##VIDEO ID:PXrkj5eiGkI## the great St pumpkin paloa returned okay you know the great staff pumpkin paloa returned and this year's decorating contest brought some surprising twists after years of topping the scoreboard Mrs Schwin was finally outdone by the greatest Miss fi and Mrs arwe with their Winnie the Poo Boo Crew Miss f and Mrs Zar took home the first place title bumping Mrs swint's ET phone home into a respectable second not far behind the creative Trio of Mrs Marin Mrs troken and Mrs giser captured third place with their warm and gooey Captain C campfire stories s'mores scene each staff member contributed $10 to join this friendly competition and students eagerly casted their votes over 2 days on Thursday the decorated pumpkins found a new home at the verlon senior Center helping to spread seasonal cheer for the community to enjoy to add to the fun I've brought photos for you to see these pumpkin masterpieces for yourself as you will see it was not an easy task for students to pick a winner the creativity at Memorial is clearly alive and well we are thrilled to announce that seven incredibly talented students from Memorial and Thomas Jefferson audition for the prestigious bgen County Chorus and all seven were selected this accomplishment speaks volumes about dedication hard work and skills of these young vocalists competing against some of the finest singers in the county they demonstrated both confidence and exceptional musical ability earning themselves a well-deserved place in the chorus please join us in congratulating these outstanding students as they prepare to perform and Inspire through their love of music from from Memorial Lily baleros Liam Rosen wig G Blanchard Emily Shana and from TJ Sher Sumer girtler Aaron Chen junyong Jin the week of respect at Memorial was filled with energy excitement and school spirit as students came together to celebrate and showcase their outstanding character the fifth and sixth grade character cavalcade was a highlight with the students proudly participating in team building events that brought out their best qualities and made for an unforgettable day in their classes students were each assigned a pillar of character to represent and this year we added two new pillars integrity and courage each class went all out creating mascots banners songs dances and even their own Flags to embody their character Pillars the festivities kicked off with a lively parade featuring The these creative displays as students marched outside the school with unity throughout the year the p PE and health department works with teachers throughout the building during our 12:45 p.m. dismissal days to promote building wide spirit and wellness with various activities for students for our first event of the school year on October 21st students in each grade level form teams for an ultim ultimate football tournament with other games and activities and will be available for students who opt out of football all money raised during these events will support our TJ cares pediatric cancer cancer initiatives with hackin sax Children Hospital Jackson strong the Peter zyo foundation and Tackle kids cancer get ready board of education because this year's drama club show is about to be so fetch we're thrilled to announce that the memorial drama club we'll be taking on Mean Girls junor where our students will bring the hilarious and heartfelt story of high school rivalries friendships and self-discovery to life on stage it's sure to be a wild ride filled with pink outfits epic onliners and plenty of laughs stay tuned for more details we'll let you know when you can grab a front row seat to all the drama the fun kind we promise at TJ the drama club will be presenting the musical Finding Nemo on February February 28th and March 21st join us as the anxious and overprotective clownfish Marlin teams up with the Optimus blue tangor and the laid-back sea total Crush to find Nemo who after he is captured while exploring the world beyond their home a guaranteed fun night for the entire family thank you for your patience as we had a lot to report tonight after all a lot happens in two months in middle school next month we will try to be a bit more concise thank you both so much Lindsay hi everyone I'm excited to be back and updating you all again on Fon High School uh for starters we had our first general assembly meeting on October 22nd it was a success and we discussed the agenda items as follows firstly we had our first ever homecoming dance which was last Friday October 25th with almost 400 people in a attendance it was a huge success we're looking forward to continuing this as a ferland high school tradition in the future secondly Spirit Fridays everyone is encouraged to wear Fon apparel or red and gray on Fridays and it's a great way to promote school spirit throughout the year we also have many upcoming events one of them is the interact club's blood drive on November 11th we're glad to be saving lives in our area and giving back to our community in this way we're also planning our fall spirit week and pep rally this Year's fall spirit week is going to be a little different from previous years because we're adding extra days starting from the Thursday and Friday prior as well as the regularly themed days Monday through Wednesday for example on Thursday November 21st we'll be commemorating 100 years of fairon with a photo booth with props from the 1920s we're also thinking of having a student teacher swap day on Friday November 22nd and then we'll proceed with our regularly scheduled Red days gray day and Falon apparel day on the following 3-day week right before than giving just like we have in the previous um school years and our pep rally will be on Wednesday November 27th this year has been bustling with fun this far and I'm looking forward to sharing more exciting news with you all next meeting thank you thank you all so much for being here and for reporting out in your schools um I will now open the floor to our superintendent's comments good evening everyone and thank you to all three of our students for those wonderful updates um as you can tell a lot of really amazing and exciting things happening in our schools uh I do have a few additional updates that I would like to provide to the public and to the board um first uh yesterday we had really exciting opportunity at our uh elementary schools where all six of our school's fourth grade classes convened together and we had assemblies um by Lizzy cider uh Lizzy cider was previously here to do assemblies on nobody has the power to ruin your day it's all about anti-bullying inclusivity um she's a top 40 singer um she was here I believe in 2018 and it was such a huge hit uh and so memorable with our kids and our staff uh that the fair laon burrow actually named uh October 29th officially Lizzy cider day in fairon so we had a great opportunity uh I think about two weeks ago maybe 10 days ago we had an opportunity to be able to bring Lizzy back so I just want to be able to thank a couple of key people who were able to make that happen um our burrow manager Kurt paluso uh Sharon bragan uh alisandra Phillips uh and Dr lactina Who coordinated that important event for all of our kids I was able to be in attendance at one of those assemblies the kids were absolutely over the moon and had a great time and her message of positivity and inclusivity uh just clearly resonated with our students so it was really wonderful day so thank you to everyone for being able to make that happen uh in addition to a lot of the wonderful events that our students have shared have occurred over the past two months uh most recently we've had some other really wonderful celebrations and recognitions uh most recently celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with a number of different activities across all of our schools we heard about the Centennial celebrations that are happening within our schools as well and are upcoming um at the high school there was an exciting no haate tour with BMX bikers doing all kinds of flips in the gym um but the real message there is also about anti-bullying and kindness um so it was a really great opportunity and that all dovetails nicely with the New Jersey week of respect that we had in October um this evening uh around uh Hib harass M intimidation and bullying we do have a resolution on the board agenda it's actually resolution 5B that I'll draw the board's attention to um that is the Hib self assessment and that's a requirement that each school in the state of New Jersey is required to engage in each year um the scores from that self assessment are noted on that resolution um those scores are consistent with our self assessments and PR years the school safety team at each of our schools across the entire District meets to review on a number of different indic indicators there are actually eight core elements that relate to the Hib anti-bullying Bill of Rights um and the categories are all around Hib programming Hib policy trainings that we provide to our our staff other staff trainings that support the Hib initiatives uh the Hib reporting procedure HIV Personnel um matters of HIV as they're taught as part of our curriculum and instruction program the Hib investigation procedures and Hib reporting so all in all you can see the scores there they um are out of a total number of 78 it is not on a scale of 100 so that's important to note um and um the the scores are overall a really good assessment of where we're currently at and it's also an opportunity for each school safety team to reflect around the different initiatives of how to continuously improve to continue to make our school safe and inclusive for every single child when they walk into our buildings um shifting gears a little bit um as I'm wrapping it up here I do want to note and congratulate uh Deanna quas who is officially retiring from Thomas Jefferson Middle School as a language arts teacher after 28 years she's retiring at the end of the year so we just want to thank her for her years of dedicated service to our students to our school to our community um wonderful Testament to the amazing contributions um and then last but not least I'm going to be turning it over momentarily to Dr lactina Who does have a presentation for us this evening uh on njsla and dlm assessment results uh for standardized testing across our school district uh I just want to thank everyone especially our students who are in attendance with us tonight I am going to dismiss them before for this presentation uh on standardized assessment because I do know that from my conversations they do have a lot of homework and things to catch up on and we want to get you home uh sooner than later so thank you for coming tonight and for sharing all of the amazing things that are happening in your schools uh and thank you for everyone who's in attendance with us tonight so thank you thank you ladies Lindsay is that one of the things that you guys sold last year this is actually for my AP Psychology project my teacher's probably watching right now too but um our project I can explain it really briefly this is a hippo on campus um so we're learning about the hippo campus in the brain and I'm taking my hippo around with me to form memories and taking pictures and everything so would you like me to take a picture of you in your hippo I I took one with Dr D okay earlier today yeah but thank you thank you thank you have a good night good all right good evening everybody uh tonight I'm going to talk about our njsla and our dlm results from last school year um there's quite a few slides but some of them we're going to go through relatively quickly uh we're going to be talking about the njsla results in English language arts mathematics and science and then we will end with a look at our Dynamic learning Maps results so njsla people are pretty familiar with that we've been taking it for quite some time all of our students in grades 3 through nine take the njsla in English Language Arts students in grades three through the high school take it in math um all students are required to take Algebra 1 and then if students already took the algebra 1 assessment in middle school then they would take Algebra 2 or geometry as freshman um depending upon which one of those courses they were in so you'll see that there's far fewer numbers in those when we report out um and then the njsla in science for grades 5 8 and 11 and again we're basically looking to see are our students College and Career ready in these subject areas the performance levels for ELA and math are slightly different than they are for science there are five different performance levels level one is students did not yet meet the grade level expectations level two indicates students partially met those expectations level three they are approaching the expectations and we really like to see our students scoring in levels four and five level four which is meeting grade level expectations