conduct. However, our school counselors are amazing and they work with all of our students that are demonstrating um some type of behavioral problem, particularly HIV. all of our students involved in HIV receive some form of counseling. Um, so just because two we are not applying the code of conduct, it doesn't mean that a teacher or school counselor is not working with both the child that feels that they've been victimized as well as a child
148who is alleged to have um, you know, done something to somebody else. So I do know that there is a source of frustration for parents because I've talked to many parents who get very frustrated with the fact that oh this should be HIV this is bullying Dr. lab you have to explain it doesn't fit the legal definition of HIV and you got to explain what the legal definition is but then you have to explain to them in a way that doesn't violate the confidentiality of the other student that don't worry though we are applying the code of conduct to correctively address that behavior of the of the other student and there are times when you have to say listen I know that your your child is saying this happened to him or her and I'm
149not saying that that did not happen but all I'm saying is we don't have any evidence to substantiate that it happened. Um so I know through the conversations that I've had with many many parents those tend to be the greatest sources of um frustration when it comes to these types of things. >> I think that's one of the big variables with HIV. It's one of the the odd areas um related to conduct where parents of all sides get a notification HIV was founded, HIV wasn't. And while that doesn't directly expose confidentiality, you can draw your own conclusions that if it was founded, okay, well, the other parties involved did something wrong. Then when it comes to straight code of conduct, we can share everything about your child, but we can't share anything that we're doing
150about the other children in that mix. That can only be shared with their families, their parents. Um, so that can often be a point of frustration where we can say we're applying policy, we're applying code of conduct. HIV is really the only area where all the parents and all the students get a notification of what happened with the total environment where regular code of conduct or other remediations you don't see that you only get information about your child. I just wanted to know because I want to know where to direct you know I don't want to think >> always their teacher first then building principal and naturally you can they can contact me too >> if I can just add a little anecdotal because I I believe my colleague Eileen here brought up a great
151point. What do we do? It's not just dealing with with code of conduct and bullying. It's preventing it. Um so this is this is simply obviously an anidotical piece but when my oldest first came came in the district in the in the middle school. Um there was bullying a lot of bullying code of conduct that her and her friends felt they were they were they were receiving and it was an issue. And then for some reason we hired this guy named Glusky to to take over the middle school. And I got to tell you, I was really upset after the first year because all of a sudden my daughter and her friends would come home and tell me that there were no more issues. They were happy to go to school. Um, they were happy
152to learn. Um, you know, it it was it it was a complete change. Um, and obviously that's because of the proactive action that this administration took. Um, and the changes that that this administration by putting in Mr. Ghusky there and the changes that he made. I don't know what he did over there. I don't know if the guy has like an S under his chest and just kind of magically fixed it, but but whatever he did worked. And I think that's obviously not just indicative of the middle school and and what Gleski did there. I think that's something we we do in in all our schools um and all and all our principles and administrators do. So, um, as a parent, I just wanted to throw that anecdotal piece p piece in there about prevention
153and teaching our kids differently. That my experience has been it's been very successful and that we've we're always going to have problems because there's always kids and they're adolescence and things are going to happen, but we we we we're certainly proactive in in preventing it. >> Anybody? >> Thank you. Any more comments or questions? Thank you, Mr. G. >> I think his presentation was longer than mine. A >> lot of questions. >> Presentation was Q&A session was a lot of questions tonight. >> Thank you. Okay. Um, moving on to board discussion. >> Okay. A team, you can exit stage right if you want. >> Yeah, the natives are getting restless. Good night everybody. Thank you for coming. >> Thank you. >> Sorry. >> Good night. Super glue. Audrey said they can all have off on
154Monday. >> Oh, >> that is not true. >> They're off on Monday. >> Oh, you're right. We're off. >> Yes, they can have off on Monday. >> It doesn't affect tomorrow. >> You definitely have more flavor. >> I think even Eric had more flavor in his. Donna, I make one mistake with a goal. >> Okay. Uh, finance and infrastructure. Mrs. Pabone, are you ready for us? >> I'm ready. I'll be quick. All right. So, um, last Tuesday evening, uh, the BOE finance and infrastructure committee met. I am very pleased to announce that almost every project, uh, that was already discussed in the one portion of Dr. Aby's uh presentation. Pretty much all the referendum things are done. There's punch list items. There's a few things that have to be done. Right now, they're working on
