##VIDEO ID:c3U5tLT4xlY## meeting of the MAA board of education is open to members of the public to be physically present members of the public that attend will be asked to follow the same procedures as all other visitors to our schools those procedures can be found on the agenda page of our website Additionally the board meeting will be live streamed for viewing purposes only anyone wishing to view the meeting May do so via Zoom webinar ID for this meeting is 85043 8687 and the required pass password is 556 237 I call this meeting to order roll call please Mr lamb Mr copin here M Evano Mr dilva Mr Denise here Mr Gallow here Mr use here Mr karski Miss Jansen Dr Mor here adequate notice of agenda of this meeting has been provided to the Ridgewood news and the record specifying that the m board ofed education will meet on January 22nd 2025 in the administrative offices 60 Ridge Road Maan New Jersey a copy was filed with the Township Clerk uh salute to the flag Mr C Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice all um all right we are okay sure so uh we're GNA go to Executive session in the beginning this evening so uh because it should be fairly short so I need a motion to recess to exact um Mr Gallow second by Mr copin we will be back in uh shortly there e e e e e e e e e okay and we're back so I need a motion to reconvene to public Action meeting Mr Hughes and second by Mr cin thank you all right let's move on to agenda questions please letm me your questions at this time to resolutions under new business on this agenda as a matter of fairness you're asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than 3 minutes please ident if you're here with the group please identify your yourself the group and your position in the group if you're here as an individual please provide your name and address this section of public participation will be limited to 15 minutes please specify the resolution you are referring to in your question all right I need a motion to open the meeting to the public Mr Janise second by Mr Hughes we are officially open to the public okay seeing no one coming forth at this time we need a motion to close the meeting to the public Mr Gallow second by Mr copin all right our Mawa student representative report this evening um hi so for the first thing we have is that last night we action Athletics hosted the annual hoops for Marcus game it was very successful raising over $3,000 all of which will go to the Marcus kale Memorial Scholarship also wiard has started and they have performed at West Milford with their performance titled when darkness comes Art Club will be organizing an exhibition for the T3 gallery and they got new walls and pedestals for that which is exciting and then the seniors hosted their talent show a few weeks ago and they raised over $2,000 from it and that also includes their Pizza fundraiser too and then Deca sent 90 students to rampo college to compete and 42 of them will be going to Atlantic City for States and then the last thing is that we had various students compete in or performed in the Bergen County bands and the Bergen County course both of which had concerts at per High School on January 12th and that's very good thank you very much uh Dr Doro superintendent report this evening yes so um things um as we usually do we have a number of things that we would like to to celebrate that's been taking part throughout the district um our Performing Arts continues to perform at a high level and represents Mawa extremely well um after a long wait for the final results the district is happy to announce that eight of our nine students who audition for North Jersey Regional High School chus recently were accepted congratulations to senior Colin MossMan sophomores Daniel Fernandez sir Lee AIA Manali aani Singh sasm Valour and freshman ashini Desai and Alina Gina Colin Danny sesm and Asha uh will be singing with the mixed chorus and Suri Aya aani and Alina will be singing with the travel chorus special kudos to Sor and Alina who both scor in the top five of their respective sections they will be they will all perform at the Morris nolles High School competition on February the 1st next slide our Performing Arts success continues congratulations to sophomore trombonist Gloria Zan on earning first chair trombone in the 2025 region one symphonic band Gloria now qualifies to audition for all St band this I'm extremely excited about as well we've expanded our Middle School sports uh This falls in line with what we talked about along lines of our facilities upgrades and things that we want to do to really represent our SCH as well on the left you'll see a picture of our current Scoreboard on the right there's a mockup of uh the new scoreboard which will be uh be installed the scoreboard um is actually has ated by uh Dylan hofus with DHA Contracting we've worked with him on a number of different projects Mr peler the contact and Mr Greg Romero has been working with uh Dylan and Dylan's very excited to uh donate this piece for our Middle School uh field um this is not like it matters I'll still share with you 3650 scoreboard uh the installation hopefully will be taking place um in the late spring early summer Slide Five I know this is getting old but I'm going to keep saying it it's not getting old never getting old we we completed our first meeting with significant success