good evening everyone and welcome to a regularly scheduled meeting of the East WSOR Regional School District Board of Education um our meeting will now begin written advanced me notice of this meeting was provided at least 48 hours ago such notice provided the time date
and location of this meeting and included the agenda to the extent it was known at the time notice of this meeting has been given in accordance with law minutes of this meeting are being kept by the board secretary and will be made available promptly to any member of the public requesting them from the board
secretary at 25A Leashen Lane Heightstown New Jersey minutes will be provided at cost and accordance with board policy are there any board members present who believe this meeting to be in violation of the open public meeting act there being none we may proceed in
compliance with the fire code of the state of New Jersey I call your attention to the emergency exits for this room which are located behind you over there and to our left and right please stand for the pledge of allegiance i aliance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisibley and justice for all item C having read the materials received I move the agenda be approved as submitted
second please pull the board miss Concepts yes mr drake yes mr larry yes m patel yes mr weeks yes m lans
yes item D be it resolved that the East Windsor Regional School District may hold two closed sessions at this meeting these closed sessions concern HIV report of March 24th 2025 and personnel minutes of these closed sessions will be made available to the public when the need
for confidentiality no longer exists second please pull the board miss Concepts yes miss Drake yes mr lowry yes miss Patel yes mr weeks yes miss Lance yes we will now move on to
our student representative report uh good evening everyone it's a pleasure to see all of you and we are thrilled to share some of the recent school happenings first to start we would like to highlight the efforts of our robotics team after their competition this past weekend in Ben Salem Pennsylvania as the
alliance captain of the fifth ranked team our robotics team ranked fourth out of nine teams and qualified for the first Mid-Atlantic District Championship which will be taking place at Lehigh College from April 3rd to April 5th if all goes well they have a chance to advance and go to World's Competition in
Houston Texas around the end of spring break we congratulate them on their efforts and wish them all the best in the upcoming competition we love to share that our hardworking Heightstown musical team will be hosting an instrumental festival concert at Manchester High School this Friday at 7 p.m be sure to check out the
band website and your email for more information speaking of musical events we had an incredible turnout with our school's production of Chicago the musical just this last week after looking at the overall turnout we are proud to say that this musical had the most attendance of
all four shows in Heightstown history since the 1980s we want to commend our students who are part of the musical and the crew team along with the directors who made it happen it was a great show for everyone in the district the Hightown High School Parent Association is hosting a bingo night fundraiser on April 5th which is
actually a Saturday night starting at 7 p.m be sure to be there to support our parent association that works hard to help our student activities next we would like to offer our congratulations to the students who participated in the FCCLA competition in particular we have student Marjorie
Samoya who achieved a gold medal in the yarn art event and a bronze medal in the repurpose redesign event at the recent FCCLA state conference in Cherry Hill we also have Mahi Patel to congratulate as she has achieved a silver medal in the fashion design event at the recent FCCLA
state conference in Cherry Hill great job to Marjorie Mahi and the other students who participated keep up the good work i would like to discuss the incredible performance of our Heistown High School FBA students last week we've had a total of 17 students qualifying for the international level at Anaheim
California and 30 state finalists top 10 winners this is the highest number of students winning in the history of our program this has been an incredible achievement for us all next we would also like to highlight the fact that we are off of school this upcoming Monday to observe Eid the Islamic holiday recognizing the end of
Ramadan all schools in the district will be off on Monday but will resume school on the regular schedule from Tuesday onwards quick announcement for the senior class the senior class advisors are now taking orders for cap and gowns which cost $30 payment can be made using tickets spot
please email or see Mr buchcci or Mr feda to provide your height weight and cap gown color choice orders placed after April 11th will be $40 this concludes the end of our report thank you everyone for listening and we look forward to seeing you again at the next meeting thank you great thank you
so much for your informative report as always and congratulations to all our students for their great achievements does anyone have any questions if not we'll move on to our student achievement update okay I'm going to just turn things over to Sandy Small assistant
superintendent for curriculum and assessment uh tonight will serve as an update regarding student progress primarily based on our district assessments uh give us a sense of student growth uh to this point uh in the year good evening everyone so I'm going
to run this in a little bit of different way i'm going to run kindergarten through 8th grade go through the data for ELA and for math and then at the end the supervisors are going to come in and talk about what are what have they done since this data what did we do saying
this data is really positive here's the intentional um resources and supports we put in and here's what we've done in those areas that the data is not quite where we want it to be so then we'll ask answer any questions at the end of that
okay so we're going to start with K2 and and as we go through kindergarten one of the things so I'm going to go through try and talk columns and stuff so that you're on the same page as me so one of the things that we looked at is
that we have the very first row is our district then we have EMK and we break EMK up as the total population ge is general education students se is special education students elll or ESL or multilingual learners and then in some
areas we have SE and ESL and that's indicated when we have um a significant amount of students that have both resources that they need and then our fourth column where it says percent of class talks about the percent of
students that are in each of those categories okay so with STAR early literacy that we do for kindergarten and first grade they have numerous domains that they test i only took the two that are I feel are foundational which would
be the phmic awareness and sentence comprehension and then toward the end is the early literacy so we're going to go through and compare some of those so if we look at uh early literacy SS is the scale score if we look October to January what we will see in each of
these areas is that there has been some really nice growth um from October to January and this is pretty um average for what we've seen in the last couple of years which is just above what we had in with the pandemic um when we look at
phmic awareness those scores have increased which is really what helps the scale score increase and the same thing with sentence comprehension so our students in kindergarten are moving very nicely along the curriculum when we go through and look at early numeric we see
again some uh nice movements so what we would call here is typical growth our students are growing the way um they should be and we talk about accelerated growth and then we also talk about regression or low growth if you
will we go into one everything is pretty similar to what we talked about in kindergarten the difference we have here are running records which is another assessment that we um do for our students which would be May October and February and what you will see with the running records is it's pretty
consistent growth in for each of the buildings and for all populations then when we go into the star early lit one of the things that and I'm going to talk about this in a little bit one of the things that I'm always going to compare is May to
January and not September to January or September to December because September we can have that slide and we can have some false positives where we're seeing growth from September to January or September to December however it doesn't
match where they were in May so I'm always going to be doing May to the point in time that we're referring to so what we see here is if you look in EMK the general ed students they have improved from um May to December but
it's a slight improvement not the significant one that we would like to see so that's just a watch that's why it's in yellow it's not that it's something that is a major concern and then the same thing with the phmic awareness and the phmic awareness is something that has um changed the scale
score for that um one of our concerns concerns is special ed in the MK because what you will see it is just pretty much equal to where they were in May so there really hasn't been any gain there and that's um shown with both awareness as
well as sentence comprehension and then if you look at WCV you're going to see that for special ed and ELLL that we're seeing um the gains are are either some losses or gains not where they belong then we go into grade one
math and you're going to see these in red especially with the special ed and EMK for early numer there is a growth but it is almost a negligible growth because it's a 75 to a 76 which basically says it's pretty flat um so
they do early lit but then we also do star math and the star math is where we're going to come into being able to do longitudinal growth through high school one of the things that you see with our special ed students in EMK is they had a significant jump in STAR math
which is really nice to be able to see from that and then WCB when you look at the ELLL students they had a really nice jump in Star Math from 237 to 299 the reason that is in yellow is even though you they had a great growth they haven't
yet met our gened students from where they began so we want to make sure that accelerated growth continues so that we can um build on the skills that they've started some of the things I want to go through that I'm going to just I make an assumption sometimes that you know the
terms I'm using so I just want to do a quick review here one of the things that as a district we have um really been strong with in the last 20 years is that our star renaissance or star reading or star math is very much aligned to what
