September 20th, 2022 Board of Education Meeting

001so uh the first item we have is any board correspondence i mean we had we did we did get an email about um a club approval and i know um susan's gonna talk a little bit about club approvals during her ed committee report okay excellent uh so tonight we're going to start with uh with my comments uh uh first of all i wanted to comment on the start of school um it's my belief that this year is likely to be both the most important and most exciting in our history we're very excited to have the new school year now in session and from all indications the opening has been a success and we're finally after two and a half years of the pandemic related restrictions operating as we were in the fall of 2019 i

002know everyone's been yearning for some sense of normalcy and i'm glad to report that that has arrived at wachong hills and this could not have come at any time sooner for our students but particularly for our senior class which is why this year is so important this will be their first full year of normalcy since they entered this building as freshmen our senior class is not known a year at wachong hills that has not been significantly impacted by covid think about that and while we work to make up for the delays and learning that may have occurred i want to again thank the administration our current and prior board members and our faculty for enabling the watch on hills learning community to be open to our students for the past two years while many schools

003were closed i also want to share with you a comment that i shared with our faculty during the convocation ceremony held at the start of the school year for our teachers as many of you are aware the wachong hills regional education association has initiated a work to job action mr fallon will be providing us some important context regarding that action in his negotiations committee report even with all the issues related to negotiations this is what i shared with our faculty our district is not defined by our sprawling campus or this fantastic performing arts center where our bucolic setting here at the wachow mountains it is defined by our faculty people who educate the people who inspire and the people who help reveal the potential and passion of each and every one of our students whether

004that is through literature and science history in the arts athletics or activities so i want to thank the administration and staff for their excellent work to get our building ready to welcome our students for this exciting and important new year the second item i want to comment on is the upcoming referendum the board of education is asking the public to approve an 8 million referendum that will be put before voters on thursday october the 6th i want to reiterate that if approved this bond proposal would have no financial impact on taxpayers this is because we're using funds from our capital reserve as well as up to 40 percent of the project cost contribution from the state of new jersey the only way that we may access these state funds is by going out to referendum

005it's one of the fuel to a few tools we have in our toolbox that we're able to use to benefit from the taxes our residents send to the state that oftentimes benefit other communities at a greater rate than they benefit ours we're able to leverage this state funding to benefit our local citizens and this is similar to how we paid for projects other projects recently including the new turf field a few years ago as well as this beautiful learning commons we're sitting in which has become a real educational hub for the school the proposed capital projects include alterations to the stat steam and robotics lab relocation expansion of the nurses office renovations to the ceramics and photography labs improvements to the locker room five and six and the trainer's room upgrades to the south cafeteria

006lounge enhancements to the occupational and physical therapy rooms replacement of chillers and upgrades to the performing arts center led lighting to bring it up to the standards that we have implemented across the rest of the campus polls will be open from 2 p.m to 8 p.m on october the 6th a vote by a mail option is available and i believe most of those early voting mailing voting letters have gone out polling locations are available on the wachon hills regional high school website as well as a more detailed description of the project i urge all the citizens in longhill warren and wachong to vote yes on the high school no taxpayer impact referendum and then lastly i wanted to albeit belatedly uh say thank you to mrs barone uh who volunteered to step into me step

007in for me during our june graduation ceremony because of my recent health issues i meant to address this in august so forgive me for my tardiness and again thank you for lending a hand and with that i'll turn that back over to you uh dr jewett i will save my comments uh for when i get up to speak uh for the strategic plan update so mr stiese if you have any comments for tonight i do just a couple and uh i will echo the informational and from mr morrison unless you want to be a doctor you are dr morrison okay got it right the first time yeah about the referendum on october 6th uh he gave you the dates he gave the times uh it is a a very good project a very needed project

008um i wish i could show everybody what the robotics room looks like right now so you can get an idea and what what we would like it to look to what it's going to look like um and one of the projects that we'll talk about in our operations committee is the science room and the conversion of that old style room to what it's becoming now i was in the room today i know liz was there too it's going to blow us away just like this room here it's really it's fantastic looking and the ceramics room as well so really looking forward to this project um i hope um everything works out um on the negative side so we've had obviously we have trouble with transportation you start the year uh particularly in the borough of

009watchong as it stands right now and again we'll talk about this in the operations committee as as we did so two of our routes right now are hs14 and hs21 are temporary meaning i only have them for a month and they're just coming here uh the students that are on those routes actually have to wait for the late bus or a parent ride home uh either one so not optimal we are looking every single day almost every minute of every day to get those covered we're working at one of our companies right now i don't want to get into the negotiations and what we're doing however i just want to ensure the public we haven't forgot about it and we haven't forgot about the elementary and middle school as well who are down seven full

010routes um every day we are trying to get routes for those students and we will not stop until we get everybody coming in and going home and then the other only other thing is and i've mentioned at the board a couple times but we certainly are seeing the same inflationary spikes that we are are seeing personally um every possible thing that we buy transportation that i mentioned any service that we do supplies are increasing so i'm just going to keep the board unnoticed we will be continuing to see this inflation hit us as well that i'd so i just want to add to that to reiterate uh regarding the transportation issues that we've been having i do want to assure everyone especially our parents of our students that have had interrupted transportation we have multiple

011conversations multiple times a day the principal mr sties myself and our transportation coordinator trying to figure this out and prior to you know a week prior to school starting i think we were what eight roots down and then uh that was pretty much all that tim ain't drake and slept that week trying to figure that out um but we we absolutely understand what a hardship it is for parents and so we are working on that every day and uh you know we because we also are worried that even that even when we do secure routes that there could end up being interruptions to those during the year for various reasons um just as we had last year so it is something that we are really diligently on top of and i i have to give

012tim a ton of credit because uh he i mean it looks like uh i i don't even know you know the the combination of routes that he put together to be able to secure transportation for wachong um it's uh you know it's it's not neat and tidy at all it was it was a lot of um maneuvering and and finagling different uh options i i walked in his office with and he and bill were actually looking at a map of watchung trying to figure out you know if we could get a smaller bus to a particular area and um so we've been trying every creative solution we can we can find so i really appreciate all of his effort with regard to that okay ready for the strategic plan update okay anthony do we have

013a laptop perfect okay so i will move over there are we going to be able to control it from the we'll put it up there fantastic this was what we were going to present last may but we had pushed it off to september we did update the information with some of the progress that we made over the summer so there is updated information on here from last may what i'm hoping when we give these presentations now i'm hoping that everyone is starting to see the links between what we present in here and everything that's coming through in our board discussions and our committee reports all of the construction projects that we just talked about that we'll be talking about with the operations committee that are part of the referendum they are directly connected to actualizing

014the goals in our strategic plan and so i tremendously appreciate the support that the board gives the plan and gives financially to the facilities related goals and the other goals so that we can provide our students with exceptional educational opportunities in an outstanding facility and do it in the most fiscally responsible manner possible that we can to the taxpayers and that is what tim and i have been sharing at the the township council meetings we attended all three last week long hill warren and wachong uh we will be going to the pto meeting tomorrow night we did have a session here that we invited community members and parents to as well and we presented to the faculty but that is the message that we have been reiterating to everyone and you know that's how the

015board develops the budget every year and that's how we're approaching the construction projects and so you'll see those closely linked to uh the goals and progress that we talk about in the strategic whoops that's not the right button do i just want to hit the middle one okay thank you let's try that again okay uh so these are the four goals of our current strategic plan and i think you know everyone is pretty familiar with these by now uh the first one is all about our social emotional learning the second one has to do with developing pathways for students to whatever their post-high school plans may be the third goal is all around innovation and that's where a lot of our steam course experiences and our new robotics and steam space that we're hoping to

016be able to to work on uh should the referendum pass comes into play and then our fourth goal around diversity equity and inclusion and one thing that i just i always like to to refer to in these presentations and when i talk about this to the new staff and to our current staff is just remind them that all of this is part of our model of continuous improvement in the district and striving to be better tomorrow than we are today and you know as the board is well aware of every summer we take a look at the progress we've made from the prior year we also do it at several benchmarks throughout the year in order to see what where we are with our objectives if we need to make revisions if we need to

017reprioritize and so that's what we're going to talk a little bit about today so i am going to start off by introducing mr sabino and miss tobin to talk about progress on our first goal thank you dr jewett good to see you everybody tonight ms tobin we're going to just go to the first slide here where we're going to talk about the social emotional growth and wellness goals my glasses on here peter i'm going to send this to the player so the first the first bullet on this is in regards to the new jersey school climate initiative survey that we administered last april uh actually going to have a little bit more detail on the next slide on that so i think we'll hold off for a moment on discussing that piece um the second

