##VIDEO ID:cJBxP8A8e30## e e e testing one two 3 testing e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening everybody hello and welcome to a regular meeting of the East Windsor Regional School District um written advance notice of this meeting was provided at least 48 Hours of ago such notice provided the time date and location of the 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 Leen Lane heightstown New Jersey minutes will be provided at cost and in 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 in the back on the left and the right and our sides on the left and the right please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all you Item B having read the materials received I move the agenda be approved as submitted please pull the board second sorry one second missc concepion yes thank you Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes Mr ly yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss lens yes item C be it resolved that the East Windsor Regional School District May hold two closed sessions at this meeting these Clos Clos sessions concern uh Personnel HIV report of January 27th 2025 settlement agreement 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 concepion yes Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes Mr lavy yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss Lans yes we'll now move on to our student Representatives report good evening everyone unfortunately San couldnot attend today so it will just be me but I have a lot of activities to report to you regarding our student body first I would like to talk about the end of the second marking period which is this Friday and also the end of the first semester of the school year as always we hope for students and parents and Guardians to monitor their academic progress and recognize future room for improvement as we head into marking period 3 but we would like to First commend our students for all their hard work this semester additionally marking Period 2 report cards will be out shortly as grades will be finalized on February 7th moving on to Athletics our heightstown winter sports teams have been having phenomenal performances our swim team for example on the 25th competed at the Mercer County CVC championship and did an incredible job with placings in the second third fifth eth and 11th Place next we would like to commend our indoor track team for their performance at the CVC championships last weekend not only did student Burke Thompson win the 1600 meter conference title and Terrence Williams won in the 55 meter dash but we also had AA somel Jaden Bosley and Sienna Rivera medling for the girls team our cheer teams additionally also had incredible success yesterday at the Liberty lion cheer challenge where they took first place in both their traditional and game day divisions won Picture Perfect pyramid and had the highest score to make them the game day Grand Champs finally we'd like to congratulate the boys and girls wrestling team at their CVC Conference tournament we're student Chris craines was the boys champion and Kira Reyes and Gabby sonon jewes were the girls champions in short we are very proud of our teams and wish them all the best as they finish their seasons in the coming weeks speaking about Athletics we would like to also emphasize that spring Sports registration is open until February 2nd anyone who wishes to participate in any of the 2024 to 2025 spring athletic programs offered must register on the Genesis Parent Portal we will not be offering extensions and are excited to see our students take advantage of this opportunity next we were excited to announce that our that the inter School chess tournament will be happening tomorrow our very own chess club invites all students to join this annual event after school in the heightstown library participants who rank at the top will have the opportunity to represent heightstown at the state tournament coming up this March interested players can sign up using the QR QR code on the Flyers poster on the school or through the chess club's Google Classroom so please make sure to show up quick announcement for the senior class the senior class advisers are now taking orders for cap and gowns cap and gowns cost $30 each and so payments can be made using ticket spet so please email or see Mr bchi or Mr feda to provide your height weight and cap and gown color Choice orders placed after April 11th will be $40 finally we would like to congratulate the HHS winners from the 2025 NJ thesan Festival each of these students earned a superior score by the judges of their respective categories and are now eligible to compete at the international thesbian festival at Indiana University in June we wish them all the best in their preparation efforts this concludes the end of the report thank you everyone for listening and we look forward to seeing you again at the next meeting and are very excited to hear the upcoming performances thank you thank you for that concise report does the board have any questions no I just wanted to say congratulations to all our extra all our students accomplishments in their extracurricular activities try to take notes there's just so many to name so way to go guys um we'll move on to item three and our first presentation of the evening is our student performances from the Middle School and High School bands and Orchestra uh good evening everyone just a quick introduction so tonight uh special evening thanks for joining us um January is board recognition month in the state of New Jersey so uh as a a small token of appreciation I thought it would be fitting to um have an opportunity to hear and see uh some student performances it's also an opportunity to see um the the work that the board supports as it relates to programs within our school district so this will fall under the co-curricular umbrella tonight uh we're going to uh hear some musical performances from our middle school program beginning with our Orchestra I believe um then we'll transition up to the high school uh at the conclusion of the the musical performances we are then going to transition into recognizing some of our student artists uh who participated in a calendar a district calendar uh for 2025 each board member as a as a small uh token of appreciation also has a calendar before them this evening uh to show the the great work of our students but also the the important toage of our art Educators within our school district so without further Ado I'm going to turn things over I believe to miss damiko for the uh middle school orchestra board members if you would prefer to sit in the front row to have a better visual of the performers I'd suggest you do so thank [Music] you okay that's a little better so I don't have to shout good evening everyone my name is Miss Deo I am the or director at um mhk Middle School um and this here is our eighth grade Orchestra so um we're going to play one piece for you tonight entitled fiddles on fire um before we play I just wanted to give a huge thank you to both our board and our Administration for their support of our programs without all of the work you all put in this this doesn't happen so I'm super appreciative and I know the rest of my music team here is as well so without further Ado the eighth grade Orchestra thank you so much like right there [Music] [Music] for [Music] l [Music] good awesome excellent got it wonderful it off there it is got it we're good amazing thank you so much how about that Orchestra uh for those of you who don't know my name is Mr Smith I'm the director of the eighth grade band and the co- corrector uh co-director of the Jazz Band it's really great to be here tonight uh one of our jazz bands one we have two at the Middle School uh we're going to play a tune called sideways walking dog I hope you enjoy it [Music] [Music] he a [Music] la [Music] a [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] thanks again we're going to have a quick swap the gold B under Mr long is going to come up follow right along you guys can get out however you got to get out good evening uh my name is Mr Longwell uh as Mr Smith said I am the other co-director um of the jazz band at creps uh before you we have the gold jazz band uh we're going to be playing one selection for you this evening it's a holiday classic I think you're going to get it right away um you're going to hear a trumpet duet in the back from rudra Patel and amen Muhammad we hope you enjoy Frosty the Snowman one [Music] [Music] la [Music] you do e spe for [Music] yeah you can [Music] l for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good evening every everybody I'm Miss OD day this is our heightstown high school Jazz Ensemble um thank you for giving us a second we had some technical difficulties um we're going to perform a chart for you called Roa map originally by the Thad Jones Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra and on this you're going to hear a solo from Leah pachelli on trumpets and Daniel cargy on trombone thank you [Music] okay one [Music] he [Music] for [Music] than let's have another round of applause for our student performance this evening excellent job okay my computer's kind of thinking but we'll not move on to item first I wanted to say thank you to all of our talented student musicians and our dedicated and passionate music teachers they really love what they do and we are very grateful to have them in District and we're very grateful to have the programming um so yes we'll move on to item 3B which is our arst artist presentation Libby I'm going to turn things over to you all right good evening everyone I'm Libby gopala I'm the district Visual and Performing Art supervisor here in East wins Regional School District and I am thrilled to celebrate our featured artists for being one of the 15 student artists selected for the ewrsd 2025 Arts calendar the featured calendar artwork show cases the talent of the individual student and highlights the overall Excellence of our art program here in the East Windsor Regional School District in order to honor this achievement of artistic Excellence we are going to individually call each student artist on stage and or right here next to me and award them with a certificate of artistic achievement one of our art teachers from the district is going to accompany us we have Miss Regina Caruso from mhk here with us we we have Miss Saran Yen from emk and we have Tama Diaz here from G&R helping to assist with recognizing our wonderful students so when we call your name if you could please come on up here and Mr Daniels if you could join me that'd be great okay now this I yeah let me try block them from walking you know what we're okay yes I can make it work all right Ryan Le asro come on up Dominic Delgado angam Mara Cameron Morris RV Ray Elizabeth shei cic Ashley delado Allison Campos Nunes Irene Tong Hassan Eileen eras Campo Verde Diana duerto Paredes congratulations let's give them all a nice round of applause thank you so much congratulations to all our students thank you for your contributions in the beautiful calendar and thank you to our creative and dedicated teachers um our next item is item three C our strategic goal update I'm going to okay we're going to take a little five minute recess e e e e e e e e e e okay I think we'll transition into the presentation we're going to we're going to um take care of these lights shortly but I don't want us to hold up the presentation just for the lights all right I figured you would all right so um quick introduction here so if you recall last year thank you so much thank you thank you so last year we engaged uh the community in the strategic planning process um to seek feedback regarding kind of setting the stage and the the uh road map for the next five years in terms of U priorities for the school district uh so from that process which really took about between four and six months um the district came up with five goal areas uh those goal areas were student center learning Staffing Community engagement facilities and finance culture and clim uh within each of those um goal areas there were also goal statements as well as objectives to support the the goals over that five-year window tonight serves as a a brief update we actually originally scheduled to do this update in December uh we we've a few things were kind of getting in the way and we moved it to tonight so tonight will be U kind of twofold one the uh initial portion