001to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands Nation God indivisible withy and justice for [Music] all Miss Amil here miss crstal here miss C Giovani here miss hollat here Mr Sher here Mr sto here Mr Toad here miss wajt here miss Cal here notice of the March 3rd 2025 meeting of the Board of Education was emailed to the clerks of the Burrows of essexfells North cville and rosand and to the township of Fairfield and to the editor of the progress on January 7th 2025 and the Star Ledger on the same day welcome everyone um as of right now I don't have anything specific as for um comments or anything from the presidency so uh we're going to go right into the superintendent's report my report tonight is
002um provide an update to the board on our school start times uh last committee meeting so good evening welcome members of the public okay so um as you know we have a process going on right now where we are looking at uh potentially changing the start time of our school day so um we've assembled a large Committee of uh students faculty staff board members and parents and we've had two meetings so far um we have established a web page uh on our on our district website on Friday I did send an email blast out to the community um giving them access to that link that link contains every letter that has gone out to the community regarding the process um meeting presentation notes and most recently the survey results and uh links to sleep research
003okay just a little bit of uh background data just so you can kind of get a sense of the uh enrollment in our district um and then I'm going to get into just sharing you a couple highlights um from the slides from the survey results so um the survey went to all of our pre-registered sixth graders in all four towns so that's about 35 students uh we have approximately 560 students in the middle school right now grade seven and8 and approximately 1,60 students grads 9 through 12 so the survey went to just under 2,000 um people okay um if you take a look at this slide here this this will give you a breakdown of um where the the um the parent Guardian responses came from we had 88 responses um which is about 46%
004of families and you can see the breakdown prek through six grade seven and 8 in grade uh 9 through 12 we had about 510 High School parents 430 Middle School parents and 330 parents uh K through six and obviously some of those parents have students in multiple grades levels okay this is just to give you a little breakdown of the percentage from every town okay you can see that North cwell had about 375% of the responses about 30% of the responses came from Fairfield 22% from rosand and 10.4% from essexfells that's almost um very close to the makeup of our enrollment in our district okay um as far as our f faculty and staff um go we had about 100 we had 128 responses you can see all the different departments um that's about a
00550% response rate from faculty and staff and that's across all departments teachers counselors maintenance buildings and grounds um and just for the record there special services and math had the highest response rate of about 15.6% okay these are the student uh results okay we had 507 responses from grades uh 7 through 12 so we had about 31% of our students who responded to the survey um interesting uh fact here is that uh the eighth graders uh were 24.7% they were the biggest uh response uh to the survey and here's the breakdown of uh response for students by town north cwell at about 38.2% Fairfield at about 29.6% rosan at 25% and then S6 FS at 6.7% again pretty close to um the same breakdown of our parent responses okay now we had three full surveys
006one to parents one to students and one um to staff I'm obviously not going to go through all those slides they are available on the website if you want to see them but I just pulled out a couple uh conclusions that um kind of summarize some of the key points what kind of what what can we take away from the survey so one of the biggest things here is that about 65% of all three stakeholder groups believe that a later start time would be a positive change for the community parent Guardians and students report that students are not getting enough sleep and according to the Sleep research teenagers need more than 8 hours of sleep all three stakeholder groups believe that a later start time would improve students mental health and well-being a majority of
007all three stakeholder groups do not believe that after school activities will be impacted by a later end time and if you took the survey you'll know that we what we're talking about is a range no later than 5 or 10 minutes later than our current end time right now which is 2:35 an overwhelming majority of all three stakeholder groups are fine with a schedule that would reduce instruction by 1 minute per block they also would be fine with um a reduction in the lunch block by no more than 5 minutes and then uh to conclude here all three stakeholder groups believe that a later start time has benefits with the small number saying there would be no benefits further most respondents in all three stakeholder groups believe there are no concerns with starting school later
008so those are kind of the main points I pulled out from all of uh the slides so where do we go from here well we're having our next meeting it's tentatively scheduled for March 20th um we're in the process of uh creating a few different mock schedules um developing Bell schedules that are within uh the the parameters of everything that we talked about and we're uh going to do somewhat of a transportation study if you want to call it that we we really need to kind of see what the impact would be on the sending districts if the buses left here 5 or 10 minutes later after they drop our students off or potentially what that might look look like at the end of the day if we held our buses for 5 minutes or
009so and then let the buses go do their Elementary runs so you know one of the biggest driving um one of the biggest factors right now is transportation because of the shared services that we have with um three of our sending districts so that's kind of our update on um school start times for now anybody have any questions okay I'll turn it over to Mr Walsh all right uh good evening everybody uh I just want to first off say hello to everybody and um just thank you for the opportunity to present um not only to present you know our Athletics fad and health and our staff um but just thank you for the opportunity to take over this position um although it's been only about a year now uh really enjoying it um made some