the state data is and it's our scale score that is in there so when we talk about the alignment some of the things I will show you is for math and ELA where we were last May and how we did in NJSLA so that we can say to you here's what the data says and this is why we put so
much stock into uh our STAR reading and our STAR math um the scale scores allow us to show growth over time for an individual student then you're going to hear the term IRL which is the instructional reading level and this shows where a student is
reading in relationship to peers of the same grade not just in district nationally so just as a little tutorial that if a student in grade six tests in September the assumption would be that student would test at a 6.1 which is sixth grade first month if that same
student tested in January and scores a 6.5 that would demonstrate typical growth because it's five months so it's a 6.5 if the same student tested a 7.2 that's an accelerated growth because they've had more um growth than that
time frame and then if that same student had a 6.3 that's going to be a minimal growth so there's growth but it's not to be able to keep that child up to par with his or her peers and then I did talk to you already about the last bullet as to why I do May to the end
point this is really busy but I'm going to talk through a piece at a time with you again for grade two we're going to talk about running records um and you're going to see that the running records are consistently growing for our
students then I want to move over to the far right side just so we can talk about because this is us going through showing um what these numbers mean so if you look at EMK on the very top that little box this is EMK eight months growth so
they students go from September at a 1.15 to January at 1.92 that means they grew eight months in that four month window so that's what we would call accelerated growth it wasn't a month-to-month and then if you look at
WCB they went from a 0.9 to a 2.0 and that's more than a year's growth in that so that's some real good data that we can see one thing I don't want you to get confused with and you will as we go through this is scale score may show
some growth and IRL may not because they're looking at two different things up until grades 2 three four and part of five this scale score um which is aligned to the state assessment is the bar is a little bit lower once we come
into fifth grade that scale score has to um rise dramatically to keep up with what the state expectations are whereas the IRL is pretty be pretty consistent throughout then the other thing I want to show which is on the top box is although we're seeing this growth of
nine months overall we want to be really clear that in that January in order to be on level the students should be at a 2.4 so even though the overall district is 1.97 and they've grown nine months which is great because we're going to
fill that gap we're not quite where we should be yet so we're going to look at growth as well as where the mastery is there so hopefully that makes sense one of the um positives I want to talk about on this slide is our ESL students and that's one of the things that we have
seen because the younger our students are that we get them the greater the growth that they can have so what we're noticing here is for EMK um in second grade our students have grown more than one year in this four month in their L2
not their primary language and that's that speaks volumes for what we're we're able to do here and then in WCB they have grown more than a year and a half during that same time period so the programs are working that have been instituted down there so as I said I
know there's a lot on this slide and that's going to be our K2 then when we go into grade three for ELA this slide is basically going through talking because we don't have the state assessment yet for this group
we're going through and looking at our scale score and our instructional reading level so I want to focus on the first part which is our scale score you will see from May to January all groups grew the reason those are in yellow in
the January is that they haven't grown quite to the typical or accelerated growth that we would be hoping for and then if we go over and what you'll notice in that middle column where it says hon or above that talks about the
percentage of students who if they were going to take the assessment in January the state assessment this is what the predictability of um those who would be meeting or exceeding expectations are but that's our midmarket our midyear
so we know what we have to go to be able to get to May then when we our last three columns which is our star our IRL which is the instructional reading level this is where you're going to be able to see the the growth so hopefully this is going to make sense that on the far
right corner the top box talks about the growth in GNR our gened students grew eight month eight months in five months special ed six months and ESL six months god bless you and then you will see the bottom box tells you the same growth for a PLLD
what I have in that little box right below the chart um I talk about what the on level would be so in May it would have been a 2.9 September 3.1 and January 3.5 if they were strictly on
level then I go to grade three math and when we look at grade three math we see some major um jumps in our scale score from May to January which is really stress to be able to see but if we look at that last
column we still have at most which is a gen ed and GNR 34% of our students that are meeting grade level expectations based on January so we still have as I said we still have four months prior to assessment um that's going to be
something that we need to make sure we're focusing on then I go into fourth grade ELA this slide is strictly to be able to show the diff the similarities between the state assessment and our star reading scale
score based on last year's data so if you go look at GNR's 32.9% on the state our scale score for STAR is 31.7 so it's you know very consistent
there and the same thing with PLLD 27.9 to 23.9 so that's how saying that we know the system that we're using is accurately measuring how we would do on state assessments this next side slide is
really talking about our students growth this year so if we look again from our reading from May to our reading till January you're going to see nice jumps all the way through in scale score if you look at the percent of
students on or above in May of last year to where we are this year you're going to see it's pretty it's pretty flat so we haven't gained or we haven't lost students in there we really want to be able to try and see how we can accelerate that growth one of and that's
for GNR if you look at PLLD for ELA you're going to see a really nice jump from 24% of the students approaching to 34% of the students approaching and that's also with our gen ed um in PL as well as our special
ed if we look at the instructional reading level for grade four and I tried to do this so your eyes can see what you're what you're matching color color-wise if you look at the instructional reading level you're going to be able to see the box in the far right that tells you how much was grown
within these five months and I want to draw your attention to PLLD special ed students that were tested grew more than a year within that time frame so that's what we would consider um accelerated growth there one of the things that
again I want to draw our attention to is although we're seeing growth collectively fewer than 50% of our students in fourth grade are meeting grade level expectations as it stands in January in grade four for math we're going to be
able to again look at the scale score from May to the star I'm sorry to January's and again you're going to see growth but what you're not going to see in all groups is the accelerated growth that we had seen so if you look at our
um ESL uh four for G&R you're going to see a short growth you're going to see there was a summer slide and then grow um in there but the percent of students that were on or above grade level
expectations in May of last year to where we are now is a concern we have dropped dramatically so we need to be able to do something now and as I said the supervisor going to talk to you about some of the things that they are doing in these um areas but that's going
to be an area that we've got to accelerate so that we're not losing these students in grade five this is again the slide that to show the state assessment versus the STAR and again you're going to see all that is pretty close um to where we
scored last year on the state assessment and what the STAR scale score told us if we go to grade five and measure the scale score from May until January again you're going to see um a nice
increase so our students are um are being successful they are growing it's simply a matter we're not sustaining the growth that has happened prior to the year so if we're looking the GMR the total growth was at I'm
sorry the total percent of students who were on or above level was 35.6% were at 29.9 and again we're measuring May to January so we do have a couple months ago to bring that up but at this point
in time we are not quite there if we look at grade five IRL again we're going to see the growth and what's interesting here is our scale score even though our students are not meeting that scale score expectations with the state you're going to see that we have
increased the number of our students who are reading at or above grade level if we look at grade five math we're going to again say you're going to hear the same story for some of these we're showing growth in the scale score um in
most areas ESL5 we have a lack of growth and we do know there's a rationale as to some of the things that um took place as to why that growth isn't there hopefully we are in the process of rectifying that so that we do see that growth um the
percent of students who are on or above level right now in phase five math needs to be adjusted like this there's something that is not showing and what showing growth even though the scale score is we're not growing quickly
enough in our 68 this first slide is really just telling us that our state assessment data matches our star in grade six ELA what you're going to see here is if the darker green again
our students are growing in the scale score and we are pretty much um matching the growth that we have we're 37.5 to 33 um and that being the January that's not as alarming one of the things
you're going to see differently in the middle school than you did in the K5 is because we have various levels um I broke this up into ELA6 is what really our gened students our ELA COM as our comprehensive class for our general ed students who need additional supports