of the presentation will provide a an update regarding each of the five goal areas kind of um from a district lenss and then we'll transition to getting a sense of what's happening at the building level and that'll be delivered kind of from a school level standpoint K2 3568 in the high school I will say that in terms of the information that we're going to share tonight we're the the intent is not to address every objective uh related to a specific goal area actually some of the goals we may but but we've kind of tried to hone in on on specific objectives related to specific goals for the building level um they will not be addressing every goal area because every goal area doesn't always apply directly in terms of where we are uh currently so to begin things tonight we will begin with Goal one um for this portion of the presentation there'll be an emphasis on the objective 1.1 which is on stem and we're really going to talk tonight specifically regarding kind of the K8 uh trajectory as it relates to stem uh within the school district so I'm going to turn things over to I believe uh Christine Steiner supervisor of our K2 pluse not necessary but thank you uh so go right ahead so primarily my role is K2 supervisor but in the stem realm it is a responsibility that I've assumed from a K5 perspective so thinking about our elementary schools um we began our stem journey in the 1819 school year uh and so this is something that that we've been invested in it began really as a related arts Endeavor of this is an experience our children will go to uh and the engineering design process is really what has driven that work so our students were engaged in challenges here's a problem that we're noticing how are we going to address that what are some possibilities what can we create really to foster a mindset with our students of having them be willing to take educational risks to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills to have them work with partners and teams to develop collaboration and communication uh which are the the four CES of 21st Century Learning and that was sort of our driving force in terms of how are we going to start this process with the thought in mind that our goal is not to have stem live in the stem lab but wanting us to infuse this into all of the work that we're doing in in our Elementary classrooms having it start with that kernel and growing from there and that's kind of been our ongoing conversation and focus of how do these critical thinking skills thought processes uh soft skills if you will how do they infiltrate all of the work that we're doing in our K5 classrooms so we have just a two short examples for you uh when we started the stem classroom as a related arts Endeavor we were very conscious about making connections in stem to the science curriculum so for example second graders are studying simple machines and one of the challenges that they're involved in is designing a playground that is using um levers and uh simple machines in their designs and in third grade they are designing confetti launchers which connects to the study of energy in their science curriculum so it's a natural Connection in our home room classrooms to make that connection in our Science World so in K2 for example our units of study are embedding performance tasks which are really connected to that design process that they're using in the stem classroom so a lot of those same procedures and thinking skills are showing up in our science rooms where children are collaborating working together to design solutions to situations and problems uh in the math classroom both at K2 and 35 this is another opportunity for us to to connect to that type of thinking so our current approach in math uses um the idea of productive struggle and presenting students with a solve and share problem where we're introducing uh a a situation or problem to them where they might not have received direct instruction yet but we're asking them to engage with Partners to come up with ways that they might be able to address and solve that problem that approach is expanded in the 35 world where they're using something called vertical whiteboards in their math classrooms and so this is really again connecting to those four C's where students are collaborating and communicating with their team as they are making their thinking come alive on these vertical whiteboards working out their Solutions talking about what our next steps might be or does my solution make sense and really trying to find ways to infuse those skills that I talked about on the previous slide of taking educational risks and critical thinking and finding ways of communicating and being creative as we're approaching educational problems but really looking for those real world connections and how those skills will assist our students beyond the classroom in in the middle school we now have students coming up from the elementary who have had that full experience that Christine just discussed in K to2 up to 3 to 5 and in 6 to8 like the elementary 6 to8 began the stem in the science area of our curriculum and that was in 2018 um since then we have expanded the science out to Branch into the humanities and really taking those four seas and looking at the creativity and the critical thinking we were already infusing the IDM model in social studies that's the inquiry design module modules they are from the C3 Frameworks for Citi cens ship um there are a lot of mandates in 6 through 8 related to citizenship and global citizenship and making sure that students are looking at the world around them and their place in it um that dovetailed very nicely with the four seas um into that came the design um thinking cycle in the Middle School in the in the science classes they went through that for about three years we were in the science um curriculum and moved that out into social studies and that was not just a quick shift that involved training of staff that involved communication between the stem teachers acting to facilitate those cross articulations um building each of the challenges to ensure that the scientific principles were still a priority but that those thinking routines and those thinking skills were embedded in a way where it flowed naturally in the humanities and again because they were well trained in the IDM framework the teachers in the humanities were already teaching students those critical for sees and asking them to look at problems and see how they could possibly solve them um that inquiry kind of expands their ability to then go into research which is a big part of the Middle School experience they go into research they learn how to ask better questions how to use those questions to attack or approach problems and then to look at those problems and see if there are different ways to solve them and that speaks right to that design framework did I just go no I wanted to go back thank you um so these are the modules we're sharing with you that are currently in the social studies curriculum and we did begin last year year this was something that we built all summer we began last year and we had limited integration we moved this year from two stem teachers to three stem teachers each working at a different grade level and working with the core social studies team to build each of these these areas and like Christine I'm going to give you an example in the seventh grade we just finished one um a challenge that was on monuments the students had to in their social studies class consider who's worthy of a monument why would a monument be built what are the important factors we consider in giving a person a monument so they had to go through and do some research they worked with the library media specialist that involved looking at valid resources looking at bias and resources and then they brought it out into the stem lab and they actually built prototypes of their monuments and they had to look at what is the infrastructure where is it going to go what is the building materials if you're building it on a high mountain it better be flexible um and they tinkered and built those in the lab when they were all done they were they were facilitated with questions that had them look at their model and say is this the best it could be how could I change it if I changed the geography if I changed how it was received um by by a population or someone who looks at it and says maybe there should be a monument for someone else so so they're looking at both of those within the structure in the first four days they go into the stem lab and in the next four days the stem teacher comes with the social studies class and they continue the inquiry through that that research and that um writing so we bring in writing and they have to defend their position through argumentative Literacy for that Monument so each of the challenges go in that format they have eight days each quarter in stem so this year we've almost doubled our stem time in the middle school they have 32 days a year of stem and in each of those they get together they collaborate as a team and they present that out to the students we also have refined our rubrics to reflect the work that Christine is doing down in K to 5 because the students are coming up with stronger skills and we're responding to those with unique or different or more complex challenges for the students yes thank you we have not left science we started in science and that is really the the foundational courses those challenges are still in science and they um these are the ones that are embedded in the curriculum for each of the years um in each area they're embedded in different branches of science so that the students see how stem weaves through each of those um areas and again they are facilitated by a science teacher who has that strong background in stem and worked for three years before the stem teachers moved on at building these perfecting them sometimes changing them right if the students come into a challenge and it and it's not it's not really fitting their needs or developing their thinking we have made some some tweaks to the challenges and that work went on throughout the last two years these are the challenges that stay in stem and like the stem in the social studies they branched out and they've been slightly refined based on the skills that the students are bringing because now they're seeing it in two different disciplines moving forward we are looking we have a PLC right now in our humanities we are working with the ELA teams as well and we are looking at where we can embed some of the research and media skills into the design process a little bit more in that content area bringing it into Ela not with an additional challenge but with a different with a different lens kind of taking the challenges that they're doing in social studies saying I wonder if and kind of researching that and seeing where they can go with it that might result in changes to the challenges in Humanities as the students learn more and we respond to that with our instruction okay so moving along goal two is Staffing um the goal statement focused on Staffing was obviously to recruit and retain staff to reflect the rich background of our student population tonight I'm only going to highlight uh objetive 2.3 which talks about ensuring that the professional development plan is aligned with the district's vision mission and established goals so um I'll rewind the clock a little bit so last school year we invested in scop training um for several of our teacher cohorts throughout the district especially those teachers who obviously are working and connected to bilingual and ESL classrooms but not only that we realize that if you're working in the East Windsor Regional School District uh odds are you are going to have some level of interaction and will be responsible for some instruction related to a multilingual learner so um scop is just an acronym for sheltered instruction observation protocol it's an approach to kind of connect learning in an intentional manner uh for students who may not come to the classroom speaking English as their primary language but recognizing that they do bring strengths and experiences to that classroom and how do we leverage that uh to kind of match maximize their educational experience um with English as the primary goal uh moving forward but not to abandon the fact that they're they're coming with a different language in our community often times Spanish so uh