001There board of education is now called to order. Please rise for the pledge to the flag. >> I pledge allegiance 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. >> Please remain standing for a moment of silence. This is a tough one. This week we lost two of our Seville family members. Laura Masa, who was at first a cafeteria playground aid, a bus aid, and finally a bus driver. Uh I've been informed that she had been in a serious accident back in February and has finally succumb to her injuries. The next member is Meredith Pisano. Meredith was a young teacher who served in this district her entire career for 22 years. She fought a brave battle
002against breast cancer, but unfortunately she did not win. Meredith was only 44 years old and leaves behind her young son, Bennett, who is 11. Please keep both families in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you, >> Miss Hill. Roll call. >> Mr. Callahan, Mrs. Shedcowski, Mr. Fernandez >> here. >> Mrs. Hernandez >> here. >> Mrs. Maldonado. Mrs. Npalitano >> here. >> Mrs. Pabone >> here. >> Mr. Smith >> here. >> Mrs. Bloom >> here. >> Uh, Miss Hill, can you summarize executive session, please? >> Yes. The board discussed personnel, including but not limited to agenda items, student matters, and matters falling under attorney client privilege. >> Okay. Any correspondence, Miss Hill? >> Yes. Um the board received an invitation to the Seerville Burough um September 11th memorial service. They also received two thank you letters from
003students and a letter from a resident on various topics. >> Thank you. Uh we now need a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Okay. Um Mr. Fernandez. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Mrs. Hernandez, >> yes. >> Mrs. Npalitano, >> yes. >> Babone, >> yes. >> Mr. Smith, >> yes. >> Mrs. Bloom, >> yes. >> Okay. Uh, unfortunately, our young representatives are not with us over the summer, but that's fine. They'll be back again when school starts. Uh, I don't have any comments at this time, Mr. Smith. Any comments? >> Nor do I. Okay, Dr. Labby, any presentations? >> Yes, Mr. Bloom, we have two presentations for you this evening. Uh we're going to begin with Miss Gman, who's going to present to you some of our 2024
0042025 uh student assessment performance results. I believe we're going to focus today on the New Jersey graduation performance assessment, also the WEDA access assessment, and the advanced placement testing results. Miss Gman, >> sorry, forgot to turn the mic on. All right. Um, good evening board members and general public. It is my pleasure to present our proficiency assessment for the 2425 school year. This presentation is the um first part of the data that we have received from the state of New Jersey and we will continue to look at it um next month and into the fall as more results come in. specifically the New Jersey student learning assessment. So the first bit of information I'm going to be sharing with you is relevant to the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment otherwise known as the NJGPA. We
005have discussed the preliminary results at earlier dates and this was all reviewed with the student achievement committee last week. The NJGPA is administered to all grade 11 students in March typically each year and it is to help us determine graduation readiness in the ELA and mathematics content areas. Um bit of new information from the student achievement we received uh the state averages. So in 2425, Seerville exceeded the state proficiency rate by 9.5% in uh language arts literacy. The percent for demonstrating readiness for English language arts in district was 90.1% and the state average is 80.7. For mathematics, the district uh percentage rate for demonstrating readiness is 66% and the state percentage is 58. So we exceeded mathematics by 8% as well. Yeah, always good to hear, right? Um so when we look at our over
006the years uh percentage rates if we look back till 2022 we have shown steady growth in both areas which is something that um we have set goals related to within the district. So we were excited about English language arts um it might only look like we increased by 1% but you know when you're over 90 we'll take every little bit of growth. The 2024 a uh percentile for demonstration was 90%, in 2023 we're at 87 and in 2022 we were at 48.2. That was one of the earlier years and coming out of COVID it was one of the um first things that we noticed was we were going to need to close some gaps on. In mathematics, we had 66% this year demonstrating readiness. That was a 5% increase from last year's 61%. And we
007did meet our district goal of increasing the percent of students demonstrating readiness on that exam by 5%. In 2023, it was 56.5 and in 2022 it was 56.5. When we take a look at the uh subda for the NJGPA, we'll start with the language arts literacy portion. So, as required by the state of New Jersey, we break it down by our subgroups. So, we have uh 94.5% of the students identifying as female demonstrated readiness. 87.3% of those identifying as male demonstrated readiness and 100% of students demonstrated readiness from the non non-binary group. economic status where we talk about students that uh qualify for free or reduced lunch and uh 95% I'm sorry yes 99 my glasses are blurry I apologize 99% of our students that are um non-economically disadvantaged so they are not qualifying for
008uh free and reduced lunch demonstrated readiness with our economically disadvantaged students 86.6% 6% demonstrated readiness in language arts. So, it's a little bit of a gap. Students with disabilities and 504 plans, um, we had 78% demonstrated readiness in English. Students without IEPs, we had 92.6. Students with 504s, 83.3. So, again, a little bit of a gap, which is why we'll talk a little bit later about goals for next year. The state reports indicate that greater greater than 95% of Seerville students demonstrated proficiency in the core competency areas for language arts. That's analyzing literary text, reading and interpreting information text, vocabulary acquisition and usage and written expression. When we break down by our race and ethnicity groups as required by the state of New Jersey, we can see that um different groups have different percentages of
009readiness. Uh American Indian and Alaskan 100% Asian 97.7, white 94.2, two or more races 92.9, black and African-American students 91.4, Hispanic and Latino 84.1. And one of the things that we discussed in looking in that is that the majority of our multilingual learners are of Hispanic background. So a lot of the students that are in that group may have struggled to demonstrate the readiness in English language arts. So it kind of shows a little bit of a gap there. Um these results do confirm that our students are achieving a high level of achievement readiness throughout um the subgroups but we again want to look for closing that gap for any group that fell below 90%. For mathematics when we look at the gender comparison 63.4% of females uh demonstrated readiness 68.6% of males and 100%
010of our non-binary population. economic status. We have economically disadvantaged students demonstrating 56.4 readiness and our non-economically disadvantaged students 74.8. So that's a significant gap that we're looking to address in the next school year. students with disabilities, um those with IEPs, uh 25.5% demonstrated graduation readiness and students with 504 plans, we had 41.7 of those students demonstrate readiness. Multilingual learners, we had 27.3 demonstrate uh readiness for mathematics. And we look again at our subgroup information on the right hand side of this slide. American and Indian. Uh, American Indian or Alaskan 66.7, Asian 84.9, white 77, two or more races 50, African-American and black 58%, Hispanic 49.2%. So, while we do recognize the growth, we know that mathematics is another area where we are focusing on. But when we look at the state average which falls below
011ours, it seems to be a statewide um difficulty in all forms of standardized assessment related to mathematics. So when we look at the gap for special education being a 40% gap and ESL for a 38.7, those were areas in meeting with Dr. Mala Maharana earlier this week that we identified as being groups that we're looking to support. So the next slide that I share with you are the 11th graders. That's well now they're now seniors. They've now you know crossed over. So we have the class of 2026. And when we look at that class, so the students that took the GPA in the spring, 33 of the students in the class of 2026 identify as being ESL. So they are eligible for ESL services. They are multilingual learners. Looking at those 33 students, 60% come
012from homes that speak Spanish or Castellian, 12% Ukrainian, and then Portuguese, Arabic, Gujarati, Georgian, and Erdo are all within the 3 to 6% range. In looking at our multilingual performance data, we have 39.4% 4% of the students of this class um eligible for ESL that were able to demonstrate readiness in English and only 27.3% were demonstrating readiness in mathematics. So in looking at possible root causes for these gaps, we talk about interrupted instruction as many are coming from countries with educational programs that are not stable or they are not comparable to the state of New Jersey which has very high rigorous standards for mathematics and language arts literacy. Some of the action steps that we've been talking about to address the gap for our multilingual learners include looking at curriculum materials for the high school.
