001yes we remembered see that that shortens my report that's jason right promise a tap dance later i expect that yeah we expect a real performance jason hey the pet when we had the students here uh you know they sang they played some music they danced okay is thank you jason oh nick are we live okay [Laughter] we should have let him walk yeah okay uh dr dewitt time for superintendent's comments thank you dr schabelski welcome uh welcome to our audience who's here tonight as well as our presenters and the full board so everyone can tell that things have changed since our last board meeting seeing as we're all sitting here in masks now so since we did finally receive the updated guidance that we were awaiting from the doe and from the governor i just
002want to give a little bit of a preview of some of the information that we will be sending out to our community in the coming days now that we've been able to to meet as a group and and just go through what some of this means it is not like last year where we had a lot of decisions to make as school was starting because you know we will be here for full days all students will be here for full days because there is no remote option but i did just want to go through some of the updated guidelines because everyone may not read them in as much detail as we do who are you know living with them and dealing with them so with regard to masking guidelines all students and staff are required
003to wear masks when inside except for certain circumstances which include eating or engaging in rigorous activity which is as per the governor's most recent executive order and masks are also required at all times on school buses we are going to ask parents to continue to monitor their children for symptoms but we will no longer have temperature kiosks or a daily form here and we will we also will be evaluating some of our um september and october large capacity events such as back to school night to determine if we are going to my microphone there we go everyone who's got a green on their microphone okay it's good now um so we are going to be evaluating uh if we are going to do those in person or keep them remote just because that draws a
004lot of people to the school the we actually were already discussing even if the year were completely normal um you know discussing what we were going to do with some of those events because we actually did get better attendance at some of the events that were held virtually parents seem to like not having to run home try and get dinner together for their family get back to the school especially people who have smaller children and needed you know to get child care so we're going to be evaluating some of those things and more information will be coming we are looking to make the year as normal as possible despite the fact that we will be in masks with regard to lunch so students obviously may have their their masks off when eating but when students
005are purchasing food or waiting in line they should remain masked we have a number of areas throughout the building that are designated for lunch and we will continue to use those spaces but we are also going to designate areas in which students can eat that allow for increased social distancing for students who want that option and we'll also explore additional areas if needed we certainly encourage social distancing where possible but as we expect all students to be back in school in september this is not going to be feasible in many situations so we will still try and space out our classrooms as much as we can but obviously we are going to have all of our students here every day as opposed to the cohorting from last year so it's going to be a little
006bit different this is why masking you know is important with regard to contact tracing guidelines because that does affect the perimeter for what you have to to consider for contact tracing which affects obviously um you know who will have to quarantine if contact tracing was complicated last year it's about 15 times more complicated this year because there are different guidelines for if you are vaccinated with no symptom if you're determined to be a if you're a contact and you're vaccinated with no symptoms if you're vaccinated with symptoms if you're unvaccinated and then it also varies depending on the cali score in terms of the length of quarantine so it is extremely confusing our nurses thank goodness are extremely skilled very competent very adept at this and we keep in very close communication with the department
007of health on this as well um we're still working out and we've linked all the the cdc content the guidance from the cdc with regard to contact tracing to the health page of our website we thought that that was a better way to do it than to create our own and put it on there because when the cdc updates it our link then automatically takes you to that updated information rather than us having to to continually update it and we are still working out the best practice that we are going to follow uh for students who need to be quarantined in terms of ensuring a continuous delivery of instruction what we talked about today um when we met as a as a leadership team we're really having trouble anticipating if we're going to have less
008students that that need to quarantine this year or more students just because we are going to have so many more students in school they're going to be closer together we're going to be having lunch so we're you know we're going to have to see how the first couple weeks go in terms of um some of our decisions with regard to instruction for students quarantining and and some other things you know we're just like we said last year we're putting um what we think are the best practices in place for september 1st but that does not mean that we won't revisit them and revise them for october 1st so i appreciate everyone's patience as we go through this and let's see um as we as we did last year we will remain in very close contact
009and communication um with our department of health uh and with our school physician we have a new school physician this year has been very very proactive in sending us guidelines and updates uh which have been very very helpful uh and we'll obviously continue to consult the cdc guidelines the aap guidelines and i will continue to utilize my somerset county colleagues as resources uh as we all have you know for the past year and a half collaborated on a lot of these decisions and and put our heads together to figure out the best ways to approach some of this personally and professionally i am very much looking forward to having all of our students and staff back in september it's actually very heartening to see the life around the building this week football preseason started a