some of the uh areas that we focused on so last year was a kind of a year-long process we've continued that this year um where we had three-day trainings for teachers that actually also took place during the summer fast forward to this year we have five uh Central offic professional development meetings where we've created a theme uh of scup training to continue uh throughout the year just to kind of have a thread and a connection in terms of the work we're doing so just some of the areas that have been focused on obviously language objectives uh building background and incorporating that into lesson planning um the area below TSO training cultur responsive teaching that um came out of the work and really came out of the equity audit um that was delivered to the district uh around this time last year one of the recommendations within there was to partner um with a press professional development provider to really focus on uh some culturally responsive practices to ensure that we are kind of bridging uh learning but also kind of valuing uh students home cultures and making sure that we leverage that within the classroom a couple of things that came out of the work related to the audit was the fact that we did have an equity Summit this summer where we had our district uh equity team come together um we also uh kind of launched the the cultur responsive teaching practices during our district-wide professional development day in October and we've also followed that up in terms of kind of following a similar Trend we were trying to create some consistency and followup and and we're we're leveraging four faculty meetings at each of our schools uh that will occur throughout the year I think we've most schools have had about two sessions thus far the right hand side just talks a little bit about some of the professional development this is is obviously not an exhaustive list but this just gives you a sense of uh some of what's happening and what's offered to our Educators within the district you can read those I will highlight K2 leader and me you may hear a little bit about that a little bit more in the presentation um the district has um partnered with leader and me uh it's kind of connected to the cvy work and um we wanted to kind of have a foundational Approach at the K2 level where we could instill a sense of obviously leadership responsibility but a sense of shared purpose as we're kind of taking students through those early stages within School Community um and that's really been a significant part of the professional learning that's happened at the K2 level this year I believe that our principles at the K2 level will we'll talk about that some more as we get into the presentation and the transition to Gold three which is community engagement um so I'll highlight a couple of the areas related to community engagement I will talk briefly about uh let me just actually share the the goal statement uh for that particular goal was was discussing um us developing and fostering lasting district-wide relationships that connect people of diverse backgrounds through every academic stage of life so I'll highlight a couple of areas the the first objective talked about um Universal preschool so that's been something that the district's been um exploring uh for the past few years uh to be quite honest so uh we realized that that serves as a a great foundational start for all of our students within the school district uh especially for our students who are coming from very backgrounds so um I'll say two years ago we were we were poised to at least launch uh in and actually we wanted to open some spaces in each of our elementary schools uh as we kind of went throughout the the school year we realized that we did not have the classroom space that we thought we would um which was which was a little disappointing and we wanted to make sure that there was enough space to open where it was meaningful um class sizes a cap to 15 we wanted to make sure that there was enough there for us to be able to invite uh an adequate or a decent amount of our our three and four year olds in the community to attend so we paused that um um and I'm going to talk about that in facilities and finance shortly because we also looked at some uh additional facility space in terms of adding on or even building so I'll talk about that a little bit further we are right now poised to and we haven't abandoned that but we are poised right now another option is to partner with local providers uh we are seriously exploring and considering that at this point at least opening the discussion to determine what that may mean uh as an opportunity for us to to kind of launch Universal prechool within within the district so that will uh some more information about that will be forthcoming uh objective 3.2 um talks about some Summer Bridge opportunities I'll just highlight a couple here we have our High School summer transition program which is kind of thrown I'd say uh during the past several years this is designed for Rising nth grade students to transition their time from mhk to the high school we realized that when students are transitioning from any level in in in the school district it can be challenging uh the high the Middle School to high school transition can be uh a significant one so we want to make sure that we have uh an opportunity to bring students in we invited all freshmen this year uh it's a weekl long program and really it's designed to prepare them to have a a kind of a springboard uh to acclimate themselves with some academic Readiness but also familiarity with adults within the building and just navigating the high school and getting a feel for that Community higher up uh is a partnership with a nonpr nonprofit local uh organization um their mission is to really create some meaningful summer jobs and internships for students uh they do have a focus on underrepresented students as well uh and they had about 30 students who participated this past uh summer um I think there about 22 current students and about eight graduates but we found that to be effective partnership that we continue to move forward with this year moving on 3.3 talks about Community Resources just to prepare students for future interest um these are just some examples of what we have here uh whether it's the student services transition Fair we have our counseling department that hosts several information sessions for students and families um I'll transition to to 3.4 just to highlight some district-wide community events um that that kind of include families and all aspects of life that list is obviously not exhaustive but our pack nights we have about four pack nights throughout the school year U parent advisory committee it's uh geared towards our multilingual learner population and their families and then providing them with resources and and and really kind of acclimating them to our school district and some of the the norms and um um supports that are available so families can navigate and support their children in their educational Journey uh this current school year was this year right was it this year now I'm thinking like is where's day R Chris Bay was it this year we did that right and the time just just like it all Blends together so so this year we partnered with HUAC uh the student services department partnered with hpac to engage in a special education resource fair that um invited several um entities within the the county and beyond that could provide resources to families uh to parents of those students whose children are uh under the special education umbrella the student services department also had the opportunity that night to kind of share and highlight some of the role of a case manager and some other things connected to the student services department uh thought it was a really successful evening and it was a a good sense of collaboration between huag and and the school district uh lastly here 3.5 I referenced this earlier this is ensuring that the district decisions and operations reflect the diversity of the community through a commitment to educational Equity access opportunities and cultural responsiveness so I just take you back to the equity audit the equity audit had five domains or five pillars those are the five pillars there that uh kind of pushed out some um some next steps i' would say in terms of what um what the district should consider as it relates to addressing uh that particular standard um so as I referenced before the I'll talk about that fourth bullet professional learning and personal growth um that was kind of connected to the work as I I shared before regarding our partnership with TSO for cultural responsive teaching these five areas are what's driving the district Equity committee um so there'll be more to come as it relates to updates related to those five domains go for facilities and finance so um me let me share the statement just to make sure so goal statement create a safe and secure learning environment while remaining fiscally responsible so um excuse me so we had a facility assessment report in 2017 that was updated um actually it will be updated by the end of uh this school year um so in terms of we we're constantly reviewing the conditions of our facility obviously HVAC has become a significant area for us uh postco which kind of highlighted some of the Aging HVAC within our schools and we're continuing to uh strategically address that at each of our schools the high school being uh the the next School uh scheduled to engage in that process uh obviously Roofing is always an issue for us as it relates to wear and tear as we move forward um it says you can see here Elementary School walks are scheduled for the end of uh next month uh early childhood education that was connected to so it's a relationship between go three go four as it relates to the Early Childhood component and this is more so the facility needs that are associated with that uh and as I shared before we did partner with our our Architects SSP to engage in various options regarding space um for Early Childhood centers and I I say it would be a variation of looking at our existing School spaces to determine how we could reconfigure classrooms um all the way up to well and then considering additions to spaces and then all the way up to creating spaces uh for Early Childhood Center so what I'd say a number of our schools especially on the height height toown side of of town and actually i' say primarily Heist town we definitely notice limitations regarding the ability to expand existing facilities we just don't have the footprint in addition to some traffic congestion that we already have um what I will say is two schools emerged where we believe that there is space uh for us to create a standalone building and that would be emk and pl where we left things emk appeared to be probably um the better option for a host of reasons now there are there's still some some things to take a look at as it relates to parking and so forth but emk seemed to be uh the space that we think would be most viable as it relates to having the space for the facility obviously another options to consider we've done we actually this about four years ago maybe five years ago you know considering uh a facility that's not necessarily connected to one of our existing schools and either taking uh a property uh reconfiguring that property or identifying some land to to build uh An Early Childhood Center this is just uh giving you a a visual of some of the requirements that we need to uh take into consideration when establishing um preschool environment we're anticipating something that house 400 students and it just talks about the square footage that's required and kind of list what we have as relates to our our existing schools just to give you a sense of what that is these are just the layout of a first floor second floor actually this would be the design that we we are considering for that the space at emk if we were looking to move in that direction go five culture of climate so um goal statement cultivate an inclusive and respectful climate for all stakeholders that inspires and values diversity of thought and opinion um couple of objectives here so this is focused on a sense of belonging by increasing the level of participation in extracurriculars by 30% so um we're actually in the process of doing this as we speak we're gauging interest uh of our middle school and high school students to determine kind