##VIDEO ID:jPWn9X-Dwg8## all right good evening everyone the public has been duly informed of this meeting in accordance with chapter 231 of the public laws of 1975 by posting at least 48 hours in advance a notice on the bulletin boards in Stevenson and Churchill schools a notice to the Township Clerk and a notice to the Harold News and the progress now please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we're going to begin this evening with our president's report I'm pleased to announce our Winter Wonderland that the Fairfield Municipal Alliance holds will take place on December 7th which is a Saturday rain date Sunday December 8th I'd like to send a thank you to the Roco Donatello foundation for hosting our Trunk or Treat which took place last Saturday it was a great event uh many community members were there and I think the kids had a lot of fun it was great seeing them in their costumes and and keeping that Trunk or Treat uh you know back intact for a second year so thank you very much um I had an opportunity to speak with our police chief in regards to uh the status of crossing guards and um in a lengthly conversation uh Chief Mana has explained to me that it would be we wouldn't be doing uh the District of service by looking at and placing crossing guards now because we're only a month or two into the school year so what they're going to do is they're going to continue to monitor the situation through the winter okay and then pick it back up um the spring and kind to see where those target areas are and then uh present a report to us and to the town on where permanent crossing guards would be I know that's a topic of conversation that we hear about uh when we're not at board meeting so we figured we'd fill you in here tonight I did also have an opportunity to meet with our business administrator wall and our town engineer behind Stevenson School to figure out something more longterm in regards to the pickup process at St in school and what we've decided to do and are currently working on is a pathway to the the back paved area a one-way pathway in and an and an exit out uh that will alleviate uh some of the traffic on null Road and it'll keep everyone back there in a designated area which should make the pickup process and and from what I understand it's uh it's running pretty smoothly now but you know we've been very fortunate uh for those of you that know we haven't had a lot of rain lately but it's only a matter of time before we faced with someon climate weather and obviously if that's the case it's going to be very difficult to go back there in that in that area uh obviously if it's not addressed before the winter and there's not a road in and out uh it's going to be very hard to pave that and have vehicles pull on and off so these are all things that um we're hoping to finalize and have a bid out by early next week and then hopefully we can have the work done in a couple weeks like we did behind Churchill um that's all I have for my president's report now I'd like to turn it over to our superintendent Mr Gupta sorry before I give um the the district assessment report just a couple of things that have occurred lately um today this morning actually officer Frank Tracy if if you know his personality he he's phenomenal with kids he did a great job today he was at he was at Stevenson he presented a um a pres a whole presentation on Halloween safety he covered everything from making sure kids can see through their masks to how to safely walk on the sidewalks and then he opened it up which was a little scary he allowed them to ask any question they wanted to a real life officer and the kids were great um it also helps officer Frank that he blowed his blew his whistle any time they got a little Rowdy but uh it was great and we're very fortunate that that uh officer Frank Tracy came to do that because it it was the kids loved it and it was really nice to see their his connection with them sticking with Stevenson the student council raised $171 for Hurricane Relief in Asheville South Carolina uh the funds were donated to the American Red Cross they also raised $570 for detective uh Champion scholarship fund um Church Hill had held a week-long competition um just to throw that in there fourth grade did win but the best part and the most important part is the school raised a total of a little over $1,000 do in honor of detective uh Champion so thank you to everyone who organized the fundraisers and those who generously contributed to a very worthwhile cause Fairfield Municipal Alliance and I think was going to be touched upon later but I wanted to give them thanks too they hosted a very successful sixth grade dance at at Stevenson school I had the pleasure of attending very impressed by the decorations the music food always gets me um and the behavior of the students the sixth grade students I wasn't sure how sixth grade students would act at a dance I figured all the girls would be dancing and the boys would be play fighting in the back but they were all involved they love the music it was a great time we got great reviews afterwards so um special thanks to Fey Municipal Alliance who not only planned everything but to all the chaperon who were there and officers there um as well and I know you've gotten a lot of email blasts recently but that's just because we have a lot of exciting things going on deadline to sign up for the variety show uh is this Friday I'm looking forward to seeing that event I've already heard great things about about it thank you to um to to that committee who put it together and then we also have a Disney on Isis Saturday which is also sponsored by the Fairfield Municipal Alliance that information was blasted out and um you can contact Dena phone with any questions and uh that's all I have and now I'm going to go over here I move the podium just because I don't like having my back to you guys so you don't mind me so not sure if you guys are aware but districts are required every year to give an annual assess report so this is basically a look back at our test scores from last year shout out to uh Mr Venia Jim did that a great job doing this every single year he was not upset that I told him I don't mind taking this taking this over um but I know he's done a great job with this and you've probably seen him do this in the past okay so this is just what I'm going to go over student learning assessment the njsla we're going to go over that we're gonna I'm going to just show you give you an idea of what staff does behind the scenes when we get this data um I'm going to mention depth of knowledge just a little bit so you have an idea of what we're looking at I'm going to show you some sample questions if you've never seen those most importantly I'm going to give you our action plan which is already well underway and I'm going to talk a little bit about the importance of Assessments because I do think that's key to what you're about to see all right as soon as you clear that up always the it guys we did a test run and he was great now I don't I don't know what you've been clicking over there but pressure sorry I feel a little nervous it's not like it's being streamed live or anything and there's a million people watching it's going to be posted if you guys miss first pitch just remember I was ready and you were fine I don't know what happened now do I need to grab my laptop and have a plan B uh no I I will figure this out sorry looks like the solstice you have something the sorry well thank you all for coming out we do realize that this concludes it's an important night for the Yankee fans out there and uh we're going to do our best to get you back in front of your uh televisions as soon as possible mustt on loading or something yeah all right back on track and present nice look at you