013Our program is a broad program that looks at reading comprehension built in with acquiring some core knowledge, specifically science and social studies. And we really feel that our students with so many of them coming as newcomers and beginners in the middle school and the high school would benefit from a program that really focuses on the acquisition of reading. So, we are going to explore and pilot some materials with our multilingual learners this year that will kind of um advance their literacy skills and put a little bit less emphasis on acquiring the content language um that we were working on before. We are also going to look at bilingual support materials um hopefully when we hear about our title uh grant money soon, sooner than later hopefully. Um, we will be looking at bilingual materials to
014support our ESL learners, multilingual learners, especially with Spanish and with Arabic to support it with some bilingual materials for mathematics and provide some services in that way. And then obviously we're going to continue with our um multi-year plan of providing professional development for teachers and meeting the needs of multilingual learners. In looking at the goals that we set for this year uh uh for NJGPA English language arts, we were looking to increase the percent of graduation ready students who are LIE eligible, which means they have a limited English plan. So multilingual learners by 5%. Unfortunately, we did not meet that goal. That is something that we're going to continue to work on for the next year. We did have a 0.5% increase for the um NJGPA English language arts. We were also looking to increase
015the number of students with disabilities demonstrating readiness and I'm happy to report that we met that goal. We were hoping to increase by 5% and we actually increased by 10%. For New Jersey GPA and mathematics, we were looking to increase the percent of graduation ready students by 5% overall and as I mentioned earlier, we did meet that goal. So, we're very excited. And then in looking towards next year, we have started to draft out some goals for next year related to the GPA. Uh as I indicated, we're looking to close the gap in the readiness demonstration as measured by the NJGPA and LAL between students with disabilities and those not identified as having disabilities. We'd like to close that gap by at least 3%. We would also like to increase the percent of multilingual learners
016demonstrating readiness on the GPA in L I apologize by 5% overall. And for mathematics, we're looking to increase the percent demonstrating readiness in mathematics as measured by the GPA by at least 4%. We'd like to, you know, move into that 70% which would be um the high percent over the past five years. The way that we are going to do this is to utilize local and uh grant funding to continue our uh NJGPA boot camps which we run during the school year and again during the summer where we support students who are having difficulty demonstrating that readiness with some tier 2 and tier three intervention levels. We are also going to make sure that we are analyzing the data with the grade 11 teachers in math and in language arts departments so that we can
017identify possible tier 1 interventions as well as any changes that we might need to the curriculum uh in particular to the algebra curriculum. We are going to continue to provide tier 2 support which means outside of the classroom uh be it outside uh after school before school over the summer um for those students that we identify uh in the 2526 year as needing support. So we're going to look at the 44% that did not demonstrate readiness in mathematics and we're looking at the 9% that did not demonstrate readiness in English and we've actually started that already. We had NJGPA boot camp uh that was run over the summer. We had high school teachers. The kids came in over the summer so that they could really prepare. Um in addition to the GPA for graduation readiness,
018we have pathway exams. So um there are alternate pathways to demonstrate that readiness. So we're have students that are going to be taking the ACUPPLACER within the next couple of weeks to be able to demonstrate readiness with an alternate assessment. We are going to provide tier three support for identified students and we are going to look for curriculum resources as I mentioned before to support multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Do we have any questions on NJGPA? >> I don't have a question but I do have a comment. I know that we ran for the board after like didn't see the effects of yet like being out of school and all that. So we >> turn your mic on >> 42%. So that's really >> we increased by 42%. So that's really really good because
019and that's one thing that the people running for the board like the new people Katiana Carrie and Lady and I think the new people as well that are running are talking about closing that gap. But I think we're doing it. So very good job. >> Thank you. Um I think that the supervisors as well deserve a lot of the credit too. So Mrs. Suzuni Capero and Dr. Mala Maharana have really worked collaboratively together and then also with Audrey Burns and I so that we can look at you know what about our program needs improving. Is it something that's related to the curriculum? Is it something related to the resources? Do we need to support the students outside the classroom? do we need to take a look at materials that are better aligned? Um, standardized testing
020is tricky. You know, 30 32 years later um in education and and state testing is one of those things where supporting students to demonstrate what they know on a state test is a skill within itself. So, um, they've really worked really hard to to support the students and I'm really proud of what we've done. But we have, you know, room to grow and and more places to grow. Although I was a little proud to see the 91% for English because that holds a place in my heart. >> That 91% that Well, congratulations to you, your supervisors, teachers. That's amazing. That's fantastic. >> Thank you. >> Are we seeing the results of having an actual ELA curriculum and book series in the high school as a direct correlation to this? I've I've had the opportunity to
021speak to a lot of the high school teachers. Um we did bring in Study Sync by McGraill Alex and you'll notice on the agenda for this evening, we're asking for the approval to bring it to the middle school as well. Um the teachers really felt that the program supported the students with working with short text, which is exactly what the state measures, right? They you can't take a standardized test on a novel. So they felt that it was really um quality materials and the assessments that were developed by McGra Hill did mirror what the students were going to need to do. So one of the things that they have to do on the GPA is read several articles about the same theme and then synthesize that information and they had to write open-ended and two-part
022you know um we call them TECRs but techn technology enhanced questioning. So part A of this question you have to get right to be able to get part B type of thing, but the assessments that are included in the new English program have that. So it gives the kids confidence to be able to do that when they take the test. >> That's great. >> Yeah. Thank you. If I can add, one of the parts about 91% of our juniors being proficient on that assessment that we sometimes overlook is the fact that our students that speak English as a second language or multil- language learners has increased by three-fold. And you have kids that are enrolled in our district as a ninth grader, a tenth grader that do not speak a word of English and they're
023still expected to pass that test as a junior. And the fact that we have many, many kids that come in even as late as their beginning of their junior year and we get them through that test and they pass that test, that's quite remarkable and a tribute to our our faculty and our administration. So, in keeping with the conversation about our multilingual learners, I'll jump into the Weda Access. So, the WEDA access 2, right? Yeah, it was perfect. It's almost like I set you up for that. Um, WEDA access 2.0 is administered annually to all students who are identified as multilingual learners and it's given in the spring. It is a four-part assessment and having looked at that test as well as the NJSLA test for grades three through eight, I will tell you that
024the WEDA access is a very challenging assessment. We measure speaking, reading, writing, and listening. And as Dr. Labby indicated, if a student lands at airport from the Ukraine on Thursday and starts school on Monday and we are in the middle of WEDA testing, they have to take the test. So, students of all levels of acquisition are mandated to take this test. Overall, um, looking at our ESL, I keep forgetting to click, I'm sorry. Um, we had 362 students completing the WEDA access test in the spring of 2025. As Dr. Labby indicated, three-fold, when I came here, there were 86 ESL students in the district in 2016. We have 362 this year. Um, our ESL population at a glance, we have 24 different languages spoken by our ESL students in grades K through 12. Over 50%
025of our ESL students, multilingual learners, speak Spanish. The other languages with the most speakers in districts, Portuguese, Arabic, Ukrainian, and Erdo. 6% of our ESL students have been identified as students with disabilities or in a need of 504. So we are seeing an increase in students that are coming in as multilingual learners that also have other identified needs. When we look at the demographics for our multilingual learners, 50 54% of our ESL students identified as Hispanic or Latino. 42% of our ESL students identify as white non-Hispanic. So if you think about Ukrainian and Portuguese um European countries, European-based countries being our other top languages, they are identifying as white, not Hispanic. 21% identify as black African-American. 14% of ESL students identify as being Asian. 2% of them identified as Pacific Islander, Hawaiian. 54% of our