of um to gather some feedback in terms of their needs interests uh what they are potentially seeking as it relates to an extracurricular experience we're also in the process of just um determining just some numbers you know numbers of students participating currently La actually last school year and also kind of breaking that down by you know students who are participating but also differentiating those students who may be participating in more than one activity so we'll be in the process of gathering that data shortly and I'll provide the board with an update as it relates to kind of student feedback and and and possible um expansion of our offerings you know just as an aside at the middle school and high school our typical rhythm is to have student interest for particular activity and then we need to identify a staff member to serve as that advisor that's that's generally we prefer it when it's more organic with students are kind of you know having that felt need and that felt level of interest and typically um it usually works itself out in terms of establishing a club um 5.2 just talks about share code of conduct you want to wait we can ask it now I was I was hoping we wait till the end but go ahead no go ahead you can ask good no that's fine go for it no go ahead they do so we we're getting feedback on not to say that so what I would say it will ask you a question it does we we are seeking that feedback it's a great that's a great it's a great question so so for those of you that didn't hear it it was um when we're looking at extracurricular interest are we also including Athletics the the answer is yes and then the the follow-up question was how would we address a situation where we may have high demand for a particular sport like soccer at the high school and uh not being able to accommodate all those students stud because we only have a varsity junior varsity team so what we do we we um we are exploring um and we have it at the middle school level for certain activities but we have talked about uh creating an intramural structure for those students who would not be um who wouldn't make those teams but still have a significant interest we want we would like to create something that is um still has a competitive feel to it so so there's some buying as it relates to to it being something that students can participate in but yes we definitely want to make sure that if you've got 60 students that did not make one of those teams we don't want to let that go and how do we capture that we believe that a that a competitive intramural structure would at least address some of those needs that's okay sorry all right um so the shared code of conduct we have code of conducts at each of our school levels um we are in the process of looking to review as we do annually uh we'll be meeting with the assistant principles next month uh to be to be to engage in that process um and then we want to kind of take what the review entails take that back to school level seek feedback from teachers students and families as we begin to reshape and determine direction for the upcoming year this this is very specific language in here I'll say that this was generated from the strategic planning process because at that point in time I think that's what we knew at that moment and the Panorama survey which is more of an SEO related survey was something that we talked about administering twice a year uh as we were going through that process last year we also discovered that the New Jersey school climate Improvement survey also emerged and we thought that that was more of a um Gathering perspectives on how students staff and family Ames feel as it relates to uh their experience their sense of belonging within uh the schools they're connected to so we are poised actually for students in grades 3 through 12 to administer the New Jersey school climate survey and that will go uh that will be um taken by students we'll also be having our our our staff participate in that as well as famili so parents will be getting that communication within the next couple of weeks regarding that and we'll create a window of time for the survey to be completed it's not a very long survey um we believe the domains connected to the survey are relevant uh this is kind of a partnership between the New Jersey Department of Education and Ruckus University so we think it's a a worthwhile piece of data for us to to gather um 5.4 just talks about celebrating very cultures within the East Windor Regional School District um and this is kind of hearkening back to what I shared before as it relates to our partnership with tiso and engaging in our culture responsive professional development experiences um 5.5 so this talks about uh cultivating social emotional skills uh I just highlighted just the fact that the at the and we go beyond that but at the elementary level our counselors prepare monthly lessons um that kind of focus on a specific area uh under the castle standards forcl and they push in to deliver those lessons just a couple of next steps here here obviously we're going to review the interest uh survey and the feedback um we'll have a an opportunity to engage in what we think the code of student conduct needs to look like as it relates to differentiated levels and some consistency um from one School uh level to the next we will review our survey feedback as it relates to Panorama and our New Jersey school climate and um we'll have a continuous kind of feedback loop regarding the professional development M connected to culture responsive teaching strategies and with that said I'm going to transition to the school level updates beginning with our K2 and uh we'll have our principes Miss folks and Mrs glin thank you all right okay you could Advance the slide please thank you all right for K2 in Reading we have two new initiatives that we have been working on hegerty is one of them um that's in our kindergarten classrooms and it's focused on pheic awareness we've had trainings for implementation we've done walkthroughs um seeing the program in action and we've also had uh professional learning communities that have been um looking at student progress in the program uh as Mr Daniels mentioned we have the leader and me program in our K through2 schools um this is our first year of implementation and one of the components is a data binder um so that's a place where students can set goals track their progress and reflect on their learning um so we do have some early adopters who have been doing that to address the achievement Gap we've implemented and again we spoke about this as a district initiative but um at the K2 building we've been supporting the scop model um really to support all our learners through the different trainings um we've had central office meetings and also some summer PD for uh those that could make it in addition to that we have our Orton Gillingham training which we've been using with our special education students uh to support a multi-century approach to learning to read for our professional development plan again um some of this was discussed earlier but at the K2 schools we are uh working on the leader and me the so those trainings have been happening they started in August with a lighthouse team which is a leadership group of Staff members that came together to set the stage for the school year um so that started in the summer and then we've had full day trainings and that was at the um first in the two in service days in the beginning of the year uh in addition to that our PLC meetings are focused on this training and most recently we had a coaching visit from the leader in May um who came in and provided us guidance and feedback on our process hi so I get to start with scup which you've now heard about I think three times but that's okay so as has been said um we've adopted the scup model as a way to meet the academic needs of multilingual Learners um so during the summer there was optional PD provided for staff members and administrators and those sessions were really well attended and and then throughout the school year as has been said all of our content meetings have been focused on training staff on the scup model so we've had um trainings three trainings so far uh on language objectives building background and then um building background again and then we will be moving on to lesson planning um in my building it's next week um and yeah sorry um writing initiative at the K2 level we decided to really focus this year um all of our attention on one component of ela instruction which is writing so during the summer there was an essential PD as well as other optional PDS that focused on writer Workshop structures and approaches and throughout the school year the teachers have been participating in a book study of the book how to become a better writing teacher and then all of our supervisor and content meetings this year have been focused on that text okay Equity I get to talk about tisu again too um so the um District host pack meetings for Spanish-speaking families throughout the year and rk2 teachers share that information about those meetings with their families and some have even attended those pack nights to show the support um we have teachers and administrators um at the K2 level who are members of the district Equity team and participate in those meetings and also participated in the summer Summit um also as previously mentioned our staff is implementing scup model to make content more accessible for our multilingual Learners uh we're also building staff capacity to deliver culturally responsive and Equitable instruction to our students through our trainings with TSO the two K2 schools have had one training so far and we will have three more um by the end of the school year and thenal is really the heart of all we do in K2 um our schedule is designed to include dedicated time for instruction where the classroom teachers will facilitate daily lessons focused on leader and me and the seven habits we've also made sure that the language and strategies from leader and me uh program are embedded in all of our content areas so that as I like to say we're all speaking the same language to our students and we're happy to report that our students are starting to really exhibit those seven habits so we're seeing success good evening everyone I'm Jasmine Allen the proud principal of Perry L Drew elementary school and I'm going to start us off with our grades 3 to five update so our first slide just goes into where we're at with our action steps we are going to be talking about the goals on the side um and it just really details where we are at in that process so we're thinking about exploring that's more so A needs assessment you can see that uh for all of our goals we are no longer on that stage think about planning it's about developing a clear road map with objectives timelines and responsibilities once we get to that create stage we want to be able to design and build tools and resources to achieve our objectives thinking about implementing want to put that plan into action once we get to that monitoring stage we are tracking our progress to ensure that initiatives are being executed as planned once we get to our monitor I'm sorry our analyzing phase we're examining data and Trends uh once we evaluate we want to assess the overall impact um and see if the objectives are met and if we need to Monitor and adjust so my dear dear colleagues will be speaking on many of the steps we've taken and based upon those steps we are in different phases within our action plan I'm going to pass it off to Kevin Weiss that's me I apologize for giving you my back it's not intentional so foundational literacy just a couple things um so this past year we uh we used our benchmarking data like Star data as well as teacher referrals to assess our Rising third graders to help us identify potential needs and services we created a decision tree based on this data so that we could efficiently cluster our students into targeted intervention groups making us more efficient and supportive for these students at the same time we're strengthening our tier one practices in all of our classrooms we're emphasizing language conventions to build essential skills for all our Learners we've also added in specific classrooms in grade three um classes that are focused a little bit more heavily on Phonics instruction to help make sure that all of our students have the foundational skills necessary