Yeah. >> You set good. >> You got five. >> Well, you did right. I should make it right. >> You got five. Five. You're the magnificent fox. Five. That's an extension. All right. So, I call to order the open workshop portion of our meeting. I'll do
a quick roll call. Trusty Bucher is not here. Trusty Burke is not here. Trusty Gdeski Rodriguez >> here. >> Trusty Gonzalez >> here. >> Trusty Sanola is here. Trusty Scofane >> here. >> Trusty Young here. Vice President Majio
>> here. >> President Desmond >> here. >> Okay. So, all packets were mailed home. Uh the draft version was last week. The uh updated version was today. The only addition
is uh B19 which is um our approval of leads. All other resolutions were covered by committee and in the draft packet um that we did review.
Are there any questions about any of the resolutions? >> Um I was hoping that we can talk a little bit through um the speech therapist plan. I I know it looks like we're we're doing some splitting up to make sure that we're covering all services for our children. Um but it seems to be an ongoing topic around
students like being adequately serviced or weight list and stuff. I do want to talk a little bit through that as it's it's a a huge concern for the community. >> Okay. >> Hi. Thank you, Melissa. So, we actually um just uh retained three new speech
therapists that'll be starting um probably on Monday in the in the um school district. Um at that point, we should have enough. But at the plan moving forward is that every student is receiving services and any services that
a student did not or any missed services will be discussed. Um compensatory services will be discussed for those students. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Go ahead. >> I just um actually because it was a
little convoluted with the schedule the past week with the holiday and all if we can do the um just reports from the different assistant superintendent everybody's >> uh Dr. Begman start.
>> Sure. Good evening. Good evening trustees. Uh obviously it's the month of November and this is a month where we celebrate our heroes and of course those heroes are our veterans and you know throughout the district we did do different uh curriculum uh in the
elementary and high school. It was culminating activity was our field of heroes ceremony uh was a great event. We had a speaker from West Point. We had community partners and we were able to uh showcase the Medal of Honor that we received. Also for the month we did um
participate in the parade, the new parade in uh Bayon. We're glad that our students could be there and our veterans. Um this Thursday night is report card night in the high school. So for the parents if they want to um make a appointment,
they can meet with their uh students teachers and the first trimester will be over in December 18th for the elementary. And the final point I have is uh Friday night we'll be celebrating our teachers of the year. So congratulations for for all our teachers
and what they've done and we appreciate their efforts. So thank you. >> Thank you Dr. >> Dr. uh Dr. Brown. >> Good evening everyone. We recently concluded our testing PSAT
SAT our adaptive field test. So we definitely thank all of our staff, our students for a successful season, pre-season of testing. We have a lot long way to go, but we certainly thank everyone for just working together and
their patience as we sort of work through the adaptive testing field test. Also, we are having psycho motor day tomorrow for our G&T students for physical um physical e education.
And finally, I'm happy to share that some of our graduation rate increases for this year, we improved for the high school balon high school by 3.7%. So our graduation rate at this point is 94.2
and then for our our alternative school also we had a 12.8% increase in our graduation rate from 45.2 to 58%. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Mr. Fu, >> good evening everyone. Uh, with
personnel, obviously, all of our uh, uh, resolutions cover uh, personnel matters. So, B14 is our school safety security uh, annual review that has been updated by our safety security teams that was signed by the superintendent and that will be submitted to the county uh, and
will meet our CUAC requirement. Thank you. Also, uh, congratulations to all teachers of the year as well. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Pigu. Mr. Verley, >> good evening. Um, so in our we we've been in special services, we have a series of parent workshops that we are
doing continuously throughout the year. Um, at the end of October, we had the division of developmental disabilities come in um which is registration for for um uh 18 into transition to adulthood. Um
we have upcoming in the in the coming months we will have social security and um we will have the Hudson County access program just to name a few um the division of vocational rehabilitation um as well. So these parent workshops
are a great way to find out a lot of information and obtain resources to support um students with disabilities. If you have any questions about them, they're all posted on Mr. Tyber's
website as well. You can also email me as well. Um, and I just wanted to give a shout out to um our teacher, Miss Ziza, at Washington Elementary School. She has created the Flourish Cafe and it's doing
phenomenal. I went to the grand opening. Um, it's a cafe. the students in her class are actually going through the process of serving and making food. And look out for after the holidays, we'll be having a grand opening of a coffee
shop in Bayon High School that um our workbased learning program will be running as an actual coffee shop. So, we're very excited about that. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I think I just have one more question. Um it it's really Dr. M, thank you for
sharing the information around the balon alternative high school increase. Like that's fantastic. Um I was hoping that maybe some of the strategy around the potential changes or changes that have been made in the balon alternative high school can be shared. Um it just seems that there may have been some changes and I don't want to see any of the hard
work that you all have done um be devalued in any way. Could that be shared? >> I was just going to address it, but I didn't realize you wanted to speak. Go ahead. Hi Melissa again. Um so the Bayon alternative high school, you know, right
now we have um we have support through the the plan through the state that um is supporting our staff and our students at the balon alternative high school. We um we have a full staff there. We have social and emotional counselors. We have
child study team members as well as guidance counselors that are all working um and supporting our students indiv individually on whichever academic journey they are on. We also have upcoming um the uh the vocational
program. We'll be doing some uh workshops for our students to gain interest. And with everything that's been going on supporting the teachers, Dr. Pearson has done a wonderful job. Obviously, our graduation rate has gone up 12 points. So, we're still focused on
individually supporting all of the students and their needs to get them to the graduation. >> Just to add to that, they also implemented progress monitoring which has been very successful. So we do um they're particularly monitoring all
students but with a heavy focus on grade 11 um as it relates to how they are performing in specifically ELA and math. So they have implemented um some formalized progress monitoring techniques to support them.
