November 9, 2021 Board of Education Meeting

001yes indeed oh wow yeah i always wondered about that uh we'll uh get started with our board of ed meeting we do not have any board correspondence today but dr jewett wanted to make a few opening remarks before we move to reports and presentations so thank you if you would like to read them um on your own time there is a our work based learning newsletter uh that mr vinder our advisor for our work-based learning program put together and it's nice that we've been able to get our students back out into the community again and this just highlights some of the work of our students in the program so that's a nice item for you to take a look at i also put in here a flyer from the wachong rescue squad i received a

002very nice call from them last week they dedicate their tree of lights every year to a group or a cause and this year they've decided to dedicate it to the educators of wachong which includes all of the educators within washington hills regional high school so i think that's tremendous and our staff couldn't be more deserving of that and they've certainly invited everyone to the tree lighting on december 4th at 5 30 pm so that's certainly really nice well to deserve news for our staff and then um the final item i included was just it was an article um on a you know very a nice outcome from a health emergency at a rugby game in morris county but i highlighted uh towards the bottom of the first page our athletic trainer michelle armanda she was

003actually at the event as a spectator she does play for the morris women's team and it was a men's team that was playing and she just happened to be there as a spectator and one of those was one of the people who helped save a young man's life uh who had an episode and it was thanks to the medical personnel that were there um you know on the sidelines actually watching that were able to help out as well as the aed that they had available there so you know just a tremendous credit we're very lucky to have her on our athletics training staff and i just thought i just wanted to highlight that because i think that was really nice that she was able to step in uh and help out so just some some

004nice news to share that is all i have thank you very much sure thing and uh since you're probably modest and not going to bring it up i'll bring it up earlier today the wachong hills regional high school accepted an award from the new jersey department of education called the lighthouse recognition award and that was for excellence in diversity and faculty there were only two recipients of that and it's over a two-year period so i wanted to congratulate our faculty administration for their excellent work and contributing uh to our ongoing strategic plan of diversity equity and inclusion so thank you so much thank you so we'll move on to our fall 2021 update on progress thank you very much dr schabilski so uh what i will do is i will kick this off and we

005have our our nice new technology and our learning commons where our um presentation is projected up here as well as projected over there which may be easier for some members of our of our audience to see uh so this is our annual presentation that it it's actually been a little bit different the past couple of years because part of this presentation is a report on our student assessment data and as we know the the usual state assessments have been uh run a bit differently the past couple of years because of our non-traditional school years that we've had but as a high school we actually have other assessment data that we're able to report as well a c t a p s a t p s a t um so that is part of this presentation

006but what we also like to highlight in this particular presentation is have each of our supervisors of our departments speak to their departmental areas of focus that are aligned with our strategic plan goals so they're going to speak briefly about that and we also have our director of counseling mr sabino who's going to speak a little bit about our the results from our school culture and climate survey that we administered for the first time uh and and talk about the next steps for that as well and then um for those of you who want you know your appetites wetted for the spring when you come back in the when we come back in the spring we'll share with you uh the report on the progress that we've made on these goals this year and that's

007where we will report on the metrics that we've uh that we'll be looking at to measure the strategic plan so without further ado um i'm going to ask mr labra to come up this is just a review of our four strategic plan goals uh which our board was instrumental in developing and uh everyone i think knows these very well by now our first goal is centered on social emotional growth and wellness our second goal is centered on helping our students find pathways to educational success our third goal continues our work around imagination creativity innovation and critical thinking and we added our fourth goal um diversity equity and inclusion which used to be part of goal one in our prior strategic plan so this is what all of our conversations tonight will be centered upon and

008what all of our conversations throughout the district are centered upon with any new initiatives with our budget uh you'll be hearing about this a lot so welcome and thank you mr lebrera thank you very much like dr jewett said we're going to start with just reporting of some of our scores on our state tests and other national tests of dr jewell could just hit to the next slide so first off um national merit as you can see we had 41 total recognized last year 34 and were commended and seven were semi-finalists and that is actually the same number as the previous year but a slightly different breakdown i think what is interesting uh and very important to recognize for this slide is the nature when the psat was taken last year this was taken in

009october in the beginning of a school year so for our students to come in and to perform at this level during that time frame of uneasiness i think is a testament to the caliber of students that we had and that their commitment to uh to their academic performance so um yes we're very happy we still don't have the finalists we're looking forward to seeing how many of our semi-finalists will move on to the finalists uh and and we'll celebrate them at that time uh the next slide is our sat three year trend and as you can see we continually uh exceed our performance from the overall state um and we are looking to continue that trend uh 12 35 was our average in the state average was were estimating around 1081 from the previous year's

010data and as we go to act as we're having more and more students take that test what we're actually happy to have is last year um well actually we offered a a c t test in our building last year for the first time to our students and now we're actually opening having it as an act site in the spring so we're showing the commitment to this test as well because you see more and more of our student body taking the act test as well you can see here that we continue to outperform our new jersey counterparts and from there i was going to help by ms marion felon talking about our ap tests uh for board members who are accustomed to seeing our ap scores uh we typically do six slides tonight we're doing three

011and the first one is uh the number of students who have scored three or above and just as mr librera explained it's um quite impressive when you think in terms of how many students despite the decrease in instructional minutes still came for the test and we credit that to the engagement of our students how committed our teachers were to liz's point earlier of harnessing technology and also using our office hours for those of you who are parents of students you know that our students had almost half as many instructional minutes so that's very impressive we haven't gotten the state or the national yet but we're expecting it um before the end of the year when we look in the uh average again those of you who have been here before we attempt always to achieve

012a 4.0 although we just missed the four average this year we're proud of our students who elected to take the exams and also in terms of personalized learning as the ed committee knows well not all of our students felt prepared to sit for ap exams some of whom were home all year some of whom felt there was too much activity in their houses etc but the comparison of 2012 was the first year when liz kind of challenged the faculty and the administrators to hit the 4-0 goal i think that's instructive thank you and then the last one um is also interesting because we're proud to have 67 scholars who receive three or higher on three ap exams and in terms of aligning our sel goals with instructional priorities post pandemic here's a quote that michael

013and i found on the ap website in june because we do not want to do our because we want to do our part to reduce the burden on stu on students this year the ap program is discontinuing honors that encourage students to take large numbers of exams so this year you can see the n a which is a credit i think to the national scholarship of really helping kids do what we've been trying to do at wachong hills which is to learn deeply and not necessarily learn widely with only this much depth so thank you this is our last ap slide but i just want to mention last year with the students they were in here taking tests some of those tests were digital some were paper some were taken at home as digital tests

014we had students kind of all over taking them i think they performed really well this is our overall data by subgroup uh this data is given to us by the college board asterisk means simply that we have less than 20 students in that particular subgroup so it's not reported out um and we have a you know a good representation of you know the diversity in the school and students who are taking our tests overall on how they're doing um and uh you know one of the things with ap last year obviously was a challenge for our students with the instruction and and how the tests were made up but they performed very well throughout the board and all the exams so the next few slides are about a new assessment you have may not have

015heard about in the past it's called the start strong exams so just to give you an overall background the start strong exams were given in october of this year and those exams are given to measure basically what the students had as learning disruptions in the last 18 months they're from the state of new jersey and those exams are it were also in lieu of the april njsla exams that are typically given during the school year so all all uh schools in new jersey primary middle or high school had to give start strong exams and uh for mathematics the star strong exams were in algebra one geometry and algebra two they were digital exams that were taken in the classroom and you could see that there's three categories it's a little confusing but the way you

016want to think about the categories is less support is needed which is yellow here you know that's um that's something that is that we we like to see less support needed then we go to some support needed and then strong support needed so yellow is kind of better right so as we see when students come in in algebra one those are all ninth graders that um they needed they needed some support they needed what we call strong support to be needed for them so they're high on the on the gray chart as they progress or as we progress into sophomores and juniors which are really the geometry and algebra 2 students we saw less strong support needed so the yellow bar got bigger while the gray bar got better and i think that's a real

017positive that's when students come into the program here they pretty much perform well on state tests and i think the teachers did a really good job with them now of course the algebra 1 students are not the same students as the geometry students or as the algebra 2 students but those algebra 2 students that you see that need less support a lot of those students were algebra 1 students in the 9th grade they're not the same students who took this test but we kind of can make this this leap that once they get here and they get into the program they're going to do well they're learning algebra and they can perform well on state tests so algebra one uh of course is a ninth grade course here and those students typically are not the

018strongest students in mathematics they come to us in the ninth grade not having having taken pre-algebra in the eighth so in the in pat in the past we've seen their standardized test scores at the algebra one level uh be a little bit lower than you would see than we would like to see so what happens is when they get into the program we tend to really you know work hard with the students get them caught up so that they can get to the algebra two in the junior year but algebra one students tend to be students who have not seen any algebra other than pre-algebra in the eighth grade for us um so the you know there's their their initial scores on njsla during a normal testing season were in the same realm as this

019so the the better math students are taking algebra one in eighth grade before they get here so the students that we are getting in ninth grade that are taking it tend to be those that are a little bit behind to begin with so that's why there's that dramatic difference in what you see with algebra one versus how it levels off and improves when you get to algebra two and also you don't see pre-calculus students or calculus students in this in this picture either they don't have to take those state tests do you do you see or can you say whether there's a difference between where the students came from from ascending district in that algebra one cohort or not so typically we you know we don't really look at sending districts you know we they're

020all ours at this point so you know we don't really break that up uh so i haven't really looked at that data what we will do we haven't done it for this but um we don't speak in the past what we've done is internally we will look at ninth grade data from the districts and share it with them um with the caveat that it's not something that they should report out or share publicly just like we don't report out or share publicly um but we have done that and and what the benefits that have come from that in the past we've actually looked at a kind of an array of ninth grade data from the four districts just to share with them um everything from the number of level changes that their their students are

