He's gonna be two on Saturday. >> Y on Saturday. Did we even have the attachment? Good. How are you? Sorry. taking care of my mother. She's pretty sick. Are you want me to move down when you
sit here? I didn't know. >> Yeah, me too. But I have to I'm going to do the other One way I don't think
of his priorities. He should be just so weird. Hi, how are you? But I thought I was going to have to move down. So I pushed them down. >> No. Do you want to move this way? Is it
too close to the edge? >> Well, there's that. >> All right. Because there is a spot. I didn't know >> stretch. I'm Everybody ready? Good evening everyone. Welcome to a meeting of the 10 Central Regional High
School Board of Education. Please be advised that this and all meetings of the board are open to the public and media consistent with the open public meetings act and that advanced notice required therein has been provided. Meeting notice was also posted in the boardroom of the upper school campus
sent to the courier news star ledger express times and the county democrat and sent to the clerks of Delaware township eastwell Flemington burough raren township and readington township. The public will have an opportunity to be heard as shown on the agenda. Can I
get a roll call, please? >> Mrs. Dugen, >> here. >> Miss Gong >> here. Miss Mrs. Gray >> here. >> Dr. Halpern >> here. >> Mrs. Kellogg >> here. >> Miss Lacosta >> here. Mrs. Peterson,
Mrs. Roel, and Mrs. Santangelo >> here. All right, everyone, please join us for the flag salute. To the flag of the United States of American, are you ready to read the mission? and Central is an innovative educational
community dedicated to the intellectual, social, and emotional safety and growth of all students. While fostering curiosity and promoting wellness, we aspire to create powerful learning experiences, establish strong partnerships, and serve as contributing
members of society. Thank you. All right. We would like to move to approve the regular and executive session minutes of the June 16th, 2025 meeting. Can I get a second? >> Second. >> And a roll call, please.
>> Mrs. Dugen, >> yes. >> Miss Gong, >> yes. >> Miss Gray, >> yes. >> Dr. Halpern, >> yes. >> Mrs. Kellogg, >> abstain. >> Miss Lacosta, >> yes. >> Mrs. Peterson, and Mrs. Santangelo. >> Yes.
>> Oh, yes. Motion carries. >> Thank you. We would like to note that we received correspondence and it will be maintained on file in the office of the board secretary. At this time, we will move to the president's report. This month, I would like to talk about
policy. The board of education is a policymaking body. That means that the board shall make, amend, adopt, and repeal policy. By doing so, the board ensures the district and schools are run well. Policies help provide structure so the board can ensure compliance with the
law, fulfill the governance and oversight role, ensure compliance with state monitoring such as CUSAC, which is the Department of Education's monitoring and evaluation system. New Jersey school districts have two policy vendors, Strauss Esme, our vendor, and the New
Jersey school board. These vendors provide the model policies and recommendations regarding what must or should be adopted according to the law. Because of the lengthy process of policymaking, the board does not have the bandwidth to do this on their own. The exception is when our vendor does not have a policy that we feel our
school may need. This situation arose this past fall when contemplating a student cell phone policy. You may recall we sought valuable feedback through our parent engagement association which was formerly the home school association and invited parents in the community to discuss this topic.
Our superintendent also conducted multiple focus groups with staff and students. This process took a significant amount of time and resulted in our current cell phone policy. In addition, due to the significant lack of policy updates by the previous administration and lack of a policy
committee, our policy manual was out of compliance and out ofd. Therefore, we began the process of replacing them with our updated vendor policies. One example of this was the counseling policy. Our superintendent reviewed the homegrown and vendor policies with the counseling
department. The counselors did not have any issues with the updated vendor policy. The board proceeded forward with a first and second public reading. This is yet another opportunity for feedback, this time from the public to provide any comments for the board's consideration. Because of the board's commitment and
the policy committee's dedication to updating this policy manual, I am happy to report that we are on schedule to complete this enormous undertaking by year's end. I would be remiss if I did not give a special thank you to our policy chair, Rebecca Peterson, who has been instrumental in making this happen.
So, Becky, thank you very much. We could not have done it without the without you. Excuse me. And finally, the board recently received recognition from senior administration that this is the first time that they have ever felt included in the policy process. So that tells us that we are on the right track with transparency and accountability and
we really appreciate that feedback. So thank you. And with that, I'll kick it over to Jessica for the superintendent report. >> Thank you, Lisa. And good evening, everyone. Happy summer. We have a very informative and interesting presentation
on standardized assessment results this evening. So, I'm going to try and keep my report brief. Um, however, there are a few items I want to be sure I emphasize with you all. First, I want to again congratulate our 573 graduates of the class of 2025. Our graduation
ceremony on June 19th, which I would argue is probably one of the largest scale events in the county, was not only well organized and executed, but also also really special and memorable. Our students spoke and sang about the importance of each individual students
journey and personalizing their educational experience for their strengths and their needs. It was a great inspiration to us to take us into the summer months. I also appreciate that so many of you were able to attend. Thank you very much. And last, but certainly not least, I also want to
thank all of our folks involved in planning this ceremony. There are way too many to list individually, but I would like to at least mention offices, principal and vice principal teams, the house office staff, counselors, operations, communications, technology, and all of our staff who helped that
day. This really takes a full team effort. As I noted last month, our leadership team convened shortly after graduation for a retreat with the intent of planning for the 2025 2026 school year. At this retreat, we reviewed critical data and feedback from the
school year, including evaluation data and trends, climate and culture survey data, and progress along our 2024 2025 goals. We use this information to create recommended goals for the 2025 2026 school year under the topics of student
wellness and climate and culture, student achievement and engagement and communication and partnerships. I've shared early draft language miss with Mrs. Santangelo and I appreciate you all providing feedback. We will continue to refine the goals and incorporate your feedback through our committees over the
next month. Related to the topic of district goals, I have also been speaking with a professional services provider about strategic planning. Our ambitious plan is to begin the process in October. I plan on having additional information for you all at next month's meeting.