010great changes uh I enjoy looking at the PE and Health Department observing the teachers seeing what they're doing in the class um but also enjoy really getting out to the field and seeing our student athletes uh really succeed um sadly to admit I also enjoy damen's Saturday and Sunday phone calls when weather coming in um but it's been great I'm under some great leadership learned a lot and uh just thank you for the opportunity and it wouldn't mean anything without your support um so tonight I'm just here to present to the board fiz Ed and health and Athletics um some updates on what we've been doing um first off in the first two slides you'll see our high school team um and then our Middle School team overall they have over 150 years teaching experience
011so we've you know either poached them from another school or kept them in District for a long time they have a lot of experience um and they're they're a great staff to work with there's our Middle School team so there's nine at the high school four at the middle school as we know um our district goals are to you know cultivate career Readiness real world experiences um and also ensure a positive inclusive climate and culture our district or our department goal is to utilize intentional movement um just you know facilitate learning so that students are actively engaged during instruction I don't know how much more engaged you can get than a fiz ed class uh they're moving and grooving you know all throughout the period um but we'll show you a couple of ways of
012how we're uh you know completing these goals so in terms of the first one cultivating career Readiness in fizzed um we are back to taking common assessments it's a big move um it's something that we haven't done in a couple years but just learning the game um the games that they play learning how to you know have teamwork face adversity uh sportsmanship all types of things that they're doing in their classro they're also taking assessments on um it wasn't a you know great thing at at the start students kind of you know gave a little push back um but I think as they move forward watching you know football with their family they'll understand the rules of the game they won't have to ask questions uh watching tennis on TV they might not have questions
013so just learning those rules taking a test on it not the end of the world not meant to be like grade Breakers um but just you know gives them a little more education through fizet uh we're also engaging students in recreational activities every single day these aren't games that they're meant to go to the college level for it's games that prepare them for the future uh volleyball pickle ball tennis things that they can backyard games things that they're going to do at you know a reunion party or something with the family where they're they feel comfortable throwing a Bago or frisbee back to somebody and not you know scared that they're going to look silly we also are learning how to maintain Healthy Lifestyles uh both physically and mentally as they prepare for Life After
014High School so you know whether that's nutritionally or you know just having the mental health awareness uh they learn that through fizzed and health the driver's ed and health curriculum is a little bit different they only get one marking period for health or driver's ed so we kind of split it up in four different marking periods the first marking period is all 10th graders every single 10th grader takes driver ed um they prepare for their driver's test they actually take the test in the classroom and in that first Market period 99% of 10th grade students pass that driver's test which is great they don't have to go to the DMV wait in lines they're all ready to drive by their time they get their license um and that's all because of driver's ad that we
015offer uh they learn the rules of the road they you know do all kinds of stuff in there the 11th grade students uh they are currently in marketing period three getting certified in first aid CPR in AED skills so if they're out on the field and somebody passes out um earlier this year football player down in South Jersey died because nobody knew where the AED was and nobody knew how to use it um so these students you know they they're paying the um American Red Cross fee if they want to $35 and they get certified in first aid CPR and a in 12th grade uh they learn about budgeting and life skills so I'll touch on this in a little bit but they pretty much did a financial aid project or Finance project where it's
016you know taking them through the next four years of college um helping them just be financially you know stable learning about budgeting and learning about life skills that come after high school uh in terms of ensuring a positive inclusive School environment uh as many other departments are doing we also did a lesson in no place for hate uh both the middle school and high school classes watched a video on positive interactions um students and staff kind of learned you know triggers or Warnings that somebody might be going through an HIV encounter uh and they also learned how to Anon anonymously report that um you know it could be themselves it could be somebody that they're friends with if they're going through something uh they can now anonymously report it and they can hopefully get the
017help that they need teachers and coaches uh they're advocating for students and groups to meet heterogeneously I was just having this conversation fed is one place where you know you have 40 students all in a classroom all from different backgrounds all diverse it's not the AP Physics it's not you know resource math they are all in class together they learn about sportsmanship camaraderie um it's a it's a class where they really get to meet their peers learn from their peers um and build that teamwork and positive atmosphere in terms of um Athletics we hold the SEC leadership conference so that's the super Essex conference um we've had a different group of guest speakers we all one in the summer one in the fall one in the spring uh one in the winter speakers come in