um we've also were able to send out a survey to gather feedback from all those who couldn't attend just to ensure that everyone's voice is heard and taken into consideration as we build our next strategic plan for 2025 to 2030 um we will be sending out a save the date very shortly for our February 27th meeting um the the location will be at Joyce Kilmer school um please we we ask that uh you go out and you get as many people as you can to attend last meeting there was over 70 people who were in attendance um but we want to continue that that positive momentum through the second and third meing slides our next slide is specific to our thunderer times it's my hope that this has hit your mailbox since the last meeting um this is an our effort to engage our entire Community not just our school-based um clientel this is an opportunity for us to Showcase all the things that we have to offer across the district k pre through 12th grade um the administrative team did a lot of work on gathering information and pictures to really uh showcase the things that we do and the wide variety of experiences that we provide to our students um also it's an opportunity for us to connect with our community that don't have students in our school systems and and share with them um their contributions to our efforts as well and how much we appreciate that we are also I ask that you take some time to look at our website so as you all know we changed over our website last year we've made a significant effort to make sure that that website showcases a lot of the things not only at the district level but at the schools the school levels so there are a number of things from the Thunderbird times that you'll see on our district website it gives people an opportunity um to to enjoy the work that's being done here in ma that's all I have thank you thank you very much Dr Doro um our assist our business administrator uh report Mr lamb you have a report for us this evening sure Dr morthy uh uh we have on the agenda tonight uh approval of awarding a bid for the uh rooftop hbac unit for Joyce kelmer School uh for $380,000 and the great news for that is that the state will be reimbursing us for 40% of that cost uh through the rod Grand program uh this is one of several Rod Grand projects that will be approving uh this year uh on the agenda tonight is approval of the uh 2023 202 was it not on I'm sorry on the agenda is approval of the 2023 24 audit so just wanted to thank our our Auditors from missia for their hard work on it and thank you to all of our business office staff for their hard work in preparation for the audit uh Mr Gallow I'll let him provide more details later in his report and um and that is all I have for the ba report thank when is the uh JK RT project going to be implemented over the summer it'll be a summer project and hopefully finish before school starts yes thank you Mr lamb um assistant superintendent report Dr Fair yes good evening good evening uh we're back so uh there's you know since droro and I have been preparing these slides for board meetings um our building principles have caught on so they forward us all the great things happening so um we're trying our best to showcase um everything but you know we actually have some slides that we've pushed to the next meeting so there's just a lot of great stuff can't all I know overwhelming yes it sure is so uh you'll see here we have um our students uh from our Deca Club Deca stands for distribute education Club of America over at MAA high school so you'll see in that that Center image our students are actually throwing up the DECA symbol um because they crushed the Northwest District competition last week at rampo college um MAA DEA competed with 2,000 students in events from marketing entrepreneurship business management hospitality and finance only the top 14 in an individual event and the top eight in a team event were selected to advance 20 Deca t- birds are advancing to the state competition being posted in Atlantic City this March so those who have uh Advanced we have president CLA Leo Officer James arciero officer s Sam Bama DEA Delina Wong Karen Salman AAL Crow the team of Dashi and rad Eon Nama Aiden Muller Izzy Molina Trisha Raja Mory Ana duve Shani Paar asini Desai Mato agami Devon strommer Kate rips kayn brisbee and um Kazi so congratulations to all on a win well earned you'll see your places we have our announcement for kindergarten registration that will be sent to families in the coming weeks so included in that notification to new families will also be the introduction to our summer programs connected to students new to kindergarten including Safety Town in late June our kindergarten Kickstart program in early August and our kindergarten play date hosted by the msf that occurs right before the start of the school year as an opportunity for incoming kind kindergarteners and their families to connect so we're excited to welcome our new families to District uh you also see in this evening's agenda um all of our existing summer programs from previous summers are listed on the agenda uh for your approval as well so we hope to begin Staffing each of those programs in the coming week so in upcoming agendas we hope to have those staff members uh recommended for your approval uh we have over at rampo Ridge we have teams which is another acronym um I'll share with