021experiencing because that might help the inform their recommendation processes from eighth to ninth grade um to you know the the um their performance in you know their grades in uh some of their freshman level classes and and what that's actually caused to happen in the past is you know if one district students were doing particularly well in the sciences the other three districts would say okay what what's the secret there you know what's in your curriculum or what are you doing differently um so we do share that data internally we haven't done it with this but that will certainly be a next step that we look at and one of the things that we look at as well is um you know we'll have a demographic breakdown of the percentage of students from each district

022so that way in terms of looking at their representation in different levels of courses and is that disproportionate and so we have a lot of conversations around that and obviously where i was going with that question is about our regionalization discussion that will come up in a little bit so the really nice thing about the start strong test is the data or how the students did was instantaneous this is the first time ever in the state of new jersey where data was instantaneous rather than three or four months down the road teachers could see the actual questions after the assessment they can see what their particular students in their class answered well or didn't answer well and they get a breakdown of everything so the teachers have access to all the student data immediately something

023that we've never had really with any of the other njsla tests so what we did is we looked at some higher scoring standards and lower scoring standards each question is linked to a standard and we're able to kind of see see those we're able to see those questions fully and you know when i look at some of those questions and i say well you know those that's a higher scoring standard for algebra one i would think that that question should be a higher scoring standard and i will i looked at some of the lower scoring questions in each of the other classes say algebra 2 and geometry that's a lower scoring question too and you have to remember that these tests are not designed to test algebra one they test the material from the year

024before really that's really now when i look at some of the questions that that could be uh that could be debatable but you know it's that's the goal supposed to really test on prior knowledge of them so but they're in this you have they have to name the test algebra one and algebra 2 or geometry good evening the start strong assessment for ela consisted of two passages there were four multiple choice questions about a fictional narrative and six multiple choice questions about an informational text for a total of ten questions and the clear majority of our students are on grade level or above and that's the yellow bar that indicates 66.7 it's kind of small there but maybe you can see on your screen 66.7 percent of ninth graders need less support 63.6 percent of

02510th graders need less support the data also show us that 21.2 percent of ninth graders may need strong support and 20.1 percent of 10th graders may need strong support so the core question is what do we do now that we have this information our first layer of review was to look at our highest scoring standards and lowest scoring standards and we certainly prioritize the lowest scoring standards but we didn't see large patterns really like more difficulty with non-fiction or over fictional narratives that's not something that we saw in the standards after checking the schedule of each student for whom strong support may be necessary we found that these students are scheduled mainly in college prep sections of grade 9 and grade 10 english and since the students who may need strong support are almost exclusively

026in college prep sections we're looking at the strategies the strategy of teachers in these classes conducting individual conferences with students according to a predictable cycle of every two weeks to accelerate student learning these are not check-in conferences about missing assignments instead they focus on the student's ability to extract meaning from complex text and to generate their own clear and well-reasoned writing what else are we doing with this assessment information during our last department meeting teachers of grades 9 and 10 generated a spreadsheet with each student's current grade in english alongside each student's start strong assessment score this activity helped teachers review multiple sources of data that they have collected in the classroom alongside each student's start strong assessment to see patterns in student learning and that's what makes this assessment different as mike was just

027pointing out it's formative and it's actionable teachers have the ability to log into the database review the data in multiple forms and make instructional decisions for individual students and classes one of the more experienced teachers of the department noted that this is the first time we've received actionable data from the department of education and i was i was entirely impressed with teachers intentional review of this data and we're taking steps to accelerate student learning in those settings where students need the most support nicole carro science supervisor will speak with you next good evening i realized that i'm going to be echoing a lot of the things that that michael and jim were talking about um but i do want to talk first about how the start strong science assessment is just a little bit different

028so when you're when you look at the screen here and you see ninth grade science these are our current ninth graders but what they're actually being assessed on are their middle school science standards and so what you're looking at is students being assessed on content that they've learned over a number of years so this is you know all middle school standards and when they design the assessment there's only 24 questions so not all standards are actually assessed with our 12th graders this start strong assessment is happening in lieu of a traditional assessment the njsla science which is typically given in may of a student's junior year and we don't usually get that data back until these students are seniors and you know maybe third marking period so to mirror some of what's already been said

029coming from another district i was so happy to see teachers reactions to having this data so again very actionable very useful for us if you look those yellow bars are students where less support is needed and similar to what you heard in english typically these students are in rcp science classes if we go to the next slide dr joab this is what's really exciting for science teachers so when it comes to science assessment i should probably state there's so much up on this slide here because science assessment is three-dimensional so what i mean by that is that each question students are given a content standard a science and engineering practice and a cross-cutting concept for each question now this makes it a little bit difficult as a teacher to kind of really unpack you know

030what did students do wrong so if you look at that first high scoring standard up there you're going to see three developing models is the science and engineering practice that was assessed energy and energy matter flows cycles and conservation is a cross-cutting concept that was assessed and lastly the content here is life science matter and energy and ecosystems when the teachers go and get the data we can actually go back and review the question and see what each individual student kind of did here so what's interesting for our ninth grade data if you notice in terms of content all three of those content standards actually are life science standards they're typically content that's taught in a biology class so looking on the positive side our biology teachers are saying okay content-wise our students know the

031most about this but if you look at the lowest scoring standards you'll also notice that all three of those content pieces usually are in a typical physics course so you know to the question before about articulation i think there's a lot to unpack there later on prioritizing what we wanted to do as a department our teachers really wanted to figure out how do we use this data to support our students that are here in ninth grade now in terms of the science and engineering practices we noticed that the highest scoring standards there they're all what's called sense making practices so these are things that students would typically do in the beginning of an inquiry cycle and all of the things that are lowest scoring are typically practices that are called investigative practices or critiquing practices

032now this didn't surprise us at all because in terms of pandemic learning students weren't doing labs in middle school they were socially distanced they weren't allowed to share materials so what we would like to do with the high school now is kind of come to our ninth grade students with this full awareness of that and give them those opportunities to develop their investigative practices this is exciting because the kids want to do that kind of work but we also realize that we have to inform instruction in terms of checking for prerequisite skills that students may not have had those experiences so perhaps teachers need to model that a little more specifically to start and then we'll move them from that middle school progression of the practices into the high school progression on the next slide

033you'll see our 12th grade data i was happy to see that on the highest scoring standards here it's not just all one content like we saw with our ninth graders being a little stronger in biology but when you look at these standards the first one is typically in our biology courses the second is in our physics courses and the third one is an earth science standard that you'll see a little bit in our biology course and a little bit in our chemistry course so i was happy to see that they're kind of showing a comprehensive comprehensive science knowledge also in terms of the practices you'll see something that you didn't see in the ninth grade slide at all which is using math and computational thinking so we're seeing that that's a practice that was definitely

034developed you know during students time at the high school and a mix of investigative practices sense-making practices and critiquing practices thanks so just summarized with trying not to be repetitive so with this data provides us the opportunity to have interventions um so as you heard from everybody and you can hear their passion is the data that is live is so different than any other test prior so this really gives us the opportunity to be actionable and so also corresponding with the end of a first marking period is also a good time to cross analyze that and that is what our teachers have been doing as reported by our supervisors looking at some data and seeing to identify some past practices of things that are being successful or things that we could implement um and we

035have and we're thankful to everything that you guys have reported afforded us to have because this is going to be able to integrate into the current curriculum that the data that we're getting so the intervention is live it's being implemented at our last faculty meetings and department meetings our staff was going through all of this data and looking at different subgroups of their grades and of their classes and this is really an exciting time because as you heard so many people say before including myself we've never really had data this early that we could actually put into action with the current students in their course rather than have they when we get the information in previous ones they were already out of your class so um we're excited for this it was a little bit

036of an undertaking to uh to commence during october during such a tumultuous time but we're very happy that we didn't have this opportunity to work with this data so um at this point we're going to turn the program over to mr sabino who could speak to school yes yes so um mr lebron uh i don't mean to put you on the spot okay um but uh based on all the information that we have and all the data that we've been able to review based on those tests uh we've certainly been hearing a lot about learning loss which is certainly not my favorite term to be using since it's more like learning delay or unfinished learning based on the assessment and the information you've come in what would be your view of how our students are

037doing when we look at it through the lens of unfinished learning well i think first it reaffirms that what we're doing in in the school even if it was abbreviated last year had a positive impact on our students i think that's a first and foremost that reassures us that what we were doing does does work with our students is it where we want to be i don't know if we're putting all our eggs in the strong test right right so i think we have to analyze ourselves and and to cross and to always look into what we're doing but i also think as small as additional schools are begin to report their scores that will also help us to see what their scores are because not everybody else has reported out so we are pleased

038where we are but also at the same time um we understood that as mr equivia was saying the um english was two passages so right it shouldn't be the end-all be-all to what we're analyzing and put our feet up and say we're in a great spot i think it is a good barometer and it gives us data to analyze um and we have more work to do this is a challenging year for everybody we knew this going in and we're not shirking from that but i think this reaffirms that what our teachers do and the time that they put in does have a positive impact on our students and i would suspect that it certainly validates the strategy that we use to keep our building open so that our students were able to be here

039and engaged and and learn yes i think hit all those strategic goals because not only were we doing things educationally we were also worrying about the social emotional well-being that students would benefit from being here so when you do both it really makes you proud of all the effort and the effort from you and support from you all to have us have the ability to safely run a building last year right thank you with respect sorry with respect to the numbers who sets the standards for those percentage groups and what we hit so i mean i can turn that over to mike that's more of the testing organization that was running this which was and it's from there so right that information needs to be analyzed a little more and just shouldn't be taking that