018they talk about their life their experiences um all the captains get to go to that they all talk about HIV and bullying and how that's LED them to where they are some of our speakers were David Tyrie uh John Paul Gonzalez you might know him from the all-in guy uh from the Giants and quintis McDonald who actually graduated from Montclair and was more than willing to come back and talk about his experience um you know just bringing everybody together this is a picture so that's 25 different districts uh all throughout Essex County I'll come to West Essex once um every season and we host uh in terms of our district our department goal intentional movement um teachers go through professional development they discuss their common assessments or less plans how can we get kids up
019and moving in health and fizzed um and just how we can improve our curriculum moving forward promoting social emotional learning through physical activities that require teamwork strategy and problem solving uh that's a big one I feel like problem solving kids just want things done but they don't actually you know know how to solve the problem so um just teaching them how to work through the strategies of getting that done implementing movement breaks in health classes I'll show you a video where uh our PE classes then Health classes actually have to create their own dance get up and moving um or body weight exercises just to reset focus and energy levels and then students also mostly at the middle school learn how to track their heart rate and understand cardiovascular health by doing push-ups sit-ups yoga
020uh pull-ups anything like that so that they're staying healthy there so here's just a couple uh samples of student work uh we have one of our teachers actively playing in the gym uh getting involved we have some of our adapted PE class is they go down to Excel and learn about staying healthy down there and um you know just a health lesson that's up on the board but let's see if this video will so this is just some every fiz ed class had to make up their own dance uh they were on a counter as one of their projects [Music] [Applause] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 4 2 3 4 5 6 [Music] so you can see they're all just taking pride in it um you know they're enjoying it getting together
021and again some of those kids might not have a single other class together um but in that period they get to work together uh and now on to Athletics um obviously something I'm very passionate about but number one best school in the county for student athletes um that was the niche ranking for 2025 something to be very proud of um there's a lot of accomplishments that I'm going to list here just for the 2025 season um and obviously it's still a work in progress but just looking forward to continuing the Excellence uh not only in the classroom but Athletics wise as well so I Dave can you click on that link so one of the big things this year was our new website um so if you go to our homepage and you go to
022activities there's a sports specific website now uh it's West Essex nights.com but it's you know all of our schedules live streams uh scores all the coaching directories all the schedules everything's up to date um and just here's some of the accomplishments on the home screen that I'm going to talk about in a minute but um a lot of success in the athletic world uh just for 2025 so um just going to go through this quick some of the things that we've accomplished in the fall uh field hockey shocker state champ group two um they also had numerous Award winners they had um girls on the allamerican team they had girls all division All Conference the the awards go on and on and on um again it's all on the website if you want to take
023a look at it um football division champs coach benaquista did become the winningest coach coach in West Essex history I believe he's at 115 now uh Brady Phillips was also named the super Football Conference young man of the year girls volleyball won the division girls girls cross country won the division Middle School girls soccer won the that's the greater Morris County uh Junior School coaches association so that's the division that we're in for all the Middle School even though it's Morris County we play in that division uh they won the championship in the winter alone Middle School boys and basketball won their Championship Colin fog set a new school record in the 55 meter he was also the rec Invitational Award winner um it was like the most outstanding runner at that at that tournament
024uh Reed clausy won the Essex County wrestling champion uh championship at 144 PBS Isabella uh was an individual qualifier for State fencing she placed just this past weekend ninth out of 40 girls uh in fencing Keegan Schmidt uh was qualified for the Special Olympics winner Games district four uh wrestling champions was Nick bante Reed Claus Ben mares and car my Massie three of those four are also going to Atlantic City this weekend uh with the addition of DJ Fury uh he won um he placed in regions so you have to finish in the top four of your entire region we had a very difficult region this year um and we're sending four uh student athletes to Atlantic City which is amazing uh girls basketball will compete tomorrow in the state semi-final and unfortunately ice hockey
025lost today at 4:00 um to Kenan so tough one uh but they had a great season they uh made it to the semi-final and then Sasha Resnik uh is the first student athlete in West essx history to have a th000 points and 1,000 rebounds th000 points is something to definitely stand out um but a th000 rebounds is even crazier th000 points you can score two you can score three thousand rebounds you only counts as one so big accomplishment for her um and just next we just have a couple pictures here's field hockey winning their state championship football so that was uh when he was the winning as coach at 114 I believe he won one more game after that so he's at at least 115 girls volleyball Liberty division champs girls cross country division champs
