all right we're going to get started so we can get moving we have lots to do tonight good evening I'm Dr Kimo superintendent of uh the greatest School District in the world um absolutely the largest
school district in Atlanta County you're you're sitting in the largest High School in Atlantic County so we're very very proud of that um and sometimes we don't realize just how large we are I was just having a conversation with Mr Mason I said you know to be so large is
a wonderful thing because there's so many wonderful moving parts to this school district um that that's absolutely amazing I'm proud of it um I have passion for the district and I want to share a little bit about who we are and what we're doing and then explain
the process of a strategic plan all right so we'll get started with some introductions our Board of Education we have our uh president Mr Lou delarka with us our vice president miss Wanita Heyman Mr Chad buers
and Mr Patrick Ireland that's four of the nine the other five may be trickling in but overall the group um as board serves um as the public voice but also um as supporters of of our our students I'm
looking to make sure that they have a uh wonderful education making sure that our policies are in place and the parts and pieces are are moving so I thank them for their support and their involvement in what we do to central office administrators if you could just please
stand assistant superintendent Miss Lily Moss assistant superintendent Mr George West Dr Terry Charlton who's the director of human resources and Mr Dan Smith our business administrator and board
secretary all right please stand if you are a building Administration in aover Township Schools please stand thank you thank you for being here thank you for all that you do each and every day our supervisors please
stand any teachers I know I've seen a few please stand teachers thank you for all that you do central office staff we introduced um actually there are some more potential here Lanna Mullen please stand
Dr Mullen Dr carmalita Graham we have I saw Miss Pam Henley please stand and Mr John Tolen thank you thank you parents with us this evening if you're in Ser sitting in a dual role maybe a teacher and parent please
stand thank you students students that we have with us this evening please stand any business owners please stand business owners thank you thank you it's important to us you're you're an important stakeholder
and community members I think that includes us all did I miss anybody please stand no yeah all right all right good so we're all here together we're on a mission here we go who' I miss who' I miss Mr oh the deputy mayor Mr Ray Ellis
please stand I don't know how I how I missed him I got a big hug from him uh Mr Ellis a former Board of Education member and um a strong supporter of our schools um but even more so uh passionate and caring about children right and that's why
we're all here that's why we're here our student panel consisted of students from slay Elementary Davenport Elementary Miller Elementary Alder Middle School ferwood Middle School and ORD Township High School and these students were willing enough um to meet with with me I
had questions for them were they were behind the camera in front of the camera and um it was great to hear student feedback what their needs are what their wants are if they like our district um if they like their school so uh we'll be sharing some feedback from them but I
want to thank them I went to each and every one one of them went to their classrooms um handed them a thank you made a big deal in front of their classmates and uh because it's important it's important that they can see and here um that one of their classmates
served as I say a leader they represented the school so thank you to those students so here we are Egg Harbor Township School District we have eight campuses and 11 buildings um and and this is us we operate each and every day um 68 square miles that we cover here in
the district and we have students from north south east and west of EG Harbor Township I think you all know our mission statement and it's very very important to me that each and every day that we Embrace engage and educate our students and and their families right
it's so important that we Embrace and when we Embrace we learn and we we build relationships we learn about our students and our families and I told the students today when I met with a fifth grade class of Miller I said we're all different we're all different but we're all important all right so we and we and
we have to learn about how we're different how we're likee and what our needs are so when we move to being engaging our students once we learn about about them we engage them in relevant learning opportunities and we look to educate them to become responsible for their own learning but
to be be Premier citizens in their Community speaking about premere we want to be a premier School District where all capital all all students experience success that's a task right and that's why our teachers are in place our
administration's in place because we look at the needs of our students and we want them to be successful we work hard each and every day teachers work hard each and every day for Student Success all right so strategic planning
okay this is actually my third strategic plan two rounds ago which was I believe was in 2017 I was just hired a a superintendent of schools and New Jersey school boards LED our strategic plan and um we went
and we listened to the needs and changes that want to take place and we built a plan a three-year plan and I'm proud to say we met the wants and needs of that three-year plan Co came once we came out of that we had another strategic plan I feel like I was just here like last week
right in this room we had another three-year plan that we put in place and I'm going to stand here three years later and say I'm proud to say we met the threeyear Strategic plan and what I'm going to do is I'm going to share that with you because if you're going to be part of the team now to participate
at in the next strategic plan and come up with the plan for us in the next three years you have to know what we did all right so pay close attention so here's the Strategic plan in review and I'm going to hand the mic over I'm going to
delegate uh to my central Office Team and each one is going to um explain the goal um the the strategies that were in place and then what was met Dr Charlton thank you Dr gerer and welcome everybody uh we're going back in time to 2022 if
you think back remember we were just coming out of the pandemic remember masks waiting outside 6 feet apart in front of Walmart ready to be allowed in at 3 at a time hey we were coming out of that and as adults obviously it was complicated for us life was different than anything else we knew at that point
but we agreed at that strategic planning what about the kids okay they're facing complications in navigating a world that's so different than any generation behind them and we all agreed that we need to make sure that they are supported socially and emotionally okay
to have those supports you know maybe the first time in education where we said social emotional learning is just as important as algebra and grammar and all the content that we teach the students because without that Wellness they're not going to be successful okay so we talked about relationships and
strengthening relationships in terms of the support that we build through our programming over the next couple of years and what we did I'm just going to show you some of the things we implemented okay recognition programs we have a great flourishing Renaissance program where we recognize students
every week positive behavior academic achievement okay and then we have structured support systems if you never heard of mtss it's for multi-tiered system of supports and basically it's like a pyramid okay and down the bottom of that period most of those things can be handled in terms of a student