010little over a week ago but yesterday was when all the rest of the the fall sports started as well as marching band and so it's really nice to be driving to school in the morning and see all of the activity as opposed to last year at this time when you had no idea school was starting anytime soon because it was still so desolate so it's really nice to see everyone back and everyone excited to be here and so i i'm really you know cautiously optimistic as we approach the first day of school and all of this will be put out in writing um to everyone in the coming week to the to students to parents and to staff so that way they'll they will have all this information all right thank you thank you uh
011in terms of my comments i would like to uh welcome [Music] the students parents teachers administration back it's been a uh tough road over the past year and a half with uh covid and our uh as a board we're very appreciative of everyone's patience in our navigation of the challenges of that pandemic unfortunately despite our best efforts uh and that is reflecting everyone in the country trying to optimize our situation we're still in i think a very fluid situation uh with the delta variant things are still fairly unpredictable there's not a lot of scientific evidence that gives us guidance about this uh there was uh i think in the news just today there's an expected announcement that the biden administration is going to recommend uh booster vaccinations for uh everyone who's gotten the pfizer or
012moderna vaccination and it's expected to be the same for the johnson and johnson with a date of about eight months after the second vaccination for booster that's based on data out of israel that suggests that those who are vaccinated in the winter are less protected than those who are vaccinated in the spring so what this tells me and i i think everyone should understand is this is still a very fluid situation and so while dr jewett and the administration are working very hard to create a safe opening for all of our students things may actually change over time based on new information that we get and we ask that everyone be patient with that such that changes may occur and we will do our best to maintain an optimal safety for everyone in this environment
013and with that i will pass it on to mr size for his comments thank you excuse me thank you mr president i think i will save most of mine to chime in on the operations committee report the one thing i will mention um the one concern we do have opening this year this is not a coveted related concern but the bus driver situation in the state um is in a tough spot a lot of the drivers some of them have retired some you know they're they're having the rules and regulations to keep the cdl or maintain one are very difficult so the bus companies are issuing their concerns so we're working together and our biggest concern is athletics and after school stuff because the middle school runs is what the bus companies will try to
014have uh bus drivers for first so that makes it a little more difficult because athletics generally goes right in that time zone so we are working toward solutions uh with the athletic director and our bus supervisor so just to keep you posted on that but it is unfortunately this the last couple years have been difficult with that and it's getting more difficult so it is what it is thank you uh thank you mr sties uh we'll move on to uh education committee report uh thank you mr president so the education committee met in july 15th uh and we had actually had two topics the first was uh the use of our esser funds um which is largely going to be going toward our tier three plan for utilization uh we have a presentation on that
015this evening so i'm going to defer that commentary to that presentation and then we also talked about diversity equity inclusion and the programs that we're running here at watchung hills along with an overview it says there's an overview in the packets but i did not see that in the drives okay so refer you to the drives uh but we will be uh doing some presentations mr librera and ms phelan will be speaking to the pto in september talking about the work that we're doing in that area as we continue to address diversity equity and inclusion across our curriculum and that's all i have on education thank you any questions for mr morrison seeing none uh we'll move on to uh operations mr fallon yeah the operations committee met on august august 5th about two weeks
016ago and over a number of things and as mr stein's indicated he'll chime in as as needed here first we reviewed this is is this any better if i keep it closer okay all right with regard to the construction projects that we discussed uh one is just the the general cleanup we've got a new contractor in pritchard and hillyard this year chris pick is staying on top of them they're working together and expect to have everything cleaned up uh when we resume school uh in the next week or so uh also we're reported on the rooftop units for the south caf south cafeteria this is about as close as i can get without eating it and though that project is moving forward although it's going to be kind of as if two weeks ago it
017was going to be kind of kind of tight whether we would get through it tim i don't know if you have any more information yet no same thing they're moving and we're hoping to have it done on time but we're con we're making contingencies just in case it's about a week week late and we may have to move a lunch but we're working on it okay and the third construction project that's that's going forward now is work the moving forward with the design meeting for lighting lighting and hvac uh for the esip project uh that that's moving forward as uh as expected uh next we had a discussion of the year-end reserves we we had previously uh brought that to the to the board a brief discussion uh we thought we might have up to
0183.2 million dollars in unaudited uh surplus balances as we got to the end of the year it looks to be about 2.9 uh you know we discussed the ideas of whether we need to put things in a separate separate budget line for future capital construction so we'd be in a position to take advantage when there's state money again to contribute towards bonded construction projects with one of our one-year bond projects as we've done for the for this room and before that for the turf field uh so that's one thing we're going to continue to look at uh mr saiz also mentioned that the cafeteria account account last year uh went down uh but had a loss of about 200 uh fortunately in the years before that we had accumulated a good bit of surplus in