our ICS classes our OCR MDLD combined and our SEI which is our sheltered English instruction for our multilingual learners so that's where you're going to see all of that broken up so besides our top box we have this here so what you're
going to be able to compare is the percent of students on or above in each of those levels in May to where they are now in comparing grade six instructional reading level you're going to notice on the right hand box you're going to see
some really nice jumps and again here for SEI students they have grown 1.3 years within this five month span which is really nice to be able to see and one of the other positives you're going to see in the grade six IRL is not only did
they make sure that the IRL of the percent of students on or above level is also um comparable to the rise in the IRL in one area um there's a slight dip and remember this is based on the number of students so the percentages are seem
a little off would be within the ICS but the eight students one student can change that in grade six math again showing that the state and the star scale score
are showing comparable percentages when we're comparing the scale score in May for math to the scale score in June you're going to see not like the growth that we had seen in other areas our total population was at
a 738.9 we're only at a 744 so that's really low growth if any um if you're looking through that um then if you look at our gened students they also we can't just you know we say one of the things I
want to be careful is that we can't say it's oh it's because special ed or it's ESL so our gened students haven't shown growth there in sixth grade as well the thing that to me is the most alarming is those double accelerated students in
pre-aggebra they came in with 98% of those students meeting or exceeding expectations we're now 10 percentage points below that so 88 sounds good but when they're double accelerated that loss of 10% is a little bit troublesome
for me what you will see with the course one IC again it's 10 students but we were able to double the percentage of students who are on or above level there in grade seven ELA this is one of
the positive things that we're going to be looking through when you're looking at the scale score for May to January you're going to see a nice jump in each of the areas with the exception of one of our two of our subgroups in there but
if you look at the percentage of students who are on or above level in May versus now that's a real positive improvement that we're seeing so we're uh trajectory is moving in the right direction if we look at our instructional reading
level that's telling us something very similar to the last slide that we talked about the scale score so again this is going to be our typical growth that we're seeing for grade seven ELA our grade seven math we saw a little
bit of a dip again in the scale score for total population gen ed and special ed um so this is again we're going from 26% of our students which is not good to begin with for our uh on or above level
to a 9.7 and again I broke it down into the courses so that if you look through the courses even our biographer students gains only slightly there but what's more this is our single accelerated um we went from 84% of our students to 46%
of our students that are successful there so I would say there's a regression in grade seven math and if you recall from last year grade seven is where we had some um positive um growth in the seventh graders last year and I
don't have algebra one on that slide because I'm saving the advanced math for our last slide for grade 8 ELA you're going to see again great you know nice growth for the scale score from May until January and then you're See some
people are going to say this is flat growth from the percentage of students on or above to from May till January i'm going to tell you that this is consistent growth or um typical growth because these students are growing that
year within the time frame and if you go come back to that slide what you'll see is the advanced um ELA 92% came in on when we're at 93% and that's what you would typically expect when you're looking at that
accelerator um grade eight IRL you're going to see again something very similar to the scale score so in grade seven and eight the um scale score and the instructional reading level were pretty much um matching grade eight math i want to
caution you if you look at this it says course three it's 42% of our population in eighth grade are in course three because we do have algebra one and we do have geometry so these numbers um are
don't tell the whole story for eighth grade math um we had a concern last year in course three i'm going to say this concern still is here um so we though we're aligned to this when we go back and we look at the scale
score for May until January in the next slide we have not recovered from our summer slide if you look at the grade grade 8 math for total population in May we were at a 763 we had a summer slide to
719 we have barely increased from September to January and not even close to picking up the um where we were last May the more alarming thing is we have 15% of our student population who are in
course three who were above level on or above in May we're down to 1% in there our middle school advanced math geometry is an anomaly for us to be able to look through because we don't have a star scale score to say here's the
predictability for the state assessment because there are not enough students who take the um geometry but what I can say to you is that 100% of our students who are in geometry right now passed the algebra one assessment um for last year
and they are on target for doing fairly well for this year our algebra 8 and algebra 7 so I put it algebra eight and seven just so make the differential whether it's eighth graders which is a single acceleration and seventh grade which is
a double acceleration so if I go to grade algebra 7 you're going to see last year when they tested in May 96% of those students were on or above level and are right now they're at 80% so my
hope is that over the next few months we're going to be able to bring that back up there the more concerning is our algebra 8 students which is our single accelerated have gone from 76% of our students on or above to 46% so I don't
want to sit here and say to you that oh our accelerated students are doing great it's our course one course two course three we have some work that we have to do throughout on some of this so I just gave a whole lot of numbers at
you i didn't throw things at you that you know for a couple of them were really positive but so my thing to to the supervisors is so what are we doing we know we're in trouble in some areas what are we doing because we're not going to sit here and just admire um the
data we've got to make sure that we're moving it so um each of them are going to come up here and just give you a little blurb so some of you have if you have the PowerPoint up for yourself the PDF you're going to see some of these things in here um Christine who is our
K2 supervisor was not able to make it tonight so I'm just going to go through a little bit of what she has shared that she's doing so I asked um the supervisor to do two things like what are some of the adjustments we had to make knowing that we are some of our areas um are not
growing the way we need and then what are our what are the intentional skills programs um that we are putting into place that is a reason for growth in those areas so what they shared in the
K2 is that where there were areas for um a lack of growth or not quite typical growth um they had been working through focus PDs and meetings to um within writing to be able to strengthen the practice and instruction they
implemented awareness program heard so in the K2 where we saw that growth we really attribute a lot of that to the fidelity in which he is being practiced in the K2 buildings um there are quarterly meetings with BSI teams to look through data and discuss um any
students who are in need of support so that they do it in small chunks and it's not a lifelong BSI and then they're leveraging um two of our programs to remediate some of the skills in our students and then the finally they're looking at small group structure
structures as well as individual conferences between the student and teacher to be able to um target specific instruction and needs for our students some of the things that have been put into place that have shown some of the growth um Christine talks about some of
them are anecdotal at this point but we talked about the targeted um differentiated instruction and then he and again we're going to attribute heard because we've seen some really good growth in kindergarten for there and then um Christina says within the math
the envision program has increased the rigor and the expectations that our teachers are using and therefore our uh students are rising to that occasion it's good to see everybody kevin Weiss i'm the supervisor for 35 i
just want to start off and really thank Sandy for this presentation because she doesn't allow us as supervisors to just we do these star tests and that's it she asks us these pointed questions all the time to make sure that we're providing programs for our students to make sure that this data is more than just numbers on a sheet of paper that it's actually
leading to programming so the first thing is after these January assessments the building teams and myself we met one-on-one with teachers to really get an understanding of how we're going to support our students moving from January to the end of the year so if there's any shortcomings are there material resources we need are there other things
that we can help to support them uh one of the things that we should understand though is that independent reading I think it was Richard Allington said that when you read independently it builds vocabulary comprehension and it helps close literacy gaps so one of the things that we're doing is we did a uh
accelerated words reading contest for both of our buildings to have a winner at third fourth and fifth grade in each building for the most words read because we really want to establish a culture where independent reading is what we do um we also uh enhanced our buddy reading
program that's currently running now between our third and fifth grade students uh to ensure that reading fluency and comprehension is a part of it uh we've had after school PDs uh making sure that the reading writing connection is there because similar to independent reading the more students see that there's a reading writing
connection we can improve vocabulary comprehension as well as making sure using whisper phones and things like that that the writing that the students are doing reads fluently um we've also had central office pees because of the we have numerous students who are coming from households where English is not the
