I call to order the Highland Park Board of Education hybrid workshop voting meeting today, Monday, December 22nd, 2025. The New Jersey Open Public's Meeting Act was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of the public bodies
at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon. In compliance with 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 an opportunity to do so before the board adjourns for the evening. May I have roll call, please? >> Dr. >> here.
here. >> Dr. >> Here, >> Miss Cruz >> here, >> Dr. Miss >> here. Miss >> here. >> We will now recess to executive session. Be it resolved, pursuant to the Sunshine
Act, NJSA 104-12 and 13, the Highland Park Board of Education will now meet in close session to discuss the matters related to HIP and also to read in one legal matter. This ex these exemptions are permitted to be discussed in closed
session in accordance with NJSA 10 col4-13. Information regarding the board's close session discussion will be disclosed to the public as soon as there is the need for confidentiality as soon as the need for confidentiality no longer exists. I
move that we recess to executive session. Second. All in favor? You're wearing a short sleeve shirt though. >> I know. >> I sweat everybody out. That's it. >> Right.
>> I move that we reconvene to regular session. >> Second. >> Roll call, please. >> Dr. Batty >> here. >> Mr. Sal here. >> Dr. Dr.
>> here. Miss Cruz here. Dr. here. >> Miss >> here. >> Stand for the pledge. >> 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, liberty and justice for all. >> All right. We had one communication um since the last meeting from Elizabeth W Greenberg um asking to please reverse the decision regarding CPAC meetings
community letter. Um number nine in our agenda is approval of minutes for the hybrid voting public meeting and executive session from November 24th, 2025. I move that we approve those minutes. >> Second.
>> Dr. >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. >> Miss Bruce, >> yes. >> Dr. >> Yes. >> Missia, >> yes. >> Yes. >> And we'll now have our student
representative report. >> I'll start us off with updates from Irving. This month has been a busy one at Irving. They started their scholastic book fair and appreciate the PTO for their time and energy. They've had multiple family evenings including craft night that involved our mayor and burough officials, the Highland Park
Police Department, and Highland Park Public Library. Following this, they had an HPA fast sponsored by Family Fit Night. They're gracious for all the coat donations that have helped many of their families uh patient and patient support services at Robertwood Johnson Hospital collected clothing, coats, and
miscellaneous items for our Irving students that will be that will be a part of our Operation Snowflake donations to our families. Again, the gift of giving was so appreciated and they are thankful they chose us. Lastly, a huge congrats to our teacher of the year, Miss Amanda Morero, and our educational services professional, Miss
Katrina Dugen, wishing our board and community a beautiful holiday season. >> Uh, as for Bartle, they said, "Thank you to HPA Fast for sponsoring the family fit night for the Irving Irving and Bartle families. Uh, we kicked off our
defy the cold attendance quest each week. The home room with the highest attendance percentage will earn 10 points toward their team and emerald games. Brave the cold, show up and keep the momentum going all winter long. Congratulations to our teacher of the
year, Miss Ultar, and our educational services professional of the year, Nurse Nanda. And thank you to our PTO and nurse Nanda for organizing Operation Snowflake uh to support our families this holiday season. A big thank you to
our community for all the donations. Wishing our BTO and H Park community a wonderful holiday season. Moving on to the middle school, they had a great spirit week leading up to the break. Last week they had pajama day, dress your favorite teacher, rhyme day, uh professions day, and twin day. But they
had they also had a holiday sweater day and will have their color wars for the pep rally. This year they'd like to recognize middle school pride, the core values they believe help their school and students grow. December is integrity and this week's winners were Kai Hernandez, Talia Fernandez, and Nadia
Montes. Congratulations. And they'd also like to remind uh everyone of the following PTSO dates, which is the cookie walk on December 20th, and a holiday cards fundraiser that will run through the first week of January. And they would they were able to help
collect gift cards and some gifts for 10 of their students through Project Snowflake. And are grateful for that. And lastly, the high school said um September has been a busy month with their school play Peter Pan and Wendy as well as our winter concerts. All
performances performances were incredible and were constantly impressed with the talent of our students and staff. Winter sports are also off to a strong start and Dr. Mark encourages families to come on out and support our teams. The high school PTSO is running
the cookie walk on December 20th and this is a wonderful new event. Um this please spread the word. It already happened but additionally they are running their annual holiday card fundraiser. Cards are available in the main office. Door decorating at the high
school is underway and although the winner hasn't wasn't known at the time this was written we are thinking Dr. Dr. Donov Stranger Things themes should have won and this is certified Dr. Donov. >> So, uh, happy holidays from the high
school. >> Yeah, >> thank you. That's it. Okay. Thank you very much. Um, does anybody have any questions or comments? >> Real quick, you said there's a new event. It was a walk. I couldn't quite hear what what that was. >> Sorry. Yeah, >> we were talking about the cookie walk. >> Okay.
>> By the PTSO at >> December 20th. Yeah. Okay. >> Very successful. >> I'm going to say I want part of >> they can go. >> I spent I spent $40 on cookies. >> Okay. They were like that many. I'm like
yes. >> Um it was really a huge success. So it's nice to see like um new events like that being so successful. >> Okay. Um we're now going to move to our superintendence report. >> Good evening everyone and happy
holidays. I can't believe we're in the home stretch here heading into winter break. And tonight I am uh really pleased to uh welcome Miss Caitlyn Brady, our middle school principal, to spotlight a very welldeserving middle school student. So, Miss Brady, the podium is all yours.
Good evening. So, it's always an incredible honor to speak about someone, especially when it's one of our Highland Park Middle School students. Asenna Urkin is a staple in the middle school community and as such is incredibly deserving of this recognition. Tonight, I have the
privilege of sharing how Asenna has positively impacted her classes and Highland Park Middle School community. I want to read each of these. These are I'll tell you who they're from. Um, they're all of your teachers and the adults in the building. So the first one is from Miss Maroon who said Asenna is a remarkable student whose positive
influence is felt throughout the classroom. She's wellliked by her peers and consistently serves as an outstanding role model. Asenna approaches every assignment with a commitment to doing her best demonstrating a strong work work ethic that inspires those around her. As an active participant, she contributes
meaningfully to discussions. Her dedication and positive attitude makes her a respected member of the HPMS student body. Miss Senate said, "As a senate is is an exceptionally responsible and hardworking student in my personal finance class. Her eagerness to learn is
evident in the high quality of her work. What truly sets a Senate apart is her professional level of accountability. Whenever she's absent, she takes full ownership of her missed assignments and proactively follows up with thoughtful questions to ensure she has mastered the material. She's a pleasure to have in
the classroom." Miss Beonia said a Senna possesses a gracious and kind nature. Besides being polite and respectful to others, she's also a phenomenal ELA student. After every writing strategy we learn, Asenna immediately incorporates it beautifully into the next assignment.
Her academic vocabulary and writing style are truly sophisticated. She is a joy to have in class. Mr. Kaiser said is an extraordinary student who possesses a great creativity and passion for learning. She always demonstrates a keen motivation for whatever task is assigned
to her. Academically, she is quick to understand and retain the content and apply it to her work, all the while showing great respect for her peers in the classroom. She is also a fantastic artist. Apparently, she painted Mr. Kaiser's cat as George Washington. It's a pleasure to have a Senna as a student
and she is an indispensable member of the HPMS community. Mr. Figlin shared that Asenna consistently comes to class ready to participate and gives her best effort during all activities. She demonstrates good sportsmanship, follows class expectations, and shows respect toward
classmates and staff. Whether it's encouraging others, trying new skills, or staying positive during challenges, Asenna sets a great example in our PE class. Miss Cheney said, um, I have known Asenna ever since she was a second grader at Bartle. Asenna has an
interesting story. She came from China and is of the Weaguer culture. The weaguer language is not related to Mandarin Chinese but is closely related to Turkish and Usuzbek. I've had the pleasure of being her ESL teacher while at Bartle and in two years she exited
the program with success. I am happy that I have her now in my class this year for Spanish. Asenna has always been a reliable, attentive and excellent student who try always tries her best. She is also a very talented and amazing artist who creates beautiful and
impeccable sketch work. More importantly, a Senate is a kind, thoughtful, and determined young person with integrity who brings quiet strength and positivity into the classroom every day. I'm incredibly pr proud of how far she's come and I know she will continue
to do great things. I encourage her to continue with her study of Spanish and eventually receive the state seal of biiteracy in Spanish and weaguer upon graduating from high school. Mr. Mr. Spino, who was the one who immediately recommended Senna for this, said Aenna is an exemplary student in every sense.
As both a peer leader and peer mediator, she approaches her responsibilities with maturity and dedication. She even chose to attend a summer leadership program to strengthen her skills. Academically, she's a strong, motivated learner who consistently works hard to maintain her grades. She's also friendly and
inclusive, building positive relationships with students from many different backgrounds. Overall, Asenna is a remarkably well-rounded individual and is an excellent choice for student spotlight. And finally, I'll sh I'll share what Miss Lane shared, which she said,
"ASenna is an integral member of the eighth grade peer leadership team and HPMS community. She is responsible, kind, and a wonderful role model. She seeks she, excuse me, she seeks out opportunities to develop leadership skills and was one of the seven middle
school and high school students who attended a three-day leadership training conference at TCJ in the summer. Asenna shared what she learned with the rest of our peer leadership team and helped plan and lead activities on leadership styles of communication. She brings positive
energy wherever she goes and approaches every challenge with a positive attitude. I'm incredibly fortunate to have the privilege of getting to know Asenna and working with her as a peer leader. So I'd like to congratulate Asenna for an outstanding
job in Barbar Middle School. All right. Congratulations again, Asenna. Very well done. It was so amazing to hear all those wonderful things. Keep up the amazing work and being a star owl. Thank you. Tonight we also have another very special person to acknowledge.