019operating the cafeteria because generally the state requires it to be run without being subsidized by the school so we haven't had to subsidize it but it wouldn't be sustainable if if we have another year like that but you know given that we expect to have students in for for most if not all of the year it's likely that we won't have that sort of a loss moving on in discussing you know surplus there was also general discussion at the room in the room among the operations committee that it's not only for capital projects but we also want to make sure that we continue to anticipate academic needs uh with guidance from the strategic plan so that we'll be able to use you know the surplus funding to to address both issues there was then a
020discussion of the chromebooks that are just coming back from uh from the seniors now that we've got a four four years of the five years now with this new year one of the church groups had approached us about whether they could either purchase them or they wanted to donate them to some place in central america tim went back and uh we were going to bring that whole question to the entire board rather than us as to whether we should just put them on the dot gov site so that they can be sold as surplus like we usually do or whether or not we could donate them uh and tim got some guidance from our board attorney that says basically we can't just give them away we have to uh see if we can you know
021get something back for them so it looks like putting them on.gov where you know this same church group which had expressed an interest in possibly buying them could go there to trying to obtain them uh but you know it's taxpayer money that bought them so we can't just give them away we also discussed uh us furniture purchase on the order of ten to twelve thousand dollars for the uh for the business office uh when the business office got moved to where it is no no new furniture had been bought and sort of cobbled together from excess furniture throughout the building uh so the members of the operations committee felt it would be a prudent expense to spend that money to get some new furniture in that office the final subject that we discussed that day
022was the gradual graduation with the calendar that we had set up for next year graduation was scheduled to be on june 17th which late this june became a federal holiday juneteenth so we talked about the idea of moving it to the thursday that the day before so we wouldn't run into the problem with with the federal holiday uh dr jewett also mentioned that she'd reach out to the interfaith council uh you know to discuss uh the situation regarding that and other religious holidays and and challenges that we face uh it was the consensus of the operations committee to move graduation to june 16th for next year which will be a thursday any questions anyone have any questions for mr fallon i guess we'll pass the mic back on to mr morrison for the regionalization update
023uh thank you mr president so the regionalization committee met this morning and we had with us mark magyar from the senate legislative office to present us with an update on the status of senate bill 3488 a copy of which is in all of your folders that is the final bill that was passed unanimously by the committees in both the house or the assembly and the senate and also by the full assembly and and the full senate unanimously um that bill is now on the governor's desk for signature they reported that they expect the governor to sign the bill sometime in the next few weeks what that means is they're setting up now a process to help manage the multitude of regionalization feasibility studies that will be going on that will be managed through the rutgers
024bureau of local government services with the idea that they will then help coordinate the uh identifying of the pool of consultants that can handle the various aspects of a the feasibility studies for all the districts that will be involved so it's almost like creating you know a central uh process a clearinghouse to facilitate the connecting of consultants with the districts that are going to be involved in this also provides quality control over the consultants that'll be doing the work so it makes it a little bit easier on the districts that are exploring and moving forward with regionalization uh studies there will be a webinar within the next few weeks most likely early in september that will be held by the state to talk about for the public to talk about uh the plans behind the
025the new legislation and the regionalization studies and they will be talking specifically uh about the fact that these uh studies are voluntary in nature uh and that there are no requirements uh assigned with the studies meaning that if the study says that there should be some sort of regionalization or suggests that there should be some sort of regionalization districts are not required to do anything and as i mentioned at the last meeting the only way communities can regionalism regionalize is not up to the boards it's up to the general public the public has to vote for that to go forward so the webinar will be in the early part of september we expect to see the application that we have been waiting for within the next few weeks on or about the same time that
026the bill is signed and that the public webinar takes place once we have all of that information we intend to go back to our sending districts one more time to invite them to participate with us in this regionalization study after which time and once we determine who will be joining with us we intend to submit the application to move forward they reinforced for us today the things that they'll be looking at as part of the study will be information around the demographics uh information around the facilities information around long-term staffing projections information on vertical articulation educational alignment and educational benefit security considerations transportation uh special services uh and a variety of other things where we may find even if there's not a call for regionalization there may be some recommendations around uh significant benefits to
027some sort of shared service in any of those areas across the districts and as we mentioned before the fact that we make up such a large portion of the tax taxpayers spending in our communities it would be irresponsible for us not to explore opportunities to improve education and be more efficient with taxpayer dollars so we're looking forward to having the governor sign the bill we're looking forward to that public webinar which we think will alleviate some of the concerns that some of the sending districts have shared about the fact that there is there are concerns that there will be something compulsory uh there is not the law just requires a study uh it will be clear in the application uh guidelines that there are no requirements or no handcuffs to follow through that nothing is