040this is the end-all be-all but yeah let me just give my second question you can address both because i look at the numbers and statistics are what they are they seem all over the place and i appreciate your enthusiasm and everyone thinks this is great but should i be impressed by this or depressed by what numbers i see i can address that a little bit i know that sounds odd but the numbers are all over the place so a couple things too um number one part of this i mean we're required to report the data and required to report the the start strong data so that's number one since it's a test that um we're required to give and required to report you know our philosophy is we want to actually make the most of

041the time that we're spending giving the test and actually see what we can get out of the results so i think what you just said right now we're looking at it as this is great information for us to have on our students looking at our at the scores for our students in isolation it's hard to you know determine well how did we do comparatively did we do well did we do poorly i'm sorry and what and well and and that's why none of this any and all of this data that's why i have such an issue the data and i've never made a secret of this since i came into the district that getting this type getting quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate how we're doing is very very important but using one test as

042our state sometimes like to do to determine a student's fate or to com say whether they are doing well or poorly is very dangerous because you also you know we're able to look at the time that students spent on these assessments and so it's for some of the students who were were classified as needing strong support is it because did they only spend you know 15 minutes on the entire test because they couldn't comprehend it or just because they knew it didn't count for anything and so they really weren't interested um so there's all of those other pieces in there however the one you know that i think the the resounding theme that every administrator that spoke um echoed is the fact that we actually got actionable data from this and and the teachers who

043are teaching these students who administered the assessment actually got the data is a huge step in the right direction from from you know our state testing system whereas generally it's we don't get the assessment results until the students have moved on to a different grade level and they're in different groupings and so we can't really go back and you know it's much harder at that time to take action on the data so i so i don't think we can answer your question either way i think what's nice is we actually do have some information that our teachers can unpack and take a look at to give us some you know more information than we had before good evening everyone i think i'm shorter than the other people it's been a problem for me good evening

044everyone um that's a lot louder um thanks nick i'm going to provide a quick overview tonight of the school counseling department areas of focus i think um principal libreo set me up well here when he mentioned obviously we just got done looking at a lot of the assessment reports and discussions about the learning loss or the unlearned you know amount of information curriculum-wise for the students of last year um the other part of this and something that i'm proud of for being part of the district was that we were open last year not only for the academic learning piece but also for the support the students needed during a pandemic uh and and getting that social emotional support so to no surprise this year with the areas of focus that we are focusing on for

045the counseling department continue to speak to those are goals so um you know we're looking to make sure that we're aligned with the strategic plan goals which are that all students will be supported by programs and services that promote social emotional and mental wellness the district and counseling team are expanding those resources for staff so we're committed to doing that work both in the classroom and also utilizing support programs targeted for individual students who need that support so some initial some some examples of the tiered support that we're providing this year uh are delivered by the school counselors themselves by our student assistance counselors which we we have a new one this year which has been doing great work to meet and and support the students and we also have a new relationship this year

046with rutgers university behavioral health care providing both individual and group counseling services to our students so we've done a lot already since the start of the year to support students and provide these tiered interventions and we're going to continue to do so this year as we expand with that program we also are providing for the first time this year the empower program for students which is providing some academic support for students who need credit recovery and other individualized support after a trying year last year so that's some of the areas we're focusing on this year other areas include a commitment to expanding internship opportunities for students strengthening college and university partnerships and revisions to our transition program to support new students so the other things i'm going to be speaking on tonight are the review

047of the class of 2021 post-secondary data which is shown here the key takeaways from this from me was that there was notable a small but notable impact to our students that expressed intent to attend a four-year college or university this fall so you'll see a little dip there from 2020 to 2021 in regards to the number of students who had indicated that they were planning on going directly into a four-year college again not surprised to see a change in this based on the impact of covid on our students and families decision-making whether that was related specifically to whether they were going to go off directly to a four-year school there were some definitely decisions made that that was not the best choice and also i believe you know in regards to we did see an

048uptick in our students who are applying to or considering more local or in state school options you'll also see another one of the variables that accounts for this increase is that we do have more students that indicated they had planned to take a gap year or other and that bottom column there uh there's an uptick there again which i believe is reflective of the environment that we're in for the class of 2021. uh we also i just want to also note that students and parents and the board and everybody else in the communities are encouraged to review the data that we have shared on the school counseling department website and our school profile we've done some we've made some efforts to provide even more detail this past year for the class of 2021 on whether

049students have chosen to matriculate in this fall with the goal that this information will help students and families in making decisions of their own going forward about where they've attended so dr judy if you go to the next slide this slide is showing that more than half of the class of 2021 that chose to attend a four-year college are in that most competitive and highly competitive range this is the first time from the data that we had that i had available to review that we have our students so interestingly enough even though i did mention there was a small decrease in the number of students overall who were going to four-year schools those who were choosing to go last year to you know four-year schools were going to the most competitive and the highly competitive

050schools in the nation so you'll see the examples i listed there and for sake of time i won't go into that in any more detail but if you have any questions about that certainly feel free to let me know this is something to celebrate obviously because of the traditional year um there's you know there's some challenges in getting into those most competitive and highly competitive schools but um certainly with the changes to the college application process a lot of schools going test optional and just overall obviously you know applying to college in a pandemic environment i think that uh our class of 2021 uh should be very much commended for uh how they achieved and where they achieved to go this this this fall so again just a great overall results from that so the

051next slide is in regards to our school climate um survey so as i mentioned earlier the district entered a partnership last year with the rutgers school climate transformation project which is part of rutgers graduate school of applied and professional psychology so our lead contact there is dr alicia raya howellik i feel comfortable speaking on behalf of the team that she has been phenomenal to work with she's been incredibly responsive she's definitely and generally invested in working hand to hand with us to develop and administer these climate surveys she's taken part in multiple meetings with us to review the initial results and glean useful data and again actionable steps to support our strategic plan goals um also want to share that the rutgers team was more than impressed with the percentage of our students and stakeholders

052overall that took part in this first survey with the help of the english faculty and mr equivia we were able to synchronously deliver this june 1st and june 2nd last year during the hybrid virtual in-person you know delivery of this so we had 1679 students that participated 173 school staff members and 410 parents and families so the initial survey that we that the students took back in june did identify some areas of strength for the district um the students first and foremost which i was happy to see felt a sense of safety in the building which i think in a school climate i think that's the most paramount our school had they also felt that there was a climate of value and respect for diverse cultural backgrounds and also our students reported individual intrinsic motivation

053for academic achievement so again anybody who knows our district you know also these may not come to a surprise but it's good to see that this was reported by both students our faculty and our community some areas of potential need that were identified from the survey were students looking for support on dealing with stress and expressing emotions so again i guess it speaks to the work that we're doing this year overall student motivation concerns was was another area of concern and having a voice in decision making these also may be attributed to the year we had last year with hybrid and remote learning so again we got to take it in the context of where it was delivered that was a hybrid environment virtual environment last year so the feedback we received was through this

054modified learning environment so we have to take that into consideration dr drew it's a final slide as in regards to the next steps so we do we are committed to continuing this partnership with rutgers um what we're going to be doing next is we're going to be piloting the administration of a more thorough climate survey that we have to discuss with our team later on this month and into december about the specifics of when we're looking to pilot period it the opportunity to to administer it is between from january through mid-may and we'll have to then discuss with the community in regards to specifics of that so that's the next steps um if you have any other questions for me again feel free to reach out to me anybody have any questions right now and

055then next up is uh mrs beth scheidermann director of hr good evening professional learning continues at watchung hills regional high school we began this summer with having our new teacher orientation here in person an administrator retreat that focused on collaboration and communication and also continuing our dei and workshops on cultural culturally responsive pedagogy in our curriculum this summer which then segued into opening school this year with our surprise guest speaker of the somerset county teacher of the year spoke to the faculty to welcome us back i'd like to thank the department heads who arranged for content area specialists to come in and speak during our professional development days and who also opened their doors so that we could have interdisciplinary discussions we focused aligned with the strategic plan on wellness and also dei during our

056professional development days and professional learning continues this year through our plcs which tomorrow is our third meeting of the year and we'll continue all year long as teachers work on real problems of practice and will culminate in june with a sharing of what they have learned and discovered with each other as an entire faculty thank you our areas of focus in the english department this year include areas we've been thinking about for some time as well as areas that have emerged as a result of learning during the pandemic this year we'll propose a senior electives program for grade 12 english credit we endeavor to present seniors with a series of high interest courses to select from in order to give them a voice in shaping their english studies for grade 12. the model we have

057in mind aligns directly with first-year college writing programs and career-based reading writing and thinking we'll also continue our work to establish common assessment targets and practices by grade level this focus on a limited number of assessment types helps us strengthen the coherence and consistency of grade level programs in english it also helps us accelerate learning by prioritizing what students need most our focus on personalizing instruction in english classes is an effort to make a large school feel small and to help students feel known we personalize instruction by emphasizing the relevance of course material to students own lives and identities we personalize also through providing targeted individualized feedback on their work and by asking them to write analytically about text and about their own experience in observation anita falvo social studies supervisor will speak with you

058next good evening so sort of a piggyback off of what mr equivia was saying a lot of what we are doing and over the years i've talked to you about how we've changed social studies from memorization to more active engaging learning i'm using the last bullet on here are our historical thinking skills um we have now continued along those lines but we're moving even in a in a different direction or or an advanced direction where we're taking students not just to what we do in the classroom using historical thinking skills but also trying to get them engaged with our community civic learning service learning social responsibility that has now become again sort of the next level of where we're taking social studies and so we're proud with many of the courses that we've added we