026ESL students are male. 46% of our e ESL students identified as being female. So we represent a large amount of uh the world space. We come from every country and continent. For the performance data for the WEDA access exam, 22 students met the required composite cut score of a 4.5 to demonstrate proficiency. What that number also represents for school districts is they we can exit them from ESL once they achieve that 4.5. I I hate to say that, you know, we we drop them. They're no longer eligible. The fact of the matter is we can continue to provide services, but that 4.5 is the score where the state says they are just about at grade level for English acquisition. We do continue to monitor them after that. So those 22 students represented 6% of the
027students that took the exam this year. An additional 44 students earned a 4.0 or higher, which is considered nearly at grade level. So we were very excited to have the results that we did. And if you look at the year-to-year comparison, 6% demonstrated that this year, and that is a um 4-year high. We had 4.8% last year, 3.6% and 5.8% 8% the year before. The thing to keep in mind when you're looking at Wed to Access is that every year is different. We have different students that come in every year. The they come in at different grade levels. So, it's a little bit harder to look at, you know, longitudinal data over the years because it could look like a very different makeup of of students. 50% of our students earned a four or higher
028in listening. That's always the area where we um achieve the highest in district and 30% earned a 4% or a 4.0 or higher in reading. 12% for both speaking and writing. So those have been the areas of identified skill focus that Mrs. Capero is going to be working on with the multilingual um population. As I mentioned before, action steps. We're looking at some new curricular materials um that is going to work explicitly with literacy acquisition rather than just the application of it. And we are also looking we've tried over the past couple of years, but it's going to be a concentrated effort to get an advisory committee up and running so that our family engagement and community resources um can be made more available to this population. Any questions on the WEDA access test? They
029really don't provide a lot of data. Um, it's part of a consortium for this state test. So, it's it's a little frustrating. >> No such thing. >> Erdo. So um Erdo is one of our uh eastern Asian languages from the um Indian Pakistan area. >> I had to look it up. >> No, it was not. Any other questions? All right, moving on. We'll take a look at our advanced placement exams. 434 AP exams were taken by the bombers at Serville War Memorial High School. 10th, 11th, and 12th graders take the test in May. Our average score for all of our exams combined is a 3.4. Five is the highest. And passing for most colleges when students are looking to have college credit um earned for these scores is usually a three or higher. Bragging moment.
030Five courses that we offer at the high school achieved 100% passing rate. English literature and composition, 12th grade English, pre-calculus, US history, American government and politics, and statistics. So, we're very excited about that. When we look at our AP College Board year-to-year comparison, um the chart that we show, we look at the 2324 is in the middle column and to the right we have 2425. So, if you want to take a quick look at that, I don't want to take too much more time reading to everybody, but the numbers that are in bold show an increase. So, art history, we um had an increase uh a substantial increase of students. We had 73% over 52. Biology, 97% of students passed as opposed to last year's 81. Computer science principles, we had 88% pass as opposed
031to last year's 73. English lang uh English lang and comp. And I'm I'm almost positive I'm confident in this data, but I think this is the first time that both English courses achieved above a 90%. It is not an easy exam. 93% for um 11th grade English lang and comp and 100% of English lit and comp. And I will tell you that hasn't happened in the 10 years that I've been here. Moving down, we had 100% um for our pre-calculus. And that is the second year we've offered the course and the second year that 100% of our students in Miss Pnoli's class have earned that. And we went from 13 students last year to 18%. So shout out to Miss Pnoli. uh 89% of our students uh passed for Spanish um senor ao that's also
032a high over the last several years and statistics we had 100% up from 82% last year US history we had 100% two years in a row and we had 21 students pass this year as opposed to 14 last year and something to keep in mind about a push that is a 2year course so our students are in a push one with to Santos and then a push 2 with Mr. Posa and they retain that information across two years in order to be able to pass that exam and that's a lot of history. When we continue on I did break down for each of the courses sorry um how many took the exam what was the average score and then the percentage for each each course and that uh each of our courses that we offer
033at the high school is there. I do want to draw your attention to the third page and I think it's the last page. The courses that are indicated um as apex those are courses that students independently take online asynchronous learning. Um they opt to expose themselves to very rigorous materials. Um uh macroeconomics, microeconomics and psychology as well as US government are all taken through Apex. So, we don't necessarily have the um higher percent proficiency for those courses. Uh it is self-study is very tough for AP exams, let me tell you. But we applaud the kids that take it on and do it independently and give it their best effort. And um I think we had the discussion last year, but I still applaud them for taking on a rigorous course that's probably related to something
034they want to take a look at in college. Does anybody have any questions on the AP exams? >> I just have a couple comments overall. Um, just backing up to the NJ uh G uh G GPA. Um, obviously incredible work. Um, we increased about nine and and six points in English and math, which is about 12% increase. But more importantly, what what stood out to me is when we break down to the subgroups, pretty much in almost every category, we we exceeded the state average. Even even when we look solely at economically disadvantaged, we're about six points higher than the state average. Um even our lowest Hispanic Latino is is about 5% o increase over the state average. So in almost every single subcategory, we still exceed the state average. So that's something that's really
035really stood out to me as note and great job by everybody on that. Um I just have an anecdotal comment on AP. What I'm about to say obviously is not worth much because just a little side note. Um some of you know here my my daughter graduated two years ago, took took many AP courses here and she's currently at what some would call a junior junior Ivy League school. Reason I say that is not just because I'm a proud dad. I don't want to brag because I do, but more importantly because I want to frame what I'm about to say. So, she's in a school where kids from all over the country are highly competitive and and top tier students. And one of the first things she she said to me after her first year
036is that she was surprised how much better she was prepared for her biology and calculus courses than her peers that came from from from all over. even even in that highly competitive uh environment. When she was here, she thought the courses were stupid, obviously, like most teenagers, but now that she's in college, she she really appreciates it much more and she sees how how much further along she was than than her peers. So, obviously, that's not hard data. That's just a little anecdotal information, but I thought I would just share that. >> And we we appreciate that, Mr. Fernandez, so much. Um, and a little bit more anecdotal data. I don't know if the board recalls, I forwarded to an email at the um, end of last school year from one of our graduating or
037one of our students who had graduated and gone to college. And he was thanking me and he asked me to thank you for uh, allowing the students to pay to pay for all of our students who are in our AP courses to take that test. because of that, he went on to Ruckers and received credit for, I think, 15 credits. Um, so credits for up to five classes because he passed those AP tests uh in high school. So those were five classes he did not have to take. So he felt like he was 15 credits ahead of every incoming freshman and it allowed him to not only graduate, I believe a little bit earlier, but to take a lot more courses um that he was very interested in that work toward uh his major rather
038than those requirements that he would have been forced to take if he did not take and pass that AP test. though years ago when we made this decision which at the time was controversial if you remember we made it for that very reason but we also made it to make sure that we were measuring how effective we were teaching those AP courses and the to see our teachers continue to raise the bar. I mean that's the kind of professionals that are teaching those classes. They're remarkable. They're extraordinary. They keep raising their own bar. They're like Michael Phelps. They break a record, they break that record. Um, and it's just it's just remarkable to watch. So, I can't thank you enough for that. Recognizing that and acknowledge that in your comments, but obviously to Miss Gman,
