June 15, 2021 Board of Education Meeting

001uh board correspondence and we did receive a communication from a member of the public uh asking us to address um in dr jewett's annual evaluation which we are in the process of working on issues about communication and we use a assessment tool set up by the new jersey school boards association that includes that as one of the factors that we evaluate so that will certainly be included uh in our discussion and i believe that was the only uh board correspondence that we received uh so uh item four is an opportunity for public comment on the uh arp esser plan for safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of service and i'd ask dr jewett to kind of give a summary of how that plan is and compares to what has already been presented previously thank

002you dr chavelski so um as i had explained to the board and i met with our whrea executive uh members as well to let to just explain this this plan is a requirement for us to receive the third round of esser money which is related to the the pandemic the additional aid that they are providing to schools um this is a federal government requirement which is why they're calling it a return to in-person instruction plan because there are a lot of schools throughout the country that never did return to in-person instruction this year we fortunately were able to last september and we developed a plan for that so this particular plan is elements of that plan put into the template that we're required to submit what is different from our plan from last september is

003several fields have been filled with we will be following the cdc and njdoh guidelines that are in place at that time and that is related to social distancing mask wearing meals at school because we are hoping to get updates on that information this summer but everything else in the plan is what was shared at the beginning of this year for when we returned to in-person instruction um so a requirement of this plan is that we accept public comment on it which is why we advertised a public hearing on the plan for this evening and it has been posted on our website uh for the past week as well and we can will continue to be up there but there is nothing new in the plan other than leaving some items open-ended uh for updates from

004the cdc and new jersey department of health over the summer thank you so if anybody would like to uh offer a comment about that uh this would be the opportunity to do so seeing none we'll move on to agenda item 5 and dr jewett's comments thank you um so i'm going to keep the comments for this portion brief because we have a very exciting presentation which this these are the this is probably one of the best attended board meetings we've had in quite a long time and everyone here is involved in the presentation we promise that it will it'll be over by about 10 or 11 o'clock tomorrow morning yes um now we we thought it would be really nice to have a representation from our staff and our students um i i have to

005say i really as much as i always enjoy our board meetings i really this is really nice tonight to have everyone here in person because the last time we were all together in person was early march of and it's really nice to have the students and the staff members here who normally during a normal year board members would be seeing students and staff members because you'd be coming to school events and getting to see performances and obviously this has not been a traditional year so we thought it would be nice to have them here and we have some special treats for you later during the presentation the one one of the items that i just have to take care of tonight which is one of our compliance items is twice a year i give the

006student safety data system report and it's a little confusing because the report i give now is actually for the period from july 2020 to december 2020 and the numbers are a little bit different this year just because you know our school day obviously looked very different in terms of the number of students that were in person um but in terms of the incidences of violence vandalism weapons or substance abuse we had zero for the first three and we had three reported incidents of substance abuse and then with regard to hiv incidents we had one alleged hiv incident that was found to not be hiv and four confirmed hiv cases and this all goes into a database without any identifying information of any of the involved parties but it's just something that we have to keep

007track of and report on so that is all i have for that i'll save the rest of my comments for um later in the board meeting thank you dr jewett um on behalf of our board of education i i wanted to thank the students the parents the teachers as well as the administration for all of their hard work perseverance patience with what the in an understatement was certainly a challenging year for everyone it was clearly difficult to try to satisfy everybody's needs and i think everyone came together as a community to work hard to give everyone the most latitude and opportunity to make the best of a very very bad situation so on on behalf of the board thank you all for your cooperation your support uh and getting us through uh such a challenging

008year the last thing i'd like to do on behalf of the board also is uh to draw attention to two of the items that we'll be voting on uh both our student scholarships and uh to thank uh the donations given by the italian american progressive league as well as the aspiring kindness foundation uh who have generously uh given us funds for student scholarships and i'll pass it on to mr steiznow for his comments thank you mr president i just want to notify the board of a couple of changes on the agenda or bids that we received today um a couple of them and a couple of them we were working through during the week d14 uh just we just added the percentage rates that the school health the school alliance insurance fund uh awarded to

009willis as d14 and willis is our insurance broker for property and casualty d15 mr found will bring up during the operations report um but we have selected brown and brown we did have a small committee of three myself superintendent and hr director he graded the proposals we have we got three and we selected brown and brown that's our existing uh benefit advisor number d16 that was a we had talked about that in operations i won't take mr fallon's uh report away from him but so but we do have a new uh doctor greenberg family practice d17 as a bid the custodial bid that was open today and the low bid is pritchard it is a higher cost than what we expected we actually expected lower we did reach out to the vendors we did ask

010they did say that the cost of the labor is going up quite a bit they talked about the inflation piece that you're hearing a lot about they talked about the minimum wage going up in january and in october they're expecting a higher hit with the what the union so the that's a separate union argument the custodian out there so it looks like that you know i talked about should we delay should we go back out to bid the thing that kind of i can tell you just looking at the bid prices that you see three of the five were almost within a couple thousand dollars of each other that will tell you something right there that that's probably the right number now i could i could go back and cut the service and get a

011lower bid but i it's something that we had talked administratively it's probably not a good idea to have um go into a new school year and cut down that service so again we threw a lot of different options out but we thought this one was the best one even though it's a little higher than we had um and then so we were expecting we we had a budget of about almost it was a little shy of 900 000 so it was 8.97 so this is clearly higher than that but our feeling is given what the folks were telling us i think that this is probably merited and the last time we did have did was three years ago so that labor rate has has gone beyond the two percent or the one percent that we

012were giving the vendor each year so each year we're allowed to give them the cost the cpi rate so their increases went beyond the cpi rate so that's why that's what we're seeing here and then d 18 this is actually the good side of things the good side of the pricing is that the 15-year lease purchase finance bid that's the interest rate we've got an excellent interest rate of 1.6274 that's fantastic we actually expected somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 but we got 1.63 that's that's very helpful and that's the items that i have that are new and now it is time for our student representatives comments mr ober and ms aldor for a student for student achievement congratulations in addition elizabeth's younger cyber sisters this recognition is given to the highest scoring 852 student

013who has each been awarded free access to this summer's cyber foundation after all each student is assigned to one of two parties or nationals congratulations to our boys and girls who have been selected from this summer's concert the delegates for girls day are mohammed and rising 12th grade student was admitted into the inaugural class of harvard undergraduate international relations scholars program for high school students the harvard undergraduate foreign policy initiative board was greatly impressed with ben's application and inspired by his passion to explore the world of and around the world the three-day summer program will consist of discussions with harvard professors experienced policy makers government officials and regional experts students will have the opportunity to learn real-world policy writing skills cross-cultural leadership and how to address global challenges from all sectors of the international world

014molecular biology club members emily young and ronald leon both analyzed a novel dna sequence using bioinformatics their findings will be published on the national center for biotechnology information database we are pleased to report that two of our junior students allison lee and daniel dan have been selected by the national council of teachers of english to receive certificates for superior writing there are 136 students across the nation who receive this award with just 13 new jersey students among them hills was among just two schools in new jersey to have two students on the list of superior writing awards warren's line the warren lions club sponsored an essaying contest on diversity and inclusion the winners are first place julia de montana 10th grade and julie will be reading her essay as part of tonight's [Music] congratulations to

015elizabeth lee for taking first place in the poetry ceremony category at the monteville township high school virtual visions heart show on may 12th union class of 2022 was kind enough to share her artwork 9th grade omaha nebraska on june 7th in the olympic swimming trials and alicia tied for second place in the finals of the 15th freestyle and now advances to wave two which takes place this week on tuesday june 8th we held the memorial community awards ceremony in the past there were 53 scholarships and numerous awards that were presented to 89 teams department held a spring showcase of many students ensembles at the outdoor stage fire students and band students met with the music teachers every wednesday after school preparing for the concert their hard work and dedication to be successful dance ensemble had

016its annual performance in the past on saturday june 5th they choreographed and performed in 12 original hosted its fifth annual tedx event on june 3rd this year's theme was scarce again students spoke about many topics including mental illness social emotional growth and well-being and alternately post-secondary pathways english teacher roy who miller tapped the night off with his tough drawing parallels from his personal life journey with his fly fishing adventures for the sports update all sports with the exception of track and field have ended their season 2020-2021 school year baseball 16-9 the hustle and warriors had a phenomenal season as they competed as far as the state semifinals game where they hosted rich softball 17-5 just like their baseball counterparts lady warriors also reached the state semifinals as they hosted west field at diamond nation spring

017track as the season will end culminating in the meet of champions this coming weekend we recognize vince rizzie for breaking the school long jump long jump record by four inches held since 1965 with a jump of 2110. rental gelmer took first place in the pole vault event in the group 4 states meet last week good luck to the team as they moved forward yesterday afternoon the results of the new jersey chemistry olympics were announced in a virtual awards ceremony three of our watching hills teams are in first place in their events first place chemical engineering research adithy adushmili arjun singh and junyan anithi arjun and june were tasked with researching the costs of bringing a vaccine to market their paper focused on the development of the guard sale 9 vaccine emphasizing the importance of this