018bullet in regards to evidence of progress that we're making on the social emotional growth and support for students is um the support we're doing with a strategic ban objective to enhance counseling services and programs to support student growth and development so that's the objective 1.1 in the strategic plan goal that speaks to the school counseling department being engaged in initiatives to work towards implementing a recognized asca model program the american school counselor association is the acronym for the asca that's a comprehensive and data informed approach to school counseling based on national standards you may have heard of asca before it's a national association that helps provide direction and guidance to school counseling programs throughout the country so just for the beginning of the school year we were able to deliver pd for our school counseling

019staff we were fortunate to have a pd presenter dr karen griffith she's a professor at the university of georgia and she came up to specifically specific present on this model for our school counseling staff in in her presentation she reviewed strategies to look specifically at our district performance data through the lens of the school counseling program and identify annual student outcome goal plans for the school counselors to help support so uh that's you know certainly the some of the initiatives and some of the focus of asca is towards some familiar themes here advocacy for student inclusion and supporting academic growth and again post-secondary planning so in short really what the pd was is to reinforce the impact of school counselors as school leaders in the school community the next goal speaks to the pd we

020provided to the rucker our rutgers clinicians who have been working with us now for two years for the staff we last year were able to through our contract with rutgers provide multiple opportunities for pd with the support of ms scheiderman for our staff last march and april rutgers clinicians hosted a faculty lunch and learn that's our most recent pd that we provided and that was entitled integrating sel strategies to support student engagement and developing social and emotional intelligence we had a strong turnout that was also recorded for the staff to view afterwards and that's in addition to the pd we did the start of the school year with the rutgers clinicians as well as well for our staff the next uh bullet is on homework and assessment-free zones ms tobin did you want to speak

021to that uh we did put out a calendar so students and parents are both aware um now it's not they're not told in the moment a few days before the calendar is out and publicized so it is part of our school calendar so everybody's aware so i think that takes away some of the anxiety that students had or parents had that students would be working during certain holidays religious holidays or times of the year so it's implemented and i think it's a great form of communication for students and parents the next evidence of progress is in regards to the support programs to help students with the transition to eighth grade and ninth grade that's most often led up by our vice principal mr flacker um in in those uh he specifically mr flacker i know

022worked this year to try to develop a ninth grade summer program there were some small construction snafus with that this year but i'm sure that's planned on continuing into the future summers in addition to that i know mr flacker has done a lot to enhance the ninth grade uh the ninth grade parent evenings including our curriculum night with miss fallon the eighth grade orientation and also we do the freshman orientation the day before school starts still additionally i think it's important to note that we've enhanced some additional outreach to our transfer students we've seen a significant number of transfer students each year since since we've come on board and so we also reach out to those students specifically welcome them and link them up with peer leaders and provide them additional support which i think

023is is important to get them a part of our learning community and get them engaged and get them involved as quickly as we can so that's been great and then ms tobin do you want to speak on the assessment piece good evening everyone on an academic level we're working with teachers to help them develop authentic assignments and assessments so that students can demonstrate their knowledge in a content area in a unique way we think this is going to help them in a long way not only in high school but as many of many of our students continue on to college so the more assignments and assessments we can create where they're really producing their own work it's only going to help them in the long run on a student personal level because that objective speaks

024a little bit more about developing students from a personal level the administrators have teamed up with counselors to identify and address individual student issues in order to vote to develop a plan to best support students so we've spent a lot of time working with our student assistant counselors our guidance counselors and individually meeting with students to meet their needs so they can progress throughout high school any questions for objective one i think we're just going to review the new jersey sky results on the next slide so for the new jersey sky results uh dr drew would ask me just to go in a bit of detail on this particular item so we were again able to this year have a second year of partnership with rutgers to administer the new jersey sky platform just for

025a reminder that acronym is the new jersey school climate initiative um it's working through rutgers they have a partnership with the rutgers graduate school of applied and professional psychology and and the sole initiative and sole purpose of this um this group is to provide support to schools uh on school climate initiatives through k-12 throughout the state uh fortunately we're one of the first districts that have really been able to take advantage of of this partnership they are outreaching to a number of school districts and expanding this year but we've gotten in kind of at the floor level here uh first during the the pandemic at its height we did a modified climate survey two years back if the board remembers that to those who are on the board and then last year fortunately we were

026able to utilize a more traditional uh deeper dive through the school climate survey in total we had sixteen hundred students 1599 to be exact students participate 185 staff and 341 parents take the survey overall the takeaways was the highest overall mean from the survey that all respondents uh responded favorably to was sense of physical safety so i guess you know that's uh that's the most important on i guess the bloom's taxonomy scale you want to make sure everybody feels safe and everybody feels well you know maslow's hierarchy scale you want to make sure everybody belongs and feels like they belong here in a school environment they feel safe before they can learn the next would be supportive staff student relationships so fortunately and that was that that measured high both along our students as well

027as our staff and also student sense of belonging in the school there's the survey is formatted so that there's no way to have neutral responses you either have to respond towards affirmatively as strongly disagree disagree agree and strongly agree and all of these measures we were well above the strong ex the agree and strongly agree uh from the responses for the area of needed uh growth it was identified under supports for students social and emotional learning uh fortunately it was just at the line there it was right between you know the agree and the disagree line was at 2.5 so there was still a number of students and faculty and stakeholders that did respond affirmatively to this but there's still definitely some area for growth specifically some of the questions were in my school we

028learned how to value all cultures and identities and that was responded with overwhelmingly positive in addition to um in our in my school we learn how our actions affect others how we make good choices and how to respect how others feel those were all responded with favorably the one area that did elicit a bit more um this disagreement and and feeling for need for support was in my school we learn what to do when we feel stress so that i mean to me makes sense certainly in the times that this has been completed the last two years we've had as everybody knows here quite a substantial disruption as dr morrison spoke to in his remarks as well you know so this is an important year for us to kind of get back on track with

029this and also make sure that we're providing support for students and providing additional opportunities and and we'll speak a bit about that throughout tonight's presentation there any questions on this or any questions about the survey okay i think next up is the goal number two mreamer thank you and jason is this the one where you're also going to give some additional information on the empower program good evening everybody so i'm here to talk about strategic plan goal 2 i'm michelle derimer i'm the director of special services so i'll be talking about pathways to educational success for all some of our evidence that we did this year in this past year is that we rolled out the empower program for credit recovery mr sabino we'll talk about that in a moment and expand upon that we

030also reinduced our peer outreach program where we had 29 students participate in that last year and our peer tutoring program had about 75 students that participated in it that was led by our national honor society we updated our steam course offerings for this school year we've redesigned our 12th grade english curriculum that has a focus on expository writing for semester one and then in semester two they have selected senior seminar topics we also participated in learning walks with the middle school teachers our science department observed sixth seventh and eighth grade science classes and a technology class and then did follow-up discussions with those teachers in the school administration our math department observed sixth and seventh grade math classes and again did some follow-up discussions with that we worked on strengthening our relationships with our colleges

031and universities the counseling department invited over 100 college and university representatives to meet and visit with the prospective students the school counseling office held college admission nights and several instant decision days and then we just want to review a bit more about the empower program so i know we've introduced this over the last couple years as we were rolling this uh this program out so again this is part of the strategic plan to ensure that individual students learning goals are supported through a variety of programs so we started this michelle and i uh we were able to get this off the ground last year but by uh by able to hire and identify a dedicated teacher for uh the support of this program um the coursework that this this program has helped support students in

032it covers english social studies science and math in addition to some students with world languages and health last year we had over 40 students benefit from this program both for credit recovery and also proactive academic support for courses that they might have been struggling with we had a number of students that were seniors we also had a few other students that i'll highlight in a minute we also wanted to make sure we delivered this program in an environment that was conducive to different learning styles and with the support of mr riemer and with the board and with all of you we were able to develop a dedicated room for this and i think we're waiting for patiently for some additional furnishings for it to make it even more innovative and flexible for learning styles for

033the students we have mr scanlon who's done a great job who is the staff member we hired to support these students he's certified in english but he also has provided support for these students in all the other content areas i mentioned by utilizing this edge annuity software that we were able to also get bring on board for students to utilize in addition for math we were able to use mr kirchoffer last year to provide credit recovery and credits and support again for students who are off track and who needed to recover credit in that area in addition to that i think it's important to highlight this program has been partnered with our student assistance counselor and our rutgers clinicians they push into the classroom to do different uh learning and and activities with the students