155making turning going from air conditioning now, making our heat go on um throughout all those schools. And I do want to say, Dr. Labby, you you stole what I was going to say. I can't believe you actually said that, Jimmy. Okay. I was going to say that, you know, everybody's always talking about, oh, the board of ed waste money. We don't care about money. The truth is we're very, very good with the money. Um, Erin, who's not here right now, is a very good money manager. And the fact that we have Jimmy, okay, being our project manager, saved us, I would probably say a couple hundred,000. All right. Because Jimmy, all right, not only did he do he he's he's phenomenal at the job he does, okay? He also cared about the school, cared about
156the project more than any outsider would have. All right? So, we have to give a lot of credit to Jimmy for getting all this stuff done. And it's I I can't even believe it. Can you believe it's done? Like when we first started this out, right? It Well, I am being quick, but um so it's almost done, but um so I'm not going to go into every single school. We're waiting on a couple of things. JCPNL's putting on a switch and all this stuff, but that's beyond our control. Um you know, we're still working on the uh green sky, the solar. We're still working waiting for the um what's it called? the greenhouse. So, you know, all in all, we're doing good as a district. I believe that um financially we're doing well, too. So,
157give us some credit, people. Have a great night. >> Thank you, Mrs. Pabone. Uh Mr. Callahan, do you have personnel for us? >> Yep. And you want me to do back toback? Go right from personnel, right? Student achievement. >> Tonight's personnel committee met. We covered the updates on the very, very few open positions for both certificated and non-sertificated staff. We also discussed the preparations for the November 4th professional development day, including the approval of the presenters that's going to be on tonight's agenda. And I know there's two great presenters that are going to be here. Uh Dr. Lavyby and Mrs. Bloom. They'll be presenting as well. Yay. >> Dr. >> Agile. Yes. >> Well, and and Dr. Aragles as well. So yes, we also reviewed the plans for the midyear job fair which is going
158to focus on the uh uh non-certificated openings that we have in transportation, cafeteria, and maintenance. Our next personnel meeting will take place at the next board of ed meeting. So then I'm going to roll right into the student achievement committee met last Tuesday. We got the sneak preview of Mrs. Gman's uh presentation, so I won't repeat that at all. She also spoke about the the revised curriculum guides that are all up for approval tonight. Uh and there's some new high school clubs, Key Club, Letters of Hope, Boach Trial, and Filerendrrons and POS. >> Good. Did not know that's a plant. I know it's a plant. So, I know it's a plant club. >> Yes. >> Again, they're all up for approval on tonight's agenda. And then, uh let's see what else to Mrs. Bert spoke.
159She spoke about uh the upcoming November 4th professional development as well uh and new new frontline professional growth system, several university workshops for the new teachers, and she gave us updates on the ISSA grant and the climate change grants. And then our next uh student achievement meeting will be on October 28th. >> Keep it short and simple just like Dr. >> Thank you. >> Um Middle Sex County School Boards Association. Nothing new to report. We had a good meeting. Um, who is our attorney came and spoke on behalf of Bush. Some legal questions were answered, but uh, all in all, you can get all of that in your emails, which is sent to you school boards. So, I will not belabor the point. There we go. Okay. Uh, at this time, we will open to
160public for agenda and presentation items only. My name is Stephen Chicowski. Um, several resident five road street. Um, I've only missed two meetings since January. I was out of town on both of them. I'm glad I was here for tonight. Tonight was troubling to me and it seems like maybe to all of you there's all kinds of reasons why it's not troubling. Um I heard that there's 54% this past year of achievement and the goal for this year is 57% achievement. That means that there's 43% that's not achieving. And I know that there's a group of halves, the kids who are taking uh AP courses, but what about everyone else who's not taking AP courses? You guys have to do better. Better. Don't shake your heads. Better. You were elected. This was my whole thing
161from the beginning. Sell the bleeping buses. Sell the solar panels. Go back and hire the other bus company because you need buses. And put that money into teachers. Hire more teachers. Let them deal with the ESL kids on their level instead of troubling the classrooms. Hire more teachers. Pay the teachers better. Don't put money into things that are bells and whistles that don't matter when it comes to education. You can say that there's I forget how many percentage are handicapped or have learning disabilities. You can't change that. Hire new teachers to help those children. The ESL children. Hire new teachers to help those children. Don't put money in places. You don't need it. Electric signs, they're nice. Allow our students to do better. Several taxpayers, several residents should have their students, their children do better.