and level level four meeting and level five exceeding grade level expectations so One requirement uh for us to report out on is actually our participation rates we are required to have a 95% participation rate in these assessments so you can see the First Column shows you the number of possible eligible test takers by grade for ELA followed by the number of valid scores that were returned and then the final column shows you our particip so you can see that we scored 98 to 100% participation across all grade levels with an average of 99% um participation rate so I thank all of our students I thank all of our families for ensuring that their children um came and took those assessments so here we have um the percentages of students in each of those levels so you will see the grade the number of valid scores and then the percentage es of students that scored in levels 1 2 3 4 and five the red shows how fairon students performed in GR in levels four and five so the percentages of students that either met or exceeded expectations and the final column is the averages um for the state of New Jersey as a whole and this we will post on our website so if anybody wants it um it will be up there um for you to see so you can see that faon students outscored the state of New Jersey as a whole in every single grade level in English language arts there it is in a bar graph because sometimes that is a little easier to see I'm a visual person so I'd love to see those bar graphs so fairon is in red and then New Jersey scores are in blue we also have to uh share with you the information by subgroup category so uh we are not allowed to report out on any subgroups that are less than 10 because of identifiable information um on students so any place you see an NA um the numbers are less than 10 um so on this chart you can see by grade level how females males and various ethnicities and races how students performed across the board in ela these are the remaining subcategories um where we report out on students that are economically disadvantaged um students with disabilities general education students students with 504 plans students that are and are not multilingual Learners as well as uh students that may be migrant students or not migrant students so again you can see um all of the data from grades 3 through n here for English language arts um now we're going to move on to mathematics so in the area of mathematics again you will see eligible test takers valid scores and participation rates you will notice that we offer the mathematics assessment in grades 3 through 8 and then we had end of course um subjects such as algebra 1 Algebra 2 and geometry and again very high uh participation rates with a 99% average participation rate in the area of mathematics once again we break out those scores according to the Prof and once again you can see that our students here in faon do a really great job and they have outperformed the state average again in all grade levels and in all mathematics courses and once again a visual of what that looks like in a bar graph and here's our end of course offerings in mathematics so sometimes when we take a look at some of these scores in math um whether we're looking at grade seven grade eight or the algebra 1 and Algebra 2 we have students in middle school and students in high school that are all being combined when the state gives us these scores so what we like to do is we like to sort of tease out that data and take a look at well how are our students doing in grade seven what does that data look like what about our students that take Algebra 1 in grade seven or grade eight as opposed to the high school um it just gives us some more information for us to be able to use to reflect back on our curriculum and the performance of our students so here you can see that that information is teased out um and you can see just for seventh and eth grade mathematics what that looks like um again grade seven our students um in grade seven math um which is not our students in Algebra 1 they had a passing rate 59% of them met or exceeded compared to the state average of 38% in Orange underneath it and then grade 8 46% um compared to the 20% of students in the state of New Jersey that either met or exceeded in grade eight 99% of our students that take Algebra 1 in Middle School um either meet or exceed and 100% of our students in grade 8 that take Algebra 2 have met or exceeded expectations a couple of things that I wanted to point out out was that 46% um that's some really nice growth for us in our grade eight scores last year we had 40% of our students so I just wanted to point out that nice growth there and also Algebra 2 last year we had 21% of our students that exceeded expectations this year 29% of our students that took Algebra 2 in 8th grade exceeded expectations really fabulous performance by our students um we should be really proud so once again we have our subgroup categories here um like we did with the ELA so these are our subgroups for gender and ethnicity and race for all of our math and then similarly our economically disadvantaged statistics uh students with disabilities multilingual Learners and migrant categories you can see how our students performed uh so now what we're going to do is just show you some longitudinal comparisons uh one thing that we spend a good deal of time on is taking a look at the data that we receive from these assessments and other assessments to say you know how is our curriculum working are our students getting all the information that they need we look for um areas standards skills where maybe our students need a little extra support so we look at the data year after year to say you know are there some improvements we can make with our curriculum and we are constantly um improving our curriculum to meet our students needs so you will see in gray that for each grade level um in English language arts grade three through n Gray represents the students in grade three in 2022 and how they scored compared to the students in third grade in 2023 in red compared to the students in 2024 in that yellowy orangee color so again there are some places where you see like grade four um we our students scored a 74 so 74% of our students um got either a level 4 five and then then the next year it was 79 the next year it was 80 you will you know notice pretty fair stability across the boards there um so again we take a look at this information we drill down to the actual standard s and the evidence statements to see um how we can continue to bolster our curriculum and then we do the same thing for our mathematics um again you know one thing that sticks out for me is when I look at grade eight and I see how over the years we have really improved uh the students have improved performance and um we've really been taking a look at that curriculum um and we see some really nice results so you can see again uh the comparison across the years and then our Algebra 1 Algebra 2 and geometry results you can see how our students do um over the past three years okay now we'll move on to science as I explained earlier science is slightly different the way they score it um compared to ELA and math um our new science test that we've had for several years very different it's not just can you give me some facts about science it's really about um understanding novel situations and applying scientific thinking to that rather than just memorization of facts so um a much tougher test um we only give the science test in grades 5 8 and 11 so it's really grade five is looking at um content from grades three and four and five the eighth grade test is assessing students on knowledge they've learned in six seven and eight and then we have the high school uh grade 11 um so there are only four levels here level one below proficient level two near proficient level three proficient and level four Advanced proficiency and we're going to share with you the results that our students the percentages of students that scored either level three or four so once again participation rates are very high for our science assessments a 98% participation rate overall so again thank you families and stud students and these are our outcomes our students again outscored in the state of New Jersey across the board again it's a challenging test you can see that these percentages aren't as high as our Ela and math um either in District or in the state of New Jersey um it's a challenging test the good news is um when you see some of the longitudinal pieces you will see that we are improving a little bit each year um there again The District in red compared to New Jersey and blue we have our subgroup categories for gender and ethnicity and race interestingly for science they also give us an other category which they don't include with the English and math so there is a homeless category here as well um but again we have fewer than 10 students in many of these categories um so um we can't report out on that information and again when you look at how our students did from one year to the next in grades 5 8 and 11 you can see pretty consistent um again that eighth grade um has grown the most over the years and this is something that we obviously constantly look at are constantly analyzing our uh scores and um making changes to our curriculum um to better support our stud students so the next section of slides that I'm going to show you is something called DFG comparisons so um DFG is District Factor groups um so District Factor groups are um basically it's a way to identify districts um that are similar demographically um it's based on a variety of factors the State Department of Education um uses a variety of data to to categorize districts so when we look at our performance of our students we like to see it's great that we compare it to New Jersey but let's try to compare ourselves to other districts that are similar to ours um similar performing students that kind of thing um so I'm going to share with you literacy and math scores for how our students did compare to us um Falon was characterized as a District that's a GH District so you'll see how we did compare to other GH districts but then we always like to compare ourselves as well to the I's and the J's how do we do with districts um that might be a little bit demographically different than we are um because again it helps us to know how well we're doing so um sorry if you can't read this super well um but this GH group we have Edgewater Emerson Hillsdale Leonia Midland Park pamis Rutherford Teck Waldwick and Westwood and you'll see a lot of colors Falon is in red any District that we outscored is highlighted in yellow any District that is highlighted in that orange color means that they outscored us but within one percentage point so you can see in mathematics when we compare ourselves to other districts in our District Factor group our students do beautifully again a lot to be proud of right here um looking at this but then what is it um oh sorry here's the rest of Mathematics Algebra 1 Algebra 2 geometry and njpa and math one thing I did not share with you is these are results from 2023 the reason is the state department of education has not yet posted scores for 2024 so we are showing our 2023 scores compared to the other District's 2023 scores all this information is available on the state department website um you will see x's in certain areas that's either because for example Edgewater doesn't have an algebra class that it offers they only go up to grade six um and then other places where you'll see an X it just was not available on the website um so again the available scores here our students did beautifully compared to our district Factor group you can see that they really outscored most districts let's take a look at group I these are towns like Allendale Alpine claer creskill demerest Anglewood Cliffs Franklin Lakes howorth Mawa Montville Northern Valley Norwood Oakland old Japan Oradell Park Ridge pasak Valley Ramapo Indian Hills ramsy riverdell River Ed River Veil ten ofly and white cof and again quite a bit of yellow and quite a bit of orange there so our students do a really good job when we compare ourselves even to some other District Factor groupings um so kudos to our students and our families and our teachers obviously um for all of the work that they put in here we are with algebra 1 Algebra 2 geometry and njpa again yellows oranges um our students are still performing very nicely against their peers and then we said well what happens when we now look at District J and here we are for district Factor group J you can see that there are places where we are performing better than Saddle River up Upper Saddle Saddle River Woodcliff Lake Glenrock going to the high school again Northern Highlands Ridgewood so our students are doing really really nicely so now let's take a look at Ela same thing here's District Factor groupings for GH our students compared to similar districts lots and