059have a social justice course which is extremely popular if you get a chance there's a bulletin board out in the 100s hallway that kind of displays some of their work our african-american history class among others but again we're trying to look at involving the community and our students in the community to get involved in again civic responsibility as part of that um and this is native american history month so it's kind of appropriate i'm speaking about this now um we are working as a department we're doing a lot of professional development this year we actually had a college professor from rutgers come and talk to us about uh the second bullet here uh most of you are aware that the leni lenape are that is the tribe that's in new jersey we actually discovered that

060it's a branch of that called the muncie tribe which is similar to the lenovo professional development in our department meetings is that the teachers are now incorporating these um to make it more relevant for students here where they live so it's it's become very interesting to see the students kind of respond to that and we've also done some work around the school with bulletin boards and acknowledgement statement uh and and things of that nature so really our focus in social studies is to continue with the skills but also as mr cuevas said to make our information relevant to their lives and to their identities as part of this this community and now i will welcome mr kamaford thank you we have set uh three areas of focus for this year many of our students have

061experienced the learning loss both academically and socially due to how the pandemic has changed the way we interact with people we believe our health and pe goals for this year will serve as a vehicle for our students to rebound from those losses this year we will emphasize a wide array of activities tailored to the individual and group needs to help students regain their sense of physical fitness what a fitness regimen means while at the same time affording them an opportunity to socialize with their peers we have also incorporated more activities into a health curriculum connected to counseling services both in school and within our school community we want to impress upon our students how to advocate for their own self-growth and what they can do to guarantee their success in high school and beyond through

062the tools they will gain in health and pe additionally we have instituted this year a character development leadership program into our freshman health and pe curricula the program required careful coordination of health and pe scheduling with the goal of allowing our students to encounter success in school in their personal relationships and to help them extend their learning to their lives beyond high school the crux of the program is learning how to approach opportunities with a positive attitude and be willing to persevere over all boundaries and obstacles we emphasize the importance of attitude integrity respect empathy and character among other traits this started in september in their health classes and will be revisited and recycled in the activities they will complete in pe throughout the year we believe these areas of focus will assist our students

063in becoming more successful in their academic areas next slide please curiously enough there will be a lot of overlap with the new health pe curriculum world languages this year capitalizing on the common experience we have had over the past year and a half would be engaging our students and talking about themselves in their world languages and how to self-manage what that means and the role personal wellness plays in their academic success this will help us emphasize the three modes of communication that are essential to world language learning that include the interpersonal mode being able to speak spontaneously with other people the interpretive mode of reading and listening in order to improve comprehension skills and the presentational mode being able to talk or to write about a topic in a cultural comparison context our students will

064be able to sharpen their reading writing listening and speaking skills in the five languages we offer the dynamics of global citizenship will also play a critical role in what we will accomplish this year through our shared experiences our students will gain a better understanding of social responsibility how that is understood in various cultures across the globe and the role that empathy and responsibility play and how people who speak different languages and have different customs confront the issues that impact all of us we rely heavily on using authentic materials to accomplish this in chinese french italian spanish and esl giving our students a realistic view of what being a global citizen really means that is all we have for world languages next up is mr michael d'alessio director of mathematics and business so the mathematics and

065business department this year this is my first year back in mathematics and business i was in science in previous years so i focus with the teachers kind of reuniting with them and trying to find areas of focus that they were interested in that would help our students so i came up with three goals this year and one was to explore recently adopted algebra 1 resources to engage students more at the level of mathematics that is needed early in their career to be successful here and incorporate more robust activities these include a curriculum called kendall hunt in which there are activities uh provide real life situations for the students allow them to use higher level calculator knowledge and to model uh model real-life situations in career exploration of things in mathematics and science so our algebra

066one curriculum is constantly changing in order to help our get our students up to par so then when they leave here in four years um they their mathematic skills are better we're also developing a progression of computer science classes that will allow all students whether they're in the 9th or 12th grade to explore computer science through their high school career we're looking at a developing a course called computer science discoveries which is a course in which any student can take at any time during the high school year we are targeting the 9th grade students and it gets them into understanding computer science and programming at a very basic level having them understand that anybody can do coding and we celebrate this in the hour of code here that's going to be on december 8th and

0679th we're going to kick off that hour of code by talking about this course during that time this will go nicely with some of the courses we do offer which is cyber security we offer a regular computer science course we offer ap computer science a computer science principles so the nice progression of course is for students who just want to delve into computer science a little bit or into the ap part of computer science we're also going to be exploring some new business course offerings that provide opportunities for career exploration we're looking for our students to understand careers that are in the business realm and obviously right now with all the different uh things that came out with the pen after the pandemic with businesses and ideas that came out our students um enjoy that

068kind of material they enjoy that kind of work because that's what they're going to probably be doing when they leave here and leave and go off to college is exploring these different fields and careers so our business courses are going to start to change a little bit incorporate that and give them opportunities to look at careers down the road once they get into college or if they don't even go to college starting a small business on their own in entrepreneurship something like that so those are the three areas of focus for the math and business department uh next miss nicole carr will come up for science thank you are three areas of focus for the science department uh this year the first one can we go to the next slide please thank you um our

069first one is um centered around three-dimensional science education so in terms of professional development we've been taking a very deep dive into each of these science and engineering practices cross-cutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas our main focus here has been on science and engineering practices and thinking about what that looks like for different students what does that look like at the advanced placement level how do we assess students doing science when traditional assessment has been so focused on content and teachers are very excited to move into that space especially post to have students doing science the other side of that is that when we think about employing science and engineering practices it automatically has you start to think about having students engage in critical thinking solving real problems decision making evaluating data thinking about their

070own opinions and and how how data may inform those opinions the second area of focus is related to instruction it's about science assessment so again and you saw from the state testing in terms of that three-dimensional assessment here we're looking at designing performance assessment tasks modeled after the njsls performance expectations and the main focus here is providing assessments for students that are meaningful and that mirror more authentic assessments that you would experience in life as a citizen trying to kind of think about the world around you the last area of focus has really been driven a lot by our students interest and our teachers interests and this is centered around climate change education new jersey is one of the first states to actually have climate change standards implemented so around that teachers are very excited

071to be thinking about this topic and developing resources lessons and projects to support climate change education i'm excited about that because our students can kind of understand climate change only if they have a comprehensive science education so you need to understand biology chemistry physics meteorology earth science so it's interesting that students could have that experience 9th 10th 11th grade and in their electives naturally we've already had some involvement from other departments of teachers that are just interested in this and ironically climate change standards are actually you know in new jersey going to be world language health and health and phys ed so they're in departments that you might not really expect and so we're really looking for science teachers to be able to kind of capitalize on that for collaboration and interdisciplinary work so that

072our students can kind of see that this is a problem that won't just be solved with science but through social studies mathematics you know communication through world language thank you hello good evening everybody uh last year we spent a lot of our efforts uh trying to get our materials and uh into the hands of our students who were spending their time at home or behind the screens uh so this year um our areas of focus are clearly aligned with the new jersey state art standards um and they have four areas of overarching um uh kind of um anchor points and they are creating performing presenting pursuit producing responding and connecting so this last year we were unable to really showcase a lot of our students talents and abilities and this year one of our first

073goal is to try to diversify and increase the areas of display that we're going to hang and hang our artwork around the school and the community so we have many teachers working on kind of different installations and new areas and murals and things like that to kind of beautify the school and increase some kind of social emotional growth and um also help the students understand what it's like to be you know a real practicing artist by showcasing their work and and standing behind their work and really putting some thought behind it we're hoping that this first goal will directly uh impact the second goal which is to try to cultivate a community of artists which is super important in this day and age trying to get the students together try to have them share ideas

074try to explore their feelings explore their ideas and really try to come together and promote all of the kind of wonderful things we do around here and promote their their again their tremendous ideas and talents we spent a lot of the first month of the school kind of retooling our rubrics and assessments in the in the arts departments trying to align them with a lot of the verbiage uh in the art and the new art standards um the they gave us a great tool the new jersey uh uh department of ed by helping us kind of break down um the the areas of proficiency proficiency for each um grade level um from k to 12 obviously focused on 9 through 12 breaking them up into three categories proficient accomplished and advanced and hopefully that this

075kind of alignment with the standards will help give the students more of a clear expectation of what the teachers expect and help them promote growth and help them promote growth in their own talents as well hopefully these standards will help improve our students social emotional growth uh strategic plan number one which i believe is you know one of the art's greatest gifts to the world and i hope that it will impact the school community as well before i leave i would like to um formally invite you all to our school fall production of you can't take it with you uh november 18th 19th and 20th uh here in the pack and uh they're doing a great job i was just in there today watching rehearsal and mr lynch is just uh knocking it out of

076the park and we're really excited to get the the community back in the pack and the students up on the stage and just you know letting them do their thing because they're super talented and we i hope to see you all there thank you very much good shameless thank you very much i did see on mr lynch today and he actually wanted to thank the board and the administration and everyone for their support and letting them you know really get moving with this this year the students are really really excited they've been working day and night for a very long time and you know the whole time they're just trying to put on a show for everybody and you got to go see the the set it looks pretty cool and it's going to be

077a lot of fun so hope to see you all there and next i am introducing our last presenter special services miss michelle dreamer good evening so i'm going to talk about our areas of focus and special services the first one that we have is the return of our community-based instruction out in the community um as dr jewett said our work-based learning program has been out into the community they are in four locations right now we're at walgreens we're at shoprite we are at the library and at warren hardware so we're happy to be welcomed back into the community that would not be possible without mr size and our transportation coordinator working so hard to make sure that we had busing to get out to the community so thank you for that which is not an