well done all right see didn't think you'd get a round of applause did you um all right so let's Jump Right In so here are you'll see the postco years and you have an asteris there just letting you know and reminding people if they weren't aware there was no testing in 2020 21 so that's why there's that jump so we've gone back the last four years of testing this is English language arts so if you look back 2019 there's a number of how our students perform that's the percentage of students that scored a three or four that's the percentage of students that met proficiency the number underneath as you can see it says NJ that's the state average okay so you get so you have an idea of where how we compare to the state average so if you look all the way to the right in 2024 grade three 48% of our students passed the state average was 44% grade four 51 state of New Jersey also 51 Ela 5 71% Pass State 52 and Ela 6 you had 64% very similar to last year the state moved up a little bit to 53% so you can see how the state did from one year to the next they pretty much were pretty consistent in every grade level but you can see our grade levels did fluctuate grade three had a drop Ela had a drop you see Ela 5 again when you're talking 4% with a number of kids you're talking about a handful of kids um and ela6 went up slightly so it it does vary and it doesn't only vary by grade but it also varies by subject area so in math again you can see the same the same Trend if you notice the state averages are very very low in math so you cannot compare an Ela score to a math score and say well we're doing better in ela than math you really have to look at what that state average is because if the test is significantly more difficult then you expect the state average and our average to drop so you see the numbers for the state even down to math 6 only 36% of the state was passing we were at 40 and you can see the other grade levels the same if you look back preco we were 10 to 20% better than the state now you see some areas where we're slightly better or even the same as the state so obviously areas that we're concerned with and we do not take these things at all lightly science doesn't have as much data but we do have the last four years and that's only grade five so you can see once again very very low average across the state you're talking about in the 20% of kids passing for science um but we were only 2% better than that state average this past year where as previous year we were 6% higher and if you look pre-co we were 12% better than the state okay so Trends we weren't happy about um so what do we do with this that data is for you guys this is the stuff that we kind of dive into behind the scenes this is just a sample so I just pulled evidence statement analysis this happens to be uh math grade three so it basically tells us how our students which is the green highlight did compared to the state in every single question so that is every single question on the grade three math assessment so of course we're going to look everywhere you see our highlight above that blue is where our students did better than the state so our teachers did a great job with that or the curriculum was there there's there's reasons our our students performed well lots of different reasons why we did very well and you can see the vast majority of those dots are above the blue now what do we focus in of course are the ones that are well below and I believe that is number 10 and 15 so number 10 and 15 are the ones where our highlight is significantly below blue so we look at those questions what about those questions was it a particular standard was was it a a highlevel question was it a question that had multiple resp correct answers was it a drag and drop we look at all of those things the teachers meet together as a grade level so math grade three grade three teacher would talk about this okay was it not in the curriculum do we need to add that to the curriculum was it covered after the njsla so we need to move it before all those types of things you can discover from these from these from this analysis so that's what happens all behind the scenes we don't just look at the scores and say you know what we Dro this year let's hope we do better next year I definitely not so there's a lot that goes on and again we have this for all three subject areas and we have this for every grade level so I'm just showing you an example we also have link it which you guys are probably aware of we give linked benchmark assessments this is a breakdown of the type of questions our kids struggled with on linkoln so the do stands for depth of knowledge I'm going to have a slide just to give you an idea of what that is but that's basically how complicated is the question how much thinking does it require our students so if you look dok1 the more basic questions where you're just testing to see did they learn this yes our students our students did well you can see how big the green section is but if you look look at the two areas where our kids had the most red that means they struggled the most that was do3 those are the highlevel type questions they're asking you to analyze they're asking you to give examples of compare contr they're asking you to do things much higher than just do they did they learn the information and then the other piece multi- select that means there's more than one correct answer okay so it kind of makes sense you know our students they're not they're not really used to those they don't see a lot of those it gets more confusing what do you mean there's more than one answer how many correct answers are there are there two or there three so those types of questions so again our teachers have that data our staff has that data and when we meet in groups and we have this time together these are the kind of things we look at and we say okay we're going to have to address this we got to give our kids some more multi- select questions so that they become more confident in it so this is the depth of knowledge that of reference on linkoln you can't see it from there and this this presentation is going to be posted on the website so you'll be able to take a look at this but it just it's something easy for our staff to look at and just remind ourselves where do we need to be so if you look at you know some of the words in depth of knowledge one it's the basic who what when where why you know our kids are good at answering that so the teachers are teaching it they're getting it they know the material but it's that next level what if can you compare when you ask them to analize that's where kids struggle and this is not a Fairfield thing this is everywhere I've been everywhere I've talked to depth of knowledge three is where our kids struggle it's it's attention spans it's perseverance it's grit it's all those things that we know our kids struggle with as a parent you've seen this so it's going to translate into this so we're going to be working on challenging kids in the depth of knowledge through three and four and this was shared Out Mr Santana shared this out to to his building we all have this so we're aware these are the types of things that our kids need to get good at and it's going to take it this isn't just a math Ela science thing this is across the board doesn't matter what subject you're in ask the students to make that second well what if well what do you mean well you heard Joey's answer how does yours compare to that what do you think of that it's that next level of thinking and that can start very very young so if you don't know what nsla looks like and you have an idea these are the types of questions they're they're getting I just highlighted the words you don't have to read everything although I know some of you are reading it and want to figure