034some things i wanted to highlight were building classroom community and goal setting fixed versus growth mindset time management of course executive functioning skills and then also i think it was interesting she ended the year with a presentation on interaction between thoughts feelings and behaviors and how students identify how their thoughts impact their feelings and then their behaviors so i think it's you know pretty insightful and i was able to do a couple you know opportunities to be in that classroom which was doing these presentations and honestly the students were engaged in participating and i think they got a lot of good takeaways from it so over the summer we also had some success with this program we had over 30 students that were able to earn back over 215 credits again in the same content

035area as i mentioned there was a financial cost we did have some onus on the students to be part of this program and to participate and it was five it was for five weeks tuesday through thursday and students were able to do some work virtually as well on a hybrid model students were able to do up to two courses and again we had dedicated teachers mr scanlon and we had ms stielman for math over the summer the thing i really wanted to highlight for this and i know michelle can agree with i'm sure is the students that with the stories and the individual students that we supported last year the first year of this program we had a fifth year student who honestly would not have come back to school without this program she was

036not comfortable coming back after not being successful the past few years and this provided her an opportunity to come back but also i want to highlight she really should be like the poster child for this program she was able to finish her high school academics but she also had time and miss fallon can speak to this as well to work on some expository writing skills take some a psychology class that she's interested which is interested in taking and be prepared to go off and pass all of her placement tests for community college and she's studying social work as we speak so i mean that's that's just one i think that's you know get a lot of loss in all these numbers but those are the students that we really have been able to support through

037this program this summer it's important to note we had two other seniors who would not have graduated otherwise one who's in the fire academy right now and looking to become a fireman and we also just have i mean a number of students even strong academic students who had interrupted education who had different unique experiences who were out of school or they transferred from one school to different format of curriculum or otherwise who were able to be supported through this program as well as mental health needs and students who needed to be maybe in a smaller setting as they transitioned back to school so it's it's been honestly an overwhelming success in my opinion uh this year we've been able to enhance it a bit more um due to the success that we've had it's more

038able to be tailored more for proactive support for students so students who now because we've had so many who are able to credit recover we're able to get a little ahead of it and even work more closely with students who may be you know identified as needing some support proactively in addition we've provided some additional resources for esl students particularly in the area of math we have ms hershberg and miss trong working with our esl population students using this ingenuity software to help them with their skill deficits and math so it's been really it's been a great program so i think that's it any questions about that program or otherwise for us i think we're going to jason that's room 109 right room 109 right across the hall i literally got a message this afternoon

039possibly thursday i'm going to wear my sneakers on thursday sorry i can help move things around that's right where your sneakers right now um we're utilizing the sr funds to uh fund the the empower program position but that is something when we started it that we had said to the board based on the success of the program we may want to look to put that into the general operating budget so i think we have it in sr for this year and do we have it for next year as well so but that just to keep that in the back of your mind that that's something that we'll we will probably look to add to the general operating budget assuming that they don't keep giving us this or funds maybe they will never know i think

040next up mr melissa mr flocker jason you're doing a great job emceeing the presentation i appreciate it good evening um so i would like to speak about uh our increasing um investment in social media our social media presence here at the high school um this year we looked at uh forming a subcommittee to enhance how we reach out to our community and engage them so we invested in a social media platform called hootsuite which we're currently utilizing and giving our teachers our advisors our coaches the ability to delegate on behalf of the district on our social media platform with moderation so it still goes through the administrative process um it still needs to be approved before it goes out so with the with this tool we're able to reach the community at a higher rate

041and more efficient rate and we get to see the analytics and the feedback that we get in the last um nine months we have grown 30 percent in fellowship and 30 or so in engagement we also revamped our school website so now that the news section on our homepage is pulling from our social media feeds so we're able to update and communicate to our community at a much higher rate of what is happening at the school and you hear all these great success stories so instead of having just a news article being put out maybe once or twice a month it gets updated maybe five ten times a week depending on what is happening at the school and we get to see what the community is responding to and then what they're engaging with and

042we continue to invest in that this year we also ran a small professional development session at the beginning of school year for all teachers so we get them uh brought into the um all teachers coaches and advisors so we get them brought into the program and start utilizing it and talk about all the great things here that's happening at one chunk hills in addition last year we worked on building the video program of studies so we met as a subcommittee we got all the stakeholders in place including teachers students administration and some other staff to structure what this will look like once it goes live so the idea behind here is to advertise our electives onto our website and incorporate that into our program of study this year we're planning our goal for this year

043is to produce two videos per department and include that in our program of study before it goes live so this is not just a teacher driven tool students are involved and they will be helped build what this will look like once it goes live so last year we worked on structuring this we did some demo videos we shared with staff and this year we're hopefully going to roll it out with the program of study mr flacker we'll speak on some other stuff thank you so uh we we identified one one of the actions that uh was identified for this goal was to uh look at how we can showcase student work uh at different times throughout the year so our first steps really that we accomplished this year where we put together a subcommittee of

044supervisors from different disciplines and director of curriculum and we discussed what we already do in terms of showcasing student work we have lots of art exhibits we have musicals plays concerts there's there's a lot of opportunities already on our calendar so we wanted to make sure any future planning we do we're doing it in a way that spreads out um the activities throughout the year we also identified that the calendar is very full and you know we should be careful about where we place things throughout the year but one thing that did come out of uh some of the discussions and we're looking forward to this year is a new science fair uh where where the science department will get to showcase some of some of their work and so many things that that our

045students they are working on we also began planning for the steam design lab referendum um that work uh there was a lot of legwork that was done by you mostly and but um we also started thinking about um the committee uh for the goal started thinking about what are the resources that are currently in use in a building that may be able to take advantage of that space once it is available which faculty members will have expertise that can help us and what equipment that we already own that may be worthwhile to incorporate into that space as well the last item on here is the innovation team which i believe is going to be the core fabric of this goal once it once it's it fully is established and in the future so the innovation

046team um we had a subcommittee last year of teachers and some administration and our goal was first identifying other school districts in the state of new jersey that has something similar similar program we formulated some questions and we met with their leadership in other districts who have founded these programs and we had it you know idea exchange you know successes and struggles that the program had in their district and what we what we were thinking at that time the program would look like here we learned a lot we gathered that information and this year we're planning to review those conversations we had with the other districts and structure goals and objectives for the innovation team that we could build on as as it formulates and as we build this innovation team here in the next

047few years that's all i have any questions for goal three is the social media platform just for the students where could a regular person yeah do you want to go to our home page real quick out of this do you mind or a nic thank you just to you can show them it replaced our news feed on the home page and you can follow any of our anyone can we're on instagram uh facebook and twitter so no matter what which service you like i think you scroll past the neck yeah there we go you can see there's a dance assembly the board of education meeting and there is a uh i believe annual club and from there there could be links to more information uh maybe a sign up form or a link to another

048website so this is run mainly by myself mr bertelli and mr england as well as advisors and coaches so if you hit over sometimes some of our athletic events will show up here too if we had a victory or something else student life is very active there's athletics looking forward to seeing the girls at next week's home game so um this is updated as you can see almost every day and this is something that we didn't have before so this is great way to inform the community not if you just follow us but even if you don't know anything about the school you can quickly see from our homepage who we are and what we do and it's very exciting this just launched in august did it expire again unless you click don't shut again

049yes thank you um so how is everybody doing we're here to speak about strategic plan number four i'm bill de bruyne this is miss marion phelan before we even get into it i wanted i guess bring attention to the picture i think we speak about it on another slide this was called anything but a backpack day and this was an idea brought to us at our principles advisory group where students were speaking about the desire for more school spirit within the school and that has been the input of students and faculty especially of what could we do to reinvigorate you know bring back some life into the school in a positive way and what i've always tried to say is a lot of times as us as administrators if we're bringing up the ideas they're

050not good to students so for things to get rhythm and things to get pace it should come from the students and so here was an idea that sounded crazy to us when they first brought it up and we saw some of the things on social media however the students wanted to do it we spoke about it and this was just a small snapshot of how special this day was and how unique it was compared to other days we had some really creative ideas faculty got involved students really enjoyed it to the point of i've already been approached to do other things this year and maybe one of the things that we will be speaking of next year is a kiss the big a kiss the pig contest uh that is being thought of by our