039Miss Burns, um, our supervisors, our principles, and most importantly, our teachers teaching our classes. >> Thank you, Dr. Lobby. Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you so much for everyone's attention and I I will be back uh in a month further down the road with the NJSLA data. >> Might be a little more sobering, but >> yes, >> we can't wait for that. Thank you so much. Great job. >> And now for the most thrilling presentation of the evening. >> He's trying to escape right now. He's trying to leave the room. Oh, you're going to do it from the podium. >> He needs the clicker. >> He needs Let's see who is quicker. M >> and in this corner weighing >> I present to you >> the infamous Mr. Glock Malloy. >> I
040I object to the comparison of timing. I'm just going to put it there. >> We don't have nearly as much data to present as Miss Gman did. So um as we have every year, this is our uh period 2 student safety um data report. Um within that category we have um both our actual period 2 as well as any revisions to our period one which runs from September to December and then period 2 January to June. Our categories and subcategories for student safety data reporting to the state of New Jersey are listed up there including our high levels of violence, substance, weapons, vandalism, HIVs and other incidents that result in removal from the uh normal academic program. our period 1 data which you saw already back in January. So I'm not going to focus much
041on that. Um we do have period 2 data broken out in its subsections but I'm going to jump down to our totals for the year which will be on your next slide. You can see here our highle categories broken down by school. U the larger numbers indicate um the scores that our um individual uh buildings had in those categories. The smaller number underneath indicates a year-over-year change um from last year. Some points to highlight there and a few more that I'll address when I look at some of the subcategories, but you can see a significant drop particularly in some of our larger buildings like the middle school and the high school in specific areas. Middle school had an overall um noticeable drop of 37 incidents in our violence category. Both the middle school and the
042high school dropped their other incidents by pretty substantial numbers. this year. Uh we did have some increases in some categories, particularly at the elementary levels. Uh that's a little misleading though. Um diving down into the data with the principles, much of this increase was um due to individual students that were uh experiencing specific uh crisis situations. And when staff intervened in accordance with our appropriate training, it met the technical definition of assaults and other um incidents of violence there. So those are not student on student cases in the elementary level most situations that is staff and student interactions when addressing crisis situations. So coming down and looking at the the subgroup breakdown for our violence category, we saw the top level on the previous slide, but here this is a little bit more telling. While
043the middle school had an overall drop um in violence, the high school went up a little bit, but the subgroup categories tell a little bit more of a story. Um contained within violence is certainly assaults, fights, things of that nature, but it's also threats. So, while the high school's overall violence numbers went up, the actual violence, physical assaults, um, fights went down, um, transferred over into the threat category in many situations, uh, which is pretty much a reflection of the high school administration's work to try to proactively address violent situations in the buildings. Of course, in some of those cases, the interactions were still taking place. it resulted in threats of violence, but the high school administration, high school staff were able to intervene before actual violence occurred. So, that's where we had a clear
044drop for our middle school. High school wasn't as clear on the top level category, but as you look down at the the more detailed breakdown of the subgroups, um it does tell a story for both of our large buildings at vandalism. And this is not ever a highscoring group. Um, we saw our top level numbers two slides ago. Here's our breakdown by categories. And in most cases, our vandalism is damage to property, um, low-level theft, and false public alarm. That's where we see the most of our vandalism categories. Coming down to our next slide, reporting period one, our comparison year-over-year going back to 1718. Um, this data is data that you saw back in January. Period. Two, our breakdown comparison back to 1718. And then again looking at our totals, you can see for districtwide
045in in many areas, particularly in our other incidents um relating to suspensions, we had significant drops this year over our last uh last year. Um, and in many of our categories, we see kind of that spread, which although these are our overall district numbers, you can see from the subgroup breakdowns that I shown in the last couple slides where we truly do have um a real reflection of how we have addressed uh some of the key components of disciplinary infractions. It doesn't always result in a total drop in numbers, but it results in a drop of those critical violent incidents relating to suspensions. Moving out of our discipline data into our HIV training and program data. Again, these are um required by the state of New Jersey for us to report what trainings and programs
046we have initiated in our schools for both reporting period one and two in the area of harassment, intimidation, and bullying. On this slide, you can see some of our examples provided by the state of New Jersey. And diving down into our next couple slides, you see the breakdown by school for reporting period one, two, and our totals. In many cases, you will see that our schools frontload a lot of the trainings in the beginning of the year, which is common. That's when we do a lot of our introductory, a lot of our new teacher trainings, new staff trainings. So, it's very common for us to see in report reporting period one higher numbers than in reporting period two. But overall, you can see throughout the course going back to 1718, although the numbers vary a
047little bit sometimes between trainings and programs, our totals have remained fairly consistent and we've increased um in our overall trainings and programs as we've moved through the years. Sometimes the variation between trainings and programs are simply we did roll out a training that became a program. So that is often another reason where you may see es and flows between trainings and programs. Our last um category for our student safety data system. Um this is very often uh related to to much of the work that Mr. Nasser and his team do with our restraints and seclusions. Um this is a relatively new reporting requirement still again broken down into period one or two. Um in Seville we do not do seclusions. So for us although seclusions are reported criteria it is restraints. This is specific to
048our special education population. This is not general education and this is again often in response to students that um may be harming themselves uh may be having a crisis situation and restraints are aligned with our formalized training within the district. Um you can see here our reporting period one data, our period 2 data and then our overall comparison. Again we do not have back to 1718 as this is a relatively new reporting requirement. Um but you can see that while our numbers are a little higher than last year. they're significantly lower than the first year in reporting and that often es and flows based on individual students um and the needs of those students um throughout the course of uh their school year. And on our final slide, we have our totals for restraints and
049seclusions for each of our individual buildings. And last up, our overall totals going back to 2223. And here is where you can truly see um although our reporting period one and two data vary a little bit, our overall totals for restraints have gone down significantly, which that I can attribute to Mr. Nast and his team. Any questions? Well, as always, it looks like we're doing a fine job, doing the best we can with what we have and always looking to improve so that we can do better. >> Yeah. And if I can just add some comment to that, Mr. Glock Malloy pointed it out. um with regard to the actual reporting data, but um I don't want to um overstate it and I well I I want to underscore the fact that our building administration
050has worked really hard this year at all levels um to first of all decrease the amount of violent infractions um decrease overall referrals and most importantly decrease the number of infractions that might lead to a serious consequence like a suspension. And one of the things that I'm very proud of is the work that was done this year at the high school and middle school. Not only did they significantly decrease the number of fighting infractions, um they significantly decreased the number of infractions that led to out of school suspensions and inschool suspensions. In fact, I believe the middle school decreased the number of inschool suspensions by 50%. and both schools decreased the number of total discipline referrals u by close to 15%. So again a lot of work going into improving the climate >> at all
051of our schools especially since the demographics in serville are changing dramatically. Um not only um are our our our ethnic demographics changing but our socioeconomic demographics are changing. We spoke recently about the fact that our students that speak English as a second language has increased by three-fold. When I got to the district, the number of students receiving free and reduced lunch was just barely over 20%. Miss Gman informed me today that we're at 43%. >> Um so we are changing. So with the change um becomes you know there are sometimes differences in values. um we have to make sure that the home and the school are aligned in terms of the type of behavior that we expect students to demonstrate in school. So I think that our building administration and our faculty has done an