A part of tonight's agenda includes two organizational items that I would like to bring to your attention. First, we are revising our 2025 2026 school year calendar to account for three additional early dismissal days for students. October 13th, January 27th, and March
26th. These days will be full days for staff as they will engage in professional learning in the afternoon. Adding these three early dismissal days as a strategic investment in instructional excellence, which, as you know, is a continued goal in our district. These dedicated afternoons
will provide staff with uninterrupted time to collaborate, reflect, and engage in ongoing learning that directly impacts student outcomes. The dedicated afternoons also ensure a consistent continuum of professional development so we can support our educator educators,
excuse me, in remaining responsive to student needs and aligned with our district goals. Additionally, the 2025 2026 calendar revision also includes the removal of the second back to school night in the fall. This was part of a sidebar with the HCA which we approved
in April. Our fall back to school night will take place on Thursday, September 18th. The second organizational item is an approval for adoption of the chapter 27 emergency virtual or remote instruction program for the 2025 2026
school year. This is an annual item that is required by the New Jersey Department of Education since the CO 19 pandemic. I will now ask Dr. Matt Hall, our director of curriculum and instruction to come to the podium to present on our 2025 NJGPA and access results. And then
I'll ask us all to move over into the audience so we can actually see the screen. Good evening everybody. Uh so it's my pleasure tonight to uh to do our spring uh assessment report to you and I and I
say that with no sarcasm at all. I I love this type of thing. So uh I'll apologize in advance for that. Um, so the goal tonight, we're going to go through, we're going to talk about our assessment results from the New Jersey graduation proficiency assessment and
the access assessment that occurred in the fall. So those are the NJ GPA. You may recall from previous um presentations of this type is our
primary graduation pathway. So let me see. Okay. So, this is this is a test taken by 11th graders and it is it's the test that um that really
is the opportunity for students to demonstrate that they're quote unquote graduation ready, right? And English language arts and mathematics. So, this happened in March. Um it is different than the SLA which we
heard about in uh back in October. Okay. So a different assessment. This is graduation test. But each time we do these presentations um they're required first of all under administrative code but more importantly they give us a snapshot a glimpse into
uh the how well our instructional programs are working. And so as we go through these slides tonight, uh that's what I invite you to have as a question in your mind is what does this tell us about how well our instructional
programs are functioning? Um now primarily we're we're going to be looking at English language arts and mathematics. We'll also look at the access results uh which are a test that our multilingual learners um they take
every year. So there are two performance levels as we take a look at these results. Okay. So just to sort of frame it for us, there's graduation ready and then not yet graduation ready.
One other way to sort of think about graduation ready is those are stu students performing at grade at or above grade level. Okay. So, at or above grade level. And that's going to be important when we start to drill down a little bit
um into some of these results because the the temptation is to just sort of look at them um you know just see okay how' we do what percentage did we get on to the next thing. We're going to drill down a little bit deeper uh tonight because we're able to now and I'll get
into that in a little more detail in just a moment. Okay. So, let's start off. So it on the left we have our mathematics performance. On the right we have our English language arts performance. The lighter colored blue bar is Hunter and
Central's results. The darker colored blue bar is the state of New Jerseyy's results. So one of the first things we always look at is how do students at Hunter Central do relative to their grade level peers across the state. And
as we would we would expect 100 central students to outperform the state, right? That's that's what we hope to be true. That's what we expect to be true. And you can see here that that is in fact what we see to be the case. We also
notice that the math percentage is lower than the English language arts percentage. And so that invites the question of what's what's up with that, right? um that tends to be the case and that's the case all across the state and it has
to do with lots of things but at a very basic level it's how they set the passing rates like what they set as the bar the threshold for passing um at the New Jersey Department of Ed and how that's determined is is done in math and
English language arts sort of independently from one another. So this is a pattern we always see. So that's not something to necessarily fret over. Um, and it's expected. So the good news in
this is we're outperforming the state. Where we start to ask questions is, okay, so in math we see 69% of our 11th graders are quote unquote graduation ready. And in math, what this
is is a a test of algebra 2 and geometry skills. Okay. 88% in English language arts. So certainly 69% isn't as high as we want it to be. But the takeaway that I don't want you to
leave with is that that means that, you know, 31% of our kids are not going to graduate because that's just not the case. This is this is one data point and pretty much all of our students pass um
a graduation through one of the various pathways. Okay. Uh and we'll get into that in a little more detail momentarily. Okay. So, next we're going to take a look at a breakdown by uh gender uh as one of our
first ways of dividing up this data and looking at it in a in a little more detail, a little more granular. So, bright blue all students, the darker blue are female students, the lighter blue are male students. So what we see
here is that um in math our male students are outperforming our female students. Um which invites the question of why, right? And that's definitely a question uh for our math department to to to look into.
In ling English language arts, we see that the opposite is true, but that disparity between those um is not as dramatic. So, a little context for you all. That disparity there, this pattern is one
that we've seen year after year after year. And it's been a major area of focus um within the English language arts department to look at that and address that. And so, what we're starting to see is that gap close. So,
um that's actually good news and sort of exciting. And when I uh looked over this with Brendan, he was, you know, he was pleased to see that that was the case. So, um, a little bit of extra context there. That's that's good news.