out the correct answer but Ela 3 third grade they have to write a story they're not just answering the question what did the cat do in the story that's not the question that might be do1 but it's write a story that does all this and when they write include details from the story to back up what they're saying that's third grade not an easy skill but again you can practice it you can work on it math fourth grade again it's not just 3 * 4 equals one half of 58 equals it's right an equation and the one they do not like at all this is math class why am I writing explain your answer write it in a sentence so those little tricks we do in math oh if you just multiply this and add this you'll always get the right answer okay great but that second one says explain your answer and you can't just say well because I use this trick and it works every time and science um if you just click on that just to give you an idea when we say science this is fifth grade this this is what the question looks like it's graphs it's interpretations they give you legends to follow it's not going to be a straightforward what is the definition of photosynthesis it's just not it's not going to be you know what does what do clouds do or how does rain formed it's going to be something like this it's analysis and it's going to be cross curricular as well you can you can go back and by the way where that link takes you our teachers have access to that they can pull sample test questions all the release items and I'll be mentioning it a little bit later as well whoops one more okay this is a question that in sixth grade our students are going to take a map assessment to place them in their math class at West essic Middle School so I figured okay let me pull one of these any of you math people here know this is not a straightforward calculate the area of this shape you have to know perimeter you have to know rectangle you have to know three or four different concepts to answer this one question that's the challenge for teachers and that's not easy because again our kids attention span and their perseverance they want a quick answer they want it now and if it takes a little bit longer and they have to struggle they get resistant they get antsy they get frustrated their anxiety goes up um and again as a parent I I know this anytime I ask my kids to do something that's a little bit more challenging than a second it's a challenge so that's just an example and of course my math people you know the answer absolutely 63 very good but is this only school stuff do we have to know this we're GNA talk about this I just pulled this these questions come from police exams this one came from ASC test but you look at the questions first of all in that second one a through e how many times do our are our kids us to more than four options you throw e in there you're like oh my goodness spelling never counts we don't have to spell on the police exam which of the following words is misspelled it's on it these are these are actual exams this isn't oh but testing only matters for njs and no I didn't know the last one but if you our students again all grade levels because I saw this at the middle school I saw this high school it's definitely going to be Elementary you see that question they're going to say this is a trick question a only B only both A and B neither a nor B oh my goodness that's so confusing yes those are the questions that are being asked of our kids now back in the day they would say that's a trick question that's not fair you're trying to you know mess my kid up so what are we doing about it we're doing lots of things and the vast majority of these things are well underway I'm not going to go over all this but again this is posted on the website if you want to take a look at all the things we're doing I try to group them into three categories so the first one increasing expectations so this I said at our first faculty meeting this kind of sums up what we're doing increasing expectations accountability and support at every level every level that means the board is has high expectations of me they're holding me accountable and they're been very supportive of everything I do that means I have to do that to my admin team that means the admin administrators are going to do that to the teachers and that means the teachers are going to do that to the students it's the same plan that's the plan raising the bar and providing support you can't do one without the other we can't say well here are the questions they're tougher but we give no support we expect you to do this in the class classroom but we're giving you nothing that can't happen so we're going to work on all that and that's all staff we're working on that um I'm and I'm just going to highlight a few of these you can go through I put them in in italics but you can't really see it there if you move down to classroom instruction um utilizing data we've been doing that focusing on creating assignments and activities that assess those dok3 and four making our assignments look like higher expectations than those of NGS Del and one of those I put in italics provide staff time for analyzing data planning collaboration horizontal and vertical articulation during faculty CPT and grade level meetings you need time to do this that that analysis that I put up there when is that supposed to be done you need time you need time to meet you need the grade level to meet and go over the result and say what are you doing for this what are you doing for that what's working well what's not working well it takes time and the last one under classroom instruction evaluating what we have I'm I'm spending a lot of time doing that evaluating every program all of the resources not just having resources are they good resources are they proven to work are they research based or is it just taken off of a website and we happen to be using that we have to look carefully at what resource we're providing and making sure our students and staff have what they need and then the last one which was always a bad word oh you're teaching to the test no tell me one thing you want your child to be good at that does not require practice name one thing we have no problems telling kids to practice certain things if you want to be a better singer you're going to have to practice play a musical instrument practice you want to be a drama practice your lines Athletics practice but as soon as we say we want you to to lower your anxiety and have confidence with assessments so practice taking assessments oh don't say teach to the test yes it's a great test it's aligned to the standards we have to practice so one of those we're going to continue doing what we're doing but increase alignment of classroom assessments to the format and expectations of nsla I think I said this at the a faculty meeting it's like you can't practice for your driving test in a compact car and then go take your test in an Escalade it does not work that way you are going to hit every single cone and you are going to fail we have to make sure we're giving these kids confidence and let them get familiar with it if they get to middle school and say I don't like taking standardized tests we've failed them this is when they have to get used to it 3rd through 6th assigned release items I showed you those and this last one which I'm I'm going to go on the soap box and show you a separate slide for this emphasize the importance of standardized assessments to ensure maximum effort from students results should accurately reflect our District's level of achievement those scores do not speak highly of this District this district is better than that so how do we get scores that accurately reflect what's going on in this District so here's one of the myths I don't like these tests they're unfair they're