##VIDEO ID:BcyIMJvmA4s## for welcoming us to Lincoln School we're so excited to be here tonight Tuesday January 21st tonight the board met here an executive session at 6:00 p.m. in the Lincoln Elementary School faculty Lounge the purpose of that meeting was to discuss personel litigation miscellaneous and old business matters this meeting has been advertised and is in compliance with the open public meeting act and njsa 10 4-6 also known as the Sunshine Law the matters discussed will be made public when confidentiality is no longer required and formal action pursuant to said discussion shall take place only at a meeting to which the public has been invited tonight the public conference meeting is taking place at 7:02 p.m. here in the multipurpose room the Board of Education meeting will be streamed live but all Community questions and comments will be welcomed here in person the calwell West calwell Board of Education public conference meeting is also in compliance with the open public meetings act and njsa 10 call4 D6 also known as the Sunshine Law notices have been sent to the progress in Caldwell New Jersey The Star Ledger in Newark New Jersey and tap into West Essex notices have also been posted at the Board of Education business office located in the Harrison School building Grace Street West Caldwell and have been delivered to the clerks of the burrow of Caldwell and the township of West Caldwell for posting Brian can you please take the RO yes student representative Josiah zachi here Miss D Martini here miss lalie Jefferson here Miss Mack Mr dimola here M Gro here we have four voting members present we have a quum fantastic okay can I have Liliana turo come on up she's going to lead us tonight in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republ for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much Juliana great job okay uh Brian are there any Communications for the board this evening there were none okay so we're going to move on to the superintendent report I'd like to introduce the Retro men they wanted to do a performance for us this evening to get our board meeting kicked off oh we are all we [Music] I'll be I'll it be long I'm going to to [Music] [Music] all might have a problem that you understand we all [Music] [Music] you have to that you can't up thead I'll share [Music] why why me [Music] alumni I want to recognize one school alumni right there [Music] so Mrs Gro Dr Conlin Board of Education thank you so much for having us this is uh the James calwell high school retran I just wanted to do a quick plug the retroman as well as 180 other uh Middle School and High School singers from all over the area are going to be at James calwell high school on Saturday for an event called Jersey Harmony explosion it's a AC capella Barber Shop Festival that we invite um all the area Middle Schools and high schools to um and they they go through clinics and rehearsals all day and then it culminates in a public night show 6:30 p.m. at James Caldwell High School um we would love to see you there and uh thank you again for having us [Applause] thank you so much everybody and Mr Downey thank you so much for bringing the group here um I could just move the mic um I was at the James Caldwell music concert the other week and actually a month ago the other week my goodness it was back in December and heard the Retro men and they were so impressive I just thought they were the coolest thing so enjoyable one of the highlights of the evening and honestly I'm embarrassed to know I didn't even really know they existed so I wanted to make sure sure that they shared their talents with all of us and brought attention to them because they surely deserve it and to you too Mr Downey for all your hard work with them so thank [Applause] you Mr G if you could join us at the microphone thank you everybody and good evening and Mr Downey just walked out the door but I want to publicly recognize his efforts he's a teacher here as well he's also a Lincoln Alum himself so it's nice to have him give back to our community and to all the students they did a terrific job so thank you and welcome everybody to Lincoln School it's nice to have you here members of the board administrators uh student representative it's nice to have you and I just want to share a few things about Lincoln School some happenings going on this year talk about some recognition that we've received tonight you'll hear from uh a teacher on our staff Mrs Goldman you'll hear from a few students you'll hear from Mariela daughter fifth grader Jackson and Leonardo forado and their and their mom as well Mrs forado today I'm going to show you a couple slides and we're going to get going so at Lincoln School I always say we have three ingredients and when they all work well together we have a successful school we have terrific students we love all of them we have a wonderful faculty very professional very dedicated to our students and we have a highly engaged family population where we communicate very well with them we're very open very they're supportive of us and we're supportive of them so when you put these things together we feel like we have a nice recipe for a successful School speaking of which uh board members and and administrators here I put a little bookmark up on the table where where you're sitting uh about what I'm about to talk about for the 2024 year Lincoln School was recognized by the state of New