##VIDEO ID:P3JwD7XV7HU## I'm barely hello and hello and welcome to the Monday October 28th 2024 Hillsboro Town Township Board of Education meeting in accordance with the state Sunshine Law of New Jersey adequate notice of this meeting of the Hillsboro Township Board of Education was provided on October 24th to the hills Beacon and The Courier News Mr eer can we please take rooll Mr Davis here M Jackson here M Craig here M Ling beer here Mr Lee here M nurse here M stats Mr here and Mr Marini here we have a quum let stand for the Pledge of Allegiance move your caps pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic it stands one nation God indivisible liberty and justice I would like to acknowledge the correspondence is listed uh there is no board president's report tonight um besides go Dodgers the vot with the superintendent's report thank you Mr President and obviously he's hoping for a short meeting tonight so he can get there for first pitch but I do have several things I have to share including some good news I'd first like to let the public know that uh this weekend the US band state championships were held at at South Brunswick High School the pride of the Hillsboro Raider Marching Band came in first place and are the 2024 group 5 open New Jersey state champions they were recognized with caption awards also for best music best overall effect best visual best percussion and best color guard they had the highest score of the night of all groups with a 96.4 the music that they put on the field that night was absolutely fantastic and I'm thrilled that the judges recognized our students for their talents congratulations marching Raiders also I'd like to congratulate our curriculum instruction department and our High School uh sboro High School achieved a silver Distinction on the AP honor role and also earned an AP access award uh this is a prestigious distinction uh the AP honor role acknowledges schools that excel in providing students with opportunities to earn college credit and placement fostering a College goinging culture and maximizing college readiness Hillsboro High School has demonstrated its dedication to these goals through impressive student participation and performance in AP courses and exams the AP access award further distinguishes Hillsboro High School for its success in ensuring that AP opportunities are available to a diverse student population this award recognizes the school's efforts to break down barriers and provide Equitable access to rigorous cours work for all students regardless of their Background by removing obstacles and creating a more inclusive learning environment Hillsboro High School is ensuring that that all students have the chance to benefit from the rigor and rewards of advanced placement coursework this commitment not only expands access to higher education opportunities but also Fosters a more diverse and representative AP program that enriches The Learning Experience for all students and most importantly what I see when I go into classrooms or when I hear from my principles and my Administration and when I talk to my teachers we don't teach to the test my teachers are out there employing creative lessons and getting kids to think uh critically and creatively and find their passion and when you do that the EB and flow of high test scores are a natural occurrence so congratulations to students congratulations to the teachers and congratulations to staff members for uh these outstanding Awards when it comes to AP also I do want to remind the community that the board of education is busy preparing for its first ever Community engagement night on November 14th right here at auton Road Intermediate School from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in order to make the night most effective I have sent out a couple of times uh an RSVP list I will be sending that out again please let us know if you are going to come and we're going to be speaking we're going to have two different places uh in the library and also here here we'll be talking about our unarmed security force and in the um Library we'll be talking in a Roundtable session where board members can talk to you about whatever you want um the constraints of a board meeting require people to come to the podium and the board members not to get back and forth with you an answer if you want to ever talk to a board member in a conversational setting get their opinion and not just the overall opinion of the board it's a great time to come to the community engagement night on November 14th lastly for the community I want to show the community the uh the next book that I'm reading and I don't normally do this but the next book that I'm going to be reading is called abiding adventures and if you don't mind for a second sorry Mr Marini I know this might keep you a little bit from the game I want to just read you about the author um this author is a writer and poet and published her first Memoir which is this in 2024 she's received Awards as a three-time topical winner in the National poetry contest just poetry and internationally through the get to know contest in Canada and the New Zealand poetry Society International poetry competition her work has been published in the Kenyon review Young Writers Anthology the 2024 Juniper Institute for Young Writers Anthology and recognized in her school's literary magazine this author's parents who immigrated from Taiwan in 2006 have influenced her knowledge of her cultural roots and distinctions between Taiwanese and American cultures her atypical physical intellectual emotional and psychological Journeys are ingrained in her in a remarkable reverence for nature and the wonders of Life a fondness Illustrated in her writings and sketches living in a word with with world with synesthesia so abiding Adventures is a memoir by Tiana quo who happens to be a senior in high school here at Hillsboro High School as an English major myself who considered himself a a struggling writer at times I can't tell you how impressed I am uh of one of our writers who has her first published book that I'm looking very much forward to reading and you heard all the other accolades she had on top of that something else that's really impressive is she mentioned many of her teachers who were influences and helping get this book published including her editor who is one of our very own English teachers is Alisa Puma so thank you very much to miss Puma congratulations to Tiana I can't wait to read this and we may have her come to a future board meeting as the first published author who's uh while a student here at Hillsboro High School so congratulations to Tiana I do have a couple of more formal things that I need to present tonight uh the first one you'll see behind me is uh every six months we have to report from our student safety data system uh about the previous