not important I don't think colleges are even using them anymore aren't they going away aren't they okay so let's take a look at this standardized assessments are still required to graduate high school to get into college or a private school they're going to test your child if you want college credit standardized assessment if you're going to go into any postgraduate if you if if you did a graduate program you probably had to take a standardized assessment they did not say well you know what it's not that important we'll just trust you on your application especially not with AI they're going away from the applications I'm telling you that driver's license we have no problems practicing that why did you practice a k turn because it was on the test you were you teaching to the test yes you were to pass your driver's license you going to have your kid do everything that's on that test you're going to have them take practice tests you're going to have them get in the car and do the exact same things parallel park my child said Dad I'm never going to parallel park but it's on the exam if you want your license you're going to learn to parallel park we do it again we do it with everything else we just seem to have this thing in our minds of Education we don't need to practice how to do well on standardized assessments this one you're all Fairfield residents it absolutely affects your real estate the real estate market it absolutely affects how valuable your house is because when you're moving into a town they're going to look at the schools if they have young kids and say how are the elementary schools middle schools and high schools doing they're going to look at that they're going to rank our schools and if you're a parent and you don't know what Fairfield is you don't know everything else it brings to the table you're going to say I don't know if this elementary school is for my child maybe I'll look around and see uh an elementary school that has higher scores they're not going to say talk about everything else that Fairfield brings they're gonna they're going to look at that because they don't know when's the time to get comfortable and confident with it's now so you can look and say oh I have plenty of time my child yeah College sat this guy's coming from West s he's talking high school stuff no it starts now we have to get them ready now we don't want your child anxious taking standardized tests we don't want them showing up and going click click click because they saw they got intimidated and went through it so it starts now and sorry I know I went on a soap box for the importance of Assessments but it really is I honestly think that if all of us parents staff Administration we all took the test seriously and said guys this is a representation of how much you know it reflects on you it reflects on your parents it reflects on your teacher it reflects on all of us that the scores will go up and I'm confident with all of those things I mean it's it's small print all of these things that we're doing and the staff is on board we're moving Full Speed Ahead we're not looking back this is what we got to do there's clearly an issue let's get it done so on that note you know thank you for everything you you've had to go through and I know it's not easy for you guys to our students our parents faculty that showed up my admin team who's been working on this we we we looked at all this stuff and we're hammering things away and you guys you're trusting me to do this you've supported me all the way through I cannot express my appreciation enough because that's huge because without that I can't do this other stuff and them knowing that you guys support me is huge we're we're we all have each other's backs and we're going to get this done we are and I know it's been record it so they're going to look at next year's assessment report and say dude you said we're going to get this done um we will so I I do appreciate it um and if you ever have any questions about any of the assessments any concerns please please reach out to me okay I open Communication email me we can get on get on the phone you can come in but don't sit there and wonder and question and think the wrong things about assessment um you can tell I'm passionate about assessments I'm passionate about student learning and growth not just test scores you you heard about all these other things the great things that our kids are doing how well behaved in in certain situations it's not just that this assessment report is about their score but we know that's not what defines our kids all right um yeah when we go into the section of the yes when we go our yeah just hold on to or I can certainly answer after if you like if it just pertains to this all right thank you back that off [Applause] on behalf of the Board of Education we just want to thank Mr Gupta for for taking this information owning it and presenting it to you guys um we truly feel that under his leadership we are going to turn that corner and we're thankful for for Mr Gupta for our administrators for our teachers for really embracing the change that's coming and and putting our best foot forward for our children so thank you all very much for being here now I'm going to turn it over to our business administrator for his report I just have a few updates um the district goes through an audit every year and we have received our audit for the June 30 2024 it's been a rough draft um there were no material findings or recommendations um we were able to increase our Capital reserves which is money that gets put aside for building improvements it can only be utilized for that but we're trying to bring that Reserve up to help maintain the bu uh the buildings uh we have established a maintenance Reserve which is something we haven't had before and we also were able to maintain the maximum allowable fund balance um the finance committee reviewed the audit and an agreement and the Auditors will present the final version of that at one of our upcoming meetings um Fairfield is scheduled for a qac review in 2425 that's this department of education's way of monitoring the district um they look at five key components and that is instruction instruction and program fiscal governance operation and Personnel uh we will be uh doing some preparation in early November U for the review and the NG dooe will come out uh for site visits and review sometime late December um we are approaching budget season and while it's still early uh we received a notification from our health insurance broker that our renewal for 2025 will increase by 16% so what that means dollar-wise is using our current coverage um that we have today it will will amount to a $375,000 increase now while Fairfield has been fortunate in recent years we haven't seen the increases of double digits that other uh districts have with that utilize the State Health Plan um unfortunately it had caught up to us and based on current Mark conditions um that's going to affect us moving forward not only next year but in future years um so hopefully we could kind of plan around that and and make things work um that's all I have thank you very much much Wally at this time we're going to move on to our board committee reports I'll take it first sure just a quick update on the curriculum committee a few different components the first being report cards buildings met in grade levels to kind of update and correct some of the discrepancies in the report cards the ELA and math standards have been updated and I has also been added for skills that have been introduced but not yet assessed so there were some discrepancies last year between the two schools regarding children receiving a one um so adding the I will hopefully encourage consistency between the two buildings and we've also moved to