So I am incredibly proud to honor our esteemed board member, Miss Jennifer Vorhees, as she concludes her term on December 31st. I want to take this opportunity to express my deepest appreciation about what her service has meant to us all. Jen joined the board in
2023 and from day one she jumped right in. She brought her time, her energy, and her thoughtful voice to so many important areas, finance, facilities, equity and excellence, curriculum instruction, policy and regulations. And as chair of personnel and
communications, she guided conversations with a calm, grounded perspective that helped move our work forward. Her service as a liaison to the board of health and the Highland Park athletic boosters strengthened our relationships with the burrow and helped keep our community connected.
But beyond the list of committees and titles, what stands out most is the way Jen has carried herself. She listened carefully. She asked the right questions. She treated people with respect. And she never lost sight of why
we're here. our students, our staff, and this amazing community we care so deeply about. Jen, your voice has mattered. Your perspective has mattered. And your willingness to show up, even on the long nights and through the tough
conversations has made our district better. While we miss having you at this table, we're truly grateful for everything you've poured into this role. I know you didn't really want anybody to say anything. So, I'm I'm So, I I will wrap it up by just saying um I would like everyone who is left
here in the room to please join me in thanking Jen for her dedication, her kindness, and the positive impact she's made on the district. We wish her all the very best in the journey ahead. Thank you. And will you please join me at the
podium? I have a plat for you. shirt. >> Um, I would just like to take it before my my actual superintendent report concludes. Um, I would like to open up to the board to see if if anybody else would like to echo my sentiments for Miss Borhees.
>> Yes, I would. Um, very briefly, I would just like to thank Jen for everything that she has brought to the board. It's been a privilege being on the board with you for the last three years. And when I was thinking about um all of the wonderful things that Christina said you contributed um one of them really sticks
out to me which is just the way that the board has shifted in paying attention to communication and that's because of you and just like the way that you uh are able to see when there's too much or too little or inconsistencies or you know
opportunities where things could be improved. I really do think that um you know what we've what we've done in trying to improve communication really started when you joined the board and so I'd just like to thank you for that contribution. >> Thank you so much. I feel like I should
be thanking all of you for staying on. I'm definitely leaving the board I feel like in a much better place than it was when I first joined. I mean it's always been a great working body but this is a really very special group of people and I think you're going to continue to do great things. So thank you.
Okay, >> that concludes my report and um we'll move on to the auditor's presentation. Uh Mr. Ros, would you like to >> kick that off for us? >> It's also ahead. Okay.
Good evening everyone. My name is John Weiss. I'm the lead auditor who comes and audits the district annually. I'm from BKCCPA's. And my job tonight is to take our big book that most of us have in front of us and boil it down into some financial
highlights and some charts to give an overall gauge of how the district did performance-wise this year and where surplus is. I find the I find the best place to start is with revenues. And by looking at our screen and our handouts, our
first page, we can see that revenues are up about $883,000 compared to last year. And I see uh three or four things worth highlighting here because a couple of things are affecting every district I go
to regardless of the bigger ones, the smaller ones. And I see that in the interest and other miscellaneous column that's down a little bit. And Highland Park is consistent with all my other school districts as far as interest on bank accounts being down.
And it's the same thing with federal special revenue. If we go all the bottom right, the amounts right before the total, we can see that we're down about $390,000. And that definitely met our expectations because the ARP erates sunset it early
in the 2024 2025 year. That federal revenue stream has dried up and we will when we look at some of our bar charts a little later on in our presentation. We'll get a we'll get a sense of where the trend is really going to be on federal funding.
Another thing worth pointing out is the increase in special revenue fund for state aid. We can see we went we went we had 1.4 million in 2425 versus about 785,000 and the preschool expansionated really
has taken off with a lot of my districts. No surprises coming to Highland Park tonight and we'll see the we'll see if the effect of that bump a little further further on in our presentation as well. Any questions, comments on revenues compared this year
to last year before we dive into some of our charts? Okay, we can scroll to the next slide, please. Denise, thank you so much. Ah, and there's our pie chart right on the upper leftand corner. And we can see
that the revenue stream is primarily a one-two combination. The one-two combination being the real estate tax revenue and state aid that the district receives. We can see that there's a smaller red wedge for federal sources which is going to get smaller in the coming years
and our yellow wedge making up our miscellaneous revenue of things like interest, tuition, and things of that nature. Going to the right, we wanted to take a look at the tax rate. And as we can see from 2022 to 2023, we have a big die for
everybody. And that's due to the revaluation in the burrow. The one thing we can control is the blue line and that's it. That's the local school tax levy. Green line being the municipal tax levy and purple line being
the county tax levy. We can see that um we have a bit of a bump over the last two years. That bump will go up in the 2526. And it's related to another conversation that I'll touch on here and get into a bit more that I'm having with most of my school districts. And that's the effect
of the increase on health benefits. because this is going to touch everybody regardless of what system you're in. Looking at some of our bar charts, we see the tax levy is pretty straight, pretty consistent. Our state sources are
up up over the last couple of years. There's been a bit more on equalization aid over the last couple of years. Also had a bit of a bump in 2022 for a one-off, a non-recurring revenue stream for maintenance of equity aid. If we move to our federal sources, our
red bar charts, we can see the effect of the arc esser greens from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and sun setting in 2025. Going forward, I think uh activity primarily from 2018 through 2021 is
going to be a bit more realistic as far as what we can expect with federal funding. State aid preschool district has always had a bit more until the state expanded preschool for just about everybody and Highland Park is no exception. A bit of a bump in 2024, a
much bigger bump in 2025 and the party continues in 2026. We're going to get about the same roughly the same amount. our tuition tuition interest and other interest has been up and has been ticking up for most of my school
districts for 23 24 25 a little bit of a dip between this year and last year. Other than that, no real surprises. Any questions, comments on revenues before we dive a bit more into the appropriations and expenditures? >> Yeah. Yes. >> Can you explain the tuition interest in
other what that is? Why? >> Sure. >> Sure. If we go to our book to exhibit to exhibit J5, it's toward it's towards the back should be at or around page 112.
>> You're serious. >> We're going to find out in about a minute because I have an old table of contests. That's what is known as a flex. >> Yeah. 12. >> By the way, my favorite part of the book is the statist the statistics section
part. Exhibit J5. >> I don't know. >> Oh, this is everything you want to know about Park over the last 10 years is is in our existence section. So yeah, exhibit J5 is where we're zeroed in and we can see the items
comprising miscellaneous miscellaneous income. Now, what's not on here, which is important, is some money we received from a local grant primarily for the uh renovations to a baseball field. That's about $160,000. We can't expect that
every year. >> It's not like that makes sense. >> Yeah. So just to clarify, it's like donations, grants. You can see here if we get tuition for students, um if we sell assets, we get energy
rebates, things like that. >> Any other questions, comments, concerns on revenue before we move on? >> The fact that on the tax rates, that big drop, >> that's not money that we got into the district. That's no that just the value
of properties that drop theoretically based on >> I mean what what is that drop? >> Oh, just speak into the microphone so people at home can also hear you. >> What is the blue line that drops from 2022 across? >> What happens is when the real estate
values go under a certain percentage, the county compels you to do a revaluation of real property. So the property was undervalued, quote unquote undervalued for years. The did the municipality did a revaluation of that real property.
So the total money raised for taxation really didn't change that much, right? But the tax rate that it's based on, you can see fluctuates wildly between 2022 and 2023. It's >> the rate that the property is being taxed will change.
>> Correct. >> Thank you. Any other questions, comments before we move on to expenditures, appropriations. Okay, moving on from our financial highlights
and I'm so happy to see it's 2024 2025. Had them all printed out and it said 23 24 and blew blew a gasket at the office earlier, but they're all fixed now. So from 10,000 ft up, we can see that operating expenditures were about a
million dollars less than the prior year. And what's happening here are two things. First of all, pupil transportation is down in about $350,000.
And a lot of that is the effect of less students participating in non-public transportation programs. a reimbursements to parents for for those eligible to get it and B the transportation costs of transporting such children. Those were the two
expenditure lines that primarily went down in transportation. Something different in Highland Park than I noticed with my other districts. I'm not going to talk about how health benefits was materially over where it was last year. And that's because in
2324 at the end of the year the district changed from New Jersey state health benefits to another provider. Thank God because the increase to me >> the increase in New Jersey state health benefits this year because some of my towns are dealing with this who can't
get out of New Jersey state health benefits will be over 30%. That's 300. Now, Highland Park, we're a little bit that we were a little bit down in health benefit costs compared to last year. And that's just the effect of changing system if we had a full year of the new
provider versus almost a full year of New Jersey state health benefits last year. Now, what we can expect in 2526, there's the budget is about 4.983 million. And this is just the general fund. This doesn't count what's being
allocated to things like these pre the preschool program. That's a bump up of a little over $750,000 compared to our actual cost last year. So, Highland Park is going to be feeling the pinch on that as well, just not this year. Much more in 2526, the year we're
in now. Going down past the operating expenditures to uh our capital outlay. And these things do change from year to year depending on what our prior capital priorities are. This year the priorities were the roof replacement projects which
the district is getting some cap some uh New Jersey SDA money on and some HVAC projects. We also had several other smaller projects such as the baseball field renovations we talked about earlier, camera system upgrades. We bought a new
tractor, BL B playgrounds finished. All that stuff goes into the pot of that 1.373 mil. >> Any questions, comments, concerns before we look at some charts? Yes. >> Uh, couple of questions. Um, could could
you say again what the pinch is we're going to be feeling next year? What that and why that is going to occur? >> The pinch is the health benefit costs and that is going to be felt by everybody. every school district, my
employers at BKC, the the health health benefits are just going up for everybody. >> It could have been 30. Um >> the uh I have a question. So the the transportation costs went down, but
charter school uh tuition went up. I thought that most of the transportation was to charter schools. So how no >> we have some we have a lot of non-publix nonpubliclix as well. >> Okay. And that's that's just kind of like rand you can't control that really. That's just sort of random that some students
>> Yes. >> Yeah. So we have to support those >> right and just sort of it happens. It happened to happen this year that we had fewer of them but nothing we can really plan for >> student as well. So we transport
students, we transport them to school. Um if it's in their transport to school um and replacement 245 placements were down from the prior year.