052enormous job of communicating with our families but also demonstrating through our actions and through our activities um in other resources the type of behavior we expect and the type of behavior we won't tolerate in our schools. No, silly maybe a silly question, but kind of related to that and I don't know if we're seeing any early indicators over our summer programs this year, but with how we're making schools more physically comfortable with cooling and stuff, are we going to see >> are we going to see because we all know when you see heat in cities and stuff like that go up, violence tends to go up. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Smith, because Mr. Nester actually uh commented about this after polling our teachers here at the Sam Celler Elementary School, which is one
053of our schools right now that is fully airond conditioned. Um about was there a difference not only in the actual climate temperature in the classrooms, but the climate in terms of behavior due to the comfortable environment that our students are in. Mr. Nasser. >> So Mr. Smith, thank you for serving that one up. I'm very happy to address that. Yeah, you did. So, Camp Excel is often the test case in this district because we start on July 1st or thereabouts for most of our programming that we start out for the year. Um, this year it's been a game changer. The the the staff are at peace physically, the children are are at peace physically and emotionally. Um, we've seen very little behaviors, even from our students with developmental disabilities who can't necessarily control them. Everybody
054seems to be very, very peaceful this year and engaged and on task. Um, I think we have to attribute that to not only our superintendent's vision to seal our buildings before pumping cold air into them, but to this board support over the last few years for for going out for the referendum and getting it done. So, I think at the end of the day, you will see Miss Gman, Miss Burns, my scores go up district-wide because of the the environment and climate. >> That's great. >> And behavior go down. >> Well, and and to add to that, um the students in the past, I've been working with it for three summers. I always had students that would withdraw from the program because they it was uncomfortable, it was hot. I have I not a single
055student has dropped out of learning acceleration this summer. So, I would withdraw. >> They're here for it. Yes, they're here for it, which there is going to help us with our proficiency. >> And that is another variable that that you bring up. Attendance is very strong on camp, much stronger than years past, even in this last week. >> Yeah. >> So, I mean, we're going to see such great benefits across the board from this. So, we can't thank you enough. >> No, that is fantastic. That's just such a added benefit that is being shown. >> And thank you to the public who voted it in. >> Amen. >> We appreciate it. Absolutely. >> Definitely. Thank you to the residents. >> Okay, thank you. I think that's it for our presentations tonight. Uh now we will
056move on to board discussion. Uh finance and infrastructure, Mrs. Pabone. >> Okay, we'll give you a minute. >> Turn your mic on. >> We held our um finance and infrastructure meeting last on the 15th, I think it was. Right. What's my note? >> Yep. July 15th. Um, and Mr. Jimmy provided an update on all the facility improvement referendum projects. He reported that the panel replacement has started at Truman. Likewise, the high school and middle school media center switch gears have been installed. The switch gear at the middle school is also now connected to the new transformer, which was a big thing. We waiting on that for a while. While there is power to a portion of the building, the vendor is in the process of connecting the remaining portions of the building to the new
057switch gear. Similarly, the switch gear for Wilson has been installed and will be powered up once the transformers there also have been installed by JCPNL. A switch gear will need still needs to be installed at the Eisenhower and Truman School. Samell HVAC, which we're sitting in right now, installation is nearly finished as all spaces now have air conditioning, which is unbelievable that it came so quickly. I thought it was going to take us years and years. The middle school HVAC installation is progressing well. And if everything goes as planned, let's keep our fingers crossed. All spaces will have air conditioner by September 4th. And that will improve that as well, the behavior because it is hot in Sep. you know, when you go back to school, you're like, so that is very good. Um the
058however, there's going to be some open and exposed ceilings at the time because that, you know, has to still be worked upon. Um the installation of the HVAC on the first floor of the high school should be finished by August 1st. Yay. And the installation of the HVAC units at Arlith are also progressing as planned and should be finished by September 4th. Um again, some ceilings may be left open. It won't be harmful to the kids, but it'll be unsightly. Um, the installation of the HVAC units at Eisenhower and Wilson has also begun and is progressing according to schedule. Both schools should have AC by the beginning or midepptember. Finally, the HVAC units are beginning to be installed at se I can never say it is slow. I never say it right. And the switch
059gear should be installed by the end of this month. However, we will not be able to power it as its new transformer is installed by JCPL sometime late in the fall. On other projects not related to the referendum, um we had some updates on our litigation with Green Skies and the Burrow and uh they just had oral arguments for the um Burrow lawsuit on the 18th. So, we you know, we don't have an answer yet. We'll see how that goes. Um, and then on the 16th, we were going to open up bids, but we didn't get any right for the solar. So, that was a little bit disappointing, but we will not give up. Um, everything else is doing good. And I do want to say, um, I say it all the time and I'm
060going to say it again, but, um, Jimmy is our pro, just people in the public don't know that Jimmy actually is the project manager. So instead of hiring an outside person, he has been tasked with this job. And he has really done an incredible job of getting all this stuff done and making sure that it's done within budget. We have not, you know, we the public should be very proud of everybody that's working on this and um not wasting their money. So people want to complain, oh, it's cost so much money because some people don't think the school should be cooled. Okay. However, um you know, we really did a good job and made use of every single dollar. So that's it. >> Thank you, Mrs. Pabone. Um, personnel, since Mr. Callahan is not here,
061Dr. Aguileles, will you >> I don't know if I can do as good a job as M. Pabone, but I will try. >> Do your best. >> We discussed this um this evening. We discussed open positions in both certificate and non-certificated staff. We also discussed uh some upcoming changes to teacher observations based on changes the state has made. Uh we will have a better update in August once uh we get more information from the state and we discuss new hires. >> Thank you Dr. Agu. >> You're welcome and to the point. >> Okay. Governance committee Mr. Fernandez. >> The governance committee met on July 2022. We reviewed policy regulations 5600 relating to student discipline code of conduct for some minor revisions. We also reviewed Strauss ESM alert 235 which impacts 12 different laws and regulations.
062We also reviewed job descriptions which are on on today's agenda for first reading including administrative secretary for security and technology, part-time secretary for technology and security and a revised director of curricul curriculum and instruction. We also discussed changes to the to the upcoming calendars for 2526 as well as 2627. And we also discussed change sorry. We also discussed updated to uh to the legislation for transparency laws. >> That's it. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Fernandez. Uh, student achievement. Miss Gman, I don't know what you can add, but go for it. >> And I'll try to be brief. Last Tuesday, prior to the governance meeting, the student achievement committee met. We discussed the six curriculum guides that are on the agenda for tonight's approval. We also reviewed the data that I shared earlier, so I will
063not beat the dead horse. Um, we talked about the calendars as well that Mr. Fernandez just referenced to and we discussed the 2526 memorandum of understanding for Ryder University where our high school students can earn college credits for tomorrow's teachers honors. We reviewed the emergency virtual plan that needs to be submitted for approval to the Middle Sex County Executive Superintendent as well as our 2526 NJDOE bilingual waiver application. Uh Dr. Labby reviewed the calendar um changes that are necessary due to the Eid holidays and Audrey then informs the committee that we are going to have in 2526 our first dual language preschool classroom. So we are going to have a bilingual English and Spanish prek program at project before >> at Cheesequake. Thank you. um she was speaking about how one of the parents that
064opted for the program actually uh speaks a third language at home. So they were excited about their child's becoming triilingual through our efforts. So it was very exciting. Um Audrey also talked about our eers results for our project before at Cheesequake where we were recognized and earned our stars. Correct? three, four, >> three stars for our program at Cheesequake. And then uh Bridgetette Bert spoke about several of grants updates um specifically the Perkins grant, the community oriented policing services otherwise known as the cops grant, the climate change grant, and then she elaborated on professional development uh summer learning that's going on right now for staff and the new staff orientation which will take place during the week of August 25th. The next meeting is August 19th. Did I get it, Miss Hernandez? All right, good.