026here is girls middle school field hockey and girls uh soccer Middle School boys basketball girls basketball at the middle school also Champions Reed clausy winning the district so there was 22 teams he came in first at 144 lbs and then these were all our place winners um all of our Champions actually so Ben was 157 Carmine at 175 Reed again in the on the right side 144 and Nick bante at 132 here is Colin CJ fob Isabelle asson and Keegan Schmidt all doing great things and then we also had some college signings so Anthony Drago is going to Duke Ben mauchi is going to Rome City in Rome it's great uh he's getting to travel over there play soccer there Sophia Cisco is playing field hockey at Boston College a Russo is playing field hockey
027at Dartmouth and we have four at least four um coming up in the spring it'll be April 16th is the next Signing Day Brady Phillips for football at middleberry Yeshua Quello wils Bear football Mikey sarano mberg and then Chris Morano going for baseball at K and just to give you a couple stories so um these are all students that I've had in the past that are also in the realm of fizzed and health uh so Rachel Rodriguez was a graduate in 2007 she studied exercise science and Nutritional Health um one of the big things that she pointed out was a lot of the people in her College uh didn't have access to food nutrition and what she really was interested in when she was going to college but she got that experience through cooking and
028sports and nutrition classes here at West Essex um which led her on to she was at VCU and now she's actually going to Central Florida uh where she's going to be the associate director of Sports Nutrition there and my last slide is Bashi uh Not only was he the student council president um but he went on to um Colgate University where he played football Masters in secondary education social studies but he's taking his time off right now um and he's going into the NFL draft and trying to go to the combine so um I actually saw him the other day at Wawa so you know wish you all the best of luck uh we're all thinking about you we all support you but if you ever want a job come on back and that is
029it for me thank you hand it over you got it to some sports hi everyone okay first want to bring everyone up to speed with our eighth grade trip so one of our district goals but certainly at the middle school is to increase student voice Empower our students to kind of dictate and kind of give us ideas of what they would like to do so we heard a lot about the middle school students wanting a dance so we tried to work or we've been working with student council to try and make that happen in past years we have gone on this city cruise but we're really trying to remarket it you probably remember that was that before was that after your time okay um so we've so we've done a we've done a city Cruise
030um but we're reallyy trying to promote it and do it differently this year and make it more of um more in line with what the kids want so student council has sent out multiple surveys to the student body so recently they selected a theme they want to do a luau theme um kind of with a tropical dress code uh they're going to kind of create a playlist if possible that we can give to the DJ to encourage kids to get on the dance floor um have a photo booth and there are two dance floors on the actual Cruise there's two levels um so we're trying to do everything we can to kind of remarket this this cruise and make it everything that the student body wants so I think student council and the kids are
031really excited about this um so this just came out last week so we're super excited and I'll keep you posted on that okay we want to congratulate some some different recognitions and honors at the middle school rogate placed second in the ess6 county uh interpretive forensics competition on January 14th there's math games quizzes and chess matches and things of that nature the kids were so excited when they got back into the building as were their advisers uh Miss Jing who kind of works in both buildings as well as Miss Tores so we just want to congratulate our forensics team our rogate team uh also a special congratulations to matth counts they finished 12th in their North Central Jersey competition back on February 1st that was at Montville High School um some of our students students
032here were Giovani vigilante Arnav jov Max tresa naven Vias and Tyler rap Tyler also had a great individual performance with a ranking of 39th out of 230 competitors in the individual Sprint round so that's math counts we have some music recognitions congratulations to our honor music Ensemble musicians a huge congratulations to Olivia Chen Ilana Goodman Vanessa stefanakis and Alexa Zach for successfully auditioning for Honor music ensembles Olivia will represent us at the intermediate region band festival at Randol High School uh Ilana Vanessa and Alexa will showcase their talents with the intermediate region choir at Clifton High School and Alexa has also earned a prestigious spot in the New Jersey Junior High All State Choir uh Ensemble so we're super proud of our musicians I wanted to kind of show you our East Sports room it's
033not quite up to the same speed as the high school but you know we are a middle school so we have some painted walls new facilities new furniture the kids are super excited so I want to thank Melissa and the board for supporting this project it certainly has been something unique for some students who maybe aren't into traditional Sports um and again you may recall that Esports came about from um student surveys and this was something that the student body really wanted so we're happy that this has been off the ground this year and happy that they kind of have a home a home base and it was mentioned by uh by Tim but congratulations to boys and girls basketball for our winter season for winning their tournaments I was at both games or nail
034biters it was a lot of fun Pi's a little bit slow and lastly read across Americas this week if you recall if you have any elementary school kids um are we lead pure leaders we started this last year go back to their respective Elementary schools and read to the younger kids it's an amazing day where the you know our middle school students get to see their elementary teachers and everyone's so excited to see them um they always say how how small the Halls look and I tell them that's just cuz they're so much bigger now um but today was our first day we were in rosand and you can kind of see the group of girls up there so we'll go to each school over the course of the next three days so that's a