trimesters all of the report card revisions have been sent to the programmer the final copy will then be sent to the company that stinks our report card in Genesis there were some updates to the media curriculum it's been revised to include some shifts in education since the last version in 2019 we've added digital Cit citizenship and informational literacy to document how our students receive and work with information from outside sources the students synthesize this information both independently and in small groups in an appropriate manner for each grade level there were also some updates to the ESL curriculum the previous curriculum eemp emphasized content essentially serving as a checklist for Topics in ESL in contrast the new curriculum prioritizes language development using various content areas as means to enhance language skills di period has been revamped and will increase the use ofl in order to better align with njsla and there's I guess in addition to the evaluation process walkthroughs um walkthrough observations will begin in November administrators will pop into classrooms unannounced in an effort to increase dialogue visibility and provide feedback to teachers and that's all on curriculum thank you very much Angela from the HSA I just have uh two quick things uh they would like you to know that on November 19th they're holding a fundraiser uh Painting with a Twist anyone interested in joining can visit their website Fairfield hsa.com for the special ed committee CPAC had a meeting on October 17th unfortunately I was not able to attend but Anthony was there so I'll yeah speak on that thank you Melinda and uh the glow with flow which was the sixth grade dance I had the opportunity to attend that as the on to the municipal Alliance it was an amazing event and like Mr Gupta said the kids had so much fun and the boys were dancing in one area and the girls in the other and then at the end of the night they were all kind of dancing together so you know kudos to the municipal Alliance for bringing that back and for our superintendent for attending and I know there was municial alliance members that were there Mr ladimer Mr Street uh councilman cesy was there I want to thank our lead officers who were there and dancing with the kids uh it was a great time and in regards to the meeting on the 17th that Melinda mentioned I just want to um take a second and really thank Megan canone and her team because I had the opportunity to attend the meeting on the 17th the cpeg meeting and I can tell you that we need to do the Board needs to do a better job and um the committee is working diligently to get the word out there about this particular committee which is a special ed based committee but I could tell you and we talked about it in an executive session I learned so much in the hour that I was there because it involves so much more than special education so if you are home or if you're in this room and you're watching uh whether you have a child that is in special ed or not I encourage you to attend these meetings it was it was fantastic her job did did a great job there was four different stations and uh the group of individuals that attended got to set at each station for 10 or 15 minutes and talk about different topics and then you got to move on to a different station and it was extremely enlightening um it was well thought out and again I just want to thank Megan and her entire team because you know I feel like I learned so much from that meeting and attending that meeting that I would highly encourage everyone in the community uh even if you do not have a child in special education to attend these meetings because you you really get a lot out of it so Megan thank you very much and thank your team they were uh they were amazing anyone have anything else with committees I think we just about wrapped everything up okay now I'd like to open the floor to public comments on agenda items we can start with yes come on up introduce yourself and give us your address state your name Paula diic uh I'm Paula diic I just my question is about the linkit um are we able to access those scores so we've been working on that for a little while now that has become more complicated than we thought because linkit data isn't compatible with Genesis so all the NG nsla scores we uploaded right away and you can actually access them from an assessment Tab and when you go into the parent portal link it is not there yet um we're going back and forth with them they're trying to change the formatting but unfortunately the files they sent over to our Tech person it just does not work with Genesis at all okay so if we can't get that information into Genesis there is a a plan B which is give you guys access to link its portal directly and then you you would have a separate login and you would go to link its site and then you could look at how your child performed on form a Form B and form C awesome and is it um are they is it very similar um score wise to njsla no no it's yeah it's it's completely different there's you'll need a lot more information to see because when you first look at those scores you're it's not going to make sense you're gonna be like well 55 is that good but if it's a pre-assessment and they haven't covered things it might be good so you do it it does break it down into category so it'll let you know whether your child is meeting the standard is exceeding is what they're ready for it does give them that information and there's other stuff that linkoln provides but no it it's not rated the same way the score you're not going to see like 700 something on link it like you do for ngsa okay yeah but we're working on that we know you guys want that information so one way or the other either through Genesis or the link at portal we're going to get you that information great thanks you're welcome you Ryan I'm assuming the the two sites can't um marry each other without divulging personal information it like is that one of the reasons why it was difficult at this point they have to send us their scores we don't give them access to Genesis yes because of because of that but they'd rather us go to their portal obviously they don't want us accessing it through Genesis so when they sent the files it was just a disaster Genesis couldn't read any of it it's all scattered so we couldn't put that in the parent portal okay thank you sure coming up state your name and address please hi Alison miaso 7 Southampton Drive I have a couple of follow-ups on the assessment that was shared so my first question we often hear more kind of anecdotally in the community that Fairfield is often the lowest of the sending districts is there any way that even if it's not shared with the community that you have access to how our testing is versus the Under sending schools because I know you're comparing us to State average but as we saw that typically Trends a bit lower I'm curious how we are Vis A our other peers going into WS6 it's a great point unfortunately we don't get that data till much later so with the staff we were able to share at the beginning of the year how we did compare to the other districts for 2022 23 so it's probably another nine months to a year before the state releases how everyone else does now sometimes superintendant will just informally say oh this is how we did but normally they do not like to divulge that so we have to wait until the state releases it in their performance reports and then we can look at the data so we did do that as a staff but we had to look at 20 2022 23 data for right now all we have is comparison to the state and there there's no opportunity within the Consortium to try to encourage more sharing of information we try to okay they're not always willing to to yes no I real you're not going to get the full