Jersey uh as for what's called a promising practice school and this is something new from from the state so I'm going to speak a little bit about that and we're going to go through some of the uh findings of what the state found about Lincoln School so the promising practices project is new it was led by the New Jersey Department of Education seeks to identify schools that have developed unique replicable and Innovative approaches to teaching and learning so the state identified 52 schools across New Jersey and we were one of the 52 schools uh recognized there were three in Essex County this includes elementary schools middle schools high schools and charter schools so I think last year Mrs Greenley I remember you actually mentioning this when I was here last year that we had just been notified that we would receive this and we didn't really know what it was at that point so I'm going to get into that in a little bit if you look at the bottom of that slide those are the icons for the three different recognition types that the state uh does for the state of New Jersey so the first one most of us are familiar with that we see the fancy signs the Blue Ribbon Schools that's a federal program where schools are recognized first here in New Jersey and then at a federal level the second one the state gives out two Awards a year two schools are recognized at what's called a distinguished School award and then now the latest one is the promising practices school so we're going to talk about that for anybody at home or here with a with a phone there's a little QR code that can take you right to the State website where it discusses the promising practice of schools what it's all about the actual report is not out yet but it's coming out any week now is my understanding I was told it will be made public this winter I received a draft in November or December of what uh elements they're going to include about Lincoln School and that's what we're going to talk about today so they sent the team to interview us we sat down with several teachers myself and and uh Mrs Jacobs and we interviewed for a few hours and the team walked away and then they shared back with us five points that they thought were very positive here at Lincoln School they are redistributing resources to economically disadvantaged families they liked our pandemic impacts how we responded to dealing with the pandemic how we use data to inform instruction our school culture as a pillar of Effectiveness and engaging families and communities I'm going to quickly talk about the first two and then turn it over with regards to the uh redistributing resources to economically disadvantaged families we spoke about this last year Lincoln School worked together like we of do between families and teachers we we decided to put together a committee to help those in our local community we wanted to provide support so that all students have a Level Playing Field to achieve success here so what did we do our HSA ask parents to Anonymous consider to anonymously donate money to a fund that the HSA runs and we you we use that money to provide supports for families in need here at Lincoln School some of the supports include things things like technology Wi-Fi access at home school supplies money for our book fair money for our holiday gift sale Bagel sales ice cream sales we want to make sure everybody has access to everything possible here so that that that was recognized by the state as something positive that we do here secondly the state recognized the pandemic impacts that it wasn't just for Lincoln School it was for all four of our elementary schools that that came out after the dealing with the pandemic so some of you were parents at that time with kids in the elementary school if you remember correctly it was crazy but we had teachers from each School teaching remote lessons by subject to students across all four schools and a lot kind of surfaced about our instruction at that time so we recognized that some of our pacing was off between schools some of our assessments differed between schools a little bit and and there was a need for some more coherence and continuity so while dealing with a pandemic was stressful and it presented a lot of challenges for us it also provided opportunity opportunities for our teachers and us to decide how we're going to work together we now have a much refined curriculum we have a curriculum guide pacing an assessment guide with pacing we have common assessments across the district we also now have a lot more collaborative work across the district for example we meet regularly but now we're able to use Google meet which we never most of us including myself never even heard of before the pandemic so we walked away with some Silver Linings to dealing with all that that we continue now moving forward that we're past it all and the other element from the pandemic that we walked away with positively to help our our our students was to include more SEO social emotional learning time we knew that the kids were struggling we knew that we had a carve out time into our schedules and we continue to carve out time in our schedules today to provide students with access to social emotional learning that happens through both our school counselor and through our CL teachers working alongside that so now I'm going to introduce Mrs Goldman one of our teachers to talk about how we use data to inform instruction hi