to meet grade level expectations um we've also been using assessment tools like Dibbles to help guide our understanding of the foundational gaps that are still uh presenting themselves in our students in grades through 25 these assessments are allowing us to better progress Monitor and see the effectiveness of our intervention ition programs uh when we look at some of our achievement gaps one of the things that we're doing is having uh data review meetings with our teachers in February to review our growth and progress of our students between September and January and to figure out ways we could better support them and get the support that teachers need whether it's professional development or tools um some of the practices that we're using to help with our achievement Gap we could also talk about Orton Gillingham as well where some of our teachers are receiving aligned with the science of reading instruction to best PR in best practices to uh help our students with some of these foundational literacy needs we're also working on a cycle of growth in writing this model allows our teachers to practice not only uh their writing instruction but the way we confer with our students to help them glow and grow we also are taking part in the central office meetings for scop which we're working to embed language objectives as well as background information so that are some of the our highlights in 3 five thank okay so now you're going to hear a little bit more of what is happening also at the K2 level but for professional development you know at the end of the year we um confer about summative evaluation data some of the trends we see that's where where Kevin's um writing professional development came from because we saw a need for teachers to become better writing teach better at teaching writing um we also use summi of evaluation data um in addition to what Kevin does but within our skip committee and some of the um some of the offerings that we have for through our skip committee are on classroom management managing student behaviors um also ideas for teachers to create groupings for plb um the scop is also a part of our central office professional development we have uh new teacher round taes and that professional development is specifically for things that our new teachers might need more support on WE during the October 14th PD day we also offered some professional development that teachers were asking for so our professional development at the 35 level it's really dependent it could be dependent on the the teachers discipline what um in fifth grade it could be B it could be math or language arts or science or social studies based on what they teach we have Preschool teachers that get professional development specific for them special ed teachers that get professional development specific for them which is Orton Gillingham most recently um for social and emotional learning we do have monthly counseling lessons that are based on secl we are focusing on Virtual vires this year and how what the virtues mean and giving students some tools and some strategies to incorporate those virtues into their daily um School experiences but also for when they leave school outside of the school day how they can live with that virtue we also each have at plld and at G&R we have Cor values that are connected to Castle and our core values are celebrated in many different ways and that's really just to give students an opportunity to embrace these these um our core values which are based on really self-regulation and showing up as a good person so it's really in a more organic way for social and emotional learning to be incorporated and for our next step we are going to be all um administering the school climate Improvement survey for Equity we also participate in the district pack nights we are uh we participate in the district Equity team our teachers have had some TSO training during staff meetings and we are having a fast event coming up in March at our school which is specifically for our bilingual students hi good evening I'm Sam felicetta I will be representing the 68 uh team and when I talk about the 68 team I'm talking about both the supervisors and the building based administrators um that work together really closely to uh provide all those things that teachers and the community at mhk needs so first I'm going to speak to student centered learning um so this first 1.4 uh it speaks to uh providing students with the necessary skills um for postsecondary and uh education and work rated opportunities so a couple of things is that uh we make sure that we're doing professional development on the new standards um so that our staff know exact ex ly what's part of the curriculum and how to teach it and make sure that they adapt to the shifts in those standards uh we also pay very close attention to uh assessment tools that we can use to be able to assess student learning so we want to make sure that we're rigorous and challenging our Advanced students and our students that need exposure to more rigor and that we're also supporting our students that need more foundational um and foundational Works um and so uh for example we have our Title One program we did our phase one of that program uh we're just finishing up with our STAR testing the second round and So based on the data that we get back from that we're then go going to make sure that we target the right students to bring in to make sure that we're giving them what they need uh I want to highlight and say thank you uh we have additional Math teachers this year at mhk and so we've been able uh to reduce class sizes specifically in our math course one two and three courses uh math is obviously a building goal and I know it's a district goal specifically at the 68 level and so having those additional teachers has been able to reduce those class sizes uh we also uh increased our Ela we added an additional teacher in the eth grade so again uh we were able to reduce those class sizes and then use that to be able to really hone in an instruction personalized instruction for students uh goal uh staying with uh student centered learning 1.6 uh addressing the achieve achievement Gap you've heard some other people talk about some things so I'll make sure I'm a little specific to 68 uh we I just referenced the STAR testing uh which we make sure that we're reviewing at department meetings at the 68 level the supervisors are able to work with their content area and really dive into those assessments to say what does that mean for us in math what does that mean for us in science what does that mean for us in you name the content area uh also the portfolio and benchmark assens assessments so they're reviews and those are also done in grade level meetings uh and the model works really well where the supervisor gets to get right in there with the the the teachers that are teaching that content area to say what do we need to do and how can we best support our students um it talks about title one again which I just referenced uh this summer uh I know you heard Orton Gillingham we too uh I think this is a nice um it shows how we have continuity across the district so we had five teachers that were trained this summer uh and they are uh using and integrating those strategies into our lld and MD classes our OCR classes continue to use their Awards but I think it really shows you a nice continuity from what's happening at the K5 and then it's carrying into uh the 68 uh this year we have a new exciting room it's called our sensory room so uh for Myriad of reasons uh there might be students that need to take a a break during the day or get a reward during the day and a sensory room is a really wonderful opportunity um for these kids to work with their CST member their counselor perhaps the AP um for whatever their targeted reason is so for each student it might be different and so that room has um when I say sensory I mean it's got all sorts of colors and and uh tactile uh but the idea is that students are able to go in there we're tracking sort of why they're in there uh how we needed to best work with them uh so that we can support them in the general in the in their educationstem setting uh depending on what their education setting is uh okay and then you heard about scop we too are doing that in our central office meeting so I won't go back to that okay Staffing I wanted to touch on the fact that our supervisors pre-plan the Staffing for the summer and we do so much support and the supervisors run so many workshops over the summer so that teachers have the tools they need prior to the school year starting they will rerun those workshops because some you know teachers work and staff work over the summer so they might not be available um but I wanted to just give a shout out to the supervisors because they really do a lot of work there and then I know you heard at 35 they're also leveraging the skip uh the skip at the middle school meets monthly uh to talk about uh we survey this staff pretty frequently to find out what they think their needs are and then we also looks at look at Trends and we sort of analyze what's happening through our evaluation process to then determine hey we're noticing first year teachers need classroom management or our third and fourth year teachers need more small group instruction training um so we're also leveraging and uh last year we added on there need to be a certain number of uh administrators and teachers but we made sure to have both building based Administration and supervisor as part of the committee and I think that's really enhanced uh the work that the skip has done Community engagement uh so we too participate in the district Equity team and have our subcommittee uh we too have had the TSO trainings and the staff has found those to be very beneficial and we too participate in the pack nights uh the only other uh item I would like to highlight is that at creps uh there is a team of teachers that gets together and we do our own Hispanic family night um to support our Hispanic families in the building climate and culture uh so 5.5 uh this year we uh we we tend to do book studies and this year uh in order to support climate and culture in the building and have a common language uh we did a book study on what great teachers do differently we did that predominantly with our 1 through four teaching staff and then with our five plus teaching staff we actually focus on some different professional development areas but what great teachers do differently does focus on classroom management and how to maximize instructional time and what strategies they can use uh across all contents we did focus on goal setting with students our school climate and safety team in the uh in October we did what kind of kind are you and we had a bulletin board where students could say I'm you know football team kind or we did we're admin team kind and so it was really nice way to try to launch off the week of respect uh we have anal subcommittee that meet meets monthly and then we roll out to each department does one monthly lesson so thatal isn't stand alone but every Department offers it over the course of the year uh and this year's theme is Character Matters build yours uh so there's a team of teachers that gets together uh and they develop those lessons for the entire staff to then deliver uh you've heard about the climate survey we'll be doing that as well and then another big thank you uh from the mhk community we have two school counselors per grade level this year the model is working beautifully uh they are able to interface with students more frequently uh we are able to make sure that we're proactive and not just reactive uh and so they are and I listed just some of the things that they're specializing in making sure that we're following up on but making sure we're tracking attendance and how our students that we're retained doing you know we we have some safety screenings that we're doing who's keeping track and making sure that we're really paying attention to each student individually so I cannot thank you enough as the board uh because because it's made a huge difference in craps this year uh so that is our craps update okay the high school gets to go last so basically what everybody said we're doing the same things at the high school so thank you very much but I will say on a serious note um some of the themes that you've heard from the even down the K2 has been embedded in the high school