analytics but just a sense of are we if you showed the data on screen there was a and I realized there was a gap in the data because of the lack of testing in the covid years but there was a significant drop in our scores Visa the state average um and I'm curious if that similar drop is expressed I know often we're hearing anly as well these are the co effects that are having this lagging effect that are on what are now the rising fourth and fifth graders so appreciate that that's kind of being seen throughout the data in the state and throughout the country as well but I'm curious the level of um differentiation between our school versus some of the surrounding Community to understand if we're seeing the same type of effect to be honest there everybody did have a covid drop but ours was more dramatic than I would have liked there there was a significant drop and we identified a lot of the things on there you saw how to correct those things but yes that was the discouraging part and the staff we we all owned it we all looked at it some of us were shocked that we didn't know our students were performing like that but that's what exactly what we're addressing because it's not just a covid drop there's there's something more there and I guess following on that point I appreciate that you're kind of new to the district and I'm really excited for the enhancements you're already putting into place I know the community feels the positive effect that that's having are you also studying the curriculum to look at how our curriculum is compared to some of the other attending districts and also how it's meeting the standards versus the testing to see if there's opportunities there Beyond just giving additional um guidance to the teachers in terms of their techniques or in terms of teaching to the test and giving kind of more advanced questions but also to see if our curriculum may also be an underlying root cause of why the scores have absolutely yes we've we've met several times as a group um looking at different curricul from different areas I've had discussions with um in round taes with other superintendant what's using what's effective and that was kind of that point up there that I said we're evaluating the programs and resources and they have to be research based proven resources because we have to make sure is is the issue instruction well there's a lot of pieces to that is the curriculum aligned is it the right curriculum are the resources we're giving to our staff appropriate challenging enough all of those things Factor so yes we we're taking a hard look at the curriculum and all the resources that go with it thank you I would appreciate I know it's probably premature now but if at a point that we do identify any potential changes that might need to happen within the curriculum if that could be shared with the community when it's at a point of maturity sure absolutely that's a great question and and it leads me to to think that other districts our sending districts probably publish their SLA scores very similar to we do so that's something that's easily obtainable by just looking at our sending districts and their website and seeing where we compare the state average is a state average so that'll give you a pretty clear picture of where we are to our our are sending districts yeah this month all of the districts are doing their assessment reports so as soon as they make those public then we'll be able to see how they did in comparison Frank lamort for Susie Lane regarding the health insurance the 16% increase is that we have to opt into like is the state just whoever the State's going with we go with or do we have options of shopping that no we have insurance broker and we're not in the State Health Plan we're in the Bergen Municipal Employee fund um and the reason we we opted for that is because it doesn't see the fluctuations that the state do um but our insurance broker at this moment is researching other options um it's always you know you don't like to change health insurance plans because everybody's accustomed to the plan they're in and they may lose some kind of services so we try to stay within the plan that we're currently in um but if the costs are excessive you know we may have to opt out but right now we there's no intention of leaving the bed plan and going into the state health benefits plan and have we used the same insurance broker for how many years like in this dist like do we is it the same person for like is it worth it to look at other options as well or we could take a look at but what they're doing is they're they're researching a market and they're coming back with whatever rates that are out there like the state health benefits plan um there there's multiple levels of that okay and like I said in in my report um the state health benefits over the last two or three years have gone up 15% um and they go up it's not a yearly thing they've gone up 15% because their year is different than the school year so you may get from uh up until December a 50% increase and then starting January another 15% increase so the way we have it with be met it's a onetime 16% increase that won't start until next July um and looking at historically I think last year our increase was 7% and before that I think it was under two so it it eventually caught up to us to go up with the market but in the past couple years we've we've had substantial savings over what other districts I just know that's a big thing we've been talking about for many years about the health insurance and the costs and it's every business it's not just you know not just our district but I just want to make sure we're looking at like a bunch of other options I I just attended a meeting last month and most of the increases that that we're seeing is is they tried to defay raising the rates so much but what's what's causing it is there's more inservice inpatient visits um coming up up in the last year and prescription costs with the uh weight loss drugs are really is what's causing the market to really um UPS well gotta all right thank you Andrea um yes you've been on the board uh longer than all of us have we had the same agent for um the last say 10 years do youall yes we have and the difference is that I do this all the time with Benefits every year and it doesn't matter who your agent is your agent is going out to bid to all the different health insurance companies so it's that that changing a broker wouldn't have anything to do with it they're shopping to get the best price that they can it just depends on the market that's what I was alluding to not changing Brokers doesn't necessarily result in a cheaper insurance rate it would be changing insurance companies which they are looking at and that may be an option one don't different Brokers though have different appointments with different companies though because not with schools no okay no a matter of fact if I'm not mistaken Andre you could probably speak on this uh with more um certainty than I can there's only a handful of insurance brokers that deal with schools so uh and I think that was there was a couple of them at the league of municipalities recently where you know your broker meets with you know different agencies and like Wally said it's it's it's difficult because we have teachers who have children and pre-existing conditions so taking you know the teachers out of a plan that accommodates everything that is you know working for them and then a higher co-pay is really something that we're we're not looking to do we're looking to stay where we are but at the best rate okay all right thank you anyone else on public comments on agenda items uh hi everyone Tyler Masterson 21 Henry at Drive just a quick comment uh my daughter's in second grade this is the third time I've sat through that