051students right now so um stay tuned for i guess our presentation next year and maybe we'll have any board members want to participate i'll make sure you get the information yes yes yeah then there'll be a pig okay um so our evidence is a progress and i know that we've been tailing a little long so i don't want to just go into every single point palpitations just so but our evidence of progress transcends different aspects of who we are and that's why this goal is so important i mean as we've spoke about and many times before that this was embedded in the previous strategic plan and the importance on dei and um how we value it has caused it to be its own goal in this one and we see in these evidence of progress

052that it transcends so many different aspects of our school from curriculum in the top to like i said to school spirit to our student code of conduct and updating that with our di values so also figuring out ways to how to connect our high school with our middle school so one of the things that i'll bring up just at the end was at the end of last year we had student leaders from the 8th grade come up to meet our high school students and have a roundtable discussion so there are so many ways that it transcends and we want to point bring attention to this is a goal that will never be fully reached it always will have places to improve always deserves our focus and attention and we are a comprehensive high school and

053it just reminds us that it's not a one size fits all here we have we're comprised of so many different students and we want to make everyone's experience of value doesn't mean that we can do everything but it means that we can have the conversations and try to figure out the best way to create a positive experience in and out of the classroom for all our students and we really have started that partnership with everybody because it's not like i said earlier before it shouldn't be administrative driven it needs to be really a collaboration of everybody involved so um you know excited to be back here next year and maybe we'll have pictures of tim and the pig and um but we thank you for your attention and i guess i can turn it back

054over to uh miss jewett with any concluding remarks i have nothing to say after that no thank you i i really commend the board for the thoughtful process in developing the strategic plan because i hopefully you can see from this i think we we selected the appropriate goals um and i really also want to thank the board for moving forward with the strategic planning process despite the fact that we were dealing with the pandemic because i think we all figured that it wasn't you know we thought it was going to last a couple of weeks and that we'd maybe just be putting this off a month or two months we would have been putting this off for a couple of years if we waited for things to get back to whatever normal is um to

055actually do this and i think that having the strategic plan actually helped us navigate some of the issues of the pandemic and especially a lot of the sel piece and you know if there's any silver lining to anything jason how many people so last week we had our senior night it was the college night for the um parents of our 12th grade students and one of the things we learned from the pandemic that we've kept from uh you know kept uh in our toolbox is that we offer our sessions for parents now in multiple formats um which parents appreciate because they're not running home trying to feed dinner to their family or do whatever they need to do then get here for a meeting so can you just share how many we had um attend

056and actually i think what was janine were you in attendance at it or so how many we had in person and virtually and how many watched it actually afterward as well yes thank you so just for the audience that may be tuning in for this we had 80 that were live in person uh 200 that live streamed uh and another 300 plus that viewed after the fact that's great so it's been you know so some of the um the what we used during the pandemic to get people here who couldn't physically be here we've continued some of that and i think it's helped it's helped increase attendance and also just increase access for parents to events that they may not be able to make it to um so thank you for your attention with that

057and now we'll open it up to any questions or comments any questions from board members ms brown i actually just have a comment so i want to commend everybody so i really think the strategic plan is really coming to life now like so in the beginning we kind of like set these goals and we set these um principles up and it's sort of hard the first year to kind of be like where is this actually going um but now we can see like the fruition of the empower program i love the idea of this innovation team um and so you can really see it starting to like frame and and you can see the goal getting to the achieve you know getting towards the achievement and so i want to commend everybody i feel like

058i really have a good handle on where we're going to be next year and in the following year thank you any other board questions i i have a couple um uh mr sabino just for clarification regarding the social emotional learning component um we are working to integrate that throughout uh the curriculum uh as opposed to what i would refer to as sel in a box we've we find and or has been my experience that i've seen in some districts where they're just going to go buy an off-the-shelf product call the students in and they will have an sel period uh and then they'll go about their their day forgetting everything that was um you know covered in an sel period including what the faculty should be doing related to that so i just wanted to

059confirm that our approach is is a more holistic approach and integrating sel throughout the entire curriculum and across all the content areas could you come to the microphone please thank you sorry to make you get up and down thank you for that question i mean uh certainly this is a partnership with miss fallon as well in regards to the curriculum aspects um but to speak to that we we don't have a purchased uh sel curriculum that we're you know using throughout all of all of the programs i think it's really more uh to to build a bearish point as well an authentic approach you know we're looking to have the student buy-in on this we're looking to to identify through the through the climate survey on what their needs are and really identify it i

060think i skirted over some in the survey and i know i spoke a lot already about the survey but there's some subgroups in the survey that particularly came to light that we certainly want to make sure addition have additionally support uh and you know we again the benefits of the surveys we're able to identify those subgroups of students that may feel they need even more support from us and finding ways through the partnership with with ms fallon and the teachers in the curriculum but also in addition to that so we're certainly mindful that this is not something in addition to or on top of the curriculum but it's embedded throughout all the coursework and those of you who have been on the board and we're on ed committee may recall when we started our journey

061with trying to integrate sel it was before we i have to say we are a bit of a head of the curve um with the dei piece and the sel piece in terms of identifying them as needs because it was we we started working on those before the state and and you know the federal uh government came in and said okay these need to be priorities in schools um so when we had identified the sel piece and we were starting to dip our toe in the water we actually had a day where we wanted t we asked teachers to focus you know something in their lesson on sel and and it it was you know it came with mixed reviews because there were a lot of ted talk videos you know that students watched in

062classes because it was the first time we were we were trying this out and and um you know and it was new to everyone of well is it supposed to be related to my content area is it just supposed to be a day where i'm helping students de-stress and so it was very eye-opening to us as the leadership team of how you know what we needed to do to help teachers with this and then we increased you know to where we said okay it's going to be different days in different departments um and then you know eventually and and the staff was so instrumental in getting this off the ground because then they really took ownership of it and ran with it and so now it's expected that it's part of your you know everyday

063goings-on in your class in terms of the way you run your class and your communication with your students and um and then also integrating you know the sel pieces into the curriculum so we've they're still we still have a long way to go but bob you probably remember that when it was sel in a box when we were first trying to figure out how to fit that into academics because you know the teachers nobody ever nobody at the state has said uh you know okay you know what um math teachers we're you're gonna teach less content this year we're actually removing information from the curriculum all they keep doing is getting things piled on and it's how to fit that in and then when we said okay we also want you to integrate sel it's

064enough to make the teachers you know go a little crazy and pull their hair out trying to figure out how to do all that and i have to say our staff has done a tremendous job um because they are a very compassionate and caring staff so they just had to kind of figure out how to to weave that into to their courses you know and we've spent plc time on that and pd time on that so thank you for asking that question and pointing that out and i think you know a comment that i heard somebody make regarding they were they were asking the question what does what does good sel look like when it's in the classroom and the answer was it looks like good teaching right so that's really what we're doing it's

065all about enhancing the instructional practice it's not about having it look like anything other than just enhancing the overall instructional environment and capacity of our teachers so i think that's something an easy way to explain it is it's just good teaching so um the other i have a comment and then a question for dr jewett so thank you um you know my my comment related to the dei aspect of it uh is just i think it's important in a community as diverse as wachong hills across all spectrums whether it is race and ethnicity whether it's income whether it's religious beliefs um i think that we really need to ensure that our approach to dei is embracing of of everyone and i'm not suggesting that it's that it's not but i think we have to be

066mindful uh as we take this approach that we want to make sure that we're an inclusive environment for all of our students regardless of their background regardless of their beliefs and i think that's something that we have to constantly remind ourselves of you know as we as we move forward uh the question i have for you dr jewett is um we had talked or we had when we were working on the strategic plan and the rollout there was the section of the website that was going to be the the reporting piece that would be public that would allow members of the public to be able to come and see how are we progressing toward implementing the strategic process so i was curious and i know that there's been some bumps in the road with that

067but i i think that would be a good time for an update so the piece of it i'm glad you reminded me of that because we had planned on sharing this um in the spring so let me share my screen i'll share it yup i'll do that in a second so we go to the dashboard um we do have on here where we are indicating the um where we are what our pr and i have to say we haven't actually done this since the spring we updated it all at the end of the year but for the different goals we do have the progress on the different objectives now the piece that we are still trying to that um rutgers i believe jason sorry to make you come up again but um the other piece

068to this is that from the cli the school climate survey rutgers actually has a dashboard that we can show the progress on those indicators so the this this component has another piece that we were a bit misled about the usability of it with the for the um for the data piece but fortunately rutgers is going to have that piece it's just that keeps getting delayed but that's where we will actually be able to show the comparison and the growth on those different indicators uh jason i don't know if you'd have any update on that the timeline they've given is um again i mentioned we got in with rutgers kind of at the ground floor they're launching the what we were part of was the pilot now they're including us districts throughout the state and in