and there's been a lot of consistency and how we've gone about planning the year um I'll just kind of echo the role um we at the high school we call our 912 team our cabinet with the supervisors there's a lot of consistency between what happens especially with creps in the high school so I'll kind of walk through the highlights of some of our programs that are a little bit unique to the high school because a lot of what you've heard tonight you will see at the high school that you heard in the other grades um one unique high school program is our College and Career Readiness program CCR you've probably heard of that um we've offered that to our nth grade and 10th grade students um that need support um we look at our grades we look at attendance we look at test uh State testing scores STAR testing indicators we also identify transfer students conduct reports and the CCR students um was created to prepare students for future opportunities but also to be successful at high school and some of the skills there were the needs for testing skills and we've kind of moved into that second phase which would be to help those students that will be needing the high stakes testing in the spring but more importantly at times we also give them the skills um to be successful in their classes in ela math um multilingual support um we also have really looked at the idea of having teachers also Mentor students so we have seen this year with a sophomore cohort who in the beginning last year with the Freshman was hardly get them this sophomore group wants to come after school so that's kind of refreshing that this kind of been a program that we organically wanted to create we at the high school have done exactly what everybody else K12 the scup training has been um super dedicated we've been really consistent with it at the high school every member of the administrative team is given up given a different group for each session and we rotate through the building and we have that multiple disciplines and that's been really refreshing to have our staff work with other departments on the high school is a large um faculty so we have people that may be in one side of the room sharing what works with scop getting to know your students and that's been really successful we're exactly where everybody else has been building background knowledge we will be entering the fourth session and that's kind of lesson planning which will go back to the Departments um it really also has been for myself kind of put me in the role of having to really um be in touch with what's going on in planning and lesson development um and it's been kind of refreshing from all of us we also each of the assistant principles work closely with content supervisors making sure that um we bring what's happening in the Departments back back to our cabinet means we've used the multi-measure evaluation tools we've had those conversations also in one um 1.16 some major activities um and this is really significant this year at the high school this something unique we've identified multi-lingual Learners who what we kind of call is potentially May age out and we have tried to work with um our um our multilingual program um with Sandy Small's office identifying those students and looking at what they need to get them back on track to not age out so they can get through school and it's been really um very rewarding looking at some students who no fault of their own just because they came to us and they missed certain classes we've been able to get them caught up and they've developed really good relationships they're working with different um staff members um and that's kind of not necessarily a senior it could be um a sophomore who again no fault to themselves they may not have taken courses in their their native country that just put them behind and we're going to get them caught up so we don't lose those students and we get them to graduate on time again we looked at that as almost a mentorship program and again just like um Sam spoke about we're in the phase of using star data we'll start that uh this week so that's one uh 3.23 major activities the PD sessions um were very consistent what you saw earlier we spent a lot of time on year one and year two cohort of teachers I'm looking at trends that they need classroom management getting and then really I been um kind of pleased that we've been tying back background knowledge so we bring scop back into the PD for um students and then we're looking for that in walkthroughs language content objectives um we've been doing that in the scop training and then that's something we' started to say this is what we expect to see when we do our walkthroughs and that's some of the professional de we worked on and we've also started at times looking at professional development the building that are needed in a high school how to plan for a trip how to plan for a fundra or so we've kind of made building based um PD also um in 4.36 um some major activities again this is very consistent what you heard um all evening the equity Summit Tel we've just finished on Tuesday we finished our third session um and it's tough sometimes in a High School faculty meeting session at the end of the day it's hard to get staff to participate um I would welcome anybody that come in our staff really welcomed it um the uh facilitators got them involved in a way that made them reflect on some of the things that they do simply even like how do you greet a student in a from a head nod to a bow which was pretty interesting and then teachers kind of reflected on what they felt comfortable doing that's just one example so we'll continue that work um then we're going to look at really having the equity team at the building level that's the next step um I think this is a really significant one for the high school um you know we look at social emotional skills that are essential for academic success you know I think this is really significant when you look look atal we do that on a pretty regular basis um we have activity periods we'll have an activity period coming up trying to identify through our surveys again the climate survey will be doing that um we will um we've put the monitors that you see in the board meeting we had that up during lunches now so we're really advertising we're making it um our students are visual Learners they see everything that's being offered at a pretty regular basis um and the question um Miss L who brought up the co-curricular interest survey um about what students want we did kind of a soft roll out of that we rolled that out right uh prior to winter break we're going to readminister the same survey we wanted to kind of see what interest we got we had about we got a significant number of students we asked questions with the co-curricular um you know why do you why what are some things that may prohibit you from doing a club or activity so they gave us really good feedback on what kind of stops them what are just some of the things that they're looking for um um some of the different areas of you know what are you interested in what are we missing and then a general um open-ended question like what could we do that would help you to be better so one of the things um was a little bit more at the high school an athletic co-curricular availability sort of a a co-ed piece so we kind of anticipated that and that was one of the trends that was pretty consistent and we're going to look at doing something along those lines um in the fall uh we also um again we're look at the Partnerships with the clubs and activities Mr Daniels talked about before since I've been here for 12 years no um administrator and no adult has really ever had to start a clubber activity every clubber activity has been generated by a student and then we just try to Foster that and get that across the finish line so um we have the non-paid the non-paid then um over a period of time based on interest could actually be a paid uh co-curricular and right now we have like 70 plus and the board has always been supportive um in the clubs and activities and again that's driven by students and we have one of the things we've on this year is Mr Dan and I do focus groups with our students we've kind of taken the focus groups ideas back to our town halls and we'll be doing a town hall in a week and we're going to have that kind of open-ended about like what are some of the other things that you would like to see at the high school kind of a way to give us some feedback in a safe way um not just standing up that way and we started to get some surveys for that we did the and sometimes you hear from the student council the the survey box we're doing that back in town halls which will be a little bit smaller and definitely grade based so we'll look at some of the other areas that we could look that you know kind of have kids have an interest and again we think that if they buy in for some of those other areas around the building that'll obviously um rub off and help them with their academic success and just like on one one club that doesn't get enough and I was just thinking about when I saw about the stem you know stem starts in in in the elementary school but we have our Ace which our architecture construction club which is a tremendous club that just Taps into the skills that they probably start learning instead but now is really an extension of stem as a co-curricular and the students in there go off the engineering careers they get scholarships and again that's a co-curricular but that has as much um Power as any course that we offer here at the high school so that's just a little bit of the overview of the high school okay so that was a lot that was a quick review um so if you want if the board wants to return to the de and we can just take some questions obviously all the questions don't need to be addressed tonight but uh if there are any any initial questions while it's fresh on your minds and the people who are here to answer them are are here that would be helpful what' you say yeah yeah you that thank you so any questions let me let me begin with this let me just thank the the my colleagues who presented tonight um I'll you know I appreciate them kind of taking the time just to highlight some of the the areas that are connected to our goals and and um bringing it as close as possible to home what I will say is based on tonight by Design there were some um I say common themes and threads and I was pleased to see there's an element of consistency K12 as it relates to what our teachers are connected to um and some of the experiences that we're we're we're kind of identifying for our students so although there was some redundancy I think the redundancy in my opinion speaks to a strategic approach to the work we're doing so I'm going to thank uh my colleagues who Who present it tonight but also who are part of the work that did not present and who work diligently each day on behalf of students and supporting our staff so any initial questions or comments Mark I have quite a few but I think I might save them till next time but one that's I would like to point out or question so we can maybe talk about it more is um on Kevin's slide under the foundational literacy box a lot of the things that we're doing there seem like that should be in K through2 it is happening K2 it's happen the reason the reason is is evident in 35 is because you know historically 35 has been kind of a a reading to learn window obviously postco even pre-co to some extent but postco we noticed that students were kind of you know entering that third grade space at different levels so it kind of uh necessitated the need for us to be more intentional regarding some of those foundational reading approaches at the 35 level okay so this is for students that still need that little extra help okay I think I'm going to just save mine for next time so Paul if we can add this to old business the Strategic update all right thank you anybody questions okay I actually have one just have one question because so we talked about the uh you know developing um and looking at the student code of conduct that part of the Strategic plan talks about all stakeholders is there a plan for folks to get together from you know different areas teachers administrators to talk about um a shared vision for shared values and you know communication style and talking about you know how you know like a shared idea of how we relate to one another you know as a district so