first language so we want to make sure that we have language objectives and background ground knowledge to help support them through our lessons some of the things that are working uh that we want to keep making sure that that growth continues is our fourth grade title one programs uh these are for
students who are considerably behind our pacing and u grade level expectations so they can make accelerated growth we also have math and reading enrichment programs for students who are significantly ahead of the pacing so when you saw that data and you see that certain students are already um are some
of the top I guess it's say five on the NGSLA that they're not backsliding and we can keep them and appropriately uh provide them rigor we also have math exemplars in our math program now to make sure that our students are being uh
presented with and working through multi-step word problems because that often is a issue for some of our students so I thank you for your time good evening everyone uh I just want to go over some of the things that we've seen over the course of the past couple
years in special ed well in everywhere we noticed last year that our third graders were coming in much lower than we had seen them coming in before some of that was uh due to post pandemic some of that was just due to students coming in overall lower so what we started last
year was uh bringing in Orton Gillingham we realized that our 35 team did not have what they needed to teach these kids what they needed we were teaching them reading where their skills were here we were teaching them here so with that Orton Gillingham bringing in that
last year we eased it in this year what we did last year as we eased it in everyone went for training including myself to make sure that I knew what I was supervising but then for each part of the lesson plan we gave them professional
development this year was the first year where we fully implemented it and if you look at at the data at the 35 level you'll see that showed where the full implementation of Wharton Gillingham this year actually limited a lot of the summer slide in the 3 to five and what
what was happening is grade three the star reading which is what most of those scores were based on including the grade two the star reading makes an assumption that you are a reader although it is a level test it does not go down to the phmic level which is why a lot a lot of
our third grade special ed students weren't even generating a real score on it so it was hard to read that data but that's a universal screener that we read that we utilize so what we also started doing was implementing the I Ready and the Dibbles assessment and those are
really showing that growth at the 35 level and with the STAR reading you're starting to see the fourth and fifth grade uh special education students really catching up because that's when that reading is catching up for them so that is what we're doing at the 35 level
it's really that Wharton Gillingham approach that has really helped us we have a weekly lesson plan template so everybody's on the same page that's what we're trying to do is create a universal protocol for that reading instruction at the K2 level uh we've seen a lot of
struggles with behavior uh we're trying to help get students to self-regulate themselves so we can again continue more with instruction there what we plan on doing at the K2 level is the pushes that we've done at the 35 level have produced
fruit now we're looking to bring more of that at the K2 level to kind of look at what can we bring down there to increase a and better engage students in that phonics instruction and along with that again we're just using using different
strategies uh a lot of these are things like writing at the 35 level we were kind of doing separate now we're making sure that that they're learning to decode their words so now we're putting that encoding piece that writing piece
and tying that to the Orton Gillingham instruction we're trying to tie all that instruction together so everything's meaningful we're not we're not teaching things in a silo on their own but really making sure everything is integrated together
any questions now oh but okay well I'm sorry i I we were talking about Gorton Gillingham well Wharton Gillingham really is is multiensory teaching so that's where we're bringing in a lot of these sensory tools so when we're teaching the reading that's it's a lot more tactile and if
you look even in the in the summer slides where it's limiting them it's because there's a deeper understanding kids are participating in the learning so things like uh one of the things is they're writing they're writing in sand but as they do it they're saying it
they're feeling it they're saying the letters saying the sounds and everything's getting tied together so those are a lot of the other pieces that we are bringing in that we're also now bringing more to the K2 level again we started with 35 but it's now moving
backwards too questions or Good evening everyone so in the ESL K5 world in our K2 program we have an intervention program to support our lowest performing students in Spanish it
is called Silma intervention which is an intervention system that's what it means in English and those students um have an opportunity to work with the bilingual interventionist two times a day our classroom teachers have two resources
called kamino and paso to support the K2 students with phmic awareness phonics blending sounds and we are also doing the heerty Spanish program in our um kindergarten bilingual classes in 35 one of our third grade teachers last summer
our third grade ESL teacher the counterpart to a bilingual teacher went for Orton Gillingham training and this summer the other ESL teachers in the buildings both at GNR and PLLD will go for Orton Gillingham training the
multi-faceted tactile experience that works for special education also works very well for second language learners we uh split a third grade class at the Prairie El Drew School and with a new bilingual teacher and those um class
sizes are now 16 each instead of 24 each we have done um walkthroughs we've met with teachers we've had data meetings and also there's been some meeting with the APS to talk about attendance because attendance is such a critical component
to student success our PDS have been focused on teaching writing to multilingual students and the science of reading good evening in grades um six through eight um I have a lot to say i did attach at the top up here um you can
click on and see additional information to what I'm going to present now but just for the salient points we based a lot of our analysis on quarterly data hold on I'm so sorry here we um based on a quarterly data review that we did with
teachers in late January and early February um that included an overview of some newer programs we had bought in in November trained the staff in put into play for the second quarter and that included um Lexia core 5 and power up we
continue to use rewards which is an automaticity and decoding program expanding it out to include um paragraph level comprehension at the eighth grade level this year so early returns are showing us that we've made gains with
our um most at risk students utilizing those programs we're still refining how we're integrating those programs the amount of time spent on those programs and looking at them really for their hybrid ability that they are not just digital programs that are giving
children practice but that our teachers are well trained at the middle school level to support decoding encoding comprehension and um exercises in multi-elobic decoding um that kind of
branches us out to the next group that Sandy presented who are showing some gains albeit minimal in vocabulary and we've really been stressing morphology and explicit systemic vocabulary not incidental where they're reading and and
picking up additional words but really looking to understand the deeper value of words as they're um plowing through comprehensive complex text um from there we also um saw that our highest level
students are flatlining and we looked at this less as a reading problem we've done a good job I feel matching the students we've done a lot of work with the staff to match to complex texts highinterest texts and texts of varied
genre which really exposes them to the written um word in various forms some are focusing on words some are focusing on structure they're getting a lot at the higher end with that focus however we also saw in our writing assessments
which was not part of the data you saw here explicitly it was in the NJSLS but not in the STAR we're seeing that our kids are kind of plateauing um a lot of this is coming from the writing modes we have been largely teaching genrebased
writing we are pushing back into six traits to ensure that they have those foundational writing skills and then coupling them with unique genre elements um the other um item that we noticed in our data review was the overuse of
formulaic writing constructors these are incredibly helpful for our students who are struggling or are emerging writers but as they climb up in in their um proficiency they need to have opportunities for compositional risk and
taking that risk and really kind of developing it um to that end the teachers have been trained and looking at data specifically in works reviews we look at student work we do not put identifiers on it we put it underneath the microscope and we examine that
student work to see what it tells us about how we need to fine-tune our teaching and how we need to fine-tune um experiences for the different levels of our students in all of our data review we focus on the tiered intervention
supports with our TI what are we doing for our most at risk tier three what are we doing for students who are kind of um on the border are afterchool intervention this goaround for quarter three was students who presented as
doing very well in their class but they're presenting with gaps in their literacy so we really went with an 8-week program that really gave them not only test taking strategies but opportunities based on evidence tables that we reviewed based on student work
we reviewed to really ramp that up and address subtle but important stylistic changes in their writing um finally in terms of program development bringing in the core lexia and the power up we pulled the teachers
offline we did an evaluation of the digital program we shared lessons that are being given in guided reading and sustained structural support and we are building a library alongside the digital to ensure that students are getting
contact time with the teacher and that that is systemic it's progressive and it's a priority as they plan for literacy instruction think I have covered everything thank you good evening