018vaccine for teens and young adults they trace the development process from discovery through clinical trials and regulatory processes to manufacturing and quality people being able to analyze the pros and cons of batch vaccine development and the nuances of the scientific process used to synthesize specific antigens in the vaccine for some of their greatest strength first place of website design arsha agarwal and arya metta arsha and oria researched the crispr gene editing technology they presented information about how the technology works and explain the nuances of this technique in a clear and concise manner for any audience to understand some of the interesting information included in their research were its history the chemistry involved and many of the many applications it can be used for and even the ethics involved in such a controversial topic once their

019research was complete they designed and coded the entire website independently first place experimental isabella huang and mayor izzy and mayor were bold enough to attack the only experiment that was part of this year's virtual chemistry olympics especially impressive as 10th graders who had never had a real science lab experience involving the determination of the energy output of their microwave they carefully researched how a microwave works designed their experiment made necessary adjustments to their procedure along the way calculated incredibly precise data and analyzed their data by deriving their own equations to calculate the power of the microwave the presentation even included a thoughtful error analysis which really impressed the judges thank you thank you very much congratulations to all of the victorious uh students that we have highlighted tonight to dr jewett now uh a recommend

020recognition of the work of both of you over the past year so carly and jed on behalf of the board we want to thank you for uh serving as student representatives to the board you this is actually the end of your third year yeah you've been on the board longer than your mom and you actually made it look so cool that she ran after you were on the board for for a year and and carly we're happy to have you join us it's actually been nice that we have instead of just having two seniors like we used to have we've been able to have an underclassmen and an upperclassman so that we can transition and you know um as you know jet has served several years and in the past couple of years we had

021the same where they would rise up and um so it's nice to have some consistency but we always appreciate the student voice and and having you here and i know this year was a little different than usual and we really appreciate you guys coming out in person for the past few meetings and for tonight's meeting and also participating in our virtual meetings uh so thank you very much and this is just a little something on behalf of the board for each of you so thank you for your work with us me again it is so we'll now uh move to our encourage empower explore excel beyond the pandemic presentation so that is what you are all here for tonight and this is something different than what we have done in the past um just so

022everyone is aware we have this beautiful new learning commons with state-of-the-art technology however the piece of equipment that allows us to project wirelessly onto multiple screens is stuck i believe somewhere overseas in china probably so that's why we have a laptop hardwired to this screen but in the future we will be able to project so that you'll be able to see it better back there what i will ask you to do when you're speaking is if you can come up um thank you mr fallon if you wouldn't mind we'll put your microphone on the um on that one okay um and you can come up there and i will control the slide so you can either just say next slide you can give me a thumbs up whatever you would like to do and i

023will uh i'll advance it for you but we're doing something a little bit different this year which involves many more people in the presentation and than in the past but the purpose of tonight is um twofold one we wanted to show you what actualization of the strategic plan that we've talked about all year actually looks like and give you some real authentic evidence of that and then the other purpose of this is to demonstrate how our how our teachers have fostered the continued growth uh and development of our students despite the fact that we've had a very non-traditional year and it certainly you know was not ideal but i think you'll see from tonight that our students and our staff really um made the most of the different challenges they were given and i and

024i think and i think you know we've talked about this as a board some some really innovative um outcomes resulted from the challenges that that our staff and students were faced with and i think some of them uh you know we will continue to will be ways that we continue to to do some things in the future i mean everything from our outdoor theater which really you know hosted a phenomenal spring musical performance and award ceremonies um to some of the tools that the the teachers used with the students in the classroom that really grew out of the need to figure out how to connect to students virtually so i'm really looking forward to sharing to them sharing all this with you tonight and encourage and power explore excel those that is the motto from

025our strategic plan and they're the key words in our mission which i do just want to read aloud to everyone whrhs is a learning community that encourages all students to embrace change today in preparation for the challenges of tomorrow we empower students to grow intellectually and socially within an environment that values wellness and respects all voices our students explore their talents and excel beyond their expectations and i think you will see evidence of the actualization of that in the presentation tonight so i am now going to turn it over to mr labrera and miss fallon so um just to reiterate some of the uh points that dr jewett said tonight what we were customarily doing in years past is coming and speaking about the year that was so obviously this year is a unique year

026and we thought maybe doing a unique presentation would fill uh phil beth so what we thought we would do is talk about the year that was but showcase our strategic plan that we adopted earlier this year so we're going to highlight each goal from each goal we're going to bring some students up and some teachers to speak about how that happened this year obviously we have aspirations to diving deeper in subsequent years but we do think that we made great strides in this year so we look forward to the opportunity when things are starting to return back to normal so without further ado we're going to speak about goal one and no better than izzy calvo will come up good evening i'm isabella calvo senior here at watchman hills i would like to thank mr

027portelli for selecting me to represent the music department specifically chorus chorus all of high school especially this year shaped me into who i am today it's where i met all of my best friends and miss byrd who is one of if not the most encouraging teacher i've ever had although many students were virtual most of this year miss bird made certain that course as a whole remained a tight-knit and supportive community of students who loved to sing my friends and i were not able to meet in person to record and rehearse course projects so instead of arranging our harmonies in person i had to use garageband which introduced me to my love of music industry this fall i will be majoring in music music industry in college so i have miss bird and hoover to

028thank for that i'm a bit under the weather today so please bear with me but i will be singing my senior solo natural in by aretha franklin it's up [Music] knew i had to face another day lord it made me feel so tired before the day i met you [Music] make me feel [Music] when my soul was in the lost and found [Music] i didn't know just what was wrong with me [Music] now i'm no longer doubtful of what i'm living for and if i make you happy i don't need to do more cause you make me feel you make me feel like oh baby what you done to me you make me feel so good inside [Music] and i just wanna be close to you you make me feel alive [Music] [Laughter] you make

029me feel you make me feel you'll make me thank you yes mr rice how are you going to top that uh i can sing this if you want but i don't think anyone wants that um so my name is kevin rice i am one of the student student assistants counselors at the high school um sacral part of the school counseling department um and it really focuses on mental health wellness social emotional growth in terms of supporting and accommodating students that's you know how we typically do that it's individual counseling group counseling how are we you know meeting these students we don't have our own caseload as the school counselors do but we get them referred whether students are coming to us on their own whether it's parents you know reaching out and asking for some

030support teachers referring school counselors or even friends of a student all different ways we would get students and our intent is to hopefully help uh you know provide the appropriate level of support whether that's directly through us whether we're working with parents to uh recommend and help find outside support uh for heightened concerns it may be through care plus our in-house um layer of therapy therapy um it really depends on the situation but uh i will say also this year there is part of what we do is the intervention and referral team our inrs intervention referral services and you know in previous years uh as as myself and gwen blake are the two sacks maybe we have around 10 or so of those student cases each year this year we had roughly 25 i think

031that was you know tied into virtual learning and covid um certainly there was there was a increase in students struggling this year and that also tied into mental health concerns too but through inrt strategies we would try to put in place working with the teachers administrators parents and students those also maybe would lead to 504 plans sometimes but maybe they would lead to child study team but yeah there certainly was a noticeable increase this year and concerns um in terms of and and i guess whether it's in rt individual counseling whatever the case may be the intent is always to help empower students to help themselves moving forward and to hopefully help them and i'll tie it in to tag in a moment with a rehab but you know to help them be comfortable speaking

032up whether it's with us or someone else to to get the help they need um but yeah there was certainly also just increasing mental health concerns in general a lot of that tied into i think isolation you know lack of socializing as compared to a typical year freshman transferring in and transitioning uh you know in a very atypical year and even for seniors transitioning out there's a lot of added layers um in terms of presentations we um this past year it was in conjunction with myself gwen and outside organizations we worked with in addition to care plus we had several which are listed there the um social emotional learning presentations from a variety of topics um it was also in conjunction at times like for instance community crisis a local organization it was wonderful to

033have them partner with us in terms of substance abuse and vaping and their legalization of marijuana these growing concerns um and a mix of others in terms of mental health supports and whatnot what's what's been beneficial to dr dewitt's point in terms of um you know changes this year that actually were beneficial having the presentations virtually we saw an increase in participation and we were able to record them too which is good because then we can post them and in theory that's something we'd like to continue i think we can post them on the warrior wellness portion of the school website which also has a lot of resources community resources uh information videos upcoming events recordings of past events um so so that's been and we've worked on that along with you know jason savino

034and gwen and i uh we've tried to really work on updating the website and that's an ongoing process um and we also had one additionally uh just to point out the social emotional professional development we offered that primarily care plus but gwen and i were in the mix for staff given the added concerns this year it was to hopefully help teachers and staff look for signs and concerns that maybe might be more difficult this year because of you know only seeing a student's face if that on zoom or even in class it was more challenging i think to engage so there was tips for engagement with students and different ways to gauge where students were at um and that was through the uh separate educational departments this year uh math english and social studies and