065>> Thank you, Miss Gman. >> Can I make a comment just before we go on? I just I just it it tickles me to hear about the dual language class in the preschool. And I I don't know if it's the only one, but I I just am so proud that we are going to be one of the first districts to open a dual language class where the kids are going to learn both English and Spanish at the same time. Every single child in that class. And then the fact that a parent volunteered for their child to be in there so that their child could learn another language. And if you do a lot of research into language acquisition in the brain up to the age of seven, children can learn well over seven or eight
066different languages because they're still learning it in the left side of their brain. But after the age of a seven for the average child, when you learn a new language, you learn it in the right side of your brain, which is what causes you to translate in your head. You got to cross you it has to cross over the corpus colossum and everything like that. Not to get too deep and sound like Tim Burn but the fact that we are giving we are giving 15 children and I hope that turns into 30 children next year. 15 children the opportunity to learn two languages before that their brain, you know, again, learns language on the other side of their brain. I just think is remarkable and I just it again I don't know if tickles me
067is the right word, but I just I'm so proud. >> We sent out a survey to the parents at Cheesequake and within one day we had um about 46 responses of parents that were interested. So we could only take 15. So, we do have someone from tools of the mind curriculum that is going to be coming and he's going to do um a residency he's calling it for 3 days and he's going to work with the teacher and he's also going to join us um in August. We were trying to set a date and he's going to join us with the virtual meeting or in person. He said he would do either one with the parents and he's going to work with the teacher and he is tools in mind um bilingual. So, we're very
068excited to work with Louise. So, we're thrilled. >> Outstanding. >> I'm so excited about it. When I heard it and everything, I think it's incredible that we are doing it. We're one of the first ones to do it. What opportunity we're giving to these kids at >> and parents. Parents are thrilled, >> you know, age to grow and do this. And I hope this is something that we can do in other schools. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Tim Burn, I know you're surprised, is waiting to do it in kindergarten. Oh, God help us. >> Um, I just want to make a comment. I have that book club, right? So, all of the children are from Seyville and some of them are like prek and they are unbelievably smart. I mean, they just know how to read. I
069mean, it's that they're four years old sitting there reading Charlotte's Web with like I'm like, "Oh my god." So, you know, they're are doing a good job. Thank you so much. Um, okay. I'm up. Middle Sex County School Board Association's update. We had our annual summer organization meeting on July 24th. Uh, we picked topics that we think will be of value to board members moving forward at our meetings this year. And once we have all the dates locked in, I will share them with you. But we're looking forward to another good year. That's it for me. Okay. And now uh we will open to public participation for presentation or agenda items only. >> Okay. Seeing none, we will close public and Dr. Labby, you will give us your agenda. >> Thank you, Mrs. Bloom. I'm
070going to go old school on you today. I don't have anything on my computer, so I just I went ahead and highlighted some things. So for finance and infrastructure, I'm going to bring your attention to page four if you don't mind. uh 23 and 24. We were we were gasping a little bit to see if we were going to get any federal funding. Um but they are starting to release federal funding and you can see that we're asking you to approve the Perkins grant as well as the uh Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant. Um so that's 23 and 24. 27 is related to it because we used the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant um to offset some salaries. So again, very necessary and you can find that on page five. Uh, also on
071page five is an interesting number 28. I wanted to just highlight it the fact that, you know, for a while the bid threshold for when we would have to, you know, go out to bid if we wanted something over a certain amount was $40,000 if you were a qualified purchase purchasing agent, which Aaron is. Uh, now they've moved that up to $53,000, which gives us greater flexibility. So what that means is if we want to purchase something that's under $53,000, we do not have to go out to bid for it. So I think that was important to highlight to you. So we just need you to approve that. If you move on to page six, um there is two there, number 32 and 33. I want to bring your attention. Those are change orders. One
072is to the parking lot expansion project at Eisenhower, which by the way is going really well. However, when we were creating the second parking lot, um to the left of the Eisenhower School, we discovered an uncharted manhole um wasn't there in the drawings, wasn't you know, you know, but it was there. So, obviously, it had to be remediated. Um so, we needed we need a change order, which is the change order for I believe it's um uh $14,000. >> Yep. >> For this one. >> No, I'm sorry. $10,000, >> $10,000. I'm sorry. I'm not reading right. Yeah. $10,000 for that. Um, and then number 33 is a change order for the referendum. And I'm bringing it to your attention because it it happens so often, and Jim, Mr. Coleman'sburgger will tell you that I whenever
073I get a call from Jimmy, nine out of 10 times, it's not good. And I can't tell you how many times in the winter I get a phone call from Jimmy saying, you know, the we we have to do a fire watch because the fire suppression system piping just burst again. um it's been a problem for since I've been here in Sville. So um due to the ref with the referendum, we're taking advantage of that um our our funding there to do a change order so that we can replace that piping there which has been needed for quite some time. So great job by Mr. Kman'sburgger in identifying that and great job in Aaron in using the referendum to for that change order. And then if I could bring your attention to number uh 36
074on page seven, Miss Gman spoke about that based upon the results that she reported to you and Mr. Smith inquired about with regard to the performance of our students on the NJGPA due to study sync. Um we're asking now to number 36 to approve the purchase of the study sync material for the middle school. Yeah. And so I'm so sorry. We're getting there. Um and then on the last one that I want to bring to your attention on um the finance and infrastructure is on page eight which is number 42. And if you might recall during our budget process but also during all of our student achievement meetings, Miss Gman and Miss Bert talked about the focus grant that they applied for and that would be for our uh literacy screener. So, um, again, we're
075always trying to take advantage of any type of funding that we can get from the DOE. And again, I give credit to Miss Bert, Miss Burns, and Miss Gman. They're quite aggressive in finding these grants and going after that money. Um, aggressive in a nice way. Um, they are. And, um, um, I I'd even say tenacious. Um, and they did. they found this money and um were able to buy our literacy screener which by the way is an NJDOE requirement um through grant funding. So kudos to them in that and that would be we're going to be using the dibbles which is an old school literacy screener been around for a long time. I don't know Miss uh Gman you want to add to that. No, it is an updated version though. So, it's Dibbles
0768 through um Amplifies Mclass. So, it's a digitalized. So, it's it's it's it is a little bit more advanced than the one I used back when I rode the dinosaur to work, but you know, >> it's old school. >> Um, any questions on those items or anything else on finance and infrastructure? It's a long one, so take your time. Okay, seeing or hearing none and everybody can ask questions later on before we vote too or comment later on. But let's move on to uh student achievement. Uh somebody's probably on the roof working. Oh, it could be fireworks, too. Is that somebody on the roof or fireworks? >> Oh, it must be fireworks then. I thought the only fireworks were in here. Um, okay. So, if I can bring your attention to page 20 on curriculum,
077I mean, student achievement. Miss Grossman referenced it in her student achievement report. We do have some curriculum guides that we're asking you to approve. You can find them in number three. And she didn't touch upon this, but what we ask you to do every year on page on uh page 20 numbers four, five, and six, we ask you to approve the back to school nights, which are there, as well as the um parent teacher conference dates in January. And as you know, we go we begin those the day after the Martin Luther King holiday. And those are early dismissal days that whole week, but these are the evening conferences. And then of course our K to five trimester report uh periods, marking periods as well as our fourth quarter or four quarter marking periods for