162I mean, did you guys hear what you all talked about today? And it kind of went over everybody like it was just, hey, we're going to do better and we're doing better and 43% aren't going to do better. They're not going to achieve. That's your job. This was troubling more than any other meeting I've been here since January. With everything I've heard about spending money here and there, this was troubling. And it seems like this was kind of like, hey, business as usual. It's troubling. As a ser resident, it's troubling. >> Thank you, >> Joe Compa. I'm also a several resident and I am also appalled at what I saw tonight and I'm not going to let you get away with it. I sat here and witnessed members of this board, certain members of this
163board, our academic experts and our superintendent blame low test scores on poor kids and immigrant kids. Go back and look at the tape because that's what you did. It's pathetic. 54% and 39% meeting expectations and then you say, "Well, there's a lot of poor kids here. What? Really? That's how we're going to frame this whole thing?" I I I'm appalled at that. And then to hear the self- congratulatory patting on the back that you all have about how good you're doing, that's ridiculous. And to to say you've been here for five years is not a boast. That you want credit. Credit is 54% meeting expectations. 39% meeting expectations. There's your credit. And while that's happening, you're worried about making sure boys can go into the girls locker room. That's your credit. That's what you get.
164Elected. You're all elected. We elect you to do a job. We're delegating that to you. We trust you to do a job so that our kids can be safe while you do the work of education, but apparently we can't trust you for that. So, I hope that everybody watching and everyone who sees this pays attention to these numbers. And by the way, don't say, "Oh, well, there's a boogeyman out there. All the other districts that are like us are okay. We're better than them." Really? Well, maybe you should have analyzed that. Why did a a new member of the board have to point that out to you that maybe year over year you do this every year, right? Maybe you should have been looking at those districts and comparing them so that parents have a
165good idea or maybe you feel better about yourselves cuz right now I don't feel good about it. It's pathetic. >> Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, Dr. Labby, >> uh, we'll close public. Dr. Labby, would you please, uh, >> Yes. And I'll go I'll try to go as fast as I can. Some of the important things. Let's start with finance. On page three, number 15, we're asking you to accept a very generous donation made to us uh, for six uh, four four six foot rectangular picnic tables that were donated by the Truman School PTO to the Truman School at a value of about 4,000. uh actually $3,100. So that's a great donation. We can't thank the PTO enough for that. Number 17, which you can find on page three, we're asking you to approve the submission
166of a corrective action plan to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture or the 202526 school year. Uh assuring that the appropriate action will be taken to ensure that the net cash resources that we have in our food services account do not exceed the three months average expenditures. And to that point, number 18, you can see which is on page four, we are actually purchasing more um food services equipment um as you know as a result of that corrective action plan. We'll continue to buy as much equipment as we can to get that surplus down. Um, but it's a don't want to say it's a good problem to have, but it's a it's a it's a a problem that we have in terms of um having to go ahead and spend some of that great surplus
167that we have generated through our food services account. >> Dr. Labby, I'm sorry. The numbers don't compenate with what I have um printed out. >> Okay. >> I think it does with what you sent via what was sent via email to us. However, what's printed out has a number discrepancy. I think the the issue was um what was sent to us there was number 12 missing. So actually they just they changed enumeration from my apologize that's probably >> that's probably the 19 and 20 I presume. >> Yeah. >> I apologize for that. >> So it should be 19 on page four and 20 on uh on page four. That work >> enumeration. Okay. So, 17's restaurant supplies and then >> Yeah, I want to make sure we're looking at >> 16. So, it's one less.