035so on so that that was also uh done early in the year but again the goal is always to help empower and support our students and uh yeah it's quite the year but one of the one of the things just to end um our intent is always try to help with students through different ways of outreach is to help break the stigma of mental health um and also just to point out that artwork is from junior and one of the students that we now have on the we're on this website um come on up ariha is going to be next year's president of ag action group which hopefully becomes an official club next year but teen action group was started several years ago in conjunction with challenge deck um two wonderful human beings that have

036been a part of tag now for a couple years and again just to tie in we've had better turnout than ever this year for tag and hopefully that continues next year hi my name is ariha mehta and i am a rising senior as well as the upcoming president of teen action group this past school year i have been working with mr rice mrs gleason and mrs blake who are the advisors of teen action group as well as the rest of the executive board to break the stigma around mental health and promote it in our day-to-day lives so this past january the executive board worked together to create a presentation about mental illnesses and coping skills like breathing exercises and positive affirmations we also provided a list of resources for students to use both inside and

037outside the school however we wanted to do more and kind of spread this past our club to the whole entire school so in may in honor mental health awareness month we created a video that was sent on the warrior weekly to the rest of the student body and our social media team posted every single day on our instagram account about awareness and different coping skills as well as resources and we actually held a green out here at walchang hills where we had the faculty and students were green in order to support mental health awareness we also created these bracelets that say you are not alone and the reason we picked this message was because we wanted students to know that there are trusted adults here that they can speak to if they need help i

038myself have utilized my counselor my teachers my friends and my family throughout this pandemic and they've been really understanding and amazing and supportive so i just want to make sure that students here at watching hills know the same resources and that they feel reassured by the school that they are available to them thank you hi good evening we're here to talk to you about physical education in a virtual world but how do you do that when you're virtual or when you are hybrid um not easy so what we've done this is dominico cello she's here to explain some of the things that we've been able to create she and her colleagues worked on creating their own virtual platform for physical education since you can't play volleyball and you can't play tennis and you can't play

039all the sports virtually you can practice those skills in those activities and that is what this was all about so this allowed us to work with the students to plan their own physical fitness regimen if you will so they could work on it at home and then later on here when they were here when we were in hybrid so take it away thank you i'm dominique i'm one of the phys ed teachers here at the high school so that picture over to your right that's actually what we first started with that was a fitness log that we created from scratch every day for nine weeks of the marking period um the virtual students would have those workouts there and when you highlight over the blue it would give you sp you know yeah you can

040but when the students highlighted over the blue it would show you exactly what it was so that top picture on the left is an example of the cardio one workout where would we would tell them to walk for this many seconds jog for this many seconds and how do we test if they're actually doing that right so on the bottom left you could see just a quick example where we actually implemented um these workouts into videos in edpuzzle where um teachers and uh including myself would record ourselves actually doing that workout to encourage and empower these students to work out following our lead they're seeing their teacher do it and they're being like wow they're motivated to actually do something because their teacher is doing it as well so if you could go to the

041next slide thank you um these are just quick little snippets of you can't play it well there's an example if you go back liz if you go over the example on the in on the weird the wording yeah so that's a quick if there's like a sound mr bren is actually talking over the video this is actually explaining the superman workout and all the different modifications that you could do it very important i work on that with my six month old yeah so we we know that there are a lot of students out there that were feeling a little unmotivated because they didn't know how to actually work out so we wanted to make sure that they knew exactly we added dancing in there as well um yeah so we just wanted to make sure

042that the students actually understood how to work out and those little dots at the bottom of the video are where we implemented cognitive questions for them that they actually understand what they're doing and how to perform it and if you just go over one more slide the last one um we also started to implement the map my fitness app on their iphones there's a lot of cool apps that the kids use nowadays so they would go out wherever they would like in a park their neighborhood anything like that and they would record them going on hikes with their friends or just running on their own we had a lot of athletes that would record their practices as well um a lot of kids had fun with it but yeah that is um what we did

043for physical education dominique is also our head soft girl softball coach that we just reported on they did very well this season thank you thank you good evening everyone mike d'alessio science i'm here to introduce one of my students this year shayna nazarene she's in my physics class and um she's going to explain a few things but i just want to take a minute to talk about shayna she is a very very very motivated student in in my class um there's probably never a class that i have whether she's on zoomer in person where she won't answer ask a question or answer a question in class she's very motivated but the thing she's going to tell you about some of the clubs that she designed at the school her motivation outside of the school in

044terms of uh looking into becoming a dentist that's one of the things she's looking into and taking some online courses kind of encompasses a lot of things that students did this year outside of school um because they couldn't get some things inside of school because of the situation um in my 22 years here i probably would put shane as the top motivated student i've ever had so it's a pleasure to introduce her [Applause] all right hello everyone thank you for having me here today my name is shayna nazarin i'm a junior here at watchung hills and i'm just going to be talking about a few things that i've been working on over this past year and my plans for the summer as you all know being a junior there's a lot of expectations a lot

045of things that i need to take into account which is the fact that i'm going to be attending college very very soon so this is a very very important summer for me as well as this year it's been very very important for for me academically socially mentally so i've taken it very seriously so the first thing i'm going to talk about is a club that i founded um over uh cover 19. um it's called the big sisters club so i originally came up with that this idea uh towards the beginning of quarantine when my sister who is in middle school in attending valley view middle school and she was having some difficulties socially mentally with her friends and um i'm very very protective over her so of course i wanted to help her in any

046way that i could and that basically led to the start of the big sisters club so i decided that um the big sisters club is basically um where we would mentor as high school as high school girls we would mentor middle school girls to help them empower them educate them on basically all the experiences they may have coming into high school to mentally prepare them socially academically um so for example if they're you know if they're academically gifted and they're looking to take ap classes for example at a very you know in their in their lower classmen years we would basically help them and tell them you know like you don't want to overbear yourself you know you want to give yourself some fun time you want to you know when you want to have

047some balance basically and that's something that i had wish that i had coming into high school so i'm very fortunate enough to be to be able to give this to my sister and to her peers so um this club specifically is for girls um it's basically upperclassmen 10th and 10th through 12th grade girls mentoring middle school girls so basically girls uh 5th through eighth grade and it started out with my sister and it's basically um via google meets or zoom and we would host weekly sessions in order to mentor these girls so for example we would i have an agenda every week so we come in and we talk about all right so how is everyone feeling today we'd start with an icebreaker something along those lines and then we'd address our topic of the

048week so mental health how can we prioritize our mental health well of course you know there are some you know very very academically gifted students and we want to make sure that they're not overbearing themselves this is very important especially during the period of coba 19 we wanted to make sure that you know they were putting their mental health first and that they weren't um you know overwhelming themselves you know with every in light of everything that's going on so the model of our club is empowering girls one sister at a time and me being a big sister i really really connect with this motto and i think it's very important that people such as my sister and other girls who are not fortunate enough maybe to have siblings to go to have this resource

049to express themselves and to help them out in times of need you know specifically cover 19 it's been very difficult as many know so um i created a website with my dad over cover 19 the period and we've basically um upstarted this we've been working for a few months now um we host by we host weekly sessions and then we do like private sessions for girls that have more personal issues and or things they would like to discuss and i'm really really proud of how far this club has come i'm really really proud of the progress that we've made and the mentors that we have and i think it's just such a positive and you know beneficial environment and i'm so happy that i was able to provide young girls with this resource so that

050is the first thing that i would like to address the second thing so as mr delezio said i am looking to become a dentist a pediatric dentist specifically due to the fact that as you may have guessed i do like kids so um i have been shadowing um a dentist in basking ridge from since november of um and due to the fact that you know coba 19 has made many many uh put many many restrictions on what i can do in the office it's actually helped improve my skills and that we've i've had to do a lot around the office such as cleaning and preparing rooms sterilizing equipment restocking helping patients um helping parents with paperwork so ever since november i've been going in as much as i can over the weekends and um i

051really enjoy every second of it i mean it's just it's it's it's amazing and i'm so fortunate that i was able to do this over such a difficult time period so that's the second thing and oh i was offered a job last month so i will be working there over the summer i was shadowing so i will be working there so yeah um and then now it's paid yes yes so the third thing that i would like to address is due to the fact that i do take my education very seriously and i do want to get into a good college as many students do i decided um on top of my ap courses which hopefully would get me college credits i also decided to take college courses by myself so independently from school so

052simultaneously with my workload at school and the aps that i'm already taking i've been taking a philosophy course through the university of pittsburgh and that is going to until july mid july i believe and we're learning things such as the meaning of life greek philosophy uh socrates plato the gist of it basically so and that's been a really fascinating course and it's it's really amazing so and then i'm planning on taking two more courses starting in july so right after this one so i'm taking a general biology course and then an intro to psychology course and the reason i chose these is because next year i'm going to be taking ap biology and i'm taking ap psychology so i figured what better way to prepare me than to take college courses that will give me