six months so behind me you will see and also shared with the public as an attachment in the board is our reporting period from January 1st through June 30th of 20124 where we list all incidents by school um and have it disaggregated into different types of areas this is something we continue to Monitor and track and we're actually thankful with our new security team that are helping out in a lot of these areas with our Administration and uh probably the next time I report this I'll start to look at this from a semester to semester basis to see if we see any anomalies right now these numbers are in line with what we have seen um over time no real spikes no real uh drops here at this point the second item that I do have to present is the uh School self assessment as you know we have anti-bullying Specialists and an an at each school and an anti-bullying coordinator in the district and at each school we have a school safety team that is led by the anti-bullying specialist about different things that we can do to keep in an inclusive environment and try to stop a bully in situations before they start this is a self assessment this is not an outside person coming in to try and grade us this is how the buildings think that they are doing in a series of other areas and it's pretty much aligned with what we have done in the past obviously we are trying to always improve in these areas to make sure that kids have a bully-free environment and that everybody feels included but it is a state requirement that I show to the public that we have indeed done the self assessment and we are still looking forward to uh to making improvements the next part of my presentation you know making sure it's behind me because this is not an attachment uh you may remember several months ago I was very excited to talk to the public and to the board about our strategic plan we had three big buckets that we were looking at one was Student Success another was culture for Learning and then facilities and Resource Management the board through a lot of hard work over many um like say a Sunday a couple of nights I think a Friday night came up with many objectives and said these are the things that we want to accomplish uh within those big buckets at that point it was turned over to Administration about the how are we going to accomplish those things what sometimes happens with strategic plans because they are five-year plans is it's turned over and then everybody kind of forgets about it and I want to make sure that people don't forget about our strategic plan and also have a way to monitor uh what we are doing and how we are progressing over a fiveyear period obviously not everything can be accomplished uh in in a short amount of time but what can be accomplished and what I'm hoping to get up within the next month is a link on our website where members of the public as well as the board although I know you've seen some internal documents can monitor what we are we are doing with the progress of our strategic plan so you'll see behind me we have the basic introduction to the Strategic plan dashboard I promis there's going to be some more colorful graphics and everything but right now it's laid out pretty plain with our mission statement our core values our portrait the learner as well as our objectives and those are the items that I presented to the public before so what's new new is what I'm going to show you today and what it is really going to look like you'll see these two um tabs at the top indicators and strategy let me first go over to the indicators and we're still working on some baseline data but it'll look a little more colorful for you when you go to the I just got logged out so let me try logging back in best laid plans of mice and men huh often go astray okay I'll be there in a second okay so what is an indicator you'll see we have Student Success here we have culture for Learning and we have facilities in Resource Management so we have lots of different indicators as you all know we have a a big political election going on I don't I know if anybody's heard in a couple days there's a lot of people voting and one thing that you hear about a lot is you hear about people are concerned about the economy well well what is the economy and for some people how do you know the economy is doing well how do you know the economy is doing bad and what you do is you look at economic indicators for some people that means when it look when I want to know what the economy is doing I want to know how's inflation how's the stock market how is unemployment it's not necessarily the economy itself but those are indicators to see if the economy is moving in the right direction similarly for our strategic plan we wanted some big items that people can look at to see if we're moving in the right direction what does it mean if we're moving in the right direction in the area of Student Success so we have some indicators here for example we'll be looking at student participation performance on state assessments IEP goal attainment parent participation and digital resources for students there will be some items that you can click on and look at to view data we don't have that up there yet but that will be something that you can look at and then similarly under culture for learning you will see some some big items that you can just see how are we doing overall in culture for Learning and how are we doing in facilities and Resource Management now these are not all of the individual objectives that each of the board members um participated in and created but these are some overall bigger indicators to see how we are doing and I can give you a little example of this one without going into too much detail if one of the indicators of our financial health is our fund balance you can click on view data and you'll see graphs and charts of how it it's been doing over the past several years I don't want to bore you with too many details and if you want more information about something like the fund balance you can click on the information um little icon and you can get more information right there so these are like the big indicators like I had mentioned about the economy you can see what the stock market's doing you can find out our unemployment rates big things not things you really have to drill down into just to give you a sense now as far as those of you who like to drill down and see how we're doing again still a work in progress here board members is where you will see all of the objectives that you guys came up with and these come under and fall under the strategies too uh under Student Success under culture for learning and then under facilities and resource management and you will see right now I am still working on it we're at kind of zero even though we're working on our strategic plan already but there are things that members