struggles within the classroom then as the P pyramid gets narrower as you go to the top tier two and tier three they might need to be pulled out for advanced supports but the whole concept behind the pyramid is no student is ever going to be left behind they're always going to have the individual attention that
they need to be successful because we're concerned about all students sore is another program you've probably heard of so even though we're giving the students all these supports they need we also have to remind them you still have to grow as a person you still have to be accountable for your own actions and
that's the way you build self-confidence and self-esteem so we'll always be right here with you but you have to do your part as well and we have things like the wingman program which is kind of like pure leadership and pure interaction so that it's not always adult the student that they can learn from their peers as well Mental Health Resources I don't
know if you've ever seen Charlie or Marty but those are our therapy dogs and they actually have a home when they come in here not too far away from us here and they've gone all over the district and wonderful reception from the kids and we've also partnered with a lot of different agencies including Atlanticare
to provide clinical supports Beyond School counseling because the role of a school counselor is an academic career and then individual and emotional support but it's not clinical to the point where you would go to Atlanticare we bringing those resources in to supplement our school counseling
resources okay a couple other things career preparation activity I'm standing right next to Dr carmalita Graham who's responsible for a lot of that career days all over the district starting at the elementary levels so those skills are built and scaffolded and not just at high school the way it used to be back
when maybe some of us were in school community events we have the Eagle Fest coming up September 27th you know that it's at the end of the month in September we have athletic events we have all kinds of clubs and activities out there as well as Community vendors and it's a great time we had noce Latina
the Lunar New Year job fair for the community we do a lot of things in terms of Community Connection as well hey and last but not least family engagement initiatives he from specialed parent groups to title one parent groups parent clubs and then workshops that we offer
for college ad missions night financial aid night a lot of different things that we offer to interact with you the community as well as tonight strategic planning okay so that is goal number one and we met that goal so right now I'm going to introduce my colleague assistant superintendent George West to
talk about goal number two thank you Dr Charlton good evening everyone and welcome so goal number two had to do with climate and culture and expanding our opportun unities for our school community and we've done an excellent job our strategies were to provide access to relevant and Innovative learning opportunities and
our second strategy was to create opportunities to recognize and celebrate our culture across our entire School community so some things that we implemented was our steam integration science technology engineering arts and Mathematics across all levels right from
our enrichment programs all the way up to the high school basically creating a pathway for our students to develop Tech technical skills and at the same time problem solving skills and trying to get our students ready for real world you know jobs five six seven eight years down the line so kudos to our teachers
and our our whole staff in creating those opportunities for our kids career exp exploration we're going through an abundance of career days right now um there was one at Alder Fernwood Miller has theirs coming up on Friday the high school so we're just providing
opportunities uh for local businesses to come in and educate or kids right Career and Technical preparing our kids for the future and again we've been Stellar uh creating those opportunities for our kids at the same time having specialized experiences with our business Discovery days any Academy visits or Eagle work
program and again we're just getting our kids ready uh for the workforce or college or any type of career that they might want to uh tackle basically student leadership opportunities you know I'm big with this you know creating opportunities for our
kids for clubs and activities right so I think about um our Renaissance program catching kids doing great things right um our staff our students student councils academic competitions Esports our kids are thriving U I know alder's
been recognized by J's Renaissance uh for being a model school for climate and culture so kudos to them and we're always working I said to recognize recognize our students and staff for doing wonderful things students of the month students of the week um things of that nature our Renaissance program which I
talked about and it's for student achievement it's a framework to recognize positive behavior um I know our administrators and staff they do they do an awesome job of catching kids doing great things and that's what we want if you feel good you look good you're going to do good right and you hope you hope that student achieve
achievement raises uh because we're recognizing kids doing great things um we have our spirit weeks um pep rallies recognition lunches and rewarding kids um and that's who we are and that goes to our next initiative with student recognition our sore program safety
ownership accountability and respect positive referrals catching our kids doing good things in the hallway good things in the cafeteria right treating the bathrooms with respect you know acting properly on the buses you know so it's the whole child we're trying to
educate and again you know it takes a village and we we have done an awesome job trying to teach our kids um how to function you know in a school system um and the last thing is community celebration uh events um you know we have our pride festival coming coming up
in the fall um we have a preschool Festival coming up and it's just a great opportunity for families to get together with their children seeing their teachers seeing Administration having conversations fun days Spirit weeks culture performances and just getting
together and celebrating what's so great about our school district and at this time I'm going to I'm going to send it over to miss Moss to talk about goal number three thank you thanks okay so as Dr Charlton said our last strategic plan we were coming back from covid we knew that we had to
have some learning acceleration or deal with learning that that students had missed during that time um and we decided through through this goal that we really wanted to focus on growth and identifying where students are and how
to move them forward and looking at that for our student achievement so that we were sure that we were able to meet all of our students where they were and that we were going to use data to determine what each student needed to help move them forward within that growth we also uh wanted to really focus on our
professional collaboration through our PLC process to really uh reinvigorate that that piece around student achievement so the ways that we met that goal were to really focus in on our Universal screening process and Ed uh in
the beginning we were using multiple measures to be able to uh assess where our students were and this year we finally have a k to2 way to measure our students through Universal screening with our map growth system um and it's a way for us to really look at how our
students are doing and compared to one another so it's peer normed and it's a way for us to really look at how our instruction is impacting the growth of students in comparison to their peers we also have worked on our data management systems so that we are able to carefully