035really fun week for us as well so that's all I have for you at the municipal thank you thank you good evening all right um okay so in line with our district goal of real world learning experiences for our students I just wanted to share that our financial accounting honors one and two students went to um went on a field trip to prio Foods where they got to speak with the owner Mark syu and they got to talk about Supply Chain management cost analysis material sourcing view the facilities toward the facilities um and it was a really positive experience I think they even came home with some sausage sandwiches so and all in all it was a great day for them um and then we had a guest speaker come and visit our architectural design
036honors classes um Mr Frank kuna III who's a renowned practicing architect in the tri-state area um and in his presentation he talks about the different projects he's worked on and but really focused on like the skills that they they will the students are learning in architectural design like critical thinking problem solving and design thinking skills how these skills would carry them into any field they go into later in life so he really brought it to them and made it meaningful for the students I'm proud to share that we received our results from the Seal of biliteracy assessment that our students took so we had 45 of our seniors achieve the Seal of biliteracy and they'll receive that certificate in June um one of our seniors two of our seniors had it in two languages so
037Samantha copc achieved it in Polish and Spanish Sophia Leu achieved it in Italian and Portuguese and one of our seniors achieved it in three languages Miss Isabella Lima in French Portuguese and Spanish um so we're really proud of our seniors we also had 24 of our Juniors pass the assessment to qualify for the Seal of biliteracy for next year so it was a huge accomplishment and a testament to our world language program oh sorry went too fast one second when I get back to where we are thank you Dave for coming through I'm not sure if that was a technology issue or a user error um and I am excited to share that Alexander bani is the valedictorian for the class of 2025 and Emily dime is our salutatorian they have worked really hard and
038we're really proud of both Alex and Emily so kudos to them for our extracurriculars I know um Mr Walsh spoke about Sasha Resnik for girls basketball being our first athlete in West tics history to reach 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds um as someone who's watched a significant amount of basketball this season for my children the Thousand rebounds is super impressive that is and that's not even really her position like when you watch her play that's not really where she's supposed to be so that was really a huge accomplishment for Sasha um and I hope you guys can all come out and make the spring musical The Wizard of Oz um it's the weekend of March 13th to the 15th the those three nights Thursday Friday Saturday or at 700 p.m. but what they've done differently
039this year and we're really proud of this is on the mattina performance on March 15th is a sensory friendly show um so if you have children or people in your life that are just that lights and music just might be too much for them bring them to the matina they'll be sure to enjoy it for culture and climate we had our no place for hate digital Footprints lessons in the math classes back in February again I think I spoke about this in February but we had the lessons they were great the students engaged in some really um productive conversations about being intentional online and like what they post and what they really want to present to the world from their on about their online presence building a positive presence and staying informed when using the
040internet um I know that this this lesson is really important because we do Place electronics and social media in the palms of teenagers who don't have fully developed brains sometimes don't think about the consequences but we are having conversations and the education about making responsible decisions um and we're also in the middle of our we compliment you project this is um was our first year last year doing this and it was really successful and something a moment many of our students spoke highly of students and staff members can send anonymous messages to each other and later in March the one morning everyone's going to come into work school and every single person in the building will have a message from someone anonymously some sort of compliments High in something positive about them um and it
041just is speaks to the culture and climate of our building and finally um what we have coming up this Wednesday hopefully you guys can make our night of knowledge doors open at 6 p.m. the first session starts at 6:30 and the first session is a panel discussion that includes students parents and staff members about the digital divide and how students want more time on electronics parents are trying to control it and kind of just having an open dialogue about this concept and this idea um this stems from our culture and climate committee and so we're really excited for this night of knowledge after that panel discussion there are four Workshop sessions that people can choose from um so if you're around please stop by on Wednesday night Thursday night we have the Freshman semi-formal where
042our ninth graders will get to get dressed up and have a nice night of dinner and dancing at the Handover Manner and then next week our juniors are testing for the NJ GPA this is the graduation requirement assessment on Tuesday and Wednesday of March 11th and 12th and that concludes my report for this evening I have a committee report um the policy committee met on January 28th and attendance was U myself John to Alicia AML Deb Calderone and uh Daman MAOI we reviewed seven policies that are on the agenda tonight for approval uh they're all mandated policies so the first four of them I'm going to mention are um all fall within the scope of our a memorandum of agreement with law enforcement first one is policy 5512 it's Hib the policy provides guidance on