of the public as well as you can can take a look at um and drill down to see how we're doing so let's take a look over here uh the fourth item under Student Success where it says to strengthen communication channels and strategies to support Student Success good objective how are we doing that as a member of the public if you click on that icon you will see all the administrative tasks and please don't necessarily pay to the numbers uh right right now what we have done and what we don't have done but you'll get to see all of the different things we're trying to do as an administrative team to bring your vision of the Strategic plan to fruition so when you click on any of those circles right there you'll be able to see all of the administrative tasks which I have shared with the board in uh some spreadsheets but this is much nicer and then we'll be forward facing to the public furthermore if you want to see well I see what they're doing here but how did they do that let me show you what this is going to look like under strengthened communication channels and strategies to support Student Success one of the things that we talked about here you can see uh administratively we want to promote the thrillshare app and if you haven't downloaded the thrillshare app let me uh promote it a little bit more right here you can get a lot of information about the schools from downloading that app so let's say uh right here it's saying we're about 40% done in our promotion we're not quite halfway there yet hopefully people have seen it but if you want to see well how are they how did they promote the thrillshare app you see all the way to the right next to each strategy there's something that says details click on the detail and it'll come up here yeah we're still about 40% complete who's the point person in charge of that the director of technology and I have it listed by title not by person specific name so people know who the person is and what are the dates we're approximately doing that so we're actually a little ahead of schedule um Mr Handler who is the director of Technology was going to have a full court press starting in December but we've already kind of gotten that out there which is why we're ahead of schedule and if you really want to drill down and say well where where do they have this under artifacts under each one of these you will have links that you can click and if you want to see how we are promoting the thrillshare app this will take you right to that page to show you how we are accomplishing these parts of our strategic plan now I want to let you know not all of these links are going to take you to a fancy colorful web page because not everything involves a fancy colorful web page but my secretary Melissa rice is creating a Google doc which when we don't have something like this the link will take you there and you will be able to see in chronological order what are the things we've been doing since the beginning of the year throughout the next five years as we work on this so um I know I could go through each and every every single objective and Mr Marini I think you might be a little uh anxious if I were to do that tonight but I do want to assure you that this isn't the first time we've talked about our strategic plan it's not the last time we're going to talk about strategic plan and once this goes live I will blast it out to the community and over the course of the next five years anytime you want to see how are we doing on something when one of our strategic objectives you will be able to go to a link on our website drill down as deeply as you want into this so um I don't know if members of the board have any questions at this time again this is still a draft I did take you to the parts that were done so we could show that so I'm not going to go clicking in everything because A lot's not done but it took a good amount of time to set this up and I think you get a sense of how we're going to communicate with the public about our strategic plan in addition to me speaking about it probably on a quarterly basis at board meetings thank you for your patience with that look like you hit a home run he's good he's good hitting a home run well speaking of hitting home runs there's one more item under my superintendence report and I will turn that over to Dr feltre Who will take it from here all right are we ready okay so um tonight I'm presenting the njsla results as well as the dlm results the New Jersey student learning assessments were administered in English language arts Math and Science during the month of May this past spring we received the scores in late August and the individual student reports were sent to parents and Guardians in September the New Jersey student learning assessments measure how well students meet the New Jersey student learning standards which specify what students are expected to learn in each of the content areas students in grades three through nine are required to take the njsla English language arts the njsla ELA focus on reading and com comprehending a range of sufficiently complex texts independently and writing effectively when using Andor analyzing uh sources this table displays the number of students who took the English language arts assessment as well as their performance this table Compares student performance on the 2023 and 2024 njsla Ela assessments the last two columns show the change in levels of um the change in levels 1 two and 3 from 2003 to 2004 where the students are not meeting partially meeting and approaching expectations as well as the change in level four and five from 2003 to 2004 where students are meeting and exceeding expectations we would like to see a decrease in the percentage of students not meeting partially meeting and approaching um from year to year and an increase in the percentage of students meeting and exceeding expectations from year to year we acknowledge that it's taken more than one year to sh up the pandemic learning gaps and therefore have supported our students with targeted intervention during the school day wraparound services and summer programming this table compares the change in performance of students on the njsla ELA assessments from 2023 to 2024 to State percentages in the best case scenario we would have seen a greater decrease in the percentage of students scoring at levels 1 two and three than the state and a lesser increase in the percentage of students scoring at levels wait a greater decrease than the state yeah or a lesser increase um in the percentage of students scoring at levels one two and three in the state additionally we would like to see a greater change in the percentage of students scoring at levels four and five than the state the next three slides compare Hillsboro student performance on the njsla ELA assessment to the state performance percentages in both 2023 and 2024 