078easy feat this year we all know that also our activities of daily living class has returned to shopping out in shoprite doing functional living activities and they've also already completed one train trip this year which has been fabulous our other area of focus is to reintroduce our peer outreach class so this is a part of our strategic plan it was one of the objectives so we can check that off that we've completed one but it's a class where general education students work with students with iups and they learn together i just witnessed a lesson that they had completed on visual impairments and it culminated with an activity of cooking so it was very interesting to watch them all work together and lastly we are on the social emotional learning as everyone else is and just

079implementing our groups focused on social skills coping skills and study skills thank you mr larrow will now sing a song to close so in summary um as you can see we're extremely motivated uh this year to really reach out to and benefit each one of our students in our in our learning community and advance our strategic plan our strategic plan along the way we thank you for this opportunity to come and present our supervisors and directors did an outstanding job tonight and we're looking forward to coming back in the spring and reporting to you our results for the year so i thank you for your attention and most of all i thank you for your support and cooperation throughout this process so thank you so much thank you to all of you [Applause] do any

080board members have any questions comments the strong um testing so i know that i wonder is the state looking at it as a benchmark test more now and that's why we're getting the data immediately versus a are you versus um are you hitting the standards that we are looking for the districts to hit so that's what mike you may be able to speak to this a little bit more because i know you were at the training for the testing i i do think um and again my correct way from wrong but their their main purpose with this there it was dual purpose one is they had to figure out something to meet the federal requirement of the testing that we did not do last spring okay um but they also you know were very um

081committed and concerned to helping schools assess where students are at com you know some of whom have been home for an entire year um so i do believe it served dual purpose and i don't know if they've talked about if it's something they're going to continue in the future no they haven't talked about it for next year i mean everybody has an opinion on whether that's going to be the njsla is back this spring i mean we're going to be testing going back to the i mean this like getting the data right away was it like four or five times tremendous so it's almost as if to me it's two different tests like this test is a it was it's a formative assessment yes it's diagnostic the issue and i'll say the the issue that

082i find with the test in the spring and any uh this isn't going to be popular amongst the powers that be for saying this but you ca the test in the spring is used to evaluate teachers and to evaluate students that you that a test can assessment can't be dual purpose like that you need to determine which purpose it's going to be used for and design it for that so and i you know that that's the issue um with that test in the spring whereas this one was purely a formative assessment to help us kind of determine some of the you know the um the areas in need and the strengths of our students like anything else that you've learned that's that's really at the federal standard from last year to to meet that standard

083that was didn't take place because we didn't have any testing in new jersey but also you know to give really the teachers the power to see where the kids are at that was the big big push so i guess the real question will be whether or not what they learned from this particular test related to the the instantaneous feedback that we have for our faculty to be able to make diagnostic decisions based on that whether or not that will make its way into you know the state testing which is still is delayed in the time the results come out again student we get the results students are gone or they're moved or they're mixed around as opposed to being able to have actionable information the way that obviously the faculty is reacting to the data

084that they have now so you know i haven't heard whether they're going to learn from this or not but one would hope that they would also helps to promote a conversation with parents absolutely that's one thing the teachers have been doing yeah first i'd just like to thank all the administrators and supervisors who came out tonight it was really an excellent presentation our technology department i'm thrilled that we finally have it on two screens so that members of the public can see the the powerpoints as well i would ask though in in the future that we put another folder in board docs with boe presentations so we can follow along on our own i will and i one of the um one of the benefits but um also what allows us we're a lot we

085are able because it's a google presentation to update it until right before the meeting and so i i am going to make a note peter because as soon as we started the presentation i remembered i forgot to put it in the board folders online so i will make sure that you don't have to ask that again and i will i will uh do that next time um dr jewett just remind me is there a more detailed uh summary for the board members regarding the climate survey information so i believe what's in the ed committee fold i'm sorry the strategic plan committee folder has the detailed of all the highlights from it so yes in the strategic plan committee folder that is in there thank you for asking about that anyone else with any comments questions

086just to close things out uh some of the observations that i made and uh like mr fallon i think we're all grateful for all of the hard work that the administration has done in putting this together we just got those climate results survey and mr ocuavia and mr comfort both highlighted areas in which we were identified as having places for improvement uh such as student involvement and decision making or coping with stress that are addressed in the plans for the uh coming year uh so i think that's fantastic and then just to highlight ms falvo taking things to another step we had a lot of discussion uh in our diversity equity inclusion efforts about school mascot in the past and taking it to the next level by having an education about the local heritage of

087our community as part of the program as opposed to just a one-off on making a decision about one item i think those efforts should be uh commended so we'll move on now to uh committee reports and we'll start with uh education and mr morrison europe so this will be and i'm sorry mr morgan i just wanted to let you know that you will not be judged if you decide to get up and exit at this time if you are done with the presentation i'm taking notes thank you everyone sorry mr morrison no problem thank you everyone all right so since uh the the bulk of the education committee report you have just sat through um so that we we certainly spent time discussing the this evening's presentation uh and again i want to commend the

088the administrators that were here this evening uh and and also mary allen for coordinating with them to to do this presentation uh the other topic that we spoke about was the results from the religious holiday observat observance survey uh dr jewitt shared the survey results uh which are in the ed committee folder with the committee and we discussed those results at length as a result of that discussion and based on the results of of the study itself that there will be no additional holidays that will be added at this time however what came out clear in the survey and particularly in the comments from the survey is that our policies around how we are handling homework quizzes tests special events at the district was not clear from what we were hearing from the parents so

089one of the things one of the recommendations from the education committee is to make sure that we are explicitly clear about what the policies will be as it relates to any major holiday that school is in session on how we are going to handle homework quizzes tests as well as scheduling of events that we are in control of scheduling right so those things that we have the ability to control the scheduling on we will work to make sure that they do not fall on a particular holiday we will also be working to communicate to the to the broad community uh and encourage those students that feel and have a desire to celebrate uh you know their their holidays uh that we encourage them to do so and that we are going to make the accommodations

090here at the school to uh certainly lessen the fear of missing out or missing something in school um as a result of that so i know that dr jewett and the administration is working on how uh that will manifest itself in the communication both the faculty and the community uh but we certainly uh respect all of the different heritages and cultures that we have in our community we certainly respect the rights of our family members to celebrate those holidays and we're going to make sure that we make every accommodation to do that while at the same time making sure that ongoing activities at the school may continue that then led to another discussion regarding the calendar from the standpoint that um you know already this year i think we're now down to one snow day

091i'm not mistaken uh and with the some of the additional federal holidays that have come into place that it uh the committee discussed the need to maybe re-look at uh the start time of the school year uh and have the administration maybe take a look and have some conversations on what it might look like if we were to begin the school year earlier into august so that that could relieve some of the pressure that we have regarding the lack of snow days a and give us some flexibility to move graduation earlier um so that's a longer conversation but it was something that we started in education committee and i know that the administration and certainly uh mr librera uh you know will be taking a good hard look at that and coming back to us

092with some recommendations to consider at the board level and that is my report any questions or comments so i've got a handful of comments if nobody else uh has any uh one uh just to be respectful of uh board members who are not at the table uh it's come to my attention that dr chand has a a different um conclusion about this shall we say and i understand he was on the education committee when this was discussed but nonetheless he had a prior obligation and could not attend so uh in part uh as president i feel responsible in some way to uh uh highlight the fact that uh he does have a different opinion which i'm sure he will express at the next meeting that uh he attends i had earlier today highlighted the recognition

093that we received from the department of education that lighthouse award on diversity in our faculty and at the same time as we listened to the administrator's presentations i saw a definite thread of accounting for diverse cultural backgrounds and a lot of the plans as they were interwoven into different amendments and improvements to the curriculum and it's hard to rectify what looks like an inconsistency in a recommendation to not change in light of the other things that that we have seen and as i look at the calendar which i agree is a very complicated issue uh and it's it's clear that we have to look at it on a larger strategic basis uh one of the things that i want to point out if i'm understanding correctly is that even though we've invested so much in

094technology to be able to handle virtual learning that snow day virtual learning is not an option uh that we are given by the state unless there are three consecutive days in this school so that really doesn't come into play in decision making but some of the things that i i would think the board should think about are one that mr morrison already raised do we start the school year earlier do we extend the school year later we've got two week-long vacations if you will one that straddles the end of the year between christmas and new year's and then another during the spring and there's nothing really that says that they need to be a full week and so those are potential days that could be reduced and if you recall we've had excess snow days

095where we've had to take away time from the spring break in a sequential series in order to be able to accommodate that we also have federal holidays that are in our school calendar columbus day uh martin luther king day president's day while these are federal government holidays i do not think and correct me if i'm wrong that we are obligated to have uh a holiday on that day so there are potential days to move around and i think if the purpose of uh equity is to address the needs of the fewer rather than the greater that perhaps in that broader discussion of what we're going to do with the calendar how are we going to manage uh snow days and other unexpected things in the future can that conversation also include the conversation about uh

096the holidays that have been uh requested or the observances that have been requested i've sat on both the k-8 board and this board collectively for almost 20 years and this request is the first one that i have seen and i know there's been concern expressed at the board level about if we acknowledged every observance of every culture there would be not enough days to have uh school but we've really i i think received one request in a long period of time that i wonder whether we should consider that request in light of this larger calendar conversation as those discussions move forward so just a suggestion that this should be an ongoing conversation um so one of the questions i just have about the whole idea is um the metric if any that was used to

097determine that or was it a min was it more about administration of the calendar um i there's things about like percentage percentage of peop percentage of people that responded was a metric like that used or was it more of like an idea that um as you looked at all the information that came in and the calendar and how many days we can have off and we have to have graduation by this time like that's my i think that was the red committee discussion that occurred really yeah absolutely okay so it was that everything kind of went into the process there wasn't like one metric or one um point of of of like you from the survey you weren't looking for like one thing to happen from it in order to make a decision but no

