I call to order this Highland Park Board of Education hybrid workshop voting meeting. The New Jersey Open Public Meetings Act was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of the public bodies in which any business affecting their
interests is discussed or acted upon. In complying to the Open Public Meetings Act, the Highland Park Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting setting forth the time, date, and location to be submitted for publication to the Home News Tribune and Courier News and posted on the board's
website at least 48 hours in advance of this meeting. Members of the public who wish to address the board will be given the opportunity to do so before the board adjourns for the evening. May I roll call? >> Dr. Beatty Ms. Casal Dun Dr. Coleman
Mr. Maldonado >> Here. >> Dr. Pixley >> Here. >> Ms. Prus >> Here. >> Dr. Schoolman Ms. Daniel >> Here. >> Ms. Gardner Uh we are going to recess to executive session. I make a motion that we recess
to executive session. Be it resolved pursuant to the Sunshine Act NJSA 10:4-12 and 13 the Highland Park Board of Education will now meet in closed session to discuss personnel matters, Hibbs, and superintendent's evaluation. These exemptions are permitted to be
discussed in closed session in accordance with NJSA 10:4-13. Information regarding the board's closed session discussion will be disclosed to the public as soon as the need for confidentiality no longer exists. So, do we I guess need to make a motion
to recess? Make a motion to recess. All in favor. >> Aye. >> Okay, I'll call us back to order reconvene to regular session. Can we have a roll call, please? >> Dr. Beatty Ms. Casal Dun
Dr. Coleman >> Here. >> Mr. Maldonado >> Here. >> Dr. Pixley >> Here. >> Ms. Cruz >> Here. >> Dr. Schoolman >> Here. >> Ms. Stanio Ms. Vardeman >> It is great to see all of you, by the
way. We're going to do a couple of pieces of business that we have to do and then we'll open it up and get to uh hear from all of you. So, it's great to have a room full of people. Um, we'll do a start with 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 received three um communications this month that are that are listed here on our agenda. And the next piece of business is
approval of minutes. So, I move that we approve the minutes of the hybrid workshop voting meeting and executive session from May 26, 2026. >> Dr. Coleman >> Yes. >> Mr. Maldonado >> Yes.
>> Dr. Pixley >> Yes. >> Ms. Cruz >> Yes. >> Dr. Schoolman Ms. Stanio >> Yes. >> Um, we Do we have our district here? >> Um, I do not see our student
representatives here. So, but I just want to give a welcome uh to our new student representatives next year, which will be Maya Cardone and Arden Lee. So, we will swear them in and at our September board meeting. So, congratulations to our new student representatives. >> Very grateful that they want to sit with us. Once a month.
>> A lot of hours. >> Yeah, and I actually have the um so it just to continue that I do have a report from our current reps that are not able to be here tonight. So I'm going to read their their student rep report. Okay, I will try to do them justice. Um so for Irving, they said June has
been so exciting for the school. The first grade traveled to Bartle uh to meet staff and get acclimated to the school. Afterward, they had ice pops and Kona ice cream later ice cream later that day. The kindergarten class gave an excellent presentation on the living garden on
June 3rd and 4th. And the preschool end of year show was June 9th and 10th. The first grade show was June 11th and 12th. And we're so excited and proud that our first grade students will be moving up to Bartle next year. Over at Bartle, they said June was also
a very exciting time of year. Miss Knapp visited Irving to read to her soon-to-be second graders. The Irving first graders visited Bartle for a tour and some ice pops. Fourth and fifth graders visited the high school science fair. Fifth graders enjoyed their time at the
splash pad to celebrate the end of elementary school. And we celebrated our fifth graders at their moving up ceremony on Monday, June 15th, and we'll miss them as they move on to middle school. And Peaks and Valleys did a wonderful performance in celebration of Juneteenth.
Over at the middle school, they also had a wonderful and exciting June. They had their eighth grade trip to Dorney Park on 6th uh June 9th and the 6th grade picnic and field day on June 10th. The eighth grade picnic at Donaldson Park on June 11th. And the
eighth grade picnic and dance on June 12th. Sounds very exciting. We have the eighth grade award ceremony and eighth grade moving up ceremony. And they're thrilled to celebrate their eighth graders as they transition to high school. Congratulations to the parents, guardians, and eighth grade graduates. Everybody at the middle
school is so proud of them. And last, the high school in an exciting year, June may be the most exciting month the high school reports. The high school has celebrated senior prom, senior trip, a choir open house, a band performance nostalgia unveiling the
magic behind rehearsal, and the orchestra concert. Thanks to the students, teachers, faculty, and family. And that concludes the student rep report. >> Thank you for that. And then, but you're not off the hook. Right, Now we start the superintendent's report and we get to recognize our retirees,
teachers of the year, and service professionals. Uh Dr. Suskind, you're on. >> Thank you. I'm going to go to the podium. There, much better. Okay. Well, good evening, everyone. This is probably one of my most favorite board meetings, mostly because we have a great crowd, and and that is awesome.
Uh but more importantly, because looking around the room to celebrate such amazing um staff members and members of our community uh just really warms my heart. So, I won't uh take much time other than um saying I I just really enjoyed this meeting, and thank you to everyone for for coming out and supporting uh and
supporting the school district. Before I get started on my official report for tonight, I actually wanted to celebrate a member of our school community who was with us tonight actually celebrating her staff, Ms. Brooke Balderston, our assistant principal at Bartle Elementary School. One of the things, if you've
been watching the board uh meetings for a little while, we've been having some issues collecting um student lunch debt and accumulated a significant balance of debt owed to the school district. Um we had some seniors that were graduating um that may not be have gotten their
diploma because of some negative student lunch debt, and and we want all students to be able to eat um and and get a a a well-balanced meal. Um so Ms. Baldizon reached out to uh some donors and um I'd be remiss if I didn't publicly acknowledge and thank
her for getting a check from Hungry Minds to be able to support the seniors in their lunch debt for graduation. So, Ms. Baldizon, thank you so much. So, um tonight I'm going to ask each administrator to come on up and um for us to acknowledge and celebrate
our retirees, our teachers of the year, and educational service professionals of the year. So, the first up, I'd like our director of facilities, Mr. John Flanagan. >> Good evening, members of the Board of Education, administrators, colleagues, friends, and family. Tonight, we
celebrate the retirement of a truly special member of our district family, Wilfredo Roman, better known to all of us as Willie. For 18 years, Willie faithfully served the district, beginning as a contractor and earning his place as a full-time general general
maintenance worker. But to many of us, he was much more than that. If something needed fixing, Willie was the person who got it done. A proud veteran of the United States Marines, Willie brought dedication, discipline, and selflessness
to his work every day. He was always willing to help, greeted everyone with a smile, and offered kindness and wisdom to those around him. Willie leaves behind a legacy that will not be forgotten. He will be deeply missed, not only for the work he did,
but for the person who he is. On behalf of the entire district, thank you, Willie, for your years of service and dedication. We wish you health, happiness, and many blessings in your retirement. Congratulations. >> Thank you. Unfortunately, Willie wasn't
able to be here tonight. Oh, hi. Next, I'd like to call up our executive director for student services, Ms. Amy Coppola. >> Good evening, everyone. I'm here tonight to celebrate and honor someone incredibly special. That person
is Elaine Donnelly. For over 25 years, Elaine has been the heart of the educational services department. During that time, she has seen many directors come and go, teachers rotate in and out, and child
study team members join, learn, and move on. Through all of those changes, one thing always stayed the same, Elaine. Elaine is efficient, organized, and detailed-oriented in ways that truly set the standard. She
noticed things that the rest of us missed and often fixed them before we even realized there was a problem. If something needed to be done the right way and on time, Elaine was the person you went to. And most of the time, she was already on it.
She's an expert at creating purchase orders, crunching numbers, and meeting deadlines. Honestly, we're not sure how she managed to keep track of everything, but somehow she always did. And she did it with all patience, calm, and a level of professionalism
that made even the busiest days feel manageable. But what truly sets Elaine apart is who she is as a person. She is kind, friendly, and always willing to help. She made people feel welcome, supported, and cared for.
No matter how hectic things were behind the scenes, Elaine's steady presence Elaine was a steady presence, someone we all relied on and trusted. Elaine is truly the backbone of our department. She is the glue that held things together.
The quiet force that kept everything running smoothly, and while we joke about who will remind us of deadlines or magically know where every document lives, what we will miss most is Elaine herself. Her warmth, her humor, and her unwavering dedication to the people she
worked with every day. Elaine, your impact on this department and on Highland Park School District is immeasurable. Your legacy lives on in the systems you built, the standards you set, and the countless people you supported along the way. As you step
into retirement, we hope your days are filled with rest, joy, laughter, and time to do all the things that you love. But fair warning, if retirement ever gets too quiet, we may be tempted to send you a purchase order just to see if you could fix it for us. Elaine,
thank you so much for your dedication, your excellence, and your heart. You will be deeply missed, always appreciated, and forever part of our department. Congratulations, Elaine Donnelly. >> So next, I am going to have the pleasure of speaking about a couple of members of
our Irving faculty. Unfortunately, Dr. Robinson um was not feeling very well, and he's not able to join us tonight. >> Okay. >> So, first I'd like to talk about Ms. Amanda Marrero. For those who don't know, teaching
preschool requires a rare and powerful skill set, including patience, emotional intelligence, deep knowledge of child development, and the ability to nurture both learning and a child's sense of self. Amanda Marrero embodies all of this and
more, and I'm proud to congratulate her on being named Irving's Teacher of the Year. As a preschool teacher at Irving, Ms. Marrero creates an environment where young learners feel safe, supported, confident enough to explore the world around them.
She understands that before academic learning can happen, children must feel emotionally secure. She meets each child where they are developmentally, guiding them in with intention, compassion, and consistency. Through thoughtfully designed play-based
instruction, Amanda builds early academic foundations while strengthening independence, problem solving, and social skills. Her classroom routines and learning centers are purposeful and developmentally appropriate, allowing children to take ownership of their learning while building confidence and
self-regulation. Ms. Marrero is deeply dedicated to her students' social-emotional growth. She connects with children, listens with care, and helps them learn their to name their feelings, work through challenges, and build empathy
for others. Her strong communication with families ensures that learning and emotional growth continues seamlessly between home and school. Beyond her classroom, Amanda is a leader in Irving in the Irving community. As a member of the staff climate committee and the green team, she supports her
colleagues and instills compassion and environmental responsibility in her students. She is part of our Black History Month Crew who develops plans and implements programming to famous black Americans for their contributions and how we can spread kindness and love as a school during the
month of February. Amanda Marrero's expertise, dedication, and heart make a lasting impact during one of the most critical stages of a child's development. For her exceptional commitment to our students and the Irving community, I wholeheartedly commend Amanda for being named Irving's
Teacher of the Year. Congratulations. Amanda Hi. All right. Next, I am excited to celebrate an extraordinary individual individual who embodies the very essence and dedication, compassion, and excellence in education.
I'd like you to join me in congratulating Ms. Katrina Dugan on being Irving's Educational Services Professional of the Year. Paraprofessionals are sometimes described as just paras, but Katrina's work reminds us how inaccurate that label truly is. She exemplifies the
highest level of professionalism, compassion, and expertise within special education and beyond. Katrina brings an exceptional skill set to her role. She has a deep understanding of student needs, strong behavioral support strategies, and the ability to maintain calm, structured
routines that help children feel safe and successful. She works collaboratively with teachers, specialists, and administrators, engaging in ongoing reflection and problem-solving to support student growth academically, socially, and emotionally.