for each of the proficiency levels on this slide numbers colored green indicate that a lower percentage of Hillsboro students performed at levels one and two in both 2023 and 2024 indicating that we had fewer students than the state average not yet meeting or partially meeting expectations and this is what we would like to see on this slide numbers colored green in indicate that a lower percentage of Hillsboro students performed at level three than the state in both 2023 and 2024 and then a greater number of students performed at level four than the state the district number colored black that is above the state average for level three might indicate that a greater number of students move from levels one and two to level three and may not necessarily indicate poor performance in the state on this slide numbers colored green indicate that a greater number of hills students performed at level five in the state the number in red indicates that we are below the state average for this grade level in terms of exceeding expectations on the njla ELA this table displays student performance on the njla ELA for 2023 and 2024 with particular emphasis on the percentage of students who met and exceeded expectations thereby sufficiently demonstrating Mastery of the ELA standards at each test grade level we saw an increase in the number of students who met and exceeded expectations in grades 3 through six and grade nine this graph depicts the percentage of students by program who met or exceeded expectations in the njla ELA for both 2023 and 2024 this graph displays the percentage of students by race who met or exceeded expectations on the njla Ela for both 2023 and 2024 for the following math slides it is important to note that since we offer Algebra 1 and uh for the seventh grade and Algebra 1 in geometry in the eth grade seventh and eth grade data are not representative of the grade seven and grade eight performance as a whole students in grades 3 through Algebra 2 are required to take the njla mathematics this table displays the number of students who took the mathematics assessments as well as their performance the njsla math focus on applying skills and Concepts understanding multi-step problems that require abstract reasoning and modeling real world problems with precisions with Precision perseverance and strategic use of tools this table Compares student performance on the 2023 and 2024 njsla math assessments as with the analogous and jsla Ela table the last two columns of this table show the change in levels 1 two and 3 from 2023 to 20 2024 where students are not meeting partially meeting and approaching approaching expectations as well as the change in level four and level five from 2023 to 2024 where students are meeting are meeting and exceeding expectations again we would like to see a decrease in the percentage of students not meeting and partially meeting expectations from from year to year and an increase in the percentage of students meeting and exceeding expectations from year to year as was the case with Ela we acknowledge it's taken more than one year to shore up the pandemic learning gaps in math and we've also supported our students with targeted intervention during the school day wraparound services and summer programming this table compares the change in performance of the students on the njla math assessments from 2022 to 2024 to the state percentages in the best case scenario we would have seen a greater decrease in the percentage of students scoring at levels one two and three and um a greater change in the percentage of students scoring at levels four and five than the state the next three slides compare Hillsboro student performance on the NJ SLA math assessments to State performance to the state performance percentages in both 2020 3 and 2024 for each of the proficiency levels on this slide numbers colored green indicate that a lower percentage of Hillsboro students performed at levels one and two in both 2023 and 2024 indicating that we had fewer students than the state average not yet meeting or partially meeting expectations which is what we would like to see on this Slide the numbers colored green indicate that a lower percentage of Hillsboro students performed at level three than the state and both 2023 and 2024 and that a greater number of students performed at level four than the state the district numbers colored black that are above the state average for level three might again indicate that a greater number of students move from level one and level two to level three and may not necessarily indicate poorer performance in the state on this slide numbers colored green indicate that a greater number of students performed at level five in the state the number in red indicates that we are below the state average for this grade level in terms of exceeding expectations on the njsla math this table displays student performance results on the njla math for 2023 and 2024 with particular emphasis on the percentage of students who met and exceeded expectations thereby sufficiently demonstrating Mastery of the math standards at each tested grade level we saw an increase in the number of students who met and exceeded expectations in grades five and grades seven through Algebra 2 this graph depicts the percent of students by program who met or exceeded expectations on the njla math for both 2023 and 2024 and this graph displays the percentage of students by race who met our exceeded expectations on the njsla math for both 2023 and 2024 students in grades 5 8 and 11 are required to take the njsla science this table displays the number of students who took the science assessments as well as their performance the njsla science measured student Proficiency in scientific and Engineering practices in the context of cross-cutting Concepts and disciplinary core ideas this table Compares student performance on the 2023 and 2024 NJ njsla science assessments the last two columns show a change in level one and two from 2023 to 2024 where students are below proficient and nearing proficiency as well as a change in level three and four from 2023 to 2024 where students are proficient and demonstrating Advanced proficiency we would like to see a decrease in the percentage of students who are below proficient and nearing proficiency from year to year and an increase in the percentage of students who are proficient or Advanced proficient from year to year this table compares the change in performance of students on the njsla science assessments from 2023 to 2024 to State percentages in the best case scenario we see a greater decrease in the percentage of students scoring at level one and two than the state and additionally we want to see a greater change in the percentage of students scoring at levels four and five than the state the next three slides compare Hillsboro student performance