assess and do progress monitoring again so that we're able to see the effects of learning and really instituting that intervention framework so this is taken a few years of implementation and honing our practice through feedback and being able to really look at the impact of
what we're doing to help move students forward finally we have um always had professional learning communities in our in our district but we have tried to really focus in on those four questions around student achievement really focusing in on how do we know when our
students are learning what are we doing when they have not learned it yet um and what do we do if they already know it so that we're really sure we're meeting those individual needs and looking at each student individually and trying to look at our practices to best move them
forward and grow from wherever they're starting important is we also have different collaborative teams within our building to help with this um we have our skip team inrs School leadership we have our advisory councils our parent um councils as we
mentioned before and then we have also really focused in on our professional development bringing in a lot of coaching for our staff um different Prof professional development opportunities so that we can continue to hone our practice and see the effects on student learning
Dr guia okay this work over the last three years got us to a place where we are proud of a framework that we share uh it's on our website and it really encompasses everything that we do so the district we have our mission statement
and the initiatives that we have in place and sore is very very important to us um you know it's it's as Mr West said teaching students how to function in school from respect in the classroom to the cafeteria to the laboratory to the
bus and it's been going well but it's part of the social emotional piece that we that was stressed through strategic planning the mtss uh process climate and culture with Jon's Renaissance and then say no to buling with the with which is the Stant Hall fly high so the initiatives that we have in place we
believe strongly in that we have made it a um we thank you throw me off we had uh made it a framework that we follow and we will continue to follow and that's all birth out of the strategic planning process I just want to emphasize that
the former plan and plans before that had three goals so you heard what the three goals are as you are now a strategic planner it's something you have to decide is three goals four goals five goals I wouldn't recommend any more than five um but that'll come out at the end of the process once we get to common
themes okay so again the changes made and sustained as a result of strategic planning beyond that framework are uh the complexes Swift slay ball complex the two schools being made into one overseen by one Administration one
teaching staff just two different buildings delayed opening is believe it or not for some of you we've never had that before okay and we're that works well in weather situations uh the data tools that we have in place and we've been through many through over the years but we have ones that are relevant now
for us to glean relevant data so that we can look at student performance um Middle School electives High School concentrations High schoolies the one1 technology 101 technology means every student has access to a computer and
some of you going to say well you just took the Middle School computers away yes we did because 30% of them were damaged severely okay and that's taxpayers money um so we want to make sure that we protect the investment that we made and that students have the technology that's working um for them
but in school every child has access to to a computer 101 technology our Talons Inspire after school programs full day PR preschool in kindergarten two strategic plans ago filled room at Davenport Elementary and the the the cry
was we want full day kindergarten how do you make full day kindergarten happen here we were one of maybe two school districts in the in the um County that had half day am p.m. kindergarten all right so we made that happen and it it's worked well and in order to get free pre
school for our community you had to have full day kindergart all right so just a little history little history um so we have preschool expansion we're involved in that we received over $300 million Grant from from the um Department of Education to expand preschool and that is a um initiative right now in the
state of New Jersey and you're seeing districts expand expand expand Esports right above us was a library a third part of a library right Dawn that uh computers computers were in and we used for testing different um classes going in and out but you know keeping up with
what's going on and student um needs and what's what's relevant for students is the Esports and we have an Esports Arena right above your heads here and someday we'll take a tour but it's it's amazing and it's it's for the kids all for the kids Innovation lab which is right next
door Dr Carmenita Graham has a lot to do with that uh myself and Dr Mullen we attended the SD um IST conference technology conference oh now it's two years ago in Phil Philadelphia we came out of that we're riding home in a train and we just had some great ideas about Esports and innovation in the district
and Ai and we'll get into all that in our next strategic planning session but it's here it's here in EHT our kids are going to have opportunities to use those things apprenticeships another initiative Dr Graham is overseeing our students are out out of the school
building out Hands-On learning um with Business Leaders and learning about um a trade if you will and our community and our our nation needs people certified in the trades right now Greenhouse right outside new
Greenhouse uh that's going to open soon that's an initiative that we've been working on for two or three years now Unified sports which is a great addition to our Athletic program and activity program for special education students and our general ed students it's a great partnership outdoor classrooms in in our
um many of our buildings and committees that we have developed over the years a professional development committee Equity team Innovation team which is working each and every day on as Ai and Technology changes to make sure that our staff has upto-date
and relevant uh credible resources a data governance team and a behavior committee and we study these areas there's groups going on uh throughout the district I don't okay so we're going to hear a little bit um from students via
videos and this is our first video video what's your favorite thing about coming to school and why I like to learn new things and be with my friends I like coming to school because I get to see my friends and I like interacting with the teachers because they're really nice I
like the community as a whole like everybody is really nice and everybody talks to everybody my favorite thing about coming to school is getting more knowledge and going to girls who code I think that the teachers do a really good job at teaching but also are like really
interactive and good about keeping the students like excited to learn my teacher lets us sit like kind of wherever we want to on certain days and it's fun being able to sit next to your friends and still learn coming in and knowing that you're going to learn
something of value cuz like I get to take the classes that I want like I can pick what I want to take it's really like a community and like a family here and it's really nice being able to come to school and feel like accepted and
welcomed and it's just really inviting here I want to ask a question do you feel that you are treated fairly in this home are definitely very fair cuz like they treat you and how you act if you're if you're a good student
you're very trustworthy yeah we are definitely treated like fairly but as well as equally like we're treated like we're a part of it like we're like a family we're all together my teachers also ask if uh if like we're okay if we need anything like that there's like a