assessment presentation and I really just want to say thank you you know number one for taking ownership and presenting it yourself uh number two for the transparency that you provided you know the data is not great um but most importantly that you have a plan and you know that's a much different experience than I've had sitting here watching this for the last two years so it's it's very positive and it's exciting and I think people are going to be happy that there's a plan in place to improve this uh even though you know what we're seeing right now isn't isn't great so thank you so much I appreciate it thank you thank you anyone else on agenda items okay moving on okay page four the following Finance motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through eight will be voted upon in one motion I motion to approve items 1 through eight can I have a second a second Missi yes Mr feedi yes M Street yes Miss alai yes Mr D pcal yes the following administrative motion is made at the recommendation of the superintendent of school R anything placed on this agenda item one will be voted upon in one motion I amotion I motion to approve item one a may I have a second yeah second M Mr andoli yes Mr FEI yes M Street yes M alai yes MRC yes okay page seven buildings and grounds the following buildings and grounds motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda item uh items one one and two will be voted upon in one motion I have motion to approve items one and two may have a second second roll call M chandoli yes Mr FEI yes M Street yes Miss alai yes Mr DC yes the following Personnel motions are made at recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through 4 will be voted on in one motion just a note there's an addendum item 4 P will be voted on in the block also I motion to approve items 1 through four and the addendum can I have a second second roll call M chendi yes mrti yes M Street yes Miss Al yes Mr yes the following curriculum program motions are made at the recommendation of the superintendent of schools anything placed on this agenda items 1 through three will be voted upon in one motion I motion to approve items one through three may I have a second second roll call yes yes M yes M Street yes Miss Al yes M yes okay we'd like to move on to public comments for non-agenda items only please come up state your name your address okay Steve Panini 39 Philip Drive Fairfield Mr Gupta welcome to Fairfield uh I want to welcome you I'm sure many others will and I think I speak for many wishing you great success here in the challenges that you and the board face thank and I want to also great presentation taking ownership and a transparency okay after my comments in the spring with regard to the the board and the Fairfield school system needing to come up with a strategy based on some of the other issues I took some time to think about it myself I gave some strategy some thought and consideration I prepared a couple of notes on two strategic initiatives I think warrant me mentioning and hopefully your consideration I would like to hear your initial feedback on these ideas and hopefully the minutes can at least to reflect the introduction of these ideas first as everyone here is well aware in 2021 Fairfield voted down the $30 million referendum by almost 80% negative vote you heard my comments on such a failure and disastrous loss before and I won't repeat them in 2023 North Carwell voters rejected their 5 their $51 million referendum for repairs and school expansion mention with a no vote of 57% in 2024 rosand voters did approve by a margin of 3 to1 to12 million Bond 12.5 million Bond of which 8.2 M million is for a new building addition this referendum passed with an apparent Net Zero tax impact certainly that has a deciding factor in 2023 going back Fairfield also approved two of three smaller spending proposals as an emergency stop Gap to avoid the elimination of programs and and and uh and staff certainly there was only a short-term solution considering we had another budget short fill just a few months later if you recall it was at that board of ed meeting that I made the suggestion we need a better strategy and hence these two ideas those are the past referendums going over them again is not going to solve any of our issues moving forward so now I'm going to be a little bit provocative this is certainly a provocative idea from my mind my suggestion is for our new Fairfield superintendent Gupta to get with the north cwell superintendent and align what our building and space restrictions and challenges really are together with that true alignment and common needs and requirements approach West Essex approach the superintendent uh one idea is to include the sixth grade at the West Essex let me finish well I could just touch on that briefly because that was considered and and obviously we want to touch on everything but that was considered last year and and I don't think um I don't think there was a approval or excitement uh for that to happen they don't have the space yeah they don't have the space so it's a great idea and we thought about it we' actually let me let me finish Anthony yeah because I know at one point speaking with the last administrator West stic they had money in the bond left over for such an expansion and we're willing to do that just a few years ago okay well that wasn't as recent as last year okay so that doesn't mean you bring it up yeah it's a bad idea you just sweep it under the rug it takes effort for big provocative ideas that's the whole reason why West S6 was created in 1960s was for those synergies and for the common goals of the four communities so to ignore like that is pretty disappointing to be honest with you well I don't want first and foremost thank you for your comments you have three minutes and we're going to give you extended time but it's not been ignored with our past superintendent it was discussed it was brought to West Essex and it was deemed not possible so please don't make a public comment saying that we're ignoring a provocative idea because that is in in fact inaccurate well now let me finish that by by all means do so okay um that that's an idea I don't think it should be considered dead already again I'm not behind closed doors and again those ideas take a while to fester and manipulate not manipulate but to grow into a right idea it's not something you go through next November and expect to get approved I'm not naive like that I've worked on bigger projects than that than $50 million I've worked on hundreds of millions dollar projects and global environment so I know they don't just happen overnight the second the second idea over a beer with the Floren the mayor of Floren park over the summer you know we review and you know his school district has had similar challenges with budget just like most State schools what he did now he took it upon himself as the mayor but it doesn't have to come from him the mayor Floren Park together with the superintendent Floren Park went to Trenton met with the Department of Education and walked out with 10% increase I'm sure it wasn't that easy they were very well prepared and there might have been more you've heard my comments in the past that um I'm sure many people not just myself because we asked the questions and did not get a satisfactory answer if the if the prior superintendent really exhausted all the grants did they look at all the money that would have been available so I think there were some doubts at least in my mind and I know in others so maybe that would be one idea I could reach out to the mayor of Floren Park if you'd like introduce you what he did or or you're can ignore it but at least that's one idea where the mayor and the superintendent of a small town went to Trenton and walked away with