on the njsla science assessments to the state percentages in both 2023 and 2024 for each of the proficiency levels on this slide numbers color green indicate that a lower percentage of hillsbor students performed at levels one and two in both 2023 and 2024 indicating that we had fewer students than the state average not yet meeting or partially meeting expectations which is what we would like to see the district numbers colored black that are above the state average might indicate a greater number of students moving from level one to level two than the state average and may not necessarily indicate poorer performance than the state on this Slide the numbers colored green indicate that a greater number of Hillsboro students performed at levels three and four than the state which is what we would like to see title fix this table displays student performance results on the njsla science for 2023 and 2024 with particular emphasis on the percentage of students who were proficient and advanced proficient in demonstrating Mastery on the science standards at each tested grade level we saw an increase in the number of students who were proficient and advanced proficient at all the tested grades from 2023 to 2024 which is what we want to see this graph depicts the percentage of students by program who were proficient or Advanced proficient on the njla science for both 2023 and 2024 and this graph displays the percentage of students by race who were proficient or Advanced proficient on the njsla science for both 2023 and 2024 to protect student confidentiality performance is only reported for those subgroups who have greater than 10 students who tested so you see a little difference in these results than Ela and math some notable achievements that we had include that the number of students meeting and exceeding expectations increased from 2023 to 2024 in most of the grade levels across all three of the njla assessments for the majority of the grade levels and assessments Hillsboro students outperformed the state average which is what we want to see intervention strategies that we've used since the pandemic um have included targeted interv ition at the K to8 level including New Jersey tiered systems of support tutoring and Esra funded summer school a focus on student centered learning and differentiation as well as we've had a TCNJ professor and residence for our multilingual Learners to help them Bridge some of the gaps that they saw the next part of my um presentation is the dynamic learning maps and this should read for the spring 2024 results and that's been updated on the agenda but not on this so um the dynamic learning Maps or dlm is an alternative alternate alternate sorry assessment for the students with the most significant cognitive disabilities students show their performance on content standards called essential elements in English language arts mathematics and science in alignment with the State Testing administered to students in our other populations the dlms were administered to students with the most severe cognitive differences for literacy and math in grades 3 through 8 in grade 11 and were administered science in grades 58 and 11 in conjunction with um all the other populations of students the assessment measures where students this assessment measures where students are with regard to the grade level Target not all students perform at Target level and that is to be expected to predict student confidentiality the sample size for reporting results is a minimum of 10 where fewer than 10 students were tested results have been grade banded for reporting purposes this table shows the percentage of students at Target or Advanced for the tested grade levels or grade bands this graph displays student results by grade level and banded grade levels where the number of students tested for grade level was less than 10 and since we have a small population of our students who are eligible for DM the number of students per subgroup Falls below 10 and therefore these comparative results cannot be reported teachers use the intervention strategies that are depicted on this slide to help students Master academics students with the most significant cognitive disabilities have a variety of educational goals academics are one part of their educational program teachers provide instruction beyond what is reflected in the students's learning profile including other academics functional skills and other priorities identified in the students individ individualized education program or IP for instructional planning teachers review student individual student reports to identify areas of academic skills where instruction may be focused and then use a variety of instructional interventions to support students and mastering these skills that concludes my report for tonight thank you Dr thank than you Dr F you may have a question or two from the board but there was also a lot of data and information in there a lot so please feel free to piece through that and if you have questions in the future you can ask as well but Dr feler I wanted to go back to those those couple of highlights you know over the past two years like what's the big the big takeaway from here from that that presentation that you had can you just over two years are we doing better we moving in the right direction moving in the right direction we are showing up the gaps in the pandemic and we are outperforming the state and we are improving against ourselves so thank you and again we can always do better and we always want to continue to improve but what Dr felt's presentation there and thank you Dr feltre goes to show is that through the hard work of students and staff and administration we are moving in the right direction academically um you know post pandemic so thank you I don't know if any board members had any questions for Dr F Mr Mr here I have a question about the science the science results you'd said that um I guess in grades eight so grade eight very low like I mean actually all of the science was very low about 50% but grade eight was 36% and I'm wondering just in thinking about grade five and eight the science curriculum is the same whereas 11th grade students May taking different kinds of Sciences I'm just wondering like what kind of test questions that they ask that are eighth grade Sciences at so low and and how does that relate to before the pandemic like in say 2019 Administration um well I'd have to compare the the results 2019 to to now um e8th grade is not just eth grade it's six seven and eight and so um I know science-wise we are very inquiry based and um during the pandemic it was very difficult to do anything that was related to Hands-On science if you will and getting the students back there I do know that um we're doing much better than the state and when our science supervisor had a um countywide meeting