you it stands for the empathy equality entrepreneurship Mission which is a nonprofit organization that connects students with humanitarian organizations around the world so we reported on this a few months ago that this would be happening and and it it finally did so here just just a few pictures from their conference last week where our students started out with a zoom call with kids and teachers from Kenya then the wal students introduced each of the speakers um which was a really cool experience for our students and here we have Miss Shannon on the right she teaches social studies at the ridge she's holding her prize for winning uh their trivia contest and she looks quite proud uh the workshop focused primarily on the UN sustainability goals and how this connects to the Declaration of Human Rights and the curricular connections to the importance of clean water to a community so good stuff happening over at the bridge we've also talked a lot about our internship and externship program droro and I have bragged a lot about this program we thought uh mid year it was would be really great for you to see some of the faces of the kids involved in our program um on the left you'll see uh Carlos Alfaro Hernandez who is a work-based learning student doing his inter ship at Liberty Kia here Carlos is assisting a mechanic with a pre- delivery inspection what's cool about Carlos's experience is he's deciding if he wants to be a plumber or a mechanic uh post high school so um he he looks like he's smiling and enjoying it so perhaps he will lean towards um working with vehicles uh you'll see in the middle we have Wally Dennison who is a senior working at leitz Advanced Technology Corporation over in Allandale uh leitz uh for those who don't know works with Technologies associated with automobiles airplanes drones tools and machines in medical technology Foods flooring and packaging uh w- hopes after graduation to be a marine and what's so cool is that uh this company makes pumps for the Marines so um it's a really cool connection for him uh for for what's to come in his future on the right we have uh Jason Francisco's work study which Stop and Shop and wakeoff and here he is stocking shelves our next slide has uh Spencer dma uh who's showcased over at Powerhouse a local gym uh he's been learning about the inw workings of the operations of a gym and uh he's looking to pursue a study in athletic training after he graduates from AA High School uh students who worked uh voter registration as an internship through December uh are are there in that second an image where they worked with the League of Women Voters uh they learned about obviously voter registration and engaging with the community to do so Gabby young is currently intering at M Public Library posed her mentors in that image and jacn lzbth God bless you is in the fourth picture in her work study at suffer in dunin D so we have a range of experiences for our kids and uh I think they're getting a lot out of it Joyce kler School announces its I ready winners um with our focus on using data to personalize student learning our teachers have been working hard on true data driven instruction uh over at JK classes are highlighted as winners each month so if you remember JK um had their academic pep rally that we highlighted at our last board meeting to promote the excitement behind this work where we had chor the I do a dance off with the the Thunderbird um so we appreciate their efforts here you you can see in this series of images uh the winning class is based on numbers of lessons completed um with a certain percentage of accuracy within the time allotted per week so winning classes spin a wheel for any of the following prizes including Game Room Time popcorn or popsicle party or a homework pass as we've been talking about with our strategic plan um our goal is to make uh more and more connections especially here uh with rampo college uh right here in Mawa uh beyond our student teacher clinical interns you'll see on this evening's agenda we now have established a multi-year partnership with rampo school and nursing beginning with three interns from Rano College working with three of our School nurses so we're really excited about that as well we have a report on uh the high school's homework club which is also been sparked from our strategic planning in terms of making connections with our older students and mentoring uh our our younger students since last spring so our high school students continue to be fantastic helpers and they're forming meaningful connections with the younger students through their work in our homework club our younger students are able to connect with and look up to our high schoolers as Role Models um there there's so much uh so much partic participation that um they're looking to potentially find a different space because as you can see like it's brimming with uh with the number of students who are helping and being helped um what has been most rewarding for Mrs gazinski the adviser of the club is seeing former homework club participants who once sought help now return as high school helpers which is really cool to see that full circle uh watching their growth and how they now get back the program has been incredibly fulfilling so we're really proud of our kids uh Dr T and I will be visiting the homework club in the coming weeks and some