additional grant money which I think that's a big they you said 10% what I was trying can you just rate you they increased taxes 10% or you they got money from the state they got the approximately 10% their state aid was ined by 10% okay I'm not mistak and I can get a that's a great point but I don't know if Wally would have these numbers offand but if I'm not mistaken our state aid from a year ago two years ago to last year there was an increase and it was probably yeah close to 10% and that was without our mayor and our superintendent going there so I well would you wouldn't happen to know that off hand would you no I don't have but I I believe there was so but it's obviously yes they found more money yeah so at least that's a different yeah approach idea thank you for your time yeah can you also you said something earlier I just want to I'm writing everything down you said we approved two small two questions and then we had what after we had the two of the three passed right and that was to just get back a program be try to get back everything that we already eliminated right correct but then you said something else we like we had a bad budget this past spring uhhuh when we're going over the budget again we were missing money again no home not missing not miss don't let me imply that fine yeah we were short we're short money not short money either that was part see what I'm about to say to you is that's part of our plan anything that's not needed is not money is not being spent on okay well let me I think I know where you're going with it I just want to make sure that is the plan all right let me finish my thought CU I didn't bring this up in the spring I I thought it wouldn't be very important in the fall of 23 23 yes there was a shortfall we were going to cut programs and sta hopefully that was decided by priority referendum goes in two of three pass I guess the third one was for school aid Bud uh Aid buses yeah thank God that one it was expected not pass just a that passes a few short months later we have a budget shortfall again what did she propose somehow the priorities changed we brought those programs back but obviously that that would have been political suicide I'm not sure I'm not sure can you specify what shortfalls honestly I thought you were talking about the kindergarten AIDS I don't know I don't know then it was that there was Staffing that's not that's not a staff reduction that's an allocation to what's mandated versus what's not we're not in a position to have non-mandated people working here we have state mandate AIDS we don't have we have luy there was no issue and no discussion for myself or many other people in the spring of this year last year there wasn't there there was an issue in regards to AIDS but like Joe said those particular AIDS were kept by the money that was passed in question two there was no shortfall we did not let anyone go that was currently working in the past they are still employed by the district now I'm glad to hear that but it wouldn't it came up I didn't make because way I didn't make up no you don't understand something people were unhappy rightfully so there was a change people were unhappy people didn't get fired unless it was based on uh you know performance performance like that's just not not what happened so our plan is we spend money on what's mandated and what's necessary as our admin tells us the man we put in place here and then every other year we're going to have another ballot question instead because nobody wants these big referendums so we're going to avoid that and really the only place to do a referendum with the the um flooding issues at Stevenson is Churchill so rather than do that and fail we're going to try what we've already succeeded at is small ballot questions there will be one next November I'm just saying I don't know what it's going to be but we're going to need one you just heard 37 we were going to need one before that number so that 340 we saved every year from the bus is not being budgeted every year can't even cover that that's that's our plan I mean I've said it multiple I know you guys can't come to every meeting but I've said it multiple meetings that's the plan right but there was certainly an issue in the spring when when this there was an issue in regards to kindergarten kindergarten a yes okay if you want to call that an issue that's fine I call that reallocation a lot of people come here concern let go seven staff the year before that that's not an issue then excuse me the year we had an issue was where we fired seven people right did not do that this time yes please we had an 8% increase in our state a from last year okay so to park had 10 we had eight to be fair you know the kind our AES have been with us for a long time and they were a very valued part of of the staff yeah when the mandated positions became known we had a reallocate however it still left a hole in the positions that those AIDS used to yes worked but those individual say that there was no issue I don't think the community feels that way I don't think the staff feels that's not being ignored but I just I like I just want to call that out and listen that that's a great point but please keep in mind that the questions were spe were for specific teachers that were here the teachers are still employed and when we were faced with that difficult Challenge and realized that all of the sending districts because obviously that's where a lot of people go they look to the sending districts don't have kindergarten AIDS unless they're special ed uh specific it was the board's decision to keep the teachers that were here keep them employed so to your point a hierarchy and a priority that's that's basically what we did yeah we could have cut teachers in classrooms I don't think that was the right thing to do but don't don't make it sound like there was no can you it's not no no and it's and hopefully it's resolved we went by the recommendation of the administration and the superintendent at the time and that's what the board decided to back and my point I'm sure that's not going to be the last issue no probably definitely not we're going to have a money issue right and just because additional money was granted or for whatever reason doesn't mean you can't go down there and beg and and and cry and get more we could we could I'm sure I'm sure you and Mr G would love to do that every year yeah on me anyone else public comments state your name and address please Rose lapers 12 AG drive so I ask a lot of financial questions often and I've taken a bit of a backseat because there's a board that I fully trust my question is to Joe oh boy so was there a shortfall in the budget or was it a fiscally responsible budget because those are two completely different things to me and I need a little bit of clarification so there was a fiscally responsible budget but to add additional I believe it was five additional AIDs that were mandated would have caused a shortfall in the budget okay so what did we do we removed them we just no we repurposed so let's just say normally there a need somewhere else we took somebody from some because what we did we only had to hire I think it was one or two instead of all five two I believe yeah okay so we took from one and just placed in another not weent and had a shortfall we only had to add two okay thank you the five new ones would have created a shortfall okay thank you thank you anyone else okay with that being said be resolved that the next meeting will be held in person on November 21st 2024 Public Works section beginning at 6:00 p.m. followed by executive session with public session resuming approximately 7:30 p.m. at the Fairfield Municipal Building may I have a motion motion may I have a second second rooll all in favor I I thank you very much