053credits and also prepare me so it was a win-win scenario for me and i was accepted into some ivy league summer programs however due to some specific circumstances i was not able to attend those so um that was unfortunate but i'm honestly truly thankful that i was i'm able to do so much over such a difficult period of time a difficult time period and i'm just very very fortunate and very very thankful to have teachers such as mr alessio who's helped me this entire year and really motivated me and um same with my parents he my dad especially helping me get the website up for tbsc he's he's been my supporter through everything so very very thankful for the staff of watching hills for my parents and for everyone who supported me in everything that

054i'm doing so thank you very much alessio i think you need to add an exponent to the word motivated to describe shaina or maybe infinity so not that this is a competition but goal 2 has something to live up to um so now we're going to move on into goal two and uh to kick that off uh miss mclaughlin and um miss kelly are gonna come up and get us started on the pathways to education is successful hi good evening i'm maureen kelly and beside me is susan mclaughlin we're two instructional aides here at the school um last spring brought the unknown for our department specifically we all struggled right but like really our kids what are we going to do to fill in the gaps so working with the child study team they identified

055students that struggled probably the most last spring and then moving into the fall identified those kids and paired them up assigning a caseload to all the instructional aides here at the high school so that became our afternoon caseload so with that upon meeting our students you know first time just getting to know them try to like really find out their personalities what's going to work how are we going to engage them motivate them all that great stuff so some of the needs that they had was organizational needs um so for us creating graphic organizers just to help them there's so much information daily navigating google classrooms the emails that come in so just navigating that and figuring out priorities like you know what what needs to happen first um kids tend to do the easier

056assignments even though they're due way later right so making sure like we space everything out um so going over time management skills um and then some of us even re-teaching curriculum in the afternoon so some students the needs were were greater so for some students you know it would be like a half hour check-in if it was just to get them organized for the week some students were meeting five hours a week really re-teaching that instruction and reteaching ourselves as well but all why we were encouraging our students to stay focused and driven to face the challenges that they had to overcome throughout the year so i think collectively as a department we did a great job i'd like to think that i got to work with so many teachers that like i see passing

057in the hallway but because we had so many different kids it was it was actually very nice to meet various teachers that we don't really get to see day in and day out um but for us too going through the google classrooms and processing that information and and seeing that um so if you have anything to add yeah i think my google classroom was like this big it takes me forever to get from one class to the other to get to the kid that i'm i'm shadowing so yeah um and as far as seeing some of the other teachers yes you get to know everybody um and i think also not only was michelle instrumental in getting this started with us but um and she made sure that we all had a shared document with

058her and then we would also share the document with the case managers um and or mr rice as well just and we would document our meetings or all our emails to just to make sure everything's there that we're showing our work and what we were doing um mr cyrifos even was uh instrumental as well some kids were hard to reach they didn't show up for their zoom meetings um so i love to text and so he would uh get their telephone number and we would email to text and it was great it worked really well with the kids they would respond that way oh thank you so much blah blah blah um and then also there was supporting parents as well uh some parents oh my you know my child is saying he did this

059i'm like no you know so we it was a learning curve for the parents as well where um we had to go i would take their hand and show them this is what you do this is how you get to here and you'll see whether that assignment was submitted or not and oh here's the time it was submitted you know or it wasn't submitted um so yeah so there was a lot of encouragement with the parents as well i was their cheerleader as well you know some of the parents you know one in particular i'm like you are the best parent because she was really there for her kid and um was behind us which was nice you know like cheerleader for us as well it was a very busy year aside from all our

060other duties that were assigned during the day going to classes you know we were supporting those teachers as well so it was extremely busy um yeah yeah good evening i'm uh scott keel the media specialist here i was going it was probably a bit redundant i was going to show slides of the finished product but we're already here so instead i'm just going to focus on one room back here which we've had a lot of success with since we opened the whether it's classes coming in clubs using it or just faculty meetings for some reason everyone's gravitating to the glass classroom back there part of the reason is both it's it's an intimate area and also the furniture and we've got from reactions from the students they just love they love that room and also

061just having the technology was a big factor of the success because they have cameras on the smart board so while they're having a virtual class the students from home can see their classmates and vice versa and it really kind of bridges bridges they gap and you know i can talk about it but one um john svenson was one of our frequent users of it and she'll explain her experiences with it hi my name is janet spensen and i'm a member of the special services department here at wachong hills regional high school and i'd like to let you know how our class is utilizing the learning commons room our journey in the library began when we had to get moved due to the pandemic and the social distancing the students now loved several things they love

062the interaction and seeing the classroom and actually being with the students they felt like they were more involved and this gave a higher engagement and more positive enthusiasm to the class and they felt like that they were really in school and for those virtual learners only it was an integral part of their social emotional learning for the year so ever since we started using that and they had that feel of being in the classroom enthusiast enthusiasm participation engagement everything went up and it became a more successful year thank you and the second part um is another thing we used in here called collab board it was a um collaborative technology it's an infinite white board and we use it as a trial we had a couple teachers that i brought on as guinea pigs and

063they were more than happy to bless you to take on the challenge and um in that picture i think believe that was mary socks um history class and they were creating a virtual timeline for decades and what's nice about it is it's being populated in in real time students are working on at on their computers students from home are also populating it as well they're adding uh videos uh notes images and um it's true collaboration and what's nice about the product is you can use multiple um smart boards and they can all work at once so there's a lot of applications and we look forward to kind of expanding on it next year and doing a deeper dive but that's just some of the things that we've been doing this year and i can't wait

064for next year to open up and just see this place in action thank you very much my name is jim aquavia i supervise the english department and i am here to introduce english teacher lynn raimondo miss raimondo's literary research project highlights thoughtful collaboration with scott keel whom you've just heard from to engage students in content based inquiry it shows the adjustments english teachers needed to make in order to engage students during hybrid instruction and it illustrates the effectiveness of the individual writing conference to personalize instruction this year the individual writing conference a teacher meeting with a student during office hours via zoom emerged quickly as one of the most effective hybrid learning tools in the english teachers toolbox our writing conferences helped us connect with our students and personalize instruction and especially for our new

065ninth graders individual writing conferences helped us make a big place feel smaller and more manageable english teacher lynn raimondo [Applause] so we did this project uh with my 11th grade it was it was a challenge because we wanted to do something you know get them to critically think but in looking at the calendar we had a lot less actual class time than we usually did you know the schedule this year so we took this book it's a postmodern uh book of poetry um called the realm of possibility and the kids basically read that on their own and then there was a it was a small project with sort of a multi-step smaller project and we came here and scott keel created a libguide uh it was really like quite like very visual they came here

066they looked at it and it had information about that book also all the great databases for the kids to research and they you know they're able to see it all in one spot which really is helpful so the the project had four basic parts and it went from you know it started pretty straightforward in a pretty straightforward manner and then got more complex the first part was just you know very short paragraph you read this book on your own what did you think about it right then it got a little bit more difficult pick one feature of post-modern literature how does it apply in this particular book with this specific example then the third part i'll come back to the fourth part was just talk to somebody in class um and what did you learn

067from someone else's perspective that maybe you didn't think about when you read the book on your own and share that and these were all pretty short snippets the hardest part was part three and that's when i wanted kids to research you know using one of these databases look at uh literary criticism of another text we read earlier that this year probably from a different american movement so maybe think to yourself okay i read this book it's about high school students it's written in the early 2000s but some connection some theme or some way you know some style of writing in some way makes me think about you know nick's plight nick's role as a narrator in the great gatsby let me look at some criticism so they had to take some some piece of criticism

068from the great gatsby and connect it to both gatsby and the realm of possibility now that was challenging it's really abstract so that's where a lot of the conferences came in and the emails we worked together in groups and we were able to even use little breakout rooms and zoom uh during class but in the end i saw some great connections really think you know things that i you know reading the book several times teaching american literature for several years i didn't think of them at all the kids really taught me a lot for that project so it was great thank you hello my name is diane krutz and tonight i have the pleasure of introducing two students angie wong and jordan johnson um angie is a student that's currently in my accounting one class

069and she's also an active member of the future business leaders of america she has some other endeavors i'm going to let her talk to you about um jordan is a student that i met her freshman year also in an accounting one class and i've had the opportunity to work with jordan over her four years here on many projects these two students really embrace and exemplify what it means to be flexible look at a challenge as an opportunity and look to see how they can take that especially the challenges of this year and learn and grow from it and add it to their toolbox so i'm gonna have andy hi so as mrs cruz said my name is angie huang and i'm currently a rising junior at washington hills so for me the hybrid learning experience

070allowed me and gave me the opportunity to explore a lot of the new technology that was available to us as students especially the microsoft suite specifically microsoft onenote and powerpoint which are programs that i were introduced to in my accounting class and in my math class and both have been so helpful to me in terms of note-taking and organization and this year i also became involved in the watching hills technology committee as i volunteer to test run the acer 512 chromebooks which personally i think are really nice chromebooks and through this committee i was exposed to a lot of the new technology the software the hardware and all of these opportunities gave me skills that i'm going to take to my future endeavors both academic and non-academic and inside and outside of the classroom and