168Okay. I I apologize for that. >> Um, sometimes I do my superintendent report in advance um when we when we do the initial agenda that goes out. >> I just wanted to make sure I was looking at the right thing. Thank you. So, in the last one, number 38, we're asking you to approve an amendment to the previously approved agreement that we have with our architect in which uh we had an up to amount of $650,490 for professional services for the transportation complex um due to the fact that we had to do some additional professional services. That's on the addendum, by the way. Number 38 on the addendum. I'll let you all get there. So, we're asking you to approve roughly. It's going to be $42,000 more uh in professional services due to the fact
169that we had suspended the transportation complex um project and now we we've reopened that project. So some additional professional services were required for engineering purposes. All right, everybody sees that number 38 on p on the addendum. So are there any questions on those items or anything else on finance and infrastructure? >> I did have a couple of questions if you don't mind. Um on page three that the one you mentioned. So bullet point um 15 which um and 16 we talked about well going to 15 it talks about um rescending or rejecting the bid provided by that. Is there any um insight on what the vetting process looks like when it comes to those types of bids? >> Um I can't give you too much insight on that particular one but I believe that um
170the bid was too high. >> Okay. this one. So, this one mentions the the Iran activity. >> Yeah, it was missing. It's defective because it was failing to comply with the bid specification. So, they either missed >> um a document that had to be provided with the bid or they didn't actually address a bid specification. >> Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. And then um number 16, which talks about a corrective action plan. >> Um so, it doesn't give any insight um as far as what what the issue was. um is that >> so we we we've talked about that previously. >> Okay. >> Um basically we have a surplus in our food services account >> and that surplus is more than um it exceeds the three months average of of our revenues. >> Dr. Lebby most
171>> so we have to spend that down >> from all all the ridiculous amount of money we were getting from the state during COVID. Correct. it it basically it began with COVID if you remember during the pandemic um all of our receiving free lunch and we were getting reimbursement from the federal government um for those lunches which created a surplus um we based upon our salaries going up for our food services workers we expected that surplus to drop um because our wages were increasing and so forth. We have kept our food prices flat for the longest time. I can't remember the last time we raised the prices for our lunches. However, because our socially economically disadvantaged population has risen, we get more reimbursement now for those free and reduced lunches. So, as our wages are
172going up, our free and reduced lunches are going up, which is causing us to continue to be in the black when it comes to our revenues as compared to our expenses. >> The state, the Department of Agriculture says that that can't exceed more than three months revenue, and it has. Um, this was something that we addressed during last year's audit. Um, our auditors didn't pick that up this year because they know we're doing everything we can. We've purchased so much equipment for our our kitchens. Um, and we just can't purchase anything more. We're we're trying to identify pieces of equipment that we can replace. Um, but obviously we don't want to replace brand new equipment, right? We've purchased two vans um that our drivers use to and we've paid for drivers now to go ahead
173and transport our foods from our our our places where we cook it at the middle school, high school, and SAM cell to our elementary schools. Um so we're working the best that we can at bringing down that surplus, but it's still above the three months revenue. So we have to have a corrective action plan for it. And that's why you see I mean if you go back and look at our agendas you know there have to be at least four or five months where we're purchasing equipment purchasing equipment purchasing equipment as we are tonight but again we just you know we're we're just in that situation where we have so many students now that are receiving free and reduced lunch and we get full reimbursement for those lunches that we're continuing to see either it's
174it's either staying set in terms of our surplus or our surplus continues to rise a little bit. Are we allowed to use that money for any other purposes to buy food services? It's only food services. It's an enterprise account, so it can only be used for food services purposes. >> And the department does want you to reinvest into the program. Keep that a viable option going forward. >> Got it. Thank you. Um on page four regarding um the uh purchase orders I guess uh for Woodro Wilson. So 6 in stem casters. It seemed kind of high. Um $5116 for two. Um so just wondering is that because it's a it's a is it a package of of a couple of them or >> you said number number what on >> number number 17? I'm sorry.