base level where where everybody's treated the same but then with like different classes you take and different relationships you make will open up a lot more opportunities for you you get what you put in like me myself like goinging like a bunch of good relationships with tons of teachers and
like that also has it perks what do your friends and School staff teachers Administration do to make you feel welcomed here a birthday in my class my teacher um gets us a bag says
our name on it and our favorite color bag and then she put our name up on the board and happy birthday S A that's very nice makes you feel special right yeah and after I walk into my classroom I'm greeted by my friends who um say hi to
me and how I and ask how I was doing on Fridays they give out high fives like the kids all right one of the lunch ladyes Miss Kathy she always gives me a big smile oh that's so best that's good see same thing about the lunch leaves like every single time I go get my lunch
they always says like have a good day and I appreciate them just saying that so I can have a great day they have fun fun Friday they have what on Friday fun fun fun Friday if I need help or my friends like we can all tell so we all
try to like um help them out as much as we can one big theme they love their teachers they love what's going on in their classrooms so thank you thank you we want our kids uh to be happy we want them to want to come to school we say EHT is the place to be right but we
still have work to do so we heard about our plan we heard what we met we heard what we do we heard from the kids and we know there's always more work to do I'm I'm never satisfied with status quo we're always looking ahead and that's why we're here what's the next three years going to be what do we need for
our kids our kids have changed I think we've all realized that as parents as Educators kids have changed so the world is changing as well are we ready to are we able to prepare them for the the the work ahead for the future ahead and we
don't know what those jobs are going to be but if we can prepare them to be problem solvers and if we can prepare them to be good thinkers and good communicators they have an edge all right so we're going to work on that but these are some ideas for you you can take pictures they'll come up in your in your groups
uh to discuss but we have work to do all right if you had to redesign this ho any part of it whether it's cours work or structurally um what would you do just like extending the hallways like I know
nobody uses their lockers so like if we were to like you could open it up by taking them out what about those lockers we're not using them no no need to back in the day you don't have that stack of books put in there I used to in middle
school but now I don't anymore I would like bright colors outside of the buildings because like if someone's down and you can just look at the building and then it's bright so it might like make your feelings out and then make you
happy human connection instead of seem like someone who's just in your office and like making all these decisions kind of show them who's making the decisions the person behind who's making the decisions we want to replace the old water fountains near the gym because the water's always hot and when you're
running around it just makes it feel bad I I think D I know downstairs ding is a little like empty and just kind of I know it's where like all the workshop and stem stuff happens I'm pretty sure but it just kind of feels a little makes my day a little
sadder so DNE needs faft a little bit all right so here we are we heard um from the students and they're quite honest trust me they're very very honest um so strategic planning uh here we we are March 25th we're going to we overview of the process we're going to talk about the survey results that was
out there and we're going to be develop a consensus on the themes that we developed tonight April 30th when we come back from break will'll be another strategic plan we'll review the themes that you developed and develop a vision and then on May 21st um we'll we'll develop goals objectives and a timeline
and an action plan all right so are we all in ready all right here we go so what's a strategic plan does anybody have any questions as to uh what it is did I cover it you understand yeah we're looking three years down the road all
right for the future of our students for the future of our school district all right we want to we want a clear path as to where we're going to go you're going to set the goals you're going to set we'll set the objectives and then we'll do the work over the next three years
at our school district level we are preparing what we call a strategic plan all right does anybody know what a strategic plan is a way to plan things in like a more like clear like point of view asking students what they think of the school and how they want to change
it or something um I'm thinking just like a plan for like what you're going to do with the school and years to come how to improve of things you can change a strategy is like something you do a lot it's like uh like you take a run every day it's a strategy you do every
day you figure something out like you have it all ready before you do something the Strategic plan is something that was well thought out and well get to that point all right so in front of you all of you have a fact sheet I could spend
many many slides and all this but my state of the school covered a lot of this but these are the fact sheet that you'll need when you work in your group uh talks about our or gives you information on our enrollment our campuses our 50% free and reduced lunch and um that's actually a little higher
these days our class sizes um the ratings we got from the niche rating our language is spoken our demographics how many sports we have activities Technologies and the committee and team so that's the information that you have uh so that you could begin the Strategic
plan um before I introduce Dr Mullen again who's going to go over um the survey results we also have some directors that I did not introduce part of my team I see Mr eray back there director of it there you are stand
up and our assistant business administrator Mr Jennifer Deana thank you so much sorry I must you getting a little old all right here we go so stakeholder survey results the survey was sent out and Miss uh Dr Mullen is going to explain it she is our I call
her a data master um she uh generates analyzes and all that for us so no better person to explain this than she thank you Dr guo hi everybody um those of you that work in the district know that I love everything data so this
is very exciting to me um I do want to point out that the print out that you have so the back half of that fact sheet does have what I think are the highlights the big take ways around the survey but for transparency we're going to go through all the questions and what the results were for them um so just so
everyone is on the same page you probably in the district in the last week or two have seen these numbers and I'm going to get out of the way so you can actually see them um 50 20 and three we had a guest speaker in uh do Dr Luis Cruz and he talked to us about these numbers and what they mean for our
district so if this is the first time you're seeing these numbers let me just lay out for you what they mean uh for us EG Harbor Township we are at about 50% economically disadvantaged or students who receive free and reduced lunch um I can't speak for the entire history of Egg Harbor Township but I do know that
is a much higher than it has been in the past and actually as recently as today we're closer to 52% so that number continues to grow and as a result of that we are at 100% uh Title One School across the entire District um again that