043reporting Hib to law enforcement when a school district uh must stay and pause their investigation to allow law enforcement to conclude their investigation this we already do but it's um mandated now uh policy 5533 student smoking policy requires school districts to report uh the use or seizure of electronic smoking devices to law enforcement um when they're suspicious um of a control substance and there may be required um they may require students to participate in additional educational programs policy and regulation 7441 electronic surveillance in school buildings on school grounds um under the memorum of agreement it allows law enforcement to activate the surveillance camera equipment um for stream live streaming video during emergency event uh policy and regulation 9320 cooperation with law enforcement agencies this policy gives school districts the option to designate a law enforcement
044agency for their District um we don't have to participate in this because we have local law enforcement uh who take care of our situations um policy 5460 High School graduation policy this policy requires parents to complete a financial aid form like the fasta form um as a prerequisite to receiving your high school diploma so there's no opting out of it you must fill out this financial aid form uh the policy also got rid of any reference to park testing which is no longer uh policy 9500 Food Service this policy revised the definition of who is eligible it includes um homeless migrant Foster runaway children or any child receiving assistance under the supplemental uh nutritional assistance program and then the last policy we reviewed was policy 9163 spectator code of conduct uh for inter Scholastic events
045this is mandatory but this is a new one all the other policies were just revised this is a new policy the state adopted a new policy that outlines the removal or suspension from school events the policy outlines the discipline levels uh to include a first offense one home event suspension second event uh second offense 30 days suspension third defense 90day suspension and then a person who has suspended more than three events in a 365 days um of a calendar uh will be required to complete an educational component as determined by the principal or design before they are permitted to attend any future home events and that's it you're welcome [Music] do have yeah most kids are seniors don't really care but you know younger kids they're uh hoping that it's happen as soon as possible
046because they want to see ev at this time I will open the floor to the public for comments on agenda items only so anything that is currently in our agenda on our agenda please feel free to walk up to that being to our motions Finance okay uh the following Finance motions are made at a recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through 13 will be voted upon in one motion and I so second Miss emo yes Miss chrisal Miss Giovani yes Miss hstat yes Mr Sher yes Mr ston yes Mr tote yes Miss wwit yes Miss C yes uh building and grounds L please yes ma'am following building and grounds motion made that the recation of the superintendent of schools and place on this agenda item one we voted
047upon in one motion and I still move second any questions Miss Amal yes Miss chrisal yes Miss covani yes Miss homat yes Mr Sher yes Mr Stone yes Mr Toad yes Miss wwit yes Miss calone yes um curriculum and special ed Ruth please the following curriculum special education motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed in this agenda items 1 through six will be voted upon one motion and I comments concerns Miss AML yes Miss crisal yes Miss C Giani yes Miss hollat yes Mr Sher yes Mr Sam con yes Mr Toad yes Miss Rood yes Miss Calderone yes John uh the following Personnel motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through eight will be voted upon second Miss
048AML yes Miss chrisal yes Miss covani yes Miss homet yes Mr Sher yes Mr Stone yes Mr Toad yes Miss wtz yes Miss Calderone yes Alicia miscellaneous please yes the following miscellaneous motions are made into recommendation of the super schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through four we voted upon in one motion I saw motion okay Miss Amo yes Miss chrisal yes Miss P Giovani yes Miss homet yes Mr Sher yes Mr Sone yes Mr Toad yes Miss wtz yes Miss Calderon yes okay I this time we board will be opening up the floor for public comments which can be of anything which is not on the agenda please step up to the podium give your name address clear enough so that we can take it down anything that you are group affiliation
049your statements will be limited to 3 minutes in duration and the board will of course consider your comments as they relate to its obligations to effectively govern the West ESS School District hi I'm Karen key um I'm in Rose I'm a rosand resident do you need my exact address yes 132 Liberty Way rosand New Jersey 07068 email and at and phone number you need that now we're good just bank account number okay that's bank account numbers a finance person I think right so I do see with two weeks to go the school has properly decorated for St Patrick's Day coming from an Irishman I really appreciate that so I'd like to thank the members of the board of education for some time tonight to go through some items um my agenda is really towards uh
050the science department specifically AP Physics 1 um during the fall of 2024 I became aware that the class was significantly behind in its progress of the 8 unit curriculum in mid November the classes were still on unit one of units eight um Mrs key and I sent messages to Mr larner the head of the science department after several emails with Mr larner including one in which he told us that the class was not behind that parents and students needed to understand what they can and cannot control and that the students need to do their best and let the chips Fall Away they may we had a phone call with him regarding the change in teachers and that the previous teaching methodology was a bit different than that the new teacher needed to be aware of
051it the statement that the class was not behind is categorically false and there is no ambiguity in that fact we agreed to let the new teacher have some time and to follow up the classes fell further behind prompting us to request an in-person conference with the teacher the science supervisor the principal and the superintendent of the district all intended included all attended including the student except for the superintendent we were told that new teachers the new teacher has absolutely no experience in high school and that the new teacher is only one of two applicants it's evident in his in the teaching of the classes that our daughter completely agrees with that assessment at the time of the meeting the classes were further two weeks behind as of today March 3rd a full 6 months into