175Um number three there it says uh two sixinch stem casters were being ordered. >> Yeah. >> Um so just the amount when I like looked on because I didn't know what stem casters was. So I looked that up randomly and saw what it is is those little little wheels or what have you. So two of them for $511 each. That seemed kind of high. So is it a particular type that had to be >> Yeah. I don't know what you were looking for when you searched. These are industrial. Okay. um products or equipment and we we go ahead and we search for the best deal we can get and we usually use purchase um you know agreements with different places. So we this time we found um Hunter County Educational Services Commission uh was able
176to get us the lowest price >> possible price. Okay, >> thank you. >> And of course that was a bid too. So I'm based upon that bid those are the lowest prices we could get. >> And Dr. Are we required to because I I'm not sure of this either. Are we required for purchases like this to only go through state approved um sellers of things or co-ops? >> You have a choice of a state contract or a cooperative purchasing like >> agreement. It's not like we can go on Amazon and look for >> correct. And they all they all are industrial commercial type equipment. And the cooperatives that's what a cooperative is, right? they they pre-bid it and they get the best price they can and then we're able to take advantage of that >>
177and that's why we can go to Hunter County or Sussex County. >> We have to have an agreement with them. >> We have several >> ed services commissions now where we have agreements where we can shop around and find the lowest possible price. >> And bear in mind, we're shopping around with people that are specifically selling to the state and they're all trying to make money. So, it's not like we go to the free market and go to the cheapest person. We have to go to the cheapest person that's allowed to rip us off. >> Any any other questions? >> I'm sorry, Dr. Lavy. I have another one regarding the one for the uh Liberty Science Center. So, it was interesting to me because I looked at the bus parking fee. So, I've been there
178before and when I had looked at previously parking um there, it says here $30 $40. However, on their website, it says $10 per day per buses. So, I'm just wondering, is it a similar type of thing where you enter into a certain type of contract with them as a school to say, you know, you get a discounted rate for something or just how do you come about the I guess the bus parking fee? >> We're sending multiple buses at the same time. So, they charge per bus, but we're taking the entire grade level over the course of couple days. So, they actually calculate everything. It's $10 per bus that that trip that day. buses that they really Okay, that was my Okay, got it. Thank you. >> Yes. And we have our middle school and
179sama which are also given title one discounts because they're are both considered title one schoolwide schools. Okay. >> Um so we did get a nice discount on the whole trip together um that we're using the grant funding for. >> Got it. Okay. That that's what wasn't clear to me. Like I thought it was just one bus for Okay. Got it. Thank you. >> Any others? You're going to kill me, Dr. Lavyby. But this is the last one, I promise, regarding this. Um, and I know we've talked about it before, but when it comes to um, let me see, page nine. Um, when it comes to the selling of the surplus property, I know we talked about like the um, in uh, bullet point G where we talk about the selling of the surplus property and
180the wording around that. So, it says the items will be disposed of if they're not sold, right? But we've talked about like the possibility of maybe donating them to other institutions, but you said most times they do sell or 100% of the time maybe they do sell. However, is it possible to just put in there the writing as far as something to the effect of, you know, just looking for clarity to something to say to or donate it to a local business in need of said equipment because, god forbid it doesn't sell, then how do we account for that? >> So, if it doesn't sell, Ken, you can correct me if I'm wrong here on this. um if it doesn't sell, we then would do what we call we declare it obsolete. So when you
181declare something obsolete, you don't necessarily have to throw it out. You can go ahead and donate it to a particular group if if if you're able to. >> That's true. >> My god, I got that right. Good job. >> I'll be I'll be here all week, >> which is great, but we don't have it in writing, right? So again, how do we like >> But it's basically um so I mean I guess what what actual sentence are you having a difficult time with? >> It just says if the item I if it's not sold the items will be disposed of. >> Um so maybe what we can do in future is say declare it obsolete, >> right? And something to that. >> That way we can go ahead and if we're able to donate it,