098the whole point was that the survey was giving us another piece of information as we were looking at the whole thing you know how many families would be impacted how many families would uh you know would take you know indicated to us that they would that their students would stay home to celebrate you know if given that opportunity uh and so that's what we were looking at and it wasn't by the way it was all across multiple um holidays uh that we were looking at and i think that you know it it i think it's really important to read the comments that came back in because the comments themselves were actually for me one of the more compelling pieces of it so i mean the data is one thing the numbers are the numbers but

099you know more importantly were some of the comments that came in from people who would celebrate you know certain holidays uh and what they were looking for from the school and that information to me became very compelling and so the second question i have is just about the um the homework feedback that you got is there a timeline about how that will be addressed does that go back to ed committee does it go to the administration first like where does that go so my plan and turn and and i guess how we've done things like this in the past i actually have it on my uh list on my desk for once we had the board discussion tonight to follow up with the administrators because that's something that we can certainly put in place for

100this year um and we had talked about for the holidays that were you know one of the survey questions did ask um for people to list any additional holidays that weren't included in the before um that we had indicated and there were others um given but maybe there were one or two you know responses for because there's obviously so many different holidays that that our community celebrates that members of our community celebrate um so what we had talked about in ed committee were for those four um additional holidays um was taking a look at making those homework free zones and really the only reason that i couldn't say tonight is this is exactly what it will be is some of the holidays um the observance varies in terms of you know is it from sundown

101from the night before to the the following evening and so we want to make sure we have that information correct um but and we're going to look at also what time of year they occur um because when we instituted our first homework free set of homework free zones we ended up making an exception for optional review work for ap exams um if those students actually wanted you know additional review material from their teachers because it was so close to the exam um to not tell those you know those teachers you absolutely could not give out anything um but really the plan would be you know to come up with a plan and um share it with ed committee at the the next meeting and i think the other the other thing i just want to

102point out real quick michael i'm sorry to meet you um is the when we looked at the holidays three of the four that were explicitly called out were in essence you know and from the tied with one another and they were from three different um uh cultural communities so i think that's you know one of the things we have to take a look at you know as part of it is it's not like it's you know it's not a matter of addressing one in this it's we're talking about addressing several and how do we make those accommodations which again you know when we talk about the comments you know i would strongly encourage everyone to read you know the 60 plus comments that came in uh you know that provide a lot more color to

103what the numbers are so i'm sorry michael no that's quite right uh just to play off greg what you were saying i think it's time it's always time to evaluate the calendar as a whole as you're saying so it's not just adding days but taking away days and we should survey let's just look at thanksgiving thursday and friday a lot of workplaces friday is a work day it's not a day off in our world school education world thursday and friday are both days off so it's important to survey what people take off thursday and friday and it's not just the students in the family but it's the teachers as well because historically we could have school but if we're losing 50 teachers it doesn't serve a purpose if we have to uh staff with substitutes

104so we kind of learn an education day i look at days as education days when we can learn and i found that ah just as an aside as a father a veteran that veterans they didn't get any love in the survey but certainly as important as some of these other days because i mean we do have labor day off on memorial day and veterans kind of stepchild to some extent but again to look at all these holidays because again as you mentioned not all federal holidays that we have to observe such as columbus day and a few others but you know we should work from taking days off and taking away days because again we have this constriction of 180 days and just to give us the greatest flexibility thank you one of the um

105things that we brought up at our at a county level last year as superintendents um partly because we saw the difficulty you know last year every school had a different schedule so to speak in terms of whether they were you know they were doing a lot of schools were doing cohorts but was it a cohort for a full week so the students were in for a week then they were off the next week or was it like us where it was two or three days and then off for two or three days and what that caused a lot of issues with were teachers whose children don't attend the district that they work in so they may be at work you know they're at work but their children are home because their the other district operates

106differently so just one of the other complicating factors in this calendar discussion is if we were just to decide to be open the day after thanksgiving for our staff their stu their children are off and so then it turns into a child care issue and we actually had talked about you know is there and we do try to coordinate as much as possible as a county because so many of our teachers obviously you know live in proximity to where they're working so we share a lot of of teachers and and students uh but you know we talked about it it would be nice to have some guidelines from i can't believe i'm actually asking for guidelines from the state but in terms of you know to have a more consistent calendar because it makes it

107very difficult when you know we want to be open on a particular day or closed on a particular day but then it causes you know for example too for us if we're closed for the most part our students are old enough that if they need to stay home alone they can but if we add additional holidays to the calendar and the k-8s we want the k-8s to coordinate with us it's more of an issue for them because now that's another day students are home from school that parents have to to figure out what to do so i'm not saying it's a reason to not do it or but just something else that that further complicates the discussion i i wanted to follow up on a couple of comments that miss barone made uh one was

108about uh the survey itself and i think we made very clear that there was not a percentage threshold that was leading to any sort of decision-making and looking at the numbers if you look at how many unique families participated in the survey one could even argue as how valid the survey is because of the number of students and families we have in the community you know we didn't hit a ten percent threshold of responses to really say uh that this is a valid survey um i'm going to try uh my very best to not get emotionally uh down a rabbit hole about the homework comment because i've already expressed my feelings about excess homework in the school and kids shouldn't be up past midnight on a regular basis trying to get everything accomplished and if

109we want to address uh stress and and emotional wellness in our schools this is in my opinion an a1 priority but while we can have a policy about homework i can tell you i've been in the district now for 20 years i've had six students who are almost the last one is out of this school district the rest have graduated uh i can tell you that a no homework policy may look good on paper but in practice does not occur and what happens is at least in my experience and i'm going to paraphrase what my kids say but they will get an assignment that's due the very next day and obviously they don't have the homework to be done during the holiday time period but they have to work on it to be able to

110make the deadline of when it is actually due so i think it's more complicated than saying homework can't be assigned tests can't be assigned on specific days because it appears in practice that kids end up having to work on those holidays in any case in order to be able to make the deadlines that are ultimately assigned to them well isn't that sort of our role though from from here on to you know we made a decision this was we you know and not to walk it back the decision was made that these would be made no homework no test um i can't remember specifically but it was no homework no test no activities that were under our control and i think we have that is the decision that was made and it's you know there's

111got to be some accountability if that doesn't happen from my perspective i mean we get these regular reports from the teachers and that's that's something that we have to abide by so just uh slight correction uh dr chabelski uh this survey actually well exceeded 10 of our families uh was actually closer to 20 so just so there's not a misunderstanding out there so how many families are in the district well less than the number of students yes well that that i would assume yeah so and we had 300 and i guess we had three um i did i had that number i have to ask i have that um i did get that from tiffany um of how many the suggestion would be that we'd be at 1500 families by your 20 number and if

112i'm incorrect yeah no i just i didn't want it to be out there that it was 10 because that is not the case the difficult thing with the survey like this too is i think if if somebody did not want additional holidays off they didn't bother filling it out so i so it's almost like we'd want it you know get a response for that i guess just for them to acknowledge that they're choosing not to um indicate that but i think it's you know it's a survey that if you don't have a personal interest in you may not complete it but i can get the number i did ask her for that at the beginning of this um and i'm sure it's actually my email somewhere but i can get that to you okay anything

113else about education mr fallon you're up operations i apologize being recorded uh the discussion regarding uh mr stein's recommendation that the board consider making this the last year for the for us to donate to project graduation and let the junior class and lower class parents know that lower class uh lower uh sophomore and freshman parents know that we wouldn't be making a donation to project graduation in the future uh miss barone and i both expressed that perhaps this is something that we need to have a whole board discussion on as to you know originally the idea of project graduation at one point was it was a time when uh the kids were brought together and out for the evening uh but they weren't drink drinking and not likely to be drinking and it was quite

114well attended for a number of years i don't know if that's still the case but we ought to look into that so the board can have a discussion he then moved on to discuss professional services [Music] we we do our annual renewals in january it's been uh and mr stei has provided a list of the professional contracts due for renewal they include board attorney the district auditor bond council financial advisor architect of record we had been for a while on a rotating basis of getting an rfp request for proposals from one or two of of those uh groups each year uh we've been a little slow and and there's a number of them now that that we haven't done in at least three or four years but we're going to discuss it again at the

115next operations committee meeting and recommend that at least two of those groups go out for requests for proposals and then set up a schedule so that we'll be you know going through them every every few years and getting new proposals mr sties then discussed the 2022-23 budget calendar uh the information uh the administrators have been uh requested to put together their their budget requests those will be coming back in sometime i believe later this month uh and the administration will work on them and and and the operations committee will work on them and and with with the idea we're aiming towards is it a march budget hearing this year the budget uh our initial proposal our initial budget presentations will be in march and then the hearing is in april right thank you [Music] we

116did we discussed the uh the agenda items for for next week i'm sorry for the next meeting the capital reserve maximum in there and uh we're you know well well within what what's permitted by the state uh we just talked about some language changes to the ref to the uh resolution and those were done we then discussed the referendum update as i believe you know we're planning to do another one of our referendum specials the ones where we the one where we have put aside enough money in our capital reserves so that we can pay our portion of the referendum within one year so that it won't with out of our capital reserve and not have to assess new taxes for the referendum and that way also get to take advantage of the between 40