Next, we'll break it down by um some of the other demographic groups. Um, here we're looking at specifically race and ethnicity. And you see a similar sort of pattern uh between math and ELA
um with perhaps the um Hispanic Latino bar and math being uh more you know a a greater larger separation uh between some of the other groups that we see. Um so that is that is one of
those patterns that we continually take a look at. Right? So this is not new. This is not a new phenomena. Um, and this is one that, you know, we we need more information to
understand it. Um, and and start to get at solutions for this. And so, um, I'll share some more insight into that, um, as we introduce some new pieces of information that we we hadn't really had before in a moment.
Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Um, and that's a great question. Okay. Here is a breakdown where the demographic groups are different programs that we have. So,
bright blue, all students, the most on the left bar. Then we have our economically disadvantaged students, our multilingual learners in the middle there, students with IEPs, and then students with 504 plans.
So, this is this is one of those um breakdowns that we look at that is really sort of hard to to draw conclusions out of. Um this data I I'll I'll use a term to describe it is very
noisy data. Okay. Um some of the students are included in multiple categories here. Okay. For example, it's not unusual for our multilingual learners to also be counted in the
economically disadvantaged um demographic group here. um students with IEPs. That's that's a huge range of different
um disabilities that we're talking about with students, right? Um so they're all sort of lumped together in this breakdown. And I share this not because it's, you know, noisy, hard to interpret data, but because this is one of the the the breakdowns we get from the state
that we want to look at and we want to make sense of and we want all of those bars to be as high as possible, right? Um so when we look at this, it certainly uh makes us want to know more about some of these um these areas where the the
performance is not at grade level. So that's exactly what I was talking about before. Not these students are performing at or above grade level. So that means that the rest of that 100% column are not.
They're under grade level. Okay. And so we'll Okay. What this is showing is a longitudinal comparison of pretty much every year that we've had
the NJ GPA. Okay. Prior to this, we had a gap with um the COVID public health emergency where we weren't doing testing. And then prior to that, we had you probably or you may remember we had
the park assessment which was a a different assessment. So, as long as we've been administering the NJGPA, this is the pattern that we're seeing. And so, you're seeing that there definitely was our lowest
performance was coming out of the COVID pandemic, not unexpected. Um, and it's been relatively stable since then, but we did see a little bit of a drop this year. And so, we want to try and understand that drop and what that means, right? Because what we're
doing here effectively is comparing different groups of kids, right? So the the column all the way on the right that was this year's 11th graders. The next one in was the prior year's
11th graders and so on and so forth. Okay? And so we see overall patterns and what we're trying to interpret is really honestly the quality or not quality but the effectiveness of our instructional programs, right? How
effective they are at moving students to that grade level or greater expectation. So when we were looking at this, we were asking lots of questions. What's different? Why did we see it drop? What's different? And so there were all
sorts of things. So we had some differences in the way we administered the NJGPA this year in terms of arranging units. Did that have an effect? It may have had an effect. Did it account for everything? Well, one of
our goals this year was to increase participation rate, right? Because we actually were on the state's naughty list for um not having a high enough participation rate. We had a over a 99% participation rate on this assessment.
You, as you would expect, as the participation rate goes up, your overall mean might come down, right? It's it's conceivable that it might come down. Or maybe there was something about this particular group of students that was unique, right? Was their
starting place lower than previous years, right? And we couldn't really answer that question, but what we could do for really the first time was start to look at where that starting place was. Okay. And um I'm sure everybody
knows because we talked about it an awful lot this year. Um we have a new student information system, Genesis, and we're starting to be able to uh do some data analysis with Genesis. That's that's pretty exciting. So
I'll introduce this. So, what you're looking at here is this current cohort of students that when I say current cohort of students, what I'm talking about is the 11th graders who took the NJ GPA in March of 2025.
So, what we were able to do was go back and say, okay, back when these 11th graders were eighth graders, what percentage of them were performing at or above grade level? Okay. And the answer was 54.7%
of them were performing at or above grade level in eighth grade. And that was about 540 students that we were able to track through this whole progression. This specifically, by the way, is English language arts that we're looking at right now.
At the end of nth grade, they took the SLA. At that point, 69% of them demonstrated that they were at or above grade level nine expectations. So that was exciting to see, right? So
we see that we're jumping up almost 15% proficiency rate in one year when they came to us and they are now in our program. Our next snapshot is 11th grade and at that point we see 86.1%
of the students are performing at or above grade level. So when we are asking the question of what does the effectiveness of our instructional programs look like? This type of glimpse we're now able to look at with the co falling and tracking
a cohort is telling a a pretty important story about growth and closing gaps. Right now, we're not able to really say why in eighth grade we were down at that 50% range. I don't know. It could have
been any number of things. It could have been because of COVID, right? like that's the thing that that's that's the easy to blame thing is co I don't know if that's the case but we know that that's this this is where we are there are all sorts of things that can disrupt
a group of students um it could have been something as I mean we've seen data um from research that you know large classes that have two teachers in a row in elementary school who were on maternity leave you can have like a
major impact that you can track through. So, I don't know what the cause was, but we know on when they got here, almost half of these students were not at grade level. And at this point in English language arts, we're looking at 86%.