that is new for us um we are also 3% uh multilingual Learners so you'll see on that data sheet it gets into the detail of how many languages we speak in the district it's over 50 different languages our students speak and for some of them they're learning English for the first time and that's what we
call our multilingual population so of them 13 different languages so they're coming in learning English but having at least one in some cases multiple languages that they speak at home so they're coming into school not only trying to do the academics but also learning English at the same time and
then finally we are at 20% of students who are special education or have an IEP um and these are some numbers that really Drive things that we should consider about our population as we go through some of the the planning we'll do in a little bit um but to get into actually our stakeholder survey so
hopefully many of you participated in this survey it was sent out from the school district in early March we had it open for two weeks and we kept it Anonymous so um what this represents is yes we have you here and we're so excited to have you here and we thank
you for being here but we also know that you are not the only people that are in our district we are trying to get as many voices in part of this as we can and that was what the survey allowed us to do so in total um when we closed the survey we had 472 total responses and
that is an increase of when we did this last time so we were able to get more participation which is great you'll see in this breakdown that we have it uh we allowed people to select multiple indications of what represents them so uh me who I I work in the school district District but I also live in the
township I would check both boxes that yes I'm a resident and yes I'm a staff member and for some of you you may have also checked multiple boxes as well and also to try to be as inclusive as possible we did put out the um survey in both Spanish and in Chinese so we were able to get some Spanish speakers to
contribute to the survey as well um liyer scale so this is a little statistics lesson for everybody who needs to get caught up on this has anyone taking a survey and they say on a scale from 1 to 10 or a scale from 1 to 5 how do you feel about this anybody familiar with those surveys um so this
is the idea the the complex behind the lard scale um using a number system of a scale from 1 to five indicates basically what is your sentiment putting a number to how you feel about something so the closer that you are to a one or a two generally that means you have a negative
outlook or a negative sentiment about something the closer you get to a four or five would be a positive sentiment indicating that you're you agree or approve about something and with a 1 to five scale we also have a neutral Z so you could kind of say yes kind of say no it depends on what your outlook is um we
did in purposes of trying to get the data as clean as possible included an option where someone could say no or not applicable and those results when it came to the analysis of it were excluded from those answers some people answered everything some people depending on it might be something really specific about
academics and they didn't feel like they could contribute on that they might have put no or na um but ultimately as we go through the scales and we see what the responses were to the questions I want you to keep in mind that anything 3.5 or higher would be considered a positive
response um it's also important to say that because we have a pretty good sample size that 472 people it's almost statistically impossible to be an exact five or an exact one right because everyone's going to have an opinion we're going to have people across the board so I want you to look for things
that are in what we're going to call that positive zone of 3.5 to 4.5 a realistic positive goal for these numbers okay so breaking down these questions they were presented in a way that they were um in in specific groups
or categories so the first category was around academics so the first question being how would you rate the quality of academic instruction in our district and the overall average or mean for those who are doing the math that is going to be a 3.9 uh next question how does our
curriculum prepare students for college and careers that is a 3.8 and then how well do you believe the district is preparing students for the future and we give you some examples such as technology skills critical thinking skills and that came at a
3.7 in the question of are you satisfied with the availability of academic support services so this would be tutoring this would be Title One services for pull out instruction special education that was a 3.6 and the question of preschool expansion how
important it is the Egg Harbor Township community that was a 4.0 so um in addition to the quantitative or the numbers version of the statistics we also had qualitative which would be the open-ended responses to some of these questions as well so I
just gave you the highlights in this particular area so overall we came in at a good rating for our academics at a 3.9 out of 5.0 our academic supports came in now I do have ranges on here because I did do a deeper analysis for anyone who really wants to see the numbers um I
have it broken down by subgroups of residents versus staff versus parents and all these other breakdowns so that's where these ranges as you see them might come in so academic supports did have a low average of a 2.9 up to a 4.0 depending on the stakeholder group and
then we also asked a question of of these different programs which would you prioritize which programs do you think we should continue to offer and are most important for our community and the number one thing that came up at 83% was Kindergarten offering full day kindergarten now again can select multiple so kindergarten was first um
followed by Talons was immediately under that and then um also preschool was right under that there were additional programs as well but those were the top programs as far as Athletics and activities uh the range of range and quality of the athletic program
specifically was a 4.0 same number for our extracurricular activities in the district and then and the specific question of how important is EDG caror Township School District in offering Athletics to the Middle School level that came in at a 4.4 um we also asked about finer
Performing Arts across grade levels how important is it to have finer Performing Arts at each grade level and you can see it starts at a 3.8 for lower elementary and goes up to a 4.5 for high school and our ranges and options here
overall people had you know favorable outlooks on the Athletics and activities they did indicate that it is important to have Middle School sports and felt that in k 12 uh it was important to maintain fine and Performing Arts across all grade levels um questions around dining
services so how would you rate the quality of our school breakfast program that came in at a 3.3 and the quality of our school lunch program at a 3.2 so um as you're following along remember 3.5 and up would be a positive so anything lower
than that is moving toward a neutral or negative uh result there transportation is coming in as if you're satisfied with school transportation or the bus services involved in the district at a 3.6 and Technology how are satisfied you with the technology available to
students and staff at a 3.6 as well um so takeaways here uh meals need to be improved this is also indicating the open-ended responses um there were some open-ended responses about communication within busing we'll get into that a little bit and then also
that um the technology some open-end responses around Chromebooks being made available at home home some confusion around that uh particularly at the middle school level facilities um so uh with facilities the takeaways here looks like we might have gotten out of order on