She is flexible, open to change, and always willing to try new approaches in the pursuit of success. What What sets her apart is her proactive mindset. She anticipates needs before being asked, steps in wherever she support is needed,
and does so with positivity and reliability. She supports students across the building, assists colleagues without hesitation, and upholds high expectations while maintaining warmth and joy. Her presence brings stability, trust, and consistency to our school community.
Katrina's dedication extends well beyond her assigned duties. She gives generously of her time, resources, and energy to support students and families, ensuring that everyone feels included and cared for. She participates in school events, supports after-school responsibilities,
and communicates thoughtfully to ensure smooth transitions and student safety. Equally important is the way Katrina supports adults. She is a trusted colleague who makes others feel seen, valued, and supported. Her professionalism, work ethic, and sense of humor strengthen our entire school
culture. She is not just a paraprofessional. She is an educator, a teammate, and a role model. Her unwavering commitment to students and staff has a lasting impact on our school community. Congrat- Congratulations, Katrina, on a well-deserved Irving's Educational
Services Professional of the Year. And lastly, for Irving, I am excited to celebrate a very special retirement, Ms. Liz Medin. So, I'm excited to celebrate the remarkable career of Ms. Medin, whose dedication to our school district has
touched countless students, families, and colleagues since 2003. Over the years at both Irving and Bartle, Ms. Medin has brought enthusiasm, creativity, warmth, and joy into every space she's entered. Walking in her classroom always felt
very special. It was a place filled with the love of learning, encouragement, and belonging where students felt safe, valued, and capable of success. Her ability to create meaningful learning experiences and connect with children made a lasting impact on
generations of students. Beyond the classroom, Ms. Medin has been an active and valued member of many school community committees and events. She's consistently looked for ways to contribute, collaborate, and strengthen our school community, whether helping to plan programs, support school
initiatives, or bringing people together, she always did so with positivity, energy, and heart. One of Ms. Medin's greatest passions was her work with the Green Team. Her love for gardening, nature, and environmental stewardship inspired students and families alike.
She brought excitement to the whole school meetings and encouraged our community to recycle, care for the Earth, and understand the importance of giving back. Her passion was contagious, and because of her efforts, many students developed a deeper appreciation for the environment and their role in protecting it.
Ms. Medin also played a meaningful role in helping to create a more inclusive and culturally responsive school community. Her outstanding Black History Month programming became a cherished cherished tradition, thoughtfully engaging both students and staff in learning about history, culture, and the importance of
representation and inclusion in the school community. Most importantly, Ms. Medin will be remembered for the joy she brought to others. She has been a supportive colleague, a caring educator, and a bright presence in our schools for more than two
decades. Her dedication, creativity, and kindness have left an incredible legacy that will continue and be felt long after her retirement. Ms. Medina, thank you for your years of service, your passion for teaching, and your love
you poured into this community. We wish you endless happiness, relaxation, new adventures, and plenty of time enjoying the things you love most. Congratulations on your well-earned retirement. Next, I'd like to call up principal of Bartle Elementary School, Ms. Jennifer
Knapp. Hello, everyone. I'm going to start with my teacher of the year. It is an honor to recognize Dina as our teacher of the year. Dina consistently goes above and beyond for both her students and her
colleagues. She is a true team player, always supportive, dependable, and willing to step in wherever she is needed. Having worked in multiple classrooms with different teachers, she brings positivity and collaboration to every setting, and brings out the best in
those around her. Dina is deeply committed to all learners. She ensures that every student feels seen, respected, and supported, meeting them where they are and providing thoughtful, differentiated
instruction. Her classroom is a warm, inclusive space where students are engaged, focused, and happy, and where they truly feel they belong. Beyond the classroom, Dina has a tremendous impact on our school
community. Through her leadership of the Sunshine Committee and her work organizing Book Bingo, she brings joy, connection, and a strong sense of community to both staff and families. Dina is also dedicated to growing
professionally and supporting others, sharing her expertise and encouragement with colleagues. She leads with kindness, generosity, and heart, and she makes our school a better place every day. Please join me in
congratulating our Teacher of the Year, Dina Olson. Now, I am delighted to honor Kayla as our Educational Services Professional of the Year. As the school nurse at Bartle, Kayla exemplifies what it truly means to be a
compassionate, dedicated, and essential member of our educational community. Each and every day, she meets the diverse needs of our students with professionalism, empathy, and care. Whether she is offering a warm greeting
in the hallway, comforting a child in distress, or responding to to needs with calm confidence. Her welcoming smile and steady presence provide reassurance not only to students, but to staff as well.
Kayla's impact reaches far beyond the walls of the nurse's office. As a Highland Park resident and a parent of children in our district, she is a deeply she is deeply connected to the community she serves. The relationship she
builds with students and families both in and out of school strengthen trust and foster a sense of unity that is felt throughout the building. Her dedication to our school is truly unmatched. Kayla consistently goes above
and beyond her role, sending timely reminders to staff, stepping in to assist with translation during I and RS meetings, and offering help whenever it is needed. She does all of this quietly and humbly, never seeking recognition,
but always ensuring that others are supported. Kayla embodies the very spirit of this award. Her unwavering commitment, genuine care for others, and tireless work make her not only an exceptional nurse, but an indispensable member of
our school community and a true role model. She is loved by our students, deeply respected by her colleagues, and incredibly deserving of this honor. Please join me in congratulating and celebrating Kayla, our educational
services professional of the year. Now on to our retirees. First, I'll honor Jody McLain. Today we gather to celebrate and honor someone who dedicated 13 remarkable years of service to the Highland Park School community. Over those years, she was so much more
than a colleague. She was a supportive and collaborative teammate and someone we could always count on to put students first. Her care for students went far beyond lessons and routines. She truly knew her students and worked tirelessly to meet
their individual needs, always leading with empathy, patience, and heart. One of the things I will miss most is walking into her classroom, whether it was seeing her become emotional while reading a powerful story aloud, or watching her jump right into a
brain break to dance, fully engaged and having fun alongside her students. Those moments capture who she is as an educator, authentic, passionate, and deeply connected to the children she served. Her presence is still felt in our
building and she has truly been missed since her retirement this past fall. That speaks volumes about the impact she made, not just on students, but on colleagues and the entire school community. We are so grateful for the 13 years she
gave Highland Park schools and for the legacy she leaves behind. We will miss her deeply. We are thrilled that she now has the time to enjoy the wealth her well-deserved retirement. We hope it is filled with joy, relaxation, and all the
things she loves most. Thank you for everything you have given to our students, our staff, and our school. Once a dolphin, always a dolphin. Congratulations and enjoy every moment of this next chapter.
>> Our next retiree is Cal Carol Sabolowski who I think is on virtually. I'm not sure if she is. She is. Okay. Today we celebrate an educator who dedicated 24 years to Highland Park schools. I have had the privilege of knowing her
throughout much of my own career. From when I was a student teacher in another district to teaching alongside her at Irving and eventually becoming her principal. For 24 years she has dedicated herself to the students of Highland Park schools.
Throughout her career she consistently held a high expectations for every student who walked through her classroom door. She believed in their potential, challenged them to grow, and provided the support they needed to succeed. Because of her commitment and expertise,
her students made tremendous academic gains year after year. What always stood out to me was her unwavering belief that all students could achieve at high levels. She never settled for less than their best and in return they rose to meet those
expectations. Her classroom was a place where students were challenged and empowered to learn. She has made a lasting impact on countless students, colleagues, and families and her contributions to our school community will not be forgotten.
Thank you for your dedication, your passion, and your unwavering commitment to children. Congratulations on a retirement. May this next chapter be filled with joy, relaxation, new adventures, and all the happiness you deserve. We wish you nothing but the
very best in the years ahead. Congratulations, Carol. >> Thank you. I next like to call up our middle school principal, Ms. Caitlin Brady. >> Good evening. I could not be more honored to be here to celebrate Ms. Erin Washington for
earning Teacher of the Year this year. Ms. Washington has worked at Highland Park Middle School for 22 years. Though quiet, she is a force. Ms. Washington defuses any situation with her calm, steady presence. She steps in anytime
she's needed. No hesitation, no drama, no spotlight, just reliability at its finest. In the classroom, she is a beloved teacher. Ms. Washington gets to hear all of the middle school drama and helps advise and guide the students all day,
every day. Students come to her in the morning before school, during lunch, and every period in between. And she is never bothered. She welcomes everyone, gives them space to decompress, and always makes time to listen.
Ms. Washington's commitment doesn't stop at the classroom door. She is involved in every school activity. She is not always at the front, but is sure the doors are unlocked, the speakers are hooked up, the mic plugged in, and the music is playing. And as if that weren't enough, she
coaches tennis. This year, she led the team to a championship win, which she accepted with her humble shrug, even though everyone knows she made it happen. For her entire career, Ms. Washington has been a dedicated educator. She has this quiet strength that
steadies everyone around her. Ms. Washington is the person you rely on because she's proven over and over again that she never walks away when it matters most. She is an asset to the school, to the staff, to the students, and absolutely to me.
Simply put, she's exceptional. And we're all better because she's here. Congratulations, Ms. Washington. >> Thank you. And I'd like to next call up our high school principal, Dr. Christina Donovan. >> [clears throat] >> Today, we are proud to recognize a truly
extraordinary educator from our Globe program. Ms. is the kind of teacher who turns a classroom into a family and makes every student feel known, valued, and capable. Her kindness is constant, her expectations are high, and her belief in her students never
wavers. In our Globe program and classroom, she has created a space where students grow academically, socially, and emotionally, all while building the confidence they need to thrive beyond our walls. Her students are not on the sidelines of school life. They are at the center of
it. Through her leadership, they're active in the community and in our school. Globe students are the proud operators of our incredible coffee program, greeting staff with smiles, responsibility, and professionalism each day. It always brings a smile to my face
when student I lets the entire school know of a specialty drink for a holiday, or student C checks in with me regarding the new cell phone policy and what I think about it. Ms. has ensured our students have a voice and have learned to advocate for themselves. She
extends her impact well beyond the school day, whether organizing meaningful after school opportunities or unforgettable experiences like last year's Olivia Rodrigo concert that I attended. She is always finding ways to broaden her students' worlds and show them what is possible.
As co-leader of DECA, she continues to open doors mentoring students in leadership, entrepreneurship, and teamwork. She has guided students to success at both the district and national levels, creating opportunities for many who may never have had those chances. Her
dedication, creativity, and heart, and what it means to serve students is always first. We are incredibly fortunate to have her in our school community, and today we thank her for the countless lives she lifts every single day. Congratulations, Hannah, on being recognized as our teacher of the
year. Tonight, it is also my honor to recognize our educational service professional of the year, Julia Charbon. As our high school psychologist, Ms. Charbon serves in one of the most complex and demanding roles in high school education. Her work requires an
extraordinary balance, having to navigate strict timelines, evaluations, meetings, and an incredible amount of detailed paperwork, all while never losing sight of the individual child at the center of it all. What makes Ms. Charbon exceptional is that she does not
simply complete tasks. She She trust, she listens deeply, She approaches every student and family with empathy, patience, and respect. In moments that can often feel overwhelming or emotional for students and our families, Ms. Charbon is a steady and reassuring
presence. She understands that behind every evaluation is a young person with strengths, struggles, and most importantly, enormous potential. She advocates thoughtfully, collaborates with staff, and ensures that students receive the support they need to thrive
in all aspects of their lives. The role of a school psychologist is not always visible, but its impact is profound. Ms. Charbon manages all of it with professionalism, compassion, and grace. She is always thinking of her students and what is best for them, and it comes through in every aspect of her
approach. We are truly thankful for her dedication, her professional expertise, and above all, the compassion and love that she brings to her work every day. Please join me in congratulating Julia, our educational service professional of the year.