028compulsory and we're looking forward to being able to finally begin to move this process forward once all this information comes public in the next three weeks so with that are there any any additional comments from committee members i was actually on in that meeting so you know i could have asked the question at the meeting but um it's just sort of occurring to me now um so there is no obligation after the study we we have the results but if if the results are clear that there are benefits to regionalizing you know ultimately it has to be put to a taxpayer vote but how does how does it get to a taxpayer vote if there isn't you know if we're part of the study that the individual k through eight boards are not participants it
029would become it's it would become a public referendum okay that's the incorporates all of the towns yes now the exact process on how that works and how the vote works you know i've had conflicting information um because you know do all the towns have to collectively agree you know or is it the majority of the towns or the majority of the people in the towns but we're so far away from that point you know that i don't think we need to really concern ourselves with it at that this point because i think it's really not you know whether or not it you know we don't know whether there's a good idea here or not right you know the whole idea is the state is paying for a study that will examine all of these areas
030and will identify for us if there is or is not any merit to shared services if there is or is not any merit to potential partial regionalization with a with a few districts or full-on regionalization between all of the districts the only way that we're going to know is to do a study the state's willing to pay for the study up to 150 000 so that we don't have to pay for it and then once and for all we'll have information that we as boards and the community at large can look at to see is there something here that we should do or not and i'd just like to add two more comments to what bob told us about one of the things we learned today that as a result of our involvement in the
031process and in working with them there are significant changes that have been made to this bill that's in front of us from what was in the earlier bill and they addressed some of the concerns that the sending districts had raised to bob and to others about whether or not they'd be handcuffed and have to go along with things by being involved in this process as bob and the rest of us have been bob's managed to get changes made in the bill that are helpful and address that and so so that just demonstrates that being part of this process i think can be helpful on many levels i think that's also a selling point for talking the local districts the other point i wanted to add to what bob told us about is that you know
032given that this is going to be run through the local government services board or whatever that division is at rutgers they are are going to be uh talking to to a number of the consultants and the original process was going to be that we were going to have to come up with our own own rfp a request for proposals for consultants that then would have had to be checked by the lawyers to make sure it complies with everything in the bill and it likely would have added a couple months to this process of retaining consultants in this now that it's being done through through rutgers that's going to be cut out we're not going to have to come up with our own requests for proposals a a format for for we're going to contracts is
033being set up through that process so that's something that's going to streamline this process as we get down the road great any any board comments questions that's all my report thank you mr morrison uh we'll move on to multi-tiered system of supports dr jewett if i may so the uh this has been an ongoing conversation uh i think going back to march uh when we first had a meeting with some of the faculty um and there was you know we were talking about how how we were handling uh our students and our student needs uh during covid and you know particularly as it related to the fact that you know we have students that are on 504 plans and you know have documented um processes for assistance uh but during covid we had a lot
034of students that didn't have plans that needed assistance that needed to be followed up with what we needed to make sure that we were working with so that they wouldn't fall behind and the the question became what does this look like when we come back to school how do we ensure knowing what we know now back in march about the student needs and what's happening with kovid how do we ensure that all of our students as they're coming back to the beginning of the school year will have the supports that they need in place to address all of their needs regardless of whether they're on a 504 iep plan or not and as a result of several conversations um uh the team at the at the district has pulled together a plan uh and using
035the funding that we have from the federal government uh of under esser uh we're able to use these funds to help ensure that our students have the kind of uh health safety and wellness uh supports that they're gonna need to have a successful re-entry to school and we met and talked about this in education committee we felt that it was so important that we wanted the full board to hear how these funds are being invested and how it will benefit our students so with that i'd like to turn it back over to the superintendent and also the staff to present thank you very much for that um overview mr morrison and the board has been very supportive of this particularly the ed committee so i'm going to turn it over to mr jason sabino our
036director of school counseling counseling and ms michelle dreamer our director of special services dr jewett is there a way for us to get to the presentation on our chromebooks i can do that right now if you agree thank you and good evening everyone i'm not sure if this can you hear me on the mic a bit okay good evening everyone thanks for uh having us here this evening and thank you mr morrison and dr dewitt for your overview and the uh the setup for this uh in addition mr riemer and i are going to kind of be jumping back and forth on the one shared mic with our two masks on so feel free to uh let us know if you can't hear us or something comes up during the presentation that's not clear i'll
037try my best to articulate throughout the presentation so in addition to discussing and going through uh as mr marisa mentioned uh the tier three and additional supports that we're going to be looking to provide this year we did kind of want to start off with just an overview certainly highlighting and spending some time speaking to the new and enhanced support and initiatives we're going to look to roll out this year for students predominantly in the areas of social emotional support but certainly it touches on other areas that may may or may not have existed prior to the pandemic but certainly were exacerbated in the past year and a half due to all things that have gone on in the school and in the community at large so i mean i guess we just wanted to