So, ELA is sort of the easier one to look at because it's not it's not so many branching paths like our math program, but we're going to look at our math program, too. um it will just take a little more um of
looking at context. Okay, so this group of kids here are specifically the students who took algebra 1 at Central as ninth graders. Okay, so that's who we're looking at in
this this slide here. About 342 students that we have all three years of data for. of those students when they were in eighth grade, only a little more than 16% of them were
performing at or above grade level. Okay, which is sort of a scary number to look at. By the end of nth grade, 24%. Right.
By end of 11th grade, 73.4% are performing at or above grade level. That's a huge increase, right? Um, and I know back in October, we were looking at SLA results and we were we saw those
algebra results and we I I was at that meeting and I know we all walked out not feeling super great about those results. Um, I what I hope this does is provide a little more context to the story um about where those students were and what
the program that we have them tracking in um is doing. And so when we begin to ask questions like how effective is our mathematics program for these students who are effectively like the I guess you could think of like the your average
ongrade level type of student is it's pretty dramatic. This is something we're very excited about. Okay, I probably shouldn't tell you that Bob Cole was jumping up and down and clapping, but but I'll tell you anyway. He was we were very excited about this.
All right. So, here's a different group of students. So, these are the students who took algebra 1 as eighth graders. So, these are these are students that are performing above their grade level. So, we would expect that these students
are um you know, most of them are doing really well. So, in eighth grade, they were strong math students. 80% of them um were performing at or above grade level. Okay, that's maybe actually a little bit lower than I would have
expected for those students. Um, we're talking about 134 of our um the students who were 11th graders um back in March. At the end of algebra 2, 58% of them
were performing at or above grade or at or above the algebra 2 standards. So that's a question that's something that we need to look at here frankly is why did we see this dip? I know um across the state you hear the the math folks
talking about this as a notoriously difficult assessment. Um but it could also be an indication that uh we need to do some curricular work with this algebra 2 class. So that's something that we want to look at. Now, if we look
at where those students are by the end of 11th grade, and remember that the GPA is a measure of algebra 2 and geometry skills, 100% of those students met or exceeded grade level expectations. Okay, so despite that
little dip, um you can't get any better than that yellow bar there. So, that's that's pretty awesome. Okay. And then for, you know, just to be super complete, let's look at the kids who in eighth grade were taking either geometry
or algebra 2, depending on what their sending district they came from. They were doing super great in eighth grade and no shock, they are also still doing super great uh on the NJGPI. So,
these are the the most academically um successful math students that we have here at Hunter Central, right? Um so, well done. So, we have 46 students in
that that group there. Okay. Now, going back to if we just want to look at the groups of kids who were not successful in ninth grade, right? When I say successful, they weren't performing at
or above grade level in ninth grade. So, we'll take all of those kids. There was 102 of them. We look at what percent of them were at or above grade level in grade 8. About 1% of them. Okay. 0% in
grade nine. I didn't put it on here. What percent of those students by the end of 11th grade are now performing at or above grade level? Well, we're up to 26 and a half percent. Right? And those are our students that need the most support
um with mathematics. And so even though 26.5 is not as high as we want it to be, that's still a pretty a pretty great achievement. And that's that's where we start to think about our programs and
where do we want to really invest in trying to push. This is the group, right? So, a couple things that we're seeing here. So, we are seeing a lot of pretty dramatic evidence that our instructional programs are working well and we're seeing that
the decision of the district to move to this new SIS and some of these other data um platforms is paying the dividends that we had hoped it is or at least starting to. So, um, as we do these types of things in the future,
we'll we'll continue to, um, to to share that. Okay. So, that's the NJGPA. Um, I'm not going to read all this to you. This is this is the sorts of things that I was talking about before. Um I will
say the students who are still on that we're not meeting grade level expectations there are lots of other um pathways that they get and we have you know automatically they will be enrolled in the next NJGPA as seniors and some of
them will pass that some of them will pass on the SAT some of them will pass on various other assessments the ACUPPLACE or what have you if assessments are just the thing that they are having trouble, you know, crossing that bar. Um, we have
a portfolio program that where we have another way for them to demonstrate grade or uh graduation readiness and it is super successful. It's a huge huge lift for our math and English language arts department, but they do a
phenomenal job. And you know this past year um I forget exactly how many we had but it had to be close to a hundred. All of those students passed the portfolio. So no one is getting left behind. And I want to just make sure that that's
that's set. Sure. Absolutely. Okay. So, now we're going to switch gears and we're going to talk about the access assessment. D. Sure. We yeah we do see a higher passing rate.
Um the stu and one of the challenges is we have the PSAT, we have the SAT, we have the NJGPA, we have the NJSLA and what we see is usually similar patterns
but the passing rates are very different. And so one of the challenges of the instructional program is developing and delivering an instructional program that addresses the things that all of those different assessments are sort of targeted at,
right? And so any one of those is really not a good like we're going to draw a conclusion from this one assessment. We want to look at all of them as a battery of assessments and some of these more deep dives um to
really figure out, you know, what is really going on here and what do we need to do about it? And so when I say do about it, I mean what are the things that we need to invest in doing more? What are the things we need to change?
um where are the places that we need to take a look and figure out if something's not working, what exactly is that thing that's not working and fix it. And so um you know a little little bit of a a glimpse into the work of the CNI department. You know that's
the the NJSLA is required by the federal government. It's our federal accountability assessment. So, that's one of those Department of Education questions. Um, I think we are the last state, if I'm not mistaken, that has a different state assessment
and federal accountability assessment. So, New Jersey likes to really set the bar really high. Now, the good news is that's why when we look at these national comparisons, New Jersey is usually at the top of the pile, right? because we have really high expectations for our kids. Um, and they get a
terrific education here in the state. So, um, the why question, I can't begin to speculate why it is the way it is. All right. So, access. So, the access assessment is an assessment that we
administer to our multilingual learners every year. Okay. And so the promise of that is because we administer it every year, we can track growth yeartoear toear. That's the theoretical
sort of thing that we're hoping for. Now, we're going to see that there are some reality challenges to that. Um but just to sort of give you um some context about who we're talking about uh we're talking about as of June about 125 of
our students that English is not their first language. Okay. Um and so they fall into a whole variety of different categories. So we have 125 total. Seven of those students are tuition students.