um okay so looking at six through eight math we kind of came at this knowing that this was an area for growth this year um some of the things that happened from looking at last year's data and moving forward is um the release of new
state standards um and modified standards for math so over the summer we revised some of our curriculum based on those new standards and in the process we also restructured some of those curricula so that we felt that the
instruction um was more aligned uh with the progression from sixth to 8 sixth to 7th to 8th grade um with a focus on uh new curriculum uh additional teachers um in the sixth through 8th math level
um and a recognition that this was an area for growth we started the year with um meetings with each of the individual sixth uh through 8th grade math teachers talking about their student data looking at where their students were starting at
the beginning of the year and pointing a focus to those students that might be ready to um be enriched uh or be provided with enriched resources and also looking at those students that we
had concerns with um we started our Title One programs a little bit earlier this year to try and provide support in our first phase for those students that we recognize would be starting the school year a little bit behind um in our phase two which is currently running
we're looking to identify those students that are just shy of meeting expectations that could use a little additional support um and then if for our third phase which is not launched yet we are looking at identifying those
students that are showing regression and trying to find a way to kind of scoop them up keep them engaged through the end of the year so that ideally that summer slide will be less for them um after the uh second star testing date
which is in January um we are are and have organized uh a second round of data meetings with teachers to really look at those students that are demonstrating regression and ask the students to ask
the teachers to identify what they've been doing for those particular students identify if they even acknowledge or have recognized that these students needed some extra support um one of the things that you may have seen is some concerns about our sixth grade and
seventh grade pre-alggebra data and some concerns about whether or not those students are regressing and again putting a focus on those advanced programs where we started the year with a focus on our our core general ed programs in course one course two and
course three so reminding teachers that we have to pay attention to where our students are and what our students need not just in our regular grade level courses but across all of our different courses um in terms of teacher practices within
the classroom teachers are expected to engage in conferencing with students not just about standardized data but also about students goals and helping students identify what it is that they need to work on to support progress um teachers have been asked quarterly to
reflect not just on data from their grade books but also to um look for cohesion between the standardized data and how students are doing in the classroom um to hold them accountable to STAR data to hold them accountable to common assessment data data that we
collect from Alex which is the secondary platform that we use to support students in the classroom um and look to see if there is commonalities across that data and again leaning beyond just the star numbers that are represented in the data
spreadsheets that you saw but going into Renaissance reports that disagregate that number into individual areas that teachers can work with those students on um so expecting teachers to kind of go through that data on a regular basis and holding them accountable to address
those areas with their students um in addition we have a staff developer for six through eight math and we have provided uh the staff developer with weekly or bi-weekly depending on how much time we want her to to spend focusing on these areas um to work with
the teachers to provide uh additional resources for enrichment and support um support teachers in integrating additional strategies to provide enrichment and support for our students one of those supports that we're looking for our teachers to use consistently is
the use of small group strategies within the classroom to make sure they're pulling those students who need additional support on a regular basis to provide that for them but also pulling small groups for students that might need enrichment and might need a little bit of teacher support in those
enrichment environments and again as a result of the data meetings that we're having with teachers about mid-year data making sure teachers are aware of those students that are demonstrating regression across this standardized data and making sure that they are being held
accountable to what it is that they are doing to better support these teachers based on some of those expected strategies and resources um that we've presented thank you good evening i'm going to talk about uh 6 to8 special education some of the
things that we're doing to work towards growth for our students um one thing is meeting with teachers to discuss the student data another is holding professional development for the math teachers on engagement strategies incorporating a lesson in
class on STAR assessment we want the students to understand why it's important why they have to take it what does it tell them um just to make it more meaningful for the students another thing we are doing is reinforcing and incorporating the basic foundational
math skills within our lessons for OCR and LLD um we are reiterating strategies to incorporate and promote reading across the curriculum and something new that was just started this year was uh that the
special education teachers are now meeting with students once marking period to set goals and conference with the students and with that they are now incorporating star focus skills into their goal setting to make it more
meaningful for them um and then that's how we're also gaining growth we're incorporating all of the things that I just spoke about before um and we're just reinforcing and reiterating all of those things and we are have a strong focus on our conferencing and goal
setting good evening i'm going to talk about ESL succeeds so Justin's uh we've made for data and lack of growth focused walkthroughs of the sheltered classes to collect some anecdotal data on how the teachers are co-eing with their content
pairs uh we've incorporated Lexia English into the ESL classroom to improve their speaking um not just their speaking their listening it helps uh build confidence for the students when they are moving around in their um content classes to participate and speak
in class we participated in after school programs we have been focusing on access test prep um but we also pulled a group of students who are beginning and emerging to help support additionally after school with their language development um these are students who
are new to district ESL1 level two um and we've seen some success there some of the programs that we've done and we've uh incorporated into um this year we've really focused on stations in the classroom this allowed our teachers to
have um small group instruction push into small groups and help them with um areas where they um need to improve on we've um also had a deep dive of uh creating uh rubrics to help them with
assessing the students but not just creating the rubrics align to our WITA language development standards but also using them to show students and conference with them this is where you are this is where we want you to be uh we've used uh AI for our teachers not
the students to help make some of the content in the classroom more accessible for the students um to meet the standard we've held writing PDS uh to help our teachers explicitly teach writing um to our multilingual learners
and we've done uh data dives with the sheltered content classes um creating targeted plans for struggling students in the class so if we've seen um there's group of students who are struggling why are they struggling what can we do to support them and um we just like to
mention that we're really excited about the access test this year to see if there's growth um and we really can't measure their language development fully without those results i know we throw a lot at you both data wise as well as some of the areas that
we are working through so I'm not sure if you have questions if you want to mow it over and think through it and we go through questions next meeting however you want to work through Mark I don't know if you have a preference or uh if board members have any initial
thoughts questions feel free we definitely can revisit this obviously beyond tonight when do the access test results come out june July june July so we'll have them over the summer in September yes
absolutely i have one more question um so Chris said we are bringing the OG down to Orton Gillingham down to the K2 level when do we expect that to happen so the original plan was Excuse me chris
can you come to the mic sorry good now your pen too uh the original plan when we started training teachers we started training 35 and K2 but we already have Wilson Foundations at the
K2 level so it was like do we want to change that i felt like it was going to be too much of a shift so I wanted to see what was going on with OG first we've already brought down Orton Gillingham strategies now you need to realize the Wilson pro the Wilson
Foundations is based on Orton Gillingham they're all multiensory but Wilson Foundation's a little bit more scripted so it doesn't sometimes it gets a little bit robotic so we've already started infusing uh some of the Orton Gillingham
like the red words and using the screens and using the crayons we're already putting that down at the K2 level we already started there but the goal is not necessarily to have everyone doing OG at the K2 level but to have all our special ed teachers at the K2 level
doing Wilson foundations with all the OG tools so we'd still be following the scope and sequence of foundations the the thing with Wilson at the 35 level is we're looking to fill in gaps we don't really need to change the scope and sequence of the foundations program we
just need to make it more meaningful so so we've already started it but there's going to be a bigger push next year even we I've had uh K2 teachers coming to the 35 uh meetings that we're holding so they're trying to see a little bit more i have our multi-ensory reading
specialists pushing in usually about once a week at the K2 level but they're spending most of the time at the 35 level so our our goal is to shift that next year and really push that at the K2 level so we can start seeing at the K2