that one but that's fine um the the numbers on the facilities how would you rate the condition of our school buildings so that was a 3.7 how would you rate the capacity or class size of our classrooms and learning spaces it was a 3.4 um and now I wouldn't want to I want
to clarify this is an inverse question so this number would be expected to be lower How concerned are you about the age of our school buildings with that being a 2.4 indicates that people are not concerned with that um but the uh open-ended here um overall good rating
as far as even though the buildings are over older uh they are rated as good but lots of notice about HVAC concerns um that came up multiple times and also overcrowding at the K to5 level uh that as preschool expansion continues to come in that we're having having some um
again this is the this isn't me talking this is what the results say um that the K to2 uh is continuing to have to adjust for that uh climate and culture how would you rate the overall climate and culture of our schools came in at a
3.3 um how safe and supportive do you feel about our school environments a 3.6 and the last question there of do you feel parents and Community feel welcome in our schools and that came in at 78% said yes that they do and doing the same question from the last time we did
strategic planning it was almost exactly the same number um so overall we would say that the morale is listed as fair in this case um you could see that I have that breakdown of 3.3 to three or excuse me 3.0 to a 3.3 being our stakeholder uh
comparisons there um overall people do describe the schools as feeling like like a safe environment at a 3.5 up to a 4.3 and um there is a a noted disparity within the people who felt that schools were welcoming particularly the business
owners of V haror Township that took this survey only 55% felt that the schools were welcoming um we did ask some additional questions about what do you think are the strengths around Egg Harbor Township School District and um we uh did a little bit of human analysis and then we
compared it to some AI analysis and we brought it back to the human analysis here so ultimately um we coded essentially what the open-ended responses were around and came up with common themes of what people said so overall as a strengthen uh in Egg Harbor
Township you see that on the leftand side teachers and staff being one of our primary strengths of Egg Harbor Township also the fact that we have a diverse Community we are inclusive to that Community being a mentioned 32 times and then specific programs or opportunities
offered by our district came up 27 times as far as challenges are concerned the district size and our ongoing growth was the number one thing mentioned also student behavior and discipline coming in at a close second uh the last thing being around communication from the
school district to the community um the last question we asked on the survey uh was what other suggestions or comments do you have as we develop our strategic plan so basically this was the survey taker message to all of you as you get to do this work uh the first thing was around
facilities and just overcrowding that there is a need for more spaces newer facilities and and other ways to address that overcrowding problem uh number two students support and well-being that there should be more support for students including academics special education and mental health
number three Staffing support uh so this would be specific to supporting our staff with additional professional development and other ways to help support our current staff and the last thing around Comm communication and engagement so suggestions on improving communication from the district to
parents in the overall community so now we're going to have you take a moment you had two Flyers when you walked in one was that fact sheet so you can review what I said was the highlights of what I just went over um but also there's another paper which
which we're calling our glows and grows so essentially we're going to have you take a moment to yourself uh hopefully you have a writing utensil otherwise we have some somewhere up here um if you need something to write with just on your own what were your takeaways what are some things that you see Egg Harbor Township is doing well either reflected
in what we've shown you so far or just from your own experience followed by where can we grow what improvements are needed or what Innovation can we start to bring in as we bring in strategic planning so this will just be for yourself and then we'll move on to another M thing in just a moment
all right Ken Savina where are you I'm where oh right there your group's going to go first spokesperson couldn't decide right now you want me go the gonna sh the common themes you want me to explain them or just yeah all right so we came
up with three common themes um technology we had Pros for technology being the devices and the fact that there is a lot of one toone devices the cons were the consistency of them working the long-term maintenance and keeping up with programs um and the
overreliance on technology rather than other modes um special education pros were the current programs unified at the high school cons um someone brought up not having unified at Miller and inclusion practices and then uh
communication um was stated that we need more consistency using various methods thank you all right let's see who's next all right Kelly baz Deus woo um so our common three themes we
took all of our grows and all of the ideas that the group came up with and threw them in chat GPT Gotta Love AI the three common themes are curriculum and educational Innovation so there was a lot of um many ideas focusing on enhancing curriculum to support deeper Learning and Development um some ideas
that were um that came up in our group were steam classes at elementary levels crossover academies um at the younger levels as well farmtotable curriculum with the green including the greenhouse now that we have those um language programs at younger ages that um could
emphasize Innovation and what students are learning and how they engage with the material the second theme was um support systems and student well-being so several of the ideas that were discussed aim to create a supportive environment for students the sore Leadership Academy mtss
expansion Eagle Hib Summit and Food Service improvements all contribute to nurturing students personal growth emotional well-being and providing healthier and more supportive learning environments um just some ideas there and then the third theme was communication and continuity so some of the ideas we discussed in grow um
focused on improving communication consistency and continuity within the education system for instance um some things were discussed of gbq expectations between middle school and high school there's some differences there that we could hopefully um correct the concern about too many funnels of
communication while all really great and helpful having so many different apps and platforms that put out a lot of information can sometimes be confusing um highlighting the need for clarity and streamlining of educational practices and information sharing methods would all be helpful in that them as well and
that's it all right next group nope I got to go back thank you all right so our team um came up with a lot of great grows um but then even more so glows but our common themes here all right is that there's a
lot of diverse opportunities for middle and high school students to participate in extracurricular activities that currently exist we could benefit from additional opportunities in the younger grades there was a lot of glowing for our security officers and the safety in
the district um they referen some of the um like incidents or some movement from Miller students at the high school was brought up a few times there was never a worry about the physical safety of their children worried about the emotional response or how their child might feel after something like that but again never worried about the physical safety