182we can donate it >> um and so forth. But we do have to declare it obsolete and if if you're not able to find a donor, you do dispose of it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And I would agree that most of it does sell. It may not be a lot. >> Understood. But in the case it doesn't, then you have that caveat there. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. >> How would you know somebody needs it donated? Like we're not >> We wouldn't necessarily know it, but sometimes we're we can we do we are able to reach out to people. I know David just whispered into my ear that we've done that before with with certain items where we have donated it. You always got to be you have to be a little bit careful too
183when you're you're donating things that are bought by the public. Um but that's why we go through the process of trying to sell it first so it goes in a sense back to the taxpayer. But then we declare it obsolete and then we're actually able to do what we want with it. The only thing that changes with that is textbooks. That's has a whole different um set of procedures that we got to follow from the state. Um, but yeah, but I'll make a note that we changed that last sentence to rather than dispose of, declare obsolete. >> Appreciate it. >> That it. >> So, yeah. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. So, if I can grab your attention and uh to and direct it towards student achievement. Um, number one, we're asking you to approve
184a settlement agreement for a student. >> That's on page 18, I hope. Um, number two, which is also on page 18, I hope, we're asking to prove um two long-term suspensions. Number three, as was discussed earlier on page 18, we're asking you to prove multiple revised curriculum guides. And then what was also discussed on page 19, I hope it's on page 19. Number five, we're asking you to approve new clubs at the high school. Any questions on those items or anything else on student achievement that I didn't mention? >> So, of the four clubs listed that we are looking to approve tonight, could you give a brief description of what the key club and the letters of hope clubs are, >> Miss Gman? >> Sure. The key club is the student um extension for Kowanas.
185So, key club is a community service type of club. So they learn about civics, they learn about community outreach, they do some um uh partnered activities with the Kowanas Club. So we have LEO's um they're the student club for the Lions. So this is just another kind of extension of it. And letters of hope is um one of our students um came up with the idea of wanting to send cards and notes to um children and patients that are in hospitals dealing with um illnesses just to kind of send them encouragement for you know we're thinking of you feeling better type of thing which is just represents the sweetness of our students. >> Yep. >> Thank you. That's wonderful. >> Absolutely. Um, if I can direct your attention now to governance, let's begin with number
186two on page 20. We're asking you to approve what we've already gone over, the 2025 2026 school district goals. And then number three, which we also already went over, um, the approval of school district budget development calendar for the 2026 2027 school year. And that's on page 20 also, I hope. Any questions on those items? All right. So, finally in personnel, u we do have a a bittersweet moment if you don't mind giving me a little bit more of your time so we can talk a little bit about a special person that is retiring. U so we're asking to graciously accept the retirement of Katherine Barish, a beloved longtime payroll clerk here in the school district effective January 1st, 2026. After 25 years of dedicated service to the Sarville public schools, we bid a fond
187farewell to Katherine Barish, affectionately known as Kathy, as she enters retirement. Kathy began her journey in 2000 as a clerk in the special services office. Transitioned to the business department in 2002 as the accounts payable clerk and was appointed payroll specialist in 2013. Throughout her career, she has been a model of hard work, warmth, generosity, and always ready to lend a hand and support her colleagues. Her loyalty the district to loyalty to the district and the business department has never wavered, earning praise from three superintendents and the admiration of all that work with her uh particularly the business administrators that have worked with her. We wish Kathy all the best in her next chapter. um she will be certainly missed. And something of note to add is she's a master gardener. Um and she has