052the school year the class has just started unit three of eight units it is clear that the pr principle of supply and demand should have had been adhered to and that the offered salary had been adjusted to get more applicants speaking from finance my understanding is that the administration is now only meeting separately with the parents of at least four students and has taken the situation more seriously over three months since I first brought this to Mr larner and to Mr larner Mr MSI is now taking meetings with parents and we have made it known that we would not only contact Ed the Board of Education we're going to speak publicly the class we are talking about is the hardest in class in West essics and its students are probably some of the district's sharpest
053Minds this is not my estimation this is something that was told to me by Dr Westervelt and Mr larner what has the administration done to resolve the failure they've organized an online learning tutor and who is the school's representative for the program the saint teacher with no High School teaching experience from what I'm told some of the sharpest students in the classes have now taken to using online resources to learn the subjects including my own daughter other students are now asking them for help as the teacher seems to be unable to communicate properly with students whether verbally or in writing and it was another issue over the weekend that I'm not going to bring up I've talked to Dr I've mentioned it to Dr westerfelt the school needs to do more than abandon its its
054children to a website putting the onus on young students young teenagers to succeed if online soulle study is a direct of this District why do our children need to attend school at all I respectfully ask that the board look into the matter and make proper changes to the supervisory roles in the district and ensure that the supervisors are properly doing their jobs sincerely Karen Keaton thank you very much apprciate coming up I'm sorry to bother you on the weekend by the way okay Mr um I as I said to you in my emails and any all those who have sent me emails I appreciate your concern it has been brought to the attention of the board members here the administration is Thoroughly involved and we appreciate that fact that you take the time and the
055effort and the interest in your students and bring it to our attention because sometimes we don't know what's going on specifically speically and we do appreciate hearing from every parent and we do appreciate that this Administration is now taking efforts and going forward to help the students meet with success I do appreciate that too that's what that's what we're all I know Mr MAOI has met with parents today and um we we want are you tomorrow morning yes I am I would say to bring some donuts me um but we want want you to know that we're all in this effort with you together everything has been recognized the Administration has understands everything and we are doing the administration is doing everything in their efforts to help your students become successful and disc Contin so
056if you don't mind as you can see from you probably don't have this many people usually at a meeting don't so it's become a very serious matter and that's very concerning the parents here our children have come to us my 16-year-old daughter has come to me asking me for help and it's a girl that doesn't ask for help she is very mature and does things on her own and likes to do things on her own she came to me she's come to me several times asking for help what do I do as a father ignore her tell her to let the chips form where they may and let you do your job this is why I keep elevating it and I keep on I don't necessarily know that there is something that can be done
057to get the students through the AP exam this year and it's sad cuz you have some of the brightest kids in that class and I don't know other parents may speak but my daughter is going to struggle maybe for a long time because of the ineffectual teaching of the teacher and the changes that went on and I thank you for your time very much she's very lucky to have you to advocate for her yeah she might not think so she will someday is there anyone else that we can help please just give your name and address AES goo 14 bit Drive in Fairfield um so my daughter is in 11th grade and she's a part of AP Physics one as well um you you heard what our concerns are I met with uh Mr Machi
058and um Mr delberto today and I thank you for your time and explanations and all that I also met numerous times and I spoke to numerous times uh with Dr westerfelt so they're well aware of the problem and I'm glad that you are now aware of that as well I just would like to point one thing because it is really concerning so while the tool that we're trying to Institute and I I voice my opinion as well in our meeting while the tool that I'm sorry somebody left the phone here um while the tool that we are trying to now Institute in the classroom is a is what it is and probably what it must be in order to get our students up to speed I want you to all understand that out of eight
059of units of the course of AP Physics one they have to go in two months over six units of that course that is that that results in three times the speed so let it snc in this is the most difficult course of high school already very rigorous schedule and course load now going to be presented to our children at three times the speed this is my concern this is not the speed that it's even required of college students I just let this speak for itself okay thank you we we do appreciate your concern and we we are taking all of this into account and our administrators these are the students who will be applying to colleges or apply to colleges who will now re ask for their GPA we understand this is really really concerning
060so I hope that when we raise concerns again if there arise due to this speed of this course our concerns will be really lessen we will be lessened too there was nothing wrong our children did there was really nothing wrong and they're the ones who are being punished so three times the speed of a normal class that is the hardest course in classroom I just wanted to make that a point Thank you thank you thank you hi Matt bonide uh my daughter is a junior I'm in Caldwell 7 Prospect Street Apartment 17A if you're going to drop off brownies that's great uh that's what I prefer uh but formerly from rosand uh Kieran and I coached many many years many of these kids uh many kids not in this AP Physics class uh he was