of of how their child would be in that moment and that um a lot of great teachers P professionals and programs sharing it more and the communication pushing it out to the students or the community about different opportunities um we had a variety of um kind of
stakeholders from all the buildings here here and sharing more information just about what's going on a lot of us weren't aware of what's going on in other buildings um and so just to share some of these great opportunities in the building and then after school all right Jackie's group
okay so team 10 the best team here um we had three we our three common themes communication was definitely um the big one which we've heard you know a couple a couple other times as well um in a large organization like this
like just trying to be more efficient and like we have so many um like good opportunities and so many offerings but how do we effectively let parents and community and people know about that in a way that lets them know about everything but doesn't feel so overwhelming because it can start to
feel overwhelming especially have multiple kids in the district at different schools so trying to streamline some of that and really let people know what opportunities are there and how to access them and things like that um then we have curriculum and this was actually a a glow and a grow for us
um you know we have a lot of variety and uh quality of of offerings and opportunities but still a a grow in um just more consistency like throughout the grade levels and then some vertical
articulation evidence-based curriculum uh teacher training just to kind of promote a little bit more consistency across uh and then we had like a wellness category so that includes Ed mental health supports and also included nutrition um and healthier lunches that
was our three themes okay so I hope we get a better Applause than Sam just did um so our themes uh we were focused on the grows um facility upgrades and expansion uh just within our offerings
which hopefully will reduce class sizes our second was around mental health and supporting staff students and our families um so there students that are having more trouble in the classroom those consequences also being tied back into it so if we're seeing repeat offenders or we're seeing students having challenges consistently where's
the mental health support and then the last thing being again on the health area healthier food better quality and then also organized activities outside for recess um for the students to do and engage them in those learning thank you was a little better all right Miss
hanigan's group what did idea hello we had some similar as the other groups communication I think we all agreed that we could use some improvement in communication and then special education um some improvements
with job training positions within the district were mentioned that bus AIDS and things like that are um advertised and seem to have trouble filling those positions maybe we could try and train some of our students to do those of jobs uh more of everything for this group
College Bound and non-college bound and then the students with behavior issues more supports for both groups with things like music swimming some increased opportunities and then last was security and Staffing especially an increase in
esps which are just too many acronyms I can't keep it all educational support Personnel professional professional thank you all right Mr lentor my goodness common themes I like
it our life easier okay so for our for our glows staff and teachers were up there super advisors uh the universal screenings and the and the data that we've been digging into the past year especially security got a shout out sore program relationships with students um
the PD days have improved a lot we were told uh much more relevant plts and plc's and the opportunities for people to collaborate uh the facilities and the U staying current on educational Trends things like Ai and uh you know really just trying to stay in Pace with what's
happening out in the world that the kids are in um for some grows more inclusion opportunities um always trying to chase that academic achievement overall to go with the theme of communication down the bottom that vertical vertical articulation not just District out to
the community but also within the district within the buildings um translation services more opportunities for in-person communication and um connection and then parent resources so having things available for parents so that they can support their kids at home
you know learn about things that we know maybe a little bit more about in the field but so like IPS 504s just apparent resources Bank of sorts um the other theme so we had communication targeted supports seal academic Etc and then
space came up a lot so more space um was the thing and then Innovative use of current space thank you Mr Mason hey everybody what am I doing
oh what all right um so we actually have quite a bit of overlap with a lot of the other groups um a lot of talk about uh the strength of the academic uh programs a lot of the opportunities that we have here a lot of stuff about diversity is definitely one of our uh strengths here
as a uh a district uh we already doing a lot of really great work supporting students with uh mental health uh social emotional learning uh we've got a lot of great initiatives like Unified sports our trade classes uh junior RTC uh dual credit mtss which is of course our student interventions like meeting
students where they're at helping them to uh move forward um and um some spots we definitely want to do better A lot of our student services was kind of one of our broad themes so we kind of put a few things underneath there such as uh Food Services which seems to come up you know more than once um discipline really
focus on safety in school improving uh safety and School uh Transportation uh additional student supports academically so um looking at our themes you know kind of overall just uh improving what we're already doing I guess in those kind of broad uh categories uh
definitely transitions um between buildings across the district um and I think a lot of folks hit that with the communication piece really came up a lot for us as well and then um really just uh continuing to promote we have a real um kind of clear Unity with our mission of embrace engage and educate really
doubling down on that driving it forward and then further embracing that diversity that we already have not only within the student body but also uh within the staff Miss Santiago's grp I love it prob need a microphone I'll wa for it
anyway see on my score there for Mr Mr Vargas Mr Vargas oh oh I didn't know who that was she like I'm supposed to know anyway should open with a joke right change your pants but you can't change your jeans science joke no anyway all
right all right so first of all we had a couple common themes we talked about a lot of stuff alumni connection so one of the questions talked about how you had 78% of people were afraid to come back into the school not that it's the most important thing for people to come back but when you look at the diversity of the population and the fact you have 50%
in this title one bucket you have a lot of diversity in economic incomes educations all this other stuff integrating that back in as far as from a citizenship Society letting kids know it's okay to be a plumber or an electrician or all these other things are really important and so making sure
you build those programs in early where the career day is just not like hey you're almost at the Finish Line what are you going to do to from day one when you're in preschool or kindergarten you can go through that and I think the administration and the preschool department does a pretty good job with that now but expanding that into finding
additional uh whether it's the community or things like that are really important because there are a lot of longtime EHS as I've learned second class size and Facilities I'm pretty sure that's been expanded quite a bit um Now's the Time it looks like there's a lot of population growth I know we see the