additional uh highlights at the elementary school level uh you'll see here this past January 20th our K3 schools honored a Dr Martin Luther King Day through a variety of different activities uh you'll see GW students honoring The Life and Legacy of Dr Martin Luther King through engaging art activities and read aloud uh students explore themes of discussing the positive changes made for our world today encouraging students to Value differences fairness imagination and empathy and you'll see over on the right um lenp medos um their fizzed class actually it's that's an action shot from a video that was taken where students would perform specific exercises based on a series of facts about Martin Luther King's life so if they thought it was true they would do one exercise and if they thought the fact was false they did another exercise so um that's that's our our staff trying to to get our kids motivated and here at Betsy Ross school we had another visit from loai Rose um ly Rose is an organization that focuses on wildlife and Environmental Education with a special focus on animal rescue uh the educational program provides students with lessons about nature and the environment and lastly we have a student to highlight here senior Kon Macker has just been informed that she's been selected as a 2025 Bergen County unsung hero uh Kirsten will be attending the county award ceremony which will be hosted on Tuesday March 4th at bur Community College the ceremony promises to be a memorable occasion filled with inspiration recognition and the company of fellow students faculty school board members and distinguished guests the distinction is given to those students who make their schools a better place so congratulations to Kirsten on this welld deserved recognition and lastly uh our only person who's in the audience other than Miss Rizzo and Dr Lino is Mr Brian who is uh listed as a recommendation for appointment under agenda item 19B um we're recommending to the board Mr near as the assistant to the business administrator Mr near is currently the staff accountant for Randol Public Schools where he is primarily responsible for payroll in the business office before this role Mr near served on the auditing team for naaia LLC where he served as a senior accountant in fact Mr nearer actually served as an auditor in reviewing this District's finances prior to joining Randolph Mr Air's references share that he is professional and calm and has a wonderful personality in the office further his references at Randolph also Shar that Mr n's audit audit background and payroll experience give him a strong foundational knowledge of school Finance uh through the interview process of approximately 30 candidates U Mr near showcases professionalism and his understanding of school business operations and we recommended to the board for this role without hesitation Brian you can do the wave thank you alloud that's it thank youing name thank you Dr fair and there was more that that you couldn't even there's a lot to come and congratulations uh Mr near and Welcome to our district thank you um all right president's report um so I'm going to just speak to our um committee and liaison appointments have been uh completed and I just want to talk about that a little bit uh we are a board that runs through committees so we have six standing committees and one ad hoc committee uh and at this time uh board members expressed their interest and what committees they want to be on um and The Business of those committees is done and then brought back to the full board so um I just wanted to review um we have our executive committee which is um myself and uh the first and second vice presidents uh so Mr DVA Mr kisari uh on negotiations committee we have um Miss Jansen who's not here this evening who will be our chairperson uh we also have Mr Gallow Mr Denise and Mr compan joining the team on uh instruction and curriculum and special education um I'm the chairperson and we have Mr Gallow Miss davano and Mr copin uh finance and Facilities uh Mr Gallow is our chairperson and we have Mr dilva Mr kisari and M Miss Janson uh community relations uh it's another standing committee that's chaired by Miss davero and Mr kmari Mr Hughes and Mr copin are on that committee our policy committee is going to continue to be led by Mr Denise as our chair and we have Miss Jansen Mr Hughes and Mr dilva um our ad hoc Transportation committee which uh we're looking to make a as a full standing Comm but that takes some uh things that we have to do to vote on uh that's chaired by Mr copin and uh Mr Denise Mr Hughes and Mr Gallow so um we also make our leaz on appointments we have appointments to other organizations um and uh one of those is MAA access for all uh this year that will be Mr Gallow and Miss davano is the alternate uh we also have leaz on to the Bergen County School Board Association uh this year that's going to again be Mr Denise and an alternate Mr Hughes um Mawa schools Foundation Miss Jansen and Mr compan and our Board of edaz on to Town Council uh which is uh Mr karski and Mr coplin uh and then I will be the liaison to our n New Jersey school board's legislative committee so anyway um I thank thank all the board members for providing um their requests um and being very flexible um the one thing about this board is I hear often from board members put me where you need