We have some that are bilingual part-time students and and when we talk about our bilingual students um those are students that um when they tested when we tested them during intake they were really their English proficiency
level was really below um in their first language was below about middle school level. So they need support in their native language as well as in English. Okay. Um and then we have high density
ESL, some former MLS, um a couple kids who decline um families that decline services, that type of thing. >> This is one year this year as of June. Okay.
all students 9th grade through 12th grade. Okay. And I say as of June because this number changes all the time. Okay. >> Hello. It's the high it's the well the highest level. It's mostly ESL4 students
who are transitioning into a regular program who we expect to exit not need English language services for much longer. >> Thank you, Dr. Ardondo. She these are her babies, so she's she's
here, too. I like to I like to chat about the the data. She she's she can answer all the the deep deep questions. Okay. So the access test specifically is given to our multilingual learners as I mentioned but what it is is it's a test
of English language proficiency. Okay. So what we're talking about is reading, writing, speaking and listening. Okay. And it's based on a set of standards called the WIDA standards. it I mentioned before it's required
annually and the scores range from one is the lowest to six is the highest and where we typically exit students out of our program is when they hit about a 4.5 on that scale. Okay, these students also
take the NJ GPA even if their English language proficiency is very low, even if their native language proficiency is also very low, even if they have had disrupted
schooling and you know all of that kind of stuff. So when we look at that bar before and you know and we were worried about it because we do worry about it and we worry about these students there's a lot going on um that challenge those students ability
to demonstrate their uh proficiency on our state assessment. Okay. All right. So, I'm not going to read all this to you, but earlier I mentioned noisy data. This is very, very noisy
data. Um, so as we go through, we're going to try to try to filter some of that noise out. And when I talk about noisy data, one way to think about it is like if you've if you think about like the stock stock market charts that you see and
they're up and down, up and down, up and down, but there's going in a general direction, right? That general direction is the trend. the any one of the points along that could give you uh you know it might
be high higher than typical and give you sort of a overestimate how well things are going or lower. So we want to try and figure out what these trends are um through the noise. Okay. So countries of origin of our students.
So remember, we're talking about 125 different students. Um, and they come from a whole variety of different countries. Now, most of our students who are in our ML program are their native language, their first language is Spanish. Okay? And most of them come
from, make sure I get this right, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Awesome. Can you tell Laura prepped me for that that part? Okay.
So, what we're looking at here are what we call sample the our sample size population. So, as you look at this, you're probably saying to yourself, wait, hold on a second. I thought we had 125 students. Why in 2025 does it say,
you know, just shy of 70? Okay. What that means is we of that 125 only 70 of those students had taken the um the access test in the prior year for us to compare growth. So we can do growth of
the whole group like the mean the average growth but the kids are changing constantly. there's a churning of kids, new students coming in, students exiting, new students coming in, students exiting. Okay, so that makes it
difficult to really track the pattern. So the best way for us to track those patterns is looking at the individual students that we have multiple years that we can compare. And what we're hoping for, right, the goal is that we're seeing growth every year, that
their 2025 score is higher than their 2024 score and things like that. So that's what we're looking for. So this is our mean proficiency growth and our goal is what we're hoping for is
for that blue bar to be up around 0.5. Okay. Now, clearly it is not up at 0.5, right? So, this is our mean growth. Our target from the state because this is an accountability measure for us is that
something around what 60%. 60% of our students should be seeing that 0.5 growth. Okay? And so, the mean growth we're seeing is not there. Although last year for example we did
hit that goal of 0.5 for 60% of the population. So it I apologize it is sort of hard to track all of that but this is one of those things that we are looking at and bless you we want that blue bar to be
higher right so when we're looking at our programs we want to we want to be making changes that are that is resulting in that mean proficiency growth getting higher and higher. Okay.
Yes. Did everybody catch that? So coming out of COVID there was a year of a gap. So the 20202 bar is two years of growth being measured. So, thinking about that stock market trend bar, is it going up? It's hard to
say if we sort of ignore the 2022 bar, maybe, but not dramatically. Okay, here's a measure. This is our number of students that hit that 0.5.
So we're we see that last year or this this past spring we had a 25. So it's a higher number than we've been seeing. So but that's a raw number not a percentage of our ML population. So that's a that's
a good number. Um but again we want that going higher and higher. Okay. So another assessment that we administer to these students is the ENIL assessment and this is an assessment that we use to
measure their native language proficiency. Okay, so native language proficiency and you can see that um you basically if if you know Spanish you you have a bunch of
these that are different colors and they correspond to grade levels. Okay. And so, um, you know, we obviously you want the grade level to be the same grade level as the student, right? We, you
know, we want them to be literate in Spanish um, at their grade level that they happen to be as well as being develop be developing English proficiency also at that grade level. Okay. So when we're
looking at gains in students, so we're measuring their grade level proficiency in Spanish. So we're looking at Spanish. It's a primary language, first language of most of our LL students.