Hey. And now on to our retirements, and I believe Ms. Puccio is here virtually. I think. If she is, okay, hello. I now have the honor of recognizing the retirement of someone who has left an extraordinary mark on our school, Ms. Puccio, our exceptional media
specialist. When we think of the heart of the school, we often think about classrooms, hallways, and maybe athletic fields. But in many ways, the heartbeat of our building has been the media center. Ms. Puccio has consistently gone above and beyond in every sense of the word. When
her title was media specialist, her impact stretched far beyond the walls of the media center. She has been an instructional partner, a technology leader, a mentor, an event planner, a club adviser, and a champion for students and staff. Ms. Puccio demonstrated deep knowledge
of her field and a forward-thinking approach to innovation. She remained current in emerging technologies, continuously sought professional development at Rutgers to refine her skills, especially in the world of digital learning. She not only embraced new tools, but thoughtfully introduced
them to our school. Her expertise with our Chromebook program ensured that technology enhanced learning rather than interrupted it. Under her leadership, our media center was, and still is, a vibrant, welcoming hub of creativity. Whether hosting special events, supporting our research
projects or wise, or simply offering a quiet space, Ms. Puccio created an atmosphere where students felt valued and inspired. Her contributions have been immeasurable. She supported clubs and activities where she helped students grow as leaders and professionals. She also coordinated special events that
brought our school community together. What makes Ms. Puccio truly remarkable is not only what she has done, but how she did it. With patience, with humility, and with a student-first mindset. Her retirement marks the end of an era for our school. While we know the media
center will continue and flourish, it will always carry her imprint in its systems, its culture, and its spirit. Ms. Puccio, on behalf of the entire school community, thank you. We wish you a retirement filled with joy, relaxation, and lots of travel adventures. I suspect you may be on
right now. Congratulations, Ms. Puccio, you will be doing. And now I would like to honor Ms. Mazur. It is truly my honor to recognize someone who has had such an impact on our high school community. Our incredible school nurse, Ms. Mazur, as she prepares for her retirement. When
people think about a school nurse, they often think about bandages, ice packs, temperatures, and lots of paperwork. But, anyone who has worked with Ms. Mazer knows that she is so much more than that. She has always been a steady presence, a calm voice, a trusted confident, and in many ways the
heartbeat of our building, as well. One of the memories shared by staff perfectly captures who she is. Someone wrote to me that she is the nurse for the whole building, staff and students alike. That more true. Over the years, Ms. Mazer has cared for generations of
students, but she has also taken care of every adult in the building. Whether someone walked into her office with a headache, stress, exhaustion, or just needed a moment to regroup, she always made time. Her office became a place where people felt safe, supported, and
cared for. Another teacher compared her office to Lucy van Pelt's stand from Peanuts, and honestly, that image feels incredibly fitting. Students and staff would line up outside her door, not just because they needed medical attention, but they
needed Ms. Mazer. They needed her humor, her honesty, her reassurance, and her ability to make things seem manageable. Unlike Lucy, though, Ms. Mazer's advice was always compassionate, thoughtful, and exactly what people needed to hear. In high school, there are many moving
parts and countless moments that happen behind the scenes. Ms. Mazer has quietly carried so many of those moments with professionalism. She has supported our students through difficult days, celebrated their successes, calmed anxious parents and staff, partnered
with counselors and administrators, and just worked overall to ensure the health of the building. Retirement is such a well-earned next chapter, but there is no question Ms. Mazer leaves behind enormous shoes to fill. Your compassion, dedication, and care have shaped the culture of our
building. On behalf of the entire school community, thank you Ms. Mazer for your years of service, your kindness, your humor, and mostly your heart. Thank you for taking care of all of us. Congratulations on your retirement. You
certainly have earned it. >> So that concludes our speeches. I just want to extend my sincerest appreciation for everyone who came to support our staff. Again, a tremendous my heart is just tremendously filled
with a lot of happiness, warmth, and love that I feel for everybody in this building. And I couldn't be more proud to honor all of our staff tonight. This is what we do every day and if you, you know, just take a minute to think about what you heard in their speeches and the big impact that they make on our school
community is really profound. So please join me again in congratulating everybody. So now I'm going to take a pause in my superintendent's report. We have some light refreshments and water and we know there's pictures. We have a beautiful step and repeat if you'd like to get a backdrop to get some photos. So please
we'll take about a 5-minute interlude for some photos, congratulations, and then we'll continue on with the meeting. Thank you. And there's up here. >> to our board meeting. I was going to say you're all welcome
>> to stay in >> No, I know. I I think they know my my my spiel now, so I just need Dr. Schoolman to come join us back when he's finished. Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay. All right, so um just going to go
to the board to present the second part of my superintendent's report. Um so, I would just probably ask kindly if maybe we can condense the the group back here so I don't have my back to anybody and that you all can see the
the screen. So, I am excited tonight to share the product of our Dreams team grant. So, for those who don't know, and by the way, it was um it says June 5th on there because that was the day of our presentation. So, for those who don't
know, we received a 3-year grant um from uh Dreams, and I'll get to that in a second to reorient everybody, uh but the culmination of our first year in the grant was a showcase. So, on June 5th, our team came and showcased our uh exciting things that we did as part of
the grant. So, uh Dreams stands for Developing Resilience with Engaging Approaches to Maximize Success, and we were selected for the program and included guidance from community mentors who are certified trainers in the Nurtured Heart Approach,
and trainings and resources to implement the Nurtured Heart Approach with trauma-informed, healing-centered, and restorative practices. So, one of the things that we were doing really well and that we continue to do is this idea of responsive classroom, restorative practices, and trauma-informed
instruction, but what we were finding was that there was sort of a missing piece to all of that, and it was a way um of how adults interacted with students and spoke to them. So, a lot of the work in responsive classroom and restorative practices and trauma-informed instruction really
centers on the way students interact with each other. So, for example, morning meeting and things like that. What Nurtured Heart did was essentially work with adults on how to communicate with students and how to fill their inner wealth. Um Nurtured Heart comes with three
stands. So, uh from my presentation about a year ago, the first strand is absolute no, which is neutralizing the negative. Positives can't register until a child experiences until the the child experiences they are no longer connected through negative
adult regulation. So, what we found and through our work with Nurtured Heart is not to energize the negative. So, if there is a situation, obviously safety and and things like that is separate to this, but what we found is a lot of times our students want attention, a lot
of attention-seeking behaviors. So, when students are dysregulated, sometimes it becomes a situation of attention-seeking behavior. So, the idea is you don't want to energize that that negative behavior. You're trying to neutralize the behavior. At the same time, there's an
absolute yes, which is energizing positive in meaningful ways. So, there's always something going right, and how do you energize that and celebrate it? So, instead of going to a student and maybe talking to them about what they're doing wrong, we want to flip the script, and
we're not energizing that negative behavior. Instead, we want to energize what's going right and fill inner wealth. So, that's specific and intentional recognition through relationship building. And then, absolute clarity for fair and consistent boundaries. We have to be intentional in the rules and
expectations, and that comes with a reset. Uh we have plenty of members. I'm not going to name them all, but you can see on the presentation, uh myself, administration, we had gen ed teachers, special ed teachers, um we had our culture and climate
specialists, we had our interventionist, school counselors, paraprofessionals, preschool teachers. So, we opened it up to take volunteers that really wanted to get trained on it. So, we all received um Coping Skills training. In addition,
Miss Gappa and Miss Miss Paxton were our head trainers, so they did a train the trainer model because the idea is to sustain it, so to build our own capacity to be able to turn key it to others. So, Ms. Paxton and Ms. Gappa did a week's-long super intensive training to be trainers of the Nurtured Heart
Approach. So, I'm just going to share some of the successes we had. Um, there's a lot of slides, so I'll kind of go through things briefly, but some of the stuff hopefully you should have seen through our communications and the work we're doing. So, at the middle school, uh, so we did some wellness tips for staff as
part of our Nurtured Heart Spotlight. So, middle school, there were self-care in the Owl newsletter. Um, examples like pause and anchor technique or mental, uh, reset phrases like stay calm. At the high school, the principal sent out Wednesday wellness tips such as box
breathing, um, three good things, micro walk, etc. So, if you saw her emails every Wednesday, she sent out, um, a wellness tip. They did wellness Wednesdays. Um, so they used, uh, so the evidence was widely used in cognitive behavioral therapy and trauma-informed practices.
So, the idea for wellness well, uh, wellness Wednesdays, here's an example, was five things you see, four things you feel, etc. to anchor, um, in a reset and reduce anxiety. Another example from wellness Wednesday, name it to tame it. Again, some ideas on
naming emotions, um, to reduce emotional intensity. So, here are some examples again of what they did to spotlight in their their newsletters, um, and positive communicate, uh, sorry. Let me go back.
Um, so some of the self-care spotlights that they did. So, what they would do is name it and then try it out. So, they name the strategy and then give them an approach to trying it out to re-engage and do a reset. Another thing for our secondary Dreams
team was they did work on positive communications to family. So, really energizing that positive was a theme that you'll see throughout. The middle school, they did tier messages home weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly. Um the middle school started an Instagram account. Um so we were excited to see that the middle school was uh
highlighting some positive um work coming out of that space. The high school, they had a PLC on shared communication, and they took specific time to send out positive communications to families. Often times what we were finding is parents seem to like dread the call from the school when they see
the school number because it's either the school nurse that your child is sick or there's a problem. And we wanted to change that culture because we really want to engage everybody in the community. So trying to be more proactive with more positive um communication home was really important.
Um so you can see those were kind of highlighted in our um uh social media post here from the middle school, ways that they celebrated the students and classroom spotlights. In addition to help our staff because we do know that their time is very important when they have preps and lunch
time, um you know, there's protected time and also they're really busy, and there's only so many hours in a day. So we drafted some templates for them to help them as well to to uh give them some ideas so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel. So there was a whole Google Classroom on tips and tricks to positive communications of different
variety. In addition at the secondary level, they energized student behavior. Um so teaching students clear strategies to self-regulate and reset after challenging moments. So at the middle school they organized time and space techniques for behavioral recognition recognition. Uh they did pride
recognition for social behaviors, student of the marking period recognition, um and then at the high school cafeteria they have game room access. So really just trying to make um more exciting spaces and um and ways to regulate for middle school. At the high school, they did a workshop
for teachers on resets. Um their Ms. Paxton is turnkeying the work she did on the greatness project, which is actually training students on the nurtured heart approach and using that with the pure leader models as a way to help um a student to student interactions.
And incorporate student voice on setting norms, reflecting on process, and suggesting improvements. And I went to one of the a couple of the student um uh she called a parliament to to get some feedback and hear student voice in things happening around the high school.