me um there's a lot of flexibility people are very willing to work together and work on any committee and and that's greatly appreciated because I think that's the strength of this board and how well we work together so thank you very much um that's all I have for President report now let's move on to our board committee reports and any of our chair people who have reports this evening Mr coplin to start please uh Transportation met this morning uh for the first time of the calendar year I want to thank um Dr Fair Mr Lim and Miss spenler for their time this morning it was great uh just I want to highlight just one quick number for just remind everyone the schools have been doing audits of writers ship uh so they're doing on random days throughout the since September uh about three days each month through December um they're random they're they're noting weather they're noting conditions things along those lines we're averaging about a 39% ridership which is consistent from last year as well so I just wanted to share that number because it's a that's an important number when we start talking about transportation we talk about busing how many kids are using it things along those lines so um welcome Mr Gallow back to the committee so that's all I have thank you thank you Mr compan should we just go around Mr Gallow um shortly before our board meeting we met with our auditor to review the audit findings for the past year um you'll notice in 18j and 18K there are two items related to um recommendations and findings uh regarding management in the district financial management issues in the district they were relatively minor um and in general the uh audit was um uh pretty good for us um I would say but there's always a bit of room for improvement and there and we'll we're going to get there um so I just wanted to thank Tom and his office for um getting us through the audit process it's always an undertaking there two Auditors that come in for they review all sorts of Records all day long and purchase orders requisitions Financial records Etc um it's a very comprehensive undertaking for the district and for the most part the district has done very well over the past couple years there are very the findings this year were relatively minor they have no way uh impact the overall um uh misrepresent the overall condition of the of the district's uh financial status so um and we also had a lively conversation on various other subjects that will help us in the future so thank you great thank you very much Mr Denise yes the policy committee met on January six as part of our continuing review of our policy and regulation inventory and we have four policies and regulations on tonight's agenda for our first reading policy and regulation 1540 administrator code of ethics was revised by removing the word sub substantial when referring to comp of Interest adding a reporting requirement for offers of meals entertainment or hospitality and replaced Financial disclosure language which with language from Strauss ese policy and regulation 1550 Equal Employment anti-discrimination Practices was revised by replacing public education system of New Jersey with Mawa Public School District and replacing the word handicapped with disabled policy 5120 assignment of students was revised by adding a sentence recognizing that the consideration of school assignment other than the designated other than that designated by a student's designated attendance area of their residence will be on a case- by casee bases and also adding a paragraph concerning the building principle assigning students in the school to appropriate appropriate grades classes or groups and finally policy 571 was revised by changing the title of the policy from plagiar plagiarism to academic Integrity thank you Mr Denise um all right I have a Qui report from instruction and curriculum um this is actually from our meeting uh from December um closing out the year um wanted to highlight um something that I thought was um uh that was presented to us by um Courtney carella um something called The Confidence closet at Mawa High School um a very interesting program that um was started um Courtney uh works very closely and and has a program for ML Learners and so this was started uh for that in case kids were fired uh things that they weren't you know able to get they needed some pieces of clothing they needed some uh accessories things like that or things for school um and at one point it was in a closet in the media center at Mawa high school but kids weren't quite going to it it somehow moved to Courtney's office right at some point and then moved again now and out I what's the current location it's a previous Supply okay okay but at some point it was in Courtney's office it sounded like she had you know shelves and and things um and uh but what really was interesting is that this started but then other students also started to use it as well um and um you know now they applied for a grant which they received so they received a $7,000 Grant uh for it and now it is actually something that's run by the future problems solvers um by students um who again are helping fellow students so I mean it's just a wonderful program I think it's been recognized on the state level on the county level um so uh I thought you know again uh kids helping each other and um making all of our kids feel