038really provide this proactively since we have been putting a lot of work into this and i appreciate the board giving us time to really just kind of lay out for for yourselves and also for the community on what we're looking to do um but before we go into the presentation i just wanted to start off by saying that despite the challenges of the past i want to say a year and a half at this point um we you know we really did the the district here at large the school the students the staff the resiliency that we've seen despite what's gone on i think is uh certainly worth celebrating noting uh speaking to very directly i work you know obviously here in the district i've been here since december of 2019 now a couple months
039before the coveted pandemic but i can tell you from speak you know speaking to colleagues and throughout the state and other places i've been and the associations that i'm still part of at the state level watching hills regional high school did a great job uh it sounds odd to say that with with wearing masks right now as the school year starts off for a second year but really i mean we certainly have challenges and i can certainly speak to those at length but overall this school and the community and the students really deserve and the teachers for supporting them a lot of credit for what they were able to do with obviously providing the instruction and the education but also that social emotional wellness piece that you know really i you know can't take any
040credit for and i know michelle also came on board shortly there after me existed really here in this community and with the students and the staff prior to us but there's always places to improve and where areas that we can grow and we hope to speak to some additional supports that we can look to provide as we move forward into this school year all right so just um the one thing i just want to mention here so that's you know we'll speak in length about the new and enhanced initiatives that we're looking to roll out but just before getting into that i want to explain a little bit about the the bit of the terminology that's used which may be looked at as some some type of jargon or educational speak multi-tiered system of support
041model you know it's certainly a mouthful but really what that speaks to and i tried to find you know one little graphic there that may hopefully simplify it you know just to some some degree is that you know in our role my role as a director of school counseling here looking to provide support to all uh 1850 i think some odd students right now we want to make sure that we're rolling out the different levels of support to students based on their needs so certainly we do that each and every day through our tier one support and we'll speak to exactly what that looks like in a few slides but really that's to be provided tier one to all students throughout the district everyone universal gets tier one level support in the classroom through the
042school counselors we'll speak about that a little bit more detail in a bit tier 2 is really designed for students who need additional additional more support which is roughly around 10 to 25 percent of the school population so you can do the math on that but about 10 25 of students should be provided through the tier 2 supports which we'll speak on and then we're really speaking about somewhere between one to five percent of students who really may need to benefit from after those other interventions have been tried even more uh you know in uh more um engaging and enhanced uh supports at that additional level which you know some parents and students may already know and the board may know about their ieps and 504 plans which we'll certainly make sure we highlight again
043through this presentation but there's other things that we look to add to the tool belt here and i think on the sides here it just mentions you know as part of this process through all the tiers we want to make sure we're using collaborative problem solving with all stakeholders in the process and also we're continuously communicating with the parents and having that communication throughout so i just want to make sure i explained a bit about what this is and what this model is that we're using before we go into our you know the different supports and strategies i'll let uh mr riemer start off by going through uh our new relationship i get the pleasure of talking about one of our new and enhanced services so in the past um this year we are going
044with rutgers and we're very excited about it and as mr morrison stated due to the sr funding we were able to expand those services to include a full-time clinician a part-time clinician and an intern which will equal to about 60 um this past year through everything you know our mental health providers did a phenomenal job but we did realize um some of the programs and services we'll be offering are some weekly after school hours for student and family through again through needs assessment and looking at what we've done in the past we noticed that you know not everything happens during school hours and it's not always convenient for families to get services during the school hours so they're going to dedicate one night a week that someone will be here to be able to meet
045with the families and if that's not convenient then we will find other times they're willing to work in the morning before school after school or even go to the home if there's truancy issues school avoidance issues so they're willing to put in the time that they need to put in their house they're going to be doing some great um that will be targeting anxiety executive functioning loss and trauma just to name a few another piece of our collaboration with rutgers that we're very excited about is that they're going to be doing a needs assessment with the staff when they first come on board in september to talk about what kind of programming and professional development the staff feels that they need or that they're interested in and again through the sr funding we were able
046to enhance the pd and add two extra days okay i'm just going to go over a bit about the additional support program that we've also titled thus far unless i think the board has objections to it uh the empower program which is uh as as mr morrison mentioned our tier three support program that we're looking to roll out and we were able to do so this year with the support from the esser funds that came down from the federal level so this was something that again uh you know from coming on board uh december 19 we had discussed and i had heard from speaking to various administrative stakeholders students from from the counseling staff and and everywhere else that there's certainly a need for a subset of our population of students who can benefit from