>> Thanks. >> Just um a comment which is you know when I look at this the tuition um has gone up which is good right? Those are those are maybe not >> these are things. >> Uh okay. Okay. So what? So tuition is that um
>> out of district students. >> Oh. Okay. >> Yeah. I was going to say cost of the tuition is going up. >> Okay. And then students and instruction related services. Is that what is that?
We're going to dive into screen center instruction related services on the very next slide. >> Any other questions, comments before we move on to a couple of pie charts? >> Yes. Uh Lonnie and I were wondering what the decrease in student activities and scholarships entails.
>> Student activities and scholarships, revenue and expenses walk hand in hand. If we raise if we raise money, say 10,000 for the ski club, we expect to see $10,000 in expenses. If we go back to our first uh our first thing, we can see that student activity revenue which
is about halfway down is down about 67,665. So we have that much less coming in. If we look at if we look at student activities here, we have about 50 $49,000 less going out. My
expectation has been met as far as student activities. Now I now if I have a Now if I have no money coming in and a whole lot of money coming out, okay, the bells and whistles are going to go off. In this instance, the activity funds are functioning the way they're supposed to function.
Hopefully that answers your question. >> Thank you. >> I'm not sure if it answers your question because I don't understand. But >> does it mean less ch less students are participating in activities? Nothing to do with number of students. Student activities are are funds that are raised
by students. All your fundraisers um raise money to go on trips, field trips, DECA. So the less money you raise, it's expected the less money that you spend. So it kind of depends. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> So like a fair overarching statement here is that in a world where expenditures are often going up, we were able to maintain that and ours didn't. Right. It seems like this is actually a good thing that our expenditures didn't go up. They actually went down from 23
24 >> total operating. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That seems like a real good face. Okay. >> I'm just trying to Oh, good. Yay. >> Yay. >> Yay. >> If we can scroll down a bit more than these two are pie charts.
We'll start at the top. Whenever I go to a district, my expectation is that my pie chart for expenses should be 75% of the way full of green, blue, and purple wedges. I'm not disappointed in coming to Highland
Park tonight. We can see that the green wedges represent our regular and special education costs. Our dark blue wedge represents tuition. Our light blue wedge represents students and instruction related services. Well,
what do we mean by that? Here's what we mean. We mean the school nurse. We mean the guidance counselors. We mean the child study team. We mean extraordinary services related to severe children with spe with uh severe needs. The library.
All of that goes into that category. and the purple wedge are employee benefits which I expect will be larger next year. Now that I know uh where the money is going by function, I want to see where the money is actually going to. And I'm
again not surprised coming to Highland Park tonight. I expect my pie to be about 70 to 75% full of purple and dark blue. the salaries and employee benefits, the straw that stirs the drink
for every district I go to. Everything else pales in comparison. We can see things like 6% for transportation, 9% for purchase services. That includes things like your attorney, your auditor, things of that nature. 2% on supplies, 4% for cleaning,
repairs, and maintenance should we should significant repair bills come in or your utilities. And 9% for tuition out of district. Moving on to our next set of paragraphs.
>> Thanks. I'm sorry. Can I ask a question? >> Sure. >> I'm numbers wacko. Um, so I'm looking at the the top pie chart. Yeah. >> And I'm seeing some numbers correlate with the um Excel on the previous slide, but some not. And I'm just trying to
understand like student instruction related services. The numbers are a little different. And then is it just the way you're breaking it down? Just trying to understand. >> I think the student instruction and related services may have
student activities on our pie chart. may include student activities on our pie chart but not include student activities. >> Okay. And then special Okay. And then I see you're also breaking down special education instruction which isn't included >> on the other Okay. I'm just trying to
maybe we can talk offline question. Yeah. >> It actually match. Any other questions before I move on to some of the bar charts? Okay, if we can scroll down a bit more, Denise, right past our eye chart there,
and we'll start looking at some 10-year trends. And we can see that um the the regular and special education in instruction lines relatively steady over the last couple of years. tuition, our dark blue lines. We talked
about the the bump there a little bit earlier. Student and instruction related services. This is where I'm seeing a bit more of the PK come in on my districts, particularly on things like the uh the additional salaries we have to pay for
family management and things of that nature. We also have a bit of a bump in extraordinary special education services costs. administration and our red line had a little bit of a bump this year and that's a bit of a one-off because we paid the architect about $131,000
based on our project and I don't expect we'll be doing that every year. A little bit of a decrease in the plant operations and maintenance between this year and last year. You can see there's a little bit of a bump in 2024. We had a we had the sewer water and sewer hookup
fees for one of the mod units. We're not going to have that every year. We saw that pupil transportation, our yellow lines are ticking are ticking down a bit and our employee benefits are ticking down a bit for 2025 and as we mentioned earlier I my expectation is going to be
much closer to 2024 when we um when this conversation is had next year. Any question any more questions, comments, concerns on appropriation and expenditures before we dive into fund balance? Okay. Oh yes sir. Do you see about I
mean because you see so many more districts than I've seen um in terms of the ratio of regular instruction to special education. I'm just curious whether you see it looks like about a >> Highlands Park is pretty even with everybody. >> Yeah.
>> Most of most of my most of the top part of my pie chart starts out looking pretty much the same >> as far as um how that fills out with regular and special education instruction. Any other questions, comments? We'll talk
some fun balance. Okay, so our financial bets between this year and last year, we had an increase in general fund balance of 1.278 million compared to last year. Well, where did that money go? We can
see capital reserve got bumped up and what happened there was we took a little bit of money out to f to fund some capital projects and then put a lot of money back in to uh to finance projects that we're
going to need this year. Now my friend Bill Colintano had a great line that I'm going to steal tonight. I'm going to show you what you have before I take it away from you have $4.8 8 million in capital reserve. When the when the calendar went from
June 30th to July 1st, 2.281 million of that was budgeted out. You have a significant repair going on at the Bartle School right now. That's going to require millions of dollars to fix. So, it's nice that you had that capital
reserve available to you with the hope that that these reserves all regenerate themselves. We're not onetrick ponies and we can maintain a healthy reserves and meet our capital needs without having to go to our taxpayers for bond issuance. Or if we do maybe have to ask
maybe we can ask for a little bit less. I'm going to circle back to excess surplus of about 425,000 because in the state of New Jersey you can't have too much money and we're going to go over that at the end of our presentation. Our incumbrances are up a little bit
between this year and last year. And we awarded a contract for toilet room alterations at Bart School. That's most of that incumbrance. And if we think about it, if we got to award the contract and do a lot of the work in the summertime when student when the students are not in school, that
represents about $196,000 of that incumbrance. If we look towards the bottom, we have unrestricted fund balance of $920,000. That's a decrease of uh from 1.368
million last year. Now, I said earlier in our talk about fund balance, you can't have too much money in the state of New Jersey. The state limits you as to what you can have in your quote unquote free surplus or unrestricted surplus. That is 2% of your operating
expenditures. And if we remember from our earlier conversation, expenditures are down a little bit for the district. plus your unbudgeted state aid if it's extraordinary special education cost aid and non-public transportation aid. What happened with Highland Park this
year is we budgeted a little bit more money in extraordinary special educ education cost aid. When that happens that excess over that you receive over budgeted goes down. And when numbers were finally tallied,
we have about $425,000 or $424924 to be exact in excess surplus money that when the business administrator starts working on her budget, 424924 will automatically populate as fund balance anticipated as
revenue. Any questions, comments before we start diving into some charts? just um for the sorry learning a lot from you today today um is there a recommended amount to have in capital reserves as it relates to your expenditures for I'm
just curious if >> varies from district to district to district >> much as possible >> I always encourage the bank as much as possible listen to your administrators as far as what your needs are for the next 5 10 15 20 years and where that reserve should be
>> but is there a limit on how We can have >> Yes, there is. What? And we're going to actually that's going to be the last slide. So, we got a little bit of a spoiler alert here. >> We're here for the spoiler. >> You are limited in your capital reserve.
You are limited to the amount of projects in your long range facility plan that is not funded by state aid, which is approximately 60% of the projects in your long range facility plan. That's just as a um thousand feet up baseline estimate.
>> You said excess surplus which we can't have that money in there. That money has to go somewhere else. >> The money automatically goes back to the good taxpayers of Highland Park. That there's that much less we will have to raise in taxes for the 2627 budget.
Moving on to our pie chart on the next slide. pressure. >> You give her one job. You give a one. She's bang up tonight. That's get some applause, isn't it? Okay. So,
>> as our wedges go from green to blue, the money gets less restricted. And we can see the darkest green part, our restricted excess surplus. That money is already airbarked for 2627 budget already anticipated. Our restricted surplus we talked about
earlier the amount that we can have in capital reserve for projects in our long range facility plan. The emergency expense reserve money as it says should god forbid something bad happen that money is there for you. It's very difficult to get out once you put
in. It can be it can be taken out for obviously emergencies if it meets this a very strict standard and excess health benefit costs. I've seen business I've seen business offices successfully get it out should there be a health benefits cost hardship and a lot of districts are
going to have that this coming up year. The district is self-insured for unemployment funds. What that means is when those claims come in, if and when they come in, funds are set aside to pay for said claims. Our committed fund balance represents
our incumbrances that we spoke about earlier. Primarily the project for the Bartles toilets. Our assigned fund balance 1.4 million. That's surplus set aside. Additionally, that will be used as a
budget revenue to offset any major tax increase. And our unassigned fund balance of 920,000. That's what we have left after everything else is divvied up. And looking at our trends below in our
bar charts, we can see that incumbences can't can and do fluctuate yeartoear. And a lot of times when we see bumps has to do with capital projects that are awarded towards the end of the year. Our assigned fund balance that
represents that amount of surplus that we are already setting aside as a budget revenue in subsequent budget years. We can see that our unrestricted surplus tick down. We talked about the difference between this year and last year earlier and 2021 and 2022 were a
bit unique. What the state of New Jersey did was say rather than take 2% of operating expenditures, we're going to do 4% of operating expenditures. So we can see that those numbers for 2021 and 2022 are kind of high compared to the
other years. Once things got slightly less crazy with CO, the state said, "Okay, party's over. You're back to 2%." Which is what we see the effect of of 2023 and 2024. Any questions, comments?