lots of yellow here's grades s through nine in ela our students doing really beautifully let's take a look at District Factor group I you're still seeing quite a bit of yellow and orange again students should be proud grades seven through nine for district Factor group I again lots of yellow and orange and how did we do an Ela compare to distri Factor group J um that grade three did really really well um and you've got some other really nice scores up there as well um so the the indicators that the state department uses are things like um percent of adults with no high school diploma percent of adults with college education occupational status say unemployment rates percentage of individuals in poverty median family income um things like that is what what they Ed they are higher yes yes and then there you go 78 and nine so those are some comparisons um to take a look at um the next couple of slides we're going to talk about notable achievements in English language arts mathema Macs and Science and then we're going to talk about all the interventions we have in place to continue to support our students and then um we are going to talk about dlm so when you look at our assessment scores that I just reported on you can see as I said that font students scored higher than the state average in all grade levels in ela and in some grades as much as 29 percentage points higher same thing for math but in some areas they scored as much as 39 percentage points higher than the state average um and students also scored higher in Falon than um in science than the state average over 40% of our students in grades four six and seven exceeded expectations in ela that's a really um a really great accomplishment 31% of our students enrolled in grade three math and 31% of our students enrolled in Geometry also met or exceeded expectations um and all of our or I think that was just supposed to say exceeded I will take a look at that um and then all of our students taking the geometry assessment are approaching meeting or exceeding expectations nobody was in level one or two in Geometry which is really great um some other interesting notable achievements of our students and staff related to ELA Math and Science 100% of our students that are enrolled in our brand new AP seminar course score a three or higher on the AP exam 100% of our students enrolled in AP Literature scored a three or higher on the AP exam our feran high school literary magazine uh received a ranking of distinguished from the NCT the National Council on teachers of English excellence in art and literary magazines the district's Ela supervisor along with one of the high school English teachers they were both published in uh peer-reviewed academic publication for the work they did here in fairon um on fostering student engagement they've been working on a department goal of working um with their English departments to do station work uh in their English classes so students have more focused targeted um opportunities to engage in um English work and we had two people published as a result of what they did 100% of our students enrolled in AP Statistics an AP Calculus BC score to three or higher on the AP exam yeah yeah 98% of our students enrolled an AP Calculus AB scored a three or higher on the AP exam and then this chart shows you um for AP biology AP Chemistry um AP environmental science and AP Physics 1 you can see the Falon average compared to the New Jersey average once again our students did a great job um on our AP exams and science as well um one of our fairon high school chemistry teachers a physics teacher and a biology teacher were awarded something called a Simon scholarship they attend in a very specific type of training uh way to teach science called open SED um they participated in that for free this past summer and they also are able to attend the New Jersey science convention for free as a result of winning this prestigious award board and our Falon High School forensic program has been accepted as a Supa forensic program so dual um enrollment with you know Syracuse University so they're allowed to get college credits and Supa is really uh very well respected so um we were really proud of that as well so what do we do to help students that might need a little additional support we have many many interventions in place we are fortunate thanks to the board of education and the support from our community we have three District element Elementary reading coaches two Middle School reading Specialists or coaches and we also have our three secondary school librarians and all of them assist um with our students and our teachers and again it enables our students to do so well on these assessments we have reading intervention programs in all of our elementary schools along with supported um academic level classes in all of our secondary schools we have a plethora of resources available to our students uh Learning Ally audiobooks um is one that assists our atrisk readers so that they can access text on their reading level we have grade K lailo which is a computer-based personalized phonics and comprehension program grades K through one have a hegerty um uh pheic awareness instruction program um and we have also gotten lots of decodable readers for our students we use brain spring in Orton Gillingham phonic first program for our students in K through 3 um our literacy coaches um are the ones that go in and help assess our students in grades K and one um with Dibbles which is a newer assessment tool that we are using in order to identify how students are acquiring early reading skills um and then we use the results of Dibbles to create very targeted intervention groups um we have schoolwide grammar units for grades K to2 we have no red ink which is new this year for grades 3 to four to help support Grammar and Writing instruction we have trained all of our grades K to4 intervention and special education teachers in Orton Gillingham and Dibbles um so that they can service the students in the classrooms we are going through um if you know and and have watched some of our board um meetings with our goals we have a board goal of multi-tiered systems of support and so that is something we are working with with our staff uh we have data days um that our literacy coaches are spearheading for our grades K to4 intervention teachers and specifically our special education teachers so again they are spearheading um reviewing analyzing data creating targeted skills instruction groups and then monitoring our students progress to make sure that they are making uh the strides that they need to um we use Sarah valo um we use her book in grades K to 6 it's research based and it talks all about um highly effective strategy work to use with our students when teaching them in the early literacy grades um we have ilel to help our students in grades 5 through seven grade eight quill which supports writing um for our students um again lots of Department collaboration and student engagement um many opportunities for grades 5 to 12 English classes where we have integrated research and research writing skills into the curricul um to improve those skills for our students and again just more resources reading a toz Scholastic Magazine nuzella commonlit.org lots and lots of resources for our students and our teachers last one for English language arts uh we also embed many njsla structured questions into the curriculum so the students are uh familiar with these types of questions for when they go to take the tests uh we use Link at Benchmark tests um which we analyze and then again create those targeted skills instruction groups for students in grades K through 11 and we have our ferland high school Honor Society students um who tutor other students which is lovely in mathematics we have our two district elementary math coaches math intervention programs in all elementary schools we have a math Cadre where we have representatives from all of our schools that meet throughout the year and uh they have very specific goals they're talking about improving math talk or math discourse in grades K through 2 um they are identifying those highfrequency skills that students need to know in grades three and four and then creating lessons to share with the teachers to ensure that the students are uh able to meet those standards in grades 5 through six they do something called a math mixer again they're identifying targeted skill areas grouping teachers um grouping students and swapping teachers so I'll take certain kids in my room that need a specific specific help with one skill and I'll send some of my students to a different teacher uh to get that specific help um lots of professional development for our math intervention teachers our math coaches are very involved in providing PD for our new teachers they conduct demonstration lessons to model how our everyday math program works um and they also assist our teachers with math rotations again small group differentiated instruction right in the classroom so again we have math rotation that we use in grades 2 through six so that we can differentiate all of our teachers use math word walls so that students um learn the very important math vocabulary we use reflex math in grades K to4 to help our students with their fact fluency we use Exel in grades 1 to eight so again students can get personalized help for where they may have gaps um we also include njsla practice activities in all of our units in grades 3 through six and our special education students in elementary schools use a really great resource called zern math uh we have included additional open response items um in our NJ in our uh curriculum um and we make sure that the pacing is such that we hit all those really high priority skills before we give the njsla uh we have a math lab at the high school that supports students with their targeted uh skills work um so that they are prepared for their algeb one assessment um and we also have additional ancillary which is a teacher so additional uh teacher support in there and we use very specific software called Alex which again is self-pacing and it adjusts to students needs we use Delta math for our high school students as another resource again we have those embedded njsla structured questions right in the curriculum and in our lessons we also use the link at benchmarking for grades K to 11 and we have the Honor Society tutoring in the area of mathematics as well in science we are fortunate enough to have an elementary science coach um there's a lot of collaboration between our science department and our elementary literacy and math coaches um they are addressing argument writing not only in literacy but also in the science classrooms we have a middle and high school initiative um where they are again taking that argument writing in elementary and expanding it into the secondary classrooms um lots and lots of professional development is continuing on data literacy how to teach teachers to teach students to analyze data um and we also have engineering and science practices that are embedded within our science curriculum we also have coding activities that are all part of our grade 56 Innovation Labs curriculum and our embedded njsla structured questions um there's always ongoing curriculum revisions again if we notice something in our test scores and there are standards that need to be addressed we make sure that we adjust our curriculum as as needed and our science uh supervisor and Coach work very closely with our ml Department to specifically um help address what kind of interventions and modifications can we provide to those MLS onto Dynamic learning Maps so Dynamic learning Maps is um an assessment that's really designed for our students um that have the most significant cognitive impairments um and so we um give this usually 30 to 35 of our students typically in any given year take this online assessment our teachers are trained every year on how to give the assessment they work very closely with the students um when they take these assessments and it happens throughout the course of of several weeks um and there are four performance level categories here emerging approaching Target and advanced again we have so few students that take this that it's really hard to break it down into grade levels I would never be able to give any kind of data because it's going to be a group of less than a 10 so we sort of cluster the students and I let you know that in total we had 30 students that took the dlm in Ela 30 students took it in math 15 students took it in science and again remember science is only grades 58 and 11 um so that's why those numbers are lower and you can see where I could report out anything 10 or higher you can see the number of students in the emerging approaching Target and advanced categories and like our other assessments I am showing you here three years of data from 2022 2023 and 2024 so you can see the first column in blue is the number of