preschool classes are growing pretty big I know that you have housing developments going up all over the place I moved into a new one 5 years ago when we moved here there is a lot of kids on that street a lot I have a lot of kids already so it's a that's a bubble that's coming it's uh so it's a so planning
ahead for that's going to be really important because when you go three to five years in the future you don't want all of a sudden have 3,000 kids in 3,000 kids in the high school that's already feels like it's too big the next thing you know you're throwing trailers on there is an emergency and then the next thing you're trying to figure out how do we build a plan and
expansion anyway uh and then streamlining progression in schools and grades together so Dr guo where you go where there you are that video is really cool but one of the common themes that came up was a lot of the kids were like I'm so excited to see my friends and I love seeing my friends and my friends are the best and man you talk about
social um and mental health well-being well when you have the schools and my kids are all little now but they're like they go to a school and then they go to two different schools and then they go back to one school and they go back to two different schools consolidating that down where you could have like here's the third grade here's the fourth grade however you can do that
to try to collectively put that together I think is kind of an easy win um but to that point how much of the trans I know that this is a busing district and so I know that puts a lot of limitations on things but how much of the busing dictates some of the things that you guys can plan with and how much of that
can you it's a lot I can see it so it's she said it though but at least you know because how much of that can you get out in front of by saying hey you know what we can go and do we have to pay the bus drivers a little more or find a bonus to get a couple extra ones but it also allows us to plan the school system a little bit better because you never want
to have you know your governor for your whole not like Governor person like Governor thing slows everything down for your whole process be that the buses can only get this many students to this location at this time of the day because if that happens it there it it might
cost you 50 Grand more and Staffing for buses but it'll cost you $300,000 more in as far as how you have to manage around the school system and especially when you look at tying this all back together the fact that you have a very high amount of from a title one school district you have a lot of lower income
you have a lot of more special ed that definitely changes the way that you have to adjust teachers and plan out the district uh back to point number one so that's it I want my uh my 10 out of 10 or actually 100 10 10 would be bad thank you so
much I'll just stand here for a second you're doing great I'm doing great sure next up here is going to be oh she's putting the great in penmanship counts right should I just go for it yeah go
for it I'm group one well we're group one so our three we focused on programming support and resources so for programming we really focused on um the really excellent clubs activities and
extracurriculars at this school district um we really think there's something here for everyone and that's wonderful um not just in the Middle School um but also at the high school so you know we were talking about if a student doesn't
know what they want to do they don't have to figure it out after they graduate they can kind of figure it out while they're in high school and make the mistake then and you know find out what they want to do before they graduate um and being an alumni of the school district that's exactly what I
did I was in the business and Law Academy and I now a teacher um so you know I kind of worked my way up um supports for students um we talked about absence rates things like that we talked about um seal and how effective that's
been in the schools these past few years um with convocation and things like that um and we talked about mod modernization um like security and just the facilities in general um St programs and spaces
things like that maybe um new camera systems and you know new facilities things like that we could update um that's what we got thank you Miss gcal and as we near the completion of our evening just two housekeeping items real quick before I
pass the microphone to Dr guo for closing comments that blank table over there if you could just leave your index cards on the way out just toss them there no need to put them in any organized fashion we'll collect them and then also in the back we put out tog go containers please take a brownie with
you for the ride take them home to your kids and then have fun getting them to go to sleep all right and here is Dr guio okay so great job great job really good uh at at what you do sharing feedback um and what we're going to do is you know
we saw um a lot of words up there and they're in um the the classroom so we will share that with you because you're part part of the committee so you'll get to see the glows and the grows and of course the common themes and at the next meeting um we are going to break down
those common themes as humans but we're going to show you how um AI does it but um for instance communication showed up so I was like w we don't communicate and and you know calm down calm down you know we're going to break it out we're going to see what you're talking about
Beyond The District newsletter beyond the website beyond the phone call so there's something in there that I'm real Curious to hear about and then we build the plans from there all right so that'll be example but what we did tonight um using technology um the tool
Gemini that we use um Dr Mullen had everything going behind the scenes and I'm going to let her explain the outcomes but uh I do want to know do you have a a certification or director of Transportation no yeah what's that director of Transportation he works for
Honda so it's not that big all right see Dr Charlton on your way out um so two things um as far as the behind the scenes part that was happening so one thing you might have noticed is we were recording the responses as you were
coming up so we actually will have the capture of your you know authentic responses to everything but also with that Google doc I I pre- prompted the AI for those that are following along with me that I gave it some information about our slides and what we were talking about tonight I told the AI that we were
going to have teams and that there was going to be glows and grows in three areas of priorities and it said okay I'm ready for it and then I gave it the documents and these are the common themes that it identified so on you know using that kind of magic um these are
the top areas of glows and grows based on what the AI said now of course it's still Ai and it's still robotic and it doesn't know the human sentiment behind everything or or the great jokes that happened along the way um but we're going to take this and then
add the human element to it too for our next meeting so you'll see more talk about more on technology more about Ai and then also the themes that we talked about tonight will be really expanded out the next time we're together which is April 30th um one other thing uh Dr um charlon mentioned about the cards can
you also if you're willing give us your activity the thing that you wrote the notes on we'd like to be able to capture that if you're willing to drop that off at the same time before you leave you can keep the um statistics if you like but we would really like to see those activities all right scroll down you
want or slow down slow down okay all right so that's a wrap thank you so much your feedback is so important to us have a great night see you soon