047some additional supports and services that were having challenges and barriers that were having them be less than successful academically in post-secondary planning and just throughout their needs while they were in high school so you know there's certainly a need for that pre again pandemic and i know i'm sounding like a broken record now but you know now that this you know we have had the opportunity to get this funding it certainly accelerated our opportunities to try to provide a program like this and certainly in the last year and a half there's been some even more need based on all the things that have transpired so um we're looking to do this program you know just try to give you some specifics on what it'll look like and what it'll do i'll start with what it'll
048do first part you know first in regards it will be looking to provide support the students transitioning back to school this year you know there have been a number of students who were virtual last year who obviously may have never been in this building yet and this is gonna be the first time they're coming back and uh certainly um you know as my role as a director of school counseling and i know in michelle's role we've heard from parents and students who have uh certainly anxiety related to that and i would say understandably in regards to you know some of the circumstances uh in addition to that there again have been students who had not been academically successful maybe it was the first time they were not successful last year due to the fact that
049they were trying to learn remotely or hybridly or whatever other word you want to use there but also there may have some been students who have prior not done well and then this just kind of again exacerbated it so we have uh put out an rfp and i know mr stein has been working with us on that to get different proposals for different credit remediation opportunities where students can make up credit and hopefully get back on track with their their needed graduation requirements during the school year next year and that is going to be part of this empower program in addition to that these students that are identified will also get additional social emotional learning support uh kind of ties back into the rutgers clinicians and that enhanced the extra hours that we're going to
050have for them so we'll have a part-time clinician and a full-time clinician this year who will be providing support for them and also we have student assistance counselors who will provide that level of support as well i'm proud to say we have a new student assistance counselor who has a lot of clinical experience and experience doing these types of groups and supports so she'll be definitely a good addition for the support of these students in addition to that we've had support from the board and from everyone else in regards to trying to identify a full-time ela teacher who will deliver the instruction for this so we were able to identify someone who will be coming on board i know they're i think contract right now in a different district and you know they're now going
051to be approved if that individual comes on board they'll be able to provide and deliver the instruction through this program for these students again using their own personal experience for delivering this instruction but also the software that we're looking to use for credit remediation and in addition to that so all of that will be kind of housed in a flexible learning environment so we formally had used um it was known as the blue room it was across from here that uh the mental health provider used but we found that space to be a one that we could use that would be malleable to kind of set up a small learning environment so we kind of set up now if you walk across the hallway before you leave today but it has a small desk space
052that has another spaces for some you know breakout individual group group learning environment and more individuals so we'll be able to kind of break off the learning a tailor to individual students needs and depending on how that teacher is going to be instructing for the day whether it be lecture style or doing more group activities or one-on-ones with the students so that's what the the empower program should be you know looking to do and looking to support for the students here and again we'll be working with the counselors and the teachers to identify those students who will be in the program you have any questions about that i think i'm just gonna interrupt everyone will have some type of an accommodation plan which will speak about it as well on through this presentation but but
053also worth noting is that this will be flexible so the second half of the year if we notice there's some students who are off track during the year we'll be able to also bring additional students into the program if needed i guess the flexibility of the program is i guess what we want to highlight and make sure we say every chance we get um so just as a review before we close is you know we already do provide a number of these supports and i don't want to miss that we do already do a lot of that here so just as a review again what tier one supports we have already in the district uh we've done some trainings uh last year and i know prior to last year for staff on social emotional learning
054and how to support students in the classroom we look to continue that obviously going into this year with our relationship with rutgers and with um scheiderman's help through the professional development that she provides and through her office and coordinates also additionally to that we have you know we need to do assessments and students for math and literacy skills the school counselors have a caseload of approximately 200 students that they see and they provide and meet with all students regardless of any type of accommodation plan or otherwise they meet with all students each year at each grade level to check in with them and provide social emotional support and otherwise as they need to throughout the course of the school year and obviously in post-secondary planning and college planning in addition to that we're looking to
055train the school counseling staff the sac counselors and the cst members this year with some additional tools um there's a columbia suicide severity rating scale that does some assessment of mental health we're looking to get to have some training on that that instrument in addition to what's called the s burp which uh is a weird acronym for screening brief intervention and referral to treatment so that also does another assessment for students if they have substance abuse concerns present presentations or other concerns that and finally there's also the school safety team which not really doesn't you know get spoken to about much but that meets on a regular basis again twice a year at this point but it could meet more regularly that does assess like the school climate and culture and kind of ways that