good evening thank you for joining us here at Lincoln um so like Mr G was mentioning there's been a lot of focus on using data to inform instruction um but if we kind of think of it under the umbrella of the promising practices schools 8 and 10 of the promising practices schools mentioned the role of data in garnering positive student outcomes now there was a fundamental distinction between simply collecting that data and applying it as we do here in the interview that Mr G was mentioning he shared that we all know that we're supposed to give the assessments and collect the data and with a lot of teachers especially younger teachers it becomes data to share but not data to use um um in reflecting on that quote and preparing for tonight I can assure you that here at Lincoln we don't just share our data according to our district guidelines but we also use it our teachers following every assessment cycle which includes um writing assessments uh running record assessments and Link at benchmark assessments teachers meet to not only analyze those results but also use that information to guide our instruction moving forward specifically following running record Cycles we have the opportunity to meet with our interventionist Mrs carabis and um she supports Us in developing our uh student growth plans and also reviewing those throughout the year which has been really helpful for us and then finally and I believe most importantly as a teacher um we use formal data but we also use the informal data the anecdotals and everything that we know about our students and what they need and we compile all of that in order to do what's best and to help our our children succeed and that's just some of our teachers working together um marel daughter is going to join us now she's one of our fifth grade students to speak about a special aspect of our school culture good good evening my name is Mariela daughter and I am a fifth grade student at Lincoln school today I want to share with you some of Lincoln School special relationship with veterans each year on Veterans Day our entire School walks to the calwell green to honor our local veterans during this event we show respect for those who served our country I love the 21 gun salute and when we sing God Bless America later in the school year we welcome many veterans to Lincoln School for our USA Day celebration all the fifth graders get to run the show each grade sings different patriotic songs and gives thanks to to our veterans parent volunteers decorate the school decorate the building with flags balloons banners and more after we honor the veterans all the fifth graders enjoy ice cream with them right in this room the veterans share their stories with us and we develop a strong bond and sense of patriotism I am especially proud of my father who serves in the Army and is one of the honored guests every year you are all invited to this year's program on May 21st which will take place on our front lawn thank you thanks Mariel now I'm going to introduce a family of the forado family to talk about our relationship with families at Lincoln School these are the two best dressed Brothers we've ever had and I promise I don't make them dress like this so we're really honored to be here and we thank Mr gayer for inviting us I'm Lauren forado and I've been a proud Lincoln parent since 2020 and these are my two sons who are Lincoln students hi I'm Leo I'm a second grader I'm Jackson I'm in fourth grade at Lincoln School parents and other family members are encouraged and welcome to get involved and there are many opportunities for both parents and other family me members to do so both in the classroom and through schoolwide activities Leo will give you some examples of opportunities for families to get involved inside the classroom like math games where a parent comes in to play a learning game with us reading Partners where parents come in and read with their child holiday parties where parents come in to do fun crafts and read books with us and Jackson will give you some examples of um opportunities for families to get involved through schoolwide activities Gap at the end of every trimester parents can come in and see what the Gap students have created my mom even got to be a mood Court Judge field day in the spring we have lots of fun activities that are set up and run by the parents Ice Cream Day parents can come in every Friday and give ice cream to the kids and some other activities for parents to get involved include family fun nights which are usually held there's one inside in this room where we show a movie play some games one in the springtime outside um there is fun at lunch there is the holiday Fair held every year in this room there's the kids heart challenge field trips where parents can serve as chaperon A Bike Rodeo held every year for the third grade students and opportunities for uh parents who have children in the Aftercare program so we hope this gives you an idea of how wonderful Lincoln School is and how much families love getting involved we feel really welcome and supported here the whole Lincoln staff is wonderful and the culture is just fantastic by the way Mr G is the best he really is he's outside every morning and after school to say hi to all of the students and he knows everybody's name even the parents' names which is extra impressive so with that we'll turn it back over to Mr G right thank you so those were the five