071they all have deepened and enriched my passion for both technology and computer science and all of these skills will serve me in my future thank you hi everyone i'm jordan youngelson i'm a senior and next year i'm will be studying management at wharton at university of pennsylvania so i've like always known that i wanted to study business but even before high school but i didn't really have any experience until freshman year when i was able to take accounting one and instantly fell in love with the class so i right away joined future business leaders of america to continue fostering that interest and then i took accounting two honors as a sophomore and with the help of miss krutz i was able to get an internship at an accounting firm in warren where i worked for

072the past well sophomore junior and senior year further developing my interests in business as a sophomore i also became involved in organizing the tedx event um i was president of fbla as a junior and a senior and all these experiences truly prepared me to become a leader in business in the future and even during the pandemic i was still really able to be involved in these organizations i still worked at the accounting firm the whole time through tax season um they were open and running and definitely needed the help and in fbla even though it was virtual this year we actually had one of our most successful years ever we had a very large and thriving membership base we held virtual meetings often we were able to compete nationally originally state and then nationals we

073had like 13 people go to nationals this year the most we've ever had i can tell you like my sophomore year we only had me go to nationals and now this year we have 13 so that just shows like how much the club has really grown um and tedx we were able to actually plan an in-person event which was incredible we planned it hybrid we had meetings in the learning commons and virtually to help the speakers prepare and we were able to have a great event that took place a couple weeks a few weeks ago um and just i really would just not i wouldn't not be where i am today without all these experiences both in and out of the classroom so i have to say thank you to miss crutch and thank you

074to everyone who's helped me get to where i am today and i'm so excited to be continuing to pursue business in college and beyond thank you [Applause] so one of the things that the science department will never take for granted again is the ability to do labs with students we didn't we didn't have any labs this year we did virtual labs we purchased software and and did our best there but um one of the great things about teaching science is you get to work with kids in play a little bit so this year our students went far and wide to do that uh not only did they do it in the classroom we highlighted some of those uh techniques in our october presentation but we had our science teams do competitions online this year so

075we heard earlier this evening about the chemistry olympics those results came in we had three first place winners uh mrs nunes was their uh mentor for that uh but we also had students uh participate in the united kingdom biology competition they didn't fly out to london but we did it virtually uh where they participated in a competition there that had both lab uh lab based questions and and content-based questions uh the us department of the energy also ran a science bowl competition that we usually do in person but ran it on uh this year uh online the students participated on a saturday for that uh spent a lot of time doing that and then the nokia bell labs new jersey regional science fair where we had two students actually participate uh in that this year

076so we had students going out there finding competitions getting mentors uh within the department to help them uh you know get that experience that they did not have this year in in the lab base so and science was for all this year we every student who wanted to be part of it uh we had teachers who kept students uh ready for our science league competitions this year they didn't run but we kept students ready just in case they were going to run in the spring so our students were craving to get into the lab and hopefully next year that all works out and they get to play again i'd like to introduce mitigation facials matthew nunez our ceo of new jersey new jersey shields and mr face shield uh just to introduce him you may

077have read a little bit of an article about him last um last july i think uh in the in uh in the newspaper about the number of facials he made at that time was over 2000 i'm sure it's more than that now i'm going to come on up and talk about that a little bit hi so my name is matthew nunes i'm currently the ceo of nj shields and i'm a rising senior at watch on hills um so how i started nj shields was um in the news there was always this graph that kept going up and up and then eventually everything got shut down so i know i had to do something and i had to invent something to help you know these people so eventually my mom saw a facebook comment um on

078facebook and um it was requesting face shields so i had a 3d printer um one 3d printer and then eventually turn it to eight um and um i just been um printing the face shields um we've had many people donate uh my mom eventually set up a gofundme page which a lot of people have donated to um and um eventually the warren police department was helping out they've been a great help and eventually i ended up with eight printers um it came from one to eight and those printers i've been running every day it's been a challenge with school and painting the face shields at the same time but eventually i got everything um done my teachers were a lot to help i would like to thank my the volunteers that have helped me make

079these fields um some of which are actually coming to high school next year and i've we've printed over 2 930 face shields um which is a lot um it was a lot of work um through the process um we've helped many many people um it was mostly donated to hospitals and you know anybody that need shields basically um it was a lot of work i would like to thank the warren community everybody that helped out and um that's basically it thank you good evening my name is tara miles or theresa miles i like to keep people on their toes but i'm here to highlight the successes of our counseling department this year and when i look back we all had challenges as we did as a school but i have to say that in terms

080of offering academic support as well as counseling services for our students the department as a whole really came together we collaborated a lot we would often zoom before school began and just kind of bounced ideas off of each other talked about various situations that were going on within our student body and how we could best support them um in terms of counseling support mr rice mrs blake i could not do my job without them they are my sounding board we again bounce ideas off of each other and we support one another and collaborate we also have our care plus program that was a huge success and having mrs panagious there to help us as well to have that extra layer of support not only for our students but the families was huge um in terms

081of the post-secondary planning there were challenges and i i myself would be lying if i stood up here and said i don't really know how we're going to do all this um i am not one that likes to be on screen so for me to be here tonight is also a win for me but um i was able to really implement a lot in terms of technology so thank you to rit department and their training to just helping us the teachers are in the classroom using google classroom and all those tools all the time so this was a learning curve for us as well but being able to use zoom meetings to have afternoon office hours to support our students to have our night programs i had 100 attendance for my junior conferences this year

082and i think that was really helpful in the sense that we had so many parents and students that are involved in other things or maybe working from home challenges with child care the fact that we were able to offer this through zoom give them that information and they could just hop on from the comfort of their home and still be able to gain this information was really beneficial to us as department the colleges were fantastic offering virtual tours we were able to go to numerous information sessions which was really helpful and when we had our virtual college panel this past may having duke there ithaca we had rutgers indiana and lehigh it was really refreshing to hear their standpoint how they were dealing with these challenges it's not something that just watch on hills had

083to deal with but as a college they had to be flexible and adapt and you know to know that a lot of the colleges are going test optional and that's going to be something that's happening again next year was really helpful i think for the parents and the students to hear to know it's going to be okay the other thing that i think was really helpful was just the support of the teachers the saying it takes a village could not be more true this year they knocked it out of the park again i rely so much on my colleagues the teachers anytime i needed help can we brainstorm i have a student that's struggling maybe a parent reached out or even the student themselves they never once you know hesitated they they collaborated with me

084and said what can we do to help the student so i think it really does take a village and i think overall we had a very successful year we were still able to hold our night programs and that was a success and we have some great things happening for our students so thank you for this opportunity hello all um my name is mainland zoo and i'm going to be talking about some of the challenges i experienced during copenhagen and some of the methods i used to sort of help me through my college applications i am a senior this year and the cova pandemic has been very difficult for me as it has been for everyone staying motivated during classes has definitely been a struggle keeping things organized when it just feels like everything's flying at

085you at once and you can't really communicate with people in person to get things figured out that's been very tough but i am very grateful that i was able to contribute at least in part to maybe helping people go through this a little more easily as eriha meta was here earlier she represented the teen action group next year she's going to be president this year i was one of the co-presidents of that organization which will hopefully be a club and i believe that we might have helped at least a few people as she stated we did a lot for may during mental health awareness month and i was really grateful that we were actually able to do even more outreach we had a guest speaker come in who was a professional about mental health and

086it was very inspiring and we also were able to do our toiletry drive to summit oaks this year we also had a representative from the letters for elders come in so we spent a session writing some letters for them and they're also going to be sent to the va hospital and yeah just the impact we've had on the community this year the amount that we've been able to increase our outreach has been kind of amazing and i'm grateful to all of our um executive board members and club members for really making this the best year for teen action group also i was chosen to be a representative for walton hills regional high school at the new jersey department of education um student commissioners roundtable and that was i i was so honored to be able

087to share my opinions and i believe that the ability for people from different districts all over new jersey to come together sort of bond a little bit over their struggles during the pandemic sort of sort of share like what they're able to do to get through it and also to give some input about how we could maybe improve things in the future how we could one of the questions they asked was how students believed that schools could readjust after the pandemic was sort of dying off and a lot of people gave some great feedback we were able to speak with some counselors in the district one-on-one and sort of give our opinions about what could be improved in general and i believe that the intent that they had and the effort they had to reach

088out to people who lived through it and lived through the pandemic and the fact that they wanted to hear from us was it was very touching and i'm very honored to have that opportunity the small impact that i may have had could not have been possible without the help i've had from the school and the staff and just everyone to sort of keep me on track mr carmini my counselor has been a huge help even before the pandemic my junior conference was a wonderful way to really keep me on the right path he looked very specifically at some of my interests my extracurricular activities my gpa and he gave me some recommendations for things i could do over the summer very realistic lens on how the college applications process worked but also very understanding of