056we can provide and assess you know what the students need in those areas we'll have the feedback in the survey results from the rutgers survey that we did as this year progresses and we could use that to pinpoint other needs for the students and the staff so tier two just to review this additional support so for those students who are identified that need more support than what they're receiving just for all students in the classroom and through the counselors we already have these other supports in the district as well math lab which we provide to students who may need some additional support in that content area we have study halls already built into student schedules that they've requested guided study hall which are predominantly for students with accommodation plans that's a little bit more structured
057and provides a little more check-in on the students progress academically again credit recovery opportunities will not just be dedicated through the empower program we're going to use that same software and the same product to also provide that to other students outside of that program through the esser funds it's worth noting we're also going to look to have some additional after-school academic support this year so we'll be able to ask some teaching staff to provide uh hour you know hours outside of the school day to provide students with some additional support if needed academically inrt is something that's been here again it's a way to identify students and provide develop accommodations for them and that's managed to our student assistance counselors which also provide their own social emotional support as well this year we'll be having
058the rutgers based what we're trying to do here supports what's in our strategic plan of really looking at the whole child and believing in their social emotional learning and their academics thank you a great presentation appreciate all the work and services that you guys provide how do students and families find out about what you do how do we educate and affect everybody so that they know what's available to them thank you for that so i mean as as the director of school counseling here we certainly uh look to do presentations and programs the school counselors are the front you know the front line in regards to having case loads of all the students in the building so they often have their own google classrooms a way to promote different programs and things that we offer
059here and they also work to screen identify students who may need these additional levels of support in addition to the school counselors certainly the teaching staff in regards to the academic concerns that are arising and the supervisors to support them and identifying the students who you know once they've provide some interventions in the classroom who are you know still having facing challenges and not you know producing or or um responding to those interventions that the classroom provides they'll they'll they'll make you know they'll make their parents aware in addition to that we try to do other marketing so we have had last year we did four evening events that were dedicated to mental health concerns that were delivered to our mental health provider and four other presentations are over to our student assistance counselors on
060those types of topics so again that just kind of puts them out there so the student assistance counselors are you know have contacts out there and before those presentations we post them on our website and there's a variety of information on the district website about these programs as well other questions thank you i have a comment okay so just as a reminder for the board uh you know we started down this pathway with the original strategic plan um and i think it was about four years ago dr druitt you can correct me if i'm wrong where we made the investment in the care plus program which was our initial and a foray into the space as an investment by this board and and i think that we see how that began to pay off you
061know particularly as issues arose during the pandemic and needing to address it with students and that really laid the foundation for us to be in a position to then build on that as we get ready for this new school year so i think that the support from this board in investing in these types of support services for our students was critical at that point in time but we wouldn't be able to do this if we hadn't done that to begin with and i think the other thing that we should keep in mind is because this is funded through the esser funds you know this is uh this is a one-time injection of funding um and we'll be able to evaluate how effective this has been for our students and then we'll we will want to
062determine if this is something that we will want to maintain moving forward into the future and if that's the case then we will have to then address how we will uh budget accordingly for it but i think this is a really important next step given the circumstances with that we're in um because i think this is this has been a topic that is on on top of mind for every school board school administrator parent across this country and i think that our students are not going to be able to learn until they feel safe and we've got to feel them have them feel safe and cared for and give them an environment to be successful then they're going to be able to learn but if we just bring them back and say okay we're going
063to test the dickens out of you to make sure that you know we're addressing you know whether or not you're on task with math and language arts that's not going to do it you know we need to address the person first then we can address the learning and this sets us up for success in that thank you mr morrison any other questions or comments seeing none thanks mr sabino thanks ms deremer appreciate your presentation thank you [Applause] now we'll move on to uh first opportunity for public comment this will be limited to agenda items for this meeting only there will be a second comment period that will open to be open to any topic after uh the vote on agenda items and i don't expect that it will be too long between the two all
064comments are limited to five minutes so if someone has a comment about the agenda items please come up to the podium and state your name and town you're from [Music] just to make clear there we did discuss the religious holidays was a topic on our agenda if anybody wanted to make a comment about that this this would be this opportunity hello yes uh we can hear you and a reminder just state your name in the town you're from all right uh i'm ryan curran i live in watrunk and i'm a rising junior uh i'm here for the third time talk about talk about religious equity our coalition the muslim hindu jewish coalition getting larger and larger every day the wachong hills regional educational association recently came out with a letter of support the entire organization