069this new uh 23 spring administration i think that that will be the opportunity to provide more individual because that's when the sky will be going again because the first survey we gave gave was the molex survey all these acronyms but they then they comp they um transitioned to the new jersey sky survey so that's also why they were able to do a crosswalk for us but it's not a true comparison because it's it's obviously a little bit of a different survey so now i think once they we we administer that same survey for the second time we'll really be able to show growth but you can go to our website currently and look at our progress on all of the strategies for every objective in every goal and see where we are so thank you

070thank you for reminding me of that thank you jason anything else any other comments questions if not we will move to our committee reports and for those administrators unless there's anything here that you are dying to stay for you're more than welcome to uh jason you have to stay in case we have more questions for you get along with the rest of your evening thank you so much all for coming really appreciate it thank you all uh moving on we'll go to committee reports first up is the education committee mrs ober thank you educate the education committee met on september 8th at 4 o'clock and on september 9th a copy of the agenda was sent to all the board members that agenda included links to some very important information i hope everybody when they get

071got that was able to click the links and see some of the information that's behind what we discussed in the committee meeting the first first topic was policies and regulations and a list of the new and revised policies and regulations was included on the agenda and included a link to the summary of key points in each one of the policies that is being revised is the policy on religion in schools while we have yet while we have not yet received direction on um on an update from the uh new jersey department of education or strauss esme our superintendent and board attorney reviewed our policy which was last updated in 2004. the revision on for first on our agenda for first read includes removal of a line that does not belong in the policy and it

072is likely unconstitutional therefore we felt it was prudent to go ahead and make that initial revision while we await further direction from the njdoe and strauss esme as per the recent supreme court decision and the line that was removed was accordingly no devotional exercises will be permitted in this district nor shall instructional activities be permitted to advance or inhibit any particular religious sect or religion generally some additional new and revised policies include p 1648-15 record-keeping for health care settings in school buildings it's a new mandated policy which addresses the covered record-keeping requirements of the emergency temporary standard uh issued by osha which was recently expired uh pal p 2417 student intervention referral services is a minor revision to a mandated policy he 2425 and r2425 are a revised policy and a new regulation both mandated

073regarding our emergency remote instruction plan uh there's a new law requiring each district to have its plan approved by the board each year ours is the same as last year last year's plan with some additional information included as required by the njdoe p 5517 school district issued student id cards is a revision to a mandated policy requiring the back of id cards uh requiring that the back of our student id cards uh contain the phone number for the new jersey suicide prevention hotline hope line and the contact information for a crisis text line and p 5722 student journalism is a new mandated policy that pertains to a new law requiring schools to have a written policy concerning students freedom of expression we also have on tonight's agenda for first read is um i think it's

074my first read is the um new and revised curriculum for approval no that's for approval for approval okay so the agenda um that was sent included a list of all of the courses that have new and revised curriculum and links to the details of each course's revisions as updates to health curriculum at the elementary school elementary grade levels has been recently in the news we wanted to clarify that the changes to the 9th through 12th health curriculum have actually shifted some of the human sexuality content from 9th grade to 8th grade the high school curriculum has an increased focus on anatomy and physiology the strand that was formerly referred to as relationships is now incorporated into social and sexual health new standards highlight personal responsibility and respectful behavior toward others especially when it comes to

075understanding boundaries regarding intimacy and sexual behavior we also talked about new club approvals so we discussed two new club proposals one was the disability studies group disability studies club and another was the skateboarding club since the meeting the staff member who volunteered to serve as the volunteer advisor for the disability studies club has rescinded their offer to volunteer the skateboarding club advisor is still willing to volunteer however we're we need to discuss further guidelines with the club's members prior to approval as we have safety as well as facilities use concerns so this club approval is currently on hold um we dr jewett alluded to a email we received from a parent regarding the uh new sorry the new cont um current events in sports club uh which they were this parent's child uh is a

076student and had proposed this club and was under the impression that it would be on tonight's agenda however we didn't have at the time i mean that we do try to follow the process where the clubs go to the asc first to our student organization because also some of the clubs that are proposed we actually have clubs that are either very similar or that club but by a different name that already exists so sometimes we you know we'll have them um just form as part of another club or or participate in that club um so it does go through the all school council first and when students don't realize that when they submit something in june it's most likely not going to get looked at until the the following year when the all school council

077convenes this one actually was submitted i believe that was submitted in april but the initial advisor they had secured then rescinded um and so they had to find a new advisor and they also you know they do have to come over the constitution and come up with guidelines um and so we need to actually make sure that what we're approving does not have budgetary implications or unexpected budgetary implications and those kinds of things but i told them that because i did just get it on friday that i will i'll share with the board in the next packet so that we can approve it on the fourth because it uh you know there there's it doesn't require much for this particular yeah i remember this parent's concern was the the club for the third and fourth

078so i figured since the board will know about it the week before unless anyone has any objections anticipating that it will be approved they can participate in the club fair great and there were updates to the student handbook um annually revisions are made to the student handbook and one of the revisions included a follow-up to a discussion we had had last spring about dress code the discussion was with both the students and with the board and some changes were made to the student handbook to remove some subjective wording regarding our dress code and then finally in order to gain continuity we have placed flex days on the last wednesday of every month starting in october and ending in may this consistency will hopefully help students and faculty members take advantage of the initiative um michael

079you were at the meeting carol i think you missed the meeting did you have any other janine any other almost everything questions any other any questions on the uh 5722 the student journalism that is new in reading what you wrote about it um you want to make sure that there wasn't going to be any issues so how will you be dealing with let's say you have kids that want to talk about right to life or our previous president that is not quote unquote in the what most kids really want to deal with how will you go about handling that to allow them the right that they're allowed to speak about it or present it like who's going to be controlling there's currently a process for that um i can get you more details on exactly

080what that is but this is not like this is it's not all of a sudden that that's going to come up as as something new you know we've dealt with that before um and we have not had an issue you know with censoring students so i can certainly get you more details on you know some of those topics that have come up and how we've handled that um but it's not i don't know if you are you when you say what we wrote do you mean the strauss esme um that you sent out yeah the explanation that's yeah this comes from this comes from the um strauss esme who does our policies and so they give kind of just a description of of what the um origination of the policy is okay right and i

081think what you're talking about is the it says that there's a we have to have a policy for how we handle if there is i can't remember the term that was used yeah or harm or something yeah yeah there was a so that's why i was just asking because some of those issues go against with the majority you know want to hear about and so how do you keep it we like i said i mean that's all if you've read our student publications that material has been in there so it's not something that this obviously came from a lot of what these policies end up coming from is one issue at a school um where somebody tried to censor something example for example for this particular one there's a policy about having a student representative

082on the board um that was discussed at operations committee we already do that but obviously there was a school somewhere that didn't want student voice and so now it became a mandated policy you know that and every school is required to do that so that's generally where these come from um but this has not been you know it hasn't been it we certainly have have had conversations uh you know about this with the students um in the journalism club and uh who do our paper but and i can certainly get you more details on some of the you know give you examples perhaps if you would like but we haven't had an issue with that any other questions thank you mrs ober i'm stunned by the silence coming from mr fallon on uh policies so

083uh i know how i'm gonna vote all right uh with that we will move on to operations uh mr bremberg yes mr fallon was waiting for my policy for him to then comment and get them both but anyway thank you um so yes we met september 14th 9 o'clock operations committee first thing we discussed was our transportation issues with which mr styus has basically already addressed all the primary issues that he is certainly working on a couple other items had to do with uh who's allowed to take the bus and who isn't allowed to take the bus uh what i mean by that is if uh if they're not if they're not on a specific route but could walk to another route and we have you're not allowed to do that you're only allowed to

084be on your bus yeah for a myriad of reasons security knowing where the kids are and stuff like that but as part of that discussion if all goes well we'll hire a consultant with regard to planning perhaps better routes and also working with the uh the lower would that be right the lower school 2k yeah the 70 districts oh yeah both long hill and wah chung is what the goal was right to work with them to develop better routes more efficient routes this way when we put them at the contract since the buses kind of work well the routes all kind of work together we also talked about board members getting their cdls correct i haven't got can you wait i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't mean to take your thing anyway so that was