188um dedicated much time um volunteering to help people with gardens and so forth. Um and I know that she's going to be spending a great deal of time gardening um during her retirement. And we can't um you know, we can't thank her enough for all she's done. And I obviously working in central office for the past 12 years have gotten to know her. Um, but the funniest story I can tell you about Kathy is, um, you know, Kathy and I were talking one day. So, she says, you know, how's Carol doing? And I'm like, Carol who? And she goes, your wife. I'm like, you know, my wife. She goes, yeah, she calls me every month about your paycheck. So, um, Kathy, if you're listening, my wife wishes you a very, very happy retirement. She thanks
189you for all the help that you gave her with navigating my my payubs o over the over the many many years. So um but she truly is a delight and the the one word that I I you know I I want to reinforce the most or underscore from what I just read to you was warmth. Um she just admits great warmth. She's just a wonderful human being and a great person and one of those people that you just love to be around because of her very positive and warming um demeanor. So, I'm going to miss her tremendously. Okay. So, along with that, number seven and 34, which you can find on pages 24 and 25, I hope, and the addendum, we're asking you to hire new certificated and non-certificated staff for this school year. And
190then numbers 8 and 10, which you can find on pages 25 and 26, we're asking you to approve the transfer of certificated and non-certificated staff for this school year. And Mrs. Bloom, um, oh, and finally, Um, no, that's it. There are some coaches with their stipens as well that we're asking to approve. That I believe is also on page 26. That's number 11. And that does conclude my report. I wanted to say to everyone, just so you know, um, thank you for agreeing to put that bus at the truck and touch a trunk fest, um, trunk, not trunk or treat, trunk, touch a trunk for Charlotte Joy. They had over 20,000 people attended and they raised over $100,000. And for the fourth year in a row, our Seyville bus was there for all the kids
191to, you know, look at and get on and all that. So, thank you very much. >> Well, and we thank you to Mrs. Pabone for paying for that. >> So, move second. >> First, second. Okay. Okay. It's an agenda. Mr. Callahan, >> I need to abstain on governance uh item number one, but everything else yes. >> Mr. Chuck Whiskey. >> Yes. >> Uh Mr. Fernandez. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hernandez. >> Yes. >> Mr. M. Mr. Maldonado. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Napatano. >> Yes. Mr. >> Pone. >> Yes. >> Mr. Smith. >> Yes. >> And Miss Bloom. >> Yes. Motion's carried. >> Okay. At this time, we will open to public for any items. >> Steven Chakowski, servable resident. Um, so earlier in the uh meeting, Superintendent Dr. Labby had talked about the lack of um
192etiquette at the football game and then how it was handled better and how well our student athletes from Serville handled themselves and that's a blessing to see. Um going back many meetings ago, a man um got up here to the mic and he spoke about how the temperature had to be turned down because people were speaking too harshly and he said his son was bullied based upon um his family situation. I had gotten up afterwards the next meeting uh not wanting to antagonize that meeting and said, "Listen, if we're going to turn down a temperature, everyone needs to address each other appropriately." So, I pointed out that some board members went on social media and attacked other board members who were running at the time. Um, there were some who uh responded to statements about
193the women who were running for the board, calling them crazy and liked it. Uh, there were other who turned their backs to people who came to speak at the mic and that's just, I said, not appropriate. Uh, it's not the way we treat each other. Anyway, um, you know, I held to that then, I hold to that now. So, I'm not on social media, but someone sends me this and it says, it's from Mrs. Bloom. She says, "If you haven't watched the board of education meeting, I suggest that you do. Visitors from out of town continue to come to speak against our one board policy. Obviously, they do not see the big picture. Education is so much more than one policy. They believe they are right, and everyone who disagrees with them is wrong. I
194suggest they take their message to their own local board and leave us to do our job of educating, nurturing, and keeping our students safe." Well, I am a servil resident and a servo taxpayer and I've been coming here since I have been aware of the whole board running. The spouse of a sitting board member stated that buses are not important. Really, solar energy is not important. Solar benefits the taxpayer by reducing the district energy cost. If I need to explain the necessity of busing, something is terribly wrong. By which I think your husband then said, hey, you can't teach stupid. You tell me if that's a good example. And you don't have a problem with reading comprehension or understanding English. I didn't say we didn't need buses. I said we didn't need to buy buses.