um yes so the first part of the process will be that uh we'll be engaging the assistant principles who tend to be kind of like the holders of the code of student conduct and then we'll kind of engage in in a review of what we currently have and then explore some some areas that we think we need to uh either clarify or or even bring up to speed um um but also making sure that we are cognizant of the things that are common across all grade levels recognizing that there needs to be some uh differentiated approaches based on students you know developmental levels and then the goal is to take some of that feedback because it's going to be an ongoing issue where we want to engage our teachers uh and I'll just use that word broadly but folks who are working closely with our students uh and then engage families whether we're doing that in Mass through survey feedback or small pockets of feedback whether it's through pto's or other parent groups and then also making sure we're engaging our students in that process Rel as it relates to uh making sure that they have an understanding because sometimes as a student you may not fully understand why that particular consequence uh may even be in place as it relates to the code of student conduct so for us that the the code of the student conduct is really um it should represent kind of um I'd say like student rights and responsibilities within a school Community right so it's almost like every student should have the right to be able to you know exit their their front door in the morning walk on that bus and be treated with a sense of respect as they come into the school but we also want to make sure that there's an element of responsibility that comes along with being a member of a school community and and try to just uh move it away from just being viewed as kind of like the ways you can get in trouble right and I think we need to kind of even though we need to be transparent about that I think the the larger issue is making sure students understand why why we need to kind of uh when we've got a school for example like the high school 1600 you know teenagers you know why we need to have some agreements in terms of how we operate within that community so we can uh all all kind of achieve our best as a community so it will start with our insistant principles and then we're going to kind of permeate that throughout all stakeholders within the community we're also going to marry some of that with the feedback that we hope to receive from the school climate Improvement survey as well which Taps into some of those areas as well in terms of how students are feeling uh as members of school communities thank you okay any other questions for right now quick question on the climate survey the um NJ um Department of Education is conducting a Statewide survey could you just have a few words about that is it every student to every school or no so students are you referring to the survey that we referenced during the presentation yes so no so this is an optional survey you don't have to do it the this um but it is supported by the Department of Education uh it's a collaboration between the department and Ruckus University and um this is kind of a it used to be the school climate survey where Once Upon a Time uh for those of you that have been around for a while there were certain schools that needed to do it we actually had to do it at one point uh that's no longer the case for us but it's one of those things that um has re kind of been revamped and resurfaced and it's really focused around um really the same premise in terms of getting perspectives both student parents and staff members um their viewpoints in terms of you know what they are sensing experiencing feeling as it relates to being members of a of a school community so it's not a have to um it it's uh it's something that um I think should have some value as it relates to the domains associated with it and and we'll gather the feedback and we'll determine you know what we think is affirming uh what are some areas where we think we need to grow or even consider doing differently but I think it's refreshing to have a tool that enables us to get a pulse um in terms of I think with what critical in terms of students and their learning if students are not feeling a sense of connection a sense of welcome as they're entering School spaces you know naturally that impacts their educational experience so that's where we are it's not it's not a have to and and just a followup so the I guess the point being since it's Statewide there will be some comparison data you know be able to see results in yeah not specifically to other schools but some Trends the Statewide averages there should be some trending associated with it but but I'll gather some more feedback about that but so to answer your question about it is a consistent tool that District may choose to use I believe that the department is capturing some of that to get those Trends across the state all right any other questions I have one more Mark so um related to the high school and Dennis's presentation um to on soft skills the um testing skills we're going into that second phase I know the first phase was a very select set of students can you go over again how we're selecting students for the second phase what that looks moving forward into the next phase and are if parents are interested in their students receiving that training college career Readiness you refering to college in career Readiness right yeah but specifically you speak to that in terms of selection process I don't want to speak falsely go for so right now the students that we have kind of in our cohort are already captured in that cohort and then we'll look to see and identify if we need to like expand that but that cohort has already been kind of in existence based on all those criteria that I kind of said about in the beginning okay so we're we're it's the same students moving forward not adding additional students right now it's the students that have already been working in the first phase of that yes okay and then what we could do is we just have to be mindful that they meet the criteria that they go in there so we'll look at that as like second semester and then obviously they were last year we had had the Freshman that then we looked at how they were If They carried over if they exited the program so it's kind of like a freshman sophomore cohort right now are we looking to expand that or are we also looking at any students who um are in need or at risk students that may be added to or a separate program running in tandem so I I should have said that so what we're doing right now also is the the really the benefit of the high school because we have four assistant pre uh princip and then in those teams of counselors they're also identifying the say let's say at risk students for that and they're creating academic plans in the grade levels for identifying potentially inrs or being referred or just support um a support plan if they um for example if they struggled in two classes or more they the assistant principal with the counseling team has made a support plan also so it's a different way to catch those students not necessarily in the CCR a lot of times they're the same student but we're trying to have a multiple ways to identify and then support them in tutoring sessions and then after school resource room is still available so other people are also flagging them also okay that's great so if a parent was interested they could contact their AP gr AP or their counselor I would and I'm hoping that that that's what as the ap's now second marking periods wrapping up they're identifying those students and they'll be reaching out especially now that we're halfway way parent conferences will be coming up but absolutely if a parent was identifi their child as struggling I would absolutely go with the grade level team first and then we can find what resources we could then um support them with then there's a whole host of you know if they're a classified student multi language students so we could find a way to support somebody so it doesn't necessarily have to necessarily be in the CCR but there's definitely something there for them thank you you're welcome 18a what I'll do I'll provide the board with the criteria that we're using for College and Career so you get a sense of what the cohort reflects all right all right thank you any other question I'm scared to ask that question scared to ask that but any other questions in closing all right and like I said we can we'll revisit it if you have any questions Beyond tonight of course we can we can get those addressed all right thank you okay well let Market settled and we're going to move on to our superintendent court gets to take a moment okay I'll try to keep it rather succinct here um okay so I I'll just kind of reiterate um just acknowledging our student um performances tonight I do want to thank our Middle School and High School uh music teachers for their work and their dedication with our students I also would like to thank uh and congratulate uh our student artist tonight I think it was great to be able to kind of put a a a face with a name regarding those students who are responsible for that amazing artwork on the calendar um quick quick uh shout out to in the spirit of winter concerts as we just concluded them I just want to uh congratulate the G&R and plld students and uh music teachers uh great concerts last week and the week before tonight um if you stop by the usual board meeting venue uh cafeteria are there are quite a few folks in attendance to the written out loud celebration um um we had a celebration of almost 400 student authors tonight who've co-written written um almost a 100 books during the recent cycle of written out loud so I think written out loud's probably been we've been partnering with them for what about four years now Sandy about four years so uh that definitely is uh I was uh joking earlier that I needed to go there just to kind of um kind of replenish my energy to the the energy in the room was contagious so I do appreciate uh the partnership and I love the fact that we're using creativity writing inspiration and also collaboration with our students who are co-authoring books um really has impact I do just want to touch on um you know the recent I guess recent change recent update to the federal immigration enforcement um practices that have been communicated uh in the past week excuse me with the new federal Administration so I'll just share that as a school district um you know we've followed guidance from the Department of Education as well as consultation with the the board's attorney and we do have an established protocol in place um hopefully that won't need to be implemented right but I think we do need to be prepared just in case um Bas based on our community and and uh obviously I'll preface things with stating that you know we follow the law uh we're obligated to do that but we're also obligated to uphold uh and preserve the rights of our students I also as superintendent feel like I have an obligation to minimize disruption to our our learning community so um you know if there is a circumstance where we have uh a visit from immigration agents our school staff and administr ation is aware of the protocol uh to adhere to um and we'll also be sharing some resources with our families as we move forward as well our our immigrant families regarding um resources and their rights within the community I'm not going to mention the school climate survey I was going to but I don't need to tonight um so I think based on where we are I I'll I'll conclude my my report at this time and uh thank you okay thank you Mark uh we'll now um open up for our first opportunity for board member comments anyone from the board have any comments I just like to uh Echo the the the the appreciation for the student performers that came through tonight uh it's always fantastic to see those programs in action and it's nice to get the special showcase tonight so thanks for putting that together anyone else okay there being none we have our first opportunity for public comments any members of the public wish to comment yes yes back in the back yeah can you come up to the podium and um there is a register there where you could put your name and address thank [Music] you and um just a reminder for time limits every member of the public has three minutes to speak and we have a 