Okay, moving on to the reserves and just how much we can have in our reserves. The green line represents where we are and the red line represents how far we can go. As we can see, there's um the
district's long long range facility plan is at 12 million. We're about We're at about uh we're at about four and a half million, but as we said earlier, over two million of that is gone at this point.
Our maintenance reserve, we're limited to how much we can have in there based on building square footage. And we can see that it's been level over the last couple of years. Emergency expense reserve common baseline is a 1% of operating
expenditures. The district has traditionally kept that one kind of low in it and has used it as needed over the years. >> That that says that we we have less in reserve that we could have more in reserves if we have if we had the money.
>> The red line represents the maximum we can go to. >> Any other questions, comments, concerns on surplus or anything earlier that we've talked about tonight? All right, a word or two about the audit. We come in, I come in with a team
of about four or five people and we look at everything from bank statements to financial reports to food service stuff to student enrollment records to transportation to bids awarded and things of that nature. The results of the audit this year had one recommendation and it's a repeat of a
prior recommendation regarding the collection of outstanding point of sale balances in the cafeteria fund. the their balance is still relatively high and the district should continue making all and any efforts to to collect on that.
>> Is that is that a practive plan that every district I mean is every district dealing with the same same issue? >> I have some districts that are getting that recommendation. Not all of them have it but I do but I am seeing that pop up a bit more some districts. >> What are the other what are the districts who don't like how do they
collect that money? It feels it seems like even the corrective action plan almost all those steps we've already been doing or they've been added this year. So what what do other districts do that to solve that problem? >> Actually I think Highland Park is the most proactive district I've seen in
dealing with this and it's sometime sometimes you can try and try and try and we're getting blood from a stone which appears to be the case here. Any other questions, comments, concerns? >> Just a high level where um when we
received title funds, is that representative in >> I'm sorry, could you repeat the question too, please? >> And okay, okay, that's under the red federal sources, >> right? Right. all federal grants that for Highland Park the one the big onetwo
punch here is the title grants as you mentioned title one and the idea special education grants and those will be included in the red section >> thank you >> okay any should any other questions comments concerns uh materialize feel
free to reach out to me my contact information is right up below on the bottom slide email me feel free to reach out but it's been my pleasure to uh talk to the board again and then have a great holiday season. >> Thank you. Happy holidays.
>> You get a special award for remembering all behind perk. It was another transition year and I think we shout out to our group this year. So, I just want to thank you for your patience and your support and uh to my business office members and staff. I couldn't do this
without them and this audience is a reflection of their hard work and dedication to the community and to the students of park. So, thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. >> All right, we will be moving on to our first public comment of the evening. The
Highland Park Board of Education welcomes public participation and has reserved this time for your comments. Board policy number 0167 establishes and regulates the right of the public to participate in public meetings. Um, there is nobody here in person to
comment. As how many people do we have on our webinar? Three. If you are here for a public comment, please raise your hand and Angelo will unmute you. One more second. >> I use my teacher. What are you saying? >> Yeah.
And with no hands raised, we are going to close public comment. We will move on to our committee reports and recommendations with curriculum instruction first. >> Curriculum instruction um met on December 16th. Um
we uh talked about the math curriculum pilot. Um we have figured out that we will be piloting four different curricula. Clear math into math, Eureka and Envision. um one class per grade level will uh
participate in the pilot. Uh and that is considering fourth and fifth grade as one grade since they're departmentalized. Um there will be professional development for the curricula in January and then the pilot will start February 18th. Um it'll be completed by spring
break. Um they're piloting geometry um a geometry or measurement unit in each curriculum. Um and costs uh are for the entire pilot are around $8,000 $9,000.
Um that's to purchase the curricula and materials, gain access to the different resources. Um there's a rubric that will be used to evaluate the curricula. Um and um program assessments will be used as well uh as a common measure across
all the units to evaluate the success of the curricula. And so we're looking at multiple sort of assessments to to see which curriculum is kind of working best terms of I think teachers, in terms of students um uh on on those specific
units. Um so we are excited about that moving forward and we'll uh evaluate those to see um how they're working for for the district. Um we also have benchmark
data. Um these vary uh by grade level depending um specifically in ELA. Some are pre-assessment, some are comprehensive um and others only assess um skills in that quarter. Um
for Irving, kinder had 53 uh% of students at or above grade level. That was 49% last year. So a small increase at first grade. It was 48% this year. 49% last year. So about the same. Um just to give a sense for the first
graders, they finished kindergarteners. So this is assessing different skills but with 66% uh at or above grade level. Um yeah, at Bartle um at second grade, 65 uh% of students were at or above uh
grade level. So um at the end of first grade those students were 61% on the first grade assessment. Um in third grade there uh 62% of students were at or above grade level uh and that was 53%
at the end of second grade. Um in fourth grade there were 56% at or above grade level and that was 65% at the end of third grade. At fifth grade they were at 56% uh at or above grade level and that was 65% at the end of fourth grade. Um last
year the bar numbers for the same uh benchmark were between 53 and 66%. So it's about the same as the uh across grades. Um uh there wasn't really big shifts. Um, so while I mentioned kind of
prior years at the end of the uh year, those assessments aren't necessarily comparable, but students were generally uh around the the same uh spot this year as the group um was last year. Um and then in middle school for ELA, the
students are between 56 and 69% um at or above grade level. Those numbers were 41 to 46% uh for the same period last year. So it was a big increase a lot of success at the middle school around ELA which unfortunately will not be the
story in math. Um as we as I transition to math benchmarks um K5 we are now using Envision uh assessments. Um uh and for math rather than at or above grade level we're talking about how many
students scored 60% or higher on the assessment. Um, at Irving, uh, for kinder that was 49% of students, which was the same as last year. At first grade, it's 76% and that number was 65% last year. So, um, that looks really
good at first grade. Um, for those same students, uh, in first grade, 79% were at, uh, 60 the 60% level at the end of kindergarten. Um, so first grade is actually looking uh, really
good. um in kinder looks about the same as as the group before. Um at Bartle at second grade um 40% uh of those students uh uh were at that 60% kind of threshold.
Uh at the end of first grade, 89% of those students were were at that threshold. Different skills being tested, so it's not comparable, right? And that's the fall assessment. So we'd expect kind of growth along the year. In third grade, 23% um were at that
threshold and they were at 73% at the end of second grade. Um in fourth grade, 29% um and 43% of them were were uh at that 60% threshold in at the end of third grade. Um a lot of numbers. Um at fifth
grade they're at 41% and they were at 51% at the end of fourth grade. Last year at Bartle, the grade levels ranged from 25 to 40% uh at that 60% threshold. Um so actually the numbers are very very
similar. They're 23 to 40 um to 41% instead of 25 to 41. So even though those sound a little bit low in the fall, they're very similar to last year. Um and so as we kind of see the growth across the year um it's not necessarily
uh a ton of concern even though we would like to see those I think those numbers grow. That's also one of the reasons we're we're looking at the math curricula right to to address and hopefully raise that that floor a little bit. Um the big concern is that in middle school um in middle school the
students are between 7 and 20% um uh se between 7 and 20% of students are at that 60 um% threshold. Um those numbers were 28 to 61% last year. Um and there was uh a particular drop at 7th grade
from about 60% down to 7%. Um and so those are really really concerning. Um uh and and um yeah, and I don't think we totally understand why. Um but it might be something to look at in terms of uh
curricula at middle school level two. Um which is something we could consider moving forward. Um we did have an issue in middle school two years ago. Um that was particularly I think at seventh grade and we had a lot of teacher turnover. um that doesn't seem to be the case here and so I think that's
something we just have to look at and try to figure out. Um yeah, so that's the big news. Um the uh we also have a proposal for a schedule B for K-pop. Um this is being recommended
by this schedule B committee. Um which means it would be in the budget and funded in the fall of 2026, not currently. Um we also looked at the policy for um headlights. Um we didn't
have any concerns with that. And lastly um we had field trips. So the robotics club is doing STEM projects with Irving students. Science bowl club competition is in Princeton. Middle school is going to the Liberty Science Center. And model
UN is going to New Brunswick and Philly. uh for a few highlights. Um yeah, and then uh in terms of voting, we have approval of field trips. I might have a readin for for this. Uh the field
trip to downtown Matuchen. Uh the updated cost is $17110 and there are 11 chaperones rather than 10. Um we also have approval of uh three HIV reports. Two of them have been
confirmed, one unconfirmed. Uh approval of the fall school emergency evacuation drill report. Approval of home instruction for one student. Approval of schedule B um athletic
schedules for the winter season. uh approval of sidebar agreement between the Pylon uh between the board of ed and the Highland Park Education Association, approval of schedule B proposal, that's the K-pop uh proposal I just mentioned,
and then approval of um one um student placement uh university student placement at Bartle. Any questions? When you pilot the math pilot, you I probably should know this. When you
pilot the math programs, the goal is to choose one to move forward. Yes. Following year. Okay. >> Yeah. So, I think yeah, the goal is to go through these choose one and fully implement it in the fall. >> Yeah. >> Question regarding the middle school
math. Um I'm curious if there was discussion around whether those benchmark numbers are reflected in like the actual term grades, >> right? So are are most students, you know, at seven to seven to 20%
passing or um are are those grades higher and then you know what why does that discrepancy exist? So it's just a question maybe that we could look into. Yeah, we we don't ever >> that's a great like doing the individual
kind of relationship there because ultimately you're going to want to see that it's predictive of something and if it's not then that kind of tells you something else. I don't think it's a good idea to look at the individual level data but we did talk about how complicated the data sources are to put them all together. So there's some
discussion on how we can kind of piece together the benchmarks and you know different other indicators to be able to get more of a holistic picture. My sense from our conversation was just it's it's really hard to kind of do those kind of analyses at this stage.