078grades 6 through 12. And then there are other items there but those are the most important ones that I want to bring to your attention. But does anyone have any questions on either those or any of the other items? All right. hearing and seeing none. So, if I can bring your attention now to page 25 of the agenda. And again, Mr. Fernandez did a great job of reporting this. Number three, we're asking you to approve the revised uh regulation 560. That's a student discipline code of conduct. And there was only a minor change and that was, I believe, at the SAM cell upper elementary school. Um, so very minor change to the discipline code of conduct. And by the way, it's required that school districts do this every year, that you sit down with your
079building administration and you go over the code of conduct to make sure it's fair and equitable. Not a lot of school districts do it and I know it, but I give Mr. Glock Malloy and all of our building administrators great credit because um they are um very disciplined in making sure that occurs every year. So, thank you Mr. Glock Malloy for facilitating that. number five, which is also on page 25 as well as number six, and this was referenced by Mr. um Mr. Fernandez as well as Miss Gman, we are asking you to approve revisions to both the 2526 and 2627 calendar just because uh we rely greatly on um the Savville Muslim Association as being our resource for the Eid holidays. And the Eid holidays can be a little bit confusing because they're not
080exact dates. they rely heavily upon the lunar calendar. Um, and we had a little bit of a problem this year with it. But again, the most important thing is we try to get the correct dates on the calendar and then hopefully when the lunar calendar is illuminated, uh, we're able to to to determine the exact date. So, in this particular case, what we're just doing on the 2526 calendar is putting an asterisk on both of those dates. I think it's a March date and a May date saying it's subject to change based upon the lunar calendar. All right, but in both cases, if the date were to change, it's just another day. It's not adding a holiday or taking away a holiday. And number 27, uh number six on the 2026 2027 uh calendar, we
081did have the date incorrect and we thank the Muslim association for pointing that out to us. So Eid alpha is actually on March 10th uh actually March 9th and not March 10th the way it was in the previously approved calendar but we also put the subject to change asterk and notation on those calendars too. And then finally number eight on page 26 within the governance portion um as Mr. Fernandez mentioned earlier we have several job descriptions that we're asking to change. Most of them are minor changes to the job descriptions but one is really important. It's the uh part-time secretary for technology and security. We need you to approve that so that we can go ahead and post that position. Any questions on those items or anything else I did not mention uh in my
082report from governance. All right. Hearing and seeing none. And then for personnel, again, we have so many agenda items. I I can't possibly go through all of them, but I will bring your attention. Let's go right to page 32. Um, so numbers 14 through 16. Uh, naturally, especially in the summer, we're asking you to appoint new certificated non-certificated staff. You can also find some more on pages 45 and 46. And then of course we're asking you to approve some transfers and uh you can find them beginning on page 34 of the agenda um 17 through 21 as well as 46 I mean 47 and 48 on the addendum. And a lot of those transfers are transfers that don't necessarily need to be approved by you but we ask you to approve them just so it
083helps us better track uh where some of our teachers are going. Um but also as you know we loop our teachers in kindergarten first grade. So we naturally have to ask you to approve that transfer but we we actually label that looping teachers and you can see all the teachers that are looping with their kids from K to one. All right. So again it's it's a it's a lot of information. Uh, but are there any questions on anything that I mentioned or did not mention on personnel? >> All right, Mrs. Bloom, that concludes my report. >> Sorry, I have a question. >> Sure. >> Um, sorry. Sorry. page 10 that we are surplus that we're going to um try to sold and at the end it says if the board is unsuccessful in selling the
084surplus of property the items will be disposed of. >> Oh okay. >> We mentioned if we can donate those items. >> Well there comes a point where we we can donate items or we can just dispose of them. But as a practice and as a pol a procedure, what we've done first is to see if we could sell them. >> So we're required to by law. >> Oh, we are. >> We're required by But if we don't sell them instead of disposable, I guess we can put, you know, donate it. >> We certainly can. Um but these particular kinds of items will likely sell. >> This is buses and um a food warming tray. So those are a little bit more marketable. >> Yeah. Okay. Good question. Anything else? Okay, thank you. >> So move.
085>> Second. >> So that was Mr. Smith and Mrs. Npalitano. Okay. Um, Mr. Fernandez. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hernandez. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Npalitano. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Pabone. >> Yes. >> Mr. Smith. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Bloom >> need to personnel page 44 number 33 Saturday detention. The first candidate I need to abain. Anything else? Yes. >> Okay. All motions pass. >> You couldn't hear me. Okay. We will now open to public for any items. I will remind you that our time is 30 minutes. Each speaker is allowed three minutes. If you are from Seville, a local resident, we would like you to speak first. I would also ask you to line up so we can gauge our speakers. And if anyone wants to speak, you can do so at this time. Hello. Uh,
086my name is Christian Marcato. I'm a Saveville resident. I'm here tonight to bring attention to an issue that's directly affected my family and that could affect others in the future if it's not addressed. And it's one that I will certainly be following up on with the board of ed. Uh, my children do not attend Sarville public schools. Instead, they attend a private school. As you know, New Jersey families with children in private schools who qualify for busing are entitled to a $1,000 stipen per child. I have two children, therefore am entitled to a $2,000 stipen. Uh throughout the school year, I stayed in regular contact with my children's school regarding the forms needed to obtain the stipend. I completed and returned all documents they sent me, and they in turn sent them to the Sville
087School District. When the stipen didn't arrive in early July, I contacted the district and was told that a specific form was missing, but that form was never given to me. I never had the chance to complete it. I followed up about this on July 7th and on July 9th. And then I received no reply from the district for 12 days. When I finally heard back from the business administrator, I was told the deadline had passed and that the fiscal year was was closed out and that nothing could be done. Respectfully, that does not sound like an honest or a valid excuse. Districts amend fiscal years all the time. I've been in public education myself for 13 years. I've seen it happen. If you go back to the Saveville minutes from July 2024, you will find
088uh amendments to the previous fiscal year. I was also cited uh guidance saying districts are not required to distribute funds after a missed deadline. So, I asked the question plainly. I said, "Is the district unable to pay me my funds or are they simply not required to?" And that question went unanswered, and I think I know the reason why. I requested a phone call with the business office about my issue, and I was told there was nothing to discuss. A week ago, I sent a follow-up email to the business administrator, and my email has been completely ignored. I really didn't want to come here tonight, but my uh my issues have just been completely ignored and cast to the side. What's most disheartening is this. Most people when they see a neighbor in need, they
089try to help. That's the basic decency I expected. Sadly, that's not what I encountered. As a taxpayer, I find it unacceptable to face such unprofessionalism and indifference to my issues. I know for a fact that other school districts frequently help out families in their town when faced with similar issues, but that has not been my experience here. So I ask, if a parent follows every instruction but never receives final form through no fault of their own, should they be penalized? Should rigid procedure and state deadlines outweigh fairness and common sense? My request is simple. Don't penalize families for breakdowns they didn't cause. Hire leaders who value doing what's right over doing what's easy. And get those who generally want to help others in their town in positions of influence. I'll be following up with each