20 minute session if we ever feel the need to go beyond that the board can make a motion to do so at the microphone over there and at the bottom there's a little button that has like a person talking and you just hit that button it'll turn the red light on there we go okay um so on Janny I'm Lisa Perez Mackenzie Perez goes to GNR my daughter she's in fourth grade can you state your address as well please 662 Windsor Commons um I received a notice for a HIV that was denied um for inappropriate comments for McKenzie excuse me um I have been in close contact with Miss Emerson as of recently um December but starting back dated um January 26 of 24 Mckenzie was kicked in the private area and it was not documented I want to know as the board what do you guys consider and what do you document on file even though they're young kids which is an HIV and what is not recently she got slapped in the rear end by a boy one day there's not no document no investigation has been opened um and the next day she's did it again I'm going to bring her to school I say Mackenzie everything's okay she said Mom you didn't hear what happened she says no I I said no I didn't hear anything that happened she said well he hit me in the butt and I was running away from him so I go into the office and I see it on video myself nothing is documented I go to the police station on two different occasions to make a sexual harassment report at this point it's concerning because McKenzie does not want to go to school um I've tried medication for her I've tried 504 plan we just implemented I we moved here four years ago from Ocean County from Tom dver school district and I never had these issues um so I need to know what do you guys consider in HIV what you guys document um the end of June I did receive you know saying she's looking at suicidal stuff on her Chromebook this isn't documented I just received this in an email and that's it or they print printed it out for me this year 30 seconds please so if you guys can just answer that what you guys consider an HIV I'd appreciate it so so um well you know let me just Begin by by um you know obviously I don't want anyone's child to be experiencing in anything that is less than Pleasant or anything a parent believes may be uh falling under the harassment intimidation or bullying umbrella you know we just spent some time talking about the code of student conduct during the presentation so so I think and I'm going to say this respectfully and I appreciate you you um being here tonight uh I'm going to ask that I follow up with you because I think you know I want to make sure that we're being discreet regarding your daughter's you know business experiences obviously you feel dissatisfied regarding uh how you think your child is um being treated at the school and whether or not it's being documented so um I'll give you a call tomorrow and we can find some time to talk and and and I think we should be able to find um some solutions and a Way Forward uh as it relates to um her well-being and how you are trusting the school I need you to be able to trust the school as we move forward the fact that you're here tonight obviously there's some there's some doubt there and and I want to make sure that we uh work together to repair that okay so I I definitely contact you tomorrow I have your name Lisa Perez McKenzie is your your daughter's name right I'll call you tomorrow okay all right Miss press can you please sign the sign and sheet thank you are there any other members of the public who wish to comment there being none we are going to move to Executive session um this time it really will be rather short um five or 10 minut probably 10 minutes give us 15 but we may not even be that long thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e we now return to regular session um up next is item seven old business does any have anyone have any questions under old business even though nothing's listed there committee oh communs Tina I had a question for you Tina yes yes I just wanted to ask you something uh we had this strategic meeting how they're doing the new training and using a different approach of learning um I know in Old business we had the stats from last year where we had some uh concerns about the test score we'll be getting an update uh once the ex assessments are done or we have to wait until the next [Music] cycle Mark said he'll get back to us on the date we'll provide an update in some form of fashion whether I'll share it with the board or we'll do a quick update uh during a meeting but you'll have something during the winter okay thank you so regarding the policy committee we were sort of undertaking a you know um kind of an overhaul of all the policies and I wondered if the folks who were on the policy committee wanted to talk about having um so it looks like we're going back to the less frequent meetings I think for a while the policy committee might want to meet monthly so I was just putting it out there to see what everybody thought and then sort of discuss how we're going to complete the project that we started thanks chenna any other questions okay if not we'll move on to our second second opportunity for board member comments anyone have any comments to follow up on Jenna's point I think the questions came up before I um came back on the board the questions came up about a policy that was approved that required there is a better definition of the committee subcommittee's role was that I haven't actually read it I should have read it first I'm sorry no there was a the board just approved the new uh policy regarding committees um not that long ago Bob so if you look at it it's pretty it's pretty self-explanatory uh in reference to Jenna's point you know we did engage in an U policy audit via Strauss Esme and the policy committee was meeting more frequently than than the typical Rhythm to go through updating um actually at least reviewing policy some of them we chose not to update but there's a rhythm of review um so in terms of Jenna I'm comfortable with us you know resuming now I just kind of put out the dates the proposed dates and thought we could obviously we can talk about that um you know amongst the the policy committee and um or we can wait for the first meeting meeting and then determine how we want to proceed but we could definitely meet more frequently than than the proposed St I would say for all of the Committees if if the Committees feel the need to meet more frequently uh they have that discretion to do so any other questions n it's our second opportunity for public comment anyone in the public wish to speak there are being numone we'll move to item number nine recommended policies for first reading recommended policies for first reading uh policy 0141 board member number and term B policy 0146 board member authority C policy 0132 executive Authority D policy 0152 board officers e policy 0171 duties of President and Vice President F policy 0167 public participation in board meetings G policy 0168 recording board meetings second any questions I have I have one comment just about the duties of President and Vice President we had talked about maybe putting something in there about the president being um someone who would acknowledge a an email from someone in the community and I didn't know if we wanted to memorialize that in a policy or not but it was discussed the board I mean I I it's up to the board I mean we can definitely amend that and include that uh and just to you know refresh everyone's memory was really just that when an email communication is received uh the board president typically would be the one responding to that at least acknowledging receipt and then forwarding that to the superintendent I'm I'm okay with that so long as the acknowledgement contains I forwarding this on behalf or behalf of you to the board to the superintendent as long as that's written in policy I think we're good I mean that's up to the board it's not something that has to be in the policy a lot of times like Mark mentioned that's just standard protocol the way it's understood that board president is the one that responds any other questions so what happens with the so what do we vote on that is it going to get voted on like what happens with that now oh it's just a discussion about it okay it's I guess it's feeling to me like it's not something people are feeling passionate about so we can just leave it I just wanted to bring it up because we had talked about it so okay pull the board please miss concepion yes M Drake yes Miss laruso yes Mr ly yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss L yes item 10 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 January 27th 2025 B approval of ew rsup memorandum of agreement C Hib report from January 13th 2025 D approve HHS spring Sports schedules spring 2025 e approve mhk spring sports schedule Spring 2025 F approve new field trip site for upcoming trip G approve Esa carryover amendment of full year 2024 through 2 title one two three three immigrant and four h approve acceptance of additional 8% of New Jersey high impact tutoring competitive Grant fund I approve united we discover Grant to WCB J approve HHS overnight trip to Princeton Blairstown Center Blairstown New Jersey February 2025 K approved travel and unrelated expenses virtual and iners L out of out of District placement M Professional Services for students n approv use of competitive RFP process o Transportation bid results P approval of settlement agreement Q Transportation jointure R regular session minute approval3 2025 s executive session minute approval T bill list of January 27th 2025 second any questions um Mr President we do have uh a request for one addition onto the travel agenda for tonight um one one addition for Tina L to attend the 2025 women's leadership conference on March 3rd of 2025 it's a one-day conference from 9: to 4: uh the registration cost is $150 for Schoolboard members and I would also uh request $100 for incidentals for parking uh mileage and also tolls thank you thank you and um Paul I wanted to know under both well regular session minutes approval um Kavita um matori is I'm sorry I'm in the wrong one is mentioned under the oath of office to new board members but she wasn't present and under exact session minutes she's mentioned as absent but also wasn't present to be sworn in yet so technically not a board member so we're going to remove that from the minutes is that correct are they still there they're still there okay I'll I'll talk to vindy I had I had a couple comments passed along to me today which I had shared with her so I I will go back and uh and discuss that with her tomorrow morning thank you just so the board is aware those changes will be made thanks appreciate that okay pull the board well wait a minute I'm I'm sorry add another question um under the [Music] item okay where' it Go the um settlement oh item p uh there's nothing nothing in there is it just understood which settlement agreement we're talking about or should there be an employee number in there or something well what we can do we can just place the settlement in executive content we didn't place it in there tonight because we already provided it to the board oh understood but in terms of memorializing it I think that's a good point about in terms of um without it just being generic and there was my head is kind of scattered tonight uh let's see what else I think that's it let's move on oh I'm sorry I did have a question on the contract approval so Item B is an approval of the memorandum of agreement with the EWR um supervisors I assume that's the supervisors Association is that correct it is yeah our supervisor group um their their current collective bargaining bargaining agreement expires June 20125 so we are slightly ahead of of the schedule here which is which is which is unusual which is slightly unusual but we did conclude that negotiations process pretty efficiently so we're uh we're we're we're ahead here EXC which is comforting great thank you any other questions pull the board please miss concepion yes Miss Drake yes Miss laruso yes for all abstain from B thank you Mr ly yes Miss Patel yes Mr weeks yes Miss Lans yes ohain from line item thank you because it was a last minute ad K any any travel and related expenses related to myself yes to everything else since there's no need for a second EXA EXA session I motion to adjourn thank you everyone and have a great night for e e e e