>> Yeah. I mean this is more from memory but I I do remember from two years ago uh like when we got when we had a lot of the teacher turnover like in seventh grade math you could see that on
standardized test and that seemed to be a bit of a shift I think a year ago which might mean this is a concern but I I don't think we uh we didn't really talk about like is this reflected in their kind of grades
and and the grading and so forth. >> Yeah, I mean I my uh my guess I haven't looked at them but my guess is that you know it's hard because the there are grades associated with marking period or of a lot of things. Um and um we don't
use once you hit middle school you don't use a standardbased grading approach. So it's really hard to unpack a student's score to say if they are operating at a C or a D let's say for marking period one what is that indic like indicative
of is that you know um what is it measuring you know what does an A mean what does B mean what does C mean what does the D mean um is that just because of there's like a lack of effort is there just a lack of understanding um if somebody doesn't turn something in right there's a consequence for that that
comes with the grade versus doing something and not being successful. So I just caution sometimes our marking period grades are not indicative sometimes of a whole picture approach to what is the um ability to do the math
skills and and a deep understanding um you know and sometimes it goes the opposite too where there's a for I hate to say but sometimes an inflated score right where it's like well you know they put they're putting forth effort and they're trying and I'm giving them extra credit and you know things like that and so you know it's what does this score
really mean and It's very hard once you hit uh the secondary world because it's not standards based. So, it's not broken up. If you look at an elementary report card, it's broken up. You could see how your child's doing and adding, you know, single addition numbers, adding double-digit numbers, multiplying numbers, right? It's very skill-based
once you hit the middle school. Unfortunately, it's not anymore. Um that's a whole another story I can go on for that. We all know >> how I feel. We all know how I feel about that. One, one day, one day, one day in a perfect world, we would get there. But that's a huge shift, but that's a big
problem when you're trying to compare it. It really hard to compare a um an assessment score, preassessment or assessment score, you know, Q1 versus what their marking period scores are. >> Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing like just thinking about I was also thinking about the cell phone policy,
right, and how that's impacting particularly middle school like where it's the kind of the biggest shift, right? And so >> I'm sorry, Dan. What what >> the cell phone policy? >> Oh, the cell phone. Um, so if you look at ELA, you'd interpret that cell phone policy really positively, right? Like
every grade's going up 15 to 20% like in the in the same exact ELA assessment from a year ago, right? Which is phenomenal growth, right? And then you look at math and you're like, hm, right? So I, you know, I don't know any
conclusions can be kind of made on that. I do we did talk about ELA and and this is kind of the second year they they've kind of uh been in implementing some things and they feel like there there's kind of more understanding more consistency and um but I do think
you could I think interpret as like some of the the kind of investment in professional development kind of working through and common assessments and that kind of stuff maybe seem to be really paying off which is typically around second third year professional element. So through one lens if we kind of can
maintain this and then that could definitely be an interpretation. We haven't invested like in middle school math I don't think in the same way um or even Bartle and so I think you know I think the hope would be that it's just a
weird outlier weird assessment um uh but it also probably speaks to you know investing more in in kind of improving instruction at that level. Great. >> Well, I think Alison, I think your question is really important because I
mean, as a parent, you often, you know, I mean, the you look at this your kids's grades, that helps you, you know, okay, they need to spend a little bit more time after school on the homework, you know, do we need to figure out tutoring or, you know, should they just, you know, be paying better attention to class? if you depend on the grades for
that signal. So no one likes to no one likes a kid to get bad grades. But but if the grades are not if if we look at the you know the average uh how the kids are doing in the classes and it hasn't changed that much from year to year but the test is one way down. We probably have to take
another look at how we uh you know um our standards for the grading because we need to get that early warning before they show up in the assessments and sort of you know tank it. Which is why I like the that the benchmarks are being sent home now for both ELA and math at least
at Burle and at the middle school too. At the middle school too. So at least you know you have that also um to look at when you're looking at how your kids performing in school. >> Great. >> I think it was encouraging and and I
think really helpful to hear in our conversation committee that there had been a lot of investment in English language arts over the past few years. seems to be paying off and hopefully I think if we you know kind of now turn our attention to math we can accomplish the same thing.
>> Yeah. And we talked about um just with co how nationwide a lot of the investment was on ELA because that's the kind of lag that you see first and now also nationwide we're seeing kind of more of a emphasis on math and it's not just unique to us really.
>> Okay. Any other questions? >> I was actually wondering if you could clarify on what you said about like K-pop. I didn't really catch it. >> Say about what >> she's asking about K-pop, the new extraur. >> What that means is that it uh it would
be a funded role for uh for someone to take on to oversee that club, the K-pop club. >> Thank you. Do you want do >> I just have a a like I'm just curious because it seems that like COVID time
seems to have really affected our math scores and it's not just us, it's a lot of people, a lot of schools in the nation. Um, but one of the things I did notice is the trend after COVID of going from some textbooks to doing everything
online and maybe that form may not be the right thing for math. like it could work for ELA, but maybe math needs to be a little bit more tangible or have an easier reference to find. I'm just curious. >> I don't know if that's actually true of
of our middle. >> Yeah, not of ours. No. So, they all of our we've invested heavily over the years on the manipulatives. So, we still really hyperfocus on that where our students go from the concrete to the iconic to the symbolic. So they should have the manipulatives first and then the sort of drawing part to create a
mental representation of that and then to the um more abstract thinking of it. Um so I mean we have that is like fully out there. I mean every student gets a set of fraction tiles, every students get base 10 blocks like we have enough for every student to have that and
there's a lot of focus um on the um the manipulatives part of the of the learning before they go into the abstract. So I don't actually see in math um at least at the the K5 level even at the middle school we're in middle school math classrooms um we see it as a station like they'll be on Delta
math or um but that's you know but when they're in um whole group or when they're working through small group they're with pen and paper manipulatives um line graphs charts they're up and moving for four quadrants in a room and things like that. So the tech is really
one small portion when they're in a centers or a station rotation model >> and and we did talk about that especially in K5 as you know important part is to think about when you're you know when they're being piloted and and looking at the intentional balance of of
technology with with the math and you know I mean it's it's if you use technology it shouldn't be the goal right the goal should be the pedagogical approach and the extension of that and so I think that everyone's the folks and can be integrated into the rubric as they analyze what to use.
>> Is it something that we're looking at from like fifth through I mean not sorry fifth sixth through high school though? >> No. So right now we're focusing on the K5 space. um just because that is a an area where we probably have our our weakest
>> um our we our weakest need right now just because it's you know kindergarten isn't a required grade level. So you know they hit first and so we're really trying that's you know because once they get tested they're in third grade but by then it's like okay well if we have these gaps then all of a sudden now we're kind of stuck in this third grade
area of that testing. So our focus is really trying to help the K5 space. Um then hopefully over time that will help. Um if we can increase our achievement there and sort of a number sense understanding and things like that then hopefully by the time they get to middle school maybe that gap will be less and less. But to what Dr. Dr. Batty was
saying it, you know, it would behoove us to consider when we decide on a program for the middle school, uh, I'm sorry, for the elementary space is, you know, maybe looking at the middle school, um, curricula and kind of getting an idea of like, are there more resources that we need in that space too? Is there
something more that we could be doing um, versus what we're currently doing there to help help? So our theory right now is that we we need more of a foundation and focus on a foundation so in the future >> correct they have an easier time. >> Yes sense. Yeah, to to your point again,
I think you you're generally right, there has been a big shift like especially in elementary math to rely on the online resources by a lot of teachers to the point and we actually did talk about this where some teachers are using the videos attached to
curriculum for primary instruction which is a big problem um because that video doesn't know your kids. it just presents a threeinut kind of instructional, you know, thing. And so you're releasing the instructional responsibility to a curriculum rather
than a professional teacher making those choices. And so I have seen that in a number of districts and it's really concerning. Um I don't think we uh so it's one of my worries as we take on curriculum that you actually get teachers like too reliant on aspects of it that actually reduce the quality of
instruction. So, it is a concern and I think it's something we kind of want to consider and kind of monitor as as we um you know purchase curricula and that kind of a thing that it's much more of a resource than something that you stick to and release your kind of professional
judgment around as a teacher. At the same time, you you know, you're hoping that the curriculum kind of raises the floor so teachers aren't making choices to kind of uh you know, reduce the kind of cognitive demand of a of a curriculum
and so forth. So, it is it is a concern even as we kind of move into that space, I would say. >> Thank you. And I just want to add to that too. One of the hopes for in that K5 space for that resource too. Uh an area that we know our teachers sometimes struggle with is our students that need
to be enriched beyond um what the grade level standard is and that becomes a a big challenge in that space. Um we have some exceptional students uh and sometimes it's beyond the capacity of what our teachers maybe can handle. So oftent times it becomes you know just pick a do a little bit more or make a
project make a poster and you know that's not really um conducive to what it means to go deeper in that standard or enrich. So um we're hoping what that this can provide is that differentiated piece to meet the needs of all learners because that's definitely an area that we're we're finding weakness. So we're hoping that it closes that gap as well.
That's really great to hear. I just wanted to add another part that I've noticed um in later grammar school and then also into middle school is that the kids maybe some of the kids really know what they're doing and how to follow along but the parents don't. So, I don't, you know, if if they need help with something, a lot of parents don't
know, myself included, where to go. You know, if when you had a textbook, and I'm not a big fan of textbooks in general, but this is one case that I it was easier to see, okay, we're on chapter 5, and the homework tonight is on chapter 5, so I can refer to that to see what they should know and and maybe
once it gets into some of the higher level stuff, I might not remember it. So, you know, it's helpful to have a book or some resource to go back to. So, I know it's there because the kids know where to find it, but the parents might not know where to go or how to help them. So, maybe more communication with
parents. Here's where you can what you can do to help with this marking period or whatever. So, >> I love that thinking about how to engage the parents, especially at a middle school level. I think that's really great. Uh something to look at. >> It is an easy and don't tell me to go to Khan Academy.