065is made up of the staff that supports our school bus drivers janitors teachers and secretaries in addition we also have over 600 signatures on our petition once again i'm here to ask what progress has been made now been several months the community has shown passion and care we are still waiting for the board to enact the words they put on paper justice and equality for all it is now on the shoulders of the board to do what you said you would do to do what you were elected in terms of the survey we don't want a survey we don't need a survey to determine that everyone deserves equitable treatment the message the survey sends is that students and staff only have rights once you reach a number arbitrarily set by the board numbers don't define
066religious rights thank you for your time thank you good evening my name is nora and i'm an incoming freshman at wachong hills and i spoke at a previous meeting as well it has been four long months since our coalition originally approached the board asking for aid and diwali off since then no progress has been made on behalf of the board this is so disappointing to all of the students wanting to celebrate their holidays with their families these following years since the last meeting we have gained the support of the whrea wachong hills regional education association they stated and i quote the whrea supports the coalition's efforts in calling for a school calendar that is equitable to each student regardless of faith and religious practice so i am my peers and even my teachers have come
067together to say that we don't need a survey to prove our existence to you we're standing right in front of you our right to celebrate our holiday without missing school should not be decided by a percentage from a survey thank you for your time thank you good evening my name is i'm a rising junior at watching hills and i stand here before you in a school that idolizes equality amongst all meaning that any race religion color and creed should not be treated different from another in a school where the logo has been changed due to it being discriminatory symbol you would think that a request for recognition of our holiday would be met rather we are faced with multiple delays along with an unnecessary survey students should not have to choose between their schoolwork and
068celebrating a religious holiday with their family i stand before you in a school which represents diversity with a simple request please refrain from constant delays and give us what we deserve thank you good afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is ali yusri i'm a rising senior and i live in wacho i come again in front of you to ask you guys to progress further with making the ideas of diwali school holidays we come again in front of you but this time with the support of the teachers and staff of this school teachers are the backbone of every society they are role models they offer guidance to the next generation and give young people the great power of knowledge they help us develop not only as a society but as a community the backbone of our
069community supports the idea of making diwali school holidays the great denzel washington once said never confuse movement with progress because you can run a place and not get anywhere again never confuse movement with progress because you can run a place and not get anywhere making aid in diwali holidays has been us running and running in place so far so let us step over the start line and move forward with making our even diwali school thank you guys thank you would anyone else like to speak you will have a second opportunity if you change your mind we'll close the first opportunity for public comment and move on to our agenda items i'm assuming that there's not a board discussion then mr president i would like to move resolutions a1 through a9 i have a second second
070and just a quick question uh mr fallon a9 we had some discussion about having that as amended by the attorney is that something we wanted in a9 we're just approving the legal settlement not the particular agreement that's that came in along with our board packet so i don't think we need to amend the resolution thanks would anybody like to pull anything for separate vote or comment seeing none roll call vote please miss marone oh sorry not here mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunsinger mr morrison yes zober it's potter prasa mr president i'd now like to move resolutions a 10 through a 19. second thank you would anybody like to pull anything for separate comment or separate vote seeing non-roll call vote please mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunsinger mr morrison yes sober mr
071prasa dr schubilski yes motions carrie mr president i'd like to move resolution b1 would anybody like to discuss this non-roll call boot please one second wait i was used to mr morris and second ago immediately yeah okay okay now would anybody like to discuss this non-roll call vote mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunsinger mr morrison yes mrs ober miss potter esprasa dr schubelski yes motion carries yes mr president i'd like to move resolutions c1 through c22 way to beat him would anybody like to pull something for a separate discussion or vote uh seeing none roll call vote please mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunzinger mr morrison yes miss ober miss potter mr prasa dr schubelski yes mr president i'd like to move resolutions d1 through d14 thank you would anybody like to pull
072anything for separate discussion or separate vote seeing non-roll call vote please mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunzinger mr morrison yes the sober miss potter ms prasa dr schabilski yes motions carrie mr president finally i'd like to move resolutions d15 and d16 would anybody like to pull either of these for a separate comment or separate seeing non-roll call vote please mr burnberg mr fallon yes mr hunzinger mr morrison yes miss ober mr prasa dr schubilski yes congratulations carrie thank you this is a second opportunity for public comment uh this can be on any item that you would like to speak about what agenda items it was discussed at the meeting the calendar was discussed at the meeting as part of the operations committee report point of order you're permitted to make a public comment um
073you will not necessarily get a response unless uh it is deemed appropriate to do so i mean if you have a specific question you can address that with dr julie the superintendent i will close the opportunity for second comment period and move on to other business does anybody have any other business thank you everyone for attending and uh enjoy the remainder of your summer before school starts in the next few weeks you