Uh in addition, they did some active listening strategies, eight weeks of community circles, which came from a student uh visual reminders and cues. Students designed and illustrated the strategies themselves. So really trying to come up with ways to support active listening strategies, and you can see
that um on the wall in the pictures. Uh they did school-wide resets on early dismissal days. So they piloted uh a change of their calendar um during early dismissal days. So you can see there was a morning break at the high school. I know they did this and it worked really well. So instead of just going straight
through without a break, they incorporated a little bit of a reset break in that uh came with a lot of enthusiasm for the reset break. At the middle school, this was the pride initiative that they shared. Each student can be nominated for attributing
uh for exhibiting an attribute um from one of the traits from uh I think it's perseverance, respect, integrity, discipline, and empathy. And on Fridays, three students are chosen and their nomination is read over the loudspeaker. Winning students
receive an owl buck for the snack shack. And at the end of each grade level, um the one with the most prizes one with most nominations receives a prize. I took us a role in this. So that was our secondary team and some of the initiatives they did around the Nurtured
Heart Approach. So I was also a team member and leader of the Nurtured Heart training. So I'm really happy about my training, and I took some of this positive work and put it at the central office level. So, what I did was I celebrated greatness through communications. So, hopefully you saw
that in my weekly communications. Um very often I celebrated either student accomplishment or staff accomplishment or program accomplishment, trying to name what the greatness was um and how it supports the school community. Um so, that was done through some
examples of our social media posts. Um and I did it for students and staff. So, you can see that they celebrated our outstanding HPPS staff. So, you'll see two staff members each week that were celebrated. And again, like I said, um you can see that shouting out students very
specifically for their awards um and some of our staff uh for that. And I will say when when I did that um I received a lot of really positive feedback. And the staff was so excited to see their pictures on social media, the celebration, um and even the emails
and say, "Hey, you you noticed me. You know, you know what I what I'm doing." And that's really great. Um at our elementary so, our elementary team was Bartle and Irving. At Bartle for the dream, so they have their dream members. And for the absolute yes stand, their
goal was to help staff understand and begin to implement stand two. So, that absolute yes, energizing the positive. So, uh they started training staff on stand two and models of example stand through throughout their building for both students and staff.
So, the they did a part which was staff-to-staff positivity. So, Bartle focused on relationship-centered wellness by creating opportunities for staff to connect socially, laugh together, and reduce stress in positive ways. Uh so, they had staff games and team-building activities, friendly
competitions and celebrations, spirit days, wellness surprises, and community-building traditions. And you can see some of that um on the picture here, like vacation-ready day, Bartle blue, jean jacket day, and things like that. Uh they continued to bring wellness in
the building as well. At Bartle, they partner with outside wellness providers to bring calming and restorative experiences directly to staff. They brought a professional chair massage, wellness appreciation experiences, stress reduction opportunities, and recognition of staff mental health needs.
They also focused on positive communications to families. So, they used a variety of communication platforms and outreach methods to maintain strong partnerships. So, they did some school-wide broadcasts uh through Genesis, teacher emails, phone calls, bilingual communication, positive
messages, teacher newsletters, SEL focused communications, and family engagement opportunities. In addition, they set an open door open door culture, which honestly they've always had, but but made it a little bit more evident. The leadership team prioritized emotional safety and support for staff
members. So, both Ms. Knapp and Ms. Baldassone had an open door policy. Unless there was a very confidential meeting, you if you walk by that office, you'll never see their their doors closed. There was access to the counselor and nurse for personal support. I think you heard that through some of the
the speeches tonight about our school nurses and their value. Collaborative problem-solving and a culture rooted in empathy and communication. At Bartle, staff members are never expected to carry challenges alone. They also celebrated successes. They
believe celebrating student growth and positive choices help strengthen both student confidence and overall school climate. Staff members regularly recognize students for kindness, leadership, perseverance, academic growth, responsibility, and positive behavior. And staff can shout out other
staff as well. So, you can see their award and achievement that they gave out to students and staff to celebrate successes. And they, in terms of impact on school morale at Bartle, they recognized students create a ripple effect throughout the school community.
And and was an increase in positive culture in the classroom. Um, it encouraged student motivation and engagement, strengthened student and teacher relationships. It created moments of joy for our staff and students, promoted a supportive and encouraging environment, and reinforced the value of positive behavior and
perseverance. In addition for stand two implementation, um, after actually only one training, feedback on Nurtured Heart was very positive. So, I won't read the data, but um, we have a variety of staff that, you know, had different levels of understanding, but um, the data suggests
that they were really excited to learn about it, and um, and felt a little bit more confident about it. And then looking ahead to next year, which I'll get to um, at the end of the presentation, but Bartle shared in our uh, presentation with the Dreams community that they're going to continue
training on stand two and beyond. Um, they're creating a tap-out room for staff. So, just as a zen calming place for staff if they just need a reset. That was some some uh, information that came out of the work that they did, and increasing stand two visuals, setting starters, and other supports for staff
implementation. And to speak on that, I um, created posters with our Nurtured Heart trainer, um, that were blown up. We have poster makers that make big posters for us, uh, that are going in our classrooms and offices as a way to remind us of the three stands, and to use language to be able to make sure
we're filling, um, the inner wealth of students. Um, okay, I'll just kind of Okay, we'll go to jump to Irving. So, for Irving, their their team members for Irving, um, they also focused on stand two, which is energizing the positive.
The staff intentionally look for, um, aggressively praise minor successes, focusing on kindness, leadership, perseverance, and positive behavior choices to build colleague and student confidence. So, they look for those small moments to be able to fill inner wealth. Um, the community to staff, um, so they
gave um, parents and community members were invited to fill out shamrocks to let other staff members know that they are valued. So there was shamrocks of staff lucky shamrocks of thanks and you can see them around. They were posted around the building. They did bunny grams. Parents and
community members could make donations to support our wildlife habitat at Irving while celebrating staff members. So again the community sort of acknowledging and and sending positivity to our staff through our bunny grams. Staff to staff. So our staff members
were encouraged to shout out their colleagues for special qualities or positive contributions. So here are examples of ones for some of our staff that you're a person we all want to work with. It's people like you that make this an awesome place to work with and very specific feedback. So the whole point of
nurtured heart is not only to praise but to do it with very specific recognition. It is really important not just hey you did a good job but what is it that is that I'm celebrating here and that's what you can see in the pictures provided. Staff members were also encouraged to
shout out their colleagues for special qualities of positive contributions. During morning meeting announcements staff members are often shouted out for their extraordinary competition contributions to the school community. So Miss McNally posted a or Miss Gappa I think posted a Google
form that staff could fill out. Miss Gappa who did the the announcements would read off and shout out the staff members. So staff to student through professional development exposure staff members have been feeding emotionally nutritious words to our students in recognition of
their positive qualities and contributions. So on that poster are those words the nutritious words. They really the staff at Irving really love them. So here are some examples of those nutritious words that the students at Irving were learning as part of their vocabulary during the announcements. Um
kind, organized, cooperative, honest, patient, disciplined, generous, focused, respectful, responsible, brave are really good nutritious words. Each week that nutritious word is highlighted and staff and students are encouraged to recognize and demonstrate
these qualities in themselves and others. So, you can see in the picture that um one week was eager to learn, the next week flexible, then generous, then helpful. For extra reinforcement and motivation, coloring pages connected to the weekly nutritious words were provided to
students. This proved to be an extra way to connect with families regarding our weekly words as well. So, sending home some some creative ways to understand our nutritious words. Um our staff members shouted at our preschool students who demonstrated kindness, fairness, and responsibility
with their peers. They are recognized as a super friend and they got to wear a cape. And our preschool students all loved the cape. The students recognized the the super friend um and again celebrated for their greatness.
Student to student was the last one for Irving and they had the greatness jar. And students can recognize their peers for demonstrating the qualities of greatness. So, students take pride in being acknowledged for their positive traits. So, here was an opportunity for peer-to-peer, our students at Irving to
recognize each other for their greatness. And here's the greatness jar, some of our students with a greatness jar um in the picture. They also focused on positive communication and participation. So, at Irving they did uh monthly family
newsletters highlighting all the wonderful things that are going on at Irving. Uh they translated messages through Thrillshare, monthly family events, mystery readers and birthdays, parent education workshops, coffee with the principal, I guess it was the dragon chatter.
Early childhood learning, collaborative health and wellness programming, and transition programming and orientation as well as welcoming events. So, a lot of positive communication and uh parent engagement. Irving also offered the open door culture to ensure staff felt heard, supported, and comfortable
collaborating. And then the staff vibe tribe focused on wellness. Um so, it was a committee that was formed to promote a positive staff climate through the school including mental health and wellness. So, they did math monthly staff breakfasts, positive
words of affirmation, staff takeout menus, grateful cards, holiday parties, um and evening snacks during conferences. So, we're really excited about this work. A lot of positive energizing the positive was something that was really important to us. Um and celebrating. There's so much
great things happening and ways that we can celebrate that was important. So, some of the things that we're really excited for for next year. So, next year will be year two of this. Um first of all is expanding. So, like I said, we have our turnkey uh professional development provider.
So, they're going to turnkey that work. So, at the secondary uh secondary team of middle and high school, Miss Paxton is going to train the high school executive board students, peer mediators, and student leaders from each grade level on the greatness project. So, we're going to work with students on that. The Dreams team members will also
like training on this as well. So, we're actually going to do training for everybody on the greatness project. They're going to increase the positive communications to parents and guardians by using some time during PLC, department meetings, faculty meetings, and grade levels to be able to allocate 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there to be able to send those positive messages
home. The um and then they're also going to turnkey the nurtured heart approach to more teachers by provi- by by providing professional development opportunities. So, we've already earmarked ways that we can do that within our schedule for next year.