what we saw at 35 okay and that'll be in the gen ed not just the RTI that'll be in the gen i'm talking about special ed okay special ed yeah no so part of what Chris talked about is the foundations and Wilson really is based off of Orton
Gillingham the reason the 35 came into play is we didn't have any type of phonics program or anything to be able to fill those gaps so that's what they're going through so a lot of the strategies that Chris is talking about some of the hands-on weren't being implemented in K2 and that's some of the
things that he's looking to bring there until we get our final results from um K2 I'm not going to tell you that we're going to switch anything i'm going to tell you we're open to those things but we don't want to just throw baby out the bath if what we're doing is working for our gen ed students so we're trying to
go through looking at all that and Tina just to help you kind of understand something when we started doing that a lot of teachers became confused it's really the same thing but when we brought when I sent some K2 teachers for Orton Gillingham training they came back and they're like "Chris what am I
supposed to do am I supposed to do Wilson am I supposed to do am I supposed to do foundations or so?" So it took a little bit of a bridge now those teachers are like "Thank thank you for sending me." But there is a learning curve there so that's something that uh that's kind of why I wanted to rain it
in a little bit so we can roll it out a little slower to ease that learning curve okay i see as long as we're bringing the the essence of Warren Gillingham into what we already have yes that that's great let's see where we end up i only ask these questions cuz I know
like 3 to five once they're past that third grade they're no longer learning to read per se or in the reading to learn area so I feel the earlier the better the more tools our teachers have so that's where we had the Wilson reading system in 35 which was for our
lowest students but the problem with the Wilson reading system is that it follows a book like it follows a system so if I came in and the only thing I needed help on was R control vowels I would need to start with short vowels and I wouldn't
see what I really needed help with for two years and that wasn't working for us we needed something where it was more prescriptive and that's where the Orton Gillingham's helping that's my second concern cuz it's not individualized and that's and at the K2 level the group at the K2 level we don't need it to be
though because we have that scope and see we're learning everything at that level at the 35 that's where we need it really prescriptive but we need all those things so we're speaking common language from prek all the way up
through fifth grade thanks hi I have a question um two years back we had a assessment and and there were a couple of grades that were a little bit uh not meet meeting the benchmark now comes and now
I'm seeing kindergarteners through eight we're far behind so so and kindergarten is growing kindergarten showed showed the growth so with the Hagerty reading program so I'm going to say kindergarten showing and then there are some some of those pockets that we saw that they are
growing so I don't I mean I want to say everything we showed we talked about how we're growing um sometimes within our scale score but it's not go growing to the extent that should be if it's called the typical growth so they stay on level so I don't want to say we're not growing
we're not growing to the level that we should be growing so should we like look into some other district similar district to try to learn them some skill set i know you're doing your in-house uh preparation and teaching teaching our teachers and to you know we have a
certain demographic in our district that needs attention and is there somewhere we can you know ask and find out because this is not working it's been two years and the numbers have decline and I'm I'm just I just don't understand what are we
missing here is it staffing uh skills or some items we need what do we need to at least meet the minimum requirement now you're giving me score that are low starting kindergarten before we had because it was because of co our kids
were not doing well from 6 to 7 to 8 now you're telling me the kindergarten are having far behind how will they succeed in high school if they're not even meeting the minimum requirement now so Jabui I hear 100% what I'm going to ask
of the board is we're going to give us till May when the next set of data comes through and then we're I'm going to challenge that we do make some massive improvements because this can happen and for those who have been around for we've
made some serious adjustments in the past that have brought this up we may have to go back there but give me and I'm gonna ask you to give and I say me when I say me I'm talking about my team give us until May's assessment and then
I will come back to you with a plan if we're not seeing things where they should be thank you but I'm not going to sit here and tell you what you're seeing is not accurate not to say that thank you any other questions then we'll move on to our superintendent
report thank you Sandy okay so good evening everyone i do want to thank our team uh curriculum team for providing an update obviously we are uh collectively working uh hard to move the needle with our students and that's a
continuous process so we will not we will not stop that couple of updates for this evening um I just want to begin with some positive news just want to highlight a student from the high school uh each year sponsored by the Mercer
County School Boards Association there's an unsung hero uh each school each high school is asked to submit uh the name of a senior current senior who they believe um kind of makes uh the school better uh
and this is typically someone who may not u find themselves in a more traditional pathway towards uh recognition um but but someone who nevertheless may have faced some obstacles along the way or or deals with some unique challenges
despite that uh still persevere so um definitely wanted to uh congratulate uh a high school student um who was recognized last week ayanna Vince Oats we've recognized that West of Plainsboro is a high school where they they have
recognition last Thursday evening along with the other students within the county but definitely wanted to congratulate her again uh acknowledge her work and also the the staff members of the high school who uh support her rose Brown her assistant principal uh was the individual who nominated her at
the county level uh our student representatives mentioned Chicago High School Musical i didn't know the the statistics they shared tonight regarding the ticket sales the the uh the number of seats that were filled but I did have the opportunity to attend the um Friday
uh the Friday uh showing and uh was thoroughly impressed um it's been a a consistent theme for us obviously our visual performing arts program districtwide is something that we continue to really see as a highlight uh and and appreciate the board support in
in the arts program but yes Chicago was definitely a success for me just it just symbolized a combination of tremendous student talent obviously three months plus of dedicated preparation and the exceptional guidance and coaching uh from our exemplary educators so I just
want to extend kudos to to Mr camps and the other directors as well as the amazing Heistdale High School crew and cast just a reminder regarding uh the New Jersey school climate survey uh if you recall we were in the process of um
utilizing the survey this year uh through a partnership with Ruckers University and the New Jersey Department of Education uh this enables us to get a pulse on uh what students are feeling uh regarding their school environments uh
and their experiences within our schools each of our schools this is actually a grades 3 through 12 survey we've engaged our students in that process and we're in the uh the next phase will be looking at that data and this is compared to not only students within the East Regional School District but we also have an
opportunity to look at some of those domains and get a comparison across the state uh another component related to the survey is getting feedback from our staff and the third component is the caregiver survey so we did uh I guess
for the past two to three weeks schools have uh communicated the survey or provided the link last um I want to say last week we provided um we provided the link within the uh
weekly update and uh I believe this week we're closing it out um this will be the last week that'll be available to complete it so if you haven't already if you're a parent please provide that feedback obviously your input will help us kind of assess our strengths and identify areas for growth and
improvement uh to enhance the overall school climate and our last board meeting uh provided a brief update regarding the progress um related to the security vestibule of the high school this has been one of the
uh it's been a little slow to be quite honest with you but we did have a meeting today um with our district architect as well as high school administration also Paul Todd business administrator we met the contractor who is in the final stages of the project
which is a positive thing so um just to kind of uh give folks a sense of what we we engaged in we used the former principal's office which is now assistant principal space converted that space uh installed an exterior um uh
entry point and uh created a secured security uh space within there so uh the good news is that we did have the opportunity to finalize the assistant principal space that was converted as well as the secretary connected to the
assistant principal so they moved back in last week um looking at the security side of things in the vestibule appears that um based on the meeting today April 4th uh is the anticipated uh completion date uh along with inspections that will
need to occur so we look forward to uh being able to at least either either not if not prior to spring break definitely post spring break uh will be the u implementation of the security vest at the high school i have some unfortunate news and some of
you may be familiar with this just based on um some information was communicated via the news uh and this is kind of developing information so I'm sharing this right now based on on factual information that I'm aware of obviously as as we gather more information we'll
make that more um known but we did uh receive some sad news uh regarding a motor vehicle accident took place on Friday evening uh involved four uh graduates of Heistell High School unfortunately two two of the
individuals within within the motorb accident uh unfortunately passed away so Joshua Davis class of 2021 and also Aaron Davis class of 2019 unfortunately did not survive the accident their brothers Benjamin and