We had 23 or 25 students who were, we mentioned before, uh performing below that middle school grade level. And so they went into a bilingual program. So, of those 25 students, 23 of them we had year-to-year
comparisons of that ENIL assessment. 16 students saw a full grade level growth in Spanish literacy and six of the students saw two grade levels growth. So, we're seeing good growth from the bilingual program in the native
language. um in addition to the growth that they're making in their English language proficiency. But again, these are small numbers and the students they're they're you know they're sort of where population is churning. Um so this
is difficult to track. Okay. like diversity of home language. True. So once you hit a certain threshold of population then you're required to start which the number is 20 we're we need to
then be having like for example once we hit that threshold of 20 we need Spanish speakaking bilingual program. If we hit 20 students who speak uh Mandarin then we would need a Mandarin program. We
don't have that right now. Right. So, of our 125 um ML students, 120 of them were Spanish speakers. So, and then there's five students with a variety of different languages
from the Yeah. It's a it's an interesting challenge, right? Um and as a public school, comprehensive public school, our mission is to serve every single kid in the community. Um and so it's a it's an
interesting challenge. Um, fortunately at Hunter Central here, we have a really strong uh, ML program and ML staff um, and an expert supervisor here who is I'm
very fortunate to have on our team here. Um, so takeaways and I know I' I've used up my time. I'm expecting the gong to to gong any second here. um we are making gains here. This is a
population that is very hard to serve for a lot of reasons. And so some of our um the way we're addressing that is ext it's it's outside of the curriculum, right? So we know that um absenteeism is
an issue. So addressing absenteeism, we know that it is for some of the families moving into our community, they're coming from a cultural background where, you know, we take some things for granted like your kids supposed to go to
school and every day. Um, and that's not the case all over the world. And so helping those families to understand what the expectations are and that coming to school there are benefits to coming to school other than just learning English so that you can then go
into the workforce. And so um Lur has been leading um a committee to look at strategies to address the absenteeism and um working with our registar to to put together um you know different ways
of um sort of welcoming these families into central's school community and understanding what their role is as parents and supporting their child and coming every single day. And so those are the kinds of things that we're really looking at. You could see that's
under the task force piece here. And we keep taking a, you know, we keep looking at this data and really trying to figure out how can we piece together the picture to get a more contextual
glimpse into the data like we saw with the NJGPA. Um, we're going to have to see what some of the changes at the federal level have. You know, a lot we get a lot of federal support for ML programs and um,
unfortunately what we're hearing right now is that we may not get that that support. And so, you know, as a district, we're going to have to figure out how to provide these services um without that support. Uh so that's you know more to more work to be done
obviously down the road for for all of us um the board and uh administration alike. Okay and that's it. Any qu any other questions for me or for
Dr. Ardondo? All right. Thank you for letting me go on about data. Okay. Okay, as everyone's getting settled, I want to thank you, Dr. Hall, for your presentation. Very thorough. I was also very excited about the growth, and it
was exciting that we could do that this year because we finally had those scores since 8th grade to be able to compare. So, thank you very much. And congratulations, too, to our staff. And it's not just our math and English staff and our multilingual learning staff and
and our ESL staff. It's really our full staff. So, thank you to our staff for supporting our students growth. And I wanted to thank you all too because you are an important part of this. You're approving our resources, our budget that helps fund these programs. So, thank you for your your support in that as well.
Uh I know we went a little longer than we anticipated, but it was worth it. Again, Doc Dr. Hall, thank you. Um I did want to note on the agenda you'll see that we have our Hib and suspension report but we have moved our um action item for the Hib report to after
executive session. So I will um conclude my report now and hand it back over to you Lisa. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. At this time we will move into our first public residence forum. This is for action items on the agenda. We will have
another residents forum public um forum at the end of the meeting if anybody would like to come up and speak about the action items. Good evening, Reverend Vernon Williams, Raritton Township. President Santangelo, uh, and I'd also
would love to hear from Superintendent Kangallosi Hayes uh, on this issue. Can you tell us if you still believe in the philosophy and theory of action of the district's former policy of 2411 counseling services in light of the
second reading revision uh to policy 2411 tonight? Currently uh the policy uh stipulates the central regional high school district is committed to guiding students toward their goals and
aspirations. We recognize that socialization has been compromised by global challenges. Students require support to develop emotional intelligence and understand the power of community. This requires schools to use a broader,
more personalized and assetsoriented approach to student growth rather than a narrow definition of student achievement. The 100 Central Regional High School District further believes that in response to these challenges and to
ensure that each student has access to the promises of our mission. The overarching work of counseling services is to ensure that our school knows and supports students and their families through connections grounded in understanding and acceptance.
because the current 2411 counseling services policy leaves out all of this language. Language that is critical to the appropriate care of our students and an extension their families. Therefore, I have to wonder if your
ideological bent does not allow you to see the dire need for a critical counseling services department that per pre previous 2411 policy for counseling services seeks to the uh seeks to to stipulate the current uh in the current
2411 policy fir and further states if the counseling services department um uh if the counseling services department does these three establishes strong, compassionate, and supportive relationships that fuel
trust, empathy, and kindness among and within individuals and in our school community. Two, represents a opportunities and resources that are tailored to the unique needs and aspirations of each student. and three
and empowers each student to grow to to endure to be authentic and to be true to themselves. Then each student will engage and thrive developing agency through self-awareness, mental health,
independence, and reflection. Hence each hence currently the counseling services department at central endeavors to build relationships relationships that provide a welcoming and culturally responsive environment to
promote student agency regardless of values, beliefs, abilities, sexual orientations, gender identifications and expressions, racial, ethnic, religious or national backgrounds. To that end,
counselors will go will get to know each student and family and address their unique needs. The proposed policy changes to 2411 counseling services focuses heavily on career counseling and downplays the
social emotional development of our students. Our students social emotional uh well-being has as much to do with their growth and success as their academic achievements. My ask of you though on this evening is
to not approve this policy change on second reading. Regardless of the outcome of your vote tonight, can you guarantee me and other parents that you will not either eliminate this department or cut back on its services?