089my own unique needs and i um i could not be more grateful for his help even past that because he would always be open for questions that i may have had throughout the pandemic or just to chat and i think having that friend and mentor and guide and guidance has been very important for me also the senior assistance counselors i've mentioned earlier have been instrumental throughout my high school career i guess even before the pandemic mrs blake and mr rice were always open for me to come in and sort of just vent out my stress and they gave me a lot of good coping mechanisms i'm also very grateful because they just let me be myself and sort of just be the mess that i am and they were totally accepting of that and that

090was just a great relief that um really helped during the pandemic the way that we adjusted was doing google hangout meetings and the fact that they were still open to sort of just let me unburden everything has been has been very helpful um so the college process was very difficult and i am glad that i was able to make it as far as i did and the emotional support for my teachers as well i know some classes they sent out google forms in the beginning beginning of the week asking how we were doing they told they told us to like rate our emotions on a scale or sort of just describe how we were feeling and why asked about some goals that we could keep in mind and they asked if we wanted to talk

091to them and i think just breaking that barrier between student and teacher between the person who's trying to do well in the class and the teacher who's giving them harsh grades depending on the student i think turning that into more of a friend relationship friend of friend is so special during this time where we all feel trapped behind our screens and sort of lacking human connection and yeah that's basically what i wanted to say about my post my process to getting into post-secondary education next year i will be attending cornell university and i could not have gone where i am without the help from everyone in this school and i think this goal of social and emotional well-being has been miraculously like fulfilled during the pandemic so thank you maylin and for all the presenters

092for goal two about uh demonstrating the different pathways we're going to move on to goal three uh miss peace um piazza's gonna come up with izzy and angelina or i'm sorry angie wang to talk about imagination creativity good evening everyone i'm lori piazza i teach ap computer science principles here at watchung hills thank you for having me cyber security is one of the world's fastest growing industries the national cyber scholarship foundation is working hard to address the current cyber skills shortage by developing champ and championing the next generation of cyber security professionals through the provision of two million dollars in college scholarships and 13.8 million dollars in cyber security training via a website called cyberstartamerica.org girls go cyberstart is a female-only community of girls working with cyberstartamerica.org because there's a serious gender gap in the

093field of computer science we started a girls go cyberstart chapter here at watch on hills in february of just before the pandemic this club was encouraged to all high schools by governor murphy who reached out to the new jersey chapter of the computer science teachers association of which i'm a member to begin motivating those who identify as female to enter the field of cyber security through girls go cyberstart our club meets every other week virtually to talk about the games and challenges presented on the website in preparation for a yearly competition in may last year the competition was organized by teams and our team here at wachong hills came in 21st in the nation this year the competition was run individually and as you've already heard nicole brunskill and lizzie huang won the title of

094scholar and we also had izzy huang and angie huang win the title of finalists other students in the country won the opportunity for a cybersecurity foundation certification giving students real-world access to high-paying jobs in the cyber security field we hope the district recognizes the real life opportunities this club gives our students and we hope to become an official club next year here to talk more about our club are angie and izzy wong i do just want to add that under miss piazza our computer science program has exploded um we have grown the number of students involved in our computer science courses tremendously we and it also earned us a place um we earned the first computer science a award given by the college board for our participation in that and for our participation of females

095in our computer science courses and we also made it onto the code.org hall of fame and uh miss piazza was her leadership was instrumental in that so it's great to see that it's continuing to expand i'm so happy to see so many of my students when i looked around the room and i saw so many of my students here i was like wow i know all these people this is great um hi again um as i stated before my name is angie huang in the lady cyber warriors club we participate in a variety of different stem-related competitions and activities of which one is girls go cyberstar this year over 3200 individuals participated across the nation of which me and izzy won the title of national finalists and lizzie and nicole won the title of scholar

096and during my time at watching hills and hopefully for the future as a new president of the lady cyber warriors club i hope to expand the club and expose my peers at washington hills more to cyber security and computer science in general the skills that i have learned in this club both academic and non-academic have become skills i use in my everyday life learning about computer science in general is so helpful and essential to our lives as well as for our generation to become competent in the modern technology immersed job industry these skills of creativity problem solving and critical thinking that i've learned in the ladies cyber warriors club and its competitions only serve to highlight the skills that i learned both in and out of school so thank you to mrs piazz and everyone

097else sorry hi i'm izzy and i'm actually angie's twin sister and i'll be vice president of the club next year and over the past year despite the challenge of online learning our club members were still really engaged in competing and participating in cyberstar america and that is proven through we even expanded our club boundaries through participating in cs ed week and we also grew the number of members in our club as well since it started last year ncs ed week we used what we learned from our online software and the majority of the club members were able to qualify for the national competition as well next year we will plan to we plan to merge our comp the computer science club and create several divisions to further expand our boundaries in the stem field it

098was amazing this year to see that even though our club was fully virtual this entire time every member overlooked this challenge and put in their best effort and work to qualify for nationals and some to even win the best title of scholar and national finalist the dedication and motivation we have seen throughout this entire year is what has made our club truly successful and able to reach our ultimate goal this competition has taught many of us and many of the students involved the basics of python coding html and online css web programming which has become an assessed necessity in today's life we plan next year to maybe even organize a school event to teach others the importance of cyber security and allow others who may not have hurt our club to understand the true importance

099of how relevant has become today thank you [Applause] hi back again uh this time with world languages i have mary mcnichols with me a spanish teacher in the department we're going to be focusing on spanish immersion and culture too this was a new course this year we didn't anticipate we'd be doing it in a hybrid environment but the idea behind it you can tell by the title immersion means you're you're immersed in the language it's completely taught in the world language but it's through the lens of culture so everything is done through that you're learning vocabulary your grammar and the different modes of communication presenting something reading interpreting information in the language but how do you do that when the concentration is on participation and then you have either a fully virtual classroom setting or

100you have a hybrid definition where you have some students in front of you and some at home and that's what she's going to be talking to you about how they overcame those challenges how they innovated different materials and they used different applications that worked out so well that we're probably going to incorporate them next year as well thank you hello everyone mary mcnicholas spanish teacher and yes i want to share about some of the tools that were used in spanish class in the world language class the first one is flipgrid and for flippery students are able to video record themselves posting a question or a comment in order to promote participation students were asked to explore a website from a spanish authentic restaurant and so they had to make a recommendation for a classmate on

101a food item then they had to create another response using flipbrid stating whether they would try that new item or not and so activities like this were great because they provided an opportunity for student self-assessment they were able to listen to what they're saying and how they're saying it and that's sometimes difficult in the traditional classroom when they're focused on okay my classmates responded i need to respond to him quickly so they were able to listen to their audios um multiple times so once they get over they oh that's what i sound like you know they really like listening to okay how i'm saying it and what i'm supposed to be saying um the next uh tool i want to talk to you about is kami and um in coming students are able to annotate

102um and they're also able to use voice or video recording for this activity students were asked to analyze song lyrics and so they first had to create a drawing and then using the voice recording they were explaining what the drawing was and how it related to the song lyrics again i believe both kami and flipgrid offer these opportunities for students of self-assessment and they also learn from each other when they're listening to their classmates audios and the last tool i want to talk to you is padlet and that is an online board and students are able to to post material and comment on each other's material this activity students had been studying different artists and painters from different spanish-speaking countries and they were asked to think of a topic of interest for them it could

103be a holiday a book they enjoyed or a tv show so this first student um recreated an image by salvador dali uh using her favorite holiday which was halloween so she was able to incorporate her own culture while keeping the structure or the characteristics from the original painting the second drawing there the student wanted to share uh her favorite cartoon that's tom and jerry and so they use it that's inspired by joanne middle's original drawing and so what that normally would be done as a gallery walk where students get to walk in the classroom and see on each other that was very challenging this year and so this padlet allows students to showcase their work and they were able to see what everyone was working on and comment on on their work so um that's

104it for the tools um so while these tools were really great for hybrid learning i i believe these are things that we'll continue using to encourage participation and self-assessment in the world language classroom [Applause] thank you all and last but certainly not least the goal for diversity equity inclusion will be kicked off by mr jim equevia as you know our strategic playing goal for diversity equity and inclusion is to welcome all students staff and visitors into a culturally responsive school environment where diversity equity and inclusion are shared and expressed values at the curricular level ms falvo and i engaged 9th grade english and social studies teachers in threading the concepts of allyship advocacy and anti-racism into classroom instruction we advanced the district's goal for diversity equity and inclusion through specialized extracurricular activities as well whrhs

105junior ben vishnovetsky will speak with you next about the folio literary magazine's annual coffee house event a celebration of diverse talents and individual expression at wachong hills ben vishnovetsky good evening my name is benjamin visnovedsky a rising senior here at chung hills i'm here today to give you a snapshot of our school community's efforts to grow social responsibility empathy and awareness for students of all backgrounds not only through the curriculum but also through extracurricular activities there are so many talented kids here at watchung hills and we wanted them to have the chance to shine in front of their peers through music dance and spoken word performances that is exactly why i became president of folio literary magazine that is exactly why i wanted to assist miss violet burnberg in the planning of coffeehouse my goal