>> So we're not we're not concerned that anything that we've changed will have a negative impact on the student population or the staff population at Bon Alternative High School. The contrary is probably true with all that has been done to enhance the program.
>> Thank you. >> Okay. >> I just wanted to um thank all the assistant superintendents for the reports. I particularly wanted to commend um the district for the field of
heroes um for their participation in the parade. Um these are important parts of our history and our future as well reminding all of us of the sacrifices made. Um and also the banners that
started showing up on the light poles from around the time of the October what's it called? The fall festival. October Fest, I was going to say, but downtown um through
Midtown, the pictures of the veterans um it's quite moving. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. Good uh good good evening members of the board. Um I just want to apologize to everybody in the audience and to the board that uh apparently this outfit
looked good in the morning and it's pretty bad right now. um stripes. This it's I'm a train wreck. But most importantly, um thanks for pointing that out, Mr. Floria. I really appreciate that. Um I
I'd like to say congratulations to all our fall sports, our band, our bees. They were performing this evening. Uh they were all competing for uh state championships, which is phenomenal. And our esports, brand new, is now competing for a state championship and a national
championship. So, um, yeah, a national championship, which is amazing. Um, so congratulations to them. And while yes, uh, through the last QAC audit by the New Jersey Department of Education, we were a high performing district, yet we still gain, we still improve, uh, we
still are keeping our nose to the grindstone and with graduation rates going up. Um, and to, um, uh, Trusty Gdetski Rodriguez, I just want to let you know that, um, there is no decrease in services in the alternative school. The idea is to properly staff it and to
allow as many educators as possible to have a have uh um an opportunity to teach there, but ultimately our goal is to have those students from our alternative school come back to Bayon High School, which is phenomenal. So offering all those services is uh is
commendable. But um I I just want to say that uh we Friday we celebrate our teachers, our teachers of the year and on that same evening we have a play. So, while my outfit will probably be much nicer, um there'll be uh two events to
go to, but uh once again, uh I can't thank everybody enough for for the great work and the support from our board of education. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Superintendent. >> Is there anything else for the board? >> Um Mr. Caster, I have a questions. Um it's regarding sports, uh especially like the winter sports.
>> Okay. We have it seems that we are doing cuts or not cuts but reducing security guards around the district regarding like coverage. Um we have a very busy season coming on winter. It's like the
most you know um how can I say the most I say busiest one because you're going to have basketball in three levels in boys and girls. You're going to have hockey. you're gonna have shows like, you know, the school plays and concerts and things like that. So, I know that we
I don't know if you guys are working something with ESS or you're working with hiring more guards to be able to work this because if you I asked you a question during committee meeting regarding a volleyball game and you told me the security guard was now in the
hallway. Um that was the game against uh if I'm correct memorial against Bayon there was no guarding there because they were in the hallway. So knowing the crowds that we going to get during basketball season I'm talking about the game against like St. Peters Prep or you
get a game against you know like a rival especially like no Bergen and and things like that. So do we have a plan how many guard will be assigned to a gym in a particular night and also a security guard will be able to work consecutive
days of overtime for example they can work now they get like two days or one day they will be able to get more days in case to be able to cover the overflow of the games. So I know we trying to save money and I understand that but >> so it's not necessarily about a cost
savings. Uh we do have 55 guards within our district which is >> hefty. >> It's it's a lot. >> Um we do allow them to work overtime. Not all of the guards want to. Some of them want to work multiple days. So similar to the alternative high school, it's about staffing it at an appropriate
level that there's everyone's safe. Um they feel safe. Um and that's the goal that we're trying to do. It's not necessarily a cost savings method that we're cutting. We are limiting the number. So we're not going to have these are just arbitrary figures. 27 out of
football games. Like last Monday we went it was like 19 people working in the hot ice. >> Correct. So we're trying to equalize like you know make that work and have it all equal across all the sports so that everyone's safe, everyone feels safe. Um and we're not going to limit that. >> Okay. We just want to make sure that we
in the same boat in that part. Okay. Thank you. >> No problem. Okay, you're good. >> We're done. >> Okay, so it is 5:48. We're going to adjourn the open workshop portion of the meeting. We will meet back here at 6:00
for the regular portion of the meeting.