090board member individually until my issue is resolved. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> Next, please. >> Good evening. My name is Terresa Focarelli. I am a Seerville resident and a grandparent of middle and elementary age students. Uh parents and grandparents are greatly impacted by policy 5756 that was passed down from the state in 2017 by Governor Chris Christie. the governor required that the state uh department of ed um provide guidance to schools about policies involving transgender students. Now, seven years later, we know that many school districts across the state have either accepted, rescended, or amended this policy. There is no legal authority that requires a district to adopt the 2018 NJ DOE 5756 policy guidance for school districts as written. Every district is however free to develop its own policy on this
091issue. We know that parents are the best advocates by nature for their children. Children are our responsibility which every parent and child already knows. Every doctor, policeman, even the schools have agreed with this for decades. A child is not even allowed to take an aspirin without parental permission given to the school. It's deeply troubling when parents in New Jersey fear sending their children into schools that are not shaped by transparency and collaboration, but by the influence of those that do not recognize all of their constituency. Most voters have trust in their elected officials to represent them even when they're not present. Taking away a parents right to know any information regarding the well-being of their child's personal and physical information is illegal and unethical. Any child in crisis does require an urgent need for support
092and that support must include their parents and their family. We ask you to please reconsider your stand and feelings with policy 5756. We ask that you would rescend it and please allow all and any of Seerville's policies to be tailored by parental involvement. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next. >> Good evening. Joe Compa, Sville resident. I'm here tonight, as every month, because policy 5756 is unconstitutional. It impedes on parents' rights as provided for in both federal and state law. I would like to address a point from last month's meeting, an assertion that was made here. Question was asked of Dr. Labby, uh whether any secret files have been uh made for students in this district. And the answer was none that I know of. Uh well, there are a few problems with that. And the
093first is that by the very own policy language, it very clearly states and I can quote it that all files must be all information must be kept in a separate confidential file. That is a confidential file. By the plain words of the policy, the existence of the file itself is confidential as well as the file and the information inside. The policy also states, quote, "This file should only be shared with appropriate school staff members after consultation with the student." End quote. So, further, the policy prohibits even revealing that a transgender status is uh in the in the district. Again, quoting the the policy, the school district shall keep uh confidential the the current new and prospective students transgender status. So, by your own rule, first, Dr. Labby may not even know about this because even
094though he's very important in the district, I'm sure not every student wants him to know about their confidential status. So, that could be an issue right there. Um, but also, um, I'm guessing maybe he didn't know or maybe he was trying to keep it confidential because by the rule that I just quoted, he really isn't supposed to be telling us that there are any confidential files or that there are any transgender students. It will raise questions and parents will have those questions. So whether there are secret files or not, secret files are a violation of our parental rights. It's a violation and it is unconstitutional. So that brings us to the answer that we we heard and so either it was a violation of the policy or trying to keep the policy. But either way,
095we cannot allow par parental rights to be taken by the school board. Secret files are not allowed. I also would like to request that 5756 be rescended. Uh it's important that parents also understand that the board in that policy directs the principal and I quote that the principal should discuss with >> sorry your time is up but thank you >> next. >> Hi Lisa Reebach also a Sville resident. First, I want to say thank you to everybody for the last 17 years. Even though a lot of you weren't here 17 years ago when I started as a parent in this district, I am now a no longer a parent. So, I want to thank you all for my kids wonderful education. And um the last meeting I attended, there was a vote on 5756 and
096it was voted down and here we are again. And I am so so sick and tired of taking time away from my family to come here and fight for the kids for kids rights, which is what the law is based on. There are, I believe, the last I checked it was 28 districts out of almost 600 in New Jersey that rescended policy 5756. And if I'm wrong, please correct me. I'm definitely not perfect. Um, so that's such a small percentage. looking through the districts like um Marorrow, Manalapin have had their they they've written their own policies, but it's been argued against by the state attorney general because the students were being discriminated based on their gender or sexuality or things like that. That's what I happened to read. So my question is for the people
097A for the people that keep coming up here asking you to resend the policy, what do you propose to do about the law? And for the people that come up here that are not in this town, what is your interest here? Why do you keep coming to our town and fighting against our children? You want to talk about parents' rights. What about these kids' rights? Who's going to stand up for these kids? If my kid can't tell me something, I want them to have another adult that they can talk to. Both of my kids, and they have. So, I am so sick and tired of coming here and making this a fight every month. It's ridiculous. Drop it. You guys all have so much more important work to do. There's been so much more important
098work done, and I appreciate all of that. this every month. It's ridiculous. And I'd like to politely request if you don't live in our town, don't come to these meetings. It's not your business. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. Next, please. >> My name is Jim Coyle. I'm 65 years old. I've been living in this town my whole life. My brother Joe Coyle works for the Sable Board of Education. His wife is a teacher here in the district. And I just want to say I am against 5756. I'm against biological males competing in girls sports. I'm against biological males being in girls locker rooms. And I'm against keeping secrets from parents. It's not right. And that's about that's all I have to say. >> Thank you. Next, please. >> Steve Fischer, resident of Sville. Um,
099I'm here tonight to I want to congratulate Mr. uh Mallaloy for Glock Malloy for the code of conduct. I think it's a very uh solid document that it's uh covers all the things that a student could be uh in violation of. But I do have one uh question. I saw on all the categories where in some instances there's a pa a parent meeting uh asked for. I I'm assuming that's face-toface communication. There's another part where there's parent contact. I'm assuming that's a phone conversation. And then there's parent notification which I guess is a letter, email or text or in uh in risk of uh giving my age or a fax which I don't think anyone does anymore. But uh there's also a column there there's none where there's no parental contact. Now I was a
100teacher so I know that even though it's not written it doesn't mean the parent wasn't contacted or notified or called. In fact, uh, under the legendary, uh, Mr. Gutowski, who was a athletic director, prince, a vice principal in Sville, he used to always say whenever I would have a meeting with him with a discipline problem, he would always say to me, every single meeting would end with are you uh should I call them or will you all the time? And Mr. Nester, I see the smile on his face. I dealt with him as as a guidance counselor and we know that's what happens. they get notified. But I would like to see that in writing for any incident whether it's uh meeting notification or contact. I think that the the written word is very powerful.
101So when I looked at the code of contact, I was looking for that and I saw in certain areas it was missing. So whether it's a serious event or uh the f a first timer or a habitual thing, I think it would be a good good idea just to put that in the code of conduct. I I would like to see that as a former teacher and uh a citizen just to see that it's written there uh and not just assume that that it was done. Okay. So thank you for your service and uh have a good night. I >> thank you Mr. Fischer. Anyone else? Seeing none, we will close public. Public is closed. Uh, any closing board comments. Okay, we need a motion to adjurnn. >> So move. >> Second. >> Meeting adjourned.
102All in favor? >> I