117and 34 percent that the state will contribute towards the project uh we are looking at uh what could be a 7.2 million dollar referendum project a new would take care of the new steam lab renovations to the ceramic lab ceramic slab excuse me relocation of the health office relocation of the photography lab and renovations to the athletic trainer's office we need to get moving on these these projects because the architects have to have to do the work to get ready to uh the bond resolutions tim yeah well the first thing they they would need to get the department uh the applications to the department of education to approve the projects and and at that point you know we're on a short timeline because we were hoping in the springtime to get this approved by the

118department of education and by our ourselves also so that we can have a referendum hopefully next september and again that would be another one of these no impact on taxes because we've already got the money for it in our capital reserves the important thing for everybody here to know is that you know we are focusing on those projects i mentioned again the steam lab renovations to the ceramics lab relocation of the health office the photography lab relocation and renovations to the athletic trainer's office those are the projects from among the various things in our long-range facilities plans that can fit within a bond issue of that size that we can pay off immediately uh and the ones we think are the most needed but you know if people feel that there are other things that

119we should address we need to do it now we then moved on to discuss the other items on the agenda one is a need to replace some interior and exterior doors that's on the next meeting agenda it's a little less than uh 70 thousand dollars we're still having our continuing issues with transportation and the inability to secure a contractor for the the vote tech run in the afternoon and also the fact that we're having to employ coach buses for a number of our athletic events that we send people to students and and coaches rather and finally dr chand asked about the status of the solar installation project which is as told by to us by mr sty's in the planning stage and work is expected to begin on that in this spring and that is

120the operations committee report thank you very very much mr fallon anybody have any questions or comments uh i would propose that that discussion about project graduation be one of our board discussion items at the next meeting that will give people the opportunity to review minutes and if the community wanted to come and make comments that they would have ample opportunity to do so um correct me if i'm wrong but i'm not sure this board can make a financial decision about something like that wouldn't that be next year's board's decision you're correct that we wouldn't be committing the future boards to that the idea was really to to give the parents of the junior sophomore and freshman class some heads up that they shouldn't as they have now for the last seven years expected a 17

121000 contribution off the bat we're not committing a future board not to make it we're more talking about giving those parents a sense of whether it would be the intention of the present board to continue that year after year thank you we'll get to public comment in a moment anyone else on the project graduation there were some questions that i had during in operations different ways so i think before we have a board discussion it may require some data being provided either to the operations committee or to the whole board about the rationales and what the actual recommendation was and like i said the rationale is behind it and and i'd suggest we could do that at the board level i don't think it needs to go back to operations excellent suggestion thank you agreed

122i i think you still carry the baton yes negotiations i can uh our our board negotiations committee met met today before the board meeting we have a scheduled meeting with the whrea tomorrow to [Music] the the initial meeting at which we would discuss setting ground rules and um and a schedule for when proposals would be made the teachers negotiating committee has indicated that as with three years ago they would like to have their bargaining council which consists of every member of the association present the negotiations committee on behalf of the board is not willing to do that i communicated that to the head of the teachers negotiations tonight so we'll see whether or not the meeting goes forward tomorrow any questions for mr fellow i want to thank all our board members for all their

123hard work on the committees and uh bringing this information to us tonight and thanks everyone in the public for your patience it is now first up uh this is our first opportunity for a public comment this first comment period will be limited to agenda items that include committee reports uh and uh the second public comment period that will occur at the end of the meeting will be open to any topic uh comments are limited uh to five minutes and uh when you come to the microphone if you would give your name and town please um can you hear me uh my name is danny i'm from wachong and i'm in seventh grade i'm a future wachong hill student so i'm here before you today because of one thing percentages and percentages are the reason why

124we don't have our holidays if we were not a minority group we would not be standing here before you and our holidays would already be on the calendar and i wouldn't have to be fighting to get the right to celebrate my holiday without stress and i wouldn't have to deny my identity because of anxiety missing the school work and lesson now i recognize that effort has been made and that this survey was created and put out there but once again this effort is not in the right direction you wanted this survey to do one thing the survey only brings out percentages and numbers nothing else you wanted to tell me that i'm part of a small group and i already know that and as someone mentioned the survey was not very effective because of the

125amount of people that took it so the numbers were in no way accurate so let's just say that the no homework and no test does take place the class cannot just like sit around and do nothing the the there's time in the day and needs to be used so lessons and teachings will end up be taking place so the the kids who go out of school uh to celebrate their religion will be at a disadvantage to the uh compared to their peers just because of their religious beliefs so uh so now that the survey is done what are you going to do are you going to deny hundreds of students the right to celebrate their religion without having to constantly worry about school or are you going to be a leader and take action and

126do something that should have been done a long time ago and as you recently just told me you're going to night you're going to deny the people and students trying to get through the school without trying to get through their school day without religion conflicting so tommy watching hills are you going to be an upstander and leader or a bystander of this story and just stop for a moment and think about that and try to reconsider your decision a few days can be added on to the end of the school years and it can be coordinated with the other schools and all it takes is some effort and time and proof that you care enough to make and create change and you said that it will take time and i'm sure it will but eventually

127it will our goal will be reached and together we can do that and the only thing that happens is it just depends on you guys to tell us how soon it will be reached um also that uh thank you for your time um also just a recommendation uh can the personal comp uh like public comments be like earlier because i have like i need to go to school tomorrow and now i come home late so just putting that out there so thank you for your time and have a good night thank you very much would anybody else like to come forward again if you would say your name and the town that you're from hello my name is janan i live in wachong i'm part of the wachong hills muslim hindu and jewish coalition and

128i have to say not surprised that what you guys said tonight we knew you were going to do a survey to count us and that's why we boycotted us boycotted the survey so we're not surprised that you had low numbers or that there was the representation wasn't there because we felt and now you've confirmed that you were counting us to count us out we've already been counted out as any minority knows how that feels which is why the jewish community the african-american community the ida committee and the diverse faculty that you have hired understand us and they've come out and supported us not surprised but i'm disappointed and i really do hope you guys change your mind as you know within the last month there were two incidents where muslim students were bullied for their

129faith their heritage by someone who is supposed to protect them in school these incidents one in maplewood one in ridgewood made national headlines olympians civil rights organizations politicians our governor leaders all weighed in in 2021 how could this happen in new jersey of all places that students would be targeted bullied excluded for their faith or heritage indeed how could it happen well it's happening right here at wachong hills this calendar it's an exclusionary document it states who gets equitable access to education and who doesn't don't tell me that a religious minority student can just approach their teacher and ask for an extension you're asking them to out themselves consider the mill you the student is living it dr jewett you and i had a conversation we have a political environment where we had a president

130who was talking about bands of a religious minority consider the milieu and then you put out a survey during these two incidents in new jersey are you aware or are we tone deaf that's why you got low representation and we told you it is irrelevant a survey is irrelevant if you truly mean that you want to give equity inclusion and diversity at this point it's still lip service this reflects a poor understanding of the pressures that students feel the very first time we came we had a school psychologist employed by the district that talked about the pressures these students field and yet we ignore it and we do presentations about social emotional well-being don't give lip service do something concrete what message are you sending to these students that show up almost every single meeting

131and they're knocking on the door and they're asking for a seat at the table and you just said sorry we don't mean what we are strategic initiative we don't mean that we'll put a survey to prove our point and this is not conclave so let's see the results not that it matters because whatever the results are we didn't participate maybe not 100 i'm sure you got some participation but a lot of people didn't and you knew that going into this because you didn't collaborate with us you you came up with this solution which is not a solution without our participation furthermore stating that no new material will be taught on these holidays doesn't go far enough as was just stated a day of review especially in an honors or ap class can make a world

132of difference for a student so if even if you miss that students aren't going to miss it it's interesting dr percivsky talked about the lighthouse award it recognizes school districts and charter schools in new jersey for illuminating the path toward educational improvement and equitable outcomes i haven't seen any improvement where is the movement towards equitable outcomes it's ironic that watchung hills has received this award for months now minority students have been petitioning you without any meaningful action on the part of the board they've actually been left in the dark i hope you reconsider your decision i appreciate dr prizbilski thinking outside the box because that's what you need you need creativity you can add two days at the beginning of the school year add two and and i sent you guys an email net net

133the hindu and eid holidays diwali and eid it wasn't more than one two maybe like for example diwali just took place it wouldn't have required the day off we're just talking about one day which was it which will be eid in the spring so where there's a will there's a way but we're going to continue coming until the change gets made because what's right is right thank you [Applause] hello good afternoon the bases if you would just give your name and template oh sorry yeah sorry about that that's okay uh my name is ali uh and i live in huanchang all right the basis of the wachong hills high school survey is majority rule which means that minority voices don't count i would like to remind the school board that at various times in american

134history that the system of majority rule has allowed the abuse and or disregard of minority rights for example following the emancipation of african americans and the passage of the 14th amendment many all-white local and state governments enacted laws that restricted the rights of the black minority additionally during world war ii japanese american citizens found their rights ignored and they were incarcerated in concentration camps because of the fear of the majority school board members will respond to this by saying that they will allow minority students to celebrate their holidays and take an excused day from school but to do this they must have the courage to come forward and tell the school the reason for their absence why does this take courage i will tell you why there's a rise in islamophobia and anti-asian rhetoric and

135anti-semitic rhetoric and anti-mexican rhetoric and anti-black rhetoric the list goes on and on it is now becoming an all too familiar occurrence with unfortunately no hope in sight as fear and hatred is on the rise there's a saying in islam god is with those who are patient i hope to be one of those patient servants who has the opportunity to witness the islamic aid holidays as official holidays of this country thank you thank you good evening guys can you guys hear me i'm sorry i don't know if can you hear me with my mask on okay good my name is jasmine and the town is warren and i don't have a prepared statement today because honestly i was really hopeful that things would go very differently you know there comes a time in every elected