comfortable um you know when they come to school so a nice program the other um we also uh got some I ready uh there's some updates of some um you know our diagnostic results and so on um and um that was uh interesting uh Dr bino and um our math Supervisor was there to present some of those results I mean I think most importantly um which was great to see was that there were some increases from Fall 23 to fall of 24 so what is in place and this the some of the universal screenings the tier three interventions things that Dr bino um has been uh really um championing and working on it's working and um it's a really tremendous thing that we're seeing improvements and increases in those scores so that was a good thing um we also had um from this meeting in January I just wanted to point out um 18p on the agenda for tonight um there's some curriculum updates um these are novels that have been added into the curriculum for 6th through 12th grades um there was a pilot program of a book club that was started um on was that 11th grade was that 11 nth nth grade one of the ninth grade ELA teachers started a book club was very successful and now um it's going to be incorporated um across Ross the curriculum so um what's exciting is that there were several novels Dr bino actually read all of them and uh gave approval so these are books that will now um also be available for um them Tre and this includes regular novels graphic novels so it's really most importantly um you know reading um is important and to make sure that kids are engaged and excited about reading uh and they have similar themes the books per each grade um and then kids can talk about um you know all the major themes so um I think it's really kind of an exciting piece usually happens in the spring um and so anyway there'll be new books in our um repertoire and their repertoire for that all right that's all I have anybody else board member remarks okay oh Mr Gallon I'm sorry just um two things one international night was um celebrated last week it seems like every year the international night um more people and more cooks and more family show more food shows up and um it really showcases the wide variety of of people and cultures and and perspectives that um that make our school experience and our community experience so rich and diverse um it was really well done and there's always talk of you know expanding and bringing the lower grades in a whole bunch of things but it was um there's everybody has a smile on their face everybody has a plate in front of them and and I've certainly had a couple of plates in front of me um but it was really well done um the other thing I just want to highlight is tomorrow at the library at 6:30 um there will be a program put on by the ma Muslim Community um regarding um Muslim Heritage Month uh 6:30 830 at the library so everybody should try to find a way there thank you Mr Gallow any other board member remarks all right so let's move on to Old business um let's take the minutes from the January 8th meeting um do I have a motion on the floor Mr um Hughes second by Mr Denise roll call please Mr Mr coplin yes Mr Denise yes Mr Gallow yes Mr yes Dr yes um all right let's move on to new business um we have 18a to W but I'm going to take 18t separately that's our donation of the scoreboard so let's do 18 a to W excluding T and then we'll do 18t separately um so do I have a motion on the floor Mr Gallow second by Mr copin for 18 a to W excluding T Mr coplin yes Mr Denise yes Mr Gallow yes Mr accept that on 18a I'm sorry check number check number 11 18566 on that check got it thank you yes Dr Mor yes all right now let's take our generous donation 18t separately um motion on the floor Mr Denise second by Mr coplin roll call yes please Mr cin yes and thank you to DHA contract it's very generous donation Mr Denise yes Mr Gallow yes it's a great recognition of our uh Rev sports program at the municipal level so we're very thankful and grateful for their contribution to the sport scoreboard Mr use yes and this is a thank you very much to them is very generous Dr yes all right now let's take new business person now we have 19 A to Z this evening need a motion on the floor Mr copin second by Mr Hughes roll call please Mr lamp Mr compliment yes and thank you to all the volunteers Mr Denise yes Mr Gallow yes and welcome Mr Brian near to our business office Mr use yes Dr Bo yes all right public questions or comment public participation at board meetings is in accordance with bylaw 0167 at this time members of the public may ask questions or make a comment on educational issues your school matters of community interest it's a matter of fairness you're asked to limit your questions to no more than one and your remarks to no longer than 3 minutes if you're here representing a group please identify yourself the group and your position in the group if you're here as an individual please give us your name and address all right need a motion to open the meeting to the public Mr Gallow second by Mr Hughes all right we are officially open to the public seeing uh no one coming forth at this time motion to close the meeting to the public Mr Copan second by Mr Hughes we do not require an executive session at the end so I need a motion to adjourn I have Mr uh Gallow and Mr coflin all right thank you very much everyone have a good evening good night Mike