and a Statewide meeting um we lamented the performance of our students whereas other people um I guess con congratulated us on how well we were doing compared to other districts across the state because while we are not happy with the performance um it is much better than the state there has been some discussion at the county and the state level about um the validity of the test itself because the state performance is so you know low um I do know we are also we have adopted new resources that open CED and there while we are outperforming which shows our approach and the resources we have are doing well um that alignment to what the test questions are asking and um what the students are able to show on the test in in middle school you know it we're we're investigating that nobody really knows I'll be honest with you you know thank you y any other questions there are no other questions Mr President that concludes my superintendent report all right thank you very much I will'll now move on to committee reports um we will begin with education okay Miss Jackson yep we met on uh October 15th and uh quickly we um reviewed new course proposal honors pre-calculus at HHS uh policy review five 2 4 for student tardiness the 2025 26 District calendar options um Mr Dilo gave us a uh an overview on HHS rotating block schedule was a discussion on possible future changes to HHS to improve schedules and academic needs um and for Middle School mathematics path Pathways um uh there was a proposal for future changes to HMS mathematics course sequences to better meet student needs um presentation of the 2023 24 njsla and dlm testing results and a few informational items um possible 2024 25 calendar change and some carryover items from the board retreat um so we had a lot of information and didn't get through a lot of the uh portion of the agenda all right thank you very much um we can move to HR Miss nurse the AAR committee met on Friday the 18th um virtually at 7 am and we discussed similar to the education committee 2425 calendar possible update that is on um tonight's agenda and for proposing half day of opening of school on Election Day and a half day PD and then closing on the 23rd uh we talked about uh the club funds similar or exactly from last year we had moved um voted to move reallocate Club funds that weren't being used to new clubs um and it's proposed again on tonight's agenda um to do the same for this year there was a sick Bank request that we discussed and negotiations sidebar um there were three job descriptions that we looked at the school board um secretary the systems integrator and the supervisor of special services there were two Personnel manners um we discussed technology Staffing in terms of needs um and our committee requested some cost analysis on um what that would cost to meet the needs that were requested and to also look at that in comparison to other departments and the needs of the other departments that we've been talking about for the past several years we then moved into talking about the security at the high school between the 300 and 800 wings um and that unfortunately locking those doors is not working quite as well as hoped because the amount of traffic um trying to get through into their classes so we talked about about having an additional security uh person at the high school so we can open those doors until we can find a more permanent solution um hopefully a construction solution that doesn't um involve other Personnel um we then ended with a discussion of the substitute rates um and the committee decided that it would be in the best interest of the district to increase substitute teacher pay pay instructional Aid substitute pay and substitute nurse pay so we can be competitive with the surrounding districts um we also had a lot to talk about so there were a couple um items that we needed to table until November all right thank you very much operations Mr Davis yep uh operations met on Wednesday the 16th uh the most of the meetings was uh devoted to Mr kushinsky from uh the auditing firm to review the audit for the current year and uh lots of details involved with that uh the good news is there were no recommendations and what that means is that they didn't find any errors in procedure and process uh that we needed to fix there were a few suggestions uh regarding processes and and things that perhaps we could introduce that might make things better but there are no errors to be corrected uh something that was interesting that seemed to be news to many of us we talked a bit about uh travel expenses and travel expenses as they appear even on the board agenda when we're asked to approve travel related expenses and that the numbers that are shown there are actually estimates if you will uh not to exceed kinds of numbers they're not uh actually hard numbers because sometimes you don't know what those numbers are until after the event has taken place and uh that was interesting um some details about uh renting school facilities to other people including certain fees and things like that were clarified and uh an item that was carried over from the board retreat we spent a little bit of time on the topic of uh security guards being armed versus unarmed and what are some of the ins and outs of that and that is a topic that will be open for more discussion at the community night uh like with so many things there's a lot more to that than would meet the eye and a lot of details a lot of small little Knack types of things that uh can really weigh the decision and um a new kind of report that uh Mr eert and Miss LEF have helped develop is to help us track overtime expenses and we've been looking at this data now for the last few quarters and we're looking to develop the ability to compare uh overtime uh expenses from year to year partly just to monitor to make make sure that we don't have a wagon that's rolling downhill uh and so it's a more contemporary contemporaneous kind of report that will help a lot in the future all right all right thank you Mr Davis uh I will go ahead and cover the uh governance committee meeting which occurred on October 16th so uh you know first thing we discussed was the community engagement night just some details around that um obviously Mr vpy share the information again today through many different uh methods um we're obviously going to have a discussion to prepare some of the content ahead of time um uh the leadership did reach out to the hsas to drive engagement for that night and they were generally pretty receptive from what I've heard so that's great um then we had a bunch of carryover items uh from the from the board retreat uh you know I'll cover some of ones that were more interesting so inboard communic inboard communication we will have um somebody coming to facilitate at the next board retreat just kind of work on obviously