106is to show our school just how many extraordinary people there are around us i also wanted to find a platform on which to present my work since i write poetry with folio not running this school year coffeehouse is my only option and i am beyond glad i got past the nerves because i was met only with compliments and constructive criticism from a caring audience i worked closely with miss vb to organize this year's coffee house event which took place on the evening of june 1st the inclusivity of the event embracing each student's ethnicity sexual orientation or identity or disability was a bright moment especially at this period of immense societal change as we emerge from the pandemic this year's coffee house served as a celebration of diversity and individual expression at wachong hills i want

107to take this opportunity to thank all the teachers that have supported me through this entire year including the two that are here miss piazza and senora mcnicholas and thank you for your support and also for your time and attention hello my name is dan bertelli i'm the supervisor of the arts here at wachong hills uh ben is a poet and i just now found out um if there was any evidence of what the arts can do for our students social and emotional growth and well-being uh we certainly got it in um truckloads this year and we couldn't have done it without our tremendous art staff who through a tremendous effort put together packages of art supplies clay paint craft materials meeting with the students after school to practice in their ensembles they deserve a big

108round of applause and the students i think came out of this whole scenario a lot more healthier and in check with their emotions and ideas so i have had many students i could choose from but i chose mrs samantha hoffman i would like to invite her up now and miss jewett if you can just click through i i put a bunch as of uh just as she's talking about it hi everyone my name's sam hoffman i'm a senior at watchung hills and i'll be graduating this week hopefully and um so you'll be hearing from her on graduation day so um this year actually throughout my whole four years i've had the honor the pleasure of having ms griffin as my art teacher and this year i took ap to the art with her and this

109year was really great as mr patel mentioned we had the opportunity to have on the all the materials at our fingertips at home because everyone got a bag of supplies to take home and first as you'll see in the artwork as we scroll through i used a lot of different materials this year and this was really important for me because not only is it a fundamental part of the ap curriculum but it's just something that i didn't always get to experiment with and last year we were kind of cut short so we didn't get to finish exploring all our materials but having the bag of materials at home was really helpful because we could work at our we could work whenever we wanted instead of only being able to work during school hours or stay

110after school which isn't always flexible for some people without after school activities so this is great if you want to cram at night you can do that you can also just work throughout the afternoon whenever you had free time or even a study hall or something like that so that was really helpful and then another thing which was really instrumental this year and keeping everyone on track was for the virtual kids we had individual breakout rooms so normally in class ms griffin always conferences with everyone one-on-one so she'll just go around the room and ask everyone what are your plans for today what do you want to get done and this year for all the virtual kids we were put into individual breakout rooms and then throughout the class you would go through each room

111have a talk with you you can show what you're working on or ask any questions and then she would help you out and just so you could stay on track because it was easy to fall behind sometimes when you had other work to do and sometimes you lost your priorities but she helped you get back on track too and also something else about miss griffin is that she was always thinking about us after class as well so sometimes you would just check your email late at night and then you'd say oh i got an email from ms griffin she's got an idea for me she's always thinking about us and for some of my projects i think if you click back one more one forward for this one i remember specifically that she actually actually

112sent me more reference photos or some ideas that she found online which weren't this was actually inspired by a comic book cover and the cutout is actually of an ambulance so that was kind of an idea i saw from a different piece but it was a cut out of a different completely different shape but i just kind of transformed that and put into my work and then one last thing i want to touch on for in the classroom for art is that normally i like to go around and look to see what everyone else is doing and i'm sure everyone else is doing the same thing but unfortunately we didn't get that this year but something that we did instead was our critiques so we actually had two of these in ap throughout the year

113and this is really nice because you could see what other people were working on to see what techniques they used and then they also offered advice and they gave it to everyone so just constructive criticism for what to change going forward or even just to go back and edit a piece that you are already made so outside the classroom i was actually the president of the national arts honor society and we continued working on my history mural and mr newsroom which had actually been started i started it when i was in 10th grade but because of covid and then the ball was a little bit slow to get rolling in 10th grade we kind of were in a difficult spot in the beginning of this year but with miss griffin leading the club we were

114able to actually take off and now we're almost finished with the mural we have finishing touches to put on on thursday but that got done this year and then something else we worked on was maker mondays which were held once a month for the whole club and we had both virtual and in-person options so at those meetings we came up with different project options uh for example one of our themes was fingerprints or finger painting which something that most people don't think of because they think we only do this when we're two years old but actually we can make really cool art even though we're high schoolers and it can look sophisticated so that was one of our themes so we just try to to do a bunch of different skills and then next year

115going forward we're going to focus more on more community projects like the mural on how to spread art throughout the school and just to wrap up i just want to thank miss griffin again even though she's not here for all the support she's provided me throughout the last four years and also want to thank the arts department and the rest of the staff at watching hills for all their support thank you so while i invite maelyn nicole and snahi to come up and set up thank you so as samantha was saying you know the the studio environment is such an important aspect of a young artist's growth and that was something we were missing over the course of this year but um through our teachers like miss griffin went the extra mile to try to

116create that environment for our students the beginning of the year we made a conscious decision to try to get as much art materials in our students hands as possible also around the holidays we push really hard to try to get our ensembles together to play this was very difficult in planning because of the three or four different groups of students the cohort a b and virtual so what we did is we set up our wednesday afternoons for anyone who was interested to come and perform together and we put on the music showcase a couple weeks ago and here are the three ladies are here to play a piece from that showcase um i'm calling the uh the flute trio you may take your masks off if you would like to it's up to you although

117you're probably good [Music] uh [Music] uh [Music] uh [Music] um [Music] so [Applause] thank you ladies i'm going to now introduce miss anita falvo with social studies good evening i just have to say when i i started here there was 1150 kids at this school i was proud to be part of watchung hills but this is amazing i mean i just you know you stay in your own little circle your own little area and you don't see all of this and i'm i'm very impressed which leads me to me the last very the person that you're going to see tonight so i'll be quick because i really want to introduce the student that i brought with me um because she del she wrote an amazing essay just to tell you real quickly we're doing a

118lot in social studies and i've spoken to you in the past about civic engagement and service learning we're so lucky that the state assembly and senate passed a middle school civics bill so that they will be required to learn civics in middle school and that will come up to us also which which i'm very pleased about we have a huge enrollment now for our social justice class it's a first year class we'll be teaching next year and of course our african-american studies it's just part of our curriculum part of what we do part of who we are to do dei uh you know diversity equity and inclusion having said that i really want you to hear um and we saved her for a last because we were able to work with the community with the

119warren lions club who had an essay contest and if you want to go to the next slide um i just put up there i'm not going to read it to you but i just wanted you to see the question that was asked and to introduce sophomore julia de montagnac to read her essay and close out our presentation today julia thank you [Applause] hi i'm julia de montagnac today i lived the ideal day i survived the day undamaged and unscathed i was not poked or prodded i was not seen as exotic my hair was not a toy for strange hands to play with teachers did not scrutinize me during lessons on abolition i was not bombarded with questions about my family lineage and i did not receive the backhanded compliment that i was pretty for someone

120in my race today i lived an entire school day without the scrutiny that came with being different nonetheless i'm painfully aware that this dream is not my reality tomorrow i will wake up and i will be poked prodded touched scrutinized and questioned because i'm seen as different and in high school different encompasses so much more than its literal meaning as high school has always been a place where fitting in is celebrated the label different embodies exclusion and creates isolation and insultation however being different does not render me powerless although i do not have power over the color of my skin or the bounce of my curls and i do not have power over the mouths that call me exotic or the hands that touch my hair i have the power to make my ideology of

121having diversity respect and equality at my high school a reality to break down the walls of high school conformity diversity must run deeper than a brief lesson plan and the occasional talk about inclusion diversity must be woven into the fabric of the school's ecosystem from the classroom to the hallways to the general expectations schools should teach about diversity in history class with the same enthusiasm that american culture is taught with we must teach our students that diversity is our history in literature students should be exposed to various books about different ethnicities genders sexual orientations religions and economic statuses students must study these books in the same way they study shakespeare and steinbach and in science knowledge about biology should be used to teach us about the commonality in our humanity it should demonstrate that we

122share a likeness in who we are despite our different athletic and academic abilities essentially diversity should be so ingrained in our schooling that it would be impossible to point it out when the educational system holds enough respect for all of its students to include all of our stories in its lessons those who have previously been ostracized will feel valued and respected by their peers more so the school as a community can reach new heights and learning enabled by the diversity of thought when we make diversity an equivalent aspect of education tomorrow no longer has to be the day when any student is poked prodded touched scrutinized and questioned tomorrow can simply be the ideal day where we can unapologetically be ourselves [Applause] i don't think we can top that that's the end of this invitation

123i'll um let dr shibalski say some some words as well as i'm sure he has some comments but i just want to thank all of you that attended tonight um the staff and the student participants did a beautiful job um showcasing your talents the performances were were wonderful that was something new that we haven't done at the board meetings before so thank you to the flautists and to our vocalist um and julia you know i i'm so uh pleased that you're reading that you had the opportunity to read your essay i believe at the lions club uh meeting and that you had the opportunity to read it here tonight because i think it's it's something it's a very important message um for everyone to hear and for the rest of you that that came to