For the elementary team, Bartle's going to begin designing and using their staff tap out room that we spoke about. They're going to use BTV to shout out share out nurtured heart approach traits and that will be a theme within the grade levels in the whole school meeting. So one of the things that we
did through our dreams celebration on Zoom with other people that had the dreams grant was hearing other people's ideas, which was really inspiring and then just in our own buildings across buildings. So they wanted to kind of mirror what what Irving was doing and
expand that. Bartle will continue training as well on the nurtured heart approach and Irving will be introducing the nurtured heart approach for staff and continue using nutritious words and students as look for qualities as they can see in their peers. At central office, I'm going to create a
Google Classroom to house all the resources and PD opportunities. Because this is an ongoing grant, there's even summer workshops, continuing workshops and training next year. So we all decided that would be really great to house it in one centralized location versus all the myriad of emails that go
out. So all of the resources will be housed there. We're going to hold at least three dreams team meetings, one in September, one mid-year and one at the end of year. We don't need them every month. So we were meeting every month for our training, our debriefs and our goal
setting. We have our goals for next year that include these. So now we just need to meet three times a year to kind of check in on things. We're going to continue creating a district culture that intentionally recognizes positive choices, effort, growth and achievement and increase staff understanding and implementation
of nurtured heart strategies through professional development, coaching and feedback. So one of the things we'll do for our instructional rounds is really focus on nurtured heart next year. In addition is celebrating that when we see it in action in our walk-throughs and when we when we go in and out of the classrooms and in
our observations. So that concludes my presentation. I will open up to the board if they have any questions. Okay. Hello. Okay. So with fiscal writing on, what does let's say within a year or so,
what does success look like when it's implemented? Like what would it look like in your in your mind um when it's everything is all implemented and then what metrics um will be used to measure that success? >> Right. Great question. So what we're
going to do is use our goals and then what we're going to do in September is give um specific goals around specific um ways that we can make sure that we're doing those goals. Something simple like create a Google Classroom. We'll create it, we know it's created, um and we have evidence of
that. But some of the other things including turn keying in our professional development, we'll monitor that through our professional development academy. And the um staff that sign up to attend professional development, we do want to turn key every time we provide professional development to our staff, we do a survey or a feedback form to
collect information about that so we can use that data that we collect from staff to inform future professional development. But honestly, success would really look like that all the staff are using the Nurtured Heart Approach in their communication with each other and with students to build their inner
wealth. So we're not just giving praise for praise's sake, that the praise is very targeted just like feedback, it's very targeted. What are you seeing that's going well and why is that so important? So that I see that you are sitting very quietly, that shows me that you are doing this
and that means you are very good insert whatever the the the word is and and what you want them. It seems like you are very focused, you're actively looking at me, you're writing notes down. It seems like you're really focused and that makes for a great learner, right? Not just hey, good job because you're quiet, right? We want to
make sure we're celebrating that um because when we have students that are in trauma or um are dysregulated, they're they're not hearing that, right? And And when they're dysregulated and they want our attention, if we're feeding it by telling them to stop doing that behavior, we're we're giving into
that negativity. We're feeding the negativity. So, what we want to do is there's always something going right. And how do we celebrate that? So, really success would be that when I walk around, that's what I hear. That that's the norm and that the the students really pick up on that as well and they support that in each other is the is the
ultimate goal in 3 years. >> Um just a quick thought on that. I know we have our uh culture survey now, but it's longitudinal. It might be possible to zero in on some of those metrics to track that as well, to have like a There's so much like the feel in the qualitative piece, but if the quantitative piece
other way around. Anyway, you know what I'm trying to say. Then we might be able to use that as a way to kind of look at improvement if there's >> Uh yeah, absolutely. So, last year was the first year over the NJ SASSY SKY, SCI, however you pronounce it, uh survey that was in collaboration with the Department of Education and Rutgers
University. We implemented it. We did it one time as a go. This year we did it twice, so thank you to those who completed the survey. Um and then what we're going to do is look at that data. A lot of the work that early on came out between um parents, guardians, students from grades three and up, and from staff
was a lot of peer-to-peer. It seems like our culture is really high. There's a lot of great things happening, um but there was a need kind of flagged in there was peer-to-peer interaction. Um in general, across all three buildings was still a little bit of an issue, so I'm hoping that that number,
you know, as we That's why we really focused on the greatness project. Thank you, good point to to really maybe build students' inner wealth of each other, um so that their interactions with each other were more positive versus negative. Yeah. Okay, Monique, you have a question?
Okay, thank you. Oh, Monique. >> Hi. Oh, hello. Hi. I me unmute myself. Here I am on Zoom now. Uh that happened. Thank you. This was an awesome presentation, uh Dr. Cesca. I am so excited about just the emphasis on
especially positive communication with parents and guardians, um and just really prioritizing that is just so good to hear. Um and I'm thinking also about the targeted feedback that you just kind of highlighted again, um in in terms of
peer-to-peer interactions as well, but supporting all students with really specific targeted positive feedback, right? So, it's um uh meaningful and impactful. And my question I think is, and we can talk about this I think in even equity and excellence and perhaps, um
you know, engage in other committees as well, but just how we integrate this work um with a nurtured heart with our culturally responsive practices, our um responsive classroom work, and our restorative practices because I know you
brought this into the district to really help support that work, fill gaps. So, I think what I In my mind, I'm thinking, okay, how do we make sure that all these um approaches that we're that are that should be supporting and supplementing each other are actually working together
um for, I think, enhancing the results in all fronts, right? Whether we're talking about peer-to-peer interaction, um staff engagement, and um preparedness, um uh discipline, and so forth. So, I would love to be able to really have more discussions around that
as well. Um and looking at the extent to which we may even start to see the data reflect the influence of the nurtured heart work that's being done um in our, you know, other areas. Thank you. Any else?
Nope. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And that concludes my report. And we move on to public comment. The Highland Park Board of Education welcomes public public participation and has reserved this time for your comments.
Um board policy 167 establishes and regulates the right of the public to participate in public meetings. Um just a reminder of our process. Um people who are in the room will get first opportunity to speak. Um then you just give us your name and
your address. Unless you're a student, and then just your name. Um and just a reminder that if this is the public's opportunity to comment, um we listen. Um Dr. Ceska takes notes and responds where there are questions at a later time. Um but we're all all listening, we're
just not responding to uh the comments so that we can listen and go on. And also encourage you to be brief. Although we want to hear what you have to say, we're not putting any time limits on, but um obviously if you can be brief, that'll help us move on to our business. Okay, so uh anybody in the room that
wants to speak, please uh go up. >> Good evening. Uh my name's Andy Zappo. I'm a resident of 131 Johnson Street. Uh first off, I think it would be remiss for me not to start uh my comment with uh congratulations to the folks who received awards tonight and the retirees.
Um some of them I know through time in this district and I just want to you know give them my respect and appreciate their service as well. Uh and that's really the main reason I came out this evening is to make sure I took a time uh to make a public comment about um a
gentleman who's no longer going to be the baseball coach for the high school baseball team. And his name is Christopher Brzowski. Uh I'm going to call him Coach Chris through most of this conversation uh cuz it's just going to be easier that way. So, my two older sons played as freshman
for Coach Chris uh when he was the assistant. And at that time, Coach Chris did something particularly meaningful to our family. There was a game where one of my sons played and he made a bad play and it resulted in uh one or two runs scoring. I don't
recall how many. But the point was he took it very hard and the team ended up losing. Um and when I got there to pick him up uh I had heard from a few other parents he was taking it very hard. And when I got there, that was in fact the case. He was in the dugout. He was not really
moving. Uh some of his teammates were there with him. The main coach at that time had already left, but Coach Chris stayed with him the entire time until he was emotionally ready to get up and leave the game. And to me, that meant so much to me that
he stood up in that moment for my son. And not just as a dad, but because that's the leadership example that I came to understand was required when I was a soldier. So, it just it's just stuck with me. It stuck with my family. It stuck with my wife and it stuck with him and his
friends who were present in the uh dugout that day. After that time, Coach Chris became a trusted person of my sons, and I have three. Two have no no longer played for him. One uh just finished his first season. And it's really important that uh kids
who are growing up have an adult who is a figure for them that is a trusted confidant, someone they can talk to and figure stuff out with who isn't their dad or their mom. I had a scoutmaster when I was growing up. My kids have all had Coach Chris. And
um he played he took the coach job for the next three seasons and in that time we witnessed numerous players come and go on the team. How on Park is not really known for being a huge club town. We don't really have uh unlike our soccer program where there's a lot of kids who come through it and get into the uh the high school
program. Baseball is not what we're known for. A lot of these are journeyman players, but the kids play and they do great and they grow over time. And for 3 years the team thrived and they did really, really well. >> [clears throat] >> This past year was a rebuilding year. The senior class from last year, not the
one that just graduated, the year before I think was about six or seven players. And most of them moved on. They were all starters, so there was some rebuilding to be done this year, but it was very evident to me cuz my um that the team was growing better with time and would probably continue to do
so, you know, as long as those players come back and I hope that they do. Um our youngest son played this year and he commented to us how much coach Chris believes in him and how much he had really really had ability. And he had grown to love the sport and this was his first time playing the sport since sixth grade.
He earned a starting position in left field as a freshman and just under 2 weeks ago he received his varsity letter. Coach Chris is a true coach. My speaking here is to make sure that his record of service is noted and as a public thank you from our family and myself for his
service to the team, the school, and to our children. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for sharing that. That's very gracious of you. >> [laughter] >> I wasn't sure if there was a Zoom line uh right now. >> In in house first. If you could just put
your name on there, please. >> Gotcha. All right, hang on. I'm working on it. I actually had just left cuz I have to catch a plane at 3:30 in the morning and then somebody said they're starting public comment, so I said, "Okay, I'll come back just for a second." Um I'm here mainly just to speak to I think the board. Um you know, since you
live in the community, I think that you know, I know you're all very hard working, very thoughtful people. I know a lot of you individually, you know, you're you're trying to do the right thing for your town, and we really appreciate your service cuz we know this isn't easy. Um the one thing though I did want to kind of note, and it kind of
dovetails with the the Coach Brazaski thing, is that in the past year with our athletic department, we've seen two big personnel changes. Um now, the departure of Craig Gerwen and the uh uh Brazaski being dismissed, I don't know
if they've named the person yet. Have they? Did I miss that part? The new baseball coach? >> Uh yes, there are there Our scheduled re-positions are on the agenda tonight. >> Oh, okay. Was What's the name? >> It's not intended to be a back-and-forth. I'm sorry. Just give us your Give us your comments.
>> Okay, I will. I will with the assumption that the person's being hired that I think is being hired. Um >> [laughter] >> Uh I just you know, I just want to say that these As the board, these two big personnel changes, you're losing long-term Highland Park well-known
respected figures, Craig Gerwen I mean, talk to any parent in this town whose kids went through his program, and they'll tell you how wonderful he was. And Coach Brazaski, you know, obviously I think is a great role model and a terrific man. And uh I just want to just note that when you make big personnel
changes like this, and you watch them happen, it's not a stamp-the-form activity. This is something that you take very seriously because this is members of our community. And when you take two people who, regardless of the circumstances of why they left, if they left on their own, if they didn't leave on their own, really who knows at the
end of the day, but you're making a big change, and you're inviting two new people into the situation. And I think a new AD and a new baseball coach. And I think that you should understand that these are big changes. There's a lot of people who are watching what
happens with these. Um the person who I think is going to be hired, he was very good to my child. I have no complaints about that. However, if it is the person I think I could understand why other people may have some concerns. So, I just want to note that, you know, this isn't just stamp the form. It is about
we'll speak in the new uh verbiage of the athletic department's about accountability. If one kid gets hurt mentally, physically, or at an off-campus thing attended by coaches,
we will be holding you to account. Um it's a zero tolerance policy as far as I'm concerned. Uh again, you're taking a risk. I hope it works out for everybody. I really do. Um I just, you know, just want to kind of underscore the fact that uh these choices matter, and people depart,
and new people come, and we put our faith in you to hand the right people to our children. I think I had one more thing. Oh, no, I just wanted to note that, you know, like Highland Park, small town, big windows. People see.
That's all. Thank you, everybody. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Good luck on your flight. Thanks for your flight. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room who wants to speak? No. Okay. Uh do you have anybody online? That's How many people are online?