Nathaniel both class of 2024 fortunately did survive so obviously our thoughts and prayers with the Davis family during this extremely difficult time quick update regarding the governor's uh educator of the year um
recipients if you recall last month we we celebrated those individuals here uh during the uh February 24th I believe board meeting uh I mentioned during that recognition that the county was in the process of looking to kind of renew
rekindle um an opportunity to celebrate these individuals at the county level so we we uh I'm going back a few years but I want to say at least five years ago this used to be an annual tradition um but things
things changed unfortunately and then it kind of faded away so we're in the process of um collaborating with other districts as well as the county office and we are scheduled to uh celebrate these folks at the county level so they have the opportunity to recognize with
their county colleagues that'll be at May 1st the College of New Jersey invitations went out last week so looking forward to taking another opportunity just to recognize the talented educators within our district
as our student representatives indicated March 31st and Monday schools will be closed Um next board meeting won't be until April 28th so prior to that we will have spring break um Friday March 11th I'm
sorry Friday April 11th will be an early dismissal uh students will return to school on Monday April 21st as a reminder spring break will serve as a homework free holiday so therefore students will not be assigned
work to complete during spring break and they will not um return to school on Monday to a quiz or a test and uh with that that concludes my report thank you thank you Mark we'll now move on to our
first opportunity for board member comments any members of the board wish to speak hello i just want to thank everybody for the presentation um today and I also wanted to say how thoroughly I enjoyed Chicago and congratulate everybody
involved hi uh we are having our second science symposium at the Highttown uh cafeteria on Saturday from 9 to 1 can you please come uh you're all invited to come and support our kids who are participating
in ATM team building science projects uh they are starting from kindergarten to 8th graders so please drop by everyone if you can to support our amazing kids and that's from 9 to 1 on Saturday at Heightstown Cafeteria right here thank
you so much any other comments i'm just I have to say that Chicago was amazing and um thank you to everybody that helped put that on and the super talented kids that were part of it um and anybody in the community that doesn't make it a point
to get out to see any of the performing arts programs uh or any of the the extracurriculars that the kids participate in here uh is missing out on a really great part of this community so I second those thoughts Michael in fact I didn't have time but I kind of
frown down upon myself that I don't sit down with the district calendar and pull out all of those events so if I find that still too difficult I might rely on some help from administration to help us gather all of those dates throughout the year so that board members are more able
to attend them if we know about them in advance um because I do like to go out to the events and I was also able to see Chicago um thankfully I got to see it twice so I got to see both casts so I commend them all for their hard work so
any other comments okay there being none we'll move to our first opportunity for public comment any members of the public wish to make any statements or addresses okay there being none we'll move into
executive Oh there is I'm sorry i'm sorry i just So if you can please approach the podium um please state your name and address and write it on the clipboard next to it and public comments are limited to three minutes of time per
our policy district policy you just hit the button to the mic thanks Sandy for helping out thank you S all right good evening members of the board my name is Barry Greenstein and I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight i come before you not just as a taxpayer but as someone deeply invested
in the success and integrity of our schools and our students after looking at the 2025 to 26 budget presentation I'm concerned about the level of transparency and accessibility
in how the information has been presented to the public while the slideshow provides very high level figures and percentage changes it seems to lack the detail necessary for community members to understand how decisions are being made especially when
it comes to administrative spending personnel changes and capital improvements for example the budget presentation notes a 2.6% increase in the general fund from last year which is the highest in the past four years but there is no
breakdown showing exactly which programs or departments are seeing increases or cuts without a line item view or explanation of tradeoffs it's hard for the public to evaluate whether this budget reflects our shared priorities additionally it's
unclear how stakeholder input factored into the development of this budget the presentation highlights strategic plan goals yet there's no mention of whether community surveys forums or advisory input during the budgeting process took
place how do we know this budget truly reflects the needs of students staff and taxpayers transparency isn't just about presenting numbers it's about context communication and accountability
i ask and urge the board to consider publishing a more detailed version of the proposed budget prior to the approval which I believe is April 28th thank you for your time and for listening thank you are there any other members of
the public who wish to approach the podium comment okay there being none we will move on to our executive session and we will be about 20 minutes thank you okay our meeting is back in session um
we will now move on to old business um so let's see our committee meetings did the curriculum No I'm sorry the policy committee meet this evening we did okay do we want It was exciting do we
want to do an update now summary or Okay we are talking about the policy committee meeting earlier all right just back on the board after a while the um board um in the past year or so has been conducting an audit of our policies
including a review of all of our existing policies including those that go back um 10 20 years since they've been revised so part of that um review had to do with a um used our
service um policy service stress estate to do an audit of all of the policies to show how our policy manual is in conformance with the state code so there
are some markings on a grid that they provided that indicate those that require some updates but the committee as a whole um has also been conducting a page by page policy by policy review of everything in the policy manual to see
what we may want to look at what we might want to schedule for further discussion for those that might be okay and maybe we just actually have a policy update to indicate that the board has reviewed it more recently than 2004 or
earlier as some of them indicate uh we also talk about that process being um a an alert a series of alerts that our policy vendor provides us to update us on changes in state rules uh
regulations mandates and uh we have a part-time employee in the district who helps us to understand the impact of those um uh updates on existing
policies and schedule a review whereby we come up with new recommended or mandated language for those policies and one of the policies that has come up for review separate from that audit is a uh policy 7510 use of
school facilities we are having to look at the rates that are very old for custodial um and other overhead uh factors during the use of our facilities by community
organizations so that will be coming forward [Music] and the committee to the board as a whole we have some review of specific policies for tonight um those
having to do with um memorandum of agreement between educational law enforcement officials and some other general policy and regulation updates and our next meeting is in about a
month end of April um where we will be reviewing our results from our uh own committee members review of the audit list provided by SH Mark
oh can we have that changed on the little grid here to to show that reflect that April 22nd date please absolutely thank you which way is that
under the old business a 2025 committee meetings we have a little grid and policy shows the next date as being July 14th not April 22nd so perhaps that was added in as additional additional meetings so if we can update that whole
box there to reflect all the meetings that would be great did anyone have any questions okay so then any questions about the 2526 budget okay no qu no questions on the budget
just could we reiterate again what the process is for review and next steps next steps uh for the board will be uh April 28th where we have our public adoption and that's going to be posted as the formal public hearing that is the formal
public hearing on it correct thanks and then the budget adoption will be on May 12th that's our anticipated date to adopt the No that'll be April 28th that'll be April we'll adopt it we'll review and adopt next month well we've been reviewing it for a little while now
we continue to review it up until April 28th when uh the board will formally adopt that okay thank you one more i'm sorry in addition to the anticipated loss of some state aid have we looked at
contingency plans for potential loss of title one monies um as right now um you know we've received uh some word from the uh state department of ed that right now everything is planned to go as you know
status quo um even when you hear you know some of the you know talking heads on TV I think everyone saying that title one IDA looks like worst case scenario could be shifted to another department so I don't I don't think
we've heard that you know title one or IDA funding is up for to be cut i think for this upcoming year it appears that we we we'll be okay i think the concern will be subsequent years and I think there will be some I think when
the dust settles we'll have a better sense of how we prepare for next the following year's budget being optimistic here um I did hear or read about and I neglected to pull my items to actually pull the the laws off
my printer but there are some new funding being put forth for high impact tutoring grants continuous funding for literacy initiatives and continued funding for computer science programs do have do we
know anything about those are we looking into that to apply for those state grants i know it's not right at this level but do we have we did last year for the high impact tutoring we did that at the 35 level um so I'm not familiar with what you're referring to i think