I fear that with the change to this policy, you plan to alter the current critical services to our students uh that they now benefit from. I welcome your laying my fear of such a thing happening. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Is there anyone else interested in speaking right now? >> Okay, with that we will close out the first public forum. We will move on to our organizational
items. Um, both of these items, the revised school calendar and the bell schedule, as well as the chapter 27 emergency virtual and remote instructional program was addressed by our superintendent. So, with that, I would like to move those two items. Um,
can I get a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Can I get a roll call, please? >> Miss Gray. Dr. Halpern. Yes, >> Mrs. Kellogg. >> Yes, >> Miss Lacosta. >> Yes, >> Mrs. Peterson.
>> Yes, >> Miss Dugen. >> Yes, >> Miss Gong. >> Yes, >> and Mrs. Santangelo. >> Yes. >> Oh, yes. Motion carries. >> Thank you. All right. At this time, we will move into our committee um report readouts. We'll start with the student
life and program committee. Leslie, >> the SLP meeting met on July 10th. In attendance were Matt Hall, Ed Brandt, Rebecca Peterson, Sue Dugen, and Lisa Santangelo. We did receive questions prior to the committee meeting. Those
questions were responded to, and they are reflected in the minutes. We have seven action items to move this month, including the renewal of our professional services contract for staff and administration, a new aerospace club, nursing plan, IEP transportation
contract, as well as an overnight trip for our amazing dance club. With that, I would like a motion and a second to move items one through seven. >> I'll second. Yeah, >> I thought I just said that.
>> I would like to motion. >> I'd like to second. >> Okay. Any comments on the action items? All right. Seeing none, we'll take a roll call, please. >> Miss Gray, >> Dr. Halpern, >> yes.
>> Mrs. Kellogg, >> yes. >> Miss Lacosta, >> yes. >> Mrs. Peterson, >> yes. >> Mrs. Dugen, >> yes. Miss Bong. >> Yes. >> And Mrs. Santangelo. >> Yes. >> All yes. Motion carries. >> All right. Thank you. Next up is the
operations and transportation committee. Jessica Rothell is on a well-deserved vacation this week. So, I will read out the uh the discussion items. Um and met on July 15th. in attendance were Jessica
Kangalloce Hay, Heather Spitzer, Jessica Rothell, Ellen Halpern, Sandra Gong, and myself. Uh we did not receive any questions prior to the committee meeting on the 19 action items on the agenda tonight. Um, the action items include
our monthly financial reports, invoices, transfers, insurance renewals, bus routes, and accepting with gratitude, a very generous donation of a $700 value to our music department from Katherine Elworthy. So, on behalf of the board, we thank you very much for that thoughtful
donation. With that, I would like to move items one through 19. Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Any comments on the action items? All right, seeing none, can I get a roll call, please?
>> Yes. >> Mrs. Kellogg, >> yes. >> Miss Lacosta, >> yes. >> Mrs. Peterson, Mrs. Dugen, >> yes. >> Miss Gong, >> yes. >> Miss Gray, >> yes. >> And Mrs. Santangelo, >> yes. >> Oh, yes. Motion carries.
>> All right. Thank you. Um, next up is the personnel committee meeting which met on July 15th as well. In attendance were Jessica Kangalloce Hay, Heather Spitzer, Claudia Gray, D Kellogg, and myself. We did not receive any questions prior to the committee meeting on the following
29 action items on the agenda tonight. Uh those items include resignation, contractual appointments, reappointments, revised contracts for identified teachers, custodians, and secretaries as well as professional development courses for staff and leaves
of absences. So with that, I would like to move items 1 through 29. Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Any comments on the action items? >> All right. Seeing none, can I get a roll call, please? >> Mrs. Kellogg?