Okay. Is there anybody raising If you're online, please raise your hand. Um and Angela will unmute you. What's that? Ann. Oh, Ann. Come on. >> Hi there. Thanks for taking my comment. Uh my name is Ann Galvin. I live on South 2nd
Avenue in Highland Park, and my kids graduated in '23 and '25. I also am calling in uh about Chris Brazowski, or Coach B as my kids called him. I'm really disappointed in the decision to remove him as coach at the high
school, if in fact it wasn't his choice. Um, as you've heard, baseball has historically not been a particularly glamorous job here in Highland Park because we're just not historically a baseball powerhouse. We don't have our own club teams here. People tend to go
to Edison. So, there are a lot of losses. What Chris did that was so wonderful was to really mentor these kids, a bunch of adolescent boys during a challenging time in their lives. Baseball season itself could be filled with challenges, typically involving
quite a few losses. Chris had these kids not giving in to baseball despair, but playing as hard as they could every time, cheering for each other even when a student achieved what some might consider a pretty minor goal, minor success. He stayed after games for
a periods of time that I assume went beyond his contract. I see him as absolutely critical to my own son's developing into a confident, empathetic leader. He was the co- captain of the team his last year. When I look at HP's Instagram page, I
see a lot of language which I fully approve of uh, about how it's not just the wins. Um, on June 17th, the page says, "It's not just the titles, not the meetings, it's when a kid looks you in the eye after the last game of their career and
says, 'Thank you.' That's it. That's the whole job right there." I agree, and that's that's how we felt about Chris. Um, on June 17th, also I think, uh, talking to student athletes, "You
represented the nest in ways that went beyond the scoreboard, and that is something we will never forget." Again, that's how I felt about Chris. He contributed so much to the boys on that team. "The wins were exciting," says the Instagram account, "but the memories, relationships, and sense of community
are what made this season great. Well, on June June 3rd, while awards honor achievements Awards honor achievements, statistics, and accomplishments. They do not fully capture the character, resilience, leadership, and determination these seniors brought to
our school community every day. I've had the privilege of watching them compete, overcome adversity, support their teammates, represent Highland Park with pride, and grow into remarkable young adults. That is what Chris was helping these kids do. We also heard a lot about uh supporting our staff in the presentation about
nurturing heart right now, and frankly it sounds wonderful. The decision to remove Chris, if that's what this was, does not reflect a respect for the relationships that he developed with students. If what really matters is a kid looking you in the eye and saying thank you,
then Chris would still be the baseball coach. I hope the board and administration will reconsider the decision to remove him. Thank you for your consideration. >> You're in. Thank you. >> Is there anybody else online? Okay.
Uh seeing no additional What's that? Okay. But there's still one more public comment, so if we missed somebody they could they could come back. We're going to uh move on to board committee reports, curriculum and instruction. >> Does that use? It's okay.
>> We're we're all covering for each other tonight. >> All right. All right. >> [clears throat] >> Uh we met um on uh June 11th, and it was uh Dan, myself, Ethan, Michelle Rodriguez, and um Dr. Suskind. Uh I'll try not to go too much detail,
keep it kind of high level, um but give you all you need to know. So, we spoke about um a policy update. There's a lot in there. Um uh the NJSBA um alerts kind of kicked us into high gear uh this past month. There
was existing regulations that were recommended for abolishment because their content had been incorporated into other policies. And so we discussed kind of the rationale for these changes. Some of them are pretty standard. Some of them may be worth a little call out just as as we all look through these and and
internalize them. So there was policy 2200 minor revisions minor revisions there to align with state requirements and curriculum standards. The former regulation addressed by free curriculum content and it was
incorporated into the updated policy language and so it eliminated the need for that separate regulation. So trying to be more consistent here or concise here. Policy 2260 equity in school and classroom practices. It was updated to reflect the current
state requirements as well. There was added language that emphasized that counseling services career guidance and instructional materials must be free from stereotyping. So some some positive language there. This was previously addressed in regulation but it was consolidated into
this policy. The policy 2411 career education and academic guidance counseling some of the terminology was updated just to be a little bit more in alignment with modern practices. Clarifying the role of academic planning
career exploration post secondary readiness. There's a lot of different kind of counselors so they wanted to create that clarity. Let's see. Regulation 2460 recommended for abolishment because it
was incorporated elsewhere. Policy 5460 high school graduation it revised updates aligning district policy with current state graduation requirements. Notable I think had a little bit of a
little bit of a discussion around this. Um changes included expanding flexibility in how students may earn credits towards graduation, more through personalized learning opportunities. So, that was an interesting addition that that could have an impact on a positive impact on students graduating, giving them flexibility.
Um Uh let's see. Yeah, just continual language um updating efforts to create multiple pathways that support successful graduation. Policy 5461 high school diplomas. Um
new policy establishing requirements related to the uh issuance of high school diplomas. Uh there was Let me just make sure I'm highlighting. Uh Okay, so discussion focused on the provisions that now may allow certain students to earn diplomas earlier when
requirements have been met. This was quite a big difference uh actually, allowing folks to graduate earlier potentially um once those requirements have been met. And so, that was a a substantial change that we discussed. Of course, all in alignment with the new recommendations.
Um Policy 5561 use of physical restraint and seclusion techniques for students with disabilities. Updated to um align with the current state requirements. Uh revisions to place greater emphasis on the de-escalation part of it of those
strategies that we had a nice discussion around that to make sure um uh from our community to that that that continues to appear in the right places within our policies and regulations. Um and then that led to a robust discussion, I think, on just uh restraint incidences and um how we've
seen a decline in those over the years and just a uh increased commitment to that. So, that was uh the policy piece. So, that was the one large portion of our conversation. The second one was around um the sub committee SSF committee led by Ms. Rodriguez. And so, we wanted to highlight a little
bit of the the good dialogue we've been having over there. It's a subcommittee that's met over the past uh year, maybe three or four times. Uh the committee is with with with the charge of that and I'm on that committee as well as some others. Um we meet to review federal funding,
evaluate program effective- effectiveness, and ensure investments remain aligned with district priorities. I think it's really important um as we go throughout the year we can um evaluate where those dollars might need to go to align with what our goals are. It allows for kind of a continual monitoring and and and um strategic
discussion around that. And so some of the highlights that should be noted um I think there's some uh good [clears throat] good places where we had a lot of discussion over the past year on where Title I funding um uh places where that go related to continuing investment in intervention-based programs, uh common
lit, IXL math. I won't name them all um uh but there's some really good uh investments going on there around uh Title I funding. Uh continued investment in the family engagement initiatives including family learning nights and outreach efforts that have been quite successful. We had quite a bit of discussion around that.
There's an expansion of mentoring, enrichment, um and continued uh use of fam- family liaisons. That's gone um quite well uh across schools and families. And then there was a discussion around um examples of uh successful implementation included continual math intervention. So
we want discussion on how we can um think about those funds and continue to support that uh math adoption next year. For middle school, um I don't know. Let me see. I want to see what's the most important thing to highlight here.
Um continues to receive additional funding as a comprehensive support and improvement school. The resources helped to support academic interventions, student enrichment opportunities, climate and cultural uh climate and culture initiatives, family engagement efforts. So we see a lot of that extension of what's going on in the uh
younger grades in middle school. Uh programs such as um Read 180, CommonLit, math assessments were highlighted as key supports that were that really help um in the middle school. Title two funding, so they support educator effectiveness through
professional learning and instructional improvement efforts. There's a next substantial investment there for district professional development, PD Academy, teacher leadership initiatives, literacy, mathematics training. Uh We had a discussion around um the importance of sustaining those
professional learning pathways and thinking about the strategy for next year as well. Um Title three funding supports multilingual learners. A couple of the notes there that we discussed were supplemental instruction for English language learners, um family engagement opportunities
through uh the bilingual parent advisory committee. Uh programs and events designed to to strengthen the connections there. Sorry, guys. I'm going through this. Um this is the exciting stuff. All this funding is going you know, to our students and our community. So, I
for one I may be a nerd, but loved this conversation. Um Title four funding, so it it supports the students' overall well-being and access to enrichment opportunities. Um so, we talked about parent workshop series, social emotional learning and responsive class classroom professional
development, uh technology and AI-related professional learning um it goes along with some of the dialogues we've had in community. Um Some additional updates we discussed um were related to uh field trips and approving the senior night chaperones.
And um the uh the approval for the summer walking trips. But, overall it was a robust discussion I'd say on policy. I think Marilyn will touch on a little bit. We went through a bit of it and then also how we're allocating uh SR funds and how we're thinking about continuing to do that in a strategic way
next year. And again, I think um having those multiple uh touch points and evaluating that is really what leads um, the success of that and I want to commend Ms. Rodriguez for doing an amazing job on that. >> Thank you. I actually had questions on those policies when I was reading them.
Like, do we now have to the got the graduation ones? What is it? 5460? There are a few of them were about, you know, other ways to finish up your high school. Do we have to now create policies um, like cuz it said at some point that you
could I was questioning can they get credit? And so I sort of read may establish policies for credit. There's some things in there that I was like kind of um, the work-based learning all that stuff. How does that apply? >> So we do some of that now. We offer structured learning experiences and work-based learning through um,
the um, course of studies. Um, so students can take advantage of that right now. Um, a lot of that's a lot of the pathway for um, our globe students for example, um, do that. We've been toying around Remember a couple of
years ago we tried to do a pathway to um, get the drone certifications. So we tried a drone certification to replace I believe it was a two and a half credit um, science elective like applied physics or something like that. So we've been dabbling a little bit in in that work. Um, this just gives
I guess more flexibility. Um, the reality is is that um, a lot of schools in New Jersey unfortunately are facing a little bit of a crisis with graduation requirements. So they're really trying to think outside the box and give flexibility to school districts to offer other ways to
graduation pathways. >> Hello. I'm sorry. One thing I didn't call out was that it also extends the ability to graduate I think to to a later age too. So that was so it's flexibility in multiple directions. >> Any other questions for curriculum?
Okay. Monique, you on there for equity and Excellence? >> Yes, I'm here. >> Okay. Equity and Excellence also met on June 11th and we too had quite a lengthy discussion of the same exact action items around policy alerts that um
was just presented for curriculum instruction. So, I'm not going to go over the overlap areas, but I do want to just hop down to let's see, we had a discussion around the high school graduation updates. Um and just specifically a question or
concern from the committee was around the FAFSA requirement now and just ensuring that there's a this does not place undue burden or restrictions on families who for whatever reason do not complete the FAFSA form.
So, Dr. Sasco did confirm that we do have a waiver in place for this particular graduation requirement. Um for for parents or families who do not complete the form. And that's codified in our policy. Um let's see, I think that was the only
thing I wanted to add for that policy discussion. Um Let's see. Under also under 5461, the high school diploma, the new policy, Dr. Sasco did and I'm not sure if you if you mentioned this I'm sorry if I'm being repetitive.
Um but Dr. Sasco did also mention that she would prepare a concise one-pager for the report that will be presented annually. So, she does have to present it or superintendents generally have to present a report annually no later than September 30th at a public meeting that
includes you know, the data on our graduation total number of students who graduated, number who graduated via substitute competent competency test competency test processes, the number who graduated via portfolio appeal processes and so forth. And so,
this particular report which will be due in September will also be prepared as a one pager. I think it's just really helpful to have those numbers and figures available in a digestible format. So we'll look forward to that in September. Um
under use of physical restraint and seclusion, we talked about um went a little bit more in depth around uh some of the um incidents over the school year that reflect um Handle With Care and
Nurturing Hearts and the likely impact that these programs have had on reducing restraint numbers. Um and again, just tying the some core Hopefully, what we will see more of a correlation between the work being done with those approaches and reduction in restraints um due to increased staff training and
preparation. Um Dr. Suskind sort of went over the process um for uh you know, using de-escalation first, verbal de-escalation first, and then restraint only if de-escalation fails and there is a uh you know, imminent
safety threat. Uh we also talked about how the policy update codifies existing practices and clarifies that restraint is only for emergency purposes only, you know, we would hope that this is obvious, but this is certainly also very clear in the
policy. And just de-escalation is emphasized and has to also be documented what efforts have been made around de-escalation. Um also codified is let's see, uh incidents must be reported within 48
hours. Um we discussed um which was good for us I think as a committee to get some understanding around kind of the graduated levels approach that Handle With Care takes um when it comes to instances of discipline that could lead to a restraint. Um and again, that's verbal de-escalation
um for minimal to mid uh level uh interactions, then full restraint with gradual release as a student regulates. Um again, around the parameters already outlined. Um the staff involved in these instances
will typically include self-contained classroom teachers, social workers, um perhaps study child study team members, uh related services staff who may or may not be present or may be called in to support staff in the classroom, administrators, and safety specialists.