136officials a term where they have to show some sort of leadership they have to demonstrate that they're willing to advocate for people that need it the most and that was not done in this situation you took a survey that served one purpose it marginalized a group of children not just adults not just the families a group of children that were being told we'll see if your identity matters to the larger population we'll see if your identity matters to the committee that has been selected to be in charge of your education your well-being your pride your identity and today they were basically told it doesn't matter it doesn't matter but don't worry we'll try not to give you homework and even that we're not sure if we can do because historically it hasn't happened there have

137been a few of you that have expressed some level of empathy and i thank you for that and i'm sorry i'm not familiar with your individual names but i've definitely taken note there are a few of you who haven't even turned around to look at the speakers who have come before you including the three that have come before you before me and me now particularly the true gentleman right here not a single second of eye contact with any of us did you say and do we have that on the record okay well that that that in and of itself shows a lack of professionalism okay regardless you've been entrusted with doing what's right for the students and these these children who are looking to you to tell them yes you know what all the things

138that we've marked on our strategic plan goals really do matter and we are making efforts to not just have a powerpoint presentation saying that we are actually striving for those goals but that we're actually doing something to make sure that these students have character development they feel like they're part of global citizenship they feel like their wellness is being addressed that diversity actually matters and the actions of not including one of the i'm sorry the second largest religion in the entire world and the students that represented within our community not acknowledging them not and and and boiling it down to being something just a matter of a survey that maybe i don't know 10 maybe 20 percent of people filled out you've listened to or read 60 comments that have somehow swayed your decision yet

139you're ignoring the children that are staying up coming and speaking before you the children that cannot be here today because they're either too young or they're just they're unaware that this is even going on those people aren't even being acknowledged and that is extremely disappointing and i would hope that you know in in lieu of the excuses and if we do this for you we'll have to do it for this person and that person and this person in lieu of that that you will look at the people that made an effort to come before you not just today who have been writing you letters who have been trying to stand out and say hey we want to count we want to matter we want you to acknowledge our identity we want you to help us

140tell our children that the things that they believe in the things that they want to celebrate matter and we've all come out of a pandemic now we know how important celebrations are we know how important it is to balance not just the stress that we all have in life but the good times that we want to spend with our families with our congregations if we don't have that balance in our communities we're not going to have anything we're going to have just stressed out kids who are always looking for the next thing always looking to go to the next step and have no balance in their life not not going to feel like their sense of that they're part of a larger community and that's a travesty and that's not what you guys have been

141elected for and i know that's not the job you want to do and i understand that you have a commitment a obligation to the whole but you have to look at the individual parts especially when they're coming to you and they're they're crying and they're screaming they're trying to be acknowledged those things have to be understood and you guys know that you all have kids you all have families you all have holidays that you relish in the celebration of including christmas so you know the importance of those times and to neglect and to just ignore this group of children at this time when they have come to you and their families and have come to you and asked and just boiled it down to well we just can't do it we can't do it right

142now we won't do it now we're not going to look at it right now because you know we've got only this many days on the calendars but we'll try not to give you homework that's just not enough so i really hope you do consider and i do hope that you look at these kids individually and i do hope that you work with the community to figure out how it can be done thank you for your time [Applause] would anybody else like to speak so we'll close the first opportunity for public comment there will be a second opportunity if there are people uh including our eloquent seventh grade speaker who would like to depart to get uh some work done and uh uh feel free to uh leave uh we'll move on to uh board discussion

143before we hit our future action items uh uh mr morrison has a regionalization update for us yes so the uh this afternoon we received a copy of the new application for regionalization along with the guidelines for that application uh the deadline for the submission of that application is january 15 of 2022. um i've provided the copy of the application to the administration we'll make sure that gets into your board books or your in into the board folders uh so that you can take a look at that uh they also gave us the name of the business administrator from pinelands regional who just completed uh their feasibility study um and they've uh he has indicated that he will assist uh mr stize and and our group in assembling our application so we're getting some some professional

144help from the folks down in fine lands to assist us with the application process uh and so you know if all goes to plan we should be able to get the application pulled together and submitted by the 15th of january um at that point in time we should be we should get a quick turnaround from the um department of community affairs uh we heard this afternoon that they're very much aware of our application and interest and are eagerly waiting its submission thank you mr morrison any questions for mr morrison uh we'll move on to future action items hopefully we've taken a look at the agenda for what we will be voting on in a couple of weeks is there anything that anybody would like to discuss within that i found you had your issues addressed

145i think yes yes okay the next uh board discussion item is just a reminder of our goals and if there is uh uh something that uh somebody wants to bring up about that uh now is the time i guess just related to the board retreat yeah that is scheduled so i assume at that point in time we will be working on revising those goals as part of that retreat um so to the degree that we know who the candidates are i think that will be coming in i think historically what we've done if it's been this late in the year that we've invited them it is a public meeting we've invited them to participate in in that because it is a public meeting correct absolutely yeah so if we can get we have been through

146we are somebody you know and love dearly and i think we're actually going to have it in the um since the board generally likes to be in a different setup correct yes so we were actually going to have it in the cafe so that you guys could utilize that space and check it out and because we do have usually food at the retreat so and the date again is when november 30th [Music] thank you tuesday after thanksgiving weekend anything else mr president i'd like to move resolutions a1 through a8 would anybody like to pull anything for a separate discussion or vote seeing non-roll call vote please ms barone mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunsinger morrison yes silver yes rasa yeah and dr schubelski yes mr president i'd like to move resolution c1 through c15

147would anybody like to pull anything for a separate discussion or vote seeing none roll call though please that's right mr fallon yes mr hunsinger mr morrison yes sober and doctor yes thanks mr president i'd like to move resolutions d1 through d5 would anybody like to pull anything for a separate discussion or vote uh mr size just i had one question i apologize for not asking earlier d4 uh it just seemed kind of unusual to have an attempt and a success as separate bills yeah they were so i could have some clarity on that yeah they were they were emerging items um how do i say this publicly it was a clog a sewer line clog in the bathrooms over by gym three four um good note to enemy i know right sorry about that you

148know i mean but we so the first attempt was an emergent attempt to get we couldn't get through i'm trying here and yeah and then we eventually get the second attempt we did get through yeah they had to get it and they had to actually take a camera and go down tmi i guess the issue was the first was emergent not prepared with the equipment needed to actually accomplish the feed no well no we we kind of thought they would but the issue was was so um significant yeah thank you it was difficult it was it was it was much worse than we had anticipated i apologize for the 1938 diversion let that go and uh roll call vocals there we go mrs barone mr burnbury mr fallon yes mr hunsinger morrison yes sober yeah

149rasa and dr shipowski yes motion's caring second opportunity for public comment on any item we promise not to throw things seeing none anybody have any other business no i just i i i'm sorry denied you were that close i you know i'd um i i can't let that comment directed at barry go without response um that completely inappropriate and i just think that if if we're gonna have meaningful conversations um folks have to be respectful uh and you know we're seeing across the state word meetings getting rowdier and less you know less respect for the people that are there and i think that it's a slippery slope if folks come in and start making wild accusations uh and making derogatory statements and you know we can have we can disagree all day long over policy

150and i certainly respect the opinions that that folks bring forward uh even though they may not agree with decisions that we make you know that goes with any elected position however it is not appropriate to to be abusive to board members and if folks are going to come and have if they want to be heard they need to be respectful and we will be respectful in return but you know the last time i checked you know you you get you make more progress with uh with honey than you do with vinegar and so i just i can't i can't let it stand that you two were targeted that way this evening i'm not targeting you or anyone but i would rather have her say something like that i didn't i didn't find that abusive i

151i thought she was pointing out i do think it's respectful when we have people who you know grace us with their presence we want people to attend our board meetings and i think the least we can do is make eye contact with them that's my opinion i agree i agree but i've been sitting on the end and i used to have to turn around and i used to do it but i'm perfect but i do think it's the least we can do to show respect to the people who come to our meetings and i i agree i didn't i didn't like that exchange at all but i would rather have her say something in our meeting to our faces then write a write a negative letter to the editor or post something negative on facebook

152i would rather hear that and i will also object in the strongest possible terms to the questioning of this board's commitment to diversity equity and inclusion totally agree and everything that we've invested in trying to make this a warm and welcoming place again i'm i'm sorry that things didn't turn out you know the way that they would have hoped uh you know it may not be the end of the conversation but at the same time um just because in in just because an issue doesn't go in one direction for one group of people doesn't give them permission to malign the integrity of the entire board in addressing uh the needs of our entire student population so you know on that i object very very strongly again i respect their right to be here and i

153expect i respect their their opinion and i think that we need to do everything that we can as a board to if we can't accommodate you know with what they want find ways to make it possible for them to celebrate and be celebrated um so you know it's just enough um well two things one's simply logistical uh we can't see the podium if it could just be moved out it would be easier to be respectful um or more respectful the the second thing is if meetings do start to get out of hand we do we can set a timer and that is a very very effective tool set a fair amount be it three minutes it's over it's over it works well i mean we do have a five minute uh in-hour policy oh it

154is five minutes it is five minutes and uh and it was actually respect it was actually respected i i kept an eye on the clock i mean plus or minus a tiny bit but it was respected i had the feeling a couple of them were going over by a bit but perhaps not it felt that way um i i i i would say that uh respect is a two-way street and uh as we expect the community who comes to the microphone and sits in the audience to be respectful we also need to be respectful uh and i think that kind of uh collaborative and mutual respect will get us much farther than the other that's what i'm looking for thank you i don't have a solution to the podium problem because the um well the

155reason we moved it there is because if we move it there then you end up seeing the back of their head from the rest of the community and on camera so but i so i don't know that's i mean carol we keep trying so if we can we'll think about it some more but we keep trying different positions