students tested each year and then that pinkish color is the emerging for each of the years approaching is in purple Target is in green and advanced is in Orange and again because of the small numbers it's really hard for us to give you a lot of very specific data if anybody wants any additional resources uh I provided you with some links here um that will bring you to various NJ dooe websites where you can certainly read more about the standards find out more about the njsla NJ GPA and um Dynamic learning Maps that's it Dr berini did you not have your hand up I can start with missman okay thank you first of all I'd like to thank Dr Latina again for not only a very thorough report but a report pretty easy to understand so thank you Natalie again uh a couple of points uh four actually one uh overall our scores are great and they uh not only represented against the state but uh against our our regular Factor but also the more higher income districts we did very well in so that's great news um the science scores just a point of information the 11th grade scores are always I I always as a PR High School principal always felt that they're a little unfair because it's not a state requirement for graduation so you have a junior that's taking a test we do I need the test well you do your best you can and they don't really take it as seriously as they should so that's only about the the 11th grade scores uh in the eth grade it looks like there's a significant drop from our scores if you looked at the numbers it goes from the 70 to the 40s but that's the first year they break it down they take the algebra one kids out they take the algebra 2 kids out for math I'm I'm sorry about math algebra one kids come out Algebra 2 Kids come out so you're taking your best ma best math students and you're taking them out of the grade a test so that 46% doesn't look great but again you're taking your best students if you merged your algebra one students test scores and Algebra 2 that are in eth grade with the 46% it'd be significantly higher than it is right there absolutely uh so I'm not I'm not really worried about the drop there because it it does uh split into algebra one and Algebra 2 the only only one that I'm really still concerned out and this is a not just in Fair loan but in districts across the state the the Gap that continues between our non-economic disadvantage and our economic disadvantage so if we could somehow this year focus on I don't know programs or something that we could do to try to address the the significant gap between students that are not economic disadvantaged and those that are so I hope that we can do something about that this year and and one thing that I did not put up there is we are going to be running some um njsla after schoolies um for students and it will be based on um is there a cause for that no good no thank you you're welcome thank you Miss yman loud thank you and thank you Dr lactina same Kudos as Dr b berini um I had a couple questions um one involved that um and I think it's been in the same presentations um before is that we're when we're looking at third fourth and fifth graders comp comparing them from year to year to year we're not comparing the same subset of kids so is that same in this presentation as well or so this presentation is um not cohort um and the cohorts aren't exact anyway we have quite a few students that come and go in in a year um so we certainly look at our individual students um so part of the data analysis that teachers and our elementary coaches and our supervisors look at as they look at individual student scores um and how each kid did each year to see what the progress is for those students in their classes um so yes we can look at those cohorts um third grade into fourth grade the next year into fifth grade the next year they're just not exact cohorts so we have to take that information with a little bit of a grain of salt because there is quite a bit of Mobility that's not showing in the presentation that wasn't in there this was the third grade each year okay yeah okay another um question is um and this is just for me for information the AP classes do you have to reach like you said like everybody was uh three and above but in order to get credit for college what what's the number that they three they have to get a three okay three okay that's just a clarification and then I didn't see any breakouts um for our elementary schools like to say this is how we scored in in each of the elementary schools or each of the middle schools is that data available or can that data be made available so that you can see each School uh you'll be able to get that from your individual schools absolutely they present that out to their pto's and ptas each year um we present on District scores when we do the presentation at the board meeting but the other ones are already done they're available oh yes they are available absolutely okay great yeah yeah yeah wonderful thank you so much thanks you're welcome Miss fich so thank you for the wonderful presentation and I know the DFG aition it took you probably forever to do this so I have to say thank because I know it takes it takes a while so I appreciate that you spent your time doing it and color coding it so it's wonderful so pinky back on what Lisa said could it be possible to get that data for each individual elementary schools for the board just to see how we're doing as a district yeah so okay so it'll be emailed to us if possible we'll pull that information together and we'll send it to the full board awesome thank you that's all I ask Miss Brown um I too want to thank you for the time and effort that you put into uh that presentation I thought it was wonderful um I am particularly excited and enthusiastic about seeing not just because my youngest son is was in the third grade cohort um shout out to West Morland um but I'm particularly excited to see how that cohort of Littles advances throughout the years because that's really where you're seeing how the foundation and the work and dedication of those kindergarten first and second grade teachers really comes to fruition because it's not just those are kind of like the unsung heroes of your elementary schools because they're laying down that those foundation and that groundwork with the hegerty with the differentiated instruction with you know getting kindergarteners to actually follow directions in the beginning of the school year so you know all of those foundational skills that you're being tested on in third grade are really a a tribute and a testament to your kindergarten first and second and third grade teachers there um so I think that you know I myself am a kindergarten first and second grade teacher so it's near and dear to my heart I wanted to make sure that those teachers are being shout out too because if those teachers aren't laying the groundwork with the curriculum that we're giving across the board with the differentiated instruction and the work with the dayto days and the work with our coaches then those kids those third grade students again shout out Jack um those third grade students aren't going to do as well on those tests um so I'm I'm really excited to see you know how we're how that those kids are going to just continue to improve across the years and thank you for bringing that up because um I I do want to shout out every teacher in District and it does doesn't matter what grade level what subject it's all of our teachers um all of our par professionals right um K through 12 um that really impact these scores and just because we were reporting out on 3 through 11 you notice that the interventions we started talking about it from kindergarten um our High School principles um historically have always been so wonderfully generous that when we have special events like uh Honor Society inductions or graduations or um Awards nights are always very quick to point out it is not just a high school achievement um they point out all the time it's a k through 12 achievement and that every human being in these District in this District that impacts our students or comes across our student plays into what we're seeing um in these test scores right and it could be the custodian or the secretary that makes a kid feel safe that you know makes a kid smile and is ready to go and hit the ground running to take that test so it's not just academics it really truly is all of our staff um so I give a shout out to everybody we are blessed in Falon with the staff that we have um and the families that we have and the collaboration um that's what brings these scores to life um so so thank you for for saying that Michael I'm sad Okay the reason I'm sad is because this is the last one of these you're gonna do probably so so um and I and I do have to I do have to give you credit and I'm sure if if Bruce saw your presentation tonight yeah um 60 it was it was it reminded me of some of his presentations not quite not quite 100 slides or 200 slides that he used to have but um a couple things first of all um I I too like to see much more than I like to see third grade this year third grade last year third grade next year is the cohorts but I also know that in the past couple years we've changed a lot of things too like as far as the interventions that that that we've been doing so it might not have really show a lot you know obviously the the best the best is is when you tease it down to the individual student is is the best but when when you're comparing one cohort to another it's it's almost impossible to get a really good um I was impressed you know my old District was up there and I was impressed where we where we were um with with that um I want to remind everybody or or speak on math of all the things for me to speak on is is usually not math but most many middle schools have very very few if any Algebra 2 students in middle school and Falon has always had at least one class of it of Algebra 2 students in both middle schools so so that's very impressive of the math department to do that and um besides the many kids that are taking Algebra 1 in middle school and and on so um I'm really impressed with that I I I saw some of the interventions last year um going on at some of the elementary schools and um I'm I'm very impressed with with that and how that worked out and what made me really impressed with it was the fact that the kids that were staying after school for those interventions were enjoying themselves staying after school and we're getting a lot out of it um so I know I know a couple people related to me um were were involved in them but I also spoke to some other people from other schools in the district so so it it it's really working out well um and I'm very very very um outrageously pleased to see Dr pinkowitz and and whatever the other English teacher get recognized for uh getting um published peer reviewed and I know it's a long uh presentation and I went through it very quickly but I do just want to reiterate the work that our supervisors and teachers um do with the data analysis is extremely thoughtful um the revisions to curriculum the revisions to the way they um you know uh create the lessons and present the lessons and the strategies that they use and the techniques it's all done extremely extremely thoughtfully so while I rushed through that I'm so impressed with the work that our teachers and supervisors and coaches do to continue to improve uh the instruction in the classroom for the students impressive thank you yeah Mr Spindel so when you speak so far down the line you hear a lot of repetition so I wanted to thank you and all those because I know there were a whole bunch of people who worked on this comprehensive report I wanted to thank them and as the other said I wanted to thank the students and I wanted to thank all of the staff as you mentioned it's not only the teachers but all the ancillaries and everyone else but I also wanted to thank the parents absolutely because without the parents support without their helping us along we would never have accomplished what we did so kudos to all those people uh Dr bertolini spoke on uh the math concern that he had with grade eight I had it with grade seven and eight and and he stated something that you can conferred on with uh regarding the algebra kids being taken out my question is because it's not only with the District of Fon it's the Statewide M problem yeah are the standards unrealistic that they've come up with have they revised these standards and are there standards in the lower grades that prepare us for taking these tests in grade seven and eight are they the proper standards so th those are my questions that I have with that so number one they did just change all the standards in math so this year are brand new standards K12 in every course has new standards which is why we had to do so much curricular work um so there are new standards however to uh Dr bertolini's Point um in grades K through six you are looking