us uh as a board and to improve our communication internally um we discussed some other items about procedures when member of community me uh mentions stuff to the board and how they should address those items there was a discussion around um interaction app board meetings and maybe some training around Roberts Wills of order just because that's something that if people are new to the board or have never been on a board like this they may not be familiar with um uh we talked about Lea on appointment statuses and a couple other um small items and I think one of the last ones was the procedure regarding alternates for committees which I think will identify a standing alternate so that it's not somebody needs to have an emergency at the last minute and we were searching around for who might be able to join we'll just identify those ahead of time and reach out um and last but not least one of the things that we did mention at the board retreat that we were going to do for our own tracking of items was to track an open items list of things that will continue beyond each committee meeting so we don't lose sight of things and the one thing we do have that will be meeting at a future meeting is uh Mr Doo and Miss poal discussing the random drug policy uh testing policy at a future meeting to dig a little deeper into that and that concludes the governance committee meeting minutes is there any comments or questions by board members on any the items that were discussed before we continue okay seeing none we'll wrap up committee reports um we'll open the first comment comments from the Public Public input on the 2025 2026 budget and action agenda items we very much welcome input from the public during board meetings will be 230 minute periods of time the meeting will be open public comment for members of the public are invited the comment which they may do if they're attending in person during the first public comment per members of the public May comment items that list on tonight's agenda before the board votes during the second public comment period members of the public May comment on any school or School District issue that a member of the public feels may be of concern to the residents of the school district as for V 0167 before you state your comment you ask provide your name and address there's three minute limit on public comment please understand that public forms are not structured as question answer sessions but rather offered as opportuni to share your thoughts with the board in instance where the board believes a misunderstanding or inaccuracy the board president or superintendent will address the comment there may be times a member of the public makes a comment or has question about Personnel or hiring decisions kind note the public meeting act and privacy rights the public employees Encompass therein do not permit the board to discuss personel issues in public session if there's any students you can feel free to join the first public comment session hi my name is AF and Durga and we are from the Communications Department of Team 75 the robo Raiders first we'd like to thank you for your generous contributions to our team that allow us to continually continually pursue our goals with your help our team has been able to make lots of progress and today we'd like to give you updates on some of that to begin an extremely successful project that we held this year was our Junior Raiders summer camp held at Amsterdam Elementary School at this three-week program children K through four engag in interactive engineering activities in which they solved problems supported collaboration and engaged in teamwork we had over 200 attendees and each had an amazing time also we made this into a large fundraiser to support our team in which we made around $24,000 additionally we have a new buddy system that was introduced to our team this year under this interactive program groups of new members are put under the advisory of our selected peer mentors this allows them to become familiar with the robotics atmosphere through the assistance of previous members on our team we hope to create a more inclusive environment for all members bringing us to the start of the school year we had a strong crowd of returning members consistently participating in meetings and aiding in in the setup process to welcome new members our interest meeting attracted over a 100 students who were excited to learn about our team and our open house was packed with interested new students and their parents the start of this year has officially kicked off without us even having our official kickoff yet leading us to one of our more substantial events of the Year team 75 the robocon NJ event in the Bridgewater Commons along with five other new New Jersey FRC teams the event was publicly available to the entire mall to watch and as a result attracted a huge crowd h plus with our interactive stem stations a large number of eager and enthusiastic kids had fun with science experiments and Exhibits that applied fascinating science Concepts and interesting and an easy to approach way in the event specifically we supplied volunteers and Extras we also ran an extremely popular section of the event named FL workshops where we taught core F skills to our upcoming f teams for the upcoming season robocon NJ is and continues to be one of the most important stem events and it elevates the impact of the robo Raiders in our community and we couldn't be prouder to be a part of it to continue over the past summer we restructured our outreach program to help increase the impact we have on our community stem Ascend is a program that leverages our team's technology and Ingenuity to impact our community through this this program we build leadership skills and assign different roles to give back to our community we provide stem activities and donations from our teams food and clothing dries for underprivileged children our goal is to give back to people who don't have as many opportunities as our team we we express our sincerest gratitude to our supporters volunteers mentors and Leadership we're so excited to be able to make this season success and to provide even more stem opportunities to the event through our Outreach initiatives we're thrilled to start this year's build season with new leadership new members and new mindsets and we can't wait for burrow blast our upcoming L event that we're hosting due to your continued support we would like to present this plaque to you as a token of our appreciation and we're excited to work with you in the future thank you so much for your time thank you very much like Mr you'll make sure that's it's displayed awesome thank you very much all right all right seeing no others I will close the first public comment period um any board members comments before we continue always like the check all right thank you