>> Google some equations. All right. Um, we'll move to equity and excellence, Nikki. >> So, oh, sorry. And equity and excellence. Uh, we also went through the, um, the headlice pediculosis.
Uh, um, so we did discuss that and I don't think that we really changed anything. Um, we kind of just stayed with the Strauss as me policy. Um the other thing that we went to talked about was a oh
the new club for the K-pop. Um went through the process ID now we uh went through the process of identifying a volunteer to run it. Um and we reviewed a stipen proposal for about 50 hours and if it's approved there will be a step
and pay position in the new budget year. Um see Okay. Um so we did talk about the with the special education program evaluation the
updates from K comingo Kang K comingingo and the process included review and analysis of hundreds of documents provided by the administration survey um from staff and parents last spring and um on December 3rd Christina and Amy
Copala uh met with coming team to review the first stress report. Um, areas of of growth and need were cited. The next step will be to dig deeper into the data that came out from the document review. Um, starting in January, Kamingo will
meet with the child study team members and we'll conduct focus groups and interviews. Um, and PD will be scheduled later in the spring to address address issues identified. Um, one issue already being addressed is the need for more
consistency in using templates for present levels in an IEP. A lot of concerns were around inconsistency and teachers and essential what is that child study team sorry acronyms um does a good job of using
present levels but the template will help improve consistency and new templates are already being implemented and the Kamingo team offered to support CPAG during their leadership transition. Um, status report 2 will be available
after the focus group meetings and interviews are conducted and analyzed. Um, Amy and Christina will meet with SPAN and BR the bridge program and we'll review SPAN startup package. Um, and Bridge will attend the CPAC's first
event on January 14th at 6 p.m. in the middle school cafeteria and babysitting and translation will be provided. Bridge is a resource that is helping the district through the transition. A survey will go out before the meeting to gather feedback on topics of interest
and preferred meeting types. And we also went over AP honors demographics. Um the committee reviewed AP honors demographic percentages. Um Genesis tag data was used to identify students enrolled in AP honors classes.
All students who are in at least one AP honors class are flagged as tag in Genesis. Uh total students flagged were 287. The data table shows the demographic breakdown of students enrolled in AP honors. The committee requested
percentages based on total population of each demographic demographic group. And then ELA math opportunities. Um, Christine provided an overview of the supports currently in place to strengthen student achievement as guided
by benchmark assessment data and NJSLA results. Um, IXL digital math resource to support student learning and growth in mathematics. Read 180 as a resource to support both foundational reading skills and comprehension development for students with identified gaps in ELA and
ELA interventionist oops at Irving and Bartle receiving uh specialized training on diagnostic assessments to more precisely identify students skill gaps with a particular focus on reading comprehension. And uh
what else is there? Okay, so we have a part-time math interventionist to provide instructional support through pushin services for kindergarten and grade 1 classrooms. Pull out small groupoup interventions for grade 1 students. Um staffing and support for
multilingual learners. Established an of a consistent ESL teacher at the middle school. purchase of additional instructional resources tailored to ML needs for the for the middle school. Um there's hired a new ESL teacher at
Border who began mid- November and co-eing professional development addition in additional math assistance and then targeted programs. The title one program that required multiple data points for student participation. uh brothers mentoring Bartle has 15
students invited uh seven currently participating the middle school uh there's 36 students invited uh 11 currently participating academic enrichment at the middle school is designed to support students performing below grade level and or not meeting
NJSLA proficiency benchmarks 84 students were invited 15 students are attending uh wise connection at the middle school attendance is an attendance support program aimed at improving engagement and attendance and tardiness. Uh 73 students were invited. 12 students
are attending. Um families were contacted via email and postal mail with follow-up phone calls made for those who did not respond. Um the committee discussed the low participation rates in the middle school academic enrichment and wise connection.
And then our next steps, am I reading that too? The next steps. They're not my notes. >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. So, our next steps are data review and intervention refinement. We
meet with the interventionists to review progress mentoring data, identify students who are not making expected growth, determine possible root causes, and adjust instructional approaches as needed. uh use grade level team meetings to analyze progress data and
collaboratively develop next instructional steps for students requiring additional support and datam data systems enhancement pilot link in a data warehousing platform that supports a whole child approach to tracking and analyzing student performance across
academics attendance and behavioral indicators. The system will improve access to actionable data to inform instructional deci decision making. And when it comes to discipline, um for November, Bartle had seven total dis
incidents, zero in school suspensions, one oh wait, hold on. That says, is that out of school in >> OSS? >> What? They both say ISS.
>> Oh, I don't know. Okay. So, it's probably it's probably one OSS, but I don't want to. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Uh the middle school discipline data not provided yet. Um let's see there in the high school 40
incidents, one in school suspension and one out of school suspension. Um we have relatively low student removal removals. shorter month may have contributed to a lower number of incidents at Bartle or second payers's adjustment period is easing.
And that is all. Well, can I just add a piece that the um CPAG meeting has to be rescheduled to the end of January. There's a tenative date on the calendar, but I don't want to make it public yet. Uh we're still working with Bridge to confirm that and a couple of the parents that have reached out to Miss Copala saying they
were interested in CPAG leadership. We're coordinating to make sure everyone's schedules align. So, we have a couple representatives from Bridge that will be working with us and we um feel it's important to have everybody all together for our first meeting. So, um what we had a tentative date on the calendar, but we moved it uh to the end
of January, but um it's on there and I think we're all confirmed. So, once we are, we will we will shout that out. We're very excited. We're not going past January without that first meeting. >> Any questions for ex uh equity and excellence? Uh yeah, just on my mind you uh
something in there about um the intervention and it it made me think um the conversation that we had kind of uh a little here and there and I'm just curious how many uh for followup how many students actually are in intervention both for math and ELA and
when we think about like I just I'm curious how many of of those students exist because those are the ones that you worry about where you have to pull them from core and so it it just could be something we might want to dig deeper into um like K 12 >> or middle school,
>> middle school. Do you have like a particular grade span? >> Say K8 would be um and really K5 is where you worry about pulling out from core instruction when they're in both ELA and and math. It's just a thought that I had. Um
>> yeah, I mean I could probably give you like estimate I could probably get you estimated numbers, but remember there's like an exit in and exit out criteria and we do exit students. So like the number we would give it could be like an estimate but like that definitive number might be hard because we do like to exit
students and we are exiting students successfully. So um that's also know like if I give you a number it's not that's set in stone it could fluctuate. So but it's good to know a general number. >> Yeah. Yeah. And then I would also say um what uh was brought up about that link pilot that's something that we talked
about as well which when we're thinking about getting underneath the data um having understanding segmentation and all of kind of the holistic individual being able to look at progress >> that's really going to help us in in curriculum instruction as well when we're trying to evaluate where there
might be some breakdowns and kind of root cause some of the challenges. >> Yeah. I I think one of the issues too with intervention is at the middle school where we've had I think a really difficult time getting students and parents to opt into it which actually
hasn't been as much of an issue I think K5 right >> um but I think that I think that's reflective of some of those lower participation kind of numbers and so it's probably not as much of an issue I'm guessing at middle school because there aren't that many students
>> like opting in and if they do opt in I believe it's like losing world language or something like that, right? >> And then and then they're and then a lot of but we could give you a list of students that qualify, right, for both um you know because in middle school that's what we're finding is students qualify for both the ELA and the math
and um and then sort of a choice has to be made um if they want to opt in and then loss of the world language becomes um becomes a problem. I think the fact that so few are taking advantage of it like we can list all the things that this district is offering
but I don't know the 15 I forget what you said 84 were invited. Yeah, >> 15 people. And yeah, I mean it's >> and I did follow up with that and um Miss Brady did indicate that they made um phone calls in several languages home
um you know snail mail and email went out um and so they really were you know >> just calling calling calling until someone picked up the phone to just even let them know that this was an option and you know this the federal dollars are going for that specifically especially at the middle school because
that's we get more federal dollars there than any other buildings to be able to close these gaps. Perhaps >> this is after school instruction school instruction. >> Yeah, >> that's really concerning. Even the big the big brothers mentoring is, you know, such a program. >> Yeah. >> Well, because I was curious if like once
you hit middle school, are they, you know, wanting to play sports or do a little, you know, there's more activities after school once you hit middle school than at Bartle? Um, but that isn't necessarily what I found was the case. It's it's not about that. It's just that, you know, people parents are just not responding to opt to the
program or declining altogether. >> Sure. this is like an is, you know, they're more social, they're more autonomous. Surely this is an issue. Look, is there I'd be curious to see if there's like best practices and how you can get incentivized folks to opt in.