085uh uh discussed and the other big issue again as mr stein's alluded to with regard to expense with regard to all of our expenses you know increasing significantly uh the bus expense has also gone up and money will be having to take out of uh surplus to address that as to policies uh again most of policies are codified by a state statute so the question always is mr fallon eludes why are we even voting for them why are we approving them why don't we just defer to state law so again there were a couple policies with regard to security drills and as dr jewett had alluded to student representation onto the board so it was really just more to adhere to what state statute was and to update and clarify a big component of the

086medium is also with respect to the ongoing construction and update from mr bicht the head of the his property and grounds again everything is moving along if all goes well most of the projects will be done within the next month or so obviously the goal had been to finish it during the summers with the least interruption to our students in teaching what not but the projects that are left that will have minimal effects some of the projects when they come online will be done on the weekends and with minimum interruption again if all goes well everything will be done and then we will move into the next phase of construction after our referendum for next summer so every year if all goes well and again as mr president had mentioned it's very important for us

087to every year or certainly on an ongoing basis to maintain the facilities improve the facilities uh for the education of our students for the enhancement of the programs so again just like the excuse me the construction that we've done in the last few months uh you know somewhere for students somewhere for efficiency somewhere for cost solar panels and stuff like that all these are important and of course that leads to a referendum for october 6 with this 8 million project uh again various classrooms various facilities the updating and just to reiterate the importance of finally being able to get some money back from the state because as everyone knows you know the cities are in towns are rated a through j with districts and depending on what your reimbursement is we get very little reimbursement

088with regard to matching our budget so to speak but this is one of the programs where we can get you know there's a range but say approximately a third of the reimbursement if this referendum were to fail we would have to spend our all of our own money so eight million dollars versus say 5.6 million or so so you know there's a benefit of two and a half million dollars or so so that's what's really important and um that's where that is and again that's october 6th um that's basically operations anyone have any questions comments peter you ready to say something i know bob said it but just to be clear the referendum is a no tax impact right yeah it's no tax one of the questions that we did get asked that i talked

089to bob too about what the response would be is what happens if the referendum doesn't pass um and i don't think the board has really talked about that um extensively but what i had said to the to the townships is that the board would then have to take a look at what of the projects we might decide to still do with using our our own capital reserve right i mean again we do have reserves we have money set aside for capital projects but without the two two and a half million dollars that would get from the state would have it actually scale it back and then down you know every year we have some we put into the budget capital reserve because we know we're going to have to do projects there's always maintenance whether

090it's a new roof or new wall or new carpeting there's always something that needs to be done so prudently we put you know an amount to side in the budget now we're doing it again the one time we can get money back from one of the few times i should say that we can get money back from the state so again this is no tax no new taxes let's just say impact other questions or comments um so just two related comments first of all i wanted to thank the administration for the presentations that they have been giving particularly to the town various township committees and town councils uh i also want to thank board members that have shown up to them i know that peter was at the warren township committee meeting i know susan

091and carol were at the long hill township committee meeting michael was at the wachong town council meeting so i think it was good to support the administration as they're out there making the pitch one other comment that i want to make regarding the referendum because this has come up in uh one of the meetings that we attended some parents uh were asking why there wasn't any security investments in the referendum and i think it's important that the public understand that we have access to state and federal funds that are earmarked specifically for security enhancements and upgrades uh that we don't have similar access to for the things that were going out for referendum um so that's one point the second point is that this board and previous boards over more than a decade have prioritized

092uh the safety and security of our students and invested significantly into the security of the building including support staff including technology much of which we don't talk about publicly for obvious reasons but i wanted to assure the public that we are we have been investing we will continue to invest we will continue to leverage the variety of resources that are available to us to continue to upgrade and enhance our security but because we have those other options we didn't need to include it in the referendum because the items that are in the referendum we don't have those same pools to draw from so i just wanted to clarify that as it was a comment that was brought up in the public mr bloomberg right just to play off that that was a question that was

093specifically asked and watching with regard to security staff for generic term what the resources are and what uh we were doing about that and that we're very focused on that and take that very seriously and are looking to hire we have several people and we're expanding that to make sure that again one of these things was you know student safety and you know that they felt secure so to speak so that was a concern of certainly watching among other concerns but again we've been addressing that all along absolutely thank you sir um if there are no other questions um mr fallon negotiations negotiations i'm going to read a letter uh to the wachong hills regional high school community uh from me is the chair of the board negotiations committee on august 31 2022 the wachong

094hills regional education association announced a work to rule job action in a work to rule job action employees in a collective bargaining agreement do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract the board of education regrets the decision by the association to engage in this job action the board of education negotiations committee has sought to engage in negotiations with the association's 10 or 12 member negotiations committee since november twenty twenty one one meeting was held on december eight twenty twenty one since that time the associations negotiation negotiating committee has refused to meet with the board of education unless the board of education negotiations committee would agree to conduct the negotiations for a new contract in a room with both the members of the association negotiation negotiations committee and the association's bargaining

095council which is open to the entire membership of the association the association's principal negotiators have indicated that no more than half of the negat of the association members would attend any one negotiating meeting as part of their bargaining council the association has approximately 220 members the board of education believes that asking three board members on its negotiating committee to negotiate in a room with approximately 100 members of the association is an attempt to intimidate the board's negotiating team the board of education's negotiation committee is not willing to conduct negotiations in this fashion three years ago when asked by the association to hold the negotiations in a room with both the bargaining council and the negot and the association's negotiations committee the board's negotiation committee did agree to a couple of negotiation sessions in a room

096with both those negotiation sessions did not result in any progress at all and thereafter the negotiations continued with two board members meeting with two association members until the term terms of a new agreement were reached the association said in its august 31st letter that it wanted to be transparent about where the negotiations now stand last december the board of education filed an unfair labor practices claim against the association over its refusal to bargain unless the board agreed to do it in a room with both the association's bargaining council and its negotiations committee our representative has reached out multiple times since last december to the association's representative to ask them to have their negotiations committee with the board's negotiation committee but the association so far has decided to wait for the determination by perk the public

097employment relations commission it will likely be many months before an eventual decision on this issue is reached by an administrative law judge the decision of the association to work to rule is unfortunate but it is not a reason for the board to conduct negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement in a room with approximately 100 members of the association the board negotiations committee looks forward to working collaboratively with the association's negotiations committee to reach agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement when the association's bargaining when the association's negotiating committee meets with the board's negotiating committee the board of education has been ready and willing to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the association since last december we remain willing to do so at any time as soon as the association drops its unfair demand

098that they will only conduct negotiations with the board in a room with up to half of the entire association membership present the fact that there is no contract and teachers have no pay increase in the face of rising inflation can be easily remedied by the whrea if it would simply use the same approach to bargaining that has resulted in reaching all of the previous contracts board is being reasonable and fair and we ask that the wh rea be reasonable and fair also any uh questions for mr fallon seeing none we will move on to the first opportunity for public comment first public comment period will be limited to agenda items only for this meeting uh the second public comment period will be open to any topic all comments are limited to five minutes if you

099are making a public comment please state your first name last name and town of residence all right seeing none we will close that first opportunity for public comment uh we'll move on to board discussion i don't believe we have any items for board discussion this evening just a reminder that the next meeting is uh our legal update with mark so we're starting that at 6 30. our closed session will be 6 30 to 7 30 and then the public meeting starting at 7 30 and we'll start in the cafe at 6 15 dinner will be provided this is october 4th and if you text me i'll make sure i respond that it is that night oh oh the meeting thank you no the meeting is the fourth we had talked about um if we were

100going to adjust the meeting because it's the eve of yom kippur we had we did our meeting schedule prior to establishing the new practice of um you know blacking out certain dates for school events can't be wednesday yeah no i thought obviously well we're all going to have meetings every night but we didn't agree to this policy well that's what the board's talking about is possibly changing it so it just makes it probably won't be able to do that that's six that's oh it's back to school night i can't do that that's also referendum i can't do one wednesday jumper are you going to be here on the 4th anyway that's monday the following monday's columbus day see the issue this is the issue with this with black holidays this yeah this is this is

101the issue that i have with it with with this particular um situation so uh we did set the calendar um it's been set everyone's you know moved around it's only recently in the past week or so that we became aware of the fact that it was where it was you know i don't believe that it's ideal and my preference would be that we not but at the same time i also finding the fact that uh you know we've we've only been meeting once a month since you know june or july august and september and now we have another one that another meeting that might get blown up plus we have you know we're just getting out of regular order as it relates to our meetings so um as much as i would like to find