Um uh let's see. So, we also just talked about the uh fact that the super superintendent's regular HIB and violence vandalism presentation also covers um just the definitions of restraint and seclusion um for for uh
clarity and so we're all understanding the difference between these two uh responses. Data is recorded also through SSDS and reported to the board twice a year. Um there's also in the new let's see added description of
alternative means to de-escalation. So, again, verbal techniques, positive behavior supports. This also includes um meetings that could be a response to um students who are showing um increased dis- dis-regulated behavior, um and and supports that can be designed by an IEP
team to support de-escalation for those students. Um we also requested as a committee just out of our discussion um that instances of restraint and seclusion be added to discipline reports that are shared with the board. Uh Dr. Susco agreed to do that, so we're looking forward to that
now being added to our uh routine uh review of the discipline data. Um and I think that does it for policies. Um moving right along, uh we had a uh positive update on the Cammegnoi evaluation report of our special education program. Um
the final report had has been submitted or was submitted weeks ago, and Cammegnoi will attend an uh either August or September board meeting, um, and we'll obviously present the report findings. There will be some action items. I know that Dr. Seska and
her team are working on, um, in collaboration with Camegno to help develop, uh, you know, action action items based on the report findings. Um, so next steps will be presented by Dr. Seska and our new supervisor of special
services, Ms. Raywood, at that, um, at a subsequent board meeting. Uh, based on preliminary reading of the findings, Dr. Seska did share that, uh, one of the recommendations includes a creation of a roadmap for parents, um, and caregivers to help them navigate the
evaluation referral process. We know there's been a lot of, um, concern and feedback from, uh, parents in the community around, um, you know, just trying to navigate the very complex, um, um, web that we have and in our special education, um,
system and how to and even just identify and identifying and referral, receiving referral process, um, for our parents. So, there's going to be the plan would be again to just make that roadmap very clear for parents, um, and that includes
also explaining sort of what to expect at each stage of the process of the referral and evaluation process. So, that was just sort of one example of, uh, recommendation in the report. Um, they're also ready to use templates
included in the report, uh, so that the district can adapt rather than have to build from scratch, uh, templates that can be used to help, uh, with data management, um, and implementing the recommendations. So, we will look forward to, uh, that
presentation very soon, um, and also John Camegno will be providing a keynote during an in-service date in September with staff. So, he will be there to, um, uh, share out with staff as well. We also went over, as usual, our ISS and
OSS uh discipline chart and data, um this case for May. Um at Bartle, there were total of nine incidents involving 15 students. Um I think most of it was around um perhaps some
fights in the school. Um we're still seeing um fortunately uh disproportionate representation among our uh black and Hispanic students and our um economically disadvantaged students as well.
Uh good news is that we are also seeing a decrease in ISS and OSS. As a result, at Bartle, for example, the nine incidents resulted in one ISS. Um at the middle school level, there
were 30 total incidents um involving 18 students. Um and these incidents resulted in three ISS and three OSS for fights. Um high school, 69 total incidents
involving 39 students. Again, still seeing our um disparities in terms of the racial uh demographics and economic demographics. Uh but at the high school level, there was one ISS and one OSS. Um
and so at again, just across the board seeing a decrease, continue decrease and uh lower number of uh out-of-school suspensions and um across the board. We talked a little bit about just that spring fever feel in all the schools and
how that can uh attribute to the uptick in um incidents in the months of May and June. And I think that's it. Um I'm sorry, one more thing we did discuss and that is uh at the middle school level uh Dr. Ceska
shared some good news around support for our multi-language learners um and the work that Ms. Wendy Yager is doing is really yielding high results around family engagement. Um so uh currently Wendy Yager was working part-time and that is unfortunately due
to reduced federal funding, but uh Dr. Ceska's recommendation is going to is is to consider making her position full-time year's budget pending funds um just to kind of maintain uh this high level uh high level results that she's getting on the work that she's doing to
engage our families of our multi-lingual multi-language learners um and the strong attendance that they're seeing at middle school uh events for uh families. And that's ending on a positive note and that's all I have to report.
>> Thank you. >> Thanks, Bonnie. Any questions? >> Okay. We're going to Yeah, go ahead, Ethan. >> The the the incident numbers for um the middle school and the high school
seem they they didn't seem quite high. I don't know. I I didn't look at them before the meeting. Do we have comparisons to past May and June periods? >> In the meeting we didn't look at comparisons to past May and June periods, but we did discuss the uptick in Christina Dr. Ceska you may want to
speak more specifically um because my notes are not reflecting um the extent to which we discussed what your thoughts were around um the uptick mostly at the high school um but certainly a little bit more at the middle school than the past few months. I know we talked about the spring fever
effect um and uh some other kind of mass incidents that may have attributed to the total incidents at the high school. >> Yeah, I don't have the comparison of where we were last year Uh, but usually we do see a little bit of a spring uptick that kind of is a natural occurs, but I can go back and look at that data
and share that back. Um, to compare year-to-year, our chart just compares month-to-month within the current year. Um, I I'm waiting to hear back. Um, the end of the year was a little a little chaotic with the graduation and the and all of our senior events and stuff like that. So, I'll follow up um, because I
we were questioning about like what um, you know, the incidents that didn't result in removal removing students from the educational environment, what were those around? So, we just need to I'm waiting for that that information to share that back. >> Yeah, and typically that means a really
low level. I mean, one ISS and one OSS with those number of incidents at the high school is telling, I think, around kind of the severity of the discipline incidents. >> Just in being that it was a lot of kids,
but it wasn't uh, like serious, is that the implication? >> I mean, could we kind of follow up on that? Cuz there's there's a lot of kids. Thanks. [clears throat] >> Yes, 39 total students and 69 total incidents. Thank you. >> Okay, we're going to move on to finance
and facilities. >> Finance and facilities. Uh, >> Make it exciting. Come on. >> It's just a my I I will I will make this exciting by saying that I will do this way quicker than all the doctors did. There's
finance and facilities met on June 9th. Um, everyone was in attendance as far as I recall. Uh, we went over the transport and treasurer reports. We went over the approval of breakfast and lunch meal prices, which will be staying the same uh, in the next school year. We
discussed property casual- casualty insurance renewals. We discussed the approval of maintenance, emergency, and capital reserve transfers. We're trying to beef up that fund. Uh, obviously we have a lot of maintenance needs in the district. We have century-old buildings.
They need repairs. We approved a report of awarded contracts pursuant to public law 2015 chapter 47. We discussed professional service contracts for educational services including nursing, OT, PT, and
evaluations. We approved out-of-district tuition contracts or we discussed potential out-of-district tuition contracts. You'll see these things on the agenda here. In terms of facilities, Denise DeRosa and John Flanagan walked us through the anticipated approval of a
change order for renovations in the pre-K classroom involving a doors. Did those make it onto the agenda tonight? >> Not the door, but >> Not the door, okay. We still have some time hopefully in July to get this one done.
Oh, no. No doors at Irving. I'm sorry. The Yeah, and we heard about the open door policy. We're We're going with a radical open door policy, I guess. We discussed a number of policies that we are updating.
I will go through them. These are not major updates to these policies. These are just updates that reflect changes in the state statutes, regulations, or federal regulations to which the policies respond. The policies are for notice of board
meetings, for legal notices. There's a codification of the superintendent's duties. There's the family leave policy. There's a policy on non-resident students and school choice. There's a policy about the reimbursement of federal and other grant expenditures, policy for federal awards funds for
internal controls and mandatory disclosures, policy for contracts for goods or services funded by federal grants, procurement procedures for school nutrition programs, non-resident students school choice district, and federal awards funds internal controls,
allowability of costs. You'll excuse me if I don't remember the contents of most of those. The one of these policies with with significant changes is the family leave policy which updates our family leave policy in accordance with the
major changes that the legislature made to New Jersey's family leave statute. That's the third round of significant changes to that program. All very beneficial. In this case, the ones that apply here are a significant reduction in the number of hours an employee has
to have worked in order to qualify for the benefits. And Yes, so that's that's about right. So, that'll be a benefit to the teachers. And that's not uh you know, if you're interested in that, that is also of broader applicability to
anybody working in the state. So, if you're curious about what your family leave benefits are, look into it. They're actually fairly generous here. We have one of the better programs in the country. Um Other information items, we discussed a bid for
athletics transportation. We discussed the distressing uh numbers on the negative student lunch balances. And then we had an update from Denise and John about facilities projects. We saw some photos of the completed
baseball field. We saw the impressive progress on the Bartle structural repair. I'm happy to report that the Bartle toilet renovation was is complete and it's open for use. I know two students that are very very excited about that
about that acontecimiento. I'm blanking on the word. It's been a long week at the Mahwah Board of Ed you'll have to excuse me. I been a long It's been a long week. Um
And then we discussed the pre-K classroom renovation bid construction update as alluded to before. There are some HVAC needs. Um we discussed the HPEF environmental sustainability project and there was an
update on a leak in a geothermal field at Irving. I was unaware that we had a geothermal field at Irving. That is alarming. There's an investigation that I believe begins tomorrow. I believe is the sum and substance of the discussion of the facilities and
finance committee on June 9th. >> Thank you very >> Uh and I will open it up for questions. Again, I ask for mercy on that one. >> You're saying there's a volcano at Irving? >> Yes. Yes, we should harness the power of
the Earth's core. >> Uh we also have to go over the list of agenda items. If you want to um summarize those for finance finance facilities for us. >> Yes. >> And then we'll go back and do quick questions after this. >> many These many many items on the agenda.
>> Many items, yes. >> That's all right. >> You can summarize. >> Okay. Uh we will approve the bill list. We will approve an additional bills list. We're into that, apparently. We will approve some travel and related expense
reimbursements report. We will approve the treasurer's report, the board secretary's report, the board of education certifications. We will approve budget transfers. We will approve the transfer of unexpended appropriations and or excess revenue to
reserve. Get excited, my people. We will approve the chapter 47 report of awarded contracts pursuant to public law 2015, chapter 47. Um we will approve the breakfast and lunch prices for the 26-27 school year, which
again are staying at the level that they are now. We will approve contracted service providers and related services for the coming school year. Um we will also consider the approval of contract service providers and related services for educational services
department in the coming school year. We will approve some contractors for professional developments uh for professional development, excuse me. We will approve an out-of-district placement for the 25-26 school year. We will approve out-of-district placements for the 26-27 school year.
Uh we will approve uh bedside instruction and uh renewals of our insurance policies for the coming school year. And we will approve McKinley Vento students to attend Edison Board of
Education for the 25-26 school year. We will also consider the approval of acceptance of funding of optimal comprehensive universal screeners focused discretionary grant. Approval of purchase of custodial supplies for the coming school year.