>> I don't know if someone's done it really well. >> I don't know. That's all I got. >> All right. Finance and facilities. Okay. Finance and facilities met on December the 9th. Um, and it was Jen and myself from the board
and Dr. Susa, Mr. Rosa, and John Flanigan from facilities. We reviewed the agenda items which um was about the audit that we heard tonight. So on the agenda, you'll see we're uh voting to approve to accept this audit and then
accept the correct action plan that we spoke about tonight. Um, other agenda item is the uh there's an additional bill list um through January 9th. So, we can pay our bills because we're not meeting until later in the month, particularly utility and
construction bills. Um, under facilities, you'll see on the agenda a lot of lot of projects moving forward. Um, replacement of fire alarms, the high school, middle school, or is that never
ending baral structural repair? Um and then the bleachers a lot of that was coming through the tax levby incentive and that work is now uh either beginning or has begun and is you know these we they're all working on a lot of work going on. Um
the uh headlights we were fine with the two it's finally here for first read. Uh we reviewed a um a report from Champions of the before and after care um
and had a conversation there about about uh feedback to Champions. I believe they had done a survey and we're going to uh hear the results of that in a future meeting. U facilities work has been completed on the baseball
field. Um fencing is up, side is up, uh open items. Um they're working on signage and the entrance way and that's working with the HP boosters on that. The Bal bathroom is moving along
smoothly. We passed our initial inspections. The walls are up. Um bids are in for the We had that on our agenda. Bids for the Irving preschool classroom that's going to be uh it's going to be added. And um we had a conversation again about what we we called it the greenhouse project. It's
no longer a greenhouse project, but it's money um that we have that we're looking towards um potential maker space and environmental sustainability area at the high school. Still in the discussion phases, but we um a vendor was coming in to give us quotes for furniture and so
forth so we can get a sense of what that's going to cost and then we can do both projects in the middle of the greenhouse. Um and just for future we had asked to um that a future finance facilities meeting to keep an eye on uh field trips and how
groups are managing the fundraising expectations if that's impacting um whether the trips can go on or not and how just in general I want how things are going there as the year progresses. Um on the agenda we have our our monthly bill list. We
have that additional one for January 9th. All the reports, budget transfers. Um number seven is the accepting this audit report that we reviewed today. And number eight is that corrective action
plan uh related to the outstanding um uh money owed for lunches that each time we keep getting uh dinged on. However, as as our auditor pointed out, we're doing everything and more as more to try to bring that money in to get that number
to go down. Um, number nine is travel and related expenses. And we had two I have two uh readins for number nine adding two people for travel Esther Torski on January 8th for professional learning committee community cohort and
um an additional readin uh Holly Morales January 21st um for basic K12 behavioral threat assessment and management training. So that's added to that portion. Then we have our contractors for professional development which is number
10. Um lots of things happening there. We have an additional um contractor for related services invo healthcare um for when we would need additional learning disability uh teacher consultant time.
We have a number of grants uh funds that we're voting on tonight. Um, one is $500 from the Mark Shonwelder Holocaust Education Foundation. That's for the high school. Um, we have a STEM grant from Bentley
Systems for the high school robotics program. Um, and that's for $1,000. Uh, we have an adjustment on one salary on to number 14. It's related to um, uh, a position being being part of the an IDA federal grant. I just think it's
allocating where the portion of her salary is going. We have two passroughs um for non-public school. One is a math license and one is an armed guard um for
Shion um girls school. Again, those are not our funds. We just are required to vote to pass them so that they can get their funding. Uh we have one, two, three, five students on bedside instruction listed here. One out of
district placement. Number 19 is being tabled. So we'll take that off the list. That's the the settlement agreement is being tabled for now. Um and then then you see some of the um facilities work. the high school bleachers, motoriization of the high
school bleachers, some repairs and some motoriz moturization and who's being uh awarded those contracts. Um and also repairs and replacement of bleacher seats at the middle school. Um and that's who's getting that uh who's going to be doing that work. Um door hardware
at the high school, the fire alarm panel replacement at the high school, middle school, there's lots of work going on. um additional architectural services needed for the Bartle structural repair and uh roofing repairs at uh the high
school fair link in the high school main office. So more more high school roofing work to be done. HVAC at the middle school and high school some work there is outlined here and who's doing it. 28 or um I think last month we talked
about change orders that are needed and increasing the contra you know the amount that we need to spend in order to do some of the work that was hidden as we as demolition as that's been unfolding as demolition took place. So these are some of the change orders um
listed here and awarding number 29 is awarding the bid for the cafeteria al alteration for the preschool classroom at Irving. So those bids came in. We actually got nine bids and um we're looking to award that
bid for $389,500 to um drill construction in West Orange. And there's a number 30 readin um which is approval of purchase of Chromebooks. And it's kind of like a
little bit lengthy. It's got a lot of numbers, but I'll read it in. I move the board of education accept the recommendation of the superintendent to approve the purchase of 66 HP Pro X360 for 11 G3TS Chromebooks. Um I'm
going to skip a few of the numbers from Vivacity Tech PBC in um out of uh Minnesota in the amount of $26,994. Pricing is covered under a a state contract
NASP np 72087. You guys don't have in front of you. So I feel like I have to read it. So that's number 13. >> Oh, you do? Oh, okay. Anyway, it's it's a it's a it's it's purchase of Chromebook additional uh 66 Chromebooks
and that's the agenda. I mean, that's the finance on the syllabus agenda. Any questions? >> Yes, the question is the Chromebooks, are they purchased as replacements or new enrollment or anything? So, new enrollment in order to pilot the math
programs that we are trying to do at the um K at the um lower elementary at Irving. Um so, many years ago when we were in CO, we had purchased tablets for them, but they've aged out and we never replaced them because we're we don't really do much tech type of work in
those classes. Um but in order to do the pilot um at at those levels uh for the different curricula it is required that there are some devices available to the students. That's why it's not a lot. You don't it's not one per kid. It's not a onetoone situation but there are in part of their rotation some uh like a station
rotation model. They do have to have access um to some some devices. So they're actually touchscreen because that's developmentally appropriate for students at Irving. So it's not a onetoone. the kids are not getting devices, but they're in the classrooms uh for when it's needed for to be able
to pilot um all the programs that require some portion of it. >> So, they're not being taken So, they're not being taken home or something? >> No, the only ones that go home still are 4 through 12. >> And they're not one to one for Irving.
That's why there's only 66. It's for there's a couple for each school class, which we've had for since I've been here. We've always had a cart uh available to them. Um but we never replaced them because during COVID we didn't because CO was a onetoone. We had
to give out the tablets and then when we came back from CO we still had some of the tablets that were able to serve as um inclass devices for like touch math or you know uh splashmath or things like that when they would do a station. Um but they've uh since have seen better
days. Um Angela's laughing because he knows they're pretty much all gone at this point. they're they're um so we need to replace them with something. So that's why we have classes like class sets a little bit in each classroom to be able to pilot different components of the math resource that we're looking to
purchase. So um depending on whatever one you select would would we need to additional would we need to purchase additional um for for when you actually roll out and do a full implementation or >> I mean I don't I I think this would be enough because there none of them are where it's a requirement that it's like
the students each student needs a device to be on the device. It's um therefore like a station rotation model. So there's a little bit of an online component uh to some of them and that is part of the rubric for evaluation too. It's like how much tech is required? Is it too much tech time? So all of that is
part of the requirement when we evaluate um these type of curriculum or resources. >> If if we if the teachers and decide or the administration decides to go with a different curriculum and doesn't use the tech, are we stuck with them? >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes.
>> What would what what would happen then? >> Um we could definitely use them for loaner devices because especially at the middle school, they seem to uh either leave them at home or destroy them quickly. I mean, you know, so what happens if they're get ruined? They we send them out to be serviced um through our company, but in the meantime, this
if the students if our students need them, they can go down and pick up a loner. So, I'm guessing between that and our staff, there's no no um you know, they're not going to collect us. >> So, well, you think too like and we'll we'll select one out of the four. And
anyway, when we think about like what should you have in a 60-minute block, there should always be room for enhancement or something available for those who need to do personalized instruction as long as it's like done in a meaningful way. And so that is something you would want access to, I
think, dependent regardless of of what actual properties. >> Any other questions for finance and facilities? Okay, I will review the personnel agenda. Um so number one is the approval of leaves of absences. We have um Aliva
Baxson's uh maternity leaves and medical leaves as listed. Um there's the approval of one resignation. Miss Beonia is res resigning from the newspaper at the middle school. Um we have some appointments. Uh Mr. Preie is going to be taking over for the
orchestra director. Um that's because Nick Perez did accept a new position elsewhere. So he's going to be filling in or has been filling in until the 4th. Um Erica Hernandez is new par profofessional at Bartle. Um Miss Gore is taking over the climate and culture
specialist um at the high school and then Miss Aly and Miss Carter are also taking are taking on that middle school new newspaper schedule B. Um we have Cornelius for track and field. And then G onward G through M is all different um
sports roles. So ticket taker, security, scorekeeper, all of those things. Um N through T are class coverages. Um and this is to allow for that $2 extra
compensation for when um these are power professionals need to go into a more restrictive setting with some of the students that have more um severe needs. We have a boys basketball leave replacement, Derek Gamble. Um we have a
chaperon for the swim tournament, Miss Landis. Um, we have Spanish translators, uh, and some event monitors here. Um, an HVAC maintenance helper, and that's to increase the hours that this person is helping us out. We have
um, schedule B orchestra coverage for the middle school. That's Miss Jabaro. Uh, Miss Fernstat's going to be doing lesson planning. Um, Miss Dman and Miss Young's also lesson planning for and grading for coverage leave.
per for a leaf. Okay, for multiple types of leaves. There we go. Um the number four is the approval of professional de development presenters and presentation hours. Um so you can see those as listed
and then that's it. >> Okay. Any any questions? >> I'm excited about digital zen part two. We didn't really hear about how part one went, but that really sounds interesting. >> Yeah, Miss Krubsy is really busy. >> Yeah, it's PG. Um, so thank you. Thank
you for all of the people who are trying to run PD in the PD academy. And then for policies and regulations, um, we do have our management of pediculosis, the lice policy. We are very excited to pass that forward for first reading. Um we do have two policies for second reading
which are the organizational organizational chart and the control of communicable disease. And that concludes our reports. So we will move to our second public comment. The Highland Park Board of Education welcomes public participation
and has reserved this time for your comments. Um we have nobody in person. Angela, how many do we have online? Three. If anybody is online for public comment, please raise your hand and Angelo will assist and unmute you.