points that the state recognized that they believe our replica uh programs and things that we do here at Lincoln school and when the report comes out I hope you will all take a look at it and I want to thank everybody for listening I did have one more slide about concerts and art shows in our music and arts program uh we have a new fifth grade choir which meets after school all the Four elementary schools have that now that we're going to sing a song today but unfortunately Mrs Capa was out sick all last week she was she was pretty ill so they weren't able to prepare but you know it's nice to have the Retro men here and it's nice to just pause and say hey we have this great thing going on Saturday at the high school which I didn't know about and anyone listening out there starting at the elementary level all the way through 12th grade this this District does a fantastic job supporting the Arts and the music program so I want to thank you guys and thank our community and thank you everyone for showing up at Lincoln School that concludes our program not the meeting thank you a picture um we're going to take a TW minute break so we can get a picture with the board and all the presenters yeah and before um J before on behalf of the board I just want to thank all of you who came and spoke tonight um and Mr G listen you're you're tops I don't really know what else to say except that you're absolutely the best the Lincoln School is what it is because of you you are truly an amazing leader because you lead by example and I think the best thing that was said tonight was you make everyone feel feel welcome right so that's why you make everyone feel like they're part of your team and then they produce and I have to tell you that is really the example of an exceptional leader we're lucky to have you we're lucky to have all of your staff Lincoln School is the best so thank you for welcoming us and thank you for doing what you do and please continue to do it because we are so [Music] grateful take quick picture yeah we got to get a e e e that's it that's it that's all she wrote that concludes my presentation okay so tonight is not a voting meeting so I'm just going to preview the agenda we have our meeting we're going to be at the middle school on Monday and that will be a formal voting meeting um so on Monday we're going to do approval of the minutes we'll probably have a committee report definitely finance and facilities are there any committee uh there's no meetings this week so definitely a finance and Facilities meeting update on Monday um and you can see some of the things we discussed in finance and facilities are on the agenda um I'm just going to open up for comments at the end uh we can do on and off the agenda at the end tonight um so curriculum and Technology um you can see we have some more um field trips on the agenda we actually have a sign language Club at the high school that's going to be up for approval on Monday that's uh really exciting we have an uh I'm like losing a word we're having a change to the calendar the primary election date was changed from June 3rd to June 10th so schools will be closed now on the 10th rather than on the 3 so that's going to be updated um some staff appointments we'll have our spring coaches and waight room supervisors for approval um one thing the board is very proud of is that for the first time we are going to have two female weit room supervisors up for approval so we'll continue to have uh Mr Dan romano and Mr Todd Romano but then we will also have two other uh females up so that the girls have some females in there to help them as well um oh yeah sure I will do that yep kindergarten Dr Kong wanted me to say kindergarten enrollment is now open so if you're listening watching or in this room and have a kindergartner uh open there's open enrollment happening the board is going to elect to keep the prices for preschool stagnant so we are not going to be raising preschool tuition this year um we're going to be approving the polling locations for the primary election um we do not have the polling locations officially yet from the county for the uh March 11th election but when we do those will be advertised um we are going to be approving uh $411,000 for the replacement of boilers to at jca HS one here at Lincoln School and one at Harrison school which we're H very happy about we got a good quote on that so the board's going to be able to do that out of the budget um and I think that's really it that I was going to draw some attention to but feel free to take it home look for questions we're not going to vote until Monday anything between then and now please contact Dr Conlin he can explain it or come to the meeting to voice your opinions or concerns uh that being said we're going to move to the public comment portion of the meeting public partici ation shall be governed by the following the participant must be recognized by the presiding officer and must preface comments by an announcement of their name and address statements are to be limited to three minutes duration participant may speak no more than once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic have been heard all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer boards use the public comment period of the meeting as an opportunity to listen to Citizen concerns but not to debate issues or enter into a question and answer session or a cross-examination