at every single student score together so all of our sorry grade three through uh six all grade three students all grade four all grade five and six you get to seventh and eighth grade and now you're pulling a sub group of students out so you no longer are including all of the same students so you are pulling out students to go take Algebra 1 so you don't have the influence of their scores anymore in that total score for just grade seven math when you get to grade eight you're pulling out students from Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 those students scores are no longer reflected so you don't have the same group of students it the reason it's happening across the state is because you are pulling out your top performers and their scores are going someplace else so they're not included in that overall um percentage okay and the other thing is something that I brought up uh whether it was last year and I think it was the year before that we now have the capability of following our students so we can follow the student from grade one as an to grade two three and so forth with their test scores this was not approved the board did not want this when I when I presented it I will be leaving in another two months so I'm not going to be following through on this but I I I would like the board to possibly take that into consideration to discuss it again to see how well these kids because as they were saying the cohorts are different see how well these actual kids are improving from grade to grade to grade because that is the real the the the the real uh truth of what's happening in the district yeah and that's what our our teachers and our coaches and our supervisors are absolutely looking at that information they drill down excuse me they drill down to that student level no I I understand that but if a report were prepared as you're presenting this information I think the parents would have a clearer understanding as to how well the kids in the district are actually doing because we have you know sometimes squares are brought down because if a kid comes into a school from say Chicago uh New York or or wherever those kids have to take this test whether they come in five days before or or one day before correct and those scores may be taken down from from those kids who were never prepared as our kids are being prepared so it's just something to think about for the board to think about in the upcoming months thank you very much thank you Mark Mr Bowski echoing my fellow board members thank you for the presentation Dr lactina um I I recognize that we can't always boil down our students to simple numbers um but it's important to use the data such as this to to help guide our uh interventions and see where we need that assistance um I think it's important to highlight that this grade three uh was the 1920 kindergarten cohort Co shut down um and to that point though my question is really do we still see those learning gaps as we're moving through cohorts from the covid shutdown do we find that there's still areas that across the state um that we're having issues with I can't really answer about across the state um of but I think that prior to covid and now there's always been standards that we identify as being more challenging for students modeling and reasoning for example in mathematics always traditionally was an area that gave our students you know more difficulty um and so hard for me to say if those gaps are directly related to covid or not I mean I think we've seen um the difference in how our students perform compared to the state I think has remained fairly steady um I I don't see that our students are necessarily all of a sudden not doing as well as they used to so um I think it's hard to attribute it right back to to covid so I'm not really sure how to answer that I can check with our supervisors and see if they have any other thoughts about that though yeah just to see what type of like learning loss that we're still working with now three years four years removed yeah thank you thank you Dr lactina you're welcome Miss Mayan I just have one quick thing to say first I do want to thank Dr lactina but um as it relates to everything that folks have shared here uh wonderful thoughtful conversation the one thing I would say as superintendent that's been most impressive for me um in my first year here is to see is the amount of commitment to the interventions to support our students moving forward and that's really Testament to the growth that we've seen up there so thank you Dr lactina thank you to the board and to all of our teachers and faculty and staff for all of that work so thank you okay okay so this is the public portion on the agenda items only please let limit your questions at this time to the resolutions on the current agenda please provide your name and municipality in which you resign and sign in comments are limited to 3 minutes and specify the resolution you are referring to in your question or comment this is not a dialogue between the speaker and the board all comments will be taken at once and when public comments are complete the board president or District administration will respond as best they can during the public portion of the meeting for other business the same procedure will apply the floor is open good evening yes um my name is Vladimir kkin Greenwood Drive fairon municipality Fair uh so the topic is uh item 11a uh first reading of policies and regulations specifically regulation regulation I'm sorry oh now I can see it uh 2464 gifted and talented pupils students uh before that actually I want to thank the board for printing the agenda that's great uh now I also want to thank the board for taking up this regulation for reconsideration it's a good idea to do so now having said that there are several um opportunities for improvements uh I'm going to Le six of them please take them independently from each other if you don't like one please don't make a bad opinion about the other so first of all uh appeals uh um when somebody is determined uh to need uh to be included in the reach program in the GNT and the decision is made I'm sorry when the decision made that somebody does not need the program uh I think there should be an appeal procedure um it's just a good thing to do because most decisions have a b procedure um and they think having a defined appeal procedure will kind of reduce dissatisfaction with the process so that's the first suggestion secondly and I think the second is easy uh terminology the policy regulation uses term eligibility for the program I think the proper term is need for the program uh as Meredith Thomas stated when she gave her presentation a year ago these children need these programs it's educational need because the way the policy is for is now as if it's some kind of upper class club uh because if the students need this and they're not there they will be bored in school so that was second suggestion um moving on let's turn on the time machine on February 22nd 2021 at the board meeting um I just printed this page of the website it is Page 3030 of 41 of minutes of that meeting the board uh adopted the following motion I'm just reading here uh to post criteria for eligibility for gifted and talented programs including reach on websites of respective schools the criteria should include required test scores the criteria should be specific enough to allow a parent to understand why the child was or was not included in the g&t program um so I hope this resolution is actually live and implemented and I hope the administration actually posts uh these items on the respective School uh websites um if not I guess they should because it was a board resolution and I suggest to make it into the regulation because it was by board so that was um item three um excuse me you have 30 seconds remaining thank you uh I'll proceed with number four and then five and six on my second coming here uh item four geography um the presentation uh by marij Thomas last September states that New Jersey State Department of Education uh and I have here print out it's slide eight of that presentation on the website uh it says that Department of Education defines a student um means a student who possesses and demonstrates high level of ability compared to his peers in the school district emphasis added in the school district I'm sry can you please wrap up your final thoughts uh okay I will take it from here then thank you I'll have another three minutes later right thank you good evening everyone uh my name is Simon sper Remington Road F uh I have a question or comment on uh regulation 2464 about G talented program uh in current reduction of Regulation 12 2464 Part B selection criteria students will be considered for participation on gifted intell program when compared to their peers within the district uh during my call with Dr Latina this morning uh she confirmed that this year uh test results were compared to local peers however I do not believe this change has been approved by the board yet uh as a parent I want to understand all the aspects uh uh of the selection criteria uh uh considered for GNC program for this year according to program overview presented in September 2024 uh one of the eligibility criteria for fourth grade was a kagat complete test taken in Fall of third grade but in instead kagat complete test from Fall of fourth grade was used I'm asking the board to clarify on both bullet points thank you there we go Christine Weinstein Falon I don't have to speak so loudly uh thank you Miss Dr Latino for the wonderful um report and presentation I will miss the very thoroughness of the the data that you present uh but I do have to stand here as a parent of a student who does not test well has never tested well and I do not feel that testing is the best way to assess our students honestly I think you have to look at everything I feel like we look at these tests and these comparisons and it's just not fair to the students and to the families who don't test well but are still high honor students and have been for years so I just had to stand up and just say that so thank you mren okay so continuing on the topic on the topic of geography um as I stated uh niger's Department of Education defines gifted students based on the PE in school district not based on the school in the school district um U so in my opinion it becomes a matter of equity you can have two children who live across the street from each other and one of them is eligible for the program and the other is not eligible that's not fair to me uh so that's another opportunity for improvement for for the regulation that was the fourth Point uh moving on point number five uh annual reevaluation so uh the regulation now says that students will be annually reevaluated um including those who are taking the program now uh the gifted child society which by the way headquartered in New Jersey and their website is gifted.org uh their opinion is that you do not need annual revaluation if a child is gifted the child will not become Ungifted next year it does not happen um so I didn't make it up it's their opinion uh I listened to the lecture by the uh leader her name is the RC natal I'm sure she'll be happy to present to the board if you so desire uh last topic is uh allowing outside evaluations I believe in the past uh outside IQ tests outside evaluations were allowed and uh the new policy says they're not allowed um well in my opinion you just creating a barrier for students to be in the program so that's not a good thing either um that's it thank you Dr dianu is there anything on the Google form there is one comment let me just I'm going to take a quick look right now so the the comment that's posted online is um related to the presentation um it's from Olga Ginsburg and it says thank you for the amazing presentation Dr lactina so many points of Pride for fair loone School District are those additional resources interventions you mentioned posted online and easily accessible to parents so they can learn more about them and request extra support for their children if needed and if so we on the website uh the parents can find them thank you that's the only comment online okay so the floor is closed um I will defer to Dr dionio to um comment and respond as needed thank you Miss Mayan so um I am going to turn it over to Dr lactina momentarily in order to be able to address um some of the comments and questions regarding gifted and talented I will just note that we do not discuss any individual specific cases in board meetings those are intended for conversations with uh gifted and talented teachers principes a central office administration including Dr lactina myself others um so in general I'm going to turn it over to Dr lactina to speak to you know generically the history of gifted and talented what's been approved in the past the audit that was completed most recently and then the updates and and the practice that the district has had