it's a continuation of that we're still in the process of assessing the the impact of the high impact tutoring just really in terms of like where we fit we incorporated some of that into the school day this year so it be interesting to get a sense of uh as we
move towards the end of the school year um whether or not we're looking to continue that because last year we had adopted a before school model um which has its challenges as well but yeah we we we definitely applied for that and there was some carryover funding associated with that grant that we could
get some additional materials to support students so we did pursue that uh I will follow up on the other the other things you referenced i I'll send you um the the information that I found also one law was related to the office of learning equity and academic recovery
and then there was another one for periodic screening at lit for of literacy from the K through three level um two laws coming into I don't know if they've been finalized I think they from what I read they were but I just found out about them yesterday so I'm not well
verssed in them yeah I'm familiar with the screening the screening component uh we already have a pretty robust process at the K2 level for screening but I do believe there's legislation that's been put forth regarding that okay all right thank you any other questions or
comments um okay so we will move on to our second opportunity for board member comments any members of the board have any questions um I'm just trying to find out about the Oprah request um they're requesting some
time i didn't understand i thought we had provided that information already uh so what is the you know for you to go back to this that's a lot of work and time consuming on your part so I I would like to understand like what's the next
step for us uh to I think we have just provided everything that individual needed so I'm just going to find out what happened thank you yeah no problem that uh email that the board received um was a little confusing
to say the least because the requesttor was combining a couple of Oprah requests the timeline that they submitted was actually from a former Oprah request which has was satisfied and moved on
from um the I I think the uh requesttor is a little upset that they the Oprah request that they put in was rather large and so we um assessed the special service uh fee that we had you know the
board discussed and I don't think that the um individual quite liked the response i was quite honest with you so I think that's just what they were saying um their request results in like 2500
emails which would have to um be looked at individually just to make sure that there's nothing confidential in those items and that's what people don't understand there's a difference when you ask for a document like our budget like I just gave that to you that's not a problem but when you ask for emails
someone has to sit there and look at them there was another request which we didn't hear about where the um person asked for it and it turned out to be like 21,000 emails i can tell you in that batch there were attorney client
communications which have to be pulled there would have been HIPPA information those emails that would have had to been pulled and a lot of times there's duplicates where someone emails maybe someone administration and that gets kicked around a little bit and then they start
forwarding that email to their home address so you could have the same email in there four or five different times in different fashions a forward of a forward of a forward so sometimes you have to go all the way down into an email and it's not just a 10-second just let's take a look at so it is time
consuming which is why we have which why Oprah by you know by their regulations has the special service charge for those kind of things so so emails is really quite a different ball than just asking for a document so we just turn that
thank you any other board member comments um I just wanted to bring up another thing I just found out about apparently the city of Newark um has been the first city in New Jersey to um expand their um
voting for their local board of education to 16 and 17 year olds and I was wondering being as civic-minded as we are if that's something as a district we could consider doing here we can table the discussion for later because it may not be a yes or no
answer but I mean conceptually I don't have an issue with that we have to look at the parameters surrounding that if we're permitted to do so but I think that's definitely a discussion we can um pursue i think it further kind of highlights you know
civic responsibility but also u the education that undergards that i look forward to hearing more about what's entailed or researching myself and reporting back okay if there's no other um just to follow up on that is that is that a November election or is
that one of the old April it didn't specify tina um currently we do not have a vote on the public budget is that what you were talking about oh I'm sorry no no it's um for board of
education elections um Newark I they're just putting it into place i assume it's for I don't know what Newark what their calendar is if it's a November or an April election but it's probably irrelevant it's basically the the township that or the city of Newark
coming forth saying we would like our 16 and 17 year olds to be able to vote in the local board of education election so we could delve in further and find out what's entailed I guess because I just wanted to bring it to light because I thought that was really interesting and
I think that's something would be you know really amazing to do in this district to get them started on the right path there's no other board member comments we'll move to our second opportunity for public comments are there any members of the public who wish
to speak okay there being none we will move on to item nine mandated mandated policies for second reading uh A policy 2200 curriculum content b policy 3160 physical
examination c policy 4160 physical examination d policy 5350 student suicide prevention e policy 8420 emergency and crisis situations f policy 8467 firearms and
weapons second any questions yeah I have a question i I had a question u when we did the first reading u I understand we were consolidating the
item in to summarize the policy 2200 curriculum content and you said we're just going to synops the 14 bullet points and put it in this little paragraphs but in the 14th paragraph they were also referring to other policy
number on it so that would also be I guess put in that paragraph format as well it was related to other items on it yes so the so the the a lot of the information on the existing policy was
primarily outdated based on language so the fact that we're referring to New Jersey student learning standards that's something that's been updated um and the bottom line is that you know the board um in order to
provide a thorough and efficient education you need to approve the adoption of new courses you also need to approve um curriculum um you know there are revisions to curriculum and obviously those those courses or pathways to
learning should be based on state standards they also they also need to be in line when you refer to other policies the high school graduation requirement is another policy that needs to be um connected to that so you know one of the things we had the board do last month I believe was approve the program of
studies which kind of serves as you know our coursework related to the high school so uh it's yeah some of that older policy was just uh language clean up but also consolidation of process but it doesn't reduce the board's impact on responsibility to approve curriculum and
courses thank you any other questions pull of the board please miss Conception yes miss Drake yes
mr larry yes miss Patel yes mr weeks yes miss Lambs yes item 10 recommended policies for second reading a policy 5337 service animals b policy
9181 volunteer athletic coaches and co-curricular activity adviserss and assistants second any questions pull the board please miss Conpsium yes
miss Drake yes mr labry yes miss Patel yes mr weeks yes miss Lance yes item 11 mandated regulations for second reading
a regulation 4160 physical examination b regulation 3160 physical examination c Regulation 5200 attendance d regulation 8467 firearms and weapons
second any questions pull the board please miss Conceptia yes miss Drake yes mr lowry yes miss Patel yes mr weeks yes miss Lance yes
item 12 motion to approve routine items by exception having read the materials received I move that the board approve the routine agenda items as submitted a staffing for March 24th 2025 b hiv report for March 10th 2025 c approve
travel and related expenses virtual and in person d approve four HHS scholarship applications for seniors e approve HHS overnight DECA trip Orlando Florida April 2025 f approve new field trip sites for
upcoming trips g resolution to issue -ate form 471 award for wireless access points h resolution to issue -ate form 47 or 471 award for MHK internet access
i resolution to issue -ate form 471 award for MHK network cabling j resolution to issue -ate form 471 award for HHS internet access k professional services for students l transportation
jointer m bid rejection HHS scoreboard replacement n approval of HVAC and interior upgrades at change order number four o professional service contract Edwards Engineering p co-op purchases q board meeting minutes for
March 10th 2025 r executive session board minutes March 10th 2025 s bill list of March 24th 2025 second any questions um Paul I just have one
inquiry or perhaps a small request under this the um approve item C approve travel and related expenses um oftentimes I'll go in and look up what all the acronyms are when we're approving things just because I feel that's good process is there a way that
you could just do that ahead of time and tell us what it's for do you have any sample um the Yes New Jersey Tiesel that's a good one um let's see the one that took me a little more time
was the um sorry the OFAC fingerprinting and school bus safety it took me a little bit of time that to figure out what office that was what OFAC stood for i did drill down
a little bit but it just you know we like our I know but I just thought it'd be helpful for the board to not have to go out and do all that research every time we're approving some of them are more obvious they they look like they go
together of course but I just thought it would be good process to do that if it's not too much trouble julie noted thank you okay any other questions okay pull the board
miss Concepts yes miss Drake yes mr lowry yes miss Patel yes mr weeks yes miss Lens yes okay being we do not have the need for a second executive session i call this meeting to an end thank you
everyone for joining us how great