All right, Abby, go ahead. >> Hi, um Abby Stern Cardell. Um, so first I just wanted to say just like you said, I'm uh unreasonably excited about the lice policy. So, thank you for uh working on that so diligently and I
really hope that that helps. And um maybe one day I can send my kids to school not in braids um without being terrified. Um so additionally I wanted to make a couple of questions and comments about um some of the math
pilot. Um actually before I say that I'm wondering there were a lot of numbers that um Dr. Batty went over about benchmark and I'm wondering if those could be shared um I'm happy to email or if that can be shared publicly because there were a lot of it just went really fast and it would be helpful and
interesting to see um for the community. Um with regard to the math pilot um I'll try to not not be too confusing because I'm just I was trying to process everything that you were saying and look at the um agenda as well. Um, one concern that
comes to mind is doing all four I'm I'm concerned that doing all four pilots at once is spreading us very thin in terms of resources and professional development. Um, so I just wanted to to mention that. Um, I I also am concerned
that I mean I would like to see a curriculum implemented as soon as possible. So I absolutely see, you know, doing as many as we can uh and finding the right one. But there are some concerns about um like I said the professional development um and
collaboration with other grade level teachers when in when trying a pilot and since there will be one class per grade. I know there'll be other grades but I'm wondering if that would impact kind of not only the potential success but just the ability to implement a pilot where
it's really just one teacher per grade on their own. um and also only one um one unit. So, it seems like it's not much data that's getting collected for a pilot. Um and then doing all four at
once. I just want to make sure that we're getting the right curriculum if we're spending money and time. And uh last year I know there was the pilot in first grade for Envisions and I'm not sure what happened with that data but I would just hate to see you know another
pilot and then deciding we don't have the right information or enough information or we had too many um kind of questions that came up and we wouldn't be able to actually move forward at the end of this. Um, so I guess I would just ask that you
think about how to um make sure that there is support in for for those teachers or at least discuss discuss some of those things. Um, and on that note, I'm wondering if the previous pilot data from last year can be shared now that that is over. um you know what
was evaluated there, what came of it um and how that's going to be incorporated along with the new data and will it be used at all um along with this that we're getting this year. Um and then a couple other really quick questions and I know I'm not going to get the answers right now, but I don't know if maybe
you'll mention them later. If not, I'm happy to send a followup um kind of summarizing uh the Eureka math. I didn't see it on the professional development list. Um it's possible maybe you'll do that at the next meeting. So I might have been
missing it. Um but I would assume if that's one of them that there would be some professional development for those teachers as well. So I just was wondering about that. Um and if that's one of the ones being implemented, how that's being handled. And then I think
my last question is I noticed under um travel and related expense reimbursement that for Irving there's something about evaluating pilot math programs but I didn't see something for Bartle. So I was just hoping that there was something equivalent where someone is being
designated or there's you know a way that Bartle is also having a robust evaluation along with Irving. So I think that was it. Um, I'm really interested in seeing how this goes and I'm excited that this is getting so much attention
and that we're going to get a really good math curriculum for uh these grades. I think that's excellent. So, thank you for all the work you're doing. >> Thank you, Abby. Sorry for saying so much.
>> No problem. Um, thanks so much. Um, okay. Anybody else online for public comment? Can raise your hand. And with no hands raised, we will close public comment. Um we will now move to our action items. Um we'll start with
curriculum and instruction. >> Uh for curriculum instruction, I move items 1 through eight. >> Second. >> Dr. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Dr. >> Yes. Yes.
>> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. Except for number one. Uh, no. On medieval times, seventh grade trip, >> uh, finance and facilities. >> I move items what are now items 1 through 30. And that includes the two
additional people that I talked about under travel. Um tableabling number 19 which is the settlement we're not voting on and uh the Chromebooks number 30. Second >> yes. >> Yes. >> Yes.
>> M >> yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. Yes. For personnel, I'd like to move items one >> through four. >> Seconded.
>> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. And I want to say I'm really appreciative that we have orchestra teachers stepping up to teach the kids uh stringed instruments. They did a great job at the concert on uh this
weekend. >> Yes. Yes. >> And for policy and regulation, I'll move numbers one and two. >> Second. >> Yes. >> Yes.
>> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> We'll move on to our board leaison reports. Does anybody have a liazison report? I have a comment from the board of health. I was unable to attend this month, but I asked them if they had
anything for us to share. And so they did have a statement. I got some new contacts that don't really allow me to read, so I'm zoomed in, but it's still really blurry. So, um, they they just had a question about the health insurance premium increases.
Um, God, it really is hard to read. Um, >> no, that that's okay. I will I'll make it through. Um they just wanted to ask if we could potentially promote or distribute
um maybe >> it's not it's just >> we wanted to ask >> to ask the BOE if they could promote or distribute etc any material that either
offer resources to people who have lost insurance or for the state children's insurance. So far we don't have anything to promote but wanted to put this on the BOE radar. Have a happy and healthy holiday season >> so much. >> Thank you
to see just >> any other leazison reports. Okay, for my president's report again I want to acknowledge Jen's last meeting. Um thank you Jen for your service. Um, we also want to extend, uh, you know,
holiday greetings and best wishes for a very relaxing break to all of our staff who are so welld deserved. Um, and to of course all of our district families as well. Um, we look forward to seeing you in the new year. Our reorganization
meeting will be January 5th um at 7 p.m. At that meeting um I will begin the meeting at which point we then go um through the process of electing a president, vice president and then placements on committees and liaison positions. Um
what do I where was I going with that? Oh, Jen obviously won't be here, but we will be um swearing in our new board member, Francisco Maldonado, and we are really excited to welcome him aboard. Um, and that's it from my report. Any
old business? >> Uh, just something about the um the benchmarks. Um, I believe Yeah. Well, pilot too, but I believe uh Mr.
Rodriguez was talking about uh presenting in January on them, right? In terms of or minority. >> Yeah, she made a comment about it, but I'll follow up. I was going to say we could also if you wanted to highlight some of the stuff as part of the board bulletin, >> right? So, we could also share >> that I put in my notes. Maybe we want to
put some of that out. The board bulletin. >> Yeah. I think the other thing too about um Irving pilot was that uh I've never seen a pilot where you only compare one curriculum to nothing. And so I think that was the concern
there even though I think teachers generally had a a positive experience of that. And so I think the concern is we really want to find the kind of um highest quality kind of curriculum that that's really working for for students. and and uh oftenimes you compare about
three or so um we're at four. So I understand the concerns too about the teacher workload and and you know co-planning if uh there's only one teacher and that kind of thing. So I think I think that's uh important things to kind of think through. >> Yeah. And I think that was the the idea
of focusing on one module rather than a full implementation across four that would be much more challenging halfway through the year. So there was some some thought put into how to make it as as easy as possible for the teachers if if if you could even say that because it will be um a little bit of adjustment
but >> okay >> um stuff we've just voted on counts as old business, right? So like like if we just voted on something but I want to say something about it, that's old business. Okay. Uh yeah, so the the extra I guess they're not Chromebooks or they sort of >> books but they are touchscreen ones.
>> Chrome touchscreen Chromebooks. So I I was actually happy to vote yes for this. I know I've been, you know, pressing a bit in um in committee on um you know, whether it students to take Chromebooks home are doing things with them online
that aren't really part of their education, which is a big concern I have. Um but I do think that in a you know controlled supervised environment um if they're if they're just being integrated into the the you know the how
how a subject's being taught that is an entirely appropriate use of technology. So these very same computers I would have an issue voting for them um if they were being taken home in the middle school but sitting on the desks as part of a station rotation in in elementary school that's that's fine.
>> All right. Any other old business? >> No. Chase your mind? >> No, I'm a new business. >> Oh, okay. New business. >> Um, I uh had the pleasure to attend an event um uh in the media center last Monday night. It was a collaboration
between Dr. Adam Gold and Dr. Andy Dalvo. Uh Andy is a new faculty member at the Graduate School of Education. Uh Dr. Gold is a high school uh teacher in Highland Park. Um and the very kind of
cool part of this was that uh Dr. Vicabo was bringing um uh teachers in training pre-ervice teachers to um to high school students where the high school students actually go through a lesson provides direct
feedback to to and actually could pause lessons and provide feedback to the um pres-ervice teachers and it was just a very um cool opportunity is something he does in his research but this was not research it was just him wanting to impact his kind of newer teachers and it
was It was fascinating to see the teachers and and really kind of attend to what the students were saying in a different way as they were receiving feedback and for them to take it really seriously. And for the high school students to to be so engaged and provide really thoughtful, not necessarily what adults
would provide like feedback on, but but things that like what was most concerning to them or what it would take to engage them in this discussion more like what teacher moves do teachers need. And it was just it was very very cool. And this was also um Dr. Gold
pulled students in uh due to the global kind of uh guess global citizen uh uh certificate and so this was part of the ways they could actually uh use ours towards that certificate. So it's just a very nice kind of coming together and I just wanted to highlight that and thank
um both Dr. Gold and Dr. Calvo for for doing this and doing this in Highland Park. I think it's a very cool experience for for high school students to think about teaching and and the moves that teachers make and for, you know, new, you know, becoming teachers to really attend to kind of what their
students are actually saying and what the feedback they're providing. It's just very kind of innovative and and cool and I think it was great for for both for both groups. >> Thank you, Dan. >> Oh, sorry. Lami and I wanted to follow
up about the PTSO participation. We're working with student congress to try and get like a campaign running, but we wanted to know if there were any reminders sent out in the meantime. I um which campaign is it? >> The PTSO meeting to like attend the meetings. >> Um yes, I did see communication
regarding attending the meeting. >> I was unable to attend. I'm sorry, >> but I did get the communication. I wanted to congratulate our student referee on her acceptance and commitment right to Tufts as a biochem major.
>> I'm on that Instagram page. Thank you so much. >> Congratulations. Thank you. >> Any other new business? >> I I attended the Bartle uh winter concert. It was wonderful. Yeah, I saw there and it was it was
wonderful because lots lots of students involved and the music was good and people really really enjoyed it and the only thing I thought was sitting there is BTO really needs a auditorium on our wish list >> but it really was my teacher did a great
job. >> I just love the audience participation. I mean the cat calls I mean in the best in the best way. I mean, it's like being at a at a rock what I imagine a rock concert is is like. I haven't been to one in a while. Um, >> but it's just like it is just so much
fun. There's so much like, you know, engagement with the audience and that it's they're having a great time. It's cool to see. >> Yeah. And I got to go to Bartle and the middle school winter concerts and they we have some really incredibly talented kids and teachers in in this district.
So, I was really impressed with with the music that I heard. It was really good. I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? I. >> Happy holidays, everyone. time that