102a way to move it it seems like it's a little bit difficult at this point in time and and i'm in i'm inclined to keep it but i'm only one person and i'm happy to go with whatever the the choices of the remainder of the point members no with the no we it's actually a holiday and we had said we had um said that we would like for this year now moving forward we wouldn't put a board meeting on that date because we blacked out days for school events and things if it's a holiday but we created obviously we do the board calendar so far in advance that we hadn't done that yet and we missed that again if you're going to have the meeting i can live with it but can we move mark

103to the 18th we um whoever was and if not if he can't do should i um if he can't do the 18th because i know he like for a reason he couldn't do tonight because of um but if he just because for whatever reason i feel like when i ask him our second meeting of the month he may have another board meeting so if not should i ask him for that if he can't do that for the november meeting okay so that way we have an alternative i'll ask them for the 18th first but just the 18th we do have our other student performance uh report presentation as well just so you know but we'll feed you beforehand so you'll be nourished so the i guess then i guess the more appropriate question is will

104would we even have a quorum on the fourth so i know carol won't be here you won't be here michael won't be here so that's three michael are you i'm sorry catherine i'm sorry on the fourth i think you said you would no you won't be here on the fourth okay sketchy so that's four we've gotta have a i won't be able to be here but you know i scheduled survey or surgery around this particular meeting here's an i'm just throwing this out there i don't know tim if yeah they throw us off i don't know if this is um you know because i but if but if because folks seem to do seem to have somewhat flexible schedules and we have done board meetings in the morning before i don't know if you okay

105like i said i'm just throwing something out yes earlier yeah well that's why i mean couldn't we do it i don't think people can get here i'm working too but i would get out of work what about um so if we talking about the sixth on i know that's back to school night but um we could start the meeting at six instead of you know and started earlier back to school nights at seven i'm just throwing up again just growing up possibilities i know it's that's a work it's a work session i know maybe [Music] so if we do keep it on the fourth we said we'll if naresh said he wouldn't be here for that one either he he's gone for so then we don't have a quorum so who who on the fourth

106said that they definitely will be here that they could be here on the fourth one i can be here three on the fourth you will know four five so we just need one more on the fourth one two three four yeah we need six but and the rest was not here so that's five well uh i could so question do you want me to see if mark's available on the 11th or no no oh because no there will be still a bunch of people not here so either the 18th or november got it yep got it right are we in agreement then okay good um so that would then move us into action items mr president what oh mr president i'd like to move resolutions a1 through second resolutions a1 through a12 any discussion seeing

107none roll calling exercise miss perrone yes mr burnberg yes mr fallon no on a4 and a5 yes on the rest mr gaelic yes ms potter just so everyone does understand what the policies i know you probably already know this but the main reason we need them is even though it's in the law we are required by the doe to have those policies and if we don't then when we get monitored if we don't get those points then we get seriously monitored and we get put on a corrective action plan so i just want to make that clear to everyone so miss prasa no on a 4-5 also yes and everything else i don't know i can't do it right i am just letting you guys know it's not a it's a big deal when you

108actually have to get monitored and put on a corrective action plan by the state for oh but okay but we didn't talk about that i don't know what there was rewriting that needs to be done this is just first reason yeah this is just first read we can make revisions can i make one comment sure although i certainly agree and i've had this issue with why we have to approve the policies and they're codified in the statute i've been able to overcome that because my view is that instead of just having on our website policies refer to new jersey statute it's nice that they're all in one place so in the public or the students or the teachers whoever look them up they're all right there it is very no versus just saying okay revert

109to njsa 22-2 you're right it's all exactly let's just be clear if eeoc came in and you didn't have an anti-discrimination policy you would get dinged like we do we get control despite the fact that there's the ada and despite the fact that there's the 504 rehabilitation act this is really very silly that you're not approving the policies now if you have issues about wording then we need to have a discussion about that but not to approve them just because you don't think that that's silly because they're in the law does not make any sense it puts us in jeopardy it puts us in legal issues and it and it's and it just is an example from today i got an email from another district who was asking about our um practice and policies around

110evacuation procedures because case law that actually revolved around us from when i first got here with regard to our ada accessibility of our drills was actually utilized in as an example in professional development in a district but then they were told to actually reach out to us because of how we remedy that um so it is a you know i know it can be annoying but it does actually create problems for the district and exposure legally as rita was saying so we were actually um in the middle of the vote we've only got four against we can still have so uh mr stize would you continue with the vote please i was actually looking up the vote for policies because i'm i'm not sure if it's a majority yeah that's the majority of full boarding

111you know what i usually mr morrison yes okay so so for four and five it was five four which is the majority of the board that is present yeah majority of the quorum yeah it's it's a simple majority and it's it's not a majority of the full board though yeah i i don't know if policies i haven't acquired that i have the list here that's what i'm looking at yeah i always keep that uh let's see and it is first read for this for the sake of moving this along i'll change my vote so it's six and then there we go right next time it'll be nelby i don't have enough time today i'll look through here to see if it's on okay and while you do that then mr president i would like to

112move resolutions a 13 through a 17. a 13 through a 17 a second discussion seeing none roll call please mr size miss brown yes mr fernberg yes mr fallon yes scallock yes miss lee yes it's over yes can i can i also just ask if folks do want language changes on the policies i am absolutely happy to entertain that um it's just whenever we have those of you been on the board a while know that that comes up but then nobody actually then provides any suggested language changes so it's helpful if um you know if you can just let me know you know what actually you would like adjusted with it um so between now and the next meeting and then they can go back to canadian committee can talk about it i mean that's

113the process next mr president i would like to move resolution b-1 any discussion or comment questions seeing non-raw call mr sties ms brown yes mr burnberg mr fallon yes alec no miss lee miss ober yes potter and mr morrison yes okay that motion carries mr president i'd like to move resolution c1 through c24 second uh motion for c1 through c24 any comment seeing none raw called exercise miss brown yes mr burnberg yes mr fallon yes mr gallick yes miss lee sober potter prasa and mr morrison yes questions carrie mr president i'd like to move resolutions d1 through d19 second e1 through d19 any item for comments seeing none roll call please mr size miss perron yes mr bernberg yes mr fallon yes gallic yes lee uber mr president i'd like to move resolutions d20 and

114d21 second d20 indeed 21 any questions or comments seeing none well call miss ties miss brown yes mr bernberg yes mr fallon yes scallock yes yes sober yes rasa and mr morrison yes carrie there's a second opportunity for public comment on any topic yes sir please come to the microphone identify yourself first name last name and your community a bit of a dollar guys so i apologize yes i try not to all right good evening everyone my name is zade hussain i'm part of the woodland park slash west patterson community first and foremost dr morris and i wish you a speedy recovery with your health issues um sorry i'm just still adjusting is that loud yeah beautiful thank you so first and foremost i just want to let you all know i am with the

115new jersey chapter of the council on islamic or american islamic relations we are the nation's oldest and largest islamic civil rights and advocacy organization in america and we strive to enhance public understanding of islam and defend our fellow muslim brothers and sisters from islamophobia it has come to our attention that there is a wad chong hills muslim hindu jewish coalition that has for the past nearly year and a half petitioned and requested repeatedly for both the muslim holidays of eid and the hindu holiday of eid to be days off in the calendar for both students and faculty they have been met with pushback have committed compromises and unfortunately some ignorant and condescending comments the coalition still pushed forward even presenting their own data through surveys approved by professors from the university of pennsylvania to show

116the overwhelming necessity for these religious holidays to be days off while these holidays have been relega regulated to excuse absences no assessment days no homework days this is not enough to be quite frank with you many of the many of these students and faculty members they observe these holidays and they will miss a day of instruction that is very vital to their education and it's quite unfair and a disadvantage to the student's experience as a high school student and as a practicing practicing observer of these religions and i as you see i'm not with any other of the coalition members because some of them have expressed a discontent to me with coming to these meetings because they have been coming for so long and have not felt heard here new jersey firmly supports the wanjung

117hills muslim hindu jewish coalition and will make sure that their efforts are publicly known throughout the state of new jersey including the pushback they have faced from the board of education we ask you all to please reconsider your stance on these holidays as many of these muslim and hindu students are experiencing a disadvantage simply for observing their faith i will leave my business card here if the administration would like to contact me please have a good night and get home safe thank you thank you any other public comments right seeing none we will move on to other business any board member have any other business so given some of the news we've got on the policies and on the curriculum i want to make sure that everybody understands how our committee structure works and how