061the bad cop I am the not so bad cop but uh this has gotten my blood a little riled um much like he said about his daughter my youngest I have two others that went through this school my youngest does not want to complain about school she complains about me all the time but that's a whole other matter um she came to me and my ex-wife and she was very concerned about this this program AP Physics she was uh saying various things I won't repeat them all here you guys have heard from some of the other parents here tonight but I do just want to Echo what's been said the speed at which our concerns were addressed was very lackluster very slow in the last week alone uh we've seen those efforts pick up so
062we appreciate that very much uh we had some emails last night I don't know if you're watching the Oscars or not but uh I I I wasn't but uh we were emailing last night so you know this is uh in my opinion a training issue Dr ear was not given the tools to succeed that he should have been given uh I recognized that maybe people didn't know that going into it but uh looking back hindsight's always 2020 and hopefully this is a learning that the department can take forward to the maybe successor we don't want anybody losing jobs you know we don't want anybody doing that but we do want people to be able to be held accountable to be trained and I mean let's face it these kids uh as uh Kieran and Agnes
063both said these are bright-minded kids my daughter's so much smarter than I ever was uh I never made it through uh through Algebra 2 so trying to do an at home thing with physics Way Beyond my pay grade um her mom maybe a little bit but uh you know this this is something that uh she's is going to impact her and uh she doesn't want to fail she doesn't want to feel like a failure but she's being set up to feel that way because she was not provided the tools needed much like Dr ear uh I think that's all I wanted to say because you guys pretty much covered everything else but um I do want to thank the the teachers the administration for taking our time uh taking their time and meeting with us
064uh I'm sure it's not easy hearing all these things and and and asking to be accountable for uh your staff but um we do appreciate it and I think uh that's all I got to say thank you thanks only run out of my other daughter's birthday I was waiting you had you had that look prepared remarks it just one comment on a go forward uh Sean Jacobs 34 FS no no no 30 seconds taking some of your time you took advantage of it I I don't want to rehash uh what's already been said a lot of valid points uh thank you for all that you do um and to the administration uh just one point um my daughter had mentioned that she was not selecting AP Physics too so it's not about only what has
065taken place but about the go forward and I'm sure that there are things in the works and actions will be taken uh whatever to correct or to uh whatever is decided and I guess the only thing I would ask for is that whereas her schedule is set for next year minus AP Physics 2 which she wanted to take but her concerns were that she didn't want to risk taking a class that would result in what happened this year obviously the last two years have been a little bit difficult in the uh Science Program no fault of administration necessarily just what whatever has happened has happened but last year there was the uh chemistry teacher and there was basically no learning for two months then uh clearly what's been stated about the chapters and whatever have
066you uh it's it's difficult to make up the time um the kids are mostly Juniors I guess some seniors and obviously everybody knows what happens in junior year there's just zero time so when it said that the resources are available then uh in considerable time is going to be needed to uh fill in the gaps well the time really isn't there uh you know I I can't ask my daughter to take as a junior Cal 3 AP Physics a few other APS and whatever have you and say well you know put in the uh 26th hour of the day so uh anyway well I'm concerned about the go forward and if students can change their schedules maybe in the near future or once something's determined or or not or not just some kind of feedback
067as to where things are going with the science program so decisions could be made around that three minutes okay thank you nice the board and the administration just want to thank you for coming out and voicing your opinions and your concerns we're always here to support you you're always welcome to come here and share those things with us you have to understand that we do operate under policies so there are certain things that we are not allowed to discuss in public but we are always here to hear and we always take that back to close doors and have discussion um you will have dialogue going forward forward between now and whatever decision is rendered from the administration they're here to support you and they will make sure that they communicate with you and that you
068will know and your children will feel more secure going forward we'll try everything and you know as they say we have to work together as a group you know there's no definite 100% answer to any of this but we're you know the administrators and Mr Machi are here to make sure that your children are successful so just please understand that we're looking into everything and this board supports your concerns and thank you for coming out tonight we appreciate it sure I just want to say how incredibly it's usually USS and I I just as said your voice is really matter and so it's very very nice to see you but I also really would encourage everybody to keep coming to the extent that you can to meetings and speaking or not listening or providing feedback
069because every you know schools only better when every stakeholder participates in public meetings and conversation so thank you very much there being no further business before this board of education be it resolved that this public meeting be adjourned at 8:35 motion to adjourn