195We didn't need to put money into buses into all the bells and whistles. You had a bus service already. Children weren't walking before then. So don't misrepresent my statements. And don't call names if you're on the board representing the city of Seville. And if that's how you're going to address people, you shouldn't be there. >> Time is up. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? >> Yes. >> Let's go. >> I'm coming. >> Good evening. My name is Kim Lley. I reside in Alban, a former teacher, a mom, a concerned aunt of a niece who lives in Saraveville. Policy 9200, cooperation between school and parents, states that this board believes that education of a child is a joint responsibility that they share with the parent of a legal or a legal guardian. Also, this partnership is
196to ensure the best interests of the child are at best served in this process. A strong program of communication between home and school must be maintained. This policy affirms that the board of members believe that parents know more about their children. Suggested policy 5756 is in direct conflict with this policy. Teachers are one of the most influential people in child in a child's life. In psychology today, how teachers change lives is an article which states not only do teachers help students prepare for their careers but can make long lasting impact in their minds and personalities. They can influence how a child thinks with influences which influence how they feel. In the Mayoc Clinic.org states that gender dysphoria is a feeling of distress that can happen when a person's gender identity differs from the sex assigned
197at birth. How can you have policy like 5756 which enables a child to make complex decisions without parental involvement? When these things are based off of feelings, how often do your feelings change? Who can count often a child's feelings change? The elementary students two most influential people are their parents and teachers. Teachers to an elementary student play such an integral part of their development. Hold on. As a former teacher, these students rely on the teachers for security in education while they are away from their mom and dad. This relationship is so strong in these fundamental years. Why have a policy that puts between puts the child between the teacher and the parent? Teachers are role models to students. Parents entrust their children to the school school and hope they would keep them at breast to
198their child's needs. Policy 5756 keeps a secret file from the parents. The child determines when to tell mom and dad. Teachers are direct conflict with policy 9200. A social worker connect in lie of the parent when a school doesn't believe the parents will be in favor of the new gender identity. The educ educational success of a student heavily depends on the teacher parent relationship. Trust is key in this relationship. Teachers should be focused on inspiring students to learn. Please resend policy 5756. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> Carolyn Mack, still from Old Bridge. Uh when I arrived here tonight, um Dr. Labby was talking about the incident, the bad sportsmanship incident. And um perfect segue to what I came one of the things I came to say tonight. Um yeah
199u not a very good um representation of that team that refused to shake hands apparently with Seerville sports team. I want you to know about an incident uh following a recent school board meeting where um after the meeting I approached the board secretary Aaron Hill. Uh all I wanted to do was ask her if she received an email that I had sent. I approached her with a smile. I extended my hand to shake and introduced myself. She pulled back, would not even shake my hand, and instantly two security guards came forward and told me I could not speak to anybody on the board, and I was told to leave. And yeah, there is a problem here with this school board. Um, you have been insulting to um more than one or two parents that have
200come to speak. We all remember what happened on May 7th, 2024 last year after I don't know seven or eight of us spoke and we came with facts. We came with statistics. We told you why we were opposed to 5756. Following that, we were insulted. Our words were maligned by Miss Pabon and Mr. Labby. And I believe Jeff Jeff Smith was another one that spoke and maligned what we said. We were called haters. Um and yeah, the sportsmanship here really bad guys. Really bad. Um you should assess yourselves on HIV. And I'm directing this to six of the board members including Lucy Bloom, Jeff Smith, and and Chris Kavanaaugh who are up for reelection. the three new board members. Obviously, we're not here yet. And yes, we've spoken many times against 5756. We will continue
201to do so until that policy is rescended. And we have a right to be here. And you should know this under the open public meetings act. It doesn't matter if we live in Seville. You should all know that. It doesn't matter if I live four miles away in Oldbridge. I have a right to be here and I have a right to speak. Um, and um, I just invite anybody listening, watch the May 7th, 2024 board meeting to hear what we said, hear how our words were maligned, and hear the insults that came from Dr. Labby, Miss Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else for public? Okay, seeing none, we'll close public. I will take a motion to adjurnn. So move >> second meeting adjourned.