over the the past great number of years sure thank you Dr diio um we as you know hired uh Meredith a couple two years ago um something like that there was a request to um make changes to our gifted and talented program which we indeed did um and we took many of her suggestions and put them into practice um there is not one clearly defined way to determine um which students receive Services how that is done uh the state department really leaves that up to districts and we worked very closely with Dr Thomas uh to reorganize uh the way that we do things here I just want to clarify that for several years now we have been using local school-based Norms that is not new um this year that has been uh I I don't know the exact number of years three years perhaps um but we try to use local Norm whenever they are available to us in fact we have had some of our testing companies create that for us purposefully so that we could use local Norms um because that is best practice according to Dr Thomas um as far as outside testing um outside testing really is an equity issue as far as we are concerned not all parents can afford to have their children privately tested um but the other huge issue with that is what we get back is National Norms so we are no longer comparing one child to his peers we are comparing a child to anybody across the country that may have taken a specific assessment and the way that best practice works with these gifted and talented programs is to um actually compare a student to the person that's sitting right next to them in these programs so that is why we we use local school-based norms um also the uh annual re-evaluation or review of students is also not new this year we have been doing that for the past several years as well and that's because children especially at the elementary levels they change from year to year their needs change from year to year we're not looking to put a label on a student and say you're gifted this year you're not gifted next year it's not about labeling them it's about saying what kind of service do you need so it is based on need um and so some students demonstrate a need for particular Services one year that they might not need in the following school year um so students may receive certain Services one year and not receive them the next or vice versa um as far as required test scores we created a gifted and talented handbook which is available on our school district website um which does explain the identif app ation process and it explains uh those uh assessments that we use um so we'll certainly place a link on the school individual School sites if they're not there um but it certainly is posted on our district website um this year um we did change assessments we have never given the coat complete until this year this is the first year we gave something called a coat screener which was um a much quicker shorter assessment the coat complete gives us a much more comprehensive view of a student's abilities and it allows us to really break down the information by subject so we get some more specific information about student performance so this year our third and fourth grade students took it in the fall and that is the very first year we have ever used that coat complete um I think um that's basically I think that's most of it thank thank you Dr lactina sure you good okay I am going to sorry I'm going back up yeah sorry I'm going to open the floor for board comments on agenda items Mr Swindell thank you I have two uh items that I wanted to speak about the first one is on 7 J2 which is the job description for the school bus driver and querer to me not posting whether this is going to be a 10-month or a 12month is concerning we should know what it's going to be before we post this particular job and in the research that I did which hopefully is correct it says that in the state of New Jersey in job descriptions you must have a salary posted there is no salary posted in this particular job description so I I leave it up to the attorney whether or not my research was correct or not and if it is correct then hopefully this job description will be changed regarding salary as well as uh the 10 or 12-month position and the other comment I wanted to speak about has to do with the gifted and talented criteria and uh Dr lactina when she uh spoke about Meredith Thomas's uh recommendations and suggestions said that she took many of them or the district took many of them which alludes to the fact that some of them were not accepted and I I really do not feel that it is correct or acceptable to have different criteria for different schools I brought this up a couple of years ago where the criteria I felt should be the same districtwide and uh another thing is that when we do our report cards report card grades are done by districtwide standards so if the district uses districtwide standards for report cards as I I'm hoping they do then why is the criteria for gifted and talented for you know done for individual schools thank you Miss fich so I'm a little confused the current I'm sorry can you hear me okay the current regulation says students will be considered for participating in gifted and talented program when compared to their peers within the district that's what our current regulation says the proposed regulation says um I'm sorry hold on yes students will be considered for participating the GIF and talent in program when compared with their local schools am I to understand or maybe I misunderstood it's late at night today uh that we have been using local schools even though a regulation state state that is within District my qu so that's my first question and if my understanding is correct can the school district not follow a regulation that's on the books any school district doesn't have to be fair alar that's my first question my second concern is based on this motion for the February 22nd 2021 Mr itkins it says the criteria should include the required test scores on the district website I may be I'm not really good at our website and I've been telling you that since the beginning I didn't really see any required test course I was wondering if it is posted and if it could be please put into the regulation that there what the motion said since it was approved by the board of education for the past four years and I assume it was adopted my other concern is that as one of the members of the public says geography I've been a teacher for many years and I don't believe anybody's geography in town determines if they're gifted or not and I asked this question in my write up and my question was I'm going to rephrase it cuz I kind of asked it with the school and I said does it mean that a school hypothetically in a school a maybe a student in school a may be denied services for the gifted intelligent and if they have the same criteria as from school B and would be given uh would be given service meaning that a child a same child in school a would be denied services and school B they would be given service based on the new regulation my question is I don't maybe I'm wrong but I just don't field geography of a student determines if they're gifted or not my other con excuse me you have 30 minutes 30 seconds 30 minutes oh I I can talk about this thank you thank you I appreciate it no okay I tried so my other suggestion is and our policy Z bylaw I'm sorry 0155 states that we should have a whole education committee meeting twice a year we haven't had one this year I was hoping we can post uh postpone this and discuss it more further so that we can all process what been what has been said and what we think about it and then discuss it as a whole Committee in education since our b z 0155 I'm sorry says that we should have two and we have zero so far this year so we want to make sure we whole we have to have two we have to have two as a whole group and two as a small committee so we had the small committee but we never had the whole as a group that's what our policy say and I actually like the appeal process I think I'll come back I'll come back thank you Miss yman so um I I I kind of um I'm going along with what Miss felich has has said with regard to uh a committee of the whole um with with not only um reg this particular regulation but with regulations in general and policies in general um that was an old way of where everybody got to be involved with how a policy or regulation was written for the specific District was always committee at the whole I still think it's very open-ended with uh gifted and talented I still think there's a lot of questions that still need to be answered even two years after um Merida Thomas's um um um presentation and recommendations and um I would like to um make a motion to table regulation 2464 and have it tabled and then secondly to pass it down to a committee of the whole of the education department uh committee hey you do too table the first the first reading of Regulation 2464 can I ask one more question before I make a motion okay so the kids that are went into school for this year and were tested in September were they did they follow the regulation of this regulation that we're saying okay to now or did they follow a regulation that was written prior to today because this is a first reading which means it hasn't been approved by the board so the question is has it been what regulation was used to determine it I'm going to defer that question back to Dr Denio who I'm assuming is going to defer to Dr latena so drtina would you uh I think we have a a few questions that have been or comments that have been made so let's clarify some of those for them so we have been again I'll I'll just reiterate we have been using local school norms for multiple years now that has been discussed with the board it's been presented publicly um we have been following that best practice those are district students and we drill it down to the school level and we have been doing that for years um so we've been following the same thing this year that we've been following for the past several years um we cannot put a specific number to these scores because the way we identify need is based on percentiles so it's not a Harden fast gatekeeper kind of um process that we use that's what we were told we absolutely should not do so it should not be you must score an 850 on your njsla in order to get into in order to receive tier 2 services or tier three services it is based on percentiles um so that is why it is very challenging to give a hard and fast rule of you need this this number this number clearly we're told that's not how it should ever be that's what Dr Thomas explained to us and um so those are the answers to some of the questions that have come up so just a a clarification because I'm still not quite getting it does what when you say we've changed it along the way and I just trying to hone in on like what it really is if you change it if you change it okay take the motion for for everybody's glad they came your motion is considered a subsidiary motion and it is against a primary motion so the policy and reg motion has to happen first so you can't move to table right now uh the chair can't recognize it yet but certainly when we get to that section of the agenda and there is a motion and a second to approve the reg uh change you can then make your motion to table and it can be considered if there's a second point of information I'm confu um my question is are you recognizing the point of information yes okay okay see what you did so again I and it could be the time of day where I've been in the last week so um is the reg that was that was that's we're changing the r obviously because that's what we're doing in tonight's agenda when making the you could change what you're doing but you what reg was actually followed each year was the previous reg followed the last three years let's just say and now we're changing it and at what point does this new reg start go into effect that there might be there's going to be some changes I don't know what the changes are but it's like something's going to change but we've why are we doing it now and not necessarily this past September or why don't we start it next September I believe this was asked and answered but I'm going to try and paraphrase what I believe Dr lacatena said so Dr lacatena if I am misinformed please interrupt me so what Dr L lacatena had said and I believe this is a conversation that we will probably go back to the December of 2020 and January 2021 conversations um we have been using local norms for some time so although there is a concern that it may not have been properly written in this is something that we have discussed at length that has been and I'm going to um use Mr itkin because he was definitely really pushed for us to review and discuss this so we have been I and I remember the conversation very clearly we have been using local Norms because there was a lot of contention about it so we have been using school-based Norms since