very much we'll now move forward to the approval of minutes 9.1 motion to approve executive session minutes 9232 24 9.2 motion to approve regular meeting minutes 9232 24 9.3 motion to approve executive session minutes 10824 and 9 to4 motion to approve special meeting minutes 10824 can I get a motion in second second all in favor I thank you we'll now move on to the action agenda thank you Mr President I ask for the board's consideration to approve the following motion in the area of Education uh professional travel related expenses PSAT Proctors the acceptance of the FY high impact tutoring award as listed field trip destination overnight trips acceptance of the fiscal year 25 teach stem classes and non-public schools Grant funds as listed submission of the application and accept funding from teach Asian-American stories grantly amount of $3,000 approving curriculum writing for social studies continuing the long-term suspension of a student and approving the submission of Grant application and accept funds from Special Olympics unified Champion schools can I get a motion a second so move second any discussion by the board s um I would just like to emphasize the importance in approving motions 10.7 and 10.8 because as a student who specifically struggled with the world history curriculum and United States history curriculum within Hillsboro High School and who has worked with the social study supervisors to include more diverse sources inside the curriculum I think both of these motions are exceptionally important to making our school environment more inclusive and diverse for all students thank you very much all right see no other comments move to roll Mr Davis yes M Jackson yes yes M Craig yes M Ling Vader yes Mr Lee Yes M nurse yes Mr Hill yes and Mr Marini yes motion passes thank you in the area of Human Resources I ask for the board's consideration to approve the following motions the suspension and termination of a district employee creating an unbudgeted position approving a settlement between the board and haa approving the sidebar agreement with the haa which would revise the 2425 calendar sidebar agreement about co-curriculars job description resignations and retirements appointments change in employment status transfer and change in assignment salary adjustment for 24-25 leaves of absence revised leave replacement teacher appointment uh resending a School counseling internship resending co-curricular contracts revising co-curricular advisor revising TurnKey trainer hours revised hours of Transportation staff mentors and buddies coaches for 24-25 co-curricular and intramural advisors sixth and seventh period coverage and extra coverage okay I get a motion in second so move second any discussion by the board okay seeing none we'll move to roll Mr Davis yes M Jackson yes M Craig yes M Ling beer yes Mr Lee yes Miss nurse yes Mr Hill yes and Mr Marini yes motion passes thank you I just want to point out there that with that approval the district is now closed on Monday December 23rd and we will get that information out to the community as well as revising a date in June um so you'll get more information but we are now closed on Monday uh December 23rd in the area of operations I would ask for the board's uh consideration to approve the following motions monthly bills monthly financial statement financial status line item transfers proposal from LA and Architects for a long range facility Plan update approving The Proposal Amendment with laan Architects for the high school media center stairwell door replacement use of school facilities revised fee schedule for this school year Professional Services contract with a canopy tree for this this school year Professional Services contract with AAC and M LLC for this school year Professional Services contract with behavior therapy Associates for this school year a contract with the hillsbor YMCA for this school year approving contract of crow skate arena for this school year accepting a tuition student approving the disposal and sale of obsolete equipment out of District placements for this school year and parent Transportation contracts for this school year can I get a motion and second so Mo second any discussion by the board before we vote okay seeing none will move the rooll Mr Davis yes M Jackson yes M Craig yes M Ling beer yes Mr Lee yes Miss nurse yes Mr Hill yes and Mr Marini yes motion passes thank you in the area of policies and regulations I would ask for the board's consideration of the following uh approving the policy and regulation removed reviewed by education committee for second reading policy reviewed by the governance committee for second reading policy reviewed by the HR committee for second reading and approving policies for first reading about our Title One schools which were shared with the board in brass tax okay get a motion in second so move second any discussion by the board seeing none we'll move to roll Mr Davis yes M Jackson yes Miss Craig yes Miss Ling beer yes Mr Lee Yes M nurse yes Mr H yes and Mr Marini yes motion passes when that move move on to the second public comment period very welcome in public during board meetings there'll be 2:30 minute period of time that the meeting will be open public comment for members of public May comment which they may do with their attending in person during the second public comment period members of the public May comment on any school or School District issue that a member of the public Fields may be a concerned the residence of the school district as per B 0167 before you st your comment you'll be asked to provide your name and address there's a three minute limit on public comment please understand that a public fors are not structured as question answer sessions but rather offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board instance where the board of leaders Mr understanding or accuracy the board president or superintendent will address the comment many times when a member of the public makes a comment WR a question about personel hiring decisions kind not the public meetings act the Privacy rights of public employees Compass their in do not permit the board to discuss personal issues in public session okay seeing none I will close public comment I will now open it up to the board if there's any comments or things they would like to discuss that includes San if is anything you'd like to add uh yeah so we haven't had our first student council meeting yet so I'm still working on like pulling the student population and kind of getting an opinion on what the biggest issues they want to address is so by the next meeting I'll definitely have that down all right awesome thank you thank you again for being here it's great appreciate it all right seeing none I will just say go Dodgers and and uh take a motion to adjourn Soo second all in favor I go Dodgers