124speak about your experiences um it it's uh we really appreciate you um speaking personally and from the heart i think a lot of you shared a lot about your personal experiences and um it helps us learn and grow so that we can do more for the future watching hill students oh we and we do have something from our culinary arts uh folks another treat this week i believe there's some carrot cake muffins to go i'm sorry mr librara i should make sure i don't forget that um one other thing i want to do we in addition to thanking the the staff and the students i want to give a special thanks and i don't know if any of our maintenance staff are out in the hallway and could come but our maintenance staff and rit

125staff have been invaluable this year and they have done everything with a smile at all hours um and have really made our crazy hybrid schedule and all of these things possible so i really do want to thank them as well because they've been an integral part to all of this [Applause] thank you dr dewitt and on behalf of the board i i hopefully can express it in a few sentences that this was one of the most amazing presentations i've ever seen come out of this high school i've been on the board for i think almost a decade now and just to see the highlights of the work that you've done uh culminating towards the end of this year uh the passion with which you shared that uh with us they're really just not words to

126express that you should all be commended for your hard work in very very trying times and to see the collaboration among our students and our faculty and i'm sure with the support of their parents you should all really stand high and stand proud for all that you've accomplished and you will go forth into the future i think representing wachong hills and our communities here with great success so thank you so much so a two-fold reward one is muffins and two is a break where you can elegantly disappear and not sit through the rest of the meeting thank you again for attending yes yes [Music] oh because we're on a break anthony are we paused by any chance of streaming are we still live streaming can you pause this for a couple of minutes is that

127possible [Music] we'll now move on to our committee reports of which fortunately we just have uh mr fallon in operations the operations committee met on uh june 9th uh discussed a couple of different things one was uh two new policies one of which is on the agenda for tonight for first read that's a policy that addresses remote meetings during health emergency believe it or not although a lot of other things have been canceled this is still considered to be a health emergency by the governor and basically the policy that we're going to be voting on for first reading tonight basically mirrors what we've been doing since march of last year there's one other policy that we considered 156.1 has to do with attending uh meetings uh remotely uh it had some quite restrictive language so

128we're going to take another look at that and loosen up some of those restrictions before we bring it to the board uh we then discuss transfer of surplus to reserves as you know this is one of the methods we use to make sure that we have enough money so that when we get in those situations where the state allows us to get aid for referenda projects that we have a way to fund them within a year and pay them off within a year and take advantage of state aid that we otherwise wouldn't be getting in this district so we're always looking with mr stein's guidance to put money into reserves capital reserves when we can he anticipates that we'll have something shy of five million dollars in amounts that can go into various reserves at

129the end of this school calendar school fiscal year he originally recommended to us that of that amount we consider putting three and a half million into capital reserves 200 000 into a tuition reserve we always put some in into that because we go back and forth with greenbrook just the way the formula works in terms of numbers of students some years they owe us some money some years we owe them money so it's helpful for us to keep reserves tuition reserves so that we won't have to you know change our budgeting practices if needed for that the other thing we discussed originally was putting 1.3 million into the maintenance reserve after discussion the committee with mr skies skye's concurrence felt that we already have approximately a million dollars in our maintenance reserve and we rarely

130use more than a few hundred thousand at a time in that so we felt it would be more appropriate to put more money into the capital reserve and keep the uh keep the amount to be added to the maintenance reserve much smaller than 1.3 million dollars we then discussed the rfps that uh timid mentioned earlier one is for the mental health provider that's uh is that one on for tonight that's not obvious that's right the ones that are on the agenda tonight include as tim had mentioned this the school physician uh we've had some new people put in responses to our rfps and and greenbrook family medicine is going to be providing the school physician services and the health broker we was mentioned briefly that we've used brown and brown in the past and they

131were one of the three that submitted after some discussion noting that we really had not only outstanding service from brown and brown but they have saved us an awful lot of money with some of their strategic advice over the years the committee uh had decided that we would allow uh or suggested that the superintendent board president and our former acting superintendent beth scheidermann review that rfp and and score it and make a recommendation they've done that and they've recommended to us that we do go with brown and brown again and accept that that bid and that's on tonight's agenda as well last thing we discussed the architects fees on the esip project and a number of questions were raised about it and and mr steiz is putting together more information about exactly what services the

132architect's providing and exactly what services uh honeywell is providing those are going to be reviewed by members of the operations committee we'll discuss it again and bring it to the board for the july 13th anything else to add that that's it mr president thank you any any questions for mr fallon and the committee seeing none just i i wanted to at this point uh while under the administrative uh uh kudos uh earlier in my comments just to highlight uh anthony maluso and his i.t team as well as mr chris bick and the operations uh team who've really done a phenomenal job to keep the school not only moving in the right direction but keeping communication open and making a challenge in technology very very uh successful so thank you on behalf of the board this

133is the first opportunity for public comment if you've got the energy left to do so okay uh we'll close that first opportunity uh we'll move on to uh board discussion anything specific in terms of our board goals that anyone wants to bring up great presentation i think we all got more out of that we have almost any other presentation it does get a little longer each year but yeah honestly it started small and so many people wanted to be a part of it um that it grew and and i i mean i think it was a great showcasing of everything from this year so thank you they're amazing our staff and students are amazing i i would like to make one comment here regarding this bipolar ionization you know i sent email to some of

134my members of the operation committee but uh just a brief comment is that that quite a few reports appearing you know in the news that there are health concerns you know apparently some 20 000 schools coast to coast have deployed the system and now there are some concerns there because apparently most of the schools have used the federal money to install it and now they are questioning whether it is doing anything good or it's going to hurt i do not know i'm not an expert but i think our architect should look into that and we should keep our eye open oh i mean it it is a complicated issue and i think we spent a lot of time as a board before even making the decision to look at it and and certainly there's not

135a an issue that i would see in revisiting it as as data comes before us and we can certainly seek it out i the caution that i would uh raise is that uh anecdote really isn't science and just because somebody says that there's a concern i need to see the data i'm a scientist i can understand it and and see whether it is legitimate or not uh and uh i think we should go into it with an open mind and and look at it as as more information comes out we should just to keep an eye open you know see what's happening because we don't want to have some if suppose there are some you know unintended consequences we could be in serious trouble you know so we have to keep our eye open system

136is already installed so nothing we can do about it i do want to point out though one of the articles that you that was in that package provided it started out with four retractions of information that was incorrect right off the start so again just the reliability of the journalism or the you really got to watch what people write because the article itself the title had the word safety in it when you read the whole article inconclusive that's all they said so i i just want to make sure that when i read stuff and let's let's be honest there's a lot of stuff out there that is not necessarily fact and you know just be careful what you read because it's it's not everything in that article pointed to they don't know they talked about

137ashrae and i did share comments and concerns with the architect and engineer and they pointed and gave gave guidance from ashrae from the department of education so which i will share with the board but you know but i researched this but they've researched this and they're professionals in that field so i'm going to go with their guidance i think they're the ones who understand the product are we using the same company as in the articles so it's the architect firm and johnson urban is our engineer no no are we using the same vendor you know these articles relates to one particular vendor gps or something yeah well gps was is the manufacturer of the correct are we using the same company no it was a the company installed it was a different company but gps

138was the manufacturer okay so that we are using the same system that's the first thing okay anything else would anybody like to discuss any of the addendum items seeing none mr president i'd like to move resolutions a1 through a5 and a10 through a 13. david anybody like to pull anything for separate discussion or separate vote saying non roll call vote please and then 10 to 13. yeah i have a 14 is that the original remember we're using the revised agenda yeah i noted that two things came out of the a's yeah yeah 14 and 15 aren't on the revised okay okay miss barone mr bernberg dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr hunsinger mr morrison sober potter rasa dr shabil yes thank you mr president i'd like to move resolutions a6 through a nine have

139a second okay anybody like to pull anything for separate discussions separate folks seeing non-roll call vote please mr brown mr burnberg dr chand yes mr fallon yes mr hunsinger morrison silver doctor yes mr president i'd like to move a resolution c1 through c24 second anybody like to pull anything for separate discussion separate vote none roll call vote please miss baron mr burnberry dr chan yes mr fallon yes hunsinger morrison yes yes potter dr schubelski yes mr president i'd like to move resolutions d through d2 through d26 and d29 through d35 i have second would anybody like to pull anything for separate discussion or separate vote saying none roll call vote please mrs barone mr bernberg dr chan yes mr fallon yes mr hunsinger morrison yes otter yes rasa and dr yes mr president i'd like

140to move resolutions d 27 and 28 and d 36 would anybody like to discuss or fall for a separate vote saying none we'll call those dr chan yes mr fallon yes john singer morrison sober dr yes thank you this is second opportunity for public comment same as the first any other business anyone would like to bring up may i have a motion to adjourn thank you all perhaps see you friday