at least 2021 so I don't think that there is necessarily a specific answer are we using the current rag or the Old Rag because we have been using local Norms since 2021 I think that is the only answer I can provide you is that that has been the criteria we are using local school Norms okay so the only question would be is why are we change why do we have a first reading of a regulation and what's what's the difference between you know what's Dr D so I can answer that so the the district you you've gotten a little bit of background as to the local norms and the regulation is being followed it says the comparison in the district the new regulation with the revision is just being much more specific spec specific to reflect the practice that has been in existence that's been discussed here at the board level and in public and communicated at out and been the practice for several years so it just provides more clarity and transparency to the community around the details of the students and the criteria and how they get accepted into the g&t program point of information according hold on we just still we still have to let Miss yman finish her motion at which point I'm going to tell you that I second the motion then so that you have to wait so there is no motion okay that's what that's what I was gonna say I am I wanted to clarify what Dr denisio said because that's point of information correct so I am going to ask you to hold off and you'll get another 3 minutes that way everyone can speak my question wasn't answered either on my first track however we don't answer questions till the end that is always our standard practice you did for Miss yman so we should do it for every no we actually clarified an inappropriate motion thank you Dr berini I probably in committee approved the the gifted and talented but uh after some thought I I'm a little I'm uncertain on the local Norm versus is a district norm and I think maybe we could is Miss Thomas the person that we hire what's her last name Thomas Dr Thomas I'm sorry Dr Thomas if we could get her to give us some pros and cons of norms by the school compared to Norms by the district I I would feel more comfortable voting on that uh because I I'm I'm a little uncertain whether or not I agree with it just being the local school or the district overall uh based on the criteria on that so if we can get our person that we hired as as the expert they gave us a lot of uh recommendations can we ask for the recommendation of what she thinks is the best way to do it I'd feel more comfortable with that thank you thank you anybody else before I start round two Mr bosski thank you um I simply want to highlight and um refocus the board uh in terms of gifted and talented that we spent considerable energy our staff Administration and time on the audit that was produced by uh Dr Thomas which states that quote local norms and building Norms when identifying students for gifted and talented Services is known as best practice in gifted education Veron schools use that and we should continue to use it she also goes on in this audit that was presented to the board and to the public um that we should not that we should uh remove outside testing policy because private testing uh goes towards nationally normed and not locally normed standards uh additionally as Dr lactina said quote there are Equity concerns when accepting privately acquired IQ tests I think if we hire a professional to do a audit such as this we need to take those recommendations seriously um as we are preparing for our facility audit as well we need to understand that when it comes back these people have spent time energy looking at our policies our uh regulations everything in practice of how it works with this District um so just to keep referring back to this audit pull it up I mean many of the members on this board we have it still in our emails it states exactly what we're doing and that we have a great gifted and talented program this regulation is to reflect those practices this regulation was sent to the board over a month ago from the September education committee meeting we have had time to review this I have not heard a single thing from any board member about this regulation since we've seen it thank you anyone else Miss vich just to clarify the education committee out of four members only two showed up that day week uh because it was switched twice there for only two people it was the president of the board and the chair of the education committee that everybody else Miss Mark and I weren't there so it was only two people discussing it and out of four point of information that um date of our meetings has been in place since March and it is always there and we do ask that everyone let us know in advance and thank you m Mr Spindel for letting know letting us know in advance that you were unable to attend just giv you a heads up it was done before the September meeting it was changed it was changed an hour before the September meeting so just giving you a heads up ju so I want to ask the attorney a question miss fich the just for clarification for the public the meeting wasn't changed an hour before the meeting no the meeting was changed for the meeting of September's meeting it was an hour before the meeting of our general M I believe that's different than what you had just stated so I just want to clarify no yes and it was but it's not the March the what Miss Mayhan was saying it was not the March date that's what I was trying to explain okay so our regulations says compared with the peers within the district the new regulation says compared with their local schools so my question is can the district Implement a substantial change in how they uh how they select students without having a reg not following the regulation that currently in the on the books that's my question for the attorney so my my other concern is as I said again the geography of a student should not be determined if they're gifted and talented all our schools should be on the same level all our schools should be using the same curriculum and therefore I feel uncomfortable having local Norms because everybody should be on the same page and no student in the district sh no any no student should be denied Services if they were in one part of the part of town versus another part of town I also like the appeal process so I want to make a motion for us to um remove this 2464 um yes I can point of information we've already been told we have to wait until that section no we already remove it but we can't we can't we've already been told to wait for that section oh okay I'm sorry I misunderstood I also don't understand so the coet test will be given every single year that's why I didn't understand that either so I wanted to clarify that and the criteria says uh on the power presentation that was given to the parents in September it says that it's it doesn't really explain what testings for which year will be provided also the New Jersey state states that K through 12 we should have gifted and talented program and the regulation only does gifted and talented which is the reach from grades one through six and I know Miss Thomas did the I'm sorry I'm talking is there I can finish Miss Meredith did an evaluation only one through six but our regulations should include the criteria to get into gifted intelligent from 7 to 12th and nothing States how can kids get into the honor program from 7th through 8th in our regulation and that should be spelled out thank you Dr berini two quick points first of all I agree with Joe in regard to an outside evaluation I don't think it's Equitable at all as Dr Latina mentioned earlier I also want to thank Joe for reminding me of of Dr Thomas's report as many of us know uh as you get older a a memory leaves you quickly so so I thank you Joe for that thank you so I feel more comfortable now would after you tell me that thank you the floor is closed I am going to refer to Mr kamno regarding um Miss's question local versus School District language thank you so my understanding is that District Operations as we've heard District practice as we've heard and heard over time is consistent with current policy uh the current polic excuse me the current regulation and the current regulation speaks to consideration with comparison to their peers within the district their peers within the district I understand I'm sorry that's not correct can that's not what it said can I can I answer the question respectfully their peers within the district The Proposal is to and the recommendation I understand this went before the committee and we've heard tonight is to clarify clarify uh so there's no question about what that practice is and it does not change their or peers it uh notes their local parentheses school peers so that's my response thank you Dr ganio I have nothing further okay my questions weren't answered regarding the can I get a motion for 3A so moved roll call Mr baldowski yes Dr bertolini m brown yes M bovich this is for 3A no Mr Rosenberg yes Mr spendel yes Miss urman yes Mrs Mayan yes motion passes can I get a motion for 5 a through e so moved roll call Mr baldowski yes Dr berini m brown yes M bovich no on 5B and no on 5D 5B and 5D yes thank you Mr Rosenberg yes Mr pendel yes Miss yman no on 5B or and 5D yes on everything else Mrs Mayhan yes motion passes can I get a motion for 6 a through e so move second roll call Mr baldowski yes abstain on 6 A4 myself Dr berini m brown yes Miss fich no on 6 A4 6E 6 A4 and no on 6E yes thank you Mr Ros yes Mr Spindel yes Miss yman no on 684 yes on everything else thank you Mrs Mayan yes abstain on 6810 myself motion passes can I get a motion for 7 a through J so moved point ofor I never got an explanation for the job description I never got an answer Miss Mayan I could address that my apologies um so in response to the 10 versus 12 months those are the two positions that we actually have so it depends on the needs of the district so that's not a typical to have a 10 or 12 month position for bus drivers being that there are times in the Summer where we have programs educational programs that need Transportation um extend the school year extracurriculars Etc uh as far as the question that you had or the comment that you had related to salary uh that's Guided by the collective bargaining agreements that the board approves with the um maintenance custodial bus drivers it's all part of that salary guide structure so that's what guides the the salaries for those positions can I just ask if it was written in that particular job description what you just stated I believe it references the negoti okay you're welcome thank you second anyone roll call Mr baldowski yes Dr berini yes m brown yes M fich we are in seven correct yes yes Mr Rosenberg yes Mr Spindel yes Miss yman yes Mrs Mayhan yes motion passes can I get a motion for eight a through C so moved second roll call Mr baldowski yes Dr bertolini m brown yes Miss fich yes Mr Rosenberg yes Mr spendel yes Miss yman yes Mrs Mayhan yes motion passes can I get a motion for 10 a through O So moved you finished it yeah roll call second yes Ed seconded that's a word Mr balowski yes Dr berini m brown yes Miss fich we on 10 correct yes 10 G oh by the way there's no attachment for T 10g I don't know if you wanted to put on that's the budget calendar it's not online just giving your heads up oh it was it wasn't there when I looked I'm voting no in 10 yes everything else yes yes thank you Mr Rosenberg yes Mr spendel yes Miss Yurman no on ten G yes on everything else Mrs Mayhan yes motion passes can I get a motion for 11 a through C so moved second I'd like to make a motion can do this is your motion to table the change to the G regulation yeah is to table that regul yeah the first read of that table the first reading of Regulation 2464 correct and to have it move to a committee of the whole for education I second ation committee as the whole if there's no discussion we can have a vote on that subid motion now what's your preference Madam president does anybody have anything else to say I I yes okay I think it's important to consider what the public had said today with their some uh there was a member that said there are six points I might not necessarily agree with all the six points but some of the points such as having an appeal process is important so the parents have a I understand that they can appeal to the state of New Jersy but it would be nice if they could appeal to us and we can understand what they're coming from before it goes to the state and then we have to spend a lot of money on attorne fees that's my saying there is an appeal process which is set forth in the policy uh policy 2464 it's actually not in the regulation and uh there is an appeal process to actually come exactly as was just articulated to the board uh the board has the ability under that policy to send that appeal out to a committee or otherwise be guided by administrative recommendation so there is an