118you can get input into both those things even though you may not be on the committees i don't know if we need to like just explain that but voting no without providing some input or being engaged in the process to me or kind of indicating what the problem is with a policy or a curriculum and just voting no to vote no he doesn't help us be a collaborative board so um i don't know if there's a way we can discuss that at some point in time another suggestion is maybe we should go to once a year adopting all mandatory policies how would that help like why how would that be different because we wouldn't be spending time at every other board meeting doing you know adopting more mandatory i don't know well i don't know

119that you guys understand the so i get updates from strauss esme almost weekly okay and so i go through them so it would be an unreal i mean when i first got here we barely had like we didn't we were missing most of our mandated policies because we didn't have them for so long and then it became unwieldy and i know like there was no i think we had a policy committee on the board but nobody wanted to be on it yeah and i mean it's it would just become on because as you've seen in the past just the past two years alone the state decides to change the laws like every week and that that then impact us so trying to keep up with that i can just tell you that it would be

120very difficult on my part to try and do all of that with one meeting because that you see the volume that come through and it's not just us sitting down saying oh we want to change this it's getting the legal update and making sure that we're actually up to speed and compliant and we do have parents quite often we'll eat they you know they'll go on our website but if they don't realize it's there they email us asking for policies on different things because they want to know what the policy says about a certain you know uh practice in the district so we and it's much easier to lead them to that than to try and look up the new jersey statutes because they certainly they really don't make that easy to do um so

121we do refer to them quite a lot as well as the regulations in terms of laying out what we do and it's helped us standardize a lot of our practices in the school so that they're not subjective and that staff you know one of the things that i am very very particular about is making sure that our staff uses appropriate terminology when they're talking about practices versus policies some of you on the board again you know years ago you would get emails from parents you know i was told board policy is this and the word you know you would see this and say that has no that's we never decided that that's you know a practice that the school follows um so we really try to be very um consistent with that so that the

122staff understands what is board policy what is um school practice which obviously we make sure that the board is you know aligned with and okay with but there is a difference between policy and practice so we have spent a number of years trying to get that consistency um which benefits students parents and staff so that's why i you know just because we do i actually do utilize and refer to the policies probably more than you think in terms of interactions with the staff and with the students and the parents as does beth in in hr we refer to them quite a lot mr fallon i think your explanation at committee meetings when these are discussed as to how this impacts us and how this is helpful to you okay is a lot more persuasive than

123we're adopting this because it's a mandatory process that you know what peter that's very helpful feedback especially because we don't generally spend a lot of time talking about them so if the board want would like us to do that i'm i'm happy to do that that's very helpful feedback we could we could always reconstitute the policy committee um but one of the reasons one of the reasons why we got rid of it was because of the the fact that it was so labor-intensive for those board members and always the newbies were the ones that got put on it because they were new so mr gallic if you would like to chair the new policy sure we'll meet once a year well i mean i'm going but i think policy committee in long hill when we

124had to do that whole thing and it really gave me an understanding of what the purpose of the policies are how they're used how the regulations are used and day-to-day how they support the administration and making its decisions and responding to questions and dealing with a crisis or like you can go to the policy what is our policy for that okay let's go these are the steps that i'm supposed to take well and one that's important and and one of the reasons why the other one of the other reasons why we abolished the policy committee was to allow the policies to go through other committees so then we were spreading the wealth out so that everyone was going to be engaged in policies that were related to their committee so um you know that just

125for the newer board members that's the back story between and i do just so you know the process when dina gives me the big packet that comes in if they're just minor like some of them strauss the state went through this thing of changing pupil to student in all their policies i only i didn't update policies just for that i'd wait till there was some other more material update to it and then we'd make you know those changes so i try not to just inundate you with the the updates that are minor language that don't really affect the actual interpretation of the policy and there's a lot that um you know i weed out because if they're not mandatory and it's not something that is a priority that we've talked about that i think will

126actually impact the functioning of the school again i because i don't think it's necessary to bog us down with those but you know i certainly can spend more time in terms of speaking to why we actually need a particular policy or why the updates are important mr burnberg yeah i certainly can appreciate the reason for having just a policy committee or spreading it out and again i have no problem sharing the policy or being on it or spreading it out so it's in the particular area but i think you're right sometimes it becomes the step child of the discussion you know we're so focused on the certainly in operations we discussed them but it wasn't the main focus let's just say i'm the chairman so that's my fault on that um education we certainly did

127go over a little more in depth but maybe it's worth addressing just have a meeting that's just policy this way we can go through each and every one of them because sometimes the mandatory policies require us to make decisions within the policy you have to have a policy but you either have to have paragraph a or paragraph b sometimes that exists and you'll get a better discussion if we're only focused on that well i think but we're also trying to be respectful of everyone's time not adding you know another committee and another commitment you know and and and obviously also trying to make sure that that as we assemble committees that folks are serving on committees that they are interested in uh gaining expertise and so uh uh mr galactic yeah is there a um

128perhaps a motion that we can make at the beginning of the year that throws the um the onus for the operational part of the policies in other words if there's only the small changes or it just goes to the administration we call it a day only those that reach the level of i'm going to use the word controversy but maybe not controversy but meaningful substance thank you substance would come to the board because quite honestly most of the stuff is already like pete said in the law we're not have we don't have discussion about it we don't have say about it we don't have a chance to change anything about it the only thing that in this policy update that i saw at least was the religion one which is kind of interesting because of

129the supreme court and that's even going to get changed again in the next two or three months because of what we're going to hear from legal counsel right so i think that there should be a way just to push it down the issue is um it's statutory of what ha so all policies have to be board approved and then with regulations whenever those come up dina will check the list to see if it's something i can issue and even if it's something only i can issue i always inform the board um but some of the regulations have to be board approved as well so i certainly appreciate that um but it's statutory i'm gonna give mr fallon last word yeah i just think that between some of the things that rita said about gaining a

130better understanding of some of the things that liz says i think if if and i think it's better to go to the separate committees so so that we're spreading it around but i think if there's a little bit of the discussion each time about how this is relevant to us and why we are doing it not that that does that is other than strauss esme or the department of education says it's mandatory then this is a lot more palatable and then i think um you know i and i just want to tag on to a second comment you know regarding you know curriculum revisions you know there's you know the the way curriculum revisions come through the recommendations come from the administration then they move through the education committee so that folks that are on

131the education committee have you know more time and more opportunity to discuss it before it then comes to the board we try to make sure that when it comes anything like that comes to the board that there's ample opportunity for board members to review and then if you have questions or concerns either raise them back to the education committee as it relates to curriculum items or even bring it to the um the superintendent the administration themselves just so that they can have an understanding of what your objections are to see if there's anything that can be done to address them so i think it's always it's always helpful that if there is something that you're uncomfortable with or something that you have questions about something that you don't feel comfortable supporting uh to at least

132raise that with the administration so that they are aware of that and i think that's that i think that's fair and that's not just not to change your point of view or position but i think just out of out of preparedness for the administration and we've also talked about people who aren't on the on the committee if it does if it was wouldn't cause us a quorum problem if you're not on education or something so you've got a curriculum interest to say go to that meeting when it's going to be discussed yeah and i always i always i do not attend committee meetings for the purposes of allowing other board members to attend a committee meeting uh if they haven't interested they're not on that committee i thought you would appreciate that something for you

133to take away the mandated policies and and dan and peter i kind of agree with you guys to do there are stuff that's kind of rammed down your throat let's just be honest the state passes the law and and they're telling you you need it it's mandated you got to vote on it and like i'm from a business guy's point of view for the board right so i don't really vote on these things because half of them i looked at i probably wouldn't vote for it but i'm just i'm telling you from a business that's helpful but from a business administrator advising you financially keep in mind that the people who are mandating these things are also the people who send us money and can take it away so that that's the only caveat that

134i throw in here so when you talk about a mandated policy look whether you agree with it or not if it's law and you're supposed to follow the law as a board that's a tricky one to go you know it's kind of hard to go beyond to go it's an unpleasant mandate to make me vote i guess totally agree however the laws of the law all right i will i will give last word on this to mrs and that's final never um i'm just thinking of the difference the state always said you had to have policies on things on items but they were not they didn't tell you what the policy had to say and i think that it seems to me that's the crux of much of this conversation they used to say you

135have to have an attendance policy but then it could say what you wanted it to say i'm talking 30 years ago it's changed tremendously and i do think that's the bottom a lot of this discussion so maybe we can even talk a little bit with our attorney about where the balance is on that good motion to adjourn all right done thank you sounds like a good question for him when he comes yeah we'll bring it up when thanks everyone good luck oh wait