>> Yes. Miss Laccasta, >> yes. >> Mrs. Peterson, >> yes. >> Mrs. Dugen, >> yes. >> Miss Gong, >> yes. >> Miss Gray, >> yes. >> Dr. Halpern, >> yes. >> And Mrs. Santangelo, >> yes. >> Oh, yes. Motion carries. >> All right. Thank you. Next up is the
policy committee report. >> Thank you. The policy committee met on July 10th. Uh in uh present were Sue Dugen, myself, Lisa Santangelo, Edward Brandt, and Matthew Hall. Um we did one receive one qu question from a
non-committee member prior to the meeting and that um question was answered in the minutes and reflected um for everyone's review. Um we have several policies tonight though many of them are kind of duplicates because we have the 3000s and the 4000s which are
um certified and non-certified staff members and so we have a lot of we have a lot of policies that that fit in both. Um we have uh political activities um which was a policy that our vendor released in 2022 but it was not provided to the board for consideration at that
time. Um we are moving to adopt a new acceptable use of district technology to uh acceptable use of computer networks and resources by teaching and support staff members. This is a um a mouthful but it's essentially our acceptable use
policy. We currently have an NJSBA policy and we are simply moving to a stress ESME policy. Um they're both rather old but they are still relevant. Um we have some other policies that are just updates that the board missed at
some point. We have one from 2023 uh policies 3324 and 4324. Um the administration also amended um some language to bring um some of the policies up to date um on some of our older policies. For instance, uh 3431
and 4431 uncompensated leave. Um we have a regular update to a military leave policy which was updated in 2017 that we missed. Um compensation policy 4410 was added. administration added some detail
to this policy to bring it in line with our current practice. Um same thing with policy 4418 and uh 4425. Uh we have 7510 is the use of school facilities. Uh this policy actually had
an update in 2020 and this is a mandated policy by our policy vendor. Um it was not adopted at that time for whatever reason. Uh we actually identified this last year going through the policies that we were rather focused on QAC policies at that point and um we also
have another policy 7510.1 which is also a use of schools um facilities communication facilities building usage. Um these actually conflict with each other. So the decision was made to keep the one from
our policy vendor which is mandated and we are moving to abolish the uh second policy on a similar topic. Anything that the administration um believes was useful from that 7510.1 will be added to the administrative
regulation for 7510 which is really the best place for detailed issues that go into a policy rather than into the policy alone which requires two reads to update. Um we have uh two four items on our first
read to abolish. Uh we have our current acceptable use of district technology. That's the NJSBA policy. Um administrative vacations. This is not doing anything to administrative vacations. We asked uh Dr. Hall did did say he would reach out to let everyone
know that nothing is happening to your vacations. Um this is actually really addressed individually in the administrative contracts and so our policy actually kind of creates a problem with that. It can be conflicting. So we are getting rid of the policy their contracts obviously
control. Um and then the communication facilities building usage is the last one that we are moving to abolish. And then we have our four um second reads from last month. And these have uh we didn't receive any questions from any board members about these policies. And
with that I will move items one through three. >> Can I get a second? It's okay. Second. >> Okay. Um, any comments on the action items? >> Um, is there a chance that we could get a copy of the draft regulation for 7510
um along with the second read of the policy just so we know what's being included for next month? >> Yes. On 75 10 Um, I'm still not quite sure why we need
to abolish that, so I will be voting no. >> Okay. Any other comments? All right. Roll call, please. >> Miss Lacosta, >> yes. >> Mrs. Peterson.
Mrs. Dugen. >> Yes. >> Miss Gong. So yes, except for section three, number four, policy 7510.1, >> Miss Gray. >> Yes, >> Dr. Halpern. >> Yes.
>> Was that a yes? >> I'm sorry, Mrs. Kellogg. >> Um, let's see. Yes, except for for item one. Um, number 14, I'm voting no, but the rest are yeses. For item two, I'm voting no on
one and five, but the others are yeses. And then for item three, I'm voting yes on one through three and no on four. and Mrs. Santangelo. >> Yes. >> Even with the no votes, all motions
pass. >> Okay. Thank you. Moving on to additional board business. Um, is there anything that anyone would like to add to our committees for next month? Okay. Um, sorry. I I would just like I
noticed in the operations and transportation u minutes that there is going to be a discussion on some vendors. I would just like to to say that those vendors have been approved in our budget and I I understand that that they can there can be a discussion about
whether we're approving them or not, but I believe that parents and the community and students have been led to believe that those services will be available to them during this school year. And I think that we need to be very thoughtful about how we approach um any changes
that we might make at this time. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. And with that, we will move on to the final residence forum. >> But before we do that, you've got your additional board business. So, just curious since uh the chair and another
board member attended a leadership meeting whether you wanted to just share highlights. >> Uh not really. Um yeah, I mean it was really actually turned out to be just a review of training that we already received. So, nothing really noteworthy
to report, unfortunately. Thank you. >> All right. So, with that, let's move into the final residence forum. This is open to any items uh on the agenda or off the agenda. So, if you'd like to come up and speak, please feel free.
All right. So, seeing none, we will close out that final uh residence forum and we will move on to executive session. Um, so we will be discussing HIPS litigation and uh we will be coming out to take action.
So, we will be in executive session for maybe approximately one hour. So, I would like to convene into executive session. Can I get a second? >> Second. >> Okay. And a roll call, please. Mrs. Peterson, >> Mrs. Dugen, >> yes.
>> Miss Gong, >> yes. >> Miss Gray, >> yes. >> Dr. Halpern, >> yes. >> Mrs. Kellogg, >> yes. >> Miss Lacosta, >> yes. >> And Mrs. Santangelo, >> yes. Everyone here. Okay. We don't have to do a roll call to
reconvene. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh my gosh. Can you >> all right here? Everybody ready. Okay. So, based on the vote in executive
session, we reconvene into open session. We're moving to affirm the 100 central regional high school administration disposition for the following HIP cases reviewed by the board of education in close session on actually
July 21st 2025. Um so can I get a second? >> Okay. Roll call. >> Mrs. Peterson. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Dugen? >> Yes. >> Miss Gong? >> Yes. Miss Gray? Yes,
>> Dr. Halpern. >> Yes, >> Mrs. Kellogg. >> Miss Lacosta. >> Yes. >> I apologize, M. Mrs. Kellogg. >> Thank you, >> Miss Lacosta. >> Yes. >> And Mrs. Santangelo. >> Yes. >> Well, yes. Motion carries.
>> All right. Thank you. And uh meeting is adjourned. All in favor? I >> I motion. Okay. Second. Yes. Okay.