appeal policy there's an appeal procedure already set in uh the policy uh that governs g&t I wasn't aware of that thank you Dr berini again after the reminder by Joe on what Dr Thomas recommended I'm comfortable moving it forward we're going to move to a vote on the current motion subsidiary motion to table the policy 2464 and refer it to a committee of the whole education your vote of yes would be to table your vote of no would be to move forward and vote the regul on the regulation my my sincerest apologies again a vote of yes is to table and refer a vote of no is to move forward with the agenda as is roll call Mr baldowski no Dr bertolini Miss Brown no Miss felich yes Mr Rosenberg yes Mr Spindel yes Miss Yurman yes Mrs Mayan no so can I get a motion for a through C we already had aary motion I yes we had a motion by Jean second by so 11 no D is when I call the roll roll call Mr baldowski yes Dr bertolini yes m brown yes Miss felich no on all of 11 Mr Rosenberg yes on everything except no on R 2464 okay Mr SP I can tell you what yes on everything except no on r24 64 Miss Yurman no on uh on 11 with an emphasis of no on R 2464 so no on everything under 11 with an emphasis of R2 464 Mrs Mayhan yes please note that that is um 11 a R2 464 for your notes apologies it's four four yeah same yeah everything passes except well it's for but you said that the motion fails right when it's split right but not everyone voted passation 264 motion passes on everything except for regulation 2464 which is motion 11a we're not going to have any cross talk if you have a question you can ask said question this is the public comments on non agenda or other business please limit your questions at this time to other business please provide your name and municipality in which you reside and sign in your whole address is not needed comments are limited to 3 minutes this is not a dialogue between the speaker and the board all comments will be taken at once and when they are complete the board president or the District administration will respond as needed the floor is open can I make a public service announcement point of point of baseball sure Yankees are win five nothing thank you I would like know for being here T we'll note for the record that you're not watching it on your phone no I'm just being updated Dr dionio is there anything oh thank you Miss bring airpods next time oh I don't have to put my name again my name's already do not um first I wanted to it seems like a lifetime ago but thank you to all the board members who volunteered at our uh Fairland High School PTA Fall Festival our third annual one it was our most successful so thank you to the public for coming out and supporting us uh raised uh great amount of money for all of our students for our project graduation projects the money gets split across the four grades and it's really wonderful it's a great boost for the Freshman Class coming in they have a nice little pot of money to start off with and so thank you so much for coming out and for uh spending your time with us it was a really great day so thank you uh my other question is in regards to the um rebranding I just want to make sure that this isn't going to hold up anything regarding um apparel sales and uh other fundraising items that we do throughout the year I know that it's going to hold up the sign at the high school being repaired because that needs to be replaced but I'm wondering where we are with all of that and I hope it doesn't hold up anything else in regards to either fundraising the ptas have to do in their in their respective schools and also with graduation and all that other fun stuff stuff thank you okay okay is there anything in the Google Doc there are no other comments in the Google Doc the floor is closed I will now open the floor to board M comments on other business Mich so my question is this Forest is turning a 100 years old this year and I know the administration with the council planted a tree this uh week I think my question is can we have a board meeting or somehow to celebrate a 100 years for them that they did a that their school turning a 100 can we have a board meeting or can we have some kind of recognition this year to show that they're turning a 100 years old in some way or another as a board like having a board meeting or having something something else so that's my first question my second question is I think we should have a policy if 50% of the board uh board uh the committee members can attend a meeting that we cancel the meeting because I think it would be more fair so that everybody would be there during the meeting and the last thing is we have a policy 0155 that says the home whole education committee shall shall meet I think two times a year we haven't met this year so I was wondering when we'll be meet thank you it's again the whole not because Dr bolini just giving me the dirty look anyone else Mr baldowski thank you I'll try to keep this short it's late uh just simply wanted to highlight that this evening we had our first student dialogue of the school year uh that is where uh board Representatives the administration and uh High School principal meets with the student government uh and class Council presidents at the high school it is such a great opportunity to see what they're doing on um the the school level um so just wanted to highlight that as a a good note that we're doing um I wanted to thank the burrow for the trees that have been planted on burrow right of way on school property um hopefully we are able to get more trees from the burrow in coming years but this is a great start um Fall Festival PTA great time as always uh thank you for all that you do for our students and ensuring that they have a alcohol and drug Fe free um opportunity after uh graduation through Project Graduation um Miss felich I certainly agree that we should recognize our schools that are uh celebrating these Milestones I do want to highlight that Forest is not the oldest school so we have missed a few hundredth anniversaries recently um but to that point the school district itself turns 100 years next year um and I I've noted it once before but I would simply urge um Danielle if you'd like to find the minutes from the 1925 meeting if they still have them in file Bank just as a not a task just encouragement if right um not a task but uh for us to recreate our first board meeting next I believe it's June that would be a fun opportunity um he may may um and simply just wishing all of our students and families a happy and safe Halloween tomorrow thank you yes of course um Dr berini and Mr Rosenberg we are just going to hold off for one moment so that we can address and answer your question Christine for the for the good of the order um and as loyal Met fans it's now 53 Yankees but it's 53 now just to let you know so so if I may I just want to address uh Mrs Weinstein's question regarding uh the apparel and the fundraising there's no impact on on any of the fundraising regarding the logo redesign so that won't be held up whatsoever you're welcome just just an apology uh I didn't get the update except from the woman over there it's now 55 that's julus a Warren I'm sorry I can't I can't no I can't I I can't see her there I'm sorry but it's 55 okay so Yankee score uh Mr Rosenberg Miss yman what ining oh god thank you um I want to um I I neglect it to um to say it during uh before before the uh agenda I I really if you if you look at the agenda tonight there was two things that stood out to me one thing was the amount of school trips this year um and I want to thank um the teachers for planning these great trips for for our kids I want to thank um the uh ptas for the ones that they that they sponsor I also the other the other one was the number of gifts from ptas and others um that were in the agenda thank you very much um it's very much appreciated um by the kids certainly and um and um Etc um I want to um mention that I got a lot of good feedback on dewali celebrations at our school um how how nice these celebrations have been and how they've taught the kids how to how to get along together and how to um uh really celebrate everybody basically um and I'm I'm sure and I'm sure Dr diio you planned this out for our teachers that dwali happens to be the day after Halloween which and I spoke to some teachers that are so happy that they don't have to be at school the day after Halloween um so um kudos for for the planning that went into that um and uh that's it have a good night so um noting um the famous phrase that that uh Rome wasn't built in a day um I'd like to make a recommendation um and and whether it's the task of the Board of Education or whether it's the task of the administration I leave that you know open uh for the my first point um is I think we should have a social some type of social media policy regulations of which platforms as a district we want to have um have accounts with and and post accounts accounts that is not what I thought you said accounts that as a district we will post on and I won't give you my reasoning but there are there are certain platforms that you may not want there to be you know a a display by the Fone Public School District but again I don't know who would who would be the person bringing that forward whether it's the Board of Ed or whether it be the uh Administration so that's that's one and the last but not least is um and this would probably end up starting in January if we were to do it is um I miss those Committee of the holes for um policies and for Education um and I just feel that we're squeeze we squeeze a lot of information within an hour and the Poli some of the policies are are overlooked or we don't really understand where they're coming from um and it doesn't give the opportunity for the whole board to look at it and then from the education standpoint um there being uh there should be two I have never been in a policy of the whole for education for the time I've been on the board this time around so again it may be something we have to address in um first of the year but something I think we should consider as a as a board thank you anyone else okay the floor is closed um just to respond to a couple of those questions policy 0155 does note that if you have something that you'd like to discuss in a in a committee you are to um send an email or share that with the chairperson being that I am the chairperson of the committee of the whole for both policy and education I am noting that I received it however I I do expect that because it is in our policy and we so often reference policy that those emails will come to me and then I will absolutely um meet with Dr diio and our Administration to schedule those um in regards to um far as turning 100 I did know that it was next year however I think it is a great idea idea that we do some sort of Celebration so I am actually going to refer that to the buildings and grounds because that would fall under finance and buildings and grounds if we want to do something to celebrate Forest next year or potentially have a board meeting there that is a building some grounds and Facilities um and so I'm going to refer that to finance in regards to recommendations for social media policy policies fall under us I appreciate that it's a recommendation so again email me and we can set up with Dr dionio a policy of the whole however our policy clearly states that you are to reach out to the chairperson so just do that I've never not had an issue I have been here in this role for roughly almost a year um and every topic that has either brought to this the attention I have referred to the chairperson on your behalf but our policy if we're going to go with focusing on what the policy states our policy states that you are to directly reach out to the chairperson so I'm just asking that you do that today was very long and I take lots of notes but please follow up with your chairperson if you have questions and you would like to refer a topic to a committee I think I got everything hold on Mark you didn't ask a question okay so our upcoming meetings are on November 21st is our regular monthly meeting for November it's here at 7:30 p.m. at Thomas Edison school December 19th 2024 is our regular monthly meeting at 7:30 at Thomas Edison school I do want to highlight that um this will be the last um meeting that Mr been um will be sitting at this day please join us in celebrating him on that evening and then our reorganization meeting where we will be induct swearing in our three um board members who win next week's election on January 2nd 202 2025 at 7:30 p.m. in Thomas Edison school um I also need to um remind you that these are deviations from the fourth Thursday of the month so please note that in your calendar do I have a motion to recess so moved ajour ajour moved okay all in favor have a safe and happy Halloween and dwali please get out there and vote and enjoy your holiday next week if you are just staying home enjoy your children