between members of of the public and individual members be aware that not all issues brought before the board will be resolved this evening boards May respond to public comment by seeking additional information or by delegating the authority to investigate the issue to the superintendent or his designate the presiding officer May interrupt warn Andor terminate a participant's comments if they exceed the allotted time or are objectively obscene participants may be civil liable for any obscene defamatory or slanderous statements made during the public comment section tonight you can feel feel free to come up and address the board on anything on or off the agenda at this point in time would anybody like to come up Liz hi Liz har 149 Ravine a happy New Year happy New Year um I have a quick question on um what the Belleville Boe Co-op pricing system is I looked at the attachment but it didn't really EXP explain what it was so I was just kind of curious as to what that is sure um bville uh is a public school and they also formed a Cooperative purchasing entity that they're going to run and that we can join at no charge and the benefit to the district is that they similar to other types of of of Cooperative purchasing entities May uh if we to uh give them information put things out to bid so they actually are going to try to arrange bids for us so we can uh use them as an as a bidding entity where it may uh fit our needs so sometimes when we have things that are over 44,000 we have to go out to build unless it's a state contract and um and so have situations where that may benefit us we may try to use that so for ordering if we're ordering paper for the year we could use Belleville and say we're ordering paper we need 25 pallets they order 100 pallets and we get a discounted rate because we go through that Cooperative so we have like five or six cooperatives that we're actually involved with so we send what we're looking for to each Cooperative just just adds to that list of people that we could actually hopefully get a better deal on paper somehow oh that's all that it is great that's awes and sorry Brian I I didn't no no no okay that's J thank you that's great can I ask one more question yeah sure okay so the boiler Replacements right so that was not part of the included in the referendum for the uh question one no no okay so that's part of it's more it's more of a we knew we had to replace the boilers we were hoping to get repairs but because we went out to a Cooperative we got a really great deal on brand new ones which gives us a longer warranty and make sure that we're putting new items in instead of just repairing the ones that are 20 years old okay great that was it thank you so much you're welcome Liz anyone else hi Andrea hi I'm Andrea 50 Park Avenue cwell I'm just here to make some comments I just want to give an applaud just here to thank you very much and you know to see all the presentations how wonderful it was with the Lincoln School I know I have a mom here with two children here at this school my daughter's right here Liliana she's fifth grade and my son Gabriel who's in third grade so I've been here since 2019 and we went through all all the pandemic and everything and I just wanted to tell everyone at one time I was a lunch a I was here at the school so I was able to observe it myself see it just how the students here really have a lot of respect for the prince really do he really just engages with the students I I just never I never knew how much he really was like as a parent outside how amazing that how he's involved with the students and I think that's why the Lincoln School here really everything here runs very smoothly so I just wanted to just applaud you give you a big thank you you're just doing a wonderful job and I'm just really going to be sad when Gabriel leaves here and I'm no longer in the school I'm hoping you move over to the middle school so that's it I just wanted to put that on the record put it out there he is a wonderful principal and we're very grateful for him thank you and Andrea it's nice to have you back you were regular for a while and we miss you because you haven't been around we know you're probably busy but it's it's really nice to see [Laughter] you uh anybody else want to come up and address the board this evening no okay before we adjourn to go back into executive I just want to say again to give a plug cuz I didn't know myself 6:30 Saturday evening is this big music festival at the high school so it would be really great if you could get out there and support it I know the high school musical is going to be coming up at the beginning of March so we'll have a performance from them sometime in February and the Middle School Musical this year is going to be frozen I know those auditions are happening at the beginning of February so that should be really fun that'll probably be happening sometime in May or June maybe June don't quote me on that but it'll be coming so it'll be good thing for our little ones to go sa uh that being said uh can I have a motion to close the meeting at 7:30 7M and enter into executive session I'll make a motion and can I have a second I'll second Brian can you take the role yes all in favor I I all against no any extensions motion carried okay thank you everyone we'll see you Monday at Grover Cleveland Middle School thank you have a good night good night thank you good to see you always a pleasure