Approval of a 60-month copier lease purchase agreement uh at Bartle. An approval of acceptance of local recreation improvement 2026 grant uh for um things at the gym. Uh approval of change order for the
Bartle change order PCO number 20 on the Bartle structural repairs bid. Uh additional change orders uh CRO number one and CRO number two. These are pertaining to the cafeteria alterations for the pre-K classroom. And we will
consider and accept the donation from Hungry Minds that was uh mentioned earlier as the great work that uh Vice Principal uh Baldozone from Bartle was able to secure. >> Can you also add the reading item? >> Yeah, one more reading.
>> The reading item? >> Oh, the reading item. Yes, of course. How could I forget the reading item? Uh number 26, we will also consider the revised approval of the direct install program with PSE&G. Do I make the motion
now or do we No, okay. You will let me know. >> Okay, then we're going to go we're going to go back and and uh Sarah's going to do the curriculum items. >> Sorry, I missed some. >> I and I'm not going to be as exciting over here. Um I'm going to uh so we will
be approving a field trip requests, which is exciting. Right? Very exciting in itself. Approval of hip reports. Approval of a nursing plan um for the 25-26 school year. Approval of summer freshman orientation for the high school. Approval of evaluation
instruments um for 2026-27 school year. Approval of 26-27 safe opening and continuity of service plan. Approval of university graduate students for teaching internships um junior practical observation.
Approval approval of uh home instruction students. Approval of a new math adoption. Woo! That That is exciting, folks. Approval of professional development. Approval of Highland Park education um association virtual professional developments. And
approval of the NJEA virtual professional developments. >> And with you with excitement for everything that you just mentioned. >> Right. Uh next time I'll say it with more of a pizzazz. Like you know, I need to practice that. >> Okay, so you're you're going to be tough acts to follow with our regular chair. >> Go get it.
>> See that you do, doctor. >> [laughter] >> All right, I'm going to summarize the uh personnel agenda um and I guess policy, too. So um under personnel, we're going to be voting on um Mr. Rosa's contract to approve her employment for another year. Um
>> Yes, yay. >> [laughter] >> Uh with some leaves of absence that are on here, we have the resignation of um an hourly maintenance uh worker. Um and then we have a number of
appointments and um one being that uh we welcome back uh Acelem Sagalski as our math interventionist at Bartle. She's going back to Helen Park. We're happy to hear that. We have a We will have a new school social worker or that's what we're voting on, um Michael Statler, a
new second grade teacher at Bartle, Anna Roberts. Um we are voting on hiring uh Eddie Hernandez as our general maintenance worker for facilities, and then a variety of other uh people that already in the district and doing additional
work um that is on here on the agenda. A lot of pages, so I'm not going to summarize. A lot of summer work and you know, so forth that is on here. Um and then we switched and changing classrooms and and cleaning closets. We have a lot
of people working hard over the summer. Keep us going here. Um and the translators, we got a lot of translators here. >> [laughter] >> Five pages of translators just in case Oh my god, that's a lot. Keep going. Okay, our longest list is translators, but we will be prepared for any language
that we need in our meetings, which is very important. Uh it has been a long week, Avery. Even here on this Monday. Um okay, we have some volunteer um people volunteering for football and soccer and basketball and cross country
for classroom moves and office moves, uh some curriculum writing in um uh ESL and in math pre-algebra, world language, um ELA, music, some more math, also some curriculum writing being done over the
summer, science, astronomy. Um extending brothers brothers mentoring till the end of the school year. Then we have transfers of teachers moving between grades um for to meet the needs of students throughout uh most of this is Irving
and Irving some will see Irving changes and some Bartel's changes. Um through we have reappointment of all of our paraprofessionals uh that are listed on here, approval of staff for summer child study team meetings. Um teachers and and uh child study team
to attend meetings, home instruction staff. We do a blanket approval for home instruction staff of all of our staff so the people will be available. We can hire them if they are willing to take on some home instruction. They've already been board approved. Um same thing for uh travel of our educational
services staff. We approve that in advance uh so they can get where they need to go to continue their work. Um summer school for our extended school year, the staff works on the school year is on here. Job coach for the school for the summer, toileting stipends for the summer
ESL screenings um for our staff to be able to do that. And then we have all of our schedule B positions that are on here uh from Irving to Bartel for after school clubs. Um coordinating our camp overnights,
yoga, lots of different things here. Middle school, our music directors newspapers, student congress. Really appreciate all of our staff willing to take on these jobs um to um extend the learning for our students. At high school, everything from yearbook
to student congress to all of our um uh theater programs, everything is on here. DECA advisors um robotics, chess club, lots of all our different clubs and the advisors who have agreed to take them on for next school year. Um our green team coordinator, lead
counselor. and middle school we have coaching positions. Um the where we have people who have agreed to take them, they're on here for approval. Um and that as well as in high school and all of our different sports head head coaches and assistant coaches
and weight room um for all of our our sports throughout the school year for next year including cheerleading at the end. Um and the last one under personnel is staff training. We have a group of teachers who are willing to come in um
as after school got out to do begin training for clear math. We very much appreciate them volunteering their time to get started on our new math program. So that is personnel. Um any questions on that although we discussed it before but no we good on
personnel. The last um agenda that I'm doing is policies and our other chairs did a lovely job on all these policies so um we have number we have one we have three for abolishment and um a whole group for first three but we've really
gone over them all cuz they went through committee so I'm not going to repeat them. Um and then we go back to public comment. What are we doing next? Okay. And so before we do board action items, we have one more round of public comment and same thing we welcome your public
participation and this is your time for your comments. Um there's no one in the room I think that wants to speak so anybody online that would like to speak? Angela? If you're online raise your hand if you'd like to speak. >> [snorts]
>> No. Okay, seeing none we are going to go to um board action items and vote on all this agenda that we listed. So um Sarah if you want to move curriculum and instruction. >> Yes, I move
I I items 1 through I believe it's 12. >> Second? >> Second. >> Dr. Coleman. >> Yeah, yes. >> [clears throat] >> Mr. Maldonado. >> Yes. >> Dr. Hixley. >> Yes, but abstain from nine.
>> Ms. Pruse. >> Yes. >> Dr. Coleman. >> Yes. >> Ms. Daniel. >> Yes. >> And uh finance and facilities, can you entertain us and amuse us? >> [laughter] >> I move the agenda items.
>> Yes, I move the adoption of items 1 through 25 on the finance and facilities portion of the agenda. Can I get a second? >> Plus the read in. >> Oh, plus the read in. Shall I Shall I now read the read in? >> You can.
>> I think I have to. Uh this is for the number This would be item number 26. So, I amend by motion to move all of items 1 through 26. This is for the revised approval of the direct install program with PSE&G. I think we have some feedback. I'm sorry.
That is the recommendation of the superintendent to approve the installation and the repayment agreement with PSE&G for the direct install program for the replacement of two boilers at Bartle Elementary School um at a cost of $437,000
minus an incentive in the amount of 57%, which gives us a total of just over a quarter of a million dollars. The district share of which is $186,000, which will be repaid to PSE&G over a five-year period at 0% interest funded
by withdrawals from the capital reserve account. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Second. >> Dr. Coleman >> Yes. >> Mr. Maldonado >> Yes. >> Dr. Bixley >> Yes. >> Ms. Pruitt
>> Yes. >> Dr. Schoolman >> Yes. >> Ms. Stanya >> Yes, but abstain 15. >> Oh, okay. >> Sorry, done? >> Um, you want to speak on what now? >> Uh, personnel, that's me. I move
uh 1 through 16 under personnel. >> Second. >> Dr. Coleman >> Yes. Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting my name there. >> Mr. Maldonado >> Yes. >> Dr. Bixley >> Yes. >> Ms. Pruitt >> Yes.
>> Dr. Schoolman >> I Yes, and I just want to say I appreciate all the um comments by community members uh tonight and over the email. I think everyone here took me seriously. Uh I do vote yes. >> Ms. Stanya >> Yes.
>> Okay, and policy, uh I move one and two, and two is A through Q. >> Second. >> Dr. Coleman >> Yes. >> Mr. Maldonado
>> Yes. >> Dr. Bixley >> Yes. >> Ms. Pruitt >> Yes. >> Dr. Schoolman >> Yes. >> Ms. Stanya >> Yes. >> Go from here. Oh, um any um So, that concludes our board action items. Any board liaison reports? Anybody need to want to share?
>> Yeah, so the Human Relations Commission, um tomorrow is the Pride Flag Raising. Um that's June 23rd. It starts at 5:00 and it's at the Highland Park Community Center. There will be like refreshments
and speakers and great opportunity to support your neighbors. Great. Thank you. Anybody else? >> Yes. Um Monique here, the Board of Health um met on June 11th. Um and they are winding down for the
year. They do not meet in the summer. Um one discussion item that came up around the school district uh it was around a the interest uh on the part of some members of the Board of Health in having
um or supporting the district in possible suicide prevention programming um in the fall. Um so again, whatever that could possibly look like, they're certainly interested in speaking with administration to see what the possibilities are. Um there's a high interest on the Board
of Health with just supporting the district in our mental health um awareness and engagement in the community and certainly with the student body. Um so they uh let's see. Um extended an offer to
even meet in the summer if there's an interest there for from leadership around um brainstorming some ideas to uh support a mental health program uh in the district. Um and I think let's see. I think that's
about it I wanted to share out from that meeting. Um of course the Board of Health is doing a lot of great work around um just again supporting um initiatives in the town around on on safe driving, for
example, not stopping at stop signs, driving too fast, um and uh supporting the district in creating more safe um uh passage in the town. Also, they discussed the new e-bike law that's going to affect in New Jersey in July
that will require all e-bike riders to be at least 15 years old, to wear a helmet, and possess a valid driver's license, e-bike license, or permit. So, you know, a lot of support for this particular
e-bike law, but just the implementation and question marks around that, of course. All e-bikes are also going to be required to be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Motorized bicycles, such as mopeds, will also require insurance.
So, that was a discussion there. And that's it on the Board of Health. >> Thank you. Yes, suicide prevention, we work with that with Board of Health is a great idea. >> Yeah, yeah. >> If there's nothing else, I'm pretty ready to go. Okay.
>> [laughter] >> Um, anybody else? Are you the president? >> Um, no, I am not the president, but >> Thank goodness. Thank you, Anne. But I I did want to, since I have the the mic, I did want to congratulate all of the Board, all of the Board, all of the retirees, and all of our honorees
tonight. It is my favorite meeting of the year. I love hearing all the wonderful things that our staff does, specifically detailed and outlined. I think it's really I think it's really awesome. And with the end of the school year, just like it was said to our retirees, we're going to thank all of our teachers
and our staff, administrators, for all their dedication for this year. I wish everybody a restful summer. Come back rejuvenated to do it all over again. But thank you. And I think we should thank the Board, also. It's been It's been a year. >> [laughter] >> Like every other year, it's It's been
challenging, and I I personally think that we work well together. And I think that we ask questions, we discuss a lot, and we made some hard decisions that we believe were in the best interest of students. So, I appreciate all of that.
Um